Chapter Forty
Never-Ending Sea
Brian’s knee was killing him. It wasn’t bad when they were sneaking through town, or running on the trail; it was in the pauses, when they stopped and knelt down, that he felt it inflame. He was weaker from his ordeal in the jail cell than he’d realized. The euphoria of escaping captivity and embracing Carolanne, his face pressed to her fragrant, thick hair, had overshadowed his injuries. Plus, while there was still strength left in his fingers, there was no way he’d let Bethany run off alone to face the enemy and save the man responsible for protecting him from the war and disease when it first blanketed the earth.
Adrenaline continued to fuel him onward, and it wasn’t until they were past Hightown’s perimeter and in the heart of town that he realized just how fatigued he was. When was the last time he’d slept more than a few aching minutes, cold and miserable, half-starved and shivering? But now the end was in sight. Crouched low, his knee on fire, his mind and body running on the fumes of stress and anxiety, Karl Metzger’s home was just around the corner. His uncle, alive or … not … was close.
The light from the house shone out from around the bend like the sun about to eclipse over the horizon, and the night was so quiet that the running generator along with the engines of the idling trucks eliminated any noise the soldiers made as they crept along the siding of the neighboring house. He and Simon led the first group, and Brian now wished he was farther back, not out of fear, but out of concern his stiff knee and woozy mind would slow him down and cause injury to the soldiers following his lead.
But these thoughts, these pains, had to be suppressed.
The earphone in his left ear clicked once and then twice. After a pause, it clicked three more times in even intervals. Then the clicking repeated in four. The first clicks came from the team in the adjacent home, pressing the receivers on their radios. They were in position and ready for the assault. The next came from the group on the opposite side of the home, led by Richard Jarrett, and the last was emitted from Simon. Everyone was ready, waiting for the first shot from the team inside the home, signaling the rest to move out.
Bethany was beside him, her arm pressed against his, like a spring ready to pop. Mental images formed of her as a child, smiling as only children do at the simple wonders of the world, building miniature dams with him and Steven in the creeks around the wooded sections of Nelson. He remembered her at her wedding, a grown woman, and so happy. He saw her in the bunker, skinny and pale, animalistic, with Carolanne at her side. He saw her embracing Simon Kalispell, her mind at ease despite her tough persona—
The first bullet shot rang out, followed by another.
Simon sprang forward and Brian followed. All notions of personal distress vanished in a moment as he turned the corner, the bright lights of the home before him burning like a torch at sea. It took a moment for the scene to materialize, to spot where enemy soldiers were ducking for cover and returning fire. He ran forward, fanning out, aiming his rifle and pulling the trigger. The drumming of his heart dictated his panting breath as he fired at the side of the truck, the driver inside hiding below the door, shooting a pistol blindly out of the window. Others were also aiming at the vehicle, and the entire side became peppered with symmetrical holes as high-caliber ammunition battered the metal. Greasy smoke appeared in a thick cloud from under the hood as the tires popped, and the truck fell to the rims.
The returning fire ceased.
A line formed as the men from Richard Jarret’s unit met with their own. Gunfire erupted from two of the windows, and the returning fire was short and precise, the men aware that inside that home lay the valuable reason for this incursion. An explosion flashed at his side, followed by another, at what Brian guessed were hand grenades lobbed down.
Richard was first at the house, his back pressed to the siding as he changed the clip to his machine gun, letting the empty magazine fall. He pulled back the bolt as the soldiers gathered, and he turned fast and kicked in the front door. Another soldier followed, and Brian was third. The light from inside was shockingly bright—and then there was a blinding flash and a roar, along with a force akin to being struck by a moving car. Brian felt his body become airborne as he was thrown violently against the far wall. The force of the blast was familiar enough, despite the confusion of the explosion, since after all, he’d been thrashed by a hand grenade in the past.
***
Simon was behind Richard and four other men when all at once the entry room erupted in a quick and violent explosion, the glass shattering outward from windows near his head. The men at the entrance were kicked with such force it appeared they’d vanished.
