Surviving the Dead (Book 7): The Killing Line (17 page)

No one spoke.

“This is not our fight. You said it yourself, Eric. There’s over a hundred armed people protecting that caravan, two of them Blackthorns. If they can’t handle what’s coming at them, our presence won’t make any difference. We’ll just die with them. So what we’re going to do is keep moving, far and fast. We’re going to push through today and all of tonight if we have to. If need be, we’ll abandon the wagon. The horses should be able to carry most of the gear. We can use the oxen as pack mules. But it hasn’t come to that yet, and I’d rather it didn’t. Now if it’s all right with all of you can we please, for the love of Christ, get moving?”

“I’m with him,” Sabrina said. “Anybody crazy enough to take on Spike’s group is no one we want to fuck with. We should get out of here. Now.”

Eric jumped a bit, as if he had forgotten Sabrina was there. We both looked at her. The gray eyes were cold and hard, the mouth a thin, sharp line. It gave me an eerie feeling, like peering into a distorted mirror.

“You’re right,” Elizabeth said. “Let’s go.”

The reins slapped and the wagon began moving again. Eric spurred his horse, as did Elizabeth. I cast a glance at Hicks and saw him staring back toward the embattled caravan.

“Hicks. You coming?”

The young soldier waited a few seconds before he responded. “Yeah. I’m with you.”

“Look, man. I don’t like it either.”

His face cleared and settled into its usual emotionless mask. “Don’t much matter what we like or don’t like, does it?”

I watched him catch up with the wagon and felt a hollow pit where my stomach should have been. The gunfire to the west increased in frequency and volume. I heard a few explosions, grenades or pipe bombs, maybe. I told myself if was not my fight, but the old voice of survival informed me it was not a matter of personal choice. There was no doubt we had been seen fleeing the caravan. Raiders do not like witnesses.

Whether we wanted it or not, the fight was coming to us.

“Riders coming,” Eric said.

I keyed my radio. “How many?”

“Twelve.”

“Disposition?”

“They don’t look happy.”

“Can the jokes, Eric.”

“Yeah, yeah. Skirmish line formation, five meter intervals. Probably not expecting much resistance. Bunch of auto-rifles and one long gun. Oh, and one of them has an RPG launcher and at least one rocket.”

“So he dies first, then the long gun.”

“Want me to take ‘em now?”

“No, not yet. I want them to stay bunched together. How long until contact?”

“They don’t seem to be in a hurry, but you know how fast that can change. Current pace, about fifteen mikes. At a gallop, maybe seven.”

I cursed under my breath.
Doesn’t leave us much time
.

“All right, get back up here. Time to make a plan.”

“On my way.”

I looked ahead to the low rise of squat buildings that had once been Wellsford, Kansas. Now it was an overgrown tangle of weeds, sapling trees, dilapidated houses, crumbling shacks, and rusted-out vehicles sinking slowly into the soft earth. Not a great place for a farmstead, but an excellent spot to set up an ambush.

“What’s the situation,” Hicks said, riding next to me.

“Riders on the way. Twelve of them.”

“That all?”

“For now.”

Elizabeth’s face was pale, her eyes bright and wide like a hunted thing. “How are we going to fight twelve of them?”

“
We
aren’t doing anything. You and Sabrina are going to hide while the rest of us set up an ambush.”

“But what if we-”

“It’s the only way,” Sabrina interrupted. “We’re on the plains. There’s nowhere to run. Our only chance is to turn and fight. And you don’t know how to fight, so somebody has to look after you. These guys are trained for this military shit. I’m not. I’m trained to run and hide. It’s how I’ve stayed alive for this long, so I’m the one who protects you. End of discussion.”

Elizabeth started to say something else, but then put her hands over her face and nearly fell from her saddle. I grabbed her and held her with one arm, feeling her body tremble against me.

“I don’t know what to do, Gabe. I’ve never been this scared before. Not even during the Outbreak.”

“What you do is listen to me. Okay? Sabrina survived out here for four years. She’s been in some tough spots and always come out alive. She knows how to keep you safe. Stay low, stay quiet, and do what she says. The rest of us will deal with those raiders. Everything will be fine, I promise.”

I knew it was a stupid thing to say as soon as it came out of my mouth; one can never promise the outcome of a fight. There are too many variables, too many things to account for, too much that can go wrong. But Elizabeth was only a few seconds away from falling apart, and I had to say something to calm her down. The job ahead of us was going to be hard enough as it was, the last thing we needed was someone going into hysterics.

