Free World Apocalypse - Genesis
Page 14
“Just gotta persuade someone to let us stay there.”
Kelly smiled, put her hand on Clay’s shoulder and leaned down. “I think that little cluster of cabins needs a big, strong boy to help out; to cut the wood in summer and build the fires in winter.”
The boy’s beaming face said all they needed to know.
Teah realized Cornelius was watching her. The old man still looked tired. He was a way off being fragile as yet, but he’d certainly reached some kind of tipping point. It then struck her that Connor and Byron were missing.
“Anyone seen Connor?”
“He’s with Byron; they’re getting kitted out,” Cornelius told her.
“Still think you should help,” Wesley said. “You’re wasted here.”
Cornelius turned to him. “I’ve told you what I think and what I don’t think, and that should be enough fer you.”
“Just sayin’.”
“Well, mind yer own business.” Cornelius turned back to Teah. “They creeping outta the forest yet?”
“Bit.”
“More I think about it, more I think we may have a chance.”
“How so.”
Cornelius arched his eyebrows. “Simple really: they ain’t used to fightin’. Sure, they broke their bones overseas, and who’s to say this bunch aren’t vets? But say they are, they’re used to having an air force pound the life outta their enemy, used to having drones mop up any bastard stupid enough to try ‘n rally. They ain’t used to this kinda fighting.”
“They’ve got tanks, though.”
“And we’ve got missile launchers. ‘Sides, tanks ain’t gonna like the shit Briscoe put out there; almost like he knew what they’d come with. Shoulda kept the pig-headed motherfucker alive, if only he hadn’t been so…well, pigheaded.”
Teah forked up a full load of fried eggs. “Yep, he sure was a waste.” She shoveled them in.
Cornelius stretched his arms wide. “Nope. They ain’t going to get it all their own way.”
Clay snuggled closer as Teah ate the rest of her breakfast, a morose silence settling over the table, her own personal cloud eventually finding them all. It wasn’t long before the first round of gunfire sounded out.
The gold had returned to the preppers’ valley, but this time it wasn’t the sun but the burst of tank fire, the blast of grenades, and the blazing tongues of fire. The convicts were holding the wall, seemingly easy meat for the tanks, but, surprisingly, they were holding their own. Their missile launchers keeping the tanks at bay, just like Cornelius had said. Their tracks slid and bogged down in the mud and loose rock churned up by the boobytraps they’d set along the trail. The Free World army had spilled out of the woods just after sunup, straight into clearly previously prepared positions. It appeared they’d been busy during the night.
Teah had left the meeting hall soon after finishing breakfast, leaving Clay with Saggers and Hannah and some strict instructions. Neither of them had been happy about it, but nor had they been inclined to argue, Saggers not being the fighting sort, as most folk knew.
Trip had come in, all dressed in his combat gear. He’d grabbed a suit and helmet from the gear retrieved from Lester’s mine and spent the morning getting used to the HUD. No doubt about it, he looked the part, the body armor bulking out his skinny frame. He’d fallen in beside Teah as she’d strolled back to her cabin to get changed.
“You planning on watching me?” Teah shouted over the driving rain.
“If you’ll…”
She shot him a look.
“I’ll wait in the livin’ room,” he said, quickly.
“What are you set on doing? now you got the fancy gear.”
“Got myself into your squad, that’s what.”
She checked her stride, then grunted and jumped up the steps to the cabin, kicking the door open and rushing in out of the rain.
“They let you in?”
Trip shrugged. “They kinda think we come as a pair.”
“A pair?”
“Yeah. Told ‘em you was only alone yesterday cos I had business over the other side o’ the valley.”
“And they fell fer it?”
“Ain’t no one gonna argue with you, not after what you done on the ridge. Not with yer history around folk.”
Teah hesitated before barging into her and Clay’s bedroom. “So, they think you’re my second-in-command?”
“Can’t help what they think, and I never told ‘em that. But you ain’t getting rid of me, Teah. We got us a bond, remember that.”
