He watched and listened, as Boomer directed his people, sometimes by flank, other times individually, and as they closed more of the gap, the firefight’s intensity grew. He glanced to Boomer, waiting for his own next ordered leapfrog movement—and saw more clearly the pistol the bandit leader wielded.
It was Wiley’s gun. That bastard had it all along. Wiley turned away, lest Boomer see his scowl. That bastard needed killing, and not just for stealing his gun. But also for that—
“Wiley, move,” Boomer shouted.
Keeping his head down, Wiley jumped up from behind a shrub and sprinted across the street. A buzzing, like that of a bee, passed inches from his left ear, and Wiley found himself diving for the slim cover that the curb offered. It was better than nothing. Two rounds ricocheted off the cement, a foot from his face, but there were too many targets for the defenders to focus fire on one man behind cover. Wiley cuddled up to that curb for dear life.
76
The bullets around him forced David to duck behind cover, but not for long. “Team Two, flank right to the gray house, then overwatch,” he called out. “Team One, suppression—just like we trained.”
David mirrored the dozen people with him, bringing weapons up over the cement planter he’d sheltered behind, and fired, two rounds per second, counting to three. Then, he ducked down and reloaded his pistol. Several of his people loaded fresh magazines. A glance to his right showed his other team had crossed the fifty feet or so to the next building and were filing inside.
He counted to ten, as much to slow his heart rate as to give them time to take up positions in the building. He clicked the radio and said, “Team Two, hold fire until I give the command. Stay hidden—don’t let them know where you went.”
“Solid copy, sir,” came the reply.
A woman—Maggie, if he recalled correctly—stood behind him, back to the house’s outer wall. “Sir, are you sure about this? They’re holding off the bandits, for now. Chrissy’s out there, somewhere. I know we lost sight of her, but—”
“No,” he said, curt and letting his frustration show. “Yes, I want to find her. She’s my friend. But I can’t deal with that, right now. This whole town is getting pushed, and hard. If it falls, where could she hide, then?”
Maggie looked down.
David turned away. Damn, he should not have snapped at her. She was only trying to help. But he had a clear duty, and right now, that meant protecting the school. “Look, thanks for thinking of her, but the people inside are those least able to protect themselves, despite holding off the bandits for the moment. If they get inside, it’ll be a slaughter, and we’ll lose half our stockpile. Now, focus on this.”
She nodded, but still didn’t meet his gaze.
He looked back out over the battlefield. Many of the houses to his left were bandit-occupied, shooting at the school—mostly at the several small outer buildings. Other bandits were at various ranges between those and the buildings, behind cover or brushes. He raised his binoculars and scanned the farther areas, as well. His eye was drawn by a monster of a man on the closer office building’s far side, moving from cover to cover with a mid-sized force of his own, but at least two hundred yards out, across mostly-open farm fields. Hell, that was almost near the creek back there.
Closer, though, and farther to his right, he spotted a lone figure crawling from a house, moving toward the building… “Oh, damn her.”
“What, sir?”
“It’s Chrissy. She’s moving toward that school building. Why the hell would she do that?”
Maggie looked him in the eye again at last. “She’ll get killed. We have to do something.”
David fought his temper. There was nothing he could do, not without abandoning the school against all those attackers. But maybe, by helping the school’s holdouts, he could help her as well.
He looked back at Maggie. “I’m ordering Team Two to circle right, to come out farther down the road, to our right of the school. They’ll have to tie down another force moving across open fields, if they can. They can take up positions in the orchard behind the school, holding them off. Then, on my mark, we will all open fire on the bandits’ flank. Pass the word.”
Without waiting for a reply, he raised his binoculars again, and watched Christine crawling to her doom—and then, he spotted a green ballcap bill, through the makeshift bunker’s firing slit, and gasped.
“What is it?”
David spun, startled. “Oh, damn. I’d almost forgotten you were here, Orien.”
