Ranger (The Bugging Out Series Book 5) (19 page)

“Keep those hands where I can see them,” the soldier ordered me.

I stayed fixed on him, my hands in front of my crumpled body. His weapon, a familiar M4, workhorse of the American military, was aimed just below my chin. If he had any inclination to pull the trigger, he would not miss at this distance.

“When I tell you to, you’re going to roll slowly onto your stomach and stretch your hands out above your head. If you make any move I don’t like, you’re not going to see another sunrise.”

He didn’t talk like a soldier. Not one trained as those I’d come to know, anyway. His verbiage was almost cute, as if he’d seen too many war movies when such things existed in the old world. What this said to me was that this man, this young man with his face hidden, was a recruit. A green draftee into a force that needed warm bodies.

“Do you understand?”

I nodded. In the distance the fog rolled fast across the slope, washing the world with an opaque veil yet again. Out there, beyond the hilltop, would be his people. That was where he would take me once I’d been disarmed. Or from where his fellow soldiers would appear. That none had, as of yet, was more than a bit puzzling. Had this soldier been manning a post, watching a route of travel covered with traps? Was he by himself?

“Okay,” the soldier prompted me. “Roll slowly.”

A gust of wind rushed down the hillside, splitting the fog as I began to shift my body and extend my hand. I could make no move here. Not yet.

As it turned out, someone made the move for me.

The flat crack of a single rifle shot shattered the dead world’s quiet. In my peripheral vision, I saw the side of the soldier’s head erupt through his balaclava, neck snapping right, away from the origin of the shot. His body folded and fell to the ground at my feet, weapon dropping, its metallic clunk against the earth the last sound I heard before the footsteps.

I knew who had fired the shot. Knew without a doubt. I’d hunted deer in my native Montana, in Wyoming, and on trips to Michigan and Pennsylvania, to name a few. And universal amongst those places, in those hunting seasons, was the sound that the venerable .30-30 made.

Precisely the caliber of the lever gun that Olin had with him.

“Get your weapon and let’s move,” the spy said to me as he emerged from the wave of fog which had formed yet again. “They’ll come to the sound of the shot.”

I didn’t have to be prompted again. Sore, but alive, I got to my feet and collected my AR, then fell in line behind Olin as he moved up the slope and turned north along the stream, traveling exactly the route I’d planned to.

“Keep moving,” Olin instructed. “We’ve got a half mile to cover.”

I stayed right on his six, glancing behind occasionally, though Olin seemed unconcerned with anyone following us. He was focused fully on the way ahead.

“How did you know I was there?”

“I didn’t,” Olin said quietly. “I knew he was there. They’ve been spreading sentries along their line, shifting them closer to town every day. He set that trap this morning. That’s when I heard him. There’s more of those backbreakers scattered through the woods.”

The man stopped talking there and brought his arm up to cough into the crook of his elbow, muffling the sound. He was sick, it seemed, but still functioning. That was what I believed until we reached his hideout.

*  *  *

T
wenty minutes later, Olin led me through a narrow space between two boulders and collapsed to his knees. He reached out and leaned his rifle against the granite wall to one side. Opposite it, another huge rock curved around, meeting the other to create a natural shelter, complete with overhang that reached almost to the only entrance.

Were it another person, I might have offered my hand to help them up. But it was not. It was a man who had brought news of a life my friend had kept from me. A life of deceit and darkness.

“I need information,” I said, not wanting to prolong my interaction with him.

Olin put a hand to the rock face and levered himself up from the ground. He turned, facing me so that I had a good view of him after the quick hike to his hideout. My reaction must have been more overt than I’d thought.

“I look great, yeah?”

He didn’t, and he knew it. Dark circles, looking almost like bruises, surrounded his eyes, giving the impression that he’d been beaten severely. Those markings contrasted hideously with the pale skin sagging over his cheeks. His lips, cracked and almost without any pinkish hue, were thin and stretched, leaving his mouth appearing as just a gash upon his face.

“What did they hit us with?” I asked. “Was it Four Twelve?”

