The 1000 Souls (Book 2): Generation Apocalypse (27 page)

Before Kayla could speculate, Mabruke joined them, hurrying up the line of trucks from one of the five-tons. She spoke even as he arrived, again flanked by several of his captains. “Can we use the LAWS on that concrete block?” she asked.

Mabruke shook his head. “We only have twelve left. We should save them for the tanks and make sure every one counts. We’ve got dynamite that would be better for that.”

The sound of a heavy engine and the squeal of treads from south of the river warned that they had little time.

Kayla studied the buildings, creating fields of fire in her mind, watching assaults and retreats and checking for possible surprises. Her concentration was fierce, and no one spoke to her for a full minute.

“Why the hell did they keep their tanks so far away anyway?” she asked. “I’d have kept them hidden and close and brought them across the bridge before we knew what hit us.”

Elliot grinned proudly. “That was us. They used to keep them up here, but Tevy and me snuck in a few weeks ago just before dawn. Caught all the traitors still napping and the rippers just closing down. We got two by dropping grenades down the open hatches and then ran for it.”

Kayla liked that the rippers had miscalculated. What other mistakes could they make?

“Okay, I want two teams of five each sweeping that condo. Make sure there’s no traitors in there. Then take two of these machine guns,” she said, pointing to one mounted in the back of a pick up truck, “and place them on the fifth floor at either end of the building, so that you can rake any traitors in the upper floors of the Mart. You see someone and you kill them until I say otherwise.”

Mabruke nodded. “What about the tanks?”

Kayla debated, but decided she couldn’t protect Tevy or keep him safe. He would never allow it and he would wonder why. “Tevy and Elliot know this hood best. You guys go straight through there,” she said, pointing south on the street where it went under the station. “Send a couple of your rocket men with them,” she said to Mabruke before turning back to Tevy. “Block the street. Hit one tank and back away. Wait for another tank to try and go around the wreck, then destroy it, too. I want two tanks blown to hell burning side by side in the middle of that bridge.” Kayla checked to make sure Elliot understood. “Then come back to us, because we’re going into the basement of the Mart before sunset.” She turned to Tevy. “Then we’ll see if Radu’s there.”

Watching Tevy and Elliot run off caused a surge of jealousy, but she couldn’t be part of their little team and run straight for the action. She had a bigger job. “Mabruke, get your dynamite. We’re going in along the back here. But meanwhile ...” She pointed to the stairs that led from the sidewalk to the station. “Let’s send a couple of teams up there to make sure that station is empty. If they take fire from the Mart, make sure they know what floor, so that your machine gunners can return fire.”

Mabruke was relaying orders as fast as she delivered them, but now she had a moment when there was little she could do but check her own weapons. She felt all the pockets on her vest, a nervous habit before battle, to ensure she had lots of spare clips.

Gunfire erupted from the Mart over the station, and she couldn’t help herself, running up the steps to find men and women retreating quickly but efficiently, some stopping to shoot up at the Mart. Fifth floor, just where she would put them—not too high, because then they’d have to lean out from the building to cover the tracks. The platform had a roof that provided some cover, so Kayla used it to run to the far end of the station. She wanted to see the tanks, but the tracks of the ‘L’ hid the street. She could hear the engines clearly now.

Gunfire echoed back across the river, the distinctive blast of a shotgun like Tevy’s and perhaps an M16, possibly Elliot’s. She tried not to fear for Tevy, not to imagine bullets burying themselves in his young flesh. A flash of a rocket and an explosion followed by several more informed her that the rocket man was at work. Black smoke rose through the ‘L’ tracks at the far side of the river, rising skyward to mark the death of a tank.

Kayla headed back through the station. Her machine gunners in the condo now opened up, dueling with the guns of the Mart. This was just a distraction, a feint to get the traitors drawn to this side of the building, to keep them from targeting Tevy and his anti-tank crew out on the bridge. She hurried down the stairs to find Mabruke’s troops jumping from their trucks and heading for the intersection, all of them with the white headbands on. She pulled hers from her pocket and put it on.

An explosion rolled through the street from a block west.

