Red Zone Son

Chapter 19

They were lying prone, propped up on their elbows, hidden by the grass just a few feet east of the track of buried metal detectors running parallel to the Susquehanna. Not a single weapon in the cabin hadn’t had at least one piece of metal in it, which was such an incredibly gross oversight on the part of whoever had stocked it that Solomon found himself wanting to complain to Wilson about it. Even his own pistol he’d had to leave behind. It was just going to be him and his body against a fully armed border guard.

If he’d had more than five minutes in the cabin to plan, he would have taken a bunch of metal odds and ends with him like nuts, bolts, screws, and tossed them across the track every few yards for hundreds and hundreds of feet, making sure most of them could be easily found. Maybe he could’ve sneaked across with his pistol then, right after the commotion was over, because they’d think that his pistol was just another harmless metal thing crossing the track.

And now that he was thinking of better ideas than the one he was about to execute, Solomon was realizing that if the reach of these buried metal detectors was only even sixteen feet above the ground, he could’ve probably tossed his pistol over in a high arc undetected. Actually, why hadn’t he stopped to grab a rock or even a stick on the way here? There was nothing but grass around them, and a half-finished fence at least a hundred yards north, where fresh concrete footings anchored thick metal posts, standing upright in neat rows.

Well, too late now. At least they hadn’t finished fencing off the entire river. Manal, too, seemed as if she’d do her part okay. On the way there he’d worn the backpack with her propulsion device but she seemed confident she could, despite how heavy it was, run with it to the river and get into the water if Solomon kept the attention off her for sixty seconds.

“Ready?” he asked.

Manal nodded. She had her oxygen mask ready, her hands on the handles of the device, and her eyes fixed on the guard standing ahead of them. At two hundred feet away, he was a small figure along the river shore without any distinguishable details. They needed to get going, they couldn’t get caught out here, but he needed to ask Manal one more thing. “Can you do me a favor?”

She turned to look at him. “What?”

“Can you tell my sister what happened if I don’t make it out?”

Briefly, she closed her eyes, but only for a moment. Then she met his gaze, and once again there was an acknowledgment in them, a salute, just like on their first day together. “Yes,” she whispered. “I will.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Solomon began crawling on his elbows through the tall grass that was growing everywhere on this side of the river. It was almost three feet high, covering him nicely, and he could barely believe nobody had been ordered to mow it to prevent someone from doing exactly what he was doing right now. He knew Manal had said the blue zone antifas were disorganized, but still! Although maybe they were just as bad in the red zone, as that cabin really should’ve had even just a non-metal knife for him to use. Not to mention an anti-drone gun. Although he was going to bet that the antifas struggled with equipment too, that this border wasn’t as flush with drones as the old US military would have had it.

Maybe this was really how battles were won or lost: someone hadn’t mown the grass, someone hadn’t supplied the right equipment. All Solomon could do now was pray the border guard wouldn’t see him…

He was at a hundred feet now. The grass was seeding and he wanted to sneeze but he’d learned how to control that urge in week one of boot camp after he’d gotten screamed at and slapped and smoked in rapid succession when he’d broken formation once by sneezing. Fifty feet. He could see the guard better now, a White guy in a dark green uniform, armed with at least a rifle, and maybe more; he didn’t have the best angle for vision while crouched down like this. At any rate, he doubted he could get any closer without being noticed. He’d feel pretty stupid if all his effort up to this point just led to the guard seeing him and shooting him at a safe distance, so he stopped and waited for his chance.

It took a while. He was holding perfectly still under the June sun, in a long-sleeved green shirt with a hood that he’d picked out of the wardrobe in the cabin. His jeans were a dark, almost blackish blue. He was sweating as his clothing absorbed the sun’s rays. Especially inside his hood. He didn’t move his eyes off the guard, ignoring the prickling sensation of the grass brushing against his face.

Then he saw it.

A slight shift in the guard’s focus. The man’s gaze was wandering for a split second. Some distant movement had distracted him.

Time to go.

With a surge of adrenaline Solomon propelled himself forward, cutting through the air as fast as he could. The guard’s head snapped back but Solomon was already on him, his shoulder crashing into the guard’s midsection.

Solomon could tell immediately that he’d picked the wrong guy to tackle. The guard had at least fifty pounds on him and was older, with a whole lot more experience than just training under his belt. Only the element of surprise was what made tackling him actually work. The impact sent them both sprawling to the ground, and now they were a tangle of limbs and grunts as they rolled and struggled, each of them fighting for the upper hand. More than anything Solomon didn’t want to let him reach for a weapon to shoot Manal with as she ran to the river, so he focused on the guard’s arms, grabbing his wrists, trying to maintain control.

Solomon had one advantage: all he had to do was keep the guard busy for sixty seconds and that countdown had already started. There was an alarm going off somewhere which he was sure meant Manal had crossed the metal detector line with the propulsion device. She was on her own now though, as he could tell he was going to have his hands full just trying not to get killed by this guard who might have been from a disorganized unit but still sure knew how to fight. He’d already broken one hand free and pinned Solomon’s right arm down under his shoulder. They were lying on their sides, facing each other as if they were in bed together, only the guard was grabbing him by the throat.

Had it been sixty seconds yet? He was clawing at the guard’s eyes with his free hand but the guard didn’t try to dodge him, he just kept on crushing Solomon’s throat with a vice-like grip. The seconds felt like an eternity as he desperately struggled for breath. He hoped Manal had made it because he was about to die here. His fingers grabbed at the guard’s belt loop, groping instinctively for a firearm, but his rifle was long out of reach and Solomon was coming up empty on anything else. Black spots swarmed his vision and he really thought he might be about to die, when he felt it: a sound grenade in the guard’s pocket.

He had only enough in him to activate it by clenching the ball-shaped device with all his strength, through the guard’s clothes, so that the pressure would set it off.

The grip on his throat faltered as the blue zone guard immediately released him to dig frantically through his pocket for the ticking grenade. But he was too late. A deafening explosion of sound erupted from his side. It was as if a bomb had gone off, shockwaves of noise cascading outward into the air. Solomon barely had the presence of mind to push himself away. Then he was gasping, staggering to his feet, ears ringing. He was trying to run but kept falling. He had to get out of there. If they hadn’t come yet, the drones would be there any second. He forced himself to stand upright, and for a beautiful second he saw the river and the red zone on the other side. Manal was nowhere in sight, which was a good thing; it meant she was in the river now, safely underwater.

The fact that he’d succeeded gave him hope. Or maybe it was that the guard behind him was having such a hard time recovering from the sound grenade that gave Solomon a lift. He wasn’t going to win any racing awards, and he had no idea where he was going, but he was running now, and picking up pace as he headed away from the river, back into the blue zone.