by Joshua Guess
Hell, who am I kidding? Those were both prices I’d happily pay just to be there again. Had already paid, come to think of it.
“How far is it between fueling stations?” I asked Garcia. I was pretty sure I had posed the question before, but I couldn’t dredge up the answer no matter how hard I tried.
“Seventy miles between the one we camped at and the next,” she told me. “We’re crawling in this thing. I just hope the tanks have been topped off.”
“Who does that?” I asked. “For that matter, who even put them there in the first place and why in the world do these trucks run on whatever gas is in them? I’ve been dying to know since I was taken.”
And so Garcia told me about a small program—small relative to the size of the military overall—jointly funded by the Army and Navy and handled by a small tech startup based out of Tennessee. It was neat. Vehicles built from scratch to run on compressed methane, mobile infrastructure that could be toted around and dropped where needed. The original use was supposed to be for places hit by hurricanes or earthquakes. I drank in the details, fascinated as any child being told a bedtime story.
And like a child, it put me to sleep.
29
We made it safely to the second and third refills before things took a turn. I learned from Garcia that the extra time we’d taken at every stop, though none as long as the first, was used to empty the giant reserve tanks we filled up from. Deny any potential pursuers the fuel. One possibility that didn’t occur to me—or to anyone—was what actually happened.
At our fourth stop, just a hundred miles or so from Bastion, Phillips overheard a chilling exchange on the long-range radio. He called us together just after.
“Looks like the boys back at the fort decided to tell on us,” he said without preamble. “They’re following behind, and they’re not alone. Twenty men from the fort are on our ass, another thirty from Station One.”
I turned to Garcia. “Station One?”
“It’s where the radio alerts come from. It’s also the main research base.”
“How are they following us without refueling?” someone from the crowd asked.
Phillips shrugged. “Probably pulled extra tanks from the fort and loaded them into the Humvees. Doesn’t really matter. The important thing is they know where we’re going and how we’re gonna get there. So does the platoon moving in to join them. We’re gonna finish topping off and move like hell. Best thing we can do is get ahead of them.”
“So you can fight them at Bastion?” I said much louder than intended. “We outnumber them two to one. Why not fight them here?”
A lot of pairs of eyes fell on me, most of them looking like I was an idiot child. Phillips, however, took it in stride. “Because they’re going to be better armed than we are. These trailers can take a standard round from an M4. What’s coming with those boys is going to be bigger, and they’ll be using AP rounds for all their weapons. I guarantee it. Our options are all terrible. If we leave the transports behind and move on foot, they’ll just get to Bastion before us. I doubt they’ll be nice when they do. Putting us behind a defensive position and adding your people to ours is the best bet.”
“I don’t like it,” I said as everyone scurried back to their transports. I kept a wary eye out for zombies, though the remote locations of the fuel depots helped keep their numbers thin. “Convenient to catch that over the radio, isn’t it? How is this not some kind of trap?”
Garcia helped me up the ramp, and I was stiff and achy enough not to be annoyed about it. “Oh, it might be a trap, but there’s nothing convenient about Phillips overhearing. Communication options are limited. It’s not like they can shoot an email. He’s been switching channels like crazy since we left just in case someone started talking about us. It doesn’t matter if some other base is sending guys to chase after us, or even aiming soldiers north to hit us as we go south, because he’s right. We don’t have any other choice. These beasts need open road to make anything like decent time, so there’s only one way we can go.”
I frowned. “You’re really shitty at this cheering people up thing.”
Garcia gripped my hand as I settled into my now customary spot on the floor of the trailer. “Oh, is that what I was supposed to be doing? Sorry, I thought you wanted honesty.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said with a groan. “We’re screwed, everything is terrible, all we can do is keep our eyes open. Par for the course.”
I wish I could say we tore out of there in rooster tails of loose dirt, a group of renegades making a last-ditch run for safety. It would have given the scene a little excitement and style. Instead the truck shifted into gear with a thunk and a whine in the transmission and trundled down the road. The ride wasn’t even particularly bumpy.
