I frowned. “Paperwork has been a mess since The Event, and it’s easy to slip into units behind the scenes. Another example of the advantage the Coalition has over us.” I looked at Infinity. “Let’s go tell the major.”
“Wait,” she said. “That was my first inclination. But then why didn’t they just blow up the train? I think they may be trying to capture it whole.”
“That would be quite a feat with all the U.S. troops we have on it.”
“Think about it. All they have to do is block or destroy the track ahead of us, then lay in ambush for us. And if they have some of their own troops mixed in with ours, it’s that much easier. We won’t know if the person right next to us is an enemy or not.”
She was right. Trains were the fastest way to move large amounts of material, but they were also easy to ambush.
“In any case, we need to tell the major,” I said. “I know if I were in charge, I’d want to know.”
She agreed, and we walked back to the officers’ car, where Major Benson was going through paperwork. After she cleared the compartment, Infinity told her what she had seen and we shared our suspicions.
“Normally I would say that’s some mighty big concerns based on such flimsy evidence,” she said. “But we have known about Colonel Wiseman—the one they call Apollyon—for a while. Ex-history teacher turned traitor. And I knew he had a son who is now a captain.” She looked at me. “And you know him, eh?”
Infinity nodded, perhaps a little too self-consciously.
“Major, you need to know something,” I said finally, realizing that she was becoming suspicious of Infinity through association. “This is Infinity Richards, daughter of—.”
“So you’re The Secretary’s daughter?” she said. “Now I understand why the Agent was sweating back there when he left you behind.” She smiled.
“OK, so what do we do about this Damien fellow?” Back to ToC
27. AMBUSH
INFINITY: EASTERN NEW MEXICO: DAY 1586
Major Benson had a handful of soldiers and officers that she had known for years and trusted implicitly. After she had called them into the officers’ car and briefed them on her suspicions, it was all agreed that the best course of action was to allow the ambush to happen and yet be prepared. The twenty or so men and I were scattered through the passenger cars, fully aware that we might be sitting next to an enemy, and armed to the teeth and ready to fight.
The ambush happened in the high desert east of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The train was weaving its way through the mountains in the early morning hours when it came to a stop. I looked at Evangelist, who sat several rows across from me, and we shared a look of concern. It was time.
We sat there for a long while, perhaps fifteen minutes, without anyone saying anything. Finally, I felt the train shudder and the engines shut off. A moment later, one of the railroad engineers came through the compartment.
“We’ve had an avalanche outside one of the tunnels ahead,” he announced. “It’s going to take an hour or two to clear it. If you want to stretch your legs, now would be a good time.”
I saw most of the soldiers stand and slowly make their way to the doors, but one or two were curled up with eyes closed. A sergeant that I recognized from the major’s select group came through and roused them awake.
“Hey,” he said. “Get up and get outside. Major’s orders. Get some fresh air while you can.”
“Sir, it’s cold out there,” one complained.
“Did I ask for your opinion? Up and at ‘em.” I rose and followed the rest of them out of the doors and into an open place on the north side of the tracks.
It was cold, even though it was August. We were at a high elevation, and I could see the stars clearly above me. Several hundred soldiers stood beside the track, stretching, griping and talking in the darkness. Suddenly they heard the ratcheting sound of a heavy machine gun being cocked.
“OK, hands up!” they heard shouted out of the darkness. “Drop your weapons.”
The men looked around them as if it were some joke. One of them, the sergeant I had seen before, started to step forward, and a bullet rang out. Several soldiers stepped forward, guns in hand. Most had not carried their weapons into the passenger compartment, with the exceptions of the officers, who were required to carry a firearm at all times. But about a dozen soldiers stepped forward fully armed. And I recognized one of them who was leading them. It was Damien.
“We have two 50-caliber machine guns pointed at you right now,” he said, a commanding voice coming from him that was different than I remembered. “It will take just seconds to kill you all. So don’t play the hero. You can die, or you can be good little boys and girls and do what we say, and no one gets hurt.”
