About that time Summer parked her car in the back lot at the Frostee Freeze. There was no hope of getting a spot under the awning. “It’s all right,” Alan said, “we don’t really want to be there, anyway. It’s more fun to hang out at the picnic tables and socialize.”

The place was busy; there were a lot of kids hanging around, and it held the prospect of being a good time all around. Summer and Alan headed up to the takeout window, where Ashley was busy. Since they’d just finished dinner not long before, they decided to pass on ice cream for now, and just got soft drinks. “Busy tonight, Ashley?” Summer asked as the bigger girl filled two paper cups for them.

“Busy right along,” she said. “There are kids here I haven’t seen since school let out. Everybody’s taking advantage of the football players out making asses of themselves. I suppose that includes you, too.”

“You sure got that right,” Summer smiled as Ashley handed her their drinks. “It’ll be nice for a change.”

“Hey,” Ashley said, “if you happen to see Lyle Angarrack, sit and talk with him for a while. We sort of hoped it wouldn’t be busy tonight so we could talk a bit, but I can see that it’s not going to happen.”

“Sure will,” Summer replied. “He’s a nice guy. It’d be great to talk with him.”

Even considering the fire, the loud rock music coming from the pickup, the fact that everyone at the party was now pretty drunk, and the relative quiet of the big four-stroke Honda outboard on the sheriff’s bass boat, it was still a little surprising that no one noticed the approach of the boat until it hit the beach like a landing craft with a bunch of Marines going ashore on a contested beach.

Well, someone noticed the noise of the approaching boat. Down on the edge of the little sandy beach of the fishing site, away from the rest of the party, Courtney Dolfuss said, “What’s that?” to Darrell Stersec. Darrell wasn’t paying attention to anything but the fact that he was on top of her and in her. For that matter, Courtney was actually more interested in what she was doing, and Darrell was doing a pretty good job of keeping her busy, so neither of them raised an alarm.

Although the big Honda hadn’t been running for long, it got the boat moving fairly fast with the bow high, so when it hit the beach it ran well up it, to about half the boat out of the water before the drag of the sand brought it to a stop. Like the rest of the officers on board, Cody had been hanging on tight when the boat rammed the beach. It had barely come to a stop when he jumped over the side with the others. He’d been riding well back in the boat, so he discovered that he was over ankle deep in water. In seconds, he was running with the others toward the fire.

Sheriff Stoneslinger had warned them that the kids at the party were going to scatter in all directions, so it was important to get as close as possible without being noticed before shouting commands. It was going to be impossible to capture everybody right off, but the more they could arrest now would be all to the good. Amazingly, they got close to the fire before anyone noticed and started to run away. Seeing that, Aaronsen shouted, “Police! You’re all under arrest!”

That got everybody’s attention in a hurry. Cody picked out a guy who didn’t seem to be getting up very quickly and grabbed him, knocking him back down. In a few seconds he had Flex-Cuffs on the guy and was looking for someone else who could be grabbed. Another guy, obviously pretty drunk, was just getting up; Cody piled on him before anyone else could.

Eddie happened to be away from the fire at that moment, just taking a leak, when he heard Aaronsen’s shout and the sound of kids yelling and running. He’d had several beers already, although he wasn’t as drunk as some at the party. What the fuck, he thought, then realized that his perfect party had been raided!

There was no time to think – the only thing to do was to get away. His car was parked a ways up the hill, and the logical thing to do was to head for it. The woods were thick and dark, but he ran in what he thought was the general direction, not paying a lot of attention to where he was going. As a result, he ran right straight into a low-hanging branch, which caught him in the chest and knocked him to the ground. “Aw, shit,” he said aloud, then picked himself up and continued heading toward the car. Goddamn fucking cops, he thought. They sure fucked up a good party, but there’s a chance I can get out of here and not get caught.

In the darkness, he slammed his face into another tree branch, and could feel that he had been scraped up a bit, but he kept going. Fortunately it wasn’t much farther to his car, and he was damn glad to see it. It was parked to block the two-rut, the closest one to the fire. He could see that some of the other kids had already made it up to the vehicles, but there were still some coming. Some of the other cars were already leaving, but he suspected that they didn’t have the people they came with – everybody was just too anxious to get away. As he piled into the car he decided that he’d better stay as long as he dared to help some of the other escapees.

