“They tried to gun us down in our barn,” a soldier said. “The ones that ran for the river were shot in the back.”
“Where’s Major Ludlow?”
The soldier shook his head.
“I’m with you,” came a voice from the back. A man shoved his way through the others. The bearded man had a bandana wrapped around his head.
“Thunder?” Steele said.
“They gunned down my crew in cold blood.”
Steele blinked as he digested what the man told him. “You weren’t in on this?”
Thunder’s mouth tightened. “No. It was the pastor and that motherfucker War Child.”
“They’re collecting everyone near the farmhouse,” said Gregor.
Steele spied out the door. “Then we break them free.”
MARGIE
Camp Forge, IA
The Seven Sisters huddled around her in the back of the pickup. The small convoy of six trucks drove as fast as possible down the river road in the direction of Camp Forge. The unplowed roads were quickly becoming unnavigable with the rising snowstorm.
Margie eyeballed the women. She couldn’t even tell they were women with the layers of warm clothes covering them. Each of them had guns. Margie’s hunting rifle lay across her lap. The wind whistled over the cab of the truck.
They zipped into the humble town of Hacklebarney. The sheriff flagged them down, waving from outside his office.
He kept a hand atop his hat. “What the hell is going on?”
“Camp Forge is under attack,” Margie yelled back at him.
“From what? That place has been fortified something proper.”
“Mutiny.”
“Mutiny?” Sheriff Donnellson shook his head in disgust. “I suppose the mayor will have us respond.”
“She’s in danger. Hurry.” She slapped the top of the truck cabin and they took off again, wheels spinning in the snow. Just outside the town, a black cloud floated over the camp.
“Looks bad,” Roxy said. The Seven Sister was old enough to be Margie’s aunt and the relative of a junkyard dog. All she needed was a spiked collar and the two would be interchangeable. She covered her mouth with a scarf.
“It does.”
The unplowed roads took their toll on the convoy, slowing them to a crawl. Nothing had touched the snow, and it had accumulated high enough to make the tires spin. The convoy’s lead truck acted as a trailblazer for the rest, carving twin tire tracks.
The black cloud increased its ominous magnitude by the minute. It hovered over the makeshift militia base, a canopy of evil encircling the camp from above. The burning smoke contrasted sharply with the sleet-gray billowing clouds carrying the winter precipitation.
The trucks came to a halt. The side door opened, and Red Clare stepped out of the cab. “Nobody does nothing without me giving the signal. You hear me.” She pointed back at her club. “Nobody.” She stared at Margie.
“Look!” Margie pointed out to the trees.
Two forms ran for them. One held a child in her arms. They were followed by dogs. Their feet high-stepped the drifts, and they waved their arms, attempting to flag them down. “Help us!”
All eyes turned to watch them run. It was immediately apparent they were not equipped for being outside for very long. Long pajamas and barefoot.
“Jesus jump-jacking Christ,” Red Clare muttered.
The people reached the road, terror in their eyes. “Please help us,” breathed a woman. She put a hand to her side and grimaced, red cheeks puffing while she caught her breath.
“Gwen!” Margie screamed.
Gwen’s eyes jumped her way. Her head tilted as if she wanted to sob. “Margie?”
Margie clambered down from the bed of the pickup, her feet piercing the snow for the women as she ran. Margie stripped off her jacket and wrapped it around Gwen. “She’s pregnant,” she said with a glance back at Red Clare. If you are thinking about betraying us now, remember you are killing innocent women.
She wrapped her arms around Gwen’s shoulders trying to squeeze some warmth back into her body. “God, what happened?” she said, leading them to the trucks.
“Get ’em in here,” Red Clare waved them into the cab. The two women and the child climbed inside, and the dogs were helped into the pickup bed. “Thaw ’em out.”
Involuntarily shaking, Gwen rubbed her hands together. “They blew up our house. Gunfire. It was the War Machines and the Chosen. Some sort of coup.” She warily glanced at Red Clare and then back to Margie. Realization settled on her face that a large group of bikers that wasn’t supposed to be in the area was at the base’s doorstep. “Why are you here?” Blood drained away from her once cold-infused rosy cheeks. She gulped and put a protective arm over Becky and Haley. She shook her head in slow ticks. “No, not you.”
