The After Days Trilogy

by Scott Medbury

  “What did you find?” Luke asked.

  I picked up the revolver from under the counter, stood up and placed it on the countertop to show Luke.

  “There you go, man, the mother lode!” he said, beaming. He picked up the new weapon and examined it as I pulled my own out to compare the two. “Awesome, it’s a different make to yours, but it’s a .38 too, so it’ll use the same bullets. You can be the Two-Gun Kid, now.”

  “Is that from some Old West video game?” I asked, sarcastically.

  “Nope, he’s a comic book character from the ‘50s and ‘60s,” Luke replied. “It was my dad’s favorite comic.”

  Replacing my revolver in the pocket of my parka, I checked the cylinder of the handgun I had pulled from under the counter and found it was empty of bullets. I checked it for rust and tested the action to make sure that it worked smoothly. It was fine and I fished six rounds out of my pocket and loaded it up before putting the safety on and slipping it into my belt. I decided to keep up my search behind the counter. If this keeps up, I'm going to need to get a gun belt and some holsters, I thought to myself.

  I approached what appeared to be a fire safe built into the counter a few feet down from the register. The safe was unlocked and open a crack, which led me to believe that, like the money in the till, any cash that had been in here was long gone, not that it would do us any good anyway ... American currency had become worth less than the paper it was printed on. I had no idea what the Chinese even called their money, but I figured it would soon become the currency of North America.

  Knowing that there might be a chance of something more useful than money in there, I reached down to open it. I caught a flurry of movement in my light beam and a cacophony of squeaks as I swung the safe door open.

  A large brown rat leapt at me and I stumbled backward, falling on my backside as I struggled to get away from it. It was as big as a cat and its squeaks became a hiss as it darted toward my legs. I kicked at it, missing badly, and watched as it darted past me and out from behind the counter.

  “Are you okay, man?” Luke asked, glancing over from where he was standing by the almost empty drink coolers. He had a grin on his face.

  “Yeah.”

  I was blushing, but happy that I hadn’t screamed. I would never have lived that down. “It was just kind of freaky. I’ve never really liked rats.”

  There was a shelf inside the safe. It contained a few old ledger books, and some yellowed papers, and scattered coins. I shuffled the papers out of the way and my eyes widened. I had uncovered a box of .38 caliber ammo, hollow points, which I picked up and opened. It was about a third of the way full, so I scooped out the bullets and added them to the ammo already in my pocket.

  The bottom of the safe was a rat’s nest, literally, of bric-a-brac, chewed cardboard, small pieces of wood and plastic, paper, and other unidentifiable stuff. I considered digging through it, looking for anything of value, but then decided that it was not going to be worth my time. Besides, there was no need to destroy the rat’s home, if that is what it was. I carefully closed the safe until it was only open a crack, just like I had found it.

  Luke had wandered away from the coolers and was standing in front of some gauges and buttons set into a panel on the wall. I came out from behind the counter and walked over to join him. The panel was to control the three fuel pumps out in front of the station.

  “I wonder if there’s still some gas down in the tanks,” Luke said, as I wandered up beside him.

  “I don’t know. The gauges read empty, but that could be because there is no power reaching them.”

  “That’s what had me wondering, Chief,” Luke said. “Be a shit fight to pump it out without power anyway, I guess.”

  As he finished speaking, we both caught the sound of tires crunching on the frozen gravel in front of the gas station. We clicked off our flashlights at the same time and scurried over to one of the boarded up windows. Peeking through a crack, we could see a Humvee had pulled into the lot and we watched as four Chinese soldiers got out of the vehicle.

  Adrenalin started coursing through my system. Three wore the trench coats which marked them as conscripts, while the last was wearing urban camouflage and carried a modern assault rifle like the one that I had left back in the cab of the truck. I could see the driver was still in the Humvee. “Balls,” Luke cursed quietly. “What if they go and check out the garage?”

  “If they do, we need to make sure they can’t report in,” I whispered back. “That means we have to take out the guy in the Hummer first.”

  “That’s not going to be easy,” Luke said. “Look again, there are two men in the Humvee.”

  “Damn,” I said. Luke was right. I don’t know how I missed it the first time, but there were two in the Humvee, the driver and a conscript. The conscript was standing, his upper half coming up through the vehicle’s roof as he manned a ring mounted machine gun.

  “That’s going to be hard to sneak up on,” Luke said. “If he sees us, that thing will tear us a new one. Shit ...”

  The camouflaged soldier waved two of the conscripts toward the garage behind the gas station and was leading the other one toward the front door, where we sat like sitting ducks.

  Things were looking bad, and only got worse as we heard the sound of a helicopter in the distance. Luke had his crossbow up, focused on the door, eyes narrowed. I moved away from the boarded up window to crouch behind the end of the counter, a revolver in each hand. This Two-Gun Kid was ready to go out in a blaze of glory, if need be. With a bit of luck, we would take out the two coming to the door and then worry about the soldiers in the Humvee.