She slipped out of her wet clothes and into her combats. “Happy to have you along, Trip. Make a change not being on my own.” The minute she said it, she realized the truth of it. “I’m gonna give you Zero-two. Now, that’s a call sign that’s precious to me. Belonged to an old friend o’ mine. You better live up to it.”
“That part of your memories?”
“Yeah; part.”
“Hey, we got time fer a smoke?”
“Guess the war can wait a few minutes.”
“Good.” He lit one. “Remember what you said?”
Teah stopped pulling her boots on. Something about Trip’s tone intrigued her. “I say a lot of things, Trip.”
“You said you had to find a strange-named man. You know, when we was out on the promontory; or was it by the lake? Anyways, that’s what you said.”
She scoffed. “Simpler times, Trip.”
“Eh?” Trip wandered in, sitting on the bed beside her. “Simpler what?”
“The man I had to find was called Josiah Charm, but back then he was the only one I had to find.”
“And now?”
“Toss me my coat.”
She took it from him and rifled through an inside pocket, eventually drawing out a small piece of paper. “I got me a list now.”
Trip took it off her. “Jevans, Roy, Sumner, and Kin’ell,” he read out.
“That’s them, if they’re still alive. That’s who I’m gonna find.”
“What they do ter ya?”
Teah grabbed his smoke, took a deep lug and let it settle. “Far as I can remember, just ‘bout everything bad you can do to someone.”
Trip sighed, a deep and long breath that almost in itself allied him to her cause. “Then that list’s gotta be dealt with first.”
“Sure has,” she said, a tear coming to her eye, and she finished pulling on her boots.
Just as she stood, Clay burst in and jumped into her arms. She carried him out into the front room and saw that Saggers and Hannah had come right in. True tears now coursed down her cheeks at the reminder that she’d soon be split from Clay yet again.
“You keep him safe, now.”
Saggers tipped his head. “Sure will; Kelly’s given us directions.” He looked across at Teah. “Sound’s a mighty fine place.”
“It is,” was all Teah could manage, and the four of them hugged.
She waved them off from the stoop. Saggers and Hannah on the cart’s bench and Clay in the open back, just like her and Lester had once been, all those years before. Clay’s face, framed by the angled rain and twisting to watch her as the cart drove away, became cemented forever in her memory.
Trip grabbed her hand and squeezed, and there they stood for a good while, the cart inexorably becoming lost to the turbulent weather, until Connor and Byron came running toward them. Almost pushed back into the room by their urgency, Teah grabbed Connor’s shoulders. “What is it? What’s up?”
Byron was doubled over, holding his sides, which left it to Connor to try to get his words out, but he appeared to be tongue-tied. Byron at last managed to speak, between great gulping breaths. “Think you need to get back to the wall. Think you need to see this.”
She looked from Byron to Connor.
“They’re building something. Seems they were anticipating the roads being blown,” Connor informed her.
14
Teah’s Story
Strike time: plus 14 days
Location:
Preppers' Compound
Byron pointed to where the Morton Road led down from the ridge and leveled out to begin winding toward the compound. At first, Teah couldn’t quite make out what she was looking at, but as she adjusted the binoculars he’d given her, she began to make sense of it.
The Free World army had felled one of the mighty redwoods, having arranged for it to fall parallel to the stockade. Now, it formed a formidable wall over which a massive barrel poked.
“Now we could use a drone,” Byron muttered. “But I’ll bet a credit to a corndog that that is one mother of a gun being put together there.”
“So…” But the whole scene just stumped her. “Where the hell did that come from?”
“Ah,” said Byron, “that’s the clever part. Seems they brought it in, in kit form.”
“Kit form?”
“Smaller parts, easily carried around our little obstacles, brought together to form a whole. If you look, you can see them sneaking components in from the forest. A good engineering corps will always win the day.”
Teah narrowed her eyes at the smug old man, who was almost seeming to enjoy their enemy’s accomplishment.
