Surviving the Dead (Book 4): Fire In Winter

by James Cook

  Physics and arithmetic, two areas of study which, when one learns them, are really quite synonymous. And they are subjects at which I am well studied.

  So I went through the routine, roaming here and there through the warehouse armory, filling in the slots, choosing the best tools for the job. The NVGs, optics, body armor, and blades were a no-brainer, as was the primary firearm. The only question marks were the secondary firearm and the long-range tool of the trade.

  The Sig .45 was a temptation, but again, heavy ammo, low capacity magazines, and I was down to my last couple of hundred rounds. No go.

  Then there was the Beretta: battle proven, venerable 9mm, but still a lot of weight to carry. If there had not been a higher capacity, lighter, equally serviceable option to which I could fit a suppressor, I would have gone with it. But, sadly for the Beretta, there was a higher capacity, lighter, equally serviceable option to which I could fit a suppressor. Eric’s favorite, the Kel-Tec PMR 30: Lightweight .22 magnum ammunition that packed a surprisingly hard punch, thirty-round magazine capacity, and it even had good quality sights. It may not have been mil-spec, but I had used it enough to know it was reliable.

  That settled, I had to pick a sniper rifle. Weight of ammo was less of a concern, since I would only be carrying fifty rounds, but the rifle itself was a different matter. I had three options by order of weight: Desert Tactical SRS configured for .338 Lapua magnum, M-110 semi-automatic chambered in 7.62x51 NATO, or a Savage Weather Warrior in .300 Winchester magnum.

  The SRS was by far the most powerful, but it was also the heaviest, and its ammo, while readily available from my Army trade contacts, was exorbitantly expensive. I left it on the shelf.

  The Savage was a good option, being that it was the lightest of the three, and .300 Win-mag is an extremely powerful cartridge. However, I only had twenty-six rounds for it, and the gun did not technically belong to me. It was Eric’s, although we had a standing agreement that all weapons in the armory were essentially community property between the two of us. But I had decided on a fifty round load out, and there was barely half that number on the shelf. No go.

  By process of elimination, I took down the M-110, cleaned it, dry-fired it on a dummy round, and when the little firing pin dent appeared at the appropriate place on the inert primer, lashed it to my pack.

  “Hey, you have room for a couple more boxes of five-five-six, or another packet of goat jerky,” Eric said, looking up from the metal table where he was packing my gear for me. He knew me well enough he didn’t have to ask what to include, except when he arranged the required items with sufficient skill there was room leftover. “Which one do you want?”

  I pondered for a moment, then said, “Ammo. You can-”

  “Yeah, yeah. You can never have too much ammo. I heard you the five-hundred and sixty-sixth time.” He grabbed two more boxes of cartridges and stuffed them into one of the modular side pouches. That done, he zipped it up, fitted the rain cover over it, and hefted it, keeping his weight on his good leg.

  “Okay, you have a change of clothes, ghillie suit, first aid kit, multi-tool, toilet paper, paracord, one-man tent, rain poncho, bed roll, five pairs each underwear and socks, cleaning kit, mess kit, head lamp, six days’ worth of food, a bar of soap, washcloth, towel, fire steel, tinder bundle, two canteens, water purification tablets, half a liter of bleach, hunting knife, machete, hatchet, steel wool, nine volt battery, one unopened pack of double-A batteries, portable solar charger with an adapter for your NVGs, Sig Sauer Mosquito, four spare mags, a five-hundred round brick of .22 long rifle, two-hundred rounds .22 magnum still in the box, and ten pre-loaded P-mags with thirty rounds each, giving you a total of three hundred five-five-six rounds ready to go and oh my God this thing is heavy as shit.”

  I laughed. “It’s not that bad.”

  “Gabe, between this and your weapons, you’ll be carrying over a hundred pounds of gear.”

  “It’s no worse than what I had to do in the Marines.”

  “Yeah, but you were, like, twenty years younger then.”

  My smile disappeared. “I’ll be fine.”

