by Tom Abrahams
As gunfire erupted around her, Lola looked across the passage to Battle. He was on the opposite side, standing with Sawyer atop the smooth capstone of a tall hoodoo. She could barely make out his frame in the gray darkness. There were a hundred Dwellers lining both sides of the seven-hundred-foot descent to the canyon floor. Every fifty feet, a wall of a dozen Dwellers stretched from one side of the passage to the other. The passage snaked to the bottom of the canyon, opening its mouth wide to the floor. If an advancing army could navigate and fight its way to that opening, they could run roughshod over the Dwellers’ encampments. Paagal had placed a paramount on protecting the single best entry to the canyon floor.
Near its entrance, fifty feet from the rim, she’d instructed Battle to hold his position. He’d chosen the hoodoo, a large rock seemingly balanced atop a narrower climbing formation and forged from millions of years of erosion, because it was what he thought might be the safest spot for Sawyer. Where the hoodoo met the canyon wall, there was an indentation, as if the hoodoo were a puzzle piece fit snug against its mate, providing some protection from the attacks near the rim.
Lola wanted to be with Sawyer on the hoodoo. Battle suggested otherwise. He knew the young boy would be too consumed with protecting his mother to focus on the enemy. He’d be at greater risk than if she were out of sight.
Lola argued, then relented when Battle offered her a spot where she could see her son from afar. In the dark, her son wasn’t visible. The flashes of fire bursting along the rim above her were, however.
Resisting the urge to look over the ledge to see where the Dweller had fallen, she steadied the HK. It was impossible to know how many men were approaching. Instead of trying to find a target, she took a shot in the dark.
The rifle kicked against her shoulder and knocked her backward into the canyon wall. Two other Dwellers gave her sideways looks and returned to their sights. Lola rubbed her palm into the ache in her shoulder.
“C’mon, Aldo,” she whispered to the rifle. “Work with me.”
She flexed the shoulder, and this time drew the rifle tight, pressing it against the burgeoning bruise. She pulled the trigger again, the power of the Heckler & Koch vibrating thickly as she maintained pressure with her finger.
Although she had no idea if she was hitting anyone, she was empowered. With each thump against the bruise, a rush of anger-fueled adrenaline coursed through her body.
She emptied the magazine and, methodically, as Battle had showed her, removed it and loaded another into the German-made killing machine. Across the passage she spotted Sawyer on one knee, looking every bit the mercenary as he fired his weapon.
Battle was in front of him, also on his knee. He too was pressed to his sights, taking aim at the unseen enemy descending from above. She closed her eyes, said a quiet prayer, and ejected the second magazine.
***
Battle didn’t like the odds. There was a tremendous amount of gunfire coming from above. He couldn’t put a number on the enemy, but the volume of the weapons discharging was earsplitting.
Ahead of his position, he could hear the occasional cringe-inducing scream or wail from an injured grunt that pierced the air above the gunfire. It was the same from below as the line of Dwellers protecting the passage took heavy casualties.
Tactically, they were at a disadvantage. Battle believed the darkness, the elevation, and the lack of morality all favored the Cartel. The only thing the Dwellers had going for them was their intimate knowledge of the canyon’s topography and a desire to live free. The latter was a powerfully motivating force. It didn’t do much, however, against the bone-splintering shots from high-powered assault rifles fired at close range.
A Dweller lying prone at the front edge of the hoodoo took a hit. He cried out in pain and rolled over to reach for the wound in his side. When he did, a second shot killed him. He lay splayed across the flat rock, and his rifle fell from the perch.
Battle lowered his rifle and put his hand on Sawyer’s bony shoulder. “Move to the wall,” he said. “Stay low, go behind me, and press yourself flat into the indentation.”
Sawyer glared at Battle. “No,” he scoffed. “I’m not hiding. I’m fighting.”
Battle gripped the boy’s shoulder with a clawlike grip. “I’m not asking. Get yourself over there. If you want to keep fighting, you need to stay alive.”