Olin straightened himself and looked me over, unconcerned with what I’d just asked him.

“Dial the volume down,” he said. “I’m not saving you twice today.”

“Was it Four Twelve?” I asked again, hushing my voice to just above a whisper.

“But don’t you look chipper? Almost like you’re unaffected.”

“Answer the question, Olin.”

He smiled through a shallow, dry cough.

“They did something to you,” he said. “Didn’t they? When they took you.”

I wasn’t there to confirm his eerie read on my physical wellbeing, but that he was able to put the pieces of the situation, maybe any situation, together so quickly, and with such accuracy, it hurt to admit the realization that rose right then—Neil had always been able to do the same. I’d thought it part of his nature, but, beyond high school and college, I wondered if that nature had been honed like a blade’s edge on a wet stone. Someone, somewhere, had taken my friend and made him into what he was—a near carbon copy of the spy before me.

“They’re all running around, looking good, feeling strong,” Olin said. “You’re in as good a condition as the soldiers I see on their line.”

“Do you want to help us, or not?”

“You don’t look like you need any help,” he said.

The man retrieved a steel cup and filled it with water from his canteen. He placed it over the narrow space between two small rocks, then slipped a fuel tablet in the hollow between, igniting it with a flick of a lighter. A blue and white flame took hold and licked upward to the bottom of the cup.

“If they’d dosed you with BA Four Twelve, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. Because we’d both be dead. Eight hours tops after exposure. That’s what the Agency brains estimated, anyway.”

The chemical smoke from Olin’s fuel tablet swirled about the hollow between the boulders, contained within the walls of his stone hideout. As the rain had done during my time at the shattered cabin, the fog here would dampen any scent before it drifted far from its point of origin.

“Estimated? You mean no one had first-hand experience with it? What about the Iraqi village?”

“Those were intelligence reports. Passed along. Third hand information.”

“Third hand? That’s your best intelligence?”

“Did you hear me? Anyone with first-hand knowledge ended up in a body bag. Trust me, they found something new and fun for all of us.”

He dragged a sleeve across his mouth, coughing into it, stifling the sound as best he could. The bug meant for our town had gotten him, too, with a vengeance. When the spasm had passed he pulled his arm away and showed me the sleeve of his field coat.

“Pretty, huh?”

It wasn’t. A spray of red mucus had stained the material, fresh blood over dried. He was bleeding internally, his lungs, most likely, or his esophagus.

“Four Twelve would be a measure of mercy right now,” Olin said, then slid down onto his bottom, back against one of the boulders, a cold, makeshift chair.

“If it’s not Four Twelve, then what is it?”

Olin looked at me. He managed a smile through the illness attacking his body from within.

“There was only one soldier on you,” he said. “Just one. That should tell you all you need to know.”

“They’re not a big force,” I said. “We already figured that.”

“They’re off in singles, setting traps to monitor a line that should take a thousand men to secure.”

“So that’s all it is?” I pressed. “Just some virus to weaken us? To even the odds?”

“No, making things even has nothing to do with it,” Olin said. “What they hit you with, hit me with, it’s going to leave everyone incapable of fighting until they bring you back to health. Then you’ll be ‘reeducated’ to their way of doing things.”

I leaned my AR against the boulder and slid to the ground, sitting against a rock face facing Olin. He reached out and tipped a pouch of drink powder into the cup of water just starting to boil.

“I’d offer you some, but not now,” Olin said, lifting the cup and swirling the liquid to dissolve the contents. “I need my strength.”

I wondered if a hardy constitution was the key to surviving this. Either the virus would run its course, over some period we didn’t know as yet, or some underlying medical condition would combine with its effects to overwhelm the body’s ability to sustain itself. Genesee had said people were going to die. Looking at Olin, and remembering how Elaine had been taken down by the bug, to imagine a weakened person not surviving this was not difficult.

“How does it feel to be a healthy island amongst a sea of suffering friends?” Olin asked, sipping the drink he’d made, a good portion dribbling down his chin as his hands trembled. “We can bet cash money that good old Neil isn’t riding a fever, or hacking up a lung.”

