It would have to do.
Still prone, he aimed, his eyes locked on the target in the center of his sights. He gently squeezed the trigger, and the machine gun fire stopped suddenly, like a person interrupted mid-sentence.
The rearmost soldier turned, looking to see what happened to his covering fire. Franz fired again. He knew all too well what a 9mm round would do to a chest. He’d treated people with chest wounds before; he’d even been successful with a few.
His target wouldn’t be treated successfully, though. Franz didn’t watch him fall; he had already moved on to the next target. The remaining two soldiers hit the dirt, realizing they were under attack from behind, and Franz missed his shot. Another miss, then another, as the enemy searched for him.
He finally hit the third enemy, but the last soldier saw the muzzle flash and fired back at him with his assault rifle.
Franz didn’t think—he didn’t roll out of sight—instead, he stayed put and, as a burst of fire hit the dirt a few meters from him, he fired again, and again and again.
And finally, the last Moravian soldier went down.
* * *
Three people from the town ran toward Franz as he left his hiding place to check the bodies. He holstered his weapon and raised his hands to make it clear he wasn’t a threat to them.
Not that it mattered much in the wasteland—they might still blow me away.
Sometimes you had to take a leap of faith.
He checked the bodies. The machine gunner was his best kill; the shot had been straight to the head. He was safely dead. The second man had a chest wound, and it looked like he’d died instantly; Franz had hit the heart or the aorta, judging by the amount of blood.
The other two were still alive. One was hit in the chest, possibly the right lung, and the blood pooling there was suffocating him. He was as good as dead.
The last man was hit in the collarbone. His right arm was a shambles and, judging by the pained expression on his face, he wasn’t on any of the drugs the Moravians had been distributing.
The people from the town finally arrived, led by a tall man with a square face fixed in a permanent frown. Behind him were two women—teenage girls, actually—with dark hair similar to the man’s. His daughters?
“Who the hell are you?” the man asked with a growl.
While no one was actually aiming at Franz—although they were all armed—the muzzles of their weapons were not that far away.
“I’m the guy who just helped you,” he said.
The wounded soldier groaned, and one of the girls took several strides toward him and shot him in the head with a shotgun. Another flock of startled birds flew up nearby.
“You helped us, which is why we haven’t shot you,” the man said with an unspoken, but clear, yet at the end. “Who are you?”
“My name is Doctor Franz Kreisel. I was traveling north looking…for that truck actually.”
“For my truck?”
“It’s yours? All the better. I heard from some traders down south that there was a truck riding the remains of E59. I’d like to hire your truck to pick up some supplies.”
The man eyed him while one of his daughters—it looked like the older one—checked the bodies. The lung-shot man had either died of his injuries or the girl hadn’t wanted to waste ammunition on a mercy killing for someone so far gone.
The other girl, who was much shorter, looked at Franz. “You are a doctor?”
“Actually, yes, I studied medicine at…we simply call it the Retz.”
“You are an Austrian?” the man asked, as if it still meant anything.
“My parents were from the border. My mother was from the Czech town of Šatov, and my father from the Austrian town of Retz…before the Fall, of course.”
“And you just happen to have a medical school there?”
“In Retz? Lots of doctors from the University of Vienna escaped there during the Fall, just before Vienna got nuked. We have our community there, much like you have yours here.”
“This isn’t our community, we just deliver stuff,” said the man, whose suspicion appeared to subside…a little. “I’ve seen my share of weirdos claiming to be doctors or engineers before.”
“I don’t think I need to prove anything to you, but you have injured, here, no?” Franz gestured toward the town.
“Dad?” the daughter asked.
The man thought for a few moments, then nodded. “Okay, do what you can.”
Franz walked over to the scene of the battle. The only wounded person was next to the truck, with a bullet in him. He was a young man, not much older than the two girls. Franz surprised everyone by pulling morphine from his bag.
“The bullet is in his stomach,” he said. “Give me a hand.”
It was surgery like he was used to doing—on the dusty ground with barely sterile equipment. The others watched him as he operated on their friend.
“What is your name?” he asked the father as he worked. The younger daughter handed him his tools. He hadn’t asked for help, but he wouldn’t turn it away, either. He could see she was fascinated, but whether that was by the surgery or by him was hard to say.
“I’m Martin Dusil,” said the man. “This is my daughter, Irena.”
“And the other girl is also your daughter?”
“Yes, Anna, or Anička. She is stupid,” said Irena.
Franz frowned as he pulled the slug out of the wound. “Stupid? She has some mental retardation?”
Martin laughed. “No, Irena is fifteen and Anna is seventeen, so of course, she thinks her sister is stupid.”
“It’s not that!” protested Irena.
Franz threw the slug into the dust. “I need to close the wound now.”
“So, you are a doctor, but you also shoot people?” asked Martin.
“A knowledge of anatomy comes in handy with both things. I’m also an adequate butcher.”
“I saw what you did to those Moravians. You didn’t fire that many times—I can tell you are a natural shot.”
