Apocalyptic Visions Super Boxset (189 page)

A bullet bit him in his right thigh, and he collapsed to the dirt. Heat from both the fires in the fields and the blaze from the house closed in. He felt Mary’s hand reach for him, and he stumbled to his feet, the pain in his leg shooting up through his back.

The warm splash of blood trickled down his calf and into his boot. Mary did her best to hold him up, but Fred kept falling. “Go.” He couldn’t be sure how many times he repeated the words, but each time he did, Mary only pulled on him harder.

              Vibrations rippled through the ground as Fred caught a glimpse of one of the riders bending around the corner of the house, still on horseback. Fred pulled the pistol from his belt, too weak to lift the rifle, and as the rider drew his own weapon, Fred fired, sending the bullet through the raider’s chest, knocking him off his horse.

The horse trotted to the road between the flaming fields and disappeared into the smoke. Fred rose to his feet, clutching Mary with his arm, and the two of them limped forward, trying to follow the direction of the horse. At least lead them away from the boys.

Gunfire erupted behind them, and the last three raiders made their way out of the house, with the flames creeping up to the second floor. Mary turned to shoot, and when she did, a bullet caught her in the stomach.

Fred watched her face upon contact. The twist of her mouth, the shock in her eyes, and the inward curl of her body as the impact of the bullet sent her backward. Fred caught her before she hit the ground, but another bullet to his back caused the two of them to give way to gravity.

The rifle that was in Fred’s hand fell from his grip and landed in the dirt next to him. He reached his hand out, and his fingertips grazed the stock, but before he could wrap his fingers around it, the raider kicked it away and stuck his own rifle barrel in Fred’s face.

It was all Fred could do to cover Mary, his last attempt to protect her, then he looked up to the raider who’d shot them both. The light from the fires flickered on one of his shoulders, and Fred saw a patch, one that he didn’t recognize from any of the clans.

“You are Fred Mars. Brother of the regional governor.” The man wore a mask, and his words were thick and muffled through the fabric.

“Is this how you declare war?” Fred asked, his lungs burning and the bullets lodged in his back and leg aching. The flames around him ran cold as a sudden shiver overtook him. “Attacking farms and families at night behind the cover of masks?”

“We are not declaring war.” The man’s partner aimed his gun at Mary, and Fred felt his heart skip a beat. “But your brother will.” The shots were quick and successive. One bullet went through the center of Fred’s forehead and the other through Mary’s eye. And that’s where they were left, lying in the dirt, with the flames destroying what was left of their home. Before the night was over, the fires burned even them.

The men whooped and hollered at the sight of land a mere few hundred yards away. The misty morning had made for poor visibility, and everyone on board was eager to finally have a chance to stretch their legs on a solid piece of rock instead of the slow, rocking deck of the Sani.

The usual scruff that layered Captain Lance Mars’s face had grown into a thicket of beard that crawled down to his Adam’s apple. He gave the tuft of black under his chin a good rub, the hair coarse, slick with sweat and salt. The light long-sleeved shirt hung loose on his frame, the piece of cloth worn and dirty. His crew always joked that he was the only captain in the world to dress like a deckhand, and none of his crewmen were so loud with their jokes as his first mate. “Canice!”

It only took the one word bellowing from Lance’s mouth to cut through the hysteria of the crewmen and return everyone to their duties. Canice climbed the ladder to the wheelhouse, the thin white shirt and tan pants clinging to her body in the wind. “Captain?”

“I want to make sure the cargo is checked before we make port,” Lance answered. “I don’t want any surprises when we dock. Anything that’s spoiled or looks rotten, toss it overboard. I want to make sure we can get as much beef out of this deal as possible.” The ship wasn’t originally designed as a merchant ship, and while more space could have been made if the cannons were removed, Lance refused to neuter his own ship.

Canice leaned against the doorframe to the wheelhouse and folded her arms. Her hair was pulled back and tied, and the bundle of curls behind her blew wildly in the wind. “If you’re looking to get a leg up in negotiations, I’d recommend a bath beforehand. That’s if they can’t already smell you from here.” She took a step out, flashing a grin, and bowed. “Captain.”

              Before Lance had a chance to address the insubordination, Canice had already slid down the steps and was whipping the crew back into shape. There wasn’t a single captain at sea that didn’t question him about taking a woman as his first mate, but once Canice pulled a blade to their throat before they could blink, there wasn’t a single captain that didn’t take back their own words.

The Sydney port bustled with activity. Hundreds of ships from South America, the Philippines, and other Pacific islands were docked and unloading their goods to be inspected then cleared for trade. Ever since the Great War of his grandfathers, Australia had become the second largest port city in the Pacific, second only to Lima in Peru, and the world’s number-one exporter of beef.

