Surviving the Dead (Book 4): Fire In Winter

by James Cook

  “What do you think,” I asked, nodding toward the house.

  Hicks nodded. “Works for me.”

  “We’ll stable the horses in the church. I’ll brush them down and feed them if you take the first watch.”

  “Deal.”

  It was the longest conversation we had all day.

  *****

  Morning. Planning session.

  “First thing is recon,” I said.

  Hicks took a bite of his flatbread and pointed at a spot on the tablet. “That’s where I set up last week. There’s a hill there with a big oak tree on top. If you climb up, you’ll have a good view of the town.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Two hours later, Hicks held my horse’s reins while I ascended said oak tree. It had to be at least eighty years old; the trunk was close to four feet in diameter, and the limbs were as thick as my waist. The lowest limb was twenty feet up, requiring me to throw Hicks’ rope over it, anchor it to another nearby trunk, and climb up. When I reached the top, I unslung my .338 and focused through the scope.

  Ten minutes passed. As I scoured the town from one side to the other, a sad fact became undeniably clear.

  Blackmire was being abandoned.

  And no sign of the founder or his men.

  “Shit.”

  I climbed down and delivered the bad news. Hicks chewed a piece of jerky, idly scratching his horse behind the ear. The animal dipped its chestnut-colored head and leaned into the soldier’s hand like an oversized dog. My own horse, a gelding I named Red because of his rusty coloring, stood aloof, snuffling around in the snow for grass.

  “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”

  I looked back toward the town and sighed, breath forming a cloud of frosted white. “We need intel.”

  A nod. “Yep.”

  *****

  The road to Blackmire was fraught with peril, not the least of it Hicks and I. As the townsfolk fled, we picked a good spot on the trail to Watkins road, donned our ghillie suits, and lay in wait.

  Most of the passersby were too tough of a target. Raiders in their Army surplus camouflage, marauders in their various crudely-dyed colors riding under embroidered flags, slavers in their dun brown, innocuous, home-spun fabrics. These were hard men and, to a less numerous extent, hard women. Not the kind of people who would back down to a couple of armed Union types demanding information. Undesiring of a firefight, we let the sharks pass and waited for the bait fish to filter through.

  It didn’t take long.

  There was a squat, frail little man in a wagon with an equally squat, frail little woman riding next to him. Drawing their cart was a pair of mules, both looking sickly and underfed. The cargo behind them was hastily stacked, consisting mostly of food, water, a cask of whiskey, a wood-burning stove, a crate with Chinese markings denoting its contents as rifles, and another crate with Cyrillic script advertising two-thousand rounds of ammo. Just a pair of malcontented settlers struggling to start a new life.

  And I’m a monkey’s fucking uncle.

  My hand appeared from nowhere, grasping the harness binding the two mules and holding them in place. I rose to my full height, appearing out of the foliage on the side of the road. The old woman reached back and laid hands on a rifle, only to find a clump of forest swinging into her cart and aiming an M-4 at her head. She stopped cold, hands still.

  “Listen,” the old man said, hand easing toward a spot under the buckboard. “Just take what you want. We’ll get-”

  I drew my pistol and pointed it at his face. “We’re not here to rob you.”

  The old man’s eyes crossed comically as he gazed down the barrel. “So what do you want?”

  “Information. Answer a few questions, and we’ll send you on your way.”

  “All right.”

  As a show of good faith, I lowered my weapon. Hicks didn’t move. “I’m looking for a man named Sebastian Tanner, goes by the alias Blackmire. Big scar on his face, one dead eye. Have you seen him?”

  The old man turned his head and spit. “Hell yes I seen him. And if you’re out to kill the bastard, you don’t need to threaten me for information. I’ll give it to you for free.”

  I glanced at Hicks, then said, “Go on.”

  “He called a town meeting yesterday, said the Union was sending soldiers and artillery to destroy the place. Told us to get the hell out of dodge while we still could. Then him and his personal guard rode off through the north gate and left the rest of us twisting in the wind. Ain’t seen ‘em since.”

