Authors: Arthur Bradley
His first thought had been that General Hood had betrayed him, setting up him and his men to take the fall for the chemical attack. However, after consideration, he realized that it simply didn’t add up. For one thing, Hood would have sent a more formidable attack force. Also, he wouldn’t have resorted to primitive techniques to stop the convoy.
This enemy, while limited in his capabilities, seemed driven by a personal vendetta. The most reasonable conclusion was that he was a marshal who had somehow managed to escape the gas attack. Perhaps he had been outside the center gathering supplies or conducting some other course of business. Unfortunately, men with revenge in their hearts were often even more dangerous than professional killers.
A car’s headlights suddenly lit up the dark from the bottom of the off-ramp. Nakai and the other soldiers instantly turned their weapons in its direction. The car was easily five hundred yards away and didn’t appear to be moving. It was just sitting there, facing up the ramp from the small town of Richmond Hill.
Jeb appeared from around one of the tractor-trailers. He was carrying his AK-47 and had donned a black bulletproof vest.
“The bridge is as clear as its going to get,” he said. “We’ll sweep it one more time in the morning to make sure that nothing new has been introduced.”
Nakai nodded, not taking his eyes off the distant headlights.
“What do you make of that?” he asked.
“It’s probably the bastard who’s been causing us all this trouble.”
“Perhaps,” Nakai mused, “But why announce himself?”
Jeb thought for a moment.
“Maybe he wants to meet. A parlay of sorts to talk things out.”
“What about you? Would you like to get a good look at this man?”
“What I’d really like to do is put my knife in his eye,” Jeb said, sliding his hand down to the pommel of his twelve-inch Kukri machete.
Nakai considered his next move carefully. They were probably not in any direct danger while in a defensive position, but only a fool ignored a determined enemy. The longer he delayed dealing with him, the more damage they would be forced to endure.
“Let’s you and I go hunting.”
When the headlights first flashed on, Mason was bent over, scuttling across the interstate with Bowie at his side. He immediately pulled the dog behind a nearby car, squatted down, and waited. When nothing happened, he peeked out and saw that a single set of high-beams were shining up the off-ramp. It wasn’t the mercenaries. They were as surprised as he was, turning all their guns in the car’s direction. Who then? The townspeople of Richmond Hill? Some other threat? Whoever it was, they were drawing the attention of a dangerous group of men, and for that, he was thankful. It should make it easier for him to get his supplies and sabotage one or more of the tractor-trailers.
He shuffled forward, carefully climbed over the median, and dashed across to the cover of trees on the opposite side of the interstate. Bowie stayed close by his side, moving as quietly as his size allowed. When Mason got to the tree line, he turned and hurried to the on-ramp located a couple of hundred yards past the overpass. Unlike the off-ramp, the single lane exit was quiet and dark, with only the occasional squeak emerging from the mash-up of abandoned cars, as they slowly settled against one another.
Mason started to step out from the trees when Bowie crossed in front of him and let out a low warning growl. He squatted down and laid his hand on the dog’s side. There was a persistent rumble deep in its chest.
“What is it, boy?” he whispered.
Bowie stood very still, staring off into the night.
Mason followed the dog’s stare down the long stretch of asphalt leading toward Richmond Hill. After a moment, he saw them—a series of shadows moving among the jagged column of abandoned cars. At first, there were only a few indistinguishable shapes, but as he watched, their numbers quickly grew. Five—ten—twenty—fifty.
Mason pulled Bowie back into the tree line a few feet and took a knee. As the crowd drew closer, he saw that the procession of shadows were actually people infected by the virus. They clustered together, shuffling stiff and bent over, hiding behind cars as they advanced up the on-ramp. There were so many that he soon lost count. As he watched them snake up the ramp, Mason was struck by how much they looked like an army of undead, seemingly mindless and set only on bloody violence.
But he understood that this was not truly the case. They were not zombies; just poor souls infected by a mutating virus. Neither were they mindless. The group moved quietly and with purpose. They were also coordinated, staying in small clusters, rather than in a single mob. But what set them apart most from mindless, flesh-eating zombies were their tactics. They had drawn the attention of the soldiers to the off-ramp using the headlights and were now attempting to mount a sneak attack on the convoy.
One thing that was not in question, however, was their violent intent. There was an electric charge to the air, a feeling that he had experienced many times when war was at hand. The strange sensation was not unique to Mason, as he had known many soldiers who claimed to feel it as well. Whether it was a natural sense of foreboding or something more extrasensory, he couldn’t say. What he did know was that a terrible battle was about to begin.
Nakai carried a Steyr Aug A3, and Jeb an AK-47, as they worked their way down the steep slope covered in knee-high grass. They maintained a distance of about fifteen feet apart, both of them taking care to stay well outside the persistent shine of the bright headlights. As they got to the bottom of the slope, they split left and right. Jeb immediately sought cover behind a black Ford Crown Victoria that looked like it had once belonged to an FBI agent, while Nakai advanced to stand with his back against the brick wall of a convenience store.
The sky was clear, and stars shone down like millions of shards of broken glass. Both men took several minutes to let their eyes adjust to the darkness. The air was cool and filled with enough humidity to make breathing noticeably more difficult.
The vehicle with the bright headlights was still far enough away that Nakai couldn’t quite make it out. It was big. That much he could tell—a truck, maybe. His enemy would not be inside, but he would likely be close.
He moved ahead carefully, watching out of the corner of his eye to keep pace with Jeb. They separated further and further as they advanced. By the time they got to within a few paces of the vehicle, they were coming at it from nearly ninety degrees apart, Jeb from the driver’s side and Nakai from the rear.
