by Kate Morris
The dead man’s friend is noisily clamoring to the top of the stairs. Cory presses his back against the wall and shuffles quickly up after him. He spots him, takes aim, and shoots. It ricochets off the wall with a loud ping. He has missed, and the man above him blasts a short, fully auto spray down at him. Cory presses hard against the wall to avoid the gunfire. Some of it comes close. Most of it ends embedded in the drywall or as a ricochet off of the metal railing and stair treads. It pisses him off, and when it finishes, he speeds up after the man, his rifle held close to his body. The man flies through the door before Cory can get off another shot.
Cory sprints ahead and makes it to the doorway. There he presses flat against the wall, pokes his head around the corner to look for the man, and rushes in hunched over and low. It sounds like the man has kicked something, perhaps an empty bottle, about twenty yards away. Cory stalks forward and pursues the man by noise alone since he has not made a visual on him yet. He comes to the end of an aisle of tall filing cabinets and spots him. The ancient hardwood floor squeaks under his booted feet, and the man quickly spins in the dark toward him. Cory pulls the trigger, and nothing happens. His rifle is jammed. A round goes off, though, from the other man’s rifle.
“Fuck,” he whispers and throws his rifle at the man, catching him off guard. It hits him hard and square in the chest.
The man cries out in surprise, and Cory charges right at him. Within four giant steps, he is on the man, knocking him to the ground. The man is bulky but not larger than Cory. He unsheathes the dagger from his boot. He stabs, but the motion is blocked by the man beneath him. The bastard shoves and manages to dislodge himself from underneath him. Cory lands on his side, grimaces from pain, which is odd that it should hurt for the amount of force, and rolls. Slipping his sidearm from its hip holster, Cory remains on his back and fires two rounds point blank at the man’s chest. His opponent had the same plan because another stray round goes off, embedding itself in the ceiling above them somewhere. He stumbles backward but doesn’t go down. Cory shoots again because the man is wearing Kevlar. His round misses. It pisses him off. He squeezes the trigger once again and nails the man in the throat, which also wasn’t his intended target.
“You done screwing around?” Simon’s voice comes through Cory’s earpiece.
“I’m saving your ass,” Cory returns.
“If you’re not too busy playing patty-cakes, I could use a hand,” Simon tells him as Cory pushes up.
His hand slips, slides in something wet. He pushes harder and rises to his knee, then springs to his feet. He collects his rifle and the other man’s. Then he rushes to Simon at the front of the building. A loud round is fired, echoing in the building, and he knows his friend is still working.
“Watcha’ got?” Cory asks as he comes up beside Simon.
Simon relays, “Douchebags about a hundred yards out, running between the freight cars…”
“Got it,” Cory says. “My rifle jammed, though. Let me clear it.”
“If you’d clean that piece of shit once in a while,” Simon says as Cory frees the jammed round from his rifle.
“Thought that was your sister’s job,” he jokes. “Some armory sergeant.”
“She probably didn’t clean yours on purpose,” Simon jokes as he turns to him. “She… oh, crap. Cory, you’re bleeding. Were you shot?”
“What?” he asks distractedly as he tries to sight in on the bastards that Simon has found. “Dr. Death, there’s about a dozen assholes forty yards north of your team.”
“On it,” John returns instantly.
Simon slings his pack to the ground, “No, I’m serious, Cor. You’re shot.”
“I’m cool. Let’s just get rid of these dudes. Kelly and John are down there.”
Simon pauses for a few seconds. Then he says, “Damn it!” and raises his rifle up to his shoulder again.
Cory does the same and concentrates on the rats closer to them. Three men are running pell-mell toward the front doors of the building where they are hiding. Cory shoots one in the thigh, and he goes down. The other is taken out by someone else. Probably Kelly. Simon fires off a round. He reloads, jamming another round into the chamber with the bolt, and fires again almost immediately. His friend is a gentle person, kind and soft-spoken most of the time, a bit of a dork, but he can be a deadly threat, too.
