Surviving the Dead 03: Warrior Within

by James N. Cook

  Gabe’s ability to disappear into thin air is as uncanny as it is unnerving. Occasionally, he amuses himself by sneaking up on me and appearing from nowhere at my side (which is annoying as hell), but he never does it when he knows that I’m holding a weapon. Which is wise, on his part.

  “See anything? Any movement?” he asked when he reached me.

  “No, nothing. But I have been thinking about that fifty-cal.”

  Gabe nodded grimly. “Yeah, that occurred to me, too. I got a feeling things just got a lot worse for us in this fight.”

  “You didn’t happen to bring a radio, did you?” I asked.

  “No. Didn’t have any charged up. I loaned the solar panels to Sheriff Elliott last week. Didn’t figure we’d need ’em.”

  I snorted. “Well ain’t that just great. I trust you’ll be getting those back, assuming we get out of this alive?”

  Gabe smiled ruefully. “Yeah, at least enough of them to charge our radios, anyway.”

  I looked back down the valley. “So what’s the plan now? You want to go on recon, or stay here and wait for backup?”

  He thought about it for a moment, staring down the hill. “No, we should stay here. If it were just you and me, I’d say let’s see what we can find, but with the other two …”

  “Understood,” I said. “You should probably have Flannigan move closer to our position. If she gets flanked, she’ll be isolated, and one of us will have to break off to help her.”

  “Good idea. Keep your eyes peeled.”

  With that, he moved off lower down the hill toward Flannigan.

  Alone again, I started doing a deliberate, systematic scan of the opposite ridgeline and both approaches on the highway—a technique Gabe had taught me to ward off boredom and stay alert. I was only at it for maybe another five minutes before I caught movement. I had been worried that the raider who escaped might be coming back with friends, and it looked like my concerns were justified. At first there were only three, then four more appeared, and another couple of dozen behind them.

  “Shit,” I muttered. “Shit, shit, shit. This is not good.”

  They were staying low and advancing in a leapfrog fashion, taking turns moving up and providing cover. One of them left himself exposed as he kneeled down behind a tree, so I took careful aim, let out a breath, and squeezed off a single shot. The match grade bullet punched a hole in his forehead, just above the eye, and blew a spray of blood out the back of his skull. He went limp and slumped to the ground.

  I had no doubt that Gabe and the others had heard the crack from the shot, but the suppressor did its job, and it didn’t seem to have reached the men across the hill. They kept advancing, oblivious to the fact that one of their number lay dead just behind them. Figuring this wouldn’t last long, I shifted my aim and bagged another one at the rear of their formation. Still no response.

  Come on, just one more …

  Another gunman kneeled behind a narrow pine trunk that was too thin to cover him. The angle was awkward and, when I fired, my aim was slightly low and the shot took him through the throat. He dropped his rifle and fell down kicking and screaming, blood spurting from the wound in his neck.

  The reaction from his comrades was immediate; they all stopped, shouted to each other, took cover, and began laying down suppressing fire. Behind them, more figures emerged over the hill and began moving up.

  Bullets peppered the berm below me and slammed into the trees over my head sending splinters and rocks flying in staccato bursts. Nothing was hitting close enough to hurt me, but it was still damned unnerving. Getting shot at is never fun, no matter how far away the shots are landing. I briefly considered backing off, but my firing position was a good one, and they clearly hadn’t seen me yet. If they had, they would have been concentrating fire at my section of the ridge.

  Gritting my teeth, I hunkered down, peered through my scope, and kept shooting. Sharp reports from my left let me know that Gabe and Sanchez were also returning fire. If Flannigan was smart, she would do what she was trained to do—stay low and continue to watch our flanks. It might not be as exciting as getting into the heat of a gunfight, but it was no less important. Being as high up as we were, if we got flanked, we would be royally screwed. It was her job to make sure that didn’t happen.

  Since the raiders obviously had an idea of where we were, stealth was no longer an issue, and there was no point in trying to make headshots. Another point in my favor was that the advancing enemy, as far away as they were, couldn’t see the muzzle flash from my barrel, which allowed me to take my time and fire with impunity. I picked a target, put my scope reticle center of mass, squeezed the trigger, and sent a three-round burst downrange.

  In less than a minute, I had reduced their number by four, Gabe had accounted for at least twice that number, and the rapidly mounting casualties forced them to retreat to the other side of the hill. The volume of enemy fire died down to just a few rifles, and instead of the near-panicked fusillade that they had thrown at us before, they settled down into a more disciplined suppression pattern.

  It doesn’t take much to keep an enemy’s head down—usually just a few shots at a time—and someone had obviously taught these men that lesson. Their shots weren’t terribly accurate, which told me they were probably not military veterans, at least not all of them. But the tactics they used were fairly advanced, which meant that someone had been training them.

  So if I were in their position, what would I do? They knew we weren’t going anywhere, at least not without that cargo. And even if we did, we only had one line of retreat. It I were in charge, I would have had a few men lay down suppressing fire, pulled the rest of them back, and then spread them out in both directions in a flanking maneuver with instructions not to attack until they had closed the circle, effectively trapping us. That way, they could eventually overwhelm us by sheer force of numbers and superior firepower.