Simon fell to his side, shielding his eyes with his free hand. He looked around, saw Bethany behind him, safe. Someone grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet, and he stormed inside with the rest of the brigade. Men were at the stairway, others moving from room to room, securing them in a fast, tactical formation. Simon knelt over one of the men fallen in the blast. The side of his face displayed the force of the shrapnel, and the man clasped desperately at his neck. Before Simon could find a bandage, he was already dead.
Richard Jarrett was getting back on his feet, but then fell forward, catching himself on his knees. Another soldier was beside him, holding a bleeding laceration somewhere on his left arm. Richard was saying, “Son of a bitch!” loud. Across the room, Brian was covered from head to toe in white dust and debris.
“Brian!” Bethany called out, rushing to his side. Simon followed, and brushed pieces of wood splinters and chunks of drywall off Brian’s body.
“Brian,” she repeated, “Are you okay?”
Brian didn’t answer. His eyes shone bright and wet from his mask of dust, and he coughed. His lips were red with blood, but still he was getting to his feet, looking down at his body, trying to decipher if anything was missing or not working. Simon repeated, “You okay?” and helped look him over. A red spot had formed on his chest and leg, but Brian replied, “My gun …,” looking around. The harness that kept it attached to his chest had been torn.
Simon found the rifle, covered in the same white dust and mixed with debris. Brian moved the slide but it was stuck, the metal displaying a shiny slice and indent. He tossed it aside and unholstered his pistol. Coughing, he said, “Let’s go,” and grabbed Simon’s shoulder as he faltered his first step. Tears trailed from his red eyes, washing rivulets across the bothersome white dust. He rubbed his face, seeming to make it worse.
“Hold up,” Simon said, and took his canteen from a pouch. “Tilt your head.” Brian did as instructed and Simon ran the water over his eyes and face, and then ripped off the sterile wrapper from a bandage to wipe away the dust. Brian took the canteen and swished water around in his mouth, spit out a gritty red trail, and then they moved to the stairwell. The gunfire had ceased, and as they neared the top stair, they heard, “We got him!” yelled from down the hall.
They passed open doorways as they went, scanning each room with rifles pointed. Two were empty, a third had been shot up with a body on the ground, riddled with bullets, and at the last door, with the frame broken in by a hard kick, they saw him.
My God … Simon froze at the doorway, the rush of emotions a mixture of torment, exhilaration, and relief. Bethany rushed forward; Brian hobbled after her. She said, “Uncle Al!” and buried her face in his shoulder. His old age had caught up with him during the ordeal, and then some. He looked frail, disheveled, his dry lips pursed, his voice coming out in a rasp. “Wh-what are you doing here, Beth?” And he began crying, sobbing, his back convulsing. Brian reached his side, and when his uncle looked up, seeing his ghostly figure, he cried again and grabbed at Brian’s arm, pulling him in.
A soldier inspected the clasp around the general’s ankle. The redness of his torn skin was visible behind the tattered cloths he’d wrapped behind the metal buckle.
Then Uncle Al broke off his embrace. “We need to get the fuck out of here.”
�
��Shield your faces,” a soldier said as he aimed his gun to a link in the chain. After a loud pop, the chain split.
“Come on,” a soldier said. “Let’s move!” Bethany took her uncle under his shoulder, helping him to his feet. Brian attempted to hold his other side, but his knee buckled at the weight.
“I’m fine,” Uncle Al said. “Give me a gun.”
But he was barefoot and faltered as he took a step. Simon handed him his pistol, and took over for Brian on Uncle Al’s opposite side. Two soldiers remained in the rear as they proceeded down the stairs. Gunfire erupted again from outside as they entered the front room. Richard knelt by the door, his uniform cut back at his shoulder, and a hasty bandage and sling wrapped around his arm. He held a pistol in his free hand and was aiming out the door. “Move!” he said, addressing the group behind him. “We got a mess of ’em coming!”
***
Karl issued the order to retreat. It was the first time he’d uttered the words, and it hurt him to his core. It went against his instinct to keep the men on the line and fight until they were all dead. But with warplanes coming against him … It wouldn’t be a fight at all. His soldiers would be turned to smoke in a blink of an eye. And furthermore, his men’s weakness had become apparent as they turned on one another down in Alice. On Liam’s council, he issued for his Red Hands to abandon their posts and flee to Odyssey, where they could regroup.
