“Let’s get into the alleys,” Cory whispered.
“It’s the next street we come to, and then turn right,” Ben answered. “You’re not wearing the NVGs,” he added.
“All those muzzle flashes screwed up my vision. I gotta wait for a bit to let my retinas dilate again. I can’t see much, but I am seeing the street signs, so we just have to ghost along for now and wait until we get to the alleys before I put the NVGs on again.”
After turning off Tatum Road, he pulled on the side of the narrow street behind a stand of bushes and turned the motor off. “There’s a bottle with eye drops in my pack. Get it out, would you?” The sound of a gunning motor passed them on the main road, and they both grinned as the pursuit vehicle passed their location.
Ben rummaged around in the assault pack for a moment and pulled out a small bottle. He handed it to Cory, who took it and carefully put two drops into each eye, holding his eyelids open with his thumb and forefinger. “What’s that?” Ben asked.
“Atropine.”
“What does it do?”
“It dilates the eyes, opening up the pupils so your eyes take in more light. Special Forces use it to enhance NVG performance.” Cory blinked a few times, then donned the NVGs again and looked around. “Much better,” he said. “Let’s get down to Rachael’s place and get the hell out of here.”
“Works for me.” They both sat for a moment, listening to what sounded like several vehicles going up the main road that paralleled their position.
“They’re hunting us,” Cory warned.
“Yep. There’s more than one vehicle looking for us.”
“It’s just like Don said it would be. He said we would be the hunted, and we’d have to be smart about how we did this.”
“Don’t surprise me any. He’s a smart guy.”
“So, how do we be smart about this?”
“We dismount and go on foot,” Ben replied. “It can’t be more than a mile from here.”
“What if we have to run from the bad guys?”
“If that happens, we lose anyway. There are a lot of vehicles out there looking for us. If we even start the ATV, they’re gonna be all over us before we can get two blocks away. We’re in the alley now, so let’s push it behind one of these houses and head toward the condo.” The two men pushed the ATV behind a garage; Cory pulled the ignition fuse from the housing and pocketed it.
“We’ll need to leave everything except the NVGs, spare mags, a flashlight, water, and the poncho. And, how the heck are we going to find our way back here?”
“Let me get another look at the map,” Ben answered. He pulled the poncho from the back seat and again disappeared under the garment. After a few minutes, he reappeared and motioned for Cory to get under the poncho with him. Cory did so and watched him trace the route on the map. “This alley leads directly to a street on the side of the condos. If we follow it, we only have to make one turn on a service street to get back here.”
“You’re right,” he whispered. “That should be easy enough to do. But, we still gotta figure out how to find this house again if we want to ride out of town.”
“We leave a marker in the alley.”
“What kind of marker?”
“This kind,” Ben replied, holding up an empty water bottle.
“I guess that’ll work. We got full charges on the NVGs and two spare batteries each, so we could pick that out if we leave it in open sight.” Cory donned his NVGs and looked around.
“Okay, let’s go,” Ben said, placing the bottle on the side of the alley closest to where they parked the ATV.
“All right, but let’s get our vests full of spare mags and get more for every pocket we have.” Ben put on his NVGs and began filling mags from the ammo box in the back seat. Cory joined him and soon they had six mags each in their vests and another two in their back pockets. They each put a spare battery for the NVGs in their side pockets. Both men drank a bottle of water and they left with a spare bottle in their free hands.
“Get to the other side of the alley and follow me,” Cory said. “We’ll leapfrog through the alleys until we get to the road to the condos. You cover me from your side, I’ll move up a half a block, and then you join me. Then, we rinse and repeat until we get there. If we’re lucky, we can make it there with no problems. If not, then at least one of us can continue on.”
“Not a pleasant thought,” Ben said dryly.
“Got a better one?”
“No,” he shrugged.
“So let’s go.” Cory moved out at a slow trot, careful to let his heels fall first and glancing to all sides as he moved. He hated the narrow vision the NVGs provided, but recognized it was the only edge they had in a battle that seemed sure to ensue before they reached the condo.
They covered the first block without incident and were moving through the second when Cory held up a fist, the universal sign to stop, and Ben slowly moved up beside him. They both heard shrieks of pain. “Let’s go forward slowly,” Cory whispered. “Stay on the other side of the alley.”
“Roger.”
The two men moved forward, parallel to each other, and walked at a snail’s pace. Cory got to the corner, motioned Ben to get behind him, and glanced around the wall. He pulled his head back and stared at Ben with the look of a man who had just seen the unspeakable.
“What is it?” Ben whispered.
“Take a look.”
Ben moved in front of Cory, who sat with his back to the block wall. “Jesus,” he whispered, moving back and sitting next to Cory. He glanced over and noted that Cory’s expression had moved from shock to grim determination. “What do you want to do?”
“Kill the bastards,” Cory replied coldly. “All of them.”
“We can’t kill them all. There must be twenty of them.”
“Then we kill as many as we can.”
“Cory, that’s crazy. The minute we start firing, they are going to be all over us.”