In the dark, I saw the Coalition forces separate themselves from everyone else, choosing to stand on a rise of ground about 20 feet from the rest.
“Gather all of the officers and put them over here,” Damien said. “Where’s Major Benson?”
“Right here,” I heard above and behind me. I glanced over my shoulder to see a line of 20 soldiers on top of the train. Major Benson and the others aimed automatic weapons at Damien and his group. Before anyone could say anything else, someone started shooting. And then everyone was shooting.
I fell to the ground, just like everyone else, trying desperately to become invisible in the dark. Spark suppressors off, the machine guns on both sides spit out fire in the darkness. Within two minutes, everyone that had been standing on the hillside was dead or dying.
“Sergeant!” Major Benson yelled from the rooftop. “Check them.”
“Yes sir,” I heard the man next to me respond. The sergeant jumped up and went to check the soldiers who were lying on the ground. I saw Evangelist come down from the rooftop and go to look at the crowd. I realized that I was the only one who would recognize Damien, so I got up too. I joined Evangelist and the sergeant as they rolled dead bodies over and shone a flashlight in their faces.
“Do you see him?” Evangelist asked as Major Benson joined us.
“No.” I shook my head. “Why weren’t there more forces here?”
“We were two hours ahead of schedule,” Major Benson said. “When we stopped, I guess this Damien fellow decided he could take us all by himself.”
“So where is he?” I asked. In response, I heard a familiar sound, the high-pitched whine of my Kawasaki. We all looked at each other and turned to see a headlight come on on one of the flatcars. A few seconds later, I heard him roar off to the north.
“If he gets word back to the Coalition, they won’t try to capture the train,” Evangelist said. “They will send an air strike to destroy it.”
“That tunnel is still blocked,” Major Benson said. “We’ll have to go back about 30 miles and go around it.”
“Moving is better than sitting,” Evangelist said. “You stay here and you’ll have company soon.”
“What about Damien?” I asked.
“I’ll get him,” Evangelist said.
“Me too,” I volunteered. “That’s my bike he’s riding.”
It took us about 15 minutes to unload two dirt bikes from the flatcar and gas them up. Damien had headed off to the north, a direction that offered only lots of flat desert. His bike offered the only lights on the horizon, so neither of us doubted our ability to follow him. Evangelist’s concern was whether we would catch him before he either joined up with Coalition forces or found a radio.
We took off as fast as we could, following a dirt path that wound down the hillside into the flat desert. As the train disappeared from our sight, I heard it blast once with its whistle, and realized that I would probably never see it again, unless we met in Camp Zion.
The sun began rising about an hour later. Once again, Evangelist didn’t worry about my ability to follow. But this time I was on a bike, and my confidence had grown. I was determined to prove to him that I was better on a bike than he was.
The train had equipped us with our c
hoices of weapons. Evangelist chose a sniper scoped high-powered rifle and a machine pistol. I chose a wicked-looking polyfiber compound crossbow and two automatic pistols. Both of us put on Kevlar vests. I had had a chance to see how Damien was dressed before the train was stopped. He wore no armor that I could tell, and his only weapon was a sidearm and his AR-15 automatic rifle.
By the time the sun was done rising in the east, Damien was about a mile ahead of us. I knew that I hadn’t taken the time to fill up the tanks of the Kawasaki, so I knew that eventually he would run out of gas. Sure enough, we began gaining on him, and I could see that he was off the bike. We got closer and suddenly rifle fire began coming our direction. At first, it was nowhere near us. But then a bullet zinged by, and then another.
“Enough of this,” Evangelist said. “Get off your bike.”
We stopped our bikes and Evangelist pulled his sharpshooter rifle from its sling.
“You get one chance to surrender, Damien,” he shouted.
“Up yours,” Damien shouted back, kneeling behind his motorcycle.
“Suit yourself,” Evangelist said. He used the bike as a brace and took aim on Damien, 200 yards ahead of us. He paused and then squeezed the trigger.
