This Shattered Land - 02

by James Cook

  “Eric, stay low and fall back.” I called out.

  He fired two more shots, then turned and sprinted toward me in a low crouch. I sent a dozen rounds downrange over his back. As close as we were to the ambushers, it didn’t take a lot to keep them honest, just a couple of rounds a second kicking up splinters and rock shards to keep them from getting any crazy ideas. At least I thought so, until the guys behind the van stood back up and returned fire at me. I snarled a curse as a couple of rounds bit into the bark just above my head, forcing me to get down and fall back farther into the woods.

  I ran back to where the others had fanned out and taken cover in a circle. Brian and his father crouched behind a large fallen oak tree shooting at anything that moved. Sarah covered Eric while he reloaded. I put my back to the four of them and knelt next to the thickest trunk I could find. Echoes of commands shouted back and forth rose above the sound of gunfire. The guy with the bullhorn was finally wrangling his rag-tag band of idiots into good firing positions to pin us down. There were a lot more of them out here than I originally thought, maybe twenty or so. They must have been in reserve, waiting for the others to disarm us and join in the fight if things got ugly. Not a bad strategy, actually. Their panicked, pants-pissing reaction to my team taking the fight to them told me these guys weren’t expecting trouble. As the rate of fire coming downrange at us increased, I briefly wondered how many other people had fallen prey to the same trap I just walked us into, and cursed myself for a damn fool for getting us into this mess. I didn’t have much time for self recrimination though, the raiders started laying down suppressive fire and advancing on us. Now it was just a matter of time.

  It’s hard to describe what it’s like in a situation like that, measuring your life out in seconds rather than years. You know you’re surrounded, and there is no way out other than to kill all of the other guys. We were sorely outnumbered, and judging by the sound of the weapons being fired at us, quite a few of these guys were armed with military assault rifles. I kept my SCAR moving, picking my shots and hitting whatever target presented itself. One guy left his knee sticking out as he ducked down behind a tree to reload.

  Crack.

  His knee exploded, nearly severing the lower part of his leg. He hit the dirt screaming and pouring blood out of his leg like a faucet. Another shooter took too long running from one tree to another.

  Crack.

  I hit him sideways through the chest. He was dead before he hit the ground. I did a quick scan and realized that I had just created an opening in their line. If I could get forty yards beyond my cover position, I could flank these assholes and draw their fire away from the others. Bullhorn Ronnie shouted out again off to my left. I turned and fired a couple of shots in his general direction. He cut off mid-sentence with a curse, his bullhorn squawking with feedback. I must have gotten close. He was the key to all this. If I could kill him, the others might spook and run off. It was a slim chance, a desperation move, but it was the only option we had.

  “GAAAGHH…fuck…” Eric shouted, falling to the ground. I rushed over to him.

  “Goddammit, I’m hit.” He gasped, holding his side, writhing and grinding his teeth in pain.

  I moved his hand and looked at the wound. Low and outside on the ribcage. Probably didn’t hit any major organs, but he was bleeding bad. Really bad. Panic began to sink its claws into my gut. I forced it back. If I wanted to help Eric, I had to move.

  “Come on man, it’s not that bad.” I said, turning to fire a few more shots. Bullets whizzed and ricocheted all around us. “I have an idea, but I need you on your feet.”

  I honestly wasn’t sure if he could do it. Eric is, deep down, an extraordinarily resilient man. That being said, he’d never been shot before, never felt that kind of mind-strangling agony. I glanced over my shoulder and sure enough there he was, getting his feet back underneath him. His face was pale, his jaw was clenched so tight I thought his teeth might break, and he shuddered from the pain, but he was getting back in the fight. Good man.

  “I’m going to run for that break in the line, over there.” I pointed. “If I can reach it, I can flank them. Cover me and try to buy me some time. Here,” I took a frag grenade from a pouch on my vest and pressed into his hand. “give these fuckers something to dance to.”

  He broke into a fierce half-crazed grin, his eyes blazing with murder. “Goddamn right.”