Sawyer’s defiance recast into acquiescence and he lowered his weapon. Battle gave him a shove, and Sawyer stayed low, quickly moving to the relative protection of the rocky nook.
Battle held up his hand, urging Sawyer to stay put during the early flashpoint of the firefight. The boy nodded and Battle returned to targeting advancing grunts. He’d only caught a true glimpse of a couple of them. Their shadows and the reflection of the moon off the barrels of their weapons gave added guidance to his aim.
He emptied the thirty-round magazine, tossed it aside, and grabbed another from his pack. He jammed it into place and began again.
Battle cursed Paagal under his breath. She’d placed them at the most dangerously critical spot. Heavy casualties were a given along the passage. There was no retreat.
Battle looked over his shoulder at Sawyer. The boy was flat against the rock, bouncing on his toes. He kept repositioning his grip on his weapon, occasionally peeking around the front edge of the curve to get a look at the action.
He took a deep breath, puffed his cheeks, and exhaled through his nostrils. He waited for Sawyer to sneak another look around the corner, pivoted his weapon and aimed at the boy’s head. He shifted imperceptibly to the right and pulled the trigger.
The bullet drilled into the rock, exploding debris two inches in front of Sawyer’s face. He reflexively jerked backward, crouched down into a squatting position, and pressed his back against the deepest part of the rock.
“Stay there,” Battle muttered. He scanned back to the front line of grunts.
***
Roof was in his saddle at the back of the company. They were at the entry to the narrow downward passage. He was sending the men in waves, ten at a time. As a man fell, another took his place. They were making incremental progress into the passage itself and had advanced maybe twenty-five feet.
Roof couldn’t see the action from his vantage point. Even though the sun was beginning to emerge, the passage doglegged sharply to the right beyond the rim.
He picked at his cheek with his fingernail and dug out remnants of hair-width wood splinters. Soon, he’d join the fray.
Roof looked back to his right, toward the rising sun. The distinct forms of the canyon’s irregular edges were taking shape in the predawn light. He envisioned the bloody battle that gained them control of the southeastern rim. A smile crept across his face even as he picked at the splinters buried under the surface of his skin.
He inched forward on the horse, closer to the entrance, and inhaled. The air was faintly acrid and tickled his nostrils. The mixture of the frosty morning, a slight breeze blowing toward him, and the hint of fireworks was strangely comforting.
His horse snorted and shook its head. As they neared the center of the fight, the noise grew louder and bounced off the canyon walls.
Roof had had enough. Despite his plan to stay astride his horse for much of the descent, he swung one leg over the saddle and hopped to the ground. His bum leg ached in the cold. His knee was stiff and radiated with a sharp pain when he landed on his feet.
He squatted and bounced on his heels to soften the angry joints and felt relief when he heard a pop crackle from his knee and his ankle. Roof sauntered forward. He carried the rifle in one hand by its fore stock. His horse whinnied behind him and retreated, galloping off to the west. It was running away from the battle, away from the dawn.
“Smart horse,” he mumbled and turned back to the violent skirmish playing out in front of him. Roof trudged forward, stepping on or kicking aside the lifeless limbs of the fallen as he pressed closer to the meat of the fight.
At the entry to the passag
e, there was a cluster of grunts taking aim at the Dwellers hidden along the walls before the dogleg. They were the next wave to flood the passage. Roof joined them and shouldered his new rifle. Slowly the group pressed forward, shuffling down the gradual slope.
As they moved in a seemingly choreographed military dance along the descent, the walls on either side grew higher. The noise from the gunfire pounded Roof’s ears. A constant high-pitched ring drowned out whatever other noise might try to compete with the sonic overload of so many weapons discharging at once.
The walls were exploding from the projectiles missing their human targets. Dust and pieces of twenty-million-year-old sediment rained down on the men while they fought. The slog forward was tedious. Men were falling all around Roof, but he maintained his forward drive and dismissed the possibility of being hit himself. He was the hunter and not the hunted.
