This Shattered Land - 02 (13 page)

The
seconds ticked slowly by. My heart rate began to slow. I closed my eyes and
focused on my hearing, tuning out all other sensory input. Maybe a minute to
two went by, and then I heard it. A faint crunch, followed by another, and
another, moving toward me and around to my right. The shooter was putting the
sun at his back at the cost of moving further down the hill’s embankment and
giving me the high ground. That was a big mistake. I pulled my knit cap down
over my eyes to shield them from the sun and waited for my chance to strike. He
didn’t keep me waiting long. The crunching stopped, and I knew that he had to
be lining up a shot. Rather than give him the chance, I gathered my legs
beneath me, sprang forward, and barreled straight toward a boulder buried
halfway into the ground about ten yards ahead to my left. My weapon was already
up and firing by the time I stopped behind it. I wasn’t exactly sure where he
was, but I had a pretty good idea. If he took the bait and returned fire, I
would know for sure and be able to walk him down, assuming he didn’t just kill
me outright. My shots were hitting wide of where I thought he was, which I
hoped would make him overconfident and trick him into breaking cover to take a
shot at me.

It
worked.

About
fifty yards away, a flurry of movement resolved into a rifle coming around a
tree, and a man standing behind it trying to steady his aim against the trunk. Alarm
flashed across his face as he realized his mistake. By the time his gun was
halfway up, he was already staring down the barrel of my HK. We both fired at
the same time.

His
shot went left and low, impacting the boulder I crouched behind and spraying
pulverized granite across the fallen leaves. I took an extra half second to let
out a breath and squeezed off a three-round burst. One of the bullets caught
him high on his left hip, and the other two went wide. He let out a snarling
grunt of pain before trying to turn and run away. I shifted my aim and let
another three rounds go. This time my accuracy was better and I stitched him
across the lower portion of his thighs, just above the knees. He crumpled to
the ground, screaming in pain but still clutching his rifle.

“Toss
the gun away, asshole, or the next one goes into your stomach.” I called out.

He
responded by working the bolt on his rifle and firing a poorly aimed shot in my
direction. I’m not sure where his bullet went, but the next time I pulled the
trigger, I hit one of his forearms a few inches from the wrist. His rifle fell
from nerveless fingers as he screamed in renewed agony.

“Okay,
so I lied.” I shouted, repressing a dark spasm of horrid laughter. “Seriously
though, if you try anything else I’ll gut shoot your ass and leave you here for
the infected.”

Soft
footfalls approached from my right, and I turned to see Gabriel huffing and
puffing as he closed the distance to me. He stayed low and used the forest for
cover, his big battle rifle held out in front of him. I motioned for him to
take cover behind a tree to my right.

“What’s
the deal, you get the fucker?” He hissed.

“Yeah,
one in the hip, two or three in the legs. And I damn near blew his hand off.”

 “You
get hit?” He asked.

 “Nope,
I’m good.”

Gabe
gave a short nod. “Keep him covered, I want him alive.”

In
the time it took me to cast a quick glance down the hill and turn back to ask
Gabe what he wanted to do, the big man had disappeared. Just there one second,
and gone the next, with nary a sound to mark his departure.

“How
the hell does he do that?” I muttered.

Glimpses
of a large shadow flitted between the trees a couple of times, then Gabe
stepped out of nowhere with his rifle aimed at the man on the ground. A size
fourteen boot kicked the gun out of his one good hand before he had a chance to
bring it around. Gabe rolled the gunman over on his stomach and pinned him down
with a knee to the back while he searched him. The pistol he tried to shoot me
with and a large hunting knife went next to the large-caliber hunting rifle on
the ground nearby. I stepped out of my hiding spot and walked down the hill to
get a better look.

