Surviving the Dead 03: Warrior Within (43 page)

“Hey Mike, do you see movement out that way?”

The other man stopped and looked. “Where?”

“There, out past the garage, toward the billboard. I think I see a walker over there.”

“Really? I can’t see shit.”

“Put the
binos on it.”

The smaller man walked to the middle of the roof and came back with a pair of binoculars. He held them up and peered where Eric indicated. “I still don’t see anything.”

“I’m telling you, there’s something over there.”

The Legion troop stepped closer to the edge of the roof. Now that his back was turned, Eric slowly and quietly drew something from his coat pocket that shined in the moonlight. “Morrison, you’re being paranoid. There’s nothing—”

Eric stepped forward and slammed his hand into the man’s kidney. The raider gave a strangled gasp and went rigid. Eric’s hand shot around and caught the binoculars as the dying man dropped them, simultaneously grinding his blade around in cruel circles. He let the binoculars dangle from his elbow by the strap, and then clamped a hand firmly over the raider’s mouth. His hand came back again and he plunged his knife into the man’s other kidney. I winced.

That’s a bad way to go, getting stabbed in the kidney. It hurts so bad that your body locks up, your diaphragm seizes, and you can’t scream. Rapid hemorrhaging and paralysis ensue, and without immediate medical attention, you bleed out internally. Eric didn’t wait for that to happen. The knife came up again and he sawed at his opponent’s neck. Unlike in the movies, cutting someone’s throat is neither an easy nor a neat process. The tendons and ligaments around the big arteries in the neck are tough, and don’t part easily. Eric hacked at them with the knife until he cut through to the big veins beneath. Slowly, he lowered the raider to the ground, blood pouring down his torso.

I stepped out from behind cover and waved. He acknowledged me and motioned me around to the other side of the restaurant. When I had run over there, he made a shooting gesture with one hand, and then a throwing motion. I pulled my nine-millimeter pistol, screwed on a suppressor, and tossed it up to him. He caught it deftly, checked the safety and the chamber, and then motioned me to climb the service ladder to the roof.

Although I tried to be quiet, the ladder was rusty and loose on its bolts. It rattled and squeaked as I climbed up. From above me, a groggy voice said, “Logan, what the fuck is going on?”

I heard the telltale
crack-clang
of the pistol firing, followed by a dull thud. The pistol fired twice more as I topped the ladder and stepped up onto the roof.

“Don’t move.” Eric said.

For a second, I thought he was talking to me, and froze. He saw me from the corner of his eye and gestured impatiently. “Not you, Gabe. Come on.”

Ahead of me, two men lay in expanding pools of blood and another kneeled half-risen from his bedroll.

“Keep your hands where I can see them, Kasikov.”

“What is being happening, Logan?” The voice was deep, and heavily accented. Russian.

“What is being happening, you sick son of a bitch, is I’m taking you prisoner. Now, if you like your kneecaps, I strongly suggest you keep your hands where I can see them.”

The man slowly raised his hands. I leveled my rifle at him and stopped next to Eric. “Who’s this guy?”

“His name is Vasily Kasikov. He’s a sadistic puddle of rotten pig shit.”

“
Go fuck your mother, traitor
,” the Russian said in his native language.

“
You should be more polite. We are pointing loaded weapons at you, after all
,” I replied.

Eric turned his head. “Holy shit. You speak Russian?”

I kept my eyes on the captive. “Focus, Eric.”

Kasikov was staring at me now, and even though I was looking at him in infrared, I could see the surprise on his face. Remembering that I didn’t need the goggles at the moment, I reached up and slipped them off. The world went back to normal, and I felt blinded without the enhanced vision. I placed the optics carefully on the ground, and advanced on the marauder.

“Don’t move. Eric, keep this bastard covered.”

The Russian’s face contorted with hate. “Eric. So that is being your name true name then, little cunt. I will be remembering it for when I am gutting you like pig.”

