Chapter 18 #2
“Plow it,” the leader said, off to my left. She said it with icy calm, like she’d spilled a cup of coffee. She also sounded far away, my ears ringing from the explosion. Someone grabbed me, pulled me up, and pushed me into the car. “John’s gone. Foster, get your ass over here.”
“What the hell was that?” another woman shouted.
“Lancer,” one of the men said, the word coming out like a gasp. “We gotta move before they sag us with another one.”
“Everyone in the car, now,” the leader shouted.
I pulled myself forward, my hands scrabbling for purchase. I still held the SD-4. Someone shoved me sideways as I was turning, and I fell into one of the seats. The inside of the car was tinged red by colored lights.
“Sorry, sir,” a man said. He dropped his rifle next to me and pulled himself around a metal ladder in the middle of the cramped interior of the car.
He scrambled up with practiced ease, his upper torso disappearing.
A heartbeat later, I heard a lawn-mower-crossed-with-a-jackhammer sound from overhead as the multibarreled gun opened up.
The three remaining soldiers dove inside. One clambered up front as the other two fired long bursts out the open hatch. One of the soldiers by the door palmed the controls, and hydraulics hissed as the two parts of the hatch slammed together.
“Go, go, go.”
The car lurched forward. I fell across the seats, and the two soldiers near the hatch slammed against the wall, rebounded, and somehow managed to stay on their feet. The engine was nearly silent, but the gun overhead continued to hammer out its staccato rhythm.
“Incom—” someone shouted. Another explosion went off, just outside, shoving the entire vehicle sideways.
For a terrifying moment, I thought we were going to tip over, but then the vehicle rocked back onto all six wheels.
The soldier who’d been firing the overhead gun fell from the hatch to the interior floor, cursing and smoking.
The vehicle bounced and lurched and dropped.
Trees and bushes scraped and grated against the sides and the bottom, the sound coming through the metal like screams. I tumbled and fell to the floor, then picked myself up and scrambled back into my seat.
The other soldiers staggered into seats and strapped themselves in. I fumbled with my own straps.
The woman with the cracked helmet fell into the seat next to mine. She secured the straps around me. “You hurt?” I could barely make out her eyes through the visor.
“I—I don’t think so.”
“Hang on,” Mary, the driver, shouted from up front.
The car dropped as though someone pulled the world out from under us, the nose dipping forward at a sharp angle.
My stomach flew into my throat, then we slammed into the ground.
The vehicle bounced and rocked and seemed to ready to tip again but righted itself.
Then we were level, and I heard the wheels hum on a hard road surface as we picked up speed.
“We’re clear,” Mary said a few seconds later.
“Head for rendezvous alpha,” the leader said.
“Roger that, ma’am.”
The three soldiers in the car with me slumped in their seats.
“Well,” one of them said. “That was a velvet-lined cluster plowing if I ever saw one.”
“We knew it was going to be rough,” the leader said, her voice steel.
“Yeah, well, tell that to John. Ma’am.”
They stared at each other.
“Who are you people?” I asked.
The leader turned a dark, cracked visor toward me.
Then she gave an apologetic cough. “Sorry.” She pressed a release near her neck and tugged at her helmet.
It came off with a soft hiss, revealing a young woman underneath.
Her red hair was short, less than a centimeter in length, almost a buzz cut.
Sweat ran from her brow, and from the angular lines of her jaw and neck she appeared to be in fearsomely good shape.
“I’m Lieutenant Jennifer Hayward, four-oh-second CMC.
” Green eyes fell on me. “Your son sent us.”
Lieutenant Hayward introduced me to the other soldiers. “Sergeant Boss Foster, Private Carl Reinhold, and Private Mary Zu driving.”
I took off my helmet and nodded to the other two men in the cramped metal compartment. They inclined their heads and resumed staring at me like I was an exhibit at a museum. I turned to Hayward. “Lyle sent you?”
“That’s right.”
“Where is he?”
“Under protection at the bunker where we’re going.”
“We’re going to see him?”
“Yes.”
I let my head fall back against the hard seat. “That’s good.” It was all I could manage. I needed to see Lyle. I had to see him.
“And … You are Scott Treder, the Traveler.” She said it with a capital T, like a title.
“I’m Scott Treder.”
“Well,” Foster said, “at least we rescued the right guy who randomly appeared out of thin air in the middle of nowhere.” He was a big man, all square head and jaw, with gray eyes and a high forehead.
Reinhold, next to him, laughed. His black armor was still smoking.
Hayward’s eyes were bright as she looked at me. “You know, I didn’t really think you’d be there. I mean, I believed it. I’ve read all the scriptures and live by the Word, but it’s another thing to see the real thing happen right in front of your eyes.”
