Dead Man's Land: Books of the Dead 3

by R. J. Spears

  Kara led us into one of the front-facing observation rooms, where we found Brother Ed and a nervous looking guy named Larry. He was one of the crew that came with Travis to the Manor. He was a little guy, with a round face and a scraggly beard that made me think of one of the dwarfs from Lord of the Rings.

  Brother Ed had his rifle aimed out a window, but Larry held back out of view. A milky white fog shrouded the landscape outside, hanging on the bulky shapes of tree limbs poking through the veil in places, but everything else was indistinct.

  “What do you see?” I asked Brother Ed.

  “Not much,” Brother Ed said, “they seem to be moving in an arc around our front. They take a few shots, then move.”

  “What do they want?” Kara asked.

  “We have no idea,” Brother Ed said. “I think they tripped one of the traps, and that alerted one of our guards. Then they started shooting.”

  “One of our traps in the woods?” I asked.

  “No, one up next to the back building.”

  Our early warning system wasn’t state of the art or anything like that. We had placed a series of simple trip wires around the complex, at the edge of the woods. These trip wires led to anything that made considerable noise -- stacks of glass bottles, some metal pans, anything to make a noise. Brandon, being the ingenious guy that he was, placed a set of pressure plates around the exterior of the complex that also set off early warning detectors. The ones closest to the building were more sophisticated and led to electronic alarms inside the building. These types were few and far between. We’d have to get lucky for someone to set off one of those.

  “But that means that they got closer to the building than the ones out in the woods,” I said.

  Flashes of light, looking like the spray of a flare, appeared out of the fog and were followed by the report of gunfire.

  “There, there,” Larry yelled, aiming his gun at the flashes and firing. He ripped off an entire clip before he stopped and pulled back inside the wall.

  Brother Ed looked at him with one eyebrow raised. “Larry, you just blew an entire clip, firing blindly into the fog. You need to be a little calmer.” He brought his rifle up, took a moment to aim, and then popped off two shots. He dropped the rifle down to a relaxed position. “Try something like that next time.” We were seeing a different side of Brother Ed.

  “Why are they shooting at us?” Kara asked.

  “What do you mean?” Larry asked.

  “Why aren’t they just running away?” she asked.

  That was a good question and one that I should be able to answer. A part of me wanted to spring into action and mount a vigorous counter attack, but another part of me, a voice deep down inside, said to hold in place. I needed to think. So much of what we did was reaction, but I had learned something from watching Greg: immediate action was not always the best course of action. Thoughts bounced around inside my head, and then it hit me.

  Another set of shots came out of the fog, only this time they were fifty yards northwest of where they were before. The shots smacked into the side of the building harmlessly. Someone returned fire from inside, but I would guess, in this fog, they weren’t hitting anything but air.

  “They want something inside,” I said.

  “What are you saying?” Brother Ed asked.

  “They were up next to the building when they set off the alarm. Now, they’re firing on us from the woods, moving around the building. If they were close and now are far away, why don’t they just run away? Why stay and shoot randomly?” I brought the walkie-talkie up and said, “Anyone at the back of the complex, please come in.” I waited.

  “This is Aaron; I was in the back building. Now, I’m moving forward.”

  “Aaron, hold your position,” I said. Before he could respond, I asked, “Where did the proximity alarm go off?”

  “In the back building,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “Stay where you are, and be alert.” I moved the walkie-talkie from my mouth and said to Brother Ed, “Can you come with me?”

  “But they’re right out there,” he said, pointing into the fog in front of the complex.

  “That’s a diversion. Whoever is out there is just trying to distract us. They tried to get in the back, and who knows, maybe they did, but our problem isn’t the people out front.”

  “It sure seems like it,” Larry said.

  “If I’m wrong, then that’s why you’re staying here,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Brother Ed nodded his head and stood to leave with Kara and me.

  “Hey,” Larry said, a slight whine in his voice, “what about me?”

  “Hold down the fort,” I said, and we were out the door.

  “Shouldn’t we send more people to the back?” Kara asked.

  We made it the stairwell in the back of our building and started down the stairs, our feet echoing off the walls. “Like I said, I could be wrong. We have Aaron back there now. I’m hoping we’re enough. There’s no more time to talk.”

  We came out in a corridor on the back of the building. It was about fifteen feet across with limited light. We only powered the lights in the back off the solar panels on the roof, and that was only connected to a few of the lights. So, it was rather dark and dangerous back there. As we moved deeper into the darkness, I felt my pulse beating forcefully in my temples.

  Tacitly, we moved along quietly, passing in and out of deep shadows as we made our way toward the back of the building. I had the lead with Kara behind me, and Brother Ed was bringing up the rear.

  “What are we looking for?” Brother Ed asked in a whisper.

  “I’m not sure,” I whispered back. “It is sort of like that judge who said he couldn’t define what pornography was, but he knew it when he saw it. We’ll know when we see it.”

  And we did know just a few seconds later. I poked my head around the corner and saw a shadowy lump lying on the floor, just about ten feet down the corridor. A dark puddle pooled around it. This was a decidedly bad sign.

