Battle for the Wastelands

by Matthew W Quinn

  The man’s blue eyes — beneath which were half-done fanatics’ scars — locked on Andrew’s. Andrew skidded to a stop, barely avoiding colliding with the Flesh-Eater.

  “Looking to get in on the action?” The man’s grin churned Andrew’s stomach. “There’re some pretty girls there.” Andrew barely avoided snarling. Before he could devise a good lie, the man locked eyes with him. “I’ve seen you before,” he growled. “You’re one of the Carroll Town rebels!”

  The Flesh-Eater opened his mouth to shout a warning. Andrew leaped forward, slamming the man’s head into the wall and cutting his words off. The Flesh-Eater bounced back, aiming right at Sam. Before he could shoot, Sam yanked the weapon down. Although the enemy still held onto the weapon, he couldn’t reach the trigger.

  At the end of the alley sixty feet away, Andrew saw more soldiers in the square. The Flesh-Eaters still struggled with the surviving townsfolk. And soldiers wearing unfamiliar black uniforms stood between them and the alley. Andrew’s stomach clenched. They must be Obsidian Guard. Grendel’s men.

  “Keep him quiet!” Andrew hissed.

  Sam nodded. He reached toward the soldier’s mouth…

  And that left an opening. A long knife appeared in the Flesh-Eater’s free hand. Before Andrew could react, the Flesh-Eater buried the knife below Sam’s ribs.

  Andrew bit off a scream. Sam’s mouth worked, but no sound emerged. Blood soaked the soldier’s hand. Its metallic stench filled Andrew’s nostrils.

  Anger as red as the hot blood clouded Andrew’s vision. He couldn’t fire without catching the attention of the Obsidian Guard, but the rifle butt would make an effective club.

  He spun the weapon in his hands. The Flesh-Eater turned, ripping the knife out of Sam’s body. He slashed at Andrew as the younger man struck him in the face with the rifle butt.

  The Flesh-Eater missed Andrew’s shoulder by an inch. Andrew’s blow caught him in the mouth. The Flesh-Eater screamed around the rifle butt. Andrew glanced left. The soldiers on the square looked none the wiser.

  Andrew yanked the rifle free, broken teeth flying like popcorn. The Flesh-Eater slashed once more. The blade caught Andrew’s elbow, drawing blood.

  Andrew struck again. The Flesh-Eater moved too quickly. The blow meant for his head instead caught him in the left shoulder.

  The Flesh-Eater snarled. He slashed again with his knife, the blade biting Andrew’s collarbone. Andrew bit off a scream, his teeth digging into his tongue.

  The Flesh-Eater recoiled, knife up like a rattler about to strike. He lunged for Andrew’s throat. Andrew knocked the blow aside with his rifle and kicked the Flesh-Eater in the kneecap.

  With a shout, the cannibal fell to one knee. Andrew hammered his head into the wall behind him with his rifle butt. The man toppled forward into the dirt.

  Andrew’s head snapped back toward the square. The enemy still hadn’t noticed!

  He turned his attention back to the Flesh-Eater. The man lay there, dead or unconscious. For a moment, Andrew pondered taking the man’s knife and making sure the job was done.

  The screams coming from the square reclaimed his attention. He took a step forward. The Flesh Eaters would be busy terrorizing helpless women, children, and wounded men. They wouldn’t see their deaths coming. He could reap a mighty harvest before they felled him.

  Then he remembered Sam. Andrew forced himself to look away from the square toward his wounded friend.

  Sam trembled on the ground, his shirt from ribs to belt soaked in blood. His breathing came shallow. Bright red blood spattered his lips. “Sam!” Andrew knelt by his friend’s side. More blood. The blade must’ve pierced one of Sam’s lungs. “No.” Tears formed in his eyes.

  “Andy,” Sam gasped. Blood bubbled in his mouth. He grabbed onto the sleeves of Andrew’s coat. “Andy, don’t die.” Sam’s grip tightened. “There are too many to fight.” Blood poured from his mouth. “Don’t throw your life away. Run, find the Merr...”

  Then he stiffened. His eyes bulged. His hands slid free as his body slumped to the ground.

  Sam Cotton was dead. Andrew’s oldest friend lay in the alley, his lifeblood pooling around him. Just like the Flesh-Eater boy behind the boardinghouse.

