Thunder and Ashes

by Z. A. Recht

  “Hell yes,” Sherman agreed. “Only a couple more left, now. Same drill. Take ‘em down.”

  Wes put his eye to the scope and was about to fire again when Sheriff Keaton’s voice rang out in the street below.

  “Hello, the towers!” Keaton yelled. “I’ve brought back some old friends! Think you could give me a hand with them?”

  Sherman and Wes turned as one to see Keaton striding boldly back toward the main gates. Not more than twenty feet behind him were the four remaining shamblers that had managed to wander off into town. The Sheriff seemed unconcerned with their presence, even though their arms were stretched out toward him and their disturbing moans were incessant.

  “Well, that’s one way to lead a horse to water,” Sherman said, grinning. “Why didn’t you just finish them yourself, Keaton?”

  The sheriff held up his empty rifle one-handed and grinned. “Stupid me—forgot to bring along extra ammo. Not that it mattered. These smelly bastards haven’t stopped following me once I caught up with them. They’re like retarded dogs, or something.”

  “Walk ‘em over to the towers,” Sherman said. “I’ll toss you my pistol.”

  Behind Sherman, Deputy Willis fired, and across the field another shambler fell. “Thanks for the shooting tips, Sherman. I’m really starting to get the hang of this thing, now.”

  Keaton moved over to the guard tower Sherman occupied, taking care to avoid the puddles of infected blood and decaying bodies of shamblers that littered the area. When he was close enough, Sherman threw down his pistol. Keaton caught it deftly, one-handed, and checked the chamber. He turned to face his macabre followers, flicked the safety off, and dispatched all four, one after the other, in quick succession. Keaton flicked the safety back on, turned, and threw the pistol back up to Sherman, who caught and holstered the weapon.

  “That’s that,” Keaton said, grinning. “Takes care of the infected problem. Any word from the rear line?”

  Sherman started to reply, but held off a moment as Wes took another shot at a distant shambler. When the blast from the shot had faded, Sherman spoke up.

  “Just got a radio report in,” Sherman said. “They held off an attack by the raiders. The infected were a diversion, like we thought.”

  “Well, hell yes,” Keaton said, his smile widening. “Did any get away?”

  “They think a few might have bugged out before the fighting ended,” Sherman said. “They took two prisoners, though. They’re bringing them to the clinic to be treated for their wounds, then taking them over to your station.”

  Keaton nodded to himself, folding his arms across his chest. All around him was death, destruction, and chaos, but the adrenaline of battle was already fading from his head. The people of Abraham—with a little help from their visitors—had won the day and saved their town.

  There was only one part of victory that left a sour taste in Keaton’s mouth.

  The cleanup would be a bitch.

  I-74 West

  March 08, 2007

  1452 hrs_

  “SAWYER?” MATT ASKED, A quizzical expression crossing his face. “Who the hell is Sawyer?”

  “I told you we should have told them,” Mason said, shooting a recriminating glance in Anna’s direction.

  “I didn’t think they’d catch up to us this fast!” Anna protested. “We just left a day ago! How the hell could they have figured out where we’d be so quickly?”

  “That’s not the point—” Mason started, then shook his head. It was no use arguing about it now.

  The black Land Rover that was tailing them had picked up speed quickly once Mason had spotted it. Whoever was sitting in the passenger seat must have also had a pair of binoculars focused on the truck, and seen Mason scope them out. With their cover blown, the occupants of the SUV were going for broke. They had closed half the distance with the truck already, and were still gaining.

  Mason slapped a hand on the window that led to the truck’s cab. A moment later, Juni pushed it open, eyebrows raised.

  “Tell Trev we’ve got company—the bad kind. He might want to step on it,” Mason said, pulling his MP-5 from around his shoulders and checking the chamber. He’d reholstered his pistol. Something told him he might need both in the upcoming tiff.

  “I heard you,” came Trev’s voice through the open window. “And I’ve been looking for an excuse to do just that for a while now. Hold on to your butts.”

