Darkness crept through the forest in a silent march, snapping at our heels as we hurried down the lonely gravel road at a light jog. The sky swirled with the beginnings of another bout of rain, but further ahead, the horizon lit up with the occasional orange and red flash, which emanated deep ka-booms that I knew belonged to no act of nature. Smoke hung faint in the air, oily and tasting of rubber, many of the routes under our shoes familiar to me. I’d come this way before on patrols as a Ranger, which mean New Wilderness couldn’t be more than thirty minutes’ walk from us. We were close, excruciatingly so, but with the night swarming in, old whispers rose in my ears like nagging curls of dread.
I turned once more to check on the column and swallowed hard at the cold sensation of metal against my skin, the second launch key suspended by a spare shoelace I had tied into a necklace.
If Vecitorak is still out here, he could be watching us right now. Good God, what if he discovered the missiles? An army of intelligent freaks with nukes . . . it’d be the end, the absolute end of everything.
Rifle fire clattered beyond the trees, and I waved to urge the children on, racing up the incline that the road followed up a small hill. “Faster! Come on, we’re losing the light! Keep up the pace!”
At the crest of the hill, the road started to slope downward again, and I ground to a halt in shock.
New Wilderness stood like an island in the fading sunset, ringed with its strong walls high above the creeping shadows, but it was not how I remembered it. Flames dotted the outer fields, spats of light shot from the walls, and more chattered back from the broad scrubland surrounding the fort. Smoke roiled into the air from more fires on the hilltop, and whistling streaks of white smoke zipped through the air to explode against the defenses with deafening eruptions. Geysers of dirt went up around the fort, shells screaming from inside, and in the glow of the firelight, I could just make out a wide ring of dugout emplacements surrounding New Wilderness.
“We’re too late.” I gasped.
My misadventures in the north had taken almost two weeks, far too long to reach the wooden redoubt before Captain Grapeshot’s forces. Judging by the black marks on the palisade walls, the flames, and shell craters, this had been going on for days at least, perhaps more. The pirate gun pits looked well-dug, even for a crew of vicious children, and the rockets flying toward the fort came in faster succession than whatever shells that replied. Bullets slashed across the roughly hundred-yard stretch of dead ground between the siege lines and the besieged, a deadly upward slope that held more than a few bloated corpses. Our flag clung to its skinny pole above the battlements, the white and green cloth ripped from shrapnel, while a black skull-and-crossbones fluttered from the siegeworks in a similar state of wear.
Around me, the others slowed to a stop, panting and pale-faced, their eyes taking in the specter of war with horror.
One of the younger members of the group looked to me, her brown eyes gleaming with fear. “Who are those people?”
“I thought you said this place was safe?” Grumbled another girl, this one closer to adulthood, as she scowled at me.
“There’s no way we can get in there.” An older boy shook his head and took a step toward the direction we’d come. “We have to go back to the bunker. Maybe we can get the power working and stay there until the fighting stops.”
Vecitorak would get us first.
Just thinking his name made the scars on my skin itch, and I could almost feel the cruel eyes in the trees on the back of my neck. I swallowed, and searched the war-torn landscape, trying desperately to find something, anything to give me a hint as to what to do next. Even as I sought for answers, a panicked, primal voice in my head screamed the same thing over and over into my ear.
Chris was in there.
Lucille appeared at my side, her own gaze riveted to the fort, and she shrugged her sister’s rifle higher on one shoulder. “What do we do now?”
Closing my eyes for a moment, I sucked in a breath, my composure barely held together by strings of petrified hope. I just needed something, some indication of what to do, but I couldn’t think of anything. My heightened senses had failed me, my wits deserted me, and I found myself utterly inadequate to deal with the crushing weight of despair that threatened to bury me forever.
Somewhere in the back of my mind’s eye, I saw again the stranger in the yellow chemical suit, standing there with his lantern and umbrella in the pouring rain of that mysterious road from my dream.
Breathe.
His words flowed like cool water over my frantic thoughts, loosened my tight muscles, and brought my heartrate down to somewhat-normal levels.
You’ve done well, filia mea. Look closer.
Opening my eyes, I squinted at the chaotic rolling plain ahead, and the air caught in my throat.