  Eric watched as I made a show of reaching across the table, grabbing the pack with one hand, lifting it up with my arm outstretched, and giving it a little toss in the air as I slipped my arms through the straps.

  “See?”

  “Whatever, dude.”

  Once I was armed, armored, and otherwise geared up, Eric limped along beside me to the north gate. I told him not to, that I could find my way on my own, and that he was just being a stubborn asshat. He told me he did not recall asking my opinion on the subject, and to shut the hell up and walk.

  I got a lot of strange looks from the guards, but my reputation was such that they didn’t bother asking questions. After I signed out, the guards opened the pedestrian gate and waited impatiently, guns trained through the opening.

  I took a moment to turn and offer Eric a hand. He shook it, but did not smile. “This is stupid, Gabe. You should let me talk to Lieutenant Jonas. There’s no need to do this alone.”

  I shook my head, and let out a sigh. “Trust me, Eric. It’s for the best. Too many people have gotten hurt as it is. I’m not dragging anyone else into my problems.”

  “Sir, you should get moving,” one of the guards said. “We can’t keep the gate open much longer.”

  I nodded to him and clapped Eric on the shoulder. “Look in on Elizabeth for me, will you?”

  “Of course.”

  “And look after that wife and baby.”

  “Allison’s not my wife.”

  “You sure about that?”

  He blinked, and stood rooted to the spot, the color draining from his face. For once, he had nothing to say.

  THIRTY

  After the defeat of the Free Legion, a few people from Hollow Rock had the bright idea to set up a trading post just north of nearby Huntingdon.

  When I first heard about it, I wondered what the hell they were thinking. After all, why set up a trading post less than ten miles from a town that is itself, ostensibly, a gigantic trading post? However, once word got out that Hollow Rock was safe again and trade picked back up, the wisdom became clear.

  It is about a hundred miles as the crow flies from Hollow Rock to the Mississippi River. You can make it there on foot in about four days if you’re in shape, eight if you’re not, and three days on a good horse. But there isn’t much civilization between the Mississippi and Hollow Rock, and by the time people get there, they are usually tired, sore, and ready for a home-cooked meal and a good night’s sleep. For many of them, given the choice between stopping or pressing on another ten miles, they choose to take a rest. Which is where the outpost gets its name, Traveler’s Rest.

  And that was where I was headed.

  There would be several days of hard living between Hollow Rock and Blackmire, but I saw no reason to spend my first night on the road sleeping on a rooftop or wedged in the boles of a tree when there were better accommodations available. It was already one in the afternoon by the time the north wall of Hollow Rock disappeared behind me, and I had no desire to be caught in the open after dark. So I set a hard pace and covered nine of the ten miles required by the time the sun began to dip below the western sky.

  I stayed within a stone’s throw of Highway 70 for most of the way, traveling due west, and was just about to turn northward again when I heard the unmistakable sound of a woman’s scream.

  I stopped and went still, ears straining, eyes darting left and right. The scream repeated itself, farther ahead on the highway, then abruptly stopped. After making sure there was no threat in my immediate surroundings, I dropped my pack, donned my ghillie suit, and set out to locate the source.

  The highway cut a broad curve until it ran parallel to a set of railroad tracks—an old CSX line that crossed the south side of Hollow Rock—and stretched past a large clearing amid a ring of burned out buildings. Spotting it, I dropped down and crawled on my belly, trusting my ghi
llie suit to keep me hidden in the deep snow. When I was a hundred yards away from the clearing, I could see a disorderly knot of people struggling around a campfire, their shapes outlined by the flickering light. Moving very slowly, I brought my rifle up, adjusted the scope to its 4x setting, and peered through it.

  At a quick count, there looked to be fifteen of them in all. Five were either bound, or in the process of being bound, two were tossing things out of a large wooden wagon, one was trying to keep a pair of horses calm, three were standing outward from the violence as lookouts, and the rest were casually brutalizing the people they had tied up. I lowered the rifle, knowing I had a decision to make.

