Carry the Flame

by James Jaros

  You stupid, stupid woman. She hated herself for having fallen victim to such simple-minded optimism. And she hated Burned Fingers for carrying on like he could work grisly miracles against a massive killing machine with nothing more in his goddamn quiver than gas—gas!—and his unchartable gumption.

  Backing up, she turned to see the truck a hundred yards off, belching oily smoke from the twin stacks that rose like curved horns over the cab, more demonic looking than ever.

  The ground shuddered, and she saw the armored tank slowing now that it had left behind the flames and its target was in full view. The truck and everyone on board could be blown into a bubbling cloud any moment. Yet she ran toward them, not wanting to die alone—or to be taken by the crew inside that monstrous weapon.

  The armored tank finally halted. Its engine no longer bellowed, and the cries and shouts of the children might have softened. She heard only her harsh breaths and hard footfalls as she gained on the long trailer; the truck was old with a heavy load, the slope unrelenting.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she spotted the cannon rising until it appeared to point at the truck. A ribbon of the blackest smoke swept over the turret and then her. Eyes tearing, she spied the trailer’s rear ladder and climbed all the way to the top before she could breathe without the harsh tang of gas fumes.

  When she looked for Bliss, she saw her daughter on the front of the tanker staring past her, shaking her head, forlorn as death itself.

  Then she saw why: the turret was inching left to aim the cannon directly at them. A grim adjustment. In the same glimpse, which left her weakened and sure they’d all be killed, she spotted the flamethrower that Leisha said had been unleashed on Kaisha and her, and knew there were much worse deaths than the quick one promised by the tank.

  BOOM. The shot left her ears ringing, and she heard a rocket rip over her head. A streak of heat fine as a hair comb settled on her scalp and made her wince, and a rumble of air came alive on her skin.

  Pale gray pillows drifted from the cannon muzzle. A mile or two away an explosion rocked the air, more ravaged earth ripped apart by heat and flames.

  The little towhead Cassie cried, but afterward an ominous silence ensued. The cannon dipped without violating this quiet accord, an unseen eye sharpening its aim. But it didn’t fire, and Jessie thought they might have been given a warning shot: one over the bow, one over your head, one over just about anything was as much warning as you were likely to get in this life.

  She shouted to Bliss, “Stop Maul. Stop him!” She knew she sounded hysterical and was succumbing to one more ruthless hope, but what was the point of pushing on? Suicide? Any plans for defeating the tank had shriveled.

  The truck shook as its aged brakes clawed the wheels, but she kept her eyes on the tank. Then she noticed fire and smoke shifting in dying patches behind it, except for a declivity about fifty yards farther downslope where gas had pooled and flames still roasted the air. And everywhere on the blackened ground she saw the smoking ruin of dead cats, the stink of burned fur and flesh following them up the hill.

  The rear hatch of the tank opened and a man in a thick vest and helmet rose, exposing no more than his head and shoulders. “Don’t move,” he yelled, “or we’ll burn you to death!”

  The same threat she and Burned Fingers had issued at the Army of God, before they burned and killed innumerable acolytes and guards. Odd to hope for compassion in the shadow of that memory; odder still the false equivalencies that insisted on themselves in a crisis.

  The van never stopped. But why would the tank crew care? The gasoline tanker was the prize. Once the crew took control of it, they could hunt the van at their leisure. It would run out of fuel soon enough.

  We’re dead, she thought. She didn’t even know where Burned Fingers was.

  The last she’d seen of him, he was escaping the dense smoke with her.

  She studied the charred ground for his remains, but for all the evidence of him that she found, he might have been vaporized by the fire.

  Not quite, but blisters were rising on Burned Fingers’s chest, back, legs, and hands, though none proved as painful as a nasty bite from a Pixie-bob. The cat had mauled his leg as he dashed through the spotty flames to the armored tank. P-bobs were dropping left and right but the one that ripped open his calf was on its feet reeling and jerking—all the fur on its back scorched off—when its stubby head banged his leg. Biting from reflex. The worst part was, he didn’t dare shoot the half-baked bastard for fear of alerting the tank crew. He hated the cats, even their name: Pixie-bobs? Made them sound like fucking stuffies, a cute toy he might have given his kid before his kid was murdered—by Army assholes with tanks. And they didn’t just kill him, which would have been kind by comparison.