The deckhands tied off the Sani, and Lance made his way to meet with the port officer. The docks were piled high with crates of seafood from the Pacific, fruits and vegetables from the west coast of South America, livestock, and a few exotic beasts with bright, striped colors from the African continent.

Sydney’s port officer was, luckily, an old friend of Lance’s. The two had served together in the Chinese uprising during the Island Wars, and while Lance had never thought twice about the Chinese again, it had become a bit of an obsession with Danny.

“Good to see you back here again,” Danny said, clapping Lance on the back.

Even the smells of the port couldn’t overpower Danny’s stench. Lance was convinced the man never showered, yet somehow he managed to keep dirt off of him. The one time Lance asked him about it, Danny simply shrugged and told him that powerful men emit powerful odors. “Looks like a busy morning.”

“Busy month.” Danny and Lance stepped aside as a group of men wheeled a cart past them filled with apricots. “I swear we’ll need to build another set of docks before the end of the year.”

Hundreds of boots thumped against the weather-worn planks as Lance and Danny headed toward the port office. “The Brazilians are charging a steep price for timber right now, although we might be able to help you out on a deal.”

              “Just because you managed to strike up a new trade agreement with the South Americans doesn’t make you the expert on negotiations, Lance. It was your brother who accomplished that. Not you.”

A blast of hot, stale air greeted Lance’s face once they stepped inside the office. Danny opened a window and let the sea air try and cool the room, but it did little to help. “So, you brought six hundred pounds with you this time?” Danny flopped into his chair, reaching for the paperwork and a pen.

“Seven hundred. Along with three hundred bales of wheat.”

“Wheat?” Danny raised an eyebrow. “When did you start chancing on wheat?”

“Last harvest. With our new agreements with the wasteland clans, we haven’t had to worry about raiding in over a year. It was a risk, but it was one worth taking.”

Danny drummed the pen on the edge of his desk. “You Mars boys always trying to think three steps ahead of the rest of us. You picked a good time to do it.” He scribbled onto the trading documents. “You’ll get a good trade for that wheat, although I’m afraid I can’t say the same for the potatoes.”

“If all goes well, we’ll be able to bring more bales, and grains by this time next year should be tripled.” At least that was what Fred had told him.

“You keep this up, and you’ll be able to open up some credit with us, Lance.” Danny stamped the papers, approving his goods to be sold and traded. “That’s if the Chinese don’t try and kill us again.”

Lance grabbed the piece of parchment and shook his head. “They’d need ships and an army to do that, and you and I both know their sanctions haven’t been lifted. They don’t have the resources, Danny.”

Danny thrust a pudgy finger at the docks. “I’ve been seeing more and more of their merchants coming here. You know as well as I do that the Brazilians cozied up to the Chinese the moment they knew the war was won. Look”—Danny grabbed some of his old files—“for the past five years, they’ve had a steady seven percent increase in their beef trades each year. Why?”

              “The same reason all of us do,” Lance answered. “Beef is valuable.”

              “My point exactly! They could be trading with the Russians, the Africans, or whatever’s left of the deserts!”

“There isn’t anything left in the deserts. What world is left we’ve seen. Everything else is dust and ash.” With his paperwork signed and a lull in the argument, Lance took the opportunity to leave and go meet with the traders at the merchants’ market.

Traders from all over the world bustled back and forth under the makeshift canopies shading different goods and products. The air was thick with haggling as everyone bickered over prices, trying to get a leg up on their competitors.

Lance recognized a few of his regulars, some of them weathered slightly more than others but for the most part still in good shape. He passed Francis, who managed to give him a decent amount fruits for half his shipment of potatoes, and Constance, who he managed to bring down to sixty bushels of wheat for silk threads, but ran into trouble when he saw Benjamin, who was the lord of everything beef in the Australian market.

“Lance.” The voice was rough, accented with the Australian tongue to go along with it. “I’m a little disappointed to see those clansmen didn’t kill you.”

“They had a few chances but missed.” Lance shook Benjamin’s hand, which was almost twice the size of his.

“Good.” The giant clapped his bear paw on Lance’s shoulder and nearly crushed him to the ground. “I wouldn’t want some savage taking the honor away from me.” Benjamin flashed his yellow-stained teeth and with it the stench of whatever was left from his morning breakfast. “I suppose you’ll want some beef.”

The merchant traders had a hierarchy. Everyone knew who had what and how much of it they had, and with that, a status that was either valued or taken advantage of followed. When Lance first started, he was at the bottom, but now he’d worked his way up the ladder a few rungs. But Benjamin was still top dog. “I have wheat. Ninety bushels. And three hundred pounds of potatoes.”

