by Joshua Guess
The warmth suffusing her brain and heart at seeing him alive and mostly intact took a back seat as she walked out of the RV, displaced by the return of the antarctic fury aimed at the assholes on the other side of the hill.
Eight scouts and a heavily-armed half dozen men who had appeared just a few minutes before were not enough to destroy the Rebound soldiers, but they were what she had. Keeping her nerves from fraying while sitting just over the hill and hearing the enemy move about as they investigated was maddening. Nearly impossible.
Between them they had sidearms for everyone. The men in the truck were the foremost unit of backup from Haven, and had told Emily that it could be as long as fifteen minutes before the rest began to appear. Emily, not being a complete idiot, recognized that hiding behind a hill a few hundred feet from her enemies didn’t afford her that much time.
Before reaching Hal just below the apex of the hill, the signal came. It was a brief series of flashes from a light aimed their direction from a watcher in a tree. Swearing to herself, she broke into a run and snatched up her rifle as she passed Hal. Not for the first time, she berated herself for not keeping the small armory in the RV stocked while they stayed in Haven.
Emily ran in a crouch to the top of the hill and dropped to her stomach in the median. Crawling into position, she took careful aim with her rifle and, knowing Hal would be watching her, nodded to him.
“Now!” he shouted.
The signal was to let them know that in the watcher’s judgment, the largest number of people possible had exited the vehicles below. Between them, the defenders had seven long guns. A few of the advance guard had grudgingly handed them over to scouts who were better shots. For most people the first instinct when planning a surprise attack was to go for the kill as fast as possible. Emily preferred a two-pronged approach.
Three of the seven rifles, including Emily’s, took aim at the vehicles.
“Dumb motherfuckers,” she muttered as she fired. It was impossible to know if this was the entire force or just a portion, but in either case they’d chosen their rides poorly. These weren’t the custom armored vehicles they’d seen in Iowa, just normal trucks with minimal additions for protection from zombies. Emily had ordered the tires shot out, as many as possible, but after four shots she decided to switch to cracking windshields. You could drive on rims, if badly, but once your visibility was fucked it didn’t get un-fucked.
The bodies at the bottom of the hill scrambled at the first shots, but she found herself unwillingly impressed by their response. It wasn’t full of wild panic, and those who didn’t fall before they could manage it universally reacted to the assault by slipping behind the vehicles for cover.
“Beth!” Emily called out. “Engine blocks, please.”
With the enemy held at bay, however temporary it might be, Emily wanted to make every moment and every bullet count. Mason operated with decades of experience, which allowed him to improvise by drawing on it. Emily was methodical by necessity, and removing easy mobility by focusing the biggest gun and its armor-piercing rounds on engines was the best way to start breaking down the enemy like a butcher boning a chicken.
“Is this not bothering anyone else?” Hal said from behind Emily ten minutes later.
She was still prone, looking through her scope. The headlights below made keeping watch easy enough. “What are you talking about?”
“The quiet,” Hal explained. “Shouldn’t they be shooting back or something?”
Emily smiled to herself. “Not every fight is a nonstop affair.”
A new voice chimed in. “That’s the truth. Back in the days of trench warfare guys would fight for ten minutes and then sit there terrified for a few hours before doing it all over again.”
“Mason, I thought I told you to stay back and take it easy,” Emily said.
“You did, but I’m mostly okay. Just a little tired. I checked Kell out and gave him something to reduce the swelling in his legs. How can I help?”
Her first thought was to give him a weapon and point him toward the enemy. It would be effective, no doubt, but then she considered those decades of experience. “Give me an assessment.”
A pause. “General?”
Emily nodded slightly against the stock of her gun. “First thing that comes to mind.”
