This Shattered Land - 02 (37 page)

My
attention was on Ronnie.

This
is all your doing, you stupid bastard.
I thought, as I lined up my sights.
You
hurt me, you hurt my friends, and you got your own men killed doing it. And for
what? A little bit of weapons and ammo?

Even
if I weren’t in a killing rage, it still would have felt good to shoot that
murdering pile of shit. My grin was widening, and a surge of exultation rose
within me as I began to squeeze the trigger. Then something strange happened.

Ronnie’s
head burst open.

Blood,
bone, and brain matter sprayed forth and soaked the rotten leaves under what
was left of his head. He went limp and flopped down as though someone had
flipped an off switch on his existence. Part of me wondered where the hell that
shot came from, while the rest of me noticed the shocked expression of the
gun-wielding raider kneeling beside his corpse. I adjusted my aim and ended his
confusion permanently.

Now
seriously, where did that shot come from? It sure as hell wasn’t me.

The
demise of their leader had thrown the last of the raiders into disarray. The
two men ordered to find me turned and fled in the opposite direction of the
firefight. Another shot from somewhere out in the forest took one of them
through the chest, erupting in a narrow mist of blood out of his back. The
other one dropped his rifle in panic and whimpered as he picked up speed. It
didn’t do him any good, I led him just a bit with the crosshairs and put two
bullets in his spine. He squawked as he went down, thrashed around a bit, and
then went still. A shot rang out to my left and I heard a scream as yet another
gunman fell to the ground with a brand new orifice in his upper abdomen. I
didn’t know who it was aiding me, but I had to admire their marksmanship.
Rather than waste time questioning the motives of whoever was lending us a
helping hand, I turned my attention to making corpses out of the remaining
marauders. I ran to another attack position and started picking shots again.
Eric and Sarah broke cover and harried the raiders with carefully aimed fire
bringing down at least one hostile each. A high-pitched scream of pain from Tom
and Brian’s position made my blood run cold. I looked around for them and saw
Tom kneeling beside Brian with a hand pressed tight over a wound on the boy’s
leg.

They
shot him,
I
thought,
they shot Brian.

That
was it, I lost it.

I
don’t remember the next span of time very well. The sound of the firefight was
drowned out by my heartbeat hammering my ears. A red haze covered the world in
front of me, descending like a bloody fog. I was running, figures came into
view, and then they went down with holes in their heads. Someone was screaming
in my ears like a madman, howling and deranged. A terrified face stared at me
from behind a rifle that had run out of ammo, his finger pulling the trigger
frantically on an empty chamber. A swipe of my Falcata sent his head spinning
away from his shoulders. Crimson jets from the stump of his neck bathed me in
gore as his headless body collapsed at my feet. Something ran into me from the
side, knocking my sword out of my hand. I grabbed the figure and slammed him to
the ground with a hip toss, then head-butted him once—twice—three times, and
then rammed my Bowie knife into his chest all the way to the hilt. I don’t even
remember pulling the knife from its sheath.

And
then it was over.

The
red mist shrouding my mind dissipated. My throat was raw from screaming, blood
ran down into my eyes, and I couldn’t tell if it belonged to me or someone
else. I kneeled a few feet away from the spot where my companions had taken cover
during the firefight. The stag-horn handle of my Bowie knife protruded from the
chest of a corpse with a horrifically smashed-in face. Blood pooled beneath the
body, soaking into the dark earth beneath. Something tugged against my neck. Reaching
up to touch it, I realized my rifle had somehow shifted around and dangled down
my back from its sling.  I shook the blood out of my eyes, ripped my knife from
the dead man’s body, and wiped it clean on his shirt before stepping away to
check my rifle. Smoke curled out of the hot barrel and the chamber yawned open
on an empty magazine. I pulled it out and slapped in a new one, then started
looking around for my Falcata. It lay on the ground half-buried under leaves a
few feet away. I picked it up and returned it to its sheath. All this I did
unconsciously, not really thinking, just going through the motions.

