Wiley snatched up the rifle and turned around, then checked the safety, the magazine, the chamber. It was hot, round in the chamber, safety off. He made sure to keep his finger along the outer trigger guard, unlike its former owner.
They crossed the last ten feet, ending up against the office’s windowless side wall.
“Now what, boss,” one of the remaining ten guards hissed.
Boomer grinned. “They expect us coming in the front, but the party’s in the rear. We go in the back door.”
“Gonna blow it?”
“No, you idiot. Our stuff is inside there. We’re gonna blow out the back window and fill the room with lead. But on my mark, not before, you meatheads.”
Wiley tensed. He was going to have to make his move in a few moments, or pull the trigger on Weldonians himself.
Then, from inside, a woman’s familiar voice shouted, “Hunter, enough! Start shooting, dammit!”
Then another familiar voice, Mary, shouted, “He is. Shut up and shoot.”
Wiley blinked. Chrissy? Hunter? His palms sweaty, he adjusted his grip on the rifle. Every nerve told him Boomer was standing right behind him, watching, waiting… But that didn’t matter, anymore. Hunter was a good kid. The world had lost enough good kids, before the sun smacked the planet, and since. Well, he was a dead man walking, anyway, and every day since his escape from the transport van had been borrowed time.
Maybe Boomer wouldn’t notice Wiley not shooting—but to hell with what Boomer wanted. Wiley’s heartbeat raced, the moment of truth speeding toward him like a train in a tunnel.
78
A spray of bullets came through the second-floor window, and David ducked, by reflex.
A shout from the upstairs “mother-in-law unit” side bedroom called out, “Anyone hit?”
“No, shoot back, dammit!” David grabbed his rifle and headed for the next room, leaving the radios strewn across a folding table behind him. He slid, like he was stealing first base, and ended up thumping, back-first, into the wall of sandbags stacked below the window. “What do we got?”
Orien said, “They’re assaulting across the parking lot. That team you sent to intercept the guys circling north, they must have finally bumped into the bandits. I heard hella shots coming from that way, right before someone down there saw me peeking out.”
“Okay.” David grabbed the radio clipped to his belt and switched the frequency. “This is David. What the hell is going on out there? Status report.”
There was a brief pause, then his radio chirped static, and a woman’s voice came through. “Sir, we’re clear. Twelve bandits wasted, but we lost three. Two dead, one dying. We’re trying to move him south, to the school, but it sounds like World War Three up there.”
David grimaced. “Crap. Nothing to do for it, though.” He clicked the radio. “Affirmative. Heavy engagement, here. Put your casualty somewhere comfortable and head south along the school’s eastern edge. We need you to move up through that eastern school corridor, to the science lab room, and take position there to help repel the attack.”
“Copy that. Shitty, sir.”
“Yes, it is. Move your asses, though. I swear, we will come back for him.”
“Her. Okay, we’re doing it. Be there in two shakes. Out.”
Orien said, “Hard decision, but the right one. Now make another right one, and send Team Two in. Chrissy and her kid are in there, and—”
David snarled, “No. We need them in reserve. If we commit them, and the bandits shift the half going after the school, they’ll get overrun and we’ll have no reserves. We have to think of the town, Orien. I do, at least. I took on that duty, and I’m not abandoning that, now of all damn times, just because one woman decided to rush toward the shooting, instead of away from it.”
Orien aimed and squeezed the trigger. His M4 spat a three-round burst, and David, peering over, watched two men standing side by side, rushing the school outbuilding to David’s right, fall face-first into the pavement. One didn’t move; the other curled into a ball, clutching his stomach. Orien, though, was already aiming at someone else.
He replied, “David, Chrissy is the reason you’re here in the first place. She and Hunter are the reason you stayed, and if you say any different, you’re a delusional idiot.”
“What? I—”
“No, you stayed for them. And I don’t blame you. You found a purpose here, and that’s to protect Weldona. Well, Chrissy and Hunter are Weldona. I don’t know what Hunter’s doing down there, but Chrissy ran out there to save her son. If you let them die because of your idiot idea of ‘duty,’ I promise you, you’ll regret it.”
