Home Fires Burning (Walking in the Rain Book 2) (7 page)

Extending my incision carefully from the top of the domed tent to the base, I made a new entrance for the small tent and eeled my head and arms inside.

“Quiet,” I said softly as I began cutting the ropes binding these prisoners.  Whispers actually make more sound than just speaking softly.  I’d read that in a story once and it turned out to be true.

I freed the larger bundle first, and silently unwrapped the filthy blanket to reveal a battered and blood streaked woman.  She wore only a tattered white t shirt.  In the dim light, I saw her cracked lips move and I realized she was mouthing the words ‘thank you’ over and over.  Had she not been so severely dehydrated, I am sure she would have been crying.

In the tiny space I barely had room to work in freeing the other two prisoners, who turned out to be a pair of little girls, maybe ten and twelve years old.  Like the woman, they were streaked with blood and bodily fluids and seeing their condition made my anger rise once again. 

Throttling down my hate, I leaned over so my lips where a scant inch from the woman’s ear.

“Crawl out under that bush.  I’ll hand the girls out to you.  Once you get clear, stay down and go straight back another ten yards.  Lie down flat on the ground and wait for me.  There will be shooting.”

I wanted to say more, but already the clock was ticking down.

“Kill them all,” she said with a voice so soft I thought I imagined it.  Then I saw the fierce look in her blood shot eyes and knew I had heard her correctly.

“Oh, you can count on it,” I replied.

Then we were out of time as the zipper on the front of the tent started sliding down.  I got the two girls out just before the guard stuck his head into the opening.

“I told you whiny fuckers…”

Whatever he was about to say died with him as the tip of my blade slammed through his eye socket and into his brain.  I twisted viciously, completing his sudden lobotomy, and then I tilted the blade up to create a handle as I drug the corpse inside.

He was a tall, skinny man dressed in filthy jeans and a stinking, faded camo pattern jacket over a beer logo tee shirt.  I found a rusty revolver thrust into one pocket of the jacket.  I thought about our plan for a second, and then wrestled the dead asshole out of his jacket.  My jacket, now.

I pulled the small radio and risked a call to my companions.

“Three extracted.  One guard down.  Give me that five minutes to cut the odds.  Watch for my new Army camo jacket.”

“Copy” was all Nick had to say.

Cut the odds?  At least fourteen more armed, aggressive hostiles in the camp and I was going out there to cull the herd.  A distant part of my mind was wondering if this was how it felt to lose your marbles, but I didn’t dwell on that thought.  As I took a moment to center myself, I realized, for the first time in months, I wasn’t afraid.  Fear had been such a constant, like gravity, that I suddenly felt giddy as I checked my knives.

I would use the knives first, until the shooting started, then go to pistols.  I would fight until all of them were dead, or I was.  I’d seen too many horrible scenes and endured too fear these last months.  The world was a terrible place to live and I’d had enough.  No bag limit today.

CHAPTER TEN

The prison tent was in the center of a semicircle of other temporary dwellings, either tents or rough lean-to shacks.  Keeping my head inside the tent and peeking out, I could see the shape of a man in the tent to the left of me.  He looked to be laying or sitting in the shade, his head moving slightly to the beat of some inner rhythm.

Crawling casually out of the stinking prisoners’ tent, I stood for a moment and stretched, hoping my unseen companions would clock my whereabouts.  I only had a few minutes before the shooting started, and I wanted to avoid friendly fire while killing as many of these monsters as possible.

The man in the tent never saw me coming.  He was occupied with a dog eared Playboy magazine, apparently reading one of the articles, when I slid the blade of my eight inch stiletto into his left ear.  This was a recent acquisition, picked up from one of the Harrison raiders, and I liked the way the grip fit my hand.  Way better than using an old butcher knife, I decided.

