Bankrupt: Wipeout Book 6: (A Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Series)

by ES Richards

  As Art squeezed her hand, Jessie realized she had silently started to cry. Blinking back the tears, Kauai was nothing more than a non-descript island in the distance now. One day she would see it again, but for now she needed to be thankful for what she still had. Her family was alive and healthy, still fighting with every new day they were given. It was going take more than a broken world to tear them down. Trident may have fallen, but they were still standing strong.

  Come on, world, Jessie thought as Kauai disappeared from view. What else have you got for me?

  Chapter 23

  “Retreat!” Taggy bellowed as loudly as she possibly could, her voice barely audible over the sound of falling rock. The building above them was crumbling at an alarming rate, brick and mortar crashing down around them as the few that were left with Taggy desperately tried to escape. She led the charge, urging as many as she could to follow her, but before long Taggy just had to turn around and run. If she didn’t move before it was too late, she wasn’t going to make it out alive.

  Sprinting away from the scene, Taggy and her fractured team started making their way south, out of Williamsburg and back to the relative safety away from the river. The Gov were just too well organized and equipped in that area, there was no way their divided groups were going to find a way through.

  As she ran, Taggy glanced to her left and out of the corner of her eye, saw a flash of orange. Immediately her pace slowed, and she peered through the building to the left of her, her gaze passing through the dusty windows and through the abandoned rooms to the street on the other side.

  “Hey!” She couldn’t believe it, skidding to a stop and causing those around her to halt as well. “Look – it’s the others! Luc! Billy! Austin!”

  Taggy couldn’t make out exactly who was in the alley on the other side, but the orange armbands they wore around their right bicep were unmistakable. The brightly colored cloth had been chosen for a reason and in that moment, Taggy found herself incredibly thankful for it. Her little group hadn’t yet been noticed by the others, but as she set to work breaking down one of the doors into the building, things didn’t stay like that for long.

  “What happened?” Taggy asked Luc in a concerned voice as she released him from her hug minutes later, noticing the wound on his shoulder and the way he’d winced as she wrapped her arms around him. “Are you okay?”

  “Just a flesh wound,” Luc smiled in reply. “It’s nothing to worry about. How are you? Is this all that’s left?”

  Taggy nodded. After their faction had been divided, the group of them Taggy was left with had come under serious fire. From the moment she last saw Luc until now, it had been hours of dodging attacks and fleeing into new areas they hoped were safe, only for the ordeal to begin again. They’d not managed to gain any ground or do any real damage to the Gov, from her perspective, this was a battle they were very steadily losing.

  “What about you guys?” Taggy asked in response, not feeling the need to explain away the friends that had died in the last couple of hours. “Where’s Billy?”

  “He didn’t make it,” Luc looked down at the ground. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hey,” Taggy placed a hand on her friend’s uninjured shoulder. “It’s not your fault. I’m sure you did everything you could.”

  “We just keep getting pushed back further and further,” Luc sighed. “Unless something changes, we’re going to end up with less than what we had when we started.”

  “We won’t,” Taggy shook her head defiantly. One thing she was not good at was accepting defeat – no matter how bad the circumstances looked, she was always determined to carry on. “We just need another tactic,” she mused, “we need to hit them somewhere they’re not expecting it.”

  “But where? What can we do?”

  The question wasn’t just for Taggy, but the whole group. There were nine of them left now and while there were plenty of other teams that had set out from the cave that morning, none of them were nearby and they had no idea of knowing if they were faring any better. As things stood, they were on their own and they needed to come up with something to help them win back the power. But that was a lot easier said than done.

  “Why don’t we go up?”

  The suggestion came from Austin, the man looking upwards at the buildings above their heads. New York was a city filled with high rise buildings, but the once formidable skyline was nothing like it used to be now. Fires had raged through the streets with a vengeance, changing the outline of the city forever. Where once thousands of buildings had towered above them, now stood only a handful – meaning the streets were more open than they had ever been before. Eight other pairs of eyes followed Austin’s gaze up to the sky and thought about what he was saying, waiting for him to explain his idea.

  “If we gain the higher ground, then we gain the advantage, right?” Austin looked to Luc and then Taggy, followed by several others as he let his words sink in. “They won’t be able to tell where the bullets are coming from if we stay hidden – we’ll be able to pick them off one by one without them even realizing it.”

  “But if they do see us, then we’re done for.”

  “Yeah,” Taggy nodded, “if they know we’re trapped in one of the buildings, then we’re effectively sitting ducks.”

  “So, we don’t let them see us,” Austin replied simply. “We just need to be careful. It’s not foolproof, but it’s the best thing we’ve got. Use the sun to our advantage, looking up at certain angles, they won’t be able to see past the glare anyway. We can do this. It can work. Half of the street is effectively ruins now,” Austin nodded to his left, where once magnificent buildings were now nothing more than rubble and dirt. “This will work. It has to.”