Sure enough, several other people saw him in the car with the dome lights on. As he started the engine he heard the car doors open, and saw people piling in. The car got full in a hurry. “Anybody else coming?” he asked out loud.

“Fuck if I know,” he heard Don Johansen say. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said, dropping the car into gear and heading up the two-rut. They were just about the last to leave. “What the fuck are the cops doing raiding our fucking party?” Don swore. “That’s really fucking gay!”

“Fuck if I know,” Eddie said, his anger getting pretty righteous. “I can’t believe the fucking cops are fucking with the football team! What the hell got into them, anyway?”

“I wonder who told them?” he heard Shelly’s voice from the back. “Somebody had to run off at the mouth.”

Eddie would have liked to have gone faster, but he was behind Lanny Mundhenk’s car and Lanny wasn’t driving fast enough, as far as Eddie was concerned. “Somebody had to,” he said, silently cursing Mundhenk and wishing the hell he’d step on the gas. “Scotty and I told everyone to keep it quiet.”

“I’ll bet it was someone gay like Kovacs or Sarmeinto,” Don said. “They’re the kind of pussies that would do something like that. They ought to get their asses kicked.”

“It might not be them,” Eddie pointed out. “A lot of people knew about the party.”

“Well someone ought to kick their gay asses anyway,” Don sneered. “Someone had to have talked, and they really need their asses kicked.”

“Did anybody get caught?” Eddie asked, getting away from that discussion.

“Some if them had to have been,” Shelly said. “There were a whole bunch of cops there; they had to have grabbed someone.”

“I’m pretty sure Walt and Shane got caught,” someone else said from the back seat. “They were too loaded to walk, let alone run. But I think there were others.”

“Darrell, I’m scared,” Courtney whispered. “Fuck, if we get caught my folks are going to be all over my ass.”

“Mine too,” Darrell replied, keeping his voice as low as hers.

“Darrell, we’ve got to get out of here,” she whispered.

“Maybe things aren’t quite that bad,” he said. “The cops haven’t noticed us yet, and we’re well away from everyone else. Let’s just sneak out of here slowly and quietly. By the time we get a hundred yards away, nobody will notice us.”

“You think we could sneak around to the cars?”

“Not a chance,” he said. “They’ll be watching. Besides, anybody that has a car will have left already, so there aren’t any cars left.”

“Oh, fuck,” she whispered back. “Darrell, what the fuck are we going to do?”

“Let’s not talk about it just now,” he said. “Let’s just sneak off through the woods. We’ll just go slowly and quietly, and then when we get a ways away we can talk. Try to not make any noise.”

“So how many did we get?” Sheriff Stoneslinger asked.

“I make it eleven,” Aaronsen said as he firmed up the Flex-Cuffs on those that had been caught. It was still possible for those they’d captured to run with them on, not that some of them seemed very capable of running. “Maybe the guys who chased the kids up the hill will get one or two more.”

“Wow, that’s better than I expected. I figured six or seven at best.”

“Well, some of them are drunk and couldn’t run too well,” the deputy said. “That made them easy. There’s a girl over on the edge of the clearing who’s sound asleep with no pants on. I haven’t even tried to cuff her yet. She must really be wasted. It’s just too bad we didn’t bring more people. We might have got more.”

“Oh, we’re not done yet,” Stoneslinger smiled. “We’re just getting started.”

Alison DuQuoin was driving the first of the escaping cars. She’d been off in the woods along the edge of the access road, just finishing up with Scotty Parsons when they realized that the cops had raided the party – and from the river side, who would have thought of that? That gave them a head start on getting to the cars, and fortunately she wasn’t parked in. “Scotty, your truck!” she’d yelled at him.

“Fuck the truck, let’s get out of here,” he’d yelled back. By the time he piled in the front seat with her she had the car running, and she didn’t wait for anyone else. Even as he said it he’d realized that leaving the truck still with the ice and beer in it meant that he was screwed big time, but still, the animal instinct was to run. Maybe he’d be able to get the truck back without many major hassles, but it seemed unlikely.

Alison was parked nose into a spot in the trees, and by the time she managed to back out of the spot and get turned around, other cars were behind her, trying to get moving. She started up the two-rut toward the road, driving as fast as she dared on the poor woods road, lined with trees so close that they almost brushed the car. “At least we’re getting out of here,” she said. “God, what a fuck-up!”

