It has been a rough few days. I have a medical issue that’s been cropping up throughout 2021 (because this is apparently the year of just constant but relatively low-stakes problems I guess, for me, personally) and it once again reared its head this past weekend, resulting in no blog posts, lots of escapism, and some pretty constant headaches. Not because of the medical issue. No, these are from jaw clenching, actually. Lots and lots of jaw clenching.
Continue readingBandit
Coldheart and Iron: Part 31
“Shit.”
“Tiffany?”
“I’m out of grenades and I’ve still got two doors to trap. You two got any?”
I let go of my rifle and rolled onto my back, unbuckling my belt as I moved to toss it to Tiffany who deftly caught it on the stump of her left arm. “Just make sure you bring the belt back. If we need to run, I’m going to need that to hold up my pants.”
“Marshall, you’re wearing a full-body snowsuit.”
I looked over at Natalie who was still steadily firing at any of the monsters that moved away from the main body attacking the Enclave. I shrugged, more for Tiffany’s sake than Natalie’s because her face was still pressed to the scope of her rifle. “It’s the principle of the thing, you know?”
Tiffany rolled her eyes and walked away. “If I’m not back in ten minutes, you two had better move.”
“How dare she disrespect me like that.” I rolled back onto my stomach with a huff. “She’s still only a trainee Wayfinder. She’s too new to disrespect me like that.”
“Shush, Marshall, I’m trying to aim.” Natalie fired again, taking out the monster I was settling my sights on. Without missing a beat, I swapped to the one behind it and, after a quick exhale, fired.
“How is that supposed to impact your aim?” I fired and took out another monster, this time pausing to watch the shattered metal fall to the ground before moving on to the next one. “You ears aren’t involved in aiming at this distance and I feel I have a right to prattle on if I want since it looks like everything’s going to hell.”
Natalie sighed, pausing after the exhale to take out a monster, and then leaned back to reload her rifle. “I know, Marshall. Just try to keep it down. There’s no reason to lead everything to our location any faster than shooting at them will.”
“I mean, the rifles are kind of a dead giveaway to anything with half a brain or whatever the monsters have.” I shot another two monsters in quick succession for emphasis. “Everyone more or less knows we’re here. I just hope we can make the jump to that building over there when the time comes.” I jerked a thumb at the building next to us, separated by about ten feet of open air. “It’s a good fifteen feet lower than us, sure, but we might just go through the floor or miss entirely.”
“Stop being such a pessimist, dear.” Natalie chambered the first round and got back to shooting monsters. “No one likes a pessimist.”
“Don’t kid yourself. You love and accept me just the way I am.” I took my last shot and then reloaded my gun, hands taking me through the familiar motion almost before I could think of what to do next. “Are you watching the time?”
“Yes. Seven minutes.”
“Neat. I’m gonna see if I got eyes on anything around us.” I grabbed a set of binoculars from my pack and started looking up the side streets east of the main force of monsters. There were still monsters wandering away from where they’d been penned in by the Enclave defenders, but most of them seemed intent on the hole in the wall one of them had created when it blew itself up. The other Wayfinders and sharpshooters were doing a good job preventing the monsters from flanking around the Enclave defenses, but I saw two more groups of bandits creeping up on various sniper nests.
“I hope the spotters are keeping an eye out.”
“It’s standard procedure, Marshall. Either they remember their training or they don’t. We can’t help them now.”
I dropped back to my stomach, lined up my rifle with the first group I’d seen, and shot one of the bandits in the chest. I looked through my scope at the bandits as they ran for their lives and saw the mess I made of the bandit I shot. “Whoops. I should change back to regular ammunition if I’m just shooting bandits.”
“Or you could keep firing on the giant mass of monsters and help us save the city, trusting the lives of the Wayfinders to the people protecting them who can’t fire on the monsters, anyway.” Natalie fired again and then reloaded, shooting me a glare I mostly ignored as I swapped out the heavier ammunition we used for the monsters with the standard, pre-collapse ammunition we used for bandits.
“Just one clip. Enough to let them all know they’re not as clever as they think they are.”
Natalie ignored me and went back to her shooting while I found the second group right below one of the sniper nests. I popped the bandit at the door in the head and watched the rest of the bandits flee. I spent the next five minutes finding groups of bandits and scattering them. When I was debating whether or not to keep shooting bandits, Tiffany showed back up and crouched down behind us.
“Doors are trapped and the bandits have entered the first floor. We’ll get a few of them on the way up since I double-trapped every route, but we’ll likely still need to defend this point.” Tiffany shrugged so that her gun fell into her arms and smiled wickedly. “I haven’t gotten much practice with this yet and I’d love to finally get back to business.”
“Or we just jump to the next building, pick a different sniper nest, and keep doing our job.” Natalie looked back at Tiffany and over at me. “Maximize our efficiency and do our best to keep the Enclave from getting swarmed.”
Tiffany was about to respond but I held up a hand. After Tiffany closed her mouth, I turned back to Natalie. “Is this you telling me that you think we still have a chance to hold?”
“I don’t know, Marshall. It’s been fifteen minutes since they blew a hole in the wall and it’s too soon to know anything for sure.”
“If you watched for a few minutes, would you have a better idea?”
