Cold Valley (The Savage Horde Book 2), page 17
They came upon a small, square structure, with Joe and Connie pulling into the lead ahead of Packard. The miniature armory was lined to chest height with sandbags and covered with brown canvas for a roof. A short, open gap above the sandbags provided a lookout, where Joe noticed more than one weapon pointing at them as they approached.
He froze, his feet skidding in the sand as he realized how it must look. Two guys in prison garb running toward the ammo dump was a recipe for being riddled by coilgun bolts.
Packard slammed into Joe from behind, and sent him sprawling in the dirt. Without bothering to help him up, the guard continued approaching the fortified building.
Connie extended a hand to Joe, and together they followed Packard into the shelter.
A trio of guards leaned against the sandbags scanning the prison. The closest one, an overweight, bearded man in body armor, turned to Joe.
“Smart move, kid,” he said. “A couple more steps and we’d have lit you up.”
Joe nodded numbly. He looked around the small room and spotted a rack of new coilguns on the far wall. Crates of coilgun bolts were stacked in the middle of the room. But what really caught his eye was a number of Regulator helmets and body armor in the back corner. They would stop a bullet.
The two guards that usually followed Packard around the prison were already in the back donning their own protective armor.
“You boys finally ready?” Packard asked them. One nodded and straightened up while the wiry man finished buttoning his jacket. Packard walked to the rack of weapons and tossed a coilgun to Connie. “I’m sure you know how to use this.”
“You betcha.”
“And here.” Packard handed him a helmet. “I’d turn off the communicator. No need for anyone to know what you’re up to.”
“What about me?” Joe asked the big man, who continued to ignore him.
Packard handed Connie a handful of magazines for the weapon and moved on to the back corner. He picked up a newer model liquid metal armored jacket and sized it up before handing it to Connie.
With that done, he finally addressed Joe. “Medics don’t get guns. You know that.”
“Yeah, uhm, but…what about some armor?”
He grunted. “Looks like we got enough to spare.” He grabbed a jacket off the table and tossed it to Joe.
For something that looked no thicker than a windbreaker, it weighed a ton to a person who hadn’t eaten well in over a week. Joe’s back bent as he caught it, straining muscles that were sore from the digging. But he quickly straightened up and pulled it on.
Packard gave Connie armored pants too, and quickly ushered them back outside the building along with his two companions.
“Let’s get rid of your buddy, then we’re all off to the wire.”
“We’re goin’ to the trench?” Connie asked.
“Don’t ask questions.” Packard looked across the camp before taking off at a quick hike. “Just keep up and you’ll see.”
“You’re the boss,” Connie replied, seemingly happy enough to be out of his pen and doing something useful. “Just lead on.”
Even with the liquid metal jacket, Joe couldn’t help but flinch every time he heard a bullet whizz close to his ear. Connie and the other guards seemed perfectly content in their full armor, each hoisting a coilgun in their hands like they were born to carry one.
Joe wondered if his sergeant had given any thought to turning the weapon on Packard, taking his keys, and running off to free Jade. But, of course, there were the two other guards that trailed right behind them. It would have been impossible to get the drop on all three.
Besides, it seemed as though there was a code among old soldiers, whether they had been on the front lines or terrorizing prisoners in a camp. Brothers in Arms was the expression Joe had heard, as if the Regulators were one big, happy family. As if everyone had each other’s back.
It didn’t mean much to a guy like Joe. He’d been willing to give his life for his squad mates, but that was as far as his loyalties went. As he hurried across the prison, all that mattered to him was the brown-haired girl in the hospital tent. Leisa was the only military family he knew—other than Connie. He supposed Jade might also qualify.
The wind rose from the north, bringing the acrid smell of burning phosphorus and the savages’ cordite as they fired away with their antiquated gunpowder weapons.