The
man looked to be in his mid-to-late thirties, medium build, albeit painfully
thin. Filthy threadbare clothes now soaked with blood clung to his gaunt frame.
Pale grey eyes stared out from a hollow, grime covered face, a matted beard
hanging nearly down to his chest. I couldn’t help but feel a stab of pity for
the guy and wonder if I did the right thing by attacking him. His eyes
fluttered when Gabe rolled him over onto his back and he began to shudder.
Blood loss had rendered his skin pale, and he was clearly going into shock. A
muttered, incoherent response was all Gabe could get from him when he tried
asking him his name. The big man dropped his pack and started pulling out
medical supplies.

“Give
me a hand, Eric. We need to try and stabilize him. He ain’t gonna tell us shit
if he’s dead.”

I
put my weapon down and helped Gabe as best I could. The gunman’s airway and
breathing were okay, but he was losing consciousness. He moaned in pain when
Gabe elevated his legs and began cutting off his clothes over where I shot him.
The hip wound turned out to be a through-and-through just over the bone that
didn’t do very much damage. I’m sure it hurt like a bastard, but by itself it
was not life threatening. The real problems were the other wounds. Both of his
legs were bleeding profusely, and the shot to his left forearm had broken both
the radius and the ulna. We put compression bandages on his legs to staunch the
blood flow and applied pressure while Gabe tried to talk to him.

“Hey,
hey, stay awake, if you pass out you might not wake up.” Gabe slapped him on
the cheek a few times to get his attention. The man’s eyes opened for a moment
and he focused on Gabe.

“I’m
gonna die, mother fuck I’m gonna die…” He kept repeating it over and over
again.

“You’re
not dying, dammit.” Gabe snapped. “You’re in shock and you’re weak from blood
loss, but you
will
be dying if you don’t start talking.”

That
wasn’t exactly true, I was pretty sure the guy was bleeding to death, but I
kept my mouth shut. If we gave him some hope that he could survive he just
might tell us what the hell was going on.

“Who
are you and what are you doing here?” Gabe asked. The man shook his head.

“Can’t
tell you…others will kill me.” His eyes fluttered again. Gabe slapped him hard,
causing blood to run from the corner of his mouth. His eyes snapped open as
Gabe picked up his broken wrist and gave it a savage squeeze.

“Do
I have you’re fucking attention now?” He shouted into his face. The man cried
out in pain under Gabe’s iron grip. “Whoever the hell these ‘others’ are, they’re
the least of your concerns right now. You’re gonna tell me what you’re doing
out here, or I’m going to start breaking bones. Do you understand me?”

The
man nodded quickly, his eyes wide with fear. Gabe asked questions, and he got
answers. The bleeding man was one of a small group of bandits that had been
travelling up and down the old Appalachian Trail and raiding along the way.
They mostly picked off individuals or small groups of survivors, murdered them,
stole their food and equipment, and did what one would expect raiders to do
with any women they found. He started trying to tell us how his raiding party
came together, but Gabe cut him off. We didn’t care what his story was, we just
wanted to know how many others there were, and where to find them.

He
told us that they had set up a relay system to attract the undead to the cabin,
and he didn’t know where the others were right then. Probably wandering around
out in the hills somewhere. They were supposed to wait a couple of days, and
then rendezvous at an abandoned house about half a day’s walk away from our
cabin. Gabe got the location of the house from him just before the man lost
consciousness. We tried reviving him, but no amount of shouting or slapping
brought him around. His blood soaked through his bandages into the ground
beneath us, and soon his breathing became shallow before stopping altogether. We
didn’t bother with CPR.

I
stood up and walked away, grimacing at the blood making my pants stick to my
legs. Gabe watched me sling my rifle over my shoulder and take a long pull from
a canteen before getting slowly back to his feet.

“One
question we never did get out of him.” I said, staring at the raider’s corpse.

“How
the hell did he and his buddies find us?” Gabe replied. I glanced at him and
nodded.

“Come
on,” Gabe said, “let’s get this guy over the cliff.”

