by J. S. Carter
Maryville—up close and personal—was nerve wracking. We came in on foot. The main road had no barriers or roadblocks unlike my first day in Arrino. Except for the sudden gusts of wind that tore at our flank, there was no movement nor sound. It was completely empty. And incredibly unsettling.
Olivia and Jeremy took the lead. Nick and Murphy were last, while Isabel and I stuck together in the middle. We all had our guns up at the ready and we moved in pairs. The mostly single story buildings enveloped us on other side. If I hadn't accidentally read Olivia, I would have taken the surroundings as a simple bad omen, a sign that the inhabitants of the town were out of sight for a good reason. But I had felt her experienced sixth sense kick in, and it was starting to make me sick. Every window, door, and corner took on an opportunity for a nasty surprise. I thought I saw a curtain fall back and I could feel my heart jump.
We were out in the open. There would be no way for any of us to find cover or react to a sudden attack in time. The lack of action was almost worse than anything else. The real problem was that we had no idea what to expect. I found myself wishing I had asked Olivia about what they had seen in other places beyond Arrino, but that also didn't bode well. Perhaps she had never brought any of them up specifically because none of them had been any better.
We crossed another empty intersection when Nick somehow made it all seem worse. He cleared his throat from the back. “Anybody else startin' to feel like they know what voyeurism feels like? Ya know... from the other side?”
Seriously?
I glanced at Isabel to see her almost panic stricken. Wide eyed, her fingers tensed around her gun. She had to have been the most nervous out of all of us. She was barely able to answer something as incredible as that. “That's not even—just, no.” Her accent grew heavy. “Why would you even bring that up?”
“Don't know,” Nick rebutted. “But you gotta admit, this feels pretty fuckin' weird. When was the last time you walked through Armageddon?”
“Assuming you're even remotely being serious,” she said, “I'd much rather believe that everyone has already been evacuated.”
“No cars,” Jeremy pointed out from the front. “We must have just missed 'em.”
“Maybe...” said Nick. “Or maybe they're just waiting to jump us when we'd be the most fucked.”
“Hey, Nick?” said Jeremy.
“Yeah, boss?”
“Stop talking.”
I kept pace behind my crush and Olivia, and I could just make out Jeremy throwing a few words at her underneath his breath. “Maybe we should check one of these houses. See what's up.”
“Not necessary.” She put a finger up to her ear and muttered something before turning back to the rest of us. “Nobody shoot Badger.”
It took me a few seconds to understand what she was talking about, until a few shapes bobbed down the street about block in front of us, and I realized it must have been the other third of our group. We joined Badger and his special operators in front of a post office that I was surprised to see them guarding.
Olivia gave him a nod. “Anything on our mystery gunman?”
“No, 'mam,” said Badger. “Shit's a ghost town. But we did find something you're probably not gonna like.”
“Let's see it.”
I followed her and Jeremy as Badger led them inside the post office. It was small and simple, not much different than what I might have been expecting, except that it was clean. After stepping into an empty town, I had expected to see signs of a struggle: trash, busted up cars, spent casings, maybe even dead bodies, but instead there was nothing. Anything left behind could have told a story as to what had happened, yet nothing else seemed out of place. I started to get the feeling that it told a different, albeit slightly more frightening one. If everyone was gone but everything was still where it belonged, the inhabitants' disappearance could have been premeditated. That started to freak me out.
We waited in the main room as Badger hopped the front counter and then came back a moment later with a crate the quarter of his size in his arms. He dropped it onto the floor in front of us.
“What's this supposed to be?” asked Olivia.
Badger kicked the top off with his boot. “You tell me.” He reached into a pile of hay and pulled out a small, metal canister. “'Cuz to me it looks like a crate filled with thermite.”
Even Jeremy's nose flared at that one. “You serious?” He had a near on panic attack when Badger tossed him a cylinder and he almost dropped it.
I didn't know what the big deal was. “What's thermite?”