“We’re here to help,” Margie said hurriedly.
Suspicion still racked her features. “How did you know?”
“War Child ambushed us on the river and killed my crew and the soldiers.”
Gwen wiped the gray soot on her face, running her hand through her messy hair. “Jesus.”
“Is Captain Steele still alive?” Red Clare asked.
“Yes, the last I saw him.”
The biker president threw a cigarette into her tight puckered lips and cupped her hands over the end so she could light it. She breathed in deeply. She eyed the two women warily and then Margie shaking her head.
“Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna backstab ya.”
“You have to take me to Hacklebarney to rally them.”
“We told the sheriff on our way through.”
Gwen nodded, shivering as she embraced the heat of the truck. “Why are we waiting? Give me a gun.”
Red Clare rolled the cigarette from one side of her mouth to the other. “Move on over, ladies. There’s one under the seat, but let’s see if we can’t take these boys for a ride.” She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe they’ll just let us in.” Red Clare regarded Margie with indifference. “Get on back. We have to move.”
Margie ran around the side of the pickup bed and climbed in with the help of Roxy and Dana. She sunk down into the bed and clutched her rifle as the truck spun its wheels, fishtailing left and then right as it gained traction. They plowed forward.
Camp Forge came into sight, and violence was afoot. Camouflaged bodies lay facedown, accumulation collecting on their lifeless forms. The smoke they’d seen for miles fed darkness into the sky, but it was blacker here as they could see the source: the Reynolds’ white farmhouse was ablaze.
Men stood near the gate. One ran inside as they approached. A group of over ten men leveled long guns at them. Their leader, a thick-bearded man, marched up to Red Clare’s window.
She rolled it down. “Hey, now. No need to point guns. We’re friendly.” He lowered his rifle a bit.
“To who?”
“We met with the War Machines a few days ago.”
The Chosen man averted his gun. “You’re late. We’re almost done.” He turned back to his men. “They’re with War Child.” The men lowered their weapons.
Red Clare gave him a hearty belly laugh but resonated in her throat. “Well, we were cleaning up after your mess. Look what I found in the woods.” She threw a thumb back at Gwen and her sister.
Margie tensed, lifting her rifle slightly, preparing in her mind to start shooting. Killing live people never settled well with her, but she was getting used to it. She was becoming someone she’d never fathomed possible months ago.
The bearded man grinned. “The pastor will be pleased. We thought the bomb would have wiped the entire clan out.” He stretched his neck so he could see in the back of the cab easier. “Lucky one, aren’t ya?”
“Go to hell,” Gwen said.
The man smirked. “You’ll be there soon enough.”
Clare shushed Gwen’s mouth with a smoke-tainted finger. “Quiet, you pretty cunt.” She turned back to the Chosen guard. “Anybody left? You catch that Captai
n Steele yet?”
The man adjusted his feet in the cold. Big flurries settled on his beard, making him seem older as if sudden bouts of age had caught him.
“We got a few holdouts. The Iron Drakes caused some problems. Some soldiers and Sable Point folks. Pastor’s collecting all the dissenters in the center of the camp for purification. We’ll melt all the snow with a great fire.” He nodded his divine inspired approval. “God wills it.”
Red Clare sucked hard on her cigarette and it fizzled softly. “All right. I’ll let you get back to it.”
She rolled up her window and knocked on it, giving the women in the back of the pickup bed a thumbs-up. The truck drove inside the wooden-walled camp. Several cabins were on fire or smoldering in the embers of wreckage.
Bodies of the fallen littered the roadway. Chosen men and women rounded up prisoners, all of which were being led to the center of the base. The convoy rolled deeper inside the camp. The Seven Sisters in the bed of the last truck opened fire on the unsuspecting guards, spraying rounds into their backs. Muted yells came from surprised mouths, but they were cut short by gunshots.
