There was no sign of the big cargo trucks, and she was glad of that, since they were carrying the vital medical treatment for Bunker Eight. There was no sign of anyone else either, though, and that had her worried. How far away were her people?
Another round of fire came from the machine gun ahead, and it was closer this time. She moved a little faster, relieved to see the bulk of the Stryker ahead of her, past the remnants of the roadblock she’d seen earlier. The Stryker appeared to be functional, which was excellent news. She coughed just as the smoke swirled around the big vehicle and two of the convoy soldiers appeared. One whirled toward her but held fire at the last second.
“Oh shit, sorry, ma’am,” he said, lowering the rifle.
“No problem, Private,” she replied and walked over to them. “Report!”
“We’re in the shit, ma’am,” he said. “At least two Humvees down, we can’t find Sergeant Carson, and the MTVs are mostly unprotected just outside of town.”
“What? Why? Get this Stryker moving ASAFP, soldier!”
“We didn’t know who was in command, ma’am.”
“I’m taking command in the absence of Sergeant Carson.” She whirled to the back of the Stryker and banged on the back until they lowered the ramp. “Get these men to the MTVs and hold position there until I come get you. Full REAPR activation, live targeting authorized. Those MTVs are the most important thing in your world, you get me?” The airman nodded and turned back to her control panel.
Rachel looked at one of the grunts outside and jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “You, get in. Do not let them take the MTVs.” She looked at the other and continued. “You’re with me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the two men chorused, and one clambered up the ramp.
“Move out!” Rachel yelled, then waited until the Stryker’s ramp had started to come up and the vehicle rolled forward. It was all well and good to take command, but she had to be certain about Sergeant Carson before joining the others, and it was too dangerous to go alone.
“We’re not going to take chances,” she said to the soldier. “We need to locate any survivors and then rendezvous with the others at the MTVs.”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” To his credit, he didn’t appear nervous, just numb, as she had been when she’d awakened.
“What’s your name, soldier?”
“MacPherson, ma’am.”
“Right, let’s go, Mac.” They crept forward to the next crumpled vehicle. She should’ve found the command Humvee before the Stryker, but she’d iron that out later. Right now, she just needed to find Carson. They’d already lost too many people.
She looked out from the cover of the Humvee and didn’t see any signs of the zealots. It was only then that she realized that the Humvee was actually upside down. She signaled Mac to move around the other side of the vehicle, and they crept forward. The Humvee’s roof had caved in, the doors blown out or crumpled inward and glass everywhere. She saw a moderate-sized pool of blood and began to doubt that anyone would be alive.
She crouched down farther and looked into the passenger compartment. The seat and roof pinned Sergeant Carson’s body. She looked past him and noted with clinical detachment the headless corpse of the driver, Fasco. A piece of thin metal had slid right through his neck and left his head somewhere… else.
She shook her head and pounded her fist into the side of the truck hard enough to dent it. “Motherfucker!” Rachel had liked both men, and now there was even more of a reason to hunt these bastard religious fucktards down to the last man. Not that there hadn’t been before.
A clawed hand grasped her leg, and she narrowly avoided screaming in shock. There was a wet cough and a rasp from the dead man.
“Get. Me. The fuck. Outta here.” Carson coughed again. “Now.”
She couldn’t believe the man was alive, and she forced down her relief. Now was not the time for emotion. Rachel took her Bowie knife from its comfortable slot on her hip and sliced through the straps holding the sergeant in place. There wasn’t room to get him out that way, so she stood up and ran around the vehicle. Together, she and Mac removed the body of Fasco, then helped Carson out and into a seated position.
The damage to the sergeant was severe, with burns or soot over most of his face and upper body. He coughed again, then looked at them both. “Mac, gimme your belt.”
MacPherson stood and took off his belt, handing it to Carson.
“Good,” he said. “Cover us while Maxwell here helps me tie off this leg.”
Mac nodded and took up his rifle again as he crouched and took cover.
