The McClane Apocalypse Book Eight

by Kate Morris

  “Dinner?” the man asks, his tone becoming more threatening. “Why don’t you just step away from that RV and let us have a look inside?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says.

  “I don’t remember asking,” the man insists and signals to his men to search it.

  “Hey, we’re willing to trade,” Kelly says. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  “It’s all like this,” the man says. “Now get your women and girls outta there and let us have a look at them. Then we’ll make a new deal.”

  “What do you mean?” Kelly asks, playing stupid.

  “I could always use another wife,” the man taunts. “And how old are your daughters?”

  “Wait, this isn’t an acceptable form of trade. I don’t think we need your help after all.”

  The man shouts laughter to the sky and says, “You actually thought we were gonna help you? That’s classic.”

  His men are heading around the other side of the RV to climb inside.

  “So you’re the ones?” Kelly asks, looking for clarification. “You’re the ones that people put up signs to warn everyone about?”

  The man bows and says, “At your service. And the assholes who put up the signs? Yeah, we’re about to take them all out.”

  “How’s that?”

  “My boss is workin’ on a plan,” he answers unknowingly.

  Kelly looks at Cory, and he instantly knows that they need this man alive for questioning. Cory gives an imperceptible nod.

  “Aren’t you the boss?” Kelly asks.

  “Me? Nah, I’m just one of the drones.”

  “Drone?”

  “Worker bees. We gather the nectar, and the boss spreads the honey.”

  “Seems like an unfair deal,” Kelly comments, trying to get more information out of the man. “You seem smart. Why are you letting someone else call the shots?”

  “’Cuz he brought us all together. He did the hard work to get us to where we are now. Ain’t nobody starvin’ anymore.”

  “How many of you are there?”

  “What’s it matter to you?”

  “Just curious,” Kelly says. “Maybe I wanna’ join your group.”

  The man laughs, “You ain’t got the stomach for what we do. I can tell. You’re soft, weak. Like a little teddy bear.”

  Cory can hear John in his earpiece, “Pick your partner, dos-i-do. I’ve got the guy on the farthest right.”

  Dave says, “I’ve got Mr. Bright Red shirt down here on our end.”

  They all sound off in Cory’s ear who they will pick off when the shooting starts.

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s why I’m gonna kill your son, take your woman if she interests me, and take everything you own, teddy bear.”

  Cory’s eyes shift quickly to Kelly’s. Then he sees the corner of his brother’s mouth twitch as if he is trying to suppress a smile.

  “Hey, boss!” one of the men calls from the other side of the RV. “There ain’t no women in here!”

  Cory flashes the signal to Simon, and all hell breaks loose. Shooting ensues, long range from Simon and Lucky as they take out the men on the .50 cal quickly, within a second of the other’s shot. Kelly shoots the leader in the knee, and the man goes down in a scream of surprise and extreme pain. Cory draws his pistol at lightning speed and pulls the trigger, taking out a man directly beside the leader. He can hear shots being fired from both sections of forest on either side of the road. John is leading men in taking out the RV explorers because Cory can hear bodies bouncing off of the outside wall of the vehicle as bullets slam into them. He squats and pulls his AR from under the hood.

  “Kevlar,” John says into his mic.

  Cory knows he needs leg shots or headshots. By the way the men are falling, he also knows that Simon and the other sniper already figured it out as their body count rises. One of Robert’s men tosses a grenade, hitting the crowd around the .50 cal as they were approaching it to take over. They dive for cover, even the man who was about to open up on the weapon. Someone shoots him when he pops up to go to work because the man slumps forward onto the machine gun. Kelly has taken cover in front of the RV and is popping off rounds into the group of men from the rifle he snatched from behind the driver’s seat. Each shot takes down one man. His brother is not a teddy bear. His brother is a grizzly.