  There are various levels of criminal scum in the world, and they generally fall into a few broad categories. The two most common are raiders and marauders: people who rape, rob, pillage, and kill anyone who gets in their way, including each other. These two groups are differentiated by their methods: raiders are constantly on the move, never staying in one spot for very long, whereas marauders are territorial, much like gangs or organized crime. Then you have the various categories of swindlers, con men, thieves, and other petty criminals that seem to persist everywhere in the world, but are not necessarily violent. Beneath them are the pimps and the hustlers, those who ensnare and sexually exploit other human beings for personal gain. And at the bottom of the dung heap, deep down with the sludge and the maggots and the worms, where the sun never shines and all is stench and rottenness, are the dregs, the scum of the earth, the lowest of the low, those for whom the mere mention of their name will incite people to sneer and curse and spit on the ground.

  Slavers.

  They are never difficult to spot. Raiders and marauders have simple, predictable methods. First, they kill the men. All of them, young or old. Then they usually try to take the women alive for reasons which do not require explanation, but if they put up too much of a fight, they kill them too. Then they make quick work of sorting their victim’s belongings, decide who gets what with the biggest share going to the leader, and move along.

  However, three of the five people on the ground ahead of me were men, fully grown and healthy by the look of them. If this were the work of raiders or marauders, those men would be dead, not tied up. As for the women, they were not in the process of being raped just yet, but it was only a matter of time. Slavers like to sample their wares before selling them.

  Where the slave markets were, I could only guess. I had heard rumors of massive auctions being held up north in Mt. Vernon and Jasper, but no one seemed to know for sure. It was well known, however, that slavery was allowed in Alliance territory so long as the slaves were not Alliance citizens. Which meant anyone traveling the roads in Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee did well to travel in large, well-armed groups, and in sufficient number to dissuade slavers from attacking them. Evidently, the people on the ground ahead of me were either not aware of this danger, or dumb enough to think they could slip by undetected. Not a very wise thing to do.

  Under other circumstances, I might have moved on. I was outnumbered ten to one, and although I hate criminals as much as the next guy, I understand and accept that I cannot save everyone. There are some fights you just can’t win, justified or not. But the putrid bags of shit ahead of me were not merely thieves, or bullies, or thugs, or even marauders. They were slavers.

  And I fucking hate slavers.

  Working slowly, I retreated and edged my way back to the woods, staying low to keep from being spotted. When I reached the trees, I got back to my feet and moved toward thicker cover closer to the campsite, maneuvering so I had the sun at my back. The slavers continued their work, unaware that death was closing in on them.

  Near the edge of the treeline, I spotted a fallen maple that looked as if someone had felled it, cut off a few large limbs for a campfire, and left the trunk to rot. Offering a silent thanks to the erstwhile lumberjack for his hard work, I belly crawled to the tree and set my rifle on its bipod.

  Through the reticle, I picked the order in which they would die. There was a man standing apart from the others I pegged as the leader. He had that look about him, the straight posture, the hands on the hips, the placid calm as if his every word would be obeyed without question, a man accustomed to authority. For anyone who has ever served in the military, these people stand out like a sore thumb. And when they go down, when you cut off the beast’s head, chaos ensues. Chaos is good. A frightened enemy in disarray is much easier to defeat than a confident, organized one.

  He did me the favor of turning his back and standing still, the accommodating bastard. To thank him, I adjusted my grip on the M-6, let out a little air, and squeezed the trigger. There was a clank and a thump, and through the magnified view of my scope, I watched a gout of brain matter splash the snow in front of him, blood pouring from the wound like a ruptured barrel. He went stiff and tipped over face first, landing in a spattering of his own gore.

  One down, nine to go.

  Before the leader hit the ground, I shifted my aim to the three lookouts. They were still facing away, unaware of the danger they were in, rifles held loosely, eyes more preoccupied with the loot coming out of the wagon than on locating threats. I took them out quickly with a single head shot each, firing with the sureness of long practice—tap, tap, tap. Six to go.