“Cory, get the hell out of there!” Kelly screams into his earpiece. “Mortars.”
“Let’s go, Professor!” he yells and yanks Simon’s jacket.
Simon grabs his bag and doesn’t argue. As they are stepping through the doorway and onto the first stair tread to descend, a loud explosion rocks the building. Cory stumbles forward and falls down two stairs before barely righting himself. Simon steps past him, hefts under his armpit, and pulls Cory with him. They rush down the stairs as large debris and rubble rain down on them from the roof.
“We’re here, girls,” Dave the Mechanic says into their earpieces. “Try not to fucking shoot us. I’d like to go home tonight with my fucking dick intact.”
“Gotta have one in the first place, Mechanic,” Kelly razzes over the open mic system.
“Not what your wife said last night,” Dave returns without missing a beat as shots are fired off in the background.
A grunting sound comes from Kelly’s mic as he says, “Hold on. I gotta kill this asshole.”
“Take your time,” Dave quips.
“That oughtta settle your ass down, fucker,” Kelly remarks a moment later and goes right on with the shit talking. “The wife said you whipped it out last night, and she wondered if you were a eunuch.”
John says, “If you two are done, I could actually use some backup.”
“Whine, whine,” Dave complains.
Kelly adds about John, “My Army wife sure is a nag, isn’t he?”
“Big bitcher,” Dave agrees jokingly, then adds, “We’re comin’ in.”
Cory trips over metal and concrete and brick rubble because his night-vision was knocked off kilter by the blast. The building is not done crumbling around them. Bricks and plaster fall from the ceiling, and they dodge it.
“Sit rep, Professor,” Kelly inquires.
“We’re fine, sir,” Simon returns.
“Where the hell do they still keep getting heavy artillery?” Cory asks Simon.
“I think they have a lot more toys than we do.”
“Let’s get back in this,” Cory says as they run out the back door together this time. “I’ll head east.”
“We’ll stick together,” Simon argues. “You’re shot. I don’t know where or how much blood you’re losing.”
“Easy, Professor,” Cory jokes. “I ain’t gut shot. Just a graze.”
“We’ll stay together.”
“You just can’t stand to be away from me for five seconds. Face it. You love me.”
“I just don’t want to hear you crying all night when you get filthy and infected.”
Cory laughs, wondering if Simon had seen him fighting with the man near the train tracks. Surely, he’s dirty from that.
“Look alive,” Simon warns as Cory adjusts his goggles.
Men’s voices crescendo as he and Simon round the building, heading in the opposite direction than Cory took earlier. He spots tell-tale silvery streaks of light about seventy-five yards or so from them.
“Anyone using flashlights tonight?” he asks into his throat mic.
“That’d be a negative,” Dave returns. “God, I love it when they spotlight themselves.”
Cory knows that none of their team is using them, either. Night-vision gear is being used by everyone on John’s team, including the three men from town who are working with them tonight. The people in Pleasant View have taken in so many displaced people because of the highwaymen. Now they want to be involved, as well. Everyone is sick of these assholes.
“Let’s flank ‘em,” Simon suggests.
“Yep,” Cory agrees with a nod and follows as Simon leads the way,
crawling over the coupling between two train cars. They jog quietly, and Cory hears the tell-tale whistling, whirring sound of an RPG being fired off.
“Assholes,” he says and speeds up.
“I think the flashlight dudes just fired that off,” his friend says.
“Someone, take those pecker-heads out,” Kelly orders into their earpieces.
“We’re on it,” Cory answers his brother.
Another minute and they have found the men. It isn’t hard. They are rather loud, and they sound frantic and frazzled. For a bunch of terrorists who have been victimizing innocent people with confidence, they seem to be falling apart even more quickly every time they battle it out with them. The chink in their armor has been penetrated, and they know it. Tonight may be slightly more difficult because of the imbalance in their numbers, but they are not more adept at battle or good at making quick changes.
