~~~
After an egg and cheese breakfast outside (Travis quietly gobbled every morsel), Leo offered to show them the rest of the grounds. He said that Abe purchased this property several years ago and had been preparing for society's downfall ever since. So, he had built this community to be self-sustaining.
Lexi and Travis walked beside Leo, listening to him describe the property and the building’s origins, not unlike a guide running through all the stars on a Hollywood tour. They paused at the end of the dock, and stared at the river racing past them to the Gulf of Mexico.
Lexi examined the speed boat bobbing up and down, pulling at its mooring line, wanting to be let go. “Is this the only boat for the whole … property?”
Leo looked around, not sure of the answer; although he thought there was at least one other boat, he had never been asked this. “Sorry, Lexi, I don't know.”
“What's over there?” Travis pointed to some movement past a wall a couple of hundred yards away.
“Let's go take a look.” Leo ushered them forward, and then through an open field. “We're actually not supposed to go there, because it's not for everyone to see, but since you're practically family …” Leo's head swiveled back and forth as if he were a spy about to give away state secrets. They all slunk low and slowly approached the wall which appeared to bound the property. Beyond it was another field and a flurry of activity. Twenty men were moving in unison. At first, Lexi thought they were dancing, but then she realized they were training. Each had a knife, and they were crouched on flexed knees. Then each sprang forward a step, thrust their knives at an imaginary assailant, and twisted. Lexi's stomach protested, threatening to give up the eggs she’d just consumed.
“This is the training yard,” Leo whispered. “Only a trusted few are able to train here in hand-to-hand combat.”
Lexi did a double-take, her mind reeling. “Trusted Few?” There were twenty of them there. “Combat?” Why were men training for combat? Was it worse out there than even she’d guessed? She studied at the leader, a harsh-looking man with a hooked nose. Even though she didn't feel like anyone here wanted to harm her or her brother, she couldn't help but feel a little helpless, like a doe who’d wandered into a hunter's camp.
An alarm sounded and all heads, but one, shot up, eyes skyward.
Feeling like she had just been revealed, Lexi saw that the hooked nose leader of the combat exercises was looking right at them.
She felt a tug on her arm.
“Come on,” Leo hollered at them at the top of his lungs to be heard over the screech of the horn, “we need to run; we're under attack.”
Chapter 28
Twelve Years Earlier
Fallujah, Iraq
“We're taking heavy enemy fire. We need an extraction,” Captain Frank Cartwright yelled over the deafening barrage of gunfire exploding around them.
His team had just cleared a building deep within enemy territory, searching for a Hezbollah terrorist they suspected of many attacks including blowing up the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which had killed nineteen of their fellow servicemen some years back. The enemy had trapped them on the roof of the building. They knew they were in trouble as they watched dozens of men wearing keffiyehs stream up to their building, AKs firing on their position.
“Shit, Captain. Our goose might be cooked on this one,” huffed Sergeant Broadmoor, his second in command and his best friend.
“Nah, we've been in worse straits.”
The radio blared, “Two Charlie. We have two Humvees approaching your six from the east. They'll be there in three minutes.”
“Two Charlie, out.”
Cartwright turned toward the eastern edge of the roof. “Extraction coming to the east in three.” He pointed in that direction. “I need this area cleared out on the double.”
His team had rushed to him from their positions. Their man assigned the SAW was injured and hung behind the lip of the roof, keeping pressure on his non-life threatening wounds.
“Give me your grenades,” Broadmoor hollered. “And I’ll need cover fire.”
Their three other team members handed him their grenades and took positions along the roof’s eastern edge. Broadmoor waited by a pipe that ran along the outside of the building and a couple of feet above the roof line. He held six cylinders carefully, pulling the pins to each, while keeping their handles depressed. “On my mark … All right, fire.”
The three fired their M4s, and Cartwright fired the SAW in a sweep around the east side of the building, while Broadmoor tossed each grenade, one at a time, trying to hit an imaginary semicircle of protection around that side of the building.
The last one was tossed when the first one exploded; four of the five men were down behind the lip of the roof for cover. Broadmoor glanced up and saw the top half of Cartwright unprotected, still firing the M249. This weapon would typically attract a lot of return fire, so he expected one of the lower ranked men to have taken over the SAW, not their superior.
It almost looked like he was enjoying this.
After the last explosion, Cartwright yelled, “Okay, now.”
Each man slid down the pole. Cartwright, the M249 empty, was moving closer to the pole, now standing up tall and working his unslung M4 around each location where he remembered seeing enemy before the blasts.
Just as Broadmoor stood up and was only a few feet from the pole, they heard the incoming mortar. Both men leapt, hitting the pole, which unceremoniously unhinged itself from the building, and both men and the pole swung out and rushed for the ground.
Frank remembered the explosion. It was the kind that sounded and felt like it went off inside in your head. His mouth was open, to equalize the pressure, and because of this, most of the Iraqi desert found its way inside. Stanley was screaming something and then they hit the ground hard.
Frank felt his leg explode in pain and noticed his consciousness wavering.
