Fallen Steel: Book 2 in the Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series: (Heaven's Fist - Book 2), Page 2

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  Again they stood silently while Ashland considered his words. “Any news from Pendleton?” he asked. Even in the dim light of early morning, he could see Marcus tense.

  “Nope. No way to get in touch with us, far as I know.”

  “Hopefully that changes.”

  “I don’t have my hopes up. Far as I can tell, best way to figure out what’s up with my family is to get back to the states, so that’s what I aim to do.”

  “Without power or fuel? In the middle of a hostile nation?”

  Sergeant Gregory looked at him as if what he was saying was of no consequence whatsoever.

  “Whatever it takes, Agent Ashland. I’m giving these kids another few hours to tell me what they know, then we’re packing up Humvees and LAV’s and preparing to start moving west.”

  Ashland nodded.

  “You guys coming along?”

  The intel agent looked up into the sky, eyes narrowing at the streaks and tails soaring high above.

  “Now that you mention it, I think we’ll join you.”

  ***

  In spite of the relative short distance, Corporal Weiling felt like they were a world away from K-North. The sun was rising, a slow, methodical trek up from the horizon and their surroundings were slowly coming into form, but they’d traveled for a few hours in the scant darkness, losing sight of K-North very shortly after they’d left. Along the way they’d used an old-school compass and night vision goggles, using the sparse, outdated tools to navigate their way across the desert, heading toward Tehran.

  Besides Weiling and Francesco, eight younger Marines had tagged along, members of the logistics team that had helped set up K-North, but who weren’t directly involved in the Highlanders on a regular basis. Still, they were Marines and they knew their stuff, so Marcus had stuck M4 Carbines in their hands, given them a quick rundown of the situation and sent them along.

  So far, so good. They’d followed Weiling’s orders willingly, and they’d made good time, coming up just south of Tehran as the sun started to rise. The Master Sergeant had wanted to time their trip carefully so they could travel under the cover of darkness so as not to be seen, yet have it be a bit more illuminated when they arrived so they could get quality eyes on the city.

  That’s precisely what had happened.

  Weiling led the others in a quiet group, ducking low and walking carefully forward, step-by-step over the rock-and-dirt covered desert hardtop. Various scattered rocks and boulders acted as limited shelter as they moved from place to place, ducking behind cover, halting for a moment to open up the long-range viewfinder, then moving forward again. A long row of tall rocks was set into the desert about three hundred yards south of Tehran, a two-lane road running just to their left, though at this time of the morning it was empty.

  “Hand over the goggles,” Weiling whispered and Private Francesco stepped up and delivered them. He could see the city without them, and it was shrouded in darkness, the entire area of normally bustling Iranian metropolis, still, dark, and silent.

  “What’s going on?” Francesco asked.

  “A whole lot of nothing,” Weiling reported back. “Looks like a citywide blackout. No streetlights, no houses with lights. I do see a few vehicles milling around with headlights on.”

  “Do we get in closer?” Francesco asked.

  Weiling shook her head. “We don’t. We do,” she emphasized, signaling to herself and the eight Marines, but omitting Francesco from the equation.

  “What do you mean?” the young private asked.

  “You’re the youngest and in the best shape, kid,” Weiling replied. “We need you to hoof it back to K-North, post haste. Run as far and as fast as you can.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we need to get this info to the Sarge, and he needs it quick. We’re going to go a little deeper into the city, but he wanted to know the status ASAP. Like, was it a power outage, or was the place flattened or what. You run and deliver that message, he’ll know what comes next. Our fancy next generation communication gear is all satellite based. Without those satellites in orbit, we can talk all the way back to K-North. Yeah, we’ve got our super short-range line of sight radio gear, but that’s not going to do the trick here.”

  Francesco stood and took a few steps back from the boulder. “You’re going to be careful?” he asked, his eyes scanning the faces of the young Marines as well as Corporal Weiling who wasn’t exactly old herself.

  “We’re covered,” Weiling said.

