Tomorrow's Dawn (Book 2): Fractured Paradise

by Wohlrab, Jeff

  She turned off the Humvee and climbed out. “How are we going to do watch tonight?” Her primary concern was the convoy that had recently departed, but she also knew they were down a man and couldn’t rotate through the same two person shifts. She was the weak link in this scenario. She didn’t even know how to shoot a rifle. “Can I stand watch with you? You can teach me how to use a rifle.”

  Jensen nodded, quickly calculating how they would stand watch with the five of them. “Let’s get you a rifle.”

  He headed for their armory table, but came up short when Sheila said “I’d … I’d like to use Todd’s rifle.” Jensen changed course and popped the hatch on his tub, recoiling slightly from the coppery odor of blood inside. He reached in to grab the Adams Arms rifle that had previously belonged to Todd.

  Jensen doubled checked the safety selector first, mentally kicking himself for not doing it immediately when he picked up the rifle at the campus. He depressed the magazine release and expertly caught the full magazine in his left hand, then pulled the charging handle to eject the bullet from the chamber. He locked the handle back and handed the weapon to Sheila, muzzle pointed skyward. Then he picked up the cartridge from the ground and dusted it off before using it to top off the magazine. Once complete, he handed the now full magazine to Sheila.

  “The first thing I want you to do is look at the top of the magazine.” He waited for her to top it toward herself and look down. “This may seem silly, but look at the points of the bullet. Those go forward. I’ve seen a lot of people try to put the magazine in backward.” Sheila noted the nose of the bullets and the way the magazine curved forward just a little bit. “Slide that into the magazine well until it clicks.” Jensen indicated the well on his own AR and listened for the click.

  “I already have the charging handle back, so all you have to do is hit the little lever on the side.” Jensen indicated his own lever and watched as the bolt carrier group slammed forward, causing Sheila to jump slightly. “That’s it. To fire it, you just hit the safety selector with your thumb and pull the trigger. These are semi-automatic, so they’ll fire once every time you pull the trigger, just like your pistol.” Sheila nodded. She’d watched others go through these same motions, so she felt as though she could repeat them.

  Jerry’s AK47 was available, but the sleeker lines of the AR called to her. Jensen was the professional and used one, so it was probably the best option available. She recalled Jerry’s bragging that the AK was the most effective weapon ever invented and had been used in more wars than any other gun, but if Jensen had seen combat using one of these and trusted it, that was what she wanted to use as well.

  “For now, let’s get some light up to Dave before it gets any darker. Keep the muzzle pointed up, down, or to the side. Never point it at anyone unless you intend to shoot them,” Jensen finished. He grabbed a couple of LED lanterns and flagged down Daniel. “We’re heading up to the cemetery. You got this?” Daniel simply nodded as he listened for out of place sounds in the rapidly cooling air.

  As Jensen and Sheila approached the gravesite, they had to turn on the lanterns to find their way. It was darker under the trees than it had been in the clearing. They found Dave waist-deep in the grave, struggling to dig through the rocks. He looked pained. “This is the best I can do,” he said. He tapped the point of the spade on the rocks several times. “I can’t get through this.” Jensen understood. He knew Dave felt like he was failing Todd by not giving him a suitable resting place, but Dave was exhausted, and the unyielding rocks below refused to be moved.

  “That’s enough, brother,” he told him gently. “He’ll be okay there.” Dave looked at Jensen, mouth open partway as he tried to catch his breath from the exertion. Jensen repeated his assessment again. “He’ll be okay,” and held out his hand to assist the former Marine as he stepped out of the grave. “You did a good job.”

  Dave accepted the proffered hand and stepped out. Jensen told him, “I can take it from here if you want.”

  The slim man thought about it and shook his head. “This is for me to do. Todd was my friend. Just leave me one of the lights and I’ll finish things up.” Jensen nodded; he knew that feeling all too well. “Let me help get him in place and we’ll head back.”

