The Dragons of Men (The Sons of Liberty Book 2) (31 page)

“She’s dead!” Rick bellowed as a deluge of tears burst forth. “Oh God, she’s dead!”

He was vaguely aware of Sarah screaming behind him as Eric tugged at him again. He tried to fight the man off, cursing as Eric pulled Rick free of the wreckage. As soon as he pulled Rick free, he dove back into the upside down truck and began freeing Judi. He pulled her out and gently set her on the ground, checking for a pulse. Eric brushed Judi’s hair back and grimaced as he revealed a massive gash on the side of her head.

Rick’s wife, the love of his life, was gone.

Rick sunk to the ground next to her and sobbed. He was distantly aware of the new thundering explosions behind them—a surreal moment of sorrow and fury. He sat there and wept as he held his dead wife in his arms. She had a slight smile to her eyes, almost as though the beginning of what came after life had been enough to make her beam. Rick wiped away his tears, taking one more look at her eyes before closing them.

“Rick, I’m sorry, but we’ve got to go,” Eric said. Jets screamed overhead from the west. Rick glanced up and watched them pass, attacking an approaching cloud of massive house-sized drones. More explosions boomed from the mouth of the bridge, some five hundred feet away. He looked back and watched as dozens of massive drones exploded, the occasional anti-air missile passing overhead. Even as the drones began to fall to the ground, he could see the large tanks behind them nearing the bridge. Rick glanced back down at his wife—his beautiful, broken, lifeless wife—and forgot about the war that had consumed everything he loved.

“Rick, we’ve got to go now!” Eric shouted.

“I’m not going,” Rick replied calmly.

“This is no time—”

“Go.” Rick gently set Judi down and rose. He winced as a spout of pain shot out from his ribs; he had certainly broken at least one, but he didn’t care.

For him, it was all about to be over.

Rick approached Eric, placed his hand on the man’s shoulder, and looked him in the eye. “You were right. I once took an oath to defend this country. An oath to live by…and an oath to die by. If they cross this bridge, then we’re all dead.” Rick reached out and grabbed a backpack from Eric’s hand—hefting the bag that contained a few pistols, an automatic shotgun with low recoil, and a long machete. “You take care of them, you hear? I don’t care what battle you get caught up in. They’re your fight now.” He hesitated before grabbing one of the grenades off of Eric’s vest. He smiled and turned to Sarah. “He’s a good man, Sarah. You take care of him, too.”

“Rick, no,” Sarah muttered as Rick fought back the tears. Another series of booms sounded off from the mouth of the bridge and Eric grabbed Sarah by the arm, shouting for her to run. “Rick, don’t. Eric, let me go!” She tried to shake Eric’s grip, but he picked her up by the waist and began to run. “Rick, please! No! You can’t….”

Rick turned away, rounding the back of the fuel container—his teary eyes darting to the force at the mouth of the bridge. The massive drones that had been blocking the mouth of the bridge were all destroyed now and a horde of people had started to cross. The fuel truck next to him sat jackknifed, blocking off the entirety of the remaining northbound lanes. Rick turned back, Sarah’s screams for him disappearing, though he couldn’t tell if she had stopped screaming or if they had been buried beneath the rumble of his approaching death.

He knelt down next to Judi, grabbing her under the arms and sliding her against the rear wheels of the semi’s fuel container. He set the bag down next to her and brushed her hair away from her face.

“Baby,” Rick whispered with a smile, “I’ll be right there.”

He then rose, slowly made his way to the fuel nozzle on the semi-truck’s container, and began to twist it off.

“I, Rick Reinhart, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic….”

He could hear the bellowing mass of crazed people, no more than six hundred feet away. When the cap was nearly off, a steady stream of fuel began to splash down onto the concrete, covering his shoes and pooling the roadway.

“I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion….”

