The Dragons of Men (The Sons of Liberty Book 2) (70 page)

In the unlikely miracle that her husband had survived the initial attack, he was now surrounded by a sea of unforgiving fiends.

“Do you…think anyone else survived?”

Eric tried to come up with an answer to comfort her, but his pause gave his real thoughts away. She nodded before raising the binoculars to her eyes again.

“Can we detonate the bridges without radio?” she asked loudly.

“Yes ma’am,” Second Lieutenant Bren said, stepping forward. “We hardwired them and have the detonators below. We can blow them at your command.”

“No,” Eric said, pointing to the bridge one thousand feet directly south of them. “Destroy every bridge but the one closest to here. We’ll leave that one bridge open for any additional survivors until the enemy overruns it.”

“With all due respect,” Trey began, “should we jeopardize the inner base for the hope that someone else might have survived?”

“We’re not jeopardizing anything,” Eric replied, shooting Trey a cautioning look. “They’ll see this as the last crossing and they’ll use it. We’ll funnel them through to this location and make our stand here. If they’re going to hit us hard, we’re at least going to make them hit us where we can counter best. Once they charge, we can blow the bridge. That will confuse them and give us some time to thin them out with the Guard’s mortars.”

“We’ve got a few snipers already in the dorms,” Nadia said, pointing to the two buildings a few hundred feet away that linked up with the inner wall. “Armstrong and Keller have two detachments taking up positions. They’ll have a clear view of the field if we bait them here.”

“Tell them not to target anything outside of two hundred yards,” Eric said, looking over at the two dorms. The buildings were old and made of brick. They’d likely crumble to the ground and bury those snipers should the enemy deploy greater firepower. Still, Eric couldn’t make decisions based on the lives of a few. He had to think about those behind him, huddling in the Heritage Building. Such was the price of victory.

Such was the burden of leadership.

“We need those snipers,” Eric said. “I want them to save as much ammo as possible for when the bastards are in range.”

“Agreed,” Nadia replied. “I’ll deploy reinforcements and make sure they—”

“Runners on the baseball fields!” one of the soldiers atop the wall shouted.

Eric shifted his gaze across the field and immediately located the group of a couple dozen men running across the battlefield. He raised his weapon and looked through the scope, focusing on the men and women who were bolting toward the creek. Their faces were contorted with determination while their clothes were bloodied and stained.

“Not ours,” Eric said, lowering his scope and turning to James. “Blow the other bridges. Nadia, get on the radio with the men in the dorms. I need the machine gunners on the first floor, snipers on the second, and rockets on the third. Everyone else on me, we make our stand here! I want any man that can lift a rifle on this wall and someone send word to the nurses. Make sure they’re ready to work like they’ve never worked before.”

“More movement!”

Eric raised his scope again, expecting to see a larger horde to pour into view. Instead, he quickly located a distant line of pickup trucks and the American flags that waved atop them, bursting into view behind the few Patriarch runners that were nearing the baseball fields.

“Is that him?” Eric asked.

“I can’t tell,” Nadia said. Eric fixated his scope on the vehicles and zoomed in as far as he could, doing his best to keep the moving vehicle in view. The lead truck had steam pouring from the engine and the windshield was missing. Two men sat in the front. Eric didn’t recognize the passenger—a dark-haired man firing a rifle through an open window—but he immediately recognized the driver.

Tyler!

“That’s Tyler!” Eric shouted as four motorcycles raced into view down Beebe Capps, half a mile from Tyler’s convoy and closing fast. Eric turned to the Guardsmen behind the wall and began to shout.

“Mortars on the baseball fields—fire for effect! We have friendlies south of the creek and closing fast!”

“Hang on!”

Tyler’s voice vaporized beneath the roar of their engine and the thunderous rhythms of war. The truck sped through a vacant industrial park and plowed through a row of thick bushes, catching air and causing everyone in the truck to rise with temporary weightlessness. Steam billowed from underneath the hood, the acrid stench of heat and oil filling the cab. Adam braced himself against the dash as the truck returned to the earth with a jolting arrival.

