by SD Tanner
“All trucks return to the main road for reassignment.”
***
Cutter
“What do you need?”
He thought if he had to ask that question one more time he’d go crazy. For the past hour, he and eight pickups had worked the three miles up and down the main road, unloading supplies into each truck. Gears had taken one of his pickups, and was now moving between each truck, issuing new orders. It seemed the direct battle was over, and they’d successfully broken up the enemy convoy, but they hadn’t killed more than half of the Crusaders.
With five hundred of their enemies either in trucks or riding beasts, all the surrounding towns and communities were in grave danger. They hadn’t stopped the enemy, only redirected where they would attack next.
***
Gears
“I dunno, Gears,” Pax said through his radio.
Cutter had just handed Pax a roughly drawn map of all the towns and communities within a twenty-mile radius of where they were on the main road. They had over a hundred vehicles between them, and around fifteen hundred shooters. He’d told Pax he wanted him and Jack to get their troops to the towns and communities to offer support. Cutter was heading back to the Marine supply base to restock the pickups, and he’d meet them in the field to keep them supplied.
All he could see were problems. There was no guarantee the surrounding towns and communities would want their help, and a good chance they’d be shot at for offering. The squads weren’t trained well enough to operate on their own. Pax had also warned him he couldn’t guarantee their loyalty, and there was a risk they’d run off with the weapons and vehicles. To top of it all off, he was worried about Ted and what may have happened at the refinery town. It was possible nothing was going on, but if it was, then Ted didn’t have enough troops to deal with the sort of attack they’d just prevented.
“Then whatdaya wanna do?” He asked irritably.
“You’re tryin’ to fight a war without an army, Gears.”
“It’s true,” TL chimed in through his own radio. “You’re not even walking yet, and you’re trying to run.”
“Leave ‘em to sort themselves out,” Pax said steadily. “We need to focus on gettin’ our army trained well enough to defend the air base and the refinery town.”
“That’s not good enough, Pax, and you know it,” he said tersely.
“He’s right, Gears, we’re not here to save man from himself. We came back to protect the babies,” TL said bluntly.
“You’ve forgotten our mission,” Pax added grimly.
He had admit that Pax and TL were right. In the heat of the battle, he’d fallen into his usual behavior of wanting to win conclusively. If he had his old army, he would send his troops to defend the towns, knowing they had the skills to do it. What he had now was a loose group of men and women, many of whom didn’t belong in any army. All he’d achieved today was to stop the enemy from attacking his key bases, and if anything, he’d only moved the problem onto someone else.
“We should at least warn ‘em they got hostiles in their territory,” he said unhappily.
“That’s not our problem either, Gears,” TL replied. “The Council of Eden needs to warn them. We can help transport the town leaders around the area, but this is their country and not ours.”
Although his brothers were nowhere near him, he nodded and said, “Okay, then send them with ten fully loaded trucks, and I’ll leave three birds to give them cover. TL, you and Jack should go with ‘em. Pax, you and Cutter should take the rest of the troops back to the Marine supply base. I’m gonna head out with the remaining six birds to see what’s happened to the refinery town. When I get back, we all need to talk ‘cos I ain’t happy with how this has played out.”
Chapter Thirty-Four: Ted
“Stop the convoy.”
In front of them, standing in the middle of the road and waving her hands frantically, was a woman dressed in ACUs. She seemed to have lost her gun, tactical vest and was only wearing one boot.
“Is it a trap?” The driver asked.
He didn’t think so, the woman’s distress looked real. Her face was covered in tear-streaked blood, and there were reddened stains on her shirt and thighs, soaking the fabric of her uniform. As their truck came to a stop, the woman staggered, limping on her injured leg towards them. Climbing out from the vehicle, he held his weapon in a firing position.
“Stay where you are. Put your hands up.”
“W…what? I need help.”
She certainly looked like she needed something. Dropping to her knees, the woman looked defeated, and with decency overwhelming his good sense, he walked towards to her.
“Who are you?”
Sobbing, the woman replied, “Marla. My name is Marla. Greg sent us to get a message to the base, but we have to get off the road.”
Hooking one arm under the woman’s shoulder, he helped her limp towards the truck and asked, “What happened to you?”
Once she was inside the armored vehicle, they gave her the Water of Life and she began to calm down. Sitting in the back with her, he asked, “What happened?”
Between gulps of the water, Marla replied, “There’s a thousand Crusaders in the town, and everyone’s hiding in the refinery building. They’re surrounded, but the Crusaders won’t fire on the building. It’d blow up.”
“How did you get out?”
“I was on patrol and we hid behind the town. Greg sent two teams out to get a message to the base.”
“Where are they?”
Marla shuddered and said, “I think they’re all dead. Well, at least the men are. We were attacked while we were walking down the road, and my combat leader told me to run and not stop.”
“How were you injured?”
“I ran into more Crusaders in the forest and we sort of shot it out, but I managed to get away by sliding down a cliff. I don’t think they wanted to follow me. I walked for miles until I rejoined the highway. I don’t really know the way back to the base, so I figured I needed to stick to the main roads.”
