The Jared Chronicles | Book 4 | The Devil's Bastion, page 40
part #4 of The Jared Chronicles Series
As Jared rounded the trunk of the tree, switching sides, he spotted a shadowy figure moving, flattened against the northern wall of the marina store. Jared jerked his rifle into his shoulder, trying to aim while identify who was in his sights all at the same time. When Jared had his rifle’s muzzle firmly fixed in the general direction of this sudden aberration, he took a split second to stare over the top of his rifle sights at the man.
What Jared saw caught his breath and nearly stopped his heart. Before him, moving toward the store’s only door, was the same man he’d seen fly into his homestead and kidnap John the previous year. Josh Talley pushed himself through the store’s door and closed it behind him, disappearing from Jared’s view. Jared’s hands fumbled for his mic.
“Josh is in the store,” Jared exclaimed into his radio.
John’s voice came back uncertain, yet concerned. “Say again.”
“Josh is here. He’s inside the store. He came around the back and went inside,” Jared almost screamed into his radio’s mic.
“Stay where you’re at, and don’t show yourself,” John fired back through Jared’s earpiece.
Jared had another no shit moment before reflecting on what he’d just seen. Josh at first seemed to have flattened himself against the wall as if stealth was his objective, but the more Jared thought about what he’d seen, the more he felt Josh might have been injured, using the wall to support himself before slipping inside the tiny store.
“I think he might be wounded, John,” Jared added into his radio’s mic.
“Stay put. I’m going to move into a place I can engage that front door,” John replied.
Jared and John had both been inside the marina’s little store and knew there were only the single front door and two windows, all facing east on the parking lot side of the building. Jared slipped a shoulder out of his pack, allowing it to drop to his side, reached down, and pulled out his binoculars, which he trained on the storefront. His angle to the front door wasn’t great, but he could see it was fully closed. Jared’s position made it impossible to see through the dirty, uncurtained windows to the left of the door, frustrating Jared even further.
Jared sat for what felt like an eternity, waiting for John to work his way into a better locale. While he waited, Jared alternated between peering naked eyed at the store and using his binoculars. During one of his non-binocular inspections of the general area around the store, Jared’s chest tightened as he caught movement beyond the store. Whatever he’d seen was roughly one hundred yards past the store, so Jared jerked the binoculars to his face and focused on the object.
“Holy fuck.” He gasped, seeing Shannon creeping forward, rifle raised, and with Devon close by her side. Before Jared could think to tell John, Stephani and Cody came into view, also creeping toward the store Josh was holed up in. Jared knew that if they walked up and tried clearing the little store, even a wounded Josh could cause a great deal of damage to a superior number of lesser trained and inexperienced shooters.
A decision was made in Jared’s mind, and he stood. “Shannon, stop. Get cover. Josh is inside the store here,” Jared screamed as loud as he could.
The few seconds of silence that reigned after Jared’s alert went out was practically enough to cause him a nervous breakdown. When John’s voice blasted in his earpiece, Jared jumped. “What’s going on?” John demanded.
Jared keyed his mic. “Shannon and Stephani are out here.”
When Josh saw the marina store, he headed straight for it, figuring he’d use the structure for cover while he tried tending to his worsening medical condition. The two extra holes in his combat chassis weren’t getting any better. In fact, they were both beginning to slow Josh down more than he was comfortable with. The leg wound was the worst in that it slowed his travel speed, while the shoulder wound had simply rendered his left arm nearly inoperable.
Josh retained some use of his lower left arm; he just couldn’t raise the limb without his head nearly exploding with the pain. Reloading his weapon could be done at waist level, so he just needed to get some pressure on both wounds to stop any further bleeding. Josh moved through the store, looking for anything he could use to apply pressure to the holes in his shoulder and calf. The store sold a couple of articles of clothing depicting some reference to Del Valle Reservoir, and these items were what Josh tore from the shelves.