“‘The Word’?”
“The lieutenant here is what you call a Believer,” Foster said. “A full-blown convert to the Traveler’s cause.” He eyed me. “You ask me, you don’t look like much of a plowing messiah.”
Hayward narrowed her eyes at Foster. He smiled and sat back.
Hayward, still frowning, turned to me. “We thought there might be an ambush. But we didn’t expect the Legion to put up that much cluster.
If we had, we’d have brought more soldiers.
A full platoon. But a lot of our goons are tied up in ops at the Bay or in Old LA. ”
“‘The Legion’?”
“Oh, right. You’re, what, forty-five years behind?”
“Something like that.”
“The Legion,” Foster said, “are the crazy plowers who ambushed our asses out there.”
“They want you dead,” Hayward said.
“What? Why?”
“Because you’re the Antichrist,” Foster said. He laughed, and Carl, next to him, joined in with a few chuckles. He spread his arms. “Hey, man. Welcome to the future.”
I looked at Hayward.
“Sergeant Foster is a plow-hard velvet dick, but he’s also right.” Her eyes, jade green, moved back and forth between mine. “The Legion is convinced you’re the herald of the apocalypse, that your every appearance foretells doom. The last time you arrived…”
“What?”
Hayward looked away, and it was Foster who answered. “Manaus happened.” He leaned forward, eyeing me like I was something from the bottom of his boot.
I shook my head.
“Northern Brazil,” Hayward said. “Comet. The day after you disappeared. Nobody saw it coming, probably because by then no one was looking. Seven hundred thousand people died.”
“Jesus.”
“Nah, not him.” Foster cackled. He wagged a finger at me. “But you? The Traveler? Maybe.”
I stared at him, tired of the same play on words I’d heard days before. I looked back at Hayward. “And this Legion thinks I’m responsible?”
“Basically, yes. If not directly, then as the herald. The herald of woe or something. I don’t know. They have a whole philosophy and creed.”
“The Antichrist,” Foster said.
“I don’t control comets,” I said.
“Doesn’t matter if you do or don’t,” Hayward said. I sensed something. She expected more from me. For some reason this woman, who hadn’t been born when I jumped away from Lyle in the clearing outside the cabin, wanted something from me, some wisdom or insight.
I sat back against the hard seat. My chest hurt, and I looked down.
There was a neat hole in the tactical vest a half inch in diameter over my sternum.
I touched the edges of the torn cloth and felt something sharp underneath.
I dug around for a few seconds and pulled out a flattened piece of metal.
“Lucky you got some decent body armor on, man,” Foster said. “Or maybe that’s divine providence?”
“Wasn’t providence. It was Lyle.”
“Sniper round,” Hayward said. She held her hand out, and I dropped the heavy piece of metal into her armored palm.
“Luck has you. They were using a mod-cal slug thrower and not an anti-materiel rifle or something bigger. Probably weren’t expecting you to have combat-rated armor on.
Just using man-frags, not proper alpha-pete.
Poor theo-op-prep on their part. Course, they had those plowing Lancers, so they weren’t totally unprepared. ”
Her unfamiliar words and acronyms skittered across my consciousness without registering.
A wave of fatigue passed over me, landing on my shoulders and the back of my neck.
I had a forty-five-year-old hangover under the adrenaline.
I stared at my hands. The armored vehicle hummed along, bizarrely quiet, barely shaking. “How long until we get to Lyle?”
“Less than an hour.”
I bobbed my head and kept looking down.
Hayward shifted in her seat. It seemed like she wanted to ask me something, talk something through, but she leaned back and stayed silent. The compartment was quiet.
“Are we out of danger?”
“Near enough.”
“Can we stop, just for a minute?” I took a few breaths, conscious of her watching me. “Please?”
I could feel Foster’s smug expression without having to look.
“Okay.” Hayward hit a button. “Mary, stop the car but keep it primed.”
“Roger that,” Mary’s disembodied voice came back from a hidden speaker.
The big vehicle slid to a smooth stop. I stood before it halted, and Hayward touched the panel next to the hatch.
It swung open, and I almost fell rushing to get outside.
The cool mountain air hit me like a slap.
A breeze kicked up around me and moved through the surrounding evergreen trees, the needles rustling.
I took a shuddering breath and tilted my head back to stare at the sky. Then I bent over and threw up.
When I looked up again, wiping my mouth with the back of my gloved hand, Hayward stood framed in the hatch of the armored vehicle. The expression on her face was unreadable.
“Great messiah, huh?” I stood there, looking at her, the wind blowing on my face.
She stared back for several long seconds. “Come on. Before the Legion catches up to us and executes you as the Antichrist.”