I sputtered and coughed. Rolled over, sitting up, facing down the hill. Mangled bodies littered the sides of the road. Sachi was a few feet away from me, clumsily climbing to her feet. Olivia lay further down the hill, both of her legs and left arm missing as she wailed pitifully, struggling to pull herself up the hill with her one intact arm. Sachi spotted her, aimed her 30 mm and fired, Olivia’s head exploding as her torso went limp. Sachi trotted dizzily toward me, helping me to my feet before we both took off up the hill.
The APC:B-021s arrived on the road below us, laying down a hurricane of gunfire as we retreated. Sachi and I zigzagged up the steep incline, small trees toppling down around us from all the steel in the air. The sound of the rail guns charging surged up again, ending in the four explosions erupting like a dreadful snare drum, devastating the side of the hills, blasting trees and rocks down onto the road below.
The forest grew thicker around us, snow beginning to fall. Frightened refugees ran in every direction, shouting and crying. Explosions peppered the hill from RPGs, flinging dirt, stone, and blood from every direction. Soldiers in EXO:G-039s converged on us from both sides, .50 cals cracking.
Sachi and I got to a large boulder, stopping and putting our backs to it. She looked at me and gave a nod before both of us looked down the hill and started spraying .50 cal fire at the soldiers, taking careful aim with our 30 mils to pick them off.
I shot at one soldier as he chased after three refugees, his entrails tearing out the other side of him as he tumbled to the frozen ground. Another turned and charged at us.
My .50 cal bullets flung off him as both of us brought our 30 mils to aim, firing at the same time. His bullet hit the rock just over my left shoulder, a shard of stone going through my suit and slicing down the length of my tricep. The soldier fell forward, sliding over the ground and coming to a stop two feet from me, dead.
A group of three soldiers came rushing from our right. Sachi and I both aimed our grenades at them. Mine hit first, tossing them down the hill, Sachi’s exploding right afterwards and knocking them back up the hill, their shattered bodies falling in crumpled piles next to a scorched pine.
The hum of the charging rail guns flared up again, the explosions crashing violently from every direction, the shockwaves knocking Sachi and me around like rag dolls. The pain in my chest felt like it might stop my heart, head throbbing, ears ringing.
I scrambled to my feet, fell back to my knees, trying to catch my breath. Eyes bulging, nose bleeding, stomach churning, I stumbled back to my feet, reaching down and lifting Sachi up, both of us taking off further up the hill.
The sound of weapons firing picked up again after the explosions. Refugees covered in blood and mud knelt down beside trees, firing their weapons down at the CSA soldiers. Bullets hit the frozen dirt around them. Sachi and I came to a stop, turning around to add our gunfire to theirs.
I recognized Austin Ganz next to me, a gash on his forehead pouring blood over his face as he fired his AR-15 down the hill, bellowing in fury.
I launched another grenade down the hill, hitting a tree with a CSA soldier behind it, the explosion prompting him to run stumbling out from behind it, being met by a hail of bullets that sent him tumbling back down the hill. More refugees and forty-eights gathered around us, adding their gunfire to ours, becoming a phalanx.
Two more RPGs streamed down the hill, exploding and tossing three more CSA bodies out from behind a tree. I saw several more starting to fall back, repelled by the deluge of bullets. I took careful aim at one, firing my 30 mm and seeing him go sprawling forward.
“Spread out!” Sachi shouted.
Rail gun charges rumbled into the forest and everyone ran full speed, spreading out up the hill. Two hundred feet up I saw one of them explode, sending two refugees gliding into the air along with several trees, the shockwave knocking me backwards in an avalanche of dirt and burning wood. I landed just as a giant tree trunk went sailing over me, tumbling down the hill.
I rolled over and jumped back to my feet, vision blurry, disoriented, running up the hill. Another explosion went off a hundred yards to my right, followed by a raucous crashing as the UAV went bouncing across the side of the hill, somersaulting over frozen ground as trees tore it to pieces.
