Rage (10 page)

He would tell his squads, then later his squad leaders—the young second lieutenants who thought they could change the world: “Take your damn time.”

At this point, at this … “juncture, gentlemen” … go slow.

One error would be an error too many.

He caught movement, the bandits standing, passing around a liquid. A few with rifles over their shoulders. One with a handgun.

Five.

They were gathered around something; the source of the screaming.

I should back away, Raine thought. He’d seen them here. What Dan wanted to know.
Yeah, you got bandits on this road. Armed. Drunk. With a prisoner.

But there was the voice of the girl, the prisoner. Raine couldn’t see her unless he leaned forward. Doing that, he’d be exposed if anyone turned.

In his world—his old world—there were times you backed away, and times you didn’t.

Old Brooklyn street rules. Sometimes you had to stand up.

No matter how bad it looked.

He leaned forward again, taking care that his gun barrel didn’t scrape the stone.

And he saw that the bandits had gathered around a wooden
cage. Makeshift. Just some sticks lashed together, enough room to stand up.

Something to transport someone, he thought.

The sun … a steady stream of sweat. He blinked.

Inside, a woman. Though almost of indeterminate sex in her own version of a Wasteland costume. Layers of cloth, a turban-like headgear. Her face smudged with dabs of color, black and red. Different from the bandits that held her.

Might that be the factor? Was she from some other bandit clan?

A prize? A hostage? Something to be bartered?

From the looks of things, they had other ideas for now.

The one with the handgun came close to the cage. He was bare to the chest, his face markings—wild swirls of color—stretched all the way down to his upper torso.

That bandit pointed his gun at the woman—no more than a girl, now that Raine looked closer. Couldn’t be much more than a teen.

“You will die if’n they don’t pay.”

A few others gave out a bellowed, “Yeah, yeah.
Die!
”

They laughed.

So funny.

But the girl didn’t blink. Instead, she leaned close to that bandit, her young face, still unburned, and unwrinkled features barely visible through her painted face—and she spat in his face.

Dead on target.

And the man didn’t even pause to wipe the spit off.

He raised his gun at the girl, who, amazingly, didn’t flinch. Her screams replaced with silence, her eyes wide, scanning her captors, as if she were trying to figure if there was any way out of this.

Now
, Raine told himself.

Or never.

To help, he would have to come out of his hiding spot, this wedge of stone, and get his guns ready, all in one move. His body still didn’t feel back to normal. It felt like parts were still sleeping.

Goddamn duty.

He pressed down, ready to spring out. Tightened his muscles.

And he moved.

The first shot went wide of its target. He stumbled getting to the level ground of the enclosed area around the fire.

But that shot got the attention of the other bandits, and they turned away from the girl … and right toward him.

The four with rifles started leveling their weapons, as if Raine had turned himself into a shooting gallery.

But they moved slowly, stupidly, getting their guns in position.

Save for the girl’s tormentor with his handgun. Drunk or not, he moved fast.

He fired a shot that Raine thought missed completely.

Until—delayed reaction—he felt a spear of pain on the side of his right leg. He didn’t look down but he felt the wound. And even without looking down, he knew he was dripping blood onto the ground.

Couldn’t let anything else distract him now.

Two guns. One in each hand. Like out of a movie. No aiming. Christ, no getting any cover.

He fired each gun simultaneously, doing his best to target the bandits without raising a gun site to his eyes.

He caught one bandit with a shot to the gut, sending him to
his knees. Then another blast took one down in what had to be an amazingly lucky shot to the chest.

Two down.

By then Raine heard bullets ricocheting around him. They, too, were firing quickly now.

The bandit by the cage stuck his arm out and actually took aim with his handgun. And despite the new pain in his right leg, Raine
rolled
forward. He felt bits of gravel and dirt dig into the wound. A flash of white light exploded in his eyes, only to clear just as his roll ended.

Down on his knees, closer to the bandits.