              “Wheat?” That word seemed to be catching everyone off guard today. With most of the grassland in the outback used for cattle, there wasn’t much for farming. Water was hard to come by, and what water they did have was funneled to their livestock. Despite the resources herding cattle consumed, the Aussies found it hard to let go of their crown jewel. “Looks like you’ve been doing more than playing war.”

By the end of the talks, Lance had managed to move every pound and bushel of goods on his ship. With the promise of increased deliveries of wheat in both quantity and frequency, Lance haggled out a fine deal with Benjamin. Before he made it back to the ship, he stopped at one of the smaller markets to buy lunch. He settled on a seafood stew that he caught a whiff of the moment he entered the square.

Lance paid the woman a silver piece, and when he turned, he caught the eye of a man watching him. He kept a casual pace through the market, taking bites and sips of the stew as he walked. The area was crowded and dense, and he lost the tail easily enough.

The man who’d followed him wore a hooded cloak, and Lance watched him curse in frustration. Theft and murder were more commonplace among the merchant tents than he cared for, but the fact that the tail trailing Lance looked Chinese piqued his interest. 

Lance ditched his lunch and kept an eye on the back of the hood through the hundreds of people, both native and foreigners, in the heart of Sydney’s downtown. The worn dirt and cobbled streets had just as much garbage and waste as it did feet that pushed it around. He never enjoyed the large cities—they always stank of death, and he’d smelled enough of that in war.

The hooded man passed some street peddlers performing tricks and then disappeared down an alleyway, away from the main crowds.

Lance poked his head down the alley and watched the man enter a building on the other side. He decided to circle around to the next street crossing and see if there was another way in, one giving him the high ground. He found a narrow staircase that led up the side of the building adjacent to where the hooded figure had entered, and Lance hurried up the steps.

The roofs of the two buildings were close enough for Lance to make the jump across the narrow alleyway below. He kept his feet light across the rooftop, looking for a way inside, which he found through a shattered window near the rafters. He squeezed his way inside the tight opening and lowered himself onto the old wooden beams that lined the ceiling. He teetered across the platforms, following the faint sound of voices.

The high ceiling caused the words to echo and distort before making it to Lance’s ears. He descended the tangled wooden beams that crisscrossed along the ceiling like a jungle gym, twisting his body to accommodate the tight spaces that he squeezed through.

“It’s all there,” one voice said. “Now, it is your turn to provide the payment.”

The lower Lance moved, the more he could make out what was happening below. Six men formed a half circle around the hooded figure that he tailed, and next to them were crates stuffed with hay.

“I’ll still need to see it before payment,” the hooded figure replied.

One of the six men cracked open the closest crate, and Lance nearly fell from the rafters when the man pulled out an advanced rifle, like the ones used before the Great War, in nearly perfect condition.

“AK-47,” the dealer said. “Complete with ammunition.”

Lance and his brothers had stockpiled as many of the old weapons as they could, saving them for times of war. But with the lack of ammunition to reload them, most battles now were fought with the powder-and-lead weapons made by their blacksmiths. And if all of the stacked crates were filled with those AK-47s, whoever wielded it would have a significant advantage in warfare.

The hooded figure nodded then tucked the automatic rifle back into the cargo hold with the others. From the count of boxes, it looked like there were at least five hundred guns.

              “You held up your end of the bargain,” the hooded figured answered. “Now, I’ll hold up mine.”              Lance descended lower, getting a closer look at their faces. Smugglers and pirates were known to provide backdoor services for the Chinese to skirt around sanctions, and a deal of this magnitude would land some serious gold.

While he knew the buyer was Chinese, Lance couldn’t place the accent of the sellers, but he did notice a patch on their arms: a sickle surrounded with four stars in a half circle.

“Well?” one of the sellers asked. “Where is he?”

“Right above us.” The hooded figure pulled his pistol and fired into the rafters. The bullet ricocheted against the beams, and before Lance could reach for his weapon, the sellers joined in the gunfight.

Lance tucked himself behind the widest beam he could find, but with the modern weapons being fired below, the wooden pillar soon turned to swiss cheese. Lance fired down into the hostile crowd below then dashed across the beams, splinters of wood flying behind him from the storm of bullets, to a balcony that wrapped around the third story of the massive warehouse.

The gunfire ended once Lance made it to the balcony, where he was still two stories above his attackers. The balcony offered no ladder or other way down, so he backtracked, looking up to the open window from which he entered, trying to find a way up that wouldn’t expose him, but the beams were too thin.

Lance sprinted around to the rear of the building on the third floor. He found a door at the far end that was locked. He reloaded his pistol, shot the door handle off, and slammed the heel of his boot into the wood, forcing his way in.