  The pickup accelerated sharply, throwing Mason and Julie off-balance. They stumbled, but recovered quickly. The distance between the truck and Land Rover grew for only a moment. The hostile driver picked up on the difference and slammed on his own accelerator. The more-powerful SUV once more began to close. It was around two hundred yards away, and gaining quickly.

  “Step on it, Trev!” Mason yelled over his shoulder.

  “I am stepping on it!” came back the irate reply. “This is about as fast as this bucket can go without adding some damn jet fuel to the tank!”

  “Then we’re in for a clusterfuck,” Mason murmured, locking and loading the MP-5. “They won’t try anything too rash, though.”

  “Doesn’t look that way to me,” said an anxious Matt, peering over the edge of the tailgate with his rifle next to him. “Looks like they’re planning on running us down!”

  “Not as long as we have Doctor Demilio with us,” Mason said, allowing himself a quick grin. “They won’t try and wreck us. They’ll want her alive. They’ll try and stop us so they can take her.”

  “Who the hell are these people?” Junko asked, sticking her head out the back window of the cab.

  “I’ll explain later!” Mason shouted over his shoulder. “Get back in there and buckle up!”

  The Land Rover was close enough now that Mason could see through the windshield to the occupants within. Neither of the men sitting in the front seat was Sawyer; that was enough for him to breathe a mental sigh of relief. Sawyer wouldn’t have stopped at anything, but maybe, if they put up enough of a fight, these cronies would.

  Even as he spoke, red and blue flashing lights lit up in the grille of the Land Rover and the passenger side window rolled down.

  “What are they, cops?” Matt asked, eyes widening at the sight of the lights.

  “Not cops,” Mason said, shouldering his sub-machinegun. “NSA, probably, or FBI or CIA, depending on who’s left.”

  “And what, do they think we’re going to pull over for them?” Matt pressed. Even as he spoke, the Land Rover activated a wailing siren, pulling in directly behind the beat-up pickup truck.

  “Well, we are speeding,” Anna said wryly.

  The passenger in the Land Rover leaned out the open window, buffeted by the wind. His eyes squinted against the gale as he grimaced and gestured at the occupants of the pickup, forcefully pointing to the side of the road.

  “Hot damn,” Mason said, chuckling. “They really do want us to pull over. Well, it’s not going to be that easy, guys.”

  Mason raised himself up to a kneeling position, tucked the MP-5 in close to his shoulder, and took aim at the road between the two vehicles. He squeezed the trigger over and over, sending rounds skipping off the pavement mere inches from the Land Rover’s front tires. The response from the men in the vehicle was immediate. The SUV lurched to the side and braked, throwing off Mason’s aim. The man in the passenger seat disappeared inside, reappearing a moment later with a sub-machinegun of his own.

  “Down, down!” Mason shouted.

  His voice was nearly drowned out by the rapid fire of the enemy agent’s weapon. Bullets skittered off the back of the pickup truck, and the occupants dove for cover. Only Mason remained upright, kneeling at the rear of the bed. He had been trying to disable their vehicle so they could put some distance between themselves and their pursuers, but if they wanted to play hard, Mason was willing to oblige them. He shifted his aim up from the road to the windshield, flicked the selector to three round burst, and pulled the trigger.

  The weapon belched
rapid fire and three craters appeared in the Land Rover’s windshield, spiderlike cracks running away from each in every direction. The Land Rover bucked and lurched once more, but righted itself after a moment. Mason didn’t give the men inside any more time to recover. He pulled the trigger again, and another spray of shattered glass and hot lead flew up from the Land Rover’s windshield. He was trying for the driver.

  Return fire came at them then, this time full-auto. Mason heard one of the women cry out behind him, but didn’t allow it to distract him. He was in combat mode now. Nothing could shift his attention from his target. He squeezed the trigger twice more, and this time, the results were immediate. Two of the six rounds kicked up paint and steel from the Land Rover’s hood, and the remaining four stitched upward across the driver’s side of the windshield. Mason could see blood spattering the splintered glass from the inside. He’d scored a hit.

  The Land Rover shuddered, lost speed, and careened off the side of the road, hitting the shoulder doing sixty miles per hour. It tipped up on its side with the passenger still firing his weapon full-auto at the truck, and, much to the surprise of Mason, continued to move on its two left wheels, balanced precariously on the edge of the road.

