Trackers (Book 1)

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Charlize twisted around, straining to see in the darkness. The pounding stopped, replaced by a scratching and then a crunching, like the walls were being pried apart. Then she heard voices in the other room, faint but unmistakable.

  Charlize didn’t dare breathe as she listened.

  “Over there!”

  “This one’s gone.”

  The door to the operations room crashed to the ground, and beams of light penetrated the inky darkness. Charlize held a hand up to shield her sensitive eyes, but she kept her gaze on two men in full CBRN suits who came barreling into the room.

  “There,” one of them said, pointing in her direction. His voice still sounded strangely muffled, and Charlize wasn’t sure if it was from her own damaged hearing or the breathing apparatus inside the man’s suit. “Ma’am, it’s going to be all right. Help is coming.”

  Charlize’s legs began to shake, and with her last ounce of energy, she pointed toward where she’d heard Diego’s voice.

  “Help the president,” she said before collapsing to the ground.

  -14-

  Colton and Jake crouched behind the back of the pickup truck as another gunshot rang out. The bullet punched through the fender. Whatever situation Raven had gotten himself into, it was quickly escalating.

  “That guy is going to pay for hitting my truck,” Jake growled.

  Colton reached out and held Jake back, and took in a breath of mountain air that stung his nostrils. He was regretting several things right now, especially his decision to ask Raven for help. He should have brought more backup, but how the hell was Colton supposed to know he was driving to a gun fight? He should have known better—this was Raven, after all.

  “Put down your weapon!” Colton shouted. He considered trying to grab his M14 from the passenger seat, but he didn’t want to risk moving.

  Colton snapped open the cylinder of his Colt .45 and checked the ammo. There were six rounds loaded.

  He slammed it shut and cocked the hammer back. The revolver would have to do.

  Another shot cracked through the woods outside Raven’s house, and the bullet kicked up the dirt by his left boot. Colton resisted the urge to jump from his position and return fire.

  Be smart, Marcus. You can’t get shot. You have too much to do.

  Every move from here on out was the difference between life and death. Not just for him, but for his family and maybe the whole town. Even a flesh wound could end up killing him now that medicine would be hard to come by.

  With his back to the truck, he waited for a third shot. In the respite came Creek’s snarls and the grunts of the man the dog had pinned down. Raven was somewhere inside the house with his niece. That was good. Colton didn’t want him to get in the way of what happened next.

  After another long, tense moment, Colton and Jake exchanged a nod. Colton held up three fingers, then two, then one.

  Jake fired his shotgun into the woods and then immediately ducked back down. The shooter was momentarily focused on Jake, giving Colton his chance. Moving to the other end of the truck, Colton raised his revolver, aimed the sights at the shooter, and fired. The shot went wide. A short man in a gray sweatshirt roved his gun toward Colton, and Colton squeezed the trigger again. The shot clipped the man in the shoulder. He let out a screech of pain and took off running in a hunch toward a cluster of trees.

  “After him!” Colton ordered.

  Jake was already on the move.

  Keeping low, Colton bolted in the direction the shooter had run. He still wasn’t sure exactly what the hell was going on, but his guess was that Raven had pissed off some bad people.

  “Stay in your house, Raven!” Colton shouted.

  There was no reply and Colton glanced at the man wearing a suit to the left. He was on his back in the dirt, hands up in a defensive position. There wasn’t time to put him in cuffs, but Colton could see the guy wasn’t going anywhere. Not if he wanted to keep his throat. Saliva dripped from Creek’s maw as the dog snarled at the man.

  The ground, slick from the rain the night before, mushed under Colton’s boots as he ran into the woods. They moved for several minutes side by side in combat intervals, just like they were trained.

  Colton flashed a hand signal and Jake took up position behind a rock a few hundred feet to the right.

  Silence washed over the woods. Colton listened for the crunch of footfalls or the groans of their injured chase, but there was nothing besides the wind rustling the canopy and a bird calling out in the distance.

  He signaled for Jake to take point. An instant later, Colton saw a flash of gray moving on the ridgeline right toward Jake.

