Trail of Tears (18 page)

Of course, he had not told April about his
feelings. On her return, he had merely shadowed her trying to find
the right time to introduce himself. It hadn’t come. And then the
community had been attacked and events had spiralled out of
control. That very chaos gave him a focus he had never had before.
As he looked over at April, he now realised where her strength came
from when she walked onto the stage to support Harris. It came from
caring for other and putting them first over your own fears. For
the first time in years, Robert Seager felt fulfilled and, despite
the carnage around him, complete.

* * *

Emma Logan fretted as she watched Conor
Ricks being loaded on to the sleigh. He looked almost comical,
wrapped in blanks, bandages, and a thick coat. Only his eyes and
nose appeared from the mass of clothing and she smiled at his
obvious embarrassment.

“I can walk,” she heard him complain, though
the sound was muffled from the scarf that covered his mouth.

“No you can’t,” she replied sternly. “You’re
lucky Amanda didn’t wrap you in a hard cast to make sure you stayed
put. Your last walkabout nearly tore every stitch from your
body.”

“If I had stayed put there’d be a few more
holes in her precious patient,” he grumbled.

“I hope that is not complaining I hear.”
Amanda Reitzig strode into the room and checked Conor’s vitals
before nodding and continuing on to the next patient. “I can always
give you something to put you out if you insist on complaining.
There’s no medical board you can complain to anymore, you know. You
are entirely at my mercy.” She winked at Emma, but Emma could see
the strain in her face. Moving thirty wounded people over seven
miles through blizzard conditions on makeshift sleighs was not an
easy task. She had been at the same meeting where Amanda had told
the committee she expected to lose a third of her patients unless
she was supplied with the best clothing and people to look after
her charges.

Emma looked around the infirmary and
wondered which patients would arrive alive at the train. Would any
of them get there safely? The wounded would travel in the middle of
the exodus.

The day had begun brightly with only a few
dark clouds in the distance. It was cold but at least the wind had
reduced. It had snowed overnight so the sleighs would travel easily
but those who had to pull them would find it difficult with their
legs disappearing into the canopy up to their thighs.

The first of the party of over eight hundred
people had already left, pulling their sleighs and weighed down by
heavy packs. This was the final check on the wounded before they
too left. In the last hour the wind had picked up again and with it
had come clouds roiling in the sky. There was no snow yet, but
everyone knew it wouldn’t be long before it came. Emma had been
assigned to guard the wounded along with two of Phil McAteer’s
soldiers. Their number would also include a hundred people. They
would take turns pulling the sleighs—a half hour pulling with an
hour walking on a continual rotation.

The last party to leave would include
Harris, McAteer and the others. They would have next to nothing to
carry except their weapons and they would protect their flank. If
no one followed them then they would soon catch up to the wounded
and would be able to lend their strength and support. However, no
one really expected them to have an easy time.

Advance scouts had seen a large force coming
in their direction. The thralls who had attacked them had obviously
been missed. Emma shifted the weight of the XM8 and marvelled at
how light such a nasty looking weapon was. She didn’t really expect
to have to use it. If Carter and his men caught up to the wounded
then it would mean that Harris and the others were dead. And if
that was the case then it was already over.

She saw Harris come in to check on Sandra
Harrington. She had still not woken up. She could see the pain in
Harris’ face. The poor man seemed to get the worst of everything
but kept coming back for more. There was a huge man beside him and
he laid a hand on Harris’ shoulder and said something that she
couldn’t hear. Harris nodded and then moved away from Sandra.

“I’ll take care of her,” Emma found herself
saying and Harris stopped and looked over at her.

“I’d appreciate that, Emma. Thank you. How’s
Conor?”

She smiled as she nodded towards the bundle
of cloths and blankets. “He is the worst patient in the world.
He’ll live though, if Amanda doesn’t kill him first.”

She saw Harris smile but the familiar spark
in his eyes was missing. Father Reilly came in and hugged Harris
and they spoke quietly before Harris and the big man left. Father
Reilly turned and smiled at Emma, but he too was distracted and far
from the jovial man she had come to know. The fact that Father
Reilly was travelling with the wounded spoke volumes for the
precarious nature of their journey.

“Okay, everyone,” Amanda returned with a
huge cast of people behind her wrapped up for the weather. “Let’s
get this show on the road.”

Harris watched the last of the wounded
sleighs pull away and he wondered, yet again, if they were doing
the right thing. He had never doubted himself so much before and
his indecision was adding to the nervousness of his team. He didn’t
see an alternative. However, the thought of loading everyone onto a
train that might not run and taking off with limited food supplies
into unknown territory was petrifying.

Of course, trying to hold off an army of
thralls and trying to remain hidden from the vampires without the
microwave shield was also pure madness. He had forty on his team,
everyone in jackets and gloves of the whitest material they could
find. Their only hope was to remain hidden and draw the thralls
into a trap. He had thought of setting up a series of ambushes on
the roads to their home but, with the snow, there was really no way
to be certain which way Carter would come. If he sent his team out
to cover the three main routes he would only be splitting his team
into less effective numbers. And he would still have no guarantee
that Carter would walk blindly into their traps.

His advance scouts had already reported that
the thrall force was the largest they had ever seen and that they
were taking their time, checking for ambushes. He imagined that
Carter thought he had all the time in the world. Where else could
so many humans go on short notice? In fact, Carter’s caution was
the only reason they had been able to get everyone out in time.
Carter’s force was so large that his job now was to delay him long
enough to ensure the others got away. Whether he and his team would
catch the others before they left was still in the wind. He had
told Aidan Flemming to leave when everyone was aboard and not to
wait on him, and McAteer had told Cabreezi to ensure that the
orders were obeyed.

