Surviving the Dead (Book 7): The Killing Line (19 page)

“Good man.”

I stood up. “Caleb?”

The young soldier grabbed his rifle and stood as well. “Let’s get it done.”

We tethered the horses in a small stand of trees a mile and a half away from the ambush site and proceeded the rest of the way in on foot. The tall grass concealed us as we traversed the last few hundred yards on our bellies.

When we reached the edge of the highway, I slowly raised my head and pulled up the hood of my ghillie suit. A slight rustle beside me told me Hicks was doing the same. I heard no sound above the wind and could see no movement in the town or on the road leading to it. We were on the east side of Haviland, looking westward, about two hundred feet from the first building lining the highway.

“Anything?” Hicks whispered.

“Not yet.”

I carefully removed a small pair of binoculars from my belt and cupped my hands around the lenses to hood them from the sun. Doing so reduced the possibility of creating a flash in the sunlight. I watched the town for the better part of an hour, remaining as still as possible. Hicks watched the other side of the highway through a little hunting monocular he’d bought from Eric a few months ago. He made no sound, not even a rustle of grass from the movement of his lungs as he breathed. I would have been very interested to know who had trained Hicks, because it sure as hell was not the Army. The average grunt cannot do the things Hicks can do. Not with the same degree of casual skill, anyway. I had asked him about it before, and he had stonewalled me. Whatever mysterious forces had made him who he was, he wasn’t talking. Not to me, at least. Which, of course, only made me all the more curious.

“I got nothing over here,” Hicks said. “You?”

“Nada. Let’s move in. See what we see.”

And we did. Forty-five minutes later we had swept the town and found it empty of everything except tracks.

“We should go back and get the horses,” I said. “Ride a circle around this place, mark each track we find. Maybe get an idea how many raiders there are.”

“Gonna take a while.”

“You got plans today?”

“Nope.”

After retrieving the horses, I rooted around a small lumber yard on the edge of town and found a crate of rusted nails in an outdoor shed the Army must have missed when they scavenged the place. Hicks and I used the nails to mark each unique track we found by stabbing a nail into it and keeping count as we went. We started at just after ten in the morning, and by the time we finished, the sun was a low orange ball sitting in a pool of crimson and purple on the horizon.

“What do you have?” I asked.

“I count a hundred and fifty-two I’m sure of. Maybe ten or fifteen I can’t tell for certain. You?”

“Hundred and forty-two confirmed. Thirty or forty might be different, might not be.” 

Hicks nodded silently. Some of the tracks were clearly from unique people, while others may have been repeated prints from the same tracks we’d already identified. Many of the tracks were partial, obscured by hoof prints and scuffs and such, making positive identification impossible.

“Lot of blood,” Hicks said. “Lot of bullet holes and shell casings. Lot of streaks where bodies were dragged off.”

I looked around and grunted. Hardly a window was left unshattered or a wall not riddled with bullet holes of various calibers. There was evidence of no less than two RPG blasts, and beneath the eaves of a house on the south side of town bordering the highway, I found the links left behind by the belt-fed ammo of an M-240 heavy machine gun and a slew of NATO 7.62x51 shell casings.

“Looks like they set up on both sides of the highway,” I said. “Let the caravan get all the way into the zone of fire before they opened up. Hit them with RPGs at the head and rear to prevent escape. M-240 lit ‘em up from the southwest while small arms fire strafed from two other directions.”

“Takes control to set up a crossfire like that and not hit your own people,” Hicks said. “Shows discipline.”

“And training.”

“Still risky for whoever did it. But done properly, highly effective.”

I looked at the scorch marks to the west. “There’s no bodies, no dropped weapons, no unwanted cargo. Even the wreckage of the destroyed wagons has been hauled away. The only indication anything went awry is the bullet casings, blast marks, and blood. And I’m willing to bet those were only left behind because we escaped and the people they sent to find us never came back.”

“Which tells us they’re a lot more concerned about getting caught than they are about finding us.”

“And they’re right to be,” I said. “Probably think we’re running scared and at least a week’s ride away from Wichita. With all these service roads out here, they’d need to send hundreds of people to find us. Easier just to haul away the bodies, wagons, and cargo. If anyone comes to investigate, assuming rain and wind and whatever else haven’t fucked things up too much, all the Army’s going to know is a caravan came through, there was a fight, and the caravan disappeared. They’re not going to waste their time marking tracks or counting bullet casings. They’ll file a report, tell patrols to be on the lookout for a raider force of something more than a hundred, and maybe in a couple of weeks they’ll get a cargo manifest out to the safe zones. Not that it’ll do any good. These assholes will be long gone.”

