(Benjamin Holland)
Ben Holland rubbed his tired eyes as he trudged through his small caravan of assault vehicles. A long night lay ahead, after an exhausting day, and his head throbbed. He swatted his goggles with a threadbare cloth to remove the thin layer of dust that seemed to collect on everything, and he lifted the collar on his fatigues to shield himself from the biting wind. Passing by one of the bullet-riddled lorries, he peered in to see Billy Washington laying down on a plasti-foam mattress, soaking in a minute of quiet before the return trip.
Ben turned to cast one last look at Nessa Lancaster and his other passengers as they shuffled through the entrance of the Salk Lake City Migrant Assistance Center. His crew wouldn’t be recuperated and ready to move for at least an hour, so he left Billy to rest and made his way toward Felipe Arrivillaga, who was furiously trying to plot a safer way back than the way they’d come.
“The whores all gone?” a voice boomed from behind him. Ben nearly jump out of his skin and turned around to find Nanner, a burly sun-tanned member of his crew. Nanner, who had allegedly gotten his moniker from the shape of his penis, was the most handsome and relentlessly jovial man on the team. A hit with the ladies, he boasted a square jaw and curly bleach-blond cut short. He was there on Ben’s first mission for Sherman—a firefight with indebted tweakers in old Dallas—and had been a reliable comrade ever since. The young man’s upbringing—nearly as hard as Ben, Felipe, and Billy’s, somehow never dampened his spirits, making him a natural fit.
Nanner’s brash humor, however, frequently went to far—something Ben suspected was deliberate on Nanner’s part. This being one of those times, Ben shot him an annoyed and disapproving look. Ben hated being startled, and Nanner had to know that referring to their recent cargo as whores would fall flat. The sex trade was no laughing matter, especially to Ben, Felipe, and Billy.
“Oh, uhhhh, sorry,” Nanner corrected himself sheepishly (but also characteristically self-satisfied). “Nessa and the others get into the MAC OK?”
Ben nodded in the direction of the MAC. “See for yourself.”
“Who’da thought such a simple trip would end up such a shit-show,” Nanner sighed.
Ben nodded in agreement, though days like today weren’t entirely unheard of.
Like his childhood friends, Billy and Felipe, Ben had seen more death and destruction since their last fateful day at the Billings Home for Children than they ever expected—far too much of it at their own hands. The relief of escaping the orphanage’s audition pits, inspections stalls, and rental rooms had long since been replaced by a malaise of dread, violence, and guilt.
On top of their vacillating views of their self-worth, each trip into the Wilds was a nerve-racking test of faith. Ben routinely prayed to somehow get his team to their destination without killing anyone—or getting anyone killed—and the orders to travel never seemed to stop. From the stifling stillness of the badlands to the terrifying peaks of the Rocky Mountains. From the lawless urban shells of California-Sur to the perilous forests of the Oregonia and Pacific Columbia Provinces. They went wherever Farid Sherman’s money sent them—and the journeys were seldom tranquil.
Today’s nightmare was a little bit different, if only because the excursion was supposed to be so brief. Return fifteen of the Ellies’ comfort guests—their euphemism for sex workers—from the holiday gala in Park City to the Salt Lake City MAC. No gangs or warlords involved in the deal. No narcotraffickers or weapons dealers in the mix. Even as they pulled out of the splendorous Nautilus complex, after some of the most decadent hospitality Ben had ever experienced, it seemed like the perils of the world outside were just a bad dream.
It had all gone to shit so unexpectedly. And so quickly.
Did I let my guard down? Ben asked himself, convinced on some level that he had.
His small convoy had wheeled onto the main road from Park City to the Salt Lake City MAC, when Ben took a shift as navigator in the lead vehicle. Thankful to be off the .50-cal turret—so open and exposed to the deafening roar of the engines and suffocating blasts of cold wind—he had swatted the dust from the V-plat in the center console with the same rag he used now.
“Six hours to nightfall!” he called into his helmet mic.
“Roger that!” Billy shouted back from the turret. The other drivers signaled their readiness as well.
“I wanna be back before dinner,” Ben added. “Eyes peeled. No fear.”