Tess handed Marla a wet cloth to wipe her face and said, “We don’t have enough shooters to deal with a thousand Crusaders, but if we don’t do something, they’ll break into the refinery one way or another.”
It was an impossible situation. Gears was using almost two thousand troops to fight a thousand Crusaders, and all he had were a few hundred shooters and ten armored vehicles. The enemy were smart and they were obviously monitoring the roads in and out of the town. Even if he had enough armored vehicles to make a difference, he wouldn’t get close enough to the refinery to use them. All he had was one fully loaded bird, but bombing the enemy when they were so close to the refinery with thousands of townspeople inside, was a recipe to lose everything and everyone.
“Where are Greg and his shooters?”
“I don’t know, but we were outside of the refinery. Greg was planning to make random attacks on their equipment and supplies, and Rodrigo was running an execution squad to kill any enemy he could find.”
Those were the tactics of terrorism, and he was surprised Greg had thought of it. With so few shooters against a well-armed and overwhelming number of enemy, it was pretty much the only tactic Greg could use. They needed to drive the enemy away from the refinery, but he wasn’t sure how he could do that, he simply didn’t have the manpower, weapons or ammo. The best he could do was what Greg was already doing.
Radioing to the bird, he said, “I need you to head back to the Marine supply base and get a message to Gears. Tell him the refinery town is under siege. One thousand Crusaders and everyone is trapped inside the refinery building.”
“Roger that.”
“Do you think we should give up the bird?” Tess asked worriedly.
“We can’t win any more than Greg can. We need more troops and they’re with Gears.”
Figuring Marla probably travelled no more than five to ten miles since meeting the Crusaders, they were already in the heart
of enemy occupied territory, and they needed to get off the road.
“Pull all the vehicles into the forest.”
It took them half an hour to drive deep enough into the forest where he was sure they’d be difficult to find. Once they were all standing around, with the trucks parked up wherever they could fit, he climbed onto a hood.
“We need to join Greg and use insurgency tactics against the enemy. That means small, highly mobile and independent teams. Each team needs to pick targets, whether they be specific enemy soldiers, weapons or supplies. You need to use the element of surprise, hit hard and fast and then get the hell out. I’ll be honest with you, none of you are ready for this type of enemy engagement.”
When the men and women standing around his truck looked back at him blankly, he suspected they didn’t disagree with his assessment.
“The chances of you being injured, killed or captured are pretty good. I’ve been told the Crusaders don’t treat women well.”
With those words, several women looked at one another knowingly. He guessed he wasn’t the only one who’d heard the rumors of women being taken prisoner, and the men being killed if they didn’t join the ranks of the Crusaders.
“If you want to leave I’ll understand, but I can’t leave. Other than Greg, I don’t really know anyone in the refinery town. I’ve lived in Eden for the past five years, and I’ve never needed oil or gas that much. My home is at a Ranch and we live pretty simply.”
Remembering the peaceful five years he’d spent raising the young Horsemen, and his newly born son only a month old, a small smile fluttered against his lips. He had a lot to live for these days, and yet he knew he wouldn’t leave even when faced with overwhelming odds.
“I was a Marine before the outbreak and I can’t say I was a good one. I spent a lotta time goofing off, but after the outbreak, I realized I had a job and it didn’t end when the world did. I have a wife and five kids back home who need me, but there’s thousands of people in that town who need me too. If it were my family trapped in that refinery, I’d want to know there are people like me who’d do anything to save them. It wouldn’t do me any good to leave, I’d never be able to face myself again if I did, so it’s not an option I even think about.”
Looking down at their upturned faces, he said, “But that’s how I deal with life, whether it’s heaven or hell I’m facing. You need to make your own choices and I’m gonna give you a few minutes to decide. Those of you who choose to stay, we’ll work out a way forward, and those who don’t…” Waving at the trucks parked haphazardly around them, he said, “You know how to leave.”
Around a hundred of them left, and not one of them had looked him in the eye while they silently climbed into five of the armored trucks. It was a disappointing result, but at least the men and women who stayed were committed. There was a brief argument about whether the deserters should be allowed to take weapons and ammo, until he pointed out they’d be on foot and wouldn’t be able to carry it all anyway.
A hundred men and women against a thousand Crusaders didn’t seem doable, but he took some solace that they were his soldiers to lead. Splitting them into teams of seven, he had fourteen groups. They all loaded themselves with as much ammo as they could carry, and moved on foot towards the town. He figured they were about fifteen miles from the refinery, and he could expect to run into Crusaders the closer they got. Having recovered from her injuries, Marla elected to join them and was walking beside him. All fourteen teams were spread widely across the forest, and he’d told them to move quietly.
“Why’d you decide to join us?”
“You don’t get anywhere if you let life scare you.”
Giving Marla a look of respect, he decided that providing she survived, she’d make an excellent combat leader. They were about three miles from the refinery when he saw the first signs of the Crusaders. Intermingling with the scent of ferns and moist earth was the smell of smoke drifting through the forest.
“Company halt. Stay hidden,” he whispered through his mike. Waving to two of the shooters near him, he added, “Tess, move forward and meet me.”