  “All right,” Francesco nodded and turned away, strapping his rifle over his shoulder. He drew in a breath and charged back into the desert, running as fast as his legs could carry him, hoping to make good time before the sun rose too high in the sky and the heat got to be too much.

  “Kid’s fast,” Weiling said. She looked at the others in the group. “Okay, load up. We’re going to take this slow and careful, but we need to gather whatever intel we can, and get back to this rendezvous point in two hours. Then we wait for Francesco to come back and figure out what to do next. You all with me?”

  The entire team nodded and voiced their approval, as the sky shifted to purplish blue and the orbital streaks coalesced into something more visible and something more frightening.

  ***

  Private First Class Francesco was the star of his track and field team in high school, and for a handful of moments in time he thought he might try for a college scholarship. His parents were pushing him that way, though after his first three denials, he decided to choose the Marine Corps instead. The choice shocked his mother, who had never envisioned her only son as being Marine material, and in truth Francesco had sort of shocked himself. A particularly motivated young student, he had been driven toward track and field as a way to refine his body and narrow his focus, and if he couldn’t use that as an avenue toward success, another physically demanding career path seemed to only make sense.

  Well, he’d thought it made sense. Francesco started having second thoughts early in the basic training process, sweating and struggling at Parris Island. But where many of his fellow recruits fell back and got discouraged, suddenly Francesco was finding inspiration and motivation. He’d always been the most physically fit person in his family, in his school, and quite possibly in his whole neighborhood, and now he was just another fresh faced young kid who wasn’t nearly as tough as he thought he was. Instead of drawing back, he doubled down. Increased his workload at the local gym, pushed himself to improve his forty-yard dash, worked strength training into his cardio routine, and by the time twelve weeks of basic was done, he had transformed himself from a skinny but athletic kid, to a broad-shouldered, toned, and muscular man who was acing his PT tests.

  He set out to do exactly what he intended.

  That had felt like so long ago. His six-month transition from Private to Private First Class had been almost automatic. He accomplished everything he needed to in order to receive his first promotion, and if he was honest with himself, he didn’t take it particularly seriously. There was just an assumption that it would happen.

  The nine-month trek from PFC to Lance Corporal was well underway too, and it looked like he had that in the bag. Serving his time in Iran with the Highlanders might even accelerate the process… but only six months had passed—a year since basic training—and suddenly the world was falling apart.

  So here he was, a Private First Class of the Marines, working along with the 1st Light Armored Recon Division, running across the deserts of Iran.

  Running. Not jogging, but running.

  When he’d taken off just south of Tehran, the sun hadn’t yet risen to full height and the weather had been cool and refreshing. He hadn’t been running long, but suddenly the yellow, radiating globe was nearly at full elevation and he could feel the dull, scorching heat of it on his back, through the BDUs and tactical vest. His brain felt like it was baking from within the thick helmet covering his head.

  He
was behind enemy lines and didn’t dare remove his equipment, so he was running, M4 Carbine bouncing along his shoulders, his limbs working from within the thick, camouflage uniform, lungs pushed to straining.

  Francesco didn’t like admitting defeat, and to his credit, he hadn’t yet. But he was getting closer. It was a good one or two more hours of running to reach K-North and he wasn’t sure he could make it.

  As he approached the gentle slope of a thick, uneven dune, likely a rising rock covered in scatterings of sand, he heard the sound. It was a tinny, rattling sound, the echo of a small motor vibrating over the harsh desert sands. A thin whine wedged between two throaty growls, he could hear the engine growing closer, likely just over the dune. Francesco pushed himself a little harder, ran himself faster, pressing to the crest of the slightly sloping hill, and looked down over the edge, falling into a low crouch.