I heard the high-powered rifle cough, then watched Damien’s form fall to the ground behind the motorcycle. We got on our bikes and rode over to him. I was cautious as we approached, wondering if he was waiting for us to get closer to get a better shot. But when we arrived, I saw that my concerns were unfounded. The bullet had cleanly entered his forehead, but was not so clean in exiting. The back of his skull was missing.
“Shame,” Evangelist said quietly. “He was just a kid.”
“He was an idiot,” I spat back, suddenly angry. “An idiot and a spoiled brat who should have left good enough alone. He got what he deserved.”
Evangelist looked at me strangely. “It’s not about getting what we deserve,” he said, an edge coming into his voice. “It’s the path we choose, and our determination to stay on that path. None of us deserves to be saved.” He took a rag from his shirt pocket and dropped over Damien’s face.
“But if we choose the right path, it just might happen.”
We stood there looking at Damien’s corpse for another long minute, then Evangelist stepped away.
“Come on,” he said. “We have a train to catch.”
We had just straddled our bikes and were ready to kick them into action when Evangelist held up his hand. I paused and listened.
A whooshing sound came from behind us. As we stood there, a dozen Raptor drones flew over, headed in the direction of where we’d last seen the train.
“The train is lost!” I gasped.
Evangelist shook his head. “Not necessarily. Let’s ride up to that ridge and watch what happens.”
I started Kawasaki and followed Evangelist up the slow incline to a ridge that was ahead of us. When we got to the top, I saw that it overlooked a broad valley that opened up into a plain headed west. There in the middle of the valley I saw our train, still chugging forward. Around it, circling like buzzards, were the swarm of Raptor drones. I watched as one swirled in, apparently ready for the kill.
“Watch this,” Evangelist said.
Tracers lit up the morning sky as gun emplacements on the top of the train stitched across the blue in pursuit of the Raptor. It weaved and bobbed around the bullets, but suddenly it paused, stopped in mid air as if it had forgotten something. A half a second later, 50 caliber bullets ripped across it, and the flying robot became a ball of fire.
“What happened?” I asked.
“One of the armories had half a dozen RF signal disruptors,” he said, a grin on his face. “It wasn’t public knowledge, and you can imagine why, but we spaced them out on the train. Robots depend on radio messages from command, wherever that is. But the disruptors made the robots stupid.”
As he spoke, I watched the train and the drones, and saw a second, and then a third, fly too close to the train and drop like they had been shot down. Before they hit the ground, the gun emplacements ripped them to pieces.
“Wow,” was all I could say.
“Yeah, it’ll buy us some time, but eventually the Coalition’s going to get wise to what we’re doing. We just hope we’re far enough west that our own forces can protect us at that point.”
By this time, the train had almost made it to the other side of the valley. It looked like a black caterpillar inching away, with moths still fluttering high above it. As I watched, dots of flame appeared on the other side of the valley, followed by explosions on either side of the track.
Evangelist pulled up his sharpshooter’s rifle and looked through the scope. He sighed audibly.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” he said. “Tanks.”
I quickly dug out my trusty opera glasses and looked where he pointed. A line of tanks stood on the ridge to the north of the tracks. As I watched, fire erupted from several of the cannons on the tanks. At first, their shots missed the train and the track completely. And I held my breath, hoping that the train would make it over the ridge to the west and out of their range.
“Come on,” I breathed. “Make it. Make it!”
Suddenly there was a flash of light that erupted from the middle of the train. As we watched, the flash traveled down the length of the train in both directions. Two seconds later, the sound made it across the valley floor, and a giant boom hit our ears.
“They got the ammo we were carrying,” Evangelist said.
We watched as the explosions continued, the booming echoing across the valley floor. After five minutes of continuous explosions, it was obvious to both of us that no one and nothing could have survived the blasts.
I looked at Evangelist, but not because I expected him to bark out an order. After two years on my own, I was used to acting alone, and my mind was already turning. Suddenly I spoke.
