A chunk of concrete slammed into Audrey’s shoulder, knocking her out of her seat. She hit the floor so hard it knocked the breath out of her. When she could breathe again, she almost wished she couldn’t. Her entire body throbbed with pain. She touched her right temple and her hand came away covered in blood.
She turned her head carefully. Foster was gone, buried under a pile of rubble, a single pale hand poking from the debris, clutching at nothing. The ceiling above where he’d stood was now a gaping hole.
“Audrey?”
She barely recognized the hoarse whisper. “I’m here Micah. I can’t … I can’t move.”
“Sorry, Audrey.” His voice was slurred. “I thought … safe. Got the bastard. Got him … dead …” Micah’s voice trailed to a whisper.
“Micah?”
She could hear his breathing, a harsh rattle in the stillness. “Micah? Micah, can you hear me?” She managed to pull herself up, arm clamped tightly to her side, pain screaming through every nerve. There was no way she could stand so she pulled herself along the floor ignoring the thick blood trail she left behind her.
Panting, dizzy with blood loss, she peered around the wreckage.
“No,” it came out a breathy moan. “Oh, no.”
They’d won. The dragon was, indeed, dead. Its smoking hulk lying on the ground outside the bunker blocked out most of the skyline, but it was missing one critical body part: its head. Not even those creatures could come back from that. But at what cost?
Audrey blinked. The room was getting darker. Breath wheezed through her lungs, each inhalation becoming more labored. Her eyes latched on to the unmoving form of Lieutenant Micah Caine lying in the shadow of the dead beast.
The monster was dead, but so was the lieutenant. So were they all. She didn’t have enough strength left to cry.
The last thing Audrey Harrison ever saw was the beautiful face of the man she had secretly loved, his blue eyes staring blindly at a sky just beginning to light with dawn.
***
“This is it.” Rain Mauri squatted at the top of the escarpment, faded map held in front of her. The pastel colors denoting long-vanished borders meant nothing to her, but there were other landmarks to follow. Most of them handwritten decades after the map had left the printer.
Sutter scanned the valley below. “Ain’t nothing much here but dust.”
Rain stood, letting her eyes, hidden behind a beat-up pair of dark glasses, roam over the barren landscape. He was right. The entire valley was one big dust bowl. Not a tree in sight, not even a bush. “There.” She pointed to a heap of gray stones in the distance. “That’s it.”
“Still don’t see it.” Sutter lifted his grimy baseball cap, and scratched his scalp. He’d shaved his head before they left the compound and it was starting to grow back, a black shadow against coffee skin.
“Seriously? You don’t see that giant pile of rocks?”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course I see the giant pile of rocks, Rain. Just don’t see what’s so special about that particular pile of rocks. Lots of rock piles closer to Sanctuary if you’re desperate for rocks.”
Rain shrugged and started down the hillside. The path was treacherous with loose stones and crumbling earth and her boots were just this side of worn out, but she didn’t hesitate. Sutter sighed and followed.
When they reached the bottom, Rain realized the valley wasn’t quite as barren as it looked from above. Here and there fragile shoots of grass bravely raised their heads above the ravaged soil. Nature was making a comeback. Or at least trying.
She headed toward the rock pile which began to look less like rocks and more like rubble the closer they got.
“That’s a concrete building.” Sutter’s voice held a hint of surprise. “Or what’s left of it anyway.”
Rain nodded and hitched her rifle a little higher over her shoulder. They were safe enough during daytime, but it never hurt to be prepared. “Old U.S. Army bunker. It was abandoned before the War.”
He shot her a look. “There are scorch marks on some of that rubble. Those beasts don’t attack abandoned buildings.”
Rain smiled. “Ever heard of Caine’s Last Stand?”
“No way! This is it?”
“Yep. This is it.” Her smile widened, flashing dimples.
Caine’s Last Stand was legendary. A tale told around countless campfires, whispered on dark nights. It had grown and changed until it resembled a tale from one of those ancient comic books Sutter thought no one knew about. Most people thought it was just a story made up by the Army during the War to keep up the spirits of the soldiers fighting a losing battle.
