No lights came on, and no discharge of a sniper rifle followed, but it was impossible not to feel like a million eyes were on me. Between being paranoid about every straight line I saw—in the grass that was somewhere between ankle and knee height for me, and full of straight lines—and the need to keep a low profile, progress was slow. I looked back at where the mine had blown up, but since the grass hadn’t caught fire, I soon lost sight of it. The momentary silence dissipated as animals of all flavors picked up their nightly routines again, allowing me to ease up a little. Every time I paused and looked around, I found only the seemingly peaceful nightly landscape around me, Martinez the only moving target I could pick out every once in a while. That boded well, I told myself.
That was, until the sharp scent of gasoline tickled my nose, making me stop and look around for the source. It was easy to chalk it up to a leaking car that had been used to set up the traps. I hadn’t been here long but I estimated that I was a mile south of the main road leading into town. My nose was good, but not quite that good. The wind changed direction slightly and the scent was gone, but I picked it up again a few steps later. It lessened again but returned in force almost immediately. I tried to get a better look around my position but didn’t see anything suspicious—which didn’t say much since there was grass everywhere, dry as tinder and tall enough to hide someone lying on the ground two feet away from me. I pushed on, telling myself that since Martinez ahead of me hadn’t reported in, it must be close yet contained.
The scent slowly disappeared from the air, then came again, but eventually I left it behind. I made it a good quarter of a mile toward the town before I smelled it once more, although logically, it couldn’t be the same patch. I halted, trying to better pinpoint the source, but it was impossible with the wind coming and going in small gusts. Then I hit a third patch, the acrid smell so strong that it almost choked me. Trying hard not to cough, I pulled my scarf up over my nose and mouth, hoping to staunch it momentarily. There was something going on, and I didn’t like it.
Huffing into my mic, I waited a few seconds, then asked, “Anyone else smell gasoline?”
Silence answered me, making me wonder if I was simply seeing things—or was lucky to have found the trail of said leaking car. A minute passed, then another, until a low, male voice came on—Amos. “Yeah, I smell it, too. Can’t find the source, though. We’re the northernmost group. You’re south, right?”
I gave an affirmative huff, again casting around for anything to catch my attention.
Nate’s voice came on next, a surprising amount of urgency in it. “Forward, now! Try to remain low, but if you can smell it, run!”
And just as if he’d jinxed it, a whooshing roar sounded, coming from the road. I had just begun to turn my head to look when bright light started to sear the retina in my right eye. Going more on instinct than command, I bolted forward, trying to keep my torso level with the ground but digging my heels in for a quick sprint. The roar increased exponentially, but was quickly surpassed by light chasing the darkness away, effectively blinding me. Heat followed, blowing over me at an alarmingly increasing rate. Throwing caution to the wind, I ran as fast as I could, knowing fully well how much of a target I must be, a dark body against the fire spreading at my back. Acting immediately on Nate’s call got me out of the worst, but even before I could check what was going on behind me, screams over the com made it quite obvious. We were spread too far apart for me to hear anyone directly, but that didn’t lessen the gruesomeness of it.
Something was nipping on my left leg, and when I looked down, I saw fire licking over my calf and boot, sparks flying into the grass, leaving a haphazard trail behind. I dropped and rolled, doing my best to extinguish anything that might be clinging to my pack where I couldn’t easily check. Grabbing some loose dirt, I dumped it on my leg, the flames going out as soon as they got deprived of oxygen. A quick check confirmed that I was fine, just a few scorch marks around the edges where the spilled gasoline must have transferred from the grass to my clothes.
Glancing up, I got a first good look at the raging inferno behind me. Well, not exactly raging as the flames were already dying down in patches, but in others the grass was burning brightly, sparks quickly lighting everything they touched on fire. It looked like someone had splashed gasoline—or some other accelerant—in three thick lines all across the plains, lighting the entire kill zone brightly. I could see what looked like three fireballs rolling on the ground—the unlucky bastards who had gotten caught in the fire when it had been ignited. The others seemed to be okay, hunkered down but on high alert.