Roof scanned the walls, looking for enemy combatants. He pivoted to the left as he rounded the dogleg. Hell unfolded around him.
A narrow plateau extended from the canyon wall some twenty feet above him. Access to the plateau came from an irregular, stair-like arrangement of irregularities that covered much of the wall. There were three or four Dwellers taking aim from atop the plateau.
To his right, against the opposite wall, was a hoodoo. He followed skyward the thin totem of a formation until his eyes met the wide perch balancing on top. There were what looked like ropes dangling from the perch, swaying in the breeze.
Roof cursed himself under his breath. This was a losing proposition. He looked ahead at the minefield of bodies littering the passage. Twenty yards ahead of him was what looked like a firing squad of Dwellers stretching from wall to wall.
He’d expected reinforcements by now. Additional teams should have lined the canyon rim to provide aerial cover. There was nobody there. He should have waited. He should have been patient and let the fight come to him at the passage.
Instead, he’d signaled for the first wave to advance and open fire. It was a mistake. He’d mistaken the forward movement of each wave around the dogleg as progress. Instead, each wave only replaced the one that had crashed ahead of it.
Grat Dalton appeared from out of nowhere. “General,” he said, his eyes glowing white against the blood and dirt on his face, “we’re getting slaughtered. Two-thirds of the men are dead. They’re hitting us from all sides.”
Roof bit his lower lip and then pointed the barrel of the rifle at both immediate threats. “Grab as many men as you can climb the wall to the plateau. I’m taking the next wave, and we’re climbing the ropes to the top of that hoodoo. We take control of those positions and we’ll turn the tide.”
Dalton nodded and marched back into the fray to find survivors he could enlist. Roof marched past the dogleg to the entrance. Another wave was preparing to descend. He altered their plans.
***
Lola slapped another magazine into the bottom of her rifle, stinging her palm. She hit the bolt release and chambered a new round. She was drenched in sweat, her hair stuck to her face. She blew strands from her mouth and settled in for another volley against the encroaching Cartel.
She heard a scream directly behind her. It was a Dweller. He was one of four on the plateau with Lola. He was holding his left eye, blood spilling from between his fingers.
The other men glanced at him and then returned to their targets. Lola inched back toward the wounded man, crouched low, and drew him to the rocky ground with her. He was wailing, spit and drool spraying from his mouth.
“My eye!” he kept saying. “My eye!”
Lola laid down her weapon and wrapped an arm around his back. She rocked him as a mother would coddle an infant and tried to pull his hand from the wound. She figured it couldn’t have been a direct hit; otherwise, he’d be dead.
His hand resisted hers, insisting it cover the injury. She coaxed it free and turned his face toward hers. She swallowed hard, pushing the bile back down her throat as she assessed the damage.
His eyeball was intact, but there was a lot of blood. It was streaming from the corner of the eye socket, where he’d sustained a glancing but damaging blow. From the corner of his lid to his temple, there was a gaping tear, as if the bullet had ripped past his eye by an inch but ripped open the adjacent skin along its path.
“Your eye is okay,” Lola said. “Your eye is there. The wound is next to your eye. You’ll be okay.”
The man grabbed the wound again. “I can’t see,” he said. He pushed away from Lola and struggled to his feet. Against her protest, he stood up and backed away from her. “I can’t see.”
No sooner had he turned away from her did his head jerk awkwardly and a spray of blood exploded from the front of his head. He lurched, his muscles faltering, and collapsed onto the rock.
Lola shuddered and wiped the splatter from her face. She grabbed her rifle and crawled away from the dead man toward the edge of the plateau. She glanced downward at the wall and started to turn her attention toward the center of the passage when movement caught her eye.
Not fifteen feet from her was the first of a half dozen men climbing the rocky wall toward the plateau. Lola called to the remaining trio of compatriots for help.
Either none could hear her over the din of the fighting or none of them cared. Another wave of grunts was making its way closer to the position from the entrance. They were otherwise engaged.
