“Not where I was going with that line of questioning,” Bruce said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “I’ve got an eye toward the militia and you’ve got a mission you need to survive. I think we can help each other out.”
“I’m listening,” Olivia said, relaxing a little.
“I don’t like Cavanaugh or his crew,” Bruce said flatly. “They treat us like shit in our own city and they trample on our contributions to her liberation. Sure, Hastings provided the soldiers we didn’t have, but those days are over and we’ve got plenty of men and women who became trained warriors during the fighting. The captain of the militia should know and respect this. The captain of the militia should be a handsome devil like me.” He smiled and twirled the end of his impressive black, old school handlebar moustache that bisected his pale, narrow face.
“If we succeed, you think I’ll have new pull with the command structure?” Olivia asked.
Bruce laughed and shook his head. “You mean to ask me, if you march a few hundred amputees into a war zone and return with the supreme commander’s beloved daughter without risking the security of the city in the process, will you have some new pull with the command structure? Yeah, I think that’s a safe bet.”
“Okay, let’s call that a given,” Olivia said, feeling a little foolish, “but what can you give me in exchange for my support in ousting Cavanaugh?”
“You won’t make it, not on foot, and not just with the weapons the Chinicans have to offer,” Bruce said. “Let me help arm you, let my men fix up the tractors, let me give you a fighting chance.”
“A truce of convenience then?”
Bruce took on a strange stillness that denoted remarkable seriousness. “I’ve always respected you, we all have. You’ve been a trustworthy, honorable, and ferocious enemy in the street fights that forged the two houses of top hats and bowlers, but it’s time to hang up the brass knuckles and unite. The city needs us and we need each other.”
“You’ve got yourself a proper alliance,” Olivia said, taking Bruce’s hand when it was offered.
Chapter 23:
Guerilla Warfare.
Claudia and Liam continued west for several more hours before she heard the distant pop of an explosion behind them. She glanced back over her shoulder to find the flickering pink beam she’d been keeping tabs on since they left the communication tower was gone entirely. She wondered how many they got with the grenade trap.
“I’ve been thinking,” Liam said, snapping Claudia’s attention forward again. “Even if we get back to the wall, I’m not sure how we would get onto the right side of it. We could hope to be spotted by a patrol on it I suppose, but most of the patrolling is automated or done remotely.”
“We can try to hold on out here for awhile and see if a search party is sent out to look for survivors, but that might not happen until after the Slark are pushed back,” Claudia said. Adding quietly after, “if the Slark are pushed back.”
“They will be,” Liam said. “This isn’t the first time they’ve tried to breach the wall. I’d give it a few days before they figure out that thing is still impenetrable and nearly self-healing with the Transcended constantly patching it up.”
“A few days of camping in a radioactive wilderness filled with lasher trees and Slark military units doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Nope, it’s practically a vacation when you think about it.”
Claudia and Liam smiled to each other.
They found the remains of a winding road out of the hills and began following it. Before long, the smell of salt water filled the air as they neared the ocean. They passed down a valley between two forests. Houses and farms apparently cleared the trees far back from the road a few hundred yards on either side. Bisecting the road, going from one forest to the other, they found crawler tracks having worn a trail going north and south. The trail looked hard packed, but some of the tracks were fairly fresh as the dirt was still wet where it was churned up by the clanking legs of the little centipede-like walkers the Slark used to move troops and supplies.
“I have a partially formed plan in my head,” Claudia said. “I am wondering if you could help me finish it now that we’ve found what I hoped we might.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense, lieutenant,” Liam said.
“You used human blood and remains to trick the lasher trees into eating the Slark,” Claudia said. “What if we combined that idea with a trap of some kind to put the scent of prey on anything trying to use this supply line?”
“I like it,” Liam said, “perhaps deer or some other game’s blood though since I don’t fancy donating my own to the cause.”
“That’s what I was thinking, but I still need help divining a delivery method.”
