Ravage

by MacCraw

  “Well, we made it”, Riley panted, patting Pack on the shoulder. “Good work, Pack Man.”

  “Indeed”, said Kirkley. “I still don’t quite understand how those crooks arrived here if the bridge was out.”

  “My guess is that they probably blew it out as soon as they were over it”, Logan added. “It’s what I would do.”

  “What a dick move, if ever there was one”, Hannah commented.

  “Now that we’re across the mines, and since the explosions probably rang the dinner bell for the dogs, what do we do now?” asked Connor.

  “We keep following the river until we hit another bridge”, said Kirkley, “And then we’ll reassess the situation when we get to one.”

  “Sounds good to me”, Pack nodded, before walking off with the rest of the group towards their next objective, which would bring them one step closer to safety and freedom.

  …

  Despite how hazardous the march through the minefield was, the heroic survivors managed to get through the death trap. The forest on the other side was also a worthy prize, since the trees weren’t as dense as they were on the other side of the blown-out bridge. Still, navigating through the forest with over 50 pounds of gear a piece was a pretty energy-sapping experience, and Kirkley swore that if he survived the wrath of Sat, he would spend the rest of his life in a nice warm bed, ideally with a special woman; with Samantha gone and gone beyond redemption, Kirkley was clueless as to who the one woman would be.

  “So Pack Man, where did you learn how to deal with landmines like that, dude?” Riley asked. “Were you into explosive ordinance disposal?”

  “No, but I have enough brainpower and ingenuity to handle situations like that”, Pack explained.

  “Wanna like, build a campfire and share some stories from your time in the British Army?”

  “No”, Pack firmly growled.

  “Okay, okay”, Riley scoffed. “Who dropped a belt sander down your trousers?”

  Pack aggressively exhaled, and clenched his fists as he tried to prevent himself from smacking Riley in the face. Riley would have needed plastic surgery had Kirkley not pulled Riley away from Pack.

  “What gives? What’s got him so pissy?” Riley asked.

  “Pack suffered a lot of very traumatic incidents during that War in Takistan”, explained Kirkley. “The infamous Battle of Nuwari resulted in the highest casualty count of any engagement that the British Armed Forces had ever participated in. Tanks were obliterated by anti-tank mines, helicopter gunships got shot down by missile launchers and crashed into buildings, jet fighters were annihilated in dogfights with the Takistani Army, and soldiers were just utterly decimated by the enemy. Pack had a band of brothers that he maintained a strong relationship with, and it totally wrecked him and left him with PTSD.”

  “Whoa”, Riley sighed, “I didn’t really think of that.”

  “Don’t bring it up with him again”, said Kirkley. “It’s not only dangerous for your sake, but it’s also a really hurtful thing to say.”

  “I understand”, Riley replied, nodding in affirmation.

  As everybody tromped through the forest, Hannah, who was on point, noticed something through the trees. “’Ey, lads, I spotted a building!” Hannah announced to her comrades.

  “What is it?” asked Connor, who climbed up onto the boulder that Hannah was standing on top of.

  “Looks like a farmhouse”, Hannah reported.

  “Ugh, great”, groaned Kirkley. “Another farmhouse.

  “No, this one seems to have a barn”, she added.

  “Worth taking a look”, said Pack. “And besides, Kirk, we have a helluva lot more manpower than we did previously.”

  “Still, I have a thing against abandoned houses out in the highlands”, said Kirkley.

  “I have a thing against going to the general store, but I still go”, Riley commented. “Or I used to, that is. Hey, maybe it’s still open! We could go get some Jolly Ranchers or something!”

  “Knock it off”, Hannah growled, “Or I’ll knock you out.”

  “Look, let’s just take a little peek around”, Pack insisted.

  “Fair enough”, Kirkley sighed, “But I’m not going in. You go in with three others and probe the interior of the house, as well as the barn over there. You have 20 minutes, and you’ll all retreat and regroup if there is even the slightest signal of danger.”

  “Connor, mate, I’d like you to join me”, said Pack, nodding towards the warrior’s mighty bone club. “Logan, Hannah, you’re watching our tails.”

