by JT Sawyer
“Admiring our handiwork, I see,” said the lead man, who was clad in a leather bomber jacket with his pump shotgun held at a low-ready. The other three wore a medley of ranching clothes but hardly resembled cowboys. Each of them had an assortment of semi-auto rifles and their disheveled, scraggly appearance gave them the look of flea-bitten hounds from a shelter. They walked with the boldness of predators used to bringing down what they caught in their sights.
“Hey, boss,” said a skinny man to the leader’s right. “I get the cute hot-pocket when you’re done with her.”
“Shut up, that’s no way to talk to a pretty lady. She looks scared,” he said with a gravelly voice and then glanced at Willis. “But not him. He looks mighty unfriendly, like a pissed-off badger, and I don’t like badgers very much.”
Willis and Eliza were half-squatting behind the rock slab, which was only two feet high. They were each armed with only their pistols. Before the four men could spread out from their initial positions any further, Willis yanked his out and fired off two precision rounds into the head of the leader, dropping him instantly. The other men, seemingly unstartled, bolted to either side and began firing. Eliza fired at the skinny man on the left, striking him twice in the chest as he shot his M4 in her direction, sending a spray of rock shrapnel into the air beside her. Willis dropped the third man with several rounds to the neck and chest as he was wildly spraying his rifle in their direction, the bullets ricocheting off the rocks near Willis, who let out a dull groan. As the fourth goon cut a wide arc to the right of the slab, firing off a volley of rounds, Willis grabbed Eliza and yanked her down on the ground below the rock. Willis heard the familiar sound of a magazine reload and sprang up, firing off three rounds into the chest of the goon. Willis staggered over, holding his side, and then dumped another round into the head of the downed man, knowing they were probably all wearing body armor. He checked on the other men while Eliza was standing over the body of the skinny thug who was moaning in pain from the bludgeoning effect of the rounds that had impacted his bulletproof vest. He was coughing and curled on his side but still trying to reach for his rifle. She stepped on his hand, crunching his finger bones as he wailed. She could see his meth-addled teeth and saw a silver necklace comprised of a dozen or more wedding rings.
Her heart sank and she felt nauseous. Then the man spit on her boot and cackled in between his moans. “You gonna kill me, bitch? You don’t seem the type—more like a tame circus pony.”
Her hand was shaking as she raised the pistol over his greasy face. She hesitated and glanced at the necklace and then back into his empty eyes. “Then it’s good for me that looks can be deceiving,” she said, pulling the trigger. Eliza felt her chest constrict and found herself biting her lip. She forced herself to breath and then realized the battle was over. They had made it. She felt torn between feeling a sense of gratitude for Willis’ training and raw disgust at having killed someone in cold blood. She knew the thug deserved the fate he met but it didn’t make dealing with the aftermath any easier. She pulled away from the dead man and turned to see Willis leaning against the rock slab, holding his stomach as blood soaked through his coat.
She rushed to his side as he collapsed next to the rock slab. He struggled to keep his eyes open, wincing as he clutched his palm against his midsection.
Eliza kneeled down beside him and opened his coat to examine the wound. There was a finger-sized puncture below his left ribs and a fist-sized exit wound in his back. His breathing grew raspy and his voice monotone as he tried to speak but only managed a whisper.
He ran his fingers along her face and then up towards her hair, moving her dark bangs aside and looking into her eyes. Then he reached for her hand and squeezed, sliding it down to her pistol. “Get back to Ft. Lewis, where you belong. I’ll be walking alongside you the entire way,” he said as he exhaled his last breath and his hand slipped off hers onto the ground.
She sat motionless, holding him and not feeling anything except rage. The rest of her soul was numb. She kept waiting for tears to form and her heart to burst from her chest in anguish but the only sensation that fueled her was a feral rage that was searing her insides. Everything was gone. She was all alone for the first time in her life. Another person she loved ripped away from her but all she felt inside was animalistic rage. Eliza kept looking at him, wondering if he would come back and say something inspiring or give her one last bit of advice but his lifeless eyes only stared up into the sky. Her pulse was quickening and her fists kept clenching and opening. She looked for something to pick up and shred to pieces but instead forced herself to take a deep breath, then she lowered Willis’ head gently to the ground. She passed her fingers along his eyelids to close them and wiped a streak of dirt away from his cheek, running her hand along his face until she no could no longer look at him.
