Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall)

by Michael Lane

  The Castle troops started across the bridge, the thirty or so riders sandwiched between the two boxy wagons, giving them cover. The CDF troops sniped as best they could, and a pair of the leading riders fell, but within seconds the caravan had entered the steel lattice of the bridge span. Further shots whined off the steel crossbeams or thunked into the back of the rear trailer.

  Nakamura waved the left flank forward, and the men moved to the base of the slope, taking cover behind an old concrete curbing. The raiders were protected by the trailer, but it also kept them from firing on their pursuers, and the Captain could hear the men on the bridge cursing and yelling.

  “They’re going to get across,” Sam said from where she knelt beside him, elbow on knee, watching for a target over her rifle’s sights.

  Nakamura grunted. “That trailer is an issue. If we had some ordnance I’d just blow it up.”

  “No you wouldn’t. We still don’t know where those cases are,” Sam reminded him.

  “True. You see Creedy?”

  “No, but he’d be careful to stay behind the wagons,” Sam said. She eyed the far bank, which was heavily wooded and dotted with old commercial structures. “We’re going to have to cross after them.”

  “Into that?” Nakamura said, scanning the far bank in turn, his expression bleak.

  From somewhere to the west a rifle began firing with a measured thump and the rearmost trailer slewed as its team came to a stop, the horses stamping in their traces.

  “There’s someone else over there,” Nakamura muttered.

  Grey watched the column advance. He heard the firing taper off as the green-clad soldiers lost their line of sight to the milling riders. The Castle troops had clumped tightly and were well out onto the bridge, under the spiderweb arch of steel that marked its midpoint. In the lull he heard Georgia’s rifle begin to fire, but couldn’t see what she’d fired at. He swung the scope back to the lead teamster and shot him in the chest. He worked the bolt of the rifle and scanned for another target as the team continued forward at a trot. Georgia continued to fire with an eerie, precise rhythm.

  Clay watched from where he lay in the scrub. Georgia’s rifle deafened him as she sighted and shot, sighted and shot. The empty brass winked in the sun as the rifle kicked each empty shell back over her right shoulder, spinning into the lush riverside grass to land in a growing pile.

  On the bridge the Castle men milled, a few shooting randomly at the riverbank. Clay didn’t think any of the bullets came anywhere near. Every few seconds another rider would jerk and slump from his horse as Georgia placed rounds precisely between the supports of the bridge. From the river’s far side the stutter of rifle fire began again, as CDF troops took potshots that rang off the bridge supports.

  The Castle men broke. Riders squeezed past the still moving trailer in the lead, lashing their horses forward, bent low and going flat out for the northern bank. A few followed on foot, some alert enough to stay crouched low behind the railings, blocking Georgia’s view. She shifted her aim to the fast moving riders and emptied the last three rounds from the big rifle’s clip. Two of the mounted men tumbled from their horses.

  She dropped the spent clip and fitted another, her face pale. “You better get down there, Clay. Mal will need help.”

  Clay put his hat on and began to run. Behind him, Georgia’s rifle continued to roar.

  Grey shot the first two riders that tried to round the trailer. He shifted his aim when he saw the crouching men pressed against the railing, shielded from Georgia, and two fell. He ducked beneath the parapet of the building and began reloading the rifle. Each of the five rounds it held had to be individually loaded, and in the seconds it took him to finish a ragged group of survivors had exited the bridge and taken cover beneath the willows and cottonwoods. Grey crawled twenty feet and peered over the roof’s parapet, scanning the brushy ground behind the building. A riderless horse cantered through the weeds, blood on its neck, but he could see none of the surviving Castle men. He scuttled across the roof, sweating in the sun, and raised his head again, scanning the cracked highway. There was a flash of movement in the shadow of a rust-splotched truck trailer with a chipped painting of a smiling freckled boy on its side. He ducked, and brick dust and chips of mortar exploded from the edge of the roof where his head had been.

  Gunshots began in the building beneath him.

