Carry the Flame (9 page)

The commander was ordering everyone off the gasoline tanker.

Play along. Do like he says. Make him keep his goddamn eyes on
you.

A couple feet more and he'd be ready to take him, but this was where it could get sketchy. He had to silently shift the sawed-off to his left hand, not his preferred mode, so he could use his right to unsheathe the knife that he borrowed to replace the one he'd planted in that bastard's back. He'd learned that using a knife in close quarters could get better results than a gun, which always offered the promise of a less gruesome exit from this life.

Slowly—
always
slowly—he climbed into a crouch, feeling every hard year of his life, and guessing the commander would have youth on him. Damn few didn't.

He looked past him to see Jessie and Bliss climbing down from the top of the trailer. Maul and Erik from the cab. None of them rushing or stalling. Just doing what they were told and keeping their eyes off him. But in a few seconds he'd need their help, and then he wanted them running as hard as they could.

After a full, deliberate intake of breath, he launched himself forward, wrapping his left arm with the sawed-off around the commander's head and slicing off his helmet with no regard for his neck or face.

As he'd figured, the guy tried to grab the sawed-off—a powerful lure. Burned Fingers used the momentary distraction to plunge the full length of the blade into his cheek, using a sidearm motion to drive the tip out the other side of his face. Then he pulled the knife into the thick muscle wrapped around the hinge joint in the back of his mouth, opening a three-inch gash in his cheeks, enough to glimpse the commander's filleted tongue, the top half of which hung by a mere quarter inch of hemorrhaging tissue.

Now
the commander's hands flew to his face, and Burned Fingers flicked aside his sawed-off. It clattered on the deck of the turret close to them, but given the guy's circumstances and condition, it might as well have been a mile.

He sawed into the joint with a single forceful motion, sinking the blade deeply into bone before shouting into the tank, “Anyone comes near him, I'll kill him and you.”

The commander struggled, squirmed, and groaned horrifically, forceful testimony for his crew—if he had one.

Burned Fingers saw Jessie and Bliss racing toward him, the girl with her shotgun. He spoke into the commander's ear. “You're alive 'cause I want you alive. I want you dead, you're dead.
How many men down there?
Show me fingers. Don't even try to talk, fucker.”

Nothing but more moans and frantic struggle.

“Show me! Are you fucking crazy?”

The commander still offered no response. Burned Fingers guessed that meant more below. One more? Three? He sawed deeper into his mouth, trying to roust an answer, yet knowing the guy might raise any number of fingers at this point. But he tried one more time anyway, “Tell me or I'll cut your fucking head off.
How many?
”

When all the commander did was claw at his knife hand, Burned Fingers cranked the blade like he was coring an apple of old, gouging out gum and molars—a chunk of meaty jaw thick enough to make the guy gag.

Useless fuck.
He had heard some of his old marauders say that they didn't feel anything when they killed. Even kids. “Not a fucking thing,” in the blunt words of Anvil, who used to drive for him. But Burned Fingers felt plenty when he killed a man—an intractable desire for vengeance. What he didn't feel was another guy's pain. Why would he ever want to? He had plenty of his own.

Bliss scaled the front of the tank, her shotgun aimed at the hatch.

Good work.

“We're dropping a gas bomb down there if you don't shout out your number
now,
” he yelled into the hole, catching sight of the swelling blood puddle below them.

He had no gas bombs—they were rolling away in the van—but even if the commander wriggled free somehow, he wouldn't be saying much.

“I'm dragging this asshole out,” he said to Bliss. “Get your gun aimed right in there. Don't let up. That's it . . . Jessie,” she was pulling herself onto the tank, Maul a few steps behind, “exterminate the bastards if they try to get out. Keep them in there; I want to burn them to death.”

He looked down: dim shadows, no sign of life, save the blood still pooling. But Burned Fingers didn't believe the guy was alone. The Alliance wouldn't risk it. Even with a tank, something could always go wrong, and it had: him.

“This is your last chance,” he shouted. “Push your goddamn guns out where we can see them or I swear I'll fry every last one of you to death.”

