by Noah Mann
“And?”
Neil waited for more information. What I had to add wasn’t anything close to positive.
“It’s turning into the front lot.”
We were on the eastern edge of town. The warehouses were the first structures one would see when leaving the highway. That anyone searching for us would start there was not a surprise, but the timing of our arrival with theirs was spectacularly bad luck.
“Only one vehicle?” Neil asked.
“Yeah.”
He thought, shaking his head.
“Perkins wouldn’t just send one party into town,” he said. “There’ll be another one on the west side of town.”
“They’ll work their way through and meet in the middle,” I said.
“Unless they spot us first,” he said.
We couldn’t allow that to happen. If any action was going to happen, we had to initiate it.
“We’re in a good spot to ambush,” I told Neil.
“We sure as hell are,” he agreed. “What do we have left? Four spare mags?”
“That’s it,” I confirmed. “Shots are going to have to count.”
Neil looked to me, and I to him. We’d fired at Perkins’ forces as we fled Klamath Falls, but this was different. Here, if it came to that, we would be fighting alongside each other, counting on the other as we had many times in conflict after the blight wiped the rules of civilized behavior away for many.
“Let’s see how this plays first,” Neil suggested.
I nodded, and we turned again to watch what was coming our way, both of us focused on the van as it entered the parking lot.
Fifteen
The van cruised slowly toward our position and stopped, its engine idling for a moment before it was shut off. The driver’s door swung open and a man stepped out, immediately slinging his pistol grip shotgun and lighting a long hand-rolled cigarette. He took a drag and scanned the area casually, as if he had not a care in the world.
“That’s Donny,” Neil whispered to me.
He’d obviously become acquainted over the years with the survivors who’d coalesced around Earl Perkins. A quick glance toward my friend told me that he held this particular individual in extremely low regard.
“He’s an animal,” Neil added softly. “He was Perkins’ enforcer until he got drunk one day on a stash of booze he came across back in Nevada. That knocked him down a few notches.”
“And Bryce stepped up,” I said.
Neil nodded, watching with me as Donny left the cigarette dangling in his mouth and thumped the hood of the van with a gloved fist. The side door slid open and three more individuals stepped out, two men and a woman, all armed with AK47s.
“You recognize any of them?” I asked Neil.
“Just the girl,” he said. “Her name’s Kim, I think. The other guys I’m not sure.”
We watched in silence as the three joined Donny at the front of the van. He pointed to several locations. A half-collapsed office in front of the warehouses. A trio of three trailers tipped on their sides.
And the shed where we’d taken cover.
“If they approach, I’ll take Donny down,” Neil said. “He’s an animal, but he knows how to fight.”
That meant he knew how to kill.
“I’ll cover the others,” I said.
The trio from the back of the van began moving toward the trailers which had been knocked on their sides in some wind event, I surmised. Their split back doors were half open, lower section resting on the ground. The group checked each long trailer, none seeming even the slightest bit worried.
“They don’t expect to find us,” I said.
“Good,” Neil said. “Maybe they won’t.”
If they missed us and then moved into town, clearing it to their satisfaction before heading out, that meant we could, in effect, occupy the area until nightfall. We could search for supplies, futile as that effort might be. Still, it would give a chance to rest and move on.
But that would never happen.
“They’re moving our way,” I said.
The three had satisfied themselves that the toppled trailers had not provided us with any hiding space and were now walking straight toward the shed in which we’d found cover. It was not the best position we could have moved to, but time wasn’t on our side as we’d heard a vehicle approaching. And now the flimsy structure that afforded more concealment than protection was going to be where we would fight from.
“I’m on Donny,” Neil said, snugging his AK to a sighted firing stance where he knelt.
The others were mine to deal with. I needed to wait until they were close enough, not only to us, but in proximity to each other. I couldn’t afford to be shifting my aim wildly.
“When they reach that tank, I’m firing,” I told Neil.
An old propane tank, long emptied of its contents, stood just to the right of our position some twenty yards distant. One of the warehouses sat to the north of it, and the van with Neil’s target just to the south. The sight picture would work almost perfectly when they passed in front of the tank. All I had to do was neutralize all of them before they could rake the shed with fire.
“Ready,” my friend said.
I didn’t have to respond. My first shots would signal him to fire. I waited, watching, picking which person I would take out first.
Kim...
Of the three, she seemed most prepared. Her weapon was held low and ready, finger next to the trigger. She’d had some training somewhere. Possibly, like Sheryl Quincy, she’d been in the military. Or it could be nothing more than the reality of survival in this world. She’d had to fight to stay alive.
I was about to take that from her.
The trio reached the long propane tank and the concrete pad it was mounted to. They crossed in front of it. I let a breath slip past my lips and settled the AKs front sight on the woman I was about to kill.
Then I briefly squeezed the trigger.
