*
THE ROAD RAN along the top of the ridge past a small wood cabin set up by the local tourism authority as a sightseeing perch for what was just a brief interruption in the general flat terrain of the Columbus hinterlands. MacLaren and the others stood on or around the porch of the tiny Alpine-style cottage with guns angled on all the approaches.
A neat pile of re-murdered children lay to one side of the paved road.
MacLaren spotted Tom first and gave a quick call to avoid any friendly fire, and seeing the way was safe, Tom jogged out of the dead summer grass and up the street towards them faking a more athletic arrival than was really honest.
He and Dan clasped hands.
“Glad you made it,” MacLaren said.
“After that clusterfuck, it’s a miracle we’re not all dead,” Tom said. “Or soon will be. You think we rang the dinner bell loud enough?”
MacLaren looked unfazed. He pointed to the bullet-riddled pile of dead.
“I think we already drew out the locals.”
“The dead ones, maybe,” Tom said. “What about the living?”
“He’s right,” Pamela intervened. “We need to keep moving.”
MacLaren nodded, sweating profusely. They’d hoped there were still Raiders in these parts. Now maybe they hoped they were wrong.
*
THE RIDGE WAS a glorified hillock, no matter how steep it rose. The way ahead was a long, gentle gradient downwards, carpeted with more spindly, summer-dry grass about two-feet high, a few big agricultural sheds and several clusters of buildings and the odd country road far away across the countryside ahead of them. They were only ten minutes into the descent when Pamela said something Tom couldn’t hear, still without a headset, and MacLaren raised his hand in a tactical signal and Tom immediately dropped into a squat pending further information, eyes craning out through the trampled grass scouting for whatever triggered the alarm.
The thought of the men they’d left behind blew through him again and he wondered at his fellow survivors’ stoic resolve.
Tom spotted the smoke before MacLaren duck-walked across to let him know.
The eight surviving troopers headed further east of where the smoke rose from one of the buildings made anonymous in the agricultural haze. It took thirty minutes to hit the road they’d seen from higher up, Pamela on point and followed by MacLaren and Milwaukee, then Tom, Brix on his tail followed by Timms and the truck driver Cyril toting a police-issue grenade launcher. Overkill, considering the newfound serenity. They fell into a line, everyone walking hunched and with their eyes on the east as they angled around, hitting the intersection of a major road, then scurried in pairs across to a single line of trees framing the far side. The trees sheltered a stately house and a garden shed, more trees rather than protective fencing forming its yard. MacLaren led the squad across the property to the trees on its western boundary where they fell into a huddle.
It was a tenth of a mile across a weed-strewn field to the first of several enormous galvanized sheds which framed the view of the neighboring farmhouse. Smoke issued from its chimney and now they could see at least four horses tethered in the yard outside.
Tom took a drink of water as MacLaren scoped the scene with binoculars.
“Reckon they’ve got scouts out?” Tom asked.
Brix gave a derisive snort.
“The real question’s whether they heard that ruckus we made earlier.”
“There’s nothing to show it,” MacLaren said.
He handed Brix the scopes on request and joined Pamela surveilling the far-off lot.
“That house isn’t fortified in the slightest,” Tom said.
MacLaren nodded.
“They just passing through?”
“They’ve got horses,” Cyril offered. “They’re mobile.”
“That Leon fella called them cowboys,” Tom said.
They chewed on that for a minute and Tom took his own shot with the binoculars.
The viewfinder showed no movement at the station. Smoke churned reliably from the home’s intact chimney. The structure was in good shape and likewise the roof. It’d certainly make a good shelter, though far too many unboarded windows left the position vulnerable.
“Are we still just getting intel?” Tom asked.
One moment he was just glad to be alive, the next fretting knowing he wouldn’t be back with his kids that night either – and wondered what the hell they’d made of his disappearance – hoping they didn’t jump to any traumatic conclusions all at once.
“We need to get closer,” Brix said.