Yet there was a new tension in the air. Over the last day and a half, the people around me started to get comfortable in the way people do when they’re brought together by circumstance. Even in that short period of time, the gradual shift toward casual conversation to fill the time—the two guys next to me enjoyed debating the merits of Marvel versus DC superhero movies—had come to a halt. Everyone was quiet, me included. Each time the radio on Garcia’s hip squawked, every head in the trailer turned toward her in expectation of more bad news.
This is the truth of all adventure and excitement: none of them are made up of just the good parts. Those moments are simply peaks, surrounded by deep and wide valleys. Most of the time we occupy those lowlands, grinding through the everyday routine. Even times like now, the moment to moment experience is stressful, slow, and still manages to be boring. Hell, it’s more stressful because it’s boring. As I sat there on my ass waiting for the other shoe to drop, I’d have given a few toes for the fight to start just to be doing something. Anything other than holding my breath.
When shit hit the fan an hour later, I realized the horrible truth of my situation.
I would still be holding my breath, because I was in no shape to fight. The only thing I could offer was a hand to hold a gun, and there were more than enough people for that job with vastly better qualifications.
The moment came with less than ten seconds of warning. A garbled shout buzzed from the radio telling us there were vehicles approaching fast behind us. There was just enough time for Garcia to shout at everyone to get down before the first shots drilled into the closed ramp.
In that, we were lucky. The walls were made of hardened steel, but they wouldn’t hold up to armor piercing rounds. The ramp was a bit thicker, and the mechanism that lowered it and the supports that held it up lay folded against its bottom half, adding an imperfect but welcome layer of protection. Two small holes appeared farther up its height, letting circular shafts of sunlight in.
Garcia crouched in front of me, weapons ready for what came next. I hauled my own gear over and armed myself. I might not be much in a fight right now, but there was no way I wouldn’t put up a good show if it came to it.
“Why’d the shooting stop?” I rasped, throat suddenly bone dry.
Garcia cocked her head as if trying to pick up the tiniest of sounds. “I don’t hear any other gunfire. I think that was someone with poor impulse control getting overexcited.”
“You make it sound like they’re going to try to take us alive,” I said. “Why would they bother?”
She glanced back at me. “Why did the colonel take you alive in that field rather than shoot you on the spot?”
Ah. Right. In every system, examples had to be made, defeated enemies trotted out for a show. It would have been easier, or maybe just easy, to kill us and be done. But that wouldn’t work. If the other bases were under the same internal strain Phillips had been coping with at the fort, killing us might not be enough. I was kind of hoping that was the case.
The whole trailer rocked, jolting everyone. I threw out a hand to catch myself. “What the fuck was that?”
“Rammed us,” Doctor Barnes said from behind me. Moments later this was confirmed on Garcia’s radio
. Then an order came across that caused a burst of angry discussion.
“Repeat that?” Garcia said into the mic.
“Drop the ramp,” the voice repeated. “Hit the emergency release on my mark.”
Garcia looked back at us, then at the handful of soldiers sharing our space. “Stay in place, keep low. Shoot if you have to.”
I only understood the order after she scuttled toward the base of the closed ramp. Once it fell, she would be framed in the open maw of the thing. Directly in whatever crossfire might follow. The urge to shout at her to stop was nearly overwhelming, but I didn’t. I knew she’d ignore me. Instead I raised my borrowed rifle, backed up until I was in front of the nearest prone body, and gave whoever it was as much cover as I could. The soldiers kneeling in front of me got as low as they could, and for a precious few moments our world paused between heartbeats.
“Mark,” said the voice from the radio. Garcia yanked the emergency release. The ramp fell.
To my surprise, it stopped before it even got level with the bed of the trailer. The door, which had to weigh half a ton at least, rotated on its hinges as if slapped by God himself. I understood the many factors which caused this to happen, from our forward motion to the light stream of air put off by the truck, but knowing didn’t take any of the joy from watching that heavy bastard slam down on the windshield and hood of the Humvee that had bumped us.