Rachel was running on autopilot now. Her training and experience guided every action. She took the belt from the sergeant and wrapped it around the man’s torn and bloody left leg. She realized that must be what had created the pool of blood she’d seen. After she tied off the improvised tourniquet, the trio stood and limped toward the rendezvous point. They stayed to the side of the street to avoid any enemy contact.
Rachel tried her radio again. “Big Betty, Hunter Three. Come in.”
When she got no response, Carson coughed and shook his head. “No point. We’ll be there soon enough.”
Rachel nodded and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. A little while later, she switched off with Mac and crept forward. She scouted their position and made sure they weren’t walking into yet another ambush. It was only seconds later that she held up a closed fist, signaling to Mac to stop and take cover.
There was movement in the shadows of an alley ahead. She waited until she could make out the shape of a zealot as he hid against the rusting hulk of a dumpster. Inexpert hands had reworked and mended the rifle, but she was certain it would still kill her or her friends. Too bad for him that he would never get the chance to use it.
The shot from her rifle took him just under the right temple, spraying the wall behind him with blood that shone bright red in the sun. She waited for others to poke their heads out, but no other zealots appeared and no shots winged her way. She knelt and whistled for Mac and the sergeant to follow her.
They continued their creeping. Though Rachel didn’t know exactly where the remnants of the convoy were, she could follow the tracks of the laden MTVs in the dirt and cracked asphalt. The drivers had decided on the more prudent course and taken a circuitous route away from the roadblock. They’d managed to maintain a rough heading in the right direction—east, toward Amarillo, Abilene, and the Austin Free Zone.
They had gone another ten minutes toward their goal when there was the rattle-crack of several guns firing in sustained bursts from somewhere ahead. They all stopped to listen, and both Mac and Rachel turned to Carson.
He, too, listened as the gunfire continued, then slowed and stopped. “They’re okay,” he said, then motioned for them to continue.
As they began walking once more, Rachel threw a question back over her shoulder. “How can you be sure, sir?”
“Think about it, Lieutenant. If you’re in a firefight and you get overrun, what happens to your rate of fire?”
“It would stop… Oh, I see. They’re fine, because their rate of fire ended slowly instead of all at once. I wouldn’t have considered that.”
“Don’t worry about it. Just a little trick I picked up from the general a few years back.”
Rachel’s step faltered for a moment. “The general, sir? You mean…”
“Sorry, Lieutenant. Not your dad. I meant my general, Frank Anderson.”
“Oh,” she said, disappointment clear in her voice.
“Though I did meet him once, your dad.”
“Oh?” she repeated, curiosity replacing the disappointment.
“Yep. He was a tough old bastard, but one of the smartest guys in the room, for sure.”
Rachel smiled, though she knew neither of the others would see it. “He was always like that.”
“He was a good man, Lieutenant. A good man.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied, and with a ren
ewed spring in her step, they continued their march toward the waiting vehicles.
It wasn’t long before she spotted the top of the Stryker. It towered over the short shrubs that had grown up in some of the backyards on the residential street. They were far enough away that she couldn’t make out the men standing next to the vehicle, other than that they had on AEGIS uniforms. And that was enough for her.
Crouched in the bushes to avoid getting shot by their own men, Rachel looked over at Carson and realized he’d passed out at some point—an alarming thing when he’d had so much blood loss.
“When the hell did he pass out?” she asked Mac.
“I dunno, ma’am. I didn’t see it.” Mac grunted and shifted the weight of the sergeant. “I was too busy hauling his heavy ass down the street.”
“Dammit, Mac!” She held two fingers to Carson’s neck and checked for his pulse, then released the breath she’d held when she found one. Weak and irregular, but it was there. “We have to get him help, now.”
“Right, let’s do this,” Rachel said. It would’ve been so much easier if they had just been able to radio ahead, but for some reason, none of the radios they carried were working. Either there was some sort of jamming going on, or, worse, there was no one to receive them at all.