Over the cragged mountain highway, they sped past abandoned orchards and skeleton trees, the thin dark branches clawing at the mid-morning sky. Ben searched the line of burned-out condominiums, smashed mansions, and ruined farm houses. Soon the road became little more than a ribbon carved into the side of steep gorges. More dead trees—murdered by beetles, blight, and fire ages ago—littered the roadside. The thirsty shrubs wisping in the winter wind made it almost impossible to see anything, but missing a shiver of a shadow could get them all killed, and Ben’s anxiety level shot up like the cliff sides around him.
They were less than fifteen minutes from the Nautilus complex when Ben’s convoy hit its first patch of bad luck. It was over almost as soon as it had started, but the bloody shootout with the prepper family would stick with him—each victim taking its place in the ghostly collage of bloodied faces and shattered bodies in his subconscious.
Figures it’d be a fucking prepper.
The descendants of survivalists, the preppers in the Wilds holed-up on dead or dying ranches. Their meager, scavenged belongings held together with black-dust-tinted spit and rusted bailing wire. Haughtily “surviving” in the desiccated wastelands, they tested almost anything that hinted of a threat—or opportunity—and the attacks were invariably a family affair. Women, children, clan.
“Farmers’ll survive when all the rest of the cities finally go to shit.” Ben had heard them say all manner of nonsense at the bazaars, watering holes, and church revival events that dotted the barren landscape.
What they apparently didn’t realize—and there was no use telling them—was that doomsday hadn’t come with a Bang! No meteor collision or thermonuclear war. No zombie apocalypse or alien invasion. Rather, it had crept in over generations. Through years of dwindling water, prolonged droughts, and crop failures. Through swings in the prices of food and the collapse of government subsidies and federal engineering. Through the diffusion of industrial chemicals in the soil and water. The toxic waste and polluted runoff. Through the collapse of the lower rungs of the food chain—bees, bats, and frogs. Through merciless Darwinian capital flows in every wave of bank failures, making seed, fertilizer, water, and debt itself unaffordable.
The land itself had turned on them, just as it did all the way back in the 1930’s. They denied what was happening—what was coming—even after they exhausted the last drops of the Ogallala Aquifer, dissolved Hugh Bennet’s soil-conservation districts, and charged headlong past the tipping point.
The farmers blamed and scorned the cities for the end of the High Times and their many struggles. The urbanites in turn derided the stupid and backward farmers, whose foolishness had transformed the continent’s Midwest from breadbasket to desert. The farmers on the remaining arable land in the north and east—or rather the international consortiums that controlled the land—weren’t inclined to help their rural kin. Not when there were profits and power to be extracted from their own dwindling assets.
The learned folks Ben had come across said that it was all too late by then anyway, so there was no point blaming the urbanites or the Ellies for abandoning the forsaken farmers—or the preppers—who scavenged what they could as wild men and wandered the badlands with more ammunition than food, and more paranoia than common sense. Within eighty years they lacked the fuel or money to move away and start again—even if they had had a destination that would’ve welcomed them. So, the preppers defended what little they had and took whatever they could, making up their own history of blame and clinging to Jesus Christ to get them through and absolv
e them of whatever sins the deigned to admit.
Of course, none of that made any difference once the first bullet hit Ben’s convoy on the windswept road in the mountains. Ben instinctively circled his group, flanked their attackers, and put them down where they lay—in their nests of rocks along the roadside.
It was the prepper who killed these kids, Ben tried to convince himself as he rummaged through the bloodied pockets of the wife. He strained to avoid looking at the kids’ wrecked bodies, for he knew that the more he looked, the more vividly their lifeless faces would haunt him in his phantom menagerie. Ben could sense each member of his crew silently reminding themselves that the kids were in the fight too—and it was kill or be killed—but it did little to ease their nagging consciences.
With the shooting over, the spoils of the prepper’s family were theirs for the taking, and their boss expected them to collect, if only to cover the costs of repairs to the shot-up vehicles. Ben also felt a need to provide whatever he could to his passengers, so desperate to get by that they’d sold their very bodies to the Ellies the night before.
So, he ordered his team to strip everything they could from the dead man and his wife—their canteens, weapons, and the few rounds of ammunition they had hidden in their pockets. They left the children where they lay, though, and started up a narrow dirt trail to the preppers’ small compound.
