Lines in Shadow: Walking in the Rain Read online

  “Let’s get around and under that thing,” he replied softly. A soft voice was better than a whisper, any day of the week.

  When Mike gave a doubtful glance, Scott had to fight a proud smile before nodding in the same location. His scouts were shaping up nicely and he was happy at how quickly they picked up his teachings. Mike picked up his gear and slid up under the squat metal box.

  “Yeah, it catches attention,” Scott explained once they were both covered by the rusted metal bulk of the elevated unit, “but if we are careful, no one will give it a second glance. This thing has become a part of the landscape, so the human eye will scan over and ignore. Unless we move at the wrong time.”

  “So why?”

  “You’ve heard the expression ‘cat on a hot tin roof’ before, haven’t you?” Scott asked as he unrolled his thin rubber mat and began prepping his gear.

  “Well, yeah. Oh, now I get it.”

  Mike was a quick study, after all. The late afternoon heat, reflected by the metal roof, might cook the pair of them like bacon on a griddle if they failed to take precautions. From where the pair lay, they could not see the enemy camp yet, since the peak of the roof blocked their view. By scooting forward less than a foot, Scott calculated their elevated vantage point should reveal at least half of the courtyard. They could hear enough noise, engines and shouts, to satisfy them that this was the right place, at least.

  “How’d you know about the heat?”

  “Long story. Let’s just say, one time, I had to sit on top of a cargo container in mid-July for a week to catch a pair of poachers dumping their gut piles in a ravine. Nearly baked to death before them old boys showed up.”

  “Gotcha. You ready to take a look?” Mike asked, binoculars in hand. They’d already fashioned covers to help prevent the glasses from giving away their position, but Scott was pleased the young man still seemed cautious. Caution was good in this line of work.

  “Yeah. Let me slide up first and I’ll make a quick survey. Then we can take turns, mapping out the lay of the land,” Scott replied, and he wormed his way up the slight incline to catch his first view of the raider camp.

  Raising the glasses to his eyes, Scott peered over the lip of the roofline and froze, not believing the scene unfolding before him.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Scott whispered hoarsely, but if the King of Kings was listening, he gave no Earthly sign. The images in the binoculars began to blur as tears began to flow unnoticed.

  Over the next thirty-six hours, Scott Keller and Mike Evans, along with the other three teams, took turns staring into the depths of Hell. By this time, all of them, National Guard and civilian alike, had witnessed horrors to harden the heart and perhaps, callous their immortal souls. No matter. Nothing could have prepared them for what they were forced to witness over those long hours. Scott knew his previous nightmares were going to be replaced by these images of evil as his eyes were forced to catalog in that camp.

  For the rest of the first day, and into the night, Scott and Mike alternated. Fifty feet off the ground and five hundred yards from the edge of the fence encircling the building and yard, they had front row seats to observe the front gate and the half of the camp not obscured by another large manufacturing plant or warehouse structure next door.

  They used their time industriously, watching as the buses and trucks came and went, and noting everything. They counted vehicles, numbers, and composition of the groups leaving and returning, and learned valuable intelligence about this murderous horde poised on their doorstep. Scott and Mike took turns drawing diagrams showing the layout of each guard post, including the numbers present for each shift, the times for shift change, and the weapons and number of magazine pouches for each individual who entered their view. They knew which guards paid attention, and which guards spent their rotation observing the spectacle inside those gates.

  They also discovered that some of the horde liked their meat fresh, as they each counted fifty-four executions of prisoners brought in on the buses and unloaded back at camp. They were herded into a circle near the front gate, rifle butts and knives used to hurry on the captives. Men, women, and children screaming as they were forced to kneel in the blood-soaked dirt, the soil so saturated with blood that the ground was muddy with the coagulating runoff, and covered in flies. Then came the crack of the pistols, and the new corpses flopping forward into the foul, stinking morass. The bodies were scarcely done bleeding out before workers began dragging them out of the abattoir with improvised meat hooks.