“You said he was in danger,” I reminded Olin. “That’s what the Ranger Signal was.”

“People can be in danger in different ways,” Olin said, setting the almost empty cup aside. “Sometimes they recognize a threat before it’s actually upon them.”

“So how do you help him? If he shows up. What do you do?”

Olin looked at me, just looked, then retrieved a thin sleeping bag from his pack and pulled it around him as he settled down to the dirty forest floor.

“You’re not here to help us, you’re here to help him. That’s what you said, Olin, so how is it that you’re going to help him?”

“You’re welcome to stay the night,” Olin told me. “You won’t want to move in the dark back through their lines.”

With that, the spy closed his eyes. The fog had lingered until almost sundown, just dissolving now as the day’s last light trickled through the space between the boulders. He was right—moving at night, though it had its advantages, would, in this situation, put me in more jeopardy. I needed to see who and what was out there when I made my way back to Bandon. Back with nothing to show for my efforts.

With nothing to help save my town.

S
ometime in the night, as Olin slept, I heard two voices in the near distance.

I’d only dozed fitfully, knowing that the huge rock formation which protected us also trapped us. There was no escape or retreat from this position. One well thrown grenade would end us both.

And the voices I heard were nearly close enough to do just that.

I couldn’t make out what they were saying, the tones hushed to avoid detection. It seemed plain to me that they had no idea how close they were to potential adversaries, which we certainly were. Though, at the moment, it appeared that I was the only viable combatant to face them.

Or so I thought.

As I rose slowly from where I’d bedded down, my AR in hand, I felt a hand grasp my leg just above the ankle. The fingers were strong, clamping tight, as if to hold me in place. To keep me from making any move.

Any foolish move.

I glanced behind and down, and in the weak slant of moonlight I could just make out Olin’s face, free of the blanket covering the rest of his body. He gave a slight shake of his head, then released his hold on me, hand slipping back into his sleeping bag.

The voices drew closer. And closer. I held my position, weapon ready, finger just to the side of my AR’s trigger. I began to be able to make out some of what the soldiers were saying. Something about movement. Plans. Big guns coming.

Then, the talking began to recede. The voices grew quieter. And quieter. Until they were lost in the whisper of the night’s cool breeze.

*  *  *

I
didn’t sleep the rest of the night, and as dawn crept over the hills to the east I readied my pack and my weapons for departure.

“They walk at night,” Olin said. “I hear them. They’re untrained. They want a fight about as much as you.”

“There was some discussion early on that we should just attack,” I told him. “Maybe we should have.”

Olin shook his head where he lay.

“What you heard, and what I shot, they’re just cannon fodder. Just troops the Unified Government can lose. Probably drafted from some other town or city they rolled over. The real fighters are out beyond the hills.”

“Big guns coming...”

I repeated what I’d heard in the night. Olin nodded.

“Things are about to get real,” the spy said.

And we weren’t ready. We were worse off. Our numbers were depleted by the virus. The thing that probably had some moniker like BA Five Five, but we would never know that. And those of us who lived through what was to come, a group I doubted I’d be part of, wouldn’t care what name it went by.

“You didn’t get what you came for,” Olin said, his thin sleeping bag pulled tight around him. “If I had a miracle drug, yours truly wouldn’t be coughing up blood.”

He tipped his head toward a balled-up rag next to his canteen, splashes of dark red soaked into the once white material, stained like the sleeve of his jacket.

“I should say thank you,” I said to the man as I picked up my AR and slipped into my pack.

“But you don’t want to express gratitude to a guy like me,” Olin said, reading me like an open book. “A dirty spy.”

I clipped my rifle into the sling stretched across my chest and stepped toward the wide crack between the boulders.

“You can’t go back empty handed,” Olin said.

I stopped and looked to the man. He pushed himself up so that he was reclining against the rough granite face at the back of his shelter, his .30-30 leaning next to him. He didn’t cough, just wheezed through several breaths, then he spoke. I listened, then left the man, expecting that we would never cross paths again.