“Either they’ve figured out there aren’t many of us, or they’re about to,” Mason said without hesitation. “If we had numbers, we’d have filtered through the trees and hit them from both sides from cover. My guess is they’ve opened the backs of their vehicles if they can reach them and armed themselves. Their best move will be to make short runs between vehicles and using them as cover, then make for the woods. If it was me, I’d have people run from cover directly away from us before turning for the woods. The light will make it harder to spot them further back in the darkness, and once they’re in the trees they’ll be able to circle around and hit us from the sides.”
He delivered it without a hitch or pause, the sort of precise tone you’d expect from an accountant. It was spot-on as far as she could tell. Her scope had a night vision option, but they would have to shoot out the headlights to make use of it. With night vision she’d be able to see the enemy retreat, but that came with its own problems. Not all the rifles had the capability, and cutting the lights would blind those who didn’t.
“What do you recommend?” Emily asked, not seeing a good path forward.
“Sending someone down there and covering them from up here. It should be me,” Mason said.
Emily was thinking it over when a loud grinding sound cut through the night air.
“What was that?” she asked, sweeping her field of view across the cluster of broken vehicles below.
Beth, laying fifteen feet to Emily’s right, spoke up. “I can see some movement from the back. There’s a big truck there blocked by the wrecked van. I think that was someone lowering the gate.”
Emily’s people, watching for movement, fired a series of shots. She saw it happen; people taking the risk of running for the partially obscured truck. “Fuck!” she shouted, suddenly understanding what was about to occur. “Everyone pull back, I think they’re coming for us!”
No sooner had the words left her mouth than they became reality. The truck surged forward, massive front end lightly clipping the overturned van as it hurtled on heavy tires up the road. Those couple hundred feet between were all uphill and would be literal death for an enemy on foot, but the truck could cover them in no time.
Rather than obey her own order, Emily let the underlying fury guide her. Hands tightening on her rifle, she ignored the danger growling up the hill toward her and aimed for the driver.
The gun bucked against her shoulder. The windshield cracked, but the angle was bad. A bullet will skip off water if fired just so, and something similar happened to her. There wasn’t time for another shot; the distance between was evaporating quickly. She shot to her feet and ran back toward the RV. Protecting Kell was all that mattered.
She didn’t quite make it. Ten feet from the RV, someone tackled her to the ground. The sound of the truck skidding by her didn’t register, so she was utterly unprepared for the flying smash of a body into hers.
Whatever expectation the attacker had, it wasn’t a woman who had spent months fighting men twice her size in brutal grappling matches. Hands sought out her limbs to keep her from fighting, and she let them. Instead of trying to match strength, Emily coiled her entire body like a spring and turned while unleashing that tension.
The man was thrown to the side and lost his grip on her right hand, which she then used to reach across his jaw. Fortune favored her; the bastard had a beard long enough to let her mercilessly grip a handful.
“Arrghhhh you fucking cunt!” the man screamed when she wrenched his head up and back, putting as much torque on his neck as possible. Though he continued to yell—loudly—he couldn’t do much to stop her. If he let go of the tenuous grip he had on her, she’d gain even more lev
erage. Emily knew how to take advantage of every small change in position and weight, and while it felt like an eternity, it took perhaps ten seconds to creep her way around to a truly dominant position.
Fingers nestled in beard and the edge of her palm pushed as hard as she could manage against the side of his jaw, she took a risk. Unable to force his face to a more oblique angle, she didn’t try. Instead she let go of it entirely. The built-up tension caused an involuntary reaction, the sort Newton talked about as equal and opposite.
When his head rotated back with the release of tension, her now-free hand went for the eyes.
There are remarkably few game-changing attacks. The human brain is deeply hardwired to defend its sensory apparatus. It can’t be helped. Emily’s extended fore and middle fingers jammed hard into the eye and crushed it. The sensation nearly made her vomit, but it got the desired results.
All conscious thought left the attacker instantly. His hands moved to his face and gave her the advantage. Rolling around with him, she’d been unable to reach her knife. That was no longer true.
He died with no idea it was coming.