Raine fired his rifle at the handgun bandit, once, twice—both times hitting. The bandit’s wide, wild eyes turned dull.

Then Raine quickly wheeled to the right, seeing the stupefied expression of another bandit trying to take aim at the moving target he had become.

It was no contest, and Raine fired a shot right between the dumb bastard’s eyes.

Now the last bandit tried to take a bead on Raine as he moved through the dirt, rolling, smearing a blood trail on the sand. Until, popping up from one painful roll, he fired his handgun at the last bandit. A shoulder wound.

All his training helped.

That, and maybe the fact that, unlike the bandits, he hadn’t drunk any of what was in the bottle.

That last bandit, wounded, bleeding, looked at the bodies and started scrambling away.

Always a mistake.

Though he was able to put some distance between him and the mayhem, it now gave Raine a chance to really aim. Too easy: a single shot in the back.

And the five were all dead.

Raine kept kneeling there.

Until he heard the voice. “C’mon. You there. Shooter man. Get me out. Now, now!”

He turned to the girl in the wooden cage, remembering why he had started this melee to begin with. She was urgently waving to him, imploring him to free her. “C’mon! Hurry!”

“You’re welcome.”

T
he girl kept her eyes locked on him. Was it from fear, or just the wild-eyed look that anyone living out here took on as their natural expression? It certainly didn’t look as though she trusted him.

Suddenly, letting her out of the cage didn’t seem like the best of ideas. But Raine checked the rusted lock. One of the bodies around him must have a key.

On the other hand—

He fired at the lock and it shattered into three pieces.

The girl pushed open the wooden poles that had kept her trapped and then stood there, as if expecting Raine to do something to her.

“You okay?”

She nodded.

“Good. Now, what are you doing here? How’d they capture—”

The girl pointed past him, gesturing over his shoulder. “Look—more of them!”

Raine turned and saw nothing. But he felt the girl touch his back, and in one sleek move she had grabbed his knife. When he turned around, he saw her running away, hugging close to boulders, running as fast as she could, her new prize held tight in her hand.

Could she be going for his buggy?

But she ran in the other direction, farther into the surreal landscape of the Wasteland.

Raine shook his head. If the knife could help her, maybe she should have it.

And then he went around to the dead bandits, relieving them of their weapons and ammo. It was the same grisly job no matter where it was done. No matter what an enemy wore. What they believed. The language they spoke or the color of their skin.

You took what they had.

After all, they were dead. They certainly didn’t need it.

Still, unwrapping fingers frozen to a trigger never got to feel like a normal thing to do.

Driving back, he guessed that the radio was still totally useless.

The weapons—his prizes—rattled in the back of the buggy. He half expected to run into more members of whatever clan he had just killed, but—so far—the road was quiet.

Just the deep, throaty roar of the vehicle. The rattling sound of the chassis. It was starting to sound comforting.

He had wrapped a piece of one of the bandit’s shirts around his wound. It stopped the blood, though it was definitely not sterile.

Raine thought about this world he found himself in.

He’d been here a mere two days, and already there was a new
normal.
He knew he shouldn’t have been too surprised, though. Even a newbie arriving into an area with firefights, IEDs, and snipers learns very quickly:
This is the fucking way it is.

Adaptable.

The species was goddamn adaptable.

Still, nothing told him what he was going to do. Strange to be in the future and not have a clue what your future held. So far it had been all about shooting people. Not that they didn’t deserve it.

Not like they didn’t have it coming.

But if that’s what was ahead, he’d better get his head around that idea.

Too many questions
—why this, why the hell that
—could screw up reflexes. Play games with your decision-making.

So—a first bit of resolve.

Acceptance.
This was the world. Forget the other one. That was long gone.

And then, as if to accentuate just that point, the radio came to life.

“Raine? Raine!”

It was Dan’s voice—barely recognizable over the noise. Raine picked up the handset. “Yeah. Here. Where the hell—”

“Listen, we’ve been hit. Watch yourself coming back.”

“Hit?”