Josh wadded up a shirt and stuffed it over his shoulder, then leaned hard into the wall, unable to come up with a manner in which to secure the shirt to his shoulder wound. Slowly and holding the shirt from above, so as not to dislodge it from its mooring against his shoulder wound, Josh slid down the wall until he was sitting. Once he sat on his butt, Josh wrapped a sweatshirt around his ailing calf and drew the sleeves as tight as he could bear.
The wrap on his calf wasn’t tight enough to stop the blood flow to Josh’s foot, but he hoped it was snug enough to stop any more leaking from the bullet holes. Finished with his calf, Josh pressed back hard against the wall, wincing in pain as he felt the pressure on his wrecked shoulder. Josh closed his eyes as he pressed hard, his mind working through all the different knots, pully systems and other training he’d received during his career. The wound was so perfectly or imperfectly located on the back of his shoulder, he couldn’t manage to form a plan to secure a bandage against it other than wrapping something completely around his entire chest and both shoulders.
This style of bandage would severely limit Josh’s mobility and likely come off if he were to vigorously move and operate his rifle. Well, Josh thought, what choice did he have. His pursuers would be on him in a few minutes, so it was time to deal with the shoulder wound and get moving. Josh remained pressed against the wall as he strung together three additional shirts. When the three shirts were strung together in a single strand of material, Josh came off the wall, feeling the bloodied shirt against his wound fall away to the floor with a sickening wet plopping sound.
“Fuck me,” muttered Josh, having held some hope the ad-hoc bandage would have stuck in place, making his wrapping job easier.
Josh reached out and retrieved a fourth shirt from the nearby shelf and wrapped it several times around the string of shirts. When the fourth shirt was secured to the strand of material, Josh heaved the material over his head with great effort and even more agony. He worked the length of material until he felt the fourth shirt over his shoulder wound, then pulled the strand tight around his front and tied it off.
Done dressing his wounds, Josh sat back, chest heaving, his face slicked with sweat and knowing he was dangerously close to being overrun. Josh steeled himself and was about to struggle to his feet when a man’s voice sounded outside and far too close for Josh’s liking. Josh wasn’t completely sure, but it sounded like the man’s voice had called out a warning to someone named Shannon. Josh scrambled to his knees and drove the butt of his rifle into the floor, using the weapon as a crutch, pushing hard, trying to gain his feet. When Josh was halfway to his feet, the butt of the rifle slipped in the blood on the floor, shooting back between Josh’s legs. Josh’s weight pitched forward, and with one hand holding the rifle and the other out of commission, Josh fell facedown on the front sight area of his rifle.
The coppery taste in his mouth told Josh he’d busted his lip on the front sight of his rifle. A quick recon of his mouth with a blood-soaked tongue confirmed he’d not only cut himself, but he was also missing some teeth up front. Could the day get any worse? Josh wondered, almost finding some comedy in his dire predicament. Slower, and while spitting out his teeth and globs of blood, Josh got carefully to his feet, attempting a cautious look through one of the front windows.
Josh couldn’t tell which direction the man’s voice came from, but knew his original pursuers would be coming up from the south. Aggravatingly, the windows offered only a view to the east. Had Josh’s body been one hundred percent, he would have spent a couple of seconds trying to locate threats by peeping through the windows, and then he would have moved and done so at a run. Hampered by his mostly useless left arm and a leg that probably wasn’t even operating at fifty percent, Josh found himself in a real pickle.
When Josh was unable to identify any threats through the windows, he moved behind the cash register and into a cramped storage room behind the counter, marked employees only. Josh let his rifle hang and tore out a large knife, slashing it into the southernmost wall of the storage room. Josh hacked feverishly at the sheetrock until he could see the back side of the wood siding that covered the outside of the building.
