Mulligan stopped struggling then. He felt himself relaxing beneath Fox’s weight, and the former colonel’s smile disappeared. He looked almost disappointed.
“What? No more fighting?” Fox clucked his tongue. “Giving up already? You reconcile yourself with the five stages of death that quickly, Gandhi?”
“Why did you have to kill her,” Mulligan asked.
“Oh. That.” Fox seemed to consider it for a long moment. “I have some problems with impulse control, I guess. Maybe some PTSD. Or maybe I was a good man once, and once all the good got sucked up into the wasteland, I’m left with what you see now. I swear, doesn’t psychological shit like watching entire families die and your own military turning on the people they were supposed to protect just kind of screw up your moral compass?” He paused. “Destroys it, actually.”
Mulligan said nothing. Felt nothing, not even the pain. All that was left was a hollowed out old man, lying on a slope somewhere in Oregon. Soon, he’d be just one of billions of corpses spread out across the globe. It was time.
Show’s over, he told himself.
Fox seemed to sense it as well. He stared down into Mulligan’s eyes, and for an instant, the madness seemed to recede. Just a little bit.
“This world,” Fox said slowly, “just isn’t for you any longer, brother. You did your best, but this is where it ends. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” Mulligan said.
Fox nodded, and he raised the knife. “Well. You were never that smart to begin with.”
He grunted as a rifle butt slammed into his head. Fox fell away from him, and Mulligan looked up to see Andrews standing over him. He was wobbly on his feet and his eyes seemed distant and glazed, but he was very, very much alive.
“Talking about smart ... maybe you shoulda made sure I was actually dead, Einstein,” Andrews said as Fox writhed on the ground. Blood poured from the gash in his bald head, and he dropped his small knife as he reached for the wound. Andrews looked down at Mulligan. He reached down to his belt and pulled his bayonet from its sheath and held it out to Mulligan with a trembling hand.
“Do to him what he did to Leona,” he muttered.
The pain hit Mulligan again like a runaway freight train, and with it came a coursing fury that burned a hundred times hotter than the sun. He sat up and took the blade from Andrews and whirled toward Fox as the other man pushed himself to his knees. Mulligan punched him in the face with one of his big fists and drove him back to the deck, then hauled himself on top of him. Fox started to come out of it then, and he snarled and struggled, but it was too late. Mulligan outweighed him by a good fifty pounds, even without the heavy rucksack on his back.
“Position seem familiar?” Mulligan said. “How’s it look from your side?”
“Decided to give the world another try, Gandhi?” Fox said. He spat out a mouthful of blood. “You still thinking you have what it takes to give it a go?”
“You know what I hate about crazy fuckers like you, guy?” Mulligan slashed open Fox’s mouth with a brutal cut, and the man screamed as his jaw fell open. “You just never know when to shut the hell up.” He held the bayonet in front of Fox’s wild eyes, bearing down on the man as his struggles increased. “Don’t get so excited, Eugene. We’re going to spend some quality time together. A long, long time. Trust me, my impulse control is damned good.” He slashed Fox again, opening up his forehead and exposing the dome of his skull beneath. “Damned good.”
Andrews sat down heavily, head lolling forward slightly. “And I’ll supervise.”
Mulligan pressed the bayonet’s tip against the base of Fox’s neck and held him there as he looked over at Andrews. “You all right, sir?”
“Good to go, Sergeant Major. Take your time. I paid good money for this, so I want to see a hell of a show.” When he raised his head, Andrews’s blue eyes were as hard and cold as diamonds. “Cobar. Slattery. Laird. Lee. Give ’em all a good show, Mulligan. Make it last.”
Mulligan turned back to Fox and started working on him with the blade.
He screamed for hours.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
By the time Buchek was allowed out of the mine, the battle for Sherwood was over.