  “How did he find out about the Union sending troops this way?”

  The old man shrugged. “Radio chatter would be my guess. The Union ain’t so careful about operational security sometimes.”

  I processed that, suppressing a grimace. The next time I spoke with General Jacobs, I would definitely bring that up. “You said they left through the north gate. Which way did they go after that?”

  Another shrug. “Hell if I know. If I had to guess, I’d say north, probably toward the 155 bridge over the river. From there he can follow the highways up to Red Blade. That’s the nearest Alliance outpost.”

  “How many men were with him?”

  “Eight. His personal guard, all on horseback. Oh, and three pack mules.”

  “What about his other men?”

  The old man spit again. “Deserted. Worthless sons o’ bitches.”

  I glanced at Hicks and gave a little twitch of my head. He stood up and leapt smoothly from the wagon, feet barely making a sound when he landed.

  “Go on,” I said. “You’re free to go.”

  The old man’s eyes narrowed. “You with the Union? Special Forces types?”

  I raised my pistol again and drew back the hammer. “Go. Now.”

  With fumbling hands, he gripped the reins, snapped them, and the wagon tottered forward.

  “Come on,” I said, looking at Hicks across the trail. “Let’s get out of here before someone else shows up.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  I used to believe I was an expert tracker. Not anymore. Now, I consider myself a marginally competent tracker.

  Hicks, on the other hand, is an expert.

  “Looks like the old fella was telling the truth,” he said, riding a circle around a cluster of barely visible hoof prints. “Nine men on horseback, three mules loaded down heavy. Looks like they went north toward Highway 88.”

  “So they have a day’s lead on us,” I replied. “How much you want to bet they already made it across the river?”

  “I’d say that’s a definite.”

  We followed the tracks and rode hard, pushing our mounts at a fast pace. If Tanner made it to Red Blade, he was as good as lost. But the airport the community was built around was about a hundred and fifty miles from the 155 bridge, so we had at least four days to catch up with him.

  Along the way, there was a buzzing, nagging little voice in my head, like a fly in my ear. I call that voice Instinct, and I had long ago learned not to ignore it. But focusing on it did no good, the harder I tried to work out what the guys in the basement were doing, the darker the lights dimmed. So instead, I cleared my mind, focused on the trail ahead, and let them do their jobs. As afternoon wore on toward evening, less than two miles from the bridge, I swear to God I heard an audible click.

  “Stop,” I said, tugging back on the reins.

  Hicks obeyed, hand straying to his weapon. “What’s wrong?”

  “Blackmire knew about the Army sending troops this way.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “My name was mentioned a few times in the chatter. I heard it.”

  Hicks furrowed his brow and dipped his head. “And…”

  “We have personal history, Blackmire and me. Also, there’s a bounty on my head. A substantial one. If he heard about the attack, and knows I was involved, there’s every reason for him to believe I might try to catch him before he reaches Red Blade.”

  I saw the machinery begin to churn. Hicks s
aid, “So we might be walking into an ambush.”

  “If you were going to set one up, where would be the best place?”

  We both thought about it for a moment, then looked up and spoke at the same time.

  “The bridge.”

  *****

  The 155 bridge, according to the tablet, was built on the narrowest point in the river for miles in either direction. But even there it is nearly half a mile wide.

  They don’t call it the mighty Mississippi for nothing.

  Fording was not an option. Horses are good swimmers, but not that good. The cold would sap their strength, and ours, and the lot of us would drown. No go.

  We did, however, find a canoe.

  Hicks put the horses on a long tether, fed them a double helping of oats, and made a water trough out of an old plastic barrel washed up beside the river. The effort cost us a couple of hours, but that was okay. We didn’t plan to leave until well after nightfall anyway.