Eliza removed his remaining weapons, straightened his jacket, and then stood up. She couldn’t feel her legs or the cold wind blowing on her neck or the tingle of the old wound on her cheek. Only the incendiary sensation of pure hatred broiling inside her, permeating every cell in her body like a rod of white-hot steel that has been removed from a blacksmith’s fire.
“How dare you come into my world and threaten everything that I love. I will fucking destroy you,” she said, reciting Willis’ words like a religious mantra as she boldly walked to the army truck on the road, her head tilted up. “Fucking destroy them all.”
****
The camp was located below a rocky escarpment at the river’s edge. Eliza could see a single plume of campfire smoke issuing skyward as the cliff walls on the other side of the river were painted orange from the setting sun.
She didn’t stop to recon the area ahead. It never crossed her mind, not at this moment in time. She didn’t think of her own survival, or if she even stood a chance or what numbers of men were in the camp. All that she saw was the view ahead through the windshield, her entire being catapulted forward in an adrenaline-soaked rage that was like a splinter in her mind. She ground her teeth together, letting out a guttural growl as she thrust the accelerator into the floor, barreling the truck down the dirt road towards the cluster of army vehicles ahead.
The five men were standing around the campfire holding beer cans, their rifles resting on nearby stumps as they casually talked and occasionally glanced at the returning vehicle making its way back.
As the plumes of dust spewing out from the truck’s rear wheels increased, she gripped the steering wheel tighter and leaned forward, an animalistic growl emanating from her lips while she sped past a stationary jeep to her right. The wide-eyed men began yelling and waving, thinking it was one of their misguided friends, and then the bewildered group began diving off to either side. As she dove from the moving rig, the truck slammed into a cluster of aspen trees near the campfire while wood and metal crunched and groaned. Eliza tumbled head over heels in the grass and came up near the road, forty feet away. She removed her MP-5 and fired a volley of rounds into the gas tank of the truck, watching it explode into a mushroom of flame.
The two men nearest the blast were killed instantly, their bodies flung into the burning trees. A larger man to her right tried to reach for his rifle but backed away from the intense heat and ran for a jeep. With a fevered stare, Eliza turned and strafed him in the ribs with a dozen rounds. The man crumpled instantly and tried crawling into a clump of bushes. Eliza darted over to him and viciously slammed the butt of her rifle into the back of his head.
Above the roar of the fire, she heard the crack of bullets sail by her head and slam into an oak tree behind her. She turned and saw a barrel-chested thug with a .45 in his hand staggering towards her. He was firing wildly and swearing at her. She swung her rifle and fired but only heard the click of a dry weapon. Robotically, she flung it to her side and smoothly withdrew her Sig-Sauer as she had done a thousand times in practice. She squeezed off two rounds into the big man’s chest. As she approached the downed figure at close range, leveling the barr
el to his forehead, she felt a sting on her left shoulder blade.
Eliza winced and dropped her pistol then turned and saw a bearded goon with an upraised knife that was arcing towards her face. She dropped low and kicked her attacker in the side of the knee, causing him to buckle and fall to her right. The enraged man kept slashing at her while trying to regain his footing. She blocked the first strike but his next one caught her and the tip of the blade sliced along her right forearm. Eliza sidestepped and then kicked dirt in his face. He swatted wildly, rubbing his face. Then she dove for her pistol and turned around to stand up but the man had already closed the distance and rushed her, grabbing the pistol with one hand while he raised the blade to jab her face. She head-butted him, hearing his nose cartilage crunch and then kneed him repeatedly in the groin until he released his grip and crumpled to the ground. She swiftly lowered the pistol and fired off two rounds into his head.
