13
“We waited too long to overrun the facility,” Khalid complained to his cousin.
“Nothing is certain, and we shall know within the hour. Praise be to Allah! Have faith, cousin.”
The men were riding in a looted Hummer they had taken from one of the many bases they had shelled and overran. They had grown confident with their easy success, but much of their long-range plan had been to use a backdoor to disable the nuclear deterrent. What they couldn’t take by cunning, they would hammer with brute force.
“Hassan, you talk much of faith and your God. How do you know he hears your prayers?”
“Cousin, I just do. I still have a hard time believing you’ve lost your faith. It’s…”
The men sitting behind him shifted uncomfortably as Khalid turned to face his cousin who was driving. What the leader of the New Caliphate was saying was heresy, and put him on par with some of the very enemies they were fighting against, at least that’s the doctrine they’d been taught. Most of them had never actually picked up a copy of the Quran and read it for themselves. Most of them were illiterate, only proficient in the art of war in their homelands… not theological scholars.
“Yes?”
An explosion rocked the Hummer as a missile hit the vehicle immediately behind them. The back of their lightly armored vehicle was hit by shrapnel, and the pressure wave from it made the rear end kick out like they’d suddenly lost traction on ice. Hassan drove into the swerve.
“What was that?” he yelled.
“I don’t kn—”
Just in front of them, a troop carrier was hit by something coming straight down. The last thing Khalid saw before they ran into the flaming wreckage was bodies and appendages being strewn all over.
Khalid came to slowly. Every part of his body hurt, and he was sure he was alive only by some miracle. He was lying on his side, and something sticky was dripping down onto the side of his head. It took three tries to move his left arm up to his temple. It came away bloody. That was when he really took in his surroundings. The Hummer had come to rest on the passenger side. What glass there was had shattered, and the smell of diesel fuel was strong and pungent, and Khalid realized that he was hit by another drop of something warm to the side of his face.
He looked to his left, which was straight up in the air, and saw his cousin, Hassan, still strapped into his seatbelt, hanging lifelessly. There was visible shrapnel sticking out of his body, and it was obvious he was quite dead. Blood had settled into the areas of the flesh closest to Hassan, making his body look mottled. He noticed the smell: evacuated bowels, blood, and violated organs. He gagged and struggled with his own straps which were holding him in the seat, probably the only thing that had saved him. He fumbled a moment and freed himself and started through the cracked windshield.
He cut his arms and legs pulling himself back through. There was something wrong with his legs; they tingled, and he didn’t have full control, but he could feel as the glass shards bit and scraped. Screaming in agony, he pulled himself through. It wasn’t just that the cuts hurt, everything hurt. It felt like he was bruised, concussed, and sliced in every inch of his being. Living hurt.
“We got a live one,” a big black man said, walking through the wreckage.
He was easily 350 pounds, a mountain of a man. His voice was low and rumbling, and the M4 carbine he was carrying looked like a play toy, carried in hands that looked like they each could wrap around the gun twice. A boy no older than his early twenties ran up to him, his cheeks thick with stubble. A black haired white woman who could be mistaken for a goddess followed as well. The boy wore twin Colt 1911s, and the woman carried a carbine like the big too.
“I… I demand to be treated as a prisoner of war, in accords with the Geneva Convention,” Khalid said in English with a British-sounding accent.
The big man looked at him and then down at the ground near his feet. Khalid looked and saw a severed arm holding an AK-47. He kicked at it, dislodging the arm, and then hooked his toe under the AK and kicked it in Khalid’s direction. Khalid crawled forward a step, one hand reaching for the rifle. His hand was unsteady, and after a moment, he pulled it back and painfully got to his feet. He wobbled, and his vision swam. He kicked the rifle back toward the group and almost lost his balance. His hand shot out, grabbing the jagged frame where the windshield had been.
“Who are you?” the young man asked, his hand flexing over his right hip where one of the Colts waited in a low slung holster, much like the gunslingers of old.