  Kirkley, Riley and Poet took defensive positions in the perimeter around the house: Kirkley remained hidden behind a capsized tractor, and Riley used a trashcan as a mount for his support weapon. Poet lay motionless in the tree line with her L85, keeping her eyes locked down the SUSAT optic, not diverting an ounce of her attention elsewhere, and hardly breathing.

  Meanwhile, back in the house, Pack and his three companions slowly explored the house, which seemed even more derelict and deserted than the previous one. Unlike the first house, which was relatively unscathed, the interior of the house was completely trashed. Portraits and framed photographs were in pieces all over the living room, the couches and leather chairs were torn apart, the television set was shattered, and there were bullet holes and casings scattered every which way, a clear signal that whoever lived at the farmhouse wasn’t about to go down without a fight.

  “Think these lads put up a better fight than we did, eh?” Pack commented.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is that prior to me saving their asses from those dog men, they were getting completely beaten out by an old farmhouse several miles away from Fort William”, Hannah explained.

  “I wouldn’t have put it that way, but yeah”, Pack sighed.

  “Hey, lads!” Kirkley hollered from outside, “We found something very interesting that you might wanna see!”

  The four humans ceased their search inside of the farmhouse and walked back out into the yard, where they saw Kirkley, Poet and Riley standing next to the door of the barn. The thick wooden gates seemed to be tightly locked, though Kirkley and his allies could scarcely see the outline of something potentially helpful, which further fueled the desire to break and enter.

  “How are we going to get inside? The doors are locked tighter than an Eskimo’s nutsack”, Riley remarked, before being angrily jabbed in the back by the handle of Connor’s club.

  “This could do the trick”, Hannah said, cocking her L85.

  “Hold on, now”, Connor replied, using the indent below the ball of the club to lower Hannah’s weapon, “This will make a lot less noise, and will also preserve your ammunition.”

  “Patience, the lot of you”, Kirkley admonished. “Sometimes a good look around is the key to situations such as this.”

  Kirkley began walking around the perimeter of the building, until he found a shorter extension to the barn, most likely a tool shed or storage shack of some kind.

  “Logan, gimme a boost, mate”, Kirkley requested. Logan nodded, and curled up into a ball next to the shed. Kirkley stepped up onto Logan’s shoulders, and ascended onto the roof of the shed, before jumping to the roof of the barn. Kirkley looked around for a weak point in the roof, and when he found one in a position where he wouldn’t receive too much damage from falling, Kirkley stomped on it repeatedly until it broke, and he dropped down into the dark barn, where there was no light whatsoever except from the orange beams of light that spilled through minor cracks and gaps of the walls and ceiling.

  To Kirkley’s surprise and elation, there was actually a land rover in the barn. It looked like it hadn’t been used in many years, but if it still ran, then there was a good chance of survival. Plus, the wolf pack was closing in, and they couldn’t outrun the wolf soldiers, so it was vital that they acquire a vehicle or at least get to a safer location.

  Kirkley clutched the handle, which merely jiggled and outright refused to open, so Kirkley
reached through his satchel and searched for a lockpick. He found one, and spent about 30 seconds carefully unlocking the door to the vehicle before it finally opened, and from there he started trying to hotwire the vehicle. Miraculously, the car revved up, its headlights turning on, its engine grumbling, and the vehicle shaking slightly.

  “Su, I owe you”, Kirkley said, looking back up at the eclipse, and nodding his head.

  Kirkley floored it, and the land rover went blasting through the barn doors. Everybody dove out of the way, narrowly avoiding being crushed to a pulp in Kirkley’s unexpected smash through the doors.

  “Sweet!” Riley laughed. “I call shotgun!”

  “Again?” Pack groaned, “Greedy little twat.”

  “Alright, lads, load up in the back”, Hannah ordered.

  It gave everybody a warm feeling working together as an efficient team. Everybody was pitching in, making sure that many hands made light labor. The land rover was spacious, and had plenty of room for five people, their weapons and their equipment. Once everybody was aboard, Kirkley shifted from neutral to forward, and gunned it, leaving the farmhouse and putting even more distance between the humans and the dog soldiers.

  “Everybody get some rest”, said Kirkley, “We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”

  …

  The 17-hour drive was very relaxing for those sleeping in the back. But all of that was about to go to hell in a handbasket.