  Neither of us was entirely comfortable abandoning the horses, but there wasn’t much choice. The bridge was as long as the river was wide, which meant our only hope of ambushing the ambushers was to get around behind them—if, in fact, they were there. If not, we would simply cross back over, reclaim the horses, and head north. We just had to hope the weather stayed on our side and didn’t warm up too much. If the temp got above 26 degrees, and the dead thawed out, the horses would rip up their stakes and take off. Hicks made sure not to bury the tethering stakes too deep just in case.

  The water was flat and wide, the current strong but sluggish. I kept the canoe pointed slightly north to combat the river’s southward flow, and in less than an hour, we crossed the border into Missouri.

  After dragging the canoe ashore, we turned northward and followed the river for two miles, then swung west in a wide arc. The bare floodplain around us eventually turned into a dense patch of forest half a mile from the Missouri side of the bridge. I switched my NVGs to thermal mode, unlimbered my .338—I had loaned Hicks my M-110—activated my FLIR scope, and began a slow, deliberate search.

  We stayed on the south side of the highway, spread out at ten meters, maintaining radio silence. There was no need to talk, I could see Hicks clearly with my thermal imager. If he strayed too far, it was a simple matter to warn him with a pre-arranged bird call. He had NVGs of his own, but they did not have FLIR capability, just standard night vision. Same story with his scope.

  About three hundred yards from where the bridge terminated on the landward side, Hicks and I belly crawled over a ridge, staying low to avoid skylining ourselves, and paused to search the forest around the highway.

  At first, with the scope set at 9x power, I didn’t see anything. But then I dialed it up to 20x power and did a grid search.

  “Bingo,” I whispered, then signaled Hicks to come over.

  “How many,” he asked when he reached me.

  “Four. Not sure where the others are, probably continued on toward Red Blade. Left these guys behind to capture or kill me.”

  The scarred soldier peered through his night vision scope. “Must be dug in good. I can’t make ‘em out.”

  “Center your reticle on the highway where it meets this side of the river. Good. Now pan right to where you see the tallest tree, looks like a pine. Okay, now scan the base of it on the left hand side. You should see a tree cancer.”

  “Got him.”

  I gave him instructions to find the other shooter on the south side of the highway and then watched as he moved the scope back and forth between them a few times. “Okay. Ready when you are.”

  I repeated the same exercise with the gunmen on the north side, then tapped Hicks on the shoulder. “On three. Five…four…three.”

  Both rifles fired at the same time. The M-110 was loud, but the .338 was deafening. I was glad I had remembered to put in my earplugs.

  The glaring white man-outline in my reticle jumped a bit, twitched a few times, and moved no more. The man ahead of him tried to get up from his hide and make a run for it, but I was too quick for him. My second shot leveled him center of mass, driving him to the forest floor. To my right, I heard Hicks fire a second shot, curse, then fire a third.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “Was a little low on the second one.”

  “But you got him, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s all that counts.”

  Warily, we descended the hill, approached the dead bodies, and searched them. Three of them had tattoos identifying them as having served in, respectively, the 82nd Airborne, First Infantry Division, and USMC. The fourth had no such markings, but his gear and weapons were maintained with military-esque attention to detail.

  “Pro’s,” I said.

  “Traitors.” Hicks shook his head and pointed back the way we came. “Let’s cross back and go get the horses, then make camp on this side of the bridge.”

  “Works for me.”

  *****

  Hicks picked up their trail at first light.

  “This is fresh,” he said, looking down from the saddle. “They must have stuck around for a while, then left when you didn’t show up in a timely manner.”

  “How long ago, do you think?”

  “Not more than a day. We probably missed ‘em by a few hours.”

  I loosed my M-6 from where it was lashed to the saddle and laid it across my lap. “Let’s go.”