Just as Emily pulled herself to her feet, the reinforcements appeared in the distance. Half a dozen sets of headlights twinkled against the darkened road.
Unfortunately, a chorus of horns blared from the opposite direction, far enough away that Emily knew they weren’t from the damaged vehicles below. The enemy had their own backup.
“Give me a fucking break,” she mumbled.
Kell
Hell began to break loose outside just as Kell found what he was looking for. Mason expected him to stay in the relative safety of the RV, but it seemed like a deathtrap. Even if it wasn’t, the idea of sitting out another fight because of injury was intolerable.
Fortunately, the pain in his legs was feeling pretty distant. Inwardly blessing the people in whatever town took it upon themselves to grow poppies and refine morphine from them, he injected himself again. Both doses—Mason’s and the one Kell gave himself—were small. Piggybacked and intravenous, the effect was quick in arriving.
The pain dulled significantly. Not gone, but much less important. There weren’t any grating sounds or sensations in his legs, just the swollen tightness of deeply bruised and strained muscles. He kept telling himself that while lumbering to the door.
Emily was standing at the bottom, rifle at her feet and pistol in her hands. She saw him out of the corner of her eye.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she barked. “Get back in there right now.”
“No,” Kell replied stubbornly. “I’m not in great shape, but I can still shoot. At this distance even I can’t miss.”
A virtual disco ball of headlights flashed across the hilltop as vehicles from both sides moved in to disgorge fighters. It wasn’t the carefully prepared ground Kell was used to, but a messy fracas chosen by circumstance. All around, men and women moved at random in a second-by-second bid to find cover or gain the smallest advantage against an opponent.
The Rebound soldiers weren’t taking as many shots as the units from Haven. It took Kell a second to work out why.
“I’m an idiot,” he breathed. “They’re after me.”
Emily, still crouched next to the open door with her body pressed against the body of the RV as tight as she could manage, nodded as she scanned the battleground. “Yes. And as soon as they see a giant black man with a scar on his face, they’re going to know exactly where you are and stop being careful about who they shoot at.”
“Then let’s use that,” Kell said. “Run out and signal everyone on foot to converge on the RV. I’ll step out, get seen, and they’ll know where I am. Where the samples are. If they’re unwilling to shoot at me, then me being here can be a shield.”
Emily blinked. “Yeah, okay.”
“That easy?”
“Yes, that easy. We’re not flush with options. Count to thirty, then step out and make sure you’re seen before you climb back in. Grab my rifle when you do.” She took a deep breath and tensed to run, but glanced up at him. “I love you. Don’t die.”
She was already moving and too far away to hear Kell repeat the words back.
He counted off the seconds, trying not to think too much about the Rebound vehicles arrayed across the peak of the hill. The battlefield was a mess, true, but there was a loose density to where the troops were concentrated. If they wanted, they could reach the RV in seconds.
When he stepped out and made himself visible, Kell could almost feel the eyes on him. His caught sight of the Haven militia converging on the RV, on foot and in the heavily modified vehicles most people called tanks. It was going to be ugly.
Snatching up the rifle, he jumped back inside as the Rebound forces lurched forward.
They sped forward, converging on the RV in a rough arrow shape. Most of the Rebound soldiers were still in those vehicles, the rest spread out providing support fire. He watched through the windshield and wondered idly if they would box him in to prevent escape or throw caution to the wind and ram the RV until it looked like a giant ball of crumpled paper. Not knowing what was happening with his own people only piled uncertainty on top of fear.
Then, from the sides, four of the Haven Frankentrucks rocketed into the lines at speed. The sound was not at all dampened by the thin glass in front of him, an almost tangible force of shrieking metal and screaming men.
Kell leaned forward and flipped the RV’s lamps on, bathing the pileup in light. The Haven drivers came out ahead, the heavy steel plates meant to mow down zombies barely marred by the impact, much less damaged at their connections to the vehicle frames. The monstrous trucks backed up and pushed again where needed or kept pushing where possible, forcing the Rebound soldiers to abandon their rides like ants scattering from an anthill.
