“They might miss important clues, Elijah. It’s self-defeating. And they need to pitch their tents, tend to their horses…”
“We didn’t bring them all the way here to loaf. Do as I say.”
“Of course.”
Dusk intruded in the hunt for clues, just as Benjamin had warned, and the group spent a restive night under the stars. The following dawn Elijah was up with first light, ordering the scouts to be quick about picking up the trail.
“They’ll have left signs of their passage,” he said with the conviction of an expert. “No way around it. That many people will leave a trail to follow.”
“Possibly,” Benjamin agreed. “But if they’re smart, they’ll have created several false trails to slow us down. And it’s not impossible to go long distances without anything obvious, depending on how skilled their trackers are.”
“What do you mean, trackers? We’re tracking them, not the other way around.”
“They’ll use theirs to cover the evidence of their passage. Because they’ll know what to conceal and how best to do so,” Benjamin explained.
Elijah’s troubled frown deepened. “I don’t like how negative you’ve become. I sense you’re not happy with our quest. Say so, and I’ll relieve you of your command, so you can return to Denver with your tail between your legs while I lead the men to victory.”
“It’s not that. I’m trying to explain what you’re…what we’re up against. These people have remained hidden for years. They’re experts at it. We have to expect this is going to be complicated and not get our hopes up for an easy victory. Their survival depends on their success, and if they were warned, as seems likely, they know the stakes.”
“I don’t want to hear anything else but solutions, Benjamin. No more problems. Am I clear?”
“Of course. I’ll see to it that the scouts get to work.”
The day stretched on, and by twilight the trackers still hadn’t found anything definitive. As Benjamin had surmised, there were several trails to follow, which had eaten considerable time, and all of which had dead-ended into rocky terrain where the group’s passage would leave no trace. It wasn’t until the following day that one of the men reported that he’d found evidence of a genuine path north, and Elijah had insisted on mobilizing immediately in spite of the afternoon being more than half gone.
As the men made camp that night in a windy valley with no shelter to fend off the cold, Benjamin watched them go about their preparations with misgivings. Elijah had proclaimed that they would follow his father’s murderers to the ends of the earth, that they were on a holy mission, divinely guided, and would never give up. Benjamin suspected that Elijah had begun to believe his own rhetoric of his greatness and the righteousness of his crusade, which could only lead to misery if he refused to be reasonable. Thousands of men forced to forage for sustenance as they moved would slow them considerably, and a few days of the weather turning against them could eradicate any trail, leaving them in the middle of nowhere with no place to turn, far from home and with nothing to eat.
Not circumstances Benjamin wanted to court, but Elijah seemed hell-bent on driving his men to the brink, no matter the damage to them. It baffled Benjamin that the charismatic leader could be so blind to the danger he was inviting, but he’d learned on this trip that Elijah’s narcissism knew no bounds and was driving his decisions. He truly believed that he was the Lord’s instrument on earth, not the son of a traveling preacher who’d struck pay dirt in the collapse, which made his leadership as dangerous as any Benjamin could imagine.
The question being what, if anything, Benjamin could do about it other than follow along obediently and do his best to avert disaster.
Chapter 26
Salem, Oregon
Scott stood with his hands on his hips as he watched Clark labor over his beloved locomotive with a welding torch they’d scrounged in one of the shops. During the fight for Salem, one of the defenders had hit the engine with multiple grenades, damaging the boiler as well as the shaft that drove the wheels. Clark had spent most of the night trying to jury-rig the contraption, but his assessment hadn’t been positive that morning when Scott had asked whether it was fixable.
“Sure, I can patch it up, but it isn’t going to be as stable as it was on the run up here,” Clark had reported. “Even with the welds, those spots won’t be as strong as the rest, and the shaft…I can cobble something together, but there’s no way it’s going to be able to pull fifty loaded cars. The strain would wreck it before we got a mile. At least that’s my guess. Too early to tell until I really dig into it.”
Now, with almost two days of work invested in the project, Clark was tentative in his prediction when Scott asked whether it could be trusted to transport the men to ambush Lucas’s group before it reached Salem.
“You can see I was able to fix the shaft, so it’ll run. The question is how much weight it’ll take before busting for good.”
“What do you think?”
“I wouldn’t want to try more than…fifteen cars.”
“That’s impossible. We need at least double that, assuming half the men stayed on the roof.”
“You have the same problem with the boiler. The patches will hold, but I wouldn’t take her up past the halfway point or one’s likely to blow. And when that happens, or the shaft breaks, nobody’s going anywhere.”
“You can’t use some other material to create a new shaft?”
“That’s high-tension steel. So no, any old hunk of metal won’t do the job. Plus, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a machinist and there aren’t any specialty metal fabrication shops open for business, not to mention any electricity.”
“How the hell am I supposed to transport five thousand men on fifteen cars?”
“Maybe we can do three trips. Assuming it doesn’t blow up on one of them.”
“This is a disaster.”
“Not really. I mean, why not just wait for them to come to Salem and hit them once they’re in town?”
Scott shook his head. “Stick to repairs and running the train. We need to ambush them on the road or our numbers are way too close to be able to be sure of winning.”