  The horses were clearly sore from the previous day’s exertions, but we couldn’t afford to take it easy on them, not this close to our goal. After following 155 to where it intersected with Interstate 55, we turned northward. The forest gave way to barren fields for a while, then the terrain grew increasingly hilly and eased into another long stretch of woodland. By the time the sun began to dip below the horizon, we had covered over thirty miles. Finally, shortly after nightfall, Hicks spoke up.

  “We have to stop, Gabe. We’re gonna kill the horses. They need rest.”

  I checked the sky, looking at the last shreds of midnight blue retreating before the encroaching black. “Let me see the tablet.”

  “Why?”

  “If we’re close, they should have made camp somewhere nearby.”

  “What makes you think we’re close to them?”

  “Think about it. Would they have set this hard of a pace? Probably not. Tanner expected his men to either kill me, capture me, or at least slow me down. They did nothing of the sort. You said it yourself, the tracks are fresh.”

  Hicks pondered for a few seconds, then nodded. “You know, you might be-”

  There was a whirring sound, a shrill thrum I knew all too well, and then a hammer nailed me in the right side of my ribcage. I had enough breath in my lungs to shout a warning to Hicks, and then he was moving.

  The report startled Red, who jumped beneath me and bolted for the cover of the trees. For the first time in my life, I could have kissed a horse and not felt the least bit weird about it.

  As we left the road, and the powerful animal wended his way among the trunks, I felt a tug at my back and the distinct thak of a bullet impacting wood. The gray matter went on autopilot, calculating the vectors.

  I was facing north when the bullet struck me. It hit me in the right side. Then another one grazed my back from the same angle as I rode away, headed northwest. Which meant the shooter was to the northeast, and had been aiming center of mass both times. Judging by the time gap between impact and report, I estimated the range at four-hundred yards. By the sound, it was a 7.62x54, maybe a Dragunov or PSL.

  Which meant the shooter was none other than Sebastian Tanner himself.

  Red carried me over the crest of a hill, then broke a sharp left to follow Hicks’ horse, forcing me to hang on to the saddle horn for dear life. I ducked my head and stayed low, desperately hoping no large branches came along and swept me from the saddle. We soon caught up to Hicks, which seemed to calm Red enough for me to grab the reins and slow him down. Hicks eased his mount to a halt, then turned in his saddle and
began digging around in his pack.

  “We have to ditch the horses,” he said. “They’re too loud and too big of a target.”

  “Agreed.” I jumped down, untied my ghillie suit and pack from the saddle, retrieved my weapons, and slapped Red on his haunches. The big animal took the hint and bolted away into the forest. Hicks outfitted himself quickly and then did the same.

  “How’d they get the drop on us?” he asked as his horse pounded away.

  I stood silently and pondered. If they had spotted us from far away, Tanner would have set up a roadside ambush. Which meant they had spotted us when we were close to their camp. But why the long-range shot? I turned and looked back the way I came.

  He knew you were following him. What would you have done in his place?

  I would have made camp far away from any buildings. I would have chosen high ground with a view of the highway. I would have set up a hide, then settled in and waited.

  So he picks a hilltop, and his men make camp, and he peers through his rifle. He had set a hard pace during the day’s ride, and didn’t think I would catch up to him. To his surprise, I prove him wrong. So he takes a shot and rallies his men.

  “He was waiting for us. Probably spotted us as we topped that last hill. I was wrong, he wasn’t stupid enough to assume his men would stop me at the bridge. He’s a lunatic. Doesn’t care if his own men die. I should have thought of that. Should have stuck to the woodlands and not followed the highway. Stupid of me. That’s what happens when I get in a hurry.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. Shit happens.” Hicks stepped closer and peered at my side. “How bad are you hit?”

  The pain was minimal, so it hadn’t even occurred to me to check. With no small amount of apprehension, I stuck my finger in the hole in my vest and felt around. The puncture stopped at a mushroomed, copper-jacketed wad of lead. The ceramic disc beneath it was shattered, but had done its job and stopped the bullet from penetrating.

  Dragon Skin. Best there is.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Body armor stopped it.”