  He saw the motorcycle approach, a slow-moving old thing, a roadster that looked as if it had seen way more of the desert than it had ever wanted. Beaten, bruised, but running, the two-wheeler banked gently around the turn of a worn path in the sand, coming straight toward the dune he was crouched upon. As the rider drew closer, Francesco could see what looked to be an old-school Kalashnikov strapped to his back, an automatic assault rifle tucked tight to his shoulder. Upon first glance, he couldn’t tell if he was friend or foe, though he wasn’t sure anyone in this part of the world with a rifle could be considered a friend. He hesitated for a moment at the top of the slope, not sure what he should do next, unslinging his M4 carbine almost by pure reflex, bringing it up, holding it in both hands, his right fist closing around the handle, index finger resting on the trigger guard while his opposite hand came around, clasping around the tactical foregrip. The M4 was kitted out with a rail system and attached M68 optical sight and telescoping stock, which currently sat wedged into the crook of his shoulder as he lifted the weapon, carefully tracing the motion of the approaching motorcycle.

  He knew that if he sat there crouched in the sand, the bike would likely pass on by without seeing him and bank around the dune, traveling out toward some village unknown, but he also knew until he sent a message along to Sergeant Gregory and the rest of the Highlanders, the advanced recon team would be at risk. The quicker he got there the better.

  His weapon moved along the arc of the motorcycle’s trail, moving with the same determined track, his finger still resting on the trigger guard, his eye pressed up to the close-combat optic. The motorcycle puttered along in front of the dune, making its way, moving slowly over the packed dirt and sand, but certainly faster than he could on foot.

  Francesco held his breath, a slow and still motion, his arms tensing as he swiveled slightly, tracing the movements one final time. His breath released and with one more swift motion he pulled the trigger three times, punching the rifle in semi-auto with three swift cracks, yelling out into the pale, blue sky. The weapon kicked hard against his tight grip, but he kept it centered on the target, a tight cluster of 5.56-millimeter rounds.

  All three of them struck sand, drilling hard into the desert floor, kicking up dirt and dust into a bursting cloud, spilling up into the air just in front of the motorcycle’s front tire. The driver shouted, pulling back and twisting, the handlebars cranking to one side, the tires digging and locking into place. With a spit of more ground, the motorcycle heaved around left, picking up the back tire and swinging it into a tight arc, finishing in a ragged, tumbling skid, the rider spilling off and rolling end over end through the hard surface of the desert floor.

  Immediately Francesco went charging down the dune, his weapon still raised and clutched, his legs pumping, angling him toward the fallen motorcycle, with a singular goal in mind. Stealing the man’s bike wasn’t top on his list of things he wanted to do, but he felt the ends justified the means, and it was certainly better than pumping shots into him and taking it from his dead body.

  But he underestimated the rider’s resiliency. In spite of the graceless sprawl from the motorcycle, the man who had been riding it sprang up on one knee, his Kalashnikov suddenly clutched in both hands, the weapon tracking the movement of Francesco. The man shouted something, words in Arabic that the Marine didn’t understand, as he moved the weapon to get a clear shot.

  Francesco didn’t think, he just acted. As he charged forward, he swiveled left, his own weapon coming around, and as a burst of fully automatic fire chewed apart the ground just behind him, he pulled his own trigger and drilled four clean shots into the man’s center mass, sending him toppling over backwards, the weapon flying into the air.

  A tight pang of guilt stabbed at Francesco and dug deep inside of him as he reached the bike and bent over it, looking over at the fallen form of the man. Had he been an enemy? Francesco figured he would likely never know, but enemy or not, the man hadn’t been directly attacking him, and he probably had family waiting for him to return.

  The private took a long, hard look at the form sprawled in the desert sand as he righted the motorcycle and straightened the handlebars, tucking his rifle over his shoulder and sweeping his leg up over the seat. He gunned the engine and forced himself to look away, not wanting to stare at the still pile of skin and cloth any longer.

  He almost didn’t hear the sound. It was an odd noise, not one that he was accustomed to hearing, it sounded almost like an aircraft breaking the speed of sound, a loud and powerful boom of soundwaves, rolling over the scant waves of desert sand. He looked over to his left, back toward Tehran, just in time to see one of those strange, pale streaks punch through some scattered clouds and scream through the still air, a silvery-white smear of light and speed against the motionless canvas of blank sky.

