Trail of Tears (6 page)

He motioned for Fowler to take the left
while he flattened against the wall and peeked around the corner.
He gagged. The floor was covered in bodies, blood covered the
walls. Terrified faces of children seemed to look into his eyes and
accuse him for being too late. There were so many. It was too much.
He felt a hatred burn in his stomach. What kind of animals…

He found himself striding down the corridor
before he knew what was happening. His training ensured that his
weapon was primed and he automatically checked out any smaller
corridors but his focus was ahead. He forced his way through the
bodies, apologising in his mind as he stood on limbs and torsos.
Another burp of the XM8 from ahead. He moved faster. The gunfire
was louder now, right around the corner. He came to the corner at a
run and continued around with his XM8 ready. He took in the scene
in the first moment. His trained eyes picked up the three enemy
thralls about a hundred yards ahead. One of the thralls was
crouching behind a table but the other two hid behind a woman and
her child. Jones lay on the ground behind some bodies. He had a
shoulder wound and blood seeped from his leg as well.

Cabreezi didn’t stop. His anger was like a
shield. He screamed his frustration and his desperation and forged
forward, firing as he advanced. His clip ran empty and he reloaded
automatically. He took the thrall behind the table in the throat
and moved on to the next one without a second glance. He knew that
the thrall might not be dead, but he only had the element of
surprise for another moment. His next shot took the second thrall
in the arm and it swung him around, the child fell away from him
and he pumped four shots into the thrall’s body before moving on to
the next. Something slammed into his side but he continued on. He
was only twenty feet away now and he saw the terrified woman being
held against the enemy. The thrall was backing away, he didn’t look
as confident as he had a moment ago but he was still firing. The
woman’s squirming put his aim off, but it was only a matter of luck
that he hadn’t taken his head off already. He had to move
quickly.

He was dimly aware that Fowler was pumping
shots into the other two thralls, just to be sure. Jones had
already scrambled forward and held the little girl in his arms.
Jesus, he hadn’t even noticed that the girl was Jones’
daughter.
Of course that meant that the woman…The anger haze
finally abated and Cabreezi recognised the woman as Jones’ wife,
Patricia.

Cabreezi looked at the woman; he forced
himself not to think of her as the woman he knew. Their only chance
here was for him to be calculating and calm. Bullets buzzed past
him. Patricia’s struggling made a shot too dangerous. He aimed at
Patricia’s head, looking her straight in the eyes and willing her
to understand. She stopped struggling suddenly. The thrall smiled
and lined up his own machine gun. Cabreezi remained in place,
aiming straight between Patricia’s eyes. The barrel of the thrall’s
gun was pointed right at him now and he could hear Jones shouting.
He ignored it all. Patricia suddenly slammed her head back into the
thralls face and then pitched forward. Once her head moved forward
Cabreezi took the shot. A small hole appeared between the thrall’s
eyes and he dropped forward. Patricia pulled away just before the
thrall collapsed and Jones had her in his arms before the thrall
hit the ground.

Cabreezi dropped to one knee as the
adrenaline suddenly evaporated. Fowler moved past him and put
another round in the thrall’s head, just to be sure. Ahead, he
could hear the chatter of high-pitched fire. They weren’t finished
yet.

* * *

The first thing Sandra Harrington noticed
was the smell of dirt. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear anything
either but the smell of soil and grass swamped her. For a blissful
moment she couldn’t remember anything; it was like she was in bed
on a Sunday morning with nowhere to go. Something was nagging at
her though; the smell of soil was strange and she was beginning to
feel a numbing cold spreading through her but her mind refused to
remember.

She tried to get more comfortable and pain
seared through her. With the pain came memories and it was too
close to call which hurt her more. The invaders had breached their
defences. She strained her ears but couldn’t hear anything except
the sheets of rain pounding the ground.
Was it already too late?
Was everyone already dead?
She opened her eyes but saw nothing
but blackness.
Was she blind?
She could feel her eyelids
move and something rough rubbed against her. She tried to lift her
head. It felt as though she were trying to lift a bag of potatoes
with just her neck. She was so weak. She was about to give up when
her whole body shifted to the left and she rolled over onto her
back. For a brief moment she saw the flames pulsing in the
darkness, there was a distant chatter of gunfire, and then the pain
took over and filled her whole world.

