Extinction Cycle (Book 2) (Kindle Worlds): Penance

by A. J. Sikes

  “Keep loading those magazines!” she yelled back to them while Reeve whipped them side to side down the road. Welch kept a steady beat of sustained fire going out the back. But either Reeve’s driving made it so Welch couldn’t aim for shit, or Tucker had the protection of angels. Gallegos checked her mirror again. The black truck was still coming after them.

  Reeve slid them around a corner, bouncing the truck bed and throwing Gallegos into the passenger door.

  “The fuck, Reeve! This isn’t a hockey rink!”

  “Fucking holes in the road. I had to turn here.”

  Gallegos flashed a look at her mirror. Sure enough the intersection they just passed was a mess of craters and debris.

  “Just get us steady so Welch can—”

  Gunfire sounded from behind them and bullets pinged off the truck body. The firefighters crouched down lower, almost putting their heads between their knees. Still the steady clicking of rounds being loaded into magazines made Gallegos feel better about their chances. She turned back to give them a thumbs up and came eye to eye with Luciano. He was tucked down lower than Dom and Matty.

  “I seen a lot of shit, but I ain’t never been shot at,” Luce said, his voice shaking around every word as he reloaded a magazine.

  Dom reassured him. “Stay cool, Luce. Stay cool.”

  Matty added his voice to the effort.

  “Get us somewhere we can hold up. We’ll send some lead back their way. Fire their shit up.”

  “Just hold tight, people,” Gallegos said. She shifted onto her hip so she could bring her weapon around to return fire.

  ☣

  Jed and Jo braced their backs together and held onto the truck for support as Reeve brought them around another corner. They’d turned onto Park Avenue. Jed risked looking up. The street behind them was empty, but he could still hear Tucker’s engine. The black truck was coming their way.

  Jed picked up the SAW and told Jo to get ready with the thump gun.

  “They come around the corner, you let one go, rah?”

  “Rah,” she said and pushed herself up to a sitting position with the grenade launcher at her shoulder. Tucker’s truck was still out of sight, but it had to be near the corner.

  What’s he waiting for?

  Jed flinched when they passed through the narrow space between two smashed up minivans.

  Those weren’t in the road before. Were they?

  He stayed up, SAW ready to rock, and waiting for Tucker to appear. The steady beat of an engine told Jed the black truck was idling around the corner.

  Why aren’t they following us?

  He looked at the minivans again, now receding behind them. Debris and the bodies of monsters lined a path in the street and on the sidewalk, showing where the vans used to sit before they were pushed into the street to form a gateway.

  Or the door of a trap.

  Tucker’s truck appeared at the corner, and slowly nosed into view, staying mostly hidden behind the minivans. Jed sent a burst at them anyway, but all he did was take out one of Tucker’s headlights. Reeve was putting more distance between them with every second. After three blocks, he began to slow down, and then finally came to a sharp halt, throwing Jed and Jo up against the back of the cab

  “What the—?”

  Jo was up first with the grenade launcher. But she didn’t fire. “Shit. He’s penned us, and now I know what he did with the extra mines.”

  “He’s what?” Jed asked, pushing himself up on his elbow to look over the tailgate. Sure enough, Tucker’s black truck filled the space between the minivans. They could always back up with Jed firing, but moving in reverse would make it hard for Reeve to change course.

  Then Jed spotted the Claymores lining the street. They faced into Park Avenue a few blocks behind their truck. If they wanted to get back to the hide, they just had to keep going forward. Unless Reeve stopped because they were blocked in up front, too.

  Jed moved to look over the cab and froze. To his left, the blackened brick walls supporting the elevated tracks led down Park Avenue. Even with a few broken spots where bombs had ruined the tracks, the wall loomed like a curtain Jed expected to be swept aside, revealing a horde of the sucker faces. He looked back down their route at each block they’d passed. Arched tunnels passed beneath the tracks, but most of them were clogged with wrecked cars and debris. Some of it looked purposefully shoved into place.