“No shit,” Scotty agreed, “Fuck, what are the cops doing raiding the football player party? Shit, it’s gone on for years, and they’ve never dared to fuck with it. The football team in this town is too big a deal for them to be fucking with.”

“I guess they decided to fuck with it anyway,” Alison said. “Jesus, someone fucked up pretty bad!”

They didn’t take much time to get out near the road. In only a few seconds, they swept around a final bend through the woods. “Almost out to the road,” Scotty sighed with relief. “Then we can really blow this pop stand.”

Just then four big floodlights flipped on, pointing at them, along with an amber rotating warning beacon. And there was something big and yellow in front of them . . .

This ought to be good, Randy Clark, the president and owner of Clark Construction thought as he took his hand away from the light switch on the big John Deere road grader. This is absolutely the strangest thing the sheriff has ever asked me to do, but it ought to get somebody’s attention.

Steve Stoneslinger had caught him at home earlier in the evening and explained what was going to be happening, if it came off. He’d told Randy that he expected a lot of kids to try to escape up the two-rut from the party, and he was looking for something solid for a roadblock. If the first kid in line happened to be driving a four-wheel drive pickup and had enough beer in him, he might be tempted to try to push something like a patrol car out of the way. The sheriff had asked Randy if he could borrow a bulldozer – no four-wheel drive pickup was going to move that. Unfortunately, Randy didn’t have any bulldozers around; they were out working on out-of-town jobs, but he offered the road grader as an alternative. He even offered to drive it out to the site since he didn’t get to play with the big yellow beast as much as he would have liked. What’s more, he even added a few wrinkles to the sheriff’s plan, suggesting that an ambulance be nearby in case someone got hurt. He was an EMT, among other things, and thought of things like that.

Now, he thought, if that drunken kid will just stop in time. At the best speed they could manage on this road it wasn’t likely they could damage the big Deere much if they hit it, but it would sure mess up a car . . .

“What the fuck?” Alison yelled as she slammed on the brakes. She managed to get the car stopped in time, but just barely – she was only a couple feet away from the grader, and with the trees so close to the road it was clear that there was no way around it.

“Fuck knows,” Scotty yelled back, opening up the car door even before the car got to a stop. “Run for it! It’s our only chance.”

Alison just sat in the car – she was screwed big time and she knew it, but she saw Scotty disappear into the woods. She sat there watching him go in the light of the floodlights on the machine in front of him. It was only a few steps until he’d be back in the darkness – but then a dark figure appeared out of the woods and brought him down in a tackle as neat as any that ever happened on a football field.

From the cab of the grader Randy could see other cars coming to a stop behind the one right in front of the machine. Doors were opening, kids were starting to run through the woods – and right into the hands of the eighteen city police officers and sheriff’s deputies stationed out in the woods to either side. A few of them might get away, he thought, but not very many. There were a few who realized their goose was cooked and didn’t even bother to run.

In only a minute, he could see some of the runners being brought back into the light of the floodlamps, wearing Flex-Cuffs. While they’d been setting up this ambush he’d seen that the cops had a bunch of cuffs. Though Randy had been trained in some police capture techniques and offered to help, Charlie Wexler had told him to just stay in the cab of the grader and watch. That was fine with him; it looked like the cops were doing a pretty good job of rounding up the runners.

“Now what the fuck?” Eddie yelled behind the wheel of his car back at the far end of the line as he stomped onto the brakes. “Why the hell aren’t those people moving?”

“Looks like the road’s blocked,” Don said. “Fuck, that’s really gay.”

“You’re the one that’s really gay,” Eddie said, getting really tired of Don’s standard comment on almost everything.

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on,” Don said. “You’re the fucker that got us into this mess.”

“Fuck you too,” Eddie said, as he realized just how bad all his plans for the party had been ruined. “The cops have got the road blocked! Everybody out! Run like hell! It’s the only hope.”

Doors opened and the carload of kids piled out – Eddie never knew how many he had in the car, only that there were a lot of them. He was one of those piling out, too; he slammed the car door behind him and headed off into the woods to the left – anywhere, away from the road. He only got a few steps away from the road when he realized that someone was following him – hopefully not a cop.

