Sunrise (2 page)

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.”

Rebecca nodded and rushed past me. I kissed Darla goodbye again and turned the other way, following Uncle Paul and Aunt Caroline down the stairs and out of the house.

When I caught up with them, Aunt Caroline turned toward me. “Alex, you can’t come.”

I clenched the rifle more tightly. “I’m going.”

“Just because your mother can’t come doesn’t mean—” “I’m going.” If Aunt Caroline thought I was going to give up the rifle, she was as crazy as my mother.

Uncle Paul stared at me for a moment, his face stony. “You know how to use that gun?”

“Sort of.”

“Let me give you a refresher.”

Aunt Caroline sighed and turned away.

As we marched away from the farm, Uncle Paul coached me on the crucial parts of the AR-15: the charging handle, selector lever, magazine release button, rear sight, and front sight. I focused on each rifle part, blocking everything else out of my mind, walking mechanically, and listening with single-minded intensity. I had to learn everything Uncle Paul was teaching me. In a few hours, my life would depend on it.

Chapter 2

The night before, Ben had told me there were two good ways to attack Warren: an overwhelming show of force or a sneak attack. So, of course, Mayor Petty chose a third.

We were strung out in a bedraggled line, trudging along Stagecoach Trail toward Warren. Almost three hundred refugees had volunteered, hoping to retake their homes and reclaim the stockpiled pork, corn, and kale that were all that stood between us and starvation. Most of the ragtag army had guns, but a few had come along with nothing more than knives or sharpened poles.

“I’ll be right back,” I said to Uncle Paul and broke into a trot, headed for the front of the column. Stagecoach Trail was a paved, two-lane highway, not a trail, although it was now covered in packed snow and ice. FEMA had plowed it not long after the blizzards that had followed Yellowstone’s eruption, leaving ten-foot snow berms lining both sides of the road. We were slogging down an ice-walled half-pipe: a perfect kill zone. Anyone firing from the tops of the berms could slaughter us.

I caught up to Mayor Petty at the front of the column. He wore a ski mask, but despite the frigid air, sweat was beading at the corners of his eyes. “We need to get off the road,” I told him.

He shot me an annoyed glare. “We will, we will.” Gasping breaths interspersed his words. “No sense wearing ourselves out in the deep snow before we’re close.” “What if they’re ready for us? They could have scouts out. We’d be sitting—”

“We’ll move off the road after we pass the cemetery.” “What if—”

“That’s enough,” Mayor Petty shouted.

“At least put some scouts out.” I waved at the towering snow berms blocking the flanks of our column.

“Be my guest.” The mayor turned away.

I stopped in the road, and people flowed around me as I thought about the problem. I could scout one of our flanks, sure, but without skis or snowshoes, I’d quickly fall behind. What we really needed was a small group on each flank on skis. Or better yet, a plan that didn’t involve approaching Warren by the most obvious route.

Someone shouted behind me, and I spun just in time to see a man in a thin brown overcoat fall headlong onto the icy road. The guy beside him—who wore a much warmer looking down coat—retracted his leg, making it look like he’d intentionally tripped the first man. I glared at him: Did he think we were marching down a kindergarten hall rather than headed to war?

I stepped back to offer the fallen guy a hand. The whole situation made a lot more sense when I saw his face: Ed Bauman, the former flenser and member of the Peckerwoods gang whose life I’d saved a few weeks before. He’d reformed—he abhorred his cannibalistic past—but he still wasn’t trusted or even liked.

“What’re you doing here?” I said.

“Headed for Warren, same as you.” Ed was carrying an old broom handle, sharpened at one end. A Bowie knife was tucked into his belt.

“I’m surprised the mayor let you come along.”

“Might be he hasn’t noticed yet.”

I shrugged. Anyone who wanted to come along on this mission had to be crazy—Ed probably wasn’t much crazier than the rest of us. But I didn’t particularly want him at my back. I pushed past him and went to rejoin Uncle Paul and Aunt Caroline.

The light was dim and yellow—normal, since the volcano. The sky reminded me of the skin surrounding a scab. As I dragged my feet down the road, the sky seemed to darken further. I glanced from one side of the road to the other, but the horizon was sliced short by the snow berms.

My dread increased as we approached Elmwood Cemetery outside of Warren. It occupied a low hill on our left, so we could see the tops of a few grave markers and tree stumps above the berm.

