The Day After Never - Blood Honor (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller) (7 page)

He dragged Clem off the shoulder and into the brush, more than aware that it would be dark soon, and considered his next step. The soil was soft – it wouldn’t take him long to dig a shallow grave and bury the dead man, sparing him the indignity of being picked apart by the carrion birds. Besides which, Tango was breathing hard and needed a chance to get his wind, so Lucas pulled his collapsible camp shovel from a saddlebag and began digging, his mind working furiously.

He could keep riding north for another three to four hours, the final stretch in the dark, get the medicine for the woman, and leave Tango in town while he rode back to the trading post – again, at night. Alternatively, he could ride back to the outpost and give Duke the bad news, foregoing the meds, which might well be the woman’s death sentence. Neither choice was a good one.

He stood back, sweat streaming down his face, and examined the trench he’d created.

“It’ll have to do,” he muttered, and after setting the shovel down, dragged Clem’s body to the depression and rolled it in. Lucas refilled the grave with dirt and stepped away, looking around. He spied a decent-sized rock and carried it to the mound, lay it at the head of the grave, and stood with hat in hand as he said a prayer.

If he was hoping for divine guidance on which path to choose, it came in the form of automatic rifle fire from the south, as distant as the shots that had brought down Clem.

Lucas nodded. Of course. That was why they’d tortured Clem – to learn what he knew about Duke’s defenses.

The riders were attacking the trading post.

The deep staccato bark of Duke’s big .50 caliber machine gun made Lucas’s decision for him. The battle was joined.

And Lucas wasn’t one to run from a fight.

He leapt onto Tango’s back and pointed the horse south, his decision made. He would help his friends and worry about the problem of the woman later. If the trading post were breached, she’d be worse than dead anyway, so the imperative was to stop that from happening.

Lucas was under no illusion that doing so would be easy or without risk.

But there was no alternative.

He just hoped he could make it in time.

Chapter 7

The gloaming darkened the sky as Lucas rounded the final bend on the trail to the trading post. He’d avoided the highway, retracing his route down the secondary road and the track along the river as gunfire echoed from Duke’s compound. The shooting was still going on, but with less intensity, the attackers probably conserving their ammunition until they could make a push after dark. They’d apparently underestimated the extent of the trading post’s defenses, and he was sure that Duke and his men were making them pay dearly for the mistake.

Lucas had taken his return easy and allowed Tango to set a comfortable pace, resisting the impulse to spur him to a gallop, unsure how much more travel the brave horse would have to be capable of before the night was over. Tango was ordinarily able to cover a solid forty or more miles a day after a night’s rest, but he hadn’t had that luxury, and Lucas was aware that he’d keep pushing to please his master until he dropped from exhaustion.

The gunfire was deafening now that Lucas was near. He tied Tango to a tree away from the fight and moved stealthily toward the trading post. By the time he’d covered the final quarter mile on foot and was close enough to see muzzle flashes, it was completely dark, which would work in his favor, given his night vision scope.

The attackers, unaware of his arrival, would believe the threat to be entirely in front of them. Any shooting from their flank or behind would be assumed to be coming from one of their number. If Lucas was lucky, he might be able to take most of them out before they realized what was happening, depending on how they were positioned.

He had four spare magazines in his flak vest and one in each back pocket of his jeans, giving him 210 rounds, including the magazine in his rifle. Assuming he was careful with his fire, it would be more than enough, although it was always better to expect the worst.

Lucas surveyed the field around the trading post and spotted three shooters to his right, maybe a hundred yards away. Beyond them, he saw two more gunmen firing intermittently. He raised the M4 to peer through the NV scope and saw a shooter to his left and what might have been two more – he couldn’t be sure, given the tall grass.

Nothing much seemed to be happening – nobody was moving, the assault force having learned the hard way that they had walked into a killing field. Lucas hoped that Duke’s men had neutralized a fair number of the attackers.

He crept toward the first shooter on his left and, when he was sixty yards away, put a three-round burst into the man’s torso. Lucas waited for incoming fire, but none answered his salvo, vindicating his strategy – at least for now.

