by Sam Sisavath
“What about you?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “Got lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“All that smoke and debris camouflaged us,” Becker said. “For a while, anyway.”
When he was done, Becker handed her an unused bundle from the first-aid kit. She took it and shoved it into one of her pouches. Becker unslung his rifle and walked up the alley, but she didn’t follow him right away.
After a while, Becker noticed he was alone. He stopped and looked back. “Gaby. We have to keep moving. She’s waiting for us, remember?”
Lara…
Gaby pushed off the wall and walked over to him, clenching and unclenching the Glock at her side. “What happened back there?”
“You mean the rocket?”
“No, with the Mercerians.”
“The ones on the sidewalk.”
“Yeah.”
“We have a guardian angel,” Becker said. He looked up, but of course there was nothing up there except the edges of two rooftops and the moonlit sky between them. “Sniper. They took out the ones on the sidewalk. I think they got another one in the alley, but I can’t be sure. I am pretty sure they’ve deterred those remaining Mercerians from following us in here, though, or they’d be on us by now.”
“Who was it?” she asked.
Becker shrugged. “Dunno.”
“One of yours?”
“Can’t be. Nothing came through the comm. But they were definitely on our side, and that’s all I care about.”
There was a fence at the end of the alley with a door on the side. Becker pushed it open and slipped through and Gaby followed, but not before looking back down the alley one last time. She wondered how many people, Angies and Dianes, were out there right now across the city of Darby Bay.
“Gaby,” Becker said. He was waiting on the other side of the fence. “We have to go. Lara’s waiting.”
She turned around and joined him. “I’m sorry about Goldman. Did you know him well?”
Becker didn’t answer right away.
“Becker?” Gaby said.
“I’m his kid’s godfather,” Becker said.
Seven
Gaby didn’t know what to say to Becker. What did you say to someone who had just seen a friend (a good friend, if the man had named Becker his son’s godfather) die before his eyes, then had to keep going, abandoning the body in a dark, dank alleyway because the mission still wasn’t finished.
And the mission? Her.
She was the reason Becker’s friend was dead. She was probably also the reason Angie and Diane were dead, though that was debatable.
But there was no debate about Goldman.
She didn’t know what to say to Becker, so she kept her mouth shut and followed him through the length of the back alley as they walked deeper into the heart of Darby Bay. She took the opportunity to fish out the (much too light) bottle of painkillers from her pocket and swallowed the final two pills before tossing the plastic container into a bin as they walked past it.
“You good?” Becker asked.
“I can walk,” Gaby said.
“Not what I asked.”
“If I can walk, I’m good.”
Her right thigh was sore, especially after all the running she’d done, but the meds were going to help with that. For a while, anyway. She didn’t want to think about what would happen when they wore off, but Becker didn’t need to know that.
The soldier didn’t pursue the topic, and they kept moving at a steady pace. Eventually they reached another chain-link fence, this one blocking off a large warehouse that was the only visible structure on the other side. Becker pushed open the gate, and they slid through and into an empty parking lot.
There were no lights around them, even though there were lampposts. When she stepped on some broken glass, Gaby understood why. There had been lights, but whoever had made it here before them had taken them out to make the area as uninviting as possible to anyone who didn’t know the true purpose of the place. The building in front of them, along with the backup command center, had been chosen twenty-four hours after they first settled into Darby Bay.
Just in case, as Lara would say.
They crossed the dark parking lot and moved in a straight line toward a lone metal door along the side of the building. Gaby had seen the warehouse from the front in the daylight, but it looked very different in the darkness and from the rear.
Just because they had barely escaped with their lives and were about to reach the halfway point, that didn’t stop the rest of Darby Bay from continuing on with the fighting. She listened to the pop-pop-pop of gunfire coming from somewhere behind them, close enough that she instinctively tightened her grip around the Glock in her hand.
Gaby glanced back briefly, her eyes drawn to the big orange and red glow somewhere on the west side of the city. The airfield and the buildings around it were still on fire, but it wasn’t nearly as bright as it had been earlier.
She looked down at her watch: 11:33 p.m.
Just over an hour now since the attack began, though it felt like another lifetime ago.
“Incoming with the package,” Becker was saying next to her. He had one hand on his Velcroed radio and was using his throat mic. “Open Sesame.”
The warehouse’s side door creaked open in front of them, and two figures rushed out. Despite the semidarkness in the parking lot, it was easy to tell they were Parrish’s men and part of Lara’s security detail. They wore the same gear as Becker and swept the area with their weapons, while a third walked calmly outside to greet them.
“About time you got here,” the third man said. He was older than Becker, the grays along his temples standing out in the blackness. “I was fully prepared to send a rescue unit for your ass.”
“Yeah, well, it took a while, but I’m here,” Becker said. Then, more somberly, “Goldman’s KIA.”
“We heard,” the man said. Closer, Gaby could make out Mueller on his name tag.
“Lara?” Gaby asked Mueller.
“They should be at OP2 by now,” Mueller said. He turned and led them into the warehouse.
“What’s the situation?” Becker asked.