J
essie aimed her M-16 into the tank, ready to fire. The commander's legs disappeared beside her as he dragged him out of the hatch. From the corner of her eye she saw him cut the man's throat and dump him on the deck of the turret.

Executing the wounded,
she said to herself, which was what he'd done so reflexively at the Army of God when he'd put a bullet into each of their heads.

She forced herself to remember that the commander was a killer, a butcher, really, just like any other men who might be down below. They had only one purpose out here: to kill anyone trying to save prepubertal girls from abduction and systematic rape, which could lead to their deaths before many of them reached their mid-teens. And those actions were far more abominable than the pain exacted by Burned Fingers, inconceivable as that seemed when the commander's legs spasmed and his carotid artery poured the last of his life onto the turret.

Executing the wounded, not the innocent. Eden would have done it, too.
So would I, she realized.

Burned Fingers grabbed her shirt. “Bear with me,” he whispered, cutting off a length of her fumy tee and then sparking the fabric.

It caught quickly, and he yelled, “Here comes the bomb,” and dropped the flaming swatch into the tank.

A powerful explosion followed almost instantly. It rocked the Abrams violently and sent Burned Fingers sprawling next to the dead commander. She and Bliss managed to back up and stay on their feet, but Maul stumbled, tripped, and fell off the front of the tank.

Smoke and flames shot from the open hatch, and Jessie yelled, “Get off, get off!” while she and Bliss scrambled and jumped.

Burned Fingers landed near them as smoke issued from around the turret, floating up in a dark circle; but her fear that the tank would blow up and shred them with steely fragments didn't materialize.

“Guess they overreacted.” Burned Fingers, bare chest bathed in the commander's blood, watched the smoke ring drift apart.

Jessie caught her breath. “They?” she asked.

“Whoever set off the bomb or rocket or whatever they had rigged. I thought I could bluff them and that the second they saw fire they'd try to tear the hell out of there. I didn't figure on a suicide bomber taking out the tank and whatever ammo we might have found.”

“Is there any chance someone could still be alive?” Bliss asked, raising her shotgun. “In some bomb-proof compartment or something?”

“You felt it. You heard it,” Burned Fingers said. “Knocked me down and him right off the tank.” He nodded at Maul. “I don't think I'm going to be seeing much more than a bunch of mangled metal when I get down in there.”

It didn't take long for the air to clear, or for Burned Fingers, armed with his sawed-off, to find the remains of two bodies in the tank. “But no dog,” he said, climbing out of the hatch, “and I looked real carefully through that mess. They must have released him before coming after us, so we've got to figure the Alliance knows we're here, or will soon enough.”

“How can you be so sure they even had one?” Bliss asked, looking up at him on the tank.

He flipped a singed but well-chewed bone down to her. Human tibia, Jessie recognized at once.

“Because even the Alliance isn't eating their own—yet.”

“Any ammo at all?” she asked him.

“Nope. They had one extra rocket, and I think that's what they used to blow themselves up.” His eyes wandered the length of the tank. He shook his head. “Sure would have been a game-changer.”

“Yeah,” Bliss said wistfully. “How's our gas?”

“We've got plenty,” he said, spurred from his reverie. “Tanker holds nine thousand gallons. I'm guessing we lost a couple thousand, that's all. But it worked out all right, didn't it?” He smiled, and his eyes appeared to land on exhausted flames licking the slope a few hundred yards away.

Jessie caught his self-congratulatory tone but didn't bedgudge him: he'd earned the right to take credit. “Nice job,” she said.

Scavenging time.
She grabbed the tank commander's helmet and Kevlar vest and handed them to Teresa. Burned Fingers had already claimed the man's bloody shirt.

The van was heading back; Brindle must have been checking behind him.

“Can they get the tank going again?” she asked Burned Fingers, who jumped down. “Maybe we should try to make sure they don't.”

He dusted off his hands. “There's nothing we have that could match what went off in there. Nothing even close. Be a waste of gunpowder.”

“What about the machine gun?” she asked.

“Ammo's all gone. Like I said, everything was set to blow. But we'll take the gun anyway. You never know. And don't worry about the tank. They'd need General Dynamics to get it moving again.”