Liam seemed to stare off into space for awhile as he thought. Claudia wondered if it was the sort of brainstorming she should offer her help with, but if she could have figured it out on her own, she probably would have an hour or two ago when the thought first occurred to her. A look of pure joy flashed across Liam’s face; whatever idea he had was a good one.
“I’ve seen the butchers in the Chinican district when they’re slaughtering something. They hang it by its hind legs and cut its throat,” Liam said, leading Claudia down the Slark trail toward the forest on the southern side of the road. “There’s blood, a lot obviously, but it goes in something of a stream. We have the wire we took from the Slark communication camp. Stay with me now. If we can find a tree on the edge of the forest that isn’t too close to a lasher, something one of us could climb, we could dangle the deer above the trail, fix a trip wire across the path, and wrap the other end around the deer’s jugular. When the wire pulls tight, it’ll cut the vein, and start a deer blood car wash for their column to drive through.”
“How on earth did you even think of such a thing?” Claudia asked.
“When we were fighting to rid the city of Slark after the cataclysm, those of us without military training were loosely organized into militia bands. We had to be pretty clever in our guerilla style fighting since we didn’t get the good guns or gear,” Liam said. “We did our best with what we had. It’s how I learned to shoot an open-sight rifle and set traps.”
“I heard about how rough it was on the civilians during the…wait.”
Liam shrugged. “Yeah, I know who you are, and know you weren’t here during those dark days. And if I wasn’t sure before, I know now. It’s pretty easy to spot the commander’s daughter based on the stories alone even if you’ve never seen her.”
“I was so concerned you would behave differently if you knew.”
“You worried over nothing then,” Liam said with his increasingly charming grin. “I only know how to behave the one way—badly.”
Claudia suspected his smile was like candle wax: the more it was poured on, the more the charm built up. She hadn’t really thought much about what kind of men she was interested in. In truth, she hadn’t thought about what kind of women she liked until Esme showed her how much she didn’t like timidity. Tall, brave on the edge of foolhardy, and dangerously clever were all traits Liam had and Claudia decided she liked them all. Personality wise, he was a strange mix of Danny and Veronica, which was a brilliant combination of caring and crazy in her estimation.
“Let’s find a deer and a tree,” Claudia said, slipping her rifle from her shoulder as she walked toward the tree line.
“Not so much as a ‘thank you’ for putting the finishing touches on your plan?” Liam asked.
Claudia glanced back over her shoulder to him and let her sly half-smile slip across her lips. It was as if he knew exactly how to set up her flirty comments and never missed on the timing within their little dance. “Your plan has not worked yet,” she said, dropping her voice a tiny bit to add a hint of flintiness to it. “We will talk rewards if it succeeds.”
Finding a deer to use as bait was the easiest part of the plan. The Slark didn’t seem at all interested in hunting deer and even though the peninsula
was bathed in the strange radioactivity and blighted with lasher trees, the deer population seemed to be doing far better than when humanity was the obstacle. Claudia shot a deer, one of the most mutated she could spot in the bizarre herd at the edge of the field north of the road, but getting the deer into the tree took quite a bit of doing.
They used the scope on Claudia’s rifle to inspect the forest from a safe distance first. It didn’t take long at all to spot the colossal gray spires within the trees on the southern edge. Most of the lashers were as tall as the old growth forest around them and unlike the saplings of the fields, these lasher trees left to grow unchecked were thick, looked incredibly hard, and were covered with foot long spines. Neither Claudia nor Liam had any interest in finding out exactly how far lasher trees of that size could reach, and so they turned their attention to the trailhead out of the woods to the north. Claudia really wished she’d thought to check that side first when they were already nearer to it while shooting the deer. The wasted exertion and time normally wouldn’t have mattered, but she and Liam were both flagging under the lack of food, and Liam was beginning to show signs of dehydration.