“Gabe,
you okay man?” Eric asked, his tone cautious.

I
turned to look at him, not really hearing. He leaned heavily against a tree,
his skin an unhealthy ashen color and his rifle hanging limp from one bloody
hand. Tom and Sarah seemed not to have sustained any wounds, but Eric was in
rough shape. Blood loss was rapidly weakening him. He needed treatment, and he
needed it quickly. Thinking about his gunshot wound made the pain of mine come
back with a roaring vengeance. I winced at the grinding agony in my shoulder as
I walked over to Brian and knelt down beside him.

“What
happened?” I asked.

“It’s
not that bad.” Brian forced out from between clenched teeth.

“He
got grazed, is all.” Tom said, his voice surprisingly calm given the situation.
“I looked at it, it’s not that deep. He’s gonna need stitches though.”

I
looked at Sarah. She knelt behind her son and held his head against one
delicate shoulder, her face a mask of fear, anger, and worry all in one haggard
bundle.

“Sarah,
take the others and get to the road.” I said. “See to Eric’s wound as best you
can and put a compress on Brian’s leg. I’ll do a quick recon, then come back
and help. All this noise is going to attract the infected, we have to get
moving.”

“Wait,
who the hell was that out there shooting these assholes. It wasn’t just you.”
Eric said, gesturing in the direction where the mystery sniper’s shots came
from.

I
shook my head. “I don’t know. They’re not shooting anymore, so they probably
don’t have any beef with us. We don’t have time to worry about it right now.
Get moving.”

Tom
gathered his son in his arms and began carrying him back toward the highway.
Sarah slipped Eric’s arm over her shoulder and supported him by gripping his
web belt as they walked. Eric was shaky on his feet, his breathing quick and
shallow. I worried he was going into shock.

I
did a quick lap around the area where the fight took place and assessed the
damage. In total, twenty-three men had attacked us. Now they all lay dead in a
remote stretch of woodland, miles away from anything, with nothing to denote
who they were but piles of carrion that would eventually wither down to bones.
What a waste. It would have been nice take an hour or so to pick the bodies
over for anything useful and cache their weapons and ammo, but we didn’t have
that kind of time. I could already hear distant moans growing steadily louder
in the distance. Once I was sure all our attackers were well and truly dead, I double-timed
it back to the others. Tom was bandaging Brian’s leg when I got back, and Sarah
had Eric stripped to his waist so that she could work on his wound.

“Eric,
I need to get this bleeding stopped.” Sarah said. “I’m sorry, but this is going
to hurt.”

Eric
nodded, his eyes closed. “Do what you have to do.”

Sarah
motioned me over and told Eric to lie down on top of the trailer. I pinned
Eric’s arms to his chest and held him down while she poured peroxide into the
bullet-hole, then packed it with gauze to staunch the bleeding. It wasn’t
ideal, but we were in a hurry and it would have to do. I helped Eric sit up and
wrapped a compression bandage around his mid-section to keep pressure on the
wound. Pain pinched his mouth down into a hard line of misery, and his ribcage
had already turned an ugly shade of greenish-purple around the ragged exit
wound. In spite of all that, he kept on a determined face and gestured for me
to hand him his rifle. He was learning the same hard lesson I learned so many
years ago in Afghanistan; the pain can only hurt you so bad. Fighting the pain
is pointless, so it’s best to just accept it. Let it run its course. Eventually
you get to a point where you realize it hurts just as much to sit still as it
does to move, so you grit your teeth and you get your ass moving. Sarah got a
bag of prescription painkillers out of the cart and handed Eric a couple along
with her canteen.

“Mother
of mercy, God bless you woman.” He said, and washed them down.

“Grab
a shirt and let’s get moving.” I said to Eric.

“Hell
with that, it’d hurt too damn much to put it on.” He replied, handing Sarah
back her water. “Just help me with my harness.”