She cursed the radios and cupped her hands around her mouth as she turned back toward the remaining convoy vehicles. “Friendlies inbound, six o’clock!” She saw the turret guns on the Stryker swivel her direction, but they didn’t fire. Several of the men shouted, but she couldn’t understand them.
“Say again!” she called.
One of the men waved the others to silence and yelled again. “What’s the daycode?”
Rachel thanked God for standard field ops, which took over in the event of secure comm failure. She wracked her brain for a moment and then remembered the code.
“Blackbird Zeta Three!” she yelled.
“Confirmed,” he replied. “God, it’s good to see some friendlies,” he said when they approached closer. Rachel noted that his tattered uniform said HENLEY on the breast.
Rachel was relieved to see that both MTVs had made it more or less unscathed, with minor damage. They’d lost nearly their whole complement of Humvees, though. Both MTV drivers and their partners were alive with minor injuries. Add the two Stryker crew, Henley, Mac, Carson and her, and you had just nine friendlies left out of over twenty who’d started out from Bunker Seven.
She didn’t have time to mourn, though. Rachel helped Mac get the wounded Carson into the back of the Stryker on the metal grating. “Do you have any medical training?” she asked the airman.
“Just emergency stuff, ma’am. What’s wrong with him?” She grabbed the emergency kit mounted on a bulkhead and slid off the seat to crouch beside the sergeant.
“Severe wounds to the left leg, burns and cuts to the face and arms, probably a concussion.”
“I’ll do what I can, ma’am. Step back, please.” The airman grabbed a package of QuikClot from the kit and ripped it open. She poured the granulated mixture into the wound on Carson’s leg, and the sergeant’s eyes shot open. He screamed, and the airman clamped a hand over his mouth to muffle the sound.
She’d done all she could, so Rachel went and found Henley and Mac standing guard. “Get everyone moving. One of you to each MTV. Tell them to follow the Stryker. We’re outta here.” She turned to survey the burning ruin of Clayton, New Mexico.
“What about the others?” Henley asked.
Rachel was about to answer but saw movement and raised her rifle to her shoulder and fired as several zealots came out of the trees toward them. Henley and Mac took down some as well. The attackers were all finished before the big REAPR cannons even had a chance to track their targets.
Rachel grimaced. “They’re gone, and so are we if we don’t get out of here. Now move!”
Fifteen minutes later, they’d found an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Clayton, several miles from the earlier fighting. They couldn’t have kept going anyway, not with their wounded in need of medical attention. The zealots would’ve chased them all down and overrun them with their much greater numbers.
Rachel hoped that Sergeant Carson agreed once he regained consciousness. She and her men closed the large doors behind the vehicles, then removed as many traces as they could of their passage outside. Rachel noticed a big sign that had fallen off the building years before and lay in the overgrown grass and shrubs.
What the hell was a Costco?
Though the tires had long gone flat, they were able to roll some of the derelict cars in the parking lot in front of the closed rollup doors. They’d had to use some fancy maneuvering to get the Stryker and the big MTVs inside without destroying part of the wall, but they’d done it. Now they had a somewhat secure hideout.
They’d worried about air quality when they’d opened the doors, but it was clear from the large holes in the roof that air circulation wasn’t a problem. That’s what time and the elements did to a building, Rachel supposed.
It took only a few minutes for the practiced troops to clear the warehouse and make sure any walkers had been put down. They only found three, mummified after twenty-plus years in the building and the high temperature of the New Mexico summers. Given the remnants of some campfires they also found, Rachel expected that some folks had hid out here but never left.
Of course, the place had long ago been looted of all useful items. All that was left were heavy or bulky items like barbecue grills and toilets and patio sets, not to mention all the laundry detergent you could ever need. She shook her head at the bulk of some of the items, dropping what had once been a Kirkland Signature tub of mayonnaise to the floor. She wasn’t old enough to have ever seen one of these stores when it was working, and the sheer scale of the place was daunting.