He walked over to the bag and drew the pistols quickly, loading each and placing them on top of the back wheel well next to the stream of gasoline. He then buckled the machete to his waist and lifted the shotgun before him. He loaded the automatic scattergun with a twenty-five round magazine and glanced back to where the last of his family ran. They were now tiny dots at the end of the bridge.

“I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office for which I have served.”

As the throng of hostile people neared the truck from the other side, he pulled the pin to the grenade—careful to keep the lever compressed—and held it with his left hand.

When he fell, so would it.

Rick took a deep breath as the first man rounded the truck, a man armed with nothing but fear and a terrified howl. As the man lunged forward, Rick raised his weapon—aiming from the hip as he muttered his final words.

“So help me God.”

And as Richard Reinhart, a man of the old breed, made his final stand against the world that had changed without him, he prayed for his country. He prayed for the last of his family as they fled north to avoid the blast. He prayed his sacrifice might help them live to find a better world. He knew America was no longer found inside the borders defined by her leaders.

His country was found in the hearts of those who ran toward freedom.

Rick had hoped to buy them one minute, but by the time he fell to the ground—splashing in a puddle of fuel and death as the bloodied machete fell from his right hand and the live grenade from his left—he had bought them two.

“We’ve got a live sat feed up in five, four, three, two…”

The large screen at the front of the control came to life as a massive explosion enveloped the entire bridge.

“Yes!” Lukas shouted. Fire covered the long bridge from end to end. A few Patriarch tanks emerged from the fire, driving off the side of the bridge aflame as they fell to the river below.

“How many fighters do we have left?” Damian asked.

“Only six, but they didn’t take it out,” Battle Marshal Madison replied. “They’re still engaged by the Patriarchs east of the city.”

“Was it the Yellow Jackets?”

“No, sir,” Battle Marshal Scott replied. “We had some Yellow Jackets break through their lines and cut them off at the south side of the bridge, but their tanks eventually chewed through that detachment. Besides, the Yellow Jackets don’t pack a big enough punch. Whatever took that bridge down wasn’t from us.”

“Then it doesn’t matter,” Lukas said, smiling as the entire bridge began to collapse into the river below.

“We still have a few hundred individuals who crossed the bridge fleeing north,” Damian said.

“Are they a threat?” Lukas asked.

“They shouldn’t be,” Damian said. “They’re most likely frightened refugees who managed to escape. Still, we could possibly reroute a few Yellow Jackets to pursue them.”

“How many Yellow Jackets do we have left?”

“Two hundred and fifty-seven,” Les Scott replied. “We lost hundreds engaging the anti-air, but it looks like we managed to disable most of their air defenses.”

“Good,” Lukas said. “Move the bombers in and hit the Patriarchs hard as soon as it’s safe. When they are finished, move the remaining Yellow Jackets in and mop up any Patriarchs you find.”

“And what of the civilians fleeing north of the bridge?” Damian said. “Do we pursue them?”

“Leave them be,” Lukas replied after a pause. “Let them spread the tales of what happened today. Let this land know the Imperium cannot be stopped.”

Victor Castle cursed as he ran through the dense copse of trees a few hundred feet west of the interstate. Smoke drifted through the air, stinging his eyes and causing him to cough. He tried to duck beneath a low branch that was barren of leaves, but it caught him on the side of his face and slashed a trio of shallow incisions across his cheek. Victor cursed again, his skin prickling with pain.

His mind, with fear.

Victor’s face and the palm of his hand were both red and blistering with second-degree burns, even though he had been at least three hundred feet back from the edge of the fireball. The minutes following the explosion were now lost in a blurry sea of fire and chaos, but he did remember the sinking feeling of knowing their defeat had come.

As poorly-trained Recruits began to flee for safety or fight the Yellow Jackets that moved over them, some fell without being touched—writhing around in agony. Others, however, had made a break for it and didn’t fall. Victor realized those who had lost their small, personal IRDs had been the ones who managed to flee. He had looked for his tiny watchdog, unable to locate it anywhere in the air above, before dismounting his tank and making a run for it. Now it was either risk the painful cuts of the dense trees on his burnt skin, die when the Yellow Jackets overwhelmed them, or be thrown back into Sigmund’s hell. Victor now mumbled to himself as he ran, vowing that he would do everything he could to avoid the fires.

