Lone Wolf: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (America Falls - Occupied Territory Book 1)

by Scott Medbury

  He’d tested the weapon before he’d torched the pyre back at the campsite and had worked out how to use it on full auto. He was grateful that he’d been given a more than rudimentary knowledge of firearms courtesy of the gun club. It was a light weapon but had some kick to it and he’d struggled to keep it on the target at first. Two emptied clips later though, and he thought he had a handle on it.

  Jack put the strap over his shoulder and slipped the hunting knife into his belt. Despite the first tendrils of dawn only just touching the sky in the east, the helmet and sunglasses went on. He headed out to Maple Street. He stuck to the shadows in the front yards of the homes lining the road opposite the school.

  He stopped at one of the houses directly opposite, positioning himself on a porch behind an overgrown Oleander bush. From there he had a complete view of the school. New chain-link fencing topped with barbwire had been placed around the large parking lot and portable floodlights set up along the perimeter. They illuminated the grounds as bright as day.

  Big canvas buildings had been constructed in this fenced square. Barracks?

  Jack spotted two soldiers patrolling the perimeter with a couple more, closer to the four long, khaki green buildings. Jack wondered if they housed more soldiers but decided the enclosure seemed designed to keep something in rather than out.

  A splash of light fell over him and he ducked back down into the shadows as a packed yellow school bus drove by his hiding spot before turning into the entrance of the school.

  Taking advantage of the remaining darkness, Jack sprinted across two more yards until he had a better view. By the time he settled, the bus parked next to another in the staff parking lot by the main building and the passengers were being unloaded by more armed soldiers that had emerged from the school’s reception building.

  The passengers were kids. Mostly teenagers, but he saw some that certainly couldn’t have been older than 10. The soldiers were anything but gentle and Jack bristled when he saw one boy of about 14 clubbed with the stock of a rifle after he said something to one of the soldiers.

  The low flame of his anger blossomed into white hot anger when a girl who went to help the kid was pushed to the ground and kicked in the stomach several times before being dragged away. Screams of shock and distress rang through the early morning quiet but were quickly suppressed by threats from the soldiers.

  Jack knew right away he had found the location of his last stand. Over the next few hours, he watched and took notes on a scrap of paper with a pencil he found in the pocket of the stolen uniform. The children from the bus were led into the main building and came out 30 minutes later, each now wearing a khaki green uniform that consisted of ill-fitting pants and a shirt that buttoned up to the neck. Both boys and girls had their hair shorn to the skin.

  They were led into the enclosure containing the canvas buildings and organized into two lines. The children had to stand there in the cold as the soldiers stood around talking. At what Jack estimated was about 7:30am, soldiers escorted two green-clad kids from the office building down the path and into the enclosure. A boy and a girl, each pushing a trolley with a large tub on top.

  A whistle sounded and suddenly more kids came rushing out of the canvas structures to line up with the newcomers. Each carried a silver bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other. The girl with the trolley picked up bowls and spoons from a box on the end of her trolley and started handing them out to the newcomers.

  “Do not lose your bowl or spoon or you will not eat! Understand!?” yelled the soldier who appeared to be overseeing the operation.

  Once this was done, he screamed another order and one by one the children came forward and had a large spoonful of slop ladled into their bowls before moving off and finding a place to sit on the ground to hungrily wolf down their breakfast.

  Jack busily wrote. At any one time there were two guards patrolling outside the perimeter of the fence. There were four inside the square guarding the children at close quarters. He hadn’t seen the other two initially as they were behind the buildings when he arrived. There were another four to eight that were stationed inside the main building of the school.

  He watched the whole day. After breakfast the kids were separated into four groups and made to stand for an hour before Jack saw finally saw movement at the main entrance. A woman, small in stature, but wearing what could almost be considered a dress uniform walked down and met two of the male soldiers who followed her through the gates.

  She was clearly in charge; the armed soldiers deferred to her and the children all bowed their heads. Jack wondered if it was out of fear or respect. He soon had his answer.

  The woman shouted a few words and the children started running on the spot. She yelled again and suddenly the children were on the cold asphalt doing pushups. This went on for a while, each call triggering a different exercise until, finally, after another grueling set of pushups, a skinny boy of about 10 with bright red hair was unable to get back to his feet. He was from the original group.

  Jack’s jaw tightened as he saw the woman walk down the row to where the kid lay on his stomach. The children around him drew back from their comrade. Jack suddenly wished he’d brought his scoped rifle. As it was, he was helpless to do anything but watch as the short-haired woman stopped over the poor kid.

  Very deliberately, she pulled a pair of black leather gloves from her jacket pocket and slipped them on before holding out her hand. A soldier rushed over and handed her something. Jack saw it was a short riding crop or something similar. She slapped it on her gloved palm.

  “Get up!” the Chinese woman yelled in unaccented English.

  The kid moaned that he couldn’t.

  “I’ll count to three, if you don’t get up you will be sorry.”

  Jack willed him to do it and the kid tried, but his wobbly arms collapsed before he made it to his knees.