  Distant shots sounded from the front of the building, but they were indistinct and muffled. Whoever was out front still fired on the building.

  Kara tried to run past me, but I pulled her back against me.

  “That’s probably one of our people lying there,” she said, keeping her voice down, but not restraining her frustration and concern.

  “I know,” I said, “but you’d be out in the open, and I don’t think there’s any help we can give them.” That puddle was surely blood, and there was an awful lot of it, too much for anyone to survive.

  “We can’t just wait here,” she said.

  “Just give us a chance to check the hall first,” I said. “Ed, can you move to the other side of the hall?”

  He nodded and started across when the first shot sounded. It came from deeper in the complex. There was a brief exchange followed by silence.

  I let Kara go and started down the corridor. Both she and Ed followed right behind. She knelt by the body while Brother Ed and I took up defensive positions, aiming down the corridor.

  “It’s Paul Grossman,” she said, “his throat has been slit.”

  Paul was another one of the newbies. He had worked as a cop and private security before retiring. He was an over-all competent fellow, but was slowed by arthritic knees. I had barely gotten to know him, but what I did know about him, I liked. There would be no more getting to know him any better, though.

  Two more shots came, followed by three more. They weren’t that far away, but in the dark, it was hard to pinpoint their source. The exchange of shots was like a call and then a response.

  Someone was pinned down. It had to be Aaron, and, if it were, I hoped he could hold his own until we got there.

  With a stricken look on her face, Kara knelt, frozen over Paul’s body.

  “We’ve got to move,” I said.

  “But, what about Paul?” she said, and the question sounded like one that a child asked. Why couldn’t we br
ing Fluffy back after she was run over by a car?

  “He’s gone,” I said. “We need to help whoever is shooting back there.”

  She looked at me and then back down to Paul’s body, her face caught in indecision.

  “There’s nothing more you can do for him,” Brother Ed said. “We need to help the living.”

  It took a couple seconds, but she slowly got to her feet, and after two stutter steps, she fell in behind Brother Ed and me as we advanced down the hall, slowly and cautiously.

  Another shot was fired and two answered. We came to an intersection where two hallways converged. One led toward the front of the building, and the other led toward the back. A single shot came from deep in the hallway, the muzzle flash coming from the dark.

  A dark figured popped out of a doorway twenty feet down the hallway from us and returned fire, popping off two quick shots and ducking back into the room. The person at the far end of the hall fired in the direction of whoever had just fired, and almost immediately, someone else started firing on the person at the far end of the hall.

  There were two people closest to us, and they were coordinating their attack to draw out the person at the far end of the hall. I’m guessing that person was Aaron. I motioned for Brother Ed and Kara to pull back down the hall, and we moved fifteen feet back and into a room.

  As soon as we were inside, Kara asked, “What’s going on?”

  “I think Aaron is down at the end of the hallway and there are at least two guys firing on him,” I said. “Maybe they’re trying to get out of the building? If that is Aaron, then he’s blocking their escape.”

  I pulled out my walkie-talkie and keyed the talk button, “Aaron, this is Joel. Are you pinned down at the back of the hall?”

  I waited for an answer, but none came.

  “If that’s him, maybe he’s afraid to answer,” Brother Ed said.

  “That could be,” I said. I brought my walkie-talkie up and said, “Aaron, if that’s you at the end of the hallway, give me three clicks.” I took my finger off the talk button, and a couple of seconds later, three distinct clicks came across the speaker.

  “Well, we have our answer,” I said. Now the question was, what were we going to do about it? Whoever was inside wasn’t going to wait forever to get past Aaron, and I couldn’t even guess what they would do if they knew they were flanked. I only knew that Aaron was in danger, and we had to do something.

  “I think we have two guys firing on Aaron. We’re going down to the intersection,” I said. “I’ll run across; you two stay on this side. As soon as either one of the attackers fires on Aaron, I’m going to fire on that person. It’s very likely that the other guy will fire back at me. You have to take him on. Ready?” I said that last word and realized how absurd the question was. Who was ever ready to go into a firefight, in a dark hallway, against unknown attackers? This was a dangerous and cruel world, and we did what we had to do.

  Chapter 17

  Without Thinking

  How many things do we do in life without thinking? We get up, we brush our teeth, and we slop down our breakfast without too much conscious thought. Autopilot and cruise control are the ways of the world. I would have to figure that half of our lives are done without too much forethought and planning.

  Running across a dark hallway with unknown attackers ready to saw me half with their guns should require a great deal of thought. Or maybe the formation of a blue ribbon fact- finding committee or a seven-year government feasibility study. Instead, I waited for the first shot and then moved across the hall quickly and as quietly as possible, making it to the other side of the intersection.

  The shot had come from a room just twenty feet down the hall. The person had popped out of a doorway, like a gopher, and snapped off a quick shot and sunk back into his hidey hole.

  A flash appeared at the end of the hall, followed by the sound of a shot. Aaron’s bullet tore into the wall somewhere between the attackers and me.

  A shot answered Aaron’s; only this shot was from the other side of the hall, coming from a low position, near floor level. I could only guess that this attacker had stretched out onto the floor, waiting for Aaron to fire. The gopher’s shot drew Aaron out, and the second shooter took the shot.

