“Joyce, perfect. You and your raiders can take and hold the Wells Street Bridge. I’ll send several detachments of St. Mike’s regulars to support you.”
Kayla suddenly saw an opportunity. She leaned close to Joyce and whispered, “Demand the Ericsians. Say you want to keep an eye on them.”
“What was that?” Bobs hadn’t missed that exchange and her attention fell on Kayla.
Joyce looked over with her own frown, studying Kayla, who nodded emphatically. “The Ericsians,” said Joyce to Bobs. “Kayla just reminded me that they’ve already followed her into a fight, and she’s one of my trusted captains. Send the Ericsians with us so that I can put them under her command.”
“Her command?”
“She can keep an eye on them for us. They trust her.”
Bishop Alvarez shook his head in frustration. “I don’t like allying ourselves with these unbelievers. They could end up spreading their false God among our good people.”
Kayla spoke up. “All the more reason to put them with us, then. They won’t be with your flock and at least some of the St. John’s people will be going home after this.”
But Alvarez wasn’t placated. “I don’t want them infecting St. John’s either. This cult is like a disease. It’s catching.”
Bobs shook her head. “There are at least five hundred of them right here in Chicago right now and lots more out west. I need them until Webb gets those Bradleys and Strikers here.” She turned her attention on Kayla. “Okay, you command the Ericsians. If they fuck up it’s on your head.”
Tevy and his friends pushed into the room, and Kayla had to hide a thrill at seeing him, had to push down the desire to touch. Luckily, Tevy took up a position across the table from her before he even noticed that she was there. But before he could speak or be spoken to, a stir outside announced the arrival of Mabruke and a half-dozen captains of the Ericsians. People had to push back into the corners to make room for all the new arrivals.
Mabruke was dressed so like Erics in a tight-fitting pin-striped suit that it might have been a statement to Bobs. I am like Erics.
Bishop Alvarez left with a swish of his cassock, pushing past Mabruke without a glance.
“Mabruke,” said Bobs. “Good of you to come.”
Mabruke stopped at the opposite end of the table, flanked by his captains, and clasped his hands. “The trinity has come together. It is clearly the time of great and terrible events.”
Bobs eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What trinity?”
“Why the Dormant Hero, the Angry Captain, and the Dependable Rogue, of course.”
“I thought Bert was the Dormant Hero. How the fuck could he be here?”
Kayla experienced a moment of panic. What if Tevy told her about Bertrand Allan? Even if he didn’t mean harm, even if he just thought he was clearing things up this would be a disaster. She caught his eye across the width of the table and tried to beg his silence without words or expression. Tevy met her eye and gave her a subtle nod.
“He means me,” he said to Bobs. “I had to take their determination. They wouldn’t trust me otherwise. I guess I answered the same way Bertrand Allan answered, so I’m supposed to be a portion of the same soul.”
“And I’m the Dependable Rogue.” Elliot slurred his words, and Jeff had to restrain a laugh.
“You?” Bobs’ outrage was focused on Tevy, but before she could say more, Mabruke interrupted.
“We have anti-tank weapons and a howitzer,” he said. “We only have illumination rounds for that, but perhaps Webb can find explosive rounds for us now that we’re allies.”
“A howitzer?” Bobs’ anger was diffused by the opportunity. “What, like a 777?”
“An older M198 but still quite functional, I can assure you.”
“Where the hell did you get that, and why didn’t you tell us about this before?”
“The Trinity has come together for the first time since the Battle of the Mountain. It is a time of great consequence, and we will put all of our efforts and weapons at their disposal. The Angry Captain has already used the LAWs to great effect.” He waved at Kayla with an open palm face up.
Kayla now found herself under Bobs’ withering attention, but she stood firm.
“So that’s why the Ericsians follow you.” Bobs looked down at her map. “Fine. I can make this work. You guys will cover the Franklin and Wells. Take these two with you,” she nodded in the direction of Tevy and Elliot. “Gonsalves and Chen will cover everything east of Clark.”