“Almost there!” Tyler shouted and Adam looked up, seeing the beginnings of the old campus for the first time. Brick buildings dotted the landscape, a four lane road and five hundred yards between them and the inner wall. A sparse group of runners were making their way toward the campus directly in front of Tyler’s convoy. Adam looked to the right, his eyes widening as a horde of men and a few battered semis slowly poured through a burning wall of steel containers and wreckage less than a mile away. From the midst of the throng burst four bikes, racing at full speed—covering the ground between them quickly.

“Bikes to the right!” Adam bellowed as he hefted his gun and fired. The popping of additional gunfire blared out from the trucks behind them as Tyler steered them around the group of forward runners. Adam tried his best to steady his aim, though the constant bouncing and swerving caused the majority of his fire to strike everything but his target. As the bikes closed in, the howl of artillery suddenly whined through the air, followed quickly by fountains of dirt and fire that ruptured on the baseball diamonds to Adam’s right. Some of the runners fell underneath the onslaught, but the bikes continued forward without hesitation—driving straight into the deadly barrage as though they longed for death’s embrace.

The lead rider took a direct hit, exploding in a concussive spray of fire and shrapnel. The two bikes next to it detonated as well, burning steel and lifeless drivers somersaulting through the air. The fourth and final rider finally fell before the convoy’s barrage of gunfire less than twenty yards away, his bike skipping across the ground with a cascade of debris. The explosives mounted on the bike finally ruptured, sending fiery wreckage slamming into the side of the truck.

Their right front tire burst with a loud bang as the burning bike struck them, causing Tyler’s truck to swerve violently and crash into an empty guard post a hundred feet away from a low bridge that crossed a wide creek. Adam raised his arms just as he hit the air bag, the wind in his lungs and the noise in his ears vanishing into sudden nothingness.

The two men who had been in the bed of Tyler’s truck were thrown over the cab, slamming into the guard post with a life-ending collision. Adam gasped for air as the truck that had been directly behind swerved to miss them, losing its balance before tumbling across the ground and crashing into the creek with a large splash. The remaining trucks sped past them, racing across the bridge toward the campus ahead. Despite Tyler’s instructions to continue onward no matter what, Adam couldn’t help but embrace a deep sensation of horror as they left them behind.

Adam glanced over at Tyler. He was slumped forward, moaning as he clutched his thigh. Adam looked down at Tyler’s leg—a bloody mess against the crumpled wreckage of the floorboard. Adam reached over just as a hand seized his collar, causing him to jerk around in surprise. Marc was already out of the truck, covering his face with a handkerchief against the smoke that poured from the engine compartment.

“Help me…get him…out,” Adam said, gasping for air as the ambiance of battle slowly returned. Marc pulled Adam out of the truck and tossed him to the ground before leaping back into the cab. The snap of gunfire cracked overhead and Adam winced. He looked behind them as the roar of the front runners they had sped around neared. Another crack of a sniper’s bullet and the front runner fell. Still, at least thirty of the men and women who had run ahead of the main attack continued their charge, their faces contorted with rage and dismay. Adam raised his rifle, took aim at the nearest combatant—a tall man with a shaved head no more than two hundred feet away—and pulled the trigger.

Nothing.

“Out of ammo!” Adam shouted. Tyler cried out in pain as Marc pulled him free of the cab. Adam glanced back at them, his eyes quickly finding Tyler’s bloody and awkwardly twisted leg. They’d have to carry him and be overrun, leave him behind like he had instructed, or battle the approaching wave of ferocious flesh. Despite the urge to run for the base and his family, leaving Tyler to perish was simply not an option.

Adam cursed and tossed the rifle to the ground. He pulled the bow from his back, drawing an arrow and knocking it as quickly as he could. He lowered to one knee, took aim, and loosed the arrow at the bald man. The arrow flew high, passing over them all. Adam cursed and drew another, breathing deeply and trying to settle his nerves.

He loosed another.

The shaft sunk into the bald man’s torso. The man plummeted to the ground and Adam drew again. He aimed and let a third arrow fly, striking a wide set man in the arm.