  Then someone inside must have shifted—perhaps the wounded driver—because the vehicle suddenly lost its center of balance, tipping the remainder of the way over. It crashed into the median upside-down, glass shattering out of all the windows, and rolled several times before coming to a shaky stop on its side, smoke drifting up from the damaged engine block.

  “That got him!” Mason said, pumping a fist in the air in triumph. “Wasn’t Sawyer, though—it was just a couple of his buddies. We’ll have to figure on them having radioed our position, so we’ll—”

  His voice drifted off as he turned away from the Land Rover and saw the scene in the truckbed. Matt and Anna were on either side of Julie, expressions of panic and horror on their faces.

  “Keep pressure here,” Anna said, grabbing Matt’s hand and pressing it down firmly on Julie’s shoulder. “We need to stop the bleeding!”

  “What happened?” Mason asked, dropping the MP-5 and moving over next to the rest. When he saw Julie’s condition, he sucked in a sudden breath.

  The journalist lay on her back in the truckbed, eyes wide with fear and pain. Sweat ran down her face as she gritted her teeth. Dark red blood soaked through her shirt in two places: one wound in the shoulder, the other high on her abdomen, just on her right side. Anna was working furiously, trying to call back the lessons she’d learned in practical medicine before she’d delved into her specialties.

  “Jesus Christ,” she cursed, voice trembling. “I don’t know what to do!”

  Mason eyed the wounds. The shoulder wasn’t bad. From the amount of blood pooling on the truckbed, he knew it had been a clean in-and-out shot—a survivable hit. The other, however, caused him to swallow hard.

  Anna cut away the bottom half of Julie’s shirt, exposing the bullet wound in her abdomen. Dark blood ran out of the wound in a steady stream, flowing down Julie’s side and dripping onto the bed of the truck.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Anna repeated, wiping a hand across her forehead. “I think she’s been hit in the liver. Don’t just stand there, help me!”

  “What do you want me to do?” Mason asked.

  “I don’t have any tools, I don’t have any supplies, I don’t know!” Anna yelled, clasping her hands behind her head. She clenched her eyes shut and ground her teeth together. “I just don’t know.”

  “It’s—it’s—nothing to worry about,” Julie said, gasping for breath. She managed a half-smile. “I’ve—I’ve never been—shot before.”

  Matt, still holding his hand down hard on Julie’s shoulder wound, tried to grin, but failed. “I’ve never been shot before, either.”

  “Just keep her talking,” Mason whispered in Anna’s ear. “I’ve seen these kinds of wounds before. You’d need a hospital and a surgeon to treat them.”

  Anna looked back at Mason with a horrified expression on her face. She dropped her voice to a whisper and leaned over to him.

  “What are you saying, that we do nothing? Just wait and hope she gets better?”

  Mason stared hard at the doctor, then shook his head slowly. “No, Doc. I’m saying that Julie is dying.”

  “Well, fuck that!” Anna shouted, startling everyone, including Julie. “There has to be something I can do, some kind of—maybe I have some drugs in my bag from the safe-house or maybe we can sterilize one of your knives, Mason—we can get this fixed and—”

  “Don’t—don’t bother,” Julie said, looking up at Anna. “It’s funny—it doesn’t even hurt. Don’t bother.”

  “Don’t goddamn tell me not to bother,” Anna said, still dumping her bags and furiously rooting through the contents for anything that might help. “I can’t just sit back and watch you—”

  Anna cut herself off with a shake of her head.

  Julie managed her weak half-smile again and held out a bloody hand toward Anna. “What—watch me—what? Die? Like I—like I said, don’t bother. Doesn’t even hurt.”

  Mason laid a hand on Julie’s unharmed shoulder. “Just relax, Julie, we’re going to do what we can for you.”

  Julie tried to chuckle, but ended up coughing instead. Matt swallowed and looked away, hand still clamped firmly over Julie’s shoulder wound. Anna came up with a syringe and a bottle of narcotics, and worked feverishly to load a dose.

