Dead Watch

If there are several, you know what to do.”
    “I call for you, at the open window, so they can hear my voice.”
    “That should scare them off,” Jake said. “If not, I’ll take them on. You call nine-one-one, you yell at me that the cops are coming, so they’ll know. Then you tip the tables as barricades, make them come through the doors to get you. If they think the cops are coming, if they don’t have time to organize, I think they’ll run, even if I’m dead.”
    She shivered. “Jake . . .”
    “We’ll be okay.” He grinned at her. “Maybe.”

    When they were ready, Jake kissed her, said, “Keep shooting until you see them go down,” and stepped outside. The porch light was on, and he hurried away from it, into the dark. Probably three hours before they’d arrive, at the earliest, he thought. At this moment, they’d probably be somewhere in the Blue Ridge.
    If they’d monitored the bug at all. But, he thought, they would have: too much was happening all at once, and the bug would be invaluable.
    He walked away from the cabin in the narrow slash of light from his headlamp, the rifle slung over his shoulder, climbed the east hill on a trail he’d walked fifty times before, heading toward a crease in the hillside, hoping it wasn’t too wet.
    When he got there, he tested it with his bare hands. No more damp than the rest of the hillside, and not bad. He unrolled his quiet pad in the low vegetation, trying not to crush any more of the leafy plants than necessary, unrolled his sleeping bag on top of it, then slipped inside.
    Inside the bag, he could move with absolute silence; and he’d stay loose and warm. He’d jacked a shell into the rifle’s chamber in the cabin; he tested the safety, to make sure it was on, then snuggled up to the rifle, the muzzle just outside the top of his head.
    And went to sleep.

    He’d learned a long time before that sleep was protective; you were silent in your sleep, as long as you didn’t snore, and if you were in an ambush, you didn’t snore. You also woke up at any non-natural sound, and at fifteen- or twenty-minute intervals.
    He did that for an hour, then two hours, then three, the minute hand on his watch seeming to jump around the dial as he went in and out of sleep. At four, he was done with the sleep. He’d heard several small animals in the dark—skunks, maybe, possums, raccoons—but nothing larger. There’d been no flashes from behind the cabin.
    At five-thirty, he heard movement above him and to the south. Listening, hard. Turned his head that way, looking for a light. Moving in the dark was difficult in the Virginia woods; even a red LED lamp would help some, and shaded, pointed at the ground, normally wouldn’t be visible. But since he was below them, he might catch just a random flash . . .
    He saw nothing. The movement stopped, and he listened, breathing silently, his nostrils twitching, an atavistic effort to find a scent. Down below, the cabin porch lights, and the yard light near the shed, lit up the yard. There were two lights on inside the house, but no sound. Jake had told Madison not to turn the TV on until six o’clock, after turning on lights first in the upstairs bedroom, then in the bathroom, and finally in the kitchen.
    After twenty minutes of silence, he’d begun to wonder if he’d actually heard the movement, if it might not have been a departing deer. But he always thought that when he was hunting. You’d hear the sound, then you’d doubt it, and then you’d hear it again, and then you’d figure out where it was going, the angle, the speed, the shooting possibilities.
    Sunrise wouldn’t be for another half an hour. If it had been Jake, he’d have gotten into a shooting spot before there was any movement in the cabin. If they were up there, they’d be watching the cabin and making last-minute plans. In a few minutes, they’d start down the hillside, probably a few yards apart. They’d go in as a team, he thought, rather than breaking up and circling against each other.
    At a minute before six, he heard movement again, and at the same time got a single alert vibration from the walkie-talkie. Madison was up and moving. The light came on in the upper bedroom, and then in the bathroom. The movement stopped when the first light came on; it started again when the second light came up.
    So they were here. A deer wouldn’t have frozen. And whoever it was, was doing it right, moving with almost imperceptible