BURN - Melt Book 4: (A Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series)

by JJ Pike

  “No offense, but can you handle the recoil on the Magnum?”

  “None taken,” said Petra. “I’ve got it.”

  “That sucker can blow a hole in an engine, but be sure you’re not aiming it at the house. I’m going to add a .357 Magnum to your vest.” He tightened the straps and patted her down.

  The gunfire to their south let up.

  “Eyes on me,” said Jim. “I’m going to walk you through how to use your vest.”

  His instruction was concise and easy to follow, the vest logically organized.

  “Show me where you go for the .45 ACP.”

  Petra looked down, counting the pockets until she got to the ACP.

  “You know what they say about this cartridge, don’t you?”

  Petra smiled. “.45 ACP, because it’s just silly to shoot twice.”

  “Good,” said Jim. “Now find them without looking down. Use your hands, not your eyes. You’re going to need your eyes on the target at all times.”

  While Petra familiarized herself with her gun jacket, Jim pulled out a miniature whiteboard and pen and drew a map. It didn’t take long to see it was the compound, with all three houses clearly marked. “This is where there are ammo stashes. You’ve got cover once you get to them, but you’re going to need to plan your route so you have the maximum number of rounds available to you when you’re moving between these locations. I’ll go east-south east and circle around back of our house. You should head west and do the same. If you get a shot lined up before we reach the back of the house, take it. Try not to shoot me by mistake. Cross fire and collateral damage took too many of my friends. I don’t want to be in that number.”

  “We’ll be coming up behind them.”

  “And?”

  “Queensbury Rules. Dad says they apply to shooting as well as boxing.”

  Jim sighed. “Your dad’s a good man. One of the best. But he’s soft in certain ways that we can’t afford to be any more.”

  “Not punching down would be the equivalent of not shooting someone in the back.”

  “I hear you, but these people are shooting at Mimi and Sean. Their lives or our people’s lives. It’s that simple. If you can line up a shot and not get any of our people hurt, do it.”

  Petra sighed. It was tough thinking about shooting someone from behind, but Jim made a good point. They started the fight and were trying to kill the people she loved.

  “If you don’t want to do this now, you can stay here and guard the guns.”

  “No, no. I’m cool. Just need to get my head on straight.” Her head—and the voices that usually plagued her when she was under pressure—remained mercifully even and quiet. Ever since she’d “solved the equation for X” and admitted she’d give her own life in place of Paul’s, she’d been free of taunts and challenges. It was a whole new way of being.

  “Show me where you’re going. Walk me through your route.” Jim handed her the map.

  Petra could visualize each rise and ditch between the car and the house. Her brain populated the picture with trees and shrubs. It was simple enough to plot her passage.

  “I’m impressed. Want to plot mine?”

  Petra ran Jim through his options. His terrain had fewer places where he could take cover. Probably why he’d selected it.

  There was a single shot. Her finger paused on the whiteboard. “They don’t sound anything like guns in the movies. I know that because we’ve practiced so often, but it still takes me by surprise. They sound tinny in real life. There’s no reverb.”

  Jim laughed.

  “That came from the house, didn’t it?”

  “Our side are conserving ammo. That’s good.”

  Petra didn’t say what she was thinking, which was that perhaps one of them was down. No point dwelling on the negative. They’d know soon enough.

  The invaders returned fire, but unlike Mimi and Sean, they didn’t show any restraint. They were running through their ammo like crazy. Unless they’d brought a U-Haul truck load with them, they were eventually going to run out. Neither of them had asked “why.” Petra discovered she didn’t care. They could be Arthur’s friends and family, they could be people who had fled the city, they could be a band of armed meth heads. She didn’t care. Her sole goal was to secure the safety of her people.

  “Ready?” Jim did a final check of their vests and hobbled towards the nearest tree.

  Dang, should she have let him go it alone? She’d forgotten how bad his hips were. She’d seen the bills from the hospital. She knew how much metal was in his leg and how it had to hurt. You didn’t rack up over eighty-thousand dollars of hospital debt for a partial replacement. Both his hips had been replaced. He was a metal man, but a metal man who should have been taking it easy. No room for second guessing, she had her part to play.

  The first few hundred yards of her route was simple. She ran away from Jo’s house towards the fir trees that skirted her property line. She hunkered down behind a trunk and surveyed the terrain. The shots told her there were two shooters relatively close to one another, just south of the fallen oak that marked the beginning of her next sprint. If she could make it to the oak, she might be able to take one of them out.

  The ground was soft under her feet. She was sure-footed, silent, her mind clear. She saw the troughs and animal bolt holes before she hit them, so she was able to dodge and weave her way with ease. She wished she’d thought to ask Jim if he had walkie-talkies. He didn’t have a phone. She wouldn’t have been able to text him, to find out how he was getting on, even if she’d wanted to.