“I’m so sorry, Gabe. I don’t know why I’m acting like this.”

“You’re afraid, Elizabeth. The last time someone came after you with a gun you almost died. It’s okay to be scared. Hell, I’m scared. But you have to control it, you hear? You can’t let it break you apart. You have to hold yourself together. I can’t focus on fighting raiders and babysitting you at the same time. Right now, I need you to be strong for me.”

I said it more harshly than I wanted to, but I had to get the message across. Elizabeth took a few deep breaths, wiped her face, and sat up straight.

“Okay. If you all can handle it, so can I.”

I kissed her on the cheek and thought I had never been more proud of her. “Remember your weapons. You’re not helpless. If it comes down to it, you fight like a crazy woman. Hear me?”

She nodded and gave me a weak smile. I kissed her again and turned to Sabrina. “Take her and go. Stay hidden.”

A short nod. “Got my radio. Let me know when it’s all clear.”

“Of course.”

As they rode toward the thickest tangle of crud Sabrina could find, my daughter shot a look over her shoulder and I knew she understood the unspoken context of the conversation. We had only talked of winning, of what to do while Eric, Hicks and I dispatched the enemy. What we had not discussed was what to do if we failed, and died, and Sabrina and Elizabeth were on their own.

Before leaving Hollow Rock, Sabrina and I had a discussion about what to do if something happened to me and she faced capture by raiders. True to her pragmatic nature, her response to the topic had been fatalistic.

“I won’t let myself be taken,” she had said. “There are fates worse than dying. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

“And if someone is with you, facing the same thing?” I asked.

A shrug. “I’ll put them down too.”

“Even me?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Dad, but especially you.”

I took no offense. I knew what she meant. Better to let a loved one die quickly and mercifully by one’s own hand than to leave them to rape, torture, despair, and a hopeless, agonizing death.

I watched Elizabeth and my daughter disappear into the long brown grass and green saplings bordering the cracked and split highway and felt an unlikely sense of peace. No matter what happened in the next few minutes, Sabrina would keep her pledge. Elizabeth may not understand it, may be enraged and betrayed in her last moments if it came down to it, but it beat the alternative. If I ever got another chance and pressed her on the subject, I was willing to bet she would agree.

*****

The grass did a good job of hiding the claymores, but I was worried about the tripwires. “It’s fast work, but it’ll have to do.”

Hicks looked at me and smirked. “I’ve seen worse.”

“Doesn’t matter anyway. We’re out of time. Let’s get into position.”

Eric and Caleb stayed low as they ran behind abandoned cars on both sides of the highway. I ran a hundred yards southward and climbed the stairs of a moldy, stinking house with several bleached skeletons lying amidst a wide black stain on yellow-brown carpeting that may have once been white. The stairs led to a bedroom with a window facing the highway. I bashed out the window with the stock of my M-40, pulled a nightstand in front of it, and piled dusty, rotting blankets from a closet until I had the right height for a rifle rest. Then I retrieved a chair from the next room, settled into it, and peered through the scope.

The raiders had given us more time than I would have hoped for. They had tracked us slowly, several of them scanning the periphery of the road to make sure we had not split up. Finding no such sign, they had remained in formation and were now coming fully into view. True to Eric’s assessment, they were armed with a motley collection of Kalashnikovs, M-4s, and civilian AR-15-pattern rifles. One man had a long hunting rifle and another carried an RPG launcher, rocket affixed, across his lap. Their demeanor was confident, determined, the swagger of men who believe they are in charge. If the fight with Spike’s caravan had been tough on them they gave no sign. I saw no injuries, no pained faces, no slumped shoulders or hands clutching bandages to bloody wounds. What I saw were grins, predatory eyes, the perverse anticipation of human animals on the hunt for others of their kind. None of this boded well for Spike and his people, or the fortune in cargo I had abandoned to their care.

Damn you and your arrogance, Spike. You should have listened.

I pushed the doomed caravan out of my head and thought about the wagon a hundred and fifty yards up the road. I thought of the explosives I had brought from Hollow Rock, hidden in our food supplies, wrapped in bundles surrounded by grain, beans, and dried peas. I thought about one of the wagon’s wheels, how it had been deliberately removed, the oxen loosed from their yokes and contentedly chewing dry grass along the edges of the highway. I thought of the bundles of cargo still in the back of the wagon, easy pickings. I thought how all this might look to a raider:
They got spooked, cut their losses, took off on horseback. Probably scattered. Doesn’t matter. We got the numbers on our side. We’ll track them down.