“We need to split up,” I said to him. “The Coalition is going to be coming after us now. They want Father to be isolated, demoralized and without ammunition. Then they will strike. One of us has to get through.”
Evangelist stared at me, then nodded grimly. “With General Despair and his First Army between us and your Father, it’s not likely either one of us will get through. But if we split up, there’s a chance. I’ll follow the train tracks straight west. You cut northwest toward the town they call Vanity Fair, then across the Megiddo Valley. When you hit the mountains, your Father’s forces will find you.”
I stared at Evangelist, and he looked back at me. Once again we were separating, but this time we both agreed it was the thing to do.
“There’s so much that needs to be said,” he said. “My job has gotten in the way too long.”
“You’ve kept me alive, you’ve taught me how to survive, you’ve rescued me time and time again,” I said, looking at him. “I’ll never be able to—.”
My words were interrupted as he leaned forward on his bike and kissed me. I didn’t expect it, especially after the way he’d responded in St. Louis. But that was two years ago, and the world that we’d left behind was less and less of a memory.
He started to break off from the kiss, but I held onto him, knowing it very likely would be the last time I saw him. His lips tasted of desert dust, but I didn’t mind. Mine probably did too. After a long moment, I let him go.
“Stay alive,” he said, looking into my eyes. Then he kick started his bike and rode down the ridge and toward the black smoke coming from the destroyed train. Back to ToC
28. SECOND CHANCES
MACK HAWLEY: DAY 1590: LAS VEGAS/VANITY FAIR
I’m a firm believer in second chances. I wear a St. Patrick medal around my neck. I’m not Irish, but he is the patron saint of second chances. And I’ve had a passel of them, as well as needed them. Reba used to say that I made more mistakes than any man she knew that was still alive. My saving grace was that Someone Up There saw fit to give me a second chance to correct those mistakes.
I also believe in karma. I believe that what goes around comes around. If you lose five bucks today, chances are tomorrow you’ll find ten. If you get short shrifted today, chances are you something good will happen to you tomorrow. And be careful about treating people mean, because sure as the universe is round, someone’s going to treat you the same way before long.
And so I had karma in the back of my mind when I decided to turn all that pretty loot in that Missouri armory over to the National Guard. I knew that if I took it, some claymore would go off by accident and blow off my knee or I would end up falling down that elevator shaft. As it was, karma came through again. They gave me a brand new Humvee, loaded it up with gasoline and stocked it with stuff they didn’t need, such as typewriters, ballpoint pens, bottles of water, boxes of vitamins and freeze dried food. I knew that I could turn that unneeded but valuable stuff into cold hard caps. And so I did what any other enterprising young American would do. I loaded up my dog Hopeful and the two of us headed west to Las Vegas.
I knew Las Vegas from 12 years ago when Reba and I flew there to get married. We spend a week there and had a ball. Course, I didn’t see much of the town on account of it being our honeymoon and such. But I still had fond memories of the place.
Problem was, when I got to the city limits, my memories didn’t fit what I was seeing. I remembered the sign that read in big neon letters, “Welcome to Las Vegas.” What I saw was a sign where Las had been ripped out and the V in Vegas started a new name. It now read: “Welcome to Vanity Fair.”
I sat on the roadside and stared at the sign for a long time before deciding that yes, I had come to the right place. For a city out in the middle of the desert, in a country that had little, if any, auto or air transport, Vanity Fair was a bustling town. As I sat on the roadside, wagons full of people, bicycles and men on horseback traveled past me. In addition, there still was an occasional car that came by, mostly with grey-uniformed Coalition troops inside.
But when I drove into Vanity Fair, it still looked like how I remembered Las Vegas. There were still neon lights in the city, not a lot, but enough to dazzle the hayseeds who came to lose their shirts in the casinos that lined the avenue. I figured that Boulder Dam was still putting out enough juice that Las Vegas—excuse me, Vanity Fair—could keep its neon sheen.
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