Lethal Seasons (A Changed World Book 1) (26 page)

“Every year the flu takes more people than are born. The population numbers have decreased dramatically every year since Zero Year.”

History of a Changed World
, Angus T. Moss

Nick jolted to his feet unsure of where to go. He hadn’t been here for any of the drills, so he didn’t know what his assignment would be.

“Oh dear, Wisp said he was going to sleep down there. Did he set it off?” Tilly said. But Nick knew that the trigger would be someone coming in, not just wandering the halls.

“How could anyone get into the lower levels?” Elsa asked.

“This is the local storm shelter. There are tunnels coming in from the neighborhoods, right?” Frank asked.

Nick nodded at him. “Five of them that dump into a staging area.

Angus went over to his desk and checked in with Martin on the radio.

“Southwest tunnel,” Martin responded. “Taking a look now.”

“Wisp may be down there,” Angus said.

“Got ‘em,” Martin said. “Let’s do this right. Evac to the chapel.”

“Will do,” Angus replied.

Nick turned to Kyle. “Can you or Ruth handle a weapon?”

Kyle shook his head. “I was never trained. Ruth is a doctor. She will refuse.”

“In that case, I’d like you to herd the children to the chapel,” Angus said. “Tilly will you make sure the doors are open? Dieter, Elsa, I think you should join her. Frank?”

“Give me a gun.”

Angus gave him an appreciative nod. “Go with Nick to the armory, please.” Angus handed Nick another radio. “Keep us apprised.”

Nick felt the urge to salute. As he led Frank to the lower levels, he was so proud of the orderly evacuation of the residents. People in night clothes, half asleep stumbling down the hallway to the chapel. Nick hoped everyone would fit. It was a medium size gathering room at the deepest point of the hill. It only had one entrance, so it was easily defensible. Nick figured Martin had set up some barricades and fall back points in the long hallway leading to it. Otherwise it could just as easily become a bloodbath. The hallway notice boards were flashing just the word
chapel
. Nick noticed that all of the signs indicating how to get there were gone.

He and Frank arrived at the new armory. Their recent acquisitions had required a larger space. Martin had taken over a teachers’ lounge and added a Dutch door. The top door was open and Nick could see two long tables covered with guns. Harley was there handing out weapons and ammunition. And so was William.

“Too young,” Harley said firmly,

“But I can fight,” William insisted.

“You’re not on the list.” Harley tapped a clipboard he was holding.

Nick stepped up and put his hand on William’s shoulder. “Here’s the deal, William, Martin has a plan. If he didn’t assign you a weapon, he doesn’t know to deploy you. I’ll let him know that he needs to add you in next time.” He tightened his grip as William started a denial. “This time, you’ll have to settle for being a runner. Harley, we got a spare radio?”

Harley gave him a tight nod and handed one over.

Nick called Martin on the radio. “William’s going to be a runner for you. Where do you want him?”

“Bottom of the south stairwell with Jim and Toby.”

Nick turned to William. “You know where that is?”

“Course.”

“William, it’s really important that you do what you’re told, okay?”

William gave him a surly nod and stomped off to the stairs.

“He’s itching for some action,” Harley said as he handed guns to Nick and Frank.

“If you’d been through what he has, you’d want to get a little back, too,” Nick said.

Frank looked over the automatic weapon. “Where’d you get this?”

“Bandits,” Nick said. It was close enough.

Frank looked amazed. “Barter?”

Nick gave him a serious look. “Nope.”

“Oh.”

Nick collected his ammunition and headed for the lower levels. They met Wisp on the stairs. He saw that Wisp was armed and waited for Frank’s reaction, but the station manager didn’t even blink.

“Feels like only about ten men,” Wisp told Nick.

“You’re sure they’re bandits?”

“No doubt.”

“Martin say where he wants us?” Nick tried to summon up a memory of the warren of tunnels around here. He’d only been down a handful of times. Five tunnels came into the school from streets in the surrounding neighborhoods. Each tunnel led to its own staging area, the size of a small auditorium, that had been planned as a reception hall to sort and assign space to people seeking shelter. Each staging area then fed into a central chamber that had the access stairs for the massive shelter, one level lower. If the tunnels were secure, no one from outside could reach the storm shelter. Only certain stairways in the school had access to all areas.

