He ground his teeth, looking down before he answered. “You won’t die,” he said, blue eyes blazing. “We’ll live.”
“I know, Captain.” She let her eyes fall back on the field.
“Keep a look out, volunteer,” Steele said. He stood back up and marched back down the sparse line. He nodded to Gregor. The long-haired brute nodded back, his gun laid out on the hood of a truck. Steele’s feet padded the sandy ground, squishing as he walked. He was stuck in his troubled thoughts before Thunder’s hefty frame waved him down, half-running his way.
“We’re going to have to stash the food to run. Not enough fuel for Bessie’s semi.” His eyes read Steele, looking for chinks in his armor. If Steele broke, the Red Stripes were gone without a backward glance.
“Your boys don’t look like they would take well to siphoning anyway.” Best to laugh away your misfortune.
Thunder cracked a smile. “No, they wouldn’t.
“That food’s important. We don’t have much to stand on without it. Make sure to keep Bessie in the loop. I don’t want her thinking we robbed her.”
“She’s onboard and there’s enough,” Thunder said.
Steele nodded. “Me and volunteers will man the perimeter while you and your club load up some of the pickups. How long you need?”
“About an hour.”
Steele eyed the sky. The sun was cascading west toward the lake like a slow meteor. “It’ll be dark by then. You think we should risk it?”
“I don’t think we have a choice.”
“I got this feeling that the noose is tightening every moment we stay here.”
“I feel it too. It’s time to roll. I’ll give a holler when we’re ready,” Thunder said.
“Stick to the plan, Thunder.” Steele’s eyes read the man. Can I trust you to not cut and run? We can only do this with you.
Thunder nodded. “You can count on us.” The older man’s eyes looked through Steele as if he were only seeing a transparent screen door.
Steele bowed his head and jogged over to Tess’s dingy off-white camper. Kevin sat outside, a bottle of whiskey in his hand. “We’re getting close. How is she?”
“Haven’t heard a peep.” Kevin wavered and leaned closer to Steele, whiskey hanging on his breath. “Don’t tell her I told you, but Gwen’s in there too.” Kevin raised his eyebrows and burped out the side of his mouth.
“Shit.” Both in there at once. Jesus. “Thanks, buddy,” he said quickly.
“You’re welcome, Cap’in,” Kevin slurred with a fake salute.
“Grab Red Rhonda and get this thing hitched. We’re leaving soon.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Kevin stood up, wobbling for a moment while he kept himself from tipping over.
“Can you even drive?” Steele said.
“Always drive a bit better with some booze in me.”
Steele snorted and stopped short of opening the door. This may be the most dangerous door I walk through. His hand hovered over the round door handle. He hesitated to walk into whatever potential hailstorm of womankind that awaited him. I’d rather face armies of the dead. I know what I get with them. These two? He gulped.
He stepped inside the musty smelling camper. He expected an ambush of insults, evil looks, and jeers. With a bit of hesitation, he put one tentative foot over the other. When he looked up, the two women saw him. Tess peered at him from beneath her blankets. Gwen sat on the edge of her bed holding a bottled water. Both sets of eyes watched him. These two sitting together? I can’t believe the universe hasn’t imploded in on itself.
He stood in the aisle of the camper. “Hi there, ladies. How you feeling?” he asked passively.
“We’re fine,” the women answered in unison. They gave each other a knowing look of accepted rivals. Tess sat up and Gwen handed her the water. Tess gave her a smile and Gwen returned it. What do they have, some sort of ceasefire? I don’t want to know what happened here. The only thing a ceasefire means is they have found a common enemy. Me.
“I’m glad you’re both feeling better.”
“Any word on leaving?” Gwen asked.
“Thunder is getting the food from Big Bessie into some pickups. When they’re loaded, the camp moves.”
“What about the pastor?” Tess said and coughed into her hand.
“We’ve got the volunteers set up and ready to cover our retreat if need be. Shouldn’t be more than an hour,” he said.