“Duty is what—”
“Your duty is to save the woman you stayed in this ridiculous town for, and your duty to her is to go save her son. You see them running down the parking lot? You think you’ll care who wins today if she dies?”
David froze, staring at Orien. What was he saying? He stayed because… Well, here he could help people. In Denver, he could do his job, but not his duty. Wasn’t it the reason?
He looked over the sill, at the outbuilding. At least a dozen bandits had made it most of the way across the parking lot. Soon, they’d be fighting through the window, and Hunter was brave, but just a kid. He’d get cut down—no, Christine would, because she’d jump in front of him.
A shock shot up his spine at the sudden image of Christine, lying on the floor with open, vacant eyes—staring at him, blaming him. “Why didn’t you save me?”
He almost heard her voice, her words, saying that. Frustrated, he blew out a heavy breath, and began to turn to get the other radios. Team Two could circle, maybe, join up with the other team he’d sent out, and reinforce the building. He didn’t have to abandon his post to help her. Her and the other townspeople in there, of course. And—
From his peripheral vision, at the lower right corner of his window facing the street, upstairs, he spotted movement. People with guns, sprinting toward the office building—and one of them was the biggest, meanest, biker-looking bubba he’d ever seen. The man was surrounded with bodyguards, too. “Crap,” he muttered.
Orien half-shouted, “What the hell is Wiley doing with the bandits? That damn traitor!”
“What?” David raised his field glasses with one hand, and his radio with the other. Wiley… But though he’d doubted Orien’s eyes, now, he saw it for himself. From behind, but that was Wiley—and he was armed, and running with that giant biker guy. He narrowed his eyes. Wiley wouldn’t be running with some field unit. He was cunning; he was a prison inmate. He’d be running with the cell block captain—the gang leader. Or someone damn high up the bandit army chain.
And he was leading them right to Chrissy. “Sonuvabitch,” he snarled. Click, chirp. “Team Two, break-break-break. Team Two, come in.”
“Go for Team Two, sir.”
David almost yelled into his radio. “There’s a unit moving up from the south toward that school building closest to you. We’ve got to stop them. You understand? I’m coming. Get down there and stop them. Stop them, dead.”
“Copy that. Over.”
David hardly had time to realize what he was doing as he tucked another radio onto his belt—between the two, they had every channel, after all, so he wasn’t really abandoning his duty. He could still direct everything, until it all fell apart, at least. Right?
What would it matter, though, if Weldona won, but he lost Chrissy? The thought surprised him. More surprising was the adrenaline that surged through him, spurring him to leap down the flight of stairs to the bottom floor, his team racing to catch up as he vaulted over the living room sofa, and out the side door into the backyard. He almost lost his rifle in his haste to hop the backyard fence into the next yard down, but his fingers caught the sling, and he snatched it up into his arm, cradling it like a football as he charged to the next fence line.
Because, was Orien right? If she died, would his being “right” about doing his duty be a sour victory? He already kn
ew the answer, and it was the reason his stomach threatened to upheave at the thought of her cold, dead eyes.
79
It was a miracle Christine wasn’t out of ammo. The bunker, amazingly, had a huge stockpile of ammo. Cases upon cases, dozens of magazines pre-loaded. She’d forced her son to get busy reloading, and he’d protested, but she’d seen how fast and sure his hands had worked on her arm. He was the best choice for the task, and it was necessary if any of them wanted to stay alive.
Too bad he hadn’t believed her when she said his task was keeping them alive, and she could hardly blame him. It wasn’t like she was disappointed to take him off the firing line. But ironically, it was true, and she sort of wished she were the one reloading those, rather than one of the three survivors in the view slit, shooting almost at random. David had called it “suppressing the enemy,” in their brief training, and now, she saw how accurate that was. They advanced only slowly, and at great cost, against Christine and her far smaller team.
