Radio Hope (Toxic World Book 1) (20 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Marcus laid The Doctor down on a cot in the operations center as the battle raged outside.

Wincing, The Doctor pulled up his blood-soaked shirt with Marcus’ help and looked at the wound. Two closely spaced holes oozed blood.

“You go
t shot twice!” Marcus exclaimed.

“
Entrance and exit wounds. Medical kit,” he gasped, pointing to a box sitting on a nearby shelf. Marcus fetched it and opened it for him. The gunfire outside rose to a fever pitch.

“It’s not so bad,” The Doctor said, fumbling for some gauze. “I got it.”

“Let me help you,” Marcus said.

“Get out there, I’m fine.”

“But—”

“Get out there!” The Doctor barked.

Marcus leapt back. This man was his oldest friend but when he gave orders Marcus followed. He looked with dread at he door. There was a shitstorm outside and now he was in charge.

He was also unarmed. He’d dropped his rifle
when he grabbed The Doctor.

Marcus went to t
he door. The catwalk boiled with struggling figures. Cultists swarmed over the wall on a dozen ladders, hacking down defenders with machetes or gutting them with spears. Citizens blasted away at them from point blank range, sending attackers flying into the air to fall on their comrades below. Right in front of the door a citizen was firing a shotgun as fast as he could pump it, taking out each man that ascended the ladder in front of him. He leaned over to get a shot at the next one coming up and got a spear in his eye. Just beyond him two cultists had made it onto the catwalk and were swinging wildly with their machetes, tracing bloody arcs through the crowd. Further on Marcus saw Roy throw a Molotov cocktail into the face of a cultist climbing over the parapet. The man exploded into flames and dropped out of sight.

Marcus grabbed the shotgun of the fallen citizen. One of
the cultists with a machete leapt at him. Marcus blew him off his feet. He turned to the other one but found him already down, writhing with a gunshot to the side.

Marcus pumped the shotgun to release the shell. A spear thrown from the ground below flew over his head and by reflex he knelt down.

That saved his life. The din of gunfire hammered his ears to deafness, but he felt the wind as a machete swung less than an inch over his scalp. He turned, falling on his back, and saw that another cultist had come up the ladder the citizen with the shotgun had been defending. Marcus shoved the shotgun into his gut and pulled the trigger.

He stood up, poked his head over the parapet. Two more cultists were scrambling up the ladder. He fired again, shredding the first man’s arm and toppling him over onto the man behind him. Instantly
another replaced them. Marcus pumped his weapon and pulled the trigger again.

Nothing.

In desperation Marcus lifted the gun overhead and used both hands to heave it down on the man climbing the ladder. It hit him in the head and sent him tumbling.

Marcus grabbed the ladder, flinched as a bullet panged off the wall inches from his hand, and hauled
it up. His sciatica sent a sharp lance of pain down one leg and crazily he remembered The Doctor’s warning against doing any heavy lifting. Ignoring the pain and the good advice, he pulled the ladder up rung by rung. Another bullet hummed past his hear, and a third shattered one of the wooden rungs.

Marcus tipped the ladder over to the bac
k side of the wall and it fell onto the heaving crowd of scavengers.

The scene behind the wall was as chaotic as it was
on it. Scores lay dead and dying, while circles of men and women were beating others to death. A big fight at the gate caught his eye. A dozen men had formed a semicircle around it and were firing at citizens and scavengers alike. Two more were pulling aside the heavy bars that locked it.

“Cultists!” Marcus screamed to the scavengers below and pointing in the direction of the gate. “Cultists opening the gate! Stop them!”

Of course no one heard him. And there was no way to make it the few yards from where he stood to the gate. One citizen on the wall noticed, turned and fired her rifle down on them, taking out two before she fell off the catwalk with a bullet in her brain.

That gate will be open in another minute
,
Marcus thought
.
Then it will be all over. Me. Rosie. The kids. . .

Not on my watch.

Marcus eased himself over the back of the catwalk, hung by his hands for a moment, and let himself drop.

As he hit earth his legs buckled. Agonizing pain shot through his legs and back. He even felt it in his teeth, each one becoming a
sharp spike of pain in his mouth. A scavenger that he nearly hit on the way down looked at him, eyes wild with shock and recognition. They all knew Marcus from the trade fair screenings.

Marcus grabbed his pants leg.

“They’re inside the wall!” he shouted to be heard over the rattle of gunfire.

“Yeah,” the scavenger shouted with a gri
n. “We’re beating them to a pulp.”

“At the gate! More at the gate!”

The scavenger looked that direction but there were too many people in the way to see what was going on.

He got the message,
though. The man ran to the nearest circle of his friends, shoving them away from the man they were beating. He pointed in the direction of the gate and shouted something Marcus couldn’t hear. They hurried away, grabbing more people as they went and leaving the bloodied pulp of their victim behind.

Marcus tried to get to his feet and more pain shot through him. He landed hard on his forearms.

A revolver lay in front of him, right next to the curled fingers of its dead owner. Marcus grabbed it, saw the chambers were full, and crawled in the direction of the gate. More scavengers were headed that direction now, while others ran away in panic, headed for the false safety of the warehouse, the homes, anywhere but this madness.

The first group he had sent for the gate burst on the cultists with a hail of gunfire, not bothering to stop until they were upon them. Fists flailed, knives flashed, guns were swung as clubs or shoved into faces and set off. Marcus raised his pistol but didn’t know who to hit.