Now there was a name she hadn't heard in years. “What about tearing it down so they can't use it for parts?”

“Don't have those kind of tools, and we don't have the time. Best thing we can do is put some distance between them and us. This thing,” he patted the massive tread, almost affectionately, she thought, “has a range close to three hundred miles, so I'm guessing we have a decent enough head start. There's just no telling what else they've got. I never could get close to the place, so I never figured them for anything like an Abrams. It makes you wonder.”

I'd rather not.
But she couldn't keep herself from the fear of another tank coming after them. She wouldn't say anything about it, though. Then she realized it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference if she did: no one on the caravan, not even little Cassie, on Ananda's shoulder for a round of chicken fights with the other kids, could possibly avoid it.

E
sau watched Hunt awaken slowly. Light shined through a louvered window, casting sharp rectangular shadows on his master's bed. A stained blue blanket with frayed edges lay by Hunt's side, leaving his legs and bottom uncovered.

Above him hung a dusty white fan, base separating from the cracked ceiling. The lone remaining blade hadn't moved since the final blackout—long before Esau was born on the border of the Great American Desert, a land decimated by fire, drought, and death.

Scum crusted his master's lips and crowded the corners of his mouth, but most of his face was bandaged. So was his back, chest, one of his legs, and both of his hands. The cloth was gray and thin from many hand washings, and bore the dark memories of earlier wounds like a palimpsest.

Esau, wearing only a darkly stained skirt sewn from the worn-out gowns of True Believers, rose from his vigil by the window. “Do you want more water?” he asked softly. Hunt didn't make him say “sire” or “my lord” when he addressed him, unlike most of the men he served.

Hunt nodded, and Esau hurried to hold the heavy jug to his lips. He had seen his master push water away; once, Hunt shocked him by spitting it out, whispering to himself that it tasted terrible, “like chemicals.”

Even more astounding, he had blamed the water for the tumors, which was a sacrilege because everybody knew that most tumors were the devil's deadly blight. Then Hunt stared at him, as if to command silence about his heresy. But he needn't have; Esau never would have breathed a word to anyone. A slave who betrayed his master always burned, regardless of the fate assigned to the one he served.

But today Hunt drank the water thirstily and said nothing of the tumors that afflicted so many. They grew from torsos, some so large they looked like angry fists trying to punch their way out of a back or belly to pummel the world.

The rheumy-eyed doctor cut out a small number of them. Two of the Elders had endured such operations; one of them survived. And His Piety had braved the removal of a dark one from his chest only weeks ago. But the prophet himself exorcised the tumors in the chapel if they turned red as boils and oozed dark, odiferous liquid—true signs of demonic possession.

Only His Piety could tell if Satan had invaded a body, and it was a certain sign of the Devil's grip if the believer screamed when the sacred sword cut him. Or if he bled to death.

Everyone witnessed the exorcism, and everyone knew Satan's devious role, even the lowliest slaves in the fields. So his master
must
know. Why would he blame the water when Satan hid everywhere?

Esau checked himself every night for tumors, then gave thanks to God the Father and God the Son for another day without sickness.

“What happened to me?” Hunt asked.

Esau fell to his knees by the bed, alarmed at how lost his master sounded.
Don't die.
So great was his fear of losing him that he took Hunt's hand, moistening his bandage with his tears. Hunt was good to him, fed him well; sometimes he even slipped him meat so he wouldn't weaken and end up on the water wheel, like other slaves who were then beaten and whipped and had their heads chopped off.

He had suffered terrible masters. When Hunt left the base, he had served many men; most cared little for his happiness, though some were as kind as Hunt when it served their most intimate interests—when they reached under his skirt or signaled him to his knees.

But most demanded nothing of him in this regard, and used his lean strength for eighteen, twenty hours a day to drag supplies around the huge fortress, dig holes, or rebuild walls defeated by tornados, sudden windstorms, or drenching downpours. Or by the strange orange clouds that exploded and sent powerful gusts—and sometimes flames—across the land. Those clouds were always a sign of evil.