Lucas repeated his maneuver, continuing left, and realized that what he’d thought was another shooter were in fact two, side by side. That would make things tougher for him, but not impossible. He switched the M4’s fire selector switch to three-round burst mode and sidled closer, biding his time as occasional salvos rattled from the attackers’ guns, answered in kind from the trading post.

Lucas dog-crawled another ten yards and took aim at the pair in front of him. He was about to fire when four high-wattage spotlights on the trading post roof blinked to life, illuminating the field with a blinding glare. He ducked down in the grass as bullets whizzed around him from the compound, and realized belatedly that Duke and his men thought he was one of the attackers.

The gunmen to his right opened fire at the lamps, and one by one they blinked out, but not before he heard an anguished scream from his left. One of the pair had been hit – how badly remained to be seen. Lucas closed his eyes in an effort to regain his night vision as quickly as possible and, when he could make out the silhouette of the trading post again, took careful aim through the PVS-14 night vision scope.

One of the group on his right called out, and a man clambered to his feet. Lucas fired a burst and then another, and the man went down hard. His companion returned fire at Lucas, and he sprayed the area with the remainder of his magazine, the downed man impossible to make out in the grass. Better to be sure he was out of the fight than discover from a bullet to the back that he had only been wounded.

Lucas ejected the spent magazine and slapped another into place, and then the soil around him fountained as rounds pounded into the earth. Lucas rolled, his pulse thudding in his ears, trying to ascertain whether the latest salvo was from the trading post or the attackers. Another burst shredded the dirt to his right and he had his answer – the attackers were onto him.

A long rattle issued from the sandbags by the gate. The three men who had shot at Lucas spread out as bullets tore the grass near them to shreds. One grunted as several rounds found him, and then Lucas joined in with his M4, creating a lethal crossfire with his rifle, its fresh magazine empty in a matter of seconds.

He slapped home another magazine and caught motion from the corner of his eye. The pair that had been two hundred yards away to his right were on the move, rushing the trading post, confused by the shooting that was coming from Lucas on their left. He loosed burst after burst, but his shots went wide, the men moving too erratically. He watched as they neared the compound wall and gasped when one hurled a grenade over it before taking cover against the outside of the wall.

The blast from the grenade’s detonation flared orange from the trading post grounds, and Lucas forced his breathing slower and zeroed in on the visible shooter. Lucas would have to drop him – from inside the compound he was out of Duke’s line of sight, having made it close enough that the wall shielded him from exposure. If the man had more grenades, he could continue to lob them from his position at the base of the wall, inflicting maximum damage without firing another shot.

Lucas exhaled as he squeezed the trigger. His first rounds were low, and he raised his aim slightly and stitched the man to the wall with his second and third bursts.

Which left one more shooter.

Who’d bugged out and was nowhere to be seen.

Lucas waited for the man to show himself. A minute went by with no more shooting. Another passed, and he swore under his breath. He couldn’t very well lie in the grass until morning, but if he called out to the trading post, he would give himself away.

Discretion being the better part of survival, he waited. And waited.

After ten minutes, he dared a glance at the glowing hands of his watch and rolled onto his back. He cupped his hands, tilted his head, and called out at the top of his lungs.

“Duke! It’s Lucas. Don’t shoot.”

A voice answered – Duke’s.

“See any hostiles?”

“Negative, but assume they’re out here.”

A long pause. “What do you want me to do?”

“Push that big wooden cart of yours out for cover. I’d be much obliged.”

“You serious?”

“I took down four of them for you. Least you can do.”

Several minutes later the gate opened, and a cart laden with crates and sacks creaked out of the compound, pulled by a mule that looked as unenthusiastic as any beast Lucas had seen. Behind it followed Aaron with an AK, a spare magazine combat taped to the one in the weapon for a quick change. Lucas crawled toward the cart as it rolled forward and, when the mule was thirty yards away, drove himself to his feet and sprinted toward the cart as Aaron swept the field with his muzzle. When Lucas reached him, he pressed against the rear of the cart and glanced around.

“There was one left that I could see. Looks like he took off,” Lucas said in a loud whisper, more than aware they were all half-deaf from the gunfire.