“What about La Salle?” asked Joyce.
“Right, you haven’t been here. The rippers pulled that bridge up one night about five years ago, just before dawn. We fought our way in there and jammed all the gears and stuff with bags of cement. It’s not ever coming down. Okay, we gotta move people. The Brat Pack will be my runners. Tevy and Elliot know them all.”
But Joyce wasn’t satisfied. “What about all the westbound bridges.”
Bobs shook her head. “Too many of them and too far away. Let them cross those if they want. They’ll have to come north and back across the river close to us, and there are a lot fewer bridges up here and those bridges are a lot closer to Old Town. Be ready to swing around to defend Kinzie and Grand, but that’s later. Right now you just don’t let them across Wells and Franklin. Those are your babies. Don’t blow them up unless you absolutely have to. We’re gonna need them when we go on the offensive.”
Kayla hurried out with the general flood of people, rushing out to the courtyard in front of St. Mike’s where Joyce pulled them all to a stop near the statue of St. Michael. Mabruke and his Ericsian captains had come with them, and everyone formed a circle around Joyce. The sun indicated about four o’clock. Jeff didn’t stop with them, heading for the blockhouse across the square, presumably to get the St. John’s people armed and moving.
Joyce addressed Mabruke. “Do you have transport?”
“I have several trucks fueled and ready to go just outside of the cantonment.”
“Okay, then get your people down to the river, as close as you can get. Kayla, you go with them and take the rest of your...trinity...and hold the Wells Street bridge. Do you know where that is?”
Kayla made an effort not to look too relieved to be given some responsibility. “I don’t, but he does.” She pointed to Tevy.
“The Merchandise Mart’s a problem,” he said. “The rippers have fortified the bottom two floors.”
Joyce gave him an irritated shake of her head. “Then unfortify it. I don’t care how, you just hold that bridge.” She may have been answering Tevy, but the order was to Kayla. But Joyce wasn’t finished. She took Kayla by the arm and led her away from the circle so that she could speak to her alone.
“If Tevy really does host a portion of the same soul as Bert, then think of him as a bullet: you point him in the right direction at the right time and you pull the trigger. Keep the Dependable Rogue, what was his name?”
“Elliot.”
“Keep Elliot close to Tevy. He’ll have a balancing influence that’ll keep him from doing anything crazy. Bert only got into trouble when he was left alone in a battle. Now go and go quickly.”
Kayla led them toward the Eugenie street gate, Tevy on one side and Elliot on the other, the Ericsians close behind. She was glad that she had no warning of this battle, no sleepless day worrying about tonight. She was well-rested and she had been trusted with a command that had a clear objective.
She was terrified only of failure.
Nineteen - At the Well’s Street Bridge
Kayla hardly had time to think or plan, because once they reached the trucks of the Ericsians, it was only a ten minute drive down to where Tevy convinced her to stop. Many of the trucks were pickups with machine guns mounted in the backs, others were five-tons, the rear doors open in the heat to show troops sitting on benches.
For the last mile they traveled on Wells, they passed mostly older buildings, three- and four-story affairs of red or light-brown b
rick. Those didn’t worry her, because they couldn’t provide much cover for rippers, especially since a few of the structures were little more than burned-out husks, but ahead the rusting steel of the ‘L’ train curved in from the west and ran overtop of the street, blocking out the afternoon light. At night it would be a very dark tunnel. Tevy identified the hulking building on the right as her target, the Merchandise Mart, and it wasn’t hard to see why the rippers chose it. The building rose around twenty stories as far as she could tell. The lower floors were faced with permanent-looking gray stone, the rest of it was strong concrete. The large windows on the lowest two floors were completely sealed with concrete block, something done after the apocalypse. Like the windows at Atherley College, the bricklayers were amateurs, and for centuries the mortar that dripped down the sides of these newer walls would testify to the haste and incompetence of the workers. A domed turret on the corner gave it the appearance of a giant medieval castle.
