"Woah! It's okay. You done good. We got control. Now get yourself inside while I set up the machine gun."
Pietersen moved past her, stepping over the body of the man she'd killed, picking his way past the others until he reached the pair of M249s that the guards hadn't had time to use.
She watched, numb, as he talked to a tall black man next to him who nodded and kneeled behind one of the guns, before pulling at and looking inside things she didn't pretend to understand. Pietersen heaved the other onto his shoulder and lifted it onto the top of the dugout, removing a line of sandbags so they could cover the entrance to the school.
"They're comin'," he called. "Get your butts up here. It's going to get hot mighty soon."
Cassie looked down at the body of the man she'd killed and tried not to think about the human being who no longer existed. He was probably fortyish, so he'd had four decades of living before Cassie had stabbed him to death. He would have killed Pietersen, but she knew that two wrongs don't make a right. But that could wait. For now, she had a duty to help her friends survive.
She picked up an assault rifle dropped by one of the guards and carefully peered above the line of sandbags beside Pietersen. The doors of the school were flung open and people in camouflage emerged, spreading left and right as, with a defining percussive ba-ba-ba-ba, the SAW spoke, Pietersen moving it deliberately left and right. Hot shell cases spilled onto the sandbags as Cassie moved away from the noise a little.
Behind her, someone called out and the other machine gun began firing. The enemy was surrounding them. And they were many. Too many.
Chapter 17: Said
The two trucks now drove up the road side by side, stopping a couple of hundred yards to the south of the school. Hick watched as his people got down from the back of his truck and lined up beside the highway.
Others ran from their cars until, finally the full complement of a hundred or so stood nervously in line. This was the most they could transport and arm. Most were men middle-aged and younger, but there were some women and some of the older folks Gert had rescued from the mine workings. They had vengeance on their mind.
To the north, a sudden burst of sustained gunfire had paused for a minute or two before breaking out again, and Hick had heard more beyond that. If all had gone well, Said and his team controlled the roadblock at the intersection and Cassie's resistance held the two dugouts in front of the school.
But that was a big if. And even had it gone to plan, the biggest force—the one now assembled beside the highway—needed to relieve them soon or it would be too late. The enemy would be back in control and dug in.
Zak was calling his people together. Perhaps a couple of hundred. Along with Hick's people, they filled the road from side to side. It looked impressive, but Hick knew that most of them had barely handled a gun before and they made a hell of a target.
Now for the final throw of the dice.
They began marching along the road, the crackle of gunfire growing louder and louder.
And then the air was full of bullets.
The man beside him fell, and people were running, diving for cover wherever they could find it. Hick was dragging the wounded man to one side when someone grabbed him. "Come on, Hick! He's gone!!"
Joe Bowie pulled Hick to one side, and they hid in the front yard of a ranch house. "We're finished," Joe said. "We didn't know nothin' about those guns. I guess we could outflank them."
"We don't have time," Hick hissed. "If we don't get to the school in minutes it'll be too late. Everything will be lost."
Joe shook his head as a sudden silence fell. "Then it's lost."
#
Tariq swept the machine gun’s barrel left and right.
"Not yet," Said whispered.
A convoy of Land Rovers and trucks was rolling down the highway from the north, coming back to town after finding what had happened to the roadblock Said and his team had destroyed.
They'd shown no sign that they'd noticed there was anything wrong with the barrier at the intersection, and so they drove closer and closer. Then, one of the Land Rovers stopped and someone got down, staring at where Said and Tariq waited.
"Now!"
The M249 spat rounds into the people standing there and into their vehicles. Suddenly, trucks and cars began reversing out of range. Good, they'd bought themselves a few minutes.
"Leader!"
Said swung around to see figures running at them from the other direction. He'd known they were hiding there, but so far his team had kept them pinned down. Now, they were taking the opportunity as Said looked the other way.
"Stay here," he said to Tariq. "Keep them covered." There was no point in turning the SAW around when, as soon as he did that, the trucks would start moving again and they'd be under attack from both sides.
So, three of them faced the multitude of figures weaving back and forth as they ran from cover to cover, but getting inexorably closer.
Said clenched his jaw as he fired short volleys. His M16 had a magazine of thirty and he'd been keeping count. He had spares, but only a couple, and he didn't want to take his eyes off the attackers for a moment.
"They're coming!" It was Tariq.
Minutes. They had minutes. Said looked briefly up at the sky and said a silent prayer.
#
"There's too many," Pietersen shouted as he moved the SAW back and forth. "We'd better pray they don't have any more RPGs."
The front of the school was a scene of utter destruction. One of Cassie's team had found a mortar with two shells, so what had once been a place of safety and learning was now riddled with bullet holes and littered with enemy bodies. But he was right. There were too many. So, Sahi, the man who Devon had tortured and killed, had lied after all. His last curse from beyond the grave. They'd have had a tough fight against five hundred, but she guessed that was out by a factor of two.
It would be over soon enough.
On the other side of the dugout, looking out over the baseball field, she could see movement among the debris. So many enemies. It was all going to hell in a handbasket.
"Maybe we should surrender," Pietersen said in a pause between volleys.
