Men of Truth (The Wasteland Soldier #4)

It wasn’t thunder.

Stone took the heavy machine gun from the sled. He threaded through the trees and scrambled up a verge beside the road. He crouched in the shadows. The guttural snarl of vehicles was distinct, coming up the highway from the south. He saw headlamps and heard men cheering.

Someone was screaming.

It sounded like a woman but it was hard to tell with the howl of the wind and the rumble of engines.

The vehicles powered along the road, tossing up clumps of mud and snow, three of them, coming into view now, out of the dark, a pickup and two jeeps. They swerved from side to side, driving slow, bright beams illuminating the way ahead and picking out a young woman.

She was on a bicycle, pedalling furiously. There was fear in her eyes and her face glistened with sweat. The pickup jerked forward, like an animal snapping at prey, and she must have felt the heat from the engine on her back. She almost lost her balance and screamed, plumes of vapour escaping her mouth. The men laughed and whooped. They could have easily captured her but the marauders were enjoying the hunt and the prize that sat at the end of it was worth the wait.

Stone looked over his shoulder. The campfire was in darkness. Cali waited with her knife drawn.

He hurriedly set up the heavy machine gun, opening the bipod mounted at the front and feeding in the ammunition belt. He lay flat in the snow, legs splayed. He pushed the stock into his shoulder, drew back the bolt and curled his hand around the worn pistol grip, finger on the trigger.

He took a deep breath, tasting exhaust fumes.

The woman grew closer to the line of trees.

She shrieked as the bicycle slipped from beneath her and she went down onto the road in a tangle of limbs. The vehicles slowed and Stone glimpsed the Triple Death emblem painted on the hood of the pickup. They would have come from the north and must have bypassed them somewhere in the wasteland. But something in the south had made them turn around and head back in this direction. Maybe it had been the girl.

She was on her feet now, nothing of her, short and skinny, running for the trees, waving her arms and screaming.

The vehicles accelerated after her once more.

Stone narrowed his vision, aimed for the nearest jeep.

He squeezed the trigger. The muzzle blazed. The belt jerked and flopped. The stock recoiled into his shoulder.

Bullets hammered the jeep, perforating the metal armour. It flipped onto its side and skated through the snow with an ear-piercing screech.

Stone kept firing, the muzzle spitting bullets, until the vehicle exploded in a great fireball, sending black smoke into the air.

A screaming man sprang from the vehicle, engulfed in flames. He threw himself on the ground and thrashed in the snow. Within seconds his frantic jerks were reduced to small twitches and then nothing.

The young woman had disappeared into the gloom of the trees. Now the fun was over for the gang. The pickup lurched from the road onto rough ground, tyres slicing fresh lines through the unbroken snow. The second jeep swerved around the flaming wreckage of the first one.

Stone rose to one knee and lifted the heavy machine gun from the ground, creating a better angle to hit the second jeep. He opened fire, raking the metal panels covering the tyres.

The vehicle skidded but the driver skilfully wrestled the wheel straight and kept the jeep from flipping over.

Marauders leapt out and let loose a salvo of bullets and iron bolts. Stone blasted along the tree line, the ammunition belt almost spent. He spotted a submachine gun in the hands of one of the men and took him down before he could fire a shot. The man was hurled back, peppered with blood-spatters.

The pickup swerved back onto the road. It was mounted with a rapid fire bolt gun. The gunner wore a steel helmet and goggles. His gloved right hand cranked a handle and the multi-barrelled weapon began to spit iron bolts into the trees.

Stone ran, abandoning the heavy machine gun. Handguns cracked and the bolt gun chattered loudly. Bullets and bolts hissed all around him. His left hand knifed with sudden pain. He glimpsed blood, ignored it, and continued to flee, losing them in patches of darkness, drawing them in.

Half-crouched, hidden in the swirling black smoke, Stone curled around them and reached the burning jeep, three charred bodies inside, a fourth on the ground.

He raised his neck scarf around his face, drew his revolver.

The men of Triple Death were shouting after him, menacing voices in the whistling wind, hoping he would be stupid enough to answer and expose his location.

Fuck-heads, he thought.

The gang had stopped firing, and so had the gunner on the pickup, and they were beginning to push into the trees to hunt him down.

One of the men found the abandoned machine gun. “You should see this fucking piece he used.”

Another called back. “We’ll grab it once we bury this cocksucker.”

Stone hoped Cali was staying hidden behind the construction vehicle.

He crept forward, hugging the shadows, revolver steady, and lowered his finger to the trigger.

Two marauders with pistols and razor-covered wooden bats had been left behind on the road.

Another voice in the trees “You see the bitch?”

“No.”

“Come out, girly, we only want to be friends.”

Ragged laughter.

The gunner on the pickup swept the trees with his spotlights. A marauder pointed at the construction vehicle.

Shit!