Of course, she expected no mercy when the bandit monsters broke through. Too many of them had died to expect mercy, or even humanity. But she patted her shirt pocket, and the two bullets it held. She and Hunter would go quick, she vowed, when their time came. Better quick, with love, than slow and painful to entertain these subhuman animals.
The office was simple, and the interior looked like an H. There was nowhere to hide, once they got in—only side alcoves that weren’t right in front of the windows. The tink, tink of bullets on metal told her the half-inch steel plate—or whatever David had ordered on the outer walls, covered by burlap—was working. But would it stop the heavier calibers, at short range? Unknown. The sandbags would… The windows definitely wouldn’t.
Christine stopped, suddenly. A chill ran down her spine, down the back of her legs, over her scalp. A dirty feeling. A creepy feeling. She spun around, but all she saw behind her was the thin interior office wall, extending maybe a fifth of the building’s length, plus the building’s open center, beyond which stood the shattered rear windows, smaller than the front ones.
Well, it was stupid to feel creeped out by something behind her. Nothing was there. There was certainly something in front of her, however, in the parking lot, charging toward them. She shook her head to clear the unnerving sensation of being watched, and started turning away—when a face appeared in one window. A shaggy, bearded face.
The woman next to Christine screamed and fired from the hip. Christine hadn’t been aware the woman was looking, too, but shouted a triumph yelp when the face ducked out of view.
A moment later, two barrels came up to the window and flashed thunder, deafening. Christine screamed at Hunter, but he was already ducking as the enemy weapons fired. The woman beside her went abruptly silent.
The man opposite the suddenly silent woman threw himself against the wall divider. “Keep shooting front,” he shouted.
She nodded, and turned—just in time to see something flying through the air at her face. She jinked to one side; a hatchet flew through the viewport to clatter off the far wall, below the rear window. Christine fired, and the thrower, arm still extended, collapsed to the pavement.
The sound of rending metal made her shudder and half-turn, once again. She stared in disbelief at the giant in the doorway. The man had to be at least six-four. In one hand, she thought he carried a baseball bat with a saw blade stuck through it, making an axe that looked wicked. Probably cut for shit, she thought… But his rifle looked just fine—an M4. He pointed it one-handed at Hunter, and pulled.
Christine screamed and leaped at him. In slow motion, she watched as the ground sank away from her feet, and the bandit’s bat-axe rose, blade toward her. She pulled her trigger—
Oof. What the hell? She found herself suddenly looking up at the ceiling from the floor. She turned her head and stared into familiar eyes. Christine froze. “Wiley? Wh… Why?”
Hunter seemed to fly past Christine lying on the floor, some kind of huge knife in his hand. He thrust it as fast as her eyes could track it, like a sewing machine needle. The huge bandit’s eyes widened, and he staggered backward, then swung his bat like a paddle.
Hunter caught the bat upside his head, and staggered back. The bandit grinned, took a step forward—then turned his head to his left, suddenly, eyes wide.
Christine scooted backward, away from Wiley and the bandit, and toward Hunter, like a crab.
Gunshots outside rang, and more, and more. So many bullets—
The bandit leader was gone, then. She blinked, almost believing she’d imagined him, but then she remembered. “Wiley.”
She spun on him, raising her rifle. Her intent was to kill him right there—he’d helped the bandit, endangered her and her son’s life. His own was forfeit, in her rush of rage and outrage, adrenaline and fuzzy thinking. “What the hell, Wiley? I’ll kill you!”
“Wait,” he shouted, throwing his hands up.
Only the fact that he carried no gun delayed her hand. That, and Hunter yelling, “Mom, no!”
“Why not? Screw this—no time.” She bolted for the door. The man, who’d hid behind the wall, covered Wiley with his rifle, so she didn’t worry about him for long enough to stick her head out. The bandit giant was gone, but the volume of gunfire from her right… Withering.
She looked out the viewslot, and saw townies and farmers storming the parking lot, from her right and left. Half the town, it seemed—enough to decimate the enemy attack.
She ran out the door. She’d find that monster. He was a nightmare walking, and he’d tried to murder Hunter—she wanted to scream, to paint his blood on her face as warpaint and howl.
