Wall: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (The Traveler Book 3) (24 page)

Roof grabbed the boss by the collar and yanked him off the horse. The man’s foot tangled in the stirrup iron and he fell to the ground on his back. Roof let go and stood over him. “Yeah,” he said to the wide-eyed boss. “That’s so. Who are you?”

The boss scrambled away from Roof, angling himself to his feet. He picked up his hat and set it back on his head. He swallowed hard. “I didn’t—”

Roof took a giant step toward the boss. “Who are you?”

“My name is—”

“I don’t give a flying turd about your name,” said Roof. “Where did you come from? How many men do you have? Are there more coming from your direction?”

“We come from Hereford, near the western wall,” said the boss. “We was staged there a few weeks ago. We got a few hundred men, maybe thirty horses. Some of us got Brownings. Some of us got rifles.”

“Hereford,” Roof said. “Good. You’re early. You got men from El Paso and Abilene, right?”

The boss nodded. “I’m from El Paso. Most of us are.”

“You see any more companies coming this way? We should have more from Lubbock.”

“I ain’t seen—” The boss froze, his mouth agape. A trickle of blood streamed across his nose and over his lips. His brows arched with confusion and he dropped where he stood.

Roof instinctively ducked and turned on his heel. He raised his SCAR 17 to return fire, but a pull of the trigger did nothing. A second pull. Nothing. He tossed the weapon to the dirt and grabbed a long gun from a scabbard on the boss’s saddle. He checked to make sure it was loaded and then marched back to the front line.

“Hold the line, men!” he called to those who could hear him. “Beat back these Dweller scum. Kill ’em and advance!”

Roof rubbed the back of his hand against his cheek, aggravating the porcupine of stump splinters dotting his face. He looked at the blood on his hand and licked it off. He ran his fingers along his cheek and plucked at the shards one at a time while he marched back to the dead boss’s horse. Roof was oblivious to the bullets flying past him. He mounted the horse and raised his new rifle to his shoulder. Dwellers were dropping like flies. The tide was turning.

The Cartel pushed east along the rim, leaving a trail of bodies in the tsunami of their attack. Roof rode high on his horse, his chest puffed at the surprising relentlessness of his men. What they lacked in accuracy, they made up for with determination. When they’d cut a significant enough swath along the southern rim, he found another boss and put him in charge.

“I’m taking half the men and turning back,” he told the boss. “We’re heading to the floor.” He offered tactical suggestions to the boss, knowing another company of grunts was to hit the southeastern rim within the hour.

Roof gathered his men and retreated west toward the funnel of a descent into the canyon. With more than one hundred men, he believed he had enough firepower to plow through whatever resistance met him at the entrance to the floor.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

OCTOBER 26, 2037, 7:00 AM

SCOURGE +5 YEARS

PALO DURO CANYON, TEXAS

The first shots struck the Dweller standing to Lola’s right. He was perched on a narrow, rocky ledge that extended from the canyon wall. He clutched his chest with one hand and reached for Lola with the other. He lost his footing and fell twenty feet onto a jagged boulder, dying where he lay.

As gunfire erupted around her, Lola looked across the passage to Battle. He was on the opposite side, standing with Sawyer atop the smooth capstone of a tall hoodoo. She could barely make out his frame in the gray darkness. There were a hundred Dwellers lining both sides of the seven-hundred-foot descent to the canyon floor. Every fifty feet, a wall of a dozen Dwellers stretched from one side of the passage to the other. The passage snaked to the bottom of the canyon, opening its mouth wide to the floor. If an advancing army could navigate and fight its way to that opening, they could run roughshod over the Dwellers’ encampments. Paagal had placed a paramount on protecting the single best entry to the canyon floor.

Near its entrance, fifty feet from the rim, she’d instructed Battle to hold his position. He’d chosen the hoodoo, a large rock seemingly balanced atop a narrower climbing formation and forged from millions of years of erosion, because it was what he thought might be the safest spot for Sawyer. Where the hoodoo met the canyon wall, there was an indentation, as if the hoodoo were a puzzle piece fit snug against its mate, providing some protection from the attacks near the rim.