“Our packs are in the corner,” Gwen said, face unmoving, a statue of an ancient Greek goddess. She can’t possibly know about the kiss. I didn’t even do it. I was a victim of a forced osculation.
“You guys can stay with me while we travel,” Tess said. Her eyes were pure amusement, and he squirmed under their gaze. “I think it’s important for the co-leaders of this community to have easy access to one another.”
“I agreed with her and said we would talk it over,” Gwen added.
They are trying to murder me with stress. Steele scratched his beard, thinking for a way out of this conversation that was clearly a trap to make him say something wrong. The faint sound of Red Rhonda idling nearby was his savior. Kevin, you’re a gift from God.
“That must be Kevin. I’m going to help him get this thing hitched up.”
Their eyes didn’t move much, neither indicating pleasure or heartbreak at his departure. He darted out of the camper. Red taillights glowed brightly in the dusk, shining light on a red pickup. Kevin’s head stuck out from the driver’s side.
“Where do you want this thing?” Kevin yelled.
Steele waved him back. The truck angled sideways, missing the hitch.
“Stop,” Steele yelled. The pickup jerked as Kevin hit the brake. A few more inches and he would have rammed the camper. “Hold up. Start over. It’s crooked.”
Kevin stuck his head out of the window. He looked backward trying to figure out his angle. “Sorry,” he yelled.
“Drunk ass,” Steele said under his breath. “Second times a charm,” he yelled forward at Kevin. The truck revved forward and the taillights flicked on again, shining red and glowing white. Steele waved him back.
A loud pop sounded off. For a moment, Steele thought it might be a tire exploding or the pickup backfiring. Steele eyed the tailpipe of the pickup.
“Jesus, Rhonda,” he said. He waved his hands at Kevin. “Stop. Stop. Start it again,” Steele said, holding a hand in the air. Two more pops echoed out in the night. Confused, Steele looked back to the entryway of Little Sable Point. Headlights beamed, gleaming away the night. Trucks bounced down the road.
“Kevin. Get this thing hitched,” Steele mumbled. He found himself running for the entrance as gunfire kicked off. The rumble of motorcycles vibrated the air like rolling thunder.
Holding the M4 in his hands, he sprinted. His feet pounded the sand. I knew it. I knew it. But surprise still crushed him as he approached the impromptu community gate. The pickups that normally sat in place had been rolled to the side. The last motorcycle sped past, joining the swarm of crimson midnight bees quickly disappearing around the bend in the road.
A person lay in the sand. Margie held his head up, her hand pressing firmly on his chest.
“What happened?” Steele shouted at her. She cradled Steve in her arms. You know but you refuse to see.
Margie looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “They killed him. He wouldn’t let them leave with all the food, and they shot him for it,” she sobbed, shaking her head. Blood oozed from between her fingers as she tried to hold his blood in.
“Who shot him?” The plan. All my men were too spread out to help.
“The Red Stripes.”
KINNICK
Dunluce Pass, CO
Skinny pine trees clustered all over the rocky, tawny landscape. The pass was near the top of a mountain, and the elevation was far above sea level. They seemed to be closer to the sky. The site for the battle had been unknowingly picked by a railroad company in the late 1800s. The company had dynamited
and carved a path over and through the mountain in an effort to connect the profitable coasts of the United States.
The brown rocky rooftops of other mountains stood tall in the distance. The taller ones were capped in white snow. The mountains were divided by a natural split formed by water millions of years in the past.
Kinnick stood in the center of the road that they were to hold. Dirt and dust had settled upon it as cars stopped using it. The road was long and led down the mountain, hugging its sides the entire way. No rail prevented cars from going over the edge. The other side of the roadway was a rocky hill leading only up. Determined evergreens clung to the hillside like stubborn, bent old men.
“Reminds me a bit of Afghanistan,” Hunter said. He spat black juice from his mouth, splashing a rock and leaving residual spit on his boots. “Aside from the paved road.”
Kinnick eyed the roadway. The last bit of it he could see rounded a bend, zagging across and back down the mountain.
“We’d be in better shape if there was no road,” Kinnick said.