“I am Khalid, the Spear of Allah, Sword of the New Caliphate.”
“Figures,” the big black man said, walking closer.
Khalid looked up and up and up. He noticed the plate carrier vest with grenades, a knife strapped to it for a quick pull, and how little of the broad chest of the giant it covered.
“I demand—”
Khalid’s air was cut off as King picked him up by the throat. He immediately tried to break the grip with both hands, but King just held him up higher with one.
“Do we need him for intel?” King asked.
“No, all reports say we’ve got the whole Caliphate captured or dead. I’m sure there are a couple hundred potential stragglers, but the last two days we’ve pretty much wiped them out.
Two Days? Khalid thought, I was dead to the world for two days, and now I’m about to die at the hands of an American Wrestler?
King swung Khalid and threw him into the damaged hood of the Hummer. His back hit first, igniting every ache and pain in his body. Khalid cried out in pain and fell to his hands and knees. If he were going to die, he would be defiant to the… He tried to spit, and nothing came out. No wonder he was weak. Dehydrated and blood loss. He breathed heavily and then made his way to his feet again.
“I demand to be treated with respect and dignity as any foreign commander. Under the Geneva Convention’s—”
Michael’s gun hand blurred and he fired once, hitting Khalid in the stomach, right where a belt would cinch his pants up tight. Khalid let out an oomph sound and crumpled.
“Why didn’t you finish him?” King asked.
“Missed, drew too fast,” Michael lied.
King made a disgusted sound and walked up to Khalid. He palmed the Jihadi’s head, and lifted him up until his feet were more or less under him.
“You know who I am?” King asked.
“You are an American, an infidel, one of the Great Satan’s minions.” His words were hoarse as he choked them out.
King changed his grip to hold Khalid up by the throat, but he didn’t put killing pressure on the man’s windpipe, just one big, meaty hand that wrapped halfway around the Jihadi’s neck.
“I am an American. I am from one of the most enlightened nations on all of God’s green Earth. I am a warrior for justice and peace. I’ve made oaths to honor my country, my flag, and to protect it with everything I have. I am the son of a sharecropper whose only life goal was for his own boy to make a better life for himself than everyone else. I did that, and I’m proud of who I am and what I’ve done.”
Michael and Shannon looked at each other in surprise. When King talked, it was significant. When he monologued, it was epic.
“You, on the other hand, are a pissant, goat-humping, hate-filled, failure to your Allah. We’ve defeated you, all of you. There is no more North Korea to back you up. China has backed off, so there’s no support there. The people you have left in the middle east? As we’re identifying the bodies, we’re alerting the families. No longer will you wage war against us. We will wipe you out to a person if needs be. There is no reason on this Earth why people should put up with such hatred and bigotry as your movement has caused. Oh, and that EMP you set off?”
Khalid looked up and smiled.
King grimaced a smile back at him. “I wish I could do this as many times as lives were lost for your crusade.”
“What?” Khalid managed to ask.
King’s hand tightened, and he twisted
his wrist. There was an audible cracking sound, like breaking ice out of a plastic tray, and he let go. Khalid fell to the pavement, his body limp.
The last thing Khalid had known, was that there was a sharp pain as his neck had snapped and then there was no pain after that. He wanted to move, but his body wasn’t responding. No pain, no pain anywhere. Who knew that the cure for pain was a broken neck? Were they going to leave him there—?
A burst from the M4 splattered the rest of Khalid’s head against the broken pavement. A contrail of smoke came up from the barrel from Shannon’s carbine.
“What was that?” Michael asked her. “He was already dead!”
“Rule number two,” Shannon said, “double tap.”
“Rule Number Two?” King asked.
“Zombieland,” Shannon said, grinning.
“I think I love you,” Michael said with a cheesy grin on his face.