  “Alright,” Taggy agreed after a moment’s thought. “I’m in – let’s do three groups of three. Everyone aim for the top floor but be careful with your movements. Once we’re up there, it’s a long way down so if anyone isn’t up for this, speak now.” Taggy looked around the group of them for a couple of seconds, her eyes drifting over to Luc who gave her a reassuring smile and a faint nod. “Okay,” she continued when no one spoke up. “Good luck guys – we’ve got this.”

  Naturally, Taggy walked over to Luc and Austin and the three of them formed one of the trios set for the high-rise buildings around them. All of them would’ve preferred more time to think through this plan and figure out what was the safest way for them to get up there, but with gunfire constantly creeping closer in on them, time was not a luxury they could afford.

  “Come on,” Luc was the first of them to set off running, heading back in the direction they’d all just fled from, but aware it was where they needed to be if they were going to be in the heart of the action. “It’s good to have you back Taggy,” he smiled at her as they jogged alongside one another. “I knew you’d make it.”

  Taggy grinned, flicking some of her fiery red hair out of her face and over her shoulder. “You can’t get rid of me that easily,” she replied. “I’m not going anywhere until this is over.”

  For all three of them, being together again sparked a new lease on life and pushed them to achieve success. Luc slammed through a locked door into one of the tallest buildings, not far from the end of the street and headed straight for the stairs, Taggy and Austin hot on his heels. For the next several minutes they heard nothing but their feet pounding on the stairs and their breath coming out in pants and gasps as they climbed higher and higher, rising above the gunfire below and the chaos that filled the streets of the city.

  Funnily enough, as they raced up the stairs, Austin found himself thinking of Samuel. It was his friend who had inspired this idea in him, looking up at the buildings and remembering the tales Samuel had told him of his fear of heights. Unlike him, Austin found the height quite calming. The sounds from below grew duller and more distant, the clouds around them acting like a barricade to the madness and producing a tranquil world that was otherwise untouched. Until you looked down at it.

  I
n the penthouse apartment of the building, Luc, Taggy and Austin looked down at the city below them and all gaped at how much destruction had already been caused. Fires burned across the skyline, plumes of smoke filling the sky and blocking out the sunlight. Entire streets had been turned to rubble, the buildings nothing more than bricks and dust on the ground, the once straight neighborhoods of New York reshaped and removed.

  As far as the eye could see there was ruin, the city’s skyline changed even more by what had happened in the last few hours. And that was just Brooklyn. The three of them could only see so far, but if what they could see was anything to go by, the rest of New York was not going to be a pretty sight. With a combination of the fires and the fighting, the city was going to be near enough impossible to rebuild.

  “We’ve got to end this,” Taggy said as she walked away from the floor to ceiling window and untucked a stool from underneath the kitchen island. “Stand back.”

  Luc and Austin both did as they told, taking shelter behind a couch as Taggy withdrew her pistol and fired two shots at the window, the reinforced glass cracking but still holding solid. Taggy had expected as much and so she placed her Glock on the kitchen counter and picked up the stool, hurling the thing at the window with a furious cry that burst through the glass with the stool and exposed the three of them to the outside world.

  “Very dramatic,” Luc winked at her, unstrapping his rifle from his bag and digging around inside it for a long-range sight. “Here,” he picked out some binoculars and tossed them over to Austin. “Have a scout while I set this up, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  Unlike both Luc and Taggy, Austin didn’t have a gun that was equipped for long range. While he could still fire his Glock down on the Gov, his accuracy would be considerably limited and therefore not as effective as his two friends. The other trios would likely be set up a little lower down than they were to aid their shooting, but with Luc and Taggy both prepared for this sort of shooting distance, Austin was happy to play the field to their advantage. Lying down on his stomach, he shuffled closer to the edge of the shattered window, being careful not to cut himself on any stray shards of glass and looked down to the battleground below.

  Watching it all from above was a very different experience to being down in the streets. It was almost like an out of body experience, being so close up to the action through the magnifying lens and yet being entirely protected from the danger. Austin remained in position and relayed details of the Gov’s set up back to Taggy and Luc, instructing them where to aim and where to find the largest groups so they could sight their weapons and fire with ease.

  They worked as an efficient team, targeting the tightest groups of enemy soldiers that could be seen from their position, but no matter how many they picked off, more always seemed to appear. Recruits from the Gov operated under strict orders, moving in tightly packed units and advancing through the city like a well-oiled machine.

  “Ah jeez,” Austin removed the binoculars from his eyes and glanced over at Luc and Taggy quickly. “I think they’ve figured out what’s happening. There’s a bunch of them starting to focus on the buildings.”

  “Shuffle back a bit,” Luc instructed, “we can’t let them work out our position.”

  “They’re firing on another building – oh, no!” Austin let out a gasp. “It’s where Maxine, Fred and Shelly are. About two o’clock from our position. They need covering fire!”

  Luc and Taggy aimed their weapons where they were told, firing off round after round at the street below and doing what they could to give their friends a chance to retreat and recover. But now that the Gov knew they were in that building, they had only minutes to get out and find somewhere else to hide before they would be ambushed. Luc and Taggy had done what they could, but it was a race against the clock for the other three now as they desperately tried to survive.

