Rebecca and Sam had doubled back down the edge of the field, then traversed the entire perimeter to come up on the opposite side of the farm through the woods behind the barn. As they ducked through the rail fence just past the gate and started walking uphill in the barn's "shadow", she didn't want to startle the guys, so...

"Lima, Echo. We're coming up on your six, don't be alarmed."

She saw a shadowy shape turn in their direction, move their hand slightly, then go back to watching the house from behind the extended barn door. They seem to be supervising some of the recently liberated prisoners as they worked to drag tables from inside the barn and stack them in a growing barricade protruding like an extension of the door.

When she got closer, Landry turned again. "Hey boss. Epstein's around the corner with a couple volunteers, making sure they don't try to sneak down the side. You know, like we did."

He could probably see her grin slightly, night vision and all. "Good work getting them all out. How's the kid?"

"Sounds like he'll be okay. They've got him wrapped up in a blanket inside, he'd been out there since yesterday. Mom gave him a little brother and I think he conked out."

"Fuckers." Rebecca heard Sam swear in the background too. "Anyone badly hurt?"

"Minor injuries, exposure, some dehydration. Probably long term malnutrition but I'm no medic, I'm just assuming. Seems these assholes tried to maintain their workforce.

"How nice of them."

"Excuse me?" A woman's voice from inside the barn attracted Rebecca's attention, and she squinted to see where it was coming from in the dim light of the few candles Landry was letting them use. "Over here..."

Rebecca nodded to Landry, who returned it and went back to watching the house, and walked into the barn to follow the voice. She heard Sam mutter something encouraging to Landry and enter behind her too.

Eventually she found a woman, maybe late 30's. She couldn't see her features well in the light, but she had long hair and was around Rebecca's height. She stank a little of sweat and toil, but Rebecca blamed her captors for that. "Hi. Are you okay?"

"Oh god, we are now. Thank you. It sounds like you're in charge?"

It kinda did, didn't it. "Sorta. What happened here?"

The woman pulled the blanket tighter around the boy she rocked in her lap as she sat on a bench. "Pretty much what it looks like. A bunch of monsters living off our backs, trying to tell us we should be 'grateful' for their 'protection'."

Rebecca shook her head in disgust. "I'm finding myself glad they got our attention."

"Oh... I was about to ask how you found us. Did they try their bull—" the woman glanced down at the child. "Their scheme with the checkpoint on you? I guess they couldn't fool the real thing, thank god."

Rebecca didn't want to get into whether or not she was 'the real thing' and let it slide. "Is he going to be okay? Why did those... Ahem. Why did those monsters have him out there?"

"Usually they use those for... discipline, or motivation. Sometimes they don't put the troublemakers on them, but their family instead. More effective, you know. But Jack here... he's my little hero. One of them shoved me and I fell — not working hard enough, of course. But when they were standing over me, he came running in between and started pounding his fists against them, yelling at them not to touch his mom."

Rebecca couldn't see the woman's face well now that her own shadow was blocking the candlelight, but could hear her sniffle as she wiped her eyes.

"So of course one of them grabs him by the arm and hauls him off to the crosses, and the other just kicks me, tells me that maybe if I work harder, they'll let him down."

Rebecca pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed, bending her head down. "Goddammit." Then, she knelt and gently lay a hand on the blanket over the kid's back. "I don't know if you can hear me little guy, but you're safe now. Nobody's gonna hurt you or your mama. You can rest for now. You're gonna be okay."

**

Sam wasn't going to lie to herself about getting to shoot at some right bastards feeling good. After the day she had, she figured it was a fair enough reaction. Now, hearing this woman's story, it made her want to go back out there and do it some more. It really would be nice to have that Black Tusk quad mech here with its cannon. Let's see how these assholes fare against that thing piloted by someone from the 2014 second place regional combat robotics team. The way that mom was describing her son standing in front of her...

Mike had left for college a couple of years before. He'd came home for the summers, walk her through one or two of his class projects from the year before, let her "drive him around" to the store or mall so she could get some wheel time in. During the school year, it was quieter without him in the room right next to hers... usually.

Once, maybe twice a month, Mom and Dad would get into it about something. Money, taxes, insurance, usually stupid grownup crap like that. Sometimes Mom would lose a bill and not pay it, or Dad would blow too much money on the weekend with his buddies. Usually they'd just end up in different rooms sulking about it until they cooled off and she could just stay out of it.

Late spring, when she was sixteen, she came home from school in a mediocre mood. She'd gotten the grade back on a chemistry test, that went pretty well. The math quiz she suffered through that day though, the teacher was just horrible at explaining things, and she dreaded the results coming on Friday. Lunch had been cool, and hey, no P.E. that day, so that was a win.

They were sniping at each other in the kitchen when she got home. Maybe if they'd just take a break and both eat a cookie they could have the conversation like "adults". She went upstairs, tossed her backpack on the bed and kicked her shoes off, glad to be rid of both for the day.

Still, she was hungry herself, and after dawdling twenty minutes to see if they'd STFU, she sighed and went downstairs. She figured she'd just walk in with her headphones in, mumble something snarky about being hungry, and raid the fridge and pantry. Hopping downstairs on every-other step in her socked feet made her pretty quiet, or they were pretty caught up in there little squabble, because they didn't hear her coming.

As she padded through the dining room, rolling her eyes, she heard a chair from the breakfast table skitter across the floor and slam into the wall, followed by another chair scraping back, and saw her mom back into view. Something about the startled look on her face, or the worried look when she spotted Samantha in her peripheral vision and glanced over, then back into the kitchen at Dad, set Sam off.

