by James, Glynn
Longfoot’s chin sagged toward his chest. He looked extremely tired suddenly. “Thousands,” he said. “It started with the cabinet and ministers, then senior civil servants. We worked our way down from there. Plus multiple military and civilian protection details. We just started ferrying them out here in waves. Mostly to St. James township, on the north edge of the island. Some dotted around the coast in the smaller settlements.”
Fink squinted. “Why here?”
The man swallowed heavily and paused long before answering. “It was all my idea. I used to take fishing holidays on the island. It was so empty, so isolated… I thought it would be safe. And it was for a while. But then we lost control of the flights and ferries coming in, lost control of everything. It all went to shit, so quickly. But there was nowhere else left to go…”
Fick gave him a shake by his collar to snap him out of it. It didn’t work. The guy kept rambling, as if stumbling around lost in a haze of bad memories.
“Most of my team were dead by then – died in the bunker, or on the island, defending the PM… The last handful of us managed to get her back here in the Land Rover… While we held the runway, her jet took off again. We thought she was safe, at least for a few more minutes. I don’t know where we thought she was going to go. But at least she was out of here… But, then… we saw the plane go down again, almost as soon as it took off. Just out over the water.”
Fick ground his jaw. What he really needed was actionable intel. Something that would help his team. “How did you survive here on your own? For two years?”
“I got back in the truck. Drove to the coast, to see if I could… but there was nothing, no one to save. So I just buried myself in the sand, rifle pointing back inland, and lay there for two sunsets and two sunrises. When nothing came for me, I got up, drove back here… and moved into the tower. Been here since. Hunting. Scavenging. Watching the dead come and go. Not a single other living person… until today.”
Fick nodded. “Wait – you drove back?”
“Yeah. The truck’s parked in the near hangar.”
Fick allowed himself the tiniest twinge of compassion for this poor sonofabitch. He had failed in his duty, or been defeated at any rate, not to mention watched all his friends get eaten. Then been totally on his own for two years. That would turn anybody’s head into a den of spiders. But just as Fick allowed his expression to soften slightly, Longfoot went mental again.
“It was the Americans who sold us out,” he muttered. “And the Afghans. God, we lost so many men in Afghanistan – shot and blown up by the people we were trying to help train… and all for Karzai’s rigged elections. For nothing! And that old bomber! Obviously sold to them by the Americans. Just another green-on-blue… But our suicide bombers will get them, oh yes…”
Fick rose, disgusted. At least now he knew which direction the bulk of the attackers would be coming from, and could adjust their defenses accordingly. He stepped out to the open ledge to get a God’s-eye view of the battlespace. Then he got on the squad net to tell the team they were going to have to pivot north; and that he’d be down to organize it in a minute.
And, after that, while he was still elevated and the reception good, he figured he’d try to get Alpha on the horn again, and get their goddamned updated status. Because where the hell were those sons of bitches already? Fick’s team had been on this island twenty-five minutes, which was about twenty-five minutes too long in the opinion of this senior enlisted Marine.
* * *
While Reyes kept the meat-lovers off, Stan the mechanic now helped the co-pilot drag the compound length of fueling hose back to the bomber on the runway. After what felt like an especially endless couple of minutes, they had it tied in to the newly patched fuel tank. Stan double-checked the articulations between sections, particularly the taped-up ones, as the two of them jogged back alongside it to the pumping station.
Reyes had pushed out a one-man perimeter 20 meters past the refueling station to the east, but was now edging north. As he wheeled and fired, he shouted, “Get a move on, Senores Tortugas… I’m gonna to have to make an ammo run in a minute.” He let an empty mag fall out of his weapon and hit the ground, slammed another one home, and resumed firing.
Stan got on the hand pump and started working the lever. After a few seconds, he could see the hose stiffen as it filled with fuel – and this straightening jigged and jerked down the length of hose until it climbed up the bomber wing and into the tank. Stan allowed himself a smile. Eyeballing it, plus based on having done similar stuff before, he guessed they could move about twenty gallons per minute with this set-up. That meant they’d have the 400 gallons they needed in about 20 minutes.