I turned around, spraying more .50 cal fire down the hill, but finding no CSA soldiers, only managing to hit one of the refugees. She howled in pain, but I turned and kept running, hearing the third hum of a rail gun right over head.
I looked up and aimed my 30 mm, firing just as I heard the explosion, seeing the recoil almost stop the UAV in midair. My shot connected as it started pulling back up. It didn’t gain enough altitude, running into the tops of the trees, crashing down onto the hillside amongst a group of refugees who shrieked and tried running away, the wings cutting a man and his son down as it skidded over the earth, tossing dirt and wood in every direction.
The fourth rail gun shot went off somewhere further down the hill, shockwave weakened by the time it reached me. Fleeing refugees continued up the hill as gunfire quieted.
Everyone kept running for ten minutes before the realization that the UAVs weren’t coming back sunk in, everyone finally slowing down. Only weeping and moaning sounded in the cold forest.
I fell to my knees on the frozen ground, seeing snowflakes fluttering down all around me, beginning to pile up on the bed of pine needles, before everything went hazy and then black.
Chapter 60
Night greeted me when I finally awoke, a thin layer of snow beginning to build up around me. I had been dragged for a distance to where a camp was setup. It was difficult to see how many people were there, but I could tell it was significantly fewer than before the ambush.
I sat up, dizzy, head pounding, feeling like I might pass out again. I took a long drink from the straw in my exo suit before turning over onto all fours and climbing to my feet.
My chest ached, ears ringing, every joint sore, my suit dented, cracked, chipped, cut, and burned, but still holding together. The gash in my left triceps throbbed in rhythm with my heartbeat.
I spotted a group of people gathered together talking in whispers. I walked shakily toward them, the exo suit keeping most of my balance for me as I came nearer. I passed by refugees sitting huddled on the ground, most tending to their own wounds. Others lay about, being tended to by doctors and medics.
Scattered amongst our refugees I could see the injured and dying from the rebels who had pursued us, their weapons taken away and Kevlar exoskeletons removed, given to some of the refugees.
I spotted Doctor Taylor working on someone I didn’t recognize, her left arm in a sling fashioned out of a bra, giving her only one arm to work with. I passed by Aveena. She had a strip of torn blanket wrapped around her neck, reddened with blood, her left leg missing from just above the knee. She wore one of the rebel’s exoskeleton suits, hugging the sawed-off shotgun under a tattered blanket, looking off at nothing. Sitting next to her was Akira, who had only a mildly uncomfortable expression, despite her face being smeared with frozen blood, left forearm ending in a stump sealed with organic polymer. Yukiko lay sedated in her lap, both legs sheared off below the knees, sealed with organic polymer.
I stopped a few feet away from the meeting taking place, seeing representatives from many of the factions.
“We lost over four hundred people,” I heard Forrester whisper harshly, red stains in his gray hair showing even in the dark, “now have fewer than four hundred left.”
“If you hadn’t kept us sitting there like fucking idiots,” Savita hissed, her dead, steely eyes fixed on the Liberty Protection Major, “we could have gotten past there before they came through.”
“Fuck you,” Corporal Wallace, someone I really only knew by voice, said. He held the LPX-033 helmet in the undamaged left glove, revealing his dark black skin and tight cornrows. “If them bitch ass hicks hadn’t attacked us, we’d still be campin’ comfortably back there.”
“And I suppose that’s o
ur fault?” Savita asked.
“You sent yer fuckin’ assassin out there after ‘em,” Wallace said.
“At least we were trying to do something,” Savita said, “instead of just letting them continue shooting at us.”
“The fact is,” Forrester said, “none of this would be happening in the first place if you people hadn’t shown up in the LoC.”
“They were just looking for a reason to invade your little paradise here,” Emma said, “if it wasn’t us, it would have been something else.”
“Ya’ll the ones who went in there and stirred ‘em up,” Wallace said, “we’d been livin’ beside the CSA just fine fer years.”
“What the hell does it matter why it started in the first place?” Colonel Riviera said, “we’ll figure out who to blame once we get out of this fuckin’ mess.”