Another round of grenade blasts rocked Joe’s ears. He hunched over, but kept pace behind Packard and Connie, who didn’t slow in the slightest. Gunfire ramped up again to a fever pitch, and Joe imagined Jade cowering in her cell completely overwhelmed by the sounds that nearly deafened him.
And then his thoughts turned to Leisa. He could practically see the hospital tent riddled with stray bullets, with the tattered fabric rustling in the smoke-laden breeze.
They rounded a corner and came face to face with the tent. It was almost as bad as Joe had imagined.
His heart sank, settling on top of a stomach that churned with anxious acid. They were so close when Packard shouted, “Get down!”
Joe caught the telltale whine of falling mortar shells the split second before they burst. The world flashed, searing into eyeballs that Joe pinched closed before he hit the ground. The earth around them came alive, grumbling under the blasts.
The bombardment quit as quickly as it had begun. Joe’s ears rang as he cautiously lifted his head. Dizzy from the concussive force, he blinked over and over to steady his sight. He wished he hadn’t.
One side of the hospital tent had collapsed under the shellfire. Next to that corner, bright orange flames licked at the incinerator building.
CHAPTER 27
“Leisa!” Joe screamed and rose to his feet.
Connie grabbed his shoulder before he could run off. “Careful. I’m coming with you.”
“Leave him!” Packard had other ideas. “We need to go.”
Connie opened his mouth to object, but pinched it back closed. There was no point in arguing with the guard.
Joe nodded. “It’s fine, Sarge. I’m good.”
He was anxious to go anyway. Without waiting for further approval, he sprinted for the tent flap closest to the incinerator.
The heat from the flames practically singed his hair before he even made it to the tent. They were dangerously close to the heavy canvas, which only served to make Joe even more reckless. He turned his back to the flames and dove into the opening.
The inside was dark as night; not even a stray lantern lit up the entire enclosure.
“Leisa!” he yelled, and scrambled through the blackness. “Where are you?”
No one answered.
He waved his hands in front of his face, blindly smacking them against curtains that divided sick bays. His boots found the side of a bed with a crash that would’ve broken a toe had it been the middle of the night back home at his house.
Joe knocked a knee into some type of cabinet with a giant metallic clunk. Ignoring the pain, he yelled louder and tripped more often as he frantically worked his way toward what he thought was the middle of the tent where Jade had been treated.
“Le-” He tripped over the corner of another bed and face planted onto it. The mounded dirt for a mattress didn’t break his fall kindly. He rolled over in disgust and screamed as loudly as he could. “Leisa! Can you hear me?”
His ears rang from the mortar blasts, which had fallen silent. Too silent.
As he hopped back to his feet and felt around clumsily, another blast echoed in the distance. Not terribly close, but definitely within the camp. And then another.
He spun around as a soft orange glow filled the open room. The entire tent wall adjacent to the incinerator glowed with the heat of the fire. And suddenly burst into flames.
“Unholy alliance,” he muttered.
The canvas seemed to slowly pull apart. A cloud of black smoke obscured the finer details of the flame, as he watched frozen in panic. The heat rushed toward his face, even from across the large, open room. At least the glow gave him an advantage, albeit a dangerous one.
Shaking away the fear, he spun back around and quickly surveyed the tent.
Joe was a couple rows of beds farther over from where he thought he would have been, not that it made a huge difference. It was more a matter of getting his bearings, which he did a second later.
“To the back,” he told himself, recognizing a partition wall that the doctor had seemed to use like an office.
Joe hopped onto the nearest bed and ran across the aisles, leaping from one bed to another as the flames crept up to the top of the tent.
Smoke billowed inside. Heat intensified, adding to the discomfort in his chest.
Joe coughed, but refused to quit. Standing on a bed in the final row, he yelled again. “Leisa! I’m coming!”
He jumped and landed on the ground—hard. His tired legs nearly gave way, but he steadied himself and slammed into the wooden partition. It fell over, taking him with it.