He needed some gun ports so he could engage these people on multiple fronts. When the wall was opened up on the inside, Josh grabbed his rifle by the stock and drove it hard into the back side of the wooden siding. On the fifth strike, part of the wood gave way, and light streamed through the jagged opening. Josh lowered his head, looking through the newly made port, but saw only parts of the parking lot and some campsites off in the distance.
Moving back through the store to the western wall, Josh was about to make another hole when a loud commanding voice boomed from outside the store.
“Josh, you’re done. Toss that rifle out here, strip to the waist, and come out, or we are going to blow that place up,” John’s voice warned.
Hearing John’s voice weakened Josh’s knees. He hadn’t expected to be asked to deal with John on top of all that had already happened to him. Maybe if he could identify John’s position, he could shoot the bastard and then deal with John’s troublesome friends.
“Hey, John, good to hear your voice. Why don’t you come over here, and I’ll hand over all my gear,” Josh bantered back, attempting to sound in control of a situation even Josh realized was probably not going to end well for him.
“You’ve got thirty seconds, Josh,” John advised, ignoring Josh’s bravado.
Josh crept closer to the window when John’s thirty-second warning was issued. Josh wasn’t sure, but he thought John sounded to be within less than a hundred yards from the store. Josh inched his way to the west side of the store before rising with the rifle in his shoulder and his eye in the electronic sight. Josh scanned the outside parking lot and surrounding countryside through the dirty window, but came up bingo on shootable targets.
Josh held the rifle up, waiting for the thirty seconds to expire in hopes he’d catch a muzzle flash or some other indication of where a shooter was so he could engage. Josh didn’t have long to wait as he heard John’s voice a third time.
“Let him have it,” John bellowed.
Abruptly, many of the items inside the store were dancing as bullets ripped through walls, windows and even the front door. Josh dropped more than dove to his belly as particles of sheetrock showered him in their chalky dust. Josh’s first emotion was not fear, but rather rage that his body in its current condition prevented him from leaping to his feet and rushing out the front door to shoot it out like some old western cowboy.
Josh rolled to the side, trying to place the store’s only rack between himself and the majority of the gunfire that seemed to be coming from the east. As Josh crawled forward, he felt a sledgehammer contact the thigh of his already wounded leg. Nearly simultaneously, Josh felt a blast pound his right bicep and another tear into the top of his right shoulder near his neck.
“I’m dead,” Josh murmured as his crawling ceased, and he lay on his side, breathing with a great deal of difficulty. The fact that he’d utter those words was not as odd as he might have expected them to be. Josh had heard men utter all manner of oddities right before death, like a time in Niger he’d entered a small village residence and been confronted by a tall thin black man, whom Josh promptly shot. The man had tried bringing an AK-47 up, but Josh beat him to the punch and shot him several times.
As Josh stepped up to the fallen man, he had been surprised when the man said you killed me in French-accented English. Indeed, the man died seconds later, but Josh had never forgotten the obvious and indisputable statement on the part of his vanquished foe. Josh’s mind drifted like reeds in a slow-moving river, harkening back to random thoughts of his past. A firefight, some girl he’d met in Virginia, and then to his childhood, his loving mother and his father, a man amongst men, in Josh’s opinion. The thought of his parents resulted in a deluge of shame and guilt for what he’d become in the past year.
His mother would have wanted to talk to Josh about his departure from how she’d raised him, but his father’s reaction would have been to just shake his head, his jaw set, lips tight, and eyes disapproving of the man Josh had become. Josh’s father had been proud of him when he’d made his way to the Special Missions Unit, but always cautioned Josh about the hazards of taking men’s lives for a living and the importance of keeping himself grounded in humility. Look at their faces, know they were people just like you, fighting, living, and loving, Josh’s father had once told him.
Josh had looked at their faces, but he hadn’t acted humble about being the man standing while another lay dying in the dirt. Now he lay in some abandoned fish and tackle store in the middle of nowhere, bleeding to death in his own country. Josh wasn’t so unlike all the men he’d killed in battle, most had died in their own country, facedown probably not far from where their families nervously waited their return. Other than the absence of a family waiting for him, Josh found the similarities striking.