Lola wanted to be with Sawyer on the hoodoo. Battle suggested otherwise. He knew the young boy would be too consumed with protecting his mother to focus on the enemy. He’d be at greater risk than if she were out of sight.

Lola argued, then relented when Battle offered her a spot where she could see her son from afar. In the dark, her son wasn’t visible. The flashes of fire bursting along the rim above her were, however.

Resisting the urge to look over the ledge to see where the Dweller had fallen, she steadied the HK. It was impossible to know how many men were approaching. Instead of trying to find a target, she took a shot in the dark.

The rifle kicked against her shoulder and knocked her backward into the canyon wall. Two other Dwellers gave her sideways looks and returned to their sights. Lola rubbed her palm into the ache in her shoulder.

“C’mon, Aldo,” she whispered to the rifle. “Work with me.”

She flexed the shoulder, and this time drew the rifle tight, pressing it against the burgeoning bruise. She pulled the trigger again, the power of the Heckler & Koch vibrating thickly as she maintained pressure with her finger.

Although she had no idea if she was hitting anyone, she was empowered. With each thump against the bruise, a rush of anger-fueled adrenaline coursed through her body.

She emptied the magazine and, methodically, as Battle had showed her, removed it and loaded another into the German-made killing machine. Across the passage she spotted Sawyer on one knee, looking every bit the mercenary as he fired his weapon.

Battle was in front of him, also on his knee. He too was pressed to his sights, taking aim at the unseen enemy descending from above. She closed her eyes, said a quiet prayer, and ejected the second magazine.

***

Battle didn’t like the odds. There was a tremendous amount of gunfire coming from above. He couldn’t put a number on the enemy, but the volume of the weapons discharging was earsplitting.

Ahead of his position, he could hear the occasional cringe-inducing scream or wail from an injured grunt that pierced the air above the gunfire. It was the same from below as the line of Dwellers protecting the passage took heavy casualties.

Tactically, they were at a disadvantage. Battle believed the darkness, the elevation, and the lack of morality all favored the Cartel. The only thing the Dwellers had going for them was their intimate knowledge of the canyon’s topography and a desire to live free. The latter was a powerfully motivating force. It didn’t do much, however, against the bone-splintering shots from high-powered assault rifles fired at close range.

A Dweller lying prone at the front edge of the hoodoo took a hit. He cried out in pain and rolled over to reach for the wound in his side. When he did, a second shot killed him. He lay splayed across the flat rock, and his rifle fell from the perch.

Battle lowered his rifle and put his hand on Sawyer’s bony shoulder. “Move to the wall,” he said. “Stay low, go behind me, and press yourself flat into the indentation.”

Sawyer glared at Battle. “No,” he scoffed. “I’m not hiding. I’m fighting.”

Battle gripped the boy’s shoulder with a clawlike grip. “I’m not asking. Get yourself over there. If you want to keep fighting, you need to stay alive.”

Sawyer’s defiance recast into acquiescence and he lowered his weapon. Battle gave him a shove, and Sawyer stayed low, quickly moving to the relative protection of the rocky nook.

Battle held up his hand, urging Sawyer to stay put during the early flashpoint of the firefight. The boy nodded and Battle returned to targeting advancing grunts. He’d only caught a true glimpse of a couple of them. Their shadows and the reflection of the moon off the barrels of their weapons gave added guidance to his aim.

He emptied the thirty-round magazine, tossed it aside, and grabbed another from his pack. He jammed it into place and began again.

Battle cursed Paagal under his breath. She’d placed them at the most dangerously critical spot. Heavy casualties were a given along the passage. There was no retreat.

Battle looked over his shoulder at Sawyer. The boy was flat against the rock, bouncing on his toes. He kept repositioning his grip on his weapon, occasionally peeking around the front edge of the curve to get a look at the action.

He took a deep breath, puffed his cheeks, and exhaled through his nostrils. He waited for Sawyer to sneak another look around the corner, pivoted his weapon and aimed at the boy’s head. He shifted imperceptibly to the right and pulled the trigger.

The bullet drilled into the rock, exploding debris two inches in front of Sawyer’s face. He reflexively jerked backward, crouched down into a squatting position, and pressed his back against the deepest part of the rock.

“Stay there,” Battle muttered. He scanned back to the front line of grunts.