  The sound of the chopper got louder, close enough the building began to shake a little. It was clear the chopper was landing. We were cooked, well and truly. Luke risked a peek back out through the crack and lowered his crossbow. He waved me back over and I joined him to see the soldiers we had been about to engage and the two who had been headed to the garage had turned to watch the helicopter land.

  The camouflaged officer walked toward the aircraft as dirt and debris started swirling in the yard of the gas station. The chopper set down about 30 feet behind the Hummer and the passenger door opened. A woman in a sleek black uniform jumped out with another similarly dressed male.

  What happened next happened so quickly it is still a blur, even though I witnessed it firsthand. Ducking to avoid the rotors, the woman approached the officer from the Humvee. If he saw her take the pistol from the pocket of her black overcoat as he raised his hand in salute, he didn’t have a chance to react. She aimed and shot him through the face, then walked forward with purposeful strides and shot the other soldier through the throat as he struggled to bring his weapon up.

  Her companion began firing at the two who had been about to check the garage. He managed to wing one, who fell to the ground screaming and clutching his thigh. The other turned and ran, but another shot took him in the neck. He collapsed, dead before he hit the ground.

  Behind the two new arrivals, the driver of the Hummer sat up straight in his seat and began screaming at the soldier manning the machinegun turret. The woman’s companion walked calmly to the soldier he had winged and stood over him, before coolly shooting him through the eye.

  I recognized the woman now. It was Huian. I began to yell a warning as the turret on the Humvee swung toward her, but my voice was drowned out by the rapid fire of heavy machine guns. The helicopter’s weaponry was brought to bear on the ground vehicle.

  The Humvee jumped and quivered as it was torn to pieces by the armor piercing shells and forced forward into the gas pumps of the abandoned station. The hellfire ended after about 30 seconds. There was no movement in the smoking pile of twisted and chewed metal.

  Huian gave a thumbs up toward the helicopter and I looked over to it as two men dressed in urban camouflage uniforms opened the side door of the chopper. They unloaded a black motorcycle, then got back in and slid the door closed. Huian’s black uniformed com
panion approached her and they had a brief conversation before he ran back to the chopper and climbed in beside the pilot. The rotors started turning faster again and the chopper rose into the air, turning a tight arc before heading back in the direction from which it had come.

  Huian watched it go and then walked over to the motorcycle and kicked the stand up before pushing it into the shadows at the side of the gas station. She cast a glance back at the garage and then started walking directly toward us. Luke started to raise his crossbow but I put my hand on his arm and shook my head.

  He lowered the weapon, but I could tell he was tense after what he had just witnessed. I had the .38s in my pockets with my hands on them when she pulled open the door and stepped into the darkened interior of the gas station. She spotted us immediately and her hand dropped imperceptibly toward the pocket where she had deposited the pistol she had used so recently against her countrymen.

  She stopped but made no move to draw it. She looked both of us over in a quick and matter of fact way which I found somewhat unnerving. I could see she was assessing what, if any, threat we were to her. Even more unnerving was how she seemed to dismiss us as threats right away.

  “I must speak with Sonny,” she said. “You follow him?”

  “Actually, it is the other way around at the moment,” I said. “Sonny got hurt so I’m in charge until he’s feeling better.”

  “Hurt? What happened to him?” she asked. There was no effort to hide the concern her voice held.

  “He was shot, when we went to get the truck you left for us,” I replied. “The bullet didn’t hit anything vital, but he lost a lot of blood.”

  “But I called the surveillance teams away from there,” she said, surprise in her voice.

  “Too bad you couldn't do the same with the Tigers,” I said. “They’re the ones who shot him.”

  “Damn it, I told him to be careful,” she said.

  “I’m Isaac and this is Luke,” I said. “Luke, check if the road and sky are clear, then run and get Sonny for Miss Huian here.”

  “Sure thing,” Luke said, looking Huian over much as she had looked us over.

  I couldn’t help but do the same. Although she was unmistakably an adult, she wasn't much taller than me, standing maybe five and a half feet tall, and her shoulder length black hair fell straight from beneath her tight fitting black cap.

  Looking at her black uniform, I could see very few insignias except for the epaulettes on her shoulders. Each had a single gold star, the Chinese Army designation for the rank equivalent to a Major. She was thin, with small breasts, but there was nothing weak looking about her, and she moved with the easy grace of a cat getting ready to pounce on a mouse.

  “How do you know my name?” Her raised eyebrow and the way her eyes drilled into me told me she was reassessing her first impressions.

  “I overheard part of your conversation with Sonny the other night,” I said. “Why are you here now?”

  “As soon as word of the incident at the bridge came across the radio, I thought that it might be Sonny and his followers,” she replied. “I came to see if I could throw them off your scent again.”

  “By killing a whole patrol?” I asked sarcastically. “How did you know that we were here? Although I am thankful for your timely appearance, you must admit that it looks suspicious.”

  “I knew you were here,” she said with a slight shrug. “We intercepted real time satellite data of the bridge incident and its aftermath. I saw the truck pull into this filling station before our technician corrupted the data and passed it along to the proper department.”