  He had hoped the old Abrams would have been compromised enough for the smoke and flames to asphyxiate or cook the crew—or blow up the whole jury-rigged beast. Some kind of malfunction. He had reason to hope: the electronics in these relics were long dead, and they rolled along mostly on the dark genius of Alliance mechanics and the verve of crews that varied in number from one to four, plus a messenger dog.

  But when he’d seen the tank survive the wilting flames, he gave up any faith in a malfunction and made his dash, scaling the armor over the top of the treads by pulling himself up on the bars that enclosed the cargo area near the back of the turret. An approach from directly behind risked less exposure, but only the uninitiated attempted to mount a moving M1 from the rear—and they tried it only once: the broad stream of exhaust from the huge engine reached 1,700 degrees.

  Now he hunkered down in the cargo area, finding little to crowd him. Little to hide him, either, but immensely pleased that in spite of his best efforts, the tank hadn’t been destroyed; taking control of it would be an unexpected coup, though it wouldn’t be the first one he’d hijacked: in the final days of the defeated rebellion, he seized that vintage World War II tank, drove it down Bay Street in Baltimore, and turned it on murderous soldiers who were trying to exterminate the last of the resistance.

  But the Abrams was the finest combat beast in its time. Still is, he reminded himself, pulse thickening when the tank commander opened the hatch and threatened to burn to death everyone on the truck.

  Burned Fingers rose up till he could see the back of the guy’s head above the upper reach of the hatch door. He hoped the engine idle would cover his advance on the commander, and that the tank’s armor—a foot of solid steel in places—would silence his movements to anyone inside. He also had to hope that some kid on the tanker truck wouldn’t give him away by staring or pointing to him. A lot to hope for.

  He had his sawed-off in hand but didn’t want to take out the commander from back here because someone inside would drag the guy’s body down below and seal the hatch—and any hope of taking over the Abrams would disappear faster than hooch at a card game.

  Eyeing any potential source of noise, he advanced on his elbows in a classic combat crawl, lifting his arms deftly, then settling them down smoothly; the same with his legs, driving forward by applying even pressure on his knees, acutely aware of the friendly eyes on him. Those kids were a savvy lot, but it still made his skin crawl to depend on them.

  He moved about halfway across the turret. Four more feet to go. But fear—and he valued it for keeping him alive—could turn even the shortest distance into a horror.

  The commander was ordering everyone off the gasoline tanker.

  Play along. Do like he says. Make him keep his goddamn eyes on you.

  A couple feet more and he’d be ready to take him, but this was where it could get sketchy. He had to silently shift the sawed-off to his left hand, not his preferred mode, so he could use his right to unsheathe the knife that he borrowed to replace the one he’d planted in that bastard’s back. He’d learned that using a knife in close quarters could get better results than a gun, which always offered the promise of a less gruesome exit from this life.

  Slowly—always slowly—he
climbed into a crouch, feeling every hard year of his life, and guessing the commander would have youth on him. Damn few didn’t.

  He looked past him to see Jessie and Bliss climbing down from the top of the trailer. Maul and Erik from the cab. None of them rushing or stalling. Just doing what they were told and keeping their eyes off him. But in a few seconds he’d need their help, and then he wanted them running as hard as they could.

  After a full, deliberate intake of breath, he launched himself forward, wrapping his left arm with the sawed-off around the commander’s head and slicing off his helmet with no regard for his neck or face.

  As he’d figured, the guy tried to grab the sawed-off—a powerful lure. Burned Fingers used the momentary distraction to plunge the full length of the blade into his cheek, using a sidearm motion to drive the tip out the other side of his face. Then he pulled the knife into the thick muscle wrapped around the hinge joint in the back of his mouth, opening a three-inch gash in his cheeks, enough to glimpse the commander’s filleted tongue, the top half of which hung by a mere quarter inch of hemorrhaging tissue.