A shocked man stood halfway through the roof of the vehicle, a shocked expression on his face. Garcia took advantage of that half second and shot him high in the chest with a burst. Her timing was beautiful, nestled in the sweet spot between the impact of the gate and the Humvee driver slamming on his brakes in abject terror. Though given how badly broken the windshield was and the degree of deformation in the frame surrounding it, the guy might have just been killed.
We weren’t moving at highway speed. Thirty at the outside. The relatively slow pace made it easy for the more nimble vehicles driven by the enemy to react. When another of them darted past the truck behind us, which bravely swerved in a vain attempt to knock the Humvee off the road, it caught up easily.
There was no man standing in plain view this time. Instead, seeing the ramp dragging along behind us and throwing sparks, the driver sped up and shot past us before the soldiers in the trailer could pop off more than a few rounds. The damn thing was too nimble. Our driver didn’t stand a chance.
The trailer rocked sideways under an impact, and this time there was no saving it. Our driver over-corrected, bleeding off precious momentum, and we were hit again. Pure human instinct to keep us from being thrown out of the trailer or, heaven help us, subjected to a roll, forced him to stomp on the brakes.
Give this much to the attackers; they knew their business. We were slowing to a stop and that fucker didn’t miss a beat. He slammed on the brakes with dead accuracy, ending up level with the ramp as we bled off the last of our speed. I was pushed backward as the trailer slewed at an angle to the truck, the sound of popping machinery beneath us heralding some awful, unseen damage.
Garcia threw herself flat against the wall nearest the Humvee in a bid to escape what came next.
The soldiers in front of me opened up for the briefest of salvos before the barrels of two weapons appeared from small holes and raked them with fire. Short, controlled bursts that did their job with lethal efficiency. The angle was such that the men in the Humvee had to fire upward. I threw myself flat on my stomach and, like an idiot, put a forearm over the top of my head as if that would do an iota of good.
Bodies fell in front of me. Garcia stayed out of sight, but it wouldn’t save her for long. The truck behind us had stopped as well, soldiers pouring from it. The world became a staccato blur of sound as a gunfight erupted. I saw, through the tangle of corpses before me, the passenger of the truck hop onto the pavement only to be cut down before he could straighten up.
Someone thundered up the ramp. Several someones. I pushed myself up, and it was only then that I realized I’d been shot. The outside of my left shoulder burned; a shallow graze. Wasn’t that nice? I lived for another few seconds. I struggled to my knees just in time to see Garcia go down as someone shot her in the chest.
“Fucker!” I croaked, the desert in my throat turning the word into a sharp hiss. “You motherfucker!”
Nero did its dance and I felt the energy flood into my system. Heart pounding, the pain in my body fell into sharp focus. It was good. It woke me up. Made me even more angry.
Unfortunately, I was at a severe disadvantage. Three men in full combat gear stood facing me, carbines raised with professional ease.
“Not getting them,” I said, glaring at them with as much hate as I could pour into the look.
No one came to join them, to my surprise. I had no idea what was going on outside, but surely someone would have appeared to back them up. The middle soldier tightened his grip a little, body tense. “Drop it or I drop you.”
I caught a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye. Against every instinct, I dropped my own rifle. All I would do by getting myself shot was risk those bullets hitting someone behind me.
Without a word, the middle man pulled the trigger.
At the same time, Garcia shot up at the three men from a kneeling position. The bullets whizzed by my head and hit someone behind me. Something in me snapped, utterly and completely. The world dropped away. Not as it had with the Shivers in the past. No.
Everything I was vanished in a red haze. Ran Lawson ceased to exist.
I was just gone.
30
When I came back around, I had a bounty of confusing things to keep my attention. The first one I noticed was the great number of guns trained on me. The faces behind them were friendly. Phillips, Garcia. Jem. Huh. Jem was here. That didn’t seem right.