  A grunt sounded from Aaron’s location, followed by the clattering of metal against the floor. The attackers’ strategy had worked as advertised. They had teased Aaron out in the open with the wild firing, only to take him out with a well-rehearsed shot.

  A surge of emotions swelled up in me, like a cold, yet a blazing vortex of blue flame. My heart sank, considering that Aaron had been killed, but my anger blossomed, rolling through me like an eruption.

  All this happened in less than five seconds.

  I stepped into the hallway, heedless of any danger, and targeted the place from where the second attacker fired. Without a thought as to this being a real live person, I pulled the trigger on my rifle and ripped off a stream of bullets. My shots lit up the hallway like chain lightning, and the sound of them roared like thunder as I stood there, firing away. The first bullets bounced off the floor, but I pulled my aim up as I shot, and the next set of bullets went to the target, tearing into the attacker on the floor. I thought I heard someone scream, but my ears also rang from the sound of the gunfire. What I did know was that figure on the floor didn’t move again.

  There are a lot of problems in acting without thinking. Most of them are obvious, and in everyday life, the consequences are benign. A person forgets to fully close the fridge door all the way, and food may thaw or go bad. A person might neglect to look at the fuel gauge and run out of gas. No big foul, no big harm.

  Acting thoughtlessly in a shootout is a very different thing. A person steps into a firefight and lets loose with a spray of bullets, and he might get his ass shot off.

  A shadowy form leaned out of the doorway across from the hall where I had just shot, and I could make out a torso slowly starting to turn in my direction followed by the long thin line of a gun barrel pivoting. I started my own course correction when a burst of gunfire sounded off to my right.

  More fireworks went off in the dark, and bullets tore into the wall next to the shadowy figure. The figured started to pull back into the doorway, but must have squeezed the trigger on his weapon as he did so. The flashes from his gun seemed to bore directly into my eyes, nearly blinding me. Bullets whizzed by me as I ducked down. The floor came up fast, and I braced myself for impact. In a combination of a falling and rolling motion, I hit the floor and spun across the hall, clinging to the wall.

  Everything went silent. My breaths came in jagged bursts, and I could feel my pulse pounding like the little drummer boy was going to town inside me.

  “Joel?” Kara whispered. “Are you hit?”

  Honestly, I didn’t know. I had read stories about soldiers in the heat of battle being shot and not knowing it. I was convinced that there was no possibility of that, at least not for me, but I did a quick personal inventory and came up empty.

  “No,” I said, locking my focus down the hall, “but I think Aaron’s been shot.”

  Although I couldn’t see her face in the dark, I could see her shoulders slump.

  “We need to focus on the attackers,” Brother Ed said. “You took out one, Joel.”

  A single shot sounded from the far end of the hall. I was heartened by this, because the shooter had to be Aaron. If he could shoot, he couldn’t be that badly injured. Or, at least, I hoped that was the case.

  What I did know was that we had a single soldier trapped in a room, and I was betting he came to this same realization. That couldn’t have been a good feeling. Of course, I thought it was just ducky.

  Two seconds after I came to that realization, a heavy metal object clunked down in the middle of the hall. I was on my feet a second later, shouting, “Grenade!”

  I felt something, hot and sharp sting my back, in two places. Then I was lifted off my feet, leaving me feeling weightless for a
moment. That sensation ended when I smacked face-first against the wall and slid down it. A wave of black rolled over me, and I nearly passed out, but I remained in the here and now. How much so, I couldn’t quantify. Maybe more in the here and later was more apt.

  While my ears still rang from the firefight, the sounds I heard then were more like a bell choir, ringing as hard and as fast as their arms could go. It must have been the 1812 Overture because a cannon boomed just a couple bars into the performance. Smoke billowed into the hallway from the room.

  I felt hands grab my shoulders, and I was being tugged down the hall. I looked up in a detached sort of way and saw both Kara’s and Brother Ed’s face, hovering above me like birds, with the ceiling passing by above them. The view wasn’t very flattering for either of them, as their features seemed distorted, like caricatures of their faces instead of the real thing. I closed my eyes for a second, and when I re-opened them, we were around the corner and out of the line of fire.

  “Joel, are you hurt?” Kara asked, her over-large face loomed into mine. Her voice seemed drawn out and watery.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked again.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I replied. “You guys look really funny. Your nose is enormous.”

  “He’s got his bell rung,” Brother Ed said, sticking his bulbous beak of a nose into my field of view. He ducked away and looked around the corner. No new shots came.

  I disappeared for a moment and came back to consciousness with a start, remembering some of what was going on.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, remembering why we were there.

  “Lots of smoke and nothing else,” Brother Ed said.

  “Do you see Aaron?” I asked.

  “No, the smoke’s too thick.”

  “We should get to him,” I said. My tongue felt thick and unwieldy.

  “Not yet,” he said, “we need to see if the soldier is still in the room.”

  I closed my eyes for a second and then opened them again, and I saw Brandon standing over me. “Where’d you come from?” I asked.