Yi returned after dark, walking slowly, clearly unhappy with his circumstances. He approached Lucas and spoke in a quiet voice. “They’ll have to be careful not to make any noise. No horses. Otherwise this will all be for nothing. There are hundreds of them, and if they have enough warning…” Yi eyed the assembled men skeptically. “This is all you’re going to send in?”
“Don’t worry about us. Just lead us to the building and keep your lips buttoned.” Lucas spit to the side. “And don’t forget that if you try to lead us into an ambush, my bullet in your back will be the last thing you’ll ever feel.”
He threw up his hands, his face a study in misery and resignation. “How could I?”
Lucas walked over to where Sam was talking to two of his fighters. “Ready to move out?”
Sam looked over at Yi. “I don’t know about him, Lucas.”
“Noted. Let’s get this over with.”
The men donned their NV goggles, and Yi led them through the perimeter and onto the dark streets. The moon hung low in the night sky, and the light from the early stars was faint. The only sound other than the rustle of the men’s clothing and the thumping of their boots on the pavement was the sough of the wind off the water through the buildings, and the streets were ghostly in their stillness. Yi moved at a rapid clip, sure of the way, and they were soon clear of the downtown area and entering the outskirts of the International District.
Yi slowed at an intersection and signaled to Lucas to near. When he was beside him, the little Chinese man whispered a warning. “They’ll have watchers on the rooftops every couple of blocks from here on, but at night, as you can see, it’s pretty hard to make anything out.”
“How far are we from their headquarters?”
“Maybe six, seven blocks.”
They continued forward, the fighters shadows as they darted from building to building. Their advance was far more coordinated and military than it would have been prior to multiple battles against the Chinese. They crossed a wide thoroughfare, Yi running in a crouch as he navigated through the wreckage of abandoned vehicles that clogged the way, and Lucas followed close behind, his nerves tingling as they closed on their target. Sam and a cluster of his fighters were on Lucas’s tail, scanning the surrounding buildings as they moved like wraiths through the night.
Yi slowed again and raised a hand in warning, and then pointed at an edifice eighty yards away. Lucas ducked behind a stoop and the men scattered, with some entering any building they could gain access to and making their way to the roofs.
Lucas led Yi up the crumbling stairs of a three-story tenement, and they climbed through the attic to the roof. Once on the tar-paper surface, they inched to the rim, and Lucas scoped out the headquarters building. After several moments, he turned to Yi and spoke in a low voice. “No sign of anyone guarding it. You sure that’s the right place?”
Yi nodded. “Positive.”
“Did you check it out before coming to tell us about it?”
“Of course. There were lookouts everywhere. They might feel there’s no threat at night…” Yi said, but his tone now betrayed some clear doubt.
“Wouldn’t that be the most obvious time to attack?”
“They probably believe they’re invincible in their stronghold of Chinatown.”
“Then why move their headquarters continually?”
Yi said nothing for several moments. “I’ll go down and scout it out at street level.”
Lucas shook his head. “We both will.”
They retraced their steps to the building entrance, and Lucas peered through the night vision goggles Sam had equipped him with and surveyed the gym. There was no sign of life, no telltale glow of torchlight seeping from beneath a door or through a shuttered window. Lucas grabbed Yi by the shoulder and pushed him forward. “Come on. If you wasted our time for nothing, you’re going to wish you’d never been born.”
“I swear–”
“Move.”
Yi stumbled forward, helped along by a shove from Lucas, and they worked their way down the sidewalk toward their target, Lucas with his M4 sweeping the street as he walked with measured steps. Yi stopped at a doorway fifteen yards from the building and cocked his head to listen.
“I don’t understand. They were here earlier. But now…”
Lucas pushed past him and made for the entrance. He stopped at where a pair of double doors gaped open and did a cursory scan of the interior before turning to the little man in disgust. Yi padded to the door and peered inside, and then glanced over at Lucas.
“I swear they were here. Not five hours ago.”
“Sure they were,” Lucas growled.
Sam arrived and Lucas lowered his rifle. “Nothing. But now we have to consider that this scum led us into a trap, so warn the men that we could be attacked at any point on the return trip.”
Yi took a step backward, hands raised. “I didn’t…”
“We’ll deal with you later,” Lucas said, and pivoted away.
“They couldn’t have cleared out that fast without leaving a sign they were here,” Yi said, and darted into the gym.
Lucas was about to respond when a massive detonation from inside the building blew a fireball through the doors and windows, hurling Lucas and Sam backward and sending a rain of debris into the street.
Lucas lay on his back, stunned, as his troops ran toward them, and was struggling to rise when strong hands lifted him to his feet.
“Are you okay?” one of the men asked.
Lucas shook his head to clear it, his ears ringing as loud as a siren. “Where’s Sam?”
“Over here,” Sam called from behind him. “I’m fine. Little scorched is all.” He coughed loudly. “What the hell happened?”
Lucas blinked as flames licked from every opening, sending inky smoke belching into the heavens. “They must have booby-trapped it. Probably a tripwire deep inside. Which means they knew we were coming.”
Sam nodded. “Looks like your friend wasn’t lying, then. He didn’t strike me as suicidal.”