Outstanding.
* * *
From up above, Fick could see Brady single-handedly defending the runway while Graybeard disappeared into the bomber, then reappeared with a double armload of magazines. The two of them were just tearing through a tremendous quantity of ammo. Luckily, they’d brought a shitload along with them. To Fick’s right, with him up top, the Kid was still firing regularly, taking out leakers in ones and twos in their rear – but also depressing his muzzle to shoot closer in. Evidently his shot-up arm wasn’t interfering with him putting out effective fire. He was also increasingly shooting to the north, where more and more of the dead, both shamblers and sprinters, were breaking through the treeline.
It was all turning into a goddamned dead-guy goat rodeo.
Fick pulled his rifle’s magnifying sight to his eye to get a closer look at the enemy. He immediately spotted more dead in tattered suits and skirts which, yeah, now that he had the backstory, looked like politicians or civil servants. There was also a scattering of people in overalls and waders, which Fick figured represented the fishermen and farmers that made up the bulk of the permanent population. As always, there were some in their PJs, those who’d died in bed; and, also as usual, more than a few naked-ass ones, who had turned in the shower or, more likely, just had their clothes rot off them after two years of mud, rain showers, and open-air drying.
Of particular interest to him was the significant number of dead guys in uniform. Whatever the size and disposition of the Canadian force that had been defending their political leaders on this island… well, they had all gone down and, save this one half-crazed dude hog-tied up here, now swelled the ranks of the enemy. Fick had certainly seen his share of military dead before – more than his share, with all their scavenging of military bases over the past two years.
His radio perked up. “Fick, Graybeard.”
He keyed his mic without taking his eye from the scope. “Send it.”
“Yeah, you know it’s not like me to complain, Gunny. But it’s getting pretty damned thick down here. And we’re burning through a shedload of ammo. What would you think about rolling the bird away down the runway to the east, progressively displacing, and defending at the other end? It’s the one side we’re not heavy on.”
“Yeah, great fucking idea – we’ll build a carpet of dead guys all the way down the runway, which we then won’t be able to take off over. Negative. We stay at this end, and hold this position.” He checked his watch. “You hold that line. But I’ll come down in a minute and we’ll get some bigger guns in the fight. Out.”
He turned on his heel to start leaping down those stairs yet again. But as he crossed the big open-air room, he realized that Longfoot, tied to the wall, was still mumbling to no one, as if in delirium. Fick had already written this guy off as several cocks short of a circle-jerk. But something he said now gave Fick pause. He wasn’t sure why, and he didn’t have time for it, but he slowed and listened.
“Our suicide bombers’ll get ’em, bombers still out there, they’ll bomb the bomber…”
Predicting he’d regret this, Fick went back, kneeled down, and lifted up the muttering man’s chin. “Okay, I’ll bite,” Fick said. “What the hell do you mean about suicide bombers?”
Longfoot’s eyes cleared and steadied slightly,
as lucidity seemed to return to him for a moment. “We had some guys who’d already lost their families, who had lost everyone. They volunteered for it. It was their decision…”
“Who?” Fick barked, shaking Longfoot by the lapel. “Volunteered for what?”
As soon as Longfoot told him, Fick got on the squad net again – while simultaneously leaping down the stairs even faster than before, a full landing at a time.
* * *
Stan the mechanic was starting to feel the strain of the work. He wasn’t getting any younger and, while he generally preferred to be hands-on, he had a lot of youthful guys and gals working for him on the carrier – energetic kids who were happy to run around, pick up heavy things, and push on stuck ones. But Stan carried on working the pump handle even as sweat soaked his jumpsuit.
Also, he figured they were now getting in the ballpark of having the tank topped – and he was slightly concerned about knowing when they did, though he figured the pump would stop working at that point. He raised his head, intending to give the co-pilot a turn, so he could go back and check on the bomber end.