“Incendiary grenade,” said Badger. “Burns at four-thousand degrees Fahrenheit—plus. We use it to burn a hole through whatever we wanna see stop working. Engine block. Helicopter. Artillery piece. You name it.”
I stared at the explosive with new respect as Jeremy held it awkwardly in his hands. Whoever had engineered it really must have not been screwing around if they had been able to get something packed so small to melt through the front of a car.
Jeremy handed the grenade back. “So what's it doing here?”
“In the middle of goddamn nowhere?” said Badger. “That would be the million dollar question.”
Olivia tried to make sense of it all. “I don't suppose you would know of any training ops that would need a stockpile, would you?”
“Around here?” Badger shook his head. “No way. Willie Pete—maybe. But smoke grenades would only get you so far.” He held the grenade up again. “This shit'll fuck your day up nice and hard. And as far as I know, all the good stuff would have been boxed up when we pulled out weeks ago. The rest could have been aggregated at NGO's: nuke plants, missile bases, shit like that.”
“So someone could have stolen it from a power plant,” said Jeremy.
Badger shrugged. “Not unless they felt like getting shot.”
Olivia tapped the crate with the tip of her boot. “So we can add stolen mil-spec weaponry to the list. That's good.” She knelt down and ran her hand across the markings stamped on the side. It made me wonder if she was trying to read it like an artifact or if that was even possible.
“Any leads?” asked Badger.
“'No,” She sighed. “But it can't stay here. Bag it.” Badger started to stuff the grenades in his backpack while Olivia got back up to check her watch with a new frown. “We're running out of time. We gotta keep moving.”
Jeremy blocked her only way out with a hand on the doorway. “Actually, we should probably start thinking about calling it soon. Or at the very least split up so we can cover more ground.”
“Sure,” she said. “After we find what we came here for.” She tried again but he wouldn't budge. She looked like she wanted to hit him.
“Come on... I haven't even seen a bike, much less a car. If—”
“If you wanna leave,” she said. “Then you better start walking. Because we still have time.”
Another tense moment passed before he caught my eye over her shoulder and he grudgingly got out of her way.
Badger zipped up his bag and looked the two of us over after Olivia left, not fully able to suppress his thoughts. “Well you got some balls, sheriff. I'll give you that much.” He slapped Jeremy on the shoulder. “Too bad that's not what we're lookin' for.”
The sight outside the door was one to behold. I let my rifle hang at my side and stared as the oncoming firestorm continued to race towards us along with a steady stream of wind fueling its rage. The thicker plumes of smoke had already crossed the sky above us and cast everything into a revolving shadow. Below that, shimmering lines of red and orange prompted me to think that Jeremy had been right in suggesting we move along. The air was starting to smell acrid as specks of ash flew past us like snow. Death and destruction were still a few miles off, but it had obviously been moving faster than anyone had anticipated. Olivia was seriously going to be cutting it close.
She walked up to the front of the line and turned around to look at all of us. Behind her, the fires continued to rage Armageddon. The
massive backdrop made her look fierce, though for a moment I thought she would give up. The notion quickly retired itself as she bit down on whatever reservation passed through her mind and yelled at us to be heard over the wind. “What's everyone standing around for?”
Badger immediately caught on. “You heard the woman. If you can stand around with your dick in your hands, then you can walk. And if you can walk, then you can run. Let's move.”
I watched his team fall into a trot while the rest of us took a second longer to commit.
“Right,” sighed Nick. “I guess we're joggin' now.”
Murphy hit him in the chest. “Hey. You love jogging.”
“Yup...”
I joined the tail end of the column and kept pace while Olivia led us onto the street and further into the town, the steady sound of all our guns, equipment, and boots fighting against the asphalt almost in sync. I admired Olivia's courage to see things through, but I also hoped she was taking into account how long it would take to still make the trip back towards the truck—unless she wasn't planning on turning back empty handed. Was is just supposed to be an example of what she had said earlier? Run towards the problem and fight the odds? And what if our odds to find any vehicles was non-existent?