The female bikers dismounted from the truck beds and took cover near the cabins. Margie swung her legs over the side and hopped into the snow with a scrunch. She ran for the nearest cabin and pounded on the door. “Open up. You’re free.”
A scarred face shoved a gun into hers. She gulped down her fear. He was covered head to foot in blackened soot like he’d crawled through a field of ash. “Steele?”
He yanked her inside. “Margie?”
A crowd of armed men with desperate eyes stood at his back. He hugged her for a second. “Where’d you?”
She exhaled quick. “No time. Seven Sisters are here. We have a clear path to escape.” Steele pushed past her and opened the door peering outside in suspicion. “Red Clare? She’s not in on it?”
“No, I made her swear it.”
His look was razor sharp. “Swear it?”
“She just killed a bunch of Chosen. She’s with us, waiting to help you escape.”
“We’re not escaping. We’re freeing these people.”
He shoved open the rest of the door and dipped through. He let out a gruff muted yell, his weapon half-raised to his shoulder. “Clare.”
The biker president eyed him and Margie.
“Be truthful or you die,” Steele said, his gun reaching his shoulder. The Seven Sisters turned, training their guns on him.
She waved them off. “Be careful where you point that. Your baby mama is in my car. I’m here to help, you lackwit.”
He dropped his gun and eyed her again.
Red Clare’s cigarette had burned down, but her lips cradled it like a mother does her infant. “War Child’s got a tiny prick. I trust him less than a bike with a wobbly wheel.”
Gunfire kicked off from the center of camp. She stared for a moment then motioned them onward. “Hurry. We’re attracting attention.”
“We can’t. There are hundreds of people that will murdered.”
“Honey, you need to get your priorities straight. Get the Iowans and regroup. Today is lost.”
He shook his head. “No, today this ends.”
AHMED
Northern Missouri
Three men walked their horses along the side of a rusted-out metal-walled building. The rust had streaked the exterior walls with a reddish-brown corrosion overtaking the faded white paint of a business from the past. The lettering was uneven in neglect and too faint to make out unless one already knew what it said.
Next to the mine elevator and warehouse, dead vines spiderwebbed along a white cinder block building only a story high. They’d come from the north, the opposite direction of the quarry entrance to the facility that zigged in multiple rings around the limestone quarry below, part of which was guarded and access controlled by the Wolf Riders. The elevator and warehouse overlooked the quarry from above.
Sly led his horse through an open utility entrance large enough for a dump truck. Jim and Ahmed followed. The interior of the warehouse was dark. Thick structural support pillars ran from the floor to the roof, and crisscrossing beams and trusses lined the ceiling. A profuse coating of white dust covered everything inside and Ahmed sneezed.
The other two men glared back at him, shaking their heads. After dismounting their horses, they wrapped the reins around a metal pole. White dirt piles rested undisturbed.
“Where’s the elevator?” Ahmed asked.
Sly gestured with his chin. “Over there.” They spoke quietly, not wanting to take a chance on an errant Wolf Rider coming upon them. They’d waited in the trees for over an hour for any signs of Wolf Riders or the dead before they’d approached.
Their feet puffed clouds of dust as they marched through. It was fine, closer in texture to flour than a larger granule sand. Next to the interior wall of the building, a machine stood silent. Hard grimy metal buckets stood unmoving, the machinery as lifeless as the dirt surrounding it.
Sly immediately went about inspecting the machine. A bucket creaked as he laid a hand on it. “I dunno. Been probably thirty, forty years.”
“What’s that?” Ahmed had expected some sort of cage-style open elevator that would take them deep into the bowels of the earth, not a series of buckets on a conveyor belt.
Sly gave him a curious look. “It’s the elevator.”
“You said that you used to ride it down as a kid. Those are buckets for rock.”
Ducking his head to study a gear, Sly chuckled. “We’d put it in reverse and ride down in the buckets.”
Ahmed felt his gut drop a bit. “No cage or anything?”
Jim pushed a bucket with his hand. It gave a rusty groan and came to a rest. “You’re inside the bucket,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
The pails moved in line with the rest where they would tip their goods down a slide. It was hardly enough space to fit a man kneeling.
“You guys are crazy.”