Bits of gritty sand flew into Raine’s face as he drove into a steady wind. He kept blinking to keep his eyes clear.

“The settlement—” Dan’s voice broke up. “Big attack.”

And he’d thought
he
would be the one to have the news. Five dead bandits. Some weapons.

“Watch it coming back. They’re likely to be—”

Another drop-off.

“Okay. I will. About twenty … twenty-five klicks, shit … I’m about sixteen miles from the settlement.”

Dan didn’t even ask about his recon. Guess it didn’t matter much.

“—careful, Raine.”

“Got it.”

He put the handset down and reached over to touch his rifle, making sure it was one quick grab away. The handgun was stuck awkwardly in a side pocket.

He drove fast, dodging the rubble where he could, scanning left and right, thinking what easy pickings he’d be out here.

He saw nothing.

Not another soul until he saw the settlement, the Hagar compound. Four smoky streams showed where they had been fighting fires, one a dark, sooty black. Raine guessed that maybe some fuel had been hit.

Guards by the entrance. He could see one with field glasses. The sun was behind them, nearly down, and they were shadowy figures.

Hope they can see me, he thought. Recognize me.

Friendly fire. It happened. Even here, he imagined.

Especially here.

He picked up the radio.

“Dan, almost there. Can you tell your guards … not to shoot?”

A female voice. Young. “They got you, stranger. Just slow it down a bit. No racing in. And watch your butt coming in. People are hurt here, shit.”

“Thanks.”

The last yellowish cusp of the sun slid behind a hill. Only
minutes more of daylight. Torches had already appeared on top of the razor ribbon that served as a wall around the settlement.

He slowed down.

And then something he felt in his gut, that he had indeed felt before, told him the attack here had been real bad.

Abreast of the two guards, one waved him in.

The smell of smoke and gunfire filled the air.

Then … slower still, past the gate, he heard the sound of moans, shouts.

Which was when someone—a woman—walked in front of his buggy, a hand up, stopping him. Raine hit the brakes, pulling himself out of the buggy. He looked around and was shocked to see what had happened.

T
he woman’s voice—clipped, to the point, an order—didn’t offer any discussion.

“You have to leave this buggy here. Too much debris still in the streets. We’re still looking for anyone missing.”

“What happened?”

She hesitated. “You best ask my father about that. After all—he’s the one who brought
you
here.”

The disdain in her voice felt like a physical kick.
This was Dan’s daughter?

“Okay. Where is he?”

“We’ve set up an infirmary right over—Hey, Tomas! Keep your goddamn eyes peeled out there,” she yelled at one of the guards who had been watching them. “Christ. They’re tired and so am I. But we can’t afford any more screwups.”

“You were attacked?”

“How observant. You Ark guys are really, really smart.”

“Okay.” He wanted more information, but clearly she wasn’t in the mood. “Dan. Where is he?”

“There’s a garage area behind Halek’s shop. Got the living and the dead in there.”

“Thanks.”

Which brought no reply.

He headed off in that direction.

Walking down the street as dusk took over, he saw signs of the battle.

Expended shells, bits of metal where something explosive ripped off a chunk from a nearby building. Even guns broken into pieces.

Some of Hagar’s people fought a fire still streaming out of a metal shed, handing buckets of water through a line. A rubber smell in the air—tires, probably. The smoke was noxious, and the people were using the water carefully.

A rare commodity here.

He walked past Halek’s shop to an alleyway leading in back, to see Dan, nodding as an elderly woman gestured at him, anxious. He spotted Raine. His face grim.

Raine walked up to him.

“They will die without it, Dan,” she was saying. “We just don’t have enough medicine.” The woman’s voice was surprisingly strong.

“Okay. I’ll take care of it.”

Raine stood by.

A voice came from behind. “Dan, the guards down by the gas tanks want some backup. Can’t afford to lose—”

Raine watched Dan take a breath. As if inhaling that much air could somehow fortify him for all the hard shit still to come.