  Cory uses the open windows of the sedan to fire shots through and strikes another man in the back. He is not wearing protective gear because blood splatter hits the white truck behind him like a Rorschach drawing, and he goes down and doesn’t rise again. Cory shoots another as a barrage of heavy gunfire continues from the woods. Then he hears more shooting in the distance. Dave must be engaging with the assholes who were hanging back waiting to supply backup. The man he shoots returns fire, so Cory aims in and finishes him off with a headshot.

  Someone shouts, “Grenade!”

  The RV is rocked. Cory offers suppressive fire toward the enemy with a quick tap-tap-tap and sprints to the front of the RV where Kelly was using it for cover. He finds John there with his brother, dragging him away. His heart stops. Then Kelly gets his feet under him and runs alongside John and scurries down into the ditch beside the road. Cory joins them as his heart resumes pumping.

  “Man, you scared me, bro.”

  Kelly shakes his head and says, “I was just funnin’.”

  “Yeah, fucking hilarious,” he adds with sarcasm.

  Cory knows his brother wasn’t joking. He must’ve been knocked off his feet or else John wouldn’t have been pulling him clear.

  “Professor, take out that dude going for the fifty,” John says into his throat mic.

  A second later, a loud report is heard and nothing else. Simon wasn’t even in a good mood when they left today. He’s taking no bullshit from these assholes. More shots are fired from the woods where Robert’s men are still hiding. They are definitely holding their own.

  “There’s a truck heading your way, Four-wheeler,” John says to Chet.

  “Got it,” Chet answers over his own throat mic.

  Cory worries that their ally will have trouble, but he has seven men with him. Another long-range shot rings out, and one of the men in the back of the truck making its escape falls out. Then another as a second shot is fired, this time from the other hill. Apparently, the Professor and Lucky are having their own competition.

  “Cory, take the hill. Flank ‘em,” John issues. “I’ll lay down some cover fire.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cory says and crawls out of the ditch as the highwaymen continue to fight it out. He sprints into the woods and quickly up a hill that isn’t as well concealed with trees. John keeps them off of him by shooting a pop-popping spray of designed fire.

  He pushes hard and runs parallel to the road. A splinter of wood hits a tree near his head, and Cory ducks. The shot did not come from the road. It came from ahead of him. He doesn’t see anyone.

  “They’re scattering to the woods. Watch out,” Cory says into his mic, getting a response to the affirmative.

  Below him, the borrowed RV is on fire now. He doesn’t think the man that lent it will be taking his family on any camping trips anytime soon, so it hardly matters. He wanted to fight actually, but he is seventy-three. They’d assured him that his place was at the condo community helping to keep it safe.

  Another shot rings out in the woods. There is more than one man ahead of him. He has to eliminate them because they could find Simon or shoot at his brother or John from the cover of the forest.

  A light drizzle begins as Cory rises and stalks carefully, quietly forward. God is smiling on him, offering the splattering of raindrops to cover his footfalls. He can hear them but doesn’t see them yet. He decides to move up the hill a little further to see if he can look down on them. It does the trick because he finally spots them moving around, whispering to one another, and taking cheap shots at Cory’s comrades in the road fighting back at their own friends. Cory heads down t
he hill and stops halfway. Then he kneels and aims.

  “Don’t take that shot, asshole,” someone says behind him.

  Cory feels the barrel of a gun pushing into his back. A moment of indecision hits him. Then Cory lifts his right hand in the air in submission and lowers his rifle to the ground, unsheathing his dagger from his boot at the same time.

  “Get up!” the man says but not loudly.

  Cory begins to rise very slowly. Then he stabs the man in the calf and spins to finish the job. The man crumbles, though. A headshot has disabled him. A second later, Simon sprints up to him.

  “Sorry, Cor,” he apologizes. “I saw him but couldn’t get a shot off. Too many trees.”

  “Thanks, brother,” Cory says.

  “Hm, looks like you were gonna deal with him anyway,” Simon says, covered in green camo from head to toe.