  Now the commander’s hands flew to his face, and Burned Fingers flicked aside his sawed-off. It clattered on the deck of the turret close to them, but given the guy’s circumstances and condition, it might as well have been a mile.

  He sawed into the joint with a single forceful motion, sinking the blade deeply into bone before shouting into the tank, “Anyone comes near him, I’ll kill him and you.”

  The commander struggled, squirmed, and groaned horrifically, forceful testimony for his crew—if he had one.

  Burned Fingers saw Jessie and Bliss racing toward him, the girl with her shotgun. He spoke into the commander’s ear. “You’re alive ’cause I want you alive. I want you dead, you’re dead. How many men down there? Show me fingers. Don’t even try to talk, fucker.”

  Nothing but more moans and frantic struggle.

  “Show me! Are you fucking crazy?”

  The commander still offered no response. Burned Fingers guessed that meant more below. One more? Three? He sawed deeper into his mouth, trying to roust an answer, yet knowing the guy might raise any number of fingers at this point. But he tried one more time anyway, “Tell me or I’ll cut your fucking head off. How many?”

  When all the commander did was claw at his knife hand, Burned Fingers cranked the blade like he was coring an apple of old, gouging out gum and molars—a chunk of meaty jaw thick enough to make the guy gag.

  Useless fuck. He had heard some of his old marauders say that they didn’t feel anything when they killed. Even kids. “Not a fucking thing,” in the blunt words of Anvil, who used to drive for him. But Burned Fingers felt plenty when he killed a man—an intractable desire for vengeance. What he didn’t feel was another guy’s pain. Why would he ever want to? He had plenty of his own.

  Bliss scaled the front of the tank, her shotgun aimed at the hatch.

  Good work.

  “We’re dropping a gas bomb down there if you don’t shout out your number now,” he yelled into the hole, catching sight of the swelling blood puddle below them.

  He had no gas bombs—they were rolling away in the van—but even if the commander wriggled free somehow, he wouldn’t be saying much.

  “I’m dragging this asshole out,” he said to Bliss. “Get your gun aimed right in there. Don’t let up. That’s it . . . Jessie,” she was pulling herself onto the tank, Maul a few steps behind, “exterminate the bastards if they try to get out. Keep them in there; I want to burn them to death.”

  He looked down: dim shadows, no sign of life, save the blood still pooling. But Burned Fingers didn’t believe the guy was alone. The Alliance wouldn’t risk it. Even with a tank, something could always go wrong, and it had: him.

  “This is your last chance,” he shouted. “Push your goddamn guns out where we can see them or I swear I’ll fry every last one of you to death.”

  Jessie aimed her M-16 into the tank, ready to fire. The commander’s legs disappeared beside her as he dragged him out of the hatch. From the corner of her eye she saw him cut the man’s throat and dump him on the deck of the turret.

  Executing the wounded, she said to herself, which was what he’d done so reflexively at the Army of God when he’d put a bullet into each of their heads.

  She forced herself to remember that the commander was a killer, a butcher, really, just like any other men who might be down below. They had only one purpose out here: to kill anyone trying to save prepubertal girls from abduction and systematic rape, which could lead to their deaths before many of them reached their mid-teens. And those actions were far more abominable than the pain exacted by Burned Fingers, inconceivable as that seemed when the commander’s legs spasmed and his carotid artery poured the last of his life onto the turret.

  Executing the wounded, not the innocent. Eden would have done it, too. So would I, she realized.

  Burned Fingers grabbed her shirt. “Bear with me,” he whispered, cutting off a length of her fumy tee and then sparking the fabric.

  It caught quickly, and he yelled, “Here comes the bomb,” and dropped the flaming swatch into the tank.

  A powerful explosion followed almost instantly. It rocked the Abrams violently and sent Burned Fingers sprawling next to the dead commander. She and Bliss managed to back up and stay on their feet, but Maul stumbled, tripped, and fell off the front of the tank.

  Smoke and flames shot from the open hatch, and Jessie yelled, “Get off, get off!” while she and Bliss scrambled and jumped.