“Course you’d say that,” Forrester said, “you been workin’ with these terrorists the whole damn time. Since back when that cocksucker Reynolds was still alive.”
“You shut the fuck up,” agent Brie hissed.
“Shut up, Beebee,” Major Ellison said, and then turned to Forrester and said, “you’re crossing the line talkin’ about him.”
“Whatever,” Forrester said, “the point is, Colonel Riviera’s unfit for duty. You and I both know that.”
Riviera looked to her Major, but he said nothing.
“We’re takin’ these folks east,” Forrester said, “to Dallas.”
“That place is almost certainly occupied,” Sachi said, “those convoys on the road were probably headin’ there when we ran into them.”
“We don’t know that,” Forrester said, “and we have people who need medical attention.”
“You’re going to get them killed,” Sachi said.
“I’m gonna help them,” Forrester said, “you’re the one who’ll get ‘em killed.”
“We’ll see about that,” Sachi said, “we’re continuing toward Grand Junction. People can decide who they’re going to follow.”
Sachi started walking away, the other forty-eights going with her. I stayed, seeing Forrester look to Colonel Riviera, who appeared to struggle with the choice, glancing to Sachi’s people as they walked away and then looked back to Major Forrester.
Colonel Riviera grit her teeth and said, “all you’ve done is argue and start fights, and you’ve done nothing to keep anyone safe.”
She started walking away in the direction of Sachi when Major Ellison and Corporal Roman reluctantly followed.
Forrester grunted and said, “you know she’s a fuckin’ psychopath. You know she doesn’t care bout any’uh you.”
Colonel Riviera didn’t stop or look back, but Ellison did. I could see in his eyes that he wanted nothing more than to abandon his superior officer and go with Forrester. Somehow a strange sense of duty – or maybe just habitual familiarity – won over and he continued walking off behind Colonel Riviera, angry at his plight. Corporal Roman followed awkwardly behind him. Forrester then looked to me, squinting his bushy, gray eyebrows.
“How can you people follow her?” he asked.
“I’ve been doing it for over thirty years,” I shrugged, “and I’m still trying to figure out why.”
“We have about ninety people coming with us,” Savita said as we came back to the camp, “mostly Hijos Descarriados.”
The forty-eights and LoC Security agents had gathered as much of their supplies as could be carried away from where Forrester was mustering. Savita and I had gone and talked to the refugees, much to Forrester’s chagrin, to see who they were going to follow. Most of them were going along with Forrester and Liberty Protection, despite them having fewer agents left to protect them.
Forrester had made a stink about how the exoskeletons stripped off the rebels should be distributed, saying they should go to those who need them most, but ended up regretting it when the people coming with us took most of them. Forrester then tried to pawn some of the prisoners off on us, but we refused to take any of them, which only made him angrier.
“That’s including our people?” Rocky asked, taking a bite from a frozen protein bar.
“Yes,” Savita said.
Rocky’s company had lost César, Olivia, and Pedro in the last battle, the other three companies having lost at least as many. LoC Security was down to eight remaining people, including Major Ellison, Corporal Roman, agent Sullivan, and agent Brie, giving our party a total of twenty people in exoskeleton suits.
As our refugees began limping, hobbling, and sulking over to our camp, Sachi and Savita began to take stock of what kind of firepower they took with them and what kind of injuries they had. Aveena, limping as the crude exoskeleton leggings supported her weight, led Akira over to us, carrying Yukiko in one arm and her shotgun in the other.
Riviera’s remaining family came over – Marlina and Zackary along with Enrique and Camille – with both grownups only having 3D printed pistols. Doctor Taylor and Teagan came over with only Carmen, all three of them looking stunned and miserable, having lost Deidre, John, Tea, Liana and Liana’s husband.
Most of the other refugees coming with us were lightly armed – pistols, shotguns, a few sub-machine guns, and only four people with weapons powerful enough to penetrate EXO:B-039s.