  A slaver sorting through the wagon noticed the guards falling and raised a shout of alarm. All heads swiveled toward him, then to the dead body of their leader. One of them unslung his rifle—an AK-47, surprise surprise—and let off a quick burst in my general direction. None of the rounds hit anywhere close to me, but I didn’t want the other slavers finding their spines and following suit. A double tap to the face ended his onslaught and sent the others scrambling for cover. Two of them bumped into each other as they scurried around the wagon, the smaller one rebounding from the larger one and landing on his side in the snow. My rifle coughed twice, and he did not get up again.

  The clatter of another rifle rang out, followed by a hail of bullets hammering away at the trees over my head. I dropped down, head below the top of the fallen maple, and waited. More rifles joined the fracas, their reports shockingly loud in the still twilight. Very quickly, as I knew they would, the shots died off when the slavers ran out of ammo.

  Looking through my scope, I risked a peek over the top of the tree, and in the square of space beneath the wagon, I saw several pairs of legs shifting back and forth. Switching the M-6’s selector to three-round burst, I pulled the trigger twice, a grin stretching across my face as a chorus of agonized howls rewarded my efforts. Two more slavers hit the ground, hands clutching at the shattered bones in their legs. There was a quick adjustment of the reticle and a couple of muted thumps, and their suffering ended.

  Two left.

  They were both huddled in the back of the wagon, staying low where I couldn’t see them. For a moment, I almost felt sorry for them. They probably didn’t realize that the wooden planks comprising the wagon’s sidewalls were not sturdy enough to stop a bullet. I aimed center of mass, and let off another burst. A slaver screamed, raised his rifle over the side, and fired blindly at the forest. Again, I waited until he was out of ammo, and then raised my head.

  “There is no escape. Drop your weapons and come out with your hands up.”

  No response.

  I fired another burst. There was a bit of frantic shuffling, but no screams. “Last warning. The next burst is going to be full auto, and I will not stop until you are both dead. You have five seconds. One. Two. Three. F-”

  “All right, all right!” a voice shouted. “We’re coming out. Don’t shoot.”

  Two men emerged from the wagon, hands in the air, one of them with a bloodstain expanding rapidly down his left leg. From the tear in his pants, I guessed one of the rounds I fired through the wagon grazed his thigh. The two men stared at the carnage around them, faces slack, eyes bulging with disbelief. I stood up and approached them, rifle leveled.

  “Turn away from the
sound of my voice.”

  The slavers hesitated, gaping at the hulking, white-clad figure coming toward them. I stopped and took aim. “Do it now.”

  They obeyed.

  “Down on your knees, hands on top of your heads. Good. Now cross your feet. Stay where you are, and do not move. You move, you die. Nod if you understand.”

  They both did.

  “You will not speak unless given permission. Is that clear? Nod if you understand.”

  Another silent affirmative.

  I crossed the campsite to one of the men tied up on the ground. He was older, maybe mid-fifties, staring at me with a mixture of fear and hope. I unsheathed my Ka-bar, cut the rope from his wrists, and offered him the hilt of the knife. He grabbed it, but I held on for an extra second.

  “Stay where I can see you, you hear? Don’t try anything cute. You won’t live to regret it.”

  He nodded quickly. “Yes sir.”

  “Go help the others.”

  He complied, not saying another word until the other four victims were all free. They huddled together in a little group and slowly edged toward me, the older man in front. “You,” I said, pointing at him. “Do you have any rope, duct tape, zip ties, anything like that?”

  “Y...yes, we do.”

  “Grab it and follow me.”

  He did as I asked, retrieving a roll of nylon twine from the detritus around the wagon, and then joined me by the two surviving slavers. “That one,” I said, gesturing to him with my rifle. “Tie his hands and feet, and make it tight. We don’t want him getting loose.”

  “Hey, listen man-” The slaver began, but I interrupted him by placing a bullet in the ground less than an inch from his knee.

  “Shut up. Open your mouth again, and it’ll be your last words.”

  He was very compliant as the old man tied him up. Very humble.

  “Hey, what’s your name?”

  The old man looked at me. “Me?”