No Shelter: Book 3 in the Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series: (Zero Hour - Book 3)

by Justin Bell

  Glancing up, his eyes widened as the behemoth approached, the large CH-53 angling around, hovering above the grass, a hurricane of propeller winds beating down upon the entire swath of rear lawn. Black uniformed commandos drew back and turned up as the long-barreled fifty mounted in the window of the large aircraft roared its welcome, long white sparks splitting the world, bright streaks of M903 light armor penetration rounds slamming down onto the trucks and commandos down on the ground.

  “Awww yeah!” screamed Haskell as the King Stallion oriented itself, the tail swinging slowly around, settling the aircraft into a comfortable, slightly tilted hover, so the window-mounted weapon could continue its relentless barrage on the armed soldiers below. As it twisted slightly, the weapons fire shifted from the trucks to the rear door of the data center, peppering the walls and door with 12.9-millimeter rounds, chewing through the gunmen who had emerged. Several men scrambled away, then desperately tried to squeeze back into the hallway as the weapon annihilated the ground and building around them, the helicopter slowly settling, lowering toward the earth, the rotor backdraft pummeling everyone on the ground with its aggressive impact.

  “Cargo door! Make your way to the cargo door!” Haskell screamed over the deafening roar of the turbines and the Marines fell into a singular group, charging toward the rear of the helicopter as the massive aircraft drew closer to the ground. Davis looped a hand around Craig’s shoulder and hefted him to his feet, shoving him forward into a run, following along behind him, running toward where the King Stallion was slowly descending. There was a slight break in the gunfire as the window gunner took a few moments to reload, and Davis drew down on two commandos who had gotten momentarily brave. He took them both down with well-aimed and timed three-round bursts, then continued on forward. Lilting slowly back and forth, the King Stallion hovered just above the grass, adjusting its level, the cargo door resting open about a meter and a half above the ground. Already Tanner had climbed up in, and was helping the injured King get his way inside as well. Holbrook and Sellers were helping Rickard up into the cargo area as Haskell waved furiously to Craig and Davis.

  “Move, boys, move!”

  They moved. Helping shove Craig up into the cargo hold, Davis hooked his fingers around the metal ridges and lifted himself up inside as well, charging up the gentle slant into the thick body of the aircraft, the cargo door already easing its way closed behind him. A soft grinding was followed by a hard, metal on metal slam, the door closed, the interior of the massive aircraft dark, and he could feel the beast slowly lifting up, carrying them away from what they had thought would be a cake walk mission.

  Instead, nearly half the team had not made it out alive, and they’d barely gotten what they needed.

  At least he’d hoped they had. They wouldn’t know until they got back to Detrick whether the five lives they’d just lost would be all in vain.

  ***

  Javitz had stopped using a glass at least an hour ago, now drinking directly from the whisky bottle, tipping it back and slugging down the bitter liquid. All around him, this small, darkened tavern was full of them, the riders and acquaintances who had become his friends since the world had ended.

  Then there was him. There was Scarface. He still wasn’t quite sure what Scarface was.

  The man smiled from behind the bar, or his facial muscles shifted into what might pass for a smile, his twisted and gnarled face contorting upwards. The lip of the vodka bottle pressed to his own ruined lips as they parted and he took a long, hard drink of the clear liquid. Javitz looked at him through narrowed eyes. Only a few hours ago he hadn’t even been able to look at him without feeling at least a little bit queasy, but that feeling had passed the longer he’d ridden with him. Like him or not, he had formed a begrudging respect for the man, even if he was sure he was more than a little insane.

  He wasn’t sure how much of his story he believed. Vasily “Scarface” Rosorov had claimed to have been the only survivor of one of the plane crashes that had decimated Boston, and then claimed to have killed several military operatives on a rampage that brought him through the center of the end of the world to ride by their side, narrowly escaping the B2 bombing run which had finished what the plane crashes had begun. Javitz didn’t fully trust the man, he didn’t trust his motivation, he didn’t trust his self-proclaimed God complex, and he certainly didn’t trust his accent, but the man had helped them escape the city, take down some armed jackboots, and had pretty much saved all of their lives. That did have to count for something.

