by Tom Abrahams
Horn shrugged. “Thirty?”
“You ain’t fired a shot, then?”
“No.”
Skinner turned around to the men behind him and laughed. “You believe that? Two men. Maybe four men. He don’t know how many. He lost all those men and he ain’t fired a single shot at Mad Max?”
None of the men responded and Skinner turned back around. “Start running, Tommy.”
“What?”
“Start running,” Skinner repeated. “Remember I told you I was about to boil? I’m bubbling over right now. I can’t have a boss who fails to fire off a single shot and lets who knows how many of his men die or get hurt or whatever. So start running.”
Horn took a couple of steps, walking backwards, until he stumbled. He turned on his boot heel and started running. Every step or two he’d look over his shoulder, his eyes wide.
“We’re gonna test the accuracy of this here AK,” Skinner said over his shoulder, leveling the AK and raising the sight to his eye. “Three hundred, maybe four hundred yards. That’s what they say.”
Skinner found Horn’s back in the sights and pulled the trigger, holding it as the AK rattled a barrage of 7.62×39mm M67 bullets. A half dozen of them penciled through Horn’s lower back. The farther he ran, the more the butts yawed, lodging deep within Horn’s muscles, lungs, and kidneys.
The volley dropped Horn immediately and he slammed face-first into the street, some hundred yards from Skinner. He twitched, his legs and arms swimming against the asphalt with decreasingly intense spasms until he stopped.
Skinner turned and looked at his men. Without exception they lowered their eyes.
“That”—Skinner pointed back at the dead boss and the spooked horse galloping west—“is a lesson to all of you. I ain’t gonna let this Mad Max beat us. I ain’t gonna tolerate any more incompetence.”
“He’s one man!” Skinner yelled at the top of his lungs. “One man!” He tossed the AK-47 to the ground. He stepped closer to his men, drawing their attention to him, making eye contact with them as he walked amongst them. “I want him,” he said, grabbing one of the grunts by the shoulder. “I want him alive. You bring him to me alive.”
CHAPTER 11
JANUARY 3, 2020, 5:15 PM
SCOURGE -12 YEARS, 9 MONTHS
ALEPPO, SYRIA
Buck wasn’t much help. The drugs had taken hold, adding to his inability to effectively move or communicate.
Battle managed through sheer will to drag Buck’s injured body underneath the flatcar and pull him along the railroad ties until they’d reached the last of the five flatcars.
Aside from scattered pops of gunfire echoing in the distance, and the rolling, rusty whine of a train on the last set of tracks, it was quiet.
“Stay here,” he whispered to Buck and checked his HK to make sure it was loaded. “I’ll be right back.”
Buck groaned, either acknowledging or protesting.
Battle used the protection on the rolling train to emerge from underneath the flatcar and open the end door of the first freight wagon. He cranked it wide enough to squeeze inside the wagon. The slatted sides allowed the orange glow of the train yard to leak inside. Ribbons of light revealed an empty wagon.
He stepped purposefully to the opposite end of the empty car, groped for the handle, and pushed it open to move to the next wagon. It too was empty.
Battle repeated the inspection through eight identical wagons. At the ninth, he found pallets of what looked like Ukrainian military rations.
Battle couldn’t read the language and thought they were Russian. He did recognize the word Ukraine.
He pulled a utility knife from his breast pocket and ripped open the Visqueen packaging surrounding the pallet. He picked up one of the containers and moved closer to the light at the edge of the wagon.
Battle tried to recall the last time he’d eaten and couldn’t. It might have been that morning. Maybe it was an energy bar a few minutes before the IED detonated. He wasn’t sure. He’d not even thought about food or recognized the pangs of hunger in his gut until he opened the K rations.
The cans of meat and fish were labeled, but he didn’t know which was which. Along with the cans there were a half dozen plastic bags filled with dry goods, plastic spoons, napkins, disinfectant wipes, powdered bouillon, and some vitamins.