“That must be Joyce’s Raiders. We need a runner to go down there and let her know that we’re going into the building. If she can attack it at the same time at the other side, it’ll divide the rippers in the basement. Send a bag of dynamite with your guy.”

Mabruke waved a young teenager forward, his face smooth and his eyes blue. “This boy comes from Bobs,” said Mabruke. “He is to be our runner.”

“Go down this street. Keep as close to the Mart as you can so they can’t shoot down at you. Tell Joyce or Jeff that we’re going through the walls in half an hour. If she could go in at the same time, that would be good.”

Good
. It would be essential. As the kid ran west with an energy only a pubescent teen can possess, Kayla wished she had stressed this urgency, but Joyce would understand. Joyce would totally get it.

A five-ton pulled out of line at Mabruke’s waved instructions and drove past the other trucks and into the intersection, where he stopped it. The back rolled up and Mabruke’s demolition men and women, many of them with small backpacks, all piled out. Kayla directed them to the concrete block walls, some on the north side of the building, some on the east under the ‘L’ station. The walls had been built inside the windows, some of which were still intact. Those they smashed in with rifle butts so that they could get the dynamite right against the block.

Hundreds of other troops now hurried her way, their captains encouraging them to all group near Kayla in the intersection of Kinzie and Wells.

“No, no, no!” she shouted. “Don’t you guys have ranks? I thought you had captains or something?”

Several with white armbands as well as bandanas pushed closer, many looking too reverent for Kayla’s liking. She wasn’t a saint or something just because she knew what to do.

“Break them up into platoons and spread them out so that each one can take a different window. Keep them back so that they don’t get hit when we blow the walls, and for fuck’s sake, don’t clump up. A single rocket or a fifty cal could mow half of you down in a second, for fuck’s sake!”

They only looked more reverent. She had been shouting like an angry captain, but if it worked, all the better. One captain looked uncertain and ventured a question.

“How many is a platoon?” he asked.

“Forty or fifty will do. It doesn’t have to be exact. Just make sure they know which platoon they’re in. Mark them with armbands or something.” But if Kayla had time, she would have instructed them to form three or four squads within the platoon, the way Joyce had done with her Raiders at St. John’s.

Mabruke oversaw his demolitions teams, each placing three of four sticks of dynamite and shoving in detonators while others hurried up with sand bags on their shoulders to place against the dynamite. Kayla made a note to learn about demolitions, for she wouldn’t have known to do this, but it made sense right away: force the explosion into the wall. Halfway down, three broad steps led to a new block wall—a sealed door that once led into the Mart.

Kayla waited there for Mabruke, who caught up in just a few minutes.

“Put a charge here, but no one goes in this way,” she said, pitching her voice to be heard over the staccato of the machine guns. “Same with that doorway up at the intersection. They’ll have all kinds of prepared defenses here and a narrow corridor to funnel us through. It’ll be a kill zone. Got that! We don’t go in this way.”

“Blow it to make them think we will. Got it.” Mabruke received some dynamite from his crew and placed it on the ground at the block.

The engine of another tank caught her attention, so she risked going up onto the ‘L’ platform again and running toward the river. The station seemed vaguely familiar, and the Merchandise Mart had been enough of a tourist attraction that she wondered if she had stood on that platform in happier times with her parents on their only trip to Chicago.

The column of black smoke from the dead tank bent to the east, although enough washed her way to carry the scent of burning oil. But the engine noise of another tank seemed close to the dead tank. Was Tevy alive? Were they going to get the second tank and what if they didn’t? What if it crossed the bridge just as she was forming up her troops to assault the Mart? Perhaps a truck sideways across the road could slow it down if Tevy failed. She was about to go and order Mabruke to pull one of the five-tons under the station to block the road, when the scream of another rocket slammed her ears. This time she saw flashes of sympathetic detonations as rounds inside the tank exploded, but she couldn’t see the tank itself because of the ‘L’ tracks. A new column of black smoke rose beside the first, the two blending together and twisting away to the east. Tevy had done it, Kayla was sure. The bridge was blocked for now to tanks. But not troops.