  The part of the road I could see was at the elbow of a sharp curve that wound around the bottom of a hill. The raiders would not have to go far to get out of sight in the thick forest on either side of the road, which would make it that much easier for them to surround us. Not good.

  Time to change tactics.

  I fired a few more shots, not really caring if I hit anything, and backed off down the hill. I was out of the enemy’s direct line of fire but was still in danger of catching a ricochet from any of the dozens of bullets careening overhead. Keeping my head down, I made my way to Gabe’s position as fast as possible, and found him lying prone at the base of a hickory tree. His rifle coughed out military grade projectiles in a slow, steady cadence, no doubt taking their pound of flesh from the Legion assholes across the road.

  I dropped down to one knee and shouted up the hill, “Hey Gabe, how much you wanna bet they’re trying to flank us right now?”

  He fired again and paused for a moment, still peering through his scope. “That did occur to me. Flannigan’s not far behind you, and Sancho’s watching our flank about ten yards to your left. Standard diamond formation. How about you take up position on the right?”

  “Will do,” I said. “You got anything fun on you besides than that other LAW?”

  He fired a few more shots before answering. “I thought you were scared of those things.”

  “Not when I’m outnumbered and about to be surrounded.”

  Gabe rolled over onto one side, canting his rifle as he did so, still firing. “Four pockets just above my hip. Take three, and give one to the others. Show ’em how to use the things first. Last thing we need is for those two to blow themselves up.”

  I crawled to him, took three grenades—frags by the look of them—and crawled to Sanchez first, then Flannigan. The two recruits got a quick crash course in how to use the little green death-balls, and then I took position behind cover on Gabe’s right flank.

  The shooting from across the way had died down a good bit, but I had a feeling it was only the calm before the storm. If my quick visual count ha
d been correct, then we had somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-five to thirty well-armed, pissed off Legion marauders about to make a concerted effort to loose us from our mortal coils.

  In the brief moment of relative quiet, with nothing else to occupy my mind, I began to think dark, worrisome thoughts. I thought about the recruits coming to back us up, and how green most of them were when it came to combat. I thought about the Legion, and the fact they seemed to be fighting with near-military efficiency. I thought about Allison, and all the things I wanted to say to her if I made it out of this one alive. Most of all, I thought about Grabovsky, and wondered what the fuck was taking him so long. If reinforcements didn’t show up soon, they would be rescuing a pile of dead bodies.

  Clearing my mind, I took a deep breath, leveled my rifle, and in a rare acknowledgement of my Catholic upbringing, I prayed.

  Chapter 6

  Battle Damage

  … Holy Mary, Mother of God,

  pray for us sinners,

  now and at the hour of our death.

  Amen.

  It was the fourth time I had repeated the prayer, and I sincerely hoped that someone up there was listening.

  Bringing my scope up, I carefully scanned the trees again. No visual yet, but I could hear them, crunching through the carpet of dead leaves, their footsteps carrying up the hill as they closed in on our position. It wouldn’t be long now.

  I almost said the Hail Mary again but decided that it smacked a bit too much of begging. If bared teeth and blazing rifles were to mark the end of my life, then for my last prayer, I wanted something that spoke of defiance. After thinking for a moment, I settled on an old favorite.

  The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

  He leadeth me beside the still waters.

  I wondered if there really were green pastures and still waters in the afterlife. That sounded better than constant warfare, swarms of flesh-eating monsters, and old age in a world that spared no pity for the infirm.

  He restoreth my soul:

  He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.

  Leaving Allison behind would be the hardest part. I had only told her once that I loved her, and I wished that I had said it more often. It seemed silly now, holding back because I was worried she wouldn’t feel the same.

  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

  I will fear no evil: For thou art with me.

  I could see them now, thickly clothed figures making their way through the close stands of trees and underbrush as they climbed the hill. Before I could recite any more of my prayer, gunshots rang out to my right, probably from Flannigan. A scream of pain echoed from down the embankment, and I grinned.

  Attagirl. Give ’em hell.

  The raiders over on the far ridgeline opened fire again, forcing us to keep our heads down while their comrades moved in and tightened the noose. Suppression fire made its way up toward us, but nothing accurate. Just people spraying and praying. I settled in behind cover with as little of my body exposed as possible, and waited for someone to come within range. The only advantage we had was that we held the high ground, and I intended utilize that strength for all it was worth.

  A brown and green shadow moved from one tree to another, and I managed to fire a burst at it before it disappeared behind cover. Luck smiled on me, and the figure went down with an agonized yelp. I hit it with three more shots just to make sure, and then started looking for another target.

  Several more gunmen began to resolve from the brush, leapfrogging with short bursts of fire as they worked their way up higher to my left. I caught one of them in the leg and then put two in his chest when he fell, forcing the others to stop advancing and take cover. To their right, more raiders emerged to back them up.

  While they were busy yelling back and forth to one another, I stayed low and moved to another spot a short distance farther up the hill. It wasn’t as good a spot as the one I was leaving, but I didn’t want to stay in one place for too long. If they concentrated fire on my position, I was done for.