  This didn’t include the two hundred and fifty-six corpses unceremoniously dumped from the back doors of the battered and bullet-scarred yellow buses and immediately hauled over to the racks for butchering. Scott and Mike kept meticulous notes as to the race, age, and sex of the perpetrators of these horrific atrocities. The men noted any distinctive jewelry and tried to determine the relationship and hierarchy within their area of view.

  Likewise, they tried to blot out the images of victims they saw being quartered and reduced to hunks of deboned meat before the runners distributed the fresh provisions to various cooking crews dotting the camp. The cook fires never seemed to go out, and the greasy, stinking smoke drifted like a black cloud over the fences surrounding the camp.

  The pair also noted some of the ghouls who enjoyed playing with their food, as some guards at the receiving yard culled out another forty-seven of the ‘live meat’ for further play. These were mostly the younger, more attractive women, though some young boys seemed to be picked as well. Neither man saw the final fate of these spared from immediate death, but most if not all, were raped within seconds of being pulled from the trucks or buses. Just thrown down on the ground and set upon by men who appeared to have lost all traces of humanity.

  Twice, Scott had to wrestle away Mike’s sniper rifle before he fired, and once, Mike returned the favor by preventing Scott from firing into the camp when he witnessed a group of half a dozen men torturing a girl no older than his own daughter. The child screamed for hours before her high, piercing wail finally seemed to be drowned out by what might have been a throat full of blood.

  They watched, and plotted murderous, righteous revenge. That was the only reason they could resist the urge to start shooting. Not out of a sense of self-preservation, for both men felt far beyond concern for their own lives. No, this was something else entirely.

  “Promise me,” Mike demanded, his voice raw from emotion and his own suppressed screams. “Promise me we are going to kill all of them. Every last one. Promise me we are going to kill them, and they are going to die screaming.”

  Morning was fast approaching, and time for them to begin their departure. Neither man had managed much, if any sleep, and both were sagging with a combination of exhaustion and spent hate. For you couldn’t carry that blazing level of hatred indefinitely without burning out, but they were storing it away for when the time was right to act.

  “Yeah,” Scott hissed, “We are going to kill them all. Every fucking one of them. Every one.”

  They formed their own pact there, unaware that the other three scout teams were doing the same. They would hunt and kill these diseased animals for as long as necessary to eradicate them all. Not just for justice, or revenge, or out of hate, though all those notions played a part. No, they would kill everything they could find associated with this horror, because the thought of these monsters being allowed to draw one more breath was unthinkable.

  This was the stuff of nightmares, and not even the most world-weary or jaded onlooker could view such horrors and remain unchanged. For these eight men, their lives took on new purpose after spending time watching Hell unfold.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Scott and Mike weren’t the first team to reach their meetup point, and they weren’t the last. The first to make it were Keith and Ben but then, their observation area bordered the point to the southwest so they were closest to the empty tire and battery store. No, the last team to make it back consisted of Sergeant Barden an
d Corporal Santomayor.

  Midway between the camp and Point Seahawk, this Stripes Tire and Battery Shop offered a sheltered office with a steel fire door and no windows as well as a back door leading into an overgrown alley. Not the best location, but far from the worst. The biggest selling point for the tire shop was a lack of recent signs of use, as the layers of dust inside showed no disturbance. Scott was pleased everyone took care to step wide around the center of the showroom to keep it that way.

  The group gathered quietly. Too quietly, Scott thought. He could see it in the eyes of the other men huddled in the inner office. No doubt reflecting his own anguish, and the terrible knowledge each man carried. The tiny candle used to light the room seemed totally inadequate to dispel the long shadows that reached out for each man sitting in the gloom.

  He wondered if the soldiers who’d liberated concentration camps felt the same horror, and realized this was worse. They still hadn’t liberated shit yet.

  As Barden and Santomayer gave the countersign to the soldier on guard and entered the store, Scott knew he should say something to these men. Stepping outside for a moment, he waved over PFC Monroe and indicated he should join the other seven men in the room. This violated all kinds of security rules, but Scott calculated the risk as low and the need great.