  “Oh my God!” Kirkley shouted, trying to wake his friends. “Guys, I think we scored big this time. And I mean big.”

  Everybody groaned in frustration, still annoyed that the most pleasurable, sensual snooze of their lives had been disrupted, and some of them were about to throw Kirkley out of the vehicle if he was bullshitting them.

  However, as always, Kirkley was not bluffing, for there was a massive city ahead of them. A city large enough to be a capital city.

  “Holy crap, I think we might have actually gotten to Glasgow”, Hannah gasped.

  “This is… this is huge”, Connor sputtered. “In more ways than one, actually.”

  As the jeep drove towards the city, Kirkley noticed that the road was impassable due to a massive manmade blockade of metal, logs, broken down vehicles, and a plethora of other blockage.

  “Son of a bitch”, Kirkley sighed, slowly bringing the vehicle to a stop. Kirkley set the car in neutral and stepped outside with Riley. Everybody else in the back of the land rover got out and jogged over to Kirkley and Riley, who were standing at the barricade.

  “Well goddamnit”, Hannah hissed. “How are we supposed to get past this fucking thing?”

  It was at that moment when shit hit the fan. A small army of humans with guns suddenly emerged from the woods and from inside of the blocked-off outskirts of Glasgow.

  “Drop your weapons!” one of the enraged bandits screamed, pressing the tip of a double-barreled shotgun into Kirkley’s neck. More bandits encircled the survivors and the jeep, and it was then that Kirkley realized that he and his comrades were in serious danger, and that survival was not guaranteed. Looking up, Kirkley saw a tall black man with a massive handgun loom over the barricade.

  “’Sup, mate?” Kirkley sarcastically asked.

  “No civilization exists here, outsiders”, the man replied.

  “Why don’t you put down the gun so we can talk?”

  “Out here in the wild, this is how we talk”, the man smirked, cocking his pistol and aiming towards Kirkley.

  “Hey, dude, I don’t know who you think you are”, Riley exclaimed, boldly speaking up much to the horror of Hannah, “But we aren’t wild animals, and we aren’t afraid of-“

  The gunshot sounded like a loud rumbling clash of thunder, and the bullet struck like lightning. Riley dropped to the ground, murdered in cold blood. Hannah shrieked in terror and fury, losing all mental stability as she watched her brother-in-arms fall to the ground lifelessly. In a burst of adrenaline-fueled rage, Hannah ripped Connor’s club off of his belt, and charged for the closest bandit. Before the villain could squeeze the trigger, Hannah smacked the weapon out of his hand and slammed the ball of the club into the jawbone of the thug, completely demolishing his lower jaw and sending blood and teeth flying.

  “Kill them! Kill them! Kill the heroes!” the bandit chief laughed, wildly firing his handgun towards the survivors. Everybody else followed Hannah’s lead and began to fight back against their attackers. Before an armed bandit could shoot Captain Pack, Kirkley slammed his boot into the stomach of the gunman, causing the man to drop in pain and release his grasp of his submachine gun, which Kirkley grabbed and used to shower another bandit in a hellish shower of 9mm bullets. Logan bodyslammed a bandit against the land rover, and began stomping on his ribcage as Poet started firing up towards the bandits standing on the barricade. Connor, although deprived of his trusty club, also had a custom built machete in a scabbard on his leg, and was using that to slice apart the attackers like a sharp blade through soft butter. The amount of gruesome dismemberment he was causing was on par with the wolves.

  Hannah was still berserk, and out of control. As her comrades fought back the attackers, she was pushing on the offensive, ferociously smashing skulls and fracturing bones in her desire to butcher the men who murdered who she considered to be her little brother. Sprawled out around the ground were mutilated corpses, spilling out blood like there was no tomorrow.

  “Get our gear out of the jeep!” Kirkley hollered to Pack, knowing that they were all about to run out of ammo for the weapons that they had taken off of their assailants. Pack scrambled into the back of the land rover and began pushing and dragging the supplies and weapons out of the vehicle and onto the ground behind it.

  “Enemy reinforcements incoming!” shouted Logan, pointing to the bandit chief and a man with a missile launcher.

