by Derek Gunn
The plan worked perfectly, right up to the point where the first explosion shattered the morning air. After that it went to shit. Jackson had meant to set the charges off just as the lead jeep passed so that the blast would take out both the jeep and the closely following truck at the same time and leave the transport unprotected. Unfortunately things hadn’t gone at all to plan. The distance between the two vehicles had lengthened when the thrall driving the truck had missed a gear a few minutes before and, rather than shifting down to regain the lost speed, he had instead pushed his foot further on the accelerator in too high a gear. The truck shuddered as it struggled to regain speed and the truck had dropped back.
Once the thrall driver had fallen back a short distance the dust from the lead jeep had immediately covered the truck’s windshield and the driver of the truck had pulled out of the slipstream of the jeep and onto the far side of the road so that he could see where he was going until he regained his position behind the jeep in the relatively clear air.
All Jackson could see of the convoy was the lead jeep and the mass of dust that followed it. He couldn’t see any detail of what came behind the jeep but he had timed their positions when they had been observing the convoy from his elevated position earlier. He saw the truck shoot past him, counted to three, and pressed the detonator. The charges had been set into the road itself and when they blew great chunks of the road shot up and outwards with the force of the explosion. The jeep lost its back wheels and the vehicle swerved to the side and tumbled over, flipping three or four times as metal and flesh tore and ripped with equal abandon before the gutted wreck finally came to rest on its side far out on the right side of the scrub surrounding the road.
The driver of the truck carrying the thrall guards slammed his foot on the break as soon as he saw the explosion and pulled the wheel to his left. The tyres struggled for grip on the dust and locked up as the thrall, panicking with the unexpected explosion, left his foot hard on the breaks. The truck was far heavier in the back than the front and the vehicle skidded with the back end coming forward. The tyres skipped over the dust as if it was ice and the truck continued out over onto the grass to the side of the road. Here the tyres bit deeply into the dry earth and the truck began to lose speed rapidly.
The driver of the transport hadn’t seen anything of the explosion. He had leaned down to his feet moments before to relieve the pressure of his combat boots. They weren’t his boots but his had been filled with vomit this morning when he had gone to put them on so he had had to borrow another pair and these were too small. Someone would pay dearly when he found out who the joker was who had soiled his boots and his mind was on revenge as he leaned down and tried to keep the tight laces away from his instep.
He heard an incredibly loud explosion and snapped his head up, striking it against the side of the steering wheel in his haste. He howled a curse as he brought one of his hands to his throbbing head. By the time he had straightened up to look at what had caused the explosion, the transport had already shot over the gaping hole torn into the road by the explosion. The vehicle suddenly slumped down on one side as the left tyre crunched into the jagged hole. The tyre blew and the thrall pumped the brakes.
Unfortunately, his practised pumping on the break caused the boots to constrict around his injured instep and agony shot up his leg. He lifted his foot momentarily and then, realising what he was doing, he stamped it back down again with far too much force. He had been driving one-handed at this point as his left hand was still massaging his injured head and the violent pull of the blown tyre wrenched the wheel from his grasp. He shot his hand back to the wheel but the transport was already too far gone. The vehicle shuddered and then the wheels locked. The driver might still have been able to bring the transport under control if the left tyre had still been whole but the blowout had shredded it down to the metal of the wheel and sparks flew as the bed of the truck went to the left and the heavy stone of its cargo carried the bed of the transport past the cab as the vehicle jack-knifed.
Jackson couldn’t tell what was happening in the cacophony of noise that surrounded him. The light of dawn was already beginning to chase the darkness away but dust swirled everywhere and blinded him completely. He was pretty sure that the transport had crashed, and they hadn’t wanted that. If the stone container cracked before they were ready then they would all die slowly from radiation poisoning. The rest of his team, Ricks and the Franklin siblings, were crouched behind cover just behind him. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there. He knew that he had to take out the truck while the thralls were still bundled together in one place or they would spread out and overpower them. He screamed for the others to follow him and then he disappeared into the dust.
Ricks lifted his head and slapped Benjamin on the shoulder.
“Come one, that’s the signal!” he shouted and rose immediately and ran toward the road. He had a bandanna covering his mouth and nose but his eyes were streaming. No one had realised when they had set off that there would be so much dust on the road, so no one had thought to bring goggles. Grit and dust washed over him as he struggled to make out the scene before him. From where he had been hidden he could not see the road so he did not know what had happened, but, judging by the level of noise from screeching breaks and tearing metal, the plan hadn’t gone exactly as they had planned. What should have been a relatively simple mopping up exercise was far from that, he began to realise.
Already the sun had risen just over the horizon and light began to flood toward them, but it was still difficult to make out anything clearly with the dust hanging in the air. As he approached the road he could see that the transport wasn’t on the road where it should have been; it had either driven through the ambush or it had gone off the road. Either way that wasn’t good. He squinted through the dust that was finally beginning to settle now that there were no vehicles moving but he still couldn’t see anything clearly. Shit! What was he supposed to do now?