He carried the open package back to the pallet and spread out the bounty. Battle looked at the variety of offerings and cursed himself for having left his pack behind. He’d decided against slinging it with him in favor of carrying Buck. Now, as he looked at the amount of food he couldn’t carry with him, he recognized his mistake.
He ripped open a package of millet-flour biscuits and stuffed a couple deep into his mouth, chewing them quickly so as to pack his mouth full with another one.
They were awful, and they were also the best thing Battle’d ever tasted in his life. He licked the remnants from his gums and the roof of his mouth. He then took the vitamins, tore open the packet with his teeth, and swallowed all three of them dry.
He took a couple of plastic spoons, the antiseptic wipes, and the bouillon. He stuffed them into one of his shirt pockets and knifed open another ration.
He took duplicates of the wipes and powder for Buck. He also plucked another bag of biscuits and the package of vitamins.
If nothing else, the rations provided two things: nourishment and a much-needed burst of caloric energy, and confirmation that the Ukrainians were involved in the Syrian conflict.
They’d long denied it, despite evidence that hundreds of pro-Russian Ukrainians were training with Russian forces in the long-occupied eastern part of the country. The Syrian conflict, and the war in Iran, had essentially become a world war.
Alliances shifted and changed as rapidly as the Middle Eastern deserts. Oil, nuclear weapons, a Muslim caliphate, and the fight between the east and west to control the metaphorical bridge between Asia, Africa, and Europe combined to make the globe as unstable as it had been since the early 1940s.
The Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans had one idea about how the world should look, the Western world offered a different vision. And though none were publicly enemies in the global fight against Muslim extremism, neither side chose to make the enemy of their enemy their friend.
The Ukrainians, along with the Egyptians, Czechs, and Polish, claimed they were neutral. Ukraine’s fragile government claimed it was too busy balancing their own sovereignty with repeated Russian incursions. They were on the verge of collapse. They wouldn’t help the United States, despite the Americans’ decades-long secret funnel of cash and weapons to keep the Russians at bay. The US asked for troops and tactical support. The Ukrainians said no. Again and again. They’d also refused to accept any Syrian or Iranian refugees, further adding to the overcrowding at the burgeoning camps popping up from Dusseldorf to Donetsk.
Battle had been in mission briefings in which superiors offered intel about Ukrainian detachments working with Russian troops to ingratiate themselves with some of the less moderate factions in Aleppo. Most of the information, however, was anecdotal and not actionable or verifiable.
But here they were, clearly involved. And though it wasn’t good for long-term US strategic control, the dry biscuits and vitamins were potentially lifesaving battlefield provisions in the short term.
Battle put the politics of the newly gained intelligence out of his head. None of it mattered if he died in the train yard.
Finished pilfering what he needed from the pallet, he stepped through the door at the front end of the wagon. Standing between the ninth and tenth cars, he looked east. He was beyond the orange glow of the yard. And there was no steep incline opposite him. Instead there was a long slope leading into the darkness. Battle nodded and pumped his fist.
He slipped back into the wagon and marched through it to the eighth, seventh, sixth, and fifth empty wagons. He was moving swiftly, anxious to get back to Buck and help him retrace the path to the end of the train ya
rd.
When he opened the door to the fourth wagon and stepped inside, he wasn’t alone. He stopped short and raised his hands above his head. There were two armed men standing shoulder to shoulder in the center of the empty cargo hold. In the slivers of orange light, Battle could see their rifles were pointed straight at him.
CHAPTER 12
OCTOBER 15, 2037, 7:28 AM
SCOURGE + 5 YEARS
ABILENE, TEXAS
“We should split up,” Pico said, adjusting the pack on his back. “You and Lola go one way. I’ll go another.”
Battle shot a glance at Lola. She was on his right, walking faster to keep pace with the men, her cheeks puffed with air.
“I’m just sayin’ they don’t know I’m with you,” Pico said. “They got no idea about what happened with Queho. I could roll up on ’em and find out where they’re keeping the boy while you and Lola go do whatever it is you gotta do.”
Lola skipped ahead a couple of steps and walked backwards to face them. “I like that idea.”