  I did a quick reload and nodded to Eric. He sprayed a full-auto burst at a knot of three gunmen rushing to cover the gap in their line. They all stopped and ducked behind cover close together.

  “Perfect.” I heard Eric growl, just before he pulled the pin on the grenade and threw it.

  His aim was true, and the little green death-ball arced out nearly thirty yards before rolling to a stop just behind the trio. It took them about two seconds to realize what it was, let out high-pitched squeals of terror, and get up to run away. It was two seconds too long. The grenade detonated with a powerful thump. The blast ripped the raiders apart, sending pieces of their limbs sailing through the air. If it hadn’t been so gruesome, it might have been comical.

  The blast distracted the other gunmen for a moment. Eric and the others took advantage of the brief respite and carefully lined up their targets. Sarah counted off: three, two, one, and on one they fired. Three voices shouted in pain, and then the other marauders renewed their shooting with gusto. I ignored the roaring clatter and forced my legs to churn the leaves under my boots as fast as they could go. I felt a tug, and a burning sensation like a hundred beestings thundered into my right shoulder. The SCAR almost fell to the ground, but I managed to catch it with my left hand. The shot had come from behind me, which meant the way ahead was still open. I had to keep moving.

  A little voice in the back of my head told me, You just got shot.

  I know, shut the fuck up.

  You’re bleeding. It tore out a chunk of your deltoid muscle.

  I know, shut the fuck up.

  You should move your arm to see if you can still-

  SHUT THE FUCK UP!

  A few more steps and I made it through the line. I ran on long enough to hear the sounds of gunfire begin to recede before ducking behind cover. My shoulder throbbed like a son-of-a-bitch, but I had to ignore it. No time for that. When I reached a higher vantage point, a quick glance below told the story of the firefight. The others had good cover, but they were pinned down and trying to engage way too many targets. Eric was in obvious pain, wincing from recoil every time he pulled the trigger. Sarah had taken position beside him and covered a lane of fire to the north. Brian and his father knelt low behind cover, fighting shoulder to shoulder and taking turns repelling the gunmen coming from the south.

  As I feared, those two were the weak point in the chain. Tom’s high volume of fire kept the bad guys from getting a chance to aim, but his shots weren’t accurate. He was scared, and growing desperate. Brian’s face mirrored that of every person I’d ever seen experience their first taste of real combat. Eyes wide, jaw clenched, lips drawn back over his teeth in a half-terrified snarl. In spite of the fear gripping him, his shots hit close to where he aimed them and sent the marauders ducking behind trees every time he pulled the trigger. As I watched, a man with a military issue M-4 leaned too far around a tree and caught a round from Brian’s MP5 in the neck. I grinned at that. Tom and his son were afraid, but they were falling back on the training I gave them and fighting through their fear. As proud of them as I was, I knew it wasn’t going to be enough. The raiders were moving in with Bullhorn Guy directing them where to go. I couldn’t see him, but I had a pretty good idea where he was, and I knew in which direction to go after his sorry ass. There were probably six or seven shooters between his position and mine. Too bad for them.

  Time to even the odds.

  The first introduction I had to woodland stealth tactics was hunting with my uncle as a young boy. Where I grew up in rural Kentucky, if you wanted to have meat in the winter, you had to go hunting
in the fall. Wild animals have sharp senses, and are naturally wary creatures. If you want to get close enough to bring one down, you have to be quiet, and you have to outthink them.

  “Listen to the forest, son.” Uncle Aaron used to say. “Hear its voice, its whisper, and its song. It speaks to you, to everyone, but you have to learn its language. You have to give up a part of yourself and join it.”

  Fortunately for me, the average whitetail buck is smarter and harder to shoot than the morons I was facing.

  My breathing slowed as I cleared my mind and allowed my senses to take over. Without being consciously aware of it, my feet began to move. I took in everything at once, but didn’t focus too long on anything. My shoulders ducked and dodged through the brush without disturbing it. My eyes tracked over where my next few steps would go, and my feet unerringly followed. I circled swiftly around and behind the cacophony of gunfire directed at my friends. A slow burning anger filled me up inside, beating back the pain in my shoulder and lending haste to my steps. Fear for my friends gave way to an unyielding determination to kill my enemies or die trying.