  “So what are we doin, Javitz?” asked the man to his right. Javitz had almost forgotten there were others at the bar with him, so consumed in his whiskey he’d become, but he looked over to Roddie and shrugged softly.

  “Dunno, man,” he said. “What is there to do? World’s burnin’ around us. People are dead and dying. Ripe for the picking. Way I figure it, we’ll just keep picking until we’re satisfied.”

  Roddie chuckled. “And when are we gonna be satisfied?”

  Javitz laughed out loud. “I suppose that’s the million-dollar question, Rod. The American dream, right? Money, cars, and girls? Girls are mostly dead, money can’t be spent, and who needs cars when we’ve got these sick bikes?”

  “I guess we’re already livin’ the dream, huh?”

  Roddie thrust out his fist and Javitz bumped it, looking out across the bar at the other bikers scattered throughout. What had Scarface called them? The Scavengers? Roaming what was left of this wrecked country and gathering up the remains? It sounded appropriate.

  “We’re Scavengers now, homie,” Javitz said, turning back to his bottle and tipping it up. “Living off the land, using what’s left to make us better.”

  “Sounds about right,” Roddie replied. “Saw my share of those kinds of guys over in Afghanistan. Roaming nomads. Living off the land, doing whatever the hell they wanted. I could get used to that life.”

  Javitz took another slug of whiskey. “It don’t bother you?” he asked, glancing at Roddie. “What happened to the country? What we’re doing? Like we’re… taking advantage of the situation?”

  “Nah,” Roddie said, shaking his head. “Our kind has been taken advantage of for long enough, bro. It’s about time the tables got turned around, don’t you think? I mean, come on. I came back from war, man, from actual war, only to find my benefits chopped, my wife’s living with some other dude, I can’t get a job.”

  “Hey, man, we got you that job.”

  “Hell yeah you did,” Roddie replied, nodding and smiling at his friend. “I owe you for that. All the guys in here, they’re my brothers.”

  Javitz snickered. “Man, we don’t know most of these shmucks.”

  Roddie shrugged. “Maybe not, but they’re good with their hands, they’re red-blooded Americans, they’ve been stomped on just as much as we have. Plus they can bend steel and ride a bike. The hell else do we need?”

  “Not a thing, brother. Not a thing.”

  Scarface pushed back from his stool, the legs squealing against the rough, wooden floor. He pushed back so hard, the stool actually tipped, balanced for a precarious moment, then clattered down to the hard wood.

  “What about this guy?” Javitz asked, nodding toward Vasily as he stood. “Nothing red-blooded American about him.”

  “Truth,” Roddie replied, “but man, he’s one tough S.O.B. He’s a survivor. A leader. I can’t say why, but I trust him.”

  Javitz nodded, but didn’t speak, not wanting to share what he was truly thinking.

  “Scavengers!” Scarface shouted from the middle of the bar, standing tall, a nearly empty bottle of vodka clamped in his right hand. “I am proud to be accepted among your tribe!”

  There were several scattered shouts of approval and cheer throughout the other men in the bar. Javitz even lifted his whiskey bottle, not wanting to stand out too much in this crowd.

  “I think the time has come!”

  The cheers died off as the men silently wondered what
time he was referring to.

  “For too long this country, this United States, it has looked down upon us and those like us! Ground us under their heels! Taken advantage of us!”

  Javitz wasn’t sure what “us” Scarface was referring to, but something about the speech made him uneasy.

  “Now, the audacity of this government has blown up in its face! This sickness they’ve caused. The country is dying, and it is up to men like us to carry on!”

  Javitz glanced at Roddie, who was smiling and nodding.

  “We are not alike, me and you,” Vasily continued in his heavy accent, gesturing to the men around the bar. “I am, what you call a foreigner. I am not from here, like you are. This is why I depend on you. We all want the same thing. We want those who lead this country to be brought to justice for what they have done to us. To all of us.”

  A couple of men shouted and cheered, a fact that surprised Javitz. A month ago, if a guy in a thick Russian accent had come into the steel mill and talked like this, he would have had his tail kicked. The world had changed, and this Vasily guy, he had some charisma.

