“Well, don’t let me stop you,” Luke replied. “Try not to leave as big of a scar as the last time, though.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Eric noted. “What happened? Looks like some pretty poor wound treatment, if you don’t mind my opinion.”
“Noted,” Luke said. “I did the best I could. Didn’t have any help, so I fit the edges together with super glue and that eventually did the trick. Amy said it is pretty crooked, though.”
“Ah, let’s just say, if you ever start going bald, I’d recommend you wear a hat,” Eric advised. “Though, I’m thinking of using the same super glue solution myself. How’d you get that old wound, by the way?”
“Somebody cracked me in the head with either a really dull machete or an ax handle. I didn’t stick around to look.”
Eric nodded to himself. That tracked for what he saw. Sealing the wound on his own must have been an adventure, he thought. He’d heard a lot about this kid, and seeing him sitting in the dark, bathed in blood, most of it undoubtedly belonging to somebody else, drove home what he’d heard. Don’t fuck with the kid. Or his woman.
“Well, then,” Eric said, “let’s see about getting you fixed up.”
CHAPTER 20
They buried their dead at daybreak. David, who’d originally brought in Ben and Skeeter, said words over their gravesite, and Sam did the same for Rudy. Luke listened, sitting on a dew-wet poncho liner and tried to keep his emotions in check. He’d barely known the two quiet, former soldiers who’d arrived with David’s crew, but he felt the loss as much as that for Rudy Meecham. He also knew that once word reached the homeplace, Gaddis Williams would be particularly upset as well. The two older men, widowers with kids long moved away and scattered to the winds, had a friendship that went back decades.
“Going to a lot of funerals lately,” Scott muttered somberly.
“Lot of folks dying,” Luke replied. “Good folks get funerals.”
“We burying them?” Scott asked, gesturing at the ragged row of dead men in their blood-soaked uniforms. The final count for the ambushers stood at thirty-one, including five killed back the ambush site when Sam Messner managed to take out the lead MRAP with the convoy’s sole AT-4 rocket. Luke hadn’t seen it happen, but Eric said it’d looked like the Fourth of July when the armored vehicle blew up. The twenty-six dead men laid out, looked like someone had knocked down a line of scarecrows.
“Fuck those guys,” Luke responded bitterly, “Coyotes gotta eat too. We take the shit we can use and leave the rest.”
Scott’s observation about the number of funerals struck a nerve with the younger teen, and he was remembering his uncle’s funeral, as well as the ceremony just days before, laying Tina’s family to rest. Before the lights went out, Luke could count the number of funerals he’d attended on one hand with digits to spare. Now, the sad ceremonies seemed to come every other week.
He thought again about his new friend Wes, and the widow and child he’d left behind, and wondered about the families of the men they were laying to rest this day. He knew Rudy’s kids were scattered, but none showed up in all the months since the CME fried the grid.
“Sounds right to me,” Scott said, drawing Luke out of his grim thoughts.
For the next hour, ten of the men worked as a human chain, transferring goods stashed in the back room of the gas station to the two five-ton trucks they’d liberated. The booty mainly consisted of packaged food, but also included several cases of civilian marked ammunition. Lots of pistol calibers, and some Lake City 5.56mm that looked to be sealed in vacuum-packed cans. Cool.
The plunder exceeded the hauling capacity of the trucks. Well, not the capacity as much as, any more would make them hard to use as gun platforms, since the gunners would need a place to stand in the back. As it was, Mike Elkins worried the packing straps might fail and end up burying one of their men under a mountain of coffee cans, but nobody suggested they take anything off the trucks. Some people really missed their coffee, Luke realized.
Luke, using a scavenged notebook and pen, and bracing the spiral-bound book with his knee while he scribbled, tried valiantly to document everything as the piles of supplies grew. Tried, and ultimately failed. He wasn’t Amy, after all.
“I think that’s about all we can handle,” Mike finally announced, walking to the back of the store and gesturing for Luke and the rest of the men to cease their labors.
“Hate leaving anything behind,” Eric Zavala lamented. He’d been using the one dolly they’d found to horse cases stacked five boxes high back to the loading dock, and he was soaked with sweat.
