Earthfall (17 page)

“So what are you suggesting, Sergeant Major?”

“I’m suggesting that I’m the only warfighter in the vehicle, so you might want to let me take the lead on this one, sir. No disrespect intended, but I’m the only one here who’s already had his cherry popped, so I kind of know what we’re going to have to do.”

“You left them,” Rachel said. “Why should we listen to you?”

“Because if they’re not dead, I’ll be able to get them back alive.” Mulligan scowled. “Shit or get off the pot, Captain. We’re danger close across the board. What’s it going to be?”

Laird frowned, glaring at Mulligan, furious at being called out in front of his crew. Mulligan sympathized, as he would certainly feel the same way if their roles were reversed. But that changed nothing, and they probably had a lot of fighting ahead of them.

Laird couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice. “All right, Sergeant Major. You’ve made your point. What first?”

“We break it down into manageable pieces and knock them out one at a time. Hiding the vehicle would be a great way to get started, sir. Get us out of the middle of this street and under cover.”

Laird stared at Mulligan for another long, frosty second. Choi fidgeted, looking from one man to the other. Finally, Laird motioned to Choi.

“Get forward, Choi. Jordello, get that son of a bitch cleaned up and deconned. Once you’re done, Sergeant Major, take some time to get yourself squared away, then tell us how you figure we’re going to get this done, if you don’t mind.”

“Hooah, sir,” Mulligan said.

Choi pushed past the settee and headed for the cockpit. Laird turned and followed him without saying another word and, a moment later, the rig started moving again.

“I’m going to clean your wounds, Sergeant Major. When I’m done, you can shower up.”

“Roger that, Lieutenant. Do your worst.” As Kelly started cleaning out the scratches on his face, Mulligan looked over at Rachel. She continued to glare at him, her arms crossed, her feet spread so she could keep her balance as the vehicle swayed slightly from side to side. Mulligan sighed and decided to try one last time to reach her.

“It’s going to work out okay,” he told her. “We’ll get them back.”

Rachel snorted and turned toward the cockpit. “They were dead the second you came aboard, Mulligan.”

W
hen Leona came
to, she had a pounding headache that wouldn’t quit and her right eye burned and itched horribly. She reached up to rub it, and the ensuing burst of pain left her gasping. She curled up into the fetal position for a time, trying to deal with the pain until she worked up the courage to try again. Gently, she ran her fingertips over her face and found the flesh around her left eye was tender, distended, and so swollen she couldn’t even see out that eye. She felt like she’d gone five rounds with a heavyweight boxer, and she’d have one hell of a shiner to show for it, that was for sure.

Then she realized she wasn’t wearing a glove on her hand.

Slowly, she unwound from her fetal position and looked around. She was on the floor of a dark, dirty room. It was devoid of any furniture, and the walls were dingy with years of accumulated filth. A small window was positioned high up on one wall, the glass there cracked. It admitted only tepid light, which was just bright enough to allow her to examine herself. Her environmental suit was ripped and torn, hopelessly compromised. And she had no respirator assembly—it was all gone, along with her radio, weapon, and knapsack. Her right hand throbbed, and she found a swollen knot on one knuckle. Had she hit someone? She tried to recall what had happened at the warehouse, but her recollections were disjointed and vague. She found her entire body ached, as if she’d been through a strenuous fight.

Then she remembered. Her last thought before the darkness had descended was finding herself suddenly surrounded by a filthy horde of shapes that moved through the warehouse gloom with a self-assured efficiency that told her they knew the layout of the building as well as the backs of their hands. Their garments were old and covered with dust and grime, and she had realized then that if it wasn’t for the respirator mask she had worn, she likely would have smelled them coming.

Then they had attacked. Leona remembered squeezing off a wild shot from her rifle as rough, calloused hands grabbed her from everywhere, tearing off her facemask and ripping the weapon from her grasp. Then there had been the vicious blow to her face, the one that left her with an eye so swollen she couldn’t see through it.

She looked up at the window as she slowly, gingerly, rose to her feet. She still wore her boots and uniform beneath the tattered remains of the suit, which was a step in the right direction. She stumbled toward the wall, wincing as a sudden tenderness in her hip made itself known. Leaning against the wall, she reached up toward the window, but it was too far for her to reach, much less look outside to get an idea of where she was.

From behind her, a door opened on creaking hinges.

Leona turned as quickly as she was able, keeping the wall to her back and slipping into a Shotokan karate stance, adopting an edge-on position that presented the right side of her body toward the newcomers while keeping the swelling on the left side of her face away from them. She already knew that contact with the swelling was immensely painful; the last thing she wanted was for someone to strike her there. She knew she would fold up like a rag doll.

As she had suspected, she was able to smell them coming. The fetid stink of unwashed bodies and clothing rolled into the room like a sickening tsunami. Leona felt her gorge rise but she fought it down silently, clenching her teeth together to prevent a groan from escaping her lips. She watched as several figures stepped into the room and fanned out on either side of the door, their eyes glittering in the darkness. They were dirty, grime-covered people, two men and one woman, while the fourth was more like a shambling monstrosity. Hunchbacked and possessed of an overly large head, the hideous creature examined her with pale blue eyes. A strand of thick, ropey drool spilled out of its mouth and rolled over its insanely thick lower lip, slowly making its way to the floor. Leona gasped at the sight of the grotesquerie, almost horrified beyond belief.

It’s deformed from the radiation … but how could something like that
live
?

The deformed person burbled something in its throat, then shuffled off to one side. Leona found that she couldn’t take her eyes off it.