  “We can punish those who have destroyed this great nation, and we can bring the country back to its old greatness, all of us together!”

  “How we gonna do that?” Roddie shouted across the bar.

  Scarface smiled a broad smile, the slender sliver of yellow teeth peeking out from dark, lumpy flesh. “The men who did this. We fought them in Boston. We fought them and won.” Men in the bar shouted again, cheering him on. “These men, these soldiers. They were from a military base. A place they call Fort Detrick. In Maryland, within spitting distance of the capital!”

  The bar had quieted as Scarface spoke, men more wanting to listen than to share his joviality.

  “They started this. They are the ones who made this country sick, and we must make them pay for this. We must ride to Detrick and destroy those who destroyed this great nation! Destroy them and burn Detrick into ash!”

  Men cheered. Someone in the back of the bar let a liquor bottle fly, it arced through the air, then struck the far end of the bar and exploded in a shower of jagged glass.

  Javitz turned to Roddie. “Fort Detrick? What’s that got to do with any of this?”

  “Those guys,” Roddie replied. “The soldiers in the contamination suits. That’s where they were from. Those guys who started the whole thing.”

  Javitz looked at his eyes and saw a kind of crazed sincerity in them, a borderline insane wildness, but an insanity that didn’t see itself as insanity. He heard the outlandish things Scarface was saying, and actually believed them.

  But Javitz was smarter than that. Javitz wasn’t going to be led blind into some strange holy war the Russians were bringing to America.

  Only this guy didn’t represent the Russians. It was just him. And he was one of them.

  “We must continue south,” Scarface said. “Find more men. Recruit. Get more motorcycles. Create an army. We will rebuild this nation into the country it should be, with our blood, sweat and tears! Who is with me?”

  The entire bar erupted in shouts and screams of frantic excitement. Javitz joined in, if only to not look out of place. It was a testament to Scarface’s likability that he could stand there in his thick accent and motivate a room full of steel workers and union members, motivate them into forming an army to follow him to fight against their own government.

  Is that what was happening? Javitz sat back, trying to sort out what Scarface had said, what he’d promised and what he’d claimed. Javitz had no love for what America had become, he’d seen the signs of a nation in trouble, a country that was losing its way. He wouldn’t have been at all surprised to learn that some twisted government program had caused this whole thing, and maybe that was the best course of action. Maybe they should ride their ramped up super bikes down to Fort Detrick and burn the place to the ground.

  The more he chewed over the idea in his head the more pleasure it gave him. Smiling slyly, he picked up the whiskey bottle and took another long, hard swallow, emptying what was left of the powerful liquor. He slammed the glass bottle down and found himself nodding enthusiastically, fully embracing this wild plan that Scarface had developed. Glancing over at Roddy he saw the ex-Army guy nodding right along with him.

  Oh, yeah. The American Dream was alive and well, and they were living it.

  Chapter 9

  Lisa pressed herself to the wall, trying to get an angle to look out the window, but she wasn’t tall enough. On the other side of the thick, brick walls she and everyone else in their cells could hear the ratcheting rattle of what sounded like machine gun fire, and it sounded like it was coming from Main Street.

  “Is that what I think it is?” she asked in a hushed whisper.

  Broderick was standing in the other cell, but he had no window on his side. Still, even without the nearby window, he could hear the sounds plainly enough.

  “If you think it’s a full-on gunfight, then yes, that is what you think it is,” he replied coolly. Leaning closer to the bars he pressed the side of his head to them, listening. “I hear at least one M4. I think multiples. Fully automatic. One side is operating in practiced, timed bursts, the other side sounds a lot more wild. Uncontrolled.”

  “Yeah that’s what I’m getting out of it, too,” Clark interjected.

  “So, who is fighting who?” Javier asked.

  “Maybe we’ll all get lucky and they’re fighting each other. A good old-fashioned civil war. Lord knows I don’t know how else we’re getting out of here,” Clark said, pulling away from the bars. He and Broderick were still in one cell while Lisa and Javier stood in the other. Priscilla was still missing since they’d taken her out to go check on the men that Lisa had injured and Melinda was nowhere to be seen.

