The Vulture’s eyes drifted from the mirror to the huge skull bolted down on the Mack truck’s hood. The skull shivered from the mighty machine’s idling. Not thirty feet away from the chrome teeth of the machine was a pickup truck. Two of the Leather stood in its box bed as sunlight flashed off the welded majesty of assorted plates and pipes. One of the Leather glanced back at their leader’s ride, waiting for a signal, while the second Leather watched over a cage hitched to the rear of the pickup. Leather reins stretched tightly down over the top of the cage’s bars, lashed to individual harnesses worn by a clutch of emaciated man-hounds. The mindless were stick-thin and dressed in rags more filth than fiber. The heads of those feral creatures whipped about as they strained against their bonds, trying to break free, eager to chase down the meat tainted with the scent. They were wretched things, masked, with hair sticking out from necklines that hung past their shoulders.
The Vulture often wondered just how far the man-hounds could track their prey when the scent of urine was applied. He believed they had an even stronger sense of smell than dogs, which could smell a female in heat up to four kilometers away. These creatures had proven to be much more powerful trackers, even when the scent they used had almost lost its strength. The distance from a relatively fresh scent was even easier for them to track. So when the road split off in a direction that seemed counter-intuitive to those menacing tire tracks, the pickup pulling the cage slowed to a stop. The man-hounds would either gravitate to whatever side the scent pulled them, or they would remain stationary.
Sort of like a much meatier set of divining rods.
And, right now, that frightful pack wanted very much to get moving in one direction, towards a side road stamped by those troubling tracks.
Where it would all lead, the Vulture had no idea.
Tucking that thought away, he stuck his hand out the window and chopped at the air.
The pickup truck turned onto the side road and crept forward until the man-hounds shifted to that side of the cage. Their heads bobbed as they took in the rancid stink trail.
The Vulture gave his driver the signal to follow.
And no more than fifteen minutes later, they discovered the abandoned escape vehicle belonging to their quarry.
*
“I’m gonna need a new pair of boots after all this,” Gus muttered.
“We got boots at the base,” Collie informed him. “Any size you want, as long as you’re not too picky about the style. All made in China.”
“Got sneakers?”
“‘Course we got sneakers. Clothes, too. Right down to your tighty whities and pinchy panties. But nothing too fancy there, so don’t expect much.”
Gus wiped his sweaty hands on his jeans. “When this is all over, I’m going to get into shape. I don’t care what it takes. Hiking. Your self-defense shit. Don’t care.”
“Duly noted.”
Those deep tire prints lining either side of the dirt road drew his eyes once again. “Never realized how damn big that thing was.”
“Well,” Collie said, sparing the tracks a glance. “We were being shot at, if you remember.”
“Maybe we should take the thing back to the coast.”
Collie’s mouth hitched into a half-smile. “Yeah, right. That thing would eat us out of house and home.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
The road curved, a long gradual bend that was hidden by forest. Gus looked back at the others, straining to keep pace with Collie. Rich Trinidad, holding rear guard, met his stare with a menacing glower. Gus turned back to Collie.
“That Rich guy is a fierce one.”
“One in every group,” Collie said. She nodded ahead. “Look.”
The dirt road straightened into a long stretch of pavement, and the forest cleared around them.
The land had been cleared some fifty meters or so, leading up to a fixed perimeter, where a stout building had been constructed. A checkpoint, distinctly military, with broad concrete partitions, heavy-duty chain-link fences, and decorative razor wire that stretched out on either side. Abundant warning signs gave precise instructions on how to proceed. Pillboxes flanked the main building, equipped with what looked like drooping machine guns. The big kind. The .50 caliber kind. Armored cameras the size of mailboxes were mounted on the building’s roof, monitoring incoming and departing traffic. There were red and green queue zones for vehicles—a pair of two-lane roads that bordered either side of the building. The lift bar with a red STOP sign remained lowered on the right side, but the left was in tatters—smashed lift bar, twisted wire fence, crushed concrete partition.