  Burned Fingers landed near them as smoke issued from around the turret, floating up in a dark circle; but her fear that the tank would blow up and shred them with steely fragments didn’t materialize.

  “Guess they overreacted.” Burned Fingers, bare chest bathed in the commander’s blood, watched the smoke ring drift apart.

  Jessie caught her breath. “They?” she asked.

  “Whoever set off the bomb or rocket or whatever they had rigged. I thought I could bluff them and that the second they saw fire they’d try to tear the hell out of there. I didn’t figure on a suicide bomber taking out the tank and whatever ammo we might have found.”

  “Is there any chance someone could still be alive?” Bliss asked, raising her shotgun. “In some bomb-proof compartment or something?”

  “You felt it. You heard it,” Burned Fingers said. “Knocked me down and him right off the tank.” He nodded at Maul. “I don’t think I’m going to be seeing much more than a bunch of mangled metal when I get down in there.”

  It didn’t take long for the air to clear, or for Burned Fingers, armed with his sawed-off, to find the remains of two bodies in the tank. “But no dog,” he said, climbing out of the hatch, “and I looked real carefully through that mess. They must have released him before coming after us, so we’ve got to figure the Alliance knows we’re here, or will soon enough.”

  “How can you be so sure they even had one?” Bliss asked, looking up at him on the tank.

  He flipped a singed but well-chewed bone down to her. Human tibia, Jessie recognized at once.

  “Because even the Alliance isn’t eating their own—yet.”

  “Any ammo at all?” she asked him.

  “Nope. They had one extra rocket, and I think that’s what they used to blow themselves up.” His eyes wandered the length of the tank. He shook his head. “Sure would have been a game-changer.”

  “Yeah,” Bliss said wistfully. “How’s our gas?”

  “We’ve got plenty,” he said, spurred from his reverie. “Tanker holds nine thousand gallons. I’m guessing we lost a couple thousand, that’s all. But it worked out all right, didn’t it?” He smiled, and his eyes appeared to land on exhausted flames licking the slope a few hundred yards away.

  Jessie caught his self-congratulatory tone but didn’t bedgudge him: he’d earned the right to take credit. “Nice job,” she said.

  Scavenging time. She grabbed the tank commander’s helmet and Ke
vlar vest and handed them to Teresa. Burned Fingers had already claimed the man’s bloody shirt.

  The van was heading back; Brindle must have been checking behind him.

  “Can they get the tank going again?” she asked Burned Fingers, who jumped down. “Maybe we should try to make sure they don’t.”

  He dusted off his hands. “There’s nothing we have that could match what went off in there. Nothing even close. Be a waste of gunpowder.”

  “What about the machine gun?” she asked.

  “Ammo’s all gone. Like I said, everything was set to blow. But we’ll take the gun anyway. You never know. And don’t worry about the tank. They’d need General Dynamics to get it moving again.”

  Now there was a name she hadn’t heard in years. “What about tearing it down so they can’t use it for parts?”

  “Don’t have those kind of tools, and we don’t have the time. Best thing we can do is put some distance between them and us. This thing,” he patted the massive tread, almost affectionately, she thought, “has a range close to three hundred miles, so I’m guessing we have a decent enough head start. There’s just no telling what else they’ve got. I never could get close to the place, so I never figured them for anything like an Abrams. It makes you wonder.”

  I’d rather not. But she couldn’t keep herself from the fear of another tank coming after them. She wouldn’t say anything about it, though. Then she realized it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference if she did: no one on the caravan, not even little Cassie, on Ananda’s shoulder for a round of chicken fights with the other kids, could possibly avoid it.

  Esau watched Hunt awaken slowly. Light shined through a louvered window, casting sharp rectangular shadows on his master’s bed. A stained blue blanket with frayed edges lay by Hunt’s side, leaving his legs and bottom uncovered.

  Above him hung a dusty white fan, base separating from the cracked ceiling. The lone remaining blade hadn’t moved since the final blackout—long before Esau was born on the border of the Great American Desert, a land decimated by fire, drought, and death.