Inside the worn-out ranch house a quarter mile up the path, they took all the rations they could find. A large plastic jar of biotein peanut butter, a few jugs of moonshine, a half-empty box of drought-oat cereal, and a carton of freeze-dried biotein milk. Five tubes of biotein paste: one labeled “CHiKin” in a childlike scribble, the other marked “MikSt fRoOt.” They took the family’s bacteria-protein generator and two canisters of protein starter powder.
Billy and Nanner followed Ben to the basement shelter, where they commandeered a solar-powered water pump, as well as daypacks filled with survival gear—buck knives, compasses, paper maps, water bags, and MREs. They captured more weapons, half of which were unusable, and more boxes of ammunition that were mostly empty.
They needed ammo, Ben realized wistfully. And there was no way to take us without every trigger the family could marshal. As he choked back his sympathy, he felt a soft hand on his shoulder.
“You did what you had to do.” Nessa Lancaster stood just behind him, offering a wavering smile. Ben had come to know Nessa a bit when he had been dispatched to pick up the comfort guests from the MAC the day before. As was customary in the Wilds, she spared him the woeful details of her life. She had mentioned that she had children waiting for her return, and Ben could tell that her anxiety about being apart from them eclipsed whatever shame she felt at whoring herself for the Ellies. She was determined to do whatever it took. That wasn’t unusual in and of itself, but her motivation was love, a quality Ben admired and wished his family had had. Ben made sure she had the nicest dress for the gala event, and he steered her toward the Ellies he understood to be the most humane.
“Thanks Nessa.” He reached up and gave her hand a gentle squeeze.
At that moment, as if coming-to from a dream, Ben heard the hurried shuffling of footsteps on the main floor above him, and he realized the preppers’ house was now full of his passengers, hard at work looting.
Nessa, seeing Ben’s expression turn to frustration, caught his eyes. “They need anything they can get,” she said compassionately.
“We’ll get everyone what we can, but this needs to be quick and orderly if you expect to make it back to the MAC.” Ben snapped his finger to get the attention of Billy and Nanner—who were still rummaging through boxes and crates, oblivious to the commotion upstairs. He directed their attention to the shuffling of feet.
“Goddamn it,” Billy grumbled, putting down a plasti-foam mattress roll and marching upstairs to restore order.
After some shouting, Billy and Nanner had cleared the house. Ben stuffed a rucksack with what little could be salvaged form the basement and handed it to Nessa.
“Not a word,” he whispered. Nessa nodded in agreement and dutifully followed Ben back outside.
When all was said and done, it was more plunder than Ben would ever have expected. Even the rusted pump in the dusty yard reluctantly gave up a few gallons of water. Ben summoned each passenger one at a time to a spot behind his lorry, where he privately gave them a small share of the spoils to ease his conscience and buy him plausible deniability if his employer found out. It took more time than Ben wanted, and it risked his blossoming career in the service of Farid Sherman, but it was necessary if he were to get even a modicum of peaceful sleep.
The afternoon was mercifully pleasant as they continued down the mountain. Ben switched to driving the lorry in the superstitious hope of finding better luck on the next leg. He invited Nessa into the cab beside him, eager to have a little bit more time in her company. Felipe sat behind him in the immersive command sphere, OmniComms’ advanced tool to control aerial drones. Through the rear-view mirror, Ben caught Felipe’s swiping gestures, his helmet delivering a bird’s-eye view from the convoy’s single aerial battle drone. While Felipe maintained a steady hand in flying the drones, the controls always gave Ben vertigo.
“We need to slow down.” Felipe’s voice crackled over their comms. “Flashpoints up ahead.”
“Roger that,” Ben answered, slowing his group and calling for battle stations. He now regretted having Nessa next time him instead of in the up-armored cargo hold with the others. “How far? How bad?”
“One KiM. Lots of smoke, but infrared says small arms fire and at least two vehicles.”
“Any chatter from militia?”
“No sign of air units,” Felipe answered. “Nothing on military frequencies.”
