MERCS: Crimson Worlds Successors (8 page)

The clanging of the alarm bell silenced him.  Jericho had sentries in its guard towers 24/7.  It was one rule Axe had always insisted upon, even though it drained manpower from the fields and the hunt.  He’d been resolute over the years, though recently there had been more grumbling that the settlement’s sheer size deterred raiders, and the labor wasted on the watch could be used to increase the village’s small but growing food surplus.  For years, the settlement had teetered on the edge of sustenance, and the promise of increased prosperity was appealing to most.  But Axe ignored it all.  Keeping his people alive was what mattered to him.

Jericho had seen its share of fighting in its earlier days, when roving bands of refugees frequently attacked, but it had been years since the last serious encounter.  Jericho was large and surrounded by its wall, and the flow of wanderers had trickled to a crawl.  Thirty years after the Fall, there weren’t too many purely nomadic groups anymore, at least not large ones.  They had either settled somewhere, built something permanent like Jericho, or they had died.  But Axe had always feared the day would come when Jericho faced a serious threat again, and he’d never let his guard drop.

“Stay here, Ellie.  There’s a pistol in the small trunk, underneath the winter gear.  A couple spare clips too.”

He bolted out before she had a chance to say anything.  There were a dozen of his people running around, and more coming out of their small huts every second.  “To the arsenal,” he yelled, waving his arms wildly.  His eyes darted to the south tower.  The mysterious shooting seemed directed mostly at the ten meter tall fortification.  He couldn’t hear any return fire, which probably meant his sentries were dead.  He still had no idea who was attacking, but he had a bad feeling this was no normal raid.

“To the arsenal,” he repeated.  “Arm yourselves.”  He ran down the narrow path to the heavy log building and threw open the door.  He slipped inside, feeling around in the dark for the battery-powered light.  A few seconds later, the dim lamp cast a shadowy glow across the armory of the Jericho settlement.

There were a dozen rifles of various sorts stacked up along a makeshift rack.  Other than the weapons issued to the tower sentries, they were all that remained functional after thirty years.  Each gun had a varying supply of matching ammunition, ranging from a dozen rounds for the single military grade assault rifle to about three hundred each for the four police shotguns.  Axe knew all of it together wouldn’t get them through one decent fight, but it was all they had.

Twenty pistols, a hundred-odd knives large enough to be accounted weapons, a few boxes of explosives, and eleven stun grenades—that rounded out the armed power of Jericho.  Axe knew a well-equipped section of trained soldiers could wipe his people out in twenty minutes
.  It’s a good thing there are no trained soldiers left on Earth.  At least we hope there are none
.  Something was still nagging at him.  A raid was dangerous enough, but in his gut he was sure this was more.  Jericho hadn’t been raided for years.  It was too big for any rival settlements to target.  The cost of an attack would vastly exceed any supplies the attackers could steal. 
So who is hitting us now?

“Tommie, Randy…you guys each take one of the rifles.”  The two were both founding settlers, and good shots as well.  He turned and caught a glimpse of long, blonde hair.  “Jack, take this.  It’s the best weapon we’ve got, but you’ve only got a dozen rounds, so make them count.”  He grabbed the heavy assault rifle and handed it to the tall, grim man standing next to him.  He was pretty sure Jack Lompoc had been a cop or a government enforcer of some kind before the Fall, and his suspicions had fueled a strong mistrust at first.  But Lompoc had arrived at Jericho’s gate starving and sick like so many had before him.  He’d been in Jericho for fifteen years now, and Axe had long ago accepted him.  There was no room in the new world for nurturing old hatreds.  Not if mankind was going to survive on Earth.  Axe himself had more than one thing in his past he wished he could erase, and he didn’t assume he was the only one who felt that way.  And Lompoc was the best shot in Jericho, by a considerable margin.

Lompoc reached out and grabbed the gun.  “Thanks, Axe.”  He moved his hand across his face, pushing a long hank of greasy blonde hair out of his eyes.  “I’ll try to pick out their leaders.”  He nodded quickly and slipped through the door and into the darkness.