The worries weighed more on my shoulders than anything else as I kept my rifle close to my chest. I was already breathing pretty heavily after a few minutes into the run and I could tell pretty clearly that those who weren't used to it weren't faring any better either. It was a stark reminder that whatever Chris had put me through in the time he had wasn't enough. I may have been armed, running through the middle of an abandoned town with a Knight, soldiers, and a half-fledged militia on the tip of scorched earth, but that didn't mean I wasn't the same, stupid, naïve, little girl that had grown up without having to fight for anything.
I put the thought to the side and spit out something acidic from the back of throat, hoping that it was normal as I forced myself to keep up with the group. It became a subtle reminder to keep my head up and on a swivel while house after house pressed in on our flanks. The dwellings eventually turned into smaller stores with pristine yet continually empty displays. It made me wonder what a hidden, pondering eye would see if someone spotted our ragtag group running through their town. The same feeling of uncertainty tinged with danger fell over me as if I were reading Olivia again, though this time from something bigger. Why were we alone?
A hand shot up in front and I nearly tripped over Nick as the group grounded to a halt.
Olivia motioned for Badger to move to her left and his team split off from our own to hug the shops while the rest of us followed her and did the same on the opposite side of the street in a hurry. She brought her rifle up at something down the road before glancing over to get a nod from Badger. They didn't use any hand signals, but obviously something was going on.
Both groups began to slowly move forward on either side of the street and I peeked past the bodies in front of me to see some sort of build up only a few blocks in front of us. It looked like a roundabout, maybe the town square or a park, except it was filled with different colors that gleamed with every ray of light that managed to make it through the clouds of smoke above us. I wasn't quite sure what we were heading toward.
I tried to get my breathe under control and kept an eye on each store that we passed wordlessly, silently cursing myself for recognizing a dark shape inside somewhere only to dispel it as something inanimate a second later. I had not been focused and I was paying the price for catching up while I tried to take everything in at once. Being last in the line, I finally remembered what my job was supposed to be and I counted out the number of steps in my head.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
I let my eyes drain from the inside of another shop to the top of Nick's back, his shoulder blades subtly flexing and releasing at a moment's notice as he guided his rifle to scan the environment in front of him.
Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
I turned around to see the same stores that we had passed. Nothing had changed. As far as I could see down the road, everything was still its empty, still self. It made the webs in my stomach twang uncomfortably.
It felt like eternity until the group stopped just short of the opening that I had seen earlier. I watched the line gently fall down into a crouch, but I couldn't see anything else past the side of the shop that I was using for cover. I waited until I couldn't possibly take it any longer. I got closer to Nick and tapped him on the shoulder, careful to keep my voice down to a whisper. “What's goin' on? Why aren't we moving?”
“No idea.” He tapped Murphy on the back only to get the same thing.
I absentmindedly bit the inside of my cheek and checked behind us again, but I wasn't paying the sights any attention. I hated being in the dark on the matter at hand. I was too impatient. I knew I wouldn't even do any good, otherwise I would already know what was going on. I would only be getting in the way.
I rocked back and forth on my heels, frustrated that I had no way of knowing what was going on in front of me. I glanced around again until a bright-red sign just behind the glass in the shop to my side caught my attention. Whoever had owned it was having a two for one sale for ice cream cones. Mix and match three scoops of any flavor. It set me over the edge. If I was going to die for any reason, I didn't want the last bit of knowledge imparted onto my being to be that I could save ninety-nine cents on ice cream and still feel just as guilty afterwards. After all, I was supposed to stay close to Olivia. I would only be following directions.
I tapped Nick on the shoulder again. “Watch our back.” He opened his mouth to say something, but I was already gone. I held my crouch and passed him by. I walked past Murphy and got a strange “What are you doing?” kind of glance from Isabel. If she had actually asked me, I wouldn't have known what to say.
