One Hundred Seven
JAKE AND ELI and Sammy are closer to the cabin now, but they’re off to the left, using the trees on that side of the house for cover but still returning fire, the whole world up here sounding like the war Helene had predicted.
I’m about twenty yards from the opposite side of the cabin when I hear the crack of a rifle that seems to have come out of the sky and see the figure who’d been in the upstairs window disappear.
I look across the clearing and see Jake crawling on his belly as Eli and Sammy continue to give him cover, Jake now as close to the cabin as I am.
All I am thinking about is getting to Roof Crockett.
I get closer now, knowing the shooters inside are focused only on the shooters outside.
I’m moving low and slow toward a side door when the front door is suddenly flung open and I hear Nash Hader shouting, “Don’t shoot!” Then I see him toss his rifle out in front of him and walk away from the cabin and into the clearing with his hands high in the air.
The night goes quiet again, but only for the moment before Roof Crockett leans out into the open doorway and shoots Hader in the back, letting him stagger forward before he shoots him again and Hader goes face down into the grass.
Then someone who can only be Lynyrd is shooting again from the upstairs window, and then there are more shots from sniper Michael Gola somewhere in the sky, and now Jake is scrabbling along the ground toward Nash Hader right before Roof Crockett is suddenly out the side door and running into the night.
I run after him.
He’s faster than I remember him being in high school, and not just by a little.
My Glock is in my right hand, but I’m not firing yet, knowing I’m not close enough to get a clean shot at him. But also knowing I wouldn’t want to shoot him in the back, anyway.
I almost want them alive, Jake had said.
I’m closing on Roof, trying to make myself as invisible as I can. Still not ready to take the first shot. Jake had said they might have vehicles on this side of the mountain. But wherever the road down the mountain is, I still don’t see it.
Up ahead I see Roof Crockett, who’d been running with his assault rifle in both hands, turn and fire in my direction, bullets crashing into the trees nearest to me, bark flying into my face, a thick branch landing in front of me.
But instead of going to the ground and taking cover that way, I make a spin move—a football move—deeper into the trees, making the next volley of shots from him miss by a lot, another branch whipping across my face and cutting me for sure.
I don’t care. I need to get closer. Burt had told me that fifty yards is the maximum distance for accurate shooting with the kind of gun I have in my hand, which now happens to feel like a popgun compared to what Roof has.
He’s running again, out in the open.
I stay just outside the tree line and run after him.
Behind me, I realize the gunfire at the cabin has stopped.
Somebody yells my name in the distance.
I keep going. The shape I’m in, the shape I’ve by God earned in the gym and in the fields, I know I can go like this all night if I have to. Even my knees are strong again, making me feel as fast as I’d been in my last game at Chapel Hill.
Maybe faster.
In what feels like another lifetime.
Another me.
When I see him coming up on the mountain road I knew had to be there, I stop long enough to fire off three quick shots.
Wanting him to know I’m getting closer.
“I know it’s you, Big Nothing,” he yells over his shoulder.
Stops and fires again.
“Give it up or I’m going to put you down the way I did your old man,” he yells.
And there it is.