River of Night

by John Ringo

  Still, they were nearly there. There was only one more row of barriers and then he could ram the buildings, push the troops up and it would be the same routine of killing, looting and raping all night, like they always did. He smiled a little in anticipation, stroking the spade grips of the captured weapon with his blue-gloved hands.

  The semi flashed its lights, and his radio squawked.

  “Hey, Dragon,” the second driver said, almost whining. “I musta run over some wire or some shit, I gotta stop and clear it, or we’re gonna lose the rig.”

  “God-damnit!” Dragon cursed. Loki was going to have his ass if they didn’t get across.

  Fuck it, time to shoot up some rounds.

  * * *

  “These guys are attacking blind,” Kaplan remarked coolly, changing magazines. “They’re putting down decent amounts of fire but they aren’t hitting anything.”

  “Are you complaining?” Detkovic asked, peeking above the barricade. “Or suggesting that it’s finally time?”

  He’d ceded the control panel seat to Brandy, who was inside, looking at her monitors.

  “So…” asked Brandy.

  “Smith is offline, and now Rune isn’t answering calls,” Kaplan replied. “I think it’s probably about that time.”

  “Gents, what it is, is use it or lose it time,” she said. “The elements on the bridge are through more than half the barriers and traps, and if we don’t go live now, some of them are going to get through. As it is, I can’t do anything about the trucks, they’re naturally electrically isolated already. Judging from these—”

  She gestured at the dials.

  “Most of the Teslas are down and Big Bad is getting shot up.”

  A fresh burst of fire stitched across their building. A single round whined into their room, burying itself in the interior opposing wall. Everyone flinched away, except Robbins, who punched out another shot from the deer rifle he’d appropriated from his daughter.

  “I’ll take care of the MRAP,” Kaplan said. “Butters, give me a hand, but keep your head down.”

  “On it,” the girthy engineer replied.

  The two squatted and lifted their only heavy weapon, the grenade launcher Smith had salvaged from their flight out of New York.

  “Wondered when you were gonna use that,” Stantz remarked. “We gonna take turns?”

  “We’ve got just one partial box of ammunition, so gotta go with ‘no’ on that one,” Kaplan replied as they dropped the heavy mechanism on the pintle mount inside the door. Detkovic stumbled for a second, tripping on the sandbags that were heaped around the legs of the mount. “Not enough ammo to dent the infected, but it should be enough for a couple oversized trucks. Once I flush the infantry, you get on them and look for any obvious leaders.”

  “How are grenades going to stop a tank?” Brandy asked.

  “Well, for one, it’s not a tank,” Detkovic answered, kicking the sandbags back into place. “It’s really a lightly armored truck. Two, it doesn’t really shoot grenades in the John Wayne sense. They’re actually high explosive—dual purpose. Each one is a little shaped charge combined with regular explosive. They should do a number on anything but an actual tank. I wish we had more of ’em.”

  “This very gun did for the FBI’s trucks in Manhattan,” Kaplan added as he lifted the end of their only belt of grenades towards the open action of the gun. “Butters, distance to target?”

  “Range four-fifty, target vehicles and troops in the open,” Detkovic said, peeking above the window rim for an instant. It was a moment too long. There was a wet smacking sound and instantly afterwards another heavy bullet smacked into the far wall of their shelter. Detkovic stumbled back and then fell to his side, utterly still.

  Kaplan glanced down at the fresh corpse without expression and Brandy cried out, “No!” Robbins glanced up, then reacquired his cheek weld without comment and sent another round downrange.

  “Everyone keep your damn heads down!” Kaplan said, adjusting the launcher’s feed slide assembly before smacking down the cover. “Stantz, get over here and get this belt straight!”

  “Ah, Kaplan?” Brandy asked, almost hyperventilating. Still, she kept her hand hovering over the system controls. Unlike Stantz’s elaborate firing system, she had a simple on/off button highlighted on her laptop’s screen. “Now?”

  “Now.”