He glanced back through the sparse trees as the hum of high-level bombers droned overhead. He broke free of the woods—finding himself on a back alleyway next to a row of trailer homes and a junkyard. Victor ran for the nearest cover, diving behind a broken-down car; the air seemed to pop as a piercing thunder roared from behind him. He covered his ears and screamed, unable to hear his own hollering over the roar behind him. The rumbling continued for what felt like eternity, though barely ten seconds had passed by the time the final bomb had dropped. When it ceased, he opened his eyes, slowly rose, and turned to survey the damage.

The woods he had fled through and the tanks that had been Sigmund’s army were burning five hundred yards away. Only one in ten of the trees remained upright, their naked skeletons alight with dancing fire. Beyond the towering torches, Victor could see the raging blaze and black smoke that consumed the interstate. He could hear the thumping of hundreds of carbon fiber blades and the whine of mini-guns as the Yellow Jackets began to clean up the mess behind the shroud of smoke. Victor exhaled and slowly lowered himself back behind his cover, thankful to be alive and free of Sigmund’s grasp as he began to weep.

A subtle buzz behind him caused him to slowly open his eyes. He looked around to his sides, but his ears couldn’t pinpoint where the noise was coming from. They were still reeling from the concussion a minute earlier. Readying himself to run, he rose and turned, only to find himself face to face with one of Sigmund’s IRDs.

“Victor,” a dangerous and familiar voice called out from the drone’s speaker. “Where are you going, my old friend? I am not done with you yet.”

Victor shouted as he raised the pistol and fired at the drone. It quickly dodged to the left and he fired again three more times before striking it, causing it to spin to the ground. He started to run, but the world shifted and he fell into an ocean of acid and fire. Hours seemed to pass before he awoke, spewing vomit as he lay on his back. Another drone hovered above his head, its beady red eyes staring down on him.

“Do that again, and I might not wake you next time,” Sigmund’s voice said calmly over a speaker. “That was only thirty seconds, after all. Imagine an entire day!”

Victor began to cry, pressing his palms against his tender face as he wept. He knew what was coming. He knew his fate. Sigmund had promised him only one reward for failure. Victor howled as he awaited hell.

But instead of agony, Victor suddenly felt…perfect.

His skin ceased to itch and burn, and his weariness drifted away. His body felt as though painkillers and steroids now flowed through his veins. He opened his eyes, stunned as he glanced down at his tingling arms.

“What…what’s happening?” Victor said as waves of blissful ecstasy washed over him. He had never felt so alive.

“Victor, my friend,” Sigmund’s voice called out. “What swims in your blood has the power to bring restoration, as it has the power to bring pain. Now we might have lost this one battle, but that doesn’t mean I am through with you yet.”

“What would you have me do?”

“Flee,” Sigmund’s voice said. “Do whatever it takes to get what’s left of my men back to Mobile, Alabama. Gather every survivor you find as you run, for I am not finished with the lot of you yet.”

“Okay,” Victor said, glancing back over the vehicle at the burning trees once more as he laughed jubilantly with the paradise in his veins. “Thank you, Sigmund. Thank you.”

“And Victor,” Sigmund began, the drone moving closer. “It is my sincerest hope that you return to me as soon as possible. Therefore I want you to know that for every hour you are awake before you return to me, I will cease nurturing you back to health and cast you back into the lake of fire for thirty seconds. Now the clock is ticking, my old friend. I suggest you run.”

Victor hesitated just a few seconds—a brief pause as his eyes grew wide with horror, despite the synthetic endorphins that now flooded him at nearly unfathomable levels—before rising and running like a man who fled the deepest layers of hell.