by SD Tanner
Laughing as she fell, she slammed into a tree, and was hurled from one branch to the next, feeling her bones break while she tumbled. Pain filled her body, and then was instantly gone as the shock of each blow numbed her mind. Landing with a dull thud, she felt her spine break, and finally her injuries exploded inside her brain, and her body burned in agony.
She was lying awkwardly on her back, her arms and legs splayed in positions that told of shattered limbs. Her bodice had been torn from her chest, and her long skirt was hitched high around her waist. Unable to move, she explored her pain. Unlike anything she’d ever experienced before, her body pulsed as if warning lights were flashing from every limb and organ. She could taste blood in her mouth, and feeling her heart hammering, she knew she was losing more blood with every thud. Alongside the awareness she was fatally injured, was a thrill at the agony that didn’t seem to start or finish anywhere on her body. For the first time since she’d left Ruler to be with TL, she felt the heat between her legs that she missed so badly.
“We don’t have time for you to amuse yourself this way,” Ruler said dourly.
Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, and she felt a frothy sensation when she mumbled, “More’s the pity.”
Running his clawed hand along her torso, she felt her body infuse with heat as organs and limbs began to stitch themselves back together.
“Not even for a moment?” She asked, spitting small globules of blood.
“No, you’re very close to death and I need you to live.”
Closing her eyes, she set aside her disappointment. The warmth she’d felt between her legs merged with the heat Ruler generated inside her while her body began to heal. Bit by bit, she lost her precious pain and began to move.
Her dress was ruined, and finally standing naked, she looked around the forest sulkily and asked, “And the others?”
In a tone of disbelief, he replied, “They’re very dead.”
With her body fully restored, she heard the sound of men calling and walking clumsily through the forest. Sighing to herself while she listened to them breaking through the bushes, she waited for them to find her.
“Holy crap! This one’s alive…and butt naked.”
Staring at the man coldly, she said, “Take me to Cain. He wants to meet me.”
Chapter Thirty-Two: Greg
“Incoming!”
Surprised, he looked up at the clear, blue sky and wondered how anyone had managed to launch a bomb at them. Seeing nothing, he stared back at the panicked combat shooter. The young man was sweating profusely, out of breath and not wearing his combat gear properly. His tactical vest was undone and he had no pack or gun. Immediately irritated, he prepared to scold him, but before he could open his mouth, the boy grabbed him by the arm, and began pulling him towards the direction he’d come.
“They’re coming…they’ll be here any minute…”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Crusaders…lots of ‘em and they’re on the main road. We didn’t even try to stop them.”
“Why the hell not?”
The man stop pulling on his sleeve, and turning to him with an expression of disbelief, he replied, “Because there’s like a thousand of them.”
Without answering the young man, he turned and began to run to the town hall. Like many refinery towns, this one had a warning siren that Harry kept in good working order. Being a refinery town, there was always a risk the production plant would blow, and Harry insisted they needed to be able to warn the residents. He’d only shown him how to use it once, but that was enough, and he launched himself into Harry’s office and hit the button behind the desk. Immediately a high-pitched wail started up, and he knew in the silence of Eden it would be heard for miles.
From the window, he saw people were already running to the building, no doubt headed for the central reception room. Grabbing his M4, he stamped back down the stairs, only to be greeted by a crowd of people pushing their way into the room.
“Where’s Harry?”
That was something he wanted to know as well. Harry spent most of his time either the oil fields or the refinery. If he couldn’t find Harry, then he needed to find Genny, she usually knew where he was.
“I dunno. Where’s Genny? Go find her and bring her to me.”
Shoving his way into the room, he stood on the low platform while the room continued to fill with men and women, all wearing anxious expressions.
“What’s happened?”
“I didn’t hear an explosion.”
“Did the refinery blow?”
“We’d smell the fire.”
Picking up a chair, he planted it on the platform and stood on it. Hundreds of people were now standing in the room, and as he elevated himself above the crowd, they all turned to him expectantly and fell silent.
“A thousand Crusaders will be here any minute.”
“What?”
“Oh fuck!”
“What are we gonna do?”
“We gotta get outta here!”
He wasn’t going to handover the refinery town to the Crusaders. His orders were to defend it, but no one had expected a full-scale attack. If he lost the town, Pax would be furious with him, not to mention how disappointed Tess would be.
“We’re not giving those assholes this town. It’s ours, and you get what you fight for,” he said sternly. “They won’t wanna damage the refinery. You need to take the kids and vulnerable people there. We’ll form a perimeter around it and defend it with our lives.”
“What about the oil fields?”
Shaking his head, he replied, “We can’t defend those. We don’t have enough people. If we have to choose, and we do, then we defend the refinery.”
“But if everyone is in the refinery and it blows, they’re all dead.”