  She kept track of which shooter had which gun as she ran. Sean was wrong. There were three, not four, assailants. Two were closer to her than they were to Jim. They hadn’t moved since she’d left the Durango. They must have something shielding them from gunfire from the house. The map in her mind built her a 3D picture. The road to Jim’s house ran straight down the middle of the route she’d plotted for her and Jim. Chances were the invaders had driven down that road and parked where they couldn’t be seen. That meant they weren’t shooting from behind their car. That had to be at least 500 feet further back if they’d been smart about their approach.

  The backhoe was the most likely place they were camped out. Not only was it a huge metal screen, Jim and Michael had started digging trenches before this latest trip to the hospital, so there was literally a place for snipers to hide out and pick off their prey.

  Too bad they didn’t know she was coming. Jim would understand why she’d deviated from the plan if she was successful. She only needed to take a short detour to her east in order to take them out. She grimaced. She’d already started creating “pleasant sounding phrases” to take the place of the word “kill.” It wasn’t murder. Like Jim said, they attacked first. It was self-defense.

  She jogged east for a couple of minutes, resetting the map in her mind so she had plenty of cover and avoided the hollow that turned into a marshy patch when it rained. It’d been dry for days, but she didn’t know what the ground would be like in there. It didn’t take her more than a few hundred feet off course. She paused behind a stout tree trunk, put the Magnum on the ground, and retrieved her phone. She texted Sean. “WE’RE COMING IN. Me and Jim. Plan is to come round back of the house so we don’t hit you or Mimi, then take these a-holes out.” She hit send and waited. It would be so good to know they were both still safe. There was no reply. “LOVE YOU.” She wrote. They’d never said it, but in that moment she was flooded with endorphins.

  She plunged her phone back into her pants’ pocket, retrieved her gun, and snuck a look around the tree. She was still too far to see anyone, but the endless rounds of ammunition being pumped at Jim and Betsy’s house told her she was close. The gun felt good in her hand.

  She ran from tree to tree, body low, leading with her shoulder so her torso was partially protected. They didn’t have helmets, so if one of them went for a headshot she’d be done for, but at least she had Kevlar protecting her major organs.
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  The force of the shot slamming into her chest threw her back several feet. She was winded, but not wounded. She forced her breaths to slow, rolled over, and slithered behind a tree. Who hadn’t she seen? Where were they? These were sloppy attackers, so they’d give their position away soon enough. The bullet had buckled and spread, but was sticking out of the middle of her vest. Her breathing fell into a less-jerky rhythm. The pain radiated out from her breastbone. There was going to be one hell of a bruise. But she was alive.

  She pressed her back against the tree and walked herself upright. She’d dropped her Magnum when she was hit. She still had a whole range of weapons to choose from. Jim for the win. She unlatched the Luger. The grip wasn’t as reassuring as the Magnum, but only because she hadn’t spent as much time on the range with the Luger. It wasn’t one of the most popular guns in history for nothing. She wanted the extra capacity. If the shooter came to check on her—and only an idiot wouldn’t do that—she was going to be ready.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on the strafes of gunfire. There were only two guns in play now. She tried to filter out the noise of the guns and scan for footfall. No one knew this land like she did. If they’d been behind the backhoe and were walking her way, they’d be headed straight for the hollow. With luck they’d walk through it, rather than around it. There were bound to be gnarly roots and potholes and messy bits of undergrowth that could trip them or impede their progress.

  Her phone buzzed. She couldn’t look at it. She had to remain trained on the sounds. There were no cars, no machines, no human voices. The wind moved through the leaves high above. The river was to her west. The dominant sound was the gunfire, but someone was padding towards her. Not subtle. They thought she was down. She had the advantage. They paused. Was it better to wait for them to round the tree or should she take her shot now?

  Her phone buzzed again. Why hadn’t she turned the damned thing off? If she did nothing, her attacker might assume she was down or dead. Better if he thought the latter. He started running again. So close now. He was going to be on top of her position within the minute.

  Again, he paused. Had she made an impression on the ground, left skid marks, when she’d been thrown backwards? Was he collecting her gun? Was he scouting the area to see where she might be hiding? He was no tracker, she knew that solely based on the racket he’d made galumphing towards her.

  Petra held her gun at the ready, pointed straight ahead. She had no way of knowing which way he’d come around the tree.

  He was so close she could hear him sniff and puff. The run had taxed him. Good, so he was unfit as well as a poor tracker.

  What an idiot. His gun came ahead of him like he was in some lame-o single-shooter game. Whatever this idiot knew about shooting he’d learned in a video game. Petra rounded the tree and unloaded on him.

  He slumped to the ground, blood spurting from his chest and neck.

  She’d expected to feel something. Remorse or shock or pity, but she felt none of those things. Instead, she had a kind of victory dance going on in her chest. She was glad he was dead, in spite of the fact that he was young. He’d come after her people. He didn’t deserve to live.