***

Roof was in his saddle at the back of the company. They were at the entry to the narrow downward passage. He was sending the men in waves, ten at a time. As a man fell, another took his place. They were making incremental progress into the passage itself and had advanced maybe twenty-five feet.

Roof couldn’t see the action from his vantage point. Even though the sun was beginning to emerge, the passage doglegged sharply to the right beyond the rim.

He picked at his cheek with his fingernail and dug out remnants of hair-width wood splinters. Soon, he’d join the fray.

Roof looked back to his right, toward the rising sun. The distinct forms of the canyon’s irregular edges were taking shape in the predawn light. He envisioned the bloody battle that gained them control of the southeastern rim. A smile crept across his face even as he picked at the splinters buried under the surface of his skin.

He inched forward on the horse, closer to the entrance, and inhaled. The air was faintly acrid and tickled his nostrils. The mixture of the frosty morning, a slight breeze blowing toward him, and the hint of fireworks was strangely comforting.

His horse snorted and shook its head. As they neared the center of the fight, the noise grew louder and bounced off the canyon walls.

Roof had had enough. Despite his plan to stay astride his horse for much of the descent, he swung one leg over the saddle and hopped to the ground. His bum leg ached in the cold. His knee was stiff and radiated with a sharp pain when he landed on his feet.

He squatted and bounced on his heels to soften the angry joints and felt relief when he heard a pop crackle from his knee and his ankle. Roof sauntered forward. He carried the rifle in one hand by its fore stock. His horse whinnied behind him and retreated, galloping off to the west. It was running away from the battle, away from the dawn.

“Smart horse,” he mumbled and turned back to the violent skirmish playing out in front of him. Roof trudged forward, stepping on or kicking aside the lifeless limbs of the fallen as he pressed closer to the meat of the fight.

At the entry to the passage, there was a cluster of grunts taking aim at the Dwellers hidden along the walls before the dogleg. They were the next wave to flood the passage. Roof joined them and shouldered his new rifle. Slowly the group pressed forward, shuffling down the gradual slope.

As they moved in a seemingly choreographed military dance along the descent, the walls on either side grew higher. The noise from the gunfire pounded Roof’s ears. A constant high-pitched ring drowned out whatever other noise might try to compete with the sonic overload of so many weapons discharging at once.

The walls were exploding from the projectiles missing their human targets. Dust and pieces of twenty-million-year-old sediment rained down on the men while they fought. The slog forward was tedious. Men were falling all around Roof, but he maintained his forward drive and dismissed the possibility of being hit himself. He was the hunter and not the hunted.

Roof scanned the walls, looking for enemy combatants. He pivoted to the left as he rounded the dogleg. Hell unfolded around him.

A narrow plateau extended from the canyon wall some twenty feet above him. Access to the plateau came from an irregular, stair-like arrangement of irregularities that covered much of the wall. There were three or four Dwellers taking aim from atop the plateau.

To his right, against the opposite wall, was a hoodoo. He followed skyward the thin totem of a formation until his eyes met the wide perch balancing on top. There were what looked like ropes dangling from the perch, swaying in the breeze.

Roof cursed himself under his breath. This was a losing proposition. He looked ahead at the minefield of bodies littering the passage. Twenty yards ahead of him was what looked like a firing squad of Dwellers stretching from wall to wall.

He’d expected reinforcements by now. Additional teams should have lined the canyon rim to provide aerial cover. There was nobody there. He should have waited. He should have been patient and let the fight come to him at the passage.

Instead, he’d signaled for the first wave to advance and open fire. It was a mistake. He’d mistaken the forward movement of each wave around the dogleg as progress. Instead, each wave only replaced the one that had crashed ahead of it.

Grat Dalton appeared from out of nowhere. “General,” he said, his eyes glowing white against the blood and dirt on his face, “we’re getting slaughtered. Two-thirds of the men are dead. They’re hitting us from all sides.”

Roof bit his lower lip and then pointed the barrel of the rifle at both immediate threats. “Grab as many men as you can climb the wall to the plateau. I’m taking the next wave, and we’re climbing the ropes to the top of that hoodoo. We take control of those positions and we’ll turn the tide.”