  The man Eric knew faded into the background, and the old Gabriel emerged from the dark recesses of my mind. The guilt and shame, the self-hatred and regret, the years of introspection and doubt, they all faded and drifted away, a dim echo. I became the man who had racked up dozens of kills in Fallujah, struck fear into the hearts of insurgents in Ramadi and Sadr City, and killed a sniper from nearly a mile away in the mountains of Shahi Kot Valley. And I did it all with a smile on my face. The thin veneer of civilization shrugged off like an ill-fitting, threadbare coat. The old instincts begged to take over again, and I let them.

  And it felt good. God help me, it felt good to let go. To become the killer again. To give the beast its reins and step back, to let it consume me. It was so much easier this way.

  I reached the spot where I wanted to open fire from and crouched down to peer through my scope. It only had 3x magnification, but it would do just fine from this range. The raiders had closed the circle to leap-frog advance on Eric and the other’s position, but took heavy fire while they did it. The attackers looked scared. Demoralized. Nearly half of them lay on the ground either dead or bleeding in screaming pain. So far it looked like Eric and I were the only wounded in my group, but that wasn’t going to last much longer. It was only a matter of time before the bad guys landed a lucky shot.

  I propped an elbow on one knee and balanced the powerful SCAR in my hand while I lined up the sights. A raider wearing a camouflage ball cap and a canvas jacket appeared in the crosshairs. He was firing an old SKS rifle. The reticle tracked up to a spot between his shoulder blades and I began to squeeze the trigger. Not too hard, not too soft. Nice and slow, you want the shot to-

  Crack.

  -surprise you. The man pitched forward and lay still. The marauder nearest him shouted in dismay.

  I smiled.

  The forest embraced me as I melted backward and moved toward my next firing position. No shots cut the air anywhere near me, which told me the enemy didn’t know I was behind them yet. Too stupid to guess where the shot came from. Good. Hopefully I could kill a few more before they figured it out. A few yards later, I crouched down again and took aim. My rifle barked, and another marauder ate the dirt with a large chunk of his skull missing. The others noticed and started shouting back and forth to one another in near panic. Nothing like watching your buddy’s head fly apart in a red mist to get the old fear pump running. Eric noticed their confusion, and urged the others to redouble their efforts. Some of the attackers returned fire at my friends, and some of them cracked off shots in my general direction. They didn’t hit anywhere close to me. Bullhorn Ronnie shouted a few names and told them to focus on my friends, and told a couple of others to break off and try to draw my fire. The two gunmen he ordered to find me looked at one another for a long moment, then reluctantly obeyed. I wasn’t worried about them, they were meat whenever I was ready to take them.

  My attention was on Ronnie.

  This is all your doing, you stupid bastard. I thought, as I lined up my sights. You hurt me, you hurt my friends, and you got your own men killed doing it. And for what? A little bit of weapons and ammo?

  Even if I weren’t in a killing rage, it still would have felt good to shoot that murdering pile of shit. My grin was widening, and a surge of exultation rose within me as I began to squeeze the trigger. Then something strange happened.

  Ronnie’s head burst open.

  Blood, bone, and brain matter sprayed forth and soaked the rotten leaves under what was left of his head. He went limp and flopped down as though someone had flipped an off switch on his existence. Part of me wondered where the hell that shot came from, while the rest of me noticed the shocked expression of the gun-wielding raider kneeling beside his corpse. I adjusted my aim and ended his confusion permanently.

  Now seriously, where did that shot come from? It sure as hell wasn’t me.