  “Thanks anyway,” he says again.

  “What are you doing up here?”

  “John sent me to flank, but there are assholes down there in the woods hiding.”

  “Want some help?”

  “Hell, yeah,” he says with a nod.

  They move out together and find the men quickly. There aren’t two. There are seven that Cory finally counts. They squat and observe for a moment.

  “Where the hell’d they come from?” Cory whispers. “I don’t think these dudes rode with them.”

  “No, I agree,” Simon concurs.

  “I’ll head that way. You push forward from here,” he says, getting a nod. Then he adds with a wink, “They won’t see you coming.”

  “Not funny. This thing’s hot as hell.”

  “Quit your bitchin’.”

  Simon nods, pulls his face mask back down and leaves. Cory walks quickly and as quietly as possible and ends up behind the men, who have not spotted him. They are too intent on shooting his teammates near the road, mostly Robert’s men who have come out of hiding to join the fight more head-on. Cory sights in and pulls the trigger, taking one down. Simon does the same from his position. Only he takes out two more in quick succession. Cory can’t be outdone, so he shoots another man. This one is in mid-dive for cover, so he only wings him in the leg. Two more to go, but they run away. Simon shoots one in the butt cheek, and Cory offers the other a faster mercy. Then the sniper takes deliberate aim and hits another man at over a hundred yards.

  “Nice shot, brother,” Cory says as he joins back up with Simon and punches his fist against Simon’s.

  “Cover me. I gotta get outta this monkey suit.”

  “You got it,” Cory says and swings around to keep watch. No one else approaches, but he scans the area carefully.

  They rush down into the fight again, and within minutes, they have the job finished. The shooting at the end of the road stops shortly after, too. Dave comes out of the woods and meets up with the rest of the group.

  “Good job, men,” John says, patting shoulders and bumping fists.

  “My men are taking care of survivors,” Dave says. “That piece of shit,” he points to the leader of the group, “we’ll take back to town.”

  “You know it,” John says with a nod.

  Suddenly, an explosion rocks the ground under them, and Cory’s ears are ringing. Round two has begun.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Simon

  A mortar round has struck in the middle of their fighting position. Their backup has arrived. One of them or many of them must’ve called for help from their people once the fighting commenced. He’s not sure if his teammates are injured or not, but he dives for cover with Cory, his brother, and John.

  “Take cover!” John and Dave both shout to the remaining men.

  Everyone scrambles as they try to figure out where the attack is coming from. The sound of heavy equipment moving on the road vibrates under his feet.

  “Talk to me, Chet,” John says into his mic.

  “It’s not coming from my area. The road’s clear,” he says.

  They look at Dave. The rest of their group jumps into the ditch with them and await orders.

  “Not from ours. We took care of them, too. There wasn’t anyone left, and we took the keys to their trucks.”

  “New group,” Cory guesses.

  “They’ve sent for new reinforcements,” Kelly says.

  “Head for the woods. We need to split up, flank that mortar launcher, take it out,” Dave says.

  “They’re coming in something big or heavy, could be a tank or similar,” John says.

  “We’ll head east,” Simon says of himself and Cory.

  Another round hits the already burning RV. They make plans to encircle the road and take out whoever is coming down it. He and Cory are to track the ones using the mortar launcher like he did with Luke the night of the condo attack. He runs beside his friend through the forest.

  “I don’t think that was mortar fire this time,” Cory says as they blast up a hill, heedless of noise. “That looked like a round from a bazooka or an AT-4.”

  “Whatever it was, we need to take it out,” Simon says.

  “Agreed,” his friend confirms.

  It doesn’t take long to find the next wave of men coming through the woods. They are less fearful of them and making a commotion as they move together toward them.

  Cory says, “Uh…we have a group of maybe fifty men up here toward the ridge.”

  “We’re coming,” John says.

  “Spread out,” Simon orders, although he doesn’t think Cory needs his advice.

