Zero Dark Armageddon, Christian thought. What in the hell did that mean, anyway? Surely the phrase wasn’t something Lauren had come up with on her own. But where did she hear it? Who had she heard it from?
Lauren’s behavior since he’d met her had never made much sense to him. In fact, it had bowled him over at times, especially in the span of recent weeks while he’d observed her becoming progressively more deliberate and lethal.
Christian didn’t know what Zero Dark Armageddon meant, but he got the feeling after the most recent turn of events, coupled with what he was now witnessing, that it was going to be something extraordinary.
Extraordinary. Like the overall mystery of the uncommonly bold, mesmerizing young woman perched so steadfastly inert to his left.
Christian’s mind continued to wander as several audible thumps sounded off in the distance, perceptible at first by feel as they vibrated the ground underfoot. This must be it, he thought, turning his head to regard Lauren again. He wanted to say something to her—something encouraging, something uplifting, or maybe even offer up a quick joke to further lighten the mood, but he just couldn’t find the words. His impulses had abandoned him.
Admittedly, his head was spinning. He had so many questions, dozens more now than he’d ever had before, but Christian made the choice to place them all on hiatus. This was neither the time nor the place. It was time to sit back, watch, and wait. Things were about to get interesting.
Then a thought occurred to him. “You know, I think those are M126 Red Star signal flares,” he said, his finger pointing at them. “A guy I knew—a collaborator in the Legionnaires—brought a few to an FTX. Everyone at camp got pretty shitfaced on white lightning that night, and he set them off not long before we all turned in.” Christian chuckled. “It freaked people out—especially the old warhorses with PTSD. I’ll never forget the looks on their faces. Hard to forget the way the sky looked too.”
After a couple of seconds’ hesitation, Lauren shrugged with mild disregard. “Did your friend make it through the night?”
“Well, yeah. We trained together the entire day following, sweating out alcohol in the sun, hungover as hell. Why?”
Lauren set a grim smile. “Then he should count himself lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“Lucky one of the vets suffering from post-traumatic stress didn’t cut his throat or light his tent on fire,” Lauren said, her eyes transfixed on the sky. “Their supply catalog designation aside, I think those flares are beautiful. They remind me of an Independence Day fireworks display. Definitely a sight for sore eyes.”
Christian gazed upon Lauren thoughtfully, his eyes focusing on the upturned corners of her mouth, a simple yet radiant closed-lipped smile that had been etched on her face in one form or another since the moment she had seen someone she recognized. A person she had referred to only as a friend.
Lauren’s so-called friend was an enigmatic, alert, agile man dressed in black military fatigues, wearing body armor and night-vision goggles, armed with a suppressed carbine and a strangely unique sword he had slung across his back.
Since the point of making contact with him, the clouds that normally hung over Lauren’s temperament had lifted. She had been practically overjoyed and remained so even now, beyond her efforts to visually suppress her excitement.
Christian counted the number of times he had seen a true, radiant smile from Lauren since they’d been introduced, and it didn’t take long to arrive at an answer. The sum was a single-digit integer.
He pondered for a moment what she’d been like before the two crossed paths. What kind of person had she been before the EMP and the blackout, before the day she’d last seen her father—before the end of her world as she’d known it to be. Christian guessed it a good chance that Lauren had been a generally happy person then. Contented and normal. Adventurous to a fault. Kind. Conventional. Popular and full of life. The type of person everyone always wanted to be around and have near them. Just like he had been.
Then he contemplated the other things he had seen. Her unbridled instinct for self-preservation. The willingness to do whatever was needed to survive. Lauren’s inner warrior.
Christian had seen her wrath manifest on more than several occasions, directly witnessing the inferno that had oftentimes existed within her eyes. Now the only flame he could detect between her delicate eyelids was one of unpolluted passion and raw courage—attributes of a fierce, young woman who had lost everything, only to keenly stare death in the face and instruct it to fuck off.