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  “We are the group that tried to stop this whole tragedy from happening in the first place and, having failed in that, we are now working to make amends as best we can. We are ‘The Shadow Cloaked Seven.’”

  “Seriously? That's what you call yourselves?” I asked, one of my eyebrows arching slightly.

  “It sounds better in Mandarin,” she replied, anger at my lighthearted taunting touching her eyes. For the barest of moments, I thought I saw her aura of supreme confidence slip a little. “Why you? Why are you the leader with Sonny injured?” she asked.

  “I think it is because I was the leader of my own little band when we joined up with Sonny and his students,” I said. “After Sonny went down, we held a vote to see who would be the one to make the decisions when they needed to be made. We knew we wouldn’t always have time to form a consensus. I was chosen. Although, right now, I wish that they had chosen somebody else.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Two of our people are injured too badly for us to safely transport. We have to get out of here soon or risk being discovered. No offense to you for helping us, but your little massacre out there only makes things worse. It will only be a matter of time before they are missed. We have to move now. I just don't know what to do with Mark and John.”

  “You should leave them behind,” she replied. “It is harsh, but sometimes as a leader you have to make hard decisions ...decisions for the good of the group. Whatever you do, you need to do it as soon as night falls.

  “That’s as long as my group will be able to delay action in this quadrant. And, believe me, I didn’t have a choice about the massacre. It was them or you. There is no way I could have explained calling them off. Leave the two injured; if they do not fight back when the soldiers find them, they will not be killed. In fact, they will probably have their injuries tended to.”

  I looked at her dubiously. I had a feeling that when the Chinese Army arrived and found what was left of the patrol, they would not be kind to survivors, but I had no option but to trust what she said was true. We had no way to care for critically injured, but the very fact I would have to rely on our destroyers ate at me.

  “Tended to and then shipped off to be slaves?” I asked, not concealing the look of disgust on my face.

  “In the short term, yes,” she said. “But one thing my group is trying to do is to get the government to recognize the freedom and rights of the children of America. It is too late to save the United States, but, if we are successful, its descendants will be able to live as free and equal citizens of New China.”

  “Jesus ... New China? Seriously? I think the definition of freedom that American kids know is a bit different than what you bastards offer ...” I said, bitterly. I saw the hurt in her eyes, and I softened my tone.

  “Look, I know that you mean well, but you have to understand, your people murdered our country. Killed nearly everyone in it and there are still kids dying ... babies. What did you think would happen when you killed mothers and fathers? China gave a death sentence to everyone who wasn’t old enough to look after themselves. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m never going to forgive that.”

  “I understand you are angry, but resistance is futile. You have to try and adapt to survive. Things can never go back to the way they were ...” she said.

  “Huian, what are you doing here?” Sonny’s voice came from the doorway, and we both looked over.

  “I came to help if I could,” she replied, turning from me. I half expected her to run to Sonny, but they looked at each other with almost a sense of mistrust. “There’s not a lot I can do, but if you tell me your route from here, I can do my best to keep the searchers from zeroing in on you.”

  “Well, after that performance, I’d say you just made things a lot worse for us, not better. I’m not telling you where we’re going. That might be just as dangerous as staying here.”

  “You still don't trust me?” she asked. “Just give me the route for the next 50 miles then. After that, you should be out of the search radius.”

  “I honestly don’t know who or what to trust anymore,” Sonny said, before looking over at me. “Isaac, can you give us a few minutes?”

  “No problem,” I replied. “I’ll go keep an eye on the others. I have some aspirin for John. It might help take the edge off.”

  I had decided I
would give him the option of pain relief after explaining the dangers of blood thinning. I know I would want that choice if it were me in that much pain. I squeezed past Sonny where he still stood in the doorway and jogged back to the garage.

  19

  As much as I hated to admit it, Huian had given me plenty to think about with regards to my impending decision. In fact, she had brought up an excellent point about the leader putting the group ahead of any one of its members. When looked at from that point of view, I really didn't have a decision to make at all.

  I just had to figure out how I was going to tell the others we were going to have to leave Mark behind. I knew it was the right ... no ... the only course of action I could take, but that didn't make me feel any better about it. Maybe I’d ride up front with Sonny when we left, after all. I didn’t think that I’d be able to sleep with the regret eating away at me. Being a leader was hard.

  “How’s everybody doing?” I asked Samara, who was still crouched on the mat by the wounded.

  “Mark woke up for a few minutes a while back,” she said. “He asked for some water and passed out again right after he drank it. I still don’t think he knows how bad he’s hurt.”

  “I can’t walk and my leg hurts like hell,” John replied for himself. “But I’m in better shape than he is. What the hell were they shooting at us?”

  “Vehicle mounted auto-cannon,” I replied. “Probably armor piercing rounds.”

  He shook his head.

  “Here, these might help take the edge off, but they can thin your blood.” I pulled out one of the small bottles of aspirin and tossed it to John. “Don’t take a lot, just in case. I guess we should be glad more of us didn’t end up like Mark and Karen. You’re lucky to only have a broken leg,” I said. “Although, I’m sure you don’t feel very lucky right now.”