Rain knew different. Maybe the details had changed over time, but the story was real. Lieutenant Micah Caine had been real. And so had his sacrifice. She’d discovered the files that proved it and now she’d finally found the place where it had happened.
“Come on.” She led the way across the scattered rubble to what remained of a set of concrete stairs, worn and broken by time and battle. Sutter followed her down into the ruined military bunker.
“Wow, that’s a hell of a gun.” Sutter’s eyes grew wide at the sight of the enormous rail gun, barrel pointed skyward. After decades of exposure to the elements it was impressive, but useless. Not to mention the thing wouldn’t work without electricity. Rain was far more interested in the remains huddled at the foot of the giant gun.
Time and vermin had scattered the bones and rotted the clothing, but she knew who it was. “Audrey Harrison. She was a librarian before the war. By all accounts a pacifist.” Rain had done her homework. Caine’s Last Stand had been an obsession since childhood.
Sutter’s brown eyes widened as he scratched at the three-day growth of beard on his chin. No time to shave and no safe place to do it out here. “What the hell was a pacifist doing handling a weapon like this?”
“It was war, Sutter. They were fighting dragons. If you were human you fought. Or you died. Just like now.”
Nothing much had changed since then, in Rain’s opinion. Except that the humans had gone underground and kept to the daylight while the monsters had multiplied despite their best efforts. Pacifism was no longer an option.
Fury rode her as she stared down at Audrey Harrison’s remains. Even in this shelled-out ruin of a world, the dead were respected. Yet these dead, these heroes, had been left to rot. The excuse, of course, had been that it was wartime. Typical bureaucratic nonsense, as Padre Pedro would say.
She stepped to what had once been a window but was now a gaping hole along one side of the bunker. Her boots left deep impressions in decades of dust and grime. Crumbled pieces of concrete and stone rattled underfoot, but her attention was on the view outside.
The pile of bones hadn’t been scattered, but loomed against the sky, bleached white by the sun. Most of the fragile wing bones were missing and the head was shattered to nothing, but the rest was intact, the ribcage reaching higher than the bunker roof. Or what was left of it.
Sutter let out a low whistle. “Big mother, huh? Wonder what happened to the head.”
Rain nodded. The stories hadn’t exaggerated the size of the monster. Lieutenant Caine had fought one of the biggest dragons on record. He’d fought and he’d won, he and Audrey Harrison and a young solider known only as Foster. But the cost had been high. They’d died along with the thirteen others who’d fled to the abandoned bunker after the nearby military base had fallen, razed by dragon fire.
Rain turned from the window. “Let’s do what we came to do and get out of here.” The place gave her chills with its fire-scarred walls and the hulking ruins of the mighty beast outside.
Sutter gave the rusted hulk of the big gun a frown. “I can’t imagine we’ll find much left, Rain. After all these years …”
“The Lieutenant was rumored to have brought an arsenal with him from the Base. I doubt he left them lying about to rust.” Every Marine she’d met had been meticulous about his guns and armor. It was unlikely the military back th
en had been any different.
“Unless he used them,” Sutter pointed out.
Which was always a possibility, of course, especially given the state of the dragon’s skull, or lack of skull. Dragon skulls didn’t have a habit of spontaneously combusting. It was highly likely Micah had used some sort of ordinance to cause the damage, which meant there might not be any left. Rain was holding out hope, however. These days there wasn’t much left to the human race but hope.
She and Sutter began shifting through the rubble, no easy task since neither one of them was exactly muscle-bound. Rain herself was of medium height, just over five foot five, but slightly built while Sutter was short and wiry, like most civilian men. Any man that showed promise of being big and muscular was taken by the Marines to fill out their ranks which were constantly decimated by skirmishes with the dragons.
By the time they uncovered the second skeleton, they were both sweaty and covered in dust, a few new rips added to their well-patched clothes. The uniform was nearly rotted away, but the dog tags still circled the cervical spine. Rain carefully lifted one. “Foster.”
