Chapter 33: The Bushwhackers

The trigger pull was a suggestion Silas wasn’t ready to take, but the brush didn’t care about his hesitation. A wall of dry palmetto scrub cracked open thirty yards out, shedding a man in a pinstriped suit coat that had seen better decades. He wasn't a soldier, and he wasn't a woodsman; he was a ghost of the pavement, eyes wide and yellowed with the kind of hunger that turned a person into a predator.

Silas shifted his weight, the stock of the Remington 700 biting into the meat of his shoulder. He didn't breathe. He didn't blink. The humidity of the swamp border was a wet wool blanket draped over his head, but his hands remained bone-dry. Beside him, tucked into the roots of a massive, lightning-scarred oak, Elias let out a breath that sounded like a prayer caught in a throat full of gravel.

"They're coming from the north line," Elias whispered, his voice barely a vibration. He didn't look at Silas. He kept his iron sights leveled at the gap in the foliage. "Check the flank. They wouldn't send one man alone unless he was the bait."

Silas panned the scope. The world turned into a circle of magnified green and brown. There—another one. This one wore a heavy wool overcoat despite the ninety-degree heat, his face a mask of desperation and dirt. He was carrying a rusted pipeshot, a crude weapon held with the trembling grip of a man who knew exactly how little he had to lose. Then a third appeared. Then a fifth. They moved with a jerky, uncoordinated urgency, stumbling over cypress knees and splashing blindly through the black-water puddles.

"They aren't raiding us," Silas muttered, his finger tracing the curve of the trigger. "They’re drowning, and they think we’re the shore."

"Doesn't matter why a dog bites when it's got rabies," Elias said. "The fence line is only fifty yards behind us. If they hit the settlement, they hit the nursery first. You ready?"

Silas felt the cold metal of the bolt. He thought of the quiet rows of seedlings in the greenhouse, the way the community had finally started to breathe without looking over their shoulders. If these men made it past the oak, that peace died. 

"On your word," Silas said.

The lead man in the suit coat stopped. He lifted his head, sniffing the air like an animal. He smelled the woodsmoke from the kitchens. He smelled the life of Cypress Bend. He let out a low, guttural cry—a wordless sound that signaled the others to surge forward. They didn't have a formation. They just ran.

"Now," Elias barked.

The Remington barked back. The kick shoved Silas’s shoulder, a familiar, violent shove. In the scope, the man in the wool coat spun, his legs giving out as the heavy caliber round found his thigh. He crumpled into the muck. Elias’s lever-action Winchester winnowed the air with a rhythmic *crack-clack, crack-clack*. 

The forest, previously a cathedral of insects and stagnant heat, erupted into a chaos of screams and gunfire. 

"Get down!" one of the bushwhackers screamed, a man with a shock of white hair and a face carved by city soot. He scrambled behind a fallen log, fumbling with a handgun—a small, silver snub-nose that looked like a toy against the backdrop of the ancient timber. He fired blindly into the trees. 

The bullet whistled past Silas’s ear, a sharp *zip* that tore through a dangling vine of Spanish moss. Silas didn't flinch. He cycled the bolt, the brass casing ejecting with a metallic chime that felt strangely musical. He adjusted his aim. The white-haired man peeked over the log, his eyes searching for the source of the death coming from the shadows. 

Silas didn't see a person. He saw a threat to the calories in the cellar. He saw a threat to the children sleeping in the communal hall. He squeezed. 

The log splintered inches from the man's head, sending a spray of rotten wood into his eyes. The man wailed, clutching his face, his revolver falling into the mud. 

"They’re turning!" Elias shouted over the din. "Don't let them circle back to the creek!"

Two of the raiders had peeled off, realizing the center was a kill zone. They slashed through the palmettos toward the eastern edge, where the water was deep and the cover was thick. If they got into the creek, they could float downstream and bypass the main gate entirely.

Silas abandoned his prone position, shoving off the ground. Adrenaline was a cold fire in his veins. He ran parallel to the raiders, his boots thudding against the peat. The humidity tried to choke him, but he pushed through it, the rifle held across his chest. He could hear them crashing through the undergrowth—the sound of city lungs struggling with the thick, swampy air.

He reached the cypress stand at the water’s edge just as the first man broke through. It was a younger man, barely twenty, his face smeared with grease. He saw Silas and tried to raise a jagged piece of rebar sharpened into a spike. 

Silas didn't fire. He swung the butt of the Remington in a short, brutal arc. The wood connected with the boy’s jaw with a sickening thud. The boy went down hard, his head snapping back, his body splashing into the shallow, dark water. 

The second man emerged, chest heaving. He saw Silas, saw his companion face-down in the silt, and froze. He dropped his weapon—a kitchen knife taped to a broom handle—and fell to his knees.

"Please," the man sobbed. He wasn't much older than thirty, but his ribs were visible through his torn shirt, a ladder of bone under skin the color of parchment. "We haven't eaten in four days. They said you had corn. They said you had a doctor."

Silas stood over him, the barrel of the rifle leveled at the man’s chest. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. The man’s hands were shaking so violently he couldn't keep them raised. 

"Who told you that?" Silas asked, his voice low and dangerous.

"The men at the bridge," the raider gasped. "They told us there was a paradise in the bend. They gave us the guns. They said if we took the food, we could stay."

