With June scanning their backtrail, Manny pulled them behind the relative shelter of the stone armory, rifle up and eyes out. Peter said, “Where’s Lewis?”
Manny nodded toward the fire, which was now consuming the next building. “That’s his work, him and Faraday. We’ll pick them up on the way back to the truck.” He explained the hole in the fence and where they’d left the Tahoe. “You good to travel?”
“Give me a sec,” Peter said. The man who’d been guarding the door lay bound in the mud. Peter handed June her rifle, then rolled the guard over and pulled the tape off his mouth. “What size shoes do you wear?”
“Uh, size twelve?”
“Good man.” Peter returned the tape to the guard’s mouth, then bent and untied his boots. They were badly worn, but at least they were the right size. Even better, they had laces. “Sorry, buddy. I’m taking your socks, too.”
With half-decent boots and dry socks, a man could conquer the world.
—
Manny led them along the wall of the armory, away from the center of the camp. Carlotta was right behind him with the guard’s pistol, then Ellie, then June with her rifle. Peter was tail-end Charlie, armed with the guard’s unsuppressed AK and two spare magazines he’d found in the guy’s back pockets. In the momentary quiet, he heard Manny say, “Lewis, Faraday, time to go. What’s your location?”
Ahead of them, the second building was fully engulfed in flames, throwing heat for dozens of yards. The trees to the north were steaming. Peter figured that big explosion had blown through the metal siding, igniting something flammable inside. If he could, he’d burnthis whole compound to the ground. If they were lucky, he thought, he might yet get the chance.
Then ahead, through the roar of the fire, he heard unsuppressed gunshots on full auto. The gunmen who’d run toward the explosion. And Lewis.
Three figures ran around the end of the armory at full speed, lit by the flames. The leader saw them, pointed back the way they’d come, and shouted, “They’re in the first greenhouse. We’re gonna circle around. How much ammo you got?”
Then he looked past Manny and saw the women and Peter. He raised his rifle. Manny shot him in the face, the suppressed rifle nearly soundless under the crackling roar of the blaze. Ellie flinched. The gunman dropped into the faint snow. The other two men realized what was happening, turned, and began to lift their rifles. Manny shot them both in the chest. They staggered back. Manny adjusted his aim and shot each man in the head. They went down.
Peter looked behind him and saw four dark figures round the corner from the stockade, eighty feet away. He calmly found the first silhouette in his iron sights and pulled the trigger twice,BANG BANG. The unsuppressed AK was too damn loud. He was acutely aware that he wore no body armor. The silhouette collapsed and the other figures retreated out of sight. Peter put two more rounds into the fallen person, then called over his shoulder, “Manny, we gotta go.”
Manny leaned against the stone building, voice loud to be heard over the fire. “Lewis, Faraday. We’re at the northwest corner of the armory. Hold your fire, we’re coming to you. Repeat, don’t fucking shoot.”
Manny turned and looked at each of them in turn. “We’re going to the nearest greenhouse. Move fast and stay close.” He raised his rifle, took a quick peek around the corner, then left at a run. The othersfollowed into the space between the buildings. Peter was last, both eyes on their backtrail.
The heat from the blaze was incredible. Absurdly, Peter wanted to stay and get warm but knew that was a bad idea. On the gravel pad, several bodies lay sprawled in boneless and bloody heaps, sad and undignified in death as all men were.
They left the shelter between the buildings. Backpedaling, Peter knew he was falling behind. He glanced to his right and saw several more bodies. He wanted more ammunition, but he didn’t have time to search the dead. To his left was the semi-sized propane tank, scorched black and cracked open like an egg. Not far away, the shell of an old gas pump burned merrily, and four flaming wood posts marked the supports where the sheltering roof had once been.
He looked back the way they’d come and saw a man poke his head around the far corner of the armory. Peter stopped and aimed and fired twice. Chips flew from the stone and the head pulled back in a hurry. Backpedaling again, Peter kept firing until he ran out of ammo. He dropped the magazine, popped in a fresh one from his back pocket, fired another few rounds, then turned and ran.
The greenhouses were made of clear plastic sheeting over round hoops. The blast wave from the exploding propane tank had popped the plastic like a balloon, and it hung from the hoops in wet shreds like ghosts in the falling snow. Inside the frame were long metal planters, two feet tall, full of dirt and leafy plants that would not survive the cold night.
He leapt a planter and dropped to the ground, then braced his rifle, aimed back the way he’d come, and waited. He wanted those assholes to think hard before they came after him. Combat never left you. Right now, he was glad of that. Later he wouldn’t be.
Two men sprinted around the corner of the armory, firing wildly.Peter aimed, pulled the trigger, dropped the first man, then the second. They fell in sorry heaps like the others. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Peter counted to ten and nobody else appeared. He stood and ran crouching down the center aisle through a gauntlet of shredded plastic to the far end of the long greenhouse, where the others knelt in the dirt, watching him come.
Carlotta held Manny’s hand and had her other arm around Ellie, who was flushed and breathing hard. June braced her AK’s butt at her hip, looking like an Irish revolutionary posing for a photo. Lewis had his back to Peter, rifle scanning over the top of a planter on the left, covering the south and east. Another man covered the north and west. Peter didn’t know him. He had brown skin and a black beard and eyes that glittered in the firelight. One pant leg was wet with blood and roughly bandaged below the knee.
Manny said, “That’s Faraday. This is Peter.”
Peter said, “Appreciate you being here. You okay?”
Faraday nodded. “I’ll live.”
At the exchange, Lewis turned and saw Peter. “Took you long enough.” His eyebrows were singed, his jacket scorched, and his grin as wide as Peter had ever seen it. “You like my diversion? I made the boom as big as I could.”
“Everybody good to go?” Manny scanned their faces, the veteran platoon sergeant getting his troops ready to move out. One by one, they all nodded. Then Lewis hoisted Faraday in a fireman’s carry and Manny led them toward the fence and the forest beyond.
Each of them aware that this whole little adventure wasn’t worth shit if they couldn’t find Hollis and Vance and the others before they flipped the switch on the end of the world.
59
