Chris didn’t reply. What was he doing here? He thought he knew once, but no longer. No amount of blood or death was going to bring Rachael back. Gentle Rachael, the girl who’d wanted to raise chickens, what would she say if she saw him now?
Mike examined the retro camp with a seasoned eye. “No more fighting in them today, filthy cowards. Oh well, guess I’ll get some chow. You coming?”
Chris wasn’t hungry, but he didn’t feel like watching dying retros gasping out their final breaths either. “Sure. Let’s g—” He trailed off as he spotted a soldier in a too-clean uniform making his way along the wall toward him.
Mike tapped his shoulder. “Earth to Chris, you coming or not?”
The soldier coming their way kept banging his sword sheath against the battlements, as if unused to carrying the weapon. Chris shook his head. “You go ahead. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Suit yourself.” Slinging his muzzleloader over his shoulder, Mike headed for the stairs leading down to the courtyard.
When the awkward soldier finally reached him, Chris grabbed the man’s sleeve and turned him away from the courtyard. “Look out toward the field. Not many up here know you, but the watch commander is part of the committee. What are you doing up here?”
Joe Watson didn’t look well. His eyes were red and bloodshot and his cheeks sported a two-day beard. A thin film of sweat covered his face. “I had to see you, Chris. They’ll kill me if they find out, but I had to tell someone, anyone. The committee...Dr. Olsten...it’s madness, Chris!”
“Keep your voice down,” Chris hissed. “Just tell me what’s happened. Is it the gunpowder? Are we finally out of bombs?”
Joe blinked. “Out of gunpowder? What…no. I mean yes. But it’s worse than that. They’re going to use a different type of bomb.”
“You’re not making any sense, Joe. What do you mean a different type of bomb?”
A group of nearby soldiers laughed aloud.
Joe jerked. Casting a nervous glance at the men, he wiped a hand across his sweaty brow. “Remember what I said about your injection?”
“You said it was a retrovirus, whatever that is.”
“It’s a virus designed to counter another virus,” Joe explained. “It’s supposed to protect you from the pathogen the committee is going to release, the virus bombs they’re planning to lob into the retro camp.”
“The committee is going to use biological weapons?” Looking out toward the forest of tents, Chris imagined hundreds of retros choking and hacking as poisonous mist enveloped their camp. “I guess it’s better than the alternative. Maybe it’ll convince the retros to give up. Maybe they’ll finally leave us alone.”
Joe grabbed his shoulders. “You don’t understand. This isn’t tear gas we’re talking about. It’s an engineered virus. It will spread. And without treatment, it is ninety-nine percent lethal!”
Cold dread squeezed down on Chris’s heart. “What are you saying, Joe?”
“This facility is the last holdout of a better time, an age of reason and science. Once it falls, we will all descend into a medieval darkness. The committee has concluded there is only one option, one way to save humanity from itself. Once the virus hits the retro camp, it won’t stop until it’s infected every man, woman, and child on the planet.”
“That’s insane,” Chris whispered. “You can’t save people by killing them.”
“Insane or not, the virus bombs are scheduled to be launched.” Joe looked toward the monastery tower. “Within hours, retros will begin to die. In a matter of months, this world will be a graveyard.”
***
In an alcove just outside the mess hall, Chris outlined the committee’s apocalyptic designs to Mike.
Mike rubbed his palm over his scalp. “So, it’s to be Armageddon then.” He sounded strange, distant.
Chris nodded. “Unless we do something to stop them, yeah. Seems like the eggheads upstairs have gone loco.” He leaned back against the alcove wall. “My life hasn’t meant squat to me since Rachael died. That’s why I volunteered, not because I was trying to make a difference or because I have high moral ideals. I mean, I hate the retros, Mike. You know I do, but this—”
“You’re going to try to stop them.” Mike turned and spit. “You have a plan, I suppose, something suicidal with little or no chance of success?”
Chris chuckled dryly. “Yep. You in?”
Mike hefted his rifle. “Just tell me who to shoot.”
Inwardly, Chris breathed a huge sigh of relief. It had been a risk enlisting Mike’s help. The man hated the retros with a fervor bordering on insanity. That said, he’d never met anyone who was better in a scrap.
Moving out of the alcove, Chris started toward the monastery tower. “Come on.”
“Lead the way, hero.”
Chris explained the plan he and Joe had come up with as they walked. “We don’t have much time, so here’s the deal. Joe says the committee didn’t actually invent the virus or the retrovirus that makes us immune. It was part of a shipment stored here when the war began, a gift from a biological weapons facility.”
Mike looked thoughtful. “You’re saying the committee has a limited supply of the virus,” he surmised. “But even if we destroy the bombs on the tower, how do we know they don’t have more?”
