“Home sweet home,” Collie whispered. “Look there.”
Ahead, the flashlight swept over a slanted pile of debris that buried the far-left lane. Broken rock, jagged concrete slabs, plastic pipes, and girders filled half the tunnel. The mess was piled up at a steep angle, to where the structure’s integrity had failed. Gus lifted his light to better see the cross-section of pipework, both plastic and steel, as well as severed fiberoptic cables. Wire dangled in strings and contrary clumps. The resulting dome of raw stone appeared all the colder and harsher in the white glare of the flashlight.
“The hell caused that?” someone asked quietly.
No one had an answer, and Collie kept moving. Gus angled his light ahead, but he looked back to the entrance and was surprised to see it half gone.
“Did a bomb go off in here?” Sarah Burton asked.
“Unknown,” Collie admitted. “But definitely an explosion. Multiple explosions.”
“Any idea why?”
“No,” the operator said flatly. “But I imagine we’ll find out.”
When Gus looked back again, the entrance was gone. The flashlights uncovered more destruction as they slunk over makeshift struts and broken sections of chain-link fence that might’ve once kept the walls and ceiling from collapsing. Dry decay wafted throughout, and the temperature rose noticeably. The debris filling the tunnel was much denser now—rock fragments, fencing, destroyed machinery.
Collie stopped so sharply that Gus bumped into her from behind.
“Sorry,” he whispered, and he saw what had stopped her in her tracks.
Bodies.
Once undead bodies, as their heads had either been partially destroyed or blown off entirely.
There was no mistaking the heap of blue-gray cadaver flesh and bone spread out across the floor. Some of the torsos had meaty holes punched through them or bitemarks the size of a shark’s jaws, while the remaining musculature surrounding the wounds was dried out and sunken. Unseeing faces stared at the ceiling, while some ogled the living. A few of the dead were practically naked, which seemed odd, but others wore varying Whitecap uniforms—military, technician jumpers, lab coats—all of which was dried stiff with blood and viscera, glued to each other in a congealed tar that, thankfully, no longer had an odor.
Someone dry-heaved near the back.
“Watch your footing,” Collie told them, drifting to the left.
Gus swung the light over to her and stopped when the beam centered on the dusty ass-end of a backhoe. The engine of the great machine was turned into the wall, where a chunk of fallen rock and metal prevented it from going any further. The group stayed away from the machine, stepping in puddles of crooked, lifeless arms to avoid running into it. At times, dead fingers touched their ankles. They threaded their way past the backhoe, where a dead snake collection of chains connected it to what appeared to be the rear of an armored truck. The truck’s back doors were pried open and the interior bare. More corpses lay unmoving around the vehicle. Beyond that were slabs of debris stacked in a crude stairway. The slabs rose to a hole near the ceiling perhaps half the size of a car lane.
One body’s legs were pinched off midthigh by a giant slab of concrete.
“Holy shit,” Sarah Burton released with morbid delight. “Almost like the tunnel bit down on the guy.”
Gus turned around to comment, but his voice caught in his throat when he spotted Monica shielding her eyes with the sleeve of Bruno’s coat. None of this was new to him. But to a kid no more than ten, if that, the tunnel was the clingy stuff of nightmares.
The screech of a speeding vehicle from behind distracted him.
“The hell is that?” Sarah Burton asked, peering into the dark.
“That’s trouble,” Collie replied and rushed up the stairway of concrete slabs. Gus fumbled after her. She stooped to clear the low ceiling and waved the others up and over. Bruno raced past with Monica, while Cory was right behind them.
“Go, go, go,” Collie said. “Gus, you take them ahead. I’m pretty sure the way’s clear. The meatbags had to come from somewhere.”
“I’m staying here with you.”
Collie fixed him with a look. She was about to say something when the white glare of headlights filled the tunnel.
Collie pulled Gus down behind the rubble. She hefted her rifle and positioned it on a high point, amongst chunks of debris. Gus pulled his Glock out and aimed at the approaching vehicles.
“Sarah?” Collie called out.
“Yeah?”
“Take everyone ahead. We’ll cover you here. Slow them down. Give you time to reach the bunker’s second checkpoint. We call it the box.”
“What about you two?”
Collie turned away from her rifle. “We’ll be along so get going. You got a klick to go. Get to the box. Past that is a garage. Huge area where the bunker’s vehicles are parked. Find the EV section. Those are the electric cars. Get one and get back here. Pick us up. We’ll be on the move by then—probably being chased.”
“And if you aren’t on the move?” she asked.
“Then you lock down the box and you’re on your own. Go down to level five. Look for a small storeroom filled with dry foods. There’s a door with ‘EVR’ stamped on it. Crack that open and go.”
“Go?” she asked. “Go where?”
“Out,” Collie said. “It’ll take you under the mountain. After that, Bruno knows the way home.”
With that, she took up a shooter’s position behind the rubble, facing the advancing motorcade. Bruno and Cory hesitated, along with one or two of the islanders. Sarah Burton was already hoofing it into the dark.
Gus shooed Bruno away, and once they started moving, he watched their beams of light flicker about for a few seconds.