14
It had taken him close to a week to recover from the rescue, and Mike was feeling restless. The shot to the back had been stopped by the AR500 armored plate, but the entire plate had left a bruise, and any movement hurt. That paled in comparison to the road rash along the side of his neck, face, and head. It had scabbed, peeled, and scabbed again. The doc said he would have some terrific scars to impress the ladies unless he could find a plastic surgeon. Courtney told the doc to go to hell, to just get him patched up enough to travel.
The healing would have progressed faster, except being tended to like he was made him flash back. When he’d been hospitalized for the shrapnel, the time he was tortured… and all the memories that had been repressed came flooding back. He had no idea who was friend or foe some days. Courtney had suggested a radio call to Arkansas, and Mary was consulted. She gave them the name and dosage of the medication Mike, formerly known as Dick, was supposed to be on. After refusing pain meds, taking his psych meds and a week's worth of bed rest, he was starting to slowly struggle out of the darkness of his own mind in an old emergency clinic Sandra’s people had taken for caring for Mike and the ladies they’d rescued.
“You’re never going off on your own again,” Courtney said for the thousandth time.
“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that,” he told her.
“Dammit, Mike, we’re supposed to be a team,” she said, a big tear trailing down her cheek.
“We are. I’ve told you a thousand times, that mission was a one-man op. I knew I might get bloody, but you did what you were supposed to, and as a team, we got everyone out. Alive even.”
“I should have been there, you wouldn’t have gotten shot,” she said, her voice softening, and she rubbed her hand against the smooth side of his face.
“I needed you to stay safe to get the women and children away, to call in the cavalry when you did. To know to look for the communications equipment that turned the tide of this war. I hear it was new Chinese high-grade gear the Koreans were using, and it would have taken us weeks to crack the code if we didn’t have our own radio setup with scrambler and codes.”
“Yes dammit, Mike, it was,” she said and sat on the side of the bed.
She looked at him and saw a man who’d willingly give up his life to save strangers, who ran into a fight knowing the odds stacked against him. Somebody who wasn’t afraid to die for his cause. For a moment she almost sobbed, remembering her own losses and wondering if she’d ever be so selfless, like Mike. He nodded at her words.
“So, we won,” he told her. “You can settle down somewhere, rebuild your life, or you can work with the new American Militia as they rebuild the country.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked, her heart breaking as she realized he was talking about a life apart.
“I hear there are two large groups of cannibals. They move into one area, torture and kill and then move on out.”
“You’re going to go after them?” Courtney asked.
“It’s what I do. I realized something, lying here in this bed. Everyone has a purpose in life. Some are called to be doctors, some are called to be priests. Some people are called to write books and poetry. Some people are warriors. I figured out all this beating about the bush, losing my identity only to gain it back… overall, I’m a warrior. I’ll always need a battle. I figure there’s spots of lawless anarchy and bad stuff that’ll need to be taken care of for a long time. I’d rather do good than tilting my lance at windmills.”
“Do you want some company?” she asked, knowing he’d say no already.
“I’d love some,” he told her, taking her hand in both of his.
15
March was every bit as cold as they had expected, and then some. Blake’s wood stove never stopped burning and the fire stack in the barracks in the barn simmered as well. People had drifted from the Homestead, except many of the kids without families or older men or women with no family around. They lived, worked, and survived together. School was held, and everyone waited for the big melt that.
A helicopter had been sent out to the Homestead on March 1st, one of many unusual ways for the government to handle a vote. Everyone over the age of 18 was given a simple ballot. Blake had voted for Grady, though he had no problem if it was Hines either. Both had been more than honorable men. In other areas of the country, trucks, railroad cars and smaller airplanes that didn’t rely on electronics flew in election teams to the population centers. They stayed in place for a week, their locations broadcast over Rebel Radio.
When the time frame was up, they packed up, drove, flew or rode back to a secure bunker somewhere in the hollers and hills. Sandra’s stomach had become so swollen that the small woman looked like a grapefruit that had been overwatered on a hot summer day. Grady had a medical team stationed there at the Homestead, with all the medical and surgical gear needed. It was the least the country could do for the two people who had started the great pushback, even if their start was only finding each other.
