Hickman burst from cover, followed by the other three. Instantly, the air rang and the ground at his feet erupted like a dozen dust volcanoes.
"Ah!" Behind him, Lumberjack had stumbled, clutching his side. The woman in the cream coat grabbed his arm and began dragging him as rounds fizzed in the air like firecrackers. Cursing, Hickman ran from cover, followed by camouflage man and, together, they pulled the wounded man behind the shed.
"They're comin'!" the woman said as she peered around it. Hick pulled at the shoulder of the man in fatigues who was leaning over the lumberjack. "Come on, we need you!"
Dammit, there were a lot more of them than Hick had counted on. He could only imagine that some had gotten inside the hospital entrance before he'd taken up position. His attack had taken them by surprise, but only for a few moments, and now the commander had sent a dozen or so to attack Hick's squad while the rest pinned down the defenders.
"I've only got a couple more rounds," the woman said, gesturing at her revolver.
Hick hadn't been keeping count, and he couldn't remember how many rounds his clip took, but he guessed he'd be out soon enough.
"Make every shot count," he hissed as the man in camouflage next to him steadily and with lethal accuracy picked out targets that dropped as his gun spoke.
But it was no good. Any moment now, they would be outflanked, just as their ammunition ran out. Hickman cursed. Only days before, he'd been faced with a similarly desperate situation, but that, at least, had been in defense of his own home. What sort of idiot would find himself pinned down in someone else's fight?
He snapped around at a roaring from behind him. A truck was accelerating toward them, its engine screaming, its tires spinning on the slippery ground. There was no time to get out of its way but, at the last instant, it veered off leaving Hickman stumbling backward so he only got a glimpse of who was in the driving seat. Rusty.
As the soldiers who'd been trying to outflank them scattered, the man in camouflage beside him calmly and with deadly accuracy took them out, stealing out from behind the shed to walk among them like the angel of death.
Hickman got to his feet and pulled at the woman in the cream coat. She fell backward, silent in the cacophony of battle, landing on the prone form of the lumberjack, whose sightless eyes gazed up at the sky. Hick followed the man in the camouflage jacket, at least in part because the safest place to be was behind him.
The truck came to rest in the hospital entrance and Hick ran from cover to cover to close in on it. He could hear gunfire coming from within the entrance and darted to one side as a group burst out, jumped on board the truck and, after a brief exchange of gunfire, revved it up and reversed it away. Hick ducked behind a burned-out Nissan pickup and watched the truck's back end weave back and forth as the driver fought for control of the accelerating hunk of metal.
More figures ran out of the entrance as Hick checked his clip and found that he had only two rounds left. He was about to slink toward a portable office that lay on the other side of the clinic building when he recognized Mayor Hawkins among those running toward the truck.
As he watched, the other truck fired up and, from left and right, fighters emerged from cover and ran for it. One figure ran past Hick. It was a young woman in denim pants and carrying an automatic rifle. She was a sitting duck. He raised his gun. And lowered it again. Maybe he didn't want to waste a bullet, or maybe he didn't need yet another needless sin to weigh down the scales of justice.
Hawkins came to a halt, watching the two trucks as they headed off across the scrubland, dust flying up to screen the mountains beyond. Then she turned and gestured back at the hospital. "Come on! Let's get that fire out."
Hickman emerged and staggered after her.
"Mr. Hickman!"
"Jenson!" He grabbed the young man by both arms, relieved to see a familiar face. "Where's Rusty?"
Bowie's face darkened. "He was on the bus. Told me to get off. They must've got him. Where's the others? Where's Brain?"
"I'll go look for him. You okay?"
"Yeah. My arm hurts like hell, but I'm alright."
Hick patted him. Jeez, what was he becoming? First he didn't shoot an enemy who was running away from him, and now he was comforting the son of another enemy.
Rusty was gone, Jenson accounted for and so the only remaining loose end was Brain, who he found leaning against a propane tank near where the trucks had parked.