Jutting his chin out, he said firmly, “If the Crusaders break through the perimeter into the refinery, then we’ll blow it ourselves and take them with us.” Setting his face into a grim mask, he added, “If we can’t have the refinery, then they can’t have it either.”
“Too fuckin’ right.”
“And we can’t let them capture us, you know what they do to the women.”
Passing his orders from one person to the next, the town erupted into a frenzy of activity. People were piling into any vehicle they could find, carrying weapons, ammo, food and children. Men and women on beasts tore past him at speed, all headed to the production plant only a mile from the town. He needed to find his shooters, but he didn’t have time.
Hoping they would head to the perimeter with everyone else, he grabbed a man running past him and said, “Come with me. We need to take all the weapons and ammo from our barracks.”
It took them less than five minutes to throw everything they could find in their quarters into a truck, and he quickly found himself at the gates of the plant. It was a small processing plant with a main production building, and a number of other cumbersome looking tanks, all connected by a collection of metal pipes of different sizes.
When he arrived, Harry had proudly taken him on a tour, but he hadn’t understood much of what he was told. According to Harry, they took the oil from the fields and separated it into crude oil, water and gas. The crude oil was then heated to separate it into the different types of fuel. The fuel was then processed through the complex secondary pipes and tanks to remove contaminants and add antioxidants to make it work effectively. He couldn’t remember which pipes and tanks did what in the process, only that they were all highly flammable, and a single well-placed bullet could set the entire refinery on fire.
The site was surrounded by a metal chain link fence, and although sturdy, it offered no defense against gunfire. He found it hard to believe the Crusaders would be stupid enough to fire on the refinery itself. One stray bullet could ignite even a small part of the plant, and then the whole site could explode.
The forest outside the fence was cut back leaving a two hundred yard clear area surro
unding the site. Behind the fence were graveled areas between the buildings, also kept clear. It meant the closest any Crusader could get to the fence was two hundred yards, but they could see clearly into the site, and hiding from them would be difficult.
Pushing his way into the entrance of a small brick, single-story office next to the main building, he ran into a man wearing coveralls.
“We’re closing down operations, but it doesn’t mean the plant can’t blow.”
“No, but it means people can hide inside the building.”
“That isn’t safe. The place is still running hot and the air quality isn’t great.”
“Yeah, but it’s safer than a bullet. Just manage the situation in there closely.”
Over the sound of people calling to one another as they filed into the processing plant, there were sharp cracks of intensifying gunfire. He still didn’t know where his combat shooters were, and hoped they were pulling back to the site.
Grabbing the arm of a man walking past him carrying a gun, he pointed to the top of the production plant building and asked, “Can you get shooters up there?”
The man nodded and said, “Yeah, but what if they fire back? The whole place could go up, and that’ll take out the site.”
“Our options are limited.”
By now, thousands of people had crowded into the site, and he realized he’d grossly underestimated just how many people he needed to fit into what was now looking like a small building. While he puzzled how they would all fit, a truck was honking its way through the gate, and one of his shooters climbed out of the passenger side.
Stalking up to him, a man he knew as Rodrigo shouted, “What the fuck are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why did you tell everyone to come here?”
“The Crusaders won’t fire on the refinery.”
“Maybe they won’t, but there’s enough of them to surround it. Everyone’ll be trapped. They’ll starve them out.”
The sheer sense of what Rodrigo said filled him with a cold shock. That was exactly how this was going to play out. Sending everyone to the refinery was probably the stupidest thing he could have done.
Confirming his thought, Rodrigo said, “You shoulda told them to scatter, run into the forest and regroup. We could call for back up, and mount an attack to take the refinery back.” With a dismissive wave, he added, “Eh, what’s done is done. It’s too late for them to pull back now, but we need to be outside the wire. We can disrupt them from behind the lines.”
There was a sinking feeling in his gut and he frantically looked back at the refinery where people were still filing into the main production building. What the fuck have I done? They’re walking into a trap I made. While he berated himself for his lack of experience, he felt a strong hand grab his collar and pull him away.
“Forget it. It’s done,” Rodrigo said firmly. “Now, you deal with this situation, and when it changes, you deal with the next one.”
As Rodrigo pushed him into the truck that was already reversing from the site, he asked, “Who are you? Why didn’t you speak up before? I needed your help.”
While they drove towards the back of the town, Rodrigo warily watched the forest around them, and replied distractedly, “And that was my mistake. I shoulda been there for you earlier, and for that, I’m sorry.”
Rodrigo’s dark hair was shaved close to his head, and down the side of his bronze-colored neck was a fading blue tattoo of a design he didn’t recognize. Looking hard-bodied and rough, he’d never spoken to the man much, and if he were honest, he found him a bit intimidating.
Not wanting to add another mistake to his day, he asked, “Where are the squads?”