But as he looked up, he saw the bulbous-helmeted aviator already coming toward him, walking unsteadily backward, half stumbling actually – and scrabbling at his belt holster for his side arm. Stan looked beyond him… and saw a knot of lurching dead, runners, maybe five or six, tear-assing in from around those buildings to the north.
Stan didn’t panic, but merely flicked his eyes to the right. Their security detachment, Reyes, had one hand to his radio earpiece, face screwed up in concentration, as if trying to make out a transmission. And though he’d been pivoting north, he was still pushed out pretty far to their east – out of position to defend against the new threat. Looking forward again, Stan saw the co-pilot finally get his pistol clear of leather. And in that frozen instant, something else caught his eye: the dead guy out at the front of the group wore a tattered military uniform, his chest criss-crossed with two bandoliers – every visible inch of which held hand grenades. He also wore two fat satchels, one slung over each shoulder, and bulging from either side of his waist.
Now Stan heard the co-pilot firing his service pistol – Bang! bang! bang! bang! – from only a few feet away. Underneath this racket, he heard a shout. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Reyes running toward them, rifle in one hand, the other one outstretched, his mouth wide. He was saying,
“Dude, NO! Hold your fi—”
Stan looked forward one last time and orange flame blossomed through the pinhole of his retina, which then turned his whole visual field pure white. Some kind of wind seemed to lift him up off the ground. He heard a sound like a train going by at full speed a foot in front of his face, which lasted for only a fraction of a second.
But which stretched out to eternity.
* * *
The blast wave hit Fick after he’d taken only two steps outside the base of the tower. It tore at his skin and uniform edges and crushed his eardrums as it picked him up and slammed him to the ground on his side like a rag doll.
When he levered his eyes apart and looked up again… the fueling station, the tin shed nearby, the two buildings closest to that – not to mention the mechanic, the co-pilot, and Reyes, were all gone. Just absent. In their place was a giant blackened blast crater in the ground, a whole lot of drifting smoke, and dozens of little flaming puddles of aviation fuel dotting the landscape for a hundred meters in every direction. Fick’s eye was caught by the hose, which had been blown clear of the fueling station and half the distance back to the plane, but which was still tied in to the bomber at the other end.
And as Fick lay there and watched, still stunned and deafened, a tongue of flame from one of the burning puddles of fuel snaked forward into the end of the hose – and the whole tube flamed and twisted and started burning away from that endpoint, blackened plastic curling into the air as the fire raced forward, like a giant fuse.
And the bomb it was attached to was… the bomber.
Fick willed his deadened nerves to prod his tenderized meat into action. He rose to his knees, then launched forward as if out of a sprinter’s crouch. He got to the wing of the bomber at the same time as the flame, yanked the hose free, and threw it anywhere. Flaming aviation fuel sprayed into the air and splashed down across Fick’s helmet, face, shoulder, and arm. As he dropped to the ground again, he kept his eye on the plane.
It didn’t explode.
But then a body came crashing down on him, and his rolling around on the tarmac became a lot more vigorous. It was Graybeard, beating him with his arms, and kneading him into the ground.
Trying to put him out.
Only the Good Die Young
Lake Michigan
Juice’s prisoner, the boy, didn’t really see the barrel of the anti-aircraft gun swinging toward them, but he did see it conk his captor, the big bearded dude, on the head. He then squirmed and shouted as the man’s grip on his belt lapsed and he fell flailing over the railing and through open air.
To no one’s greater surprise than his own, his flailing arms – flexicuffed in front of him, thank God – caught at the railing on the lower deck as he fell by it. He grabbed and scrabbled for dear life, to keep from going into the drink, which was now going by below him at an alarming rate. Gulping air, blinking, spitting out the spray frothing up at him, and mustering his pulsing strength, he hauled himself over and onto the heaving deck.
Pulling himself to his feet, he looked up and down the outer walkway of the lower deck. Oh, my God… there were bodies, three of them – three of the guys, and by no means the least badass of the group, all sprawled out in awkward poses, blood and viscera and brain matter splashed around them. That was what all the firing had been. Every man on the lower deck had been cut down.