Keeley and Jason still bickered, and Chris convinced many people to play Legos and tons of board games with him during the unusually cold winter. Everyone got along. Their preps were wearing a bit thin, but they had given so much food to the people as they left so they wouldn’t be burdened with starting all over from scratch.
There were three weddings between Christmas and New Years Eve: David married Corrinne, much to everyone’s surprise, and Bobby married Melissa, with her father, Curt’s, permission. Then Tex and Caitlin returned to the Homestead and married just as midnight rang in, and Duncan performed the adoption ceremony for Linny and Brett the brat. Everyone was merry. In the first week of the new year, Don and a girl named Zelda, or Z, wandered into the Homestead, and Patty immediately took them both in, having grown fond of Z.
On March 16th, a Thursday, Sandra went into labor, somewhat close to her due date. The Homestead was abuzz, and everyone paused what they were doing to wait and listen for news. The pregnancy had left her bedridden after the battle of the Hammer and Anvil, and although the doctors felt they had her stable and the baby safe, there was still a significant risk, and this might be the only pregnancy Sandra could have if she survived. She prayed, but she was hopeful, and she glowed every time somebody would rub her stomach for luck.
Blake was pacing when he heard the distinctive whump whump whump sound of an approaching Huey. He quit pacing and saw the doctors wipe Sandra’s brow.
“Go see who it is,” Sandra said and gasped as another contraction hit her, and she moaned in pain.
“I should be here,” he told her.
“Go, if they are flying in this weather, it’s life or death.”
Sandra was right. Blake saw the wind had kicked up a lot over the last couple of hours and snow was falling hard, and being blown off the roofs of the house and barn. He saw the helicopter make a landing on the flat spot near where the ice house was situated. He was torn with indecision, and Sandra tried to turn toward him. The docs shouted for her to hold still.
“Just go,” she told him, “I need to know… and Blake?”
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“Yeah, baby?”
“When this is over,” she said, panting through a contraction, “I want chocolate ice cream, remember, you promised.”
“I can do that.”
Blake swore to himself over the interruption and walked out, pulling his coat off the hook. He was already wearing his boots, so he opened the door and was surprised to see that four armed soldiers in US Marine uniforms, guns held low, were following close behind Col. Grady and Hines, Governor of Kentucky. Blake smiled, having met Grady once and Hines many times during all the work he’d done with him as former head of FEMA.
“Gentlemen, would you all like to come inside?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“Yes, that would be great. You gentlemen can stay here, we won’t be long,” Grady said to the four armed escorts.
They walked inside, both men stomping their feet. Blake took off his coat and hung it up and looked to see that David and Patty were about to start up Rebel Radio and tell the world that soon Blake would have some news. Corrinne was sitting next to David on the Bench, and Patty was standing and pacing. Lisa, Duncan, and Bobby were camped out on the sofa with Chris sitting on Melissa’s lap, who was on the floor. Everyone looked like they were clutching something with bloodless hands, the tension was so high.
“What is it? You’d interrupt him now?” Lisa asked.
“What’s going on, ma’am?” Hines asked.
“My daughter, his wife, is about to give birth!” Duncan roared.
They both shrank away from him a bit; Duncan had lost a tremendous amount of weight, but he was still a formidable guy, a man of God or not. Grady dug around in his coat pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper.
“I need to make an announcement, regarding the election. I thought I would come here to the Homestead and announce it to the world over Rebel Radio, with your permission, of course.”
“Of course—”
Sandra let out a scream, and Blake left them standing there and slammed the bedroom door. Everyone in the living room stood as Sandra screamed in pain once more. Then there was a soft cry, then it grew louder. A baby’s wail blasted through the house, and everyone smiled. If it could scream, it was alive. The tension eased down several notches, and Duncan tried to stand to have Lisa hold onto his arm, pulling him back down.
Hope Of The World Page 7