Sutter frowned. “Can’t be. He’s not big enough.”
True, the skeletal remains weren’t those of a large man, but of someone well under six feet. And while Rain was no judge, the bones appeared slight. “I guess a man’s size didn’t matter to the Army. After all, things were different back then. They had machines and guns. No dragons, either.” At least, not until the end.
Sutter gave her a wry look. “Brains were more important than muscles?”
She grinned back, “Maybe. Stranger things have happened.”
It was hard to imagine a world where intelligence ruled over brute strength. It was hard to believe. After all, the old military with their guns and bombs had done nearly as much damage to the planet as the enemy they fought. Not exactly a sign of intellect.
“Over here,” Sutter beckoned. In the corner behind more rubble were two green metal boxes. “I think this is it.”
After a bit more digging they had the boxes out. Each of them was big enough to hold a man Sutter’s size and each of them was locked. “Dammit,” Rain snarled.
Sutter grinned. “Not to worry, Rain. I’ve got skills.”
She laughed as he fished a small hand-stitched leather wallet out of the inner pocket of his worn overcoat and began pulling out tools. Within minutes he had the boxes open and they were both staring in awe at the contents.
Rows of gleaming black automatic rifles shone in the sunlight streaming through the broken bunker wall. At either end of the trunk were egg-shaped grenades carefully tucked into foam cradles, and under it all were boxes ammunition sheathed in shining brass.
“Jackpot!” Sutter crowed, his brown eyes sparkling with glee. Such a boy, Sutter.
Rain’s mind had already turned to other things. They had what they’d come for and they’d found the bodies of two of Caine’s people. They’d seen the remains of the dragon he’d killed. The stories were true. And while stories were just stories, a story like this, proven fact, could give hope and strength to people who were quickly losing both.
If she could find the body of Lieutenant Micah Caine, it would give them more than hope. It would give them a talisman: A relic behind which to rally. Rain had read enough to know that relics held powers beyond that of any weapon. The Church, though now a distant memory, had held power for thousands of years due in part to such relics.
Besides which, she wanted to see him.
Oh, she’d seen his likeness in old articles from newspapers saved at the beginning of the war, but she wanted to see the real Micah Caine. Even if all that was left were bones.
Rain left Sutter to examine their find while she began shifting through more of the rubble. In her experience, a true leader didn’t hide in the back out of harm’s way. He, or she, stood at the front, right in the line of fire, urging on the troops. If the stories were right, Micah Caine had been such a leader.
She headed toward the front of the bunker and the broken wall framing the jagged hulk of dragon bones. After a few minutes of searching, she saw a glint of silver buried under some crumbled concrete and debris. Dog tags.
She scooped up the tags. The chain was broken as though it had been caught on something and snapped. She turned the tags over. The metal was partially corroded by time and the elements, but the stamping was still clearly legible: Caine, Micah. U.S. Army.
Rain wrapped her hand around the tags. The tags of a dead hero. Exaltation warred with disappointment. She’d found the legendary bunker. She’d found his tags and his weapons cache. She’d found the remains of his fellow warriors and of the great beast they’d killed. But where were the remains of Lieutenant Micah Caine?
Two
“What’s that?”
Rain glanced at Sutter then followed his pointing finger. She frowned as she swiped sweat off her brow. It was hot and getting hotter. “Don’t see anything.”
“At the base of the cliff over there.” His voice was insistent.
Rain pulled out the binoculars and trained them on the cliff base. She’d radioed in their find before she and Sutter left the site of Caine’s Last Stand. By now the scavenge team would be loading up the ordinance on hand carts and hauling it to the compound. That left her and Sutter to make their way home by a different route in the hopes of finding something else worth scavenging.
She scanned the bottom of the cliff looking for whatever it was that was getting Sutter all worked up. She frowned when she saw a lump the size of a human huddled in the shade. Who would be out this far from any known compound?