  Mal stood with his guns at his sides, inside and slightly to the right of the doorway. Hooves clattered on the asphalt outside, and the confused yelling of the survivors grew louder. There was a single shot, then a flurry, and he could hear the bullets crack and whine off the building’s façade somewhere overhead.

  A man in a tattered parka came through the door, crouched low and holding a short shotgun. Mal shot him, using the second while the intruder’s eyes adjusted to the shadows to aim and squeeze the trigger smoothly. Inertia carried the man forward onto his face, the shotgun thumping on the cracked linoleum tiles of the floor.

  Mal drifted to his right, toward a connecting door. Another man leaped through the front entryway, lunging over his fallen friend, and firing a revolver wildly as he came. Mal shot twice as he continued to walk slowly, almost sliding his feet. The man stumbled and fell.

  He stepped into the next room, his right hand swinging to cover a glassless window in the far wall, his left rising to cover the door he’d just passed through. Mal’s boots crunched in the granulated plaster that had crumbled from the room’s sheetrock walls as he took three steps to the window. He leaned to his right and peered out. Half a dozen men were clustered under the squat acacia that grew through the sidewalk before the door. Another pair sprinted past in the street beyond. He shot one, then moved left as return fire began to splinter the window frame and thud into the ceiling.

  Feet thundered on the floor of the room he had left, sliding to a stop just shy of the open door. Mal shifted his left pistol and punched three rounds through the wall to the side of the door in a level line at waist height. There was a thud, and someone began screaming and thrashing on the floor.

  More shots chipped brick and wood from a rear window as the surviving raiders sought cover by getting indoors. Mal began to retreat backward toward the stairwell to the second floor, watching the connecting door and the front window. He heard wood creak and stepped left, turning. Something struck him in the right shoulder and he heard his right hand pistol fall. He continued his turn, unhurried, left hand rising, and shot at the blurred figure that crouched in yet another doorway. The shooter rolled back out of sight. Mal knelt, picked up the fallen gun as more rounds buzzed into the room from both sides. He ignored them and jogged to the stairwell, climbing three steps at a time. He spun at the landing, taking what cover he could from the stair rail. He could see the bright arterial splashes of the blood trail he had left, red as strawberries against the dun of the walls and stairs. He coughed and spit pink foam on the peeling wallpaper.

  That’s not good, he thought. His eyes wanted to blur and he blinked, forcing them to clear. He started counting, slowly. Upstairs Grey’s rifle continued to boom. From the bridge came the fainter rattle of the CDF’s weapons as they advanced.

  At twenty three the man who had shot him stepped through the door. He trailed his right leg and it left a smear of blood as he moved. Mal shot him left-handed, hitting him twice in the chest. The man stumbled and sat down, an old revolver falling from his hand. His head tipped forward as if embarrassed. Mal started climbing, rounding the turn and heading for the third floor. He was beginning to feel nauseous and his vision was growing dark around the edges. He shook his head and it cleared, though his shoulder - as though finally getting the news - began screaming at him.

  Feet creaked on the stairs. Lots of them, and Mal leaned back against the wall, locking his knees as they attempted to fold under him. He watched the stairs and waited. This time they were more cautious. He had counted to seventy five before they came. The one in the lead had another shotgun, and Mal’s hands seemed t
o weigh a hundred pounds as he swung the pistols up. He saw the flash of the shotgun as his pistols kicked in his hands, and felt something push him back against the wall. The shotgunner’s head exploded in gout of nastiness.

  I was aiming at his chest, Mal thought. He kept firing as screaming faces crowded the stairs, the noise deafening. His right hand, slick with blood, couldn’t keep hold of the .45 and it thumped to the floor. He fired the left into the rush until the slide locked back on an empty clip. Two men were trying to clamber over the knot of bodies that blocked the stairs, but Mal lost sight of them as his legs buckled and he fell, his empty pistol skittering on the lineoleum floor and dropping out of sight over the lip of the top step. He heard it bounce down toward the pair.

  What rolls down stairs alone or in pairs, he thought. What is that from?

  He tried to draw his backup revolver, but his hands didn’t want to move.