As the last few flares ruptured to life, others launched in advance ejected their parachutes one by one, a commencement of their floating descent amidst plumes of dense, twirling, crimson and white smoke.
Confusion was starting to overtake the crowd of wildlings and ruffians gathered outside. They scurried about indiscriminately while gawking at the sky in trepidation and awe.
Several shots rang out as a team of expletive-shouting men took aim on the hovering fireballs, attempting to shoot them down. The men whooped and hollered upon finding their efforts ineffective, only to reload and continue firing their weapons in vain anyway, stopping only at the point when they had exhausted their ammunition supply.
The group’s collective rage grew and festered, and the unnerving silence that had overtaken the expanse outside the cage melted away into panic. Infuriated, maniacal cries flared out from the crowds milling about the bonfire, and from that point forward, the commotion began a hasty transformation into chaos and all-out bedlam.
Men began pushing and shoving each other while yelling obscenities in multiple dialects and languages. Heated arguments and fights broke out, many quickly escalating into full-on, no-holds-barred brawls. The social fabric holding the group together had frayed beyond repair.
Two bearded men in tattered clothing, their builds broad and husky enough to challenge a professional football linebacker, tackled each other to the ground and began beating one another senseless. As they wrestled, growled, and shouted incoherent curses, the fight came to an abrupt halt when a third man wearing a dark gray trench coat emerged from the shadows. He pulled a satin-finish .357 Magnum revolver from his waistband and shot both combatants, one point-blank in the face, the other execution-style in the back of the head. Directly following the savage deed, he nonchalantly knelt and rifled through their pockets, gathered whatever possessions he thought valuable, then took his leave of them as if nothing were amiss.
Christian pointed to the men and mused, “Did you see that? They really are a bunch of cornflakes. One minute, they’re all buddies, ready to cook us on that fire over there. Now their plans are busted…and they’re shooting each other.” He sniggered. “This is insane!”
Lauren shook her head, diverting her attention away from the fireworks show to take a knee. “No honor among thieves,” she said, motioning for Christian to do the same while she eyeballed the man holding the revolver with caution. “I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that you find this entertaining.”
“What? You don’t?”
“No,” Lauren blurted. “But to be clear…it is strangely gratifying.”
Christian moved to one knee as directed. “You’re developing a taste for vengeance. Nothing wrong with that, considering what almost happened to us. Look at it this way—what if it escalated? They might have a little civil war over this debacle and wind up shooting each other dead. Would that at least be visually stimulating for you?”
Lauren nodded slightly, flicking a pebble on the ground between the wooden posts. “Visually, mentally, and spiritually. They could kill each other off—wipe themselves out, for all I care.”
“Well, my dear, the night is young.” Christian nudged her. “Keep your chin up. I have a feeling good things are coming.”
“You have no idea,” said Lauren, elevating her brow. She turned away, leaning closer to the stockade wall, her smile gradually returning while her adversaries’ movements became more and more frantic. They start
ed to disband, heading off alone and in groups to find darker regions in which to lurk or conceal themselves. “They can run, but they can’t hide.”
A whistling sound caught the attention of everyone within earshot just as the bonfire in the distance became engulfed in a blinding flash of light. A split second after, it detonated into a massive, towering firestorm, showering the area with sparks, blazing hot embers, and burning debris.
Those standing close by, including the man in the trench coat, were obliterated by the blast, not having had the time to react or find refuge. Scores of others within the blast radius were blighted by the concussion, some having their clothes ripped free from their bodies, others being literally cut to pieces by sprays of flying shrapnel.
At the onset of the explosion, Christian reacted, instinctively grabbing Lauren by her arm and pulling her down to the ground with him.
With sharp eyes, Lauren fought against him, but Christian overpowered her. He took hold of her head and wrapped his arms around her, effectively shielding her from the blast’s shockwave and superheated drafts as they jolted past, causing the ground and everything around them to shudder ferociously.