Battle nodded. “It’s a good idea,” he said. “Where would you go to find out?”
“I think I go to the HQ,” Pico said. “If that’s where you think everybody is. I mean, I won’t come out and ask where the kid is. I’ll hint around.”
“You need to lose the pack, then,” Battle said. “You’re gonna have a tough time convincing them to trust you anyway, but it’ll be impossible if you have that pack loaded with my gear.”
Pico nodded and stroked his mustache with his fingers. “True enough. Where are you gonna be?”
“We’re going around the backside of the post office,” Battle said. “No need to put ourselves in harm’s way any more than necessary. We’ll do some recon there. Maybe get some additional artillery or destroy some. Depends on what we find.”
“Where do we meet up?” Lola asked, still doing her best to maintain a pace while jogging backward. “When we’re done. Where do we go? Where does Pico go?”
“Pico?” Battle asked. “This is your plan. Thoughts?”
“My house,” Pico said. “Seventh and Plum near the old Baptist Church.”
“How far is that from the post office?” asked Lola, turning around to walk forward again, a limp returning to her gait.
“Four blocks north and four blocks east.”
“Okay,” said Battle. “Let’s do it.” Battle stopped walking. “Give me your pack.”
Pico shrugged the pack off his shoulders and swung it over to Battle. “See you on the other side,” he said. “Seventh and Plum. If I ain’t there by sundown, I ain’t comin’.”
“Don’t say that,” Lola said. “We’ll see you there.”
Pico tried smiling. “I’m gonna run east a bit. I don’t want ’em seeing me coming from this direction.”
“Good idea,” Battle said, “and good luck.”
Pico waved and jogged ahead. Battle opened up the pack and pulled out some of his food, some additional ammo, a handgun, and a canteen. He pulled off his own pack and set it on the ground, unzipped it, and stuffed it full with Pico’s belongings. He rolled up Pico’s pack and added it to the mix.
Lola frowned. “What are you doing?”
“I can’t carry both bags,” Battle said. “I’m bringing what he’ll need when we meet up with him. I’ll carry it for him.”
“Oh.”
“What?” Battle cocked his head to the side. “Did you think I was writing him off?”
“I didn’t know.”
“I’m not that pessimistic, Lola.”
“I didn’t know.”
“We’ll do this,” he said softly. “We’ll find your son. We’ll get out of here alive.” Battle reached out and put his hands on her shoulders, drawing her eyes to his. “I told you I’d reunite you with Sawyer. It’ll happen.”
Lola’s eyes glazed, but she held back her tears. “I…believe you.”
There was doubt in her eyes. Battle understood it. He’d seen the same uneasy gaze from his wife, Sylvia, in the days before their son died. He’d tried to assure her the illness wouldn’t take hold and that the medicine would work. He’d taken too many precautions and forced his family into too many sacrifices for Wesson to die in the earliest days of the Scourge. Maybe it was that she’d known he was trying to convince himself. Maybe she’d known the truth before he did. Either way, she’d been right to doubt him. He’d been wrong. Their son had died. And days later Sylvia had too.
“She doesn’t believe you.” Sylvia’s voice echoed in his head. “Look at her. She knows the odds aren’t good. She’s not an idiot, Marcus. Be honest with her.”
“I am,” Battle said aloud.
Lola looked at him sideways. “What?”
Battle shook Sylvia’s voice from his head. “Nothing.”
Lola pulled away from his hold. “Let’s go.”
***
Pico turned north off of Third Street onto Walnut. It was as if he tripped an alarm. Every one of the two dozen men gathered in front of the HQ’s remnants spun to look at him. Half of them raised their weapons in a synchronized chorus of suspicion.
Pico had walked farther west than needed so he could approach from the south and east, as if he’d limped in from Rising Star. Two blocks east of Walnut, he’d rolled around in the dirt and ripped his shirt at the collar and along one of the shoulder seams. He pulled at his cracked lips with his fingers, aggravating the hairline splits in the skin to produce thin tendrils of blood around his mouth. He favored his right leg, which was actually bruised, and held out his arms.
