She nodded. “That boy never did sit square with me. A bit off kilter.”
Danny shrugged. “Gary told me himself that he’d cut my throat if I didn’t get on board with Black’s program. So, I did, until I found out about his plan to extort Burnsville. Not even for food, just for stuff.”
Kent laughed, but it was a bitter, barking sound. “Taxes, he called it, like he was the government or something.”
Misty stared, slack-jawed. “My Lord,” she muttered, then her mouth kept opening and closing as though she were about to say something. But finally, she looked at Brooke and let out a heavy sigh. “So, Danny, why do you think Brooke and I are in danger?”
Abram answered for him. “A man like Black sees everyone as either a pawn or a foe. Brooke was missing since the CME, so she was presumed dead. You were broken and grieving, and no threat. But there were plenty of people who didn’t care for Black, an outsider, taking over just because he said so.”
Danny added, “If he kept you alive, he could keep an eye on you and see who came over. Eventually, I think he hoped one of those disgruntled parties would contact you or you’d contact them, so he could strike hard and fast to take you both out.”
That wasn’t the whole story, but it was close enough to get them to the last and final point they needed to make. Danny said, “Don’t say anything, yet. I saved the best for last.”
“Which is what, exactly? What’s the best?” Brooke crossed her arms.
“Right now, our people are gathering outside the gates. When they arrived with their extortion demands, the first thing Gary himself did was to casually murder a Burnsville guard in cold blood.”
“Oh my God…”
“Yeah. The man just didn’t agree with Gary about something, but never said Gary couldn’t enter. Not yet, anyway. Gary shot him dead, without even bothering to stop leaning against the machine gun he used to do it, then made a big show of yawning.”
“Could it have been an accident?” Brooke frowned. “I can’t imagine the people I know back home would ever go along with that, bless them.”
Danny’s turn to frown, he said, “No. This was all planned out, I’m telling you. Black ordered Gary to kill whoever spoke against him first, and to do it fast, careless, and easy. Fear was the point of the murder, and it worked—on Burnsville’s people and ours.”
Brooke shook her head. “If you’d known…Well, now you do know, so now, you can do something about Dad’s death, about killing all those people in Nettletown, for murdering a man in cold blood here in public…For all of it.”
Misty’s voice cracked, words coming rapidly. “What? What can I do? I’m just one person.” Misty’s eyes welled up. “I can’t stop him. He’ll kill me, and you, and everyone here. We know. He has to know that we know, now.”
Danny thought he heard an edge of panic to her voice. “Listen, we have a plan. There’s an old, abandoned water main that runs north, under the riverbed, and then runs close to the surface for a few hundred yards. It’s big enough to walk down, and there are access tubes with ladders, about every two hundred feet. You and Brooke can come up smack in the middle of our people gathering out there. Tell them what happened. Weaken Black’s hold on them.”
Misty shook her head, but she looked uncertain. “What if it goes wrong? I can’t let anything happen to my baby girl.”
Abram said, “If you fire up a flare gun we’ll give you, we’ll know you need rescue—and we’ll send out a fleet of ATVS, like locusts with guns, to rescue you.”
Danny nodded, confirming it. “Yes. It’ll work. It has to.”
Misty nodded, and swallowed hard.
The clock was ticking.
45
Yeah, Burnsville had totally screwed the proverbial pooch when they attacked Black’s little negotiation team, killed Gary’s aide, and forced Gary himself to hide and run for his life. Well, Gary wasn’t an incompetent fool, so he’d wrap this up soon, and decisively. They wouldn’t get to run and hide. And when he finished up here, then hopefully he’d be able to go home, at last—not to Clarks Crossing, but to his real home, the one he’d earned. If Abram had been the right guy to run a lawnmower, much less the compound, then Gary would never have escaped the ATV attack. It was just more proof that Abram needed to step down or get put down, for the long-term good of the compound and everyone in it.