Christian spoke softly with his mouth next to Lauren’s ear as he eased his grip on her. “Hey—don’t punch me, okay? I’m sorry about that—I should’ve warned you. I think your friend gave us some good advice. We should heed it from here on out.”
Her senses overloaded from the blast, Lauren pulled away from him, coughing and brushing dirt and debris from her hair, arms, and chest. She tossed the entwined strands of her hair over her shoulder and grinned nervously, doing her best to convey an expression of gratitude. “I’m going to have to agree with you,” she said, barely able to hear her own voice over the ringing in her ears. “Thanks.”
Christian shrugged. “No sweat.” He meekly gestured behind them. “We should probably get everyone else on board again…before another one goes off.”
Lauren glanced over her shoulder and nodded her recognition. She knew who had arrived and was mindful of what was happening. She even had some semblance of an idea of what to expect, and it had become her responsibility to offer direction to the group of terrified faces huddled nearby.
Wetting her lips, she took advantage of a brief intermission in the assault. “Everyone listen to me, please. Like we told you before, stay as low as you can and keep your heads down. Cover your head with your hands and shield your eyes and ears, and try to stay that way until it’s over. This is only the beginning.”
While Christian echoed her remarks, an agitated man’s voice asked, “The beginning? The beginning of what?”
“Yeah—seriously. What the hell is this?” another voice, panic-stricken, called out. “Are we being attacked?”
Lauren shrugged, turning her gaze to Christian momentarily as a set of faint blasts echoed off in the distance. “Just please do as I say. We’re not being attacked…we’re being rescued.”
“Excuse me, miss? How exactly do you know that?” another voice, one carrying a faint British accent, questioned her. “We’ve seen this happen before, yet we all still remain enslaved here.”
Lauren didn’t have time to answer him. More explosions, some far away and others close by, silenced the group as the ground trembled beneath them and wafts of heated air passed by.
Christian placed his hand on the dirt. “I suppose that would be ‘the bombs bursting in air’.” His facial features tensed in urgency. “I think they’re getting closer.”
Lauren cocked her head to the side just as the detonations intensified. Seconds later, the intensity persisting, they started going off in rapid succession. She plugged her ears with her fingers and tucked her head into her arms to safeguard herself from the blinding flashes of light and concussive jolts emanating from the blasts. The area around the stockade quickly became saturated with thick, billowing dust, smoke, and ash, making it difficult to see and nearly impossible to breathe. Lauren pulled her shirt collar up and over her mouth and nose and waved her hand at the others behind her, attempting to get them to do the same.
The explosions continued relentlessly in an abrupt, reverberating cadence as mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and other munitions rained overwhelming power and a spectacular display of force upon the encampment. They annihilated every target, personnel or otherwise, leaving behind nearly incomprehensible levels of destruction, and the leftover hostile forces were left paralyzed and in complete disarray, unwilling to put up a fight.
Lauren couldn’t help but be curious. It was in her nature. A battle was being fought tens of yards away, and she wanted to see what was happening as the attack transpired. At one point, she wiped her eyes and peered out into the smoky, glowing darkness, hued burgundy by a multitude of burning fires, only to regret her decision mere seconds after making it.
A severed arm, bloodied and still wrapped in a torn shirtsleeve modestly singed by fire, smacked into the wooden poles of the cage, landing on the ground outside directly in front of Lauren and Christian.
“Oh…oh God,” Lauren groaned. She turned away and lurched, her hand moving to cover her mouth while fighting her body’s sudden urge to regurgitate.
Christian tried to make light of it. He patted her on the back and jested, “That’s not something you see every day.” He slid his hand through the poles and did his best to move the appendage aside and away from view.
After an assault lasting nearly two minutes, as quickly as they had begun, the outbreak of booming detonations ceased to be. The lingering smoke wafted, swirled, and cleared away, aided by the breeze, and the last of the parachuting luminous flares completed its descent, making a final touchdown with Earth as the dust settled.