Franz didn’t look up from his stitching. “If you say so.”
“What do you need our truck for?” Irena asked, earning her a frown from her father.
“That’s a complicated question. I need to haul some supplies…or cargo, if you will.”
“What cargo?” asked Martin. “And don’t give me any bullshit about how you don’t want me to ask questions. It’s my truck; it’s my business. And before you say cargo too often, let me tell you that we don’t do slaves. We don’t transport and sell people like those assholes from Great Moravia.”
Apparently, they’d had run-ins with the Moravians before.
“I don’t trade in slaves. Quite the opposite. Our community is trying to fight Great Moravia, and we need a drug called Ebarin T to do so.”
Martin Dusil could have been the master of the permanent frown. “A drug? Like the shit the Moravians give to their cannon fodder?”
“Exactly the opposite. Ebarin T serves as a counter agent. Using Ebarin T in combination with some chemicals from our lab in Retz, we can produce an airborne toxin that would…” He paused, considering his audience. “Well, people would sniff the stuff and start vomiting…really badly. They would have cramps and chest pain that would last several hours, but then they wouldn’t be addicted to the Olex the Moravians are giving them anymore.”
Irena seemed to understand more of this than her father. “And what would stop the Moravians from simply dosing them again?”
Smart girl.
“That’s something we are working on, but…the Ebarin T would stay in their systems for a long time. They would not be able to get addicted again.”
He finished stitching the wound. “Anyway, that’s why I need the ride. And your friend will live if the wound doesn’t become infected.”
Martin shrugged. He wasn’t convinced, but he wasn’t immune to his daughter’s interest. And he appeared to be aware that Franz had just helped them.
“We need
to return home first. I need to recharge the truck and…” He looked in the direction of the bodies. “It isn’t safe here, although the Moravians usually don’t get this far.”
“What about the people in this town?”
“We just made a delivery, but they’ll have to take their chances. We can’t help them, even if we wanted to.”
Take their chances. Like everyone else around here.
“Can I hitch a ride with you to your home?”
Martin nodded.
* * *
The older daughter, Anička, took the wheel on their way back. Franz helped load the wounded man behind the driver. Martin rode shotgun—literally—and Franz got to ride on the roof in the machine gun nest with Irena.
There were actually three gun nests on top of the big truck—one just behind the cabin, one in the center, and one at the tail end. Only the central one had a machine gun. Franz helped them collect the weapons from the soldiers he killed, which gave them an extra machine gun and three SA 58 assault rifles. The Moravians also had plenty of ammunition. This wasn’t just a recon; they had intended to capture the truck.
“How often do you meet Moravian patrols like these?” he asked Irena. He sat next to her in the central nest as the truck bumped along the half-destroyed E59.
“We’ve seen their patrols from time to time, especially for the last five or six months,” she said. “We also make deliveries on the D1 highway, but they don’t go that far. At least not until now…they have been expanding a lot!”
“Yes, they have,” said Franz. “Prince Mojmír is getting bolder and bolder.”
“He’s their leader?”
“Yes. He calls himself a prince, but he was actually a history teacher before the Fall.”
“A teacher?”
“Yes, at Masaryk University. Great Moravia was a big empire in this part of the world about 1,500 years ago. He decided to revive it or, at least, to use the name. He is crazy, but he has an army of loyal followers and an even bigger army of slaves. He actually got bolder when he started using Olex. He first produced the drug in a lab in Oleksovice, but he has since moved the lab to his fortress in Brno. He calls his army of slaves the Sámo Corps, named after some slave trader from history. He has continued to expand his reach to the point where they are near my home in Retz.”
“Have they attacked you?”
“Yes. It was just a few scouts at first, but Great Moravia wants our labs. Their procedure is to first send envoys, offering you a place in their empire. If you refuse, they send the army to kill or enslave everyone. That has happened in a lot of places between Retz and Vienna.”
“My dad and Simona—she is the leader of our town—are afraid of them. We have a militia, but the Alliance is widely spread out. We aren’t one community—just a bunch of towns helping each other.”
“Like the town we just left? What was its name?”
“Hladov, which means Hunger Town, although it probably doesn’t translate that well into German.”
“I understand—I’m bilingual.”
“A bi-what?”
“It means I speak two languages. Czech and German. What were you saying about the community?”
“Well, the people of Hladov—despite its name—grow some crops and trade them. They are on the far end of our circuit; our home is in Jihlava. We grow some food as well. We travel west to Humpolec, Chotěboř, Melikana and all the way to Zruč. Some towns have old steel mills, some can give us ammunition…all kinds of stuff. You’ve heard of our truck, even in Retz?”
“Yes, some traders were talking about it. How do you keep it going? There isn’t any fuel anymore.”
“When my dad first found the truck, he installed a battery he found in an old electric car at a rental office in Humpolec.”
“How do you recharge it?”
“We have a reactor in Jihlava that survived the war. It’s small but efficient.”
An electric car recharged by nuclear energy. All those pre-Fall ecologists would have a fit, Franz thought with a snort.