  Austin watched as closely as he could, trying to see through the windows in the buildings and track their progress down to ground level. Just as he thought they were about to exit the building; a loud explosion erupted not far away and shook the whole street like a naughty child with a bagged fairground goldfish.

  “What was that?”

  The blast from the explosion was so powerful, the three of them could feel the heat of it. Austin didn’t need his binoculars to see where it had happened, the smoke and fire coming from just off the riverbank, not far from the Williamsburg Bridge that they had set out that morning to capture.

  “I don’t believe it,” Austin muttered as he pressed the binoculars back to his face, zooming in on the site of the explosion. “It’s the Rikers. They’ve come to fight.”

  “What? Let me see.”

  Austin handed the binoculars to Luc who took in the scene for a few seconds, furrowed his brow and then passed them onto Taggy. It was definitely the Rikers and they were coming down on the Gov with everything they had.

  “Where have they come from?” Taggy questioned. “What are they doing?”

  “I don’t know,” Luc said, pausing to look at the scene again. “But whatever their plan is, it’s working. The Gov are split now – they’re having to fight on both sides. This is our chance!”

  While Austin continued to watch the Rikers attack the Gov further up town, Luc and Taggy did what they did best and picked off the stragglers. The threat from the Rikers was far greater than the one they were posing, so all possible reinforcements began to head in that direction. That meant they were out on the streets and easy targets for the snipers which lay in wait above.

  “We’ve got to get down there,” Taggy said as she fired one last round, flooring a panicked soldier who ran for his life in the wrong direction. “We can secure this area and take the bridge. We need to act now.”

  “Hold up,” Luc stopped her for a moment. “We need to think about this, why are the Rikers here? If we go charging into them and they’re not here to help us, then we could be walking into another attack.”

  “I think they’re with us,” Austin replied, still on his stomach looking through the binoculars. “It looks like they’ve come to help.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I can be. But there’s only one way to find out.”

  “Okay,” Luc eventually nodded. “Let’s get down there and see what we can do.”

  Chapter 24

  Charging out onto the street, the three of them almost immediately crossed paths with Maxine, Fred and Shelly. As a trio, they looked far more worried and disheveled than Austin and his friends did, but it quickly dawned on the newly appointed lookout that they didn’t have a clue what was happening further north.

  “The Rikers are here,” Austin explained after their quick reunion and check that no one was injured. “They’ve blown up the bridge. We think they’ve come to help us.”

  “No way? What do we do?”

  “We’ve got to head up there and check it out,” Luc decided. “This could finally be our chance to push the Gov back and take back this area.”

  “Come on then,” Shelly cheered. “For the cave!”

  The streets in Williamsburg were very different now as the six of them jogged northwards, checking in doorways and down back alleys for hidden soldiers they might have missed. They also kept their eyes peeled for the other trio, but as they passed the last of the high-rise buildings, they sadly didn’t appear. Sounds of the attack from the Rikers kept their attention instead though, the question about whether the threat was dangerous or from an allied force yet to be determined.

  “Austin, your radio!”

  Austin had been so focused on what they were heading toward, that he didn’t even notice the familiar radio crackle that was coming from his belt until Fred pointed it out to him. The radio had been there the entire time, Samuel giving it to him before he set out that morning. They weren’t being used for regular communications though, only emergency transmissions as both Samuel and Walter needed the stations clear to deliver their messages out to the p
ublic. With that in mind, Austin picked up the small device and flicked the switch on the side, cautious of what sort of transmission he was about to obtain.

  “Receiving,” he spoke clearly and simply into the radio. “This is Austin Taylor. What’s happened? Over.”

  The radio crackled for a couple of seconds before a voice came out, by now everyone in their group looking in Austin’s direction and waiting for a response. “Austin… it’s Samuel. Do you read me? Over.”

  “I read you loud and clear. Is everything okay? What’s happened? Over.”

  “The Rikers are coming,” Samuel relayed over the transmission. “They’re on our side. I repeat, they’re on our side. Target is Williamsburg Bridge. Over.”

  Austin looked up at Luc and the others after hearing the message, a huge grin plastered across his face. “They’re here,” he replied, hardly believing their stroke of luck. “They’ve blown the bridge. Over.”

  “What? Already? Have you made contact with them? Over.”

  As elated as Austin and the others were to discover that the Rikers were truly on their side, as the sounds of gunfire continued in the streets ahead of them, they knew the fight was far from over just yet. Austin looked up from the radio and encouraged Luc and the others to go on, ready to follow right behind them once he’d gotten all the possible information out of his friend.

  “We’re making our way there now,” Austin replied. “What’s the deal? What are the terms? Over.”

  Listening to his friend explain the treaty that they had managed to make with the Rikers, while Luc led the other five of them toward the bridge, Austin let a smile drift across his face. This was exactly what they needed to win over the Gov and claim back the city, working with the Rikers wouldn’t be the easiest thing in the world, but they at least were willing to work with them and that was already a step in the right direction.