  * * *

  Loki stayed well to the rear, urging his men forward with shouts. Very few wanted to be close to him, so as long as he moved from cover to cover, the assaulters stayed mostly ahead of him. Mercifully, the amount of fire that had held up their advance was now dropping off. As far as he could tell, the two machine guns that had alternated between spraying his force and the vehicles over his head were now either out of ammunition or broken.

  “Move up, keep moving!” he yelled. He noticed a pair of men lagging, hiding behind a the lip of a maintenance stairwell, gripping the metal rail. He jogged forward, equipment rattling.

  They had to move all the way across before the defenders came up with a new surprise, and these two slow pokes clearly needed a little encouragement.

  Before he could reach them, bright orange and yellow sparks popped all around him. Several screams of surprise sounded ahead of him. He crouched, and checked for incoming fire. There was none. He looked ahead to see the pair of laggards slumped, nearly lying on their sides. Curiously, they kept a firm grip on the railing. Small wisps of smoke rose from their hands and Loki made the connection.

  They were electrocuted. The defenders had wired the dam.

  Well, fuck.

  Ahead of him a few more men screamed in fear, though fewer than before, as their fellows were fried in place. More than one Gleaner dropped directly onto a live contact, where their clothing smoldered and in a few cases, burst into flames. There were some further flashes and pops as humans involuntarily served as electrical resistors, but mostly there was an eerie silence as all of the shooting from his team died away.

  “Fuck this shit fuck this shit fuck thi—” a Gleaner said, shouldering past Loki on his way to the rear. The big Guard was so surprised that he made no immediate move in response, which saved his life. As the fleeing Gleaner stepped between a pair of metal studs set on each side of the walkway that Loki had just used, a finger-thick spark snapped, dropping the man to the rough concrete, where he twitched for a moment.

  Loki considered pushing up, but warily looked at every surface. There was metal everywhere and absent a correlating Gleaner body, there was no way to tell what was now coursing with deadly electricity and what was safe. The strong smell of ozone was present, overcoming the slight breeze over the river.

  “Governor, this is Loki,” he transmitted. “I’ve got a situation.”

  There was no reply.

  He looked over his shoulder at the dark river bank behind him.

  Hmmm.

  He heard Dragon’s voice and carefully reached for his radio, avoiding brushing against anything metal.

  “This is Loki.”

  Hopefully things were progressing a little better above.

  * * *

  “That’s it, the dam is hot,” Brandy reported. “I’m already getting about sixty percent shorts on my traps, so the bad guys just ran into a wall.”

  “Electrical shorts are good?” Robbins asked, searching for his next target.

  “They are if they’re made from the bodies of your enemies,” retorted the TVA manager.

  “Speaking of going hot,” Kaplan said. He depressed the butterfly trigger between the spade grips of the Mark Nineteen.

  * * *

  “Okay, that’s the last one,” the driver said over the intercom as they slowly scraped past a final concrete barrier.

  “Finally!” Dragon replied, reaching for the radio. “Loki, it’s me, we’re moving up.”

  He waited for a moment and repeated the call before he heard Loki reply, asking for a report on what the defenders were doing. He shrugged and spun the turre
t to the front, just in time to see two small explosions strike the causeway in front of him. The next two struck the front of his “tank,” and for a moment his world stopped as the blast and concussion rattled his head.

  He glanced down past his feet. He could see the driver’s arm bent back at an unnatural angle, but the man wasn’t moving.

  “Shit-shit-shit.”

  Another series of explosions rocked the vehicle, which ground to a complete stop.

  * * *

  Because the big gun burped out five to six rounds a second, Kaplan carefully squeezed another sub-second burst. Mindful of his limited ammunition and the relatively high rate of fire of his weapon, he was trying to be economical with his ammo. A glance at his remaining supply revealed perhaps a third left. Fortunately, he’d already stopped both vehicles, which had sustained several hits each. The Gleaner infantry was clustered around the back of the farther truck, a large eighteen-wheeler with ad hoc plating that covered the engine and most of the windshield. It might have been a morale booster for the Gleaners, but in practice it had merely provided enough resistance to arm the projectiles that he was lofting.

