Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall) (31 page)

The
Castle troops started across the bridge, the thirty or so riders sandwiched
between the two boxy wagons, giving them cover. The CDF troops sniped as best
they could, and a pair of the leading riders fell, but within seconds the
caravan had entered the steel lattice of the bridge span. Further shots whined
off the steel crossbeams or thunked into the back of the rear trailer.

Nakamura
waved the left flank forward, and the men moved to the base of the slope,
taking cover behind an old concrete curbing. The raiders were protected by the
trailer, but it also kept them from firing on their pursuers, and the Captain
could hear the men on the bridge cursing and yelling.

“They’re
going to get across,” Sam said from where she knelt beside him, elbow on knee,
watching for a target over her rifle’s sights.

Nakamura
grunted. “That trailer is an issue. If we had some ordnance I’d just blow it
up.”

“No
you wouldn’t. We still don’t know where those cases are,” Sam reminded him.

“True.
You see Creedy?”

“No,
but he’d be careful to stay behind the wagons,” Sam said. She eyed the far
bank, which was heavily wooded and dotted with old commercial structures.
“We’re going to have to cross after them.”

“Into
that?” Nakamura said, scanning the far bank in turn, his expression bleak.

From
somewhere to the west a rifle began firing with a measured thump and the
rearmost trailer slewed as its team came to a stop, the horses stamping in
their traces.

“There’s
someone else over there,” Nakamura muttered.

Grey
watched the column advance. He heard the firing taper off as the green-clad
soldiers lost their line of sight to the milling riders. The Castle troops had
clumped tightly and were well out onto the bridge, under the spiderweb arch of
steel that marked its midpoint. In the lull he heard Georgia’s rifle begin to
fire, but couldn’t see what she’d fired at. He swung the scope back to the lead
teamster and shot him in the chest. He worked the bolt of the rifle and scanned
for another target as the team continued forward at a trot. Georgia continued
to fire with an eerie, precise rhythm.

Clay
watched from where he lay in the scrub. Georgia’s rifle deafened him as she
sighted and shot, sighted and shot. The empty brass winked in the sun as the
rifle kicked each empty shell back over her right shoulder, spinning into the
lush riverside grass to land in a growing pile.

On
the bridge the Castle men milled, a few shooting randomly at the riverbank.
Clay didn’t think any of the bullets came anywhere near. Every few seconds another
rider would jerk and slump from his horse as Georgia placed rounds precisely
between the supports of the bridge. From the river’s far side the stutter of
rifle fire began again, as CDF troops took potshots that rang off the bridge
supports.

The
Castle men broke. Riders squeezed past the still moving trailer in the lead,
lashing their horses forward, bent low and going flat out for the northern
bank. A few followed on foot, some alert enough to stay crouched low behind the
railings, blocking Georgia’s view. She shifted her aim to the fast moving
riders and emptied the last three rounds from the big rifle’s clip. Two of the
mounted men tumbled from their horses.

She
dropped the spent clip and fitted another, her face pale. “You better get down
there, Clay. Mal will need help.”

Clay
put his hat on and began to run. Behind him, Georgia’s rifle continued to roar.

Grey
shot the first two riders that tried to round the trailer. He shifted his aim
when he saw the crouching men pressed against the railing, shielded from
Georgia, and two fell. He ducked beneath the parapet of the building and began
reloading the rifle. Each of the five rounds it held had to be individually
loaded, and in the seconds it took him to finish a ragged group of survivors
had exited the bridge and taken cover beneath the willows and cottonwoods. Grey
crawled twenty feet and peered over the roof’s parapet, scanning the brushy
ground behind the building. A riderless horse cantered through the weeds, blood
on its neck, but he could see none of the surviving Castle men. He scuttled
across the roof, sweating in the sun, and raised his head again, scanning the
cracked highway. There was a flash of movement in the shadow of a
rust-splotched truck trailer with a chipped painting of a smiling freckled boy
on its side. He ducked, and brick dust and chips of mortar exploded from the
edge of the roof where his head had been.