  They run to the farthest points on the ridge, about sixty yards apart and take up positions of an offensive nature. Simon kneels and readies his rifle for multiple shots. He locks in on the man using some sort of grenade launcher or mechanism of that type. Without waiting for the others, he squeezes the trigger. The man goes down. Then the enemy all start shooting, but he and Cory lay down rounds of more lethal intent. Pieces of bark and chunks of wood splinter off of the trees near him, but Simon knows they are just mindlessly shooting. It doesn’t mean he won’t be hit, either, so he stays low, belly crawls to his right just a few yards and sets up a good spot for sniping. He remains prone and starts picking them off. Cory is moving around shooting, too. He knows this because his friend’s rounds are hitting men from different angles.

  Dave and John join him in the resistance a few minutes later. The others hook up with Cory at the opposite end, and they all spread out, effectively barricading in the men below them. Dave sends a hand signal to three of his men to start flanking. Simon knows they are about to surround the men below them, which will block them in and prevent them from escaping or retreating. This is a no-surrender, no-retreat battle. Sympathy will not be given. An armistice will not be offered. They will fight these men and kill them or be killed in the process.

  Most of John’s men are kneeling behind trees or lying prone like Simon. A few have their backs turned to the approaching enemy to scan behind them lest anyone decide to circle them, as well. Simon continues to shoot men as they enter into open areas. Something about this feels like a scene from a documentary about the Civil War that he’d watched one time with his father. Men of the same country, fighting it out in the heartland, in the forest like monsters full of hate and anger instead of fellow countrymen who should be working toward the same goals and who share the same values. These men are nothing like them, though. They are pure evil.

  Somewhere down the line, one of Robert’s men throws a grenade into the crowd coming at them. It does a lot of damage because the men were bunched together, and it throws clumps of dirt and debris into the air, causing the scene down there to become frantic and chaotic. Many of the opposition is taken out in the next two minutes because they are panicking, some trying to retreat, others trying to hide, and the worst situation possible trying to rush them, which is resulting in numerous and swift casualties on their side. Simon fires into the men in the cluster. The others do, too, and soon they have this group taken care of like the ones down on the road. They were co
ming to help their already fallen comrades but were met with the same expedient punishment.

  One of Chet’s friends from town has been shot through the top of his shoulder, so Simon quickly treats him, preparing him to be transported to the clinic. He binds the wound and ties a sling for stabilization.

  “Think that was it?” Kelly is asking rhetorically.

  John shakes his head and wipes the sweat from his forehead. He frowns and says, “Not sure. Maybe.”

  Dave offers, “I’ll send runners.”

  They head back down the hill after investigating the area and confiscating weapons. Cory had been right about the AT-4, or so his brother had confirmed. There is one survivor with a bullet hole in his side and the mouthy leader that John shot in the knee. Simon is thankful that none of them look young like the two teenage boys in the jail in town. As with the others they’ve fought, they are well fed and clothed and very well armed. They take the survivors with them. If they live, they’ll be questioned along with the others. Although these fights will help to suppress the highwaymen, there are still hundreds of them that can hurt people.

  They listen to a few of the radios they found on the men, but nobody makes contact. The highwaymen have gone radio silent. They head back to their town after eleven p.m., having waited a while for another barrage that hadn’t come. Chet’s friend is shown to Doc’s clinic where Herb and Dr. Scott treat him.

  Sam rushes over to him and says agitatedly, “What happened? Is everyone all right, Simon?”

  “Yes, fine. Everyone’s fine.”

  “Did you run into them? Did they take the bait?

  Simon washes his hands under the spigot behind the clinic and splashes cold water on his face. “Yes,” he says in between dousings. His hands come away with just as much dirt and grime after he’s run them over his face. “We took care of them. Many of them.”

  “And nobody in the family was hurt?”

  “No. Not at all,” he answers. He stands straight again and takes her shoulders in his hands. “We’re all fine. It’s over.”