  The demise of their leader had thrown the last of the raiders into disarray. The two men ordered to find me turned and fled in the opposite direction of the firefight. Another shot from somewhere out in the forest took one of them through the chest, erupting in a narrow mist of blood out of his back. The other one dropped his rifle in panic and whimpered as he picked up speed. It didn’t do him any good, I led him just a bit with the crosshairs and put two bullets in his spine. He squawked as he went down, thrashed around a bit, and then went still. A shot rang out to my left and I heard a scream as yet another gunman fell to the ground with a brand new orifice in his upper abdomen. I didn’t know who it was aiding me, but I had to admire their marksmanship. Rather than waste time questioning the motives of whoever was lending us a helping hand, I turned my attention to making corpses out of the remaining marauders. I ran to another attack position and started picking shots again. Eric and Sarah broke cover and harried the raiders with carefully aimed fire bringing down at least one hostile each. A high-pitched scream of pain from Tom and Brian’s position made my blood run cold. I looked around for them and saw Tom kneeling beside Brian with a hand pressed tight over a wound on the boy’s leg.

  They shot him, I thought, they shot Brian.

  That was it, I lost it.

  I don’t remember the next span of time very well. The sound of the firefight was drowned out by my heartbeat hammering my ears. A red haze covered the world in front of me, descending like a bloody fog. I was running, figures came into view, and then they went down with holes in their heads. Someone was screaming in my ears like a madman, howling and deranged. A terrified face stared at me from behind a rifle that had run out of ammo, his finger pulling the trigger frantically on an empty chamber. A swipe of my Falcata sent his head spinning away from his shoulders. Crimson jets from the stump of his neck bathed me in gore as his headless body collapsed at my feet. Something ran into me from the side, knocking my sword out of my hand. I grabbed the figure and slammed him to the ground with a hip toss, then head-butted him once—twice—three times, and then rammed my Bowie knife into his chest all the way to the hilt. I don’t even remember pulling the knife from its sheath.

  And then it was over.

  The red mist shrouding my mind dissipated. My throat was raw from screaming, blood ran down into my eyes, and I couldn’t tell if it belonged to me or someone else. I kneeled a few feet away from the spot where my companions had taken cover during the firefight. The stag-horn handle of my Bowie knife protruded from the chest of a corpse with a horrifically smashed-in face. Blood pooled beneath the body, soaking into the dark earth beneath. Something tugged against my neck. Reaching up to touch it, I realized my rifle had somehow shifted around and dangled down my back from its sling. I shook the blood out of my eyes, ripped my knife from the dead man’s body, and wiped it clean on his shirt before stepping away to check my rifle. Smoke curled out of the hot barrel and the chamber yawned open on an empty magazine. I pulled it out and slapped in a new one, then started looki
ng around for my Falcata. It lay on the ground half-buried under leaves a few feet away. I picked it up and returned it to its sheath. All this I did unconsciously, not really thinking, just going through the motions.

  “Gabe, you okay man?” Eric asked, his tone cautious.

  I turned to look at him, not really hearing. He leaned heavily against a tree, his skin an unhealthy ashen color and his rifle hanging limp from one bloody hand. Tom and Sarah seemed not to have sustained any wounds, but Eric was in rough shape. Blood loss was rapidly weakening him. He needed treatment, and he needed it quickly. Thinking about his gunshot wound made the pain of mine come back with a roaring vengeance. I winced at the grinding agony in my shoulder as I walked over to Brian and knelt down beside him.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “It’s not that bad.” Brian forced out from between clenched teeth.

  “He got grazed, is all.” Tom said, his voice surprisingly calm given the situation. “I looked at it, it’s not that deep. He’s gonna need stitches though.”

  I looked at Sarah. She knelt behind her son and held his head against one delicate shoulder, her face a mask of fear, anger, and worry all in one haggard bundle.

  “Sarah, take the others and get to the road.” I said. “See to Eric’s wound as best you can and put a compress on Brian’s leg. I’ll do a quick recon, then come back and help. All this noise is going to attract the infected, we have to get moving.”

  “Wait, who the hell was that out there shooting these assholes. It wasn’t just you.” Eric said, gesturing in the direction where the mystery sniper’s shots came from.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. They’re not shooting anymore, so they probably don’t have any beef with us. We don’t have time to worry about it right now. Get moving.”

  Tom gathered his son in his arms and began carrying him back toward the highway. Sarah slipped Eric’s arm over her shoulder and supported him by gripping his web belt as they walked. Eric was shaky on his feet, his breathing quick and shallow. I worried he was going into shock.