Stanley was over him, hollering something about a Humvee.
Frank tried to right himself, but couldn’t get farther than the sitting position, with his back to all the hollering. He tried to look away from what lay before him, to hear what his friend was yelling, but it demanded his fading attention.
Only a few feet away were the bodies of children, dozens of them. Arms, legs, heads, scattered with other body parts and guns. These boys were some of those forced to fight; their grenades had been tossed at terrorists who turned out to be kids, and they killed them. This enemy put these kids into harm’s way, but somehow he felt complicit in their murder. And murder was exactly what had happened here.
As he felt his consciousness slip away, he lost all desire to do this anymore. He couldn’t witness another child die.
He lay back down and heard Stanley’s voice, closer now, calling for Frank, asking if he was all right. But he wasn’t, not at all.
Frank’s visual periphery was blackening, constricting. It wouldn’t be long now.
He reached out, felt Stanley's hand, but he lost all strength and then he was out.
~~~
July 6th
Frank reached out into the darkness and whispered, “Stanley.”
He felt a strong hand clasp around his and pull. Comforting words told him, “We’ve got you, Major.”
More force tugged at him from the darkness and he was dragged for a long period, or at least it felt that way. A startling sensation made him jerk: a rough cloth rubbed against his face.
Light.
“Is all of that blood yours, Major?”
Porter was kneeling before him, wiping his face. Frank snatched the towel away from him and continued the task himself as he sat up. The image was complete now.
In front of him was the smoldering carcass of the convoy truck he’d been driving, upside down and its ass-end blown to shit. He turned his torso to see what was behind him and noted that his pickup truck, radio antenna jutting up, was hiding under the thick cover of trees.
Just then, the memorie
s connected and his head shot up and scanned the skies above.
“They're all gone, Major.” It was Wallace. He was happy to see she had made it. “After they took out your truck, they came back for us, but we hid under that canopy for a half an hour. When the drone was sure we were gone, we came out to retrieve you. We thought you were dead, like all the rest.” Her head was pointed down, supporting what she said.
“Is this all?” Frank asked, glaring at them.
“That's all …” Porter said, dejected, and then his head sprang up. “But at least you got us out. If it weren't for you, we'd all be dead.”
Frank said nothing. With much effort and Porter’s help, he rose to his feet. His bad knee hardly responded to his commands anymore.
“Now, do we go after the bastards?” It was Wallace asking the question that already clouded his mind like an angry thunderstorm. He'd made his decision just before the missile hit. Did getting blown up change anything?
When he was blown up in Fallujah, it was their ticket to retirement, his and Stanley's. Even after the promotions, he was done killing people. It was different when they blew up his home. That was revenge. And this plan to share intel with Ft. Rucker … It didn't matter that they had a Plan B to recruit and take the fight to Farook. He wanted no part of that. He had planned to convince the base of what they needed to do and then leave with Porter. They'd lock ’im up first before he’d relent on this. He’d had enough of war and certainly didn't want it now. They no longer had the manpower to fight Farook. Plus—his mind searched for any excuse it could grasp—he had more people that depended on him and a promise he had made to Grimes, to bring Porter home. It was the path he'd chosen; he'd stick with it.
“We're going to Stowell, Texas. We hope you will come too. We could use your help. But first, we have to take care of our dead.”
They were silent as they carried the bodies and piled them alongside each other, stacking rocks on each to complete the makeshift graves. It took several hours. When they were done, they picked through the convoy truck's wreckage, salvaged anything that would be useful, and they drove away from their defeat.
Chapter 29
Clyde
Clyde was no mastermind of strategy and planning, and he knew it. He depended on brute force and fear to win his battles. It was how he had ruled his gang, serving drugs and prostitution to the northern strip of Florida and the southern tip of Alabama along the highway, from Tallahassee in the east to Mobile in the west, right down to the Gulf. It would be how he planned to lord over even more territory now that the bombs had dropped and the police couldn’t respond. He had big plans.
But then, this little pixie came along and now his brother was dead, his house burned, his most trusted man Big Mike went traitor on him, and there was a rival gang, right across the river from him, who threatened to take it all? He knew at the root of this black cloud was the pixie and her brother. They were like some bad luck charm which had brought blight to all his plans. Well, that would all change in a matter of minutes.
“Around the next bend, get ready,” said Pete, his baseball cap steady as his hand navigated their boat at a slow and quiet 5 knots. The other three boats were close behind; a total of fifty men and lots of weapons. They would kill everyone, including that pixie and her sniveling brother, and take everything. It all belonged to them. They belonged to him.
“The dock is up ahead.”
Clyde signaled two of the three boats to unload along the bank before the dock. Clyde would pass the dock and unload from the north. The final boat would unload at the dock and attack them right at their heart, drawing most of their fire. With most of his forces on the north and south, they should have no problem winning this battle.
He stood tall in his seat as the other men slunk under cover, passing by the dock. He felt like a military general, directing his troops, not unlike a MacArthur or Patton. Perhaps he was pretty good at this strategy thing after all.
