Here We Stand (Book 2): Divided (Surviving The Evacuation) (14 page)

He was talking to himself. He looked at the pen. It wasn’t mightier than the sword, and certainly not the assault rifle. The energy that had been driving him a moment before had gone. It was over. He wasn’t going to read the script, and so they would shoot him and fabricate some other story. It hardly mattered. He’d tried to save the world. He’d failed, and done it in a spectacular fashion, but at least he’d tried.

Addison came back in. “Change of plans. Harris, start the chopper. No, wait, we can’t fly. Those APCs, are they shielded?”

“You mean it’s happened?” the sergeant asked. “I thought you said it wouldn’t. That it couldn’t.”

“Well, it has. The APCs, they’re meant to be shielded. Can we use them?”

“No, that’s why we’ve got the old trucks,” the sergeant said.

“Then we take those, and leave now,” Addison said.

“Should have done that this morning,” the sergeant said. There was no trace of respect in his voice. “What about the prisoner?”

“Bring him,” Addison said.

Tom slid his hand, still holding the pen, into his pocket. Wish for a miracle, and it might just happen. He forced his face into a scowl to hide his utter jubilation at the unexpected reprieve.

Chapter 13 - Fire, Returned

Location Unknown

His hands were cuffed behind him with plastic ties. It was done with such haste that they weren’t tightly bound. Given time, he thought he could work them loose. As he was hustled from the room, he realized it wasn’t because the guard aimed to help him escape, but that the soldiers wanted to leave the facility as quickly as possible. Addison had asked the sergeant if the vehicles were shielded. Taken with all else they’d said, the puzzle began to rearrange itself so the pieces formed a new, more terrible picture.

Two other guards ran past them. “Are we going to the base?” one called.

“No. The mine,” the sergeant replied.

Tom was shoved outside, toward the green-painted vehicles. Two of the police cruisers were missing, but there wasn’t time to see anything more before he was pushed inside a battered four-by-four. The interior had been refitted, but that couldn’t disguise that it had been built in the 1970s. In fact, the dashboard looked as if it had been replaced with controls that were a lot older.

“Retrofitted against an EMP, right?” he asked. “This is Prometheus. The Russians and Chinese are finishing what the zombies began.” That was the apocalyptic nightmare he’d been trying to thwart before the outbreak, and which he’d almost forgotten when the dead began attacking the living. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Shut up,” the corporal said.

The sergeant was by the door. “Hell if I’ll wait. In!” he bellowed at the third guard. The man got in the driver’s seat, the sergeant in the passenger side of the cab. “Go!”

“We were meant to—” the driver began.

“Let him burn,” the sergeant interrupted, “because I’m damned if I’m going to burn with him.”

“You said we’re going to a mine? You think there’s any that’ll be deep enough?” Tom asked.

The corporal slammed his rifle into Tom’s face. He rocked back in his seat, forcing the pain down, using the motion to try to free his hands. There wasn’t enough give. A hood was thrust over his head. It didn’t matter. He let his head loll forward, pretending he was insensible, as he worked on the plastic cuffs.

The vehicle bounced along an uneven surface, picking up speed, lurching left, then right. Were those turns? The vehicle hit something, and bounced up and down. Was that a pothole? Were they even on a road? Or had they collided with one of the undead?

“After today,” the corporal said, “this is it. It’s gone on long enough.”

“You know what the boss said,” the sergeant replied.

“I don’t care. This isn’t what we were paid for.”

“Fine, if we survive the next hour, you can do what you like,” the sergeant said. “But you’ve got to tell— Watch out! Zombie!”

The truck swerved, but not enough. There was a jarring jolt as something hit the front. As the corporal swore, Tom shifted his leg, moving his hands to where he could just,
just
reach the pen. With the next lurching bounce, he pulled it from his pocket. Gripping the pen awkwardly between fingers and palm, he stretched his wrists so the plastic ties were taut. Stabbing the pen into his wrist as often as into the plastic, he worked at the cuffs.

The vehicle took a steep turn, and he shifted his feet, bracing them on the floor. There wouldn’t be time to take the hood off. He’d have to dive sideways, wrestle the rifle from the guard, and fire blindly at the driver. If he survived the crash, he’d… he’d worry about that if he did.

“How long?” the corporal asked.

“Twenty minutes,” the driver said.

“I meant
until
,” the corporal said.