The action was quick and effortless. My finger came down on the trigger and then released it, sending a brief burst of automatic fire tearing into the woman who was my first target. She spun and fell, her companions reacting first to flee, turning away from the source of fire, only one managing to bring his weapon up. As I fired again I heard Neil open up, just one quick burst to match mine. The two left in my sight fell, my weapon tracking them to the ground. That was it.
Except it wasn’t.
“Dammit!”
I heard my friend curse just an instant before a shower of bullets tore through the slatted wall of the shed just over our heads. My attention shifted instinctively toward the sound of incoming fire and, past Donny’s dead body in front of the van, I could just make out muzzle flashes and the silhouette of a figure through the open side door.
One of their group had remained inside.
Neil was the first to return fire, peppering the van with rounds that chipped dark holes in its rusty exterior, shattering the windshield and flattening the right rear tire. I was about to join him in putting rounds on the unexpected target when the whole of my left side erupted in what felt like fire.
“Ahhh!”
My AK whipped upward and was ripped from my grip. I rolled to my right, my left arm and hand pulled tight against my chest as the fire from the van’s interior ceased. Neil’s shots had found their mark.
“Fletch!”
He glanced toward me, his gaze bulging before he turned his attention again toward the threats we’d just neutralized. I eased my hand away from chest and saw a bloody mess, so much so that it was hard to tell just what had happened, though I knew one thing for certain.
“I’m hit,” I said, forcing a calm upon my words.
Neil bolted up from where he’d positioned himself and stepped past me, rushing for the shed’s doorway.
“Stay in cover,” he said.
He raced out, and through the space between the wall’s boards I could see him moving from body to body, checking each, then approachi
ng the van and disappearing into its interior. I turned my attention to my left hand, squeezing the palm with my right, the pressure slowing the flow of blood that was coming from where my ring finger had been.
“Damn...”
I looked to where the AK lay next to me, its barrel bent from the impact of an incoming round which had struck it and then me, severing my finger. The bloody digit lay in two pieces just a few feet away, the wedding ring which had circled it crushed where the bullet had struck. Elaine had had Hannah Morse in Bandon craft it specially for me before our wedding, and now that priceless symbol, and the finger it had proudly worn it, were shattered.
In pain and frustration I kicked at the useless AK, sending it sliding across the small space. We did not live in a world where micro-surgery could replace severed pieces of the human body. Not anymore. Even if that were still a specialty in abundance there was no chance my mangled finger could be reattached.
You’ve been shot twice...
That thought rose as the wave of pain crested. Yes, I had been shot before. By self-proclaimed Major James Layton in Whitefish. I’d killed him in a final confrontation after a round from his weapon had found me. Now, Neil had eliminated the next person who’d shot me.
“Fletch...”
I looked up and saw my friend just inside the shed. A backpack was slung over one shoulder, and he carried an extra AK, an obvious replacement for the one that had been shot from my hands.
“How bad?”
“A finger,” I said, coming to my knees, the wound still bleeding despite the pressure. “Layton gave me worse.”
Neil had arrived at my refuge with Grace and her daughter as that wound, in my jaw, had become infected and threatened to end my life. His future wife’s nursing background had certainly saved me from an agonizing demise. She wasn’t here now, though, to tend to me. No one was.
Except my friend.
“Let me see,” Neil said as he knelt next to me, examining the damage before reaching into the backpack. “I grabbed some food and mags from the van. But we’re going to have to move. They have a radio. The one who surprised us could have put out a broadcast.”
“If they have another group on the west side of town like you said, the gunfire was enough to give us away,” I said.
“All the more reason to bandage you up and get out of here,” he told me.
He retrieved a long multicolored head and neck wrap from the backpack and wrapped the shemagh around my left hand and pressed a length of it down onto the opening where my ring finger had been.
“Ahhhhh,” I winced loudly.
“Life’s tough,” he said, feigning zero sympathy.
“Yeah, yeah,” I reacted, forcing down any further reaction to the pain. “Be tougher.”
He finished the quick dressing of my wound and stood, holding a hand down to help me up. Once I was on my feet he handed me the replacement AK. I took it and reached for the backpack.
“You sure you’ve got that?” he asked, concerned after what I’d just gone through.
“You’ve had a few crackers and some beans in, what, days?” I pressed him. “Weeks? I’m lighter by a finger.”
Neil smiled and let me carry the heavier pack, taking the shoulder bag we’d previously acquired for himself.
“How long do you think we have?” I wondered aloud.
“Let’s not find out,” he said and hurried out of the shed.
I followed him, glancing down at my hand and the blood already soaking through its wrap. It hurt like hell, but I knew one truth that made the discomfort easier to bear—it could have been worse. Much worse.
Part Three
The Hunted
Sixteen
We backtracked south, leaving the warehouse complex behind, then skirted the edge of town to the west until we found another old irrigation canal, moving away from Tulelake as we hunched low beneath its sloped sides.
Five hundred yards south of the burg’s closest structure we heard gunfire.
“They’re shooting at shadows,” Neil said.