“I’ve often said,” he further crowed, “that an attacker must inevitably win, and it looks to me like that beauty will end up tipping the odds in their favor.”
The rain was bouncing off his bald head, dripping through his wiry eyebrows, and almost guttering along his smile. She thought she’d seen some strange things in her time, but this man’s appreciation for a weapon that might result in his death topped most. “Of course,” he went on to say, “it confirms that Briscoe did indeed have a spy problem. They clearly have a well-rehearsed plan for taking this compound—the only question is: how much is going to be left once they have?”
“Do we know what that thing’s capable of?” Teah asked.
“Connor can fill you in.”
Up until now, Connor had been mostly quiet, appearing almost disinterested, but now he stared from the battlement and studied the gun. Eventually, he crouched down and bade her do the same, the stockade parapet giving them some measure of respite against the weather.
“It’s a four-hundred-and-fifty-millimetre old fashioned howitzer, immune to EMPs, one Sable tells me is ideally suited this exact scenario. Clearly, someone knew Spike’s plans, someone who knew the wall wasn’t just a puny wooden palisade, and they’ve taken this antique out of mothballs and recommissioned it for this very purpose. They might not have air-cover drones available now, but—”
“They might not now need it,” she said, her voice almost at a whisper.
Teah rose, her legs unsteady, the implications of what they were both saying hitting her hard. With the wall gone there’d be no defence of this place, and they’d be overrun in a day.
“It doesn’t alter anything,” Byron said. “We have to carry on with the plan.”
Teah shot him a glance. “It changes everything: if there’s no safe place from this army, then what’s the point?”
“The point is, my dear, that if we finish the plan, things will turn around—”
“No,” Teah screamed. “No; these folks deserve a fighting chance, deserve to have something to come back to.”
Byron lent her an almost condescending look. “So, what do you propose we do? Destroy it?”
Teah stared down at her boots, seeing beyond them to an image of Ned’s body falling like a stone, of Lester’s just turning to dust, and Jenny lying in her grave. She saw Briscoe reaching up to the pass, trying to grasp his own future. And she saw Kelly’s cabin being overrun, saw Saggers and Hannah being slaughtered, and Clay; Clay lying in the mud, blood pooling around his head.
She looked up and at Byron, her eyes afire.
“That’s exactly what I’m gonna do.”
The steps down looked innocent enough. Bordering them was a dwarf sandbag wall, posts either side holding up a simple flat roof, making the place look like some sort of well from a distance, or from the air. The more she saw of Spike’s planning, the more she rued the man’s death. She wondered whether Byron had been right about Morrow, whether he had indeed handed over the plans to the whole compound. If he had, then surely, they’d know about the tunnel, too.
Teah clambered over the small wall and swung her legs onto the top step, Trip waiting his turn behind her. Her backpack felt heavy and awkward, and she wondered whether it would fit down the hole. She flipped her visor down, the familiar comfort of its luminescent-green display making her descent that much easier. The steps led her down to a small tunnel, just high enough for her to stand. Lanterns hung every fifty yards or so, though their bursts of light only confused her view ahead. Not that there was much to see in this manmade tunnel, one so alike the many that had once led away from Black City, ones she’d often raided. Teah moved forward with the assurance of an old hand, Trip’s footsteps sounding behind her.
The HUD’s display sanitized everything, made it almost appear unreal, but she knew exactly where the tunnel led, to the reality that lay there at its end, to a course of action any sane person wouldn’t have entertained for a moment. But Tuttle had said the tactic had a sound footing, that a mob called the Germans had done it once, fighting some folk called the Brits, and now it was used all the time, what with the drones and all.
She eventually made it to a circular chamber in which some ten preppers were already sitting, propping themselves against the sides. Taking off her HUD, she nodded to each in turn. “This is Trip,” she announced, and they muttered their greetings. Beyond the chamber, another tunnel led on, away from the stockade and farther into the no-man’s-land between it and The Free World army.
“Mac?” Teah said, staring down at a woman who looked similar to the prepper she’d met in the woods by Lester’s mine.