“Someone must have spotted him and followed him back to our base.” His expression darkened. “Or tipped them off.”
They watched the building burn for a beat, and Lucas’s expression hardened. “Let’s get out of here. We’re sitting ducks if this was just the opening salvo.”
“Back to HQ?” Sam asked.
Lucas’s frown deepened and he eyed the street with foreboding. “Assuming we can make it.”
Chapter 16
Fairplay, Colorado
Duke and Edwin slowed their horses from a trot when a flock of birds rose into the air from a grove of trees ahead on the trail. Duke raised his rifle while keeping hold of the reins in one hand, and Edwin did the same.
The chatter of an assault rifle shattered the stillness, and Duke and Edwin split up, urging their steeds into the pine trees at the side of the road while bullets whistled and snapped around them. A round tugged at the sleeve of Duke’s trail coat, beneath which he was wearing his plate carrier, but it didn’t draw blood, and he ducked low as his horse made it to the tree line. He swung from the saddle and took cover. Edwin returned fire at the invisible assailants from horseback, and Duke covered him with methodical volleys aimed at where he thought the shooters were lurking.
Edwin dismounted from his position across the mountain road, and the two of them began moving toward their unseen assailants. Raiders were a constant threat on the main highways; though they’d hoped that the more remote mountain passages would prove too thinly traveled to merit their presence, that idea had obviously proven erroneous – an ambush from just around a bend was a classic raider technique. Fortunately the ones they were up against seemed inept, given that they’d begun shooting while Duke and Edwin had been well out of guaranteed kill range.
That small bit of luck wouldn’t be much help, though. There was no other way across the mountains than this road – at least none that wouldn’t take them many miles south of their desired r
outes, across some of the most inhospitable territory in the state. Barring climbing trails that mountain goats would be loath to try, it was the road or nothing, and obviously some group of miscreants had decided that anyone foolhardy enough to try to navigate it would be easy pickings.
Duke suspected that the shooters were rank amateurs, opportunists without any military training or useful combat skills, judging by how they were wasting ammo shooting at shadows. That was a second piece of luck – in the post-collapse world, ammunition wasn’t abundant, and most were limited to what they could easily carry.
Edwin spotted Duke between two trees and gestured to him that he was going to retrace his steps to where the road curved and cross over to Duke’s side. Duke readied himself and popped off a few three-round bursts at the shooters for good measure, drawing their attention as Edwin tied his horse to a low branch and jogged back.
A couple of minutes later he joined Duke, who never took his eyes off the road ahead as he leaned into the younger man. “What do you think?” he whispered.
“Bushwhackers. They should have let us get up on them more, but the birds must have spooked someone trigger-happy. Lucky for us.”
They would normally have been traveling at night, but had figured that the area was so devoid of humanity they could risk moving during the daylight hours at least while still in the mountains. Once on the plains it would be a different story, but few had the temerity to try to eke out a living in the barren expanse of the Rockies, and they’d decided to speed along their travels by riding as much as possible – a decision they were now paying for.
“We need to get closer and see what we’re dealing with,” Duke said. “How do you want to do this?”
“I’ll head off to your left and move up the gulley there. You keep plinking at them from here, edging closer when you can, and I’ll see if I can flank them.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Edwin slipped away through the trees and vanished like smoke among the conifers. Duke continued to lob bursts at the sniper position, changing trees periodically. The rounds they returned slapped harmlessly into the trunks around him without doing any damage. He’d left his horse lashed out of sight to one of the trees near the road, and had advanced on the shooters to the point where the animal was in no danger of being hit by a stray.
The shooting from up the road slowed to a few desultory pops now that their quarry had disappeared, and Duke took the opportunity to move forward another fifteen yards, sticking to the trees lest one of the shooters got lucky. He estimated there were three of them, certainly no more than four, based on the number of different rifles that had been firing during the peak of the shooting frenzy. At least two were AR-15s or similar smaller caliber weapons, and there was one AK he’d heard. Perhaps a lever-action .30-30 somewhere in the mix, although he couldn’t be sure.
He reached a pair of promising trees and searched the scrub ahead for any signs of life. Movement stirred in one of the bushes, and he sprayed two three-round bursts in its direction, counting the seconds until Edwin made it close enough to take out the attackers. Like the raiders, Duke and Edwin had a limited supply of ammunition; they carried as much as was practical in their saddlebags but didn’t want to weigh down their animals with unnecessary weight, so they had to be sparing in their fire. Once the skirmish was over, they would retrieve all the usable rounds from the bushwhackers and replace their spent stock, and take anything that didn’t fit their weapons for barter.
Assault-rifle fire exploded from near the trees. Edwin’s weapon was on full auto, which emptied his magazine in little more than an instant. Screams of agony drifted from the grove, and Duke broke into a sprint, his weapon at present arms. Another shorter burst of automatic fire told him that Edwin had changed magazines, and the lack of answering fire meant that he’d put down the threat.