Hicks pulled a nail out of the ground and hurled it at a building. It hit the wall with a crack and fell to the ground. “Motherfuckers. This was a professional operation, Gabe. These guys knew what they were doing.”

“And there’s a lot of them,” I said. “Take away the hundred and thirty or so tracks that belong to Spike’s people, and we’re probably looking at a force of at least two hundred. Ever heard of a raider band that big?”

“Insurgents, yes, back during the Alliance’s heyday. But raiders? No. Too petty. Too contentious. Too likely to kill each other and break apart into smaller groups.”

“Which means whoever is leading this bunch must be one ruthless son of a bitch.”

“Yep.”

I pulled a clean cloth from a pouch on my vest, poured some water on it, and wiped my face and neck. The cool air on wet skin was refreshing. “Nothing more we can do here. It’s getting late. We should head back.”

“You go,” Hicks said. “I’ll camp here tonight, see if I can figure out which way they headed in the morning.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Want us to come back for you?”

“No. I’ll catch up. Be back before 1300 hours, rain or shine.”

“Okay. See you tomorrow.”

I climbed into the saddle and rode back to camp.

“Looks like it’s rain.”

Hicks wrinkled his forehead at me.

“You said you’d be back today by 1300, rain or shine.”

“Oh. Right.”

The young soldier dropped his rucksack and sat down in a wooden chair next to Sabrina. His Army-issue pancho was slick with water, his boots were muddy, and there were dark circles under his eyes. The skin of his face looked pale under a thin coating of week-old beard. The rest of us sat wrapped in blankets around a small fire in the barn. Outside, rain came down in sheets while the wind roared and moaned through the eaves above us and made the tin shingles on what was left of the farmhouse’s roof clatter like metal bones. It was just past noon.

“Don’t look like you slept much,” Elizabeth said.

Hicks made a slight movement that may have been a shake of his head. “Didn’t.”

“Wanna tell me what you’ve been up to?” I asked.

He looked up then, blue eyes sunken from exhaustion. “Afraid I lied to you.”

“I gathered as much.”

Another slight movement. Maybe a nod this time. I could not be sure.

“Picked up the trail pretty easy. Followed it about eight miles before I found them. Dark by then. Backed off a ways, picketed my horse, and went in on my belly.”

I had to bite down on an angry comment. Going after the raiders alone was a dumb move. He knew it, I knew it, and he knew I knew it. But that’s Hicks for you. He does what he wants to do, and there’s not much one can do to stop him. Reprimanding him after the fact would have been about as productive as asking a wave not to break itself against an ocean wall.

“Find out anything useful?”

“There’s at least two hundred of them. Probably more.”

“What about Spike’s people?”

“I counted thirteen prisoners. All women and girls. No men, no boys.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes and put a hand over her mouth. “Jesus.”

“I ain’t gonna lie,” Hicks went on. “It was bad.”

“What about the others?” I said. “Any sign?”

“Yeah. The bastards dug a mass grave, tossed ‘em in like cordwood. Gave their own dead a proper burial. Looked like eight or nine of them.”

“That’s it?” Eric asked. “All those people in the caravan, and they only got eight or nine?”

Hicks nodded. “That’s what it looked like.”

“Mary mother of God,” Eric whispered. “And we got twelve of them.”

“Only because we took ‘em by surprise,” Hicks replied, “And only because we had those claymores.”

“So Hicks has confirmed what we already suspected,” I said, trying to keep everyone focused on the right part of the problem. “We’re facing a professional band of raiders, skilled and coordinated enough to take out even large, well-protected caravans.”

Eric stood up and began pacing. “Which means they’d crush us like fucking bugs.”

“If they were worried about us, yeah,” Hicks said. “But I don’t think they are.”

Eric stopped. “What makes you say that?”

No one moved for a few seconds. Hicks picked up a stick and poked at the fire. A few of the larger sticks on the pile broke and fell into the coals, new flames curling to life around them.

“They’re headed south. Saw them leave this morning. Left behind about half of Spike’s wagons, but no cargo.”

“They didn’t cache anything?” I asked.

“Nope. Looked like they got no plans to come back any time soon.”

I mulled this news over. We were near one of the busiest supply routes between Colorado and the eastern settlements. If the raiders planned to come back this way, chances were strong they would have hidden a supply stash somewhere. It was what I would have done, anyway. If they didn’t, it meant either they were very poor planners, which I doubted, or they were finished raiding in southern Kansas for the foreseeable future. I said as much.

“So we’re in the clear,” Sabrina said. “All we have to do it make it to Colorado Springs.”

