This Fallen World, page 24
part #1 of Fallen World Series
“There’s enough ammo to even train that kid, Lassiter, how to shoot,” I said.
“He’s pretty bad,” Gary added.
“Can’t hit a damn thing,” Grady said. “You think we found enough ammo? I’m not sure.”
I laughed.
We rounded the bend in the road that led west from the farm to see a lot of activity going on near the square.
“What the hell?” I asked under my breath and nudged Dagger’s ribs to send him into a canter.
I saw Pop beside the barn. He was saddling one of the horses. What worried me was the pair of pistols on his side and the Winchester leaning against the barn.
He turned to see me, and the troubled look on his face sent me his direction instead of the square.
“What is it, Pop?”
“It’s Neave, son. Pete and Neave are missing. We just found out what happened and those damn cowards are hiding their heads in the damn sand!”
There was an icy pit in my chest. “Alli?”
“She’s with Deli.”
“Tell me everything.”
“We found Lamb at Pete’s place. He was shot and next to dead. He was escorting Pete, Neave, and a couple of the students to the old farm. Some sort of field trip about food storage.”
“Lamb come out of it last night and told us they were hit by raiders. He was holding them off until that damn Lassiter kid shot him in the back. They loaded up all the stored food at Pete’s and took Pete, Neave, and the kids. They had a truck and headed east.”
“Grady!” I yelled. “Mount the Guard!”
“Council won’t let us take the Guard into the city,” Pop said.
“What?!”
“I was about to head east, myself.”
I could see several people in the square staring in my direction.
“They won’t allow it?”
“We made the council because we aren’t tyrants, son.”
“I’ll be going, too.”
“Jimmy?”
“I’m with you,” Jimmy said.
“Thanks, son.”
“I’m coming,” Gary said.
“Me, too,” Grady added. “Damn the council.”
“Get the horses fed and watered,” I said. “I have to see Lamb.”
I walked toward the square and Doc’s infirmary. The people who were watching us from the square hurried to be elsewhere. Hollis Drager dropped his head in shame and walked away. I didn’t have time for them. My mind was on the whereabouts of my wife and those children.
“Zee?” Lamb asked as I strode through the door. “Zee, I’m sorry…”
“What happened?” I asked and grasped his right hand in my left. His left arm had a drip attached with an IV.
“Took Pete and Neave and some of the kids out to Dalten Farm to show them some of the storage facilities.” He shook his head in misery. I could tell he was barely staying conscious. “Figured…four of us with guns should be enough. Raiders…hit just before we reached the farm. Neave…little Neave, shot three of the bastards. I got another three, and even Pete got one…But then that son of a whore, Lassiter shot me in the back…and clubbed Pete with his gun stock. I saw them close on Neave, and she stabbed another one before they took her.”
“Jesus,” I muttered.
“Oh, God, Zee…They took my babies. They got my Twiggy and Mia…I couldn’t stop them…”
“This isn’t your fault, Lamb,” I said. “It was Lassiter that shot you?”
“That traitorous bastard…Got my babies…Can’t do anything with my legs…”
“You rest,” I said. “We’re going after them.”
“You’ll find my babies?”
“I will.”
“Thank…”
He lost consciousness.
“That’s a tough man there, Zee,” Doc said from behind me. “Dragged himself, with a spinal injury, close to a quarter mile.”
I turned to Doc. “Any of the raiders live?”
“I got one of them in the next room.”
I walked toward the door.
“Zee, now I can’t let you…”
“What?”
His face paled as I stared at him.
“Don’t say something you and I will both regret,” I said. “They have my wife and her father, and they took children.”
I opened the door and looked inside at the man on the bed. He was unkempt but not as dirty as most of the raiders I had seen up to this point. My eye was drawn to a tattoo on his right arm. It was of a bird. I knew that tattoo.
“He won’t talk,” Doc said. “We tried.”
“He’ll talk.”
I walked into the room.
“I told your people,” he muttered. “I got nothin’ to say.”
“You’re going to tell me where they took my wife and father-in-law. You’re going to tell me where they took those kids. You’ll tell me the location of their base and how many men they have.”
“Not gonna happen,” he answered.
“I remember a time when there was a group of men and women who started a movement, using a symbol left from another era. It was a Falcon that had symbolized a team of players in what used to be known as Atlanta. They took that symbol and built a group of anarchists.”
He shrugged. “What’s it to ya? I still got nothin’ to say.”
“That movement was behind the Food Riots down in the south.”
“Piss off.”
“If you were familiar with that group of men, you would know what happened to them when those riots were put down.”
“What the hell is your point?”
“The point is this.” I leaned close to him. “My name is Zebadiah Pratt.”
All the color left his face.
“And I’ll skin you alive, right where you lay, if you don’t talk.”
“His name is Morgan Lassiter, he sent his son, Owen to infiltrate this place and learn of any weakness…”
Sometimes the carrot worked, more often than not, one needed to use the stick in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter 23
“So this Morgan Lassiter was a Falcon?” Pop asked.