Which was where the Komatsu truck presumably had entered.
“She didn’t fit,” Gus observed quietly.
“Apparently not,” Collie agreed. “But they still got the big girl’s ass through.” She turned to face the rest of the group. “Stay behind me. Don’t wander off the path and don’t go into the woods to take a leak, unless you see a crater and a clear path to get to it.”
“Why’s that?” Sarah Burton asked.
“That means someone already stepped on the mine.”
That silenced the lot of them and made them visibly uneasy. They gravitated towards the middle of the pavement and the broken white lines painting it. The wire fences stretched out on either side, eventually disappearing from view. Unchallenged, the little group walked through the queue zones, peeking inside the open door of the checkpoint building. It resembled a small office, one that the janitorial staff hadn’t visited in a few years.
Collie stopped at the open door and inspected the interior.
“Any guns in there?” Gus asked.
She shook her head. “Picked clean. Too bad they didn’t do any other cleaning.”
There were other buildings inside the perimeter’s fortifications, low structures built of brick and steel, with grime-caked windows and open doorways. A few scraps of cardboard littered the edges of concrete and the pavement beyond, where the road continued.
“Bunkhouses?” Gus asked.
“Barracks. Waiting stations. For the quick reaction teams.”
Gus guessed at what that meant. “Any guns in there?”
“You’re not happy with yours?”
“Just wondering.”
“You can check, but I’m guessing no. Shovel’s group probably took everything. All the good stuff is in there.”
She pointed toward the complex’s interior buildings, which resembled a small alpine town. Rising beyond all that was Whitecap.
Impassive. Awesome. And indifferent. Wearing a tattered cloak of forest around its shoulders.
The dark tunnel mouth resembled an unpleasant maw, where a pale tongue of a blacktop unfurled in a long ramp, ending in a tangle of destruction that brought back memories for Gus. It was difficult to locate a spot on the complex grounds that wasn’t littered with debris. Motorhomes had had their faces bashed in, their fiberglass asses crushed. Trailers had been upended and left for ruin. Smashed vehicles littered the compound, many of which had exploded and were now in multiple piles. Garbage bins had been overturned as if picked up by giants, shaken empty, and thrown to the earth. Broken glass covered the white concrete in wide sprays and glittered under the sun. Brass shell casings gleamed in fragmented streams.
Just below Whitecap’s mountain entrance was the unmoving iron husk that was the dead Komatsu truck.
The vehicle was still upright, parked at the end of that shocking path of ruin. All four tires were intact. The considerable length of metal that was the flatbed lay on its side, bent at a subtle crook across the behemoth’s face.
And in that deep reflection of battles fought and finished, in that serene mountain silence, Sarah Burton said it first.
Perhaps even said it best.
“…The fuck happened here…?”
24
“This way,” Collie said, herding the little group across that junkyard landscape. They tromped over concrete and glass, their sneakers and boots
crinkling upon far-reaching streaks of debris.
“Watch your footing,” she warned, but even Gus had trouble minding that one. The newcomers’ attention strayed, taking in their surroundings and the leftovers of a small war. Cars and trucks half-flattened by the Komatsu truck. Sofas and chairs hanging out of RVs. Glass framework bent into angular puzzles and left for garbage. A wall of shredded sandbags. There was even a trail of twisted pipework and fittings that ended in a kitchen sink, lying half a football field away from the nearest destroyed motorhome. More than one high-tech rifle was discarded on that plain of rubble, the most notable of which had a bent barrel.
“Those gas tankers have anything in them?” Rich Trinidad asked from the rear.
“Maybe, but I doubt the octane levels are there,” Collie said.
Gus studied the great white plain and all the shit covering it—destruction he left during their escape from Whitecap.
Whitecap’s maw loomed closer, while a white cloud as fine as silk stretched out across the mountain’s heights. There were other rock formations behind that towering peak, but Whitecap was the tallest. The most imposing.