It would have been a logical assumption regarding most people. But as I had once told my daughter, I am not most people. Nor, for that matter, are Caleb and Eric.

I kept my breathing under control and positioned the reticle where I needed it. The riders were headed toward the trip wires. I had positioned the explosives to blast a semicircle straight back the way we had come. If the raiders hit the wires, that part of the job was done. If they did not, it was my responsibility to remote-detonate the claymores as soon as the wires were recognized.

And now, even though every instinct was howling for me to start carving some proverbial notches, I forced myself to wait. This attack needed to be perfect. We could afford no survivors. For this reason, Red waited around the back of the house tethered to a pine tree. If anyone rode off I would jump on my horse and give pursuit. That said, I sincerely did not want to jump on my horse and give pursuit. I wanted to do this quickly and efficiently and get back on the road to a more defensible position and use my satellite phone to call for assistance.

But that was later. Right now, I needed to focus on the threat at hand.

My earpiece crackled as I hit the transmit key. “Stand by. They’re moving into position. Wait for the signal.”

Two quick static chirps from each of my companions came by way of acknowledgment. The raiders drew to within fifty yards of the tripwires. A quick tug on the bolt of my rifle showed me there was a round loaded and seated. A twist of my hand confirmed the suppressor was on tightly. I listened to my heartbeat and slowed my breathing. The pulsing in my ears slowed with it. I leaned over the rifle, pulled it into firing position, and felt the old sense of calm descend.

Back in my Marine Corps days, I had once told my old friend Rocco that there were only two times in life I felt truly alive. When he asked what they were, I said, “When I’m in bed with a hot girl, and when I’m pulling the trigger.”

At the time, he thought I was joking. I was not.

The two thrills, however, come from very different places within me and produce completely dissimilar effects. The rush I get from pulling the trigger is not sexual. It has no carnal implications. Rather, I feel as if I’m in an altered state of awareness, of calmness, like I’m reaching across some great abyss within myself and touching something at the center of who I am. It is quiet there. It is tranquil. And in this place, I feel nothing. I am a void.

And now, with the stench of moldering fabric in my nose and the rough texture of the trigger under my finger, the echoes of the void were heartbeats, its walls the parallax of the scope in front of my right eye. I sighted in on the man with the RPG. He was not tall, not particularly savage looking. He had long brown hair tied back with a piece of shoelace. His beard was reddish-brown with streaks of gray. I guessed his age at thirty-five to forty. Regardless of the day’s outcome, he would not see another sunrise. I wondered if he had known that this morning would be the last he would ever see, what would he have done differently? Not that it mattered. It was almost time.

My right hand rested lightly around the grip of my rifle while my left hand cupped the remote detonator, thumb poised over the switch. The raiders continued riding toward the wagon. The tripwire was now less than thirty feet in front of them.

And then a voice rose from the highway.

I could not make out what it said, but the effect was clear—the raiders halted. A man near the middle of the formation held up a hand, eyes fixed on the road ahead. His body language told me he was suspicious, the careful type, and had caught wind of something he did not like.

I heard static over the radio. “Gabe,” Hicks said. “I got eyes on the leader.”

“Copy. Maintaining visual on the RPG. Eric, you still on the long gun?”

“Got him. Just give the signal.”

“Earplugs in?”

A round of affirmatives. I pulled out the small plastic radio earpiece and shoved a plug into my right ear, then keyed the radio.

“Stand by.”

I watched the leader lower his hand. His eyes narrowed and swept the highway from left to right, pausing to examine the tangles of grass at the edges. For a moment, his gaze lingered on exactly the spot where I had placed a claymore and I felt my stomach clench. Then he turned his head and began speaking to the man beside him. The men around him were all watching him now, hands easing reins to one side or the other. They were going to split up.

I pressed the detonator switch.

The explosion was incredible. Two claymores went off simultaneously, hurling hundreds of little metal balls into the line of raiders at incredible speed. The eight men in the center virtually disintegrated in front of my eyes, limbs and heads and fractions of torso spinning madly through the air. Their horses fared no better and collapsed into barely recognizable lumps of shredded meat.

The four men on the periphery, however, were mostly unscathed. The breath had been knocked out of them and their ears were most certainly ringing, but they were alive. The skirmish line had been wide, and at the distance I had triggered the explosives, I knew would not get all of them. Worse, the RPG and the long gun were among the survivors. Two muted cracks rang out from Eric’s side of the road and I watched twin blossoms of red mist explode from the long gunner’s back. He slid from the saddle and was still.