“What about those?” she asked Tevy, pointing across the street at a high glass condo, only a few of the windows smashed. Behind it, rising far higher, towered a glass-and-steel office building. The upper ten floors looked to have burned out of control at some point, as evidenced by the exploded windows and smears of black covering the structure. The lower floors, however, looked untouched by the conflagration.
“Not held by the rippers as far as I know. There’s a smaller building fronting the street in front of the tall one back there.” Tevy pointed to the rusting overpass. “That’s the Merchandise Mart ‘L’ station. Up there we can shoot at the traitors in the Mart, but they can shoot us, too. Hey, do you think Radu made it down here last night?”
Before Kayla could speculate, Mabruke joined them, hurrying up the line of trucks from one of the five-tons. She spoke even as he arrived, again flanked by several of his captains. “Can we use the LAWS on that concrete block?” she asked.
Mabruke shook his head. “We only have twelve left. We should save them for the tanks and make sure every one counts. We’ve got dynamite that would be better for that.”
The sound of a heavy engine and the squeal of treads from south of the river warned that they had little time.
Kayla studied the buildings, creating fields of fire in her mind, watching assaults and retreats and checking for possible surprises. Her concentration was fierce, and no one spoke to her for a full minute.
“Why the hell did they keep their tanks so far away anyway?” she asked. “I’d have kept them hidden and close and brought them across the bridge before we knew what hit us.”
Elliot grinned proudly. “That was us. They used to keep them up here, but Tevy and me snuck in a few weeks ago just before dawn. Caught all the traitors still napping and the rippers just closing down. We got two by dropping grenades down the open hatches and then ran for it.”
Kayla liked that the rippers had miscalculated. What other mistakes could they make?
“Okay, I want two teams of five each sweeping that condo. Make sure there’s no traitors in there. Then take two of these machine guns,” she said, pointing to one mounted in the back of a pick up truck, “and place them on the fifth floor at either end of the building, so that you can rake any traitors in the upper floors of the Mart. You see someone and you kill them until I say otherwise.”
Mabruke nodded. “What about the tanks?”
Kayla debated, but decided she couldn’t protect Tevy or keep him safe. He would never allow it and he would wonder why. “Tevy and Elliot know this hood best. You guys go straight through there,” she said, pointing south on the street where it went under the station. “Send a couple of your rocket men with them,” she said to Mabruke before turning back to Tevy. “Block the street. Hit one tank and back away. Wait for another tank to try and go around the wreck, then destroy it, too. I want two tanks blown to hell burning side by side in the middle of that bridge.” Kayla checked to make sure Elliot understood. “Then come back to us, because we’re going into the basement of the Mart before sunset.” She turned to Tevy. “Then we’ll see if Radu’s there.”
Watching Tevy and Elliot run off caused a surge of jealousy, but she couldn’t be part of their little team and run straight for the action. She had a bigger job. “Mabruke, get your dynamite. We’re going in along the back here. But meanwhile ...” She pointed to the stairs that led from the sidewalk to the station. “Let’s send a couple of teams up there to make sure that station is empty. If they take fire from the Mart, make sure they know what floor, so that your machine gunners can return fire.”
Mabruke was relaying orders as fast as she delivered them, but now she had a moment when there was little she could do but check her own weapons. She felt all the pockets on her vest, a nervous habit before battle, to ensure she had lots of spare clips.
Gunfire erupted from the Mart over the station, and she couldn’t help herself, running up the steps to find men and women retreating quickly but efficiently, some stopping to shoot up at the Mart. Fifth floor, just where she would put them—not too high, because then they’d have to lean out from the building to cover the tracks. The platform had a roof that provided some cover, so Kayla used it to run to the far end of the station. She wanted to see the tanks, but the tracks of the ‘L’ hid the street. She could hear the engines clearly now.