  “No.” Tears dripped from his eyes. “No.”

  A yawning emptiness opened in his chest. He remembered growing up with Sam. The ball games, cards, the times they got caught eavesdropping, all the things boys would do in a town on the edge of the Iron Desert. All that was over now — Sam’s death ensured that more than the fall of Carroll Town.

  Despite his efforts, the tears kept coming. “Sam,” he hissed, shaking his friend’s body. “Sam, wake up. Sam, please don’t die!”

  Nothing happened. The tears came faster now. Andrew laid his head on his friend’s chest and stopped trying to fight his emotions. He simply wept, his tears soaking the stolen enemy uniform.

  Then something else emerged from his sadness, transfiguring it.

  Anger. White-hot killing rage.

  “I’ll kill them for you, Sam.” His hands trembled. “I’ll kill them all.”

  His grief and the momentary consideration he should run vanished like straw before a firestorm. His mother and his best friend were dead. His sister and his girl were in the rough hands of the Flesh-Eaters.

  The fallen enemy moaned, blood bubbling in his mangled mouth. Andrew’s gaze fell on him. He grit his teeth until they hurt. Everyone in Carroll Town, including himself, would die. Or worse. But it wouldn’t come cheap. For the sake of his mother and Sam, if nobody else.

  He knelt and took the knife from fingers offering little resistance. Although Andrew had a knife of his own, it felt more fitting to finish the Flesh-Eater with his own weapon. His and Sam’s warm blood trickled onto his hand from the blade.

  The Flesh-Eater moaned again. Andrew shoved the man’s arm away and buried the blade in the man’s neck. Hot blood stung Andrew’s eyes. Wiping his face with his left hand, he pulled the blade across the Flesh-Eater’s throat. The man’s trachea and other artery parted. He gurgled. Blood pulsed from the open wound in time to the enemy’s fading heartbeat.

  Andrew picked up his rifle and returned to his feet. He wiped the last blood from his face with his sopping sleeve and looked toward the square.

  The Obsidian Guard still looked away. Damned deaf idiots. He raised his rifle and crept forward. The one standing directly in front of him would make a good first kill.

  As Andrew raised his rifle, the soldier stepped left. Now Andrew saw three men beneath the mooring tower. One wore a Flesh-Eater uniform, but his was significantly cleaner and had something shiny on each collar. The second, heavier than the first, had a shaved head and a brown patch over his right eye. He wore a long jacket extending to his knees colored the same as Flesh-Eater duds. When he moved, the glint revealed it was actually metallic armor.

  The third didn’t look like a Flesh-Eater at all. Like the second man he wore a long armored jacket, but it was solely black. He wore the skull of a big cat with two long fangs forged into a helmet. Could that be Grendel? But why would he bother with Carroll Town? It had to be some Guard bigwig.

  All three had the hard eyes of men who killed for their bread. The first looked about the square, obviously approving of the atrocities taking place. The second did as well. The third seemed like he had his mind elsewhere.

  Andrew pressed himself against the wall. If they chose to look closer, they’d see the fresh blood on Andrew and the bodies in the alley. They would not see him coming for their lives.

  He raised his rifle. He’d start with the man in black. Even if he wasn’t Grendel, he was special, he had to be with that crazy getup. He looked down the sights, lining up against the man’s gray left eye.

  Then the first man turned to the second. He said something Andrew couldn’t figure. Laughter crossed his cruel face. That sparked rage in Andrew’s soul. Andrew’s breathing came harder and faster, to the point he feared they’d hear him.

&
nbsp; Damn him, damn him, damn him, damn him!

  Andrew shifted his aim away from the dark-clad man onto the one with the ornamented collar. Before he died, he would make sure that laughing bastard went into the dark with him.

  Andrew took a breath, then squeezed the trigger.

  CRACK!

  A bullet seized the commander of Fort Vallero and sent him sprawling, minus the side of his head.

  Grendel was halfway through unslinging his repeater when his guards clustered around him. The Flesh-Eaters turned their attention away from the captive townsfolk, most of whom were now hogtied. Alrekr leaped away from a corpse it was nibbling on to circle the square.

  “Some holdout, no doubt,” Clark said quickly. “Don’t worry, we’ll find him. What do you want us to do when we’ve got him?”

