Renewal 9 – Delay Tactics
Chapter 9 – 1
Terry crept through the darkness. A sinister orange glow drew him onward. He did his best to move silently through the underbrush as he followed the low murmurs of fevered chanting. Soon, the crackle of flame buried his worry about being heard and replaced it with the worry of being seen. He need not have worried. The white-robed figures were fully involved in their ritual of obscene pain. One layer of leaves from full exposure, Terry watched the center wooden cross crackle and spit, burning bright in the black woods.
Terry sat absolutely unmoving until the figures on the side crosses forced a ragged gasp from his throat. He reached for his automatic and prepared to die. He had never met the victims, but he recognized them from Bill’s stories. On the left cross was Arturo, and on the right, little Jimmy. Terry was struggling to reconcile the fact that they matched his imagination perfectly. He would have known them anywhere, and yet he could not possibly know.
As he judged the timing for his attack, the center figure of the ritual spun around to face him. He knew he was caught, most likely recognized. He rose to his feet behind the bush, his upper half in plain sight of the entire white-robed crowd.
“Terry Sheffield,” the figure intoned, “So nice of you to join us.” He pulled the pointed white hood from his head, and Terry sagged back to his knees. The leader of the ritual was Bill Carter. He waved Terry into the clearing.
Terry stepped around the bush and walked forward until the heat of the burning cross became uncomfortable on his face. He was surrounded by a hundred hidden men, all wearing the white robes of the Knights of the White God. As Terry scanned the crowd he picked out eerily familiar eyes peering from holes in the hoods. He was lost. Everything he believed in his rapid transformation into a member of Bill’s carefully built community was overrun by the revelation that Bill was no different from the enemy. These men could burn him, for all he cared. His hope for the future was shattered.
Bill Carter spoke again. “I’m glad you’re here, Terry. We didn’t know how much longer we could pretend to be the good guys.”
What? Terry felt the cracks forming in his reality. The others began removing their hoods. There was Kirk. There was Sam. There was Jeffry and Seth. John Hall pulled his hood and leered at Terry with a purely evil grin. The hood to Bill’s right came off. It was Dusty Baer.
Wait a second. Dusty is dead. This is wrong.
Bill glanced away for moment and back again. “Wake up, Terry. Wake up!”
A dream. It was a dream. The open window was black. Terry physically shook to rid himself of the last vestiges of the horrible dream. He heard gunfire outside. With his mind still mired in the twilight of sleep, Terry let his body drive. He pulled on his clothes and weapon belt. He sat back down on the edge of the bed while his hands laced his boots. Another part of his mind heard scuffling sounds from down the hall. When he turned the knob on the bedroom door, he stepped out into the hall and was nearly knocked over by a slender redhead in full stride.
Sally looked angry at first, and then they both laughed at the collision for a second or two. Then they remembered. Gunfire. Sally slid past Terry with her hand lingering on his shoulder. He followed her down the stairs, still struggling to pull his head out of the wild dream. Down through the kitchen and out the back door. They listened to the firecracker pop of weaponry to the west, and headed out in that direction.
The whole of Teeny Town was only four hundred feet wide, east to west, and two turns later, they were standing at the massive barn that served as the main vehicle storage and western defensive gate for the town proper. Beyond the barn was a flat series of crops fields, everything from beans to corn, mixed for maximum efficiency and synergistic support. The town nestled in a
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