  Jensen placed one of the lanterns at the foot of the gravesite, only feet away from the two lumps of freshly dug earth where Ed and Jerry were buried, and grabbed Todd’s shoulders through the body bag. He grunted slightly as he helped Dave place him gently in the ground, wondering how he’d found the strength to lift him several feet into the air on his own to get him into the tub. When finished, he looked down at the body and said a few quiet words nobody could hear before he turned around. Jensen clasped Dave on the shoulder and simply said, “Thank you” before he trudged back down the hill.

  Chapter 3

  Jensen awakened with a start. It was barely dawn and he’d only had a few hours of sleep since finishing his double stint on watch the night before. He laid there for a few moments, confused about where he was. He’d been back in the mountains of northern India in a running gunfight with insurgents. His tub had been damaged by an RPG and he was trying to break contact with only two drive wheels still functioning. For a moment, he didn’t recall being in a cabin on a north Georgia mountain.

  Once he recognized the walls of the cabin, it started to fall into place. He could hear the faint sound of rapid gunfire coming from the west. At first he thought it was insurgents, somehow transported to Georgia with him as he woke from his unpleasant dreams. When Dave poked his head in to get him, he was already putting on his vest. “I hear it.”

  Dave waited as Jensen grabbed his weapon and double checked it. “It’s been going on for a few minutes—a lot of firing a few miles from here.” By this time, Jensen was fully in control of his senses again.

  “Daniel, we need you up,” he said, placing a can of Rip It next to the big man. “That’ll wake you up. Meet me outside.”

  Daniel groaned and wiped a hand across his eyes. He hadn’t gotten much more sleep and had a hard time coming to. “Is that gunfire?”

  Jensen nodded at the question and stepped outside.

  The gunfire woke him faster than any energy drink could. Daniel opened his eyes fully and sat up, pulling on his own vest and grabbing his rifle before turning his focus to the caffeinated beverage. He drained it quickly and stepped outside, appreciating the weight of his rifle in his hands.

  Outside, Dave and Jessica were staring intently toward the sounds of gunfire, as though they would be able to see the fight taking place some miles away. The echoes of the shots continued, less rapidly now, through the hazy morning air. The winds had changed direction slightly and brought the smell of smoke from the massive fires with it. Jensen took a swig of water from a plastic bottle and swished it around in his mouth, trying to get rid of the taste of morning breath while he tuned his ears toward the sounds.

  As Daniel walked out, Sheila close behind, the sounds of gunfire seemed to drop off. They heard several single shots, followed by more rapid fire, and then a final shot before everything went silent.

  Jensen turned to Dave. “Can you take a radio and scope out that intersection again?”

  Dave nodded and ducked inside for the black radio before jogging at a rapid pace toward the southern side of the mountain.

  “Let’s get the Hummers in place again and prep for visitors. Make sure you’ve got water and plenty of extra magazines, I don’t like the sounds of this,” Jensen told the assembled group. He had several extra magazines in his vest, along with the little girl’s doll, as he grabbed another water bottle and a Rip It of his own before climbing into his tub. He checked the battery indicator; it was only at 45% after the long drive of the previous day and running passive systems throughout the night.

  He watched as Sheila and Dave took the Humvees back toward the edge of the clearing, this time parking them further apart to catch any incoming vehicles in a crossfire. Jensen drove into the woods, poin
ting his tub toward the base of the road. His vehicle had a fully protected shell, unlike the Humvees, and he wanted to be the first in contact. “Daniel, will you stay by the cabin?”

  “Roger, boss.”

  They waited in silence for what seemed like hours, but was perhaps twenty minutes, when Dave radioed in. “We’ve got inbound. It’s those same cars from yesterday.”

  “Thanks Dave,” Jensen replied. “Any idea how many?”

  “I’ve only got four so far,” he replied, his voice distorted slightly by the tiny speaker.

  “Keep an eye on things. Let me know if it changes.”

  The radio clicked to life. “Roger that.”