Several figures, mere silhouettes, could be seen moving to investigate the flares still burning while others stood by scratching their heads, static and dumbfounded. Some used the respite to tend to their fallen or injured comrades, but nearly all who remained alive were back on their feet, milling about aimlessly.
“Jesus H Christ! Now that was somethin’ else!” a thin man said while thumbing a Fu Manchu mustache. “A hell of a lot worse than some of the other attacks we’ve had.”
His cohort, a black man wearing a cowboy hat, his face covered in dust and ash, rubbed his eyes before replying. “You think so?” he barked, his voice shuddering. “How’d you come to that conclusion, genius?”
“Do y’all think it’s over?” a man in a torn denim jacket standing nearby asked while surveying the devastation, nearly tripping over several dead bodies piled up near his feet. “Think it’s the same jerks as last time?”
Fu Manchu huffed, palming a Colt 1911 variant. “Hard to say. Sure looks like it, though.”
The black man pulled off his hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Both of you shut the hell up and get ready to shoot! If it’s the same folks as last time, then you both should know by now. Shit’s not over yet!”
As the words escaped his mouth, a fusillade of heavy gunfire kicked off. And not unlike the alleged first shot taken in the American Revolution, as portrayed in Emerson’s ‘Concord Hymn’, it was ‘the shot heard round the world’ that started it all.
A rifle bullet left the muzzle and went instantly supersonic, its organic tracer fuel alight, marking its trajectory. It struck the man in the cowboy hat just below his left eye, splitting his head in half and nearly decapitating him. As he fell in a lifeless heap, what could only be described as a pandemonium of high-cyclic-rate machine-gun fire commenced, rattling off in a turbulent, errant discord. The second wave of the assault had begun.
Fu Manchu turned to run, but was eviscerated by a burst of shots just after taking his first step. Denim Jacket was cut in half at the abdomen only seconds later after watching his comrade drop in a thick mist of blood spatter.
What was transpiring now was unlike anything Lauren had ever seen before and bordered on anything she’d even imagined coming to pass. Her ears felt like they were stuffed full of cotton, and th
ey were starting to ring worse than the first time she’d heard a pistol go off from an adjacent lane at an indoor range years ago. A time when she had been remiss enough to slip off her earmuffs to remove a set of earrings.
The gunfire was devastating and persistent, and there was no escape from it. It emanated from almost every direction from the encompassing boundaries of the encampment. Tracer bullets streaked across the visible landscape like a laser light show at a rock concert, and sparks jumped and sprang to life from friction when the rounds struck concrete or metal objects.
The cage holding Lauren, Christian, Norman, Fred and the others seemed to be the only sanctuary remaining, the only place yet to be fired upon or otherwise struck by one of the previously hurled incendiaries. Outside, the once carousing, chanting, dancing rabble of wicked hooligans never stood a chance. They were being crushed. Their faction’s populace appeared to have already been cut in half, and they were losing tens more by the second. The barrage of suppressive heavy-weapons fire continued at the same pitiless rate with no regard for the dwindling numbers, mowing them down like a bush hog through a field of unruly, dense weeds.
Lauren peered just above her forearm to see if she could spot anyone still alive she recognized. The men who had brazenly taken part in Fred’s beating were nowhere to be found. Their bizarre bald-headed Shakespeare-spouting leader and Gus, the giant grunting mute who had spat in her face, were also both long gone. She hoped to find them lying amongst the dead. One could only be so lucky.
The type of evil those men possessed, the wickedness inside them that made them tick, had no purpose, no right to remain existent anymore. It was a by-product of the collapse, and they were nothing more than the superfluous afterbirth of humanity, dregs of a society gone astray.
Lauren continued to visually scour the area, searching for anyone or anything related to Dave Graham’s unit, but her visibility was severely limited. She couldn’t even see where Woo Tang had gone off to. He had disappeared into the darkness not long before the first flare had been sent into the air to light ablaze and set sail.
Divided We Stand Page 5