I nodded, but said nothing. I was thinking about those thirteen prisoners, all female. I was thinking about what would happen to them when the raiders got wherever they were going. I looked at Sabrina and Elizabeth and thought about what I would do if they were captured. Eric caught me staring and walked over to stand in front of me.

“I know what you’re thinking, Gabe. And it’s a bad idea.”

I did not reply.

“It sucks. It’s horrible. But we can’t save them.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

A gentle hand settled onto my arm. “Gabriel, listen to me.” Elizabeth said. “We need you. Now is not the time to go running off into a fight you can’t win.”

Sabrina looked at me, Elizabeth, and then Eric. “Somebody want to tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”

“He wants to go after them,” Eric said. “Like a fucking idiot.”

I stood up quickly and got an inch from Eric’s face. “What if it were Allison? What if it were your son? Would you call me an idiot for going after them?”

My voice echoed briefly in the barn. An impressive feat, considering the noise from the wind and rain. Eric’s steady gaze wavered, then fell away.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Gabe,” Elizabeth said. “What if they catch you?”

“They won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

I turned to her and gave her the full weight of my attention. “One way or another, I won’t let myself be captured.”

She caught the meaning, stood up, and gripped the front of my shirt. “No, goddammit. Do you hear me? I’m telling you no. Do not go. I’ve lost too many people. I’m not losing you too.”

I took her hands and gently eased them away. “Thirteen women and girls, Elizabeth. Thirteen. Do you know what raiders do to women? To children?”

Her eyes stayed fixed, but she said nothing.

“What if it were you? Or Sabrina? Would you want me to just abandon you?”

More silence. Her eyes grew watery and began to fill.

“I have to do this. I won’t be able to live with myself if I don’t. And then what kind of a husband will I be? What kind of father?”

“You can’t,” Elizabeth said, her voice a harsh whisper. “There are too many of them.”

“Too many for me, yeah.” I patted the pouch on my vest with the satellite phone. “But not too many for the Army.”

Hicks cleared his throat and stood up. “Which brings me to the point I was about to make before things got all dramatic.”

Everyone turned to look at him. Hicks’ attention settled on Eric.

“Afraid I’m gonna have to tender my resignation, bossman. My first loyalty is to the Army. I can’t let a threat like those raiders go unchecked, not after what they did. And God only knows what else they’ve done. Duty requires I follow them and report their movements at the earliest opportunity.”

“That,” Eric said flatly, “is the biggest crock of horse-shit I’ve ever heard.”

A smile. “Maybe. Doesn’t matter. I’m going after them. If Gabe is going too, we might as well work together.”

“And what the fuck are the rest of us supposed to do?” Sabrina said. “Just sit here and wait for you two to come back?”

I looked at Eric. After a few seconds, he threw his hands in the air and let out an exasperated curse.

“Fine. I’ll do it. But you owe me, Gabe.”

“I know.”

Sabrina picked up a stick and threw it at Eric. He swatted it away.

“Explain, fucker,” she said. “I don’t speak whatever silent, jackass language you two have.”

“He wants us to go west. He’ll catch up when he can.”

Sabrina turned toward me. “Uh-uh. Not gonna happen.”

“Sabrina…”

“No. Don’t. Just don’t. You might be my father, and I appreciate all you’ve done for me, but I do not answer to you. You don’t get to order me around and expect me to just meekly go along with whatever you say. I’m not going anywhere without you. You go after those raiders, I’m going with you.” 

I took a step forward and very slowly reached up to touch her face. “Sabrina, you are a pain in the ass. But you’re my daughter, and I love you, and I can’t put you in the kind of danger I’m walking into. You’re the only family I have left.”

“Hey!” Eric and Elizabeth said at the same time. I held up a hand.

“Sorry. You know what I mean.”

Their hackles went down.

“Did it ever occur to you,” Sabrina said, her voice growing husky, “that you’re the only family
I
have left?”

I let out a sigh and pulled her to my chest. She did not resist. “Yes, it did. But here’s the thing: I can’t leave those people to die. I have to do something because if I don’t, no one else will.”

Hicks pointed a finger at me and tilted his head. “Were you not here about ten seconds ago? You heard the part about me going after them, right?”

I frowned at him. “You know what I mean.”

Hicks rolled his eyes.

“And I can’t help those people,” I continued, turning back to Sabrina, “if I’m constantly worried about you. I need you out of the line of fire. I won’t be able to concentrate otherwise. You come along, I’m a whole lot more likely to get killed. I know it’s a hard thing to hear, but it’s the truth.”

Sabrina grabbed the back of my jacket and squeezed. “Well, at least you didn’t try to bullshit me.”

“So you’ll stay?”

“I thought you wanted me to go with Eric?”

Another sigh. “You know what I mean.”