  It was a couple minutes later when the familiar red car crawled into view. Jensen rolled his tub forward into the dirt road, blocking the way. The older man, Brent, painfully crawled out of the vehicle holding a white t-shirt in one hand, the other holding a bloody mess on his side. “We come in peace!” He walked a few halting steps forward. “We’re sorry about yesterday, it was a misunderstanding. We need your help!”

  “What about Cody?” Jensen asked.

  “Dead,” was the quick response.

  Jensen thought for a moment and clicked on the speaker. “Everyone out of the cars, no weapons. You, come forward, alone.” The older man seemed to struggle for breath as he moved forward, still clutching his side. When he got closer, he popped the hatch and checked the man for weapons before instructing him to get in the tub. “The rest of you, wait here.”

  Jensen backed the tub up to the top of the hill, eyes on the monitor until he passed into the clearing. He popped the hatch open and instructed the man to climb out, which he did. Jensen keyed his radio. “Don’t let anyone else up here until I find out what’s going on.” A chorus of affirmatives came in over the comms. Then he turned to the man and said, “Tell me what’s going on.”

  Brent breathed heavily through obvious pain. “We stopped at a clearing a few miles down the road last night and set up camp. This morning, we were attacked by a group of men.” His eyes looked haunted. “They started shooting us, mostly our men and a couple of kids.” He looked ashamed for a moment. “Not the women.”

  The truth dawned on Jensen. Someone had taken it upon themselves to find suitable mates in the apocalypse, willing or not, and would kill to get them. It was amazing how quickly some men would become savages when there was no authority around to police them.

  “We’ve got two pickup trucks coming through the intersection now,” Dave said over the radio.

  Jensen looked at Brent, who said, “That’s them.”

  Jensen checked Brent for weapons again, and finding none, said, “Stay right here. Do not make a move toward one of the other vehicles, do not move toward the cabin. If you do, you will be killed. Do I make myself clear?” Brent nodded, his face white with pain. The shock of the gunshot was wearing off and the pain was steadily increasing.

  The military leader of the small band from the mountain regained the safety of his cockpit and got on the radio. “Dave, keep an eye on the intersection and let us know if anyone else comes through. Everyone else, I’m going to let the rest of the vehicles come up here. Keep them in the center of the clearing and keep them covered.”

  Jensen rolled his tub back down the road. He said over the loudspeaker, “We have company inbound. Take your cars to the center of the clearing and stay there.” He pulled to the side and watched as the men and women got back into the cars, one quickly running up to the red car that Brent had been driving. The all eagerly set off for the safety of the clearing. He tried to count the survivors as they went forward: three men, two women, and a child. That was all that remained of the dozen-plus vehicle convoy from the day before.

  A boiling rage filled Jensen as he thought about the men in the trucks. He’d fought people like these overseas, people who thought they could take what they wanted. People who raped and murdered innocents. No—not people—animals. Well, he would treat them like animals.

  As the first truck climbed into view with the engine roaring, Jensen saw the men inside. The driver had a shaved head and large, bushy beard. He was heavyset. He was smiling. Jensen wiped that smile off his face with a well-placed burst from his twin machine guns. As the truck rolled to a stop into the front in a tree, he shot another, longer burst into the cab, decimating the other two men inside.

  As he turned his attention to the second truck, he saw scared men trying desperately to back away from the armored beast. This wasn’t the mostly defenseless men and women they’d attacked from out of the dark, this was a killing machine. Jensen rolled forward, shortening the gap to the new vehicle. He keyed the loudspeaker. “If you surrender, you will not be killed.”

  Jensen watched as the two men in the front seat began to argue, one clearly wanting to stop and test his promise, the other desperate to get away. It was enough that the rear bumper clipped a tree on the side of the road and crunched the tailgate and quarter panel, bringing the truck to a momentary stop. As it started to reverse again, Jensen sprayed the interior with more copper-jacketed death. He had hoped to get answers first, but hadn’t intended to let them live anyway.

