She settled the tentacle pod of her rifle on the lip of her armored basket. The little arms gripped hard, steadying her rifle better than and bipod. She zeroed in on the first Slark she’d seen through her scope. The scaly invader had figured out his position was compromised and launched his attack early. Claudia fired. Her rifle let loose with a whirring hiss, and the round lanced through the Slark’s chest as though he were little more than tissue paper. Dozens more followed the downed leader’s attack, flooding from the woods like the proper army Claudia secretly dreaded was hiding among the trees.
She didn’t lack for targets, and couldn’t spare the time to see if the burners were making good time. The Slark were moving faster and they didn’t need to mind the lasher trees. If she didn’t slow them, they would easily catch up to her men. She found a target, fired, downed it, found another target, fired, and felled that too. This continued until the gun in her hands began to radiate with such heat it threatened to cook her. She reluctantly pulled herself from her scope to see to her weapon. She followed through the cooling process of turning the heated sections out to replace them with the cooled portions that formerly faced out. The entire process of turning parts of her gun inside out felt like it took an eternity, but probably only soaked up less than thirty seconds.
When she returned her attention to the field ahead of her, she saw one of the Hungarians had taken a round from a Slark weapon. Four arms and the Slark still used projectile weapons mounted on their wrists, as though they couldn’t be bothered to hold the things. The uninjured brother returned for his limping kin while the Greek continued plowing forward through the grass, leaving a wide trail of stomped down vegetation behind him.
Claudia covered the brothers as best she could. The pressure of the situation along with the increased heat of her rifle made her shots slightly more erratic. She hit four out of every five, but she could tell the misses were leaving cracks she couldn’t afford. The uninjured Hungarian did his best to help defend himself and his brother by spraying at the grass behind them with his flamethrower, wielding it one handed. The wet grass reluctantly caught fire at first, but quickly took to the flames, creating huge infernos across the field, slowing the Slark, but also threatening everything, including the tractor.
“Bring me down,” Claudia demanded. Alfie did as he was ordered, lowering Claudia’s pod at an agonizingly slow pace. The tapped the little tentacle pod on her rifle with a bare finger and it released the edge of the basket. “Abandon the tractor,” Claudia ordered him as she slid down the ladder to land on the ground. “I need you to head back, warn the others, get to the city.”
“What about you, LT?” Alfie asked.
“I’m going to try to get to the other advanced position squads before the fire or the Slark surprise them too.” Claudia began walking out into the grass toward her fleeing men and the fire chasing them. She found targets dancing among the flames, smoke, and grass. She felled what few she could, wounding others, and missing a couple entirely.
The Greek ran past her first. Alfie did his best to help the stocky little burner get his helmet and gear off to run faster. The Hungarian brothers limped in close on the Greek’s heels, although Claudia could tell from all the blood slicking down the brown leather apron on the wounded brother that he wasn’t long for the world.
“Why not take tractor?” the Greek asked as Alfie pulled him back down the path they’d blazed getting there.
“If it burns up and the Slark find it, they might think we burned up near it, giving you a head start,” Claudia replied. “Now get going.”
Her four men did as ordered, although Alfie kept looking back to her as he fled. She turned toward the battle, pulled her scarf up over her mouth to block out the smoke, and charged into the field. She needed to get onto the other side of the fires, onto the other side of the Slark line, to pick her way along the trees. The smoke and brushfire might work as cover, but her window was closing. If she planned her shots right, she might have cut a proper tunnel through the inferno. As she ran into the burning field, she hoped she was right about the Slark formation being a skirmisher line or she’d be running right into a second wave.
The smoke made her eyes water, burned her throat, and sapped her already waning energy, but the only bodies she saw among the grass were the bloody corpses of the enemies she’d felled, finally releasing her on the other side of the line, a few dozen yards away from the forest.
She smiled in spite of herself. She figured she might owe Esme an apology. As exciting as it all was, Esme was right, Claudia was a danger to herself in combat situations.
Chapter 20:
Found Beyond the Vale.
Claudia stood on the other side of the line for a moment, mostly to catch her breath, but also to collect her thoughts. The sun dropped swiftly in the west, casting the last of the light of the day across the hills, creating long shadows of the smoke. If it was just a raid, she could find another tractor to return on. If it was more than a raid, as she supposed it to be, the Slark line likely stretched quite a ways in either direction. Alfie had said the coast was to the west and the freeway to the east. The freeway and the ruins of San Mateo likely had traffic of Slark and probably mutants, but the coast could be rocky and impassible if she didn’t know the way, and she didn’t. Plus, if the setting sun was at her back, she’d be harder to spot by any Slark she came up on. East was the best of two iffy options.
She took off at a light jog, rifle slung across her back. Her stamina in running, which used to be marvelous, was long gone from easy months and whatever damage she’d done to her lungs from the radioactive dust in Yuba City. She was walking soon, slowing even further when she started spotting the spires of unburned lasher trees. She considered briefly heading into the woods, but with twilight coming on fast, she suspected it would be a fantastic way to have all her limbs torn from her body by an unseen lasher tree that could be as tall as redwoods by now for all anyone knew.