“I can’t live with this, Ben. You go if you want to. Go get your boys. I’ll figure out a way out of this after I kill these guys.” Ben considered it for a moment and then looked again at the sight in front of them. What he saw was not pretty. A line of men stood waiting to rape three women who were staked down, naked, on the ground. The men at the front of the line were removing their pants in anticipation of their turn at the women. Another man moved from woman to woman, tracing a knife across their bare skin and eliciting shrieks of pain. He giggled as he tortured them. Ben could see that he was passing the blade lightly over their breasts and not thrusting the knife into them, but the whole scene was obviously frightening to the women. A fire burned between the women and another group of men who sat on lawn chairs and watched .
“What’s the plan?” Ben asked.
“I go in without a long gun. They’ll think I’m one of them. Then, I take out as many as I can with my pistol, and you take out the rest. The men without the pants aren’t armed as far as I can tell, so you focus on keeping that group in the lawn chairs off me. They all have rifles. If something happens to me, just get the women out of here at the very least.”
“That’s not gonna work.”
“What’s your idea?”
Ben thought for a moment, then said, “we go in together, like we’re part of the crowd. Then we start taking them down. You cut the women free and we get back to the alley.
“Then what?”
“I guess we go on with the rest of the plan.”
“What do we do with the women?” Cory asked.
“Take them along, I guess.”
“You think they’re going to be in any shape to travel with us? Maybe we should just free them and let them go.”
“I think that party just started,” Ben said, after glancing again around the wall. “They don‘t look like they’ve been beaten or anything. Let’s just get them out of there.”
“And then move on?”
“You break it, you buy it,” Ben replied. “You can’t just walk aw
ay and hope they’ll make it out of here.”
“I know,” Cory sighed. “I guess Don was right when he said we would see all kinds of horrible stuff and have to walk by it, but I just can’t accept it. Can you?”
“No, we have to do something. But I don’t know if we can do it and still finish what we came here to do in the first place.” Another woman started shrieking, and both Ben and Cory winced.
“Okay, I don’t care what the plan is anymore. We have to stop this,” Cory said. “I’m going in there. Give me your Glock and some cover fire on the group with the rifles. You’ve got to keep them off me while I take out the group with the women.”
Ben handed the pistol to Cory, who began walking toward the hideous scene. He drew his Glock 21 as he approached the men from the rear, now holding a pistol in each hand, and calmly began to fire rounds into the back of the heads of the men standing in line. Ben’s AR joined the fight as he fired on the group that sat in the lawn chairs.
The last two men had time to turn and face Cory before he fired, but he capped them without a second thought. The man who was torturing the women turned and tried to flee, but Cory put two in his back. He again heard the bark of the AR as Ben rejoined the fight.
Cory noted that the men on the periphery of the camp, all armed with long guns, were falling. He was in a trance-like state, beyond caring about his own life, and finished the last of the men within range of his pistol. He turned back, drawing his combat knife from his vest, and started cutting the women loose. Ben’s AR continued to sound in the distance. When he had all the women free from their bonds he said, “go into the tree line over there.”
Cory was in a state he had never been in before. He heard the gunfire and felt slugs whizzing by him, but did nothing to avoid the rounds. Changing magazines, he returned fire from a standing position to cover the retreat of the women, who scurried away from him as he advanced on the second group.
His rounds found two more bad guys, who both fell to the ground and lay motionless, before his mags again ran dry. Pulling out the last mag he had in his vest, he advanced on the remaining men, firing methodically as he walked, until he heard the dry click of another empty mag. Drawing his combat knife, he walked toward the last man standing, who was struggling to reload his rifle, and slashed the knife across his throat. The man made a gagging sound, clutching his neck, and fell to the ground, blood spurting between his fingers. Ben’s AR continued to bark, and Cory saw another man spin to the ground.
The last of the men fled out of the light provided by the fire. Cory wiped his combat knife on the shirt of the last man he killed, holstered his pistol, and walked back to where the women and Ben were standing. Ben had already given a poncho each to two of the woman, and the third was wrapped in a blanket. Cory stopped in front of them. The two wearing ponchos were in a state of shock, both shivering and crying. The third looked as though she was going to kill something. Her eyes blazed with anger and hatred as she looked over Cory’s shoulder at the last spot the fleeing men were visible.
“Everybody all right?” Cory asked, his voice calm and steady, even though he felt as though he were speaking without hearing the words. He was still a bit dazed, but hid it well.
“We’re okay,” the tallest of the young women said. “They were just starting when you showed up.” Her eyes continued to shine with hate. She again glanced over Cory’s shoulder and said, “give me a gun.” Her voice was low and unwavering. “Those men started to rape us, and they’re going to pay. I’m going after them. Give me a gun,” she repeated.
“Slow down,” Cory started, and then asked, “what’s your name?”
“Tiffany,” she replied, holding her hand out for a pistol.
