“Security! I need security here now!” she screamed.
John looked past her. Wherever Bob had gone with most of his command, he was long lost to view. A crowd was beginning to mill about out along Main Street. All of them looked to be civilians. Well-clothed, well-fed civilians, from mothers holding infants to several elderly, one of them in a motorized wheelchair.
Some were looking their way, and as if this woman was indeed some sort of leader, they started to head in their direction to witness the confrontation.
John looked back at the nameplate on the barrack’s door.
“Your husband is…”
“Yes!” There was a definite superior gaze as if with that question being asked she could now play her trump card and he would wilt away. “He was a senator and is now acting secretary of state.”
“At Bluemont?” He said the two words slowly.
“Yes, you idiot, at Bluemont.”
“If I were him and married to you,” Forrest growled sotto voce, “I’d stay there.”
“How dare you!” she cried.
“I dare because I have a right to dare,” Forrest replied.
“And you were evacuated here hours before our country was taken down by an EMP?” John snapped, voice filled with bitterness.
“I don’t have to answer that question,” she replied, but there was a slight loss of confidence in her voice. She turned away from John, looking back over her shoulder. “Someone get security here now and throw these bastards out!”
“We killed most of them,” Forrest replied. “If you’d care to, go up outside, take a look at their bodies. And then take a look at the entire damn world out there while you were hidden away down here.”
He was about to say more, but John could see that Laura was behind her mother, terrified, clutching Buster and sobbing uncontrollably.
It took all he could do next to try to control his voice. “Ma’am, I suggest that someone take your daughter to what she said is a shelter area, but you stay here. I have a few questions I’d like to ask you.”
“I want security now!” she screamed. “They’re assaulting me!”
The crowd was drawing closer. John looked past her. They numbered in the hundreds while Bob had brought less than a hundred with him when they stormed this place. More than a quarter were dead, wounded, or still deployed outside in a defensive perimeter protecting their precious airlift assets or dealing with the prisoners and wounded. He realized he should have stayed with Bob, who had forged ahead to find the communications center. All who was with him at this moment were the three guards that had been detailed to hold the entry to the tunnel and those left of what could be called his command—Grace, Reverend Black, who was gazing about, obviously in shock, Kevin Malady, Maury, and Forrest.
He could sense it was unraveling.
He glared at the woman, who was obviously trying to provoke a reaction.
“Ma’am, this can go one of two ways,” John announced, struggling to control his voice, his emotions still overwhelmed by all that he had learned in the last few minutes. “We’re going to back up to the tunnel entrance. I ask you to tell those folks behind you to get back in the other direction and we wait to let this sort out. We don’t want this to go out of control, so please help me.”
“Get your filthy asses out of here now!” she screamed. “Security, they’re trying to assault me!”
John saw several men pushing their way through the crowd, M4s up and aimed toward him, the crowd parting to let them pass but following in their wake, some shouting obscenities and threats.
“My people, get back!” John shouted even as he unslung the M4 over his shoulder.
“He’s going to shoot me!” the woman screamed. Her scream was picked up by the approaching crowd, most of them scattering or dropping to the hard tarmac floor of Main Street.
It was happening too fast for him now to hope to control. He began to draw back. Forrest was already crouching low, weapon aimed. Grace was out front, crouched low and moving forward, and John could see that she was trying to snatch Laura and knock her down while the girl’s mother remained upright, screaming.
A shot rang out, another, and then another.
Grace tumbled over onto her side, blood spraying out. Forrest, weapon leveled, opened up, aimed shot after aimed shot, dropping those who were firing on them. The crowd behind the action started screaming and running in panic. John stopped his retreat, crouching low, crawling the dozen feet to Grace, and flinging himself over her to protect her with Kevin at his side. Maury had his weapon leveled, shooting as well, while the three troopers who had been guarding the tunnel entry came running forward, weapons at the shoulder, one of them firing several times at a man in civilian clothing who had a short-barrel automatic, catching Maury in the leg.
A well-aimed shot from Forrest dropped that man as well as he tried to dodge behind a barrack.
The firing from down Main Street stopped; John, still prone over Grace, looked up. The street, so crowded but a minute earlier, was empty, the smell of cordite heavy in the air, wisps of smoke being sucked up by a noisy ventilation fan set in the ceiling over the street.
The three troopers pressed forward past where John was, and throughout it all, amazingly, the woman who had provoked it had remained standing, most likely so startled by the frightful onset of violence she had not yet even grasped how to react. Grace was lying prone over Laura, who was gasping for air and trying to crawl out from under her protection. Horrified, John saw that Laura was bleeding, blood leaking out of a wound in her back.
John drew back from his covering of Grace with his body. Her eyes were glazing, going out of focus. She had been hit in the head.
“Laura okay?” she whispered.
Crying, he could only nod. It would be like her to sacrifice all for a child she barely knew.
“She’s okay, sweetie,” John lied.
“Good. Tell my daddy…”
And then she was still.
It was near to painless and all so quick, unlike so many deaths he had witnessed, so many he had held while they were dying. All he could do was gather her into his arms and cry while Forrest knelt by his side, weapon protectively raised, and screamed for a medic. Kevin Malady went forward with the three troopers, reaching the security troops they had just engaged, all of them apparently down. One of them started to rise up, swinging his weapon around and cursing with rage, and Kevin put three more rounds into him.
Only now did the woman who had triggered all of this realize that her daughter was hit as well.
The medic came running up, still crouched low, knelt down by Grace’s side, put a finger to her carotid artery, snapped on a flashlight, and shined it into her eyes.
“I’m sorry, sir, she’s gone.” Without delaying even a second, the medic crawled over to Laura, felt the wound on her back, gently ran a hand underneath her, drawing it back to reveal she had an exit wound in her upper chest, and then frantically went to work. Even as she did so, she looked over at Maury.
“Where you hit?”
“Leg.”