“Kas, insults ain’t worth tits on a turtle coming from you. Neither are threats, for that matter.”

Eric moved left to keep a vector on the Russian as I stepped behind him. “If he moves, kill him,” I said.

“Gladly.”

I swiveled my rifle around on its sling to free up my hands. Just as I was reaching back to grab a couple of zip-ties, the Russian sprang up.

The top of his head caught me in the jaw and rocked my head back. My tongue got caught between my teeth and I tasted blood to go along with a jolting shot of pain. Before I had a chance to reach back for my weapon, the Russian had turned into me and slammed a fist into my solar plexus. He was standing directly between Eric and me, and if Eric pulled the trigger at this range, the bullet would go straight through and shoot the both of us.

“Gabe, get down!”

Kasikov grabbed me by the web gear straps on my chest and, before I had time to do anything about it, he shoulder-tossed me straight at Eric. I had time to think,
Christ, this fucker is fast
, and then I slammed into my friend. I managed to get a grip on Kasikov’s shirt as he threw me, dragging him along for the ride, and the three of us hit the deck in a tangle of limbs.

Kasikov got back to his feet first and swung a kick at Eric’s hand. The toe caught him just below the wrist, and the pistol went flying. He aimed another kick at his head, but Eric got his arms up just in time and cross-blocked it, trapped the Russian’s ankle, and lashed out with a kick aimed at his knee. Kasikov saw it coming and turned so that instead of getting his knee broken, it simply buckled from behind and dumped him onto his back.

Between the punch and the throw, I still hadn’t managed to draw a breath through any of the exchange. My tongue was a screaming ball of fire in my mouth, and I had to spit out a mouthful of blood to keep from choking on it. I got up to one knee, only to have Kasikov rip his leg free from Eric’s grip, pivot around on his back like a breakdancer, and swing a boot into my jaw. My vision exploded, and I toppled over backward, striking the back of my head on the cinder-block false front bordering the roof.

He aimed another kick at Eric, but missed as Eric flipped through the air in a capoeira-style, no-hands cartwheel. Dimly, I wondered where the hell he had learned to do that. Eric landed just next to the Russian, dropped down into the knee-on-belly position, and started raining down punches. Three of them landed before Kasikov could move an arm to block, and then, to my surprise, he bridged up on the back of his neck and did a hip-switch, throwing Eric to the side. That was a fairly advanced technique. Where did this guy learn to fight like that?

Not waiting for the bigger man to mount an offensive, Eric lunged forward in a somersault and popped back up to his feet in a fighting stance. The Russian got up, reached under the back of his shirt, and drew a fighting knife. I recognized it immediately—a Soviet era NR-40 combat knife. I had seen many like it before.

Eric saw the knife, and his eyes darted over to the weapons lying on the ground next to the men he had killed a few moments ago. Kasikov moved to his right, cutting Eric off from getting to them.

“Now, my friend. I am to be gutting you like pig.”

Eric’s face darkened, and he tightened up his fighting stance. “Bring it on, bitch.”

I rolled my eyes.
Enough of this shit
. The illuminator was still on my web belt. I took it out and pointed it at the Russian. “Eric, hit the deck!”

The Russian spun around, surprised. He must have thought he’d knocked me out with that kick. Behind him, Eric dropped. I grinned through bloody teeth, and pushed the button on the illuminator. Kasikov had a half-second to register what it was, and then his chest burst open in a crimson geyser. Gore and bone shards peppered me, splattering my chest and face. The Russian slumped to the ground.

I reached up and keyed the mike at my neck. “Took your fucking time, didn’t you?”

“I am sorry.” Great Hawk’s voice came back. “I did not have a shot until your friend dropped to the ground. Just so you know, I had already pulled the trigger when you activated the illuminator. It was not really necessary.”

“Just making sure you knew who was who.”

“Who are you talking to?” Eric asked as he walked over to me.