A strong arm caught her coming out the door, hooking her around the waist. She glared, but saw David’s concerned eyes looking back.
“Get in there, Chrissy. You aren’t getting yourself killed today.”
She bared her teeth at him. Sliding her arm around Hunter’s shoulders, though, she turned her hiss to Wiley. “Bastard,” she growled at him and glared. “You saved him.”
She spat on the floor, at his feet.
“I saved you, Chrissy.” Wiley glared at Christine as she scrambled to cover her boy, like a mother hawk. “Think about it.”
He bent to pick up his rifle, dropped as he’d grabbed her mid-leap toward her death. As he wrapped his fingers around the stock, a booted foot stepped on it, slapping it down to the floor and ripping it from his hand.
He looked up and found himself staring down a rifle barrel. A man he recognized as a townie, finger on the trigger, eyes narrowing—
Wiley jerked his head back and swung his left hand across his body, smacking the barrel aside as it went off, then came back with his right fist, pivoting on his foot and throwing his shoulders into the blow, which struck the man’s chin and sent him reeling backward.
Wiley made no move for the rifle, this time. “Asshole. I saved her life.”
David’s voice, from the door, made him freeze. “Nobody move.”
All heads turned. Wiley took a deep breath. “I saved her life—”
“You said that,” David snarled. “But you’re here, with them.”
Orien stepped inside from behind David, his pistol drawn and aimed at Wiley.
Wiley strained against his instincts to lunge for the gun. Orien was fast, and he had the drop on him. He took a ragged breath. “They caught me as I ran away from you people. I led them into the mines, then got that beast of a biker to focus on this building, not something important.”
“My son was in here!” Christine shouted.
“Mom, calm down.” Hunter put his arm around her, in return. Standing arm in arm, he nodded toward Wiley. “He’s one of us, Mom.”
The man in the room, the only survivor beside Christine and her son, it seemed, glared at David and held his chin, already visibly swelling. “He’s a killer, and he joined the rest of his kind. Put him down, David.”
David looked Wiley in the eyes. “You saved Chrissy?”
> “You’re damn right. She was lunging at him, right into his damn bat-axe thing. She’d be dead now if I hadn’t.”
“Liar!” she screamed.
David held his hand up. “Stop. Wiley, why did you come back with them?”
“I told you. They would have killed me. I was waiting for a chance to get away, but it never came. When I saw Chrissy trying to get herself killed, though, I said fuck it, and saved her. She’s got kids, and they don’t need to be orphans.”
David let out a raspy growl, looking back and forth between Christine and Wiley.
He’s gonna kill me. Aw, shit.
David paused. His lips flatlined, and he looked into Wiley’s eyes for seconds that seemed to last hours.
“Do it. Get it over with.” Wiley faced him, unflinching. To hell with begging these ungrateful asses, Wiley decided—he’d die looking his killer in the eyes.
David stepped to one side. “Leave, Wiley. Run.”
Christine shouted, “David, he joined them! He came here with them to kill Hunter.”
David shook his head. “Wiley, you want to live? Then run. Now.”
Wiley bent down to pick up his rifle, until he heard Orien cocking his pistol’s hammer. Well, he’d just have to find another, it seemed, but that didn’t bother him too much. The town needed it more than he did. He glanced back at Christine, then shot a smile at Hunter. “Take care of your mom, kid.”
“I swear, I will. Be careful, Wiley. Don’t let these small-minded idiots kill you, okay?”
“Deal.” Wiley bolted out the door.
He made a bee-line for the copse of trees just east of the school, expecting a bullet in his back with every step, but the bullet never came. When he got to the trees, he kept running.
To hell with Weldona. They didn’t understand. They didn’t want to. Well, screw Chrissy, and screw them all.
As the sound of the waning firefight faded, he angled north once again, and smiled when he realized he was following the same path he’d taken to escape that hick town the first time. This time, he’d have better luck.
Inception of Chaos: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Story Page 47
