Refugees from the Righteous Horde (Toxic World Book 2)

by Sean McLachlan

  She’d only been a little girl when the bandits came. Being so young they hadn’t bothered with her and she managed to escape. Her parents and the others—especially the women and older girls—hadn’t been so lucky.

  She glanced over at Jeb and saw his grim countenance made frightening by the distant firelight. He had survived a similar slaughter, not once but twice, and she knew without asking that the same thoughts, the same feelings, were going through his mind.

  They drew closer to the settlement, and while the cultists who stood next to the burning buildings would not be able to spot them in the relative darkness of the countryside Annette worried about patrols. She looked around for a good spot to hole up until dawn and saw a dark bulk blotting out the stars.

  Raising her hand to block out the glare from the flames, she saw it was a large, rocky hill about a half mile to the west of the burning buildings.

  “There,” she said. “We’ll take up position there.”

  They made a large circle in order to come to the hill from the opposite side, where the darkness and the hill itself would shelter them.

  It took another hour to make it to its base. It stood out clearly silhouetted by the flames.

  “You think there might be sentries up there?” Annette asked Jeb.

  “Probably not at night. Wouldn’t be able to see and they don’t have anything to fear anyway. They might send observers up there come dawn.”

  “We’ll hit them at dawn. Didn’t you say everyone had to stay for the morning sermon?”

  Jeb nodded. “Yeah, you’ll have your chance. And then what?”

  Annette turned and gave him a grim smile. “And then we run like hell.”

  She turned to the others, looking at Jackson, Christina, Nguyen, and Charley each one by one before she spoke.

  “Look, I’m not going to order you to climb that hill. This is my shot and Jeb’s along because he made a deal. You all can head back to the pass if you want to.”

  Christina snorted. “I’m not chickening out. Those pieces of shit killed some of my friends.”

  Nguyen nodded. “If there’s trouble during the getaway, you’re going to need me,” he said, patting the bag of grenades at his hip.

  Annette looked at Jackson, who only snorted and cradled his AK on his shoulder.

  She turned to Charley, the one she was least sure about. He spotted her dubious look and laughed.

  “Hell, I’m sore about losing the election, but not that sore! Let’s get on up there.”

  Annette smiled. She really needed to learn how to trust people more, rely on people more. Everyone said it—Marcus, Rosie, Roy, everyone. It was the old scavenger in her, that old mistrust born of eking out a living in the wildlands. That sort of attitude had no place in New City or even the Burbs. If she wanted to be the symbol of law and order and a renewing civilization, she had to lead by example.

  “I’m sorry I doubted you,” she said at last. “Let’s get this done.”

  They spread out and ascended slowly, keeping low in case Jeb was wrong about the sentries.

  She caught Jeb looking at her.

  Did he think I was apologizing to him too?She thought.Was I?

  She signaled a stop.

  “Who’s carrying the spare AK?” she asked.

  “I am,” Nguyen said.

  “Give it to him along with all the spare clips.”

  Nguyen paused a moment, and then did as she asked. Jeb took the AK, pulled out and checked the magazine, and snapped it back in. He turned to Christina.

  “You OK with this?”

  Christina’s grin was visible even in the shadow the hill cast.

  “Don’t worry, machete man, I know you’re not going to get trigger happy. They’d kill you as fast as they’d kill me.”

  “Faster,” Jeb grunted.

  They made it up without coming on any sentries. The hilltop ended in a flat-topped summit with almost sheer sides.

  “Let’s be careful climbing that,” Charley said. “Don’t need a broken neck before the main event.”

  “You and Nguyen go check it out. We’re taking position down here,” Annette said. “Jackson, take a look around the other side of the hill.”

  “Why not take up position at the top? Better view,” Jeb said.

  “See how there’s no stars? It’s cloudy now but what if it clears? The sunlight will flare off the scope.”

  She led him around to a spot a few yards down from the top and sheltered to the east by a taller slab of stone.

  “Here the sun won’t hit us for the first part of the morning,” she explained.

  They looked out and saw all the countryside before them. Less than a mile away burned a dozen buildings. Tiny figures cavorted around the flames. To one side spread the camp, all lit up by the burning settlement, with little dots of cooking fires scattered through the camp looking like sparks coming off the main blaze.

  “So tell me how the sentries will be positioned,” Annette said, hearing her voice come out hoarse. She lay down to make herself less visible, even though she knew they would never be able to spot her up here. Lying down made her heart beat a little less madly.

  “There’ll be some in the darkness beyond camp,” Jeb whispered back as he lay down next to her. Christina hovered in the background. “They’ll be paired up now, at least two each of the Elect and the bodyguard. Maybe three each, I don’t know. An equal number, anyway. That’s the way things had been heading between them. Nobody trusted you with their back.”

  “At least there were none up here,” Annette said. “That would have been a mess.”

  Jeb shrugged. “Judging from the size of that camp they don’t have the numbers to spread a cordon this far out in the dark.”

  “Right,” Annette replied. She handed Jeb a pair of binoculars. “Check to see if he’s visible.”

  “He won’t be. He always hides in his tent at night.”