As Mayor Petty led our column past the entrance to the cemetery, I caught a flash of motion from the corner of my eye. A dark figure rose from behind a monument, and suddenly there were dozens of people popping up from every hollow, tree stump, and stone marker on the hill above us. I screamed a warning, but my voice was drowned out by the roar of incoming gunfire.

Chapter 3

A woman a few steps ahead of me was hit. Cyndi Reitmeyer, I remembered, even though I’d only spoken to her twice. Everything slowed, and I watched in horror as the top of her skull pirouetted lazily away, trailing torn bits of her knit hat and bloody strands of molasses-colored hair.

Before I could bring my rifle to bear, someone slammed into my right shoulder, hurling me to the edge of the road. I yelled a protest but shut up when I realized I’d been pushed into the only safe space— so tight against the snow berm that the attackers couldn’t get an angle down to shoot me.

Aunt Caroline and Uncle Paul were crouched nearby. Ed was at my shoulder—he’d thrown me against the berm, maybe saved my life. Mayor Petty was screaming, “Up and over!” and gesturing at the top of the berm.

“Idiot,” I yelled. “We need to flank them. Come on!”

Uncle Paul nodded, and I started elbow-crawling back the way we’d come. Uncle Paul, Aunt Caroline, and Ed followed me. The chatter of gunfire was continuous; chips of ice showered us as bullets struck the ice above our heads.

The road had filled with the newly dead and dying. Blood coated the ice, seeping toward both sides of the road. The air itself seemed alive with screams of pain, the acrid stink of gunpowder, and the sickly stench of blood.

I glanced over my shoulder. We’d split into four groups: One tried to climb directly toward the attackers. Mayor Petty was urging them on at pistol-point. Another crawled along the base of the snow berm, following me and Uncle Paul. A third group was running in panic, their numbers thinned steadily by gunfire from above. The fourth group lay bleeding in the road.

As we crawled out of the immediate area of the ambush, I caught Uncle Paul’s ankle and yelled, “Up and flank them?”

Instead of replying, he turned and started clawing his way up the snow bank.

“Up!” I bellowed, following him. Ed, Aunt Caroline, and dozens of others started up alongside us.

At the top I flopped into the snow alongside Uncle Paul and tried to click off my rifle’s safety. My thumb slid over the lever twice. My fingers were shaking, and my vision had narrowed as if I were looking out from the end of a dark tunnel. I dragged my thumb along the smooth metal of the rifle, concentrating, and managed to bump the lever to single shot. I only had one magazine, and it wasn’t full. Twenty-three shots in all.

The next two minutes were a cacophony of noise, terror, and adrenaline. From the direction of the road, the ambushers were behind good cover—gravestones, tree stumps, the brick gateposts, and the two gatehouses, but that did nothing to protect them from us on their flank. They were totally focused on killing people in Mayor Petty’s group as fast as they could reach the top of the snow berm.

I aimed at a guy peeking up over the top of a gravestone and pulled the trigger. A moment later he disap-peared—but I had no idea whether I’d hit him or someone else had.

Some of the ambushers turned toward us. I threw myself forward and to one side, rolling behind a tree stump. I heard a resonant thunk, and the stump vibrated against my head. The world lurched around me in a herky-jerky syncopation, counterpoint to the screams, the pop of gunfire, and the reek of powder.

I peeked around the side of my stump and shot again. More and more of us were reaching the top of the snow berm behind me, flanking and overwhelming the ambush-ers. I scrambled away from my stump, taking cover behind a stone monument and firing. Soon the ambushers began to flee, and we advanced, pushing them back. A few of the people in Mayor Petty’s group made it to the edge of the cemetery, sheltering behind the gatehouses. It looked like we would rout the rest of the ambushers.

“I’m going to see if I can do anything for the wounded,” Aunt Caroline yelled. She slid down the snow berm and ran toward the nearest of the dozens of people who lay bleeding in the road. I moved forward, ducking behind a stump, scanning for targets.

Under the constant chatter of gunfire, I heard the low growl of an engine. I looked for the source of the sound. Two pickups drove side by side, coming down the hill at the outskirts of occupied Warren. A column of men with rifles jogged behind the trucks. Each truck had a belt-fed machine gun mounted to the roof of the cab. Aunt Caroline, Mayor Petty, and at least a hundred others were still on the road.

As I watched in horror, both machine guns opened fire.