The gaping, ragged holes in the container walls hadn’t been enough to give the enemy full access to the town, but they had certainly served as fatal funnels when they tried to push their way in. Even when they’d brought vehicles with machine guns up, they were held back and pushed away. Sometimes they fell back quickly, other times they had to be wiped out entirely. There was a lopsidedness to the attackers. Many of them were hard core fighters, able to take the punishment while inflicting great pain on the town’s defenders. Others were timid, fearful of running into the hard stops of their own mortality. But bit by bit, they were grinding down the town’s capacity to defend itself. Munitions coupled with the psychological effect of the walls torn open conspired to make even those defenders who had practical military experience before the war take pause.
Eventually, the enemy would win.
Then a series of rippling explosions tore across the enemy’s rear lines, a constant volley of triplets that struck the hostile formations first in one sector, then in another. The irregularity of the shifting fires confused the enemy as much as it started to kill them. They lost vehicles, supplies, and staging areas. Soon, black smoke rose into the air as the carcasses of enemy trucks burned. And during all this, the defenders of Sherwood kept pouring it on. Griffith directed their fires, hobbling around with his cane or zooming about in his Volvo. According to the old Marine, the enemy suddenly became disorganized and confused when they saw SCEV Four race out of the community, miniguns blazing as it raked the attackers with precision fires. According to Griffith, that was when their collective will broke. Without a rig of their own to press the attack, the enemy formations began to dissipate. Though the battle raged on for hours longer, the attackers had lost the element of surprise and the essential mass necessary to take Sherwood. And it had been the attack in the back field that had done it—Buchek surmised it was the team from Harmony Base pressing in on them with their own vehicle, firing missiles into the fray. But then he got word that the rig had made its way to the bluff instead.
So who was it, then? Who the hell saved our bacon?
Griffith ordered the defenders to hold fast and stand ready to repel follow-on attacks. He wasn’t buying that the enemy was falling apart and retreating; he sensed it was an elaborate ruse, designed to lure Sherwood’s fighters outside what remained of the container wall’s protective embrace. Buchek didn’t disagree, and they launched drones to verify that the enemy was collapsing his formations. It was a total surprise, but they were pulling together everything they had left and moving out. They paused only long enough to pillage the hundreds of fallen bodies they left in their wake. For as far as the drones could follow them, the enemy gave every indication it was retreating.
The found out why later in the day. The teams that had been dispatched to Ironside led three mortar teams back to the engagement area around Sherwood. Well hidden and over ten miles away, they savaged the attackers with bombardments they could neither detect nor defend against. And Ironside had a substantial amount of ordnance to hurl at Fox’s forces, everything from high-explosive to incendiary. Once the enemy began to lose their vehicles, that was when they were forced to retreat.
With Ironside’s help, Sherwood would live another day.
But at what cost. Buchek felt tears running down his cheeks as he helped deal with the dead and the dying. All good people, cut down by marauders who wouldn’t have let them live regardless. They’d died defending Sherwood, and he couldn’t possibly thank them enough. Their sacrifice had been complete and total, and without them, Buchek and his community were so much the poorer.
At dusk, turbines growled. SCEV Four returned to the town, its radome spinning, its miniguns moving in their turrets as they sought targets. The vehicle appeared to be largely undamaged save for where a
salvo of large-caliber bullets had tried to do more than just dimple its side. Buchek took a break from helping with the bodies and headed for the rig as it drew to a halt, engines idling. To his surprise, the back of the vehicle opened up. Its tailgate formed a loading ramp that reached all the way to the ground. Inside, Mulligan and Andrews tended to someone on one of the bunks. Buchek recognized two of his people in the rig with them, and their faces were grim as they looked out onto the carnage that Fox’s troops had left before withdrawing.
He turned his attention to Andrews, who moved slowly. His hands were trembling, and his face was curiously blank.
“Mike?” he asked as Andrews slowly picked his way down the tailgate. He moved as if he were drunk.
“The captain has a concussion, maybe worse,” Mulligan said from inside the vehicle. “We have someone here with extreme burns. She needs help, more than we can give her here.”
