War Read Free

ran with his bike, tripping over roots, pushing aside branches.
    A clearing became visible. Just beyond it, a small hill.
    And halfway up the hill, a run-down, wood-shingled hut. Lopsided and windowless. Standing on four stout wooden corner posts.
    Jake ditched his bike at the clearing’s edge and ran to the hut. The door was secured by a huge rusted padlock. The windows were boarded up.
    He slid under the hut, in the space formed by the posts.
    The ground was cold but dry. A salamander skittered away, vanishing under a rock.
    Jake pulled back his hair. Rivulets of water cascaded down his neck.
    Another boom sounded. Loud. Close. Shaking the ground. But this time Jake saw no flash of light.
    Weird.
    He lay on his stomach and gazed back into the clearing.
    A ring of tall pines surrounded the area.
    Tall dead pines.
    SSSSNNNNNNNNNAPP!
    A flash.
    An explosion.
    A falling tree.
    And a shuddering shock wave of heat that seemed to rip across the ground, traveling through the moisture, searing the soil.
    Electricity.
    It was Jake’s last thought before he blacked out.

4
    C RACK!
    CRACK!
    Musket shots.
    Ambush.
    Man the cannons.
    Shoot first, ask questions later.
    Don’t worry, Colonel Weymouth. I’m here.
    You won’t lose this time.
    You can’t.
    CRRRRRAAAACKKK!
    The sound pierced Jake’s consciousness.
    Close. Loud.
    Too loud.
    He jolted upward.
    His head smashed against something hard. Wooden.
    Ow.
    His body ached all over. He felt as if he’d been slammed against a rock. His fingers twitched uncontrollably.
    Electrocution.
    I should be dead.
    With a groan, Jake pulled himself out from under the hut.
    He stood on shaky legs and leaned against the wall.
    He tried to focus. Blurred, gray-blue images swam before his eyes.
    Grass.
    Pine trees.
    Through their spindly top branches, the sun was attempting to break through.
    The rain was now a drizzle. The ground had dried a bit.
    A fallen tree lay across the clearing. The tree’s stump jutted out of the ground, jagged and white-brown.
    A swath of scorched, blackened earth led from the stump to the hut. On a straight line to where Jake had been lying. Like a shadow that had remained after the tree had fallen.
    The lightning hit the tree, then traveled toward me through the wet ground.
    And I lived.
    How much time had passed since then? An afternoon? A week? A year?
    Jake glanced at his watch. Three-seventeen. An hour and a half. That was all.
    Leave.
    Byron doesn’t know where you are.
    CRACK.
    He froze.
    The sound again.
    The shot.
    Not a dream.
    Real.
    Coming from behind him. From beyond the ridge.
    He looked over his shoulder. A puff of bluish-gray smoke rose in the distance.
    Go ahead. Just a peek.
    He turned, then began to climb.
    Toward the top he began hearing voices. A faint whinny of a horse. The clanking of metal. Another shot.
    He dropped to his knees and peered over the ridge.
    Below him lay a broad valley, dotted with scrub brush. In its midst was a sight that made Jake’s jaw drop.
    It was a vast encampment with clusters of canvas tents arranged around log cabins. Men swarmed about, carrying crates, grooming horses, cleaning muskets.
    Men in blue uniforms.
    Dead Man’s Trace.
    This is it.
    The movie set.
    To the left, across the valley, a line of soldiers took turns shooting at a metal can on a distant tree stump. Directly below Jake, a group of soldiers sat around a campfire, cleaning muskets. Laughing. Relaxing.
    From behind one of the tents a burly guy emerged, wearing a stained white apron and dragging a bloody hunk of meat about three feet long.
    “Steak tonight, Cook?” one of the soldiers shouted.
    “Last one,” the man grunted. “Tomorrow we starve.”
    Exactly right.
    Every detail.
    Just like the drawings and photographs.
    Better than any Civil War reenactment. Ever.
    Jake looked around for cameras. Power lines. Lighting equipment.
    Nothing.
    Which meant they weren’t even shooting film yet. So this had to be a setup. A practice.
    Nothing modern to