“Don’t be afraid of them, dearie,” a voice said from the blackness beyond the open door. “They won’t harm you.”

Leona pulled her eyes off the deformity and tightened up her stance, clenching her hands into fists and them raising up before her. She watched as another figure stepped out of the deep shadow and into the nominally better light inside the small room. He was clad in dirty, threadbare clothing, but his garments seemed to be in better shape than any of the others. His hair was thinning, and his face was pockmarked with scars left from old, festering sores that had finally healed. He smiled at her, and Leona thought that he had once been a handsome man, many years ago. Now, time and the harsh post-apocalyptic environment had taken their toll. His dark brown eyes seemed to gleam with an uncanny intellect, and when he looked at her, Leona felt he could see directly into the depths of her soul.

She feared him instantly.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” he said. “I am the Law. And before you even think about it, let me tell you there’s is no place for you to run, even if you did manage to get out of this room. We know this city quite well, and we have your vehicle. You couldn’t escape.” His smile widened into a broad grin, revealing surprisingly white teeth that looked to be in fine shape. He took another step toward her, closing the distance between them to about ten feet. Leona instinctively tried to back up, but she found she was already against the wall. There was no place for her to go.

“Tell me … who are you? Where did you come across such a useful vehicle?” the man asked. When she said nothing, he pursed his lips and feigned a crestfallen expression. “Come on, now. I’m absolutely
dying
to hear your voice.”

Leona regarded him for a long moment, then slowly lowered her clenched fists. She took a tentative step toward the man who called himself the Law, and forced her dry throat to swallow.

“Sure thing,” she said, right before she launched a quick snap kick right for his face.

The man avoided the blow as if he had known it was coming. The air around him seemed to pulse suddenly, to come alive with a rising electricity that quickly filled the room. Leona had never felt anything quite like it before as it enveloped her, almost like a physical thing. Then, every nerve ending in her body exploded with pain so deep and sudden that her legs gave out. Leona screamed as she crashed to the floor, jerking in a series of agonized spasms she could not control. Her scream continued until her lungs emptied of air, then she had to fight to fill them again as bright flashes danced behind her eyes. The pain was immense, as if every cut, bump, bruise, and injury she had previously experienced was only a series of tests before the main event. Her conscious mind retreated, fleeing the pain, but found nowhere to hide.

The man seemed oblivious to her torment. “I can force you to speak, you know. How do you like the pain? Should I make it worse?”

Leona’s agony suddenly doubled. She threw her head back and shrieked as she convulsed on the floor, her limbs flailing, completely out of control. She felt consciousness start to fade as tunnel vision set in, and she wondered vaguely if this was going to be the last thing she ever felt—degrees of pain she had never imagined, agony so extreme it threatened to shatter her mind.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the pain subsided. Leona gasped for air as her nerve endings slowly cooled off, radiating pain like a heat sink.

Law stepped closer to her. “You didn’t enjoy it? I hadn’t thought you would. But that was just one of my powers, girl. A bit crude, maybe … like a bat against an infant’s skull. Want to try something else? Something a touch more
sophisticated
. What do you say?”

Leona rolled over onto her belly. It was almost an autonomous motion, as if her body was taking charge and trying to get her away from the slender man with the bright eyes who could induce such mind-numbing pain that the very thought of enduring it once again nearly drove her mad. She tried to crawl away from him, heading for one of the room’s dark corners, her muscles trembling and her joints barely moving. She let out a ragged gasp when Law stuck his foot under her belly and turned her onto her back. He stood over her, still grinning manically, his eyes agleam with something Leona couldn’t identify. Madness, she decided, something she’d never seen before.

“Want to see how it all ended?” he asked in a harsh whisper. “A tour of mankind’s demise? It’s a definite E-ticket attraction!” He squeezed his eyes shut, as if concentrating on some difficult task. Veins suddenly stood out on his forehead, and Leona could see them pulsing with blood. The air grew electric again, and she made a small noise in the back of her throat. The pain was coming, and she knew it.

But the pain never came.

Images flashed across her mind’s eye—

An atomic warhead detonates over San Jose in an airburst of brilliant, blinding, malignant light.

Ear-splitting thunder cracks as streets full of people are instantly atomized, disappearing in brief puffs of flame.

A luminous shockwave tears across the city, shattering skyscrapers, flattening homes, tossing debris everywhere.

The same city, now a time-ravaged tomb.

Mangy, diseased dogs stalk the streets, devouring whatever is left that still bears meat; clouds of black flies descend upon thousands of bloated human corpses that lay baking in the hot sunlight.

The images stopped as suddenly as they had started, and Leona’s mind was returned to her. She found she was weeping, convulsing with great sobs of despair and sorrow at what she had seen. Was that what it had been like during the Sixty Minute War? The fear, the horror, the destruction of inescapable death? She had spent months over the past year looking at the rotting corpses of the great cities of the Midwest, their crumbling skyscrapers skeletal and gaunt, having shed their facades and panes of glass as the rest of the settlements around them decayed. Examining those cities and the remnants of small towns, the husks of what had once been country houses and farms, she had felt a vague, disconnected sorrow for what had befallen her people, her fellow Americans, and perhaps the entire human race. But that pale mourning was hardly even a drop when compared to the vast sea of grief that now consumed her. She raised her hands to her battered face and cried into her palms, unable to do anything else.

The man who called himself the Law knelt beside her, and she could feel his lips moving against her hair as he spoke, his voice a calm whisper.

“Now. Tell me who you are, where you come from, and what you’re doing here.”