“I know what you mean,” Lee agreed. He’d been one of the men standing at the edge of the concrete dock, tossing boxes up to the truck beds, using the same motion Luke recognized from when they hauled hay. Using his legs instead of his back.
“Maybe some of the locals can get in here before another band of scavengers swoops in,” Luke commented. He’d felt useless letting the other men strain and sweat while he’d sat, trying to make a simple inventory.
“You mean like us?” Eric joked, trying to lighten the mood. They’d lost men before, in shootouts with raiders or in defending the area around Ripley, but this seemed different. On an away mission, far from home and their families.
The medic knew Mike especially was blaming himself, but he’d also known Skeeter and Ben. Good guys, but hard. Eric didn’t have the details, but he knew both men had been soldiers once, and that reality still colored their actions. Both went in knowing the risks, maybe more than even Mike did, and Eric was sure they would have wanted their people to push on and make their sacrifice mean something.
“Maybe like you,” Luke said, picking up what Eric was doing in a general sense. He, too, could see the morale of the group needed a boost. Mike still appeared drawn and sick from the earlier funerals, and Luke noted his own father was exhibiting the furrowed brow look he knew well from dealing with a high-stress situation. “When I stole stuff, nobody knew I was even in the same county.”
Scott laughed. “Dude, when you stole stuff, nobody noticed because of all the bodies you left laying around afterwards.”
“That is slander, pure slander,” Luke retorted, hamming it up when he caught the fleeting grins exchanged at the banter. “I move like a ninja in the night, and no one ever sees me leave the scene.”
“Ninja, huh? Lisa told me about you and that Marine up in Arkansas, playing tag in the woods. She said he was even better than you.”
“PFM,” Luke agreed. “That guy should have been MARSOC or a SEAL.”
“PFM? And what is MARSOC?” Eric asked as he parked the big rubber-wheeled dolly and grabbed a cloth shop towel to wipe his sweaty face.
“Pure Fucking Magic,” Luke replied, looking over his shoulder to see if his father was standing nearby. Habit. “And MARSOC is what the Marines call their Special Forces units these days. Or something. My dad can explain it better. Let me put it this way: Scott Keller could have been running in the dark, deep in the woods with those Green Berets.”
“Like you?” Toby Winters asked. That he even asked the question caught Luke’s attention, since the blonde trucker with the buzzcut and the hard eyes seldom said much. Luke knew some of his sad story and tried to encourage him to interact more. He was a local, out of Center, but he’d been on a run to Texarkana when the lights went out. Took him a week to walk home and by that time, his wife and five-year-old daughter were both dead, victims of a home invasion.
“Me? Are you kidding? Toby, buddy, those guys were scary good. I mean, they train to a level that I could never match. David said back when he was stationed in Saudi during the First Gulf War, those SF teams shot up more ammo in a month than David’s company did in a year. Not in combat, but just to keep their skills sharp.”
“Wish they’d gotten to the house just a day earlier,” Scott lamented, and his unthinking comment managed to kill the upbeat mood Luke and Eric were trying to build. Well, heck, Luke thought, nobody made me mora
le officer anyway.
With that thought, he looked around and noticed for the first time, he didn’t see either his father or Mike in sight. Angel and David were already out, of course. Manning scouting observation posts a mile out along the highway in opposite directions. They had their rifles and each also carried one of the AT4 rockets recovered from the Homeland stores. Those AT4s, as Luke’s father had proved, could take out any armored vehicles in play short of an M-1 tank, though so far, Luke hadn’t heard of any being rendered operational as yet. Too darned many computers
As he was thinking about tanks, Scott grabbed Luke’s arm when his headset radio went off. Amazingly, Scott’s radio, unlike Luke’s, survived the crash of the truck, and the young man even kept a hand on the headset.
“Help me up,” Scott said, his voice going urgent as he leaned forward on the wooden packing crate he was using as a seat. “Get me to that armored five ton he already loaded. Angel just called in approaching vehicles two miles out. Looks like half a dozen Humvees.”