The second patrol had clearly come upon the location of the ambush we’d executed and were likely moving through the warehouses, shooting into every possible hiding space. That didn’t demonstrate discipline or anything close to proper tactics, but, in the end, it might not matter. A horde of fanatics firing wildly would easily overwhelm what the two of us could bring to bear.
“As long as they think we’re still in town,” I said, needing to say no more.
“If they keep thinking that until dark we might have a shot at clearing this area,” Neil agreed.
I stumbled slightly, recovering quickly in the shallow depression. No water filled the dry bottom of the canal we were following south. Years of runoff sediment and wind driven dust storms had filled it, reducing its depth by almost half. I readjusted the pack Neil had taken, feeling its contents shift, shapes within pressing against my back. Odd shapes.
“What else did you grab?” I asked.
My friend glanced back at me as he kept pressing forward, staying low.
“A few grenades,” he answered. “A road flare. Binoculars. Half empty water bottle.”
The water was more useful than the explosive ordnance, I thought. The day was already feeling hot. We were eight hours from sundown and, combining what we had in the shoulder bag and the backpack, we had enough for both of us to have a couple substantial drinks, and that was it. The murky water we might come across ahead if the canal deepened would be a no go without treatment or boiling, neither of which were practical in our situation.
“How’s the hand?” Neil asked.
Before I could answer a massive BOOM cracked behind us. We stopped and took cover, pressing our bodies against the sides of the canal as we looked north toward the town we’d just fled. A burst of debris was arcing through the air, slabs of metal and wood hurled outward from an enormous blast, smoke column rising from the unseen point of origin. But we both knew what had just happened.
“They just blew the warehouses,” Neil said.
I nodded and got to my feet again, as did he, both of us staying low as we continued on, moving a bit more quickly now. Something had dramatically changed. A dynamic we both realized. Our pursuers were no longer chasing us down to bring us back. Instead, some form of scorched earth policy had been set in motion. That could only happen if word to do so had come down from on high.
From Perkins.
“I think we pissed him off,” I said as the canal we’d followed met another, a trickle of water in this deeper trough that tracked southeast.
“You think?” Neil quipped back.
Earl Perkins had gone to extreme lengths to locate and secure the non-existent pathogen BA-412. In both Neil and I he’d believed he could find the answer to his quest for this holy grail. But we’d upset his plans by escaping. And done worse in the process.
We’d made him look as small as his physical stature.
BA-412, if it had existed, might have given him the ability to annihilate the residents of Bandon and take the town for himself, and his people. But our slipping free of his tyrannical grasp had crossed a line which he could not allow to go unpunished. All he was to his followers was a figure who wielded power at the snap of a finger. Destroying us was now a requirement to maintain that aura, that illusion, of power.
This was no longer a pursuit—it was a hunt.
* * *
The network of old irrigation canals ended after we’d followed them south for a few hours, spilling us out into an arid, rocky moonscape, jagged knots of basalt poking up from the reddish earth. It was an ancient lava flow, weathered almost to nothing. We were beyond what had once been farmland and had entered terrain that was disturbingly familiar.
“Remind you of anything?” I asked.
“Like that lovely jaunt we took to Cheyenne?” Neil responded, understanding immediately what I was referencing.
The landscape almost echoed with memories of that hellish trip which
had begun with the loss of one of our own, Burke Stovich, and ended with the key to survival in our possession. Here, though, there was no goal other than eluding those coming after us and making our way home.
But home was toward the Pacific, and then north along the coast. One of those points on the compass presented a problem at the moment.
“West doesn’t look very doable right here,” I said.
Neil looked and saw what I did—the slopes of a mountain range in the distance.
“Mt. Shasta is that way,” he said.
That peak, and the smaller mountains near it, were an obstacle we were not prepared to tackle. There would be some way through, I knew. A road, paved or just gravel, some old logging track that we could navigate. But knowing which ones wouldn’t simply end where the terrain became impassible was the trick.
“Let’s trade the grenades for a map,” I suggested.
“And water,” Neil added.
We’d drank what we had as the canals neared their end. My friend had also downed some more nuts and dried fruit to boost his energy, which was surprisingly robust considering the condition he’d begun this journey in.
“We’ll find some,” I told him. “If you have mountains, you’ll have springs.”
Neil nodded and kept moving, a large wall of old, jagged basalt rising from some ancient fissure off to our left. The feature screened us from the road, but we were still in the open, little along the route we’d been forced to take offering any cover whatsoever.
“Over there,” Neil said, pointing to his right. “Tracks.”
On a low rise a length of train tracks became visible further away from the lava cliff just east of us. I was instantly reminded of the train I’d ridden with Schiavo and others as we made our way back home from her meeting with the President in Columbus, Ohio. That old diesel beast had been manned by the oddest man I’d met in a long time, Ivan Heckerford. He, like the Marine unit he hauled supplies to, was likely no more than dust on the Kansas prairie where we’d left them.
“Colby, Kansas,” I said aloud.
“What’s that?”
I smiled as my friend looked back to me, puzzled by my quiet outburst.