Toward the top of the highest hill in the area, which took nearly everything she had to climb, she turned back to look down on the grasslands behind her that were nearly fully engulfed in flames and smoke. The already burned areas were scorched, black smudges across the landscape. A light wind had turned the fire to the west, further supporting her already made decision to head east. She was glad for the bit of luck for her fleeing men that they at least wouldn’t be pursued by the fire and even happier that the western edge of the Slark line would likely burn or have to retreat for a time.
Gunfire and shouting drew her away from her inspection of the inadvertently brilliant fire the Hungarian brothers started. She was well away from the tree line now without much cover. She crouched low in the grass and snuck up over the crest of the hill. With any luck, anyone in the vale below wouldn’t be able to see her with the setting sun fully at her back. She knelt at the apex and slid her rifle from her back to look through the scope. She spotted the Slark first, running in their strange gait after something that clearly had them confused and disorganized. Two of them ran past a lasher sapling and for some reason the tree opened up and snatched them both from the ground, taking special care to remove their legs before starting in on their arms. Claudia scanned farther up the valley toward the tree line to the southeast of her position, trying to find the source of the gunfire. A lone man with a rifle that looked like one of Dr. Gatling’s insane creations was firing back at the Slark, daring them to come get him, and landing well-placed shots on his pursuers.
She made the decision to help the man, who appeared to be on the numerically unfavorable end of a twenty to one situation. She scanned back to the Slark in time to spot two more passing by another lasher sapling. As they neared it, something shot into the frame of her scope. A rag wad or something dark and soft anyway, because when it struck the Slark, the alien registered momentary confusion, but no real injury. An instant after the ball struck the Slark the lasher tree opened wide and snatched the confused lizard from the ground. Claudia noted with some
amusement that the Slark weren’t putting up even the token struggle the mutated deer had. They must really never have thought they’d be on the receiving end of dismemberment at the hands of their own crops, she surmised.
She found a target, exhaled slowly to steady her breathing and heart rate, and fired. She toppled a Slark from the middle of the pack where she suspected they might not notice. The man felled two of the closest ranks to him after taking cover behind a few glacier washed boulders in the widening of a creek bed. Claudia sighted in on another Slark, popping one of the lizard’s eyes with her shot. The man behind the rock clearly figured out he had help on the ridge as he pressed the attack back up the valley when the Slark turned to escape the unseen sniper fire.
Claudia didn’t bother shooting after the fleeing dozen or so Slark. She couldn’t get them all anyway, and they weren’t posing any immediate threat worth wasting ammunition on. She honestly didn’t know exactly how long she could fire her new rifle before it would need more of the strange Slark fish juice or specialized metal shards. She had a few pouches of each on her belt, but ammo conservation was always smart behind enemy lines.
The man scanned the exact ridge Claudia was on, holding his hand above his eyes to shield them from the sun. He seemed to vaguely figure out where she was and waved in her general direction. Claudia sighed and began walking down toward him. She was going that direction anyway and the man had somehow figured out how to make the lashers eat Slark, which was worth asking about. The man, finally seeing her on the shaded face of the hill, began walking toward her as well.
“I don’t know who you are, but I’m mightily happy to see you,” the man said in a velvet smooth Scottish brogue. On closer inspection, he was tall, wiry, and in full possession of the boyish good looks most college advertisers would go nuts for. His eyes were sharp, pale, and green. His messy auburn hair threatened to fall in his face with every turn of his head.
“I’m Lieutenant Marceau,” Claudia said, a little surprised that he didn’t make a comment on her gender or size.
“Corporal Liam Gregory of Tractor 17, at your service, lieutenant,” Liam said with a sloppy salute as his attention kept returning up the valley to where the Slark had vanished over the next hill. “Think we ought to get moving? They’ve got a whole army somewhere back there.”
“I’m heading east, hoping to pick up stragglers to return to the City of Broken Bridges by the freeway ruins,” Claudia explained.
“Sounds better than the last plan I was following—I’m with you.”
They headed off immediately up the next rise to the east, having to double back a little to get fully around the creek bed, which was dwindling to a trickle in the late autumn. Claudia marveled at Liam’s height as they walked. He was nearly a full foot taller than her but moved with the agility and effortlessness of a mountain goat up the side of the bluff.
“What was your plan, exactly?” Claudia asked between increasingly heavy breaths as she was struggling to keep up.
“The plan you saw the end of wasn’t mine,” Liam explained, waiting a little for her to catch up. “Some sergeant or other from one of the other tractors came through, gathered up everyone’s shooters, a dozen in all, and said we were going to draw the Slark off to let the rest of the brigade get clear.”
“What happened to the others?”
“We got the Slark chasing us, far more than we expected even. Once we figured out we were on the other side, it was too late to head back through. The Slark got some, the lashers got others, until there was just me, and apparently you.”
“How did you get the lashers to kill the Slark?” Claudia was sick of seeing Liam having to stop to wait for her, although he clearly didn’t seem to mind. His eyes were constantly to the horizon, his attention all around him in equal parts, as though he couldn’t see enough of the world.