I
helped him hoist the dead man up over his shoulder and gathered up his belongings.
Old Irish folk tales my father used to tell me as a kid came to mind as I
looked over the dead raider’s weapons. The legends always went that victorious
warriors would claim their slain enemy’s weapons by right of conquest after a
battle. The rifle I picked up was a finely crafted Savage chambered for .300
Winchester Magnum, and his pistol was a venerable Beretta 92. Gabe had
threading tools and a suppressor that would work for the Beretta, and we had a
couple hundred rounds of .300 Win Mag that we found on a scouting trip last
summer for the rifle. My previous reservations about killing the bastard dangling
over Gabriel’s shoulder had dispelled the moment I found out what he was
involved in, and I figured ridding the world of a piece of garbage like him was
about as close to conquering an enemy as I was going to get. As far as I was
concerned, his weapons were rightfully mine. I stepped on his hunting knife as
I turned to follow Gabe, and stooped down to pick it up. It looked like the
kind of cheap piece of junk that flea markets used to hawk to people who didn’t
know what good steel looked like. I stuck it in my belt and followed Gabe back
to the cabin.

No
one was in the yard when we stepped back through the front gate. Sarah came out
of the cabin wearing a tactical vest and sporting a pair of reflective
sunglasses. She cut a seriously no-nonsense figure with her hair pulled back in
a tight bun and an M-4 on a sling around her shoulders.

“You
guys okay?” She asked, stepping down off the front porch.

“We’re
fine.” I replied, pointing at the dead man over Gabe’s shoulder.

 “Can’t
say the same for this guy.”

Sarah
walked over to us and looked down at the body Gabe unceremoniously dumped on
the ground. She kneeled down and gave the corpse a quick examination, pausing
when she saw his wounds.

“Jesus,
how many times did you shoot him?”

“Four,
altogether.” I said. “He bled out while we were questioning him.”

“Why
didn’t you get him back here for medical attention?” She asked, standing up and
pushing her sunglasses back on her forehead.

Given
the fact that I had just been through a harrowing firefight and had probably
saved her life, I didn’t particularly care for her tone.

“Uh,
maybe because this asshole tried to kill me? Are you going to ask me what we
found out when we interrogated him?” I said.

“Do
you mean interrogated, or do you mean tortured?” She asked.

I
ground my teeth and leaned in close to her. “Pick one.”

A
large iron-fingered hand gripped my shoulder and forced me back a couple of
steps. Sarah wore a strange expression, as though she couldn’t decide if she
should be pissed off or apologetic. 

“What
he means to say, is that this guy is responsible for the infected that attacked
us this morning.” Gabe said, giving me a hard glare before releasing my
shoulder.

“I’m
guessing he told you that.” Sarah deadpanned, flipping a hand at the body. Gabe
frowned and nodded.

“Yes,
actually he did. And yes, I hurt him to get him talking. It worked because I
convinced him that he wasn’t dying, when in fact he was well on his way to
bleeding to death. I’ve done a few interrogations in my time, and I know how to
get answers out of people.”

Sarah
looked back and forth at us for a few moments, and then seemed to deflate. “So
what did you find out?” She asked, shaking her head.

Gabe
related everything the raider confessed to us. When he finished, Sarah’s eyes
grew dark and there was a dangerous tension about her as she stalked off toward
the bunker. She knocked a few times on the hatch and called down to Tom to come
out. He blinked against the bright mid-day sunlight as he emerged from the
shelter.

“Everybody
okay?” He asked, reaching down to help Brian out of the hatch.

“Everyone’s
fine, ‘cept that guy.” I hooked a thumb over my shoulder.

Tom
looked past me and paled when he saw the dead man on the ground in the middle
of the yard.

“Jesus.”
He breathed. “What happened?”

I
told him, leaving out the details of the interrogation for Brian’s sake.  An
angry scowl deepened the lines in Tom’s face by the time I was done.

“So
what are we going to do about the others?” He asked.  

“And
how did they find us in the first place?” Sarah added.

“We’re
going to set a trap for the other raiders.” Gabe said. “We know where they are,
and we know about when to expect them. I’ll recon their safe house from a
distance over the next couple of days and hoof it back here when it looks like
they’re ready to make their move. I have a few high-powered radio’s we can use
to maintain comms in the mean time. I’m sure I can come up with a proper
welcome for them when they show up.”