  Two faces peeped at him over the top stair. Both men carried rifles, and the older of the two - though both looked like teenagers to Mal - lowered his to draw a knife from his belt.

  “We may be fucked,” he hissed, smiling like a skull, “but you won’t live to enjoy it.” Mal struggled to rise, but his body refused.

  The gunshot made man with the knife jump, and his companion fell forward on his rifle, sliding down the stairs out of Mal’s vision. There was another report and the second man dropped his knife and staggered. At a third shot, he fell.

  Mal’s vision was going dark, but he could see the ludicrous white hat topping the figure that climbed into sight. The patter of automatic fire from the soldiers had stopped, and he could hear the clop of hooves and the squeal of an unoiled wheel as the lead wagon, its dead driver still slumped on his seat, passed by outside in the sudden quiet.

  “Hey,” he said, and passed out.

  Nakamura had moved his men onto the bridge and was crossing cautiously, threading through the abattoir that Georgia had made of it. When Grey walked onto the far end, his rifle slung, the Captain ordered his men to hold their positions and walked to meet him. Sam followed, studying the man as they neared him. He looked tired, she thought, and seemed to be a local.

  Grey and Nakamura exchanged a studied glance.

  “We need a doctor,” Grey said. “Everything else can wait.”

  Mal coughed and moaned, his jade-colored eyes fluttering open. They gazed vacantly at the ceiling for a moment before coming into focus.

  “Oh, good,” he whispered. “I’d have hated my last sight on earth to have been Clay’s face.”

  A young man in glasses leaned over into his field of view. He wore a green camouflaged jacket spattered with dried blood and Mal raised an eyebrow.

  “Don’t try to move. I had to stitch up your subclavian artery and I don’t want you popping it.”

  “Wasn’t planning on moving,” Mal husked. “My damn legs hurt.”

  “They’re full of birdshot,” another voice said.

  Grey’s face replaced that of the kid in glasses and Mal managed a thin smile.

  “You’re going to be fine,” Grey said.

  “Not going to pass away suddenly?”

  “Probably not.”

  “C’est bon. Then make sure these guys know a quarter share of what’s in those trailers is mine,” Mal’s eyes closed, his face as white as paper. “Wake me when I don’t hurt so damn much.”

  Clay stayed with Georgia, who walked the length of the bridge, looking at each of the men she’d shot. Clay counted silently. There were nineteen he felt sure she had killed from the wounds they bore. The big rifle wasn’t friendly, and had left chests torn open and limbs severed.

  She didn’t speak, and Clay respected her silence. At the far wagon she paused and looked at the teamster slumped across his seat, his hands curled around phantom reins. She turned around and offered Clay a questioning glance. He adjusted his hat. She began the long walk back to the bridge’s north end and he stayed with her.

  Beneath them the river gurgled and hissed on its way to the Pacific.

  Nakamura rubbed his face and looked at Grey out of tired eyes.

  “So you were planning on ambushing this Creedy to keep him out of Canada?” He glanced along the bloody avenue of the bridge deck. He could make out Georgia and Clay as they moved away down its length. “With just four of you?”

  “I just wanted to whittle him down, and fall back as we needed to. I figured we could turn him if we kept it up.” Grey sighed and sat on the rusty hood of a gutted sedan. “I wasn’t expecting you to drive them across into our guns. That could have been a lot worse than it was, if it hadn’t been for Georgia.”

  The two men sat quiet for a minute, listening to the distant sound of the river and the moans of the few wounded that the CDF men had rounded up.

  “No Creedy,” Nakamura said, looking sour. Sam exited the bullet-pocked brick building and walked to where they waited.

  “No Creedy,” Grey said. “He must have split off last night.”

  “We need to go after him,” Sam said, pushing her hair back from her brow and looking from Grey to Nakamura.

  “Why?” Grey asked. “I have no men,” Nakamura said simultaneously. Grey looked at the Captain.