  “Check anyway.”

  Jeb looked for a few minutes. In that time Charley and Nguyen returned and reported that the hilltop was deserted.

  “He’s not visible,” Jeb said. “That’s his tent over there, that big white one.”

  Annette pulled out her Dakota and looked through the scope. The camp and its denizens leapt into detail. She wove a path through the crowds of laughing, feasting men until she found the tent. It was twice as big as any of the others, and guards with M16s stood at every corner. She scanned to the left and the right and saw the tent stood isolated from the rest, with the burning buildings to one side and not another tent within two hundred yards.

  Don’t trust your own men, do you? Well one of your own men has led me right to you.

  Something closer to the burning buildings caught her attention, some strange objects that looked like trees. She focused her scope and her mouth went dry.

  Crosses. A dozen crosses with men, women, and children nailed to them.

  Annette gritted her teeth and looked away.

  So. They’d stay up here until dawn. The Pure One would come out of his tent, do his morning speech, and be right there to take out. One shot, get the hell out. They were better fed than these guys, and far more rested. If they ran and kept running, they’d get away.

  That was the plan anyway.

  Annette’s eyes strayed back to the crosses. She forced herself not to look.

  You can’t help them. Focus.

  Annette rolled herself up in her bedroll and settled down to wait. She told the others to get some sleep but she knew that was a pointless command. None of them would sleep that night.

  So they waited. Annette had no appetite but ate anyway, as did the others. They needed to keep up their strength for the chase they knew would come with the sunrise. A cold winter wind blew around the exposed rock and they longed for a fire. Lighting one was out of the question.

  As the night wore on the farmstead buildings collapsed one by one, sending up great curtains of sparks into the night sky. Members of the Righteous Horde sta
rted going into their own tents if they had them, or wrapping themselves in their bedrolls by the fire. At last the camp grew quiet. The only figures still awake were the guards around The Pure One’s tent.

  Too bad that Nguyen’s grenade launcher doesn’t have the range to blast the tent into ribbons.

  Annette made a face. No, there was no getting out of this. She’d have to be the one pulling the trigger. She’d pulled it so many times before and she had never gotten used to it, not even with scum like this. It was always hard, always made her feel dirty.

  But her aim was always true.

  She pulled the bullet out of her breast pocket and studied it in the dim light still cast by the farmstead. Yes, her aim had always been true, and if she had been home when the attack had occurred she could have taken out The Pure One and saved everyone a heap of trouble.

  But no, she was off chasing Radio Hope for Abe Weissman without even knowing she was doing it. Damn guy’s conniving didn’t stop even in the face of an invasion.

  No one had spoken for a long time. She hoped the others were catching some sleep. Jeb wasn’t, though. He sat a little apart, whittling that bat. The scrape of his knife shaving wood soothed her against the harsh crackle of the burning farms.

  It was nice that he was doing this. She wasn’t good with her hands. She’d never made Pablo anything.

  Poor kid. What with Roy and Marcus and Rosie he wasn’t starved for attention but she could tell he wanted a father. She’d put that part of her life aside when Estefan died.

  She sat for a long time, remembering.

  The sky started to brighten in the east. Jeb had put away the bat and lay looking out over the camp, which was gloomy now that the houses had burned down to smoldering heaps. Only the guards by The Pure One’s tents stayed up.

  At last the sun peeked over the eastern horizon and the camp beneath them began to stir. After a small breakfast of pemmican and corn cake, Annette crawled around the hill until she was out of sight and then limbered up, swinging her arms, doing deep knee bends to loosen up limbs made stiff and cold by a long night out in the cold. She took several deep breaths to calm herself. Everyone left her alone. Then she got back into position, checked and rechecked her sniper’s rifle, and lay down to wait.

  Smoke curled from up from several points in the camp as the Righteous Horde began to cook its breakfast. Annette noted that it blew slightly westward, as was typical in the early morning as the sun warmed up the air. She eyed the figures walking around the camp and estimated her position was a little over a hundred feet above them, and three-quarters of a mile away.

  Jeb lay down next to her with the binoculars. He kept them trained on the entrance to the tent.

  “He’ll be out soon now,” he said.

  “Get any sleep?” Annette asked.

  “I dozed a little.”

  “I didn’t get a wink. You made some nice progress on that bat. Pablo’s going to love it.”

  Jeb glanced at her before looking through the binoculars again.

  “I’ve gotten it into the basic shape. Once you get it back, have Rachel put it on the lathe. I’m sure you can find a picture of a bat in an old magazine or something.”

  “Pablo has a bunch.”

  Jeb grinned. “Good boy. Use one of those then.”

  Annette smiled.

  Jeb got a distant look in his eyes.

  “Probably got his whole room plastered with pictures,” he whispered. “Baseball, jet planes, the lunar base. . .”

  His voice trailed off and he turned back to study the camp through the binoculars.

  Annette felt like putting her hand on his shoulder, but held back. If things were different, it would be nice if Jeb could finish that bat himself. If things were different, a lot would be better.

  “There he is,” Jeb said, looking through the binoculars.