  The Flesh-Eaters would vie among themselves to subject the holdout — assuming they caught him alive — to the most hideous tortures they could devise. Currying favor, hoping he would overlook the fact someone got within shooting distance of the first lord of the Northlands.

  He shrugged. What did one townsman matter? “Do as you will.”

  The Obsidian Guard and some of the Flesh-Eaters returned fire. Amid the crackling, Grendel’s gaze fell on the fallen commander of Fort Vallero. Fitting he died as a result of his own failure to properly secure the town.

  Grendel whistled for the guard captain. The short man came rushing over, his fellows parting before him.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “The commander at Fort Vallero —”

  “His name was Major Thomas Marshall,” Clark added helpfully.

  “Major Marshall did not fucking clear the surrounding area well enough. I want the guardsmen to clean out every goddamn building touching this square, in case there are any more holdouts.”

  “Understood, sir.” He paused. “But what about the one who shot Marshall?”

  “Let the little bastard run. The town is crawling with Flesh-Eaters. If they do not catch him, the desert will eat him alive.”

  Into the Desert

  Bullets sliced around Andrew. The repeaters’ insane chattering chorus shattered his resolve to drag his enemies down with him. He flung himself out of the alley into the street.

  He landed on his hands and knees and looked up. The sergeant who’d let him and Sam pass minutes ago loped toward him, two younger Flesh-Eaters close behind. Murder burned in his eyes. Andrew aimed and fired, hitting the sergeant in the gut. The man fell screaming. Andrew scrambled forward through the dirt. The gunfire that kept him on the ground also kept the two other Flesh-Eaters off him.

  Andrew pulled himself onto the porch of the chandler’s shop as bullets whined overhead. He crawled through the open door and kicked it closed behind him.

  Behind a counter newly-scarred by Flesh-Eater bullets was the door to the workroom. A way out!

  Andrew was atop the counter when the door banged open. He rolled off and landed arm-first on candles he’d knocked over. Snarling and rolling onto his backside, Andrew scrambled away. A Flesh-Eater loomed over the counter. The man aimed…

  Andrew fired twice. The first missed entirely, but the second didn’t. The man staggered out of sight. Andrew bolted into the workroom and kicked the door shut. Despite his pain and exhaustion, he seized a shelf with a few candles on it and hauled it in front of the door.

  Safe for the moment, he looked around. There was a back door. He could reach the fields outside town. If the Flesh-Eaters had all their men in the square, he could escape that way and look for the Merrills. Better if he could find a horse, but going back was suicide.

  He seized the handle of the back door. It wouldn’t open. He’d probably only wounded the Flesh Eater. The man was going to batter down the door and shoot him in the head...

  Then he saw the deadbolt above the doorknob. He tore it free of the lock, yanked open the door, and ran for it.

  Outside lay open space bounded by a white picket fence. Beyond, acres of sickly and stunted grain. A Flesh-Eater emerged from around the building. Andrew fired, the bullet snapping by the Flesh-Eater’s head. The man shouted and retreated.

  Andrew had to skedaddle before more showed up. He bolted across the open ground. The pointed fence-posts bit as he dragged himself over. Fabric tore as one caught on the Flesh-Eater jacket.

  Andrew rolled off the fence onto his back. He momentarily lost his grip on his rifle. Biting off a scream, he snatched it back. His eyes locked on the back door of the chandler’s shop. Nobody emerged. He felt like laughing. Had the townsfolk killed so many cannibals that they couldn’t surround and occupy the town at the same time?

  Slowly, Andrew’s breathing returned to normal. As it did, his limbs grew heavier. His eyelids drooped.

  He shook his head. This was not a good place to rest. If the enemy found him, he was dead meat. Literally.

  He looked across the field. Beyond lay a footbridge and after that, rough, stony country. He’d be safe in the ravines there.

  Holding the rifle in the crooks of his elbows, Andrew pushed his way into the grain and looked back.

  The grain did not pop back up after him. His movement left a trail likely visible from the chandler’s shop.

  “Damn it!”

  He pulled himself to his feet, hunching over so the wheat hid him as much as possible, and ran. His growing fatigue slowed him and reddened his vision, but he soon came to the wooden bridge. He looked back. More Flesh-Eaters beyond the fence!