“Crap.” Ben slowed the lorry to a crawl. “Felipe,” he added, “put the drone on a wider sweep. Every scumbag in Salt Lake is going to converge on this to get a piece of the action, and we’re not geared for a big fight. I want to see them before they see us.”
“You got it,” crackled Felipe’s answer, as he started sweeping and gesturing more frenetically.
“All units,” Ben said into his mic as calmly as he could, “weapons ready.”
“Boss?” Felipe chimed a moment later. “It’s a cluster-fuck up ahead. At least ten raiders closing on the site. I count twenty drones.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Ben groaned. “Gimme a flyover, quiet mode, full video.”
“Already there.” Felipe paused. “Three sets of vehicles slugging it out at the intersection ahead. Rocket fire on the perimeter.”
“Sounds like we got ourselves a ménage à trois, fellas,” japed Nanner.
“Nanner, shut the fuck up,” Ben rasped. “All units, full stop. Billy, get on GEO and find us a way ‘round.”
No sooner had the words passed his lips when a deafening clatter echoed in the cabin—like buckets of nails pouring onto a sheet of metal. Then a BANG! And a wall of smoke plumed over the windshield. Orange flames licked the hood of truck.
Another Bang!
“Motherfucker!” Nanner yelled.
“Ambush!” Ben shouted into his mic. “Circle up!” He rolled down his window to try to see past the black smoke.
A whoosh-BANG ripped a nearby tree trunk to flaming splinters. Ben ducked back into the cab and pulled the steering wheel until the truck skidded to a stop.
“Weapons hot! Felipe, if you’re not dead back there, get that goddamned drone into sentry mode. Smoke everything in a quarter KiM of us. Everyone else, light beacons.”
“Get down,” he said sharply to Nessa.
“Whoa!” protested Felipe. “If we light beacons, everyone for fifty miles will see us. And we’ll be only ones the cops know’re here.”
Another burst of clitter-clatter washed over the truck. Another Whoosh-BANG!
“Hunter-Lead’s hit!” exclaimed Nanner, running past Ben toward the front of the convoy. “Martinez, you’re on fire—get the fuck ou
t of there!” Rosa Martinez and Leticia Castañella threw open the doors and dove onto the pavement.
“Felipe, the drone, goddamn it!” Ben shouted. “Everyone, light beacons NOW!” Ben peered through the spider-webbed cracks in his windshield to glimpse the small black drone racing overhead, its small cannon blazing as Nanner charged the burning lead vehicle. Skinny orange streaks of molten lead streamed from the sky into the rocks and dead trees ahead.
“Ben.” Nanner’s voice crackled in Ben’s headset. “Open your hatch. Martinez and Castañella are hurt, but they can get to you on foot. I’ve got some cover up here from the wreck.”
“Got it,” Ben acknowledged. He sized up his two wounded comrades as they climbed through the truck’s side hatch. Seeing they were basically OK, he rasped, “Martinez, get the rooftop fifty-cal going. Castañella, tend to Felipe—then help me roll the automatic sentries onto the road.” Ben opened the truck’s door, only to be greeted by the terrifying whiz-SNAP! Of passing bullets.
Though his heart pounded in his chest and his head thumped with every pulse, he was thankful the truck’s armor would protect Nessa and the passengers in back from small-arms fire. “I’m going to unload the roller-drones! Cover me!” With one last glance into Nessa’s terrified eyes, he leapt down and raced to the rear of the truck.
The buzzing of their aerial drone echoed through the canyon a ways ahead, but Ben only caught glimpses of it strafing, banking, and disappearing over the withered treetops. With each pass, the enemy’s firing subsided a bit more, but he had no time to admire the drone’s efficiency as he hurriedly unlatched the convoy’s two small robot-sentries and rolled them down the truck’s rear ramp.
Whiz-SNAP!—nearer his head this time. He crouched behind the sentry’s small blast shield, feeling completely exposed, and keyed-in its activation code. The machine came to life with a series of bleeps, and it lurched forward on its tiny tracks. It scurried down the road, past Nanner, still hunkered behind the flaming hulk of Hunter-Lead. Its Gatling barrels began to spin, and small thunderous bursts of fire followed. The enemy fire slowed again as Ben deployed the second machine.
Fire, Ruin, and Fury (Embers Saga) Page 14