Axe finished handing out the firearms, trying to pick and choose those to whom he gave the precious weapons.  “The rest of you, grab a blade or a club, and try to stay close to the guys armed with guns.”  He was about to rush back outside when he saw a familiar mass of brown hair come through the door.  It was Ellie, and she had the pistol in her hand.

“What are you doing here?” he snapped, with more edge in his voice than he’d intended.

“I’m not going to cower in our shelter and wait to see if my home survives or not.”  Her voice was firm, defiant.

Axe stared back at her, ready to argue, but he held his words.  He tended to try to protect her as much as he could, probably because of the way he’d found her all those years ago, so helpless and abused.  But Ellie was 45 years old now, and a survivor of three decades of post-Fall life.  He knew he didn’t have the right to treat her like that tortured and terrified young girl he’d found so long ago. 
Don’t coddle her, Axe.
 
She’s going to have to be strong when you’re gone.  And that’s not going to be long, even if you survive tonight.

“OK, stay here then, and give out the rest of these weapons.”

She nodded.  “I will.”  She stared around the room, taking a quick mental stock of what was left.  “You be careful.”

He paused for a few seconds, just looking at her and nodding.  There was so much he wanted to say, but so little time, so he just smiled at her and slipped out through the door.

*        *        *        *        *

“Grenade teams, open fire!”  Barkley stood to Grax’s side, staring toward the breached wall of Jericho.  There had been a brief firefight with the guards in the tower just behind the settlement’s ramparts, but he was pretty sure they had taken out the sentries.  Grax would rather have spared them.  Almost certainly, those tasked with defense were among the strongest and healthiest in the village—and thus the most valuable.  The Traders paid ten times as much for captives that met their Prime parameters, and the men they’d just shot off that tower were probably all within that 3% portion of the population.

But the tower was well-positioned to cover the approach to the walls, and two of his men had already been hit trying to get close.  In the end, he’d had no choice but to order his people to take out the sentries.  There just wasn’t time.  The heavy fire had instantly roused the village, almost certainly, but that had been inevitable once the guards had spotted his scouts approaching.

Still, he wasn’t here to kill any more than he had to.  These villagers were his inventory, and every one his people killed was one he couldn’t sell.  And that cost them all.  No, his men weren’t here to get into a pitched battle.  This was business, nothing more.  It was hunting, not war.

Whoomp.  He watched as the first grenade sailed over the walls.  The tranq canisters made his job a lot easier.  The modified nerve gas had a mortality rate of about 10%, which was somewhat wasteful, but that was well worthwhile considering it turned most raids into simple exercises in loading unconscious captives into the transports.  Normally, his grenadiers could take all the targets down before the rest of his people closed in, but this settlement was much larger than anyplace he had raided before.  There was a good chance the gas attack wouldn’t take all the defenders down, which meant there might be some actual fighting to do.  Grax normally preferred to avoid unnecessary risks, but greed had overruled his caution, and he’d allowed Barkley to talk him into the raid.

Whoomp.  The second round of grenades flew over the walls.  The gas was odorless, but it was visible as wispy white clouds where concentrations were heavy. 

Whoomp.  The third round was directed deeper into the village.  Two volleys was all he’d ever used before, but he wasn’t taking any chances here, and he’d ordered four.  Plus his people were armed with smaller, handheld grenades.  His teams were all equipped with gas masks, and every villager they could capture instead of kill increased the expedition’s profit.

“Masks on,” he barked, looking quickly to the left and right at his people.  They were ready.

Whoomp.  As soon as he heard the last round leave the launchers, he leapt to his feet.  “Forward…through the breach.  Take down anybody who is still standing in there.”

He watched Barkley leap forward, leading his twenty men toward the breach.  There was no fire, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be any once they got inside.  He turned back toward the grenade teams.  “Stow those and bring the transports through that breach.  We should have a ton of prisoners to load.”

Then he checked his rifle, and he moved forward, following his raiders through the collapsed section of wall.