His partner frowned. “No, more like you completely forgot.” He peered out the window, in the direction David had been looking. His eyes narrowed. “Chrissy is out there? Why the hell are we in here, then?”
David only half-heard him, though, reacting to a flurry of radio chirps. He directed reinforcements from the east end of town down to the south gate, and a team to move up to support the school building, though it would take a few minutes for them to arrive.
He looked up at Orien, and let out a frustrated breath. “What? Why are we here? Does it look like I can leave? She left her post, Orien. I’m doing what I can, and you heard me move a team up.”
Orien turned away to watch Christine, darting and ducking, moving toward the bunker. “Doing what you can? We’re right damn here. We have an entire team sitting around doing nothing, waiting for the perfect moment. This is that moment, David.”
When his radio chirped again, David practically dove for the handheld unit. Orien was young, he didn’t understand duty, but if David could keep the town and both of them alive long enough, maybe he’d have the chance to learn.
Heroics were a luxury when so many other lives depended on him.
A chunk of wood exploded from the tree trunk, and Christine ducked by reflex. A second bullet whizzed over her head, where her head had been half a second earlier. She let her knees buckle and fell to her belly as she brought her rifle up, and scanned.
There. Bastard…
She lined up her sights, placing the glowing dot over a ragged-looking, unshaven man. His muzzle flashed again, but though every instinct screamed to pull the trigger as fast as she could, she somehow remembered what she’d been taught, caught her breath halfway out, and only then pulled the trigger.
The rifle kicked, painful against her collar bone from her prone position, ruining her “sight picture.” She got the front post lined up with the rear sight again, but needn’t have bothered. The man sat, leaning against the tree he’d been standing beside, staring at a huge red splotch covering his chest.
What bothered her most about that image was how little it bothered her. Shouldn’t it? She’d just killed someone, but instead of guilt, she felt… Well, she tried to tell herself she felt nothing, but in truth, she felt like jumping up and shouting, a mix of rage and joy.
“God, forgive me,” she muttered, and for the first time she could remember, she hoped no one was listening. That would mean no one else could see the fierce joy in her heart.
Even as those thoughts poured through her, she was on her feet and sprinting forward again. From her left, many distant shots rang out, but if they were shooting at her, she couldn’t tell. In two seconds, she crossed forty feet to the school’s outermost building: a mobile office, sandbagged and reinforced. She rose up and peered through the window—
Right in front of a pistol’s cavernous barrel. She looked up from the tube, and her eyes met a familiar face. A townie. Recognition spawned on his face, as well, and he lowered his pistol and pointed to her right.
Christine looked in that direction. A door… It opened, and she rushed in. The townie closed it behind her, slamming a two-by-four board into L-brackets they’d screwed into the frame and the metal outer door, securing it.
“Chrissy, are you okay?” The townie, peering through a back window covered with some sort of sheet metal, glanced her way. “You hit?”
“Mom!” Hunter’s voice was like birds singing amidst a thunderstorm, a ray of sunshine through the clouds. His f
ace, though, was etched in concern. “Why’d you come? I’m fine.”
“Why did you come? Who’s protecting Darcy, and Nana?” She didn’t bother scowling at him; instead, she rushed over to him and patted him down, looking for wounds. She found none.
“This is our town, too, Mom. You said I was the man of the house, with Dad gone, so I’m doing what I had to do.” He turned back to the window facing the parking lot, and brought his rifle back up to rest on sandbags. In the small building, his shot’s report was deafening. Three others were likewise firing out the front.
Christine looked through the window, nudging in with her own rifle between Hunter and the woman beside him. It was tight, but she took aim, and fired.
A hot shell from Hunter’s rifle landed on the back of her neck. Christine yelped, and batted the biting, hot shell off her. Her fingers felt the flesh already bubbling—that’d be a nasty blister. She pulled her collar up, ignoring the discomfort of it rubbing on the searing burn mark.
