Dead Nation

by Joshua Guess

  I was about fifty feet from the guards when I stopped, took a deep breath, and let out a harsh cough. Jackie would be listening for that.

  The guards definitely took note of the noise. All five of them straightened and looked my way, with the lamp between us. I raised my pistol and charged forward, sighting and firing as I moved.

  The leftmost guard's head snapped back in a spray of blood and brains, the slightly pained expression from glancing at the harsh incandescent bulb given no time to leave his face. By the time the man next to him realized what was going on, he was taking a pair to the chest.

  I closed the distance quickly, trying to avoid stepping on any legs while also controlling my shots. And the children, bless their mostly innocent hearts, moved out of my way. Not just that—to my naked astonishment, several of them nearest the guards stood up and started yelling. The commotion spread like a wave, the noise growing to a deafening babble within seconds.

  Guard three had time to aim his weapon but died before he could pull the trigger. Guard four managed a pair of shots that missed me by a couple inches.

  My shots took him in the shoulder, only temporarily removing him from the fight but close enough for my purposes. Guard five shot me with a burst from his rifle, aiming for center mass. It felt like Zeus reached down and kicked me in the chest as my strike plate absorbed the rounds with metallic slaps loud enough to make my ears ring.

  The guard clearly wasn't expecting that. He shot me and he damned well knew it. I was supposed to fall, dead before I hit the ground. Instead I continued forward, regaining my aim and firing at his face twice from less than fifteen feet away.

  I heard the echoes of more suppressed gunshots wafting over the top of the wall, but I wasn't in a rush to go see how the team was doing. They'd either handle it or fuck up. Nothing I could do about that. Sometimes you just have to trust and leave it up to god.

  Or the devil, depending on your perspective.

  I walked over to the injured man writhing on the ground and saw the exact moment he realized he was about to die. I didn't have pithy last words. No one-liners here. I just stopped next to him as he tried to crawl away, leaving a smeared trail of blood in his wake, and shot him in the head.

  Then I waited for my people to open the door. While I did, I turned to the room full of scared kids.

  “I'm looking for a boy named Logan. Anyone here by that name?”

  There was a fearful, loaded silence.

  “I'm here with Tabby. Your mom. She's just on the other side of that door.”

  A few seconds later, someone shuffled out of the darkness. The hair was longer, the eyes more haunted, and the cheeks more hollow, but I knew the description well enough to be sure. The kid stopped a few feet away, and I put out my hand.

  “Hey, kid,” I said. “My name's Mason. Nice to finally meet you.”

  22

  I let the team in, unlocking the heavy steel door and noting with satisfaction that none of them were missing. Two sported wounds, but nothing that couldn't wait until we were all out of danger for treatment.

  Tabby stepped through first and cast her gaze around, freezing as she saw Logan standing before her. She walked forward slowly, dreamlike, and knelt down before the boy. His expression was unreadable and wooden even after she put her arms out and pulled him tight against her body. Slowly at first but with increasing speed, the ice holding him in place melted and his face trembled before he burst into tears.

  Something in my chest gave a savage howl of joy, but it only lasted a second.

  Jackie, who was supervising the rest of the team as they closed the doors and spread a thick paste over its seams, put a hand on my upper arm. “We might not have much time. I think Wanda and her lynch mob out there probably distracted the guards waiting outside this wing, but we can't assume that will last forever. Someone is going to decide to check on the guards here soon.”

  She was right. The only reason we were able to get this far was because the Sons had every confidence no one would be able to fight their way out of this death trap. The guards inside the room with the kids were one layer of defense, and not a great one. The guards outside it were another, and I'm sure they were coached to make sure to look up toward the catwalk regularly. We attacked on the night shift, and not long after our intel said the change happened. If any of them looked up to spot us, the shadows and our head to toe black made us hard to spot. But I doubted they had. After all, you can't evacuate a few hundred kids on a catwalk with zero access from the room they're in.

  Outside that room, however, was the real threat. Since there were no other doors out, the large open area was a staging ground for an assault on anyone who might try to get to the kids. There was no doubt in my mind that a few hundred pissed-off parents were giving those people a hell of a fight, but that wouldn't last.

  “Light it up,” I said. Jackie nodded.

  I turned to the frightened but hopeful children. “That door is going to get really bright here in a second. Don't look at it. It'll hurt your eyes. I need all of you to move to the left side of the room, and get close together against the wall if you can. We're getting you out of here. Marie will come over and explain exactly what we need you to do.”

  Marie took over, herding the kids where we needed them. Jo rushed past me with a handful of operators, all of them aimed toward the back wall. They began moving what crates they could shift even before all the children were away from the area.

  “Igniting,” Jackie said a few seconds later. The flood light, bright as it was in the area near the door, was utterly overwhelmed by the thermite paste. The welds on the door would be sloppy and relatively thin, but they would harden extremely quickly and the fact that every seam was packed with the stuff meant we'd basically just turned the door into a steel wall. It would take a lot of force to break through.

  Hopefully it would buy us enough time.