Rachel looked over at Sergeant Carson, lying on one of the scattered picnic tables at the front of the store.
“Ever shop at one of these, Sergeant?” she asked.
“Costco?” he said, coughing. “Just how fucking old do you think I am, Lieutenant?”
She laughed. “I’ll take that as a no, then.”
“I was three on Z-Day,” he said. “I don’t remember a damn thing from before the bunker. Are we set?”
She nodded. “Yes, sir. All entry points secured. We’ll take shifts up on the roof for watches.”
“Be careful up there. This building is older than shit and hasn’t been maintained. Don’t want anyone falling through the fucking roof. Those holes could get bigger any moment.”
“Roger that, sir. We’ll take something heavy up there and throw it ahead of us, find a safe way to the edge.”
“Good idea. You could also look at the roof from down here to find the most rusted sections.”
Rachel blushed with embarrassment. “Uh, yes, sir.”
Carson chuckled, then winced. “Ow, don’t make me laugh.” He turned to the Stryker airman who’d tended his wounds. “Charlie, any luck with the radio?”
“No, sir. No reply. We’re transmitting, but it’s likely not getting through the structure, sir.”
“Can we make it portable? Get it out of the Stryker?”
“Well, sir…” Charlie hesitated. “I can try, but I don’t know…” The airman hesitated again.
“What is it, Charlie?” Carson asked, annoyance plain on his face.
“This place, sir. Are we sure it was the right call to bring us here?”
Carson snorted. “Not much for tactics, are you, Airman? A Costco is eminently defensible. Thick, high walls, lots of room inside, probably some water somewhere, and best of all, high vantage for recon. It’s basically a modern castle. Perfect for withstanding a siege, which is really the only option when faced with an overwhelming force. No, this is a great location to hole up and wait for reinforcements.”
Carson noticed Rachel’s half-smile but ignored it. “You can work on that radio tomorrow. Everyone get some rack, right now. No one’s going to
attack tonight.” When Rachel gave him a look, he shook his head. “These guys aren’t smart enough to come at us at night. They’ve been fighting all day like we have, and I’m willing to bet they’ll wait until daybreak to make their move. We gave ‘em hell today.”
He leaned back against the makeshift pillow they’d made out of the remnants of an old dog bed. “On second thought, might not be a bad idea to set a watch after all.” He closed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh, and if anyone finds a can of Coke, it’s mine.”
Church Forces Staging Area
Outside Clayton, New Mexico
Brother Ezekiel gazed over the men assembled before him in ragged groups and around the vehicles. The hot late-afternoon sun beat down upon them, and the breeze did little to ease the temperature. His long experience in the deserts of New Mexico had left him inured to the heat, though, and he ignored the complaints of the men around him as best he could.
“They have taken refuge inside one of the ancient structures, Brother Ezekiel,” the man standing next to him said. “The archbishop has seen fit to place you in command of this operation. What are your orders?”
Ezekiel took a deep breath as he tried to maintain his composure in the face of the man’s astounding idiocy. Brother Benjamin was, as Ezekiel’s grandmother would’ve put it, “not the sharpest knife in the drawer.” Still, he was loyal and devout, two qualities Ezekiel prized. It was unfortunate how rarely they were paired with intelligence.
“Our men are in position, yes?” he asked.
“Indeed, Brother. They await divine instruction.”
There would be little divinity in the massacre of these men and women, though it was, of course, necessary. The balance of the righteous versus the infidels would be in their favor somewhat, but ultimately, it didn’t make much difference. All would need to die before the world would be truly cleansed.
He was thankful for the extra training imparted by the archbishop’s recently-arrived representatives. It would be helpful in the coming attack, but he was curious about where the men had learned these new skills. Even under the influence of a strong tea, spiked with more than a little prohibited white lightning, they would only mumble inanities. The most lucid had said something about a new influence on their leader but nothing of substance.
The Dying of the Light (Book 3): Beginning Page 18