Frantic banging on the door almost dragged her attention from her son. Someone opened it, though, and Mary crouch-ran into the room. “There you are, you little weasel. Thank God you’re safe.” She looked up at Christine. “I came to find him, but I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I’d say the same,” Christine replied, “but I’m glad you—”
“They’re coming again,” shouted the man on the line’s far end, Hunter’s opposite.
Christine cringed. He was right. Across the parking lot, people jumped up, ran forward, dropped down. They moved a few feet at a time, and while half ran forward, the other half laid down a heavy enough fire that Christine ducked, and dragged Hunter down with her.
As he yelled in protest, she lifted her AR-15 up to rest the barrel on the sandbags and fired blindly three times.
A shout behind her made her turn to the office’s back. The man who’d let her in lay on the floor, eyes open but unmoving. A rivulet of blood trickled down his cheek from a dime-sized mark. Was that the entry wound, or the exit?
She shook her head. It didn’t matter, anymore. Not for him.
Hunter said, over the din, “We gotta lay down return fire, or they’ll swarm us.”
Christine felt more than heard the urgency in his voice, and found herself rising up to fire back. So many people shooting at them… Something hot bit her arm. She glanced down at her left arm and saw her sleeve turning red.
Hunter threw her to the floor. “Kit!” he shouted. Mary threw a big, green bag his way, and Christine could only stare as he moved quickly and deliberately, cutting open her sleeve with crooked scissors. “Graze. I’ll gauze it,” he panted, sounding out of breath.
Where had he learned this? A child shouldn’t be doing battlefield medicine.
As she watched him work, a disturbing thought hit her. Hunter wasn’t a child, anymore, was he? That hurt almost more than the bullet that grazed her. She watched, mute, as he moved at blinding speed, heedless of the pain it caused her, but it was done in seconds, and seemed like it would hold—at least long enough to live, or die, with the enemy assault coming.
She shouted, “Hunter, enough! Start shooting, dammit!”
77
Boomer grabbed Wiley by the scruff, the back of his neck, and squeezed. “You sure the good stuff is in that building?”
Wiley nodded. “It was when I got invited to leave. Batteries, scopes, a bunch of their ammo, and all the MREs. I don’t know how anyone fit inside to protect it, really. But if you take that, you got a protected spot to attack that school, where the rest of it is.”
Well, there were some supplies in there. It wasn’t a lie, exactly.
He added, “They wouldn’t have sent reinforcements in, if it wasn’t important to them. The bastards deserve it. Take that building, you leapfrog up the rest, to that little office right up next to the school. You can pin them down while you load up the dynamite and blow a huge damn hole in those stone walls. Once you get inside, it’s just kids and old folks. They can shoot, but you’ll be the fox in the henhouse, then.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Boomer said, looking through his binoculars. “You talk too much. Remind me to cut your damn tongue out before I let you go, after this works.”
Wiley clenched his jaw. The bastard probably meant it, too. He distracted his growing rage by imagining himself digging Boomer’s eyeballs out with his thumbs.
“Here we go,” Boomer said. “We’re going to move up along the right, near those houses. They only got a few people shooting at us from over there. We can come up to that office on the right side, where the idiots inside can’t see us, while I throw warm bodies across the parking lot to keep ’em busy.” Boomer looked at Wiley, eyebrow raised.
Wiley shrugged. Sure. Why not. “Sounds good. There’s a reason you’re the boss.”
Boomer nodded, curtly, and brought out his radio. Flanked by a dozen guards, they moved parallel to the school, along the parking lot edge, but with dozens of more bandits charging the office and the school directly, no bullets were coming their way.
Wiley was glad of that, though it’d have been awesome to see that guy get whacked by a stray bullet. Anything to get Boomer’s vice-like grip off the back of his neck. All he could do was struggle to keep his feet underneath himself as he was half-dragged, half shoved at the break-neck pace of the bandit’s long strides.
One of the men surrounding them dropped, clutching his thigh. Everyone looked around, but no more shots struck them. Wiley breathed a sigh of relief. Stray round. Once again—too bad it wasn’t Boomer who got it.