Scanning the bastards’ lines through the scope, Gary muttered curses at them for refusing to expose themselves. Why wouldn’t these people give him someone to shoot? Gary’s blood screamed for theirs to be spilled, but he would only get the release he craved when he had twice the fighters Burnsville had, or more. He guessed he had about one hundred fifty, not enough, but Clarks Crossing had at least four times more fighters than Burnsville. Success was basically guaranteed. It was just hard to sit around waiting.
What the hell, he could still make good use of this wasted time, so he climbed to his feet and moved through his units, bent low to avoid getting hit by any snipers on the other side. There was an odd murmur wherever he went, though, like they were all whispering at once, but wherever he went, the murmur went silent. Maybe it was his imagination…Well, his gut said to worry, so Gary decided to favor caution. He slid one hand into his pocket and maneuvered a small punch-dagger into position with its brass cross-brace in his palm, leaf-shaped blade covered by his fingers to hide it. Just in case…
Gary started his quick inspections with his most loyal. Those were the three squads of first platoon, first company, or “Alpha Company,” as Black called it. There, the buzzing conversation was quiet and distant. But as he moved down to the squads of second platoon, and especially into the third, the murmurs became a steady drone of background noise—and yet, wherever he went, it died down to whispers. Were they talking about him, then? He couldn’t think of another reason for the conversation to go dead within ten feet of him, no matter where he went.
A voice behind him said something, but Gary couldn’t make it out. A high-pitched voice, but male.
Gary turned to find the source, scanning the area visually, until he spotted one person looking up at him from their seat on the ground. He said, “Hello, there. I didn’t catch that. Say again?”
The man shook his head and looked down. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to say it to Gary’s face, apparently. That didn’t feel right, and it was certainly out of the ordinary. Gary made his way back to the car he’d arrived in, ignoring the moving island of quiet that followed him like a black cloud. He opened the door and leaned in, then found what he sought. He pulled out a full-sized aluminum baseball bat, with the front end drilled out and filled with cement, and the thick, meaty part of the bat wrapped in barbed wire and three heavy iron bands that were not quite an inch wide each.
He slung the bat over his shoulder like a lumberjack with an axe and headed back to where he’d left off. First squad was cool, and had all the ammo and gear they were supposed to bring. Second squad quit whispering when he stood in front of them, but they also had all their gear.
Gary stopped and stared at them. Only one returned his gaze, but it was no friendly look. “Can I help you?”
The man clenched his jaw, then said, loudly enough for the squads around him to hear, “No thanks. I have all the holes in my head that I need.”
Gary froze. “What? Holes?”
“Sure. You know, like the one you put in the Burnsville guard’s skull. I can do without, thanks. Oh, hey—maybe that’s why all the guys who came with you got killed. Great job, boss-man.”
Someone off to the right, speaking clearly, said, “Murderer.” Someone else repeated it. The word flowed across the assembled squads like a cork riding an ocean wave.
To his left, a woman said, “I guess you could say he murdered his whole unit when he blew that guy away.”
Gary flexed his grip on the baseball bat in his right hand, still over his shoulder, and shifted his grasp on the punch-dagger in his left hand. “I prevented a battle. One man died—theirs,
not ours—instead of ten, or fifty. It was crappy, but it worked. It saved lives.”
In the third platoon somewhere, a man said, “You got twenty of us killed, and you say it worked? That’s what you call saving lives? Don’t piss on me and call it rain.”
Then, over the general rustle and din of dozens of people in one space, another man’s voice rolled over the growing army. “It’s truth, he admitted it. Bet they did Wyatt, too. That’s what people are saying.”
In an instant, the crowd’s volume surged upward several decibels, the tone of outrage unmistakable. Gary felt the situation slipping away from him.
Some part of his mind switched gears, from leading to hunted. He looked all around for anyone rising to their feet. None had moved from their makeshift cover, but the faces no longer reflected the eager, determined mood they had shown earlier. Anger, outrage, or disgust had replaced it, on many faces. Gary was losing them, fast, and losing whatever safety a battlefield could offer, as well.