  “Watch out!” Colton shouted.

  There was an earsplitting crack, and Colton knew the short man had gotten off the first shot. The retort from Jake’s shotgun never came. Colton watched his friend crash to the dirt.

  “NO!” Colton shouted. He aimed his Colt .45 toward the man, but by the time he found his target, the shooter was already on his knees, pawing at his neck as blood drenched the front of his shirt. An arrow protruded from the center of his Adam’s apple.

  Colton raised his pistol at an approaching figure. As soon as he saw it was Raven he lowered his gun and ran toward Jake.

  The burly officer was on his back, clutching his gut and sucking in labored breaths. Colton holstered his pistol and dropped by his friend’s side.

  “Son of a bitch, that bastard got me,” Jake wheezed.

  “Don’t talk.” Colton felt around Jake’s chest and stomach for the wound so he could apply pressure, but Jake slapped his hand away.

  “It’s okay,” he grumbled. “I’m wearing a vest today.”

  Colton pulled his hand away. “Jesus, Jake. You about gave me a heart attack.”

  “Hey,” Raven shouted from the top of the hill. “Is he okay? This little prick is dead.”

  Colton helped Jake sit up and then ran over to Raven and the dead man. Dark, wide eyes glared up at cloudy sky, a look of shock still painted on his face.

  “Thanks, I owe you one,” Colton said to Raven, hardly believing the words as they left his mouth.

  Raven nodded and rose to his feet. “Actually, I owe you one. You got here just in the nick of time. This guy and his friend would have killed me and my niece if it weren’t for you two.”

  “What happened to the other guy? Did you—”

  “No, I didn’t kill him. Creek is still watching him.”

  Colton had a dozen questions running through his head, but instead of asking them, he reached down and grabbed the dead man’s pistol. He wedged it in the pocket of his jacket.

  “Goddammit, Raven,” Colton said. Now that they were out of danger, he found his usual impatience with Raven returning. “Why can’t you stay out of trouble?”

  Jake staggered over to them, gripping his chest. “Nice shooting,” he said to Raven. “But how about you explain why this guy just tried to kill me?”

  “I swear I didn’t start this shit. They came for some money I owe their boss.” Raven slung the crossbow over his back. “When I told them about the attack, they tried to take my Jeep, and then they pulled guns on me right in front of Allie.”

  Colton’s eyes flicked to Jake. The hulking officer looked okay, but he’d probably have a hell of a bruise come morning.

  “Look, if you came here to arrest me, then just get it over with, man,” Raven said, holding his wrists out. “Go ahead, put the cuffs on again.”

  Colton sighed. “I didn’t come to arrest you, Raven.”

  “Oh? Did you come for my Jeep?” He lowered his hands. “Sorry, I’m not handing it over for good…but you can borrow it if you really need it.”

  “I didn’t come for your Jeep either,” Colton said. “I came for your help. We found Bill Catcher’s body this morning, hanging from a tree in his backyard.”

  “Oh shit,” Raven said. He patted his jacket pocket, drew out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, and then seemed to think better of it.

 
; “Bill’s legs were burned, like Melissa’s,” Colton said quietly. He paused, listening to the wind rustle the branches of the ash trees. “We’ve only got two bodies so far, but I fear we might have a serial killer on the loose, and with everything else going on, I need your tracking skills to find him.”

  The world was burning.

  Charlize was lying on her back, too hurt and exhausted to move, in a place that looked a lot like hell. Fires raged in every direction, flames licking at a sky the color of bloody mud. Or was that the ceiling?

  I’m dead. I’ve gone to hell for all those innocent civilians I killed during the war.

  Intense terror ripped through her. She could sense the rush of adrenaline, but she still couldn’t feel her limbs. She couldn’t feel any pain, either, and somehow the numbness was worse than the burning agony.

  You’re dead. You failed Ty, and you won’t ever see Richard again.

  But if this was hell, shouldn’t she feel pain? Wasn’t she supposed to suffer?