With every step toward Whitecap’s entrance, the massacred machinery and debris cleared a little more. Beyond the sandbag line, however, the group could make out hundreds of desiccated bodies splayed out over a wide area. Gus heard Bruno telling Monica not to look. The crows had feasted. Sand spilled from the destroyed wall, covering a few of the corpses, but not nearly enough. There were hundreds, although after the long winter, you really couldn’t tell where one body ended and another began. Rotten eye sockets stared. Skulls bared teeth. Bony torsos wearing rags stretched out as if catching some sun.
Collie sped towards the ramp, picking up the pace.
“You gotta use the can or something?” Gus asked.
She didn’t answer; instead, she picked up the pace even more until she reached the base of the paved slope. Decayed remains covered this area, too, shredded and torn apart by Shovel’s minigun. The sight of all those dead husks caused her to turn around. She surveyed the mass destruction surrounding the camp, adjusting her shades as she did so.
“You really did a number on this place, buddy,” she said.
“You were with me,” Gus reminded her.
“You were driving.”
That shut him up.
Collie turned to the rest of the group. “All right. Watch your footing from here on out. It looks all clear to me, but just be careful.”
They weren’t looking at her. Not really. They were looking at the ramp.
“Oh my gentle Jesus,” the one called Allie quietly remarked, and Gus couldn’t remember her saying a word until that moment.
“We have to go up there?” Sarah Burton asked.
“If you want to see the bunker, you do.”
“That’s a bunker?”
“Way back in there.”
“How far?” Rich Trinidad asked.
“It’s a hike,” Collie informed him. “Another klick and a half.”
There were eyerolls at that, as well as a few tired sighs.
The incline was difficult for the group; their calves screamed. Sweat soaked their clothing. Halfway up, Gus’s eyes started to wander toward the imposing mountainside and all the greenery growing off its face. He remembered reading an article about how the brain always sought patterns, faces, in inanimate objects. If Whitecap had a face, then its eyes were closed, and the mountain had puked upon itself, poisoned from within by something yet unknown. And they were marching up its filth-covered tongue, which was coated with a dried-up froth of corpses.
The sight caused Gus to shiver.
“You know something?” Collie said. “I thought I’d recognize more people. Nope.”
“Collie,” Gus said, “you think it’s safe in here?”
“Fuck if I know.”
That floored him, and it showed.
The lower part of her face broke into a smile. “Having second thoughts?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Honestly, I’m ninety-nine percent certain it’s safe,” she admitted. “Which is pretty solid to me. I wouldn’t be bringing us here if I thought we’d be at risk. And with all that’s happened in the last couple of days, well, you can’t hang around outside. Not in the open, and not down there.”
She jabbed a thumb at the mess behind her.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “You aren’t going any farther than the next checkpoint. I’ll do the rest, by which I mean I’ll check on the weapons and munitions.”
“And if all that’s good?”
“We pack up what we can.” She locked eyes with him. “And if those assholes are tracking us, we get ready for a fight. Maybe even make a stand right here.”
No sooner had the words left her mouth, Gus looked back the way they’d travelled, over the concrete battlefield, all the way back to the first military checkpoint. He stopped marching, which caused Collie to stop.
“What?” she asked.
Gus held up a hand, and the rest of the group halted.
“Something up?” Bruno asked.
Gus motioned for silence, which prompted the rest of them to turn around.
Then, like a whisper teasing one’s ear, he caught it again.
That distant, unmistakable purr of a motor. A very big motor.
“Well, shit,” Gus muttered. He turned to Collie. “You hear that?”
“Yeah, I think I do.” She waved at the rest of them. “Best to hurry along, people. We might not have much time.”
The group started moving again, casting fearful looks in the direction of that first checkpoint. Gus hurried at his top speed, energized by the latest booster shot of fear. He wondered if his nerves were fraying out. Or even his heart.