The northern edge, which they vetted extensively, even throwing one of the chunks of Slark meat they were still carrying, covered in deer blood, into the forest to see if a lasher tree would snatch it up. When the limb sat unmolested in the middle of the trail, they entered the forest to find a tree that would serve as their trap’s dangling point. This also proved difficult.
They ended up quite a ways into the forest, still carefully creeping and using the blood-coated Slark arm as their litmus test for unseen lasher trees, before they finally found a fir tree Claudia suspected she could climb that had a limb above the trail sturdy enough to hold the deer carcass. Liam offered to do the climbing, but Claudia managed to convince him to stay on the ground by pointing out the limb might not hold both him and the deer. She imagined it probably would, although he was looking so tired and thirsty she wanted to spare him the effort.
She climbed the trunk like something of a rock climber for the first dozen or so yards until the branches began. Once she was able to use actual limbs to climb, the process became a whole lot easier. Liam tossed the wire up to her, weighting the end with a rock. She wrapped her legs around the branch and inched her way out, dropping the wire on the other side of the branch. Liam replaced the rock with the deer’s back leg, and hoisted the deer up into the tree. He’d removed his jacket at some point. As he pulled at the wire to haul the deer, his arms strained, sweat rose on his skin, and every muscle in his taut form became visible through his tight, tan shirt. Claudia was a little sad when the show ended and it became her job to secure the deer and transfer the wire to the jugular vein. She’d thought Liam was on the skinny side, but it was clear after seeing him with his shirt off that he was simply tall, packing his lanky frame with long, lean muscles.
He’d given her a strap from one of the satchels to use. He pointed out that they didn’t really need the center band of cloth meant to go over a second tier shoulder on the Slark. She secured the deer’s hind leg to the tree branch using the double bolen knot that Olivia had shown her. With the carcass in place, she unwound the wire used to hoist the deer, and wrapped it around her wrist.
“Don’t freak out,” Claudia shouted down to a confused Liam.
Before he could reply, she sat sideways on the branch and rolled backward off, dangling by her legs with the branch behind her knees. She hadn’t told him this was her plan all along. She was far too tired and hungry to explain her gymnastics background or spend the time necessary to convince him it was the fastest, easiest option since they didn’t have enough wire to tie off the snare with a separate length from the one used to hoist the deer. To his credit, he didn’t freak out, although he did look concerned and conspicuously moved below her position as though he would somehow catch her if she fell. She wanted to bark at him to get back, that he would only serve to get them both injured, but she decided against it. He could be as chivalrous as he wanted because there was no way she was going to fall.
Digging around in a deer’s neck while dangling upside down, twenty or thirty yards above the ground, seemed a lot easier in her head. It took her quite awhile to get the wire secured and her hands, which were sore from climbing the tree trunk earlier, were now also slick with blood before she’d finished. Her lower legs had gone numb and shot through with hot pins and needles when she pulled herself back up onto the branch, making getting down from the tree unpleasant, and slow work. By the time she’d climbed down, Liam had already finished setting up the trip-line snare and was mostly done with concealing it. She heard the clanking of crawler tracks and the rumble of engines the instant her feet hit the ground.
She grabbed up her rifle, handed Liam his, and they ran for the tree line. There wasn’t any way they’d make it out of the woods in time to conceal themselves in the grass. They spotted the Slark supply convoy heading north across the road when they neared the edge of the woods. Claudia pulled Liam off to the side and found a clump of ferns and other underbrush thick enough and large enough to hide them both. The camouflage job was a quick one, but she suspected more than adequate.
Lying on her stomach, pressed closely to Liam’s side beneath what she suspected was an Oregon-grape shrub and several large fern plants, her breathing quickened from the excitement, taking in the earthy scent of the forest floor and the man beside her.
The crawlers clanked along past them, belching diesel smoke. Three in all, the convoy appeared to be a sustenance supply drop. Claudia recognized a few of the strange casks the Slark packed their food in on the sides of the crawlers. She couldn’t hear the wire’s trip line above the sound of the clanking crawler legs, and she suspected the Slark couldn’t either. Once the convoy was well enough past them, Claudia wriggled out of their hiding spot toward the edge of the trail, dragging Liam behind her.
