Apocalyptic Visions Super Boxset

by James Hunt

  Gunshots rang out the closer they moved to the river. Mike could smell the mixture of water, gunpowder, and dust swirling in the air. The scent grew stronger as the sounds of guns and screams increased.

  Up ahead Mike could see the forces already there, advancing on the bridge. The rallying point for the unit was a small office building just behind the front lines. Blake led the group inside and they had a front row seat for the bloodshed.

  “Listen up! We push whoever we can to the west. No hesitation,” Blake said.

  Mike clicked the safety off the rifle. He looked to Kalen, who was still staring out the empty window frame where the glass was shattered. He pulled Sam close and whispered in his ear.

  “Don’t let her out of your sight,” Mike said.

  Sam nodded and moved over to Kalen’s right side. When Blake finally signaled they were heading out, Mike gave Kalen one last glance and took a deep breath.

  The firing was sporadic and Mike could hear the shouts of men on both sides. He kept Kalen in his field of vision the entire time, while scanning for anything that would harm her.

  Blake was leading them toward a small cluster of soldiers on the outside edge of the bridge. He was the first to open fire, followed by Jimmy and Steve.

  The rebels immediately returned fire and Mike shoved Kalen down behind a car for cover.

  “Dad!” Kalen said.

  “Stay down!” Mike screamed.

  Mike rested his rifle on top of the trunk and squeezed the trigger, firing off some rounds into the rebels, then ducked back down as they returned fire.

  Kalen crawled to the front of the car by the engine. She rested her rifle on top of the hood and opened fire.

  “Kalen!” Mike yelled.

  Mike jumped up, but was pinned down by more rebel fire. Kalen took off running and he crawled to the front of the car to see where she was heading. He saw her up against another abandoned car, parallel to Blake, who was waving everyone forward.

  The rebels were slowly realizing they were being flanked, and he could see them retreating not to the west but across the bridge. There was a lull in gunfire and Mike sprinted toward his daughter.

  His shoulder slammed into the car door as he caught his breath. Kalen continued the assault on the rebels. He yanked her down.

  “What are you doing?” Mike asked.

  “Our mission.”

  She yanked his hand off her and moved back into a firing position. Mike watched her with a blended sense of admiration and fear. The swell of pride came from watching his daughter so focused, thriving in a moment of chaos where most would crumble. The stroke of fear came from the knowledge that getting to that point of focus came at a cost of her old self, one that she wasn’t going to get back.

  “They’re retreating across the bridge! Move forward!” Blake yelled.

  The gunfire coming from their team was relentless now. The rebels were sprinting as fast as they could across the bridge. The other units were converging at the bridge’s entrance, picking off as many of the rebels as they could.

  “We need to move across and secure the other side before they regroup!” Blake said.

  “Anybody that goes across that bridge is a sitting duck. It’s too exposed,” Sam replied.

  Mike looked around. There were three abandoned cars close to the bridge’s entrance. One of them had the tires blown out, but the other two were good.

  “We can throw those cars in neutral and roll them across,” Mike said.

  “That’s our cover,” Blake replied. “Let’s move!”

  They opened all of the car doors and rolled them forward across the bridge, shielding them from the gunfire raining down on them.

  Another unit followed their lead and began pushing their own car across the bridge. Both Mike and Blake were on the front doors. Sam was behind Mike and Kalen was behind Blake on the rear doors, while Jimmy and Steve were pushing from the bumper.

  As they crept their way across the bridge Mike noticed the gunfire had let up. He looked up and saw that most of the rebels had disappeared. In fact, he couldn’t see any of them. Mike scanned the shoreline and the end of the bridge, but there was nothing.

  “They’re gone,” Mike said.

  “Keep pushing forward,” Blake ordered.

  Something was wrong. After all of the fighting and protection of the bridge, why would they give it up so easily? From everything that Mike had learned about the bridge, it was a pivotal, strategic point.

  They were past the halfway point and the bridge started its downward slope. The car started picking up speed. Mike jumped in the driver’s seat and tapped the brakes so they wouldn’t end up crashing into anything on their way down.

  Then, just to his left Mike could see a tarp on the sidewalk. The end was flapping open from the breeze. He looked over to his right and saw another tarp directly parallel to the one on the left.

  Mike slammed the brake pedal hard. The open doors flopped forward a bit and everyone slammed into them.

  “They’re gonna blow the bridge!” Mike yelled.

  Everyone’s heads went up. Mike slammed the car’s shifter into park and tried rolling out of the driver’s seat, but someone grabbed his arm, stopping him.