The agony lasted for three minutes. Her side
felt as though someone had ripped her in two. She screamed,
heedless of who might be near, the rain filling her mouth, and
making her gag and cough. She found it impossible to think. All she
knew was the pain. Her eyes fluttered and, with a sigh of relief,
she fell back into the darkness.

* * *

April felt Seager tense and he motioned for
her to drop among the bodies again. The bodies felt cold as she lay
down. It was as if they were ghosts sucking her very essence and
replacing it with a coldness that gripped her bones. She shivered
but forced herself to stay among the dead. She couldn’t bear to be
completely cut off from what was happening so she angled her head
so that she could see the junction ahead through the bloody limbs
of a woman and her child. From her position she saw a shadow
suddenly precede the people coming down the corridor. The shadow
was joined by another and they stretched further along as if a mad
God had suddenly grabbed the person making the shadow and stretched
them like moulding clay. She was about to laugh at the image when
the first boot appeared.

The man swept fluidly into the small
corridor where she lay and she forced her eyes to retain a glazed
look. The man wore dark coveralls and weapons dripped from every
pocket and seam. His eyes were hard as he surveyed the scene,
checking for movement.

“Fucking bastards.” She read the words on
his lips and she could feel the emotion in the words from his
gritted teeth and the softening of his eyes when he saw the
children’s bodies. He began to turn away when his face suddenly
sparked a memory. She felt her heart begin to race. He wasn’t a
thrall. She remembered seeing him around the complex. She struggled
to rise but the cold had made her hands numb. The man was already
turning away. She tried to draw his attention and fell forward as
she finally managed to shift her hand.

The man whirled to the motion of her fall
and she looked in terror at the dark hole of the barrel pointed
directly at her. A thought occurred to her that she wouldn’t even
hear the blast of the shot that killed her. And then, the man
surged towards her and was throwing bodies to the side. She felt
his strong arms lift her easily from the sea of limbs. She felt his
hands brush something sticky from her face. He turned his head to
the junction of the corridor and she felt his cry to the others.
Suddenly there were more figures around her, asking her questions
that she couldn’t hear or hope to respond to. She felt the man
tense a moment later as the bodies surged again and she saw Seager
pull himself from the tangle. He looked like a demented demon
rising from hell but she felt a surge of warmth as he stood
defiantly beside the soldier. He was at least a head smaller than
the man who held her, but he stood his ground until she felt the
man shrug and she was passed from his arms into Seager’s. She felt
him buckle slightly as the weight shifted to him but he gripped her
tightly to his chest and she could feel his warmth seep into her.
She felt his chest move as he talked to the men but she let the
words flow over her. She was safe for now.

* * *

Phil McAteer tried to keep track of the
figures as they moved through the rubble. It didn’t help that it
was dark, or that the rain persisted to fall. But the main problem
was that they were so damn fast. They moved like shadows at a dance
with multiple light sources splashing their images here and there.
As soon as he lined up his weapon and fired a burst they had
already moved. They weren’t as quick as the vampires, thank God,
but they were too quick for him.

He had two men with him, Grier about thirty
yards on his left and Peterson to the right. He knew that Jackson
was further on to his right, but he hadn’t heard anything from him
for a while. Bloody amateur had been standing up firing from the
hip like he was John fucking Wayne so he probably got what he
deserved. It did leave their flank dangerously exposed though.

“How the fuck have these people lasted so
long?” He muttered as he sent a hail of bullets in front of where
he thought the thrall was moving and cursed when he saw the figure
swerve away at the last moment and drop below his field of vision.
It disappeared.

“Shit.”

This wasn’t getting him anywhere. He’d be
overrun before he knew it if he didn’t shake it up.

