Trail of Tears (22 page)

“Hold on,” he shouted but the Lieutenant
didn’t hear at first and continued into the entrance. “Wait,”
Carter shouted again and the patrol stopped. “Where’s the snow?”
The Lieutenant frowned and looked at Carter as his commander
approached. “The bodies aren’t covered in snow yet it’s been
snowing for hours.” Realisation dawned on the Lieutenant a moment
before the explosion erupted from the main entrance and he was
thrown into the air. Carter whirled as gunfire shattered the
silence behind him. The trap had been sprung.

* * *

“Now,” Harris shouted. It wasn’t ideal but
if they waited any longer the trap would be discovered. The blast
caught two thralls, lifting them up and throwing them out into the
snow where they lay in crumpled heaps. The others were thrown clear
but were already getting to their feet. Harris watched as his team
rose from their positions like the dead from their graves and sent
a hail of fire towards the main collection of thralls.

The thralls scattered, returning fire as
they ran and his team were forced to seek cover. The clearing
around the flaming entrance had become an inferno and it backlit
the thralls as they ran. Already there were five or six bodies
sprawled motionless on the snow but there were far too many left.
Harris ran towards the thrall vehicles. Whatever happened here they
had to delay this force; they had to cripple their ability to catch
the wounded.

Bullets hammered into an armoured truck as
he ran alongside and Harris threw himself to the snow to escape the
hail. The snow was cold as he slid under the truck but he ignored
it. Bullets stitched along the ground where he had been running and
Harris lay gasping for breath as he watched the snow pitch upwards
with each strike. He took a breath and rolled out the other side of
the truck. It was so difficult to see in the swirling snow, you
never knew if someone was right in front of you so he kept close to
cover and inched his way through the abandoned vehicles. He came to
the fuel tank on the truck at the back of the line of vehicles and
tried to open the flap. It was locked.

He dug into his jacket and withdrew a long
knife and dug the point into the small crease and levered the flap
open. He twisted the cap within and threw it out into the snow. The
noise of gunfire competed with the wind for dominance and it was a
close thing as to which was winning. He had no idea which way the
fight was going. He could only hope that his team stuck to the plan
and stayed out of sight as much as they could. Their job was one of
distraction not to defeat the thralls. He had drilled into them the
importance of watching for flanking manoeuvres, but he wasn’t sure
if they really understood. He took a rag from his pocket and
stuffed it into the fuel hole before pulling it out quickly and
grunted in satisfaction as the fuel splashed out onto the snow and
left a trail down the side of the vehicle. He dragged the soaked
rag with him to the next vehicle and repeated the process.

Bullets thunked into the vehicles around him
regularly but he didn’t think they were aimed at him, more likely
they were stray shots. But a stray shot could kill him as easily as
one that had been aimed so he kept low as he moved to the next one.
He came to an abrupt stop as he saw a group of thralls guarding the
lead vehicles. He had hoped that the thralls would all become so
involved in the fight that they left the vehicles unguarded but
they weren’t as stupid as he had hoped. From his position he could
see at least four thralls but there could be more in the vehicles
as well. Too many for him to take on.

He pulled his lighter out and lit the fuel
trail. As first the old Zippo struggled to light in the wind but he
finally got it lit. The fuel on the snow refused to ignite though.
Maybe there wasn’t enough. He would have to get closer to the main
tank. He retraced his steps until he came to the last vehicle he
had sabotaged and he held the Zippo against the fuel trail low down
on the metal. He hadn’t planned on getting this close to the fuel
tanks and he bunched his leg muscles in preparation to run as soon
as the fuel ignited. Nothing happened.

He held the lighter up higher, shielding the
flickering flame against the wind.
Shit. Would he have to do
this at each vehicle? How long would his luck hold out?
In the
end it wasn’t the fuel that ignited, it was the fumes. One minute
he was coaxing the tiny flame and the next a whoosh of flame
erupted, engulfing his hand and then streaking upwards into the
tank. The shock made him drop his Zippo but there was no time to
retrieve it. He ran.

He got ten steps before he felt a wave of
hot air pick him up and throw him forward. It was only when he hit
the ground that he heard the explosion. He didn’t look back; he
scrambled to his feet and continued running. His goggles had fallen
down and wind slashed at his eyes, filling them with moisture and
blurring his vision. He slammed into a wall, air expelling from his
lungs in a great whoosh and he fell to the snow. He heard another
explosion but he didn’t look back. He crawled around the broken
wall and huddled there until the explosions stopped. Wind howled
around him but he could still hear the dull thud of an occasional
blast and he could feel each impact as the wall was struck by
debris.

When he could only hear the wind and the
faint chatter of the occasional machine gun, he peered around his
cover. He could see flames in the distance and thick black smoke
but little else. He couldn’t tell how many vehicles had been
damaged but there was no way he had gotten them all so he would
have to go back. He checked the magazine and slammed it back into
its housing. It was time to go.

* * *

Carter led his patrol through the snow.
Would this fucking storm ever stop?
The main concentration
of fire from the humans seemed to be coming from the east so he had
left his main force under cover to pin them down while he led a
smaller patrol around them. Of course, what had seemed like a good
idea back in the clearing was proving more difficult in its
execution. The blasted wind was throwing snow at him with such
force that he could barely see in front of him, despite his
goggles. He had lost all sense of direction. Had he come far enough
to get behind the humans or did it just seem that way?

He lifted his head and listened but all he
got for his trouble was cold snow down his neck.
There! Was that
a gunshot?
There had definitely been some sound to his
left
.
He motioned for the thralls behind him to get down and
he made his way slowly to where he had heard the noise. It was
blind luck that stopped him from walking right into the middle of
the humans. One minute he was inching his way forward and the next
he heard a voice call for a magazine. His heart nearly leapt into
his throat. At first he thought it had been one of his own patrols
and he was about to glare at the offender when he suddenly realised
that the voice had come from just in front of him.