The wind blew hot sparks in my direction, making me back up further, toward the settlement, immediately. Part of me was glad that it was blowing toward the ocean, which might just help keep the entire state from burning. But that also meant that we were potentially caught inside a narrowing noose that kept driving us right into the arms of our opponents—and giving them great illumination to make their shots count.
The rapport of an assault rifle was loud enough to be heard above the roar of the flames, if still far enough away that it couldn’t have been a well-aimed sequence of shots. It served as a reminder that hunkering down was no longer an option.
“Martinez, are you okay?” I whisper-shouted into the mic, figuring that the sound of my voice would be the last thing to give me away now.
“Copy,” Martinez was quick to reply.
“Burns? Sonia?”
The answer came a few seconds late, making my anxiety surge momentarily. “We’re caught just behind the forward-most line,” Sonia reported in. “Checking to find a part that we can cross. Looks like we can move forward if we go a hundred yards to the south. Advance without us, if you can.”
I was tempted to tell her that I wasn’t taking orders from her, but it was sound advice, so I acknowledged and instead tried to find Martinez to join him. It was a horribly easy task, since even partially blinded from staring into the fire, my eyes had no trouble picking him out where he was hunched down behind a scrub maybe fifty feet away from me. The rifle barked again, but since nothing hit me, I continued forward, picking up the pace as I passed by Martinez’s position. He sprinted right after me, signaling me to stray farther to my right. That seemed stupid since the road and gate were in that direction, but when he kept insisting, I changed course. The closer we got to the walls, the darker it got, our pace much quicker than the wind could drive the flames forward. I found a convenient cover looming ahead—the base of a forward watch tower, little more than a few slats nailed to some poles, abandoned now. I hadn’t been running full out but it still took Martinez over three minutes to join me, his face twisted into a grimace of pain. I was just about to ask him where he’d been shot when I realized it must have been his old injuries giving him grief.
Looking beyond him, I thought I saw Sonia and Burns following roughly in our tracks, if at a much slower pace. I realized why when the rifle barked again. Looking toward the source of the racket, I saw the muzzle flash from somewhere up at the palisades, the guard post pretty much right between where we’d been running and where the shooter was standing. More weapons opened fire, the relative darkness of the barricades making it easy to see them from where I was. My hands were itching to grab the M4 from where it was strapped to my pack, but I remained hunkered down instead, happy not to be in the line of fire right now.
As soon as Martinez looked like he’d be able to respond, I leaned close to him and asked, “Should we try to take them out? From here, I’m sure we’d hit at least five or six of them before they take us out.”
Not much of a surprise, he shook his head. “If we can make it onto the palisades, we’ll be much more effective,” he pressed out between pants. “And you can use your knife, if need be.”
Did the very idea of shiving those assholes bring me joy? A little, but it was reason more than bloodlust that had me nod. If we opened return fire, they’d spot us within seconds. If I could stealthily sneak down the line
and dispatch them silently, it would take them a while to realize the others weren’t just reloading or waiting for their targets to come out of hiding.
Glancing back at the fire, I could make out a few more moving targets, proving just how urgent the situation was. “Can you climb?” I asked Martinez in what was likely a pure insult. He gave me a look underlining just that as he gave a curt nod. “Great,” I went on. “Because I can’t. You’ll have to go first and help pull me up.” It was only at my explanation that he understood, his gaze briefly dropping down to my hands. I gave a pained grin at his apologetic look, forestalling anything he could say with a quick slap on his shoulder. “I go first. I’ll throw a rope up. You go up. I come after you. Go!”