  “Robbie, the rest of you, get ready, I’m going to scatter the ones at the back,” he warned. “When they run, cut as many down as you can.”

  “Set.” “Yessir.” “Oh, hell yes!” came the replies from Robbins and company.

  Kaplan carefully sighted, guided by the orange flames licking underneath the punctured fuel tank on the converted truck. He loosed a longer burst and waited another second for the slow projectiles to reach his target before releasing his final rounds.

  * * *

  Dragon had kicked the warped rear hatch of his tank open, and then fallen out onto the rough concrete. His ears were ringing, his vision was blurry and his legs wouldn’t work properly. Using only his arms, he pulled himself the rest of the way out.

  “Hey!” he tried yelling to the other survivors that were dimly visible, peeking around the end of the wrecker. It was stopped a couple of lengths behind his own wrecked vehicle. There were actual holes visible in the windshield armor. Both front tires were flat and a growing puddle of diesel smoldered sullenly beneath the cab. He tried again, but couldn’t hear himself. “Hey! Hey guys!”

  He began to crawl, but before he made it halfway to the next vehicles, several explosions trip-hammered across the causeway, making it flex like a trampoline. The explosions lifted him from the surface and lofted him forward. Dragon landed squarely in burning diesel, and began screaming. He flailed with his arms, ignoring the sound of shrapnel as it whickered over his head and pinged off the chassis of the now destroyed semi.

  Fresh screaming sounded from his men, and then a second string of explosions blew that to hell as well.

  Dragon rolled himself out of the fire, smothering the flames on his trousers. Terrified, panting, he kept his face down. He could make out the snap of high velocity rounds overhead, their cadence as steady as a metronome.

  Maybe if he held very, very still, the defenders might overlook him.

  As it turns out, dual purpose shaped charge grenades will also do a number on unarmored troops in the open. Two grenades from Kaplan’s last string burst on the concrete within five meters of Dragon’s position, fragmenting his body so badly that any identification, if someone had cared enough to bother, would have relied on the tattered and scorched TSA-approved blue gloves he loved so much.

  * * *

  Loki heard the explosions overhead, and that decided the matter, right there. Green was out of contact, Dragon was out of contact and the dam assault was obviously a failure. It looked like nearly his entire force was wiped out.

  Waiting here was a sucker bet. He’d have to chance any remaining electrical defenses behind him and get back to the take off point. Without a backward glance, he began to jog back the way his force had come.

  * * *

  “I think that’s about the last of them,” Robbins said, peering through the variable optic on his rifle. His left hand was curled under his chest, meeting the stock firmly tucked into his right shoulder. He reached up with his right hand and rotated the scope’s bezel, increasing the magnification to 8X. “Hey, isn’t that big guy the one that Smith pointed out?”

  “Looking,” Kaplan said, snapping his rifle back up to scan the dam walkway. The poor lighting made it hard to find his quarry, and by the time he caught the running figure in his sights, the man was six hundred yards out. “Contact! Robbie, high value target, spillway number nine, ENGAGE!”

  “Running away, easy peasy,” Robbins replied. He was sprawled on an elevated table in the back of the room where Jordan had set her shooting mat. A small, red plastic ammunition box was open at his side and the serried rows of ammunition were nearly empty. The rifle moved minutely on the sandbag, and he fired.

  “Miss,” Kaplan barked. “Low and right. Reengage.”

  * * *

  Loki heard the ricochet and the snap of the round as it sped by. Still running, he still had time to register the two sounds nearly at the same time and understand the significance.

  Still supersonic when it skipped. Heavy rifle, very fast round.

  He began dodging as much as his running would permit, first moving towards the center, then towards the railing on his left, and back again. The remainder of the dam stretched in front of him.

  * * *

  Robbins ejected the spent case smoothly, maintaining his sight picture.

  “Wind?” he asked, sliding the bolt forward and locking it down.

  “Left to right,” Kaplan directed, watching the figure dwindle in his own optic. “Gusting to ten. Holdover five.”

