The 1000 Souls (Book 1): Apocalypse Revolution (39 page)

"It looks like Webb got a hold of either Malmstrom or Minot and closed Vlad's escape route." Bertrand pointed at the helicopters, hardly able contain his excitement. "This is just great."

The superhero inside him rejoiced. Bertrand had felt that heightened inner strength for so long since Needleman's that he had come to accept it as his normal self, but in the last day it had grown much stronger. Was it a psychosomatic reaction to seeing Erics die? Was he stronger because he secretly believed Erics and so believed he must be stronger, or had his soul truly become denser?

Emile brought the bus to a halt and opened the door. Bertrand leapt from the bus.

People formed up quickly, easily over four-hundred souls all ready to risk everything. They were regular people. Some were teenagers. Some were middle-aged. They were all ready to die if they could just end this apocalypse and leave a normal world for others to repopulate.

Bertrand wanted to just run up the mountain trail that wound through the trees and rock, but Bobs hurried up and caught his arm.

"You have to say something to them, Bert. You have to inspire them."

"Time is everything!" But even as he said this, he knew she was right.

He turned to the crowd, standing uphill from them so that they spread out below him. He could see every face. It irritated him for a moment that Terry stood in front with a video camera. They didn't need another YouTube video. This was it! He ignored the camera and summoned his courage. Inspire them. Why were they there?

"The worst evil in the world," he shouted, "is in that mountain." He pointed up the hill behind him. "I intend to go and get him, kill him, and drag him into the sun or burn his stinking corpse. I do this for my friends, in memory of my parents, for my city and for the world. Will you come with me so that we can take back our world from the rippers?"

Their shouts of "yes" broke the stillness of the morning, and shouts of "The 1000 live on!" were added by the crowd on the right with the white armbands.

"Our blood may be spilled today, but not to feed the rippers!"

More cheers rose to the sky.

"Let's go now and do what must be done!"

He turned and charged up the hill.

Cheers and pounding feet told Bertrand that the army followed him, and he thanked the sunlight that he could be sure the rippers wouldn't be able to shoot at them as they ran up the trail, but he kept a sharp eye for the Daylight Brigade. Surely they'd fire down on them now?

But as the thin mountain air slowed his charge and robbed his lungs of oxygen, no shots forced them to take cover. They could have been the only people for hundreds of miles.

Men and women started to pass Bertrand now, for even though he had lost a lot of weight in the last four months, he was far from ready to start running races.

"Hold back! Hold back!" he shouted. He wanted to be first into the mountain, was exhilarated to be able to finally truly do something, to come to grips with the source of all the frustration and fear. This was why he had been born.

He needn't have worried. A square hole had been blasted into the rock as if a railroad company had begun work on a tunnel, the scoring showing that this was new work. Bobs led her people left, heading higher up the mountain for the natural cave. Bertrand ran into the mouth, but only a short way down the tunnel they found a cinderblock wall with a heavy steel door. Several people, including Joyce and Jeff, had already stopped in front of it, turning to Bertrand to see what he'd say.

"First challenge. I should've known they'd block the way."

Joyce waved her arms at her troops. "Everybody get to the sides of the tunnel. I have help coming along." She turned to Bertrand. "While you were making your speech, I was talking to my scouts. Emile's bringing up that Bobcat, and he says it'll go through here no problem, but we're not going to knock on the front door until everyone's ready."

She adjusted the microphone of her walkie and spoke, but an engine—growing louder by the second—buried her words. The small front-end loader rolled into the cave on its four big tires, Emile in the protective cage. He stopped and waited for Joyce's signal.

"Come on! Everybody get against the walls," Joyce called, running up and down the tunnel to push people back. "We charge in pairs right behind the loader. Take that side, Bert." She pointed to the right where Jeff already waited. "You and I will lead."

Bertrand pressed against the gray rock, feeling oddly like they were rehearsing for a wedding procession with Jeff as his best man. He checked his Glock for the tenth time that day and put it back in the holster. He pumped a round into the breach of the Winchester, trembling with anticipation. The enemy he had wanted to face at Needleman's so many months ago was here. The monster he'd wanted to attack against all odds at Goth Knights was here.