“In a word, fucked and shit.”
“That’s three words.”
“Close enough. Last I heard, they were trying to reach Black Tide Island and the other FOBs in state.”
Black Tide Island, Gaby thought. What’s happening at Black Tide?
In all the running and fighting, she had forgotten about the island and the other FOBs in the state of Texas. Were they also under attack?
“She wanted to wait here for you,” Mueller said, looking over at her.
Gaby nodded. “She did the right thing.”
“So, the big boss is gone and we get you yahoos instead?” Becker asked.
Mueller chuckled. “You’re welcome.”
“For what?”
“Exactly.”
Mueller’s two men had closed and locked the warehouse door behind them and were now following them down a long corridor. Mueller had switched on a flashlight underneath his AR, and Becker had taken out a Maglite from one of his pouches. There were no other lights in the building, but plenty of moonlight filtered in through the high windows to their right. The walls around them were thick and solid, but they couldn’t completely block out the continued rattling of gunfire from outside.
“Sorry about Goldie,” Mueller was saying.
“Yeah, thanks,” Becker said. Then, because he was probably just as uncomfortable talking about Goldman’s death as she had been earlier, “So, what’s the scoop?”
“The scoop is that it’s all gone pear-shaped. QRF forces have gone dark, and we got personnel scattered all over the city. The general comm was overloaded with chatter, but that’s gone quiet too except for the occasional squawks. The smart ones managed to link up with their units and are hunkering down and waiting for further orders.”
“But we’re eventually going to re
group and retake the city?”
“I don’t know the answer to that one. It’s way above my pay grade.”
“Seriously? When did they start paying us?” one of the two men bringing up the rear asked.
The other one chuckled. “When you weren’t paying attention.”
“No shit.”
“That’s Leo and Hartnett,” Mueller said to Gaby.
Gaby nodded and didn’t bother asking him which one was which. But she knew why they were talking and cracking jokes. Everyone had lost something—or someone—tonight. Goldman, Angie, Diane, and all those poor souls that never made it out of the apartment building. Except there was no time to dwell on the losses. There would be later, when all of this was over.
They turned a corner and into another corridor that looked identical to the one they’d just walked through. The warehouse’s interior gave the appearance of one big maze, but that was only the lack of lights playing tricks with her mind. She had toured the building in the daytime and knew better. The place had a massive center room that was still filled with steel-pressing machinery, and the hallways ringed the outer edges, with access doors into the work area and offices.
“We got a sniper on Overwatch?” Becker was asking Mueller.
“Not the last time I checked,” Mueller said. “You saw one?”
“Didn’t see him, but someone definitely saved our bacons out there.”
“You sure he was one of ours?”
“I’m guessing, since he shot the other guys and not us.”
“Yeah, that’s probably a good assumption, then.” Mueller shook his head. “But it wasn’t us. We’ve had our hands full just trying to get here in one piece.”
“You guys had problems?”
“A half dozen skirmishes along the way, but nothing we couldn’t handle,” Mueller said. “It slowed us down, though. Took longer to get here than planned.”
“Yeah, nothing’s going as planned tonight.”
“You know what they say about battle plans…”
“No, what?”
“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy,” Gaby said.
“Who said that?” Becker asked.
“Some guy who’s dead now,” Mueller said. “But he sure knew a lot about war.”
“Didn’t stop him from getting dead,” either Leo or Hartnett said from behind them.
That’s one way to look at it, Gaby thought as they reached their destination: a door marked Supplies.
Mueller grabbed the handle and pushed it down, but he didn’t swing the door open right away. Instead, he seemed to freeze and tilt his head slightly, as if listening for something.
She was about to ask him what he was doing, when she heard it, too.
Or, actually, what she didn’t hear.
It was quiet outside the warehouse. Deathly quiet. While there had been lulls as she made her way to the halfway point, there was always a gunshot or two (or a dozen) to break the temporary silence.
“Is it me, or did it get really quiet out there?” Mueller asked.
“It’s not just you,” Gaby said.
No one else said a word, and Gaby looked from Mueller’s face to Becker’s, then to Leo’s and Hartnett’s behind her. They all looked back at her and each other, and remained silent. She wasn’t quite sure how long they stayed that way. Maybe a minute. Maybe two.
Finally, Becker said, “Someone tell me. Is this good or not?”
Gaby shook her head. “I don’t—”
Her radio squawked before she could finish, and she heard Lara’s voice through the tinny speakers: “Gaby, come in.”
She quickly unclipped the radio and answered. “Lara.”
“Are you okay?”
“In one piece. You?”
Instead of answering her, Lara said, “What’s your current location?”
“I’m at the warehouse with Mueller. Where are you?”
“OP2,” Lara said. “So you’re indoors?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Get here fast.”
Gaby exchanged a look with Becker. Like Mueller and the others, he could also hear her conversation with Lara through his earbuds because they were tuned into the same channel. While Becker didn’t say anything, she could read the curiosity on his face; it, she guessed, was probably mirroring her own at the moment.
“We’re on our way,” Gaby said and nodded at Mueller.