“It’s me,” he croaked, “Salomon Pico.” He waved his hands as he held them high. It’s me. Don’t shoot.” He limped another half dozen steps and dropped to his knees.
Cyrus Skinner flicked a cigarette to the street and walked towards Pico. “Put down your guns,” he said, motioning with his head toward Pico. “He’s one of ours.”
“You got water?” Pico asked, looking up at Skinner when the captain neared. “I need some water.”
“Bring me a canteen,” Skinner called over his shoulder. “Pico here needs some water.” Skinner squatted down onto the toes of his boots, resting his forearms on his thighs. He squinted and held Pico’s gaze.
Pico blinked first but kept his eyes on Skinner. He knew this was a test. Skinner was trying to read him.
“So,” Skinner said and peppered Pico with questions. “What happened? Where is everybody? Didn’t you leave with Rudabaugh? Did you ever see Queho?”
Pico swallowed hard. He was about to speak when a grunt appeared over Skinner’s shoulder, holding out the canteen so the captain could grab it.
“Hand it to him,” Skinner said, his eyes still trained on Pico. “I ain’t the one who’s thirsty.”
The grunt reached across Skinner’s shoulder and stretched the canteen to Pico as if he might bite. Pico took it, flipped the cap with his thumb, and chugged the warm water.
“Whoa,” Skinner cautioned. “You drink too fast, you’re gonna make yourself sick. We wouldn’t want that.”
Pico slugged back another swallow and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He handed the canteen back to the grunt. Skinner motioned with his head for the grunt to go back and join the others. He did.
“So you were about to tell me what happened to my men?”
Pico was matter of fact. “They’re dead.”
“All of ’em?”
Pico nodded. “All of ’em. I couldn’t tell you the number. They’re all dead.”
“How do you know that, seein’ as how you got yourself back here without a scratch?”
Pico’s eyes narrowed with indignation. “I don’t know what you’re saying, but I’m hurt. I barely made it out of that…hell.”
“That so?”
Pico smoothed his mustache and swallowed. “Yeah, that’s so. I nearly died. Took everything in me to get back here to warn you.”
“Warn me?”
“He’s coming for us,” Pico said. “Mad Max. He�
�s coming. He wants the boy.”
“What boy?”
“That redheaded woman. Her boy. He’s coming to get him.”
“That so?”
Pico nodded.
Skinner leaned in, his face inches from Pico’s. “How do you know that? I mean, if you was running for your life. If you nearly died and everyone else did, how would you know what his plans are?”
“I heard him,” said Pico. “I was playing dead. He was only a few feet from me. I heard him talking to the woman. They said they was coming here.”
“They ain’t gonna find him. He’s gonna be headed to the Jones.” Skinner licked his teeth. “Tell me how everybody died.”
Pico shook his head. “I don’t know. I know there was a lot of gunfire. There were booby traps everywhere.”
“So you were with Rud, right?”
Pico nodded and wiped the sweat beaded on his forehead.
“You survived the booby traps and gunshots,” said Skinner, his voice low like an idling engine. “And then what did you do until Queho got there?”
Pico searched Skinner’s face for an answer. He ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s such a blur,” he rambled. “I hid near an oak tree for what was hours, I reckon. I lost my shotgun. I was afraid of stepping into one of the traps, so I hid. Then Queho showed up. He and his men attacked, but Mad Max was ready.”
Skinner nodded slowly. “Huh.” He stood and spun on his boot heels. “I need some help over here,” he called to the grunts. “My man Pico needs some water and some food.”
Skinner turned back and offered his hand to Pico. Pico reached up and took it with both of his and heaved himself to his feet. Skinner nodded toward his men, motioning for Pico to follow him.
“Thanks.” Pico followed Skinner, favoring his left leg as he limped to the group.
Skinner walked ahead, his feet kicking up dust as he moved, then halfway to the men he stopped. He cocked his head to the side and put his right hand on the revolver at his hip.