He reached Edwin in under a minute, approaching cautiously in case he hadn’t completely taken out all the shooters – Duke knew all too well that even a wounded man could be lethal with a gun. Edwin was standing with his weapon trained on three bodies, their clothing soiled with filth and stained with blood. Only one was still breathing, each intake of breath a rasp as he bled out from a half dozen bullet wounds stitched from his abdomen to his chest.
Duke remained by Edwin until the last man died. “Good shooting,” he said, and wiped the sweat from his cheek with the back of his arm.
“Damn fools were lined up like a turkey shoot. Didn’t take a lot of skill to put them down.”
Duke swept the surroundings with his rifle. “Sure you got them all?”
“Positive.”
Duke moved over to the first man, who’d been using a grime-encrusted AR-15. He felt in the man’s jacket for spare magazines and retrieved one with a look of distaste. “Idiots wasted most of their ammo. This one’s full,” he reported, and then snatched up the rifle and ejected its magazine. “This one’s maybe a third,” he said, weighing it before pocketing it.
Edwin walked to the next corpse and repeated the process. “AK. Two full mags.”
“Good for trade, unless you feel like going Commie with your gun.”
Edwin offered a grim smile. “Not likely.”
They finished searching the dead men and secured their pistols and rifles for barter, and then walked back to where their horses waited patiently, their terror from the shooting abated. Duke loaded his saddlebags with the AK and its mags and did a quick inventory of how much ammo the skirmish had cost them. Adding back those of the dead men, he was still twenty rounds poorer than before the gun battle, but he could trade the AK rounds for more 5.56mm further down the road, he was sure.
He untied his horse and mounted up, and Edwin did the same. Duke spurred his animal forward, the deadly exchange now just another slice of the past, a not unusual part of survival in the brave new world that had emerged from the collapse. Both men had been in dozens, if not hundreds, of similar fights, and the adrenaline rush that always accompanied one quickly receded, leaving them feeling hollow and fatigued as they continued on their way, the only sound the clack of their horses’ shoes on the asphalt and the occasional plaintive call of an unseen bird.
Chapter 17
South of Redding, California
The locomotive’s wheels screeched as the heavily loaded column of cars rounded a gentle curve on approach to Redding, about which the Blood Dogs knew little other than what they’d heard from travelers. Clark squinted through smoke at the tracks ahead and then yelled to the fireman over his shoulder, “Hang on. Out of track ahead!”
Clark yanked on the brake and jerked the transmission out of gear, eyes wide at the sight of a section of track a quarter mile ahead where the steel beams upon which the train ran had been removed, leaving nothing but ties, like rows of decaying brown teeth. Momentum carried the train forward, even as the locomotive’s wheels locked and wailed against the railings, throwing showers of sparks as the heavy procession continued inexorably toward the gap that would spell the end of the trip to Oregon.
“Clark–” the fireman shouted, but Clark was seemingly mesmerized by the empty section rushing to meet them, his jaw clenched so tight the muscles along the sides of his face looked hewn from wood. The fireman lurched forward to shake the engineer from his trance, but then Clark was in motion, leaning over the side to stare at the wheels that were doing precious little to slow the train.
“We’ll make it,” Clark said under his breath, counting the seconds as the forward movement gradually ebbed. “We’ll make it,” he said more loudly, and turned to the fireman. “But it’ll be damn close.”
“I don’t know,” the fireman muttered.
“Have a little faith,” Clark countered, and then gripped the side railing in case he’d called it wrong.
The old engine groaned to a full stop fifteen feet from the missing tracks, and the fireman exhaled a tense breath he’d been holding as Clark threw him a grin. “Told you,” he cackled, and then leapt from the cockpit and
walked forward to the naked ties.
Scott approached from farther down the line at a jog and stopped beside Clark to consider the track.
“Sabotage?” he asked.
Clark shrugged. “Against what? We’re the only thing that’s run on these rails since the collapse.”
“What, then?”
“Somebody probably took it for raw material for something. Beats me.”
“Great. What do we do now? Can’t go any farther, and we’re, what, still a couple of hundred miles from Salem?”
“More than that. But don’t sweat it. It’ll take some elbow grease, but we can pull up some track behind us and use it on this stretch.”
Scott regarded the missing rails doubtfully. “That’s got to be a few hundred yards minimum.”
“Yep. I didn’t say it would be easy. Just that it’d work.”
Men piled out of the cars, and Clark explained to them what needed to be done. He was finishing up describing how to uproot the spikes that secured the rails when a deafening volley of gunfire exploded from ahead of the locomotive, and a hail of bullets cut down dozens of the fighters where they stood.
“Take cover!” Scott screamed, and the men scrambled back into the steel railway cars or threw themselves beneath them. Those positioned on the roofs returned fire, responding with the devastating destructive punch of the .50-caliber Brownings, whose range easily exceeded the most powerful assault rifles by a factor of three.
The shooting had originated from a scattering of lopsided houses in a run-down neighborhood of shoddily built dwellings, and the jacketed rounds sawed through the plywood and stucco walls, shredding anyone inside to pieces. Clark watched from the cab of the locomotive as a shower of bullets pulverized the homes; and then the shooting stopped and Scott was yelling commands.
The Day After Never - Legion (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller - Book 8) Page 9