Buchek reached out and steadied Andrews. He nodded up at Mulligan. “We’ll do what we can.” He noticed that one side of Mulligan’s uniform was dark with blood. “Big Ugly, you get hit?”
“Yeah.”
“Need a hand over here!” Buchek yelled, waving people over. “Let’s get these people to the doc right away!”
***
The team from Harmony stayed at Sherwood for another two weeks as they recuperated from their injuries and dealt with their own dead. While those who had fallen in Sherwood were buried just outside the town, Eklund and the crew from SCEV Five were laid to rest atop the bluff. Mulligan had thought they might enjoy the view, watching as the sun rose and fell every day. His bullet wound wasn’t exactly serious in that nothing vital had been struck, but it was absolutely painful and prone to bleed if he moved too much. Andrews had a hairline skull fracture as well as a concussion, but as far as Sherwood’s medical staff could determine he had suffered no long-term impairment. Both men needed some time to rest and recover, but they would be fine. When it came time to bury their dead, Buchek and Griffith were of one mind in that neither man should get involved in the physical actions required. Mulligan and Andrews weren’t happy with that, of course. But the truth was, they weren’t in a position where they could dig graves and not run the risk of further injury.
The remains were pulled from the wreckage of SCEV Five. Of Laird, there was almost nothing left, and Slattery had been burned down to the bone. Cobar’s corpse was more intact, as he had been protected from the secondary blast by the bulkhead that separated his station from the cockpit. At least there was more of him to bury. The burial crew from Sherwood treated their remains, and those of Leona, with utmost care. Buchek, Amanda, and Griffith attended as well, standing with Andrews, Mulligan, and KC as their friends were lowered into their final resting places and covered up.
And then it was over.
Buchek dismissed the burial detail, and for a few moments, he held his position off to Andrews’s left. He nodded to Amanda and Griffith, then leaned toward Andrews.
“We’ll leave you guys alone for a bit,” he said. “We’ll wait for you at the truck.”
“Thanks, Stan.” Andrews’s voice was barely audible.
Buchek nodded slowly, then turned and walked away. Amanda followed. After a moment, Griffith sighed and looked at the surviving trio from Harmony Base, his eyes bright beneath the brim of his hat.
“I am truly sorry for your loss,” he said, looking at each of them in turn. “May they shine on in your memories.”
And with that, the old man trundled off, leaning on his cane.
Mulligan stood with Andrews and KC. It was late in the day, and the sun was sinking to the west. They stood and watched over the four graves for several minutes without speaking. Andrews rubbed at his eyes, and KC sniffed. Mulligan felt nothing.
“This really sucks,” Andrews said finally.
KC released a hitching sigh. “Can’t believe they’re gone.”
“They are,” Mulligan said. “Not the first, and probably won’t be the last.”
“Should never have called Five forward,” Andrews muttered.
“Then we’d all be dead, and Fox would be raping the ever-living shit out of Sherwood,” Mulligan said. “The cost was high. But it ...” He paused and released a long sigh. There wasn’t any way to explain it that would make sense. “It had to be paid. It’s just part of the mission.”
“I hope the mission’s worth it,” KC said quietly.
“It is. It has to be.”
They stood there looking out over the graves for a time longer. Finally Andrews stirred and looked back to where the truck was supposed to be parked, right behind a small rise.
“I guess we should go,” he said. “We need to start planning the return trip.”
“I’ll be along,” Mulligan said.
Andrews looked at him. “What’s that?”
“I’ll be along, Captain. You and Winters go ahead.”
Andrews exchanged a glance with KC, then considered the graves before them for a moment longer. “Don’t fade away this time, Sarmajor.”
“What?”
“Don’t fade away. Don’t become a ghost on us again.”
Mulligan shook his head. “No. I won’t.”
He finally reached out and touched KC on the shoulder, and they faded away. Mulligan was left alone with his thoughts and the graves.
Why don’t I feel anything, he asked himself. In the ground before him were four people he had known for years. He should have felt more on the occurrence of their passing ... especially for Leona, who had stuck her neck out to help him escape the enveloping darkness that had surrounded him for so long. Was she in love with him, he wondered? Had she given him a gift he never even knew he held?