“He claims to be the one that started the Falcons, but I have my doubts on that,” I said.
“Why’s that?”
“All intel said the guy who started it was named Harliss Grye. I know for a fact Grye didn’t leave the Falcon HQ alive.”
“Do you now?”
“After the massive loss of life in the Riots, we were sent after the Falcons, Pop.” I looked toward him. “I put a bullet between the eyes of Harliss Grye. We took his records and hunted down just about every name on the Falcon membership list. A few may have gotten away, but there were none in high level positions remaining. This Morgan may have been a low rank, just like Fieago, back there.”
“We couldn’t even get a name,” he said.
“They learned to fear the name of Pratt. I was the last person most of them ever saw.”
“Soldiers shouldn’t have been used for assassinations,” Grady said.
“We were used for whatever Obsidian needed done,” I said. “But that mission was my last. I didn’t re-enlist after that and came back home.”
“And Fieago told you where they took our folks?”
“If we follow the main road toward the city from Destin, we’ll hit the first zones at Main Street. Three blocks down Main and right on D Street. Two blocks to Lassiter.”
“Named it after himself?” Pop asked.
“Seems so.” I looked to our east, my left eye twitching. “We’ll have to cross through three of what they call zones to reach Lassiter. May be some fighting to get through those. He says they travel in groups of twenty or more so they won’t be attacked. The good thing is that most of them won’t have guns. Lassiter’s men do but the zones we need to cross may leave us be if we have guns in sight.”
I was lost in thought for a minute as my mind strayed to Neave. I hoped she was alive. I needed her to be alive.
“She’s tough, son.”
It didn’t take a genius to figure what I was thinking about.
“She’s such an innocent…”
Pop chuckled. “That innocent girl took out three men and cut another. Son, you’ve taught her well. If any of them can make it through this, it’ll be her. Right after you two got married, she started training with Lamb. You know how slow she was to finally accept it. But she told me, ‘I’m a Pratt, now, Pop. Best I start acting like one.’ Made me proud, son.”
“She has to be okay, Pop,” I said softly. She had to be.
We rode on in silence.
Destil was two days out on horseback.
“Looks like the fire spread,” I said.
“I don’t think they cared if it took the whole town,” Grady said. “We set fire to the main buildings but this whole town was a reminder of what they did to survive.”
Destil was a burnt out husk of a town. Almost all of the buildings had suffered fire damage. The highway was covered in blackened mud from the ashes blending with the dirt. Rain had washed the black mud across the streets in spots.
“Ugly place,” Pop muttered.
“Ugly things happened here,” I said.
“Yep.”
“Truck,” I said.
“That looks recent,” Pop said as he saw the same thing I did. A box truck was parked in the middle of the road.
“Lot of tracks around it.” I dismounted and drew my .45. “Hold here until I can check it out.”
The tracks in the mud around the truck told a tale if you knew how to read the writing. It looked as if they had offloaded the truck into cars. The tire tracks were much smaller. But they looked strange. There were quite a few footprints in the mud, all staying within the width of the car tire tracks.
I looked over the truck but there was no one still there. Taking a deep breath, I opened the back of the box truck. The smell hit me in the face like a fist. I backed away for a moment.
Pop walked past me and peered inside.
“It’s not any of ours, Son.”
I’d seen more death than anyone should have to see, and it never gave me this feeling. I couldn’t stand the thought of finding her dead.
“This one has a stab wound in his chest,” Pop said. “Looks like the same blade that got the guy in the infirmary.”
“Neave,” I said with a small grin I couldn’t keep from showing.
“Told you,” Pop said. “She’s tough.”
He stepped back from the truck and shut the door. “No one is here.”
I opened the fuel tank on the right side of the box truck. “I’m guessing they ran out of fuel.”
“Looks like they loaded everything in cars,” Grady said. “Or wagons made out of cars.”
That explained the strange footprints.
“I’m guessing wagons.” I said. “I was trying to figure these prints out. They’re using people to pull wagons.”
“Sounds right,” Grady said, looking at the prints. “See how they look like they slide backwards just a bit as they step forward? Pulling something.”
“I think you’re right,” I said. “That might be some good news.”
“We’re on horses,” Pop said. “They’re on foot, pulling loaded wagons.”
I climbed back on Dagger. “We may make up those two days by traveling faster than they can.”
Pop remounted Kennedy. “Then let’s ride.”
We set out from Destil at a bit faster clip than before. We rode past nightfall for an hour before stopping. Pop lit a fire and I took the radiation badge I kept in my pack to check the stream. This one ran from north to south and most of the radiation was far to the west. There was some destruction to the north of us, closer to the coast, and I wanted to be sure the stream was safe.
The badge didn’t change color so I led Dagger to the stream for a drink. After he had drunk his fill, I pulled the feed bag from the pack and poured corn and wheat grain into the bag. Hanging it over his head, he munched happily at the feed. Then I brought Kennedy down to the stream. Pop was putting a pot on the fire and heating beans. We had the MREs but we had to stop and feed the horses, and they would need rest. Gary, Grady, and Jimmy were taking care of their mounts as I brought Pop’s down to the stream.
