“I guess you’re just brilliant,” I said, the snark dripping heavily. “But my plan sets the bell tower on fire and then waits for him to escape, followed by picking him off like a corn rat.”
“I want to set a fire!” said Mills, followed closely by Bunny, also volunteering.
“Okay, it’s dark, so you should have some cover,” I told them. “Both of you, light opposite sides of the bell tower, and pay attention to where the wind is coming from. Got your matches?”
“Yeah,” Mills said. I could hear the rustling as he got his stuff organized.
“Got it,” said Bunny. “Mills, you ready?”
“Yeah. Meet you in twenty seconds.”
I clicked my comm off and told Nate, “I’m heading across the street—I’ll be on the second floor of the mercantile building.”
“Okay. I’ll raid the doctor’s office for medical supplies—if there’s any left.”
“Good thinking,” I said. Then I peeked out into the street, found the deepest shadow, and slid soundlessly into it. Praying the sniper didn’t have night-vision goggles, I nipped across the street as fast and lightly as I could.
Just as I dove through the broken door of the mercantile, gunfire peppered the street behind me, and then I heard shots off to the right. Crap. Had he seen Mills and Bunny?
At the rear of the store I found the ladder to the storage loft. As soon as my head poked through the top I froze—the moonlight illuminated a horrible scene: several skeletons, still clothed, grouped around the eave’s window. There was a woman, two kids, and two men. One of the men held an old-fashioned hunting rifle.
“Gross,” I whispered, and forced myself up. What had happened here? It looked like these people, this family, had holed up here to fight some enemy. Why hadn’t their bodies been burned afterward? This was the most horrible not-cell I’d ever seen. This was the only not-cell I’d ever seen.
Gritting my teeth, I gently pulled one of the kids’ skeletons away from the window. The shoulder bones came apart so I was pulling an empty shirt. The kid’s skull rolled off to one side and I saw the one neat bullet hole in the small forehead. Who would do that?
I crawled between the woman and one of the men, trying not to dislodge them. Their silhouettes were visible through the window—surely the sniper had already seen and discounted them. Carefully I rose just enough to see the street below… and yes! A small flame flickered on one side of the bell tower! Immediately I saw the sniper’s shadow as he leaned out and aimed straight down.
I quickly skipped parts two and three of the plan, raised my rifle silently and aimed. The sniper was moving fast from one side to another, shooting.
Wait… wait, I told myself, curling my finger around the trigger. I didn’t move my rifle, just waited for the shadow to flit across the crosshairs. Then, in between breaths, in the millisecond that the sniper filled my sight, I gently squeezed the trigger.
The rifle kicked against my shoulder but I’d expected it and didn’t move. The sniper staggered, then fell out the bell tower archway and landed two stories below with a thud. The flames licked at the old wood more eagerly, lighting up the night.
28
“THERE’S A SURPRISE,” NATE SAID as we gathered around the sniper’s body. He wore a United Army uniform but had no identification on him.
“Jolie,” I said, looking at her. “Go up in the bell tower and see if he left any equipment we could use. Be careful—there might be another gunner we don’t know about.”
Jolie watched my lips, then nodded and took off, her gun ready.
Bunny unbuckled the army guy’s gun belt, adding it to the one she already wore. Mills took his rifle and the ammo from his jacket.
“Why was he here?” Nate asked. “Why protect this abandoned town?”
“There’s got to be something here,” I said. “Maybe he has to check in every so often? When he doesn’t, they’ll send a replacement. So let’s split up and scour this place as fast as we can, and be out of here by midnight.”
Mills snapped me a sharp salute and I rolled my eyes at him. Bunny waited for Jolie, but the rest of us scattered.
We were back on the road by midnight, having found absolutely nothing of value, nothing mysterious. We’d left the sniper’s radio with him, since it probably had a GPS in it to track him.
Slowly we worked our way east, picking carefully through the woods and then hunkering down through tall prairie grass. I went first, whistling quietly and pushing the grass aside with my rifle.
Jolie tapped my arm. She traced a question mark onto my palm.
“Snakes,” I told her, and she nodded and was even more alert after that.
We’d been on the move for six hours since we left the not-cell, when the long march caught up to us. We dropped where we stood and I was lying in the chilly, damp, hay-smelling grass, my eyelids weighted by exhaustion, when it occurred to me.