“Look, Tiffany. First of all, we need the weapons ourselves.” He held out a placating hand as she started to make her argument. “Second, they already paid for something they tried to do.” He stressed the word “tried.” “Last, we need to get you to safety. You might be all right, but your friends aren’t.” Cory nodded to where the two women now sat huddled on the ground, still shaking and crying. She glanced over at them and rushed to their side.
“Come on,” she whispered, “it’s over. We’re safe now.” Tiffany hugged both of them.
“We’ll never be safe again,” one of the women whispered back, before again sobbing inconsolably.
“You’re safe as in the arms of Jesus,” Ben said, accepting his Glock back from Cory. He walked over and hugged the third girl, who clutched his arm as though it were the last hope in the world.
“We need to get moving,” Cory said. “Let’s get back to the house and find these people some clothes.” They walked back through the alley and heard vehicles approaching the site of the gun battle. Cory led, with the women holding hands to make their way in the darkness. Tiffany held the back of Cory’s vest, leading the other two women. They made their way through the back yard, passing the parked ATV, and then moved to the back patio of the house. Cory softly rapped on the door; when nobody answered, he gently slid the door to one side and led the women into the house. Ben followed, closing and locking the door while the group waited in the middle of the room.
“Close the shutters,” Cory whispered to Ben, who moved to the patio door and closed the drapes and then the shutters on every window in the room. Cory flicked the flashlight on, holding a hand over the lens to dim the light, then raised his NVGs and squinted around the room.
“There must be some clothes in the bedroom,” he whispered, pointed the dim light at an open door. They moved through the door and the women went to a dresser in the corner of the room and began rummaging through it. When they all found clothes they thought would fit, Cory handed the flashlight to Tiffany and turned around, facing away from the women. Ben followed suit. The women donned the ill-fitting garments, found some shoes in the closet, and Tiffany handed the flashlight to Cory.
“We may as well get comfortable,” Cory whispered. “We’re not going anywhere until we hear those vehicles leave the area.” They moved back to the living room, where Cory turned on the flashlight and rested it on a table, facing the interior of the house. He walked out a side door and examined the house from the back. Seeing no light in the windows or back door, he grunted with satisfaction and returned to the house. “We’re fine,” he whispered to the group. “Let’s take a seat and wait it out.” They sat together on a sofa and love seat. After a half-hour in total silence, they heard the vehicles moving away from the house, heading west. Ben looked at Cory with a question mark in his eyes.
“Not yet,” Cory said. “I bet they come back in fifteen minutes to see if we’re on the run again.” After another few minutes passed, Cory asked, in a hushed tone, “what’s your story?”
“We were at the University of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, when it happened,” Tiffany whispered. “We stayed on campus for the first two weeks, but then everything started falling apart, so we decided to try to reach my parents’ house. We’re trying to get on the other side of 48th Street, where it’s safe. That’s where my parents live.”
“Why is it safe there?”
“The National Guard and police control everything from 48th Street down to Central. And everything from there to the west side of the city.”
“How do you know? Cory asked.
“We met other survivors on the way here. They were trying to get to Las Vegas to find family members. They told us a lot about what’s going on here.” She frowned. “Most people told us to not even try. But, we had to get here, so we came anyway. It almost cost us dearly.”
“Yes it did,” Ben agreed. “What else can you tell us about what’s happening here?”
“You’re not from here?”
“No, we live in Prescott,” Cory replied. “We’re here to find my sister.”
“Where does she live?”
“44th Street and Camelback.”
“She’s in the safe zone.”
“I think it’s around a half mile from here.”
“That’s about right,” Tiffany agreed.
“So, who’s hunting us?” Ben asked.
“The gangs all joined together after it happened. It’s a United Nations of gangs now. They’re everything from drug cartel members to white bikers to Latin and black gangs. You name it, they’re in it. Right after the EMP, they fought each other for turf. The city was in chaos at the beginning, and they eventually got tired of fighting each other around the time the police and Guard began to take back parts of the city. So they decided to fight the good guys together to try and keep as much turf as they could.”
Cory looked surprised. The speaker was one of the two previously mute girls. “My name’s Rose,” she said, extending her hand. “We can’t thank you enough,” she added, and then looked away with a shy expression.
“Mine’s Grace,” the third girl said. Her voice was still shaky, but she was no longer trembling. “Thank you,” she added. In the faint light, Cory could see the women were in their early twenties. Except for the grime that covered their faces, they were all quite attractive.
“I’m Ben. Rambo over there is named Cory.” The women took turns shaking their hands and then returned to the sofa.
“How did they get you?” Ben asked.
“We were trying to sneak around one of their camps, but they heard us. We didn’t have a chance,” Tiffany said. “I didn’t even have time to clear my Sig from the holster.” She stared at Cory for a moment, then added, “I have a carry permit—grew up shooting. My dad’s a Phoenix Police detective. You give me that Glock I asked for, and you won’t be sorry if we run into trouble. I’m not as crazy as you, but I’m a good enough shot. How about it?”
“Are you in control of yourself now? We don’t need anyone to start trouble for us. We just want to get my sister.”
Prepper's Crucible: Volume Five: A Post Apocalyptic Tale Page 2