About a quarter mile down the road from the gates of our outer perimeter fence, the gravel diverged into a crossroads overlooked by an old railroad bridge, known locally as Eldar Crossing. Back in the mining days, it had been used to dump coal from trail cars into trucks, or so Jamie had said. From here I could just make out the orange-brown girders of the bridge, the boxy metal chutes bolted to the underside, surrounded by thickets of multiflora rose. To anyone who didn’t know, it looked just like another decaying relic from the coal era, left to rust away in the forgotten wastes of Appalachia.
I, however, knew we had an outpost there; an outpost with fellow Rangers, weapons, and a radio connected to the fort’s network.
“Follow me.” With renewed fervor, I lunged back into a run, the others in pursuit as we turned right down the parallel roadway.
As if I’d been touched by some magic wand that had restored my stamina, I raced on through the encroaching night, the others doing their best to keep up, and we swung around the edge of the siege buy the decrepit backroads of post-human Ohio. If I could reach the outpost, we could radio the fort, maybe arm up with better weapons, and help break through the siege lines from the outside. Victory was near, so close I could almost taste it behind the ashy soot and rubbery smoke.
I’m coming, Chris. Just hang on. I’ll be there soon.
It seemed an eternity, but at last, we reached the crossing, and I threw myself toward the access door at the top of the steep incline.
“Friendlies! Friendlies coming in!” I shouted, uncertain if the defenders would mistake our advance for the pirates and waved my hands over my head. “It’s Hannah, don’t shoot!”
Ducking a few lopsided strands of barbed wire, I reached the metal door at the top of the embankment and beat my fist against it three times.
No challenge or reply came from inside.
“Guys?” I gasped, my heart thumping like a trip-hammer, and tugged on the handle.
The door swung open freely, and the foul stench hit me like a freight train.
No.
Bodies lay draped across the room, stripped of their weapons and gear, mutilated and butchered to the point of being unrecognizable. In the shadowy gloom of the outpost interior, I noticed the bullet holes in the walls, the spent casings on the floor, and the blood spattered across the corroded metal. I now understood that the door had been ajar because the lock was smashed, the barbed wire lopsided because it had been cut, and the room stank of copper because a hand grenade had smeared the defenders’ insides all over the walls and ceiling like sticky finger-paint. I could taste the salty burned gunpowder on the back of my tongue, and in the stony silence of the wrecked outpost, I tried not to imagine their cries of pain as our men were cut down. All the dead rangers were missing their hair, the scalp sliced away with crude, ragged edges to the torn flesh. Eyes had been gouged out, limbs broken or chopped off, skulls stomped in, as if the pirates had been in some kind of blind rage that death itself could not quench. The dead had been stripped bare, their naked bodies pockmarked with slashes, cuts, and puncture marks from a storm of cruel blades. Judging by the amount of brass on the floor and the bullet holes in the bodies, most of the rangers had either died from the grenade, or went down fighting, but I pitied any that might have lived long enough to endure the pirates’ wrath.
They picked the place clean, the filthy cretins. Didn’t even leave them in their clothes. God on high, the smell . . .
Gagging noises erupted from behind me, and Lucille leaned out the door to vomit onto the grass. The others recoiled in similar fashion from the charnel-house interior, but I couldn’t let our only respite go to waste.
“Everyone inside, now.” My shoes squished on cooled blood and a few severed fingers, and I propped open the metal gunport shutters to let in some fresh air. “Move it, we don’t have much time.”
“Why?” One of the children tried to protest, but I stalked back to the doorframe and began to pull them in one-by-one, a hazy plan forming in my mind.
“You’ll be safe here.” I press-checked my Colt and peered through the steel shutters to survey the battlefield, my eyes following a line of unburned brush that clotted near the base of the hill. It would be a half-mile run to the hill, and another few hundred yards up the slope to the wall, a task I would have to accomplish without being shot by either side. “I’ll wedge the door shut, and the pirates all think this blockhouse is knocked out, so no one will come snooping. Your job is to lay low, don’t make any noise, and wait until I can get help.”
Lucille shook her reddish-brown head in rapid sequence, face greenish-white, and pointed a shaky finger at the corpses. “I don’t want to stay in here with them, Hannah, don’t make me stay here with them, please.”
