“Alright,” was all Jesse said before he started switching channels on the radio and making calls to the teams on their individual radio networks. I leaned heavily against the side of the stairwell. My head hurt and I was so tired, maybe if I just closed my eyes for a moment then it would make things seem better…
SIX
I awoke to my shoulder being shaken roughly. “Get up, man!” Jessed yelled. “We gotta go!”
“Wha? Huh?” I mumbled as I came to. I looked around and realized that it was well into dusk and full nightfall was probably less than thirty minutes away. Jesse pulled on my jacket sleeve and I felt my weight shift as he began to drag me out of the stairwell.
“Hold on!” I whispered harshly. “I’m awake. What the fuck is going on?”
“Once it started getting dark, the fuckers came out of hiding all over the city. The radio was going crazy with all the chatter as everyone came up to the command frequency to talk and ask for reinforcements. I saw a couple of those dudes sneaking around, so I had to turn our radios off. Sam came up here and told me that she saw a couple of them behind us as well.”
The massive amounts of gunfire in the distance combined with Jesse’s words and the realization that Springfield really was a trap hit me fully. I was done with this place. I switched on my radio and turned the volume as low as it would go. “This is Chuck,” I whispered into the microphone. “Everyone fall back to the trucks. This place is nothing but a trap, we need to regroup at the trucks and figure out what we’re going to do.”
“That’s cute, Chuck,” a voice I recognized drifted out of the speaker. “Don’t worry about your trucks on the south side of town at the highway split, we’ve already confiscated those. You’re going to die and pay for what you’ve done to this town—and for past transgressions. I’ll hunt you down until the day that you die. Do you hear me?”
Fuck. I switched off my radio and said to Jesse, “Looks like they’ve gotten one of our radios and Jillian is with them.”
“That bitch. We rehearsed how to keep from putting out secret information on the net… Do you think the others heard and will bypass the trucks and retreat back to Virden?”
“No idea,” I mumbled. “Let’s go back and pick up Nick and that other guy. Then we’ll get back to our truck and hightail it outta here,” I said as I grasped the handrail and pulled myself upright.
“Well now you’ve fucked up haven’t you, Chuck?” Allan’s crony admonished as he walked out of the dark. “This whole show has been a fuck up from the start. Now you’re abandoning the campaign before any of the objectives have been met. Allan’s going to hear every bit of this and I hope he executes you and rapes your wife before he kills her.”
“Are you fucking stupid?” I asked him. I gestured back towards the downtown and said, “The enemy is that way man. Not here.”
“All I see is an enemy of Allan…” The small alcove lit up as bright as day for half of a second as flame belched out of the muzzle of Sam’s pistol. Allan’s man dropped like a stone and the remnants of his brain painted the side of the building.
“Man, I hated that guy,” was all she said and re-holstered her weapon.
I glanced at her and wondered just what the hell was going on in her mind. I hoped that her experience with the rape hadn’t permanently messed her up. I nodded slowly and said, “Okay then, problem taken care of. Thanks.”
We shuffled our way back towards the blue Victorian and I started to walk down the alley but Jesse put a hand across my chest to stop me. “Nick! Nick, it’s Jesse, we’re coming down the alley, okay?” he called softly into the shadows.
Nick emerged from behind a bush with his rifle pointing at us and then he lowered it when he realized that it was us. “Fuck, where have you guys been? It’s been over an hour! Shit’s goin’ down, we gotta get outta town man,” he said so quickly that I almost didn’t understand him.
“We’re going to go back to the trucks; maybe they didn’t really take them like that bitch said. I told everyone to retreat back to our assembly area and we’ll talk through what we’re going to do once we get there,” I said as I held up both hands in a gesture of pacification. “How’s our friend? Can he make the trip back to our truck?”
“I think so. Hell, otherwise we just leave him and we can’t do that,” Nick said. He turned to the side and reentered the bush. After a couple of seconds of movement and hushed voices he emerged with the squad member.
