Tomorrow War

by J. L. Bourne

  Jesus, they weren’t giving up.

  We rode through the mountain pass for another hour before we finally stopped to make a stand.

  The noises were louder and our pursuers were gaining on us. If we kept riding, they’d just run us down like dogs and put our heads on their handlebars as ornaments. I don’t even ask myself why people become like this anymore. I already know. We’re goddamned animals, all of us. If we miss more than a few meals, we become the road, we become the people that ride all night to kill another human being for whatever they’re carrying . . . or even the very meat on their bones.

  We chose to stop near a low-water bridge, letting our horses cross, stepping through the three inches of icy flowing water to the other side. The bikers would be funneled here, unable to fan out to avoid any ambush.

  Maggie and I pulled our encrypted radios out of our packs and connected them to our helmet/electronic ear pro combo. I’d set up one EFP at the crossing, just out of view, aimed down the middle of the low-water pass. I’d run the wire safely into the tree line behind the business end of the EFP. Maggie would set up shop about a couple hundred meters up the road, setting up a pincer attack on the approaching bikers. She’d tie up the horses, keeping the explosives payload safe along with our crucial supplies.

  I’d lay in wait to detonate the EFP after Maggie gave me the advanced warning. Post-KABOOM, we’d pick off the survivors, separating our targets via IR laser designation so we wouldn’t be working the same target at the same time. Deadly efficiency, just like we were taught by the very government we were now trying to fight.

  We waited until the stars began to fade, listening to motorcycle engines get louder and then softer as the bikers negotiated the countless turns, peaks, and valleys on their way to our position. The first lights flashed through a bend up ahead simultaneous to Maggie’s transmission.

  “Strength one, moving fast. Probably a scout,” Maggie said.

  Wow. It was so weird hearing her finally speak; she’d been dead quiet up until this point in the trip. Maybe this was the juice she needed.

  I watched the lone biker accelerate until just before the bridge, where he slowed down before pushing through the shallow flowing water. The biker rode a large enduro motorcycle with saddlebags and extra gas cans. On the other side of the creek, he cranked the gas and shot off down the road until his engine faded out of earshot.

  Ten minutes later, the real target began to approach. This time, a lot more headlights broke through the trees at the bend where Maggie sat watching them approach.

  “Strength twelve, main body. EFP worthy, I think.”

  I clicked the mic in acknowledgment, wanting to limit my transmission from space-based sensor detection, even though our advanced radios were frequency hopping a hundred times per second.

  The biker’s headlights swept over the shallow rushing water of the bridge. I saw some brake lights, but some of the bikers must have disabled theirs. As the first one crossed into the water I squeezed the EFP detonator like a nutcracker.

  The explosion was loud enough to cause ringing in my ears, even though I wore over-ear electronic sound attenuators. The flash temporarily disabled my NVD and blinded my unassisted left eye. The NVD returned a picture in half a second, revealing chaos on the bridge. One of the bikers was on fire from an exploded gas tank; he fell into the creek and began to float, with the part of his body that wasn’t underwater smoking as he slowly drifted downstream.

  The bikes were now a mangled mess of chrome and rubber, burning from the intense impact of the hypersonic copper projectile. I wasted no time shaking the concussion of the explosion from my mind. I sprang from cover with my carbine pointed downrange at the bridge. Switching on my IR laser, I began picking out my first target. A man sat screaming and in flames from a gasoline explosion who didn’t think it smart to follow his dead friend into the creek. My laser met his chest and I squeezed two rounds of .300 Blackout into him, dropping his corpse to the concrete as Maggie’s IR laser came to life on another target. I saw her laser and deconflicted my shot, neutralizing it in tandem with her medium distance shots.

  All in all, every biker had lead in them within about five seconds.

  “All tangos down,” I said on our secure channel.

  A single key on the net told me that Maggie understood.