Chapter 4

I shot at the closest truck, firing as fast as I could pull the trigger. The two guys manning the machine gun jerked spastically and fell. My ammo ran dry. I dropped the now-useless rifle from my shaking hands.

The second truck moved in front of the first, hugging the right side of the road, tight against the snow berm. I scrambled to the top of the berm as it approached, keeping on my belly. Ed slid up beside me—I had no idea where he’d come from. Rivulets of blood dripped down the shaft of his broomstick, staining the snow with a trail of livid droplets.

The gunners on the second truck were spraying bullets across the middle of the road. Mayor Petty went down screaming. Aunt Caroline was trying to drag an injured man up the berm. No way would she get over the top in time.

I froze. My vision narrowed to a black-rimmed tunnel, centered on Aunt Caroline. She jerked spastically, thrown backward by the slugs tearing through her midsection. Her scream was audible even over the chaotic shouts and gunfire, as loud in my ears as if it were the only noise in a quiet cemetery, rather than merely one more wail among the chorus. I felt it as much as heard it—piercing me, opening my field of vision, and unfreezing my legs.

The truck was almost past my position on the berm. I threw myself off it, jumping toward the gunners.

I stretched out, elbow up as if I were doing a taekwondo high block, aiming for the side of the closest guy’s head. I hit him perfectly, my elbow connecting with his temple with a crack that was audible even over the gunfire. We went down in the bed of the pickup, our limbs thrashing and tangling.

I rolled, looking up just in time to see the other gunner draw a pistol and aim it at my head.

Chapter 5

A shadow passed over me as the gunner’s hand tensed on his pistol. Ed soared over us in a flying leap, his broom handle held below him like a hawk’s talons. More than a foot of bloody broom handle sprouted from between the gunner’s ribs, driven through by Ed’s falling weight. The gunner dropped. Hot blood spattered my face, and the sharp end of the stake thunked into the truck bed beside my neck. I roared wordlessly, more from surprise than terror.

I threw the twitching weight of the man off me, rolling onto my knees. Ed was lifting the machine gun from its mounting on the cab of the pickup.

Bullets whanged around us as the column of men behind the trucks fired. The driver of the pickup thrust his arm out the window, trying to bring a pistol to bear on Ed. I lurched forward and grabbed the driver’s wrist in both hands, hauling it backward against the window frame. His elbow broke with a crunch, and the pistol slipped from his hand into the road.

Ed had freed the machine gun from its mounting. He turned it around, braced it against the back of the cab, and opened up on the men behind the truck.

The rear window of the truck shattered from the gun’s recoil. Thousands of pebbles of tempered glass rained down in a tinkling sheet. Ed adjusted the machine gun, bracing it against the strip of metal above the window, and opened fire again.

Men died. Some fell quietly, becoming inert piles of bloodied flesh and clothing. Others screamed, falling into writhing heaps of agony. Those who didn’t fall under the Ed’s scything gun scattered, running back the way they had come.

Ed’s ammo ran dry, but by then our side had taken full control of the other truck and machine gun. The fight was over. I slid out of the bed of the truck, collapsed to my knees, and vomited onto the frozen road.

Chapter 6

I hadn’t seen Uncle Paul since the beginning of the fight. Not far from me, someone was frantically working on Mayor Petty’s right leg, cinching a belt around his thigh—an improvised tourniquet. Blood pulsed from half a dozen wounds spread across both of his legs.

I pushed myself upright, catching sight of Uncle Paul as I rose. He was about fifty feet off, kneeling by Aunt Caroline. Uncle Paul was cradling her head in one hand with his other pressed to her stomach. Her face was nestled against his coat.

“Alex,” Aunt Caroline said as I approached,

“you’re okay.” She forced a wan, bloodless smile.

“How are . . .” I noticed the tears streaming down Uncle Paul’s face and the blood welling between his fingers.

“Can’t feel my legs,” Aunt Caroline replied. “Paul says they’re fine. His ears turn red when he lies.”

Uncle Paul fixed his stare on me. “We need to get her to Dr. McCarthy. Now.” His voice was ragged.

“I’ll get a truck.” I ran back to the pickup Ed and I had liberated. The cab was empty, but the truck was still running. Ed was helping two other guys lift Mayor Petty’s considerable bulk. I grabbed Petty’s shoulder, and we slid him into the bed of the truck.