They navigated to an opening between some old willows that would provide excellent cover for their boat.
They were all off, checking their weapons, when a horn blasted from the camp. Then gunfire.
“Come on, men, da war has started. Let's take these fuckers and make ‘em pay for Zach's death with their blood.”
~~~
“Run, Lexi,” Leo called out to her, just behind him. She was clutching and tugging at her brother, whose eyes were wide with fear.
Shots exploded from the dock area. But then many more sounded from the south, from right where they had been standing.
“It sounds like a war,” Lexi cried.
She ran hunched over, trying to make herself small and harder for an errant bullet to find. She wasn't sure where they were running to, but knew that Leo was trying to find the safest place for them.
“No!” demanded a man barreling right for them. “Take them to the dormitory with all the women, then grab your weapon.” It was Sal, who yelled this as he passed, headed toward the dock and most of the gunfire. The soccer-ball lines crisscrossing his no-longer-gentle face were creased into a gruesome mask of a man intent on killing.
Leo turned right and led them at a run across the circular drive that she had come through yesterday when they first arrived. They were headed to the largest of the buildings, next to the cafeteria. “You'll be safe in there with the other women,” he said. “I have to fight with the men.”
Lexi could have sworn that his voice trembled as he said this, but maybe that was because they were running and all their voices sounded shaky at this point.
Leo left them at the front door of the large dormitory and then disappeared around the corner.
Lexi entered, immediately seeing the dozen or so women, all cowering in a corner and covered with what looked like black sheets—perhaps their idea of camouflage.
She knew right away she couldn't stay here. She had to go out into the action. As scary as that thought sounded when it entered her mind, she knew it to be true. She needed to see what was happening, and if needed, protect this place from whatever was attacking it.
“Travis”—she leaned over with her face directly in his—“you need to stay here with these women, where it's safe.”
He didn't really respond, but his head tilted forward in sort of a semi-nod. He then turned and plopped himself next to the covered women. One of their arms reached out from an undulating pile of black and took him in.
She wished she had her gun right now, but knowing she had her father's survival knife attached to her waistband brought her some measure of confidence. She thought of the image of the men thrusting their knives at an imaginary enemy and twisting. She would do that, if it meant protecting herself or her brother.
She slipped out the door and shut it behind her, walking into the gunfire, all around the camp. It did sound like a war. Surprisingly, she no longer feared it. She would deal with this like everything else that had been thrown at her. She pulled out her knife, snapped it in place, and walked around the corner of the building, mentally preparing herself for the next threat to be tossed at her.
~~~
Clyde and his men were firing everything they had at this encampment of men and a few women who were running for cover. Yet, in spite of their superior numbers, his men were falling one by one. And even though they were getting shots off, he didn't think they were doing equal damage to the other side.
Every minute or two, they’d try to drive forward, but they kept getting driven back.
In less than ten minutes it was over.
He looked at his rifle, surprised that his Rock River LAR-15 would no longer fire. He should have packed more ammo.
Someone yelled something at him and Clyde looked around. All his men had fallen. Clyde looked forward and saw two men yelling demands from behind their automatic weapons.
Shit!
Clyde let go of his rifle and thrust his hands up. They were defeated.
~~~
As she slid along the side of one of
the camp’s buildings, using it for cover, Lexi saw a man half obscured by the building’s edge. His bloody left hand was reaching for a knife, like he was about to attack someone she couldn’t see. His back was to her. He hadn’t heard her. She didn’t hesitate, walking toward him with her knife held at the ready to be plunged into his back. She wasn’t sure how she decided this—she wished she knew more about human anatomy.
As she methodically stepped, careful to be silent and block out all other noises, she marveled at her calmness. Her heart was pumping like a train engine going up a mountain, but she was resolute. Best of all, she felt no fear.
The man’s hand slipped the knife out of its sheath, while she picked up her pace, worried now that she wouldn’t get to him before he struck his intended victim.
She was only a couple of feet away: time to strike.
She pulled her knife back and took two quick steps, about to plunge it into him when a loud pop rocked his head back. It exploded, covering her in a mist of red.
Lexi stopped in midstride, elbow back, hand clutching tight to her weapon, shocked that the man she had intended to kill had been killed. But by whom?
A clawlike hand grabbed her neck and pulled at her. “You think because you see men train and fight that you can now fight like one?”
It was the man with the hook nose she had seen earlier in the field, the trainer. He looked like a man-sized hawk whose beak was spitting words at her.
“Your place is with the other women,” he spat some more, dragging her around the cafeteria, back toward her cabin. Her eyes then fell upon the picnic area, where this morning men and women had been enjoying their breakfast, like normal people, and she had thought the day looked bright.
Now, five men—she guessed by their dirty outfits they were the enemy—were on their knees with their hands up in the air, while many of the men from the training yard held guns to their heads. A couple more were being pushed in that direction. Beside them were the dead bodies of scores of others. It looked like the war was over.
Highway: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale of Survival Page 17