Cassie shook her head, feeling the bloody clots caught in her curls slapping against her face. "No point. They'd kill us all."
"They'd kill the likes of me, sure enough. But you're young and pretty. You might survive."
Cassie ignored him and soon enough the air was filled with the staccato punch of the M249.
"I'm nearly out," Pietersen said. "Save yourself, Cassie."
He pulled on the trigger. A handful of rounds spat out, followed by an impotent click. He drew his handgun.
Almost immediately, figures began moving forward. Death was coming.
Movement to her left. They'd been outflanked and enemies now surrounded them.
And then they began to fall.
The attackers from the school halted, looking off to their right and ducking for cover.
Cassie looked harder at the newcomers.
Good God in Heaven. It was her father.
Elwood Miller, shotgun blazing from his hip, led the citizens of Hope as they ran from the cover they'd been gathering in. Those at the front were firing weapons of all sorts, from purse revolvers to ancient long-barreled rifles. Behind ran—some faster than others—men and women carrying kitchen knives, some tied to poles, axes and baseball bats.
"Come on!" Cassie called out and made for the exit from the dugout.
"No!" Pietersen said. But it was too late, and he was forced to follow her as she ran shrieking at the enemy.
#
Hick ran across the highway, keeping his head low as, after a few moments, rounds began fizzing through the air. He reached the nearest truck and jumped across the front seat as glass showered down on him.
Keeping himself to the floor, he turned the key in the ignition, then peeked above the dashboard before putting the stick into drive and contorting himself so he could
push down on the gas pedal.
It was a crazy plan, a plan he hadn't bothered to discuss. He had told Joe, Brain and Martha to follow once he had the truck moving. He would be both the weapon and the shield. His fighters could follow the truck as it rumbled toward the emplacements, and he'd then do his best to take one of them out.
The air seemed to ripple with heat as round after round flew just above and around his head. Any moment now and they'd strike lucky, blowing his brains out, and it would all be over.
He kept the truck on a straight path so his people could follow in the narrow strip of protection it offered. Bits of the ceiling and trim rained down on him as he sat among the shattered glass, the engine screaming. Closer, closer, closer.
Then darkness.
"Dad?"
He was dreaming. Sam was standing over him, looking down as he lay in bed, the sun peeking out from behind her head as she moved. Was it Father's Day? Had she brought him breakfast in bed? For the first time ever?
"Dad!"
Now he was on a boat at sea, the horizon bobbing up and down in time with the boat. If it rocked any more, he'd be thrown overboard. He put his hands out to steady it.
"DAD!"
His dream turned into a nightmare of pain. The boat disappeared, and he flailed around, fighting the monsters that were biting him, clawing at his head and shoulder.
"He's coming around."
"Give him a minute. He's lost a lot of blood. Maybe we should let him sleep."
"Sam?"
"Oh, thank God."
He forced his eyes open. They felt as though they'd been shut so tightly, the eyelids had glued themselves together. "Sam?"
"You son of a bitch, Dad. Who the hell gave you the right to lock me up?"
"Give him a break, Sam," Jay said.
Hick heard no more.
When he woke up, he was alone and lying on a real bed in a familiar room. It was the school gym that had been used as a makeshift hospital. He could hear voices and the groans of people in pain.
Hick winced as he sat up on his elbows and looked around. It was chaos. Some poor devils were lying on the floor. He went to swing his legs over the side of the bed so he could go and see what was going on, but they felt as though they were made of lead and stuck with glue to the bed, so he fell back on the pillow.
"You're awake, then?"
Sam's face appeared above him.
"What happened?"
"You nearly got your head blown off, that's what. But I'm glad you made it. We thought you might have lost too much blood. I'll get you some sweet coffee."
Hick put his hand out to grab her arm, but it merely bounced off. "I mean, what happened here?"
"We won, if you can call losing dozens of people winning."
"But …"
"No buts. Wait here and I'll get you something to drink."
By the time the sun rose the following morning, Hick was back on his feet, grateful for the cache of drugs they'd discovered. He was on Advil and morphine and, just for now, he couldn't care less about the hole on the left side of his head where his ear had been. He didn't remember a damn thing after setting the truck on its way, but they reckoned he'd turned away just as a bullet scraped along the top of the dashboard and took off his earlobe. He must have then jumped up a little, and a second bullet had taken him between the point of his shoulder and his neck. Two inches to the left and he'd have died instantly.
He had his arm around Sam's shoulders on one side and Jay's on the other as he limped out into the fresh air of an early Nevada morning. It would get hot soon, but for now, it was nice enough. Except for what he saw.
Bodies everywhere. Mainly uniformed but, here and there, civilians, some of them people he knew.
"Cassie!"
She ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck, then releasing as he yelled in pain. "Sorry," she said.
"You okay?"
"Just cuts and bruises. I got lucky, real lucky," she said, before turning to Sam. "I haven't had chance to thank you, Sam."
Hick felt his daughter move as if shrugging. "It's okay. I didn't do much."
"That's not what I hear."
"You don't want to believe everything you hear."