"The bridge is thirty miles away," Silas said. "Who’s at the bridge?"

"The ones in the blue jackets," the man whispered, his eyes darting to the woods where the gunfire had ceased, replaced by the low moans of the wounded. "They’re gathering everyone. They’re directing the hunger."

Elias appeared from the brush, his Winchester held at his hip. He looked at the kneeling man, then at the boy unconscious in the water. He reached down, grabbed the boy by the collar, and hauled him onto the bank so he wouldn't drown in six inches of mud.

"Blue jackets," Elias spat. "The militia from the coast. They’re clearing the cities by pushing the starving inland. Using them like a wave to break the independent settlements."

Silas looked at the man on his knees. This wasn't an army. It was a stampede of the dying. 

"What do we do with them?" Silas asked.

Elias looked back toward the fence line, where the silhouettes of the settlement’s guards were beginning to appear. More of their people were coming, armed with shovels and hunting rifles, their faces etched with a mixture of terror and fury.

"We can't feed them," Elias said, his voice devoid of emotion. "And we can't let them go back to tell the others we’re soft."

"Elias," Silas said, a warning in his tone.

"I’m not saying kill them, Silas. But look at them." Elias pointed to the man. "He can't even stand. If we give him a bag of grain, he’ll be dead or robbed before he hits the main road. If we bring him in, we’re inviting the blue jackets to come see why their wave didn't wash us away."

The man on his knees looked from one to the other, his hope flickering like a dying candle. "I can work. I used to be a plumber. I know pipes. I can help with the water."

Silas felt the weight of the moment. This was the fracture point. Since the collapse, Cypress Bend had been a secret, a pocket of the old world preserved by geography and silence. Now, the silence was broken. The world had found them, led by its most desperate ambassadors.

"Take them to the holding shed," Silas said, stepping back and lowering his rifle. "Not the infirmary. The shed by the old barn. Handcuff them. We tell the council."

"The council will want them gone," Elias said, though he motioned for the man to get up.

"Then the council can be the ones to put the bullets in them," Silas snapped. "Until then, they're labor. We need the trenches finished before the rains come anyway."

He turned away, unable to look at the man’s grateful, weeping face. It felt worse than the shooting. The shooting was a reflex; this was a choice. 

As they marched the two prisoners back toward the settlement, the woods felt different. The birds had stopped singing. The shadows under the cypress trees seemed longer, reaching out toward the tilled soil of the gardens. 

They reached the perimeter fence. Sarah was there, a shotgun draped over her arm, her eyes scanning the tree line. When she saw the prisoners, her mouth thinned into a hard line.

"More?" she asked.

"The vanguard," Silas said. 

"There were eight of them," Elias reported. "Two dead in the palmettos. One wounded. These two are the only ones who didn't run or bleed out."

Sarah looked at the plumber, who was staring at the green stalks of corn rising behind the inner fence. He looked like he was staring at a miracle.

"The militia is pushing them here," Silas told her, leaning close so the prisoners wouldn't hear. "They're being used as scouts. If they don't return, the blue jackets will know there’s something here worth defending."

Sarah’s grip tightened on her shotgun. "Then we just traded a skirmish for a war."

Silas looked back at the dark, silent forest. The trees were no longer a barrier; they were a hallway, and the door at the end had just been kicked open. He thought of the man’s words—*directing the hunger*. It was a brilliant, cruel strategy. You didn't need to waste ammunition on a settlement if you could just starve it out by forcing it to feed a thousand mouths it didn't have.

"Put them in the shed," Silas repeated, his voice sounding hollow to his own ears. 

He walked past the gate, past the well-tended beds of herbs, past the children playing near the laundry lines. He didn't stop until he reached the porch of his own cabin. He sat on the top step, the Remington resting across his knees. 

The sun began to dip below the horizon, bleeding a bruised purple across the sky. The air grew cooler, but the tension didn't lift. It settled over the Bend like a fog. 

He took out a cleaning rag and began to wipe the swamp grime from the barrel of his rifle. He worked with methodical, trembling precision. His hands were no longer dry. 

A shadow fell over him. It was Caleb, the youngest member of the council, his face pale. 

"Silas," Caleb said softly. "The scouts just came in from the south road. They found markings on the trees. Blue paint. Fresh."

Silas stopped rubbing the steel. He didn't look up. He knew what it meant. They weren't just being pushed; they were being mapped. The "paradise" the bushwhacker had spoken of was being staked out for a harvest.

"How many?" Silas asked.

"The markings go for three miles," Caleb said. "Each one is numbered. They’re measuring the distance to our gates."

Silas looked at the rifle in his lap. It was a precise tool, meant for deer and occasional predators. It was not meant for what was coming. He thought of the plumber in the shed, and the boy with the shattered jaw, and the men who had sent them there to die just so they could see where the bullets came from.

He stood up, the chair creaking under his weight. The peace of Cypress Bend had lasted exactly fourteen months. 

"Gather everyone in the hall," Silas said, his voice ringing with a cold, terrifying authority he hadn't known he possessed. "And bring the plumber. If he wants to live, he’s going to tell us every single thing he saw at that bridge."

He walked off the porch, his boots striking the earth with a finality that echoed in the quiet evening. He didn't look at the gardens. He didn't look at the sunset. 

He looked at the gate, realizing for the first time that a fence was just a way to tell the world exactly where you were hiding.