  “I hope Mel isn’t stuck in the middle of whatever that is,” Javier said quietly.

  “These guys are dirtbags,” Broderick replied, “but I think even they might draw the line on full auto against a ten-year-old.”

  “World like this does strange things to a person,” Lisa replied. “Mayor Harris used to be a completely normal guy. Yeah, he always seemed a little eccentric, and some newspaper reporter said something about him spending hours a day on a train set out in his shed or something, but he always treated me and my family well.”

  “Until he didn’t,” said Broderick.

  “None of us knows what happened,” Lisa replied. “Who knows what he might have seen at home.”

  Clark shook his head. “Not buying it,” he replied. “Times like this, you see who people really are. It’s easy to be a nice guy when you’re in charge of the town and playing with trains all day, apparently. When stuff starts to fall apart, that’s when the real you comes through.”

  “Well, then the human race is hopeless,” Broderick spat back, “because the majority of the people I’ve met since this started happening have been sons of —”

  “Sons of what?”

  The young girl’s voice took them all by surprise and Broderick’s head snapped around so quick, his neck barked in pain.

  “Melinda!” Javier shouted, leaping from the cot and pressing himself to the bars. The ten-year-old walked slowly into the lobby area between the two cells, dragging a large canvas bag behind her. Broderick recognized the bag immediately. He’d been toting it around since Boston, it and the pile of weapons that were bundled up inside.

  “How did you get here?” Broderick stammered. “Where did you get the bag? What’s happening?”

  “It’s so good to see you!” Javier hissed. “We were so worried about you!”

  “Jack helped me,” Melinda said, dragging the bag into the middle of the room. “All the men with guns were out looking for me. They almost found me, but Jack saved me, he helped me.”

  “Jack?” Lisa asked, looking at her oddly. “Who is Jack?”

  Clark smiled wide. “Oh, little lady… Jack is your boy Jackson. Sounds like maybe he’s stirring up some trouble out the
re.”

  “Jackson?” Lisa asked, her mouth dropping open. “He’s doing that?” she asked, gesturing toward the wall at the faint sounds of gunfire.

  “He kept me hidden, showed me where to go, and when the men were gone, he helped me get to one of the basement windows. I snuck in there and came up the back stairs, nobody even saw me. I found the bag in a closet on the first floor.”

  “Well, color me impressed, little lady,” Clark said, smiling. “You are one resourceful little girl. Now tell me, what kinds of goodies you got in there for uncle Clarky?”

  ***

  Jackson crouched down on the sidewalk, his shoulder pressed tight to the grill of the old Ford truck, the stale stink of cordite and smoke lingering in the air. He coughed lightly and wiped the soot from his eyes as another scattering of gunfire sent more sparks racing along the slanted hood of the vehicle, puckering metal.

  “Okay, Jackson,” he whispered to himself, “you’ve gone and opened the can of worms today. Now you gotta figure out how to put them all back.”

  There had been at least six or eight men coming down Main Street when he’d been caught out in the open, and from what he could tell all of the random shots he’d fired back had missed cleanly. Thankfully he was pretty well prepared to hold his spot; he’d managed to steal the tactical vest, sidearm, and rifle from the dead man before he’d been spotted.

  The dead man. The man he’d killed. A man that, for all Jackson knew, was a devoted father and husband who just happened to get wrapped up with the wrong people just before Jackson buried his sword in his guts, hilt-deep. He fought the urge to look back on the sidewalk, and tried to push the image out of his mind. Not just the image of the sword guy, but the image of the guy in the cabin, too. Two men that he’d killed in the past two days. What was happening to this world?

  More gunfire echoed, chewing up broken chunks of Main Street and throwing them up into the air, showering tiny rock fragments across the hood and over his cool flesh. He closed his eyes and winced for a moment, then tensed up and prepared to make his move. It was a short dash across Main Street to the Town Hall, and if he ran, he might just be able to make it. If he could get down behind Town Hall, the woods ran along the south side of town, dipping to a gradual slope, leading down to some swamplands. Jackson thought that he could lead the men down that way and perhaps buy some more time for Melinda to help the others.