The Dragons of Men (The Sons of Liberty Book 2) (69 page)

“But what about Tyler and the others?” the soldier asked. “Won’t they still be out there?”

Nadia’s lower lip quivered as she glanced back out the window. She shook her head, sorrow failing to mask the courage Judah saw in her.

“Just do it. I’ll meet you at the wall.”

The soldier nodded his head, shouting to the other men in the room as they ran for the door.

Judah remained still, a great rift tearing down the center of his soul. He wanted to stay and protect Alexandra and his family, but he knew they’d need every man they could to turn back whatever army was attacking. Once a few fleeting seconds of hesitation had passed, Judah took a deep breath from his digital inhaler—knowing what he had to do.

Judah began to follow the soldiers—doing everything he could to avoid looking at Alexandra for fear she might force him to stay—but her hand quickly caught his and pulled him back. He turned around, immediately finding her dark and wondrous eyes.

You are so beautiful,
he thought, urging himself to look away and run with the others.

“Judah, I….” Alexandra failed to suppress the tears that descended down her pale cheeks. He reached up, wiping her tears away as he fought back his own. He tried to find words of comfort—some poetic battle hymn to say to the girl with whom he had fallen in love. Still, as he searched for that perfect ‘fare thee well,’ he could only bring himself to mumble the words he longed for her to say.

“I love you,” he said, ripping his eyes away as he jogged toward the exit—battle before him and the woman he loved behind him.
And I will love you until the moment I die, be it minutes or years from now.

“Judah, don’t go!” Alexandra shouted from behind him. “Judah, wait! I love you too! Please, Judah, don’t….”

He ran out of the room, struggling to suppress the crushing desire to halt and stay with the one who held his heart. As he exited the room and began to descend the stairs, he began to wonder if this was how his father had felt the day he flew off to die defending those he loved.

Judah’s feet struck the bottom step and he bolted toward the door, thinking of Alexandra, his family, and the knife his father had given him—the blade that weighed him down like a thousand cold stones of sorrow.

Adam bounced up and down as the truck rumbled across a lengthy grass field, thinking of his family up ahead at the base. Tyler shouted on the radio next to him, though he failed to receive anything but static. Two more pillars of smoke rose to their right—one close to a large blockade that Tyler said protected the inner fort while the other column of dense smoke rose half a mile to the south of that gate. Tyler tossed the radio down to the floor with a harsh curse.

“Just keep going,” Adam said, attempting to sound confident as the truck raced through a sports complex.

“We did everything,” Tyler said, breathing deeply as he glanced at the billowing clouds of blackness to his right. “We set up blockades, we armed our men as best as we could, but now…it all burns. What the hell could we have done differently?”

Adam stared back at Tyler silently, searching for an answer. He had wondered that same question so often over the past few months as he dwelled on the road behind him. Adam had done his best to stop Lukas Chambers, only to lose the nation in the end. He had traveled through war, surviving one small battle after another, only to nearly lose what good remained within. He had struggled, bled, and killed in his quest to find peace, only to think he might die now, so close to the family he had thought dead.

What could you have done differently?
Adam thought quietly.

As the truck jostled him around, speeding quickly to his death or deliverance, a whisper of a whisper echoed through his mind, answering his inquiry for him.

Pray.

The word struck Adam like a blast of arctic air and he instantly realized a sad truth about his journey. Over the past four months of hardship and survival—as he teetered on losing what good remained inside him—Adam had failed to pray even once. He had found God in the days before he had lost his battle with Lukas, only to seek out survival and vengeance in the following months. Now, as they raced toward the outpost, Adam knew for the first time in a long time exactly what he needed to do.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, shutting the world out for but a moment as he silently prayed.

God, I am sorry. I failed to seek you out when I needed you most. Please, help me through this. Not just this battle of men, but the battle for my soul. I don’t believe you brought me here to die. I refuse to believe it! But God…I need you. Those we fight who have been turned against their will need you. Fort Harding needs you now.

The world needs you now, more than ever.

Victor Castle shrieked as he was dragged out of hell and cast back to reality. He had no idea how long he had been under, though it had felt like years. The stench of bile filled his nose and he quickly emptied his stomach on the back of a man beside him. He looked around him, trying to remember where he had been.

Trailer...battle…Fort Harding!

As the memory returned, a gruff voice whispered from the tiny Wasp behind his ear.

“The final blockade has been partially breached, though the breaching trucks have been disabled. You will all need to run the final mile by foot and storm the inner base. We have bikes and runners ready to go before you once the gap is cleared. They will clear the path for your advance. We have deployed IRDs above you. Know that they are watching those who might decide to fail us. Remember the pain that awaits cowards and the freedom that awaits the one who finds Adam Reinhart.”

“You heard command,” Victor shouted meekly, resuming his role of authority even though his voice was clearly weak and pathetic. “Don’t stop until—”

A surge of heated air passed through the trailer so violently that it blew out Victor’s ear drums and tore his shirt from his torso. He closed his eyes and shouted as the trailer tilted to the right. Sound fled into a ferocious nothingness and the trailer crashed on its side, throwing everyone about. Victor collided with a wall of human flesh, aware of panic and fear while his ears were most certainly unaware of anything.

He pushed himself up quickly, clawing for freedom from the mass of scrambling men and women. Victor noticed light pouring in from the rear gate and began crawling for it, mumbling to himself as terror coursed through his body. He could see the other semi-trucks slamming on their brakes outside, screeching to a halt as hundreds began leaping from the trailers.