“Bloody rags and body parts,” Liam said cryptically. “I scooped up remains of the other shooters or scraps of their clothes that tore free readily enough, and threw them at the Slark chasing me. Lashers love the smell of our blood and don’t much care who it’s on.”
“That’s actually…brilliant,” Claudia said.
“Thanks, that plan was mine,” Liam said with a wink.
Claudia glanced to his gun. It was obviously made by Gatling as it had the eccentrically functional look to it commonplace to all his inventions. It was a six barrel rifle, set in a wheel pattern like a Gatling gun. The front brace and rear grip were both handles with a folding stock and open sights along the top. Liam must have amazing eyesight to shoot such a weapon at distance without aid of a scope. Liam caught on her inspection of the gun and flipped it into one hand to show it to her.
“I call her Six-shooter Sally,” Liam said with a silly grin, his hair falling across his left eye.
“It looks like one of Gatling’s weaponstrosities,” Claudia replied.
“Yep, he was particularly proud of this one and even equipped some of the other shooters with them,” Liam said as they walked on once Claudia had caught her breath. “I was joking about the name. I didn’t really name my rifle. That always seemed like such a juvenile thing to do with a weapon. Unless you named yours, in which case I was joking about joking.”
“No,” Claudia said with a grin, “I’ve never named my rifles.”
“I thought not,” Liam replied. “You have the look of a sensible woman.”
They walked on, heading east into the growing darkness. At the bottom of the next valley over, with a hill that might rightly be called a small mountain ahead of them, they found another creek, this one healthier than the last with a proper flow going down into the forest. Claudia made for the water to fill her entirely dry canteen and splash some of the water along the back of her neck. Liam caught her by the shoulder before she could do either.
“Whoa there, lieutenant,” Liam said, “that’s likely as radioactive as everything around here. It might not hurt you to splash around in it, but you certainly shouldn’t drink any.”
“I’m…”
Liam nodded and let go of her shoulder as if seeing her peculiar eye for the first time. “Irradiated.”
“Yes,” Claudia replied. She dunked her canteen into the water and dropped a couple iodine tablets in after. “I’m probably more radioactive than the water.”
They stood in silence for a bit at the edge of the stream. Darkness was nearly fully upon them when Liam finally spoke. “We can’t keep going in this. We’ll likely get snatched up by a lasher or stumble right into a Slark camp.”
“The former, but not the latter,” Claudia replied. She closed her normal eye and pointed along the sky. “I can see their communication beams. There’s a whole army out there talking through those flickering lights.” The strange beams of light that she knew no human besides her could see drew in from the entire peninsula north of them, heading toward a single point in the south somewhere in the forest. It was just as she’d feared. There was an invasion force headed toward the wall and she was on the wrong side of both.
Liam proved to be a remarkable wilderness survivor in his own right. He found a few bushes along the edge of the stream, hacked away a handful of branches, and constructed an impromptu shelter between two rocks. A fire wasn’t out of the question as there were plenty of other fires around the valley that might dilute the threat, but Claudia and Liam agreed even the tiny risk it would pose wasn’t worth the fraction of warmth they might get from it. They crawled into the little shelter on the back of the creek and huddled closer to one another for warmth.
“What did you mean when you said you could see their communication beams?” Liam asked in a whisper.
“My irradiated eye changed enough to see in other light spectrums outside the visible range,” Claudia explained the concept she wasn’t entirely clear on herself. “Dr. Gatling said he thought the Slark communicated through light beams we could not see—now I can see them.”
“I’m just a foot soldier, shooting in the direction the
y tell me to shoot, but that sounds like a skill we’d want to make use of. Why would command risk putting you on a tractor?”
Claudia considered the question for awhile. She didn’t think Liam knew she was the new supreme commander’s daughter, nor was he likely to know her father was a firm believer in making a person earn their place. It was a valid question though and one she didn’t have an answer for. “Beyond my pay grade,” Claudia replied.
They drifted off to sleep, only to be awoken by the reason wildfires struggled to find purchase in the late autumn. Rain, like cold daggers, began falling, accompanied by an oppressive fog. Claudia and Liam both awoke when their branch roof began leaking in on them. It was pitch black and freezing. Fixing up the shelter wasn’t an option and building a fire was an impossibility. Instinctively, Claudia and Liam pressed against one another to maintain what little warmth remained.
The embrace, born out of the need for survival, felt far more intimate than Claudia thought it would. Liam wrapped around the outside of her in something of a protective shell with her face pressed close to his chest, just below where his collar bones ended. When she’d slept with Danny, the quiet, intimate moments of intertwined bodies after sex almost always resulted in Danny taking on a protected posture with his head near her chest. Danny was so strong in his public persona that it was strange to find him vulnerable when they were alone. In juxtaposition, Claudia rather enjoyed the protected feeling that having Liam wrapped around her provided. The fresh rain and wet vegetation aside, which had a pleasing scent all on its own, Liam had the difficult to describe smell of a man. Claudia had nearly forgotten how enjoyable the scents of leather, gun oil, and male sweat could be up close.
The Steam-Powered Sniper in the City of Broken Bridges (The Raven Ladies Book 2) Page 18
