Page 77 of Red Rabbit
Around midday I couldn’t sit still so I paced the hallway like a caged animal. The storm persisted through the night and the rain continued to fall hard all morning but when it stopped, I was both relieved and terrified. The rain meant a harder time for Cooper but also made it more difficult for rescue.
Graham spent all morning fortifying the building after he unearthed a pile of thick sheet metal under the truck. He used it inside near the windows and created slits in the boards so he could shoot through them. He dragged the massive oak table into the center of the room and upended it onto its side as additional cover. Then he took me into the computer room and handed me an assault rifle. I stared at it skeptically. He went over the basics of how to sight, shoot and reload and then looked at me seriously.
“When they get here, I’ll be at the front windows. I want you watching the hallway. These three doors and the back are all entry points and the back door is our biggest weakness so they’ll probably come through there first. I want you to communicatewith me constantly. If you shoot the gun, I want to know. If you hit or injure someone, I want to know. If someone comes through the door, I want to know what door and how many. Got it?”
I nodded.
“Now, Cooper will probably anticipate you having a gun and he knows you’ll be the weak point and prone to panic. If someone comes through that back door, or any of those doors, do not—do NOT unload an entire clip on them. That’s what they’re going to try and get you to do. Remember our goal is to deter them and slowly pick them off until Cal can get here. We don’t need to go out guns blazing, we just need to hold. He has about twenty, twenty-five, men with him so if we’re careful and strategic—”
“How do you know how many men he has?” I interrupted suspiciously. He ran a hand through his hair and gave me a guilty half smile.
“That night I left you—I doubled back to see what we would be up against.”
“Graham!”
“I wanted to know just in case I had to send you on and make a last stand.”
“Jesus…” I muttered.
“Anyway, I think Cooper will push hard to see where we’re weakest and then back off and make his big push. We have the advantage of the bottleneck so—.” He shrugged, not wanting to say anything too optimistic but also not wanting to scare me.
“Graham—I—I don’t—if he takes me again—”
“Shh,” he said, running his thumb over my cheek. I started to tremble. If Graham fell and Cooper took me—I would kill myself. I couldn’t go back to the Warren. “I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
I knew he would too but twenty something against two—and I was more like a half—wasn’t good odds. The rest of the afternoon, Graham made sure all the guns and ammo were prepped and ready then he set me up near the hallway with the assault rifle and some ammo and we settled down to wait. He stood near the window and we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
The sun set and still the forest was silent.
Neither of us slept even though he told me to try. I’m not sure how he expected me to rest when Cooper could show up at any moment and take me back to hell. Even my dreams weren’t safe. But the night passed uneventfully. Graham didn’t look stressed or worried at all. He prowled the house a few times but otherwise kept his post near the front window, his gun in his hands.
By late morning Graham stared at me pacing behind the overturned table.
“What is taking him so long?” I muttered.
“You in a hurry or something?” He asked and I could hear his amusement.
“No—but the waiting is killing me.”
“The rain must have really slowed him down,” Graham said calmly. I needed to remember he’d been in worse situations than this before.
A few more hours passed and suddenly Graham sat up at a sound only he could hear. He held up his hand to me and I got down behind the table and grabbed the gun as I turned towards the back door. I strained to hear what he heard but I didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary. He looked out through the boards.
“He’s here,” he murmured. Fear coursed through me cold and fast, making me shiver. “He’s sending three to the back—they’re doing a quick recon.” I noticed Graham’s body language change and I knew he spotted Cooper.
“Hello the house!” Cooper called out, his cocky voice boomed out across the front lawn. “We’re here for the party! Actually we’re here to crash the party but you know—” I could almost see him shrugging. “Wolfman, you’ve taken us on a merry little chase the last few days. When did you get better at tracking?”
He was awfully chatty and then I heard the boards of the back porch creak and I knew why. He was trying to distract us. The mattress was still partially covering the hallway entrance but I could see when the shadow of someone crossed the light shining through the door frame.
“Back porch,” I said quietly.
“Remember what I said,” he murmured. “Conserve ammo.”
I nodded but I knew now what he meant because all I wanted to do was unload everything we had at that door. I clutched the gun and stayed ready.