  “I won’t ask how it went. We all saw what was going on in there.” Scott paused, his voice raw and rough.

  “In fact,” he continued, “I kept half expecting one of you guys to open up on that butcher shop. That abomination. But, I’m glad you managed to stay your hand for now. Because I intend to kill every last motherfucker in that shit show, and we need the intel to do this right. We do this right. We. Kill. Them. All. No judge, no jury, but straight on to execution.”

  Scott stopped again, glancing from shadowed face to face in the room. Taking in all of these men.

  “Otherwise, this cancer will spread. We now know what we are fighting, and what we are fighting for. These monsters threaten our families, our friends, and everything we’ve managed to hold together since the pulse.”

  Scott’s words garnered no cheers, but it wasn’t that kind of speech. Instead, he received several grunts of acknowledgement and a knowing nod from Sergeant Barden. With that, the Sergeant spoke up, his voice more of a soothing balm after Scott’s fierce rant.

  “Alright boys, get those packs ready to move and refill your water bladders from the buckets. Stay hydrated. And for God’s sake, pour out those piss bottles before we get moving. Nobody wants to smell your funk on the way home.”

  In order to stay concealed, each man had taken an empty one liter soda bottle along to handle the need for urination, and they’d all had to squat over a plastic bag to evacuate their bowels. That, fortunately, was something discarded in deep brush upon exiting the immediate area of their observation posts. A risk, but one deemed low enough by their mission planners to allow for the disposal. After all, sad as it was to admit, pretty much everybody without access to a latrine was reduced to shitting in the woods these days.

  The eight-man unit was ready in ten minutes. No one tried to talk about what had been observed. They would present their books when back at their base, and then be debriefed by Conners and Nick. Scott led the way, with Barden and Santamayor guarding the rear. Every man, including Scott, was sleep-deprived and working on something akin to sensory overload, but as dusk gave way to night, they needed to use the darkness to make good their escape. The sooner they could get back, the sooner they could start offensive operations. Gone was any thought to hunker down or try to wait out the horde. Even heavily outnumbered, Scott knew they needed to take the fight to this enemy before they were literally consumed by that pack of madmen.

  The march back to Point Seahawk passed without incident, and the two fighters assigned to watch the Humvees started in with questions almost as soon as the doors were shut on their respective rides. Scott didn’t know how Barden handled the chatter, but he just gave Yalonda a dead-eyed stare and said he would fill her in later. No one else seemed to have the energy to join in, and wisely the medic let the matter drop for the moment.

  So the drive back was accomplished in silence, except for the occasional call of “lights left” or “walker right” as the scouts continued to maintain a vigilance that worried Scott. None of them dozed off, even though all were visibly exhausted and stared out the windows with red-rimmed eyes. He resolved to ask Cass for sleep aids for all his men once they reached the compound.

  The night was almost eerie as they saw nearly no one and no signs of life close by. Running at night was another risk, one that Scott remembered dismissing as too dangerous just a few days ago when Kat Warren showed up in his woods. He wondered if acting that night, rolling a convoy of trucks aimed at the refugee camp, would have made any difference.

  Yeah, he thought, we would have lost twenty or thirty men we couldn’t afford to do without, and maybe killed a hundred of the enemy’s useless Liberators. Like what they’d wiped out in Gentry. Cannon fodder. Based on what he’d observed, they were used to gathering ‘low hanging fruit’ in the way of nearly defenseless refugees, but the horde had other, better armed and more disciplined units for tougher targets. Those were the ones that really worried Scott, and he wanted those fighters targeted from ambush first.

  His thoughts continued to swirl in his subconscious as he focused most of his attention on the trip back. They carried vital information, and a well-timed ambush by the opposition could negate the sacrifice already made by his men over the last two days. No, he needed to keep his head on the now, and worry about the later, later.

  Only after they’d negotiated the last roadblock and cleared the gate at the end of the road did Scott begin to relax his tight shoulders and unclench his jaw. He knew without looking at his self-winding watch that the hour was late simply by the lack of lights around the house, and his sleep-deprived body demanded a rotation on his cot, even if sleep was too much to ask for this evening.