She charged hard off the carpet, getting good traction with her socks there, but not on the vinyl tiles where she slid a few unexpected inches and slammed her hip into the table. Maybe the pain added to things, but she faced off with her dad, a few inches taller and a good forty pounds heavier than her, and rammed both of her fists into his chest, shoving him back several inches.

"Don't you fucking touch her, Dad!"

Now she was between the two of them, Mom trying to get her to calm down, Dad getting defensive about how Sam was being absurd and he'd never. But she wouldn't back down from either of them.

Eventually Sam literally ordered her mother to "go to her room" and defiantly held the space between them until she'd left. At that point, Sam shouldered her way past her father to the fridge, grabbed the half-gallon jug of orange juice and entire pack of string cheese, and taken both back to her room. She pointedly left the door open with her chair in-line with the hallway, chomping moodily away on cheese sticks while she read her Lit and history homework, foot up on a bookshelf and blatantly facing the door. Eventually Dad turned off the TV downstairs, glanced sheepishly at Sam as he crossed the landing, and started mumbling things in calmer tones at the doorway to their bedroom. Maybe that was why Mike played his music and games so loud sometimes.

Fucking hell, this day had to fuck right off, and they still had several hours to go until midnight.

**

As Rebecca rose with a groan, Jack's mom grasped for her hand. "Thank you, again, really."

She tried to smile as best she could. "What's your name?"

"Sorry... manners. Dylan. The ones you've captured or... killed. Was there a woman among them?"

"Not that I saw, but I'll check. Why?"

"She's the one in charge. The others follow her, but this is all her doing. She's probably up in the big house. She goes by Mags."

Rebecca's eyes narrowed a millimeter or two. "I see."

"Goddammit," Landry's voice boomed from outside, "put it down!"

That snapped Rebecca's gaze up and she dashed to the doors with Sam, guns coming up.

Landry's weapon was at his side, but his finger was pointing imperiously into the face of one of their rescues. Late 30's or early 40's man, dingy and scruffy just like everyone else. He was clutching an AK-style rifle and trying to get around Landry, but the burly man kept stepping in front of him.

"Why should I? They deserve it! You killed plenty of them! Why are you defending them now?"

A row of men in a mix of outdoorsy and paramilitary clothing knelt near the barricades, facing the house. It looked like Landry had used his fistful of zip ties on the first several, and remaining were bound with lengths of rope cut from a coil found inside the barn.

Rebecca stormed up to Landry's side, slinging Felicia behind her as she went and grabbed the barrel of the man's gun, forcing it farther down and to the side, and shoved the safety lever down with her other hand. Right up in his face, she snarled at him through clenched teeth. "Because, you idiot, there are more people like you up in that house. Maybe you don't know any of them, but if you shoot one of these assholes, just like all the rest of us would very much like to, who's to say what they're going to do inside? Let go of the gun before we take it from you too. Now!"

He glared at her for a second, but she had plenty of practice not blinking as she looked through a scope and just gave him a cool stare. Grumbling, he released the gun, suddenly heavy in her awkward grip near the muzzle. Landry reached around her and grabbed it nearer the center of gravity and she let go gratefully.

"Thank you. Now go bandage somebody's fucking wound or help distribute some food and water or some shit." As the man stalked off around the corner as ordered, Rebecca glanced at her hands to make sure they were clean enough and then rubbed her eyes. God, she just wanted to be curled up with her back against her uncle's wood stove right now with Sam at her side, explaining to her mom how they found her. Instead she had to deal with all this shit. She glanced at Sam again, but was disappointed, she couldn't see anything of her expression in shadowy night.

Fine, let's get this show fucking moving. She reached for her radio. "Echo. Bring the cars up, stop outside the gate." She half-listen to Chrissie's acknowledgement while she looked for someone competent and steady looking. Two guys were standing together like they knew each other, one holding an AR-15 pattern rifle similar to an M4. "You two. Can I trust you to keep your eyes open and your shit together?"

They glanced at each other and nodded. "Great. Go around the other side of the barn, find the Marine who helped save you, and send him over here. Take his place and keep an eye out for any movement out of the side of the house or through the fucking crucifixes. Clear?"

The unarmed one nodded and the guy with the gun replied. "Yes ma'am."

She'd settle for it. "Good, go."

The wait gave her time to consider Ronnie's lesson in the sewers months back. About taking into account how the other side would treat their captives. If she could see her now. "Hey, Landry. Good job keeping him from screwing things up more."

"Seemed like it would only go downhill from there."

"Amen. Oh, good. Lance, nice work so far. Those trucks downhill towards the gate, and the Humvee. I presume you can hotwire them if there's no keys?"

Epstein probably gave her a mildly offended look, based on the head tilt behind the night vision headset. "Cake walk."

"Cool. One sec." She had an idea and turned around to address the row of slavers-turned-prisoners. "Hey assholes. Any of you with a key to one of those cars who coughs it up right now gets a chair to sit in and medical care for your injuries."

One guy who was balding to begin with and seemed to have lost more hair in the explosion squirmed and tried to look her way. "I got keys for the Ford in my right pocket!"

Rebecca pointed at two more of the liberated civilians. "Get him up. Landry, cover them, if anyone does something stupid, kick their ass and then let that other dipshit come back and shoot them."

She looked back to Epstein. "There, saved you a little work. Bring them all up here, point them at the house, and turn the high beams on. I want them lit up and blinded." Here's hoping at least one of the trucks was seriously rednecked out and would have those extra lights behind the cab.

The wait for her latest orders to be completed... because yeah, now she really was issuing orders... gave her a little time to check in on Sam. "Hey, how're you doing?"

That got her a shrug. "Holding up. You're doing good."

Rebecca reached for Sam's forearm. "Thanks for having my back like you always do." She hoped she didn't just imagine Sam's smile.