  The bandit leader nodded to his subordinate, who crouched and took aim with the rocket launcher.

  “Move, move!”

  Everybody snatched as much of their stuff as they could moments before the bandit fired the rocket which obliterated the jeep in a gigantic, fiery eruption that blasted upwards and very nearly took out the 6 survivors. From the cover of the trees, Poet reflexively aimed down the sight of her assault rifle and fired off a short burst that struck the destructive terrorist in the neck and face, causing him to drop instantly.

  “The woods, into the woods!” Kirkley ordered, rushing his comrades into the thick forest. Everyone was in a frantic struggle to get into the relative safety of the woods, and having their bloated backpacks to swing around didn’t make anything easier for the intrepid survivors. The gunshots fired from both parties of human survivors buzzed, pulsed and rang, and the forest was torn asunder from all of the relentless firing.

  Even after the 6 survivors were out of visual and ballistic range of the bandit army, they continued sprinting through the forest, not stopping for anything until it was guaranteed that they had lost their pursuers. By the time everybody had stopped bolting through the trees, they all dropped to the ground in exhaustion, panting and moaning.

  “Any more casualties?” Kirkley asked, checking to make sure that none of the others had fallen during the retreat.

  “No, bro, I’m intact”, Connor said, sheathing his machete.

  “Riley…” Hannah sniffed, tears rapidly generating on her face. “Riley. He’s gone. Goddamnit!” she shrieked, kicking the ground in frustration and punching a tree with no registration of pain.

  Kirkley felt a crippling emotional blow, for he understood how agonizing it was to lose somebody that he loved. Kirkley gently placed his hand on her dirty shoulder, and she completely fell apart, bawling in overwhelming hurt. Poet also seemed upset, for she had enjoyed Riley’s company, and she sat down with her head in her knees.

  “They’re gonna pay…” Hannah whimpered, hyperventilating at alarming speeds. “Their hearts will beat in my hand.”

  “Too fuckin’ right”, Pack nodded, slamming a fresh magazine into
his G3.

  “Slow down, Pack”, Kirkley said, “Look, though both of you may have a valid reason to seek revenge on all of those bandits, I’m still not convinced that a head-on forward assault is the best way to go about this. We need to honor our fallen by surviving through this mess. But you both are absolutely correct. We need to wipe out these sick twats before anybody else is murdered, and we need to take what they have so we can survive. It won’t be long until the dog soldiers track us here, so we need to make our move as quickly as possible. Logan, what’s our count?”

  “Ammo… not good. We have only two full magazines for our rifles, not counting the ones already loaded, there’s only about half a drum left for that shotgun of yours, and Pack only has the one magazine in his battle rifle. We’re knocking on death’s door”, Logan reported.

  Poet unloaded her magazine, and gave it to Kirkley, before unslinging her assault rifle.

  “Poe, what are you doing?” Kirkley asked. His question was answered when she pulled out a sound suppressor for her handgun, and fastened it to the barrel.

  “A stealth incursion it is, then”, Kirkley concluded.

  …

  With the eternal eclipse blocking the sun, it was impossible to visually determine the difference between night and day, for it was always dark, and shadows were much larger and thicker. This element played in the favor of the bandits when they ambushed the survivors from the tree line, and now it was going to benefit the survivors against the bandits.

  With Poet on point with her suppressed pistol, and Connor stacked up right behind her with his trusty machete, the 6 survivors hugged the walls of the closest buildings as they searched for a window or some kind of entrance. From atop one of the houses, Poet’s attentive ears detected footsteps, and she silently gave her comrades the command to halt, and to not make a single sound. Poet lightly whistled, not too blunt and obvious, but not undetectable, and the sentry standing watch over the road and the still smoking fuselage of the land rover took the bait. He peered over the edge, and the moment Poet saw his face, it was too late. Poet fired a single bullet that struck the guard in the dead center of his brain, and the lifeless corpse went plummeting down. While Poet scouted out the region near the barricade, and probed for guards, the other 5 survivors looted whatever they could off of the dead body, which included several MP5 banana magazines and a grenade. If possible, the survivors would also try and recover the guard’s MP5, which was still on the roof. Poet gave an all-clear signal, and everybody nodded in affirmation before hastily scurrying over to her.