"You idiot. One shot and you'd have been blown sky high."
"Sorry, boss. My leg's hurt and I couldn't go no further. It sure is painful."
Hick examined Brain's leg. Blood soaked the denim of his loose, fat man's jeans, but the flow had stopped and he could see that the bullet had grazed his inner thigh rather than embedding. "You'll survive. Jenson's okay, but it looks as though we've lost our sheriff."
And the old Paul Hickman was back. This was an opportunity with a capital O. He had grown to respect and—perhaps—even like Kaminski just a little, but the fact remained that the sheriff considered Ned Birkett's death to be suspicious and, for all Hick knew, had evidence to back it up. He'd made no secret of hanging that over Hick's head like the sword of … whoever it was. Greek fella. Now he was gone.
"Oh, I don't think he's dead, boss," Brain said. "I saw him outta the back window of the truck. They beat him up good, but he weren't dead."
"What? Are you sure?"
Brain nodded enthusiastically. "Oh yeah. I saw'd him, I did. We gonna go after him?"
Hickman grabbed Brain by the collar of his filthy coat. "No! And you listen to me right now, you moron. You didn't see him. Do you hear me?"
"But boss, he was right there, as clear as day!" Brain's eyes looked as though they were about to explode out of their sockets.
"He's dead and if anyone asks, that's what you'll say. D'you hear me?"
Brain nodded.
"Unless you want to go after him on your own?"
"Oh no, boss. I ain't got the brain my daddy was born with. That's what Momma always said."
Hick let him go. "And that's the first right thing you've said. Now don't you forget it. I ain't goin' on a wild goose chase to rescue no one, 'specially not when he stands against me. You got me?"
Brain nodded again and Hickman got to his feet. It was a sorry state of affairs when an idiot like this was his only henchman. He'd have to change that, and his first target was the man in the camouflage jacket who'd been such an efficient killing machine. He sure hoped that fella had survived.
"Come on," he said as he glanced over at the hospital entrance. No more smoke rose into the sky and people were beginning to emerge into the daylight, Hawkins among them. "Time to show willing, then we can collect what we came here for."
Chapter 7: Amish
"Just act normal," Devon hissed to Jessie as she stared out the window openmouthed.
"But there are people! So many people!"
Devon scowled. "I messed up. I didn't expect them to be this far out of town."
Perhaps he'd become complacent as they'd headed northwest into Pennsylvania in the Sons of Solomon's Land Rover—the one that had been left with Marcus. It said something about their brutality that he was less frightened of being punished for it being stolen than he was of being tried as a deserter by going with Devon and the others. They'd done their best to create a plausible fiction that he'd been captured by overwhelming force, having left him tied up in the supplies room and, for good measure and appearance's sake, taking as much of the food as they could stuff into the trunk of the car.
Margie and Amanda sat in the back. Devon had been reluctant to bring them along, but there was nowhere safe to leave them. Several times on the journey, they'd found a farm with a habitable outbuilding that could have accommodated them, but both insisted on sticking with him and, in particular, Jessie. Marcus's fear, it seemed, at Devon's behavior had transmitted itself to Amanda and she kept him at arm's length. Like a fierce dog: necessary for keeping the wolves away, but you didn
't want to get too close.
They'd driven through green countryside shared by the living and the dead. The farther from the main highways they'd gone, the less often burned-out vehicles had been pushed off the road and, once or twice, they'd been forced off-road to bypass a collision that sat, as if it was frozen in resin, in their path.
Marcus had told them about the settlement he'd been taken to by Gideon. It was called Wareham and it was smack-dab in the middle of Amish country. Of course, it made sense on the one hand—if there was one group least affected by the firestorm, it would be the Amish, since they rarely allowed householders to connect to the electrical grid. On the other hand, the Amish were staunch pacifists. Marcus couldn't explain because he'd spent no more than a few days at a house in Wareham and had only seen the Amish from his window before being shipped off to training camp. But he'd watched as others of those he'd arrived with had been taken away by Amish families in their gray-hooded buggies.