With two of their trucks destroyed, including Luke and Scott’s ride, Sam moved his remaining men around to make use of the four salvaged vehicles. This would spread them thin, but the opportunity to lay claim to this many functioning military vehicles could not be ignored. This meant they had eight trucks and only fifteen effectives. Well, fifteen and a half.
Scott, at least, could still shoot, broken leg or not, and he was manning one of the M249s assigned to defend the big truck. Luke was not. In addition to his head injury and concussion, Eric Zavala quickly discovered Luke had also sustained a sprained left wrist at some point. That joint had swollen up to the size of a grapefruit and rendered Luke effectively one-handed for the short term.
“Shit,” he whispered, suddenly fighting back an insane giggle and he again, realized he was afraid his father might hear the profanity. Once he got Scott situated, including hauling over a dump bag for any of the box magazines he emptied, Luke stepped up on the passenger side running board while the drivers jockeyed their way into a defensive position.
The two MRAPs, with their remotely-operated fifty caliber M2 machine guns, moved into position in front to cover the smaller and more fragile three remaining farm trucks, and the two five-ton trucks sat on right and left flanks to provide additional firepower with their M249s. The big Peterbilt, with Mike Elkins acting as gunner and Lee Farrell as driver, pulled out with a hiss of airbrakes and moved a quarter mile further down the highway before coming to a stop, the idling engine seeming to smoke with the steam rising in the early morning chill.
Luke, left out of the loop without his radio, started to step down from the side of the truck, but Scott reached out to grasp his arm yet again.
“Your dad wants you over at the 05 MRAP. You know what I mean?”
Luke nodded his understanding and gingerly stepped down off the metal grate. Over his shoulder, he called out to his friend.
“Watch your ass, buddy. I’m already in enough trouble with Helena as it is. Getting her boytoy broke and all.”
“You, too. You’re getting slow in your old age. Birthday is coming up next week, after all. And if you get killed, Amy will absolutely fry my ass.”
Waving over his shoulder with his good arm, Luke took off at a trot across the asphalt. He knew which of the MRAPs Scott meant. Each of the big armored vehicles had numbers stenciled in white letters on front of the cab, and the two they’d recovered had an eight-digit string that ended in -05 and -12. These quickly became known as the Ought-Five and One-Two trucks. No need to advertise what they had more than necessary over the radio.
When Luke reached the rear of the correct truck, his father quickly opened one of the heavy bomb-proof doors and ushered him inside. The layout might have been designed to carry a four-man fire team in full gear, but Luke concluded they must have been using ten-year-old boys as their models, since the inside felt cramped with just the two of them. Sam didn’t hesitate as he hurried back over to the thinly padded seat and checked the view from the camera trained on the approaching convoy. Seeing the level of electronics functioning in this vehicle, Luke knew the MRAP must have come from one of the underground bunkers the Department had scattered all over the country. The pricks.
Like Scott warned, the vehicles all appeared to be Humvees, but even Luke’s untrained eye could tell the differences. Bringing up the rear was a mottled brown Humvee, armed with a fully enclosed gun tub, and what looked like a reverse-facing M2 machine gun to cover the rear. Next up, Luke spotted three pale blue models in what he thought of as the basic configuration, meaning without the mounted weapons platforms, but towing covered trailers. The pair in the lead, painted the almost ubiquitous desert tan seen on Humvees deployed overseas, looked bulky and featured a distinctive cupola attached to the roof. Seeing those long tubes attached to the rotating mounts made Luke swallow convulsively as he thought about what this might mean.
“TOW missiles?”
“Looks like,” Same replied coolly.
“Think they work after the pulse?”
Sam shook his head before answering.
“Don’t know, and don’t really want to find out. We’ve got David and Angel out there with two of the AT4s we recovered from the five tons. David will be repositioning since the call came in, and since Angel was the first to see them, you know he’ll have a good position,” Sam said, then muttered something to himself before continuing.
“How’s your head?” Sam asked.
“Hurts,” Luke replied honestly. “Still trying to clear things. Feeling a bit stupid or loopy, but otherwise ready to go.”