As soon as he gave me the thumbs-up, I sprinted toward the barricade, trusting that the now near-constant shooting would drown out any sounds I made. Being a moving target so close to at least three shooters made me physically sick, but they were all concentrating on positions farther out, ignoring me for the moment. The fires likely blinded them too much for them to catch on to what was moving in the near darkness directly below them.
I reached the forward defenses unscathed. The settlement had gone all out and had dug not just one ditch but two, filled with lots of sharpened poles oriented toward the plain. Shamblers might be stupid enough to impale themselves, but for a sentient human it was possible to climb over or squeeze through them with a bit of care. Martinez was fighting his way through the first ditch by the time I reached the heavy, slightly weathered wood beams that made up the wall. Getting the rope from the side of my pack, I wasted twenty precious seconds checking that it had only been slightly scorched but not seared through before I got a good grip and let the grappling hook fly. It went short, knocking against the wood but coming right down again. I quickly sidestepped and pressed myself against the palisade, hoping that nobody was looking down to investigate. Since I wasn’t turned into a human sieve, I picked up the blasted thing and threw it again, this time aiming better. The hook caught, staying put even when I used my entire weight to try to dislodge it.
Martinez joined me a moment later, accepting the rope from me, still puffing for air. He was up in record time, not bothering with great leg work as he used only his upper body strength to pull himself to the top. I had noted that his torso and arms had beefed up compared to before, but not how much. I figured it made sense, with months where he hadn’t been able to use his legs at all, followed by what must have been a grueling physical therapy regimen. I grabbed the rope as soon as he was over the top, jumping as high as I could and doing my best to get the rope grabbed just right between my ankles. My hands were burning by the time I managed to reach the top of the barricade and pull myself over, nicely aided by Martinez.
We both hunkered down on the dark walkway on the inside of the wall, checking that we were still undetected. The nearest shooter was a good fifty feet from us, close enough that I was surprised we’d made it from the watchtower to the wall without being detected. I debated what weapon to use and ended up getting my knife out. The ruckus caused by incessant shooting—some of which was return fire from the plain below—was likely enough that I could have used my handgun, but I didn’t want to risk it.
Still, I hesitated as I glanced toward what would become my first victim. I’d gotten quite good at shooting people who were shooting back; cold-blooded murder was a different affair entirely. I knew it was a moot point—we still had people down there in the kill zone that I was protecting with my actions, and they had at least severely wounded, if not killed, three of us. That should have been more than enough to calm my conscience. Yet as I kept looking for clues of the affiliation of the purported evil in front of me, they were hard to find. From what I could tell—good low-light vision or not, it was dark up here compared to the burning plains below—they were all wearing the typical patched-together gear of traders, scavengers, and lots of settlement people all across the country.
Turning to Martinez, I decided to, this once, get a second opinion. I already knew what he was going to say from his pinched expression that only got more forbidding once he had his night-vision goggles in place—and pointed down into the settlement. “Those are not our people,” he whispered, jerking his chin at the shooters up on the barricade. “But they were.” Following his gaze, I could just make out two bodies lying in the otherwise unremarkable-looking street. One might have been either a short man or a woman. The other was too slight for that—an adolescent, if my guess was any good.
Fuck.
Well, there went nothing.
Peering one more time into the plains, I tried to make out any of our people but I couldn’t even find Burns and Sonia, although I knew where they must have been hiding more or less. Most of the opposition centered further north, which was a good thing—for now. Turning my com to the team frequency, I blew into it first before giving a quick, near-silent status report. “Lewis here. I’m with Martinez up on the wall. We’re starting a quick cleanup run, going south to north. Don’t shoot us if you can avoid it. Concentrate fire on the shooters north of the gate. I’ll keep you in the loop.”
Nobody acknowledged, but that was just as well. Martinez had his rifle ready, signaling that he was covering me—and was ready to take care of anything I couldn’t quickly overwhelm. I figured I could take out at least two or three of them until I’d have to resort to ranged attacks. After hours spent tensed up without a good way to bleed off energy, my body was singing with the need for violence, and after seeing the bodies in the settlement below, my mind was more than on board with that.