He didn’t see what he and the others were
doing as a sacrifice. If they failed to delay Carter here then he
would catch the others out in the open and they would not stand a
chance weighed down with the wounded and supplies as they were.
Most of his team realised what they had signed up for and, if some
of them hadn’t fully grasped their situation, then he really didn’t
have time to enlighten them.

Harris had been preparing for this day for
over a week now and had sent out teams to pull more buildings down,
spreading their rubble across the narrow streets, and blocking many
of the routes into the city. Carter wasn’t stupid, though. If there
was only one route into the city then he would know it was a trap
so Harris had ensured that the damage appeared natural. In some
cases he had blocked some roads with the burnt-out carcasses of
cars that he hoped Carter would move rather than divert around. By
making Carter come through a route that was difficult to pass, he
hoped he would give the thrall commander the impression that he was
outsmarting the humans. He didn’t know Carter that well, but he had
spent enough time with him to know that he thought very highly of
himself. Forging his way through obstructions rather than diverting
around them would appeal to his sense of strength and
infallibility.

Harris and his team had waited until the
others had gone before he ordered some of the bodies retrieved from
their graves. If he was to sell the story that Carter’s patrol had
caught them and done significant damage there would have to be
bodies visible around the base. He hated to desecrate the bodies in
this way, but there was no way Carter would walk blindly into a
trap, he had to be enticed. He felt that Denis Jackson and the
others wouldn’t mind helping just one last time, though he wasn’t
so sure that the community would understand his motivations. Even
McAteer had looked at him strangely, though whether he was appalled
or just surprised Harris wasn’t sure.

McAteer had turned about to be a lot easier
to work with than he had expected. There was no jostling for power
or undermining of authority. If Harris came up with a good idea
McAteer merely nodded. McAteer had suggested some refinements that
made the plan better and Harris had accepted these improvements
with good grace. He was reminded of his time with Steele where his
mad schemes had been toned down and refined. Harris realised that
he missed having someone to share his plans with. Someone to share
the responsibility. Of course, McAteer was equally quick to argue
against a bad idea. Harris missed having someone to argue with as
well.

They had spread the bodies out on the snow
with their team mingled among them, playing dead until the trap
could be sprung. It was a risk, but he did not expect Carter to
waste ammunition making sure that all the bodies spread before him
were dead, especially when many of the dead were terribly mutilated
by the high-powered bullets the thralls used. They wouldn’t get
them all, but that wasn’t the mission. The mission was to buy the
others the time they needed to get clear.

* * *

“Will we go around, sir?”

William Carter pursed his lips as he studied
the street. It had once been a wide two lanes with footpaths on
either side but the destruction caused during some previous
altercation had left buildings gutted with rubble strewn across the
surface. There were cracks all along the main road and more than a
few holes gauged out by grenades and from heavy equipment being
dragged or torn from where they had been plugged into the
ground.

There was still quite a wide track open
along the length of the street but two burnt out husks of cars lay
in their path. The cars did not look as though this was where they
had been set alight. The ground beneath them was not scorched by
the same fires that had gutted the vehicles. They looked as though
they had been placed in the way. Further down the stretch of street
another car laid sideways blocking access.

His heart skipped a beat.
They don’t want
us to come this way,
he thought. He had made good time up to
the border but the storm had come from nowhere and the snow and ice
had begun to slow the heavier vehicles and the tanks. Rather than
slow his entire force, he had left the slower moving vehicles
behind, instructing them to follow as quickly as they could. He had
taken what jeeps and troop transports he had and forged ahead. Once
they had crossed the border and had come ten miles into Nero’s
territory without seeing evidence of any thrall presence, let alone
any guards or roving patrols, he had gotten the feeling that speed
was now of the essence. Something was urging him on, some feeling
that he was nearing the end of a very long journey. His excitement
was barely contained as he imagined catching the humans unprepared
and helpless.

Even among his faster moving force he had
urged the jeeps and trucks to greater speeds and his column had
stretched out further with the half-tracks falling behind. He
didn’t care. He was convinced that a clock was ticking down
somewhere and, if he wanted his revenge, he would have to take the
risk. The more he thought of his last encounter with the thrall
force the more he was certain that he had been played. He was so
certain he was willing to bet his life, well the lives of his men
anyway. The only thing he knew for certain was that something had
happened to his patrol and, while it was possible that Nero’s
forces had taken them out, it was unlikely. If Nero’s forces were
still in control then more of his patrols would have failed to
return or at the very least would have seen other thrall forces.
Yes, the patrol that had disappeared had been the furthest into
Nero’s territory, but something told him that they had found the
humans. Somehow they had managed to defeat Nero and maintain the
impression that the territory was still under his control.

If he didn’t need their remarkable weaponry
so badly he would enjoy talking to these humans, before he killed
them of course. Once he had reached the city limits they had found
the way blocked a number of times, forcing them to go around the
ruined streets and adding to his unease. Some of the streets had
been completely blocked by fallen buildings, their steel girders
and wooden supports poking from the rubble like a mass grave of
bodies. But some of the streets had appeared somewhat contrived.
Like this one.

Up till now, they had diverted around
obstructions but Carter had a feeling that something was up. The
only reason he could attribute to these blockages was that they
were here to buy time. And that suggested that something was
happening that required time to finish.

“No,” he stated suddenly. “We’ll push
through. Send out a patrol to move the cars.” He paused for a
moment and then a thought struck him. “Make sure there are no
traps, these humans are sneaky. Something about this whole setup
seems wrong.”