Joyce had one hand pressed to her walkie earpiece to hear, and Bertrand mimicked her so that he could listen in on his walkie.

"Barry here. I've got the cat lined up to smash our way in here. Let me know when to roll."

"Bobs here. My boys have put a whack of C4 on the door up here. Let us know when and we'll blow it."

Joyce looked across at Bertrand and he nodded.

"Go! Go! Go!" Joyce waved Emile forward even as she shouted into the walkie.

The Bobcat roared ahead, belching fumes and choking the tunnel with foul air. It slammed into the cinderblock wall and pushed it and the steel door well into the next chamber.

"St. Mike's!" Bertrand had no clue where he got the idea to shout this, but even as the words left his lips he knew a lot of the people behind him would identify with that call. Back at St. Mike's were their families, their children and their hopes.

He charged through the gap, stumbling on the cinder blocks but righting himself in time to avoid tripping, his shotgun pointing the way. He gasped on fumes from the Bobcat even though Emile had shut it down as soon as he had cleared the wall.

Florescent lights on the ceiling, two four-foot bulbs, illuminated the little white-and-black machine through a haze of dust thrown up by their violent entrance, so Bertrand shut off the flashlight he had duct taped on top of the Winchester. He hurried past the machine, staying close to the rock wall. Farther along, another florescent light, the cheap kind that could be found in any hardware store, lit the next section of tunnel, which curved off to the left. Dark shapes clung to the walls near the curve, and even as Bertrand took aim, muzzle flashes from the enemy lit the tunnel with dazzling staccatos of light, creating a strobe-like effect.

Gunfire in a tunnel is loud. Gun reports from their enemy blasted Bertrand's eardrums, let alone the blasts from his shotgun. He should be afraid. Battle and death is what people feared, but he had never been so calm in his life, burying the exhilaration to aim and shoot at first one and then another ripper.

It didn't bother him that they looked ordinary, that one man reminded him of his high school librarian, another of his bartender. Rock chips and ricochets flew around the tunnel, nearly as dangerous as the bullets that whizzed past. First one and then another of the rippers dropped, others fled back down the tunnel.

Bertrand was aware that there was shouting in his walkie earpiece, but even with the volume turned to maximum he couldn't hear much of what was being said. He caught the words "heavy resistance" once, and another time he was sure he heard Bobs shout, "Fucking pussies!" He was vaguely aware of Joyce shouting across the tunnel, waving people forward as the rippers ran, but he was now in his own deafened world, the slow thud of his heartbeat the only thing proving to him that he wasn't a robot.

And the rage. There was a rage building that had nothing to do with Vlad or the rippers. It was a rage fed by his sense of abandonment. How dare his parents die. How dare God or fate damn him to loneliness. He should have had years more with them, their guidance, their help. Part of him knew this was trivial compared to the dangers of the day, and maybe that's why it surfaced now.

"Come on!" He waved people forward as he ran down the tunnel, seeking to avenge his parents' random fatality. Jeff outran him and stopped to crouch against the wall and fire.

Bertrand waited until Jeff was reloading and ran past him, rounding the curve to find many more rippers, but even before he could shoot, many discharged their weapons and turned to run. He tripped, saving his life as dozens of poorly aimed bullets went over his head, although one tore at the shoulder of his leather jacket, but even this near miss didn't provoke fear. He was invincible. He would destroy them all. He would find Vlad and drive a stake through his rotten heart.

The tunnel wound down into the bowels of the mountain, rippers waiting at each curve, at each bend, Bertrand deafer with each gunshot. They fired wildly at him, but Bertrand's calm side remembered Emile's admonishment.

"You can't carry infinite frigging ammo. Make your shots count. Don't just spray and pray." That was Emile's often-repeated prayer.

One ripper, an older man when he had changed, stepped out in the middle of the tunnel, so bold that as Bertrand's shot took the man in the chest and dropped him, he had to wonder whether the man was committing suicide.