He rose to his full height and glared all around him. “You want to talk to me about killing? Every damn one of us was there in Nettletown when that went down. Maybe you all forgot what you did there, but I haven’t. Who wasn’t there? Hm, anyone? Almost all of you were there for that.”
He turned slowly in a circle, looking as many people in the eyes as he could, challenging them.
After a pause, most of them looked away, mostly down at the ground.
Guilt’s a bitch.
Gary would use their guilt, though, if that was what it took. He felt its pang, too, but pushed that aside. He’d work through his conscience later, on his own time.
When no one replied, and no new harassing comments flew his way, Gary allowed himself to relax, just a bit. He stayed alert, of course, as that was simply prudent, but he came down off the balls of his feet to a more comfortable, sustainable posture. “Very well. So, here’s truth…We’re all killers when we need to be. Crap just happens, sometimes, and you just deal with it the best you can. Now, we got a job to do. Or did you forget that these bastards killed twenty of your friends and family? You think that makes us even? I don’t. I think we owe them, and big.”
He looked around again, standing tall, challenging them, staring.
None of them moved, or even looked up.
He counted to three in his head, then said, “So, you jackals are more upset about one dead stranger than you are about twenty of your own, huh? I tell you what. If any of you thinks Nettletown was less screwed up than what I did here, you just stand right up, and we’ll figure it out between us. Anyone? No one?”
The units became silent, then.
Gary, satisfied, was about to head back to his vehicle, when one man stood. The guy was maybe thirty years old, give or take a couple years, but he stood easily six-foot-four.
Gary snarled, “You forgot what you helped do in Nettletown, huh? Are you for real?”
The big guy craned his neck, then faced Gary more directly. “I remember—that Black was the one who ‘found’ Wyatt. I remember—that no one saw what happened to him but your boy, Black. Maybe you two did the same to him as you did this here guard. You know, because ‘it was crappy, but it worked.’ So, is that how we do things, now?”
Gary strode up to the man, glaring. He fingered the punch-dagger in his hand. His nerves tingled, sending goosebumps down his arms. In a monotone voice, he said, “Just to make it clear, are you saying Black or I had something to do with Wyatt getting himself killed? Yes or no.”
The man didn’t flinch back even an inch. “I’m saying you two came in, and straight away, Wyatt’s dead and Black is calling the shots. Where was Black when we were starving, and Wyatt and Misty pulled us together? Where were you when they organized us, turned us off the bandit path and still got food for everyone? Out there, looting. That’s where you were.”
Gary forced a slow smile to spread and lowered the bat in his right hand, calculating. “I was surviving. That’s more than I can say for you.”
“What?”
Gary pulled his left hand up. At the same time, he dropped the bat and reached for the man’s shoulder with his right hand. When the man looked over at the hand on his shoulder, Gary punched him in the throat—the leaf-shaped blade slid into him like he was made of butter. Blood flowed freely as the man staggered backward, both hands clutching his throat in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding, but it was futile. He gasped, but that only drew blood into his lungs, and he fell to his knees, coughing great gouts of blood into the dirt.
Gary ignored the spectacle and bent to retrieve his bat, then turned to scan the crowd. “Anyone else want to call me a liar to my damn face? We’ll sort it out right now.”
The answering silence spoke volumes.
Gary said, “This changes nothing. We’re here for a reason, and now we got even more reason to punish these bastards. They gunned our people down in cold blood. We were here to offer them protection, and the answer was bullets. Well, we’re gonna answer them right back, just like we were before dipshit over there decided he didn’t want to breathe no more. Get back on post, get your asses back on the lines, and get ready. I’ll have some unit movements before we push into the town, so be ready to move at a moment’s notice.”
He had to bark to get them moving, after that, but the mob broke apart. The immediate danger was gone. Gary wasn’t no idiot, though. This problem wasn’t over with. He went unit to unit, under the guise of talking them up for the attack, but at the same time, he was watching them carefully. Their reactions to him told him much about which units he could trust, and which would turn on him—or break at the first resistance they encountered, their hearts not in it anymore.