A large number of his men in Hightown had already disavowed their oaths, shedding their uniforms, with the handprint prominently displayed on their chests, as they escaped. If any of those miscreants thought they could do so and still enter Odyssey, they had another thing coming. They’d be added to the line of corpses decorating the road into town.
There was a good chance that most wouldn’t make it back anyway. By all accounts, the enemy colonies had come in mass, and probably had soldiers waiting to cut down the deserters. His army … it was defeated, for all intents and purposes. Alice was gone in a flash. All he had fought for … all he had sacrificed; evaporated in a blaze. The army he’d raised from the depths of Haddonfield Maximum Security Prison, to Marianna, gathered from Mark Rothstein’s brigade, and the Priest’s underground silo. All of it gone. Dietrich too—he’d been in Alice when the bombs fell and the men rebelled. His officers were dwindled down, his army a skeleton crew. Rage boiled, and he bit his tongue against the temptation of taking what few soldiers he could muster and making a final charge into the oncoming wave of enemy troops, to kill as many as possible before bullets found them.
There was a good chance that his army would never recoup, never be strong enough to go up against the colonies again. He would have to take what he could get, keep the few who remained loyal, and with Liam’s help, survive. He didn’t know how he’d do it, but he would. He was Karl Metzger, and if they hadn’t killed him yet, they never would.
The transport was driving him toward his home where he had men waiting. Liam had gathered the trusted few, the soldiers who they knew wouldn’t turn on their vows. Several were from Haddonfield, and had fought since day one. Others were acquired along the way, such as Jacob, who had been expelled from Alice in years past, and held such a hatred for Tom Byrnes and Alice’s citizens, that Karl knew the man would never turn on him.
A report came in over the radio. “You hear that?” Liam said as he drove.
“Yes,” Karl replied. “I heard it. How many soldiers do we have mustered?”
“Fifty or so. We staying on course?”
“Oh, Mister Briggs, we most certainly are. Radio for the men to expect a bit of sport upon our arrival.” He inspected his rifle, checked the chamber. The report indicated that right at that moment an insurgence of the enemy’s soldiers had made it into Hightown, to his home, and were trying to steal his prize, the only possession he’d taken after the many fruitful raids, other than drink, food, and weapons. General Driscoll wasn’t the prize he wanted; it wasn’t the prize he yearned for—he yearned for his Bethany. The girl with fire in her eyes, a deep rage that he could feel in her glare, witness as she cursed and fought against the soldiers trying to sedate her in Nick Byrne’s underground room. One day, he could coax her into seeing the world his way. If that would happen, oh Lord, even he would be terrified.
The colonies had taken Alice. Reports told of the gardens destroyed. The barracks reduced to rubble. Homes and offices, Alice Elementary, set ablaze by his own men. Hundreds, thousands, dead. The colonies left his organization a splinter of its prior potential—but they weren’t going to take his one and only prize.
“Hurry up,” he told Liam.
“I’m going as fast—” he began, then said, “Yes, sir,” as they drove into the skirmish.
***
Someone grabbed Brian’s shoulder and pulled him forward, toward the door. His uncle was in front of him, helped along by Bethany and Simon. “Go, go!” someone shouted, and before Brian knew it, he was outside. He found a machine gun on the ground next to a dead Red Hand, and holstered his pistol. Headlights glared, and bullets whacked into the earth, making the soil appear to be boiling. He fired at the headlights, along with everyone else. A hand reached out again and pushed him. His legs gave out and he was pulled back up. Then the person grabbing him, pulling him, dropped in a shocking mist of red. The neighboring home with the machine gunners on the top floor was taking heavy fire, the whole side of the building torn to pieces of broken timber and shards of glass as pockets of fire erupted. Hand grenades were lobbed from either side, and tufts of earth rose with each concussion. He shot his gun through bleary eyes and felt heat around wounds on his torso, stomach, and legs. New hands pushed and pulled him, and voices shouted commands, but his ears rung from the explosions, and all he heard was mumbling.