  The blurry forms of other sinners were moving around her. Their skin looked like dark plastic, wrinkled and deformed.

  Burned. Everyone was burned.

  Lightning flashed overhead. So that was the sky after all. And she seemed to be rising toward it. The burning pyres seemed to be falling away, growing ever smaller as she rose out of hell. She could see other shapes now, skeletal things like the bones of whales jutting out of the scorched dirt.

  The sensation of motion grew stronger, and a fierce, hot wind whipped at her body. Beyond the dull ringing in her ears, she heard a strangely familiar sound.

  This wasn’t hell, but she wasn’t ascending into heaven either.

  I’m in a chopper, she realized. How had she gotten here? All she remembered was burning pain and then darkness. Had her F-15 crashed? Was she being airlifted to safety?

  She sucked in a breath of sharp air that stung her lungs. A hand touched her shoulder, and she turned away from the burning world to see a man in a space suit looking down at her.

  Her vision suddenly sharpened. It wasn’t a space suit; this was a soldier in a CBRN suit.

  “Ma’am, can you hear me?”

  “How…?” she started to say. Her mouth was so dry. She licked her lips and tried again. “How did my plane crash? Where’s the rest of my squadron?”

  To the masked man’s right was a familiar face—a face that reminded her she wasn’t in some foreign warzone. She was in D.C. What was left of it.

  Albert nudged the soldier out of the way and managed to open his cracked, bloody lips. A single tear rolled down his face. It was the first time Charlize had ever seen the big man cry.

  “You’re going to be okay,” Albert said. “We’re going somewhere safe.”

  Charlize tried to respond, but all that came out was something that sounded like a witch’s cackle. She tried to move again, managing to palm the metal floor with her burned hands. Her skin stuck to the surface.

  Two more soldiers in CBRN suits closed the door to the helicopter, sealing off the view of the burning landscape below. Charlize scanned the troop hold, trying to see who had made it. Diego was on a stretcher with two soldiers working on him. There was another person in the corner of the troop hold whose flesh was so badly burned she couldn’t tell who it was.

  “Where’s Clint?” she asked.

  Albert’s mouth moved in reply, but a raucous clap cut him off.

  Charlize twisted to look out the window, half expecting to see North Korean fighters tearing through the skies. Instead of hostile jets, there was only the electric blue crackle of lighting.

  She made herself sit up to look out the window. Her body seemed distant, like it had been unplugged from her brain. Probably morphine, she realized. Either that or shock. The view outside really was like looking down into hell. Fires burned across the horizon. Husks of buildings were all that remained in some areas, but ground zero was a flat, smoldering field. The shockwaves from the strike had pounded the city into a blackened pancake.

  Near the epicenter of the destruction lay what remained of the Washington Monument. Blackened blocks of stone littered the smoking dirt not far from where the other symbols of American democracy and freedom had once stood. The White House, the Capitol, the National Mall …they were all gone. From now on, Washington would be nothing more than a radioactive night light.

  “Ma’am. Can I look at your arm please?”

  She forced her gaze away from the window. The soldier in the CBRN suit was back, holding a medical kit.

  Charlize ran a hand over her head, and a clump of hair came out in her burned fingers. She held it up and examined the shriveled ends of what had been her favorite feature. Charlize wasn’t a vain woman, but she had loved her long, glossy black hair.

  A tear crept down her cheeks, the salt searing her skin. Lips trembling, she looked to Albert and asked again, “Al, where’s Clint?”

  Albert wiped his forehead and then slowly pointed toward the horribly burned body in the back of the troop hold.

  Raven was late.

  That normally wouldn’t have surprised Sandra, but today she needed her brother more than ever before. It had been a rough morning, with several new patients showing up throughout the early hours. One man had suffered a mild heart attack on the walk into town after being stranded on Highway 34. He claimed to have trekked ten miles to get to the hospital. They had him stabilized now, but another man who had gone into cardiac arrest hadn’t been so lucky.