Lola drew herself to one knee and leveled the HK. She pressed the butt against her shoulder and aimed down at the man closest to her. One pull. One kill. The man hitched and fell to the floor below.
Lola aimed at the next man in line and pulled the trigger. Nothing. She pulled again. Nothing. It was jammed. She pulled the bolt handle back, ejected the bad round, and chambered a fresh one.
By the time she’d taken aim, the man was at the plateau. He leapt forward as she pulled the trigger, burying the muzzle into his gut.
His full dying weight collapsed on top of her. She tried freeing herself, but couldn’t. She was stuck on her back. She dropped her grip on the HK and used both hands to try to force the hulk from on top of her. The rattle of his lungs vibrated against her chest as he took his last rank breath. A damp warmth spread across her hips and trickled along her thighs.
She was surrounded by an envelope of yelling and a rapid exchange of close-range gunfire. Lola shifted her head so she could freely breathe and stopped her struggle. She lay still underneath the pressing weight with her eyes closed.
There was nothing she could do in the moment to stop whatever was happening. It was better that she save herself.
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly through her nose. In and out. In and out. The thumping pulse in her neck slowed, her breathing normalized.
Grunts and calls for help punctured the staccato thwacking of the assault. Heavy boot steps pounded past her. Lola bit the inside of her cheek to keep from squealing or whimpering from the convulsive fear threatening to consume her.
And then it stopped.
The fighting continued below her. It echoed off the walls of the canyon, reverberating against the layers of rock that formed the deep gorge. But the sudden violence on the plateau was over.
Lola opened her eyes, still pinned underneath the most recent of her kills. Instead of looking straight up to the early morning west Texas sky, a pair of black eyes was staring back at her. A man with a long, thick beard and a ponytail draped over one shoulder bent over at his waist and narrowed his glare. His feet were spread, one on either side of the dead man atop her slender frame.
“I recognize you,” he said, squatting onto the dead man, pushing the air from Lola’s lungs. “You’re the ginger I saw at the Jones.” A smile spread across his face, stretching his beard. “That must mean Battle ain’t too far from here.”
CHAPTER 35
OCTOBER 26, 2037, 7:22 AM
SCOURGE +5 YEARS
LEWISVILLE, TEXAS
Breastfeeding on a moving horse was nearly the most awk
ward thing Ana had ever attempted. Given the depraved variety of life-saving activities in which she’d engaged since the Scourge, it didn’t top the list.
The tug and pull of her nine-month-old’s gums and teeth was worse than the aggravated saddle soreness along her thighs. She was raw on both accounts but couldn’t stop. There was too much ground to cover and too little time.
Ana knew that once the Cartel fell, and it would, chaos would engulf the territory until the Dwellers dropped their own righteous hammer on the region. She needed to be well north of the wall by then. So she sacrificed her comfort for the sake of expediency and the health of her daughter.
The horse was making good time chugging north along Interstate 35 and showed no signs of exhaustion. Ana parsed the animal and coaxed it forward, pushing through Lewisville, a town not quite halfway to their destination south of the wall.
Lola had drifted into a daze as her child sucked and nibbled, when a flickering streetlamp caught her attention. It was the first working light she’d seen since Dallas. Adjacent to the light, stretching toward the orange glow arcing along the eastern horizon, was a wide utility easement. A succession of high-tension power transmitters guarded the land in an endless watch. Their main legs spread like duty-bound sentries. Above their waists, the conductor bundles drooped low, as did the overhead ground wires atop their upper beams.
North of the transmission towers and the strobing lamp were a half dozen boats askew on the side of the three-lane feeder road running parallel to the interstate. A couple of them were still attached to their trailers. The others looked as though they’d been tossed by wind. A couple of them were riddled with large holes.
Behind the boats was a long, single-story building. Along the front of its flat roofline was a ratty faded blue awning. Only the letters OATS remained of what Ana imagined was once the signage for a boat dealer.