Creeping up to the first shooter was almost too easy. The boards of the walkway weren’t completely silent, but even I had a hard time picking up the creaks my weight on them caused, and Martinez remained my silent shadow. I didn’t bother with fancy kidney-stabs or the like, but went right for the side of his neck as soon as I reared up behind him. Height difference was no issue as he was crouched over slightly, using the wall as a support for his rifle. Two lightning-fast stabs and a slash across his throat, and I had a dead body right in front of me, still gushing blood all over my arms. I picked up his M16 and threw it over the wall, leaving Martinez to grab any spare magazines he could find on short notice. A careful glance forward revealed that the next shooter was still oblivious, right now busy with reloading. I was on him before he could fire another shot, dispatching him as easily as the first.
I realized I was out of luck when I checked on the next position, and found not one but two shooters, side by side. I considered for a moment but then sheathed the knife and instead drew my Glock. Crossing half the distance to their position, I knelt down on one knee and aimed, hoping that down here they wouldn’t see me that easily. Two shots—the first a clean kill in the temple, the second a little too low, hitting the asshole in the side of the neck. He slumped over all right, but ended up partly hidden behind the corpse of his buddy. I came to my feet and moved closer, gun aimed at what I could make out of the bulk of his body. He was still holding on tightly to his AR-15 but hadn’t managed to bring it up or even vaguely point it in my direction. His head was turned to the side as if he tried to look for his assailant, but by the time I stepped into his field of vision, his stare had turned sightless. I checked on the next position, but the single shooter was still oblivious to us. As much as I appreciated that stroke of luck, it also made me suspicious. I was good, but not that good. I let Martinez divest the two bodies of their guns and spare ammo while guarding our front, but then signaled him to take over so I could check the bodies once more. One had a bare neck but the other—the one I’d killed with the headshot—had a single X, marking him as a scavenger. My blood ran cold seeing it, and when I looked closer at his gear, I saw streaks of lighter paint across parts of it—red, if I wasn’t mistaken, yet it was impossible to tell without additional light. I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been part of the group from Vegas. But why fight against us, then?
The next shooter paused to
reload, making me freeze instantly. Yet he didn’t turn his head to check to his left or right—just ejected the magazine, dropped it, pushed in a fresh one, and went right back to shooting. Glancing into the dark settlement, I realized he was the last one south of the gate. Since he was on his own, I could have used the knife once more, but I went with the gun instead, minimizing the risk to myself that melee always entailed. He died just like the others, without making an extra sound except for his body slumping onto the walkway boards. Right above the gate, I saw three shooters next to each other, concentrating fire on a position somewhat north of them. I hadn’t made it past my last kill when one of them jerked his head around, looking right at me, and I knew my luck had finally run out.
Martinez and I opened fire at almost the same time, me dropping down to minimize the target I was presenting, and so he could spray everything in front of us with bullets. A stray casing hit my cheek, leaving a hot, burning scorch mark, but I didn’t even flinch as I kept emptying my magazine into the shooters in front of us. The one closest may have seen me, but he was dead before he could alert the others, who were too slow to react as our bullets bit into them. One of them let out a shout before he died, which I was sure would put a final end to our spree.
“The guard house, to your right!” Martinez hissed to me, making me spring forward and duck through the opening in the wooden box sitting next to the gate. It was barely large enough for the two of us, but it was solid cover with openings to shoot into the area right in front of the gate—that also worked well for whoever was coming along the walkway toward us. As soon as I had a new magazine in my Glock, I aimed and fired, taking the first man who came running in the torso with three shots, and felling the second with one miss and one right between the eyes. Martinez’s single-fire shots also landed in their torsos, but I didn’t mind the overkill. I waited for more to come, but when the coast remained clear for another twenty seconds, I figured I might as well report in.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12 Page 83