In fact, the line of cars was too long to be covered by only eighteen officers, and Eddie was still beyond the range of the ambush, for all the good it did him. “You fucker!” he heard Johansen yell from behind him. “You don’t fuck up like this and you don’t fucking call me gay without fucking getting your ass kicked.”

Just about that time Eddie ran into a branch in the darkness again. When he picked himself up, Johansen was on him, swinging a big right hand with the intention of hurting. Not able to do anything else, Eddie managed to block the force of the hit a little, but it still hurt. “You fucker, that ain’t helping anything,” he yelled, throwing a punch back.

It turned into quite a brawl. Both of them were beaten, bruised, bloody, and still fighting when Cody Archer and sheriff’s deputy Gabe Randall separated them, got Flex-Cuffs on them, and led them back toward the road.

As Darrell and Courtney tried to move through the woods as quietly as possible, they could hear the yelling and commotion up at the roadblock. While it wasn’t clear what was happening, one thing was obvious – there were more cops waiting up there.

They were well away from the fire and the site where the party had been held by now, even though it was slow going in the near total darkness. They almost had to feel their way along, with only starlight to light their way. Finally, Darrell thought they were far enough away that the chances of them getting caught were reduced. “OK, Courtney,” he said to the girl right behind him, “I think we’re far enough away that we can talk a little.”

“Jesus, Darrell,” she said, “this really sucks. What are we going to do now?”

“Try to avoid getting caught,” he told her. “I think if we continue to work our way downriver slowly and quietly there’s a chance we still might get away. It’s gonna take us a while, though.”

“Oh, shit,” she sighed. “I want to go home.”

“Hell, I do, too,” he agreed. “But if we don’t want to get caught it’s going to take us a while. If we keep going this way, we’re going to come out to the road after a while. There’s no choice, the road comes right down next to the river before it gets to the bridge on the state road.”

“Good, if we can get out to the road, we could maybe hitch a ride.”

“I doubt it like hell, at least not anytime soon,” he told her. “If what I hear from up the hill is correct, a bunch more kids got caught. That means the road is going to be lousy with cops for half the night. If they catch us hitching, or even walking back to town, then we’re done for.”

“So what do we do?”

“Mostly, I guess we just get close to the road and find a good place to hide for a while,” he replied. “Once the cop activity dries up we might be able to walk back, but it could be going on morning before we dare to do it.”

“You mean we’re going to have to spend the night out here?”

“It’s either that or spend the night in jail,” he said. “Which is going to get you in trouble with your folks more?”

“Uh, yeah,” she replied thoughtfully. “That would really suck. Darrell, you’re OK, you really are. You’re about my only hope of getting out of this mess, even a little.”

After the action in front of the grader died down, Charlie Wexler had Randy back the road grader up to the road so all the kids captured could be concentrated in the floodlights of the big machine. All were Flex-Cuffed, and the more belligerent ones were cuffed arm to arm, facing opposite directions to make running even more difficult. Right at the moment there were more captives in the light of the grader than there were officers, but the Flex-Cuffs evened things out quite a bit.

With things getting more peaceful, ignoring the swearing, bitching and whining from those in Flex-Cuffs, Charlie decided it was time to report in. “Cascade Six from Cascade Five,” he called on his portable radio. “We got most of them, but from what I can tell there’s still a few running.”

“Roger, clear on that,” Stoneslinger’s voice came back over the radio. “You got a count?”

There was silence on the radio waves for a moment while Charlie surveyed the scene. “I make it twenty-four, but that’s not final. We’re still chasing some runners.”

“That makes a total of thirty-five,” Stoneslinger replied. “That’s getting on toward most of them. I don’t have a firm count on how many were here. A couple guesses put it over forty, but not by much. Guess you’d better get started hauling them in.”

“Roger that,” Charlie replied. “The road back to you is pretty blocked, though. It’s going to be a while before we can get units back to you.”

“Not a problem,” Stoneslinger said. “I’ll put the ones too drunk to walk in the boat and take a couple of deputies with me. I’ll send the rest up to you with the other officers, and you can have them hauled in from there.”

“Good enough,” Charlie replied. “I suppose we ought to get George’s Towing out here to clear the road.”

“Let it wait a little till you get some of the perps hauled off,” the sheriff suggested. “Now that the fun is over with the real work is going to take most of the night.”

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