  Julie’s bloodied arm tapped weakly at Anna’s leg. “Give it—give it a rest, Doc.”

  “Shut up,” Anna snapped, testing the needle’s flow and quickly injecting the contents into Julie’s outstretched arm. Within moments, Julie’s panicked, pained expression eased somewhat as the painkillers took hold. She looked dreamy and almost content.

  “I was—I was wrong,” she said, still smiling. “I—I guess it did hurt before, but now—now it doesn’t. Guess I shouldn’t—shouldn’t have tried to stop you, Doc.”

  Julie laid her head back and let out a long sigh, staring up at the sky.

  “Damn straight,” Anna said, rooting through Mason’s pack for any medical supplies he might be carrying. She came up with gauze bandages and some surgical tape. “Next we’re going to get this bleeding stopped, and once I find a couple proper tools we’re going to get you all fixed up.”

  “Doc,” Mason said, trying to interrupt Anna. The doctor was having none of it.

  “Then we’ll pull over and do a little surgery. I hope you trust me to try it, Julie, because the last surgery I did was in medical school,” Anna rambled, pulling together her meager pile of supplies. “But it can’t be too tricky. I’ll get that bullet out, and we’ll hole up for a bit while you heal—”

  “Doc,” Mason repeated, this time louder.

  Anna glared at him.

  “Doc, she’s gone,” Mason said gently, looking down at Julie.

  The journalist lay still, eyes open, rocking gently from side to side with the motion of the truck.

  Julie Ortiz was dead.

  Anna stopped her frantic search, stared for a moment at Julie’s peaceful expression, and fell back against the side of the truck, dropping her face into her hands. Matt slowly released his hold on Julie’s shoulder. The blood had stopped flowing. The young man looked at his hands, covered in the journalist’s blood, and swallowed hard. Mason turned away from the scene entirely, facing the tailgate, knees pulled up against his chest. He managed to hold himself in check for a few seconds before he lost his control.

  “God damn it!” he screamed, reeling back and throwing a powerful punch at the steel tailgate. The whole back end of the truck vibrated with the impact, and when Mason withdrew his arm, his knuckles were scored and bleeding.

  He didn’t even notice.

  1734 hrs_

  Trev had pulled the truck off the interstate two exits past the site of their engagement with the Land Rover. He’d chosen that particular exit because it connected the intersta
te with a rural road, without a town in either direction for miles. He drove until he found a wide gravel shoulder next to an open field and pulled off. Dust billowed up around the truck’s wheels as he braked to a stop, shifting into park and turning off the engine.

  The occupants of the vehicle were unnaturally silent. Even Matt and Junko, whom Trev knew loved to argue back and forth, were subdued and withdrawn. They had all seen friends and acquiantances killed in the pandemic, but those people had been felled by the Morningstar strain.

  This was the first time any of them, save Mason, had actually seen a person killed by another uninfected person.

  Julie lay in the truckbed, covered in a thin woolen blanket, the one she had been using as her bedroll on the long trek west. When Trev offered to help carry her, Mason and Anna glared at him, silently refusing the offer. They lifted the journalist’s body between them and carried her over to the field, laying her down gently in the grass.

  For a moment, the remaining five were silent, looking down at the blanket-covered body. Trev removed his baseball cap and held it over his heart.

  Mason broke the silence after a full minute. “Do we have a shovel?”

  Trev shook his head. “No. No, we don’t. There might be a spade in the toolbox in the back, and that’s about it.”

  Mason nodded silently, turned on his heels and strode back to the pickup truck. He rooted around in the bed, and came up with a small, handheld garden spade. Without saying a word, he fell to his knees next to Julie’s body and began to dig, one tiny spadeful at a time.

  Trev opened his mouth, intending to say that they would waste too much time trying to dig a grave without proper tools, then decided against it, snapping his mouth shut again. Instead, he reached down to his boot and pulled free a long hunting knife that he’d sharpened to a razor’s edge, knelt beside Mason, and began stabbing at the dirt, loosening it and scooping it out with his free hand.

  Mason looked over at Trev and managed an emotionless smile, a silent thank-you.