The truck bumped over an especially big hole in the road.
“What about the battery? It won’t last forever.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Dad took at least ten batteries from that store. We are still on the first one, so we have spares.”
“Good.”
Irena looked at Franz in fascination. He wasn’t an imposing figure, but he knew he wasn’t bad looking. “So…I…thank you for saving Tomáš’s life.”
“That’s what I do. I’m a doctor. I swore an oath called the Hippocratic Oath.”
“What does it mean?”
“That I have to help people. Cure them.”
“But you also kill people, and you’re good at it.”
Franz smiled. Yes, he was good at it. Very good. He had all kinds of special skills.
“Yes, but I only kill when I have to. Sometimes, the best way to save lives is by taking lives.”
“That is covered in your oath?”
“No, that’s more like…bending the rules. The oath is more like a guideline anyway.”
“Huh.”
* * *
Martin was glad Anička wanted to drive, as it allowed him some time to sleep on the way back. He didn’t even yell at her to slow down. She got the giggles when driving fast, but he didn’t mind; she hadn’t crashed the truck yet, and he wanted to get home quickly.
Tomáš groaned behind them, and Martin suppressed a grimace. He would need two new gunners.
How many people had he lost since he started driving the truck? Definitely more than if they’d stayed in their small settlement in the abandoned warehouse on the D1. But the truck helped people.
That’s how the world works, I guess.
He knew he was lucky. There would have been more dead—including Tomáš—if that doctor hadn’t come along. Martin was still trying to figure him out.
Jihlava was not that far from Hladov, and Anička soon entered the town—or the ruins—and parked in the concourse of what used to be the main bus station. Martin’s eyes widened when he saw the military-style humvee parked there.
“The Peacekeepers are here again?” Anička asked with a growl.
Martin shook his head. “They are persistent.”
As he got out of the truck and helped Anna unload the stretcher holding Tomáš, he tried to remember how many times the former Corporate military unit know as the 18th Peacekeeping Command had visited Jihlava. At least three times. They probably visited other Alliance towns and other communities as well. The Peacekeepers were members of the Obsidian Corp militia that had gone into some sort of suspended animation during the Fall. They’d woken up a few months ago in their bunker in northern Bohemia. Martin didn’t know much about them, apart from the fact that they claimed they wanted to help. Of course, Great Moravia claimed the same thing.
Franz—what was his last name again?—climbed down from the truck to check on Tomáš. Irena followed him, and they soon attracted the attention of the leader of the Peacekeepers.
The six Peacekeepers were returning to their big car. They looked like real soldiers—even though they were mostly guns-for-hire for the Corporation before the Fall. Moravian troops were only recognizable because they wore red and brown clothes and sported patches with an eagle on their shirts. These people, on the other hand, had everything—tactical vests, helmets, hands-free radios, the same rifles, and the same boots.
“Who are these people?” asked Franz.
Martin gave him a brief summary.
“They also have cars?”
“Yes, they have huge supplies of gas in their bunker. I heard they have at least 10 or 15 cars like that traveling through the wastelands.”
“So, they are good?”
“I guess. Too bad they don’t really understand that “no” means “no.”
“You had trouble, Martin?” asked their leader once he was within earshot.
“Sergeant Wilde…yes, we had. But we m
anaged.”
Sergeant Wilde pointed at Tomáš. “Was that in Hladov? Your mayor told us that was where you were going. Where is your other gunner?”
“Dead.”
Doc Franz looked at the soldiers with curiosity.
“Aren’t you a little far from home, Sergeant?”
“Probably. But we go back to base every few days. What happened to you in Hladov? Bandits?”
“No, Great Moravia. Our expansive neighbor.”
Martin gave him a brief overview of what had happened.
Wilde looked at Franz with a strange twinkle in his eye, but then he turned back to Martin.
“As I said last time—and reminded your mayor today—had we been protecting you, we could have helped.”
“While that’s possible, I don’t want to let one dictator in to help us against another.”
Wilde smiled. “We’ve been here several times. Did we try to enslave you or steal your truck? No. I think we can safely claim the moral high ground in this matter.”
“Maybe. But we still don’t trust you.”
“Your choice. Now we must be going. Hladov may welcome our offer.” He smiled again.
Yeah, you go there, you son of a bitch.
* * *
Simona Beranová, the mayor, was a woman in her forties with a permanently tired expression. She favored her left leg, which Franz judged was due to a badly healed broken bone in the past. He might have been able to help her, but she didn’t seem to want anyone closer to her than was necessary.
He stood silently as Martin explained everything that had happened. The mayor listened intently, and Franz got the feeling she was surprised anyone had returned alive.
Maybe she is more aware of the Moravian threat.
“You lost Tomáš and Adam?” the mayor asked.
“No, Tomáš is going to live, thanks to the doc, but Adam was killed. I’ll need more volunteers for the truck, especially if we’re going medicine hunting as the doc wants.”
Simona turned her attention to Franz.
From the Ashes Page 33