Wisp took a doorway off the stairs to a short hallway that led to one of the staging areas. They passed Dr. Jamison setting up triage in an alcove. Wisp took them to the end of the corridor and indicated the steel, double doors. “Martin wants you here in the first fallback zone,” Wisp said. “They haven’t come out of the tunnel yet. They’re waiting for something.”

Nick felt his adrenaline kicking in. “For what? Do they have an inside man?”

“No.” Wisp’s tone was solid enough that Nick felt better. He cocked his head to one side and frowned. “Someone just joined them.”

“Waiting on the boss?”

Frank glanced from Wisp to Nick. “He got an earpiece?”

Nick chuckled. “No, he’s psychic.” Frank laughed, but his uneasy look said he wasn’t sure if Nick was kidding.

The sound of automatic gunfire brought them all alert. A scream punctuated another round of firing. Wisp winced.

“Ours or theirs?” Nick asked.

“Ours.”

Bruno burst through the doors with a body slung over one shoulder. Nick reached to help, but he bulled past them. “Prepare to cover, Martin’s drawing them back,” Bruno said as he headed back the way they’d come.

Nick slipped through the door to find a stack of barrels set up for cover. The Watch were shooting from similar positions. The staging area was a labyrinth of barrels and tree trunks laid out to give the defenders the most advantage. Nick gave Martin credit, he must have spent days lugging all this stuff down through the tunnels. The sides of the room had been closed off funneling anyone coming in from the tunnels into a narrow corridor of about five feet. The few overhead lights working deepened shadows and added confusion. Martin was sending men back one by one towards Nick’s door, pulling the bandits deeper into the maze. Wisp took a stance to one side and started firing. That drew fire back towards them. Over the radio, Martin called for cover. Nick crouched behind a barrel and laid down gunfire for the retreating men. There were two bodies on the floor in front of the storm door from the tunnel.

Another bandit went down, and Nick felt that twinge of regret that another human being was dead. But if they were going to come in shooting, they certainly couldn’t have good intentions.

Bruno came back, his clothes stained with blood. He crouched next to Nick. “Anyone hurt?”

“No one on our side,” Nick grunted as he reloaded. The gunfire was deafening.

The radio crackled, Martin called for Bruno.

“Where?” Bruno responded. An arm came up over a barrel just long enough to spot. Bruno crouched along the line of a tree trunk then disappeared into the maze.

Nick peeked around his barrel. The bandits were attacking blindly. They couldn’t see the High Meadow men, so they were firing indiscriminately. A waste of ammunition, in Nick’s opinion, and considering the tight, intermittent response from the Watch, Martin’s also.

Another bandit went down with a scream. Bruno reappeared half-carrying Tall Joe who was holding his bloody ribs. Wisp lay down cover fire, taking out two more men, backing along in Bruno’s wake. Then Bruno was away through the doors.

“Martin’s down to eight men in the maze,” Wisp said.

“Against how many?”

“I can only use visual right now.” Wisp said, his eyes never leaving the bandits. “About the same?”

The bandits attacked with more fervor, automatic weapon fire rattled across the drums. Wisp stood up and took out three of them. Two of the Watch scooted into cover beside Nick and Frank. Wisp stumbled and went down. Nick pulled him deeper into cover.

“How bad?” he asked, looking for the blood. Wisp was unconscious, the left side of his face covered in blood.

The men of the Watch returned fire more enthusiastically. Bruno came back through the door, saw Wisp and dragged him away without a word.

Nick was worried. Head wounds were bad. And Wisp was one of their best shots.
One
of...he had a few marksman awards of his own. He crawled over to where Wisp had been standing and took a peek over the barrel. Without a thought, he stood and took out two bandits that were reloading. He ducked before anyone could return fire.

And then it went quiet. There was a scuffle and one final gunshot. When he looked over his barrel, Martin was standing on the trunk of a tree, scanning the area in front of him.

“All clear!” Martin yelled. He was answered from the left and right. Then he turned to check the men behind him.

Nick stood up. “All clear.”

“After several fairly mild years we had grown complacent. In Year Ten, a lethal strain took approximately 40% of the country’s population. I cannot say how it affected other countries because we have lost communication beyond our borders.”