“Switch off that flashlight,” Collie said, adjusting her rifle with a metallic click.
Gus did so, hunkering down not two feet away from the operator. The opening at the top of the rubble heap was about six feet across with shards and jagged edges on either side. Gus and Collie had good cover with clear sight of the tunnel.
The approaching headlights grew stronger.
“Okay,” she said quietly, cheek pressed against her weapon. “Get ready, ‘cause we’re gonna stop a shit tsunami.”
Some fifty meters ahead, the advancing vehicles slowed to a halt. Brakes squealed. Headlights fully revealed the extent of the cave-in, as well as that gruesome welcome mat of decomposing bodies, the abandoned backhoe, and the armored truck. Multiple vehicles filled the tunnel, the glare as fierce as magnified starlight. The tunnel debris and the piles of the dead prevented them from coming any closer.
“This is good,” Gus said, taking a deep breath. “Real good. We can hold them off for days.”
Collie smiled, her eye pressed to the assault rifle’s scope.
“Ah, how long do we stay, exactly?” Gus asked.
“As long as it takes.”
Just then, the unmistakable sound of doors opening perked their ears, followed by boots pounding upon concrete.
“Get ready,” she said quietly, fingers flexing on the rifle.
In the tunnel beyond, dark things swarmed.
*
The tunnel had narrowed into just a single lane, filled with all manner of morbid surprises. While the entrance into the mountain had accommodated their forces, the Vulture soon realized the only way forward would be on foot. Before entering, the mindless’ handlers had released them from their cages and tied them to the lead truck’s front bumper. Tires slowly rolled forward over fallen pebbles, rocks, and wire fencing, until the truck, guided along by the pack of man-hounds, halted. That caused a ripple effect down the line. A lesser jumped out of the passenger side and waved at those behind, motioning for them to back up a few meters. Rigs reversed, and they spread themselves out.
When they all came to a stop, an impatient Vulture opened his door, got out, and sucked in the exhaust-laden air. He tripped on a small section of fallen pipe. He regained his b
alance and scowled at the sight before him—a backhoe, apparently reversed into the wall in a hasty retreat, blocking much of their path. The dead things covering the road no doubt had a hand in that, or so the Vulture assumed. Rubble buried two of the three lanes, slimming the passage ahead into a tight bottleneck.
The Vulture eyed the dormant ogre of industrial might. Like the enormous Komastsu truck outside, which the Vulture dearly wanted to investigate closer as well, the backhoe could be salvaged, repaired if necessary, and later utilized.
After they had captured the remainder of Carson’s islanders.
And the girl.
Especially the girl.
The Vulture raised a hand and signaled his minions to check on the condition of the machine. Engines idled as doors opened and figures emerged, leather-clad wraiths holding a positively medieval assortment of weapons. They hurried past the Vulture, converging upon the bulk of the backhoe. The quickest one climbed the short ladder to the operator’s cab and examined the controls with interest.
The Vulture waited.
In the glare of headlights, the minion gave a thumbs up. A second minion relayed to the Vulture that the machinery was all intact, it just needed a new battery and more fuel.
Both of which the Leather possessed.
Without warning, the first minion’s shoulder exploded in a single crack of gunfire, and the man fell onto his companions at the base of the backhoe. Panic ripped through them. The Vulture instinctively crouched behind his door before rushing to the rear of the pickup.
Another shot then, and a second Leather bounced off the steel hide of the backhoe, a bloody gout erupting from his ruined chest.
A third Leather had his head snapped back before dropping, long dead before the echo of the shot petered out.
The others bolted for cover, crawling under the backhoe itself or sprinting for the trucks.
More gunfire. Single shots, each within a second of the last.
A black-clad minion flew backwards as if yanked from behind, landing among the corpses covering the blacktop.
Another figure twirled about, his hands going to his fountaining throat. He died slower than the others, falling to his knees before lowering himself onto a thin mattress of decomposing bodies.
Bullets ripped into the front of a nearby truck, and the headlights winked out.
The Leather scrambled over themselves as they sought protective cover. Cries of warning reverberated throughout the cavern, guttural messages and grunts. Once the lessers were clear, the crossbowmen dropped to their knees and returned fire. Steel-head bolts flew straight into the tunnel, their fletchings slicing the air. The missiles cracked off rock and metal, while a few disappeared through the opening at the top of a mound of fallen rock and concrete.
The Vulture studied that gap, where jagged teeth rose on either side.
He thought he saw movement there.
Scowling behind his mask, the Vulture marshaled his minions.
*
Collie fired.
Selectively. Repeatedly.
And each flash of her muzzle drove Gus to the ground and kept him there. He gripped his Glock, holding it two-handed as hard edges poked and prodded him. Collie fired twice more before dropping back. Truck headlights seeped through some of the more porous parts of the debris they crouched behind.
“Get ‘em all?” Gus asked.
“You’re funny,” she said and considered her weapon. “Got about twenty rounds left. After that, sidearm.”
“And when that runs out?”
“I’ll take yours. Not like you’re using it.”
Gus scowled at that.
A series of cracks and whistles rang out above them, and flashing slivers split the air overhead, whizzing into the darkness beyond.