Sly ignored him. “You just have to stand in it and hold on to the one above it.”
Ahmed shook his head. “I can see that.”
Jim gave him a smirk. “Come on. It’s for the girls.”
“I know what it’s for.” Ahmed shook his head again. “There’s no way this is going to run.”
Sly gave him a mean glance. “My father used to work this mine, and he always said there ain’t nothing better than these machines. Never let him down. American made.” Bending close he blew, and dust burst off the control panel. He wiped his arm over the panel. “Might need a bit of tender loving care, but I’ll get it going. We just gotta wait until those Wolf Riders take the bait.” Studying the panel, he tapped a few buttons.
Ahmed mouthed to Jim, “He can’t be serious.”
Jim shrugged his shoulders again.
“Jimmy, get that diesel in the tank over yonder.” Sly directed him with a free hand. Jim walked over with a gas can and unscrewed a cap before tipping the can high in the air.
“Ahmed, come over here. When those bikers start rolling, I’m gonna need you to manually pull the conveyor belt downward. Think about it like winding her up.”
“All right.” He neared the hole in the ground. It was four-foot wide and across like a square, the buckets resting in their final position like ancient machinery from a lost civilization left to rust out into oblivion.
Distant gunfire banged like small hometown fireworks, not the quality ones you purchased by driving across a state border to one with lax firework laws. They were the safe kind that you might let a little kid play with—bottle rockets and Roman candles—but the men knew the sounds for what they actually were: the beginning of an ambush.
“That’s them,” Ahmed said under his breath. They listened as the gunfire fireworks picked up. A tap-tap-tap followed by cap-cap-cap.
Jim jogged to the warehouse opening. The thunder of motorcycles rolled over the quarry like a coming storm. “There they go.”
“How many of them are goi
ng?”
Jim stood on his tiptoes. “Can’t see.”
Glancing over his shoulder, Sly said, “Hope it’s all the slimy bastards.”
“Me too.”
“Start winding.”
Locking his hands on the lip of the closest mining bucket, Ahmed heaved. It held its ground, staying in place. He jumped, gripping the side of the bucket. He grunted as he strained, pulling his arms down using his body weight. Metal groaned under his effort, refusing to budge.
Sly flicked a switch and jabbed a button. “Keep pulling!”
Ahmed jumped down again, throwing with all his might. The bucket complied, inching downward and rotating a new bucket over the top. Rusted gear teeth groaned under the pressure as they slowly interlocked once again like an old man’s joints after a century at rest. He threw down another rusty metal tub. Sly jabbed the button. The rock pail slid down farther.
“Come on!”
The motor fired alive, awakening a tarnished decaying giant of the past. The screech of metal on metal grating atop one another filled the warehouse. The buckets wound over the highest point and then flipped, swinging with hesitation back into rusty place.
Sly shouted over the din. “Hurry!”
He timed the passing pails. Grabbing one, he hopped inside before it disappeared into the shaft. It swayed beneath him. Ahmed handed him a rifle, and Sly crouched down for balance.
“See you at the bottom,” Sly said with a smile. He vanished into the mine.
Jim came back over. “The gunfire’s dying, we have to hurry.”
With care, he stepped into another one of the buckets, gripping his shotgun. “Let’s get those girls.” He disappeared as if the ground opened its mouth and swallowed him whole.
More buckets swooped by, and he took a deep breath. “They went down. Just hop in and hold on they say.” He watched the rusted buckets descend into the unknown. “They did this as kids? Allah be good.”
His monumental death-defying move as a kid was sneaking out to the batting cages with his friends, not climbing old industrial mining equipment like he had a death wish. His father had brooded over him for days after they were caught. Why do you waste so much time on such a trivial sport? You will never be good enough to play professionally. Focus on your studies. Focus on business. I need a son to help me in this industry, not waffle around playing sports. Games will get you nowhere, boy. The disappointed look on his face had set Ahmed back for weeks, but he was addicted to the sport. The siren’s call of the crack of the bat lured him back. It was like a drug that he could never get enough of.
The End Time Saga (Book 5): The Holding Page 36