More sniper fire struck the runners, but it wasn’t enough. They were fifty feet away now, charging full sprint toward him. He drew one last arrow and began to knock it just as Marc leapt forward, wielding a long knife in one hand and a pistol in the other.

Marc fired quickly, dropping or slowing every intended target. The first of twenty remaining runners neared Marc and Adam knew his friend was about to die without aid. Adam jumped to his feet and charged forward, shouting as he drew one last arrow to his cheek and let it fly into the monsters who were now upon them.

Judah fired again, the man in the crosshairs of his automatic range-finding scope stumbling as a stream of blood sprayed from his neck. Eighteen initial snipers, including Judah, had taken up watch in the dorm beside the southern front of the inner wall, with machine gunners below and rocket-wielding Guardsmen on the floor above.

Judah zoomed in as the front runners neared the truck that had crashed into the guard post. He watched as the man who had pulled the driver free of the truck charged the runners, firing into them with a pistol. Another man who had been kneeling with a bow stood and ran forward, sending an arrow into the closest combatant’s thigh. Judah took a breath and aimed—the red dot of the scope gliding to where the bullet would hit—and fired as it lined up with another runner.

Judah’s intended target dropped as the two men next to the truck fought for their lives. The man with the bow dropped his weapon to the ground and drew a long machete, slashing one man across the arm clumsily before burying the machete into another. The other man was much more calculated—seeming to dance methodically between attackers, firing as he ducked, dipped, and slashed about.

Judah took deep breaths in between shots, focusing on the enemy by doing his best to push the rest of the world out of mind. Still, he did notice that his rifle seemed to be the only source of gunfire in the dorm. He knew his high-tech weapon held the best chance of hitting anything at that distance compared to the older hunting rifles the other snipers were using. Judah loosed one round after another—relying on the advanced scope almost completely as he dropped four more. The man with the pistol took the glancing blow of a baseball bat to the forearm, causing him to stumble to the right. Judah aimed quickly, sending a round that struck the attacker with the bat in the lower leg. As the attackers began to thin, smoke from the truck wafted in front of Judah’s view.

Judah cursed as the smoke lingered, concealing the fight completely. Footsteps and voices filled the hallway behind Judah, though he kept his eyes focused on the field, scanning for an opening. Men shouted as reinforcements filled the dorm.

“What do we got?” a young man shouted as he entered the room and took up position in the window next to Judah.

“A convoy of survivors,” Judah replied. “Three men—two fighting and one injured badly.”

“You’re not actually hitting anything this far out, are you?” the other man asked as he gazed through his own scope.

“Just focus on the fight,” Judah replied. “I’ll hit what I can. You wait till they’re closer.”

“Whatever you say, Longshot,” the man replied, stepping next to Judah to gaze out the window. “Name’s Jimmy Stone.”

“I don’t care who you are…there!”

The pistol-wielding soldier emerged, coughing as he ran toward the driver they had pulled from the truck. A moment later, a man emerged from the smoke, stumbling toward the truck in a daze. Judah zoomed in and fixed the red crosshairs on the man. As Judah began to pull the slack from the trigger, a sudden wave of doubt passed through him and he hesitated, truly seeing the man for the first time.

The man moving forward looked eerily similar to Judah’s dead father. His face, his walk, his build—everything reminded Judah of the parent he had lost. The man reached down for the bow and grabbed an arrow. Judah’s finger quivered on the trigger. Judah wasn’t sure if the man was an attacker or not and he knew he should fire, but he couldn’t bring himself to kill someone that looked so similar to his father.

Emotions Judah had thought dead and buried resurfaced in an instant. He had done his best to remain strong for months—trying to overcome all weaknesses as he became the warrior his family needed him to be. Judah had resisted the urge to dwell on his father’s passing until he fled from Alexandra moments ago. Now, the appearance of the man on the field almost seemed to mock Judah. Still, Judah knew if he put a bullet in the chest of a stranger that looked identical to his dad, it would haunt him forever.