Forged From Ash (27 page)

The rocks were sandy brown mixed with a deep red and were angled almost directly perpendicular to the ground. The floor of the canyon less than a mile from where he’d perched was covered in thick grass. A charred passenger jet’s fuselage lay to the east. The rest of the plane was probably scattered across a good portion of the county. So many planes had gone down when The Breaking had been so aggressively forced onto humanity that finding a wreck wasn’t such an unusual thing. Cole held the Brown Precision rifle to his shoulder so he could study the wreckage through his scope.

“That can’t be it,” he whispered to himself when he spotted a flimsy shelter built near the broken nosecone of the downed plane. Without moving the scope from his eye, he found a switch on its rounded side and moved it to a position that brought up a small display within the scope’s optics.

“Or maybe it can.”

Cole adjusted another ring built into the scope which gave him a greater magnification. High caliber gunshots could be heard further back within the woods, but he ignored them as he studied the shelter he’d found. A crooked grin showed on his face when he picked out a series of wires connecting the shelter to a blackened wall just inside the fuselage which was most likely the divider between the cockpit and passenger cabin. Thanks to the high resolution optics built into the scope, Cole could tell the wall was made from heavy scrap metal instead of the smoother steel that would have been used in the plane’s original construction. Wires leading from the wall to the shelter could have been salvaged from any number of places, and their presence told him that something was inside the fuselage other than boxes of stale honey roasted peanuts.

The next series of shots that were fired came from a slightly different angle. Those were followed by shots from different sources as well as a few voices shouting back and forth to each other.

“We got one pinned down,” one of the voices said. “Find the other!”

Cole lowered the scope and looked straight down. Doing his best to ignore the swirling feeling in his gut, he studied the edge of the canyon until he found what he was after. A rope ladder was secured to a ledge by two posts and to the floor of the canyon by a steel bar embedded in the ground. He then traced an imaginary line back to the shelter. It wasn’t until he took a closer look at the fuselage itself before he whispered, “There you are.”

A narrow pipe stuck out from the bottom of one of the windows looking into the plane’s passenger cabin. It could have been stuck there any time during the crash or sometime near impact. Protruding from the window only a few inches or so, the pipe was mostly covered by shredded strips of canvas. Thanks to Cole’s enhanced scope, he could just make out the face hovering above and behind the pipe inside the plane. Studying it a bit closer was enough to convince him that the pipe was actually a rifle barrel. He rested his left elbow on top of his bent knee and used that hand for support while taking aim with the Brown Precision.

The high caliber shots from the woods behind Cole had come to a stop, but smaller caliber rounds were still being fired. A man’s voice rose to a surprised yelp and was quickly cut short. The smaller caliber shooting switched to full auto, and Frank shouted something in his native language. The reptilian dialect, which Cole had only found out about recently, could easily be mistaken for a series of hisses and croaks. In any language, the war cry would have spoken for itself. A few heavy impacts and one final solid thump put an end to the last bit of shooting.

A few seconds later, Frank’s voice drifted in from behind Cole. “There were two more in these trees,” he said.

“You handle them?” Cole asked.

“I was able to knock one out, but had to kill the other.”

“Were they Vigilant?”

“They had the brand on their necks.”

“Then I don’t give a shit what you had to do to them,” Cole said. “Just as long as they’re out of our way.”

Frank moved in beside Cole to take a look at the bottom of the canyon. “Is that the prison?”

“I think so,” Cole told him. “Either that or it’s just marking the entrance to some hole being used as a prison. I’ve seen more underground lairs than I care to remember. I don’t see anyone else up top with us. How about you?”

Lifting his scaled snout, Frank sampled the air and panned his dark yellow eyes in both directions. He opened his mouth to talk, but only flicked his tongue out and pulled it back in again. Finally, he said, “There are no other humans in the vicinity, but there is one inside the wreckage of that plane.”

“I see him. Or her. Either way, there’s a ladder that’ll take you down to the bottom.”

“Take
me
to the bottom?”