I rushed over and put one of the man’s arms around my shoulders and the three of us walked as quickly as we could towards the street. “I never got your name, soldier,” I said in an effort to mimic the tough army sergeants I’d seen in so many war movies.
“It’s Robert, man,” he said.
I stumbled and looked over at him. With our ever-changing wardrobe and mask configurations, I’d failed to realize that it was my original pal from the gathering squad. When I’d been put in charge of the security for the gatherers, he stayed with the main group. “Holy shit, Robert! It’s me, Chuck Broussard,” I said as I reached across and patted his chest with the hand that wasn’t supporting him.
“Chuck? Wow, man, I heard that you were the one in charge of this entire goat screw,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “We got the order to come over here and we planned as best we could. We had no idea that they’d set up all of these traps and explosives. We’re gonna get you out of here though, alright?” I promised with renewed determination to get him back to the security of our town.
“Alright man, sure. I just want to see my wife and kids again, this…” he was cut off by a very large explosion from what sounded like the next block over to our west and we threw ourselves to the ground.
“Fuck! If I were a betting man, I’d say that the group on Fifth Street just got wiped out,” Jesse said.
“Alright, let’s go!” I said louder than I meant to.
“Hey man, I saw this shit in Fallujah, over in Iraq. Stay in the center of the road,” Jesse replied to my order to get moving. “You lose the cover of the buildings, but since some of them are rigged to blow, it’s actually safer in the street than right beside one.” We veered drunkenly off the sidewalk to the road in response to his advice.
“Great, we’re getting shot at and Jesse’s having Vietnam flashbacks or something.” Sam could always be counted on for some type of smart-aleck remark.
It took a little while with Robert in tow, but we made it back to the SUV unharmed. It was fully dark now as Nick depressed the automatic lock button on the truck’s key fob. The headlights flickered on and illuminated a small group of ragged children sneaking along the burned out shell of the building where we’d parked. They froze for half a second and then scattered.
“Shit,” Jesse said flatly. “We gotta go!”
We physically threw Robert into the back seat and scrambled around to our respective seats in the truck. Nick revved up the engine and backed out quickly. A couple of rounds impacted into my side of the truck from the building where the kids had gone as he fishtailed out of the parking lot. He gunned the engine and the truck swerved so violently that the rear end began to slide around, but Nick expertly corrected it and brought the vehicle back into line.
“I learned how to drive in this shit long before there was a nuclear winter,” he said proudly as Jesse slapped him on the shoulder in appreciation of his driving skills.
We raced through the streets as fast as the debris on the road would allow. We’d gone about a mile, maybe a mile-and-a-half, when gunfire erupted from behind a low wall to our left. Nick and Jesse’s windows were shattered and bullets riddled the side of the truck.
To his credit, Nick never wavered. He drove straight through the ambush and kept driving forward to get us out of the kill zone. I congratulated him, but he was too concentrated on driving to answer me.
We slowly began to pick up more speed and I shouted, “We made it through alright, Nick. Slow down before we get in a wreck!”
He didn’t respond. I figured that he couldn’t hear me over the wind rushing in the broken windows so I slapped him hard on the shoulder. “Slow down!” I shouted again.
Nick slumped forward over the steering wheel and his head rolled to the side. “Fuck!” Sam yelled from the back seat.
I frantically reached for the steering wheel, but my seatbelt kept me from grabbing it in time. The back end of the vehicle surged to the side and before I could do anything about it, the SUV flipped and we rolled several times. My head slammed into the passenger window and then as we rolled again I was flung to the side and my shoulder smashed against the center console.
Somehow, we ended up back on the wheels and the vehicle shot forward. We careened right into the front of a house along the street. My world exploded in bright white and I was thrown backward violently when the airbag deployed. I felt my lips split open as the interior chin cup of my mask crushed against my face and blood began to flow freely along the inside of my sealed mask.