“Crossbows,” Collie whispered. “Primitive sonsabitches. We’ll hold them here.” She edged back towards a ‘V’ formation in the ruins. “As long as we can. Long enough for everyone to make it to the box. Then we run.”
Gus’s scowl deepened.
“That’s it, honey,” she said. “We run. It’s nothing but a straight line from here. And if Bruno or Cory can’t get an EV to start, or the damn things are all fried or God knows what, then you and I, my friend, are on the royal cusp of being Fubar.”
He didn’t like the sound of that, either.
“Nervous?” she asked.
“A little.”
“Not a lot?”
“Yeah, okay, a lot.”
“Never been in a gunfight before?”
“Sure. Lots of times,” he wavered.
“But…” she prodded.
“I was usually drunk. Or usually shooting gimps. They’re different. Usually.”
Collie peered over the ridge. “Being modest. I’ve seen you in action.”
A roar of engines drew her back to the battlefield.
“Oh my,” she whispered, peeking at what lay ahead.
*
Under the direction of the Vulture, the Leather mobilized for war.
Once they loosed their bolts, the shooters took cover and reloaded. During their early scavenging years, the Leather made use of whatever they could find on the battlefields where the dead and the living had squared off—Kevlar vests, riot helmets, armor-plated knuckles. These bits and pieces of armor they pulled onto themselves.
Then came the weapons.
Fire axes. Spiked bats. Lengths of steel pipe. Long knives. Crossbows. Makeshift spears. Some carried honest-to-God broadswords strapped to waists. Others hefted chains that could be whipped about. Shields hung off arms––huge metal barriers with extra handles bolted on the inner part.
They weren’t super soldiers with high-tech weaponry. They didn’t belong to any particular law enforcement body with formal training. What the Leather had, however, was experience, earned during those early years as modern-day hunters and gatherers. They were conquerors of the aftermath, possessing two key attributes that made them both deadly and frightening at the same time.
One was their singular hive mentality.
The other was their willingness to inflict pain upon others.
Amongst the flurry of getting battle-ready, the Bronze moved among the lesser like a grim sergeant-at-arms. The tall scarecrow inspected the minions, and when they were ready, he signaled the Vulture.
The Vulture chopped at the air, and the first truck reversed in a huff of steam. Its headlights had been destroyed, but that wasn’t the reason for its retreat. The vehicle halted alongside a second pickup, creating a barrier of sorts. There, the Vulture brooded behind a box bed, watching that mound from which the gunfire originated. Headlights from some of the other vehicles still shone ahead, whitening the debris and casting bizarre shadows. The Vulture suspected that whoever was firing from behind that concrete hump was alone. And that the shooter was buying time for Carson’s islanders to retreat somewhere safe.
The Vulture would not allow that to happen.
26
The shouting of perhaps a hundred voices blasted past Gus and Collie.
Collie rose to one knee and targeted a wall of shields charging around an armored pickup truck. She aimed at the shield closest to the backhoe.
Three quick shots punched into its flat surface, twisting the owner to one side, enough to present a target. Except, before she could get off a kill shot, the crossbow crew snapped off an answering wave of bolts. Two sliced past her head, missing her by a sliver as she dropped behind cover.
“They’re coming,” Collie said, keeping her head below the crest.
Gus lifted his Glock. He straightened and fired at the first thing he saw. His shots slammed into metal but failed to slow the human train charging them. The masked freaks stomped over the grim welcome mat of corpses, reached the slope, and chugged up the concrete steps. The edge of the shield came down hard on the top slab, spraying dust and chips.
But then the shield lifted.
Whereupon Collie blew out the owner’s feet.
&nbs
p; Standing below the shield’s rim, she had no trouble placing two quick shots into those boots. The shield carrier dropped to his knees, his scream rising above that collective howl. Two others floundered behind him, creating long shadows upon the wall. The train’s forward momentum frazzled, but not before one of them flung a spear at Collie’s head, missing her by inches.
Gus shot the masked men from the other side, catching them in the chest and shoulders. The impact flung them back, twisted them around, and blasted them back into the others. The first man tumbled past Gus and Collie with a clatter, as if he were holding onto a refrigerator door. He landed facedown and the operator quickly put a bullet into the base of the guy’s neck.
Gus continued firing, hammering that stalled mass of arms and weapons. They were so close, so packed together, he couldn’t miss.
Damn thing was, they just didn’t seem to be dying.
A second shield pushed its way into sight, channeled by another stream of masked men, bent over and screaming like a murderous rugby scrum. They lumbered past the first line of assailants and pushed up the hill.
Gus fired twice, his shots hitting low and tipping a shield forward, enough that the edge caught on another’s body. Two figures behind the shield fell, leaving the men behind them unprotected as they went down. Gus unloaded his Glock, catching one in the helmet and knocking him flat. Collie also fired into the besiegers, further disrupting the charge. She then dropped back, flinging the rifle away before pulling out her Sig Saur.
Gus tried to maintain his cover while still shooting, the flashes of gunfire lighting up the attacker’s masks. One blast burst apart a neck, and the man flopped to the ground.
Mountain Man (Book 5): Make Me King Page 23