  I put my effort into helping half of the team push crates around. There were two groups doing this. I joined the one moving several of them up toward the front of the room and in front of the door. This was a lot harder than it looked—no idea what those things were filled with, but I had to put my entire body into it along with four other people.

  When we had two large crates pushed tight enough against the door for the cooling metal to singe the wood, we all moved to the back and helped arrange things around where Jo and Jackie worked on the wall itself. The stacks of crates required virtually everyone else—minus Jo, Jackie, and Tabby—to push all at once. We lengthened the corridor of heavy boxes framing the doorway-sized space they worked in. It took about ten minutes. All the while, the sounds of combat filled the entire building. No gunfire touched us thanks to the layers of walls, but the smell of burning cordite and the screams of the dying weren't something any of us could ignore.

  When our labor was finally done, I moved down the corridor of crates and stood behind Jackie and Jo as they worked. Jo was using a small battery-powered drill with a heavy masonry bit to put half-inch holes into the cinder block at strategic places. Each of these took ten seconds or so. When she pulled the bit out and moved to the next spot she'd marked and started the next hole, Jackie took one of the small pre-cut charges from her own pack and affixed it to the hole.

  The lengths of detonating cord were fairly short. No single one of them would have a huge effect on the wall's integrity, but placed in the holes they were devastating. Jackie expertly connected the cord together with a single, longer piece.

  “Okay,” Jo said after drilling the last hole. “Once she's got it all ready, it should work.”

  When Jackie straightened and began feeding out the wire she'd connect to the detonator, I jogged all the way back to the safe zone. Or what I powerfully hoped would be a safe zone. Everyone was set. The kids were warned what was about the happen and every one of them did as they were told and ducked their heads with hands wrapped around the back of their skulls.

  Tabby covered Logan with her body, unwilli
ng to risk any harm to him now that she had him back.

  I toggled my handheld radio. “Ron, we're in place. Next step is a go. Give me a countdown.”

  Now was when any kind of subtlety came to an end. Because no matter what small tricks you play to alter the psychology of a group, no matter how gently you push people to move in the direction you want, sometimes the only solution to a problem is to drive a fucking tank through it. That isn't a metaphor.

  Deep within the building as we were, I could hear Ron's last announcement only as a vague booming noise. It didn't matter. I knew what he was saying. He was telling the captives inside to fight, that we would be coming in force for the children. At that very moment, several hundred Union militia would descend on the northeast corner of the compound. It wasn't a feint; those people were coming to annihilate anyone who stood against them. Tonight we'd break the back of the Relentless Sons as an organization or die trying.

  That fact didn't stop the incoming assault from also being a distraction, because it absolutely was. Because like I said: tank.

  “Ten,” the countdown began.

  The thunder of distant guns intensified. The sounds of panic grew with them.

  “Nine.”

  The countdown continued and my chest grew tight. There were certain things you could manage on a battlefield, others you had control of during an infiltration. I had no illusions about how dangerous this next part was going to be. Herding all those kids to safety in these conditions—the thought had haunted me since coming up with this batshit insane plan.

  At three, I yelled for everyone to get ready. Just as the voice on the radio reached one, a shudder went through the building as the tank bearing down on the place from the southwest rammed through the relatively flimsy outer wall and just kept right on going. Or so I hoped, since it was our way out.

  At the same time, Jackie blew the wall. The hope was that the much larger shock of our militia bursting through the walls like an armored Kool-Aid man would hide the smaller explosion as we breached this wall. The noise was painfully loud, but mercifully brief.

  I hopped up and ran for the wall with a glow stick in hand only to discover that it hadn't quite worked. The interior part of the cinder block was gone, but only sporadic holes were blown through the entire depth of the wall. There was fairly catastrophic damage to the angles of the blocks that had previously been hidden by the face now reduced to rubble. A sudden, hot rage burned through me and without thinking, I raised my boot and started kicking as if trying to burst through a door.

  The outer section might not have been blasted clear, but it was blasted. The holes were surrounded by pitted thin spots, with cracks running all through it like crazed safety glass. My first heavy kick broke out a section the size of a watermelon. From there it was mostly just widening the hole. I don't know how long I was at it, but the desperate need to get us the fuck out of this room drove me until there was a space large enough for me to walk through if I hunched over.

  I stopped, chest heaving, and turned back to tell the others to start bringing the kids only to find the corridor packed full of people ready to go. I grinned and drew my pistol, then stepped into the space beyond.

  The hallway here was narrow. It was the space between two blocks of partitions, and wasn't used by anyone in the building for any regular purpose. It had no doors, and dead-ended. The open end ran all the way back to the room where I'd killed the guard on the catwalk. Tossing the glow stick back through the hole, I moved down the nearly black hallway with Jackie and Jo at my back, followed by the horde of kids and my team.

  It was a lot faster going this way than on the catwalk. We didn't have to be slow or careful, and other than keeping from talking, no special precautions needed to be taken.