He heard a slide of metal just in front of him and he dropped to the ground without thinking just before bullets tore through the air above him. He brought his own weapon forward and shot blindly back in the general direction of where the bullets had come from. Another weapon began to chatter and then another and he rolled away from his position back toward where he had come from. Something had gone wrong and the thrall guards from the truck obviously weren’t dead. He continued to roll frantically away from the fire and, suddenly, he slammed into a pair of legs coming toward him. The figure fell over with a yelp and he felt someone land heavily on top of him. Bullets stitched the air where the figure had stood only moments before and, unknown to both of them; he had just saved Delilah’s life.
Benjamin saw his sister suddenly disappear from in front of him, but before he could react, he felt a searing pain in his shoulder as a bullet ripped into his flesh. The force of the blow sent him sprawling to the ground where he landed painfully on the wound. He tried to raise his own weapon but his hand was numb and it wouldn’t obey his command.
He tried to change hands but the strap of the weapon was caught under him and he couldn’t get any leverage to move. His head began to swim as darkness threatened to pull him down. He could see the dust settling and there were three darker figures beginning to make their way toward him. He tried to move again but the movement grated against his wound and the pain swamped him before he lost consciousness.
Harris heard the explosion in the distance as he waited for the second convoy to reach him. They had taken a lot longer than he had expected, based on the speed they had been doing. They must have slowed down for some reason since passing the transport and that meant that they were now out of position. If he had heard the explosion then…
The lead jeep began to slow and Harris cursed as he saw the convoy come to a halt a few hundred yards from the ambush point. These thralls were far more cautious than the ones they had faced previously and it was really beginning to piss him off that they were not falling blind
ly into his traps. If Steele had been here he would probably have insisted on a backup plan, but Harris had been so sure that his timing was right. For a moment he froze. The thrall sitting in the back of the jeep pulled himself out of the vehicle and began to walk back toward the first truck, shouting orders as he went. Thralls suddenly spilled out from the back of the truck and the soldiers took up positions around the convoy.
Shit, Harris cursed, these guys really aren’t taking any chances. Harris’ mind went blank suddenly and his hands grew damp. What do I do? All of his recent failures flooded through his mind. I am so out of my depth. He had taken a number of blows to his confidence of late and doubt nagged at him constantly. He needed someone to bounce ideas off, someone with a cooler head who understood what it meant to wage war. It had been so easy at first. No one had died in the beginning, except for vampires and thralls. And then, even when one of their group had died, there had been others there who had helped shoulder the guilt, others who had been involved in putting the plan together. But more of his friends had died in the last few months than were left in his small group, and each of their deaths were on his shoulders alone. No one else had shared the plan; no one else shared the blame. It was all becoming too much.
He had tried hard to shut out the guilt, but every time a plan went awry the reality of their position flooded back over him. What right did he have to lead these people? They followed him because they trusted him, believed in him. But it was all a lie. He wasn’t a leader. Not when things kept going wrong. He didn’t have the strength to push his failures aside and move forward. He was plagued with doubt, and his plans, he could see now, reeked of conservatism and inexperience. He hadn’t put a backup plan in place because he had wanted his people out of sight well before the convoy appeared. There had been time, he now realised, to place some of the charges further back along the road just in case – but he hadn’t done it. And now they might all die because of him.
He heard shouting from the road and he shook himself from his thoughts. The dust had settled quickly and two of the thralls had come almost level with his position while he had been lost in thought. They had found the explosives and were already shouting a warning back to the rest of the convoy. Engines roared as the vehicles began to back away. They were really buggered if the convoy made their way back to the transport before the others were ready. If that happened, even more deaths would be on his shoulders.
Without thinking, Harris rose from behind his cover and took out the two thralls nearest him with two three-shot bursts. The thralls dropped immediately to the ground and remained still. The noise of the shots was drowned out by the roaring engines but the thrall commander saw his men fall and, suddenly, the air was thick with bullets and Harris was forced to dive for cover.
Sandra Harrington cursed as she saw the thralls stop short of the explosives. Harris had assigned the majority of the group to this assignment, but, as there was so little cover close to the road, they had been forced to deploy some distance away from the now stationary convoy. Sandra was almost a hundred yards from the road and the settling dust and the glare from the sun made it difficult to make out anything clearly.
All she knew for certain was that the convoy had stopped. She too had heard the explosion in the distance, but the distant thump hadn’t seemed loud enough for the thralls to hear over the roar of the engines. But, whatever the reason, the thralls had stopped and they were too far from the ambush to set off the explosives. This presented another problem. If they just waited to see what developed and the thralls did discover the trap then it would be too late at that point to circle behind them and cut off their retreat.
Sandra looked around at the others she could see. April crouched beside her behind a low mound that, at one time, must have been excavated earth where workmen before the war, maybe even before the energy crisis, had begun to widen the road. Quite a lot of earth had been bulldozed into small piles that ran parallel to the road for some miles, but the exercise had long been abandoned and the earth had packed hard under the sun’s relentless glare over the last few years.