“Joe,” Chris answered simply. “Even before he came to me, he snuck into the storage room and added bleach to the containment barrels. I’ve also given him a list of names, those I judged aren’t so fanatically loyal to the committee that they would condone genocide.”
“You’re thinking mutiny?”
Chris checked his rifle, making sure the firing pin was free of any dirt that might cause a misfire. “Hopefully. Anyway, while Joe’s rounding up as many supporters as he can, we have to keep those bombs from launching.”
Mike nodded toward the two guards standing outside the tower door. “Okay, but the monastery interior guards are all in the pocket of the committee. They’re not going to let us near those catapults.”
Chris thumbed back the hammer of his rifle.
Mike spit. “Gotcha.” He readied his own gun. “This is the suicide part.”
When they were ten feet from the tower, one of the guards raised his arm, palm out. “That’s far enough,” he said. “What do you want?”
Chris hesitated. This was the part he’d been dreading. These were men he’d fought beside, men he’d shed blood beside. Killing retros was one thing, but these men were his battle brothers.
As if sensing Chris’s reluctance, Mike stepped forward with a friendly smile. “Evening, fellas,” he said amiably. “Great day to save the world, don’t you think?”
The guards looked at each other. “Wha—?”
Mike fired from the hip, blowing a hole up through the first guard’s chin and out the top of his skull.
The second guard scrambled for his gun. Chris put a bullet into his forehead.
Dropping his spent rifle, Mike swept up the guards’ guns and handed one to Chris. “Take it. It’s still loaded.”
An alarm began to sound and soldiers began to spill out of the barracks and mess hall. Some of them were pointing toward the tower.
“Well, it’s a party now.” Mike stepped over the corpses and opened the tower’s stainless steel door. “Let’s get a move on.”
A bullet whined off the tower wall.
Chris ducked inside and Mike closed the door behind him. There were metal brackets welded to the inner side of the door. “We need to block this entrance. It’s the only way in.”
“Here.” Mike pointed to a six-foot wooden beam propped up against the wall. Handing his rifle to Chris, he picked up the beam and dropped it into the brackets. “That should hold them.”
Chris handed Mike back his rifle. “For awhile, at least.”
The door began to rattle beneath banging fists as Chris and Mike started up the long spiral staircase that led to the roof.
“There are more guards up there,
I’ll bet,” Chris said as they climbed. “All this ruckus is going to bring them running. They might even fire the virus bombs early.”
Mike huffed out a laugh. “Hah! Wouldn’t that be a...kick in the pants, all this running...around for...nothing?”
They ran on. Halfway to the top, they turned a corner and came face to face with three leveled rifles.
“Duck!” Chris dived and fired. Every gun seemed to go off at once. Grey smoke blinded him and his ears rang painfully.
A limp body tumbled past, a guard. Behind it, a dim outline was busily reloading a rifle. Ripping his sword from its sheath, Chris sprang through the smoke and buried his blade into the guard’s stomach before he could finish.
The guard screamed and fell. Another took his place, this one swinging a sword.
Off balance, Chris backpedalled, parrying wildly.
An axe swung down into the guard’s foot. He opened his mouth to scream, and Chris’s backhand opened his throat.
Chris stepped back to give the guard room to fall. “What took you?”
Pointing to a thumb-sized hole in his shoulder, Mike shrugged. “One of them got lucky, knocked me back a bit.”
Chris examined the bullet hole critically. It was in the meat of Mike’s shoulder, a flesh wound with a clean exit at the back. Tearing strips from his shirt, he plugged the holes to stop the bleeding. “Didn’t you hear me say duck?”
Mike rolled his wounded shoulder experimentally. “You little guys are faster than me.” He pointed down at the fallen guards with his axe. “Should we take their guns?”
Chris started up the stairs. “Leave them. They’re all empty and we don’t have time to reload.”
Nodding grimly, Mike followed.
The stairwell ended at a small landing and a closed wooden door. Tiptoeing closer, Mike pressed his ear to the door.
“How many?” Chris breathed.
Mike listened for a moment before answering. “Six or seven maybe.”
Chris bit his lip. “Seven?” Three was standard. The committee must have doubled the watch before launching the virus.
Moving away from the door, Mike cast a meaningful glance toward the stairs. “We could still get the guns. Or we could wait for Joe and the cavalry. I don’t figure we—”
Chris silenced him with a cutting motion. “Do you hear that?” There was a metal squeaking coming from beyond the door, coupled with a sound like a fingernail plucking a bowstring.
Mike cocked his head. “It sounds like pulleys.”
Chris swore. “That’s the catapults being pulled back. They’re getting ready to fire the bombs!” Backing up as far as the platform allowed, he charged the door.
“Chris, wait!”
The door shattered before Chris’s shoulder. A dozen men labored on the far side of the roof, cranking back the pegged wheels of the second of three massive catapults built of cedar and black iron. The first machine was already cocked and ready. Its basket was filled with fragile-looking glass cylinders.