The racket of bullets shredding the interior of the store seemed to have stopped, although Josh wasn’t entirely sure his perception of reality was still intact. Josh thought he heard the distant sound of people’s voices, but again, he was drifting as if under water, unable to make out the finer details in life, instead only vaguely aware of murky shadows and muffled sounds. Josh thought to call out, a primal urge to beckon help, but his throat was full of blood, making the drawing of a breath onerous, and speech impossible.
The muffled sounds he’d heard were now sharper, and Josh had the sensation of moving. The sensation came more out of changes in light he could sense. He’d been moved to his back and was being dragged from the store, roughly moved out into the parking lot, where the feeling vanished as he was deposited roughly on his back, staring up at the blue California skies.
Josh felt himself beginning to suffocate on the blood in his throat once he was on his back and tried willing his body onto his side, but alas his brain no longer controlled the husk he’d honed into a killing machine. Josh lay, unable to cough or even choke on the blood that ran more freely into his lungs than air.
In death, Josh found his brain the last thing to go, and strangely, the bodily functions nearest his brain remained online the longest. Although his legs and arms were inoperable, his one eye that wasn’t caked in blood could be opened and take in his surroundings in a blurry if not almost detached way. People were crowded around Josh, talking excitedly. Josh blinked away a bit of blood and focused the best he could on John Buckley. John’s face was not the face of a victor who’d just vanquished a foe in a valiant struggle, but rather one of almost sadness, regret, maybe even remorse.
Chapter 35
When John called out to open fire on the store, every member of his party did so. Only after everyone had expended at least one magazine into the building did John call off the gauntlet and wait while his friends reloaded. John and Jared maneuvered to the rear of the structure while the reloads took place, moving up the side and eventually to the front. Stealing a look through the windows, John saw Josh lying in a growing pool of his own blood.
Together Jared and John entered the store, disarmed Josh, and dragged him out into the parking lot, where the rest of the group crowded around to gawk at the demon who’d haunted all their dreams at one time or another. Cody stepped forward and pointed his rifle at Josh’s still breathing form, but John gently pushed the teen’s rifle away.
“I’m not letting you do that, Cody. I know you want to after what happened with your dad, but shooting a wounded unarmed man won’t bring back your father. It also won’t make you feel better. I know you probably don’t believe me, but I’ve seen men do what you want to do, and it always ends badly for them,” John counseled.
Cody looked as though he might grind his teeth to nubs for a few seconds before stepping away.
“He’s going to die, Cody,” Jared added as Josh’s breaths came further and further apart.
The group of six survivors stood over Josh’s dying body for ten full minutes until at last, Josh’s labored breathing ceased while his undamaged eye remained open and staring lifelessly into the heavens. John squatted next to the fallen soldier, holding two fingers to the man’s bloodied neck. Feeling no pulse, John stood again.
“He’s gone,” John announced in an almost melancholy tone.
A shot rang out from the hill to the east, causing pandemonium as the group scattered, seeking cover or at the very least concealment. Jared dove to the side of the little store in time to see a uniformed soldier tumbling down the side of the hill on the far side of the parking lot. The tumbling soldier slid to a stop ten or fifteen yards before reaching the paved portion of the parking lot. The soldier’s head was a gruesome display of gore with no defining lines to tell an onlooker what in the hell exactly had happened to his head.
Jared would remember the next thing he saw until the day he died, and Jared had seen a great many bizarre things since the collapse of society. A man astride a horse, lever-action rifle in hand, making his way down the hill in the wake of the very dead uniformed man was surreal. The rider wore a long duster with a black flat-brimmed hat like the ones Jared had seen in old spaghetti westerns. The man’s horse was a strong-looking animal, and even though Jared was no equestrian expert, he knew this horse was different than the ones he and John had been using.