The mounds offered great cover for them but they were too far from the road for them to use them for any attack. Joshua Perkins crouched behind another mound a hundred yards further back and Carlos Mendez and Al Warnback were positioned on the far side of the road in the light cover afforded by the wild grass that still dotted that side of the road. On the far side of the road there was a steep incline, again too far to be of use to them from the road. The hill did afford the grass there some shade and that area was thriving with lush growth.
Of them all, Sandra could only trust Carlos to react to this new situation. The others took orders well but had no idea how to react to a fluid situation. She sighed. She would begin to make her way south and try and move past the convoy and cut them off from behind. She could pick up Joshua as she made her way back but they would be easily overrun if Carlos and Al didn’t pull back also and add their strength to the attack. Warkowski had positioned himself high above the road with his rifle, but even with his skill, he wouldn’t be able to turn the tide against the number of thralls in this convoy.
She tapped April on the shoulder and signed for her to follow and to keep low. The young girl slipped her weapon forward, checked the slide and nodded her understanding. Sandra moved out. There was something very sad about seeing such a young girl handle such a weapon with that level of skill. Where had her childhood gone? She wondered briefly where it would all end.
The sudden shout followed by the quick three-shot bursts sent her plan the same way as the world. She had only managed to barely reach Joshua’s position when the thralls spotted her and began to spill from the middle truck firing as they ran to cover. Their fire wasn’t accurate at this distance but the sheer volume was enough to pin them where they were. There was no cover at all from where they were for at least another two hundred yards and there was no way they could get to where she needed to be with the thralls lined along both sides of the road.
The rear truck began to reverse and roll back off the road while the driver struggled with the poor grip in the undergrowth. Her heart thumped in her chest. If this patrol made it back to the others, then they wouldn’t stand a chance. She had already made her decision to come back to the rear of the convoy, but in so doing, she suddenly realised that she had left Harris on his own further down the road. Four thralls suddenly split from those lining the roadside and began to make their way carefully toward the head of the convoy where Harris was. Their progress was slowed as Harris sent numerous well-aimed bursts toward them, but, already she could see that they were splitting up and approaching his position from different directions. It wouldn’t be long before they outflanked him.
These thralls were far better trained than any others they had faced before. She was already too far away to help Harris. Besides, it was becoming increasingly difficult to make out any detail as the vehicles had begun to turn around and their frantic manoeuvres were throwing plumes of dust into the air. The other thralls continued to scan the area on both sides of the road as they protected the vehicles. The choking dust would also affect the thralls’ vision of the surrounding area, but the trucks would be turned and ready to go in the next few seconds. Once that happened, they would escape back toward the other convoy and all would be lost.
Suddenly she heard a deep boom from behind her position. The rear truck’s windshield shattered and the driver slumped over the wheel. Sandra had been hoping for a break, and Warkowski’s shot set in motion a number of freak occurrences that, for once, played into their hands.
The dead driver’s foot stayed on the accelerator and the truck continued to crawl forward. His body pulled against the wheel and the truck moved to the left toward the thralls guarding the road instead of away from them. The truck wasn’t going fast but it did move relentlessly forward and forced the thralls to shift their positions to avoid the moving vehicle. A sudden eruption of fire from behind the thralls on the other s
ide of the road caused them to lose their composure as all eyes shifted suddenly toward where the gunfire originated.
Sandra didn’t stop to think about the hundred yards that separated her from the thralls. She grinned as she heard Joshua mutter “Crazy bitch,” and then she was up and running toward the trucks. She didn’t worry that the other two would follow; they all knew that each of them had to watch the others’ backs. She felt exhilarated, her heart pounding in her chest as she ran blindly toward the thralls. The dust obscured most of the road but she could still see vague shapes moving about as thralls shifted positions to avoid the errant truck.
She was very exposed where she was, but she prayed that the thralls didn’t look in her direction for just another few moments. Even with the dust cover they couldn’t fail to see her running toward them. She suppressed the urge to fire; any bullets that she fired while running might as well be ejected unfired for all the good they would do anyway. Carlos and Al were still keeping the thralls busy on the other side but there were only two of them and there were a lot of thralls.
The truck finally came to a shuddering halt and the engine coughed and died. The thralls, seeing that their companions had things covered on the far side of the road, turned their attention back toward her. She was still too far away to see clearly through the dust but she dropped to one knee immediately and began to pour carefully spaced fire toward those shapes she could see. She hit the first thrall in the chest and he was flung back out of sight. The second moved quickly and she only managed to wing him before he rolled away and disappeared into the gloom. The first thrall she had hit had already pulled himself back to his feet and was bringing his weapon to bear on her again. The buggers were really hard to kill with their vampire-enhanced healing and they really had to be hit hard if you wanted them out of the fight.