The line of fleeing soldiers was being cut down, blown up, and those who remained were forced to the steep side of the property where the ground dropped off to the trail and shoreline below. He lost track of his uncle as the men vanished over the side, sliding, tumbling, as bullets pelted the branches above. Brian’s footing faltered on a slick layer of dead leaves and branches, and he skidded and dropped, rolling for a moment before hitting against the hard side of a tree.
“Brian!” a voice yelled, and he looked up to see Simon grabbing his shoulder, pulling him to his feet as he also helped Uncle Al, who, without shoes, had also tripped and fallen in the brush. “Come on, get up!” Simon yelled.
Brian’s reserves of adrenaline kicked in, and he got to his feet. A sensation like he was plummeting from the top of a tall building caused him to falter again, but onward he went down the hill, falling until he hit the paved trail. Oh Christ, he thought as his vision strobed white. Carolanne, all I want is to be with you … I’m no use here.
A few men had made it to the bottom and more were crashing through the brush, firing up the hill where the enemy was gathering, following them down, tossing grenades. Luckily, the brush and trees stopped most of the explosives from reaching the bottom.
Brian managed to regain his footing and hobbled onward. Simon and Bethany were in front of him and going faster, dragging Uncle Al along. Bethany looked over her shoulder. “Brian, come on!” He tried to shout back that he was coming, but his breathing was too labored to make words audible. With each step, the pain in his leg became more debilitating, and his knees buckled. He fell and pushed himself back up. His shirt was soaked with his own blood, and a thought came zapping into his mind: I’m not going to make it. They were still far from the town perimeter, and they had to sprint if they were going to outrun the soldiers on their heels.
Brian inhaled and exhaled, trying to regain his limited breathing and force himself to stand. Simon and Bethany were out of view around a bend. The last two of their soldiers ran by. “Come on, Brian—get up!” one yelled as they passed.
“Yeah …” Brian said, and got himself to standing on shaky legs. “I’m up.”
Bullets pelted the paved trail, and one of the soldiers was struck down a few feet in fron
t of Brian. The man fell off the trail, landing on the large boulders bordering the water’s edge. The other man ran on. Brian looked at the dead soldier and then up to the distant horizon, where dawn had cracked, forming a magnificent deep orange and red slit where the water met the sky.
Brian moved to the boulders and removed two grenades from the dead man’s belt, pulled the pin from the first, and threw it into the slope of earth where the enemy was appearing, then pulled the pin and threw the second. As the detonations erupted, he aimed and fired his machine gun while walking toward the approaching Red Hands. Two bodies tumbled to the pavement, killed either by the grenades or his bullets, and Brian fired until the chamber clicked empty. He tossed the gun, picked up another dropped on the path, and sprayed the thicket.
A piercing hot sensation rocketed into his arm as a bullet found him, but he continued to fire. Three men emerged from the brush, and Brian was quick to aim in their direction. All three dropped, but not before firing a few rounds; his same arm was hit again, and his thigh burned from where a bullet grazed his skin.
The second rifle clicked empty. He dropped it and unholstered his pistol, and with his nearly immobile left hand, he unsheathed his combat knife. Flashes of Bethany as a young girl crossed his mind … Steven and himself back in Nelson, flipping burgers and serving beers on busy weekend nights in Hendrick’s Bar and Grill … having a beer after hours with old Ben and Nancy Hendricks, her talking to him and Steven in gentle words, “I appreciate you boys more than you’ll ever know,” and Steven smiling his goofy smile as she rubbed his giant paw of a hand with her small, fragile fingers … Carolanne in his arms, her hair, God, how she smelled like the ocean, like countless waves, the freedom of a never-ending sea …
Brian felt something pop and grind in his knee as he ran forward, meeting another of the Red Hands as he crashed through the brush, and dropped the soldier with a shot to his chest. More appeared along the trail, and another bullet pierced his side. A wide man stood before him, and Brian plunged the knife forward. The man grabbed his wrist, but the knife managed to sink an inch into the man’s side. The man wailed, and as Brian lifted his pistol … he saw Karl Metzger rise from the rear, his expression stony, his gaze narrowed. “Move!” the terrible general commanded.
Someday Soon Page 21