Another cabinet toppled, pushing against the canvas. Joe twisted to the side as he fell, landing flat on his back. His last decent lungful left his chest with a whoosh.
“Who’s in here?” a man’s voice called from the other side of the fabric.
Joe gasped like a fish out of water, unable to pull a breath into his lungs.
A hand reached under the tent. He rolled and crawled toward it.
Coughing wracked his body as he finally sucked in a breath of acrid, poisonous, superheated air. With his head swimming, he dove for the hand.
Fingers locked around his wrists. A rough grip pulled him under the edge of the flaming tent.
The sky was alight with a fireball from the canvas. It backlit a hulking shadow towering over him. Joe alternated between cough fits and gasping as the man dragged him away from the tent. And then he passed out.
* * *
Joe regained consciousness only to vomit a toxic combination of bile and ashes. He sat on hand and knees like a sick dog, retching over and over, as a hand gently rubbed his back.
“Get it all out, babe,” a soft voice said.
He turned his head and found his angel at his side. “Leis,” he croaked.
“You’re okay.” She sighed. “Thank all that’s holy.”
“Barely.”
He turned away to vomit a final time, and hung his head in shame. Just like back in the hills, she had to see him at his weakest, throwing up again. Reassuringly, though, her slender hand was there on his back the whole time.
Finally, he crawled away from the mess and sat back on his butt. He looked around and spotted an orange bonfire through a row of cages, but nothing looked familiar.
“Where am I?”
“In our new field hospital.” She waved her hand to the side to show off a few blankets spread out around a little clearing somewhere inside the camp. All were empty except for a lump in prison gray curled in the fetal position off to her left.
“Where were you?” He coughed again, and held back the bile. “I was looking all over.”
“Helping get everyone out.”
“Like who?” Joe croaked, having seen only the one sleeping prisoner.
“There weren’t many, thankfully. Doc has a couple that are worse off…over there.” She pointed behind them to the aisle between more prison cages.
Joe tried to force air into his lungs, but it felt like someone had tightened a belt around his chest. He shrugged off the armored jacket.
“You might want to leave that on.” With a grin, she added, “Or find me one.”
“Wish I could.” His raw throat protested as he spoke. “It might be hard-”
“I’m fine,” she said, waving him off. “Save your voice…and put that armor back on.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He pulled the jacket on, but kept it unbuttoned for a while longer.
As they sat and watched, the hospital tent collapsed with a rush of scalding wind and a burst of flame. Even at the distance, the heat stung Joe’s face. He looked away.
“Phew. Lucky I got outta there,” he whispered.
“Yeah. I’m glad he found you,” she replied, drawing a weak smile from Joe. “Doc always said I’m just here to take care of special patients.” She leaned over and bumped him with her shoulder. “Good thing too, since it’s not like I know what I’m doing in a hospital.”
He wanted to say something, but his throat had practically closed up. Leisa grew strangely quiet before focusing back in on him again. With a quick movement, she brushed her hand across his face, wiping soot from his brow.
“I wish I could do something for you,” she whispered. “I’m useless.”
“No.” He cleared his throat roughly. “I’ll be okay.” He took her hand in his own. Their fingers locked together instantly. “Don’t worry about me.” The words came out like sandpaper, but he had more to say. “We need to find Connie and Jade.”
She shook her hand out of his and harrumphed. “Jade, huh? Of course you’d say that.”
He didn’t have the strength to argue over what Jade might or might not have said when she had been in the infirmary earlier, but he had to try to clear the air. “Leis, it’s not like-”
She held up a hand to silence him. “Dude, I’m totally joking. Really.” She grinned. “Just tell me where they’re at, Sarge first.”
“I dunno.” Joe paused to force more air into his tight lungs. “He’s fighting savages…with the guards.”
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “No joke? And your buddy Jade?”
“In her cage.”
“Then I guess we’ll get her first.”
“I don’t have a key though,” Joe said, suddenly realizing the flaw in his plan.