They stood at the edge of the trail, watching the Slark convoy as it slowly lumbered up the hill. The deer was still dangling amid the branches, dripping blood in a fairly impressive stream. Nothing happened for so long that Claudia began to wonder if the trap failed. As if on cue to quell her doubts, the forest came alive around the three crawlers. Gray trunks bent toward the trail, dozens of hellish tentacles, all thicker than her arm, shot out of the woods, snatching Slark off the crawlers and then tearing off parts of the vehicles themselves. The carnage was unimaginable in its ferocity. Without even knowing she’d done it, Claudia took Liam’s hand in hers to draw comfort from him at what they’d done. Yes, the Slark were the enemy, and no, they hadn’t done anything outside the bounds of normal warfare when it came to brutality. Still, Claudia couldn’t help but feel a little twinge of horror at how well their plan worked.
They began walking back down the trail, out of the forest, still hand in hand. Claudia flashed back on the first time she’d felt such agony over killing. She’d experienced the revulsion of dealing death after her first solo kill of a human being, and then again for her first Slark, but in both of those instances, she’d flashed back to the chipmunk. She’d made her first kill of a mammal when she was eleven. She’d fished with her father before that, squashed bugs as any kid did, and even hunted frogs for her grandfather when he wanted to show her how to cook frog legs, but the chipmunk was the first mammal, which seemed an important distinction to her.
She’d borrowed a book from the library, some boy’s guide to wilderness survival and fun published in the fifties or maybe even earlier. She’d hated the idea that only boys got to have fun in the woods and so she proudly checked out the book to prove she could do anything a boy could. Most of what the book tried to teach her was beneath what her father had already shown her excepting when it came to snares and traps. She’d turned to this section first and found the wiliest game the book promised to catch—chipmunks and squirrels. She’d followed the directions exactly, located a likely tree by the droppings around the base, set bushy branches around the trunk,
and looped tiny nooses within the tunnels created by the little limbs of the underbrush she’d created. It was less than an hour of waiting, an eternity for an excited eleven year old, before a chipmunk ran for the tree. It hadn’t hesitated at the new branches resting against the tree he must have climbed a hundred times. He raced right through them, right into a noose, and kept on going until the snare, anchored to a heavy stone at the base of the tree caught and stopped him. The line went taut with the chipmunk six or so feet up the tree, wringing its neck with its own momentum. The little chipmunk had fallen back into the bushy limbs. Claudia’s triumph at her snare working so brilliantly was short-lived. When she saw the lifeless little body among the branches, she remembered thinking its stomach was so white—too white for something that lived in the dirty forest. It was senseless death for the sake of death and she couldn’t undo it. She cried rivers as she buried the little chipmunk by the creek, in a nice spot, because she felt bad for killing him. Her father had asked what was wrong when she came home, and she told him. She thought he would be angry with her, but he only nodded in a sad sort of way. “It’s natural to feel curious about our power over life,” he’d said. She’d never forgotten his exact words. “Feel bad now, but understand, for people to live, something must die.” In retrospect, it was a surprising thing for a father to tell his eleven year old daughter, but this was all after Claudia’s mother had died. Her father had hardened and so had Claudia in following the example set by her last living parent.
“I’m strangely bothered by this,” Liam said, snapping Claudia back to the present.
“Me too.”
“I’m not sure if it’d help or make things worse to eat Slark meat now.”
She understood completely. If they could view the Slark as a food source, like chicken or fish, what they’d done would simply be wasteful, but if Slark were thinking enemies, and she couldn’t see them as anything else after the Gator, eating them now would be something of a war crime on the heels of an atrocity. Still, her father’s words called to her, and she used them to tamp down her regret.
The Steam-Powered Sniper in the City of Broken Bridges (The Raven Ladies Book 2) Page 21