  “Pick him up,” said the woman, clearly putting on a show for the new arrivals.

  Two soldiers ran in and picked up the poor kid and pulled him roughly to his feet to face the woman. His head lolled on his neck as he tried to focus on her.

  “Turn him around and lift up his shirt.”

  Jack made himself watch the beating. It was short but vicious and the kid passed out before it was over. This seemed to annoy the woman, and she whipped him viciously with five more strokes while he was slumped, unconscious in the arms of her guards.

  After it was done, the kid was carried out of the enclosure into the main building. Within minutes the disturbance was forgotten. The woman made the children run on the spot for another five minutes before blowing her whistle.

  “Better!” she called, loud enough for Jack to hear. “Now you will go out and earn your keep for New China! Make two rows!”

  Their unseen watcher was curious about this new development. Exactly how were they to earn their keep? He had his answer in a few minutes. The children were loaded onto two buses, carrying shovels and picks doled out to them by guards. Then with three guards and a driver in each bus, headed out of the school and turned right, headed into the Sacramento CBD.

  Jack waited a few minutes. The female ‘commandant’ watched the buses go, then, seemingly satisfied, headed back inside with two soldiers. Jack got the feeling this was a new operation and also suspected it would grow, especially given that even with the new busload of kids, they only had enough prisoners to fill one of the four barracks.

  Careful not to be seen by the two perimeter guards, he snuck down the side of the house he’d been watching from and made his way over the back fence and then, yard by yard until he reached the truck.

  He judged it was worth the risk to try and follow the buses to find out exactly what they were up to with these kids.

  31

  Jack passed a vehicle identical to his not long after he set out, but that was the only contact he had with the enemy as he followed N Street into the downtown district. He’d always thought the naming of Sacramento’s streets after
letters of the alphabet was dumb and had wondered aloud in class once how unimaginative the city planners must have been. It was one of the few times his English teacher Mr. Brock had agreed with him. Dumb street names aside, it appeared the invaders did indeed have a presence in Sacramento, but at this stage it wasn’t large enough for him to consider it occupied territory.

  He felt more relaxed but was wondering how far the buses were going and what he would do if he lost them, when he rounded a bend only to find one of them parked smack bang in the middle of his lane.

  His heart rate spiked as the eyes of the armed guards fell on him. They didn’t react though, the vehicle and the uniform were familiar to them, and the helmet and sunglasses hid his Caucasian features. He forced himself to remain calm and slowed down as he moved to the other lane. He looked around in what he hoped wasn’t too obvious a manner.

  Some of the children were in a park opposite a tall apartment building, digging with the tools they had been provided with, and both they and the guards watching over them wore surgical masks as they worked.

  To his right, two boys came out of the apartment building and dumped a body into a large wheelbarrow before one of them lifted the handles and began to wheel it across the road to the park. Jack passed and looked to his rearview mirror. Another kid with an empty barrow came from the park side and crossed in the same spot.

  Jack’s mouth shrunk into a grim line, and he drove for two blocks before turning right and circling back the way he had come on a parallel street. He didn’t know where the other bus was, but he didn’t need to. It was obvious that the children had been organized into work gangs. Work gangs to clear the corpses of their own people.

  He felt sick. Sick and angry.

  He headed back via a less used route and parked in the street behind the row of houses that faced the school. He ate some peanuts and crackers and washed them down with a warm can of coke before climbing into the back seat of the vehicle. It was only midday or so, but he hadn’t slept well the night before and thought a few hours of shuteye might help him clear his head and formulate a plan.

  He awoke hours later as the sun was sinking low in the afternoon sky. He hadn’t meant to sleep that long but knew he wouldn’t have unless he needed it. He ate again, this time a can of cold, gelatinous chicken soup. It was horrible but there was no way he could risk a fire to heat it up.

  He worked at the problem of the encampment as he ate. He obviously couldn’t just assault them head on; he might manage to kill one or two before he was shot, but that wouldn’t help the kids that were imprisoned.

  No, he had two options. Try and infiltrate at night with a handful of weapons he could pass on to the kids to help him in the fight, or, wait until the buses went out the next day leaving a handful of guards in the office building. He could attack them, and if he survived, then try and surprise the guards on the buses when they came back.

  He knew there wasn’t a chance he would come out of either scenario alive, but then that wasn’t a part of the plan was it?

  Jack grabbed his Sako Finnlight when he was finished eating and made his way furtively to the front porch he had surveilled from that morning. He had barely settled in when the two buses returned. He unclipped his scope and used it to observe the children being herded from the buses. They looked exhausted as they were led back into the enclosure and made to line up.

  Movement caught Jack’s eye and he looked back towards the front of the office building. Like clockwork, the same two kids who had dished up the slops this morning wheeled out their trolleys, escorted by two soldiers.

  The cold chicken soup he’d eaten from the can sat heavily in his stomach as he watched the kids attack the steaming bowls with vigor, wolfing down what appeared to be some sort of rice stew.

  “At least you’re eating better than me tonight.”