“We have to take it to them,” he called and
hoped Grier and Peterson heard him or he’d get an ass full of lead.
He slithered up over the lip of his hollow and inched his way
forward. He paused every few feet and peered through the darkness,
watching for any movement and then stirred on. He was only thirty
feet from his own hollow when he saw movement twenty feet ahead to
his left and he lay still. It wasn’t really a movement, more a
shift in the curtain of rain. Shit, the bastard was far closer than
he had thought. His heart beat so fast he was certain the thrall
would hear him; the bastards had such good hearing but the figure
continued to move towards Grier’s hollow.

Every now and then a burst of fire from
Grier and Peterson would make him jump and the sudden flare of
light only served to light up the area immediately around each of
his men, announcing their positions—as if the thralls didn’t
already know where they were. He watched the shadowy figure glide
through the darkness towards Grier. It hugged the ground and moved
silently towards the oblivious man. These things were impossible.
He had trained Grier himself and there was no one he would want
more in a fire fight, but these bastards were able to do more than
blend in, they
became
the fucking darkness. He was fairly
certain that more of them were already in similar positions around
Peterson and Grier. He eased his XM8 forward and lined up on the
thrall. A quick three round burst stitched across the thrall’s back
and the last round drove up through its skull and ripped the top of
its head off.

There wasn’t time to gloat; McAteer was
already moving as he saw pools of darkness shift.
Jesus, they’re
all around us.
Bullets tore into the ground where he had been
only moments before. He continued to roll until he fell into the
hollow he had left only a short time ago. Bullets followed him all
the way and peppered the edge of the depression as he curled into a
ball. The thralls had given their positions away though and
Peterson and Grier were already on it, firing at the flare of their
weapons. The barrage of bullets began to reduce as the thralls were
either hit or dropped out of sight to avoid the stream of fire that
Peterson and Grier laid down. McAteer grabbed at his XM8 and
stitched a line of fire blindly out into the darkness, aiming along
the ground only a few feet from the edge of his hollow. He wasn’t
taking any chances.

“Fall back to the compound,” he called and
waited for the shouted acknowledgements before he slipped back. He
hated leaving anyone behind; in all the war zones he had been sent
to he had always managed to bring everyone out. They didn’t all
survive but he always brought them home. He hesitated. Jackson and
Delilah could still be alive. He looked over to where they had been
stationed but the darkness was too dense to see anything. Bullets
slammed into the ground around him, and he had run out of time. If
they were still alive then they were on their own. He just couldn’t
get to them. He had a bigger responsibility to the community.

He ran. A bullet tore at his heel and sent
him sprawling. He saw Grier come up to him but he waved him away
and began to get back to his feet when he saw a body. For a moment
he didn’t recognise who it was. Mud obscured their features and the
rain was driving into his face as the wind picked up. He turned the
body over and saw Sandra Harrington’s pale face as the rain washed
away the mud. There was a lot of blood on her clothes and in the
mud where she had lain. He felt for a pulse. Jesus she was so cold.
He couldn’t feel a pulse. Bullets slammed around him, but he
reached down and lifted her into his arms. He wouldn’t leave her
behind. She had rescued him after all. And besides, Harris would
kill him if he left her, alive or dead.

He struggled to his feet and saw a shape
flicker in the darkness. They were so close. Suddenly he heard a
burst of fire from behind him. One of the thralls dropped to the
ground in a heap and another dove for cover as Grier came level
with him.

“I thought I told you to get to the
compound,” he snarled as he lifted Sandra and hobbled to the
entrance; his broken heel made running difficult.

“What can I say? I’ve a terrible sense of
direction, chief,” Grier smiled as he laid down covering fire.

* * *

Robert Seager reluctantly let April walk by
herself. He had enjoyed the feel of her head on his shoulder and
her soft breath against his neck despite being surrounded by
carnage. But it quickly became evident that he just didn’t have the
strength to carry her and negotiate the number of bodies on the
ground. He had nearly fallen twice already and, while he had been
prepared to go on, she was adamant that he put her down. The last
thing any of them needed was a broken ankle.