Once I made sure the man was 100% dead, twisting the blade as I had with the earlier guard, I drug a filthy blanket up over the cooling corpse and moved on to the next objective.  Instead of skulking around, I just stood and walked over like I belonged there.  Trying to sneak around in broad daylight is hard, and with my need to hurry and the movement already going on in the camp I decided to take a gamble.

The next tent was vacant and I barely slowed as I continued walking.  I was running out of time and needed to act fast if I wanted to whittle down the opposition.  With that in mind I stepped in front of the next man to walk by, a black guy in his early twenties with a row of tattoos across his neck.  He barely seemed to register my presence before I swept his legs out from underneath him.

Taking a firm grasp on his right arm in my left, I continued the motion and rolled both of us into the weeds bordering the tent.  With my right arm cocked, I drove the point of the stiletto into his chest, angling up under the rib cage and aiming for the heart, even before my victim’s back hit the ground.  I took several uncoordinated blows to my arms and a shot to my jaw before the struggling stopped.  I pulled the blade free and quickly slit the man’s throat for good measure.  I was still on my knees, knife in hand, when I heard a sharp intake of breath and looked up.

The man, another one of the raiders I’d seen standing near the poor bastard being tortured earlier, was clawing at the pistol holstered on his hip.  His movements were panicked and he was making little progress.  When I saw him open his mouth to cry out a warning, I lunged forward, the knife sinking into the man’s crotch.  I ripped down, seeking the femoral artery, even as the mutilated man shrieked.

“Well, hell,” I muttered and continued cutting until the bright fountain of blood confirmed my job here was done.  This guy wasn’t going to be much of a threat in a few minutes, but I couldn’t stick around that long.  Those screams rivaled the guy getting butchered, who had now fallen silent.

Then the shooting started, and I dropped to the ground next to the dying man.

“Why?” the man whispered, his eyes glassy and rolling back in his head.

“Because you were here,” I replied in a conversational tone, as I used the edge of the knife to cut his throat.  The dying man didn’t even flinch.  Probably unnecessary, since very little blood leaked from that wound.  Most of his blood was already on the ground, where it pooled under his body.  And where I was laying, no doubt.

Keeping my head down, I still had a decent view of the camp as Nick, Scott and Mark began the task of killing the remaining raiders.  At first, every shot seemed to bring down another one of the thugs, and I noticed my teammates were trying to shoot the men armed with rifles first.  That made sense.  A pistol is ultimately a defensive arm, while a rifle gave you the range to shoot back. 

The AR-15 appeared to be the rifle of choice, since everyone either had one slung on their back or close at hand, except for the first guard I’d killed in the prisoners’ tent.  Both of the dead men sprawled around me still had what looked like an AR-15 strapped to their backs.  Not that is did them any good.  They’d never seen me coming.

I debated picking up one of the rifles and using it, but decided to stick with my pistols.  I didn’t want to confuse my teammates when I started moving and also, though I barely felt it with the adrenaline flooding my system, the bruising from being shot the day before still made my chest burn.  Also, at the range I intended to work, a pistol would likely do the job.

After the first furious few minutes, I noted the fire coming into the camp began to fall off, either because Nick and company were running out of targets, ammunition, or were being forced to change positions.  Given the heavy volume of return fire, I figured the last option was likely the cause.

From where I lay, I could see several bodies hunkered behind the cover offered by a pair of fallen trees.  We’d noted these earlier as the lounging raiders used the roughly carved trunks as seats.  Several dead raiders lay around the trees, and these bodies and the trunks gave the survivors temporary shielding from the shooters.  From the rifle barrels I saw pointing out, that was the main resistance to the Keller force’s attack.

Crawling carefully on my knees and elbows, I approached the raider bastion using the tents and other fallen bodies as concealment until only a dozen yards separated me from their position.  This was it, the time to see if my trick might work.

“Guys, give me some cover.  I’m coming in!”

Though I’d only heard the man speak a few words before I killed him, the heavy Southern accent of the tent guard stuck in my head.  I tried to deepen my voice and hit that same twang, but filled with panic, as I jumped up and sprinted to the L shaped defensive position.