“Now, I need you to do something dangerous and possibly a little stupid. You in?”
“Sure. Just don’t tell Mom.”
Sam, sensing he was out of time, gave Luke his instructions in just a few words and took a moment to grasp his son’s shoulder in a one-armed embrace.
“Just drop it and run,” his father repeated. “Use the cover of the fence line to loop back behind the car wash station. I’ll pick you up there.”
Luke nodded again, then knelt to grasp the only item resting on the grooved metal floor. The AT-4 launcher felt strangely light in his good hand, and his father hurried to help adjust the strap to fix it across his shoulder. It wasn’t perfect, but good enough for what he needed.
Once out the door and back on the asphalt, Luke could see the six-truck convoy already stirring up a cloud of dust down the road. He knew the clock was ticking down. He guessed the TOW missiles were already in range, but the operators might be loathed to use such an irreplaceable weapon. Luke didn’t know where they were manufactured, but like everything else in this fallen world, nobody was making any more in the near future.
Breaking into a trot, Luke angled for the ditch his father indicated, then kicked up his speed to a sprint, even as his mouth filled with bile. His head hurt, on a level he wasn’t sure would be survivable, but Luke knew this job had to be done, so he bit his lip until he tasted blood and kept moving.
Stripped down like he was, minus his body armor, chest rig and gear, Luke felt almost light for once, and his newly acquired UMP-45 beat a steady tattoo against his ribs on the left side while he ran. The AT-4 tube, cinched tight, barely moved when his booted feet pounded the pavement, and then he hit the softer earth of the ditch and nearly tripped in the swirls of dead grass on the verge.
Dropping his left hand, Luke let out a short scream as pain shot up his wrist to join the symphony of agony playing in his head. In his haste, he’d forgotten about the sprain, but the nearly electric jolt of grinding hurt reminded him of his predicament instantly.
Dropping to his knees, Luke used his good hand to scramble at the strap around his neck, dropping the fiberglass tube in the thick dead brush at the bottom of the ditch. Mission accomplished, and time to make himself scarce. Crawling on hands, well, hand and knee took him ten, then twenty yards away from his point of entry and closer to the aluminum shell of the car wash station behind the truck stop
. Over the harsh percussion of his own labored breathing, Luke heard the sounds of the approaching convoy and waited for the inevitable bark of gunfire.
Sam Messner was not a gambling man, but the harsh school of combat taught him the need for calculated risks. He knew anyone on the lookout with the approaching forces would probably see Luke’s dash to the ditch, but at the angle he’d directed, Sam knew the bulk of his trucks would shield Luke from effective fire. That remained the hope, anyway, and Luke trusted his father to be correct. Of course, Luke was the decoy, running off to hit the ditch with the empty launcher Sam himself had used earlier to destroy one of the Homeland MRAPs. Sam intended to use a little misdirection to draw attention away from the two men he already had out there with live AT-4 launchers.
As Luke stayed low, he made his way around to the back of the drive-through car wash. Risking a peek every now and then, he saw the approaching Humvees slow, then come to a stop about four hundred yards short of the MRAPs. The drivers pulled the maneuver off in a coordinated manner, breaking down into a shallow diamond pattern that spoke of experience. So, probably real soldiers in those trucks, Luke decided.
Then he was behind the gas station, bent over at the waist and sucking in great gulps of air as he tried to catch his breath. His head continued to hurt, and his neck was now sore as well. The wrist, even wrapped tightly, was throbbing in concert with the dagger stabbing into his brain, and all Luke wanted to do at the moment involved finding a place to sit. Or lay down. Now that his job was done, Luke felt like he was just about done as well.
Still, survival meant staying informed, so Luke took a knee at the corner of the tall, plexiglass windows around the building, close enough that all he could smell was the stink of long-burned oil and maybe plastic, and risked another peek at the scene unfolding.
From the white t-shirt Luke saw hanging from the antenna on the Number Five truck, copied by one of the stopped Humvees, Luke thought things might just work out okay after all. At least, nobody was shooting yet. The day remained young, though.
Midnight Skills Page 15