“I told them to pull back from the main road and stay hidden,” Rodrigo replied. “I came looking for you. You’re our combat leader and you have to lead.”
Doubting he was capable of the job, he said hesitantly, “Maybe you should lead.”
Rodrigo was sitting in the back of the truck, and leaning forward so his mouth was inches from his ear, he said sternly, “No. You were made leader for a reason. It means they have confidence in you. One mistake doesn’t make you a complete failure.” Pulling his combat glove off, he held out his hand and said, “You see this tattoo?” Across Rodrigo’s fingers were the letters, ‘EVIL’. “I got that in prison.” Pulling back in his seat, and patting him heavily on the shoulder, he added, “We all make mistakes, my friend.”
He had made a mistake, and mentally putting aside his sense of failure, he asked, “Where are the Crusaders?”
“Tearing the town apart looking for the people.”
“Where are the people who didn’t make it to the refinery?”
“Some are with us.”
“Where are they?”
“About half a mile behind the town, spread out and waiting for their orders.”
“How many shooters do we have between our own guys and the townspeople?”
“Not sure, but I estimate about a hundred.”
“Weapons and ammo?”
“Limited to what we were carrying.”
While the driver weaved through the dense forest, he was thrown around in the truck. He wanted to stop and think, but now was not the time. He had at least three thousand people trapped in the refinery, only a hundred shooters and one thousand enemy. The enemy were better equipped, with more firepower, but they wouldn’t want to destroy the refinery. They came for the refinery and its workers, and they wouldn’t want to lose either. He needed to weaken them while they waited to starve the people out of the refinery. He needed to get a message back to Axe’s base to call for back up.
Turning to Rodrigo, he said, “This is what we’re gonna do. We need to send two squads of five back to Axe’s base to tell them we need help. Then we’re gonna break into smaller teams of ten, and start destroying their main weapons. Trucks with turrets, anything with heavy weapons and stores of ammo. We’ll aim to steal it first, but if we can’t have it, then we’ll break it.”
“What about an execution squad?”
“What?”
“We should pick them off. One enemy at a time.”
That made sense, if they quietly killed as many as they could, they would slowly weaken them from behind the lines. With this approach, they might score some better weapons, and at the very least, stop them from using their weapons against them.”
“Good idea. If we send ten people out in two teams to get help, that’ll leave us about ninety shooters. If we split them into teams of ten, that’ll give us nine teams. We’ll use one of them as an execution team, and the others can target specific locations and equipment.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Turning in his seat to face Rodrigo, he studied the man’s hard features and said with a slight smirk, “I might be wrong, but you look like you know how to lead an execution team.”
The driver who’d remained silent throughout their discussion suddenly barked a sharp laugh and said, “Yeah, you got that right.”
Chapter Thirty-Three: Troops
Pax
Not having any long-range communications was driving him crazy. Giving their only bird to Ted was the right thing to do, but now he couldn’t work out where Gears and his battalion were. Not having any skilled combat teams, he was reluctant to send them ahead to find the other convoy, and could only hope his brother would find him.
The trip from Axe’s base to Jackson County, Florida was difficult. He’d brought several large tankers of fuel to keep the convoy rolling, but wanting to take as few trucks as possible, the shooters were crammed in like sardines. With the world being Eden, there was nothing along their route to cause them any problems, but it also meant the shooters could walk away anytime they were fed up, and some did. He was leaking soldiers, and he estimated he’d lost about two hundred of the seven hundred he originally started with. On the one hand, that was reducing the demands on the limited space in the trucks, but on the other, it was
proving to him that his army was close to worthless. He’d let Gears down, and couldn’t be more pissed off with himself.
Running her fingers softly across the back of his neck between his helmet and his collar, BD whispered, “They’re close.”
“How do ya know that?”
“Gears told Ip to let you know they’re just passing Marianna.”
“She told ya that?” He asked in surprise. Ip was not a reliable communicator, and he doubted Gears would trust her to send him a message.
Laughing, BD replied, “No, Gears made her show me a road sign that she could see.”
Grunting, he said, “Yeah, well, I don’t think she can read, but she coulda jus’ shown the sign to me. She’s telepathically linked to me too, you know.”
“She says you’re rude to her.”
She was a fine one to talk. He didn’t think that since he was able to communicate with her telepathically, Ip had been anything but rude to him. Shrugging away the thought, he calculated the other convoy was about twenty miles from their position. Assuming they were on the right road to intercept the Crusaders, he needed to move his convoy closer to the highway he knew they must have been travelling on. If he was lucky, they’d hit them in the side of the line just as Gears was tackling them head on. Visualizing the scene, he decided he should split his convoy and try to spread their attack wide across the enemy line.
Radioing to Benny, he said, “I need ya to take half the convoy…”