“Yeah. I’m guessing you can climb down it faster than I could. It’s anchored about fifty or sixty feet that way.”

Without looking in the direction Cole pointed, Frank sighed, “I suppose I am the bait to get that sniper to show themselves?”

“We both already see the sniper. Getting past them without being picked off is the tricky part. If there’s a chance for you to get down there and knock him out before I have to blow his head off, it’d be worth the risk.”

“You mean worth risking
me
.”

“Hey,” Cole said. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit rusty here. How long do you think I’d last without backup? If that’s the prison, we’re not even halfway done before we can get out of here. If anything happens to you, I don’t have much of a shot.”

Frank studied the canyon top to bottom for a few more seconds before saying, “I have a better idea. It may take a while longer, but it should be worth it. Give me ten minutes, and then fire a shot into that plane.”

“I do that and the sniper will probably zero in on me.”

“How important is it to take the sniper alive?”

Cole thought about all the things that could potentially screw them up if they walked into any Vigilant stronghold without knowing their security measures. There were explosives that could be rigged, alarms that could be tripped, any number of traps that could be sprung, and those were just the things that popped into mind after thinking for a few seconds. Even if the sniper had keys to a jail cell, that would make a world of difference in Cole being able to get out before any reinforcements arrived. “Ten minutes?” he asked. “You can’t go any faster than that?”

“Just be ready to shoot,” Frank replied. “One of the windows near the tail would be good.”

“Sure,” Cole grunted since the Squam had already scurried away. “You want fries with that?”

L
ess than five minutes later, Cole heard a few pebbles clatter against the side of the canyon. It sounded as if they’d broken loose almost directly below his position. He leaned forward to glance down along the canyon wall.

Nothing was there.

The stuff that affected his sight had almost completely evaporated, but enough remained to add a trace amount of smearing to the world around him. What caught his attention wasn’t a color or texture that was out of place but a small space where there were no colors or textures whatsoever bleeding from the environment. Cole studied that spot until he was convinced it was just the first spot in his field of vision that had fully cleared. Then, that same portion of the canyon wall inched downward.

Cole blinked to make sure he wasn’t seeing some kind of mirage after focusing on the same patch of nothing for too long. When the patch moved again, he grunted, “Holy crap.”

He’d already known Frank could change his coloring to blend in with his surroundings. He’d seen the Squam pull that trick so well that he could remain unseen to someone who was staring straight at him. What Cole hadn’t known was that Frank could dig his claws into solid rock and climb down the wall of the canyon like some giant four-legged spider.

After the rocks had clattered down into the canyon, anyone could have looked in Frank’s direction. Cole put the scope to his eye to check on the guard that remained inside the broken fuselage. He could still only see one rifle barrel emerging from a window, and it was still pointed in the same direction since the last time Cole had checked on it. There were no other ladders to be found, so the sniper was most likely watching the one stretching up to the top of the canyon. Cole kept the rifle pointed at the fuselage as he leaned over to glance down along the canyon wall. He couldn’t find Frank.

“Shit,” Cole whispered. The only thing left for him was the plan. He checked his watch, saw there was still two minutes left before he was supposed to take his shot and gazed through the scope once more. Cole turned the ring on the scope to zoom out two notches. He still couldn’t find Frank anywhere on the wall or the ground below. The stuff beneath his eyes had completely evaporated, leaving him without a single ghostly smear to point him in one direction or another.

The sniper was still at the same window, staring in the same direction. The barrel of the rifle moved slightly back and forth, but no shots were fired.

One more minute.

Cole thought he might have caught some movement near the shelter connected to the fuselage but couldn’t see enough to tell for certain whether it was Frank or just the wind kicking some dirt around. Finally, the time came for him to fire his shot. Cole aimed at one of the windows closer to the cracked tail section and sent a round through an already broken window.

The rifle barrel poking through the other window shifted in that direction and was immediately pulled into the plane. Squinting along the top of his rifle, Cole prepared to take another shot. The only problem was that he didn’t have a target. His nerves drew taut. After waiting so long in Cody for a chance to hit The Vigilant, it was difficult to wait one more second now that he was on the job.