The vehicle was a tow truck, heavy, with lots of torque. It could haul a car out of a ditch as easily as a parent might lift a toddler from the tub. The whole truck was canted to the left, the result of something heavy smashing into the driver’s side quarter panel. The bottom half of the door was crumpled so badly that Nakai doubted that it would even open. He advanced a little further to see the passenger-side door. It too was dented, and the window had been smashed in. Someone had obviously leaned in and flipped on the lights.
Jeb shuffled up to the mangled driver’s side door and quickly popped up, muzzle first, to peek in through the window. It was empty. He stepped around to the rear of the vehicle, squatted down, and motioned to Nakai that no one was inside.
Seeing Jeb’s all clear, Nakai turned to survey his surroundings. The street was filled with abandoned and broken-down vehicles, most of them crashed or skewed at odd angles, no doubt the result of people trying to push their way through the congestion. His prey could be hiding in any one of them, planning his next move, or perhaps just waiting for morning.
Nakai could make out the dark but familiar sign for a Motel 6 not far down the street. Half a dozen smaller buildings lined the sides of the thoroughfare, most of them unrecognizable in the night. Other than the tow truck, there wasn’t a single light to be found anywhere—no candles, no flashlights, not so much as a flicker of someone lighting a late-night smoke. It was as if the town had died in its entirety. That struck him as strange. Even the hardest hit communities had their share of survivors. Why was Richmond Hill different?
As if in answer to his question, the wind shifted, and he caught the sound of faint whispers. Someone was out there. Someone who didn’t want to be discovered.
Peeking out from behind a huge pine tree, Mason took a moment to consider his next course of action. If he did nothing, the hundreds of infected men and women who were secretly snaking their way up the on-ramp would soon swarm the mercenaries. While Mason held no love for the soldiers of fortune, he needed to capture Nakai alive. Not for any honorable intention, such as seeing him convicted in a court of law, but rather, to use whatever means were necessary to discover the man’s employer. If Nakai died, so would Mason’s only link to whomever had masterminded the attack on the marshals.
It would take but a single shot to draw the attention of the mercenaries and spoil the ambush. Once alerted, the soldiers would chew them up with the .50 caliber machine guns. But in doing so, it would put Mason back on uneven ground against an army of trained soldiers. Despite his recent success in slowing their convoy, he saw no clear way to actually defeat them.
No, he thought, I will wait and let the enemy of my enemy do my bidding. If Nakai and his men triumph, they will be weaker and fewer in number. Even if they lose, Nakai might find a way of escaping. He was, according to Van Gogh, a very dangerous man. And dangerous men often found ways to survive.
Nakai motioned for Jeb to approach. The big man rushed across a small parking lot and moved up beside him. Nakai was peeking around the corner of a small grocery store.
“Do you see him?” whispered Jeb.
Without answering, Nakai stepped back and motioned for him to take a look.
When Jeb leaned around the corner, he saw dozens of men and women moving along the dark street. Their bodies were stiff, and they shuffled along like their knees didn’t bend quite right. They made very little sound other than heavy breathing and the scrubbing of their shoes across the asphalt. They all moved in the direction of the off-ramp to the interstate. Most of them carried primitive weapons—pipes, sticks, knives, and shovels.
Jeb ducked back around the corner.
“Night of the frickin’ dead!”
Nakai nodded.
The two men stood in the shadow of the building and watched as the mob slowly passed. When the infected arrived at the tow truck, they stopped and began banging on the hood, shouting at the soldiers on the interstate above them.
“What the hell?” Jeb looked astonished. “Do they really think they can draw us out? Even if they did, those sticks and shovels wouldn’t hold up against rifles.”
Nakai said nothing as he gazed up the long off-ramp. He played out possible scenarios. Even using the cover of cars, anyone who tried to charge up the ramp would be shot to pieces. Were they really that stupid?
But they didn’t advance. Instead, the infected began shouting unintelligible obscenities as they continued taking great pleasure in beating the hell out of the tow truck.
A thought suddenly occurred to Nakai. His eyes scanned the night, looking for confirmation. Then he saw it—the back door.
“Shit,” he spat, pushing off the wall, and bringing the Aug up to his shoulder.
“What is it?” asked Jeb, raising his own weapon.
“They’re a decoy. We’ve got to warn the men.”
Looking out over the roof of the HMMWV, Lieutenant Tripp gripped the handles of Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun. Corporal Finn stood down at ground level, ready to help spot for him. They both listened to the sound of crazies beating the paint off the car at the end of the off-ramp.
Finn seemed especially agitated.
“First, they turn on the lights. Now, they go ape shit. What the hell, Lieutenant?”
“It must be pus pockets,” said Tripp.
“I say we give ‘em a taste of Ma Deuce,” Finn said, using the familiar moniker for the heavy gun.
“You heard our orders. We don’t fire unless a threat is confirmed. You want to be the one to explain to Jeb why we broke silence?”
Finn shifted his weight back and forth from foot to foot.
“Not me, man. You’re the gunner.”
“And I say we wait.” Tripp looked around at the rest of the men. Most had weapons up and ready, facing down the ramp.
A distinctive burp of gunfire suddenly sounded from the town below. Finn looked up at Tripp.
“That’s an Aug. Nakai’s giving us the go ahead.”
Tripp wasn’t so sure.
The burping of the Aug was quickly joined by the
thump thump thump
of an AK-47 as gunfire flashed at the bottom of the off-ramp. Men looked around at one another. Most stared over at Tripp, who was the ranking officer in Jeb and Nakai’s absence.
Feeling the pressure, Tripp raised his arm and dropped it sharply. Before his hand had even reached his side, the mercenaries let loose with long strings of small-arms fire. As had been the case for generations, when things got confusing, soldiers were most comfortable resolving matters with a little snap, crackle, and pop.
Finn looked up at him and nodded.