Then, he made his way to his new command car, and the radio it held. Black had to be informed. Maybe he’d know what to do about the cancer of rumors spreading among their people.
Palmer ordered two men to relay coal to the steam engine, behind which was hitched his special cargo. He hadn’t calmed down yet, since talking to Gary. That fool had somehow allowed Palmer’s triumphant army to damn near break apart, and now well over half were of doubtful loyalty, at best.
Well, Palmer mused, if he wanted something done right, he’d have to do it himself. This train was going to kill two cancerous birds with one stone. A toxic stone. He’d told Gary to shift the worst of his troops to assault the railway side of town, down in Burnsville, but it would have been stupid to trust a pit bull with Palmer’s grand plan. He had merely told Gary that he’d be bringing in more troops and some assault goodies—siege engines, in a more medieval time—along the railway to help push through on that end, while Gary led the assault on the town’s one open side. And even demoralized and disloyal, his troops outnumbered Burnsville by three-to-one. Hard odds to beat under any circumstances.
But just in case, Palmer had another plan. Telling Gary to shuffle troops and the new battle plan had not been a lie, exactly. The special cargo car, he’d equipped with high-pressure mechanical pumps to spray in every direction, and when pressure dropped, the whole thing was rigged with just enough explosives to make sure the rest of it spread far enough to contaminate the town, its water supply, and all the supplies they had stored in their rail depot.
Apparently, they’d found out Black had a working train and troop cars, and had sabotaged the rails. Well, Palmer was no fool. He’d scouted ahead, just in case, and of course, they’d found the damaged lengths of railway. Palmer’s teams had worked through the night to repair the damage Burnsville’s people had done to the rail system outside town.
Palmer relished the surprise they’d feel when his train barreled right through their perimeter. Ha, that would be one hell of a memory to keep him warm at night, when this was all over. The dissidents would be dead, or slowly dying horrible deaths, Burnsville would be a cautionary tale to scare the other towns in the region into bowing before him despite his reduced troop count, and the supplies they’d still be able to take in plunder would fund rebuilding his army—wit
h people motivated by loot, which were the best kind. Greed, he trusted, far more than people’s fickle loyalty.
“Hurry up,” he shouted at the crew readying the train. “We have a war to win, people.”
Knocking at his bedroom door woke Kent from a pleasant dream. He glanced at the mechanical clock on his nightstand. Four o’clock, almost. “Come in,” he called, and sat up in bed. Too bad Brooke wasn’t there—she’d been up all night working on organizing their defenses, to allow Kent a couple hours of sleep before the main event began.
The door opened, and Dean, his head of town security, poked his head in. “Sir, there has been a development.”
“Spit it out.” Kent climbed from bed and grabbed the pair of jeans folded on the nightstand beside his clock.
“The enemy has shuffled their troops. There had only been a token force threatening the rail depot side of town, but now, at least half their fighters are over there. While we’ll now have no problem holding off the attack across the bridge, and on the open side facing the woods, we’ll be pushed aside over by the rails.”
Kent frowned. On the one hand, it meant Black hadn’t learned they were moving as much out of the depot as they could, hiding it around town. On the other, they still had half their stuff stored there. Enemy scouts had just become a threat to his plan. “Stop the relays. We don’t want Black’s people seeing us moving our crap out of there, and we need every hand on the line, armed. Get the reserves over there, and start moving more teams to beef ’em up.”
“Yes, sir. But then we won’t have any reserves.”
Buckling his pants, Kent replied, “I know that. It’s temporary. Once that’s done, if Black gives us the time, we can pull two guys off every squad and reform ’em into new reserves. We can’t afford to wait to beef up our line at the depot, though.”
“Roger that, sir.” Dean shut the door, and Kent heard him padding away down the hall.
EMP Crisis Series (Book 3): Instant Mayhem Page 35