  “I know he might have something of value, Sam, but I have less than two squads healthy, and we have to get back to Larson and make sure our wounded there are safe until reinforcements arrive. I can’t spare men for what could be a wild goose chase now.”

  Sam considered Nakamura for a moment, her eyes narrowed, and then gave a single sharp nod before turning to Grey.

  “Can you track?”

  “You’d have to convince me why I should want to.”

  “Okay. I will,” Sam said, sitting down.

  Sam had left to find new clothes and Nakamura was organizing a body detail when Georgia and Clay came back off the bridge.

  Georgia retrieved her rifle, folded it away into its case, and hefted the black oblong. Leaning against its weight, she walked to the brick building where Grey watched the CDF men as they set up camp.

  Grey leaned against a tree as she approached, looking from Georgia’s face to the black case and back again.

  “I’m leaving, Grey,” Georgia said. She stood the case on its end and leaned it toward him. “I want you to keep this. I won’t need it.”

  Grey put a hand on the case to stop it from falling, and Georgia let it go.

  “I’ll get you the rest of the ammo for it. It’s in my saddlebags,” she said.

  “You’re done,” Grey said. It wasn’t a question.

  “I’m done.” She turned to Clay, who cocked his head. “You remember what you asked me?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “How about you come home with me, instead?”

  Clay took his hat off, leaned down and kissed her, his free hand cupping her scarred cheek.

  “I’d like that.”

  Chapter 24: Old Friends

  It took most of the next day for Grey and Nakamura to discuss the situation and tie up loose ends. Sam had found a uniform and black armor vest that fit her. Grey had scavenged through the CDF’s supplies with the Captain’s approval, choosing a few items and rations for an extended trip.

  Mal was in and out of consciousness but the young medic assured Grey he should recover. After a series of slightly delusional demands from the patient, Grey spoke with Nakamura and retrieved as much as a horse could carry from the two trailers, depositing the pile of silverware, engraved pistols, statuettes, furs, canisters of spices, watches and stranger things next to the pallet Mal occupied.

  He did the same for Clay and Georgia, and saw them off that evening. Clay accepted the hide bags with a nod of thanks and turned away, settling them behind his saddle.

  Georgia gave Grey a kiss on the cheek.

  “Well, your invasion is stopped,” she said. “How do you feel?”

  Grey’s forehead wrinkled and it took him a minute to answer. Clay turned, curious.

  “I feel okay,
” he said at last, looking at them both. “I’m glad we managed to do what we did. Not happy, but glad, if that makes sense.”

  Georgia nodded. “You’re not done, though, are you?”

  Grey shook his head. “No, I am done. My business, anyway. But I’m going to help Samantha find Creedy if I can. If he took something from that library, it’s probably better that she has it.”

  “Why you?” Georgia asked.

  “Nakamura’s shit out of luck,” Grey said. “The rest of his troops are either blown up or injured and the only tracker he has is yours truly. Sam figures the two of us can move fast enough to stay on their trail and get the cases back.” Grey shrugged. “He can’t get reinforcements for a week or two, so it’s me or nothing. And he asked real polite.”

  “You decided that having the US Army wandering around is a good thing?” Clay asked, squinting.

  “There’s always someone wandering around. They’re no worse than most, it looks like. Besides, I’m Canadian. I’ll start worrying when the RCMP shows up.”

  Georgia mounted and Clay followed suit. Their horses stamped, ears raking forward, anxious to be gone.

  “You’re not trying to fix things, are you?” Georgia asked.

  “No,” Grey said. “Check in on Ronald and Doc for me, please?”

  “Any word for Josie?” Georgia asked.

  “I’ll talk to her when I get back.” Grey shook his head. “No. Tell her I miss her and I’ll come back when I can.”

  Georgia stared at him and raised an eyebrow. Grey exhaled and looked down at his hands.

  “Tell her I love her and I’ll be home soon.”

  “That’s better,” Georgia said. “Bring flowers.”

  Clay ticked the brim of his hat with a finger.

  “We did what we had to, and did it pretty well. That’s something.”

  Grey watched them ride away. Nakamura joined him.