Head down and arms pumping, I scarcely noticed when a rifle barrel came up, froze on my form and dropped again just as suddenly.

“Fuck, Jimmy, get your ass in here,” one of the men hissed as I dove over the thick oak trunk and landed in the middle of the huddled raiders. 

I landed hard in the dirt, managing to clear the bodies.  I had no more time to plan as someone exclaimed, “Hey, that ain’t Jimmy!”

If any of the men had been fully facing me, I likely would have died right there.  Fortunately, they were still facing out, those armed with rifles trying to pick off my teammates.  I shot the closest man first, the one who called out and blew my cover.  Before any of the other men could bring their weapons to bear, I was already shooting into their backs and sides.  It was not in the least bit fair or sporting.  This was fish in a barrel and pure slaughter.  That’s why I did it.

I emptied the Glock in my right hand, dropped it, and switched to the P95 in my left until the slide locked back on that pistol as well.  Blood seemed to hang in the air as the men jerked and shuddered from the close contact wounds. 

By the time I transitioned to the knives, a Bowie in my right fist, the stiletto in my left, none of the men scattered around me were moving.  Not even a twitch.  I was hyperventilating and looking around for the next target.  I could hear the wind and the sound of my heart beating in my ears.

A shot from an unseen source whizzed by, and a dull pain began in my left forearm.  I dropped to the ground, landing partially on a corpse and released the knives.  The mad spell driving me before seemed broken and I scooped up the Glock.  I loaded a fresh magazine and chambered a round before searching out my radio.  I noticed the gunfire had flared up briefly before dying down to nothing while I was reloading.

“Thanks for not shooting me, guys.  What’s it looking like out there?”

“No more movement,” Nick finally replied.  His voice sounded tinny, and tired, over the small radio speaker.

“You see where those prisoners are hiding?” I asked, rolling over to get a better view of the now deserted looking camp.

“Yeah,” Scott answered.  “I saw them crawl out earlier and then they stayed put.  I think they are okay.”

“Give it ten more minutes, boys.  Keep on your toes and let’s see if anybody is playing possum.” Nick’s voice came through more clearly and I wondered if he had changed positions again.  I knew these little radios had less than two miles of absolute range and even a few hundred yards could affect the quality of the broadcast.

After a series of “roger”s sounded over the channel, I set the radio aside and turned my attention to the stinging in my left arm.

“Crap” I whispered as I gingerly pushed up the ruined sleeve of my stolen jacket.  Somebody had put a round through the fabric, and a ragged tear ran from wrist to elbow.  Beneath, I saw the sweat shirt I was wearing also looked shredded, but I saw no blood.  This felt like a real burn, from a hot stove, not a particular quality of the pain I was experiencing.  Could a bullet do that?  What I saw resembled a carpet burn, but worse, and fortunately it wasn’t bleeding.

After getting the all clear from Nick, I gathered up my pistols and knives and headed over to the middle of the camp where the tortured man was still tied up on a board.  He was dead, and looked so awful I had to fight to keep from vomiting.  I’d seen some bad shit but this was just something I could not comprehend.  Why burn and disfigure a man like that?

Nick took a look and I could see him grinding his teeth.

“We need to get him buried.”

“What about the others?” Scott asked.

“What others?” I asked, while stripping off the blood soaked jacket to get at the minor wound on my arm.  Mark saw the burn and started digging some ointment and a bandage out of his first aid kit.  He was working hard to avoid looking at the ruined face and body that had once been a man.

“I found what I have to assume is a body dump.  Four more.  All show signs of torture as well.”  Scott sounded disgusted and horrified.

I remembered then, and shook my head.  Mark looked up but I let him know the ointment wasn’t causing me any pain.  Really, I’d done more damage to myself leaning against a tractor exhaust pipe one time.  Still, that bullet had come awfully close.  Maybe the wound would scar.  That might remind me to stay the heck down in the middle of a firefight.