"Count your shots," Emile had said. Somehow, despite the chaos, Bertrand had been counting. Eight regular rounds. He could either draw the Glock and shoot with that or stop to reload, but he had no way to carry the shotgun. He should've thought of that, have made some kind of holster for it. With the barrel sawed short and the pistol grip, it would've been easy.

He stopped with his back to the rock, the gunfire from the rippers wild and over his head. Was it a trap? Were they just leading them in? He looked across at Joyce on the other side of the tunnel, who went down on one knee to drop the mag out of her Uzi and slam another home. He could see her shouting across the tunnel but heard her through the walkie rather than over the gunfire.

"Don't stop! Keep them running!"

He would make love to her again, and it wouldn't be rushed and urgent and in a basement. They would take their time and he would get to know her body.

Emile's heavy bulk rushed past, followed by Jeff's lanky figure.

Bertrand fed the shells into his Winchester. Perhaps a gun with a magazine would be better right now, but he had become comfortable with the weapon. In seconds he was in pursuit of the others, and when they stopped to reload Bertrand rushed past them.

A face peeking around a corner warned Bertrand of a new danger. An intersection. If they ran through this, the rippers could fire on them from one side or the other. This was why he had brought grenades. Bertrand stopped a couple of car-lengths short, firing at the pale face to make the ripper duck and hide.

He yanked the grenade from his jacket pocket and pulled the pin, looking across at Joyce who had also stopped and taken out a grenade, shouting into her walkie.

"Fire in the hole!" She nodded to him.

Bertrand tossed his grenade at an angle and down the intersection tunnel on Joyce's side, and she did the same on his side; the paths of the grenades crossed and they nearly collided. Bertrand made a flash note of that. Next intersection, they shouldn't throw at the same moment, because if the grenades had collided they would have dropped right in front of them. Instead they got lucky and the grenades bounced down the perpendicular tunnels as intended. He put his head down and covered his ears and closed his eyes.

The explosions were brilliant and deafening, even with his eyes closed ears covered. He rose up and charged the intersection, but the explosions had thrown up rock dust that rose to create an impenetrable cloud. He breathed in the acrid scent, and it reminded him of the dust from a bag of unmixed cement that he and his father had poured into a wheel barrow when doing renovations in the back yard, before they'd added the water. He had complained that day because his father had neglected to purchase particle masks, but now he took great lungfuls, letting the memory of that sunny afternoon help him with his calm. Who cared about lung disease now, with bullets flying?

He was lost in the haze, running down the tunnel when shouting on the walkie penetrated his brain and gunfire behind him warned of a new threat.

"Bert! Bert! Are you alive?"

It was a dim voice even with the walkie volume turned to full, but it was Joyce's, and that's why it grabbed his attention.

"Yeah! It's me! Where the hell are you guys?" He looked back down the tunnel and saw muzzle flashes through the haze, a veritable smoke screen. "Stop! Stop! You're shooting at me!" He flung himself to the floor.

"No we aren't. Rippers came down the side tunnels after you ran through. We're pinned if we don't shoot, but we can't see you."

He should have turned right at the intersection and made sure Joyce's grenade had cleared that tunnel. Who knows what crevices or barriers the rippers might have had to hide behind? Now he couldn't fire back without risk of hitting his friends and they couldn't fire forward. Amateur's mistake.

"Then shoot!" shouted Bertrand. "I'm going around the next curve!"

He stayed flat on the floor and crawled forward through dust and sharp gravel, rounding the curve as bullets ripped over his head. He rose up to shoot, but no targets presented themselves. The tunnel was empty. He turned back, leaning out to look around the curve. He heard Joyce both through the walkie and the air. "Fire in the hole!"

He dropped to one knee and covered his ears. The explosion flashed and tore through the tunnel. Shouts and screams and more gunfire warned Bertrand that some rippers were retreating his way, and he was alone. He turned and ran farther on to find a bulge in the rock wall of the tunnel that offered some shielding. He took up his position aiming back down the tunnel. Men Bertrand didn't recognize ran around the corner. They had no red or white or blue armbands, no bandanas. Bertrand fired and a red hole appeared in the chest of one ripper and it dropped to the floor. Many others pressed to the tunnel walls and muzzle flashes lit up the dust.