Hunter took in the land. “It’s kinda fucked up thinking that we’ve been doing all this fighting and dying here instead of some shithole foreign country.”
Kinnick sighed. “That’s why we’re here. To make sure this country stays in one piece.”
Hunter smirked. “Don’t want California floating off on us.”
“Floating off would be better than nuking it.”
Two days had passed since the barricade of Eisenhower Tunnel. They had destroyed all the infected on the eastern side of the tunnel. They had reinforced the tunnel with a host of trucks stacked in a massive line across the entrance.
The smell at the tunnel was so bad and the men so tired, they dug in and slept on the ridge the first night. It took them another full day to ruck to Dunluce Pass. Kinnick’s legs were so sore he could hardly walk. He settled for a painful hobble to get around.
Kinnick estimated the distance of the stretch of road until the bend before it fled behind tall hills.
“How far do you think it is to the bend?”
“Eh, about four hundred yards.”
Kinnick nodded. “Plenty of good firing lines.”
The grade in the roadway incline was shallow, but the steep rocky hillside leading up from the road provided good protection from the infected as far as he could tell.
Hunter pointed to the hill above the dusty road. “Good ambush positions.” Then he pointed low. “Nothin’ ’cept a billygoat could get up that way. It’s an ideal position.”
The infected would either take the road back from the living or be stuck. “A bottleneck with no alternative way through the mountains en masse,” Kinnick said with a nod.
His men stood nearby. His leaders on the eve of the coming battle. Elwood stood with a slight hunch, helmet under his arm. His platoon sergeant, Sergeant 1st Class Putnam stood a step behind him. In his early thirties, Putnam looked likely to give Stark a run for his money in a liftoff. Next to him was Sergeant Matthews, thinner with the look of a long distance runner.
“Men, you see that sign there?” Kinnick pointed to a cherry-red-colored sign nearby. His men’s dust-covered heads looked over at it. “It says Dunluce Pass. 11,293 feet. There.” He pointed. “About a hundred feet behind us is the choke point.” He pointed at the highway that appeared to be cut straight out of the rock with dynamite over a hundred and fifty years ago. Thick white and brown lines cut horizontally across the cut rock. It gave the appearance of a layered club sandwich crushed by millions of years of pressure.
“That is the hole we must plug with our lives. Our entire mission hinges on us holding this pass. For if we fail here, the infected will roll up what’s left of the United States military, and before that’s done, the rest of the country will be destroyed by thermonuclear warfare.”
Stark’s eyes were fierce. Elwood listened intently weighing his words. Hunter spit again on the rocks.
“We are going to stagger our fire teams.” He turned to youthful Elwood. “Lieutenant Elwood, your platoon is mostly intact. Our defense is going to center on you holding our flank. I want your two best fire teams about two hundred yards down this road. Get them up on the ridge in the rocks and pines. It’s steep and the dead are slow.”
“It’s good ground,” Hunter added.
“Master Sergeant, how many rounds per soldier?”
“Rifleman about eight hundred. Each machine gunner has twenty-five boxes of ammunition.”
Kinnick nodded. “It’ll have to do.” He looked back at Elwood. “Every fifty yards, I want another one of your fire teams. As the fighting gets thick, they will fall back to the next fire team. So, as we get pressured, we will apply more concentrated firepower.”
“I will get a team together and line the roadway with claymores,” Hunter said.
“Excellent,” Kinnick said and nodded.
Stark viewed the terrain. “Plenty of ground that the infected have to cross in order to reach this point.”
“There will be plenty of them to cross it,” Kinnick said. The broad-shouldered soldier stared grimly, looking out over his surroundings.
“Lieutenant Stark,” Kinnick said. Stark faced Kinnick again. “I want 2nd Platoon on the road. Pile up rocks, trees, whatever you can get your hands on to slow them down. You are the short end of my L in the anchor. Your team will be putting rounds head-on into them. Their only path is through you. Your men have suffered some casualties. Can I count on you?”
“We are the Regulators, sir. Always ready to mount up.”
“Good. I never doubted you.”