Clark shrugged. “Well, you’re the commander, so I’ll take your word for it. I’m just telling you that she won’t haul nearly the load as on the way here. That’s just fact. How you work around it’s up to you.”
Scott glared at the old engine as though it were responsible for the predicament, and then began to pace, thinking furiously. Maybe Clark’s solution wasn’t so stupid after all. If they could get a couple of thousand men per run, they’d only need two trips to ferry most of the force north to what, after studying the map, was clearly the most favorable spot for an ambush.
“How do we test it so we know it’ll hold?”
“There’s no way other than to load up as much as you dare and see what happens. Not very scientific, but we’re making this up as we go along.”
“You don’t think it’ll handle twenty cars?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But I’d be conservative, because once something breaks in the middle of nowhere, that’s all she wrote.”
“Let’s split the difference and try eighteen. Fifteen passenger cars, and three equipment and horse cars.”
“You’re the boss. But don’t blame me if she gives up on you. I’d do more like ten to be safe, and run more trips.”
“We don’t have that luxury. How soon before you’re finished?”
“Got to deal with two more iffy seams, and then we can run up a head of steam and see how she does.”
“In English, Clark.”
“Maybe by tomorrow morning unless you want to run in the dark. I don’t recommend that. You saw how easy it is to pull up track. No way of knowing that the rails run all the way where we need.”
“You’re just a font of optimism, aren’t you?”
“Look, I’ve had maybe three hours of sleep in almost two days. I’m not sugarcoating anything for y
ou. It may or may not make it. That’s as good as I can commit to.”
Scott nodded. “I’ll let the men know the first bunch will be moving out at sunrise.”
“Sure. Now can I get back to work while I’m still conscious?”
Scott left Clark to his job, scowling as he walked to what had been the state capitol building and was now Blood Dogs headquarters. According to what the Illuminati had shared with them, Lucas could arrive at any moment, and Scott was deeply uncomfortable taking on an army about the same size that was fresh off beating the Chinese army and had proven itself against more than a few random civilians. The Blood Dogs were meaner than striped snakes and would fight like they meant it, but depending on what kind of leadership Lucas’s had, they might be outclassed, even with the latest equipment.
He didn’t intend to learn the hard way in the city when he could choose the time and place to sneak attack. No, he’d have to take the risk of doing multiple runs, and hope that the engine made it. Getting home was another matter, but one challenge at a time. For now, he needed to figure out how to ship five thousand men north with all their gear as expediently as possible using a locomotive that should have been put out to scrap a century before.
The following day Clark hesitantly announced that the train was ready, and attached eighteen cars to the engine. While the first group of men clambered aboard, others loaded the cargo and animals under Scott’s watchful eye. When nothing more could be fit onto the train, the two firemen began stoking the furnace, shoveling coal into it as fast as they could. Clark studied the pressure gauge with the attention of a surgeon, and when the boiler was up to three-quarters pressure, waved at Clark and put the locomotive in gear.
The engine groaned in protest as the wheels bit into the rails, and then the train inched forward. Clark moved to the side of the cab and looked over the edge at the repaired shaft. He was pleased to see it holding, the weld showing no signs of buckling. He was turning back to the firemen to urge them to shovel faster when two of the patches on the boiler gave, and jets of scalding steam shot from the rents with hypersonic velocity, catching one of the firemen in the face and upper body.
He screamed in agony as his skin was seared from his bones, and Clark ducked beneath the jets and groped for the lever to disengage the transmission. He succeeded and dropped to the steel floor as the injured fireman’s agonized cries flooded the cockpit.
Scott came at a run as the train slowed and stopped, and Clark and the other fireman crawled to the side of the cockpit and pulled themselves clear of the locomotive with the help of Scott and three of his men. Once standing on the side of the tracks, Clark straightened and watched as Scott’s helpers dragged the dying fireman from the floor, leaving a skid of broiled flesh and seared skin on the cockpit base.
The fireman was still screaming in tortured pain when they set him on the ground, and Scott’s face hardened at the sight of what had moments before been a strapping young man, now almost unrecognizable as human, face pressure-blasted from his skull, blinded, and with only tendons and sinews remaining, most of his upper body a steaming mass of cooked hamburger. Scott withdrew his pistol, stepped to the man’s side, and fired two rounds into his skull, ending his misery.
Clark stumbled three yards away and spewed up his breakfast, his body racked with spasms of nausea as he continued until he was bent over, dry heaving. Scott waited for the spell to end, and then walked over to him, his pistol now holstered.
“You were right,” he said tersely.
“Hell of a way to find out.”
“How long to fix it?”
“Depends on how bad the damage is. Maybe a few hours. Maybe more. I have to wait until it cools down and I can see what the problem is.”
“All right. Go to work.”
Clark straightened and spit bile at his feet. He coughed and grimaced and then regarded Scott with a dark expression. “Probably a good idea to unhook at least five or six of the cars.”
“Yeah. I got that. We’ll make it happen.”
“Gonna need another fireman, too.”
“I’ll find someone. Anything else?”
