Images flashed in my mind. Shapes pouring over a dark horizon. Teeth and blood. Ethan on the ground.
If they came again, it would end the same way, with one or more of us dead. I glanced at Bethi, and my imagination painted her eyes with Ethan’s vacant stare. What little I’d eaten twisted in my stomach.
“I agree. We can’t face them like that a second time.”
We’d been unorganized and ripe for the death they’d handed us. I pushed my chair away from the table and stood, knowing what needed to happen. Yes, we needed to leave. But more than that, we needed to organize ourselves. To fight, we needed to be fighters.
Before I could move to the bedroom to get my things, Carlos spoke up.
“I’ll clean up everything in here. Go outside and get some fresh air.”
Bethi and I walked out the door. Grey stood by the car, casually leaning against it.
“The rest of the group will be here in a few minutes,” Bethi said.
“Good. We need to talk about what happened.”
She gave me a surprised look.
“Really?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I watched the road for the caravan of vehicles. As Bethi had said, it only took a few minutes. By the time they were pulling in, Carlos was walking out the door with our bags.
I didn’t miss how Winifred and Charlene glanced my way as soon as I stepped away from the car. They were worried about me. Why though? They barely knew me. I hated the pity I felt.
“We can run some more, but it won’t stop the bad guys from trying again,” I said. “Not if what Bethi says is true. They need us. But we can’t fight like that again.” I looked at Charlene, Michelle, and Gabby. “You three need to be more than helpless.”
Clay and Emmitt growled at me.
“Shut it,” I snapped. “You want them to die?”
I refocused on the three women.
“What do you have in mind?” Charlene asked.
“When we were fighting, we couldn’t see overall movement.” I walked up to the three of them. “Stand back to back.” Michelle glanced at Charlene but all three moved to do as I asked.
“Back to back, you can have a 360 range of vision if you work together. Gabby has the ability to see long range, but when we’re fighting, it’s the short range that will keep us alive. The three of you have to be our center and our eyes. You watch and shout out what you see.”
“Like what?” Charlene asked. “There was so much motion, nothing made sense.”
“We’ll work on that,” I said.
I glanced at Winifred.
“And we can’t have two layers of protection. Not against the numbers we faced. The rest of us need to form a single ring around them.”
No one looked convinced.
“Trust me. Fan out around them. Grey, Jim, Carlos, Thomas, Winifred, Clay, Sam, and Emmitt.”
Everyone moved around the women so that I stood between Jim and Carlos. I turned to face outward. The rest did the same.
“This is how we’ll practice,” I said. “This is how we’ll learn to fight together. And this is how we’ll keep anyone else from dying.” I swallowed hard. “Gabby, your job is to find us two quiet places each day where we can stop for thirty minutes to practice.”
I stepped away from the circle.
“Let’s go.”
Numbly, I stared at the passing landscape.
“Are we there yet?” Ethan’s words echoed in my mind, as did Winifred’s response. My stomach churned sickeningly.
The car started to slow, and I lifted my head from the seat.
“Why are we slowing?”
“Gabby found the first quiet place.”
So soon? Trying to pull myself out of the dazed state I was in, I looked at the clock and saw we’d actually been on the road for two hours. It hadn’t felt that long.
I unfolded my legs and opened the door as soon as Carlos parked on the shoulder. Gabby’s quiet place was on another rural road with long stretches of fields and trees. I waited impatiently as the rest of the group climbed from their vehicles.
“In the same position,” I said as I walked a few yards into the field.
Everyone remembered their spots and faced outward.
“Grey and Sam, you’ll attack us. Your goal is to try to pull any of us from the circle.”
Grey and Sam stepped out and moved around us. Bethi squatted down into her ready stance but didn’t pull her knife out.
“Call out where they are, girls,” I said when Grey moved out of my line of sight.
“Grey and Sam are both by Emmitt,” Michelle said a moment before snarls broke out.
I spun around to see both Emmitt and Jim had broken the circle in their effort to fight off Grey, leaving an opening for Sam, who was batting Clay aside to grab for Gabby.