“We will,” MacLaren said. “Relax.”
“All of us?” Tom asked.
“What’s the matter, hero?” Brix mocked him. “Come all this way and then you wanna sit this one out?”
“It wouldn’t hurt to have a few guns in reserve.”
“Guns, yes. Not bows,” MacLaren said. “We’ll all go. If we hadn’t lost the others, I’d agree. We need strength in numbers.”
“Strength in numbers . . . for gathering intel.”
The others stared at Tom as if willfully mistaking his caution for cowardice. Tom screwed up his mouth in that way he did when things tasted unfavorable, saying nothing as MacLaren quickly split them into two crews, Tom with him, Pamela leading everyone else except for Milwaukee and Brix. Considering the last encounter, Tom held the taller Milwaukee’s gaze long enough to make it uncomfortable, leaving him with no misunderstanding that the other Reclaimer’s willingness to cut and run was on the record.
Pamela led her team back towards the road using the shelter of the tree-lined strand for cover. MacLaren waited a moment, as if rethinking holding their force in reserve, then cued a signal into his mic and motioned for Tom, Milwaukee and Brix to follow.
*
THEIR APPROACH TO the house involved flanking to the right once again, coming in from the east hoping to use the farthest big shed as a rally point before checking it was safe to move any closer. It was a clear and sensible plan for what was otherwise an uncertain endeavor, but their growing awareness of a rumbling noise far away across the barren ground saw the quartet falter in their tracks while still halfway across the field.
“What the fuck is that?” Brix said.
They were a fair distance out from the ag sheds still, and the rumbling noise grew louder until Tom pointed to the north. More than a dozen riders cantered in their direction across the staggered farmland left to ruin.
“Holy shit,” MacLaren said and his voice broke, swiveling around to Tom with such a look Tom felt a chill go through him.
MacLaren’s panicked survey didn’t stop there. He twisted a full three-sixty to check across at their original target, then back towards the road and wherever precisely Pamela’s team now stalked.
Tom’s squad was hopelessly exposed.
“Change of plans,” MacLaren said, clutching his headset.
Discipline crashed down on whatever fears stoked MacLaren. The ex-commando motioned back the way they’d come, and Tom was so startled by the unexpected change in direction that he stood rooted to the spot as Milwaukee barged back past him, and he and Brix and then MacLaren started racing back to their previous shelter in the tree-line.
Tom could hear MacLaren giving commands to Pamela’s team over comms. Then he sighted the approaching mounted Raiders them one final time and loped after his comrades as best he could.
*
MACLAREN YELLED SOMETHING as they made the first trees, and though he didn’t know what it was, Tom somehow understood enough to shoot a look back across the field to the neighboring farmstead where a half-dozen men now broke from where they’d been sheltering behind the second big shed, lying in wait to ambush MacLaren’s advance on the farmhouse.
Cheated out of whatever they’d planned, the Raiders unhitched their horses just as an ungodly fireball ripped through them and their steeds. The explosion looked tiny at that distance, but the screams of men and horses was loud enough to ca
rry across the field as Tom and the three others whipped about.
“What? Repeat.”
MacLaren covered his ear piece with one hand and looked around desperately for somewhere quiet, better to hear the muffled relay. The pop and crackle of gunfire two-hundred yards away explained the bulk of it.
“Pamela’s saying more riders coming down the road from the west,” MacLaren growled. “There’s contact at the other farmhouse. Cyril’s used grenades.”
There was another muffled explosion as if on cue and Tom threw a look at the house behind them.
“We’re gonna have to –”
But to their utter astonishment, six more men on horseback rode into the farmhouse yard behind them. Tom barely had a moment to grasp for his next words before Brix and Milwaukee turned and dropped their safeties and opened fire.
*
TOM WANTED TO shout for them to hold their fire, but it was already too late.