I stuck my knee to the ground and craned my neck passed the corner of her shop to see the opening I had been looking for. I had been right. We had reached the town square of Maryville, but it wasn't quite what I had been expecting. As far as I could tell, six taller, multistory buildings skirted the vague circle in front of us and made it appear as if it were almost encased in a short bubble. One building looked like it could have been the town hall. Another a library. Another a church. The rest I couldn't quite make out from my vantage point.
In the middle—in what should have been relatively empty space—was the biggest surprise of all. Dozens of vehicles dotted the once relatively luxurious layout. They were all different sizes and colors, and seemingly randomly placed in orientation and space from one another. The diminishing rays of light sparked across the hoods to make it all look like a flood of twinkling, stretched out jelly beans. It may have explained where all the cars had gone, but it had done shit to uncover the mystery that was Maryville. We were stopped in front of a maze—a man-made one at that. Something was wrong.
Again.
A little movement caught my attention and I spotted Olivia and Jeremy crouched behind the side of the nearest sedan, the shade of a building nearby making them easy to overlook next to the contrasting colors in front of them. I watched Jeremy stick his head just above the rear window and steal a peek at the view in front of them. He said something to Olivia and her lips moved inaudibly in response.
I flexed the grip on my gun and went through the reasoning again. They didn't need me there. I would only be getting in the way. Yet no sooner had the thoughts passed through my mind had I told Isabel to cover me and dropped down onto my belly. I shifted my rifle so that it was perpendicular to my body in front of my face and starting crawling just as Chris had taught me.
I put one arm in front of the other, the gun always a few inches from my chin, and pushed off with the accompanying leg as quiet as I could make it, though it never seemed silent enough. I winced as my chest rubbed up against the concrete and my arms quickly began to burn from the underused muscles. I caught Olivia's attention halfway there and was confused to
see her stare at me blankly, until I realized she must have been listening to her radio. I was surprised that she didn't tell me to turn back around. Then again, if anything happened, I would at least be another gun in a fight.
I finally reached the front of the car and leaned up against the side to take a moment to try and collect myself. I fought the urge to lean over the hood and get a view for myself. Jeremy was obviously taking care of that already. Anything else would be me acting selfishly and increasing the risk of our group being spotted by unseen eyes.
I kept my dome of a head lower than I thought it had to be, the inescapable reflex resurfacing again as Chris had spent hours mulling the practice into my brain. He would order me to find cover from a hypothetical attack and then politely inform me whether or not I would survive it by either throwing pebbles at my forehead or poking my exposed limbs with a stick. It had seemed unnecessarily painful at the time, but the small welts and bruised ego I had to endure would be nothing compared to a bullet finding vulnerable flesh. I figured the lessons had worked reasonably well considering I would choose to hide behind the engine block of a car and stare at the ground only a few days since his death. The memories of him would live in on ways I hadn't even imagined.
Jeremy brought his nose up to the window again, his voice low and succinct. “Still nothing.”
Olivia brought a finger up to her ear, but thought better of it when she glanced at me. She reached down to pull out a cord from a small radio attached to her belt and adjusted a knob before speaking softly. “We got nothing on our end. What about you?”
A small click and a brief static from her radio told me that she had gone unplugged so that I could listen in on the conversation. Badger's voice came in soft amidst the quiet static of interference, but I could still tell that he was eerily calm. In addition to the words that he was actually saying, I realized I should have respected him a lot more than I had allowed myself to before.
“Nothin'.” Another brief beat of static. Then: “It's definitely a trap.”
Olivia nodded in agreement as if he were right in front of her. “Use the cars to slow us down. Pull us into the middle and then open up in a crossfire. Multiples points of contact and different elevation...” She looked around at the buildings around us, the unnamed idea solidifying itself in my brain as I imagined how it might unfold through numerous windows. “It's a kill zone.”