  She took her gun back and added his gun to her collection. No point wasting hardware. She checked his pockets for ammo, but didn’t find any.

  His ID said he went to Beacon High School. Wow, he was young. He had the same last name as Arthur, so that was one part of the mystery solved right there. What did they have against us? Why come back? She knew why. They’d killed his dad. In a way, he was right to return, though it still didn’t tell her why they’d even come in the first place.

  Her phone vibrated and buzzed. She crouched down behind her tree and read her messages.

  “MIMI’S HIT. COME SOONER.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Fran assured Christine that Naomi and Frank—the people who’d threatened her with a gun and attempted to extort money from her—would be arrested, just as soon as they could find a police officer. She explained, at some length, that police officers were in short supply given what was going on across the water. Thousands of men and women in blue had, apparently, rushed towards danger, rather than away. Fran spoke of them in a gushing tone, when in fact she should have noted that they’d abandoned their posts and left honest, law-abiding citizens like herself without protection. That being said, her abductors were safely stashed in a conference room or utility closet. She didn’t care to know the details, just as long as they were locked up and unable to get to her. The police would come when they could. She had to content herself with that.

  With the criminals safely dispatched, she turned her attention to her lip. The cut was on the inside of her lower lip. She’d doubtlessly injured herself with her own teeth when the boat threw her off balance. It was likely none of her epithelial tissue had touched Angelina. There was no reason to mention the cut to anyone else. She could monitor it and take herself out of circulation if there were developments.

  She asked Fran to fill her in on “the investigation,” peppering her with questions as she tried to get up to speed.

  Crowds were always overwhelming, but the crowd Christine was about to face was especially daunting. Fran had divested her of Angelina, told her the girl would be taken care of by a team of medical experts, allayed her fears that there would not be tilapia skins on hand, explained that “they” had been waiting for her, that another set of “theys” had samples they wanted to show her, and that the Army was involved and the CDC was waiting.

  “You don’t actually mean the Army and the CDC. The entire Army and CDC cannot be here.”

  Fran nodded, but did not seem annoyed at the correction. “Alice said you were a literalist.”

  “Is Alice here?” Christine heard the excitement in her own voice. It would be magnificent if she could take a personal translator with her to this meeting.

  Fran shook her head. “No one has heard from her or seen her since K&P went down. I did a GPS search on her phone and I’m sorry to say it was close to K&P. Her phone signal hasn’t moved in the ten times I’ve checked it. She could have dropped it, but that’s not the most likely scenario.”

  “Her son came looking for her, you know. Sorry. Of course you know. You were with me.”

  The door to the main laboratory opened. The place had been transformed. It was like a scene from a high-tech, science-based movie. Not the cheesy kind; the serious “we know what the future looks like” variety. The filmmakers were wrong, of course, but they at least made an effort at verisimilitude.

  There were widescreen TV’s all around the walls. There were white boards, white coats, people barking orders, rotary phones, though why they were necessary she could not imagine. Over to the right-hand side of the room she could see a long glass wall. Behind it, she could see members of her team. A deep, pervasive calm settled over her. The need for a shower, for a toothbrush, even for food and water evaporated. She was home.

  “I’m going to introduce you to a general first,” said Fran. “He’s coordinating Manhattan. You’re going to need to explain everything you know to him. Don’t hold back. He wants all the gory details.”

  “What do you mean ‘coordinating Manhattan?’”

  Fran stopped, forcing the bustling scientists to flow around her. She turned and faced the Professor. “Manhattan is flooded. What you and I saw when we were boarding the boats was just the beginning.”

  Fran hadn’t boarded a boat. She’d thrown herself into the water. She would need to be closely inspected. If she’d ingested contaminants, she’d need to be isolated for her own good as well as the good of others.

  “The Hudson and East River are now joined, sloshing around the streets, roaring up and down the avenues. There are likely people stuck in apartments, high-rises, and skyscrapers. Depending on what you say next, we are either sending in the National Guard or we’re leaving those people to their fate.”

  “There are hundreds of thousands remaining on Ma
nhattan,” said Christine. She was evaluating the data like a civilian. She needed to change tack. She needed to be “The Professor” again.

  “That’s correct,” said Fran.

  The Professor, the face Christine wore most easily and with most joy, weighed the matter at hand. She was supposed to brief important people. What she said now mattered. “What do I say? What do they want to know?”

  “Tell them the truth.”

  “There is more than one truth,” said Christine. “We cannot possibly know what’s objectively true yet. We don’t have all the data.”

  Fran reached out to touch the Professor. Christine flinched. It had been a trying few hours.

  “I’m not saying that their lives are in your hands alone. There are a lot of decision-makers in this room.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “But, in this moment, you are extraordinarily influential. You can sway these people. If I were you…”