The woman smiled. “We meet again.”
“Didn’t get enough fun yesterday?”
“Oh, I’m a sucker fer it.”
“How long we got?”
“We were just waitin’ fer you.” And at that, their helmets went on.
The illuminated display to the side of the HUD’s screen gave Teah their call signs. She programmed in Trip’s and her own. The preppers were simply “P1” to “P10,” and she wondered which was Mac. They all got up, checked their machine guns, patted down their combats, and adjusted their helmets. From their manner, Teah knew they would be as good as pros. She was led into the next tunnel, most of the preppers in front and Trip, P4, P6 and P10 bringing up the rear.
Having left behind the rooflights, the tunnel was now pitch-black, but the heat sigs from the preppers in front illuminated the way. Every now and then the ground shook as a missile from the stockade fell short of its target. How short? she wondered, for it would suggest how near they were getting, no doubt well into no-man’s-land by now.
This wasn’t how the day was supposed to have gone.
Each time a tremor ran through the tunnel, showering them with clumps of mud and stone, it felt like the ground was going to collapse in on them, but they continued to push on, the experience all the time becoming ever more familiar for Teah. She’d once done this thing day in, day out, and now it was back again as second nature.
The tunnel eventually ended at a small earth and rock-lined chamber, to which the roots of sturdy trees added some relief. One of the preppers lit a lantern already hanging there, its light revealing a ladder that climbed up into the darkness above. Letting her gaze follow its rise, she could just make out a circular hatchway, glints of daylight around its edge.
“Yep,” Teah said, “he seemed to have everything mapped out. Funny, though, how he could be this careful at plannin’ and yet die such a pointless
death.”
“You ain’t the only one been thinkin’ that.” Mac slumped against a particularly stout root. “Smoke before you croak?”
Teah let out a laugh. “Reckon the mission’s one way?”
“Can’t see two in it.” She lit a cigarette each.
As she took a drag, Teah wondered about that, knowing that as soon as they broke cover their route back would be compromised. She wondered whether Byron Tuttle’s final words had been justified, that she was putting her own taste for battle above the needs of the human race.
“Silly old bastard,” she muttered.
“Who?” asked Mac.
“Just an old man who got rescued with Connor.”
Mac grunted. “I reckon I know the one; academic type. Sort of man who’s got fingers in pies that ain’t even been baked yet.”
Teah smirked. “Yep, that just about sums him up.”
“Sort of man it feels good to prove wrong.”
“Amen to that.” Teah pushed herself to her feet to drop her backpack on the floor, tucking a Glock into her belt.
Before long, she stubbed out her cigarette and grabbed hold of the ladder, turned a look to everyone watching, drew in a long breath, and started the climb. She realized that this was a new kind of terror for her: this was army, not some ragtag bunch of smugglers. Last time she’d come up against Oster Prime’s folk it hadn’t ended well, and those memories were still fresh—too fresh. Each step up became a true test of her nerve, for above lay the enemy, her enemy, an enemy that might even be sitting right on top of her. Her heart thumped loudly in her ribcage, and too soon her outstretched hand grabbed the last rung. When she eased the hatchway open a little, rainwater dripped onto her. She prayed that Briscoe had really picked a wise spot, then pressed her palm against the hatch and lifted it an inch. From what little she could see, all seemed quiet nearby. Rising up a rung, Teah lifted the hatch farther, enough to poke her head out.
She was facing the river, the stockade to her right. The lie of the land gave her a good view from here, a good view of the chaos going on around her. Clouds of smoke dotted the ravaged land, sections of the stockade already on fire. The few tanks the army had managed to get through were just in range of the wall, though thankfully inflicting minimal damage. She couldn’t see the compound, though, hidden behind the stockade, and wondered what state it would now be in. Preppers’ missiles were coming in thick and fast, though, their smoke trails arcing out from the walls of the stockade, and occasional EMP blasts booming from the same place, but The Free World tanks were clearly inching forward.