Cassie looked doubtfully at Sam. Though she'd washed up a little, she still wore a shirt stained with blood. "Well, thanks anyway. I'll be helping Pa if you need me." She smiled at Hick and walked off to where a group of people huddled around the seating on the school playground.
Everywhere Hick looked was utter devastation. Shell cases littered the ground, discarded weapons everywhere. And bodies. Dozens.
"What did Cassie mean?"
"Nothing, Dad."
"Sam made Scriver come," Jay said. "No, Hick needs to know the truth, even if others don't."
Sam disentangled herself. "You tell him, then. But stick to the truth. I've got things to do."
"Do you want me to come with you?"
"No. I'll find you later. I'm okay. Really."
Hick looked up at Jay. "What was that all about?"
"Said," Jay said. "He's dead. All of them are. They held the barricade to the last man. If they hadn't, we still might have lost even after Scriver arrived."
Hick sat on a small wooden seat beneath a palm tree that looked over the baseball field. "Poor kid. He was a good one."
"Yeah. He was."
"So, Scriver arrived after all?"
Jay nodded. "After you went crazy in the trucks, we were following and then there was shooting, and we realized Scriver's men had snuck up behind them and taken them out. If you hadn't distracted them, they wouldn't have been able to do it.
"Then we followed them up here to the school. There was a hell of a fight going on, but the Sons were getting the upper hand. Once we joined in, though, it was over pretty quick. But we couldn't get to Said quickly enough. He was dead, and some of the enemy got away heading north."
Hick sighed. He couldn't help but touch the bandage that was wrapped around his head. It was as if his fingers needed to learn what was under there. "And what did Cassie mean when she thanked Sam?"
"Well, it seems Sam made such a noise after you locked her up that one of Scriver's men let her out. I think she said his name was Reebus. She asked when they would be heading to Hope to support the attack, and Reebus told her they'd been ordered to wait. No one was even getting ready. So, she went to see Scriver and tore him a new one."
"She changed his mind? I know she can be persuasive, but that's hard to believe."
Jay shook his head. "No. It seems his men weren't exactly happy with his decision not to help. I guess they knew it was their only chance to beat Mendoza's forces. And no one likes following a coward, do they?"
"I guess not. So, what happened?"
"Reebus and a few others told Scriver that they was going in, and he could either lead them and stay as their commander, or wait behind and they'd find someone else to follow."
Hick grunted. "Politicians like power, even if it's only an illusion."
"I guess so. But they were late, and the fighting had already started by the time they set off, so they had to go across country. So, they got strung out and there was only just enough to take out the machine guns."
"Well, they arrived in the end, whatever the reason," Hick said, shaking his head. "Now, will you help me get home?"
Jay took Hick's weight as he got to his feet, and they walked slowly through the ruined streets as the sun rose on the first day of a free Hope.
Temporarily free. For Mendoza still lived, and he would soon return.
Chapter 18: Hunt
Three Weeks Later
Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City. The firestorm destroyed them all, consumed by the flames that had transformed the world. All at the command of the Sons of Solomon.
Cheyenne, Grand Island, Iowa City, Hagerstown, Columbia, Springfield. In these smaller towns and cities, Devon and the others had found evidence of the brutality o
f Mendoza and his followers. They saw that much had changed since the last time they'd crossed from west to east. Still, the big cities lay like black marks on the landscape, polluted and uninhabitable. But in places like Hagerstown, small communities had begun to spring up, planting the first seeds of a possible future. Seeds the Sons of Solomon had crushed.
The farther east they traveled, the darker the mood in the Honda. In constant fear of being spotted, they kept to the back roads, only venturing onto the highways when they needed fuel, and only then in the dead of night. Five times, now, they'd been forced to attack a gas station, and had barely escaped on two occasions. Luckily for them, the enemy fighters were of variable quality. In fact, calling them the enemy at all seemed ridiculous. Most of those they came across were simply locals who'd put on a black mask so they wouldn't themselves be shot. Because of this, they tried their best to obtain gas without bloodshed and, in some cases, were able to talk at length with the guards, getting valuable intelligence about where Mendoza was and what he was doing.
The man's name was Todd. He was a thirty-something former mechanic from Pittsburgh who'd moved to Wheeling in West Virginia five years before. When the Sons of Solomon came, he joined up because they promised to feed him and his young daughter. He'd been assigned to man the gas station along with three other locals, and was on his own tonight on account of his scheduled partner being comatose in the back room after consuming too much home brew.
"It's slow as molasses around here," he said, pulling on a cigarette as he watched Gert fill the car's gas tank. "We don't get more'n three of their vehicles come through here a week. I reckon they'll let us run dry and then shut us down."
Devon had approached the gas station with his usual extreme caution, skirting around the periphery after dark, looking for any signs of movement. He'd spotted Todd in the little mart and he'd waited until his target had wandered out before sneaking up and pressing the gun into his back. Todd had shrieked to begin with but, pretty quickly, had calmed down and was now happy to spill the beans. It seemed Lem, his partner, wasn't the talkative type.
Last Victory: Book 6 in the Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series: (The Last City - Book 6) Page 14