Sarah
helped me buckle on Eric’s web gear. I pulled a canteen from his belt and held
it up to him. “Drink as much of this as you can stand. It’ll help keep your
blood pressure up.”

Eric
took the canteen and unscrewed the cap. “I thought high blood pressure was a
bad thing.”

“Not
when you’ve been bleeding like a stuck pig, it isn’t.”

He
took a long pull of water, wincing as he raised his arm. “You learn something
new every day.”

I
turned and knelt down beside Brian. His father had cut away his pants leg to
work on the deep groove carved into his leg, and was just finishing with the
bandage.

“You
doing okay?” I asked, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m
not going to lie, Gabe. My leg hurts like crazy.” He looked up at me with eyes
too old for such a young face. “I think I can manage, as long as we can find a
place to rest soon.”

I leaned
closer and lowered my voice. “I know you’re hurting, but I need you to dig deep
and gut it out, you hear? We might have to walk a long ways before we find a
place to hole up.”

The
boy set his jaw and nodded.

“Come
on, son. On your feet.” Tom said, standing up and holding out a hand to Brian.
The boy reached up and let his father help him stand.

“What
about the trailer?” Sarah asked, shifting her worried gaze away from her son to
look at the sum of our worldly possessions.

“You
and Tom worry about this guy,” I said, patting Brian on the back, “I’ll see to
the gear.”

The
moans of the approaching walkers drifted to us through the forest, converging
from all points of the compass. If they were close enough for me to hear, they
were close enough to be a problem. We needed to put some distance behind us. I
opened the lid to a side compartment on the cart and began digging out the yoke
and harness.

“Y’all
go on, I’ll get this thing sorted out and catch up.” I said, waving down the
road. “Eric, can you take point?”

He
smiled, his usual smart-ass nature winning through despite the pain.

“Jeez,
Gabe, I ain’t dead yet. Just make sure you don’t take too long with this thing,
I’d hate to have to come back here and rescue your sorry ass.” 

I
shot him my best scowl and stabbed a finger in the direction we needed to go. He
turned to start down the highway and motioned for the others to follow. The
yoke and harness only took a minute or two to hitch before I dragged the cart
out of the brush and hustled to catch up. As I passed the van, I paused for a
moment to squat down and peer inside the shattered front windshield. I was
curious why none of the rounds we fired at the outset of the firefight
penetrated through to the ambushers on the other side. Inside the cab I found
my answer—sandbags. The clever bastards had jam-packed the inside of the van with
a couple of hundred canvas bags filled with dirt. I’d have to remember that
one.

The
warm stream of blood that had been pouring down my injured arm for the last few
minutes finally began to slow down. I knew by the simple fact that I could
raise it that the wound wasn’t that serious. It would require stitches, which
would hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but as long as I didn’t let it get infected I
had little to worry about. I’ve been hurt a lot worse with less medical
resources available and survived it. I could do it again.

Eric’s
condition was a much larger concern. He had lost a lot of blood, and once his
adrenaline wore off the pain was going to be significantly worse. We had enough
pain meds to keep him moving, but the drugs would reduce his ability to focus.
In a world overrun with the living dead, that kind of thing could get a man
killed in a hurry. What we needed was a place to rest and recuperate for a
while. Someplace near a source of water, preferably with places close by to
scavenge for food. I picked up speed and caught up with Eric.

“How
you feelin’?” I asked.

“Pills
are kicking in.” He replied. “My side doesn’t hurt as bad, but I’m feeling a
little loopy.”

“You
drink all that water yet?”

“Yeah.
I’m about halfway through my second canteen.” He patted the green bottle riding
on his belt.

“Good.
It’s the closest thing to a plasma drip we have right now, so keep it up.”

He
nodded, his eyes beginning to glaze over. “So what’s the plan? We still headed
for the railroad tracks?”

I
shook my head, grimacing in frustration. “No, it’s too far away to make on foot
before nightfall, especially with us being all banged up. We need to find a
place to hide out, and we need to do it quick.”