Screaming out a battle cry, Chris charged.
The catapult operators abandoned the second engine and went for their guns.
Hot lead zipped around Chris as he sprinted toward the men. He was outnumbered and had no gun. He needed to get close, too close for the operators to fire at him without the risk of hitting one another.
A line of fire creased his hip just as he reached the catapults, spinning him around.
Chris bit down on the pain and swung his sword in a wide arc. His blade clanged off a raised rifle, slicing away two fingers and eliciting a shriek from the weapon’s owner. And then he was fighting for his life against more men than he’d ever faced alone.
He stabbed and rolled, parried and kicked. In seconds, hot pain ripped at him from a dozen open cuts, but he fought on. Swords sought his vitals, and rifle butts and boots sought to bash in his skull. There was pain in every twist, blood and death at every turn.
He was going to die. And the real kicker was, he was going to die to save retros, the same heartless fanatics that had cost him his wife. It would be ironic if it weren’t so stupid, so insanely and completely stupid!
Blocking the blows he could see, absorbing those he couldn’t, Chris screamed out his frustration and rage, punishing every man who came within reach of his sword. Blood covered his face, some of it his own, and he screamed at the world. It was all so stupid!
In his mind, Rachael smiled up at him in a dead retro’s face.
Chris blocked a guard’s sword and then kicked hard at his ankle. The guard stumbled back, but Chris couldn’t follow through with the counter. He was busy parrying the stabbing thrusts of another.
The man that had stumbled raised his sword and started to smile, until a huge axe destroyed his face.
“Come on!” Mike roared, plowing into the guards. “Death is waiting!”
The bald giant swung his axe, mowing down men like wheat. Chris slipped in beside him with the air of long practice. This was a ballet they’d danced many times, a savage song of death learned over months of bitter combat.
Men fought. Men shouted. Men died.
Suddenly, it was over. Bruised, weary, and bleeding, Chris and Mike stood alone, surrounded by the dead.
Slowly, Chris lowered his sword, scarcely believing he was still alive. “You okay, Mike?”
Mike spat on a disemboweled corpse. “Peachy.” One of his eyes was swollen shut, and like Chris, he was covered in blood.
“Chris!”
Chris raised his sword and swung around.
Joe, followed by a dozen men, who normally manned the wall, ran out onto the roof.
Chris lowered his sword once again. “Cripes, Joe. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
Joe laughed as he reached him, and then caught him up in a painful hug. “You were right about the men, Chris! They all hate the retros, but none were willing to wipe out the entire planet. The committee’s already fled the monastery with what’s left of their loyal guards. We’ve won!”
Chris extracted himself from the doctor’s grasp. “Thank God. I’d hate to have to do something like this twice. Now all we have to worry about is finding a way to fight the retros without eggs.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Mike said. He was standing next to the loaded catapult, his axe poised over the rope release. “I don’t think the retros will be a problem anymore.”
An icicle of dread slipped into Chris’s heart. “Mike, what are you doing?”
Mike raised an eyebrow. “What I always do, Chris. I’m going to kill some retros.”
“What are you talking about?” Chris demanded. “We nearly died to keep those things from firing!”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Mike looked out at the retro camp. “I came to watch your back, not to stop the bombs.”
Some of the men Joe had brought inched toward the catapult.
“Uh-uh, boys.” Mike’s axe touched the rope, the razor edge parting a finger’s width of fiber.
The men stopped in their tracks.
Chris dropped his sword. This couldn’t be happening, not after all this. “Listen to me, Mike. I know how you feel. I do. Rachael, my wife, she was everything to me. The retros killed her, and since she died, I’ve spent every moment of my life trying to make them pay. But Rachael wouldn’t want this. And I don’t think Susie would either.”
Mike stared at him for a long moment, saying nothing. Suddenly, bright tears filled his eyes. “She was all I had,” he choked. “She was my little girl, and they took her from me!”
“I know, Mike. But killing can’t bring either of them back. I know that now.” Chris thought of Rachael and her warm smile. For the first time in two years, the memory didn’t bring him grief. “It won’t give us peace. It has to end.”
Mike sniffed. Taking a deep breath, he wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand. “You always were smart, Chris. I’ve killed more men than I can remember, and you’re right. There is no peace in murder.
” Lifting his axe from the rope, he gave a sad smile. “So, I’ll settle for revenge.”
“No!”
The axe swung down, cutting the rope. The catapult snapped straight, sending its viral load raining down on the retro camp.
“Sweet Heaven,” Joe wailed. “Do you know what you’ve done? Only we few have been inoculated!”
Chris fell to his knees. “It’s the end of the world, of everyone.” Oh Rachael, what have we done? What have I done? “We’ve killed them all.”
2013: The Aftermath Page 30