“Have your men bring the welder and all my tools. We’ll need to keep them on the train in case it happens again when we’re underway.”
“Check.” He looked at the dead fireman without emotion. “I’ll send a crew for the remains.” He hesitated. “There was nothing we could do for him but end it quickly.”
Clark swallowed hard and looked away. “I know.”
Scott seemed like he wanted to say something else, but after a long moment he headed back to the station with his men, walking along the tracks and occasionally glancing at the train, where gunmen were dropping from the cars with puzzled expressions, leaving Clark to the hiss of steam escaping from the boiler through cracked seams and the barely audible crackle of the dead fireman’s cooking flesh.
Chapter 27
North of Salem, Oregon
Over a week had passed since Lucas and Art had led their men out of Seattle, and they’d encountered no insurmountable obstacles on the road south. Because of their sheer numbers, they didn’t have to fear attack by any of the usual raiders or scavengers, who had been giving the army a wide berth. They traveled from late afternoon through the night and slept during the day to avoid dehydration and unnecessary wear and tear on the animals, who could rest during the worst of the heat and make better time in the cool of darkness.
The lead riders guided the rest by torchlight when the sky was overcast, which it was much of the time, sticking to the highway for ease of passage since safety wasn’t a concern.
They’d been underway for three hours and the light was going out of the sky when Lucas slowed Tango and raised his M4 to peer through the scope at the road ahead. A collection of tents stretched along both shoulders, and Lucas called to Sam to join him as the column came to a stop.
“What do you make of that?” he asked. “Trouble?”
Sam looked through his binoculars for a moment, scanned the encampment, and lowered them slowly. “Looks like a bunch of scavengers. Only a few hundred, tops. We’ll be fine. They won’t try anything.”
“We don’t want anyone taking potshots at us as we go by.”
“I’ll send an advance party to check it out.”
“I’ll go with them,” Lucas said.
“Then I will too. Pretty boring lately. I could use some excitement.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Lucas muttered as Sam rode off to collect several dozen of his most capable men.
They rode toward the camp and slowed as they neared when it became obvious that few of the inhabitants were moving. They were greeted by the wafting stench of rotting flesh rising from bloated corpses that had been tossed in a heap and left to decay without any regard for burial. Lucas pulled his bandanna over his mouth and nose, and Sam did the same, though the cloth did little to cloak the stink of death.
“Bad,” Sam said.
Lucas didn’t respond and goaded Tango forward, anxious to be past the dead.
The camp was in disarray, mostly men sitting outside their tents, gaunt and listless, their skin blistered and sickly. Lucas swung down from his horse and walked toward a group gathered around a fire, and tipped his hat at them. One of the men looked up at him with dead eyes in a skeletal face and then resumed staring at the fire. “What do you want?” he croaked, his voice hoarse.
“Just passing through. What happened here?”
The man coughed, the sound wet and unhealthy. “Portland happened. We’re all refugees from there. Thought we’d made it out before the radiation got us, but we were kidding ourselves.” He coughed again. “We’re all dead. Been dropping for weeks. Some worse than others, but nobody’s going to make it.”
“How many?” Lucas asked softly.
“We started off with around five hundred. Managed to slip past the bikers and make our way north. We were mostly okay, but then we started dying. No rhyme or reason to it. Eventua
lly we just camped out here and buried our dead best we could. But now nobody’s got the energy, so we’re just waiting to die. Best move through fast and stay away from the river. And don’t eat anything you catch or find – radiation’s getting everything.”
Lucas didn’t bother explaining to the man that the groundwater they had been drinking was also likely contaminated and was responsible for poisoning them, not the river. It was clear none of them was long for this world, and there was no point to explaining the fatal error they’d made.
Lucas walked back to Sam, and the men retraced their steps to the main column, where Art was waiting with Terry and Gary by his side. “Well?” he asked.
“Portland survivors on their last legs. All dying of radiation sickness. Nothing we can do for them except leave them to die in peace.”
“God…”
“Seems to be out to lunch in these parts,” Lucas finished for him. “Best we can do is move by quickly and turn off the road before we get too close to the river. Pass the word to the men that they’re going to have to make their water last – the river’s poisoned the water table, so it’ll be a while before we can refill.”
“You’re sure we can’t help them?” Gary asked. “What a horrible way to go.”
“They’ve got weapons and ammo. I saw a few pistols and rifles. I suspect most of them aren’t waiting till the bitter end after watching their companions drop.”
The procession got underway again, and the men moved past the dying encampment with averted eyes, the reality of death as thick and heavy in the air as cooking smoke. Once they were well past, they turned off the highway north of Longview, using a map that had survived the collapse to guide them. They’d have to cross the river at Portland and would be exposed to radiation when doing so, but the toxicity level wasn’t so high that an hour on the bridge would be grossly dangerous – at least no more so than most of the other threats that lurked around every turn of the road. And that was a problem that was at least two days’ ride away. In the meantime, they just had to make the best time they could while safeguarding their water, living off their provisions rather than hoping to hunt down deer and rabbit for food.
The Day After Never - Legion (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller - Book 8) Page 14