Turning and facing toward the water now, hands still bound before him, the boy saw motion behind the Diablo. It was the other boat, the one with the astonishingly deadly commandos on it, giving chase. It wasn’t coming up fast, but it was coming. And now he saw that an enormous man stood on the prow, pointing a rifle directly at him! He ducked his head as shots rang out, and swung into the interior companionway, hearing the snap of bullets going through the air behind him, and the thunks of others as they smacked into the hull.
He launched himself into the stairwell and then headed up, just to pick a direction. As he climbed, he rationalized his decision after the fact: the man who had captured him was down now. And he would be vulnerable.
He emerged into the open air of the top deck. Sure enough, there was the big bearded man, lying on his back with his arms outstretched, head lolling with the motion of the boat. Water from his hair, beard, and clothing still dripped and pooled around him.
The boy approached carefully, keeping his head low. He found a large knife on the man’s belt, undid the clasp, and slid it out. He then managed to grip it overhand and saw through the plastic tie that bound his wrists.
Taking the knife on the deck, he leaned over the unconscious man again, slowly, carefully… and removed the handgun from his chest rig. He knew how to check for a round in the chamber by pulling the slide back an inch, and how to get the safety off. As he pointed it at the man’s head, he thought with a rush of terror, and then one of anger, of all the guys, the ones who had taken him in and kept him alive all this time, now lying dead on the deck below.
But as he drew back the hammer to cock it… he remembered something else. First, how the bearded man had killed John, his partner in manning the ZPU. But then when he himself had turned and put his hands up, how the bearded one had immediately eased off, spared him – and taken him prisoner. He hadn’t had to do that. And maybe it made him different from the ones who had killed everyone on the lower deck. He didn’t know, really, it was all so fucked up…
But as he pointed the gun with trembling hands, putting the sights on the unconscious man’s forehead, he hesitated long, his finger caressing the trigger. The boat continued to roll around him, and he could hear
the engine of the other vessel getting closer now.
* * *
Ali didn’t actually have them herself, despite what everyone said about her. But she knew right where balls lived and, as usual, a quick sharp knee strike there did wonders. As the convulsing figure of the cowboy doubled up, Ali rolled on top of him, got her knees and elbows set, and straddled him. In a flash, she went into the classic mount from Brazilian ju-jitsu, sliding her knees up into his armpits, forcing her arms under his while spreading them out and up, and became, for a second, total dead weight on his chest.
Yeah, that would work.
Until it didn’t. The boat, already thrumming and bouncing, suddenly rocked sharply, as if something had collided with it. This bounced Ali’s weight, of which there was not all that much to start with, up off the cowboy. In addition to breaking her hold on him, it twisted the vertebrae she had wrenched in the fall after her parachute landing, sending shrieking pain up her back – and then she came back down partially on the arm she had speared in the same fall, which now threatened to collapse under her. She tried to recover, but the cowboy used the temporary space between them to slam his head forward and into her nose – which crunched and smarted, as her eyes stung and teared up.
Fair play, she figured. She’d smashed the hell out of his schnozz. Hell, she’d used the business end of a gun barrel.
So now she just had to dodge his knife for the eternity it took her to coil and spring away from him, and out of that terrible embrace in close quarters.
* * *
The Three Brothers, already so badly torn up from large-caliber gunfire, crashed now into the hull of the Diablo. Handon’s second attempt to bring them in alongside wasn’t as smooth or successful as the first. But that one hadn’t been so desperate, or conducted at such high speed.
The two hulls crunched and bounced off each other in a spray of churning water, the much smaller boat doing most of the rebounding. Handon battled the controls to straighten them up and run a parallel course, and to get them in close. But then he immediately realized he had a problem. Predator, who was out on the prow and in a perfect position to jump across to the other boat, was in absolutely no shape to do so, with his gimpy leg. And Handon, who could jump, was back in the cockpit driving the damned boat. And of course Henno was the man down, sitting slumped in the back and skewered by that crossbow bolt.