The ringing in my ears made the shouts from Jesse and Robert in the back seat sound like they were a mile away. I reached out and pushed the airbag away and a puff of white powder emitted from the side of the bag. Nick’s neck was obviously broken. His face was staring right at me, but his body was turned towards his door.
I reached up and depressed the interior light, which filled the cab with a watery glow. Nick was dead. Even without the injuries from the accident, I saw that he’d been shot several times during the ambush. He was probably dead before we even left the kill zone and that was why we kept picking up speed and didn’t change course. Jesse reached up from the back seat and shook me. He shouted something about getting out of the truck before it exploded. I nodded in shock and fumbled with my door handle.
Pain exploded in my hand when I touched the handle. “What the fuck?” I said out loud as I jerked my hand away from the offending object. I brought my hand in front of my face to examine it and the intense pain continued even after I’d stopped touching the door. I could see my gloves, but everything seemed fine, so I gingerly pulled off the glove. My right pinkie fell out onto my lap and my ring finger lay at a strange angle to the side where my pinkie should be. I stared dumbly at my finger resting on my crotch and tried to understand what I was looking at.
My door opened and Jesse reached inside to pull me out. He grabbed me by the arm and yanked me towards the opening. I fell hard onto the ground and my injured hand was crushed under my ass. “Fuck!” I screamed in pain.
“We gotta go man! That ambush was less than a quarter-mile from here. They’re gonna be here soon,” Jesse roared in my ear.
I stood up on shaky legs and reached inside to grab my weapon. In the dim interior lighting I saw my finger sitting on the floorboard next to my glove. I grabbed my glove and crammed my finger in my pocket. Jesse helped me stagger away from the wreckage and threw Robert’s arm over my shoulder so I could help him walk. He bent over and picked up Sam’s ragdoll form and threw her unconscious body over one massive shoulder. Nick was gone and now our group was down to four.
* * *
We stumbled our way as best we could for several blocks. I was really beginning to feel the pain in my hand and my entire body ached from bouncing around the vehicle when we rolled. I tripped over an unseen object in the snow and gasped loudly in pain as Robert toppled onto me when my support for him gave way.
“I can’t do it, man,” I heaved, out of breath. “I’ve got to take a rest somewhere or I’m done for. I can’t see straight.”
I don’t know where Jesse’s reserve of strength came from. We’d just been in a pretty bad accident and he’d been carrying a 130 pound girl through knee deep snow for more than thirty minutes. It seemed almost superhuman to me. He glared down at me and I could tell he was weighing his options for survival and his desire to go back to rescue Trisha. Then he reached out and pulled me to my feet. “Alright. We’re all too banged up to make it far tonight,” he said. “Let’s move off the street and break into a house on the next block over. Maybe that will throw off the guys chasing us.”
I nodded in agreement. I felt like I was letting him down by being such a pussy, but I was physically exhausted. I hadn’t gotten much sleep in the previous few days because I’d been worried about Rebecca and the baby’s well-being. We’d been up since around 4:30 a.m. preparing for this mission, added to that was the mental pressure of the disaster downtown and the physical stress of the accident and carrying Robert through the snow… I needed to rest, maybe even take a short nap.
Or maybe I was just making excuses to myself for my own shortcomings. I wasn’t the most physically fit guy. I had a gym membership and worked out on the machines, but I wasn’t winning any competitions. I’d gotten a lot stronger since the bombs, but I wasn’t where I needed to be yet for this environment. Like so many other times recently, I promised myself that I’d get better and stop being the weak link in the chain. I was going to be a father. I needed to be stronger, tougher and smarter than the rest of the people in this world if my family was going to survive.
We broke into the back door of a house on Fifth Street. I covered the back door while Jesse dropped Sam and his backpack then searched the rooms to ensure that the home was vacant. He motioned to me that the downstairs was clear and that he was going upstairs. I nodded and continued to peek out the window at the back deck while Robert watched the inside of the house.