“Load it!” someone whispers in a fevered tone.
Cory nods to Simon, and they creep ever closer to the men clustered around a Jeep parked there. They are pulling items from the cargo hold that stands open. One thing in particular looks like another RPG.
“Go,” Simon whispers and sprints to their left to take an advantageous position behind a raised platform constructed of steel. There is a small building on top of the platform, as well, which probably housed an office before the rail yard became a steel graveyard.
Once Simon is in position, Cory nods to him, and they both open fire on the men. Cory is able to take out the one with the RPG, but he does not think Simon hit his mark, which is highly unusual for him. Another round from the Professor and a man goes down. Then he sees someone behind him on the ground, which explains Simon’s first shot. Cory takes aim at another but is unable to squeeze off his shot because they begin firing at them and diving for cover. Cory extends his arm around the corner and fires off a few suppressive rounds to settle them down. Simon does the same, and the men stop shooting at them. Then with perfect timing, he and Simon turn in unison and open fire on the group again. Simon takes out another, and so does Cory. Two additional men run for their lives. Cory does not feel guilty about shooting one in the back. Simon makes a much cleaner shot and kills the other with a headshot.
They regroup and join back up with John and Kelly. This has been their longest battle to date with these highwaymen. They watched them for nearly forty-eight hours before engaging and fought tonight for over an hour. However, another few minutes working alongside John and Kelly and they have the enemy defeated. Then his friend makes him remove his shirt so he can apply bandaging and tape to his shoulder.
John stalks toward him and shouts angrily, “Next time I say stick together, you follow my orders!”
Cory actually takes a step back. “Yes, sir.”
“You could’ve gotten the Professor killed! You could’ve gotten yourself killed. Don’t be reckless. This isn’t the time for glory hounding. You aren’t on your own anymore, Cory. If I pair you up with someone, stick with them. Stay with your battle buddy next time or stay on the farm!”
He walks off in an angry rampage, and Simon laughs at Cory, who punches his shoulder. Kelly chuckles and follows John. He’ll have to find a way to make it up to John. He’s just so used to being out there on his own and having to make decisions on the fly that it’s hard following a plan.
“Don’t worry about that,” Dave says to him with sympathy. “Dr. Death’s just pissed ‘cuz another farm compound was hit a few miles from here by another band of these assholes. Looks like we’re heading there to see what’s left as soon as we’re done here.”
He and Simon nod with grave seriousness. This is ridiculous. They thought they were doing something monumental tonight, taking out a large faction of the highwaymen. They didn’t know that other ones were busy doing exactly what they do, just elsewhere. It only renews Cory’s hatred of them.
A few of the highwaymen have escaped according to some of Dave’s men. He sends scouts after them, but Cory knows that they might not recover them. Dave has taken a young man prisoner, and Cory is relieved that he hasn’t been killed because he looks like he’s about fourteen. They collect the weapons of their enemy and take their vehicles, too. Then it’s on to view more carnage.
Chapter Two
Sam
After midnight, Dave’s convoy leads a group of severely injured men back to their compound and to the cabin in the woods that has now become their medical facility. Some of the injured are victims of the highwaymen’s attack tonight on a village near the railroad station. She hadn’t needed to be awakened. Sam was already up, too eager, too anxious to sleep knowing they were all out there in the fray.
“Here they come,” her uncle says to her as they wait on the porch of the cabin. Sam also spots headlights in the distance.
“I’ve prepared the rooms, Doctor,” their nurse, Tilly, says.
“Thank you, Tilly,” he replies kindly, to which she nods and goes back in to keep working. She’s a great nurse, and Sam has learned a lot from her.
“Ready, honey?” he asks Sam.
“Yes,” she replies and tries to find some fortitude. She would much rather draw people than sew them back together, which is what they will no doubt be doing soon.
Henry pulls up on a four-wheeler, having cut through the newly forged path from his farm. He hops off and jogs up to the porch.