The vehicle rocked. Tom pulled, and the plastic snapped. His hands were free. He took a breath, waiting for the next jolt.

“We’ve got time,” the sergeant said. “Plenty of time. Plenty of—”

Tom was thrown forward. Everything went white. The truck slewed to the left and slammed to a halt. Someone screamed. It wasn’t Tom. He pulled off the hood, shaking his head to try to get rid of the ringing in his ears. The corporal’s head lolled forward, blood dripping from a savage gash on his temple. Tom grabbed the man’s rifle, aiming it at the truck’s cab. The driver was moaning. The sergeant was unconscious. Tom put his shoulder to the door, pushed it open, and fell outside. He staggered to his feet and froze. A mushroom cloud squatted over the land, not nearly far enough away.

Part of him had known that this was going to happen. That this was why they had wanted these ancient vehicles that had no circuitry for an EMP to fry. The sight still cut him to the quick. A bomb had been dropped on America. But how far away? Ten miles? Twenty miles? Thirty? He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t think.

His mind stayed blank until the sound of an engine drowned out the now-hoarse screaming from the guard. The approaching vehicle was getting nearer, though it was currently hidden by the slope of the rutted track.

He turned away from the cloud, looking at the truck, the track, and tried to process what he had to do. Get away. It was that simple. The bomb had fallen too far away for the blast to kill him, but the radiation might. The shockwave had caused the crash. Either that or it had been caused by the flash, though the bomb had fallen behind, and was too far away to cause anything or than very temporary sight loss.

The truck’s door opened. The driver had a hand against his head, but either his concussion was clearing or his sight was returning. His hand dropped to his belt. Tom raised the rifle and fired a three-shot burst, cutting the man down. The engine noise was getting nearer. He needed to get away, and escape the radiation. He wouldn’t do it on foot, or in this truck. Smoke and steam billowed from the engine. He was on a track, not a road, that was barely ten feet wide. The truck had crashed into a thicket of trees on the left-hand side. He ducked down, moving behind the thicket, waiting for the vehicle to get nearer. Nearer. The truck came into view. It stopped the moment that the driver saw the crashed vehicle. Tom judged the distance as close to thirty yards. He could make out the driver and one passenger, but there wasn’t time to waste confirming whether there was was anyone else on board. There wasn’t time for anything, not anymore. He raised the rifle. The passenger door opened. A uniformed guard stepped out, weapon raised. Tom aimed.

The ground shook. He was thrown from his feet. His first thought was shockwave. His second, that it was another bomb. His third was attack. He picked himself up and ran toward the second truck. He fired from the hip, aiming at the guard on the ground. One burst. Another. A third. The man was still. The driver’s door was opening. The man stumbled onto the track, a pistol in his hand. Tom shifted his aim, cutting him down. Not bothering to check they were dead, he jumped into the truck. He tried the ignition. For a moment he thought it wouldn’t start. It did. He slammed a foot on the gas. The truck jerked forward, butting into the crashed vehicle. Metal screeched as it was pushed aside. With the left-hand wheels on the muddy slope, he drove past the stalled vehicle, and onto the clear track. He didn’t ease off the gas until the crash was no longer in sight. When the road curved, the mushroom cloud was still visible.

“Think. Think. Think.”

But saying it didn’t help. Mushroom cloud, fallout, radiation, blast radius, flash, the words lined up in his brain, but without meaning.

“Two shockwaves. Two.” So there had been two bombs. He looked for a second cloud, but couldn’t see one, and now that first was lost from view. Without it filling the rearview mirror, his mind began to clear. Maybe the second time the ground shook wasn’t due to a shockwave but an earthquake caused by the first detonation. Or it was conventional explosives. Or it could have been a missile taking off from an underground silo. Or—

“No. Think. What do you know?”

That he’d seen a mushroom cloud. He’d felt the shockwave. There had been a flash.

“And what does that mean?” He knew, in theory, a one-megaton bomb could cause temporary flash blindness for up to thirteen miles. Had it even been a flash? Had the driver been blinded, or had his hand been raised to his head due to a concussion or something else? He had no idea. Certainly the two who’d been in the vehicle he was now driving had been able to see. Did that mean it was more than thirteen miles away? Now he tried to remember, he couldn’t recall whether it was thirteen miles or thirty. Of course, as he didn’t know the size of the warhead, it didn’t matter. Of course it didn’t. If you could see the mushroom cloud, you were far too close.