  As I began to walk down to the bridge to get a closer look at the carnage, I saw Maggie’s laser illuminate and pass over my head. It began to lasso, so I hit the ditch.

  “His lights are off—he’s coasting down the hill to you,” she said ominously.

  I lay in the ditch as a dark figure opened fire. The rounds whizzed over my head and up the hill to Maggie’s position. Her IR laser went dark. I made sure mine was off when I brought my gun up from the edge of the ditch.

  I was cold and covered with mud when the motorcycle came into view. The scout was coasting in neutral with his engine off, wearing an NVD. He’d seen Maggie’s IR and taken shots at her.

  He didn’t know I was right there and about to put the hurt on him.

  He slowed the enduro motorcycle as he approached the situation of all his hardcore biker buddies in pieces on the ground and in the water. Confused, he looked around, trying to find the source of what could have caused all that mayhem.

  That’s when his single ocular NVD met mine and he nervously reached for the pistol inside his shoulder holster. I took the shot, this time to his head, sending the last one into the ditch under his heavy motorcycle. I waited to make sure the target was neutralized. Approaching the bike, I could smell burning leather, or flesh; I couldn’t tell. The hot exhaust was pressing against one of them. I painstakingly righted the motorbike and pushed it back to the road and dropped the kickstand. The guy in the ditch was dead, and his NVD was smoked, too.

  Good. Most of the groups that might scavenge that device were probably not the type of people I’d want running around in the dark with a rifle.

  With the threat neutralized, Maggie came bouncing down the hill. I could see enhanced light reflecting off her smile. I wasn’t smiling at all but Maggie seemed to be having fun with this. I didn’t even ask, as I didn’t want to hear her response.

  “Interview with a Sociopath” would be the title of that article.

  “Let’s check the saddlebags,” she said to me, walking over to the low-water bridge where the corpses and mangled bikes sat spilled over.

  “Wow. You’re actually talking,” I said. “But, no. I don’t think I can check their bags right now. Would you mind?”

  She cocked her head sideways at me for a moment before turning away to check the cargo that the bikers were carrying before we ended them.

  I went over to a nearby guardrail and leaned up against the frozen metal as Maggie rummaged through the disaster area. I winced every time I saw her open a flap on a saddlebag, hoping she wouldn’t find inside the horror I’d discovered when I was operating in Fayetteville, just after the shit hit the fan.

  Some things you just can’t unsee.

  She came back with a box full of energy bars and some iodine tablets. Better than nothing, I suppose.

  “Bikes were wired with human body parts,” Maggie said nonchalantly.

  “Yeah, they were road warriors. Probably not working for the provisional government. Most likely a pack of feral bikers moving like locusts.”

  We recovered our horses and walked them down to the stream to water them up before it was time to leave again. I stared at the enduro bike for a few moments, trying to talk myself into taking it instead of Molly. Yes, it would be faster, and yes, I could cover a lot of ground and scout ahead for Maggie, but it’d be loud as hell and the gas can strapped to the back wouldn’t get me all the way to the East Coast. Adding a motorcycle to the mix would only mean more problems.

  With the theme park behind us, we rode on, leaving the twisted pile of chrome and flesh behind for eastern horizons once again.

  THE BIG MUDDY

  Happy New Year
/>   We didn’t see another soul on our way across eastern Arkansas other than an old mountain man early one morning. He didn’t say much as we rode past, just tipping his hat as he set snares in the field adjacent to the road we traveled. I didn’t know for sure, but something told me that he didn’t much care for the troubles of his fellow man. He looked as if he’d been setting snares and running trotlines since before all this went down anyway. I waved, and the man just ignored me and we kept on moving.

  We are currently camped out in an old warehouse about ten miles from the Missouri-Tennessee border. We’d thought briefly about crossing the Mississippi River on I-40 into Memphis, but the report we’d received via shortwave from Rich warned against getting anywhere near the city. It was under the control of a group even more vicious that the provisional government, and now resembled Somalia more than an American city.