  Being careful to stay low, I put my cheek to the stock, my eye an inch or so from the scope, and settled the crosshairs on a knee jutting out from one side of a thick maple. Two quick trigger pulls turned that knee into a flapping, bleeding clump of meat. When the raider fell down, rather than finish him off, I waited for someone to go to his aid. Sure enough, some brave, dumb bastard broke cover firing an AK-47 at the place I had just vacated and ran to help. He got three rounds in the stomach for his effort. Now it was his turn to scream.

  The men behind him halted, probably realizing that they were facing a sharpshooter, and not just some yahoo with a gun. Good. It would buy me some time. Behind me, I heard more rifle fire from Flannigan’s and Sanchez’s M-4s, and the heavier report of Gabriel’s SCAR. Judging from the shouts coming from the Legion’s direction, my friends were making their shots count.

  A volley of bullets hit the trees below me and brought my attention back to the problem at hand. I could see five more of them in my lane, hunkered behind cover and peppering bullets at anything that looked like somewhere a man might take cover. Unfortunately for them, that was a lot of places, and none of them were anywhere near where I stood. I risked two more shots at a head poking out over a rifle obscured by a tree, missed him on the first try, and then dropped him like a sack of bricks with the second.

  Hot damn, score one for the good guys.

  Not wanting to push my luck, and well aware that if I tried to run now they would undoubtedly spot me, I decided to play my ace in the hole. The last four gunmen were trying to reach the two wounded who still lay where I had shot them, bleeding out and begging for help. Once they were sufficiently close together to suit my intentions, I took out my grenade, pulled the pin, counted to two, and then let it fly.

  I played pitcher for my high school baseball team, and when I throw an object at something, it usually hits where I want it to. The grenade flew straight and true, right into the middle of the marauders’ congregation, and detonated with an ear-splitting WHOMP. I broke cover and ran toward their position, staying low and moving fast. I got close, took cover, and after a moment, realized that no one was shooting at me. I risked a peek around the trunk I knelt behind.

  The two men I had wounded looked like they had been dragged over a hill of glass shards, and three of their would-be rescuers lay motionless in similarly gruesome condition. One of them, however, was still moving. He didn’t look like he was going to put up much of a fight, being that he was bleeding out of his eyes, spitting up blood, and gasping around a lungful of shrapnel, but I wasn’t about to take any chances. I stood up, took aim at his head, and squeezed the trigger twice, putting him out of his misery. I did the same to the remaining bodies, and then moved on.

  Not wanting to get caught out of ammo, I pulled the magazine out of my M6, stashed it in a pocket as a last resort, and smacked in a fresh one. A few tense moments went by as I waited to see if anyone else was going to show up. No movement caught my eye, and the only sounds I heard were gunshots to the south where the others were still engaging the Legion. It occurred to me that I might have just taken out the entire force that had been sent to this side of the ridge.

  Yay, me.

  Breaking cover again, I worked my way across the embankment and down, trying to put myself behind the gunmen advancing up the hill toward Flannigan. If I could draw their fire, maybe I could lead them away from the others and split their forces. It wasn’t the best plan in the world, and it would leave me isolated and outnumbered, but for now, it was all I could think of.

  Following the sound of gunfire, I didn’t have to go far to get a visual on the enemy. They were about thirty yards down the hill from me, and it looked as though they had divided their forces into two groups: one going straight up the middle at Gabe and Flannigan, and the other flanking left to take out Sanchez. That meant the gunmen
I had just dispatched on the farther end of the ridge had been sent with the intention of taking out yours truly.

  Sorry, guys. Better luck next time.

  The fact that my side of the hill was now unoccupied meant that if I could somehow get Gabe and the other’s attention, they might be able to fight their way over and we could make a run for it. But I didn’t have a radio, or any other way to get word to them, so that plan was out.

  I’d like to say that the idea of just turning around and slipping quietly away didn’t occur to me, but it did. And it was a damned tempting idea. I had enough food on me for three days if I rationed it, plenty of ammo, the means to make fresh water, and two well-maintained firearms. I could bug out, leave Hollow Rock behind, and head west. Live off the land, and forget I ever saw this place.

  But that was just the old Eric talking. I could no more abandon Gabe and the others to their fate than I could stand the thought of never seeing Allison again. No, running away was not an option. That left only one course of action.

  As I drew closer, being careful not to let the raiders see me, I noticed that quite a few of them wore balaclavas and scarves, probably to protect their faces from the cold. My hand went to the thick wool scarf around my neck, and I grinned as a plan took shape.

  Moving quickly, I made my way down the hill and around behind the Legion’s advancing line. This next part was going to be tricky—if they had left anyone behind to watch their backs, things could get dicey. I moved carefully and deliberately, using the forest to stay hidden.

  When I finally drew close, I realized that I needn’t have worried. The raiders were so focused on the firefight in front of them that they would not have noticed me if I had ran naked and screaming into their midst. Not a single one was paying attention to what was going on behind them.