The North (#wattys2016)

Chapter 10

Her eyes narrowed for a short moment and she gave me an uneasy look. Dawson wasn’t stupid. She knew that as soon as she popped her head through her hatch she’d be exposed to everything from a sniper to a creep that we might not have been able to see through the periscope. I felt a gnawing sense of unease about taking down yet more survivors, but I reminded myself that they attacked us and not the other way around. They could have chosen to simply let our two carriers pass without firing a single shot.

I gave Dawson a firm nod to show her I had confidence in what she was about to do, so she clenched her jaw tightly and nodded back as she reached beneath the tarp and pulled out the rocket.

My eyes moved to Jo, who was fighting a losing battle against her helmet. I threw her a half-smile and motioned for her to come up to the crew commander hatch, so she threw off the helmet and scrambled across the back of the carrier like a mouse in an obstacle course.

“We bein’ attacked, huh?”

“Yeah, squirt … and it’s about to end, in less than two minutes.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Survivors like us? Trying to get us?”

I sighed heavily. There wasn’t any time to get into an age-appropriate discussion about survivalist nut jobs bent on killing us and taking our supplies. Instead I decided to deflect the discussion.

“Look, Jo, you get to be in charge for a few minutes, okay?” I asked.

She beamed at me as I picked her up by the armpits and placed her in my crew commander seat. “Does that mean I get to tell Doug where to go?”

Doug Manybears cocked his head back and said, “I got something better for you – I want you to keep an eye on the engine gauges, Jo. Can you do that?”

She nodded as I put a hand on Doug’s shoulder. “Thanks, brother,” I said.  He understood that I didn’t want Jo looking outside of the carrier.

I gave my baby sister a thumbs-up as I crawled to the rear of the carrier, grabbing my carbine off the stowage rack. I pulled back the cocking lever and then positioned myself beside Dawson, who now had the M72 fully extended and ready to fire.

“You didn’t think I was going to let you do this alone, did you, Kate?” I said as I disengaged the combat lock on the hatch door. “I’d fire off that rocket, but you hit every target at the anti-tank range in Suffield last year. I can’t hit the broadside of a barn with one of those things. Don’t worry – I’ve got your back.”

She grasped the hatch lever tightly and nodded. “Just make sure you whack anything that isn’t breathing and eats meat.”

“Count on it,” I said, exhaling nervously. “You ready?”

“Ready.”

“On three then … one … two … three!”

We popped up from our hatches like a pair of gophers poking their heads out of the ground. I quickly oriented myself and caught a glimpse of the small army of creeps shambling along about a hundred meters to our rear. I did a quick scan of Cruze’s APC to see that she hadn’t taken any damage from either creeps or homemade explosives and then I followed Dawson into a firing position behind our turret. A flash of movement out of the corner of my eye immediately sent a wave of panic through my stomach as I glimpsed at a creep tangled up in our tow cable on the right side of the carrier. Its sunken eyes gazed up at us and then it flung its one good arm up onto the top of the hull, narrowly missing my combat boots. I stomped on its blackened fingers, crushing the bones beneath the heel of my boot as I lined up the barrel of my carbine with the creature’s forehead. I squeezed off a single shot and the monster’s head snapped back violently, sending a spray of bone and brain matter splattering onto the grass. It slumped back, sliding off the top of the hull, and I spun around to cover Dawson, who was lining up the sight on her M72 with the Brinks truck.

I could see two figures readying another volley of Molotov cocktails in their slingshot. “Don’t waste any time, Kate! Hit those pricks now!”

“I’m on it!” she shouted, as her fingers dug into the trigger bar. There was a flash of light, followed quickly by an intense wave of heat, as the sixty-six-millimeter rocket jetted across the open field. It hit the Brinks truck right through the improvised armor-plating covering the driver’s windshield and the vehicle lit up in a ball of fire. To my horror, the pair of figures standing through the hatch in the roof simply disappeared; their bodies vaporized in a mixture of blood and gore and burning metal that shot fifty feet into the air. We scrambled across the roof of the carrier and dropped back down through the rear hatches. We slammed down the hatch doors with a deafening clank and hit the combat locks.

Dawson closed the now empty firing tube and replaced the end caps, securing them with a pair of cotter pins. She stared at me blankly. “They didn’t stand a freaking chance,” she said. Her voice was hoarse.

“They were going to kill us, Kate,” I said firmly. “If we hadn’t fought back one of those fire bombs would have hit its target.”

“The creeps are the enemy,” she said flatly. “I hate this. I freaking hate this!”

I handed Kate my water bottle. “It’s good that you feel lousy taking them down, Dawson. It shows you’re still a human being. You did your job and that’s all that matters right now. Are you going to be okay - we’ve got to keep moving.”

She nodded. “Yeah – I’ll get past this.”

“Good,” I said, as I crawled back to the crew commander’s hatch. I motioned for Jo to head back to the rear of the carrier, and then slipped my crew commander helmet over my head. She climbed across my lap, the heel of her shoe digging uncomfortably into my groin, and she whispered in my ear.

“Kate Dawson kicks butt.”

I snorted, and peered through my periscope. The creeps were bearing down on us fast. “You bet she does. We gotta jet. The creepers are getting a bit too close for comfort.”

“Okay, David,” she shouted as she wedged her frame around the turret cage and then back to her spot by the rear doors.

The radio hissed loudly in my ears. “We have to pull out now, Dave!” said Pam Cruze.

“Roger that,” I answered. “Doug … get us the hell out of here!”

He raised his thumb over his shoulder as the carrier raced forward until we’d resumed our place in front of Ark Two.

Two and a half hours since we’d left the armory, and already we’d been in a fight for our lives. I could only hope that there weren’t any other human-made surprises in store as we pushed on. But it would be only a matter of time until we ran into a smarter, better-armed group of survivalists who’d kill their own mothers to take our two carriers and all our supplies. I just hoped like hell we’d keep our wits about us when the time came.

Were we murderers because of what we’d just done? A large part of me felt like a murderer, even though we’d have been dead if they’d had their way. Can you be a murderer when law and order are distant memories and the only things you can count on are the bullets in your gun and the people in your tribe?

And that’s what we were, as our APC’s rumbled along the riverbank. A small, heavily armed nomadic tribe.

At least, with the living dead, we knew who our enemies were. I decided that if we were going to survive, then we’d have to somehow learn about our other enemy - the ones that looked like us.

Kate was right, this sucked.

Big time.