  Rich was sending out intel, trying to time his report with where he thought we might be on our trip. Every few days, I planned to send a Morse signal to update our position based on the secret kill box grid he gave me before leaving the Shire.

  The only other crossing besides the I-40 that I knew might still be intact would be the 155, which is where we’re going tonight.

  —————

  We made our approach to the bridge that spanned the widest river in the once great United States. Abandoned cars were everywhere; some of them blocked access to the bridge, unless you were on foot, motorcycle, or horseback. At the mouth of the bridge, we stayed back for a moment, observing any signs of activity. I watched for nearly an hour in the darkness through my NVD, trying to pick out cigarettes being smoked, or any other lapses in light discipline that a would-be ambusher might let slip as they waited on a couple of suckers to try to make their way across.

  “You ready?” I asked Maggie.

  She nodded and led the way ahead, unafraid of anything that would be on the bridge. The four-lane giant appeared to be in decent shape, with none of the wire supports frayed or snapped yet. Give it a decade and this whole span would be in the bottom of the mighty Mississippi.

  We moved farther across the bridge until we came to a giant hole in the span. I looked down through the opening beyond the frayed rebar and crumbling concrete. The water rushed rapidly below. The hole covered both lanes on our side and a truck was leaning halfway inside. We backed the horses up, as combined we weighed as much as a small car.

  “What the hell could have caused that?” I said aloud.

  We backtracked a hundred yards or so until we found a way that the horses could negotiate to the other lane and resumed our crossing.

  The bridge was long and the details on the other side were still too dark to make out. We continued to move forward, slowly, moving around abandoned vehicles. I could hear the water forty feet or so below the bridge. We kept going, eventually making it to the last third of the bridge. After going around an ambulance Swiss cheesed with large caliber bullet holes, the far end of the bridge lit up.

  A flare had been fired into the night sky, illuminating the area all around us with eerie incendiary glow. Maggie and I slinked down like vampires exposed to sunlight and turned our horses around in slow retreat. The next sound was faint, unmistakable.

  Incoming mortar.

  Why wouldn’t one of the only passages across the Mississippi be guarded? What the hell was I thinking?

  Those were just some of the thoughts going through my head as the mortar came down somewhere in front of us, blasting concrete and steel into the bullet riddled ambulance we’d just passed.

  “You hit?!” I yelled.

  “No, but they’re not gonna launch just one!” Maggie said.

  Just as those words left Maggie’s mouth, another round came whistling, then slamming down from above into about the same spot as the last, again rocking the ambulance, this time turning it over. I watched in slow motion as the ambulance flipped in an awkward direction, a way in which didn’t seem quite natural considering the blast from the explosives.

  It was too late when I realized what was happening.

  The ambulance was falling into a hole in the bridge, just blasted open from the high order detonations being fired from the eastern end. The emergency vehicle lurched in over the side and the concrete below us caved, sending us down into the deep brown, murky waters of the Mississippi. The last thing I remember before going over was screaming to Maggie, “The explosives!”

  Then impact.

  I went under with Molly. She flailed and kicked to get to the surface and the current tore me from the saddle sometime after we hit. The cold water impacted like a planet strike, evacuating the air from my lungs. My foot was still caught in the stirrups, dragging me awkwardly behind the swimming animal, and I was having trouble reaching the surface, especially after the horse kicked me in the stomach (accidentally of course).

  Eventually, I wrestled my foot loose from the saddle and took in a deep breath of cold air. I began to shake uncontrollably as I gripped the saddle horn for dear life. I knew Molly was cold too, but she had a much higher probability of resisting hypothermia than I did.

  I forced myself to stay lucid, concentrating on the pain, letting the continued mortar strikes serve as alarm bells to my senses.