One Rebound SUV made it through, limping slowly but inexorably toward the RV. Kell jumped back when he realized it wasn’t going to stop, even with bullets raining down on it in a heavy fusillade and leaving dozens of craters holes.
The RV rocked hard enough from the collision to take Kell’s balance, his head slamming hard enough into the cabinet behind the driver’s seat to black him out.
It was a blackout and not true unconsciousness, because Kell was actively fighting someone when the lights in his head switched back on. His arms were outstretched in an attempt to keep the attacker at bay, but the man was still landing body blows in rapid succession. Kell felt every one of them much more keenly than he would have expected with opiates in his system.
Behind the attacker, the front of the RV was badly out of shape. The entire dash buckled inward, windshield crazed and laying in a cracked sheet across the seats.
“I’ve got him!” the soldier screamed as he tried to draw Kell in closer, apparently to subdue him. “Someone get in here and fucking help me!”
Kell tried to attack the knees—his old standby tactic—but his sluggish legs wouldn’t obey him. The pain might be dulled, but the physical damage and swelling made him too slow by a wide margin. The soldier sneered as he easily avoided being kicked and stomped by the feeble swipes.
Since crippling the legs was out of the question, Kell changed up his grip and, rather than push the man away, yanked him forward while dipping his own head down. Mason would have had something to say about the delivery of the headbutt, though it was certainly effective.
The result was a warm gush of blood and the hollow pop of a breaking nose. When the man recoiled, Kell pulled him back in. This time there was resistance, and Kell’s timing was bad. He felt his forehead split as it slammed against teeth.
He let go of the soldier, who tripped backward and fell on his ass as he tried to shake off the disorientation. Kell reached over the miniature stove and grabbed the tiny cast-iron skillet there, flipped it in his hand, and swung it in an overhead arc into the man’s skull.
A detached, bizarre part of him thought killing someone with a skillet was funny, and killing them with a very small s
killet much more so. If he laughed, it was only in his head.
Several more people appeared at the edges of his view and tried to climb through the windshield, one of them needing to slide across the hood of the crashed SUV to do it. Kell gripped the skillet tightly, ready to fight until his body gave out completely.
A hand appeared from just outside the frame and hauled one attacker away. The wrist was heavily scarred.
“Thanks, Mason,” Kell shouted, unable to keep himself from grinning. The only answer was a gurgling scream from the general vicinity of the man Mason had gotten his hands on.
The soldier sliding over the hood of the SUV made it inside and, confronted with an angry giant standing over the corpse of one of his friends while holding a saucepan covered in bits of skull and brain, decided he’d just rather not.
From five feet away the soldier raised the rifle slung from his shoulder and shot Kell in the left shin.
He fell screaming to the floor, the world turning into a bright red smear of anguish. The pain was fire and electricity and unbearable pressure, every facet sharpened like jagged glass. Someone pushed and pulled at him, but his overwhelmed brain lacked all rationality. The incessant, rough handling was a disconnected fact lacking context.
His flailing hand fell on something round and hard, sparking recognition. It was a seed crystal, and around it the swirl of pain and other sensory input began to form into a logical continuum. The man warily hunched over him frantically trying to tie off the badly bleeding leg was an enemy. So was the guy who’d shot him, standing safely back with rifle raised.
The rifle was a threat, meant to keep Kell docile. The shooter operated from bad information from first principles, so every conclusion from there was faulty.
He assumed Kell would act in self-interest, falling into survival mode to avoid getting killed. Under most circumstances, that’s exactly what he would have done. But the wounds to his leg on top of his previous injuries pushed his coping mechanisms past the red line. Rather than rely on logical survival instincts, his brain dropped all the way back to the mammal equivalent of first gear; not much speed but a hell of a lot of torque.