  There was no time to sit and digest their meals afterwards though. Before the last kid had finished their meal, they were ordered to their feet and herded back into the barracks. Within a few minutes the only children left in the compound were the two who had done the serving. They busied themselves collecting the bowls and mugs and scooping leftovers back into the tubs under the watchful eyes of the guards.

  Jack waited until they were done, and the compound was empty except for the four regular guards. He really felt for the kids in the camp. Their life consisted of sleep, nightmarish work and some exercise in the morning. No amount of hot soup compensated for that.

  He decided conclusively that he would make his move after the buses left. It was his best chance to make a difference. He replaced the scope and went back to the car under the cover of darkness. After eating a chocolate bar, he crawled into his sleeping bag on the back seat of the Chinese Hummer and set about formulating a step by step plan for the next day.

  Surprisingly, given his long nap in the afternoon, he fell asleep soon after.

  The routine the next morning was identical except for the fact that no new buses arrived. The kids in the barracks were roused before dawn and brought out into the compound where they had their breakfast. This time they only stood for 30 minutes after breakfast before the Commandant came out and led them in their exercises.

  There was no cruel singling out of a child this time. Through his scope Jack tried to find the kid with the red hair who had been beaten yesterday. He was nowhere to be seen. The children finished their routine with five minutes of on-the-spot running before the woman gave them the same crappy pep talk.

  Jack’s adrenaline began to flow as the kids were loaded onto the buses.

  Not long now.

  The same as yesterday, within 10 minutes of the buses leaving, only the two perimeter guards remained. Their victory was so complete, the Chinese army didn’t seem concerned about attack at all. All the manpower in this encampment seemed to be focused on keeping the children in rather than defending from attack.

  He had timed the perimeter guards the day before. In roughly six minutes they would be out of each other’s sight for around 12 minutes as one circled behind the school to the road parallel to this one. Jack headed down the side of the house and through the backyards the same way he had yesterday. He got into the truck and drove it south along back roads and then crossed over the main road, well clear of the school, before turning left onto the residential street that bordered the rear of the school.

  He parked the Mengshi in a small cross street and got out carrying only his black bladed knife and a fully loaded automatic over his shoulder. He ran as fast as he could towards the school and in the distance, he saw the first guard disappear around the far corner of the school and knew he had at least five minutes to get in place and await the arrival of the second soldier. He slotted in behind a thick bush that backed onto the fence at the rear of the school. This part of the fence was behind a row of classrooms, so he was in little danger of being spotted from that side.

  Squatting low and peering through the thinner branches on the underside of the bush, he saw the soldier turn onto the sidewalk 50 yards away and begin heading his way. As stealthily as he could, he pulled the strap of the automatic over his shoulder, placed it on the grass and pulled out his knife. He rose to a crouch, ready to spring his deadly trap as the soldier went by.

  It was then he heard the subdued singing. It could only be the soldier. His face turned a shade paler. The voice was beautiful, melodic and female.

  31

  A girl!

  How had he missed that? More importantly, with her only a few feet away, how was he going to deal with it? Frantically, he formulated a new plan then counted down as her footsteps approached.

  Maybe the song came to a natural end, or she sensed something amiss. Either way, as she passed the bush, she stopped singing. Jack made his move. He burst out of the bushes and grabbed the slightly built soldier, clamping his hand over her mouth and putting the knife against her throat.

  “Don’t move or I’ll cut your throat.”

  She froze, limp aga
inst his body, and for a second or two he thought he was in control. The sharp elbow to his ribs disabused him of that idea and the soldier immediately tried to twist out of his grip and bring her weapon up. He struggled to keep a grip on her; even though she was small, she was wiry and strong.

  “Stop struggling,” he said and pressed the knife harder to her throat.

  He received another elbow to the ribs and then she bit his hand.

  “Fuck!” he grunted, just managing to keep his hand over her mouth before shifting his knife arm and locking it around her throat. He squeezed and dragged her to the ground.

  Her struggles continued, it was like trying to hold an armful of snakes, and when his hand slipped from her mouth, she yelled something in her native tongue before he managed to clamp it back in place. That’s when he felt the sharp sting in his side. Then another. Her arm jerked and he realized what was happening. She was stabbing him!

  Jack rolled over onto her, using his greater weight to crush her knife hand under her body. He pulled the arm locked around her throat backwards. She got her hand free again and tried to get the knife free.

  “Please, just fucking stop!”

  Jack jerked his arm to try and cut off her air, but the angle of her neck was awkward, and a horrible, muffled crack silenced her abruptly.

  “Oh, shit, no!” Jack rolled off the petite woman and climbed to his knees, panting, and patted her cheek. “Sorry!” he moaned. “I didn’t mean to! Shit, why did you have to fight so hard? I had a knife at your throat…”

  A sightless stare into the sky was the only answer Jack got. Still kneeling, he shook his head then closed her eyes with the heel of his hand before standing up. He only had a few minutes to make his move. He dragged her body behind the bush before pausing to check his wounds.