Taking her by the shoulders, I met Lucille’s frightened irises with my own. “Listen to me. I have to get inside the fort, but I can’t risk you or any of the others getting hurt. Someone has to stay here and keep the rest from wandering off, someone I can trust. I know it sucks, I know this is awful, but I need you to do this for me, okay?”
She shuddered, and suppressed another gag reflex as the other children shuffled over the gore-strewn metal, their shoes squelching in the viscera like crimson mud puddles. “Promise me you’ll come back.”
I wish the world were kind enough to give us such guarantees.
A thin, grim smile crossed my face, but I nodded anyway, daring to lie if it meant keeping her and the rest of the children alive for a few more hours. “I promise.”
They watched me go with gaunt faces, standing in huddled groups as far from the dead rangers as possible while I shoved the metal access door shut. I jammed a nearby piece of rebar through the handle loops to keep any regular animals from gaining easy entry, and skidded back down the embankment to make for the fort.
Reaching the perimeter fence was easy enough, but not far beyond it, a pirate dugout sat squarely in my path, and I could hear the muffled shouts of crew members inside loading another rocket launcher. Darkness fell thick around me, the brush tangled enough to through inky shadows everywhere, and with the risk of using a flashlight unacceptable, I was forced to crawl forward on my belly under the hole they’d cut in the chain link. Cold mud seeped through my clothes once more, my limbs trembled in adrenaline and fear, the voices only a few yards away.
“No, not that one, the white bands are smokes! Give me a red one.” A boy called to his companion form somewhere in the pit ahead.
“When is the doctor supposed to get here?” Another boy asked, his tone higher and squeakier. “Fred’s bleeding won’t stop. Seriously, guys, I think he might—”
Snap.
A bullet sailed into the dirt parapets of their abode, and I ducked in reflex, the lead whistling past my ear by a few inches. Whoever was on the fort’s walls atop the hill had decent aim, the night likely the only thing throwing them off from a direct hit.
“Shut up and hand me that red one!” The first voice roared, and he barked at a third person with a gruff desperation that I recognized as fear. “Hey, Simon, when I say so, you pop up and shoot to draw their fire. I’m going to hit the tower again.”
No, you’re not.
Pushing myself off the wet grass, I jumped to my feet, and crested the back rise of the gun pit.
Three faces turned to look up at me, wide-eyed, and open-mouthed in shock. A dark-haired boy, maybe fifteen at most, held a rocket-launcher on one shoulder, ready to fire. The others were easily four years younger; a pug-nosed kid with a camouflage bandana and a lever-action rifle crouched at the opposite end of the trench, while the third, a skinny blonde boy, knelt beside a small litter, where a motionless figure lay covered in blankets with dark red stains on the wool.
Bang.
Cold steel bucked in my hand, and the oldest boy tumbled backward, clutching his chest where crimson spouts gushed forth.
Bang.
The boy with the rifle went rigid, and collapsed, the bullet finding him right between the eyes, taking his bandana off in a blur of green motion.
Bang.
The third .45 caliber round caught the blonde boy between his shoulder blades as he tried to run down the trench, and he face-planted in the mud with a dull plop.
Snap, snap, snap.
I cringed as incoming fire chewed at the dirt around my feet, and leapt down into the trench to avoid the hail from the walls of the fort. At that distance, with me no longer in my New Wilderness uniform and likely presumed dead at this point, they couldn’t know who they were shooting at. Unfortunately, I found myself pinned down in the same gun pit as the dead pirate boys and took a minute to catch my breath.
“Max?”
My head jerked up, and I saw the body on the litter move, a smaller hand sluggishly waving in the darkness.
“Max . . . I’m thirsty. C-Can I have some of your water? Please, I’ll pay you back later, I swear, I’m just so thirsty . . .”
Still high on adrenaline from my charge to the position, I glanced around until I spotted a mud-spattered blue water bottle, like the kind made for gym-goers, and stooped to pick it up.
Flipping the built-in straw upright, I walked over to gently tuck the container under the kid’s clammy arm. “Here.”
No sooner had the word come out, and the hand went limp, dribbles of water spilling from the nozzle onto the litter.