  The more he looked, the darker the tracks grew and the more threatening the shadows became until Jed couldn’t take it anymore.

  He shifted his position and lifted the SAW to aim at the tracks. If anything moved over there, he’d light it up. He sent his focus into every dark corner, and was happy to see Jo doing the same. She kept the thump gun tucked against her shoulder and ready to fire.

  “Do you see any of them?” Jo asked.

  “No. Not yet. But they gotta be there.”

  The ruins of the el-tracks reminded Jed of his escape from Queens with the Civil Affairs unit. They’d taken the Queensboro Bridge and were ambushed from the tracks that ran overhead. The monsters had raced ahead of their convoy and dropped onto them, taking out almost everyone in Jed’s truck.

  God, don’t let that happen now. Not now.

  Jed wanted to shout for Sergeant G, tell her they had to move, but he didn’t dare take his focus off the tracks, not with so many shadows haunting him from every direction.

  ☣

  Gallegos gripped the dashboard tight and rested her M4 on the door. Tucker’s truck had vanished from her mirror.

  They stopped. Or they’re going in reverse. What the hell are they doing?

  “Are they gone?” Reeve asked. “Shit, I should’ve flipped us around back there. If they’re just a bunch of candy-asses—”

  “Eyes on the road ahead. We don’t know if we’re clear yet, and there’s no easy way off this street. Not anymore.”

  Park Avenue was crossed by three streets along their path, but almost every road beneath the el-tracks was filled with smashed cars, like a barricade.

  And some of those cars were just pushed into position.

  Gallegos felt the world slow down until everything seemed to move in half time. The brick wall beside her was broken up ahead, with ash, rubble, and jagged steel spilling into the roadway. Reeve swerved around the mess and braked suddenly, sending everyone in the cab forward in their seats. Luce nearly tumbled into the front of the cab.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Reeve?” Gallegos demanded, pushing off the dashboard. She’d only just put her hands out in time to avoid slamming into the windshield. “We need to get to the hide.”

  “With respect, Sergeant, the hide ain’t an option anymore.” Reeve gestured ahead. Gallegos followed his finger, but he started ranting before she could pick out what he’d aimed at.

  “That little race around town was a fucking dangle. Check the mirrors.”

  She did, and what she saw put a ball of rage into her throat.

  The road behind them was lined with the familiar mix of holes and bodies and debris. But something new had been added since they’d left the hide in the bus depot. Three blocks behind them, a pair of minivans had been pushed together, forming a gateway. She hadn’t noticed it before because she was too busy watching her mirror for Tucker’s truck. And now there it was, filling the space between the vans like a drawbridge being slammed shut.

  “If that ain’t bad enough, take a look up front.”

  Two blocks ahead of their position, at the back corner of the bus depot, a line of cars had been moved to fill the roadway, and even from this distance, Gallegos could see the small green rectangles spaced across the cars.

  “Guess we found the rest of them mines,” she said.

  If they wanted to continue, and stay far enough away from those mines, they’d be forced to turn around and deal with Tucker first. The tunnels below the elevated tracks were jammed with cars and debris, but the crossing one block back had looked clear. They’d been moving fast when
they passed it, so Gallegos couldn’t be sure.

  But going under the tracks wasn’t exactly the most desirable option. Even if they could find a clear tunnel, they’d probably be driving into a dead end. Adding insult to injury, the crack of an M4 sounded from behind them. A few more shots were fired, and two of them hit the truck.

  Tucker’s no idiot. He’s penned us like cattle and now he’s trying to herd us into the mines.

  “What now, Sergeant?” Reeve asked, breaking her from her thoughts.

  “Use the thump gun and blow that truck out of the way.”

  “Won’t he set off the mines?” Luce asked. “He’s got us in a cage. We shoot, he blows the mines, and then we’re all dead.”

  Matty and Dom said as much themselves, and Reeve turned back to answer the firefighters.

  “We’re far enough they won’t hit us, at least not that bad. That’s why he’s shooting at us. He wants us to get closer so he can use the mines to finish us off. That means he’s a punk ass, just like I thought. Motherfucker knows he can’t take us out man to man.”