“Maybe we can bust her loose?”
“Not likely, but we could maybe find a guard or something.”
“At least we should see if she’s okay…then find a way to get her loose. Might even find a key on the way there.” Leisa stood and extended a hand to Joe. “Can you walk?”
He nodded, and let her help him up. Once standing, he wobbled for a moment before finding his footing. An occasional explosion still crashed in the distance, but nowhere close by—and definitely fewer. The mortars had quieted, leaving only sporadic gunfire to assault his ears. That was typical savage, Joe knew. Hit hard one minute, and then fall back and regroup for another mass charge.
“You’ll have to show me,” Leisa said, cutting through the clutter in his brain. “I don’t know where they’ve been keeping you.”
“Right, right.” Joe shook his head, and a fierce pounding replied. He shut his eyes, steadied himself, and grabbed her hand.
She looked at their intertwined fingers and squeezed his hand. A smile played at the corner of her lips that grew until her cheeks plumped to dimpled perfection. With a new burst of white phosphorus bearing down from overhead, her green eyes twinkled in the murderous light.
“I love you, Leis,” he proclaimed, not caring if a random bullet cut him down where they stood. It was too important to him that she knew, just in case…
“Not now,” she said softly, but he wasn’t to be dissuaded. Joe tugged on her arm, pulling her body close. His free hand wrapped around her waist, drawing her even closer. She stretched on tiptoes, pressing against him. His lips met hers.
They kissed as the phosphorus burned out, eventually plunging them back into darkness, though Joe wasn’t fully aware for a while. As they pulled apart, he finally got the breath he needed, and felt completely rejuvenated.
Leisa sighed contentedly. “That was amazing.”
“Yeah, and at the least romantic time possible.”
“There’s no such thing as the right time,” she said. “I don’t care when or where as long as you’re with me.”
He hugged her again, ecstatic to have finally seen that perfect smile on her face. With all that had been going on with Jade, he’d obviously been worried that he’d screwed up a good thing. Or that maybe the Republic had ruined it whenever they’d separated them. But everything was finally working out—other than an unplanned assault by a horde of murderous savages.
Still, Joe was riding too high on the sweet emotions to worry about more than one thing at a time. Having Leisa’s hand in his own was all he needed to know about where they went from there. But she wasn’t one to resist a good, playful taunt.
“Let’s go get your girlfriend,” Leisa said, as smart-alecky as Joe expected.
Before he could respond, a fresh barrage of mortar shells rained down on the camp in the direction of Joe’s cell block.
CHAPTER 28
Blasts ripped through the camp as multiple mortar shells burst within the wire.
“That’s right by my cage,” Joe said, and pulled Leisa down the nearest aisle toward the pens.
He tried to run, but couldn’t even muster a jog. Worse yet, the closer they got to the outer fence, the more random bullets pinged and whizzed all around them.
“Get behind me,” he said between ragged breaths.
Thankfully, she listened. It wasn’t ten more paces before a stray bullet found him. The slug buried itself in his abdomen. He twisted to the side from the impact, and sank to his knees in the path, moaning in agony.
“Joe!”
“I’m fine,” he barely managed. Though the liquid armor was borderline magical, it did nothing to dull the force of impact. The little bit of lead had hit like a hammer, knocking the wind from his chest again.
“Help me up,” he croaked. “And stay down.”
“I’m trying. It’s a freaking war zone out here.”
“You should be used to that,” he said with a pained grin.
“I’ll never be used to that.”
He staggered to his feet, and keeping Leisa behind him, he hurried toward his cellblock. After another twenty yards, they turned left onto the familiar path that led from the center of the camp to his cage.
Beyond the fence, flashes ripped through the night sky, punctuated with volleys of rifle fire that never seemed to end. Joe could hardly believe the mixed force of prison guards and soldiers were still holding off the savages. He didn’t know how long they could last, and that was almost as terrifying as the stray bullets.