  His gut clenched. His limbs felt lighter. He stooped and dashed across, over the drought-stricken stream, and off the path into the rough country.

  Across the dry, stony ground lay a ravine some long-ago waterway or digging had cut into the brown earth. He and Sam had played there long ago. He spotted the trail they’d taken where the wall wasn’t as steep and shook his head. That was the obvious way.

  Instead, he ran and jumped. He stumbled when he landed, the hard ground tearing through his pants and the skin beneath. When he rose, the ground was bloody.

  It had been years since he’d been here. Was the overhang to the left or right? Left. He stayed on the rocks as much as possible. The Flesh-Eaters were right good hunters from the northern hills. Leaving even the smallest track would be cutting his own throat. His limbs and eyelids grew heavy, but he bit his lip to keep fatigue at bay. He could rest hidden beneath the overhang.

  There! There it was! Ahead the earth extended over empty space, roots dangling from some plant long since dead. A large rock lay below. Andrew climbed over and slid down the other side. He was safe. For the moment.

  Now that he wasn’t standing, darkness pressed against the edges of his vision. He forced his eyes open and pulled the ammunition tube out of his rifle. Four bullets. He pulled the cartridge box from a coat pocket and thumbed three bullets into the tube. Between the rifle and the box he’d lifted from the bastard who’d killed Sam, he had eighteen rounds to give the Flesh-Eaters hell.

  He shoved the tube back into the rifle. Here, with no sign of pursuers, he could close his eyes. Just for a minute…

  Something tickled Andrew’s face and shoulders. It felt like Cassie’s blond hair. For a moment, he thought it was Cassie climbing atop him. He smiled.

  Harsh buzzing dragged Andrew into full consciousness. It wasn’t Cassie’s hair touching his face — it was a swarm of black flies! They crawled all over him, thickest at his wounds.

  Andrew shouted in disgust, slapping at his face and body. Flies pulped beneath his hands. Others leaped away, their buzzing angry in Andrew’s ears. A snarl curled across his face. They wouldn’t be nibbling on him today.

  He closed his eyes. Cassie was dead, or would soon wish she were. He’d failed to protect her. She was his girl, and he’d let her down. He sighed, closing his eyes and clenching his fists. He was weak. He was a failure.

  Nearby voices seized Andrew’s attention. Three Flesh-Eaters descended into the ravine sixty yards away. Two were ordinary enough, while one stooped and twitched
when he walked.

  Andrew held his breath. If they saw him, they’d attack. If he somehow defeated them, the noise would attract more Flesh-Eaters. Either way, he was dead.

  He grit his teeth. He was dead the moment he shot the Flesh-Eater bossman. He’d at least choose how he died.

  He raised his rifle. One of the Flesh-Eaters pointed and shouted.

  CRACK! The man paid for that with his life.

  The two survivors ducked behind the remains of a small rockslide and returned fire. Andrew scrambled behind the rock and threw a glance back. The ravine curved out of sight twenty yards away. It wouldn’t take long to run, once he had killed them.

  Andrew risked a look. One Flesh-Eater peeked above the rocks. Andrew fired, but the bullet sparked off the stone. The man ducked back unharmed. The other Flesh-Eater popped up and fired. His bullet struck the rock perilously close to Andrew’s face.

  Andrew took another shot. No effect. He couldn’t keep wasting ammunition like this. He looked around. Rocks lay everywhere. He couldn’t hit the Flesh-Eaters head-on, but what if he got something over their heads?

  He snatched up a rock and hurled it. The stone landed halfway between the enemy position and his. “Shit!” He threw another, harder this time. It landed a few feet farther. His arm already hurt. This wasn’t going to work.

  A Flesh-Eater bullet slammed into the dirt beside Andrew. Andrew shouted and let his left hand sprawl. He kept his right hand on the trigger. Time to sham again.

  Nothing happened. His left hand trembled. He forced himself to remain still. Still nothing. Shit.

  Then one Flesh-Eater ordered the other to stay behind. Andrew grinned and waited, ears pricked. Seconds passed slowly, cruelly. Perhaps the Flesh-Eaters were onto his trickery and wanted to fool him into moving first?

  Boots scraped on stone. Almost there. Come a bit closer, you man-eater.