  I craned my head over my shoulder and watched as part of the bridge came apart from the violent attack that continued from the eastern shore. Nearly passing out, I just held on, not daring to call out to Maggie for fear of getting mortars redirected as a result of my voice carrying too far over the water. My hands began to lose their grip, so I climbed up higher onto Molly, causing her to whinny in protest. She was pushing as hard as she could to get across to the eastern shore. The river kept rushing us downstream and away from the stricken bridge and I hoped that Maggie was somewhere out there, in front or behind, awake and commanding Elvis to carry on, somehow.

  I blacked out as I felt my body get even colder.

  —————

  I woke up to a campfire on the banks of the Mississippi somewhere far downstream. I couldn’t see the bridge or a sign of anyone other than our small camp. At first I was concerned about the fire, cautious that we’d be seen and killed, but as I got warmer, logic prevailed. We’d have died without the fire, no doubt about that. I still shook from hypothermia, but the fire began to cut through my icy skin and muscle and eventually reached my core, meeting the warm water Maggie made me drink somewhere in the middle.

  “How?” I asked, barely able to speak.

  “Elvis is a much better swimmer than Molly. It was cold at first, but after the initial plunge, I was out of the water the rest of the way to the bank. Granted, I had to come in after your dumb ass as you fell off Molly about fifty yards out.”

  “I see you enjoy talking again,” I said, cracking a thin, hypothermic smile.

  “Don’t get used to it, Max.”

  Maggie had all our gear spread out around the fire suspended on paracord clotheslines to speed up the drying. I make a quick visual check and saw that everything seemed to be fine. Fatigue began to rob my consciousness, and before I drifted out, I swore I could hear the click of a weapon’s latch. I tried to force myself awake, but my body would have none of it. I went down for a hard reboot to the crackling of fire.

  —————

  Maggie woke me up at about 0600, just before daybreak.

  “Let’s move,” she said after pouring river water on the fire. “Don’t worry, I made another.”

  I was still cold from the plunge from the bridge, but I reluctantly crawled out of my bag that I’d luckily stored in a dry compress and began to ball it up and follow Maggie. I was half naked, my clothes strung out over branches to dry, but they were missing. It all became clear to me as I walked into the tree line from the banks of the Big Muddy. The glow of another fire beckoned me back into the open arms of the riverside forest. At the fire, I dropped my bag near and crawled back inside, still shaking from exposure.

  Maggie allowed me to sleep until about noon,
when she smacked me on the back.

  “Suit up and follow. You need to see,” she said.

  I quickly got dressed, glanced at the horses, and followed Maggie onto the bank. She didn’t venture too far out, skirting the tree line that the Mississippi River had carved out, the polished stones relenting to softer dirt where the trees grew from fertile soils brought downriver.

  We passed our camp from before, charred black driftwood being the only evidence left behind, to be erased the next time it rained somewhere upstream, somewhere uphill. Rounding two more bends, the bridge was revealed, the same one from which we plummeted last night. Maggie pulled out her binoculars and glassed the eastern side before handing them to me, gesturing that I do the same.

  I cleaned the lenses with my dirty T-shirt and brought them up to have a look. Clearly, I could see white armored vehicles covering the eastern side and could make out black UN letters painted on the side. A few years ago, I’d have been called a conspiracy kook for even talking about UN vehicles at a checkpoint, let alone a UN force firing mortars to close off passage across the river.

  “That’s weird,” I said, handing the binoculars back to Maggie.

  “Chinese, all of them,” she commented.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I got close this morning. They’re not wearing blue helmets. Straight up People’s Liberation Army. Listen, Max. I think they were guarding the bridge because I think they’re laying claim to this side of the river.”

  Damn, that really stung to hear. I chastised Maggie for getting so close to the action, but couldn’t fault her success. We didn’t know for certain, but it appeared at least from here on the riverbed that her assessment of the situation could be true, especially knowing what I’d learned from the intel reports at the Shire. The Chinese wanted their share of what they were owed from the thirty-two trillion dollars in national debt, backed up by sovereign U.S. territory.