He glanced in the mirror again, a reflexive instinct to see if the cloud was still there. What he saw was worse. One of the deuce-and-a-halfs was on his tail. Barely a hundred feet behind, it was closing fast. He pushed the gas pedal down until it touched the floor, and almost lost control as the track abruptly kinked hard left, then just as hard right. By the time he’d regained control, the six-wheeler was twenty feet closer. He could see the outline of a driver and passenger.

The track had to lead somewhere. Of course it did. It led to wherever the guards had been taking him. The place to which they were going that would be secure from the fallout. They’d said something about a mine. It could be around the next bend. He had to get off the track, onto a road, and far upwind of the irradiated particles drawn up into that malignant cloud. That was easy to say, and impossible to do. Trees surrounded him on each side. The six-wheeler was closing.

He spared a glance around the cab. There was a bag in the foot well. Waiting for the next relatively straight section of track, he grabbed it. He had to wait another minute before he could check the contents. There was a chrome-plated .45, a few spare magazines, a book and… and he glanced back at the track just in time to avoid a tree stump.

“Personal possessions.” That’s what the bag contained. No grenades, no explosives, nothing that might rid him of his pursuers.

Perhaps they weren’t pursing him. Perhaps they were just trying to get away as fast as he. That hope lasted until they reached another straight section of track. With the six-wheeler only sixty feet behind, the passenger pushed a rifle through the window and opened fire. Tom didn’t hear the sound of an impact, but it told him they weren’t going to give up.

“All right, so think. What do you know? Fallout. Got to get away from it. But what goes up doesn’t come down immediately.” He had time. Not long, but he was in a vehicle that was easily managing forty-five miles an hour on rough terrain. Assuming that he wasn’t driving straight into the blast-area of another bomb. No, he couldn’t think like that. He was alive. If he wanted to stay that way, he had to deal with his pursuers.

He slammed his foot on the gas pedal, almost losing control as the vehicle took a steep turn. The moment the six-wheeler was out of sight, he stamped on the brakes. Pocketing the .45 and grabbing the rifle, he was out of the vehicle barely before it had stopped. Leaving the driver’s door open, he ran around to the passenger side. He’d chosen the spot poorly. There was little cover, and no time to find anything more concealing than a rhododendron.

The six-wheeler rounded the curve. The driver braked, but not in time. The vehicle crunched into the back of Tom’s truck. He winced, praying that it was still drivable as he took aim. The driver jumped out, a rifle raised, aiming toward the woodland on the driver’s side of the vehicle. More slowly, the passenger got out. Tom breathed out and fired. One burst at the driver, and the man flew backward. Tom shifted aim; the passenger had dived to the ground. Tom fired, emptying the rifle into the man.

A third person jumped out from the cab on the driver’s side. Addison, an automatic rifle in his hands. Tom’s finger curled around the trigger, but the magazine was empty. Addison fired. Bullets smacked into the ground a few feet in front of Tom. He rolled into the sparse undergrowth as leaves and bark rained down upon him. He grabbed the .45 from his pocket, and crawled through mud and dirt for a dozen feet. He stopped. There wasn’t time for subterfuge and misdirection. This had to end.

With a roar, he pushed himself to his feet and charged. Addison was half in, half out of the vehicle, reaching for something inside. Tom fired. One of his bullets hit the man in the thigh. Addison screamed, fell to his knees, clutching his leg. Tom slowed his run to a walk and stopped five feet from the man. He glanced around. The two guards were dead. No one else appeared from the truck.

“Tom. Please,” Addison said. “We have to get away.”

Tom raised the gun.

“Please, Tom. It doesn’t have to end like this. I can tell you everything. I can tell you how this all began, who was really behind the outbreak.”

Tom backed away a step, his eyes darting between Addison and the back of the truck, until he reached the rear. He looked inside. It was empty.

“Who?” he called to Addison. “Who was behind it?”

Addison had curled up, almost into a ball. “I’ll tell you, Tom. I’ll tell you.”

“Who?” Tom yelled, even though he knew the man was talking just to stay alive.

Addison straightened. Tom saw the gun in his hand. He fired. The first bullet took the man in the arm, the second in the chest, the third in the head. Addison collapsed in an inelegant heap.

“I can truly say that the world is better off with you dead,” Tom murmured. A wave of regret washed over him, mingling with the adrenaline coursing through his veins. He leaned against the vehicle and heaved.