There was a loud thump from upstairs and what sounded like scuffling on the floor. “I’m going up there. Watch the door,” I told Robert as all my exhaustion melted away and I ran further into the house. I took the stairs as fast as I could safely negotiate them and burst onto the landing. The noises were coming from the room to my right and there was definitely a fight going on.
I opened the door and rushed in at a crouch in case someone began shooting. It was dark, but several pairs of eyes glittered at me from the corner of the room and Jesse was rolling on the floor with someone. I ran over and aimed my rifle at the head of the person fighting with my teammate. “Stop fighting right now or your family will see what the inside of your skull looks like,” I hissed.
The occupant stared up at me and down into the long barrel of my rifle. In the pale gloom of the night illuminated by the burning city, I could see the fight leave the man’s face. He held up his hands and Jesse shoved hard into him as he pushed himself off. “Thanks, but I had him,” he said. Then he motioned for the man to stand up.
The man was in his mid-thirties. He had several layers of clothes on, but they were sweat pants and shirts, not clothes for traveling outside. He wasn’t wearing an armband. “We don’t have anything. Please, leave us alone,” he pleaded.
“How many more people are in the house?” I asked.
“No one, just me and my family,” he said. I glanced over my shoulder at the four people crowded in the corner.
“I’m gonna finish checking the rest of the house,” Jesse said. I nodded and he slipped past me. “Keep an eye on him,” he said over his shoulder.
“Why’d you jump my buddy?” I asked the man.
“It sounds like there’s another street fight going on out there and you guys broke into our home. What else am I supposed to do?”
“Alright, point taken. We don’t want any more trouble. We’re just trying to get out of this damned city and get back to our families,” I said. “We’re not going to bother you. We…”
“The rest of the house is clear,” Jesse interrupted.
“Thanks,” I said to him. “Like I said, we’re not going to harm you. We just need a place to hide and get some rest until things settle down outside.”
“O…Okay,” the man said haltingly.
“Look, we’ll be out of here in the morning and you guys can continue trying to survive and we can go back home,” Jesse said.
I gestured to the people in the corner and said, “You guys can come out from there. We’re not going to hurt you. We have families back home too.”
The woman detached herself from the children and stormed over. “Why are you doing this then? We’re all Americans!” she cried. “It’s bad enough what’s already happened in the city, but now you people show up and attack us?”
“I’m sorry ma’am. We’re just following orders,” Jesse replied before I could.
“Orders from whom? Are you guys in the army?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” I stated. “We’re from the town of Virden, about thirty miles away. Your city has resources that ours doesn’t. In this fu—” I glanced at the kids and stopped myself. “In this messed up world, it’s all about food and supplies. It’s going to get worse.”
“There are already so many people dead,” the man said as he eased himself down on the mattress. “Why can’t the government help protect us?”
“There’s no government left anymore, man,” Jesse said. “Most of them were wiped out by the nuclear bombs. What’s left of the military probably went AWOL to get back to their homes to protect their families.”
“You said there were street fights…who won?” I changed the subject.
“I don’t know. We’ve kept out of it. We didn’t need to go out for food, we—” he stopped suddenly. The look that his wife shot him was stern enough to shatter glass.
I chuckled at their exchange of glances. “Hey, I don’t care if you have a stash of food. We have what we need in our backpacks.” Technically, Jesse had a backpack, not Robert or me. “We just need a place to lay low for the night. If you have any medical supplies, we could sure use some, but other than that, we won’t bother you.”
“Have you been shot?” the man’s demeanor changed as he asked me.
“Nobody’s shot, but we’ve got several injuries that we need to get cleaned up from a car accident,” I said.
“I’m a doctor,” he said.
“Greg, you’re a veterinarian!” his wife wailed. “Let these people take care of themselves. We’ll make it through the night and then they can get out of our house.”
Enduring Armageddon Page 11