The riders carried handguns drawn, but the fully automatic weapons hissing from silenced rifles cut into men and horses alike. Tom had an arrow drawn, but looked for shelter rather than to stand and fight, and the others had the same idea. Two horses writhed on the ground and one bolted without its rider as four of the Raiders fell, one crushed under his steed.
MacLaren hefted his rifle to cover their retreat as the two men still mounted wrestled their mounts under control. One of the riders getting up off the ground returned fire in a series of wild shots – but MacLaren’s gun jammed as he went to kill him, and he threw it away at once, drawing his 9mm and pushing Tom in the back to get everyone moving.
“Run!”
“Daniel!”
The armed Raider aimed at MacLaren and Tom released his arrow.
The shaft flitted the thirty-yard distance to embed itself up to its fletching in the man’s throat. The man’s mouth opened in a scream he couldn’t make and he dropped to his knees clutching himself even as he died.
Then Tom and MacLaren ran, following Brix and overtaking out-of-breath Milwaukee headed through the trees between the house and its back shed. More gunshots rang out and Tom looked back to see Milwaukee stop and draw a pair of Colts.
Behind them, one of the riders charged his horse into the open, shooting with a rifle with evident skill. He and Milwaukee traded random gunfire and Tom yelled as one of the rounds hit Milwaukee in the shoulder and spun him around.
“No!”
But the rider was a crack shot. He worked the rifle’s action and fired again and Milwaukee’s head exploded like soup.
Tom turned after the others, desperate for cover on the far side of the garden shed. The stormfront of approaching riders off to the north was obvious through the trees screening the field, and further to the west, back towards the other farmhouse, Tom saw Pamela flogging a stolen horse and leading a second one by its bridle towards them across the open field.
Tom hit the sanctuary of the metal shed and slammed his back against it with his chest heaving. Forty yards away, Pamela yelled for them to mount up with her and the other horse so the four of them could get away, but as she pulled up, more strafing gunfire hit the horse she was riding and the gaunt older woman leapt down just in time to avoid getting hit. More rounds instead struck the wounded horse she hid behind, and the second horse bolted as its ally fell, Pamela finding herself running out of the crossfire and into the temporary sanctuary where the others were equally trapped.
“We’re pinned down,” Tom groaned.
The man he’d just killed was still dying in his thoughts. Tom fought back nonsensical, cloying memories of watching the Furies take his wife, and he squeezed his eyes shut instead, making a Herculean effort to drink a deep draught into his lungs even as his hands shook and he tried not to shit his jeans.
“We’re trapped,” MacLaren said.
The ex-commando stood licking his lips, eyes unfocused, perhaps desperately trying to conjure tactics to get them out of this jam and losing some part of himself when he came up with nothing.
“Dan?”
“Jesus, Tom,” MacLaren said and swallowed with difficulty and looked at him and then Pamela and Brix and then away to where the other riders were closing in. Their cover’d be worth nothing once the dozen other horsemen cleared the trees.
“Where’s Carter and the rest of your squad?” he asked Pamela.
“They’re all dead.”
“OK,” MacLaren said. “Shit.”
He refastened his grip on the Glock he still held and clasped Tom’s shoulder with his other gloved hand.
“I’m not gonna leave you guys stuck like this.”
Before Tom could question anything, MacLaren stood and made a John Woo move with the 9mm as he twisted out from behind the shed.
Multiple rifle shots hit him instantly.
He took two bullets through the left shoulder and another one hit him just at the edge of his mouth, blowing the side of his beard and neck open and giving his arterial blood free rein.
He was dead from shock within seconds of falling down, twitching and grabbing at his gurgling neck.
Tom watched horrified as his friend’s legs give a final kick and went still.
In their cramped cover, Pamela was pressed against Tom’s back and Brix had the other side, the two women with steel in their resolve in a way that left Tom ashamed. He bit down his gorge and forced himself through several more breaths, careless if he sounded like a bellowing train. Brix shot him a look as if checking that he wasn’t checking out.
“Fuck.”