  Sandra sat next to Teddy’s bed, her hands tingling from the constant motion of pumping air into his breathing tube. She had traded off the duty with other nurses and doctors throughout the night, but they were all busy with other patients now.

  Everything that required power was offline: ventilators, feeding tubes, dialysis machines. Feeding tubes and saline drips could work by gravity, but the pumps were offline. ECG monitors were dead. The labs, the CT and MRI machines…none of their expensive equipment worked. Sandra and the other nurses and physicians were practically working in the blind.

  The doors were propped open to let in light from the outside. It also helped with the airflow. Without ventilation, it was already getting hot despite the chilly temperatures outside. And the smells…

  Sandra breathed in through her surgical mask. It helped block some of the stench, but not everything.

  The curtain cordoning off the small space peeled back and Newton looked in. He closed it and asked, “How is he?”

  “The same,” she said.

  Newton examined Teddy. Sandra wasn’t sure what was going on in the doctor’s mind, but she could tell by his calculating look he was probably factoring Teddy’s chances of survival.

  He looked away and tapped his iWatch several times before giving up.

  “Damn thing still doesn’t work. Does anyone know what time it is?”

  “Little after noon,” someone yelled back.

  Newton wiped sweat from his forehead with a sleeve. “Doctor Duffy and I have asked Kayla to put together a handwritten schedule for the staff. We’re going to need everyone to work double shifts until the power comes back on.”

  Sandra wanted to tell him that the power was never coming back on, but she held her tongue. Instead, she pumped another breath into Teddy’s lungs, his chest rising with the oxygen. He looked so peaceful, drifting in his medically induced coma. Sandra realized with a jolt that she hadn’t slept for more than a few minutes for over thirty hours.

  “My daughter is with her uncle, but I’m sure he can watch her longer. I just need some rest, maybe an hour.”

  “Of course,” Newton replied. “Everyone is going to get—”

  The sound of a commotion in the lobby cut the doctor off. Several raised voices echoed into the ICU. One of them was Kayla’s, but Sandra didn’t recognize the others.

  “I better check this out,” said Newton.

  “Does anyone know where I can find Sandra Spears?” someone called.

  Sandra nearly forgot to h
elp Teddy breathe. She carefully squeezed the bag, but her heart was running wild. Had something happened to her little girl?

  Newton glanced at her and reached out for the bag. “Looks like you have visitors. Why don’t you let me take over?”

  Coordinating the shift with the utmost care, Sandra and Newton changed places. She stepped onto the floor of the ER, terrified about what she would discover.

  “Momma!”

  Allie was standing at the entrance to the room, holding Police Chief Marcus Colton’s hand. She came running and grabbed Sandra around the waist.

  “Allie! What are you…?” Exhausted and confused, Sandra looked to Colton for an answer.

  “Ma’am,” he said, inclining his head. Before she could ask him what he was doing there, Doctor Duffy approached. Sandra hugged Allie and then knelt to look her over.

  “Are you okay?”

  Allie nodded.

  “Where is Raven?”

  She nestled her head against Sandra’s shoulder and whimpered.

  Hospital staff watched Colton as Sandra worked to calm Allie. People from the lobby tried to follow the police chief into the ER, but Kayla shooed them away before sending the curious nurses back to their tasks.

  “What can you tell us? Will the power be back on anytime soon?” Duffy asked Colton. Then his eyes went wide. “Damn, Chief, what the hell happened to you?”

  Colton glanced down at his uniform, which was covered in blood.

  “There was an incident,” he said dryly, before reassuring the doctor that the blood wasn’t his. He looked toward Sandra and said, “Ma’am, we need you to come outside.”

  “What did my brother do now?”

  Colton jerked his chin toward the exit. “You can ask him yourself.”

  Sandra grabbed Allie’s hand and led her through the lobby and outside into the parking lot. Between the lack of sleep and her rapidly firing heart, Sandra felt like she was going to faint.

  The first thing she saw was Jake standing next to Raven’s Jeep, guarding the rear door with a shotgun. A man in a black suit that Sandra didn’t recognize sat inside.