When he saw a face appear in the window where the sniper had been, Cole snapped his aim straight to that spot and placed his finger on his trigger. Through the scope, it was easy enough to pick out Frank’s reptilian features. A Squam’s expressions were never easy to read, but tension on any face looked the same.

“Whoever is out there. I know you can hear me.”

The voice came from the earpiece Cole had taken from one of the guards. He hadn’t put it on because all radio traffic seemed to have been cut after the first coded response was messed up. Cole clipped the piece to his ear and tapped it. “I hear you.”
“I’ve got your snake man at gunpoint. Show yourself or I send his brains out through this window.”

Cole settled in behind his Brown Precision, resting his cheek against the side of the rifle so his eye was lined up with the scope. “Bullshit. Nobody can sneak up on him that easily.”

“You don’t talk like a snake man.”

“And you don’t talk like someone who’s seriously got the upper hand.”

“You think so? I already have a pretty good fix on your position,” the voice said. “Do yourself a favor and come down here before I rain mortar fire down on you.”

“You’re just a voice on a radio, idiot,” Cole said. “You could be calling from anywhere. I stand up and wave my hands and you’ll see me for sure. You think I’m stupid?”

“This is a secure location. You either do as you’re told or you don’t go home.”

“Sounds like a bluff to me. You got a gun on my partner? Prove it. Let me talk to him.”

F
rank stood rooted to his spot. His toes curled to dig their short claws into the floor while his eyes remained fixed on the window directly in front of him. He’d just been looking out but froze when he felt the touch of a pistol’s barrel against the back of his head. The sniper who’d been at that window before lay sprawled upon the floor. Moments ago, the two of them had been the only other living things inside that plane. By the time Frank detected the scent of another human, it was too late to do anything about it.

“Say something,” the man behind him demanded.

Frank’s thoughts raced, and a plan quickly took shape. It wasn’t much, but it was the best he would get under the circumstances. When he reached back to take the earpiece, Frank felt the barrel jam against his head aggressively.

“Just talk,” the human said.

“Can you hear me?” Frank asked.

Cole’s voice crackled through the connection. “Are you all right?”

“You won’t see me again.”

“So someone is really there with you? He’s got a gun on you?”

“Yes,” Frank replied. “You won’t see me again.” He didn’t know how much of that he actually got to say before the human behind him pulled the earpiece back.

Frank listened to the gunman make some more threats but wasn’t paying attention to specific words. Instead, he listened to the tone in the human’s voice while focusing the pressure of the gun barrel against his head. Within seconds, that tone shifted, and the pressure of the gun barrel altered slightly. Frank snapped his head to one side and twisted his entire body around.

The human had the build of a soldier with a lean frame and was obviously no stranger to being starved for days or weeks at a time. His eyes betrayed no surprise now that his prisoner had turned on him. He cut himself off in mid-sentence, dropped the earpiece and adjusted his aim to take a shot. The pistol in his hand sent a round into the battered interior of the fuselage, sending moldy dust into the air. If Frank’s body had been constrained by a human’s flexibility limitations, he would have been dead. A Squam needed to wriggle through the smallest openings at the bottom of a swamp or crawl beneath fallen logs while keeping his belly to the ground. Ducking out of the way of a gun being fired by someone with a human’s reflexes was no big challenge. Staying out of that gun’s way at close range for more than a few seconds wasn’t going to be as simple.

Contorting his spine into a crimped zigzag line, Frank pushed against the floor with both feet in a desperate attempt to scramble away. His arms stretched out to support himself as his frame partially collapsed. The human fired again, hitting Frank’s side. Because the Squam had drawn his innards into the middle of his body so he could flatten his torso, the bullet passed through without doing more than tearing two small holes in his leathery skin. Frank hissed while scrambling around to get behind the gunman. The next bullet scraped across the side of his neck. That vital area was protected by several layers of scales, preventing any real damage from being done. It still hurt, however, and Frank used that pain to fuel his next attack.