  Mike looked over and Blake had his fingers digging into his skin. He tried to break free, but Blake had a really good hold on him.

  “We push forward,” Blake said.

  “The tarps!” Mike said.

  “We can’t lose this bridge,” Blake yelled, running to the tarp.

  Kalen followed him and Mike sprinted after her. Blake lifted the tarp off and revealed enough plastic explosive to blow the bridge sky high.

  “Jesus,” Blake whispered.

  “We need to get off the bridge now!” Mike yelled.

  “If we lose this bridge it’ll set us back months and it’ll give the rebels time to regroup. We can’t let that happen,” Blake said.

  “Toss it over the side!” Jimmy yelled.

  “No, if it goes off under water it could damage the bridge’s pillars,” Blake answered.

  Blake pulled his radio to his mouth.

  “We need an ordnance expert on the bridge. Now,” Blake said.

  A few minutes later a man came jogging up toward them. He was an older gentleman, probably late fifties, and had thick-rimmed glasses. He wasn’t dressed in the normal military fatigues like Blake had on, so Mike figured he must have been a recruit like himself. He introduced himself as Brian.

  “What do we have here?” Brian asked.

  “Can you disarm it?” Blake asked.

  Brian walked around to the back end of the explosive device. There was a wire that ran from the back of the C-4 along the bridge wall leading to the opposite side. When Brian saw the configuration of the bomb he sprinted in the other direction without saying a word.

  Jimmy and Steve followed him. Blake tried to corral his unit, but once the other soldiers saw them sprinting away it was a free-for-all.

  “We have to get this explosive off the bridge!” Blake said.

  Kalen went over to the other side where the other tarp was. She flung the tarp off, revealing an equal amount of explosive as its counterpart.

  Mike grabbed her by the arm and tried pulling her backwards. She kept wiggling out of his grip.

  “It’s not worth it. Let it go,” Mike said.

  “I’m not going to fail!”

  Kalen was punching his chest, struggling to break free. Mike’s hands were starting to ache from her thrashing. She wasn’t going to give up. He’d seen that look before. It was the same look he had when he was on the road from Pittsburgh to the cabin, traveling to get to his family.

  Mike flung her on the other side of the bridge away from the explosive. He scooped up the bomb and sprinted down the slope of the bridge. He set the bomb in a clearing away from the bridge’s entrance. When he started to make his run back to the top of the bridge, the other bomb left on the bridge detonated.

  The concrete and metal fle
w through the air and landed all around him. Mike coughed and rolled around on the ground. A solid ringing ran through his ears and his vision was blurred, straining to focus on the shapes around him. When the ground stopped spinning he managed to focus on what was left of the bridge.

  Only a few thin pieces of concrete and steel connected the two sides. Mike scanned the bridge, looking for Kalen, but he couldn’t see her.

  Then a distant thumping sound began to replace the ringing in his ears. He couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but it was quick and sporadic. It was as if it was coming from all directions.

  Mike was still on his belly, crawling forward, trying to stand, but unable to get his legs underneath him. The ringing started to clear and the foreign thumping sounds became more recognizable. They were gunshots.

  Mike looked behind him and could see rebel forces moving back toward the bridge, and firing along the bank. Mike stumbled forward, attempting to stand, but then landed face first on the concrete.

  He heard shouts behind him and the last thing he saw before he blacked out was the butt of a rifle smacking his forehead.

  ***

  “What do you mean we can’t go after him?” Kalen screamed.

  One of the field nurses was sewing Blake’s arm up from the blast wound he suffered when the bridge exploded. There weren’t any casualties, but a few of the men were banged up pretty bad.

  “You saw the bridge. It’s gone, and we don’t have any navy to speak of, so unless you want to swim across the river with our supplies on a raft I suggest you calm down,” Blake said.

  “How long till we have boats in the water?” Kalen asked.

  “Boats weren’t a priority in our rebuilding efforts. It’ll be a while.”

  “How long’s a while?”

  “Will you give us a minute?”

  The nurse left the room, leaving Blake and Kalen alone. The stitches in his arm were poking out and blood streaked down his skin.

  Kalen wasn’t without her own injuries. A piece of concrete had knocked her unconscious and left her with twelve stitches across her forehead. There was a constant throbbing in her forehead, but she ignored it.

  “Look, kid, I know how much you want to get your dad, but we have to be realistic about this. We don’t have any way of getting over the river right now, and even if we did there’s no guarantee that he’s still alive. That’s something you’re going to have to be willing to accept,” Blake said.

  Kalen grabbed hold of the frame at the foot of the bed. She felt as if she could squeeze through the metal, crumpling it into flat pieces of lead.