Gunfire echoed back across the river, the distinctive blast of a shotgun like Tevy’s and perhaps an M16, possibly Elliot’s. She tried not to fear for Tevy, not to imagine bullets burying themselves in his young flesh. A flash of a rocket and an explosion followed by several more informed her that the rocket man was at work. Black smoke rose through the ‘L’ tracks at the far side of the river, rising skyward to mark the death of a tank.
Kayla headed back through the station. Her machine gunners in the condo now opened up, dueling with the guns of the Mart. This was just a distraction, a feint to get the traitors drawn to this side of the building, to keep them from targeting Tevy and his anti-tank crew out on the bridge. She hurried down the stairs to find Mabruke’s troops jumping from their trucks and heading for the intersection, all of them with the white headbands on. She pulled hers from her pocket and put it on.
An explosion rolled through the street from a block west.
“That must be Joyce’s Raiders. We need a runner to go down there and let her know that we’re going into the building. If she can attack it at the same time at the other side, it’ll divide the rippers in the basement. Send a bag of dynamite with your guy.”
Mabruke waved a young teenager forward, his face smooth and his eyes blue. “This boy comes from Bobs,” said Mabruke. “He is to be our runner.”
“Go down this street. Keep as close to the Mart as you can so they can’t shoot down at you. Tell Joyce or Jeff that we’re going through the walls in half an hour. If she could go in at the same time, that would be good.”
Good. It would be essential. As the kid ran west with an energy only a pubescent teen can possess, Kayla wished she had stressed this urgency, but Joyce would understand. Joyce would totally get it.
A five-ton pulled out of line at Mabruke’s waved instructions and drove past the other trucks and into the intersection, where he stopped it. The back rolled up and Mabruke’s demolition men and women, many of them with small backpacks, all piled out. Kayla directed them to the concrete block walls, some on the north side of the building, some on the east under the ‘L’ station. The walls had been built inside the windows, some of which were still intact. Those they smashed in with rifle butts so that they could get the dynamite right against the block.
Hundreds of other troops now hurried her way, their captains encouraging them to all group near Kayla in the intersection of Kinzie and Wells.
“No, no, no!” she shouted. “Don’t you guys have ranks? I thought you had captains or something?”
Several with white armbands as well as bandanas pushed closer, many looking too reverent for Kayla’s liking. She wasn’t a saint or something just because she kn
ew what to do.
“Break them up into platoons and spread them out so that each one can take a different window. Keep them back so that they don’t get hit when we blow the walls, and for fuck’s sake, don’t clump up. A single rocket or a fifty cal could mow half of you down in a second, for fuck’s sake!”
They only looked more reverent. She had been shouting like an angry captain, but if it worked, all the better. One captain looked uncertain and ventured a question.
“How many is a platoon?” he asked.
“Forty or fifty will do. It doesn’t have to be exact. Just make sure they know which platoon they’re in. Mark them with armbands or something.” But if Kayla had time, she would have instructed them to form three or four squads within the platoon, the way Joyce had done with her Raiders at St. John’s.
Mabruke oversaw his demolitions teams, each placing three of four sticks of dynamite and shoving in detonators while others hurried up with sand bags on their shoulders to place against the dynamite. Kayla made a note to learn about demolitions, for she wouldn’t have known to do this, but it made sense right away: force the explosion into the wall. Halfway down, three broad steps led to a new block wall—a sealed door that once led into the Mart.
Kayla waited there for Mabruke, who caught up in just a few minutes.
“Put a charge here, but no one goes in this way,” she said, pitching her voice to be heard over the staccato of the machine guns. “Same with that doorway up at the intersection. They’ll have all kinds of prepared defenses here and a narrow corridor to funnel us through. It’ll be a kill zone. Got that! We don’t go in this way.”
“Blow it to make them think we will. Got it.” Mabruke received some dynamite from his crew and placed it on the ground at the block.
The 1000 Souls (Book 2): Generation Apocalypse Page 21