“We can get some more lights up and confirm that,” Aaron said.

Lucas eyed him. “Any casualties?”

“Travis bought it. Doug’s wounded, but he’ll live.”

Lucas nodded. “Let’s get behind the walls and turn some lamps on.”

“Works for me.”

The mule required little coaxing to return to the outpost, and they kept the cart between them and the field until they were through the gates, just in case their lone shooter was still out there. Duke heaved the iron barrier shut and bolted it, and then returned to his position behind the sandbags.

“Clem?” Duke asked.

Lucas shook his head.

Duke frowned. “Damn. He was a good man.”

“Aaron said Doug’s wounded?”

“Yeah. Leg. I rigged a tourniquet. It’ll hold till we mop up.”

Aaron motioned to the smoking crater created by the grenade. “I’ll go get a couple more bulbs for the field lights.”

Duke nodded. “We’ll hold the fort.”

When Aaron was gone, Lucas joined Duke behind the bags and looked out over the darkened field. “Any idea who they are?”

“No. They came straight at us. We mowed down a half dozen of them before they fell back and dug in. Then they waited for nightfall. Which is what they should have done all along.”

“Strange, isn’t it?”

“I’ve known stranger.”

Five minutes later the lights went on again, illuminating the field to the three-hundred-yard markers. Nothing stirred. Aaron rejoined them and wiped his face with a trembling hand. Duke grunted and stood. “You boys keep watch. I’ve got to patch Doug up.”

He walked to the main building and disappeared inside, leaving Aaron and Lucas alone. Lucas looked over to his right at the grenade tosser’s corpse sprawled by the wall, and his jaw clenched. They must have been desperate, or high, to try to take on Duke’s group.

“How’s the girl?” Lucas asked.

“Out of it. But you could light a smoke on her. She’s that hot.”

Lucas nodded. At least she was still alive.

Aaron eyed Lucas. “Clem?”

“Didn’t make it.”

Aaron nodded. “Figured as much. When your number’s up…”

“Yup. Rest in peace.”

Chapter 8

The interior of the trading post main building was bathed in the dim glow from two LED lamps. Doug lay on the table, biting a strip of leather as Duke finished his ministrations.

“This will hurt,” Duke said, and Doug looked away as Duke seared his leg wound with the soldering iron, the sound like a steak frying on a too-hot grill. Doug’s scream was muffled by the leather strap and faded to a moan as Duke set the instrument aside and carefully bandaged the damaged flesh.

Duke stepped away and regarded Doug. “Sorry about only using lidocaine, but I need you sharp in case there’s more fighting to do.”

Doug grunted. “Burn’s worse than the bite.”

“You can have some morphine come sunup. Till then, we’re all on duty. Can you walk?”

“Should be able to.”

“I’ll help you out to the sandbags.”

Nearby, Lucas stood over the woman, noting the sheen of sweat on her face. When Duke returned from helping Doug, the trader sat down on a hardwood chair nearby and took a swig from a plastic water bottle. Lucas turned to him.

“She’s not going to make it, is she?”

“The truth? No,” Duke growled. “Not without antibiotics. Danger is sepsis, and her fever tells me she’s going in the wrong direction.”

“I was afraid of that.”

Duke nodded. “What about you?”

“Looks like I can either chase horses or risk it all to get her to Loving before she dies.”

“You thinking about taking her?” Duke asked, his tone skeptical.

“Be faster than a round trip, don’t you think?”

“Yep. But traveling at night… And your horse has been through a lot.” Duke hesitated. “You don’t look so spring fresh yourself.”

“We’ll be fine.”

Duke fixed Lucas with a probing stare. “What is it about the woman that’s got you sticking your neck out, Lucas? This ain’t like you. No offense.”

Lucas’s voice was soft when he answered, “None taken.” But he offered no elaboration, and Duke didn’t ask again.

Duke gave the woman another injection of morphine and helped Lucas carry her outside to the travois. Lucas rigged the contrivance as Tango waited patiently, and then they set her onto the sling between the two poles. Lucas patted his empty magazines and held one up.