History of a Changed World
, Angus T. Moss

Tall Joe was in surgery when Nick got to the infirmary. Martin and the rest of the Watch were sweeping the other tunnels. Nick heard Martin on the radio tell Angus he wanted everyone to stay in the chapel until they searched the entire building. Thunder rumbled faintly. Nick knew the storm had to be really bad to hear it this deep inside.

He checked for Wisp and the other man that Bruno had carried out. It made a certain sense that Bruno would want to be the one to rescue the wounded, a recompense of sorts for all the lives lost at Riverbank. And he was a big powerful man, so he could easily carry anyone.

Wisp was in bed, his head bandaged, still apparently unconscious. Kyle was standing by the bedside watching him.

“He okay?” Nick asked.

“A deep graze. Concussion. He’ll have a scar.” Kyle spoke in clipped tones.

“He was amazing.”

“He was well trained.”

“But not you?” Nick asked, not expecting an answer.

“My skill was obvious. I went into the sciences when I was only a few days from awakening.” Kyle shifted uneasily, reaching toward Wisp, but not touching him. “We knew what his skill was, but none of us told, so it appeared that he had no skill. He was trained in many things as Hendricks sought to discover what he was good for.”

“But Hendricks didn’t want any double Es.” Nick said softly, trying to encourage him to speak.

“No. He made that clear when he shot Gamma in front of us. Which I suppose is the real reason that Sigma killed himself.”

Nick responded automatically. “I’m sorry.”

Kyle turned quizzical eyes on him. “For what?”

“For your loss. They were your brothers, weren’t they?”

Kyle looked around the room, a puzzled frown on his face. “Yes. And we loved each other. Although we learned quickly not to let that show. We had a pact. We...” He shot a worried glance at Nick. “Forgive me. Seeing him like this makes me emotional.”

Nick clapped him on the shoulder. “He’ll be okay.”

Kyle nodded. “Thank you.”

Nick was just starting to feel awkward when William burst in. “Martin wants you in the south tunnel.”

“Both of us?” Nick asked.

William pointed to Nick as he panted to catch his breath.

“Problem?” Nick asked.

“Dunno,” William said with an eyeroll. “He just said to get you down there.”

Nick returned to the staging area to find it looking very different. All the overhead lights were on making the maze less daunting. A few key obstacles had been shifted creating a path straight through the center. Nick was half way through when he met up with Martin headed in the other direction.

“Oh good, he found you.”

Nick looked at the men working on the maze, tightening some areas, dragging branches and rocks to make the path uneven in others. “Doesn’t look too urgent?” Nick said as more of a question.

“Not sure. I wanted you to take a look at these guys.” Martin led him through the other half of the maze and out the storm doors to the access tunnel. Nine bodies were laid out, their weapons at their feet.

“Wisp said he thought there were ten,” Nick commented.

Martin gestured toward the mouth of the tunnel. “There’s one vehicle out there. Big black van like the ones you brought back. The rain’s made a mess of any tracks, but the underbrush looks like a second vehicle was parked there.”

“So you think someone got away.”

“He was wounded, I think. I hope. Blood trail on the floor and on the outer door.”

“I don’t think he’s going far in this storm. Those vans are sturdy, but he’s going to have to shelter somewhere.”

Martin nodded, his eyes narrowed against the harsh overhead lights. He pointed to the bodies. “Anybody look familiar?”

Nick checked each one. There were three in the black gear of Rutledge’s guards. The other six wore mismatched gear or none at all. One man was in only jeans and a t-shirt. Nick noted the headshots, probably Wisp’s work. “These two were at the lab.” He folded his arms against a sinking feeling in his gut. “I invited them here.”

“You think there’ll be another attack?”

“These two were bully boys. They’re probably looking for an easy mark. Figured any place that would take a bunch of drugged prisoners and scientists couldn’t have good defense.”

“They figured wrong,” Martin said smugly.

“Yup.”

Martin frowned down the tunnel again. “You think this has anything to do with the missing parents?”

“No. Kids would have said if there were guns involved. And this lot wouldn’t have left witnesses.”

Martin grunted his agreement.

“By the way, nice maze,” Nick said with a smile.

Martin chuckled. “You should see the one in the west tunnel.”

“You need me for anything else?”

“No. Just wanted you to see these guys before we buried them.”

Nick went back up to check in with Angus.