Eliza looked behind her for movement but only saw the dance of flames upon the rock ledge, matching the fury inside her. She walked over to the other bodies to make sure they were dead. Then she headed to a jeep on the outskirts of the treeline and leaned against the front quarterpanel, her body sagging as her hands went limp, barely noticing the sour taste in her mouth. She tilted her head in a grimace, feeling the wicked sting of pain emanating from her shoulder and forearm as the adrenaline in her ebbed away. She slumped to the ground next to the tire and watched the conflagration for what seemed like hours, occasionally closing her eyes, unsure if she had fallen asleep or awakened in some distant reality.
In her exhaustion, she dreamt of people emerging from the shadows, staring at her, whispering, pointing. She shook her head and rolled her eyes until she could focus on the surreal world of smoldering metal and charred wood before her. Then she realized the voices were people tethered to trees in the woods to her left. She could make out two, no three, maybe four sooty faces dressed in rags, wearing collars around their necks. She stood up, wincing at the terrible pain in her shoulder and forearm.
As she inched forward, carefully studying the forlorn faces in front of her and glancing behind her to check for any surprises, she saw that there were two men and two women with their hands outstretched. They were crying and whispering the same message over and over. “Thank you, God. Thank you.”
Chapter 28
Two hours into their flight along the coastal sand dunes north of Baja, Matias pulled his headset aside and leaned back over his right shoulder. “We’re about twenty minutes out from San Diego. I’ve been getting the standard automated distress beacon from the navy base at Coronado Island but nothing else.”
“Unless you say otherwise, Carlie, I was going to circle in around Coronado and set down there, if it looks good.”
Carlie tried to look upbeat at the thought of finally arriving at her brother Matt’s last known location but instead only gave a stern thumbs-up and continued peering out the window. What if she didn’t find any signs of him there? What if he was already dead, buried in some unmarked grave in the dunes? Her heart felt like it had a red-hot dagger driven through its core. She had to stay positive—to focus on him greeting her at Coronado or that he had made it out to their family cabin in the mountains before the world crumbled. Her cheeks quivered. She raised her hands up in front of her chin, resting her elbows on her knees and trying to contain the anguish of what was to come.
****
As they neared the Naval Amphibious Coronado, Carlie could see the decimated buildings below, the majority of which appeared to have been blown up. A few were left standing while the rest were charred remnants. Even the palm trees were gone as if a mighty wave had scoured the land.
“The base commander may have initiated a self-destruct sequence of critical structures if he knew the area was going to be breached,” said Shane, peering over her shoulder. “Or an order was given from elsewhere to take out the key infrastructure.”
Matias circled around the thumb-shaped wedge of land that jutted out into San Diego Bay south of the main island. He flew in low above a canted street sign indicating Trident Way, then over what was once a chapel, a string of fast-food restaurants, and finally past the Turner Field Airbase near the bay. Several miles to the north, directly across the bay, were the derelict buildings of downtown San Diego, their monolithic forms standing silent like extinguished candles over the quiet streets below.
As Matias swung to the right, setting down on an isolated helipad two hundred feet from the ocean, Carlie saw a row of close to fifty burial mounds, each affixed with a wooden cross. Her chest constricted and she felt herself unable to swallow. She gripped the edge of the seat, digging her fingernails into the thin fabric until she lost sensation in her hands.
She felt a hand on her shoulder and saw Jared looking at her, his deep blue eyes causing her grip to ease up. “Hey, I’ll go down there and look with you. If your bro is as tough as you are, then he’s probably long gone from here, sitting on some mountaintop, laughing at the world.”
Carlie tried to nod but felt her face tighten. Instead, she grabbed her rifle and asked Amy and Pavel to remain on board. Then she flung open the door and hopped out onto the tarmac, hastily making her way to the shoreline where the earthen graves were strung out in a single-file line running the length of the beach.