*        *        *        *        *

Axe slipped around the edge of the building.  He’d been up near the gate when the gas attack began.  He’d been surprised at first, but then he realized what was happening.  He didn’t know why the raiders were there, but he knew they were using gas.  He’d seen the police in New York use gas on rioting Cogs more than once.

“Get away from the gate,” he screamed.  “Gas!”  He stood in place and waved for any who could see him to follow.  Dozens of people were dropping to the ground, and he could see the gauzy white clouds drifting his way.  “Let’s go,” he said again, and he rounded the corner of the building and headed deeper into the settlement, about a dozen residents following.

He slipped down the narrow alley toward a row of large structures, turning out into the dusty track that served as Jericho’s main thoroughfare.  He ran past a series of long, low shelters, mostly storehouses, stopping in front of the infirmary.  He pushed open the door, waving his arms as he did.  “In here.  Now.”  It looked like about fifteen people had managed to follow him.

He ducked inside, feeling around on the wall for the battery-powered lantern he knew was there.  It took him a few seconds to find it and flip it on.  “We need to make some gas masks.  Now.”  He ran to the crude racks along the wall, pulling open the doors and ransacking them for what he needed.  He angled his head back toward the cluster of people behind him.  “Close that door, and jam some cloth underneath.”

He grabbed some surgical masks and a bundle of gauze from one cabinet and dropped them on the table.  Then he knelt down and pulled an armful of old plastic bottles that had been cut up into makeshift flasks.  He pulled out the knife he wore at his side and started cutting them roughly in the shape of masks.  He soaked a handful of cloth in water and put it inside the first bottle.  He turned and handed it to the person closest to him.  “Put it against your face.  There are some elastics in one of those drawers over there.  Go grab a handful.”

“OK, Axe.”  Sid Wentz was one of the settlement’s oldest residents.  He’d been part of Jericho since the start.  Axe knew Sid had been over 35 then, but he remained fit and strong, almost immune to the effects of radiation and hardships.

Axe knew Wentz had gotten a serious dose of radiation; he’d been a lot closer to ground zero than most survivors.  But year after year, he’d failed to show symptoms.  It was a game, a race between genetics and random factors.  Axe himself had been relatively immune to side effects from the blasts, even as he’d watched hundreds die over the years.  Now, he knew his luck—or his genes—had finally failed him, but Wentz was almost fifteen years older and still going strong.

He was making more masks as quickly as he could, handing them off one at a time as he finished.  He knew he only had a few minutes, but he was determined to get one to everybody before they left the infirmary.  He knew the attackers would wait until the gas attack had taken out as many of Jericho’s people as possible before they moved in.  That gave them a short while at least.

He could hear the sounds of more gas grenades impacting, closer now, right outside the door.  The infirmary was a half-assed structure, thrown together like everything else in Jericho from whatever could be scavenged.  He had no idea if it would keep the gas outside long enough—or if his primitive gas masks would even be effective at all.  But he couldn’t think of anything else to do, so he didn’t waste time worrying about it.

Ellie kept passing through his mind, but he knew he couldn’t get to her now.  Hopefully, she had gotten away.  If not, he knew his best chance to save her was to stay on his feet.  And one breath of that gas would take him out of the fight.

“Alright, let’s go,” he said as he pulled an elastic around his head, fixing his own mask in place.  “Grab anything that looks like it can be a weapon, and let’s move.  We need to get an idea how many attackers we’re dealing with.”

He moved toward the door.  “Make sure your masks are on.  And try not to breathe near any of the white clouds…even though your masks.”  He put his hand to the door, but he paused and turned his head back around.  “But that doesn’t mean you’re safe if there are no clouds near you.  That gas is probably effective even when it is dissipated and invisible.  Breathe slowly, carefully.”  He looked at the small group stacked up behind him.  They looked terrified, almost panicked into shock, but they were still there.  They weren’t warriors.  There were a few people in Jericho who knew how to fight—Jack Lompoc was one of them for sure—but none of them were with him now.  For all he knew, the fighters were all captured already, or dead.