They raced for the entrance, straining, panting, and eventually reached the cavern mouth. Collie aimed her rifle and peered through the scope. The tunnel was rounded, with smooth chalky walls made of concrete. A collection of cables ran along the roof, resembling the veins of one’s wrist. Two huge, circular ceiling lamps hung high, perhaps thirty feet apart. Both were unlit, and if there were any more beyond, they were hidden in a deep, intimidating blackness, where daylight failed to reach. A smaller security camera was perched before the first lamp and aimed at the cavern mouth.
Collie immediately located a panel that, at a glance, might’ve held firehoses. She smashed out the glass with the butt of her rifle and forcefully cleared the frame of any leftover shards. To Gus’s surprise, there was a firehose in there, as well as what appeared to be a breathing mask and a matching red fire extinguisher and axe. Collie pulled out three rechargeable flashlights, the kind recharged by squeezing the grip. She powered one up and flicked a switch, producing a white cone of light. She immediately handed the flashlight over to Gus.
“Pass that and this one along,” she ordered. “You keep the last one and aim it over my shoulder. Everyone else get in a line. Hands on shoulders.”
Gus did as he was told and powered up his own flashlight.
“All ready?” Collie asked.
“Yeah.”
She started ahead, leading a frail string of humanity away from the light of day.
*
The lead truck stopped at the first checkpoint, with the caged man-hounds pressed against the bars and pawing at the air, so gripped they were by that infected sewage-piss stain that tantalized their senses. If he ever had the chance to put a lab together, the Vulture would have to sit down and analyze just what it was in the urine that attracted the creatures. That scientific dalliance would have to wait, however, as the military structures ahead drew his eye. The rest of the Leather pulled up around the main checkpoint building and jumped out of their vehicles. They entered the guard house and rooted around. The Vulture waited aboard his transport, studying the destroyed base that lay beyond the chain fences and concrete barriers.
His eyes centered on the mountain in the distance.
It was the crown jewel
in a range of four smaller peaks, all stretching out behind the first mountain’s mass. The first of a series of green and gray cones stamped against the sky. Trees and other vegetation grew out of the beast’s back, all the way up, thinning out into a barren peak.
He zeroed in on the mountain’s upset mouth at the base.
The caged mindless strained against their bonds. They weren’t concerned about the nearby buildings. Where he was sitting, the Vulture could see that the hounds were aiming their noses straight ahead.
Towards that dark and mysterious opening at the base of the mountain.
Then he spotted the Komatsu truck.
The Vulture froze, his eyes narrowing in disbelief. The fortifications. The distinctly military dwellings. The trimmings of razor wire and strategically placed mailboxes that were surveillance cameras. The glittering broken glass and the unmistakable gleam of brass, and the reams of crushed vehicles and mobile homes. The end of the world location of it all, far and away from prying, protesting, civilian eyes.
The Vulture’s driver noticed the tense posture of his leader and immediately wondered if he had anything to do with it.
Without warning, the Vulture stuck his head out the passenger window. “Go!” he shouted at his lessers. The Leather that had stormed the checkpoint stopped and listened, their upper bodies visible through the windows. Masked heads turned in his direction.
“Go now!” The Vulture pointed, infuriated by his minions’ confusion. “There! To the mountain! They’ve found a bunker!”
25
Rock dust coated the cavern floor, thick enough that Gus and company left a trail of footprints in their wake. As daylight receded and the dark enveloped them, the flashlights flickered to life. Gus swung his around, taking in the cement blocks that lined the walls and ceiling.
“Keep that light pointed ahead,” Collie warned him.
“Sorry. Got distracted.”
She didn’t reply, and he vowed to do better.
The beam bleached the tunnel floor, revealing concrete covered in dust and grit. They were well beyond the cavern’s mouth, perhaps closing in on the one-hundred-meter mark. Flashlight beams scanned the area, revealing featureless walls and nothing else. A soft breeze pushed past Gus’s face, however, and he wondered if someone had left open a back door somewhere. Then there was the silence, a noticeable absence of any noise except for their own heavy breathing and the occasional scuffing against the floor. Some heels clicked, and the sounds carried long and far enough to cause Gus’s unease to spike yet again.
Mountain Man (Book 5): Make Me King Page 22