As Carlie rushed along the weed-choked path, she stopped briefly at the foot of each mound to examine the initials painted in white on the makeshift wooden crosses. Her eyes scanned ahead faster than she could walk and she found her pace increasing to a frantic trot as her vision kept going in and out from one grave to another. Her lips trembled when she thought there was a match with her brother Matt’s initials but then the corner of her mouth would slightly crack in relief followed by a tinge of guilt because she was glad it was someone else.
Shane and Jared were trying to keep up with her but eventually gave her some space and fell back. As she neared the end of the graves, she felt relieved at the lack of visible evidence of her brother’s presence. Then Carlie slowed and nearly stumbled on a knotty patch of grass as she noticed the last mound was devoid of a crucifix. She abruptly stopped and studied the grave, searching for an overturned marker, but found none.
Carlie looked down the long row of graves that she had just passed and wondered why this one was lacking a marker. She frantically scanned the beach and saw two weather shovels amidst a pile of scrap wood and an empty paint can in the grass ten feet away. She lowered her rifle to the ground and then retrieved a rusted shovel. Carlie moved back to the grave on the end and was about to thrust it into the truffle-colored dirt.
She began digging into the loose soil and soon heard the shovel clank against something. Scraping the remaining dirt, she saw the slender legs of a woman wearing orange Nike tennis shoes. Carlie took a deep breath and then flung the shovel down. She ran her hand along the back of her neck, massaging it while looking out over the ocean and fighting back the anguish inside that was simmering. How will I ever find my brother’s remains even if he is here? There must be graves all over this region. Maybe he made it out of here, to our cabin in the mountains. Yes, he must have made it—he can’t be buried in the sand like a piece of driftwood. Her mind raced back to her surroundings as she heard the crunch of footfalls on the beach as Shane and Jared approached.
“Carlie, you don’t have to do this alone,” said Shane.
As she looked up to respond, she saw movement as two coyote-tan Humvees rolled along the main entrance road, coming into view. She dropped the shovel and picked up her rifle, nodding to Shane and Jared as they all turned to look at the weathered vehicles rolling up to the far edge of the airfield opposite the helipad.
“Let’s hope these guys are friendlies. Whoever they are, they’ve been surviving here through all of this so they’re probably gonna be some tough hombres,” said Shane.
As they all slowly lowered their rifles to a low-ready, Carlie stepped alongside Jared and Shane and scanned the immediate area for tactical
options. “Just remember, as we’ve discussed in various ‘what-if’ scenarios around the campfire, we’re not surrendering our arms no matter how good these guys seem.”
The shoreline was peppered with various sand berms. Interspersed between her group and the helicopter was an abandoned truck, a cluster of oil drums, and a heap of empty wooden crates tipped on their side. This would provide some cover but there wasn’t anywhere to retreat to given the ocean behind them, and not enough time to make it to the helicopter.
She saw Matias leaning out of the pilot’s side in the distance. Carlie couldn’t risk having their only means of transportation damaged or destroyed along with the people inside. She reluctantly raised her right hand towards Matias and twirled her finger vigorously. He gave her a wave and closed the door then lifted off. Carlie saw the helicopter make a hard right and disappear to the west beyond the burnt-out remains of Coronado just as the Humvees pulled up.
“Alright, fellas,” she said, palming the handgrip of her rifle and motioning for them to take cover behind the berms as the vehicles came to a stop twenty yards away. “Either this will be a welcoming party or it will turn into our very own O.K. Corral.” She moved forward a few feet next to an oil drum and studied the physical characteristics and gait patterns of each of the nine men as they exited their rigs.
Chapter 29
“You Coast Guard?” yelled the wiry man walking towards them. He was dressed in desert camouflage fatigues and wore a warrant officer’s hat. He pointed up to the sky at the helicopter. “Coast Guard—we haven’t seen many military personnel in these parts, not since the collapse.” He stopped within a few feet of Carlie as she raised her rifle slightly. He removed his hat and tucked it under his left arm while smiling. “Pardon me, ma’am. My name is Captain Jake Bairdsley.”