As much as I wanted to just keep going, the horses could only do so much. I remembered traveling halfway around the world in the time we had spent just in a day traveling on horseback. More and more frustrating were the limitations in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter 24
We saw no sign of them before we could see the silhouette of the buildings in the distance.
“We knew it was a longshot,” Pop said.
“I know,” I answered, pointing toward the buildings in the distance. “But chances of getting them out alive drop drastically when they get inside that.”
“I never went into the city,” Gary said. “Destil was as big of a town as I went to. That place looks enormous.”
“It is,” I said. “Used to be a lot bigger before they blew up the lower side of it.”
“How much got hit?”
“Can’t be certain. They definitely hit the Obsidian Corporation Headquarters. I’d say they saturated that area with bombs. There weren’t many Corporate outposts in this part of the city so it seems to have gotten spared.”
“After the stories we’ve gotten from the refugees, it would have been better if it had been destroyed.”
“I tend to agree with that,” I said. “But there wouldn’t have been any refugees if it had. And this part of the city is close enough to us that we’d be gone too.”
“Well there is that,” Grady added.
“It’s been hard, but I still would rather be alive,” Gary said.
“Me too, Gee.” I said. “When we get close, there’s probably going to be some fighting. Keep that rifle ready and mind your horse. There’s no telling what’s in the streets. Gotta make sure you don’t run him through something that will damage his feet.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want you behind us,” I said. “You hear me? You’re supporting fire. Same with you, Grady. Pop and I will be point. Jimmy, you be ready to do that thing you do.”
“Gotcha,” Grady said.
I looked at Gary, “You hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
I looked toward Jimmy, who nodded. I couldn’t see any expression on his face. I really missed my brother. But this Jimmy would be invaluable where we were going.
Any small talk dropped off as we got closer to the buildings. The outer blocks were lower and more industrial in nature. Some large warehouses and quite a few buildings that looked like factories. I could see movement on the streets ahead of us. More activity than I really expected to see. There were several gunshots, and the people I had seen were running back the way they had come.
“That could be them,” I said and lightly kicked my heels into Dagger’s ribs.
He sped up to a slow canter. I wanted him moving faster but the roads were unsafe to run him with metal shoes. The activity had passed by the time we reached the first buildings. But there were four or five men dragging two others out of the street.
They saw us and dropped the dead men.
A loud whistle sounded and the crowd came from three different alleys.
“Shoot low, Gee.” I said and palmed my .45.
What I could see coming toward us was about ten men from each direction carrying pipes, clubs, knives, chains, and any other assorted weapons a person could think of. I focused on the closest alley and fired into the crowd.
Dagger snorted, but I held him back. Then I heard the others open fire. Pop’s Winchester cracked first, and then the two automatic rifles we brought back from the facility opened up.
The fight ended before it even began. These men wanted nothing to do with the weapons we carried. Running back into the alleys, they left behind twelve dead men.
“Reload,” I said. “We keep going. If that gunfire was the guys holding our people, we can catch them before they get back to their headquarters.”
I looked back at Gary but he was holding up fine.
“Boy’s got some steel in him,” Pop said quietly from beside me.
“Yeah, he does. Keep watch on him, Pop.”
“I’ll be doing that.”
“When we catch up, I need you and that Winchester working anyone near Neave and the kids. It’s got the range. We’ll be working the ones in closer.”
“I’ll fall back with, Gee and Grady.”
I nodded. “Jimmy, you’re on point with me.”
“Be careful, son,” Pop said. “You can bet they heard that gunfire.”
I nodded and nudged Dagger to move forward.
“Boy, we can’t afford to lose the horses,” I heard Pop talking to Gary. “Now, if we have to dismount, your job is to get the horses back out of the way.”
I should have thought of that. If we got separated from the animals they’d be in someone’s stew pot.
We rode forward to turn down the street to our right. Close to two blocks down, I could see them. We had covered the first block when they saw us. There were people pulling the remains of two vans and a crowd of men had joined them from the adjoining street that led to Lassiter. I turned to Pop and heard the angry buzz of a bullet pass my head to hit the ground to my left and rear.
“Sniper!” I dove from Dagger’s back and pulled him toward the closest alley.
“Jimmy, take the sniper!”
He was in motion before I even finished the sentence. He slammed through the reinforced door to the building that held the sniper like it wasn’t even there, and I heard screams.
Gary took Dagger’s reigns and, drawing my Colt, I ran back out from the alley to take cover behind an old car.
“Here they come!” Pop yelled from the corner of the alley.
“Light ‘em up!”
I raised and fired three times. Two of the leaders fell and bullets began to hit the car. Pop fired the Winchester and another fell. Another sniper from across the street fired and the bullet chipped stone above Pop’s head. He raised his aim and calmly shot the man who was peering out the fifth floor window with a rifle.