Gunshots
began in the building beneath him.

Mal
stood with his guns at his sides, inside and slightly to the right of the doorway.
Hooves clattered on the asphalt outside, and the confused yelling of the
survivors grew louder. There was a single shot, then a flurry, and he could
hear the bullets crack and whine off the building’s façade somewhere overhead.

A
man in a tattered parka came through the door, crouched low and holding a short
shotgun. Mal shot him, using the second while the intruder’s eyes adjusted to
the shadows to aim and squeeze the trigger smoothly. Inertia carried the man
forward onto his face, the shotgun thumping on the cracked linoleum tiles of
the floor.

Mal
drifted to his right, toward a connecting door. Another man leaped through the
front entryway, lunging over his fallen friend, and firing a revolver wildly as
he came. Mal shot twice as he continued to walk slowly, almost sliding his
feet. The man stumbled and fell.

He
stepped into the next room, his right hand swinging to cover a glassless window
in the far wall, his left rising to cover the door he’d just passed through.
Mal’s boots crunched in the granulated plaster that had crumbled from the
room’s sheetrock walls as he took three steps to the window. He leaned to his
right and peered out. Half a dozen men were clustered under the squat acacia
that grew through the sidewalk before the door. Another pair sprinted past in
the street beyond. He shot one, then moved left as return fire began to
splinter the window frame and thud into the ceiling.

Feet
thundered on the floor of the room he had left, sliding to a stop just shy of
the open door. Mal shifted his left pistol and punched three rounds through the
wall to the side of the door in a level line at waist height. There was a thud,
and someone began screaming and thrashing on the floor.

More
shots chipped brick and wood from a rear window as the surviving raiders sought
cover by getting indoors. Mal began to retreat backward toward the stairwell to
the second floor, watching the connecting door and the front window. He heard
wood creak and stepped left, turning. Something struck him in the right
shoulder and he heard his right hand pistol fall. He continued his turn, unhurried,
left hand rising, and shot at the blurred figure that crouched in yet another
doorway. The shooter rolled back out of sight. Mal knelt, picked up the fallen
gun as more rounds buzzed into the room from both sides. He ignored them and
jogged to the stairwell, climbing three steps at a time. He spun at the
landing, taking what cover he could from the stair rail. He could see the
bright arterial splashes of the blood trail he had left, red as strawberries
against the dun of the walls and stairs. He coughed and spit pink foam on the
peeling wallpaper.

That’s
not good
, he thought. His eyes wanted to blur and he blinked,
forcing them to clear. He started counting, slowly. Upstairs Grey’s rifle
continued to boom. From the bridge came the fainter rattle of the CDF’s weapons
as they advanced.

At
twenty three the man who had shot him stepped through the door. He trailed his
right leg and it left a smear of blood as he moved. Mal shot him left-handed,
hitting him twice in the chest. The man stumbled and sat down, an old revolver
falling from his hand. His head tipped forward as if embarrassed. Mal started
climbing, rounding the turn and heading for the third floor. He was beginning
to feel nauseous and his vision was growing dark around the edges. He shook his
head and it cleared, though his shoulder - as though finally getting the news -
began screaming at him.

Feet
creaked on the stairs. Lots of them, and Mal leaned back against the wall,
locking his knees as they attempted to fold under him. He watched the stairs
and waited. This time they were more cautious. He had counted to seventy five
before they came. The one in the lead had another shotgun, and Mal’s hands
seemed to weigh a hundred pounds as he swung the pistols up. He saw the flash
of the shotgun as his pistols kicked in his hands, and felt something push him
back against the wall. The shotgunner’s head exploded in gout of nastiness.