He strained his eyes to see through the
snow, forcing himself to remain in place despite the cold. He could
hear the restless shuffle behind him but he ignored it.
Yes,
he thought. There they were. No more than twenty feet in front of
him he could just make out the prone figures of five humans. They
had no one looking at their back trail.
Amateurs,
he
grinned.
Dead Amateurs.
He signalled his patrol to advance
and then he strode forward, taking the first two before anyone else
could even begin to open fire.

Amanda Reitzig stopped and watched the
sleighs pass her by. They were five hours into the journey and were
not making good time. They had to keep stopping to treat those who
were badly wounded. It was horribly difficult to peel back the
heavy blankets and clothes to get at the drips and then recover
without causing damage to their patients. But what else could she
do? IVs had to be checked as they had a habit of freezing or
folding on themselves and cutting off the precious liquids. They
had already lost three of the wounded. One had died of his
wounds—she was surprised he had made it this far. Al Cuthbert had
suffered too many internal injuries when the thralls had attacked,
losing his liver and most of a kidney. But the other two had died
from frozen IV lines. She now insisted each patient be checked
every thirty minutes and her military guard had not been happy with
these delays.

It had come to a head when she had insisted
that they stop and bury Al. Tony Grier, their lead military
representative, had argued violently that they couldn’t afford the
time but she had insisted, using her authority as lead on the
expedition to overrule him. He hadn’t been happy and had sent the
rest of the expedition on ahead with the main supplies and less
critical patients. He paced up and down as his men dug a grave in
the snow for Cuthbert. The poor man had had no family so only the
medical staff and the soldiers who had dug his grave stood over his
remains before the soldiers covered the body and Grier ordered them
to head out.

After the third burial Amanda decided she
better mend some bridges as Grier no longer spoke to her. She knew
how much she and her charges depended on him and his guards so she
increased her pace and matched his long strides as they leaned into
the wind.

“We’ll make up the time with the sleighs
being lighter.” She tried to judge his reaction but his face was
covered almost entirely. He looked over at her but his eyes were
hidden behind goggles.

“Doc, I understand where you’re coming from.
I really do.” His voice was muffled through the scarf he wore
around his neck and mouth. “But you gotta see it from my side. You
have up to twenty wounded who are seriously critical. If we take
the time to bury them all, that’s up to four hours we delay this
expedition. Four hours can get a lot of those not so critical
patients killed.” He paused as he let his words sink it. Amanda
could see his logic and the stark number hit her hard.

“But we can’t just abandon the bodies. What
do you want to do, abandon them before they even die just in case
they slow us down?” she countered reaching out to him and stopping
him as she searched his face for some glimmer of hope. She knew
that he hadn’t deserved her words, but she was so frustrated losing
patients that would have survived if they did not have to make this
journey. He just happened to be close enough to bear her anger.

“Doc, that’s exactly what we have to do.” He
pulled his goggles down and looked at her, his eyes were a warm
brown and belied the callousness his words portrayed. “Look, I
don’t like it either, Doc. I really don’t. But If Harris and
McAteer can’t stop Carter, and I really can’t see how they can,
then we need to concentrate on the getting these people to safety
as quickly as possible. What’s more important, the living or how we
treat our dead?”

He looked at her and his question hung in
the air. He sighed and continued on past her, his head hung low and
she wondered if it was just the wind that bowed him so low. She
watched his back disappear into the swirling snow. “What are we if
we lose our humanity though?” She whispered before following on
behind.

* * *

Emma Logan was exhausted. Every step caused
sharp pains to stab at the backs of her legs. The snow was so thick
that her feet disappeared under a foot of snow with each step and
she had to lift her foot up high before planting it a few inches
further. At least the pain meant that her legs were not frost
bitten...yet. She had seen five others transferred to the sleighs
with frostbite and she had caught a brief glance of their flesh
before Amanda had treated the area. The flesh had looked almost
black from a lack of blood flow and the thought of losing one of
her legs left her shaking with fear.

Amanda insisted that everyone walking take a
turn on the sleighs with the wounded to allow their flesh to warm
up, but that only added to the weight of the sleighs and delayed
the long line of refugees. Five hours in and at least the same
distance to go; though it was likely to take twice as long as
exhaustion was already setting in. She strained her eyes to look
into the distance but she couldn’t see very far. She knew the line
continued on ahead for at least a mile. She stumbled and fell into
the snow, lying there for a moment as she felt the heat from her
body being sucked from her. Would it be so bad to just to lie here?
The cold had a way of feeling almost comforting once you got past
the initial pain. She was so tired. Surely another minute here
wouldn’t make any difference.

There was no one rushing to help her.
Everyone was focused on the point just in front of them as they
plodded on. No one would know she was here until they arrived at
the train and realised she hadn’t made it. She looked to the side
and saw a sleigh stagger past her in the jerky motion that they had
all become so used to. It pulled forward a few feet and then
stopped as the people pulling moved ahead a few paces and then
pulled again. It was monotonous and hypnotic; everyone who had
taken a spell knew the relentless monotony of the motion.

The sleigh
, she thought.
Conor
.
Conor was on that sleigh.
Her thoughts were
harder to grasp now, slipping through her mind like jelly—corporeal
enough to feel but impossible to grip. Conor needed her. She tried
to rise but her arms were so cold that they felt as though they
were already part of the snow. She tried again and succeeded in
raising her head before falling back into the cold’s embrace. There
was no wind here and her legs had already stopped hurting. Maybe
just another minute…