Free The Unit by Terry DeHart Page B

high. Maybe they didn’t want to ruin the stuff in here. But now what?
    We’re surrounded by shooters. We’re surrounded by a parking lot that only has a few cars for cover. And I get the feeling that the shooters didn’t just stumble up on us. No. I get the feeling we’re caught in a trap. Something makes me look up at the shelves. Rows of chips. Corn chips and potato chips and pretzels and cheesy fish crackers. I didn’t notice before that some of the packages are open. The bags are crumpled and crooked on the shelves. Some of them have dirty fingerprints on them.
    It’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t have noticed back when the world was boring, but I see it now, all right. Bait. It’s bait and this is a trap and we’re in it. The rat eats the cheese; the rat eats the cheese; hi-ho, the dairy-o, the rat eats the cheese. And now we’re totally screwed. Unless we fight. Unless we fight and kill and win.

Bill Junior

    We pour some fire on them to see what they’re like. They pop back at us with a little .22 and one shotgun round. Let’s just say that our fire is a lot noisier, and so the situation is clear. I send runners behind us and all the way to the trees to make sure there aren’t any more strangers setting a trap for us. I learned how to play chess when I was locked up in juvie, and an ambush is a lot like that mean little game. I know I can’t pay so much attention to setting up an attack that I fall into somebody else’s.
    I send runners to get some of our dynamite. I don’t want to blow up the market, but I want to be ready for anything. I hold up my fist and the men stay low and some of them look like they want to get this over with and go back to sleep, but they’re watching me and understanding my signals, and I know they’ll do whatever I say.
    For now we’ll wait. We’ve had good luck with waiting. We’ve had people surrender after the first few shots. We’ve had people shoot up all their ammo at us, so we could just walk over and put them out of their misery. One dude even shot his family and then himself while we waited. Ookie said that the dude didn’t know what side he was on, and we laughed about that crazy loser for days.
    No, these strangers aren’t going anywhere. I’ll wait for the runners to get back before I make my next move, then I’ll think of something that doesn’t get anyone but the right people killed. I glass them with the binoculars. The girl peeks out from behind an aisle of soda pop, and she’s looking fine, fine, fine, with that wild red hair. She’s wearing a ski coat and some nasty-looking blue jeans, but her clothes can’t hide the fact that she’s one hundred percent female. I hand Luscious the binocs and ask him what he thinks of her.
    “So
that’s
what you’re after,” he says.
    “That there is a righteous-looking wench,” I say.

Jerry

    The shooting stops. The kids are quiet, and I crawl to them and check them for holes. I check their arms and legs until they push me away. Susan hasn’t been hit, thank God. I remember to check myself. There aren’t any holes in me either, thank You, Lord, again and forevermore. Thank You for not letting us die because of my stupidity and greed.
    But how did we miss these guys? I don’t buy the story that they just walked up on us. No. They could’ve been hiding in the motel or the wrecking yard, watching us pass. But if that was the case, they could’ve taken us on the road. Maybe they have hidey-holes. Spider holes, like the terrorists had in Beirut. It doesn’t take long to prepare positions like that. And nestled down in the earth, beneath good camo cover, you’re very hard to spot. Unless someone steps directly on the position, a spider hole is practically invisible.
    But I’m only being paranoid again. They probably just didn’t see us right away, and that’s a good sign, because it means they’re fallible, too. I low crawl to Susan and whisper that we’ll wait until dark. We’ll melt away into