A roar of gunfire from his right made him eat dirt. A dozen members of the Merchants Association stood not far off, each with an assault rifle on full auto, spraying the crowd by the gate with bullets. Friend and foe alike went down in a mass of flailing limbs and spraying blood.

The men and women of the Merchants Association slapped new clips into their weapons and hustled to the gate. While one slid the bars back into place, several more faced the scavengers, guns leveled but not firing. The
rest hustled up the stairs and onto the catwalk. More rushed from the interior of the city to join them, leaving two of their number to guard the staircase.

As Marcus
pulled himself painfully to his feet he saw the added strength was turning the tide. Those cultists who had made it over the wall were picked off, and then the defenders poured a hail of autofire and more Molotov cocktails onto the crowd below.

Marcus staggered up the steps, still clutching his pistol. Every step sent aching pains through his legs and lower back, but at least nothing was broken.

By the time he made it to the parapet the Righteous Horde was retreating. Hundreds of the first wave lay dead or wounded at the base of the wall. Pools of flame burned everywhere, living on after the consumption of their initial fuel by burning the clothes of the dead or those too wounded to crawl away.

The defenders directed their fire at the line of riflemen, who quickly moved back when they saw how the battle was going. Their machine gun opened up again, making everyone on the wall duck out of sight.

“Reload!” someone shouted. “They’ll use that as cover for another attack.”

Marcus dared a look over the wall. No, they weren’t massing for another attack. The machine
gun gave another sweep of the wall and stopped. Its crew pulled it out of sight.

Marcus hurried into the operations center. He found The Doctor lying on the cot, suturing
his own wounds as sweat beaded on his face.

“How b
ad is it?” he asked Marcus.

“I was a
bout to ask the same thing.”

“No internal injuries as far as I can tell. I’ll be fine. The firing has stopped. What happened?”

“Please tell me you’re using local anesthetic,” Marcus said, looking with worry at the bloody mass in The Doctor’s midsection.

“Of course I am, now answer my fucking question!” The Doctor barked.

“We pushed them back. Lots of casualties on both sides. There were more of the Righteous Horde on the inside besides the guy that got you. They almost opened the gate.”

The Doctor finished suturing the wound and reached for the gauze and surgical tape.

“I’ll get that, you lie back,” Marcus said.

He applied the bandage. The Doctor lay unmoving on the bed, utterly exhausted.

“I’ll go find Ahmed,” Marcus said.

“I don’t want that turncoat
touching me,” The Doctor whispered.

“Oh, come on—”

“He defied me!” The Doctor said, a bit of his strength coming back.

“Just lie there. You’re down for the count. I’ll go clean up the mess outside.”

He emerged from the operations center to find Clyde doing that very thing. The Head of the Watch was directing citizens to clear the bodies and take the wounded to the treatment station.

“I thought you got hit,” Marcus said.

“Got the Kevlar. Knocked me on my ass and might have cracked a rib but I’m OK. How’s The Doctor?”

“Alive and he’ll stay that way.”

“Get down and fix those people down there,” Clyde gestured at the gate. The Merchants Association was still guarding the gate and glowering at the scavengers, who glowered back. Guns were leveled on both sides.

Marcus hobbled down the stairs, every step a jab of pain, and made his way to the gate, where he stood in between the two groups.

“These assholes gunned down some of our own!” one of the scavengers told him, pointing an angry finger at the men arrayed around the gate.

“We killed a bunch of spies,
” one of the Merchants Association shouted back, “and who knows how many more there are. They killed The Doctor!”

Marcus raised his hands.
“All right, all right, hold on! The Doctor’s fine. He only got a graze. Everything went to hell when he got shot and nobody’s to blame but those crazies out there. And they’re still out there so the last thing we need to do is have a standoff inside our own gate.”

“We ain’t moving,” one of the men of the Merchants Association said.

Marcus turned to him. “Nobody asked you to. But we need more men on the wall so half of you are going up there.”

“And leave the gate vulnerable to this group of thieves? Hell no.”

Marcus walked up to the man who spoke. Dave Boeri, son of a big landowner. Always was a snotty kid.

“I told you to get on the wall,” Marcus growled.

“I take orders from Abe.”

“And where is he?”

“Guarding our compound.”

“Hiding like a baby, more like, now get up on that wall.”

“Abe is my boss.”

Marcus slapped him. “And I’m your acting mayor. Get your ass moving.”

Boeri stared at him in shock. After a moment’s hesitation he and a few others turned and went up the stairs.

I can’t believe I did that. Hell, I can’t believe that worked.

Marcus addressed the crowd of scavengers. “This is over. We have a city to defend. All of you set up a firing line a bit further back. If they make it over the wall again and kill the defenders, you can fire from there. Also, form three groups of ten people each to guard the shore. We got plenty of razor wire along but that doesn’t mean they won’t try and swim over and cut it. If they wiped out the village in Toxic Bay that means they got boats. We need to cover those areas. Also collect all the weapons and share ammo. Let no one run short.”

He turned back to the wall and waved to get Clyde’s attention.

“What’s happening out there?” Marcus called to him.

“They’re hanging back,” Cl
yde called back. “They’ll think twice about charging us again.”

Everyone cheered except Marcus.

They’ll come again
,
Marcus thought.

The cheer rose to a roar as The Doctor appeared at the doorway to the operations center. He looked pale but stood erect, holding onto the doorframe and raising a fist above his head.

This time Marcus did cheer. The man had a fatal disease, hadn’t eaten properly in weeks, just got shot, was pumped full of painkillers, and he was still a leader. Marcus thanked God the cultist hadn’t been a better shot. There was no way he could fill The Doctor’s shoes.