“Great Hawk. He’s on overwatch.”

Eric helped me sit up and looked over his shoulder. “Took his sweet-ass time, didn’t he?”

I chuckled, wincing in pain. “That’s what I told him.”

“So where is he?”

“ ’Bout a klick south of here, set up on a hilltop.”

He looked at Kasikov’s corpse. “That’s a hell of a shot.”

“I gave him my .338.”

“Ah. That’ll do it.”

I handed Eric my flashlight. “Would you mind taking a look at my tongue? I bit the shit out of it when that fucker head-butted me.”

He clicked it on and looked. By his expression, I was guessing it wasn’t pretty. “Yeah, you cut a little chunk off the tip there.”

I took the flashlight from him and reached back for a first aid kit. “Give me just a minute here.”

“You okay man?” Eric asked. “You took some pretty bad licks.”

“I’m fine. Just not as quick as I used to be.”

He patted me on the shoulder, smiling. “You did fine. Most people would be dead. That son of a bitch was fast, though. Wasn’t he?”

“You ain’t lyin’.”

I folded a patch of gauze over my tongue and held it in place until the bleeding subsided, then spit it out and walked over to the dead Russian. Eric had already rolled him over onto his back and was checking his pockets.

“Does he have something we need?” I asked.

“There’s a key … got it.”

I checked the other bodies and the backpacks next to them, but found only weapons, food, water, medical supplies, a few baggies of marijuana, and several bottles of liquor. Nothing that revealed any information about the Legion.

“You have any luck over there?” I asked.

Eric sat back on his heels and let out a disappointed sigh. “Nope. Just the key to the women’s shackles.”

Just as he was about to stand up, his eyes shifted to the Russian’s wrist and he picked it up, pulling back the shirtsleeve. “What do you make of this? Looks like some kind of military insignia to me.”

I walked over and knelt down, shining a light. “Holy fuck.”

“What?”

I moved the dead man’s arm so that Eric could see it. “That’s emblem for Spetsnaz GRU. This guy was a fucking Russian commando. No wonder he kicked our asses.”

“Actually, he only kicked
your
ass.”

I scowled at him, and then my eyes drifted over to the pile of Kalashnikovs the raiders had been carrying. Eric followed my gaze.

“You think?” he asked.

“I can’t say for sure. But I don’t believe in coincidences.”

Eric stood up and put his hands on his hips, looking down at the dead marauders. “What the hell is going on here, Gabe?”

I got to my feet and stood next to him. “I don’t know. But I intend to find out.”

I called Great Hawk down from his hide.

Eric and I cached the marauders’ weapons in the manager’s office of the drug store, then dragged their corpses into the refrigerator of the McDonald’s. The reek of moldering flesh would soon join the stench of long-spoiled food, but the seal on the door would trap most of it in.

We set up camp on the roof of the garage down the street and waited for Great Hawk to arrive. Having retrieved my ghillie suit and pack, I took out the satellite phone and called the prearranged number that connected directly to Captain McCray’s office.

He answered immediately. “This is Alpha. How copy?”

“Alpha, this is Wolf. Copy loud and clear. Subject acquired, five by five. Three ECs down. AO green.”

“Nice work, Wolf.” His voice sounded relieved. “Where’s Hawk?”

“En route. Will establish comms for subject debrief.”

“Very well. Reestablish comms via VTC.”

“Wilco. Wolf out.”

Eric scooped another sporkful of corned beef hash from his MRE and scarfed it down. “Okay, so in English, what just happened there?”

“I told him we found you, killed three hostiles, and that you’re uninjured. We’re safe, and the area is clear. When Great Hawk gets here, we’ll debrief you via video teleconference.”

“So why didn’t you just say that? Why all the jargon?”

I frowned at him. “It’s called brevity. Getting messages across quickly and concisely, with no confusion. The military does shit the way it does for a reason, Eric.”