  Annette lined up her eye with the sniper’s scope. She saw two men in hooded robes emerge from the tent. The guards saluted.

  “The one on the right.”

  Annette heard the others shift and mutter amongst themselves.

  The pair turned and the guards hurried to get around them. She didn’t have a clear shot.

  In silence she watched as the group strode to the center of the camp. She could see the robed figures were talking, and that some of the men cheered them as they passed. No sound reached her on the hilltop.

  The entire camp began to stir. Men left their cooking fires or emerged from their tents and began to assemble. Annette noticed an oblong, flat-topped boulder near the crosses. The two priests and their guards headed there.

  Jeb confirmed her hunch. “He’s probably going to speak from that big rock there,” he said. “He always likes to stand where he can be seen.”

  “Do you think they’ll chase us once I take him out?” Annette asked.

  “Probably not. They’ll probably think he was killed by one of their own. All hell will break loose and everyone will start shooting everybody. It’s going to be fun to watch.”

  “We’re not going to be watching. We’re going to be running like hell.”

  “Shame to miss the show, but that’s probably a good idea.”

  The two priests stopped in front of the boulder. One climbed up on top. Annette clicked the safety off her sniper’s rifle.

  “Don’t fire. That’s the second-in-command,” Jeb said.

  Annette’s eye left the scope long enough to glance at the smoke from the fires. The wind had picked up slightly.

  A high, thin voice came up to them as the man started gesticulating. The crowd gathered more quickly now.

  “They seem eager,” Annette said.

  “No. They just want this over so they can have breakfast.”

  In a minute everyone had assembled. As one man they raised their fists in their air three times.

  “Purity! Purity! Purity!” words rang clear through the crisp morning air.

  Annette guessed there were about five hundred, less than a quarter of their original numbers. She saw no camp followers other than a few women huddled by the tents. They did not cheer.

  The high priest spoke for another minute before jumping off the boulder. The other robed man climbed up and took his place.

  “That’s him,” Jeb said. “Take him out so we can all be safe. You can do it, Annette.”

  Encouraging murmurs came from the others.

  Thanks, now shut up. God I hate doing this. It’s like murder. This guy doesn’t even know I’m here.

  She studied The Pure One through her scope. What everyone said was true, he really did have the features you see in the common images of Jesus. Annette had the weird thought that if he had lived a different life he could have been a regular back at $87,953, some scavenger or small-time farmer. Everyone would have called him Jesus and had a big laugh. “Hey Jesus, turn some water into wine. I don’t have any more trade to give Roy!”

  In some other world. She and The Pure One weren’t living in that world.

  He wore a plain linen robe, not the bright white one people said he wore when he had besieged New City, but a simpler robe that was more practical for the march. A belt and a black satchel were around his waist. Otherwise he had no other item of clothing or possessions on him that she could see.

  Even at this distance his charisma was unmistakable. His gestures, the way he stood, the power of his contorted face, all showed that this was a man who could twist minds and make them commit evil. Annette had read enough history to know that only perhaps once a generation did someone like this appear, and they always led their people to ruin.

  Led to ruin because they made enemies like her.

  “What made you like this?” she whispered. “Why not be a farmer or a scavenger or move to the Burbs? You could have been anything, and you ended up being this. Sorry, but you got to die.”

  She let her breath out slowly and squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle barked in her hands. She kept it steady, gazing through the scope
for the half-second it took for the bullet to reach him.

  The Pure One jerked and a flare of blue light surrounded him in a sparkling sphere.

  Annette blinked, and the light was gone.

  The Pure One was still standing.

  Standing, and looking right at her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Oh shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. I knew Annette was short on ammo, but one bullet? She brought us out here with only one fucking bullet?

  Just like a woman. You begin to like her and she pulls some world-class bullshit!

  But she hit him. . .

  The Pure One flinched, and there wasn’t any kickup on the rock around him. She hit. And what was that light? It was like an egg of blue light around him.

  He couldn’t be. . .

  No, no way. The guy was a fraud. He’d seen enough frauds to know. But how did he do it?

  First things first, they had to get the fuck out of there.

  They were running—flat out running—across the plain. There was no attempt at evasion or hiding their tracks or deluding their pursuers into thinking they were heading anywhere except the pass. The land was too open for that. The only thing that could save them was running faster and for longer than the Righteous Horde.

  They could see them back there. Any time they came to a rise they’d see hundreds of men spread out about a mile behind them. The Pure One had spread his net wide. If Jeb and the rest tried to veer off to one side they’d get caught by the flanks of the army.

  So it was straight on to the pass or face crucifixion.

  They might just make it. As Annette had pointed out, they were better rested and fed than their pursuers, although they were carrying packs and knowing The Pure One, he’d told his men to strip off everything but their weapons to make better time. Still, they maybe they could get away. Maybe.

  And then there was that tremulous edge of fatigue already placing a palsied hand on Jeb’s muscles and making his heart beat painfully in his chest. He wasn’t much better off physically than those guys back there. In another mile or two, he knew, he’d start lagging behind the rest.

  So. . . options.