He needed to find the source of the smoke, and with Tess and his two best shooters, they silently moved through the forest. It didn’t take long before he heard the sound of men talking. The odor of smoke now had the distinct heavy smell of cooking meat. Signaling to the two shooters to stay back, he and Tess belly crawled closer to the makeshift camp. Three men were sitting around a small fire cooking meat on a metal plate. All were wearing the black Crusader uniforms with their guns lying next to them. They were obviously a forward squad acting as a sentry to the town, and he suspected there were at least two more enemy soldiers somewhere. Usually there were at least five troopers to a squad, and he very much doubted Cain would run his army any differently.
Pulling his KA-BAR from his belt, he put his fingers to his lips, and pointed at the man on the left of the campfire. Tess nodded, and silently pulling out her own blade, she pointed to the man opposite him. Having picked their targets, they simultaneously erupted from the bushes. He had his arm around the man’s neck before he had time to pick up his gun, and ran his blade across his throat, pressing hard. Without waiting to see if the man was dead, he lunged forward and plunged the blade into the chest of the man next to him. Pinning the man under his elbow, and using his body weight to hold him down, he finished the attack with series of short jabbing stabs into the man’s upper abdomen. Glancing over to Tess, she slit the other man’s throat with a fast slicing motion, before letting him fall face down into what was going to be his dinner.
Before he had time to check the men were dead, a man shouted ahead of him, and he assumed his shooters had found the rest of the Crusader squad. He and Tess launched forward and crashed through the bushes. The one thing he hadn’t heard was gunfire. Running into a body that seemed to appear from nowhere, he stabbed blindly, only to hear a man grunt and quietly swear. His blade had slid uselessly across the man’s body armor, and he realized he’d just tried to stab his own shooter.
“Very professional,” the shooter whispered sarcastically.
Pulling back from the man’s unintended embrace, he glanced past him and saw two men lying in their own blood.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
It was going to be a long night and he assumed this would be the first of many errors. His intention was to meet up with Greg and add a hundred more men and women to his numbers.
Breaking into a grin, he said quietly, “Five down and only nine hundred and ninety-five to go.”
Chapter Thirty-Five: Faith
She’d lost count of how many men she’d had sex with in the past four days. After they’d found her standing naked in the woods, they dragged her back to the prison and threw her into the barracks to entertain the troops. Far from resisting their needs, she’d welcomed their attention, but it wasn’t nearly as much pleasure as she’d hoped it would be. They were a boring crowd and not one of them satisfied her voracious and varied appetites.
“For as much fun as this isn’t, you really need to take me to see Cain.”
The bobbing head of the man above her stopped, and he asked incredulously, “What?”
Clearly, the man was an idiot and she said firmly, “I’ve been sent here to meet with Cain.” She’d asked the same question every day for four days. “Is Cain here yet?”
Immediately losing his erection, the man hitched up his pants and said sourly, “He arrived this morning, but I don’t think he’ll be interested in a whore like you.”
“Do you really think it’s wise for you speak on his behalf?”
Shaking his head in disgust, the man replied, “You are one strange bitch.”
Swinging her legs off the edge of the cot, and standing naked and bruised, she left the room and walked into the shared area of the barracks. Approaching a table where the more senior soldiers were talking, she said sarcastically, “Thanks for the hospitality, but I need to see Cain. I’m told he’s h
ere now.”
Looking her up and down, an older man replied, “All my men will do is fuck you, but Cain will cut you into pieces. He likes to remove women’s organs without the benefit of anesthetic. You might not like it here, but it’ll be worse for you with him. I’m doing you a favor by keeping you here.”
Scanning the faces of the men around her, many of whom she’d had sex with over the past few days, she sighed and said sternly, “Don’t try to be kind, you’re too stupid. I was sent here to meet Cain, and his hobbies sound interesting.” Leaning forward onto the table so her the breasts rested against it, she added, “You can tell him I’m a gift to amuse himself with.”
It didn’t take much to persuade the senior man that he could score points by handing her over to Cain, and she quickly found herself lying spread-eagled in a barren room, securely tied to an operating table. Next to her was a metal trolley covered with surgical instruments. Above her head were several large hooded lights that were shining brightly into her eyes. Not content to tie her arms and legs, she also had heavy restraints around her knees, thighs, hips, elbows and forehead. Clearly, she wasn’t meant to move during the procedure.
After waiting what felt like a lifetime, the door finally opened and a man whistled merrily to himself while he fussed over the medical instruments. She couldn’t see his face, but from behind his shoulders were broad, and he looked tall and well built. Eventually the man, dressed in blue scrubs, turned to look at her wearing a surgeon’s facemask.
“Good morning, my dear.”
Ruler liked to call her that, and she found herself immediately warming to the man. His eyes were a piercing blue, and judging by the few strands of hair peeking out from his surgeons cap, his hair was almost black. Above his facemask, the skin around his eyes creased upwards, and she guessed he was smiling at her.
“Today, I’m going to help you learn who you really are by peeling back the layers you hide under. We’re all liars, you know. We never let anyone get to know us our real selves. That will be my gift to you. You’re going to learn more about yourself over the next few days, than you would have come to know in a lifetime.”