  He slowly crept up near the second truck and confirmed that the men inside were dead, then he reversed up the hill to the first truck and did the same. There were no survivors, and two of the men, including the driver, probably couldn’t even be identified by dental records. As he reversed the rest of the way up the hill, Jensen got on the radio again. “Both targets down, no survivors. Any trouble up there?”

  Daniel answered, “All good here. Sheila is attending to the first man.”

  Jensen swore softly. He didn’t much care if the man died as long as his people were safe. He didn’t like Sheila putting herself in danger to help, or possibly becoming a hostage to the group of recent arrivals. He sped up slightly.

  “Dave, any change?”

  The terse response was “Nothing yet.”

  In the clearing, Sheila used the medical supplies from the vet’s office and to treat a bullet wound on the older man’s side. It hadn’t hit anything vital, but the blood loss would leave him weak and it would hurt to bend or twist for a long time. Jensen shrugged his shoulder, waiting for the twinge of pain from his own healing wound. Digging graves and carrying Todd to his tub had caused it to flare up. Bullet wounds sucked.

  Jensen addressed one of the women, a heavyset blonde sitting with her back up against a blue car he didn’t recognize. “Were there more than five of them?” She looked at him quizzically. “I killed five of them in two pickup trucks. How many were there?”

  She thought for a second, “I don’t know. We didn’t see them until after they started shooting. There could have been five, there could have been more.”

  “How about the trucks. How many trucks did you see?”

  The blonde lady looked up at him. “We didn’t see any. They came out of the woods.”

  Jensen had hoped to get useful information, but he already knew his answer: there were more of them. He knew because if they had attacked the encampment and focused on killing the men, then the surviving women had to be somewhere, and they weren’t in the two trucks he’d just destroyed.

  “Dave? Can you come back in?” He waited impatiently for a moment.

  “Roger—moving,” was the response. He didn’t know what Dave had done in the radio battalion, but he seemed to have some experience beyond what one would expect from an intel guy. It took several minutes for Dave to return, and in that time, Sheila had given Brent an IV to help replace lost fluids and laid him down in the back of one of the vehicles. She hung the lactated ringer bag from the garment hook in the back seat.

  Jensen directed Dave and Sheila to provide overwatch on the group using one of the Humvees while the other remained facing the entry. “Nobody go near them, and don’t let them away from the vehicles. Daniel and I are going hunting.”

  Jensen smiled grimly. If those men were still around, he would find them a
nd bring them to justice.

  Daniel nodded inside his cockpit, ready to roll. The woman told them, “We were in a clearing a couple miles down the road.”

  Moments later they were in motion. The site was easy to find. There were cars parked up and down the side of the road with the doors hanging open. There were bodies in the cars, on the road, and in the clearing. Further down the road was a large pickup hooked to a cattle trailer. Jensen saw movement inside the trailer. It was several women, clustered together for safety. Jensen didn’t see any men, but he was sure those women would know where they were.

  On the loudspeaker, he simply said, “Point to them,” and watched as several arms pointed to a hill across the road from the clearing. The arms had been zip-tied together. Jensen didn’t see anything through the trees, but he knew that Daniel had when the staccato beat of his machine guns blasted out across the clearing, followed by a loud ‘crump’ as an HE grenade struck partway up the hill.

  Jensen could see them now, at least parts of them, as orange-clad bits and pieces flew away from the impact site along with branches from the nearby trees. He nudged his tub up alongside the trailer, hoping to protect those inside from shrapnel, which was still clattering to the road and off the metal of the trailer. He kept his eyes moving, looking through the trees for any horizontal movement. He knew that the remains of the blast would be falling vertically, and any horizontal movement could be another target, but he saw nothing.

  It was several more minutes before Jensen was ready to venture outside the protection of his cockpit. He hadn’t survived several deployments by being hasty in his movements. He pulled his tub forward slightly, putting it between the destroyed hillside and the doors of the trailer. After looking around one more time, he dismounted and opened the doors. Then he pulled his knife from the sheath on his vest and cut the ties on a red-haired woman near the door before handing her the knife to do the same for the others.