  His eyes widened as it vanished behind the gentle slope of sand that he had crested moments before, and a moment later he heard the unmistakable sound of shattering impact somewhere in the far distance. The ground beneath him shook, his legs quaking on either side of the motorcycle as he stood there, engine throttling. He almost lost his balance, and a sudden, invisible shockwave slammed over the hill just before him, knocking dirt and desert sand into the air in a wide, arcing blast.

  Francesco stumbled back and fell, the motorcycle’s engine dying as he and the bike went over, sand pouring over him in relentless waves of power from some unseen force of wind. He closed his eyes as he hit the ground, swarmed and battered by tiny, coarse ground, caught in a sudden, unexpected sandstorm.

  A few moments later, it was done. The sound of the impact still echoed far along the flattened desert, and a dull, gray belch of smoke slowly rose from the horizon, directly toward the city of Tehran. Francesco picked himself up, his heart hammering, and he set the motorcycle up as well, once again kicking the engine over, straddling the seat and engaging the throttle.

  He hadn’t seen the impact, he had no idea where the thing had struck or what it even was, but he was suddenly uncomfortably certain that the entire United States Marine advanced recon team had just been wiped off the map, and quite possibly the city of Tehran with them.

  Francesco revved the engine and sent the motorcycle hurtling over the sand, bolting toward K-North and reinforcements for a team that was no longer there.

  ***

  Now.

  Sunday, June 28th.

  The deserts of Arizona.

  At around the same time in a much cooler desert—relatively speaking—Marilyn crouched down next to Vera, tucking one of the Marine’s long sleeved BDU shirts around her, wrapping her tight and bundling it underneath her body. She glanced further east and saw the ridge of mountains still in the distance. They hadn’t been able to make it to shelter quite in time, and had elected to bed down for the night rather than hike another few miles in darkness, especially as Vera was starting to complain of the cold.

  A collection of dried sticks had been retrieved from the area and a small fire burned in the middle of the uneven collection of bodies ringing the blaze, a small, gathering flicker of flames that gave out just enough heat to keep
them from being totally miserable. Vera was situated close to the fire, laying on her side, curled up in a fetal position, the shirt wrapped twice around her in an attempt to keep her from shivering. Marilyn rubbed her back gently as she knelt next to her, singing softly, hoping for her to fall asleep. As rough as the arrangements were, she also knew the child had been up and moving steadily for several hours straight and would likely be totally exhausted. Exhausted enough to sleep on the floor of the Arizona desert with only a shirt covering her? She wasn’t sure about that, but she hoped so.

  Finally, after several moments of touch and go, Vera lay still and Marilyn ventured away from her, heading close to the fire, which was now larger and warmer, reaching up a few feet into the air, feeding off the oxygen. Up above them the sky was dark, however where it should have been scattered with stars, the persistent comet tails of streaking orbital debris laced the black instead. It was like a perpetual meteor shower, however instead of the unique interest that a meteor shower typically garnered, this one was full of ominous danger, a feeling that death loomed above, just waiting to descend upon them.

  “MRE?” asked Private Boskwin, moving closer to Marilyn.

  “Only if it’s beef taco,” Marilyn replied. “Always loved the beef tacos.”

  “You actually loved MRE’s?” asked Boskwin. “You really were hardcore, weren’t you?”

  Marilyn chuckled, but held his eyes. “So, you got beef taco or not?”

  Boskwin returned the soft laugh and turned back toward his backpack, rummaging around for a few moments. After some time he returned, a different MRE in hand.

  “Chili with beans is the best I can do.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers.” Marilyn tore into the MRE, accepting a small canteen from Boskwin so she could pour the water into the heater bag. It amazed her that even after so many years, the basic science of the MRE hadn’t changed. Weren’t they living in the future now? She waited a few moments and placed the food pouch in the heater to let it warm up.