I
was aiming at his chest
, Mal thought. He kept firing as
screaming faces crowded the stairs, the noise deafening. His right hand, slick
with blood, couldn’t keep hold of the .45 and it thumped to the floor. He fired
the left into the rush until the slide locked back on an empty clip. Two men
were trying to clamber over the knot of bodies that blocked the stairs, but Mal
lost sight of them as his legs buckled and he fell, his empty pistol skittering
on the lineoleum floor and dropping out of sight over the lip of the top step.
He heard it bounce down toward the pair.

What
rolls down stairs alone or in pairs
, he thought.
What is
that from?

He
tried to draw his backup revolver, but his hands didn’t want to move.

Two
faces peeped at him over the top stair. Both men carried rifles, and the older
of the two - though both looked like teenagers to Mal - lowered his to draw a
knife from his belt.

“We
may be fucked,” he hissed, smiling like a skull, “but you won’t live to enjoy
it.” Mal struggled to rise, but his body refused.

The
gunshot made man with the knife jump, and his companion fell forward on  his
rifle, sliding down the stairs out of Mal’s vision. There was another report
and the second man dropped his knife and staggered. At a third shot, he fell.

Mal’s
vision was going dark, but he could see the ludicrous white hat topping the
figure that climbed into sight. The patter of automatic fire from the soldiers
had stopped, and he could hear the clop of hooves and the squeal of an unoiled
wheel as the lead wagon, its dead driver still slumped on his seat, passed by
outside in the sudden quiet.

 “Hey,”
he said, and passed out.

Nakamura
had moved his men onto the bridge and was crossing cautiously, threading
through the abattoir that Georgia had made of it. When Grey walked onto the far
end, his rifle slung, the Captain ordered his men to hold their positions and
walked to meet him. Sam followed, studying the man as they neared him. He
looked tired, she thought, and seemed to be a local.

Grey
and Nakamura exchanged a studied glance.

“We
need a doctor,” Grey said. “Everything else can wait.”

Mal
coughed and moaned, his jade-colored eyes fluttering open. They gazed vacantly
at the ceiling for a moment before coming into focus.

“Oh,
good,” he whispered. “I’d have hated my last sight on earth to have been Clay’s
face.”

A
young man in glasses leaned over into his field of view. He wore a green
camouflaged jacket spattered with dried blood and Mal raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t
try to move. I had to stitch up your subclavian artery and I don’t want you
popping it.”

“Wasn’t
planning on moving,” Mal husked. “My damn legs hurt.”

“They’re
full of birdshot,” another voice said.

Grey’s
face replaced that of the kid in glasses and Mal managed a thin smile.

“You’re
going to be fine,” Grey said.

“Not
going to pass away suddenly?”

“Probably
not.”

“C’est
bon. Then make sure these guys know a quarter share of what’s in those trailers
is mine,” Mal’s eyes closed, his face as white as paper. “Wake me when I don’t
hurt so damn much.”

Clay
stayed with Georgia, who walked the length of the bridge, looking at each of
the men she’d shot. Clay counted silently. There were nineteen he felt sure she
had killed from the wounds they bore. The big rifle wasn’t friendly, and had
left chests torn open and limbs severed.

She
didn’t speak, and Clay respected her silence. At the far wagon she paused and
looked at the teamster slumped across his seat, his hands curled around phantom
reins. She turned around and offered Clay a questioning glance. He adjusted his
hat. She began the long walk back to the bridge’s north end and he stayed with
her.

Beneath
them the river gurgled and hissed on its way to the Pacific.

Nakamura
rubbed his face and looked at Grey out of tired eyes.

“So
you were planning on ambushing this Creedy to keep him out of Canada?” He
glanced along the bloody avenue of the bridge deck. He could make out Georgia
and Clay as they moved away down its length. “With just four of you?”

“I
just wanted to whittle him down, and fall back as we needed to. I figured we
could turn him if we kept it up.” Grey sighed and sat on the rusty hood of a
gutted sedan. “I wasn’t expecting you to drive them across into our guns. That
could have been a lot worse than it was, if it hadn’t been for Georgia.”