  “Everybody stay really low,” Gallegos said. “Reeve, put it in reverse and get ready to floor it. Somebody open the window and tell Welch to wipe that piece of shit off our ass.”

  Her order was met with a knock on the back window. Matty slid it open and Welch’s voice came into the cab.

  “Sergeant G, why’re we stopped? We got four Claymores on the street back here—”

  “Shit! They mined the street up ahead, too.”

  Another round impacted on the truck.

  “Get us out of here!” Welch shouted.

  “Use the thumper, Welch! Clear him off our ass!”

  More rounds came in and Welch shouted back, “We gotta get away from these tracks. The sucker faces hide in ‘em.”

  “Negative on that, Marine! Clear us a hole! Now!”

  The rounds kept coming from Tucker’s spotter, but they were only hitting the fenders.

  Reeve slammed the steering wheel. “We let him do this. We goddamned let him do this.”

  “What do you mean?” Dom asked.

  “He means we should have seen it coming. We underestimated Tucker, and now we’re fucked,” Gallegos said. She resisted the urge to shout for Welch to take action and scanned the area, looking for a place they could hold up and make a stand. She spotted a mound of debris a little way back and on their left. Keeping her voice low, she said, “Reeve, turn us around over there, behind that shit pile. Tucker and his spotter won’t have a clear shot at us.”

  “You’re thinking we ditch the ride and try to fight on the ground?”

  “No. I’m thinking we blow that roadblock up there. Make a hole and move out,” she said.

  “Welch said he saw four Claymores behind us, right? That’s gotta be two on either side of the road. Tucker’s no dummy. I don’t know, Sergeant; those mines are closer than the ones up ahead. He might blow ‘em. I don’t like our chances.”

  “I don’t like our chances either way, Reeve. I like sitting here in the street even less. Turn us around. Over there,” she said, aiming a finger at the debris behind the remains of an apartment block.

  Reeve spun the wheel. “So they blow the roadblock. Then what?” he asked as he moved them off the main roadway. No explosions rocked the street, but more rounds impacted on the truck, still just hitting the fenders. Gallegos waited until Reeve had them positioned before answering his question.

  “First, we deal with Tucker. Then we get back to the hide. The sucker faces are quiet now, but I doubt they’ll stay that way for long.”

  The truck jerked and Jed again watched the city spin around him as Reeve took them in an arc that aimed the rear of the truck at the roadblock. They took a few more rounds from Tucker’s spotter, but nothing that came close enough to be a threat. And the Claymores didn’t go off either.

  Jed checked their position. Reeve had brought them up behind a mountain of wood and concrete that spilled out of the apartment block beside them.

  Another round came in and pinged off the truck.

  “It’s like he’s missing on purpose,” Jo said. “I swear he’s hit the same fender every time. He obviously knows how to aim, but he’s not aiming at us.”

  “Probably hoping we’ll move closer to the mines,” Jed said. Another few rounds came their way, but they all missed. He worried a lip between his teeth and kept glancing between the roadblock and the el-tracks. Even with the roadway between them now, the sucker faces could still leap out of anywhere.

  Beside him, Jo held onto the side of truck bed with one hand and kept the thump gun snug against her side with the other.

  Since they were turned around, Jed took a good look at the blockade Tucker had put together. About a hundred yards away a line of cars had been pushed into position, probably by Tucker’s truck. The cars snarled the road from the sidewalk to the el-tracks.

  “If the mines go off, will we get hit?” Jo asked.

  “Shouldn’t. Not from this far, but you never know. We gotta put a round out there and drop down fast. Even then we might get hit.”

  Behind them, the cab window slid open again. Sergeant G shouted back to him.

  “Welch, make a hole!”

  “Oorah, Sergeant!” he said and reached for the grenade launcher. Jo still held it tight.

  “Waiting on you, Christmas!” Sergeant G yelled out the window. “Let’s go!”