  “Set,” Robbins said, barely whispering as he exhaled, balancing the little chevron of the crosshair above and to the left of the running man’s head.

  “Send it.”

  Robbins finished staging the trigger and just thought about completing the trigger stroke.

  The three-hundred Winmag barked, punishing his shoulder.

  * * *

  Loki had put another fifty meters between him and those persistent defenders. He was still randomly jerking his stride right and left. He couldn’t see any Gleaners ahead him, but he knew that there would still be a handful of friendly snipers as well as the zombie patrols keeping the staging area clear.

  Those fools had better not shoot at him!

  If he couldn’t reach Green on radio and the boss didn’t show up soon, they would pile into the vehicles and head back to camp. There was no way to get the dam before winter, but next spring, they could ret—

  Robbins’s round was fired from a hunter’s rifle, one intended to one-shot drop large North American game animals that could weigh up to half a ton. The very high muzzle velocity and streamlined shape helped it retain considerable energy even at long ranges, which was why the military used that caliber for distant targets.

  However, bullets can shatter on bone, such as the human spine. When that happens, the bone fragments become further projectiles, enlarging the area of destruction within the body. A side effect of such a spine shot is that nerves are instantly severed, sharply reducing all sensation of pain below the injury.

  Lucky Loki.

  The round easily penetrated the ceramic plate designed to stop slower and lighter bullets. It did deform considerably, which only served to make the wound channel wider. However, as luck would have it, the next thing that happened to the slug was fragmentation. Loki felt a massive sledgehammer blow, perfectly centered between his shoulder blades. Nerveless, his hands opened and his weapon began to fall the length of his sling. His legs abruptly stopped working and he felt a tremendous pressure in this throat, but he couldn’t cough. Very, very slowly it seemed to Loki, the dirty gray concrete of the dam walkway floated up to meet him.

  * * *

  “Hit,” Kaplan reported. “Target down. Reengage.”

  Robbins cycled the bolt and fired again. The bundle of black rags didn’t even twitch.

 
“Hit.” His spotter reached over and smacked Robbins’s shoulder. “Rounds complete. Nice job.”

  * * *

  Tom kept the beard of his tomahawk on the Gleaner leader’s throat as he used his left hand to methodically strip Green of weapons. A tidy pile accumulated. A pistol clunked onto the rifle already on the ground. A small knife from inside Green’s waistband tinkled on top of the pistol.

  “You’re late, Boss,” Rune said. In the background, small arms fire had increased. Tom could make out sustained automatic fire. The final assault was underway.

  “I had to find a friendly catfish,” Tom replied absently, reaching around to pat his prisoner’s pockets with his left hand. “There are catfish a many, but friendly catfish are few.”

  “I have no idea what you mean,” Rune said. “What catfish?”

  “A noble steed, a veritable horse of the river,” Tom said with artificial jocularity. “Give me moment lad, I need to deal with our company, here.”

  In his peripheral vision, he could see Rune shrug, but Tom kept his eyes on the locus of his wrath.

  Green was still holding preternaturally still, perhaps sensing Tom’s mood, or maybe he was just deeply concerned about Tom’s blood-soaked ’hawk, which continued to hover just below Green’s chin. A simple rearwards pull would hook the lower point of the blade in the prisoner’s throat, just like gaffing a fish.

  “Roight, mate,” Tom said, still facing his prisoner’s back. “If you want to live a little longer, you’ll hold very still while we relieve you of the unpleasant weight of your kit. And if you think that a few more minutes of life aren’t worth living for, then give it a try. I’d really, really enjoy it if you resisted.”

  The prisoner just nodded, so Tom slowly reached around to one side to unclip Green’s combat vest.

  “When I tell you, you are going to shrug your left shoulder and let the vest slide right down your other arm. Here’s the trick: don’t move your head, because my tomahawk is thirsty and it might just nick something vital.”

  “Look, if you j—” Green tried to speak but Tom applied just a bit more pressure to the RMJ, making the Gleaner inhale in sudden pain as he felt the searing kiss of the blade just above his Adam’s apple. A trickle of dark blood ran down his neck into his collar.