Mueller finished pulling the door open and slipped inside. Gaby followed, with Becker and the other two bringing up the rear.
They entered a small room that had once been full of shelves and large equipment, but now only had a single shelf at the back filled with boxes stuffed with rags and plastic tubes. Leo and Hartnett walked over and lifted the shelf at its opposite ends and carried it over to the side, while Becker’s flashlight revealed the concrete floor that dominated the room, along with the box-shaped square indentation near the back: A trapdoor made of a single concrete block.
“Lara, what’s happening out there?” Gaby said into the radio.
“The attack’s taken on a different phase,” Lara said.
“What phase?”
Leo and Hartnett had grabbed boning metal hooks, the kind used to work with meat, from the shelf and came back. The two men slipped the sharp ends through two metal loops sticking out of the floor and lifted, removing the block of concrete to reveal a metal ladder leading into an underground tunnel below. Yellow lights hummed underneath them, casting an eerie glow against the small closet space around her.
“We started getting reports over the general comm about Mercerians retreating from the fight,” Lara said through the radio. “It didn’t make any sense.”
“Retreating?” Gaby asked, before exchanging another perplexed look with Becker. “Why would they do that? They’re winning.”
“I know, that’s why it didn’t make any sense,” Lara said. “But then other reports started trickling in…”
“What kind of reports?”
“Ghouls.”
“Ghouls?”
“I’m getting too many reports of ghouls in Darby Bay to think it’s just people seeing things.”
Ghouls, Gaby thought. Fucking ghouls.
It wasn’t bad enough they were fighting an enemy that had come fully prepared for a long and drawn-out battle, but to have to deal with ghouls, too.
She might have shivered slightly and was glad for some of the darkness around her.
“And the hits just keeps on a’comin’,” Becker whispered next to her even as he crouched next to the hole in the floor and added his flashlight beam to the yellow glow coming from below.
“Did you hear me, Gaby?” Lara said through the radio. “There are ghouls in Darby Bay. That’s why it’s so quiet outside. The Mercerians have backed off to let them in, and our people are going into hiding.”
“What’s our next move?” Gaby said into the radio.
“I don’t know yet. We’ll figure it out when you get here.”
“What about Black Tide? Did you make contact?”
Lara didn’t answer right away, and that, more than anything, made Gaby nervous.
“Lara,” Gaby said. “Any word from Black Tide?”
“No,” Lara finally said. “The island’s gone dark. I haven’t been able to make contact since I got here.” Then, after a brief pause, “The same for Larabie and Galveston. No one’s responding to our calls.”
“Shit,” Mueller whispered. “That’s not good.”
“That’s definitely not good,” Becker added.
They were right. Larabie and Galveston contained the other two Black Tide Forward Operating Bases in South Texas. Galveston in particular had become an important FOB, thanks to all the refineries they’d managed to get back up and working. That one base was the reason they had so much fuel to work with. Some of that fuel was powering the lights in the tunnels below them right now.
And Larabie, located between Galveston and Darby Bay, was where the bu
lk of Black Tide’s armor was headquartered. The last time she was at the forward operating base, there were enough tanks and firepower to take down an entire state or two.
“So no tank rescue?” one of the men who could be Hartnett or Leo asked. Hartnett, Gaby thought, finally seeing the name on his uniform.
“I guess not,” the other one, Leo, said.
“What about Danny?” Gaby said into the radio.
“Later, when you get here,” Lara said.
Uh oh, I don’t like the sound of that.
“Roger that,” Gaby said. “See you soon.”
“So I guess this means we’ve officially gotten our asses kicked for the first time in five years?” Hartnett asked.
“Hey, one out of—What. Twenty? Thirty?—ain’t bad in my book,” Leo said.
“I’d rather have a perfect run.”
Gaby nodded at Mueller. “Let’s get going. We’re just wasting time standing up here chatting.”
Mueller slung his rifle and went down the ladder first.
“You’re next,” Becker said.
She didn’t argue and climbed down after Mueller. The ladder was heavy and fastened to the wall, its every rung designed to take punishment. But it wasn’t the health of the ladder that gnawed at the pit of her stomach. It was the idea of going back down into a tunnel, even one with plenty of lights to see with, that didn’t sit well with her.
Gaby hopped the last few rungs and landed on solid concrete. Mueller was already a little farther into the tunnel, waiting for them. Becker jumped down behind her, and there was a loud thump! as Leo and Hartnett, sharing space on the ladder, moved the big block of concrete back into position above them.
“Follow the leader,” Becker said and walked with her to where Mueller stood. “He’s not quite as dear as the one up ahead, but he’ll do.”
“I heard that,” Mueller said.
“Heard what?”
“Yeah, right. Keep it up, Beckerhead.”
“Ah, boss, I’m just joshin’ ya.”
Instead of listening to their back and forth, Gaby remembered the last time she found herself voluntarily climbing into and journeying through a little-used tunnel. She was walking under the city of Houston and into the heart of the enemy back then. Definitely another lifetime ago, and she was so much younger at the time.