“Forrester managed to hold onto most of the refugees with the big guns,” Savita said, “which might make up for his lack of exos. He only has seven.”
“Joaquin Yrid?” Sachi asked.
Savita shook her head.
“Forrester’s planning on heading east and following the road,” I said, “are you still thinking of taking the scenic route?”
“Yes,” Sachi said, looking up at the night sky, the moon still visible in the gaps of clouds, “I plan to go roughly parallel to the one forty-one. The snowstorm will give us cover from UAVs. If we’re on the road, we’re likely to get fucked by ground units. Plus, we can bypass all the little towns and shit on the way. I’m guessing they’re all occupied by now, judging by the fact that CSA units were on the road this far north.”
“That’s going to slow us down,” I said.
Sachi nodded slowly, “slow and safe rather than fast and dangerous. No matter which way we take, we won’t be beating that fucking storm anyway.”
I glanced at Akira, her eyes still blank, and then looked back to Sachi. She caught on to what I was more worried about, but only pursed her lips and said nothing.
Sachi had wanted to leave before Forrester got a chance to go. Almost as if he sensed that it was a competition, Forrester got his people marching before we did, taking off going northeast.
We all watched as the refugees he was leading started walking away, disappearing into the trees, some looking back at us with exhausted expressions. I knew many of them would be wondering if they made the right decision to go along with Forrester. It was human nature to second guess decisions that way.
“And yet it could be the people following Sachi who are making the wrong decision,” Evita said, once again remaining nothing but a shadow just out of sight.
“Or everyone is fucked,” I said, walking back toward camp.
Our group took off an hour later, when the clouds was just starting to brighten with the rising sun. Even with more injured, we kept a decent pace all morning, no longer weighed down by unwieldy numbers. The temperature remained low, never getting above ten below zero Fahrenheit, wind picking up.
Doctor Taylor, Ellen, and the nurse Nancy Sterling kept busy checking on people’s wounds, especially with the children. Camille was becoming sick, her minor injuries, exhaustion, and the cold weather overwhelming her small body. Yukiko remained in a daze, occasionally looking down at where her feet used to be and then looking to Aveena as if expecting an explanation for this. Carmen intermittently broke into tears. Enrique maintained a stoic demeanor, often having to be the one to comfort his sister Camille as her aunt Teagan seemed too shocked by so much loss to even do anything.
The forty-eights, now all walking tog
ether in one group, would sometimes lob a few jokes and insults, but mostly marched on in silence. The names of their fallen comrades refused to cross anyone’s lips. Revenge fantasies were a popular topic, with Gabriel Mitchell himself often being the target of their wrath. Only once did someone bring up the possibility that Grand Junction might be occupied right now, too, but nobody was willing yet to throw away our last hope of finding a safe haven.
At noon Sachi called a halt for everyone to take a break, but it only lasted fifteen minutes before everyone was ready to go again. There was little to eat, and many people were still worried about getting found. Sachi was more than happy to keep going.
The sky became completely overcast by midafternoon, more snowflakes falling by evening, temperature hovering around ten below. Despite everyone’s exhaustion, we continued walking even after the sun went down and the evening grew late, propelled purely by dogged momentum.
It wasn’t until ten thirty at night that we stopped when someone heard something out in the woods. The forty-eights and LoC Security people got into defensive positions.
“I heard it now, too,” Rocky said over the radio, “just west of us.”
Sachi signaled for him and Victor to go look. The two ran quietly off into the trees.
“Someone here,” Rocky whispered over the radio, “they got exos. Double aught nines.”
“Armed?” Sachi asked.
He didn’t reply. Everyone stayed quiet, listening to the commotion a ways away. Finally, the radio crackled again.
“We got ‘em,” Rocky said, “you’ll never guess who.”
“Don’t keep us in suspense,” Manny said.
“It’s those Crusaders,” Rocky said, “Big Terry and Isaac. What d’you want us to do with ‘em?”
“Bring them back here,” Sachi said, “I wouldn’t mind having a word with them.”
Chapter 61
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