  “We’re going to get my father back. Dead or alive, he’s coming home,” Kalen said.

  Anne and Freddy were in the waiting room when she got out. They had been there all day, waiting to see her. She had been done with her checkup hours ago, but she wasn’t ready to face them just yet. She needed more time to gather her thoughts.

  She thought she’d know what she was going to say when she saw them, but the moment her eyes landed on her mother’s face whatever plan of action she had disappeared.

  She found herself running into her mother’s arms, feeling the embrace and warmth she hadn’t allowed herself to feel for what felt like a very, very long time.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart,” Anne whispered.

  Kalen squeezed her mother tighter and could feel Freddy coming in on the side of her, wrapping his arms around her waist. She held the back of his head and just allowed herself to be vulnerable again.

  Once she finally gathered the strength to let go, Kalen wiped her eyes on her shirt and Anne examined the stitches on her forehead.

  “What happened?” Anne asked.

  “The bridge we were sent to take over was destroyed. Dad was on the other side when it blew. I don’t know if—”

  Kalen cut herself off. Freddy was looking up at her with the fearful eyes of a child, wanting to know more, but afraid of what that knowledge meant.

  “They don’t know when we’ll be able to cross the river to get him back. They don’t have any boats prepared,” Kalen said.

  “There’s no other way across?” Anne asked.

  “No, the other bridges were blown up a while ago. I guess the rebels wanted to bottleneck everyone. Have one way in, and one way out.”

  Kalen could see the same words Blake had said etched across her mother’s face. The chances of her dad being alive were slim, and even if he was, there wasn’t a guarantee they could get him back.

  ***

  Mike’s head was pounding and he was drifting in and out of consciousness. He caught glimpses of different images when he was able to keep his eyes open. Brick walls, people in surgical masks, soldiers with rifles—all appeared and disappeared.

  When Mike finally came to he was in a bed. His head was still pounding and when he tried to touch his forehead, he realized both of his hands were restrained. His feet were also tied down around the ankles.

  He strained against the cuffs, but he couldn’t break them. There was an IV set up next to him and he could hear voices just behind the curtain accompanied by footsteps. Mike’s heart pounded harder with each step and when the curtain finally swung open a doctor with a clipboard was looking down at him.

  “How are you feeling?” the doctor asked.

  “The bridge. What happened to the other soldiers on the bridge?”

  “Calm down. You’re going to be all right, but you need to rest.”

  Mike started thrashing violently against the restraints, shaking the entire bed.

  “My daughter! Where’s my daughter?”

  “Nurse, sedate him.”

  The nurse shoved the needle into Mike’s arm and he could feel a weightlessness fall over him. The faces staring down at him dissolved as he drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

  ***

  When Mike woke again he was still in the hospital room, but this time the curtain had been flung open and he was in the room by himself. There were two other empty beds with their sheets neatly made.

  The drugs had left him tired, woozy. He was having a hard time concentrating.

  “Hello.”

  The voice was cordial, but firm. The figure Mike was staring at in the doorway was blurry. He could tell that he was in a suit, but he couldn’t see the features of his face.

  “I apologize for what happened earlier. It’s not something I wanted to do, but my men told me you were being very… difficult.”

  The old man moved to the foot of the bed. Mike could make out his face now. It was kind, but weary. Lines of stress creased along his forehead, under his eyes, and along his mouth.

  Mike shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. He recognized the old man, but he couldn’t remember from where. Whatever drugs they had him on were fogging his mind. Mike checked his limbs. He was still tied down.

  “What happened to the other soldiers on the bridge?” Mike asked.

  “Most of them survived the blast, but the bridge did not fare very well. It wasn’t a move we wanted to make. It hurt us just as much as it hurt you, but we couldn’t allow your men to advance.”

  Mike wasn’t sure how many questions he was going to get out of him, so he wanted to pick them carefully.

  “Where am I?” Mike asked.

  “You’re in south Cincinnati.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Dr. Quinn Wyatt.”

  Day 25 (Columbus)

  Beth watched Cain drive. She hadn’t taken her eyes off him since they left Carrollton. She was drawn to him in the most unexplainable way. Everything he did seemed so effortless yet calculated with tremendous intention.

  Cain kept his eyes on the road and hadn’t glanced her way the entire trip. In fact he hadn’t said a single word. She wasn’t sure if Joey had said anything. All she could focus on at the moment was what he made her do.

  Every once in a while she’d glance down at her hands and see the stains of blood, the blood of her son. It was dried now, flaking
against her skin.

  She was indifferent to it all. Whatever, or whoever, she believed in before was a forgotten memory.