“Don’t lose your shit now, hero.”
Brix winked at him and finished changing magazines. The other horsemen would breach the trees in seconds and Tom and the two women were lined up against a wall as if ready for execution.
“We’ve got to surrender,” Tom said.
“Fuck that, you pansy.”
Brix pulled the slide on her rifle and stepped out with the weapon raised just like MacLaren before her and with exactly the same results.
A single round took her in the forehead and it was only a miracle the brains didn’t explode out the back. Brix hadn’t fallen to the ground before a man masked with a bandanna stepped around the turn on foot with Milwaukee’s twin Colt automatics trained on Pamela and Tom completely exposed.
Tom dropped his bow and sagged in defeat.
The other mounted Raiders came through the trees and Pamela tutted and threw her rifle down and dropped at once to her knees with her hands behind her head.
Stunned and disbelieving the end of his own story, Tom followed suit.
*
THIRTEEN RIDERS WALKED their horses into the rear of the overgrown yard. Two of the men leapt down with rifles leveled, and the masked man with the Colts kept Tom and Pamela covered as a man in the middle of the posse let his horse wander closer still.
They were a lean crew of hard-looking men, most of them bearded, if not masked too, not one of them aged older than fifty, though the guy at the lead cut it close. Strangely warm brown eyes stared above the pitiless mask of his red bandanna and he let his horse come to a stop with just a flutter of the reins betraying years of skill.
The rider simply watched them for a few harsh seconds, then looked more with curiosity than concern as another of his men strode out from behind the shed, moving past the one with the drawn pistols, breathing raggedly with a furious expression declaring his hand in the gunfight beside the homestead of just a minute before.
“How many?”
The leader of the Raiders spat the question in the face of the other survivor’s fuming distress. His comrade dusted down his knees and shot a hateful look Tom’s way.
“Jake’s in a bad way,” he said. “We lost Morrow and Andy Dent.”
“Darn,” the leader said and glanced once at Tom and Pamela and then back to the other man. “Horses?”
“We’ve got two,” he answered. “We’ll track down Andy’s Rumor. She’ll come back once it’s quiet.”
“To her dead rider
.”
Their masked leader finally sounded mad. Any curiosity fell away. He dismounted and put a hand to the side of his mouth.
“Confederates, dismount,” he shouted. “Secure the area. Put down the dead.”
He drew a lever-action rifle from the holster attached to his saddlebags and Tom noticed one of the men secure their leader’s reins, while two more fell into step with him as he advanced to where Tom and Pamela knelt. Tom looked up and thought better of it and then the man barked for them to stand.
“You can keep your hands on your heads, though,” he said. “I like that.”
Tom focused on his breathing and let his eyes close a moment, conscious of the sweat trickling between his shoulder blades, fingers laced together over the thinning hair at the top of his head. It was only the sound of more horses snickering that forced his eyes open in surprise as yet another half-dozen riders slowly entered the arena leading two unmounted horses behind them. Slung over the two steeds were the blackened bodies of Cyril and Carter. Unburnt, but just as equally unalive, was Timms. Someone had done the honors of the head kill and Tom lost the staring competition with Timms’ head hanging upside down over the saddle.
“Made a mess back there, Freestone,” the lead newcomer said.
“What’s the damage bill?”
“Five horses,” the man said. “Killed Coates, Savage, Clunes, Lord Ramsey, and Toots.”
“Toots?”
“Sorry.”
The leader, Freestone, made a fresh face of anger and turned towards the two captives with a clenched fist.
“The only question seems to be which one of you I kill first?”
Tom tried not to give away his nervous gulp. Pamela was more forthright. She lowered her hands and stepped forward, giving one look Tom’s way.
“If you have to kill one of us, kill me,” she said. “He’s a father with young children.”
The words flooded Tom with alternating waves of gratitude, shock, and grief. For some reason, the response delighted the lead Confederate.
After The Apocalypse Season 1 Box Set Page 40