Mulligan considered that as he looked out over the dirt mounds before him. If Leona had wasted her love on him, it would be a tragic thing. But even that didn’t elicit an emotional response. Inside, Mulligan found he was as barren as the irradiated cornfields of Kansas.
There’s nothing there ...
A shuffling sound from behind him got his attention. Mulligan turned, expecting it to be Andrews walking up to gently prod him along. After all, there were more people in Sherwood who still needed to be buried, and the rest of the group was waiting for him to finish up his graveside remembrances so they could get back to town. He was surprised to see it was Griffith, huffing and puffing his way up the incline. He leaned heavily on his cane.
“Master Guns—”
“I sent the truck back to town,” Griffith said, breathing heavily as he ambled over to stand beside Mulligan. “They’ll come back for us in a bit. Had to convince your young captain that it was okay. He wasn’t having any of that at first, but we managed to bring him around.”
“Bring him around?”
Griffith looked up at Mulligan, his dark eyes dwelling deep in the weathered skin of his old face. He pushed his hat back on his head and wiped at the sheen of perspiration gleaming across his dark skin.
“I see you, Sergeant Major,” he said. “I see you holding it all in because you need to put on a show for your people, and maybe mine, too. We’re thirty years apart in age, but I know what you feel you need to do because I had to do it myself.”
Mulligan said nothing because he didn’t know what to say.
“You hold that inside of you, it’ll kill you. Rot you out,” Griffith said.
“I’m pretty much past my Best By date anyway, Master Guns.”
“Aw, you feeling sorry for yourself?” Griffith clucked his tongue and shook his head. “You think that because some people you were minding made the ultimate sacrifice that I should cut you some slack?” He jabbed his cane toward the graves. “They didn’t die for you. They died for us.” He pointed the cane at Leona’s grave. “That girl there, she help you? She wake you up? She give you a reason to open those eyes every morning?”
Mulligan nodded slowly. “She did.”
“Then pay her some respect,” Griffith said. He spat the words out like a true
Marine, making each count like precision rounds slamming into distant targets. “She reached out to you across age, race, gender, and experience. You have to admire that—most young people I know today can’t wait for the old folks to die off, especially after what we did to them. She had to want to do what she did because she saw the value in getting you all shook again. Give the poor girl her due, you son of a bitch.”
Mulligan turned away from Griffith, wincing in discomfort as his wound flared up when he twisted. He put a hand against the bandages on his side, but it wasn’t the bullet hole there that caused him pain. The pain wasn’t even in his side; it was in his chest, as the dam he’d constructed to hold back his emotions began to crack. He found he was vaguely disgusted by it. All it took for him to start feeling again was a pep talk from an old jarhead.
“Shut the fuck up, Eldon,” Mulligan said.
Griffith lashed out with the head of his cane and rapped Mulligan on the shoulder. “You think we’re better off with her in that hole than you, boy? You think that she didn’t know that by going over the fence that night instead of you that she was saving your privileged white ass? Yeah, maybe she wouldn’t have been caught. But if she was, she knew what was going to happen to her. And it would happen to you too if you’d been the one to go. You know it, I know it, and she knew it. Seems to me you’d be man enough to honor that kind of sacrifice, being a Special Forces grunt and all that.”
“Master Guns.” There was a peculiar pleading quality to Mulligan’s voice that he heard all too clearly. “Shut up, man. Really.”
“Let it out,” Griffith said. “That poison will kill you, boy. Let it out. Your people back home don’t want to see you as a humbled man, they want to see you as a conqueror. So let it the fuck out.”
A wave of sadness rose inside of Mulligan’s breast, so powerful and intense that he had to put his hands on his knees as he bowed beneath its weight. He gasped, and he found it took all of his strength not to sink to his knees.
Earthfall (Book 2): Earthfall 2 [The Mission Continues] Page 55