  “Let me take the shot,” he said to Jo. She held the thumper like it was a life line. Her eyes met his and for a split second he thought he could see the girl she used to be. She looked like a kid, like a girl he used to know in school, scared and alone and not knowing what the hell was going to happen next. Then she was Jo again, the firefighter who wasn’t afraid to take action. Just like another woman he’d known once.

  Now she’s in the sewers with the sucker faces and me and Jo are sitting in the middle of a battlefield with nobody but ourselves to say it’s going to be all right.

  Jed reached for the grenade launcher again and Jo finally let him lift it out of her hands.

  “Get down and stay down. I’ll cover you, just in case. If anything comes our way, it should be me that gets one in my fourth point of contact.”

  Jo’s face softened. “I hope nothing comes our way,” she said. “But thanks, and rah.”

  She slid down to lie flat in the truck bed. Jed checked he had the right grenade loaded. They’d come away with five high explosive rounds, and one Willie Pete. “Gotta save that one for crowd control,” he said, showing the WP round to Jo.

  “What’s it do?”

  “Makes a smoke screen, but the shit burns forever. If we get swarmed, this’ll give us something to hide in, and if you land it in the middle of them, it’ll take out sucker faces quicker’n shit. These,” he said, holding up an HE round, “are what you use when you need to make a hole in a wall. Stay down now.”

  He lifted the thumper and had the sight flipped up. He aimed and was about to squeeze the trigger when Sergeant G shouted from the cab. The crack of an M4 drowned her out, then Jo screamed next to him and a pair of clawed hands clamped onto the truck bed just above her face.

  ☣

  Gallegos gave up waiting for Welch. She put her eyes back on the ruins around them, and especially the mound of rubble they were using as cover from Tucker’s spotter. They hadn’t taken any more fire since they’d moved into this position.

  “He’s taking long enough,” Reeve said. “Fucking deke.”

  “Chill, Reeve,” Gallegos said. “Eyes out. That goes for everybody.”

  Reeve spit out his window but brought his weapon up and scoped the area for movement. The firefighters shifted in the rear cab. Gallegos turned around and checked out their version of keeping an eye on things. An easy smile spread across her face. Luce was tucked down in the middle with a handful of shotgun shells in his lap. He nodded at her and she gave him a thumbs up. Dom and Matty sat on either side of Luce, weapons up and watching the
area outside the truck.

  The rear cab window was still open, and she could see Welch and Jo moving around back there. It looked like he was loading the thumper. She turned back to watch her zone of fire.

  If she’d still been watching out the back, she wouldn’t have seen the three sucker faces that low-crawled toward the truck from around the back of the debris pile.

  “Enemy at three o’clock!” she yelled and fired off a shot at the first of the monsters. It went down and the others scrambled off to either side, disappearing in Gallegos’ peripheral. Then Jo’s scream had her turning in her seat to watch out Reeve’s window.

  A trio of sucker faces darted forward from a broken section of the el-tracks. Reeve fired, taking down the lead of the three. A single shot from his weapon put another down. The third launched sideways and was instantly knocked back by a burst from the SAW.

  The street was quiet for a second. A truck motor rumbled down the block, followed by the squealing of tires and explosions sending a cloud of dust and debris through the already ruined street.

  In a flash, Reeve had them backing up and into the roadway.

  “Now’s our chance,” he said. “Welch! Make a hole in that roadblock!”

  Gallegos let him take the lead and focused on watching their flank for any of the sucker faces. As Reeve got them back into the roadway, she knew why Tucker had bailed out.

  The street one block ahead was a mess of blood and the shredded remains of sucker faces.

  A swarm of the monsters filled the street beyond the carnage, pouring out of the ruins and down from the el-tracks. Where the two streams met in the middle of the roadway, they crashed together in a frenzy of claws and blood. The sucker faces from the tracks were faster and worked in teams, taking down their enemies by joining up in twos and threes. The ones from the ruins were like a herd. They all moved as a unit, but individuals were always left off on the side, and these were taken down quickly by the stronger and faster monsters racing into the street from the el-tracks.