  When he saw Lieutenant Conners, his nephew Nick, and his brother Darwin all standing in a semi-circle in the motor pool, he knew his chances for shutting down in the near future were virtually nil. Their heavy expressions telegraphed bad news, and Scott was sure he didn’t want to hear what they had to say.

  Killing the big diesel, Scott sat back and stretched his tired muscles, and felt his hamstrings twitch. Oh, you bastards, he thought dully, I never did find time to do that stretching Yalonda ordered.

  “Guys,” Scott mumbled over his shoulder, “go hit the rack for some shuteye. Yalonda, break out the sleeping pills for anybody who wants one.”

  Turning in his seat, Scott glanced in the darkness at the three men who’d been with him at the enemy camp. “I mean it, guys. I’m taking one as soon as I find out what new shit we’ve stepped in, so you all need to do the same. Meet me at the bunker at 0700 and bring your books.”

  “Yes, sergeant,” Mike said solemnly, and the other two echoed the sentiment a half second later.

  Dragging his tired body out of the seat, Scott limped over to the sour-faced group and gave each man a little nod of acknowledgement.

  “You find the place?” Conners asked curtly, and glanced over Scott’s shoulder. No doubt encompassing Sergeant Barden in his look.

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” Barden managed to answer around a yawn, then held up a hand in apology. “Sorry, sir,” he added, “we didn’t get much sleep.”

  “How many are we facing?” Conners inquired.

  “We didn’t get a chance to match up our counts, but prelim numbers look like well over two thousand. I’ll have the final tally first thing in the morning. We’ll link up with our men and get a map completed as well as the inventory.”

  “Peachy.” Darwin muttered, then apologized immediately. “Sorry, Sergeant Barden. Stuff just keeps getting better every minute. That’s all.”

  “So out with it, guys,” Scott finally demanded, the emotions finally getting the best of him. “What the fuck?”
r />   Conners nodded, reading something in Scott’s face. In the faint glow cast by the blackout lamp under the tarp of the motor pool, Scott’s features took on a craggy, almost demonic appearance in the play of shadows.

  “The Chicken Ranch was attacked yesterday. Force estimated in the two to three hundred range. Some of them where like the ones we saw in Gentry. The skinnies. But they had some well-armed paramilitary support in the way of machine guns and rifle grenades.”

  “DHS troops?” Scott asked, and started reviewing what he’d seen at the camp. Something didn’t add up.

  “Unconfirmed, but that’s the most likely scenario.” Conners conceded.

  “So, they managed to hold out?” Scott asked, feeling a wave of nausea rise up in his stomach.

  Conners gave a short nod, his downward glance warning there was more to the story. “They held, by the skin of their teeth. Lost sixteen men and women doing it, but they held them at the trenches. The captain estimated their combined forces killed upwards of a hundred of the attackers before they finally gave up the assault. Enemy took most of their dead and wounded with them.”

  “That’s tough,” Scott agreed, and waited for the other shoe to drop. He didn’t have to wonder long.

  “Gets much worse, guys. Just got a call from Sergeant Dwyer not half an hour ago. Captain’s badly wounded, and they suffered another fifteen dead and nearly forty more injured. He thinks it was two Hellfires. Most likely a drone strike.”

  Sergeant Barden began cursing then. Using language that would have made a construction worker blush and leave the bar. Scott just scowled, the creases in his face deepening as he weighed the latest news.

  Drones. Well, hell. Scott thought knocking out Ft. Gruber resulted in mostly removing the enemy drone jockeys from the equation, but this was a dreadful reminder that the other side was far from out of options.

  “Well then, we’ve got even bigger problems, LT. Because Mike Evans and I were observing the front gate of the horde’s compound in Lowell for the last two days. We saw the worst things anybody has likely witnessed since the Spanish Inquisition. Shit that honestly made me throw up on three separate occasions. But we kept watch for every minute of that time. And no way a force of that size could have gotten past us.”