“Could be a Wanderer.” She handed the binocs to Sutter. Wanderers were odd ones. They eschewed the company of others, preferring to roam the wastelands alone instead of settling on a compound.
“Whoever it is, he isn’t moving. We should go see if he’s okay.”
Rain frowned at that. “Could be a trap.”
“Or it could be someone needs our help.”
She sighed. “Fine. I’ll check it. You hang back. If he so much as twitches wrong, shoot him. You got that?”
“When have I ever let you down?”
She smiled at that. Sutter was Rain’s right arm. Without him she’d have been dead a thousand times over.
Leaving Sutter to watch her back, she slowly picked her way over the rocky terrain. The sun beat down, making the back of her neck itch with heat.
The lump at the base of the cliff was definitely a person. A man, and a badly injured one at that. As she drew closer she saw his body was twisted at an odd angle, a broken bone in his arm protruding through skin. She fought back the urge to vomit. Food was precious and throwing it up was a waste. Padre Pedro had drilled that into her.
She scanned the man’s body and then glanced up at the top of the cliff. It was pretty obvious he’d either fallen or jumped from the top. Poor bastard. He was buzzard food now.
And then she heard it. So soft she thought for a moment she was imagining things.
“Help me.”
“Shit. He’s still alive. Sutter!”
Sutter came running, worry etched across his dark face. “What is it?”
“He’s alive, Sut. He’s frigging alive.”
Sutter frowned and leaned over the fallen man, checking over injuries with the ease of years of practice. He glanced up at her, face grim. “Not for long.”
Sutter had been trained as a field medic. Or at least as much of one as anyone could be these days. If he said the man would die, it was fact.
She tugged at her dark-blond pony tail. Crap. She hated shit like this. There was nothing they could do for the man short of putting him out of his misery. From the looks of things, it’d be a mercy.
Rain knelt beside Sutter. “What do you think?” She could tell by the look in his eyes he knew exactly what she was asking.
“Nothing else to do. We can’t leave him. Not like this.”
He was right. Leaving the man to die a slow painf
ul death was cruel in the extreme. Better to end it quick. Her hand drifted toward her knife.
Sutter stopped her. “Let me.” Darkness was in his eyes.
“Damn.”
He shrugged. “It’s what I was trained for.” These days field medics did more than just treat injuries.
Sutter slid his own knife out of its sheath. Gently holding the man’s head still, he laid the blade against bare throat and quietly mumbled a few words under his breath.
Rain crossed herself like she’d seen Padre Pedro do. It meant nothing to her. It was another thing they’d had drilled into them. They honored the dead. Ensured safe passage into the afterlife. Rain hoped that whatever was there waiting in the afterlife, it was better than the here and now.
Sutter’s arm tensed for the killing blow.
“Please …” It was a mere whisper of breath.
“Wait, Sutter.” Rain crawled in close to the man. “I’m sorry, mister. There’s nothing we can do.”
His hand groped weakly for hers. She grabbed it and held on as he struggled to get the next words out. “Don’t let them … My body … don’t …”
“I’m sorry, mister. Don’t let who do what?” She frowned, trying to make sense of his words.
“Don’t … let … Marines take my body. You don’t …“ The man coughed and gasped for breath. “You don’t know … what they do to bodies.” His voice trailed off. “Please,” he whispered, “please don’t …”
Rain glanced at Sutter. His face was grim. “I’ve heard rumors about the Marines taking dead bodies.”
“Why?”
“No idea. Some say they experiment on the bodies. Desecrate them. Who knows?”
Her face turned grim as she leaned back to the dying man. “Don’t worry, mister. We won’t let the Marines take you. I promise.”
The man nodded ever so slightly. “Thank …“ His voice trailed off into a death rattle. Rain felt relief Sutter hadn’t had to end things.
“How we gonna make sure the Marines don’t get his body?”
“Burn it,” Rain said.
“The drags …”
“It’s daylight. By the time the dragons wake we’ll be long gone.”
Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories Page 2