Kinnick pointed back behind the pass. “Gentlemen, that copse of trees beyond the pass is our fallback point.”
A small circle of tall pines sat through the pass on a low hill. The dead will be able to traverse the slopes. By then it might not matter. He wondered if the famous Spartan King Leonidas felt like this when he measured and weighed the terrain for his final stand at Thermopylae.
“If we get pushed from there, we will regroup on the other side of the bend in the highway. There we will bound and cover as we make a tactical retreat.” Like Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn? He had more men and fewer enemies.
“It won’t come to that, sir,” Stark said.
“I pray it doesn’t,” he said. They stood a moment in silence, each man contemplating the death that marched for them.
“You are dismissed. Master Sergeant, a word,” Kinnick said. The men threw up salutes. With a crisp hand, Kinnick returned the salute. His officers and NCOs left to go about their pre-battle preparations.
Hunter walked with him through the pass. They stopped and Kinnick looked up the side of the rockface. He patted the sheer cut rock with his hand. It was rough and coarse on his palm.
“We can’t bring this down, can we?” he asked his Hunter.
Hunter stared up at the rock. “It crossed my mind, but I don’t have enough C-4.”
“Damn, if we had some air support that would make a world of difference,” Kinnick said. “Even a single gunship would level the odds. At least a bit.”
“We gotta face this for what it is, not what we want it to be,” Hunter said. Kinnick gazed at him a moment. The master sergeant met his eyes and his drifted out to the mountain range.
“I’ll get something rigged up. Can’t promise nothing,” Hunter said.
“Thank you, Master Sergeant. Carry on.”
Three hours passed and Stark’s men had erected a barricade that looked more like it belonged in the Civil War than in the modern era. Rocks were thrown about the road, anything to provide an obstacle. M240s were set on the fallen tree logs, each manned by a gunner and an assistant gunner.
Kinnick sat in the fallback point of the trees. His men had thrown up a high-frequency radio tripod with a long-wire antenna. It attached to a satchel-like pack containing the radio itself. It looked more like a large handset connected to a battery pack. It allowed him far-reaching access to other radios but li
mited reliability dependent on a host of factors.
Turning the knob on the brick, he skipped over to his desired frequency.
“General Daugherty. This is Colonel Kinnick, over.”
Static burst through the radio phone. He clicked over another channel.
“Lieutenant Wyman, this is Colonel Kinnick. Status update, over.”
More static groaned from his earpiece. Kinnick eyed the puffy gray-clouded sky. A layer of depressing cotton candy blanketed overhead. I wonder if it’s the cloud cover or some sort of solar flare that is keeping us offline. He set the radio down.
A faint voice cut through the static. A ghost in the airways. Long-distance echoes. He had heard men talk about it in the past. Were they picking up somebody else out there? Or were they picking up radio transmissions from the past? Or were they bouncing transmissions of a faraway planetary body?
“Sir,” the voice breathed. Static cut in. Kinnick could hear someone talking, but it was faint as if the man were under water.
“Lieutenant Wyman? How are you holding? Over.”
“…thousands…we must,” Wyman said, his voice cutting in and out.
“Lieutenant, you must hold the pass. I repeat. Hold the pass at all costs,” Kinnick said into the phone.
Gunfire grated from the radio, sounding like a firework display. “…repeat, over?”
“Hold the pass,” he said in the phone. He held the phone next to his forehead while he listened to the static.
“These fucking radios.”
Hunter sat nearby, back against a tree.
“It’s all we got,” he said.
Kinnick wanted to chuck the piece-of-shit phone and smash it into the rocks. Of course, my phone wouldn’t work when we need it. He settled for squeezing the hell out of it.
“I know that, Master Sergeant. Doesn’t mean it’s not a pain in my ass.” The air had chilled as the sun dipped a yellowish-white orb behind the clouds.
His high-frequency beeped and sputtered. He clicked the dial back a frequency.
“Colonel Kinnick,” he answered.
“…General Daugherty.”
The Rising (The End Time Saga Book 3) Page 32