So, Devon and the others had traveled the 250 miles, skirting the devastation of Philadelphia to find Sam. It was, at least, in the right direction and would shave a day or two off their return journey. If Sam was there. If they could find her and if they could get her away.
The pain in his head and, especially, his fingers and arms was a constant companion. He'd refused pain relief other than Ibuprofen as the morphine that would give him true relief also made him drowsy and they needed all their wits about them as they traveled through once-rich farmlands and the shells of formerly prosperous cities.
As it turned out, they saw few people on the open roads, and those they had seen darted away quickly. It seemed the boxy Land Rovers were becoming a sight people chose to hide from, which was worrying in itself.
He'd taken the back roads once they were within ten miles of Wareham, but they'd emerged among tended fields sooner than he'd expected. To left and right, men in straw hats and blue shirts with dark gray jackets labored beside women wearing violet dresses and white bonnets. It was like some sort of pilgrim fathers re-enactment. Sturdy carts moved slowly across muddy fields being prepared for planting as children bent to pick the first broad bean crop of the year. Life persisted.
Faces glanced in their direction as the car passed, rumbling like thunder in an otherwise peaceful countryside.
"See how they look away," Jessie said. "It's as if they don't want to admit they've seen us."
Devon shook his head. "I'm getting a bad feeling about this. I wish Marcus had come with us. They're not going to be happy with him that we took the car."
"Yeah. But there's nothing we can do about that now. Dev, I think we need to get off the road. We're attracting a lot of attention."
Amanda reached through from the back. "How about over there? Is that what you're looking for?"
Squinting in the direction she was pointing, Devon finally saw the unmistakable shape of a ruined farmhouse set far back from the road. He took the first lane that seemed to be leading in the right direction; it was so narrow that, in places, it was tough to squeeze through. He leaned forward, praying that they wouldn't come across an abandoned car. Finally, they popped out onto a slightly wider road and, like rats in a maze, picked their way toward where they'd seen the farmhouse.
Jessie had pointed out that even in an area settled by Amish and Mennonites, they might be in a minority, so their plan had been to find a partially burned-out house on the edge of the community to hide Margie and Amanda in while Devon and Jessie tried to … what exactly? In his naivety, Devon had imagined they might be able to creep around the settlement in the hope of spotting Sam, but he now had a sense of the scale of the place. No, they'd need to speak to someone local. But how they were to do that without raising the alarm, he had no idea.
First things first.
Jessie gasped as they rolled into the driveway. What had once been a large, rectangular farmhouse made of white wood and roofed with slate, was now a tumbledown wreck. The upper story was completely gone, save for the brick chimney stack that pointed accusingly at the heavens. Stray timbers jutted over the edge, and a halo of broken tiles marked the perimeter. The only sound aside from the wind in the trees that lined the road was the dripping of water that came from somewhere within.
Devon got out of the car and walked across the ceramic boundary toward the front door of the first story which creaked on its hinges as the breeze escaped from the remains of the house, bringing with it a sickly stench that he knew only too well. But he had to know, so he activated his flashlight and stepped across the threshold.
It was dark enough to set his skin a-tingle, but not enough to cloak the horrors inside. He found them in the living room, black skin and bone wrapped in rags lying among the ashes. They'd been watching TV. Four of them he thought, though that was just a guess. A family evening in front of some sports. The huge screen—it must have been seventy inches—hung from a metal arm attached to the wall, though there was little left other than the screen's aluminum frame. Behind the couch, the ghostly remains of the speakers they'd used to enjoy the game in Dolby Surround sat on their metal stands like pig carcasses in a butcher shop.
At least it had been over in seconds. Explosive flame from in front of them and behind. He imagined the screams as they writhed in agony, consumed. He choked down the bile that threatened to overwhelm him.