Victor fell from the trailer as a rocket—launched from somewhere near the front of their lengthy convoy—struck a semi-truck one hundred feet to his right. The cab exploded in a silent fury of fire and sparks. Victor looked to the left of the ruined trailer he had crawled from and saw a burning crater where a missile had nearly killed him.

Men and women began running around him, their faces contorted in howls and screams that were indiscernible to him. He looked overhead, his eyes immediately seeing the IRD above. He could almost feel Rendell watching him, waiting for an excuse to put him back under. His bare torso prickled with first and second degree burns while his head pounded in pain. Victor took a deep breath, summoned the last of his courage, and began running with the masses toward Fort Harding, hoping that death would find him and set him free.

Thousands of Praetorians descended upon New Orleans like a cloud of locusts. Lukas observed the wall of screens intently, their chutes billowing as their boots hit the ground. The Yellow Jackets slowly advanced into the city from the south, gunning down every living person who did not have a transponder like those which had been injected in each Praetorian. A grand total of twenty-five hundred highly trained Praetorians now swept through the city, assisted by the drones, fast-moving bombers, and gunships above.

“Intel suggests Sigmund will be located in the French Quarter,” Clark Madison said.

“Use the Yellow Jackets and gunships to subdue the rest of the city,” Lukas replied. “Have the Praetorians concentrate on locating Sigmund’s HQ. Capture him alive if possible.”

“I thought you wanted him dead,” Jacob asked.

“I want him to see my face before he dies,” Lukas replied. “I want the man who nearly cost me everything to tremble as he gazes upon his Sovereign.”

“My dearest chap,” Jacob began, “I know Sigmund quite well. As a matter of fact, I know of only one thing that can make that man tremble and it is not you.”

“Then I will at least look him in the eyes before he closes his to this world,” Lukas said as the Praetorians began spreading out.

“A reasonable request,” Jacob said, patting Lukas on the shoulder. “While I am not one to usually laud victory before finality, I believe you have won. Congratulations, my Sovereign.”

Despite his looming success, Lukas couldn’t help but frown. Jacob was right. The Patriarchs were scattered, New Orleans was falling, and Sigmund was surrounded. Still, as Lukas watched the victory he had dreamt about for months unfold, he glanced at the door, his heart sinking as he wondered if his selfish ambitions had cost him the one person that mattered most.

Where are you, Maria?

Maria stepped out of the car, failing to suppress the tremors in her hands as her feet pressed against the soft grass. She looked over at the guard next to her, nodding with as much elegance as she could.

“Are you okay, my lady?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Maria answered, her voice shaky. She knew what was about to come would likely cost this man his life one way or another and she tried to ignore him. Still, his face was already seared into her memory.

Are their lives worth your freedom?
Maria thought as she stepped toward the banks of the Potomac with her chin held high and her hand on her bag.
Is anything too costly to free yourself from this life?

She halted next to the river, the tremors growing stronger as she waited. Maria’s moment of deliverance was nearly at hand.

Eric crossed East Park Avenue and burst through an open gate on the inner wall, slowing to a stop as he panted for air. Lieutenant Bren halted next to him while the last of the survivors ran through. A volley of shouts by men behind the inner wall demanded answers, though Eric ignored them. Eric breathed deeply, trying to regain the wind he had lost retreating from the breached gate that now left nothing between Fort Harding’s citizens but a few hundred soldiers, a widened creek, and a low wall.

“They’re through,” James shouted as Trey ran up to them. “Send a runner to Nadia and tell her the last of the survivors from the breach are behind the wall. Close the gate, blow the bridges, and get everyone you can up in—”

“Belay those orders!” Eric shouted, standing up and breathing deeply.

“We have to close this gate now and cut them off,” James argued.

“We don’t know if everyone is through,” Eric replied. “You want to tell Nadia you cut off Tyler and whoever survived the Southgate One and Two?”

“You know there is no way anyone else made it,” Trey argued, stepping forward. “We need to—”

“What we need to do is stay calm and keep cool heads,” Nadia said as she stormed into view. “Eric, what in God’s name is happening?”

“All of Little Rock is battering down our door,” Eric replied, glancing backward as the gate closed behind him. “They were using suicide bombers on motorcycles to hit the blockades before plowing through them with armored dump trucks. They had dozens, if not hundreds of semi-trucks bringing up the rear. They breached Southgate One and Two, but we partially held them at Beebe Capps and Benton.”

“Partially?” Nadia said as they ascended steps to the top of the inner wall, peering southward. Multiple columns of smoke now rose to the south—the sounds of resistance had died off as the last of those who had refused to retreat died.

“We disabled the armored trucks they were using to breach each wall, but not before the lead truck’s wreckage crashed into us. A few of the containers collapsed and there’s a gap just wide enough for their vehicles to pass through one at a time, though they’ll have to drive slow. It bought us some time to counterattack their reinforcements, but there’s no way we could have closed that breach.”

“What of our armored vehicles stationed there?”

“They did what they could,” Eric said, watching the men gather around him at the inner campus, knowing his hour of leadership wasn’t yet over. “As soon as they were gone, I ordered all survivors off the wall to rally back here for a last stand. I give us five minutes before they’re crossing the creek and charging this way.”

“Did you see what they were carrying in the semis?” Nadia asked.

“Soldiers,” Eric answered, looking out over the battlefield. “At least a hundred per trailer. They’re blocking video feeds, but Trey was able to catch a glimpse of hundreds of additional semis before we lost the last signal. Whoever is hitting us, they’ve brought thousands.”

Nadia lowered the binoculars slowly, her eyes flickering over to Eric. He could clearly see her inner struggle as she tried to remain courageous and composed. But Eric knew the truth just as well as Nadia did.