They passed behind a Volvo, parked at the street curb since the CME no doubt. Across the street, curtains fluttered in the wind. Boomer shouted, “Three o’clock, fire! Now, damn you!”
A dozen rifles, minus one, leveled at the window and began firing. They each shot off three rounds. Wiley cringed at the two screams he heard within, one on the first salvo, the other on the second.
Boomer looked at two of his people. “You and you, go clear that room. Check upstairs, too. Kill, and bring back their guns.”
They nodded and darted across the street. Boomer watched them so intently that he didn’t see, up ahead on the right, two buildings down, a rifle barrel stuck out an upper window for a moment and fired, then vanished back inside.
Crap. If he told Boomer, any chance of the people inside catching him by surprise went away, and they’d likely get killed. If he didn’t tell Boomer, they might just as easily catch Wiley himself, when they fired.
Well, a chance of dying was better than a guarantee of getting townies killed, and with the numbers game, Weldona couldn’t afford an even exchange. Wiley made a point of looking the other direction.
Less than one minute later, the two returned, carrying three extra rifles. Wiley hadn’t heard any new shots within, though. At least he could tell himself whoever it was had died quickly, not gutted by some invader’s knife but shot during the salvo. It was a small comfort.
And then, Boomer had them moving again. They crossed the street and began moving up, along the house fronts. At each, they glanced into the window, ensuring it was clear, before Boomer—and Wiley, still in his grasp—crossed in front of the window.
In this way, they moved house by house. Wiley cringed when they reached the one with the upstairs rifle barrel he’d seen, but they passed it without incident. Whoever was in there, they were upstairs, wisely.
They moved through a side yard, into the backyard of a house facing the school, and jumped a few fences. Apparently, Boomer didn’t want to be in easy shot of the mobile office building’s defenders. The guy was cunning, though brutal. Wiley had met a hundred men just like him, in prison. More ambition than brains, but tough enough and cruel enough to get lucky and rise up the prison block pecking order.
Wiley smiled, remembering one of them begging for his life in the “rain room,” the floor slippery with his own blood, unable to get enough footing to run out. The guards had arrived in time to watch the
man breathe his last breath, but never did find the weapon. By now, it had probably rusted away inside its perch in the loose shower head, unless someone else had found it. Either way, though, they had a hard time pinning a new murder charge with no murder weapon, even if they didn’t believe the man’s own story about falling down. It was about the last thing that man ever said in this world—
“Wiley, you piece of shit, move your ass.”
Wiley blinked. The chaos of that fight, playing out in his mind, faded, replaced by the chaos of the one going on around him. He nodded, and let Boomer shove him forward. Wiley’s neck ached where Boomer had finally let go of his vice-grip, to shove him forward.
A glance told him everything. They were hustling across the street, intercepting that office building. Eleven men, plus Boomer and Wiley, against the few who could possibly have fit inside there…by surprise…
Wiley let his foot catch the curb, and fell face-first, hard. He grabbed one of the two men right in front of him, the one with his finger on his trigger, as he fell—as though trying to catch his fall, he brought the guy down with him.
His rifle went off, and Boomer roared, “You asshole!”
“Sorry, Boomer,” Wiley said, scrambling to his feet and helping the fallen guard up, too. “It’s not my fault he shot his damn gun.”
Boomer grunted. “Guess not.” He let his rifle swing to face Wiley.
Wiley froze. Damn. At least the people inside might have heard that outraged roar, and the gunshot before it. Wiley closed his eyes, tightly. This was not how he pictured himself going out. Violent, yes, but standing, unarmed, facing his killer…
Bang.
Wiley paused. No pain… He opened one eye, only to find the guard he’d tripped up was back on the ground again. He didn’t move.
Boomer said, “He fucked up. You get one shot. Grab that rifle and you keep your damn back to me, or I’ll kill you myself. You don’t shoot anyone shooting at me, I’ll do the same. Got it?”
Inception of Chaos: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Story Page 46