It struck me then how little I felt. My first kill had been a horrible, scarring event, one that shook me to my very core, yet in the recent weeks I’d become more and more numb to the killing. I’d felt nothing when I gunned the soldiers down on the streets of Black Oak, not in the moment, anyway. Standing over the still-warm bodies of these four boys, I realized I still didn’t. It was as if the part of me that was previously so sensitive to that kind of thing had been rubbed raw, amputated, drugged into emotional impotence. It had to be wrong, but I couldn’t bring myself to cry, puke, scream, or feel remorse. There wasn’t hate boiling in my chest, no seething anger or rabid desire for vengeance, just . . . numbness.
Gotta get moving.
I sloshed through murky standing water in the bottom of the trench to where the lever gun had been dropped and snatched it up. With it slung across my back, I retrieved the rocket launcher, and squatted in the mud to inspect it, curious. I had yet to actually fire a real-life rocket launcher, as Jamie had only given me cursory instruction on a few of the spent tubes New Wilderness had from earlier firefights. This one seemed fairly straight-forward though; a rocket got stuck in the front of the tube, the tube went on my shoulder, a hammer was cocked like with a revolver, and all I had to do was squeeze the trigger.
Assuming I didn’t screw it up, and blow myself sky-high, of course.
“Smokes.” Throat dry as cotton, I whispered to myself above the fading ringing in my ears and eyed the red-painted band around the green warhead. “I need white rockets. Smokes, smokes, smokes.”
A nearby section of the trench wall had been gouged out with a spade, a primitive roof of logs built overhead to house a few green wooden crates stacked one on top of the other. Two were already opened, a small prybar laying to one side, and I pulled aside the lids until I came across a neat row of green warheads with white paint bands, laid out like sardines in a can. They were heavier than I imagined they would be, but I managed to pull the red one out, and set it as carefully as I could back in the box. There had to be some kind of safety cap for the nose fuse somewhere in the trench, but I didn’t have time to search for it on hands-and-knees.
With the white round fitted in place, I gulped a chalky lump in my throat, and regretted not taking the dead boy’s water bottle before it emptied into his stretcher. My own was back with Lucille in my knapsack, which meant if I wanted a drink, the only way was forward.
I angled my neck back and forth to crack it, and peeled the small metal safety cap off the front of the rocket.
Here goes nothing.
Pushing a small lever that looked like a safety to the off position, I stood upright, and squinted down the stubby black sight tube.
Ka-whoosh.
I blinked, and the rocket was gone, soaring off into the distance with bizarre speed. The launcher jerked in my hands, and I stumbled back, almost falling on my butt in the mud.
Boom.
In the next second, a plume of white smoke erupted from the base of the palisade wall where I’d aimed, the fusillade of bullets becoming more scattered as the marksmen on the walls lost their field of vision.
Stunned at my own success, I dropped the smoking launcher tube, and dragged myself out of the trench, arms and legs tingling with tension. Hot lead buzzed through the cool night air like metallic wasps, and I dashed forward as fast as my legs could go. My lungs ached, both ears were shrill with ringing, and sweat trickled down the center of my back in an icy slither. A shell exploded to my left, raining dirt over me in a cascade of brown particulates, the whole world a cacophony of thunderous gunfire. People screamed and shouted, splinters flew as another high-explosive warhead smashed into the palisade wall, and it vaguely reminded me of the fireworks shows from the Fourth of July.
Mud slipped under my shoes; I fell, righted myself, and dashed on.
Come on, I’m almost there, come on . . .
At any moment I expected a bullet to find me, waited for the searing pain and hot blood on my skin. Ever since the fateful night when I’d blundered into this place, never once had I considered having to attack our own fort to save it. How I would get over the wall, I still didn’t know, and how I would keep the rangers inside from shooting me off the rampart edges, I had no clue, but no other choice remained. Jamie might still be in there, which meant the fort was in danger from both directions, especially if she took this opportune moment to defect to the pirates in return for a ride to ELSAR headquarters. I had to find her and take back the first launch key, or the world’s most powerful weapons could fall into the hands of ELSAR.
If that happened, no amount of steel, lead, or fire could save us.