Stone emerged on the road, keeping low, and cut loose at the two men watching the dark tree line. Bodies went down. The gunner reached for the bolt gun but realised it was pointing in the wrong direction and would take too long to adjust the angle. He grabbed for a pistol in his belt. Stone dipped his shoulder and planted a single bullet in the man’s forehead.

The remaining four marauders in the trees whirled round at the sound of gunfire behind them.

Stone rushed for the cover of the truck, putting down fire with his revolver until it clicked empty.

Bullets and steel balls pinged off the vehicle as he scrambled onto the flatbed and took the carbine off his shoulder.

There was fighting in the trees. He pumped the slider, aimed across the roof of the cab, and saw Cali tackling one of the marauders, blade glinting and slashing in the moonlight. Stone honed in on another target, fired, reloaded, fired again, and the man howled, his chin erupting bright red. His pistol blasted but the bullet shattered dead bark. Stone narrowed his eyes and hit him again, the high-velocity steel ball shattering the man’s jaw and ploughing through bone, teeth and flesh.

The man went down, and he didn’t get up.

Stone pumped the carbine with his left hand, wincing as blood trickled through his shredded glove.

He lined up another shot but a small figure barrelled from the dark and rushed across his sights. It was the girl, screaming banshee-like. She piled into the man and raked her nails across his face. He tried to throw her off but suddenly he was the one screaming, and much louder than her. Stone saw in the glare of the spotlights the man drop to his knees, the girl’s thumbs curled into his eyes.

Cali slashed her blade. The marauder clasped his throat with both hands, blood spewing through his fingers.

There was only one man left, holding a crossbow.

Stone leapt from the truck, slingshot in hand.

Cali stepped around her kill, blood-stained knife in her fist.

The young woman was on her feet, shaking, cheeks stained with tears, hands smeared with gore.

The marauder took one look at them and ran, heading back along the road to Kiven.

Cali whistled after him. “Long way to run, man.”

The young woman stared at her hands, threw up.

Stone raised his carbine and looked along the barrel.

* * *

Black smoke snaked into the night sky.

Bodies lay red against white.

The young woman sat in pale moonlight with a dazed expression. She could hear the wind and the flames. She could see the shapes of men in the jeep and the filth on her hands. She had shocked the marauder with her determination and shocked herself with her ferocity. She had been instructed on how to attack a man but had never done so and had never wanted to and had always thought of herself incapable.

Her teeth were chattering. Her shoulders shook. Mucus ran from her nose. There were scrapes on her bare forearms from falling off the bicycle and her cheek stung from where a branch had whipped it.

Stone fetched whiskey, uncorked it with his teeth, offered it to her. His hand was bandaged and gloveless. He waited but the girl didn’t acknowledge the bottle. She didn’t even acknowledge him.

He shrugged, gulped a mouthful, set it down between her ankles.

“You got a name?”

He reloaded his revolver as he waited for her response. He tucked the firearm into his belt.

She lifted her head. “Are you going to hurt me?”

Her voice was tiny, words neatly placed.

“No.”

She was short, roughly five-three or five-four, around that mark, and in her twenties. She had olive skin, a small nose and black hair that framed a flat face. Her dark eyes flicked nervously in his direction, now seeing him clearly. She shrank back into the gloom at the sight of him and turned her head away. Stone followed her line of vision. She was looking back along the road she’d travelled. Then her gaze settled upon the charred bodies in the jeep and the smell of cooked flesh was in her nose. She twisted her head toward him, abject pleading in her eyes.

Is it going to be OK? What’s going to happen to me? What have I done?

She shivered violently. Her clothes were windblown against her small frame. No hat, no fleece, no coat, no gloves. She saw his brooding eyes on her body and folded her arms over her small chest, puckered hard against thin fabric.

“What’s your name?” asked Stone.

“Yuan.”

“Where did you come from?”

She bit her lip, clamped her jaw.

“Is there a community nearby?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

He pointed. “I hurt scum like that. Not people like you.”

Tears bubbled in her eyes.

“They would’ve …”

“But they didn’t,” said Stone.

He plucked up the whiskey bottle, pushed it into her small hands. “This’ll smooth the nerves.”

He went to the nearest body and stripped the man, dumping the clothing in a pile beside her.

“Get these on.”

Yuan watched him walk away. He seemed calm but angry. She couldn’t understand how both emotions existed at once. She looked at the clothes and the whiskey bottle but didn’t move toward either of them. Her heart raced. Her chest rose and fell. The world was collapsing in on her and there was no will in her arms to hold it back. She knew what happened beyond the fences of her community. That the world was mostly feral. She wasn’t that naïve. But her life had been lived as a shadow. She had been protected and over-protected, moulded into someone who knew little about anything, until this moment.

She picked up the clothing. The garments were oversized and blood-spattered. She edged into the trees

She was alone.

Her fingers shook. Her teeth rattled. Her hair bristled in the icy wind.

She began to pull the clothes on, tears streaming down her face.