“Doctor,” he says and inclines his head to her uncle and then toward her. “Samantha.”
“Hi, Henry,” she says. “Coming to help?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he agrees with a nod and turns as the vehicles approach.
Within minutes the place is a melee of patients and volunteers and chaos. They’ve brought several wounded victims, survivors of the highwaymen, and three men of Dave’s who will also need put back together. Cory and Simon have even come to help, but the rest of the McClane group has gone back to Pleasant View to take patients to Grandpa and Reagan in town.
“Take him to exam room number two in the back,” she orders a few of Dave’s men and points in the direction. The injured man is one of their own and has suffered some sort of head trauma and loss of consciousness. His heartbeat is steady but slow.
“Sam, go with Simon,” her uncle orders and rushes past her to the back of the truck to Dave who is calling him. “GSW, so he’ll need help.”
She knows he means gunshot wound. She pushes down the urge to refuse and instead follows Simon and Cory up the stairs as they carry a woman on a makeshift stretcher. She is moaning, crying out from the pain of being shot.
“Hey, little sister,” Cory says to Sam with a slight smile. “She’s been shot through the wrist.”
Sam winces and looks at the woman’s shaking hands as she is attempting to put pressure on a bandage that has been wrapped around her injury.
“Where do you want her, Sam?” Simon asks.
“Kitchen,” she said. “The other two rooms are full already.”
They rush there together, and the guys lift the woman higher and place her on the exam table, which Henry and his men commandeered from a local hospital. It is no longer a kitchen but has walls and only one wall of cupboards where they keep medical supplies. They now have five exam tables, but only three, closed rooms. Two tables share a space that is curtained off. Tonight, it doesn’t matter. They need to use whatever space they can find.
The woman cries out in agony, “It hurts!”
“I know, ma’am,” Simon tells her soothingly. “We’re going to get you fixed right up.”
“You? You’re just kids!” she cries with disbelief.
Sam would have to agree. She usually feels completely inept and out of her element in these situations.
“No, way!” Cory says, trying to make light of the situation. “He’s a super nerd. Got his degree in medicine early. You’re in good hands. No worries.” He lays on the charm thick when he needs to.
“Oh,” she said weakly and nodded. “Ok then.”
“I’m ou
t, bro,’” Cory says to Simon. “Going back to the truck to help.”
Simon just nods dismissively, pulls on latex gloves, and gets to work. He unwraps the woman’s bandage while Sam scoots the medical cart closer where their tools and equipment rest.
“Sam, in my bag, there’s a small jar of white powder,” he says. “Place a half teaspoon in a quarter cup of water and let the patient drink it.”
“Got it,” she says and rummages his backpack, which he’s slung to the floor. She has no idea to what he’s referring but trusts Simon knows what he’s talking about. She finds the jar, a baby food jar, unscrews the lid and wrinkles her nose at the acidic smell of white powder inside. Then she mixes the prescribed dosage with a bit of water and hands it to the patient. However, the lady pulls back as if she doesn’t trust them.
“What the hell’s this?” she asks.
“Pain reducer. It’ll put you in…a euphoric state, so to speak. It’ll dull the pain, ma’am,” he explains as he pulls on a surgical gown that Sam swiftly ties in back for him.
“What is it?” she asks as she sniffs, then moans from pain.
“Made from wild lettuce. Rather fascinating actually. The shaft secretes a milky substance that Dr. McClane and I have recently discovered to contain a narcotic-like substance which will…”
He drones on long enough that the woman finally relents and downs it with a grimace from the apparently bad taste. As Simon is examining her wound by which Sam is holding a flashlight, the woman’s head lolls to the side. She’s out.
“Is she ok?” Sam asks with worry and presses her fingertips to the woman’s neck pulse.
“Yes, it’s a powerful narcotic,” he explains. “I’m actually rather relieved. This is going to be somewhat painful.”
“Oh, no,” Sam says and rejoins him near her wrist. In other parts of the clinic, people are crying out in pain.