  As we approached the dim light at the end of the hall marking the exit into the large room ahead and our freedom, sound of battle grew steadily louder. Even oppressive. There's nothing quite like it in the world for setting your insides on fire and clenching up every muscle you have. Ten yards from the opening, I put up a fist for everyone to stop.

  “Wait until I give the all-clear,” I said. Jackie didn't argue for once, had no chiding comment about not risking my ass. If she wasn't willing to die for this, she wouldn't be here. She knew I felt the same.

  Creeping down the hallway, I took care moving into the vast space. A cold wind blew steadily through it, the enormous gash in the wall fifty yards to my left letting the dregs of winter run rampant. Despite the noise, the room was empty as far as I could see. I glanced off to the right and saw more destruction wrought by the tank—and I should clarify here that when I say tank, I mean an actual one. Not the nickname for our modified trucks. Getting that son of a bitch here was a nightmare, especially without being spotted.

  Fires were burning that way, and through the smoke I could make out the vague shapes of people running and firing weapons. Whatever madman got the honor of driving through the wall was clearly making the most of it. We wouldn't get a better chance than this.

  I stepped to the mouth of the hallway and waved everyone forward, guiding them toward the exit wordlessly. It took a subjective eternity for the scared children to cover the distance with their short legs, the older kids slowed by having to carry the smallest of them.

  All the while I watched the action through the burning haze, waiting for something to go horribly wrong. It was only when Marie, who was acting as the rear guard for our herd of former captives, slapped me on the shoulder that I realized the hardest part was over. With one last glance to make sure no one was following us, I joined the group and stepped back out into the night.

  We could have tried running the kids through the gap in the wall made by the tank, but that was not the plan. Why bother taking them overland when there could still be stray zombies or fleeing Sons, any number of random dangers? Instead we drove them like a herd of cattle toward the one safe place we knew was ready for them.

  One by one they jumped in the hole, falling only a few feet before the enormous slide the team below had put in place took their weight and gently sent them to the floor of the cave without injury. I stood there waiting until the last of them were gone. I was in fact that last of our entire group to be above ground.

  Jo went just before me. I told her I'd be right behind her.

  That was a lie.

  23

  I ambled over to the body of the nearest dead guard and took his rifle. I made sure to flip the selector over to single shot. Each of the two pockets of my coat got a magazine.

  I snagged the radio from my pack before setting off on what I hoped wouldn't be a suicide run. Raising it to my mouth, I called Ron.

  “It's Mason,” I said. “Mission accomplished. You can send out the call. Make sure the PA we've got strapped to that fucking tank is working.”

  “Roger,” Ron said. “What's your position? You're coming in real clear. Are you not in the cave?”

  I smiled. The guy was a team lead for a reason. He didn't miss much. “Negative. I'm...going hunting. Also going radio silent. The field is yours. Good luck.”

  I switched off the radio before more than the first squawk of his protest could be heard and stuffed the thing back into my bag. I walked slowly back the way I'd come. A few people were visible now, some running toward the hole smashed through the wall while others limped or shuffled along. They were too far away to identify me as anything other than a silhouette in the night.

  “We have successfully rescued your children,” Ron's voice boomed through the night. I heard the words echo from inside the building a fraction of a second later. I guess the concert speakers strapped to the ass end of the tank still worked, thank god. “Our forces are moving in. If you see someone with a white arm band, you should surrender. We will not be choosy about killing anyone who attacks us.”

  I wasn't wearing an arm band, but I didn't much give a shit about being shot at just then. Instead I walked through the rent in the wall and moved with my rifle raised.


  When a running man nearly collided with me, raw fear on his face, I shouted for him to stop. I was about to put him to the question when I saw the Relentless Sons insignia tattooed on the side of his neck. Well. That helped.

  His eyes widened. I've seen that look on a lot of faces. It's the slightly slack-jawed expression of a person who understands that death has come. That sounds easy to take in conceptually, but it isn't. The knowledge that nothing you do will change the end rushing toward you is oppressive and freeing at the same time. It's a weight you can't shrug off, but our brains are also hardwired to shoot a bunch of chemicals into our blood to let us deal with that specific feeling.

  I don't know if he had enough time to get the full effect before I shot him in the face, but I also found it hard to care.

  Someone else making their way toward freedom took a shot at me. No clue what their story was. Biker, paramilitary operative, captive, or hostage parent—it didn't matter. I fired back on pure instinct and at that distance there was no missing.

  “Please,” a woman dragging an obviously broken ankle behind her said to me. “Please tell me you got my Dylan out. He's twelve. Brown hair, green eyes. If you're gonna kill me, just tell me my son is safe first.”

  “He's safe,” I said. “If he was in that room, he's alive and well. My people have him.” I scanned the area to make sure no one was about to pop up and put lead in my skull, then pointed the direction she was already going. “A whole bunch of soldiers will be coming through that wall in a little while. They were just waiting for us to get your children to safety. Surrender to them and they'll get you back with your son. Probably take care of that ankle, too.”

  The woman, injured and haggard though she was, lit into a glorious smile. “Thank you.”