Also, I was covered in a lot of blood. Like I’d gone swimming in it. Which was just crazy, because I was still in the trailer. My hand was in front of me, bright scarlet like a glove and dripping. I looked down.
I must have pulled my knife at some point, because the soldiers Garcia had shot were so far beyond dead it wasn’t even funny. Since no one else was a nightmarish mask of blood and viscera, I had to assume I was the one who did this to them. My god.
The details don’t need to be repeated. Suffice it to say it looked like an enthusiastic butcher with something to prove made a project of them. Whether they were dead or just injured when I started in on them was impossible to tell at a glance, but I hoped for the former. I leaned forward and vomited. I was not the only one in the small space to do so.
“Are you, y’know, you again?” Garcia asked, pain tightening her voice.
Still doubled over, I nodded. I wretched one last time and went to wipe my mouth on my sleeve, catching myself at the last second. If I’d thoughtlessly wiped that ungodly mess across my face, I might have actually gone crazy right there on the spot. “Thought you were dead.”
Garcia put a hand to her chest. “Lucky for me, they weren’t using AP rounds. My armor caught it. I think I broke a rib slamming into the wall, though. What…” her voice trailed off as her eyes fell on the floor. “What happened? Do you know?”
I shook my head. I realized the knife was still in my right hand, and I dropped it. Jem, heedless of the blood, rushed forward and put his arms around me to steady me. “You’re okay. Come on. We’re gonna clean you up.”
No one objected. No one asked more questions. Jem marched me off—gently—and just like that, it was over. However far from Bastion we might still be, I was home.
He guided me to a familiar pickup truck and snapped orders at a few people milling around. Part of me wanted to figure out what had happened here, but for once my curiosity was a minority vote inside my head. Instead I let Jem sit me on a stray cargo box that must have fallen from a truck while he used towels dampened with a water bottle to clear off the worst of the gore from my body.
“How are you here?” I asked, knowing he would understand the q
uestion.
As he worked, he explained.
“I hoped you’d get away. People volunteered to do long-range scouting. One of them called in this convoy, and we showed up right before the firefight started. Someone was putting out a radio address to us. Specifically to us, using our channel. They asked for help, said you were with them. Used your code word. That was smart of you.”
I nodded numbly. Because I am who I am, setting up an all-clear phrase with Jem was something I’d done months before I was taken. It signaled that someone speaking for me was genuine.
He didn’t waver or even frown as he continued to clean the blood from me, as if it didn’t matter to him at all. Like it didn’t even cross his mind to shy away from a person who could leave that sort of carnage behind.
His voice was calm, almost thoughtless in how casually he relayed the facts. Before Zero I might have thought it patronizing. Now I took great comfort in the fact that he was trying to soothe me.
“We flanked them. Your new, uh, friends told us to go after the ones in the Humvees. The whole fight couldn’t have been more than sixty seconds. Scared off their backup, too. Scouts said the other group of them turned tail once they saw what was happening here.”
“What about you?” I asked.
Jem paused, his face curious. “Don’t know what you mean.”
I tilted my head at the towel, now deeply stained with streaks of crimson. “You saw what I did. You gonna run like they did?”
His reply was a gentle slap to the back of my head. “Of course not. And anyway, that wasn’t you. That was Nero making you its bitch. While you were still, uh, doing your thing, that redheaded scientist tried to explain it. From what he says, the Shivers can pump so much shit into your system it just shorts out your brain for a little while. Like a seizure but without losing control of your body.”
I tried to take comfort in the idea that it wasn’t my fault and failed. If anything, the knowledge scared me more than thinking I had even the slimmest control. The idea that I could lose myself so completely that I’d traipse around in the guts of a living person like a child stomping a rain puddle made me want to vomit again. How could I be trusted around anyone, if I could do something like that? Having seen the results, how would any of these people even want to be around me?”