No, Amanda and Margie couldn't stay here. They'd hoped to find another building on the property they could shelter in, but this was simply too horrific. What if Margie stumbled across this scene? It would be horrific enough even after they'd been buried.
He spun around. Time to get out of here. Devon stepped over the threshold of the living room but, as his foot landed, it slid on something slippery and he fell forward, his flailing arm catching the remains of a bookshelf so it fell as he did. With a shriek, he hit the floor, enveloped in curtains of agony as he was engulfed in ash and charcoal.
"Dev!" It was Jessie's voice.
He ground his jaw and pushed against the floor.
"Oh my God!"
Devon rose like a mummy from its tomb, shreds of black and white paper flying everywhere, groaning in pain as he found his footing, arms reaching out to her.
She shrieked, then caught her breath. And then she laughed. In this place of death, she actually laughed, a staccato that reverberated from the blackened walls and seemed to suck reality back into the nightmare.
"I'm glad you think it's funny," Devon said as he brushed the ash from his clothes, gritting his teeth against the pain.
She took his hand. "Come on, let's go. We can't stay here. We'll find somewhere else."
He let her lead him out into the sunlight where they found a man in a straw hat waiting beside the car, a shotgun held at his side.
"Who are you and what are you doing here? This is a place of tragedy and death."
Devon pulled the gun from his pocket, flecks of ash flying from his arms. "Put it down."
Gently, the man put the shotgun down. "I was hunting. I do not use weapons on my fellow man. I wonder who you are. When I saw your car, I thought you were Sons, so I hid and watched. But then you emerged, and I saw that it was not so. Are you with them?"
Devon could see Margie's round face pressed against a window of the car. He shook his head. "No. Are you?"
The man smiled. He was good-looking, with a deep brown and gray Lincoln beard and bright blue eyes. "I am not."
"Are they in charge here?"
The smile vanished. "God is our only master. We answer to him and our elders, and no one else. My name is Noah Kurtz. If you wish to discuss things, then you must hide your vehicle and we will find somewhere out of the cold and away from prying eyes."
Devon left Jessie with Kurtz, at her insistence, and drove the car around the back of the farmhouse. By the time he and the others had gotten out, they found Kurtz and Jessie standing beside a small barn made of rusting iron sheets. They picked their way between the puddles that had formed in the rust-brown mud and Devon put out his hand
.
"My name is Devon Myers," he said as Kurtz led them into the dim interior. Ammonia prickled his nose, and he took in the railings of what had plainly once been an animal pen.
"I welcome you to Wareham, but urge you to leave immediately."
Devon shook his head. "We've come here to find someone."
"You do not understand. For outsiders, to remain here is to die."
"How are the Amish involved in … all of this? I thought you were pacifists?" Jessie said.
Kurtz sighed and gazed up at the roof. "We do not resist, and we welcome, in many ways, the change in the world, though we deeply regret the suffering. But just as with the great deluge, much must be swept away for God's people to rebuild again. Perhaps, this time, we will listen."
"So, you didn't do it?" Amanda asked.
That drew a chuckle from Kurtz. "We? I am told that the destruction was caused by … how was it put? … hacking into the electrical grid. Does that sound like something that we Amish have the capability to do?
"No, the first we knew of it was when the houses of our neighbors went up in flames. We helped as we could, but there was little we could do. The Carrs lived here. A good family, for English.
"A few days later, the Sons of Solomon arrived, and we thought, at first, that they were of like mind. And so they are in many ways. They wish for a simpler world without the distractions of technology; a new start. But some of us realized that they are, in truth, a brotherhood of evil, for they wish for power over others. They have committed so many evil acts since they arrived that all but the most willfully blind of us know them for what they are. And yet many are content to continue as if nothing has happened: to till the fields and to teach our ways to those the Sons bring into our community. Now, before I tell you any more—I have said enough to earn a public flogging—I must hear your story."
So, they found crates to sit on and told him as he nodded his head and the sky dimmed outside.
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