Kayla hurried down the station platform, the machine gunners still battling between the buildings above her head, each using short bursts. Did Mabruke’s guys know to keep relocating to up their chances of catching the traitor gunners exposed? She hurried down the stairs to find Mabruke about to run up.

“We’re just about ready,” he said.

“Get two of those platoons to either side of the bridge on this side. If you can, get some of those sand bags and build nests for machine gunners. Don’t let the traitor soldiers across the bridge. Keep your guys under the station for cover.” He started to turn away to issue these orders, but she caught his arm. “And get a machine gun crew into that other building on the east side, the one Tevy said is in front of the office building. They can fire down on anyone crossing the bridge.”

Until they ran out of ammunition. If only she’d had a chance to get to know Mabruke’s army, understand on whom she could depend, take stock of their ammunition. Train with them.

The runner she sent to Joyce came flying down the street without his backpack. From the excited grin on his face, you’d think he’d hit a triple and was racing for home plate.

“I got through,” he said breathlessly, giving the hasty fist at shoulder height salute that the Ericsians preferred. “I talked to Jeff himself! It was amazing. He totally got it right away, and he brought me to Joyce herself. Joyce! She said I did great and to tell you they’d attack the Mart at 6:30.”

Kayla looked at her watch: 6:15. Thank God she remembered to wind it this morning. Thank God she had been able to salvage a winding watch. The batteries in her old watch died years ago, which was why she started searching dresser drawers in abandoned houses until she found this one, obviously designed as a man’s watch.

“Mabruke,” she called. “We’ve got to go through the walls in fifteen minutes. I want to speak to your platoon leaders. What do you call them anyway? Captains, Lieutenants?”

Mabruke turned from shouting instructions. “They’re all hosts of a portion of the Captain Soul, like me.”

Why did she outrank them because she hosted a portion of the Angry Captain? She filed that question away for later. “Whatever, get your captains assembled back behind that truck.” She pointed to a battered white five-ton that said
EXPRESS DELIVERY
on the side. “But not the captains from the platoons defending the bridge. I’m going to check on them right now.”

She ran down the side of the street under the rusting steel girders of the station, the ‘L’ tracks filtering the afternoon sunlight where not in shadow from the Mart, the smoke from the burning tanks more pungent, drying her nostrils but not thick enough to prompt coughing. A 4x4 raced past her, stacked dangerously high with sand bags. These Ericsians thought of everything. What was their history? They fought a lot of rippers, Kayla was sure of that, but where and when? This obviously wasn’t their first canoe trip.

She reached the steel of the bridge, rising up out of the sidewalks on either side to support the ‘L’ train tracks above. She found many men and women taking shelter behind the girders. Four figures ran along the east sidewalk toward them. Tevy’s form was unmistakable, and Elliot’s thick red hair was just as obvious.

“Hold your fire,” she yelled to Mabruke’s troops. “Friendlies, Friendlies!” Kayla pushed down the panic that she was about to see Tevy shot and ran out to meet them.

“The 1000 Live On, but they sure as hell won’t,” shouted Elliot. “It was great!”

Kayla could see the burning tanks sitting on the metal-grate deck of the drawbridge. But as she turned she also caught a muzzle flash from the fifth story of the Mart, reminding her that this was no time for heartfelt congratulations or warm reunions.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Kayla aimed her Uzi down the sidewalk in case any traitors were in hot pursuit, but too much smoke obscured the far side of the bridge. She hurried after Tevy even as others unloaded the 4x4 of sandbags, building positions for guns on each sidewalk.

She had to sprint to keep up with Tevy and Elliot and the two rocket men, who still carried the M72 LAWS, even though they had been fired and were now useless. Tevy slowed as they approached the intersection at Kinzie and looked to Kayla for direction. She led him behind the
EXPRESS DELIVERY
truck, where a dozen men and women, the Captain Souls, waited with Mabruke.

Kayla checked her watch: five minutes. Not enough time for a real briefing, not enough time for much planning.

“After we blow the holes, you’ll need to go in right away while they’re still dazed. This is the ripper part of the building, so make sure you tap the brain of any ripper you bring down. The torso should be your first target, sure, but don’t assume it’s dead if it takes a shot to the chest.”