“I could maybe make a few educated guesses, but that’s all they’d be. We’re still better off continuing to focus on the mission we started until the Enclave is clearly lost, no matter what I see.”
I nodded, thinking for a moment. “Alright. Tiffany, keep your focus on the bandits and let us know what they’re doing. If they make it to the doors soon, we’ll move out and jump to the next building. If we’ve got more time, I’d rather wait since I don’t like the idea of jumping unless we absolutely need to.”
Natalie nodded and got back to shooting as I reloaded my gun with the heavier ammunition. Tiffany looked at me for a moment and then shrugged. “I’ll try to set up an ambush point.”
“Sounds good.” I gave her a thumbs up and then let myself fall back into the rhythm of firing and reloading. I lost track of time as we continued shooting and so it caught me by surprised when I heard a bang and felt the building shake. I realized one of Tiffany’s traps had gone off and halted shooting for a minute to wait for the next one. When it didn’t go off, I went back to shooting but kept my ears open for anyone approaching.
A few minutes later, Tiffany came back, chuckling under her breath. “Turns out that there’s a weakness in the staircases. If the door blows up, it takes the landing with it and then it takes out three of the landings beneath it as well. I moved the grenades to another door and I’m going to booby trap as many doors and staircases as I can. We’re good for now.”
I gave her another thumbs-up but kept my focus on shooting monsters. To my left, Natalie’s steady firing stopped and I felt her pull the binoculars away from my side. “Going to look now?”
“Yeah. I’m hoping the fact that the monsters are still trying to flank the walls indicates that the Enclave’s defenders are holding their ground at the hole. If they are, we still have a chance.”
“Cool. Just let me know if we should move, otherwise I’ll keep shooting.” I returned my attention to my scope and kept firing, trying to keep my mind focused on my task as the seemingly endless stream of monsters made their way east of the main body, looking for a path over the wall. I lost myself in the motions again and I was once again brought back to reality by the rumble and shake of explosives going off somewhere in the building. My arms were stiff and the pile of magazines beside me had shrunk considerably. I looked around me and noticed that Natalie had gone back to firing a while ago, judging by the diminished size of her own ammunition stock. Behind me, Tiffany sat with her back to a wall.
“That’s one of the stairwells collapsing.” Tiffany gestured toward the interior of the building we were occupying. “Even if any of them survive, they’ll find another trap in every stairwell and once behind each door leading to this floor. I wouldn’t worry about them until we feel the blast wave of a trap on this floor going off.”
I nodded and stretched my arms out, moving them from side to side before pushing myself back from the ledge. Once I was safely out of sight from the battlefield stretching below me, I hauled myself into a sitting position and took a few sips of water from my canteen. “How long have we been at this?”
Natalie replied from her position. “Two hours and about fifteen minutes.”
“It’s been about an hour and a half since the first bandit group showed up here.” Tiffany tossed me a granola bar that I pensively chewed as I started calculating how many monsters we must have killed.
After a few seconds of getting nowhere, I abandoned it and turned to Tiffany. “How many bandit groups have attacked us? Is this only the second?”
“Yeah. We’re higher up than most of the other sniper nests and pretty far east of the main body. The bandits have to sneak past a ton of blind alleys, most of which could have a monster wandering through them at any given time. The other nests are much easier targets.”
“Shoot.” I filled my mouth with water and swished it around to get as much of the granola out of my teeth as possible while I thought. A few moments later, I had an idea. “How easy will it be to completely collapse the stairs so no one can get up or down?”
“Pretty easy.” Tiffany shrugged. “The only thing left entirely intact at this point is a fire escape and that cuts off a floor above the ground.”
“Neat.” I started digging through my backpack for my lantern. “Is everyone alright if I turn my attention on the bandits trying to attack the sniper nests and make us a target for every single one of them?”
“Sounds like a blast.” Tiffany smirked and stood up. “I’ll go trap the fire escape if you’ll give me your grenades, lieutenant.”
Natalie rolled over, slipped off her grenade belt, and slid it back to Tiffany. I looked over at her and offered her a sheepish smile that she returned. “‘Better us than them’, right?”
I nodded and started filling my snowsuit pockets with ammo. “I love that you get me.”
“I know.” Natalie winked at me and rolled back over to continue firing, accompanied by gagging noises from Tiffany.
Once I’d grabbed everything I could fit in my pockets, I snatched my rifle from the ground and retreated into the dim interior of the building, following Tiffany to another vantage point that was better suited to my task. After leaving me to get set up, Tiffany disappeared further into the building. Getting settled took a while longer than I would have liked, especially because I had to finish the magazine of heavy ammo first, but I was soon set up and shooting.
Any group of bandits I saw lost at least one person. They moved less predictably than the monsters did, so I missed a few shots, but the way they started creeping forward and using cover made it clear that they’d figured out someone in my area was targeting them. After setting aside my gun for a moment, I took the reflector out of my lantern and set it in the remaining window to my right. Satisfied, I went back to shooting bandits until I noticed every crew I saw was heading in our direction.
Soon, I couldn’t look through my scope without seeing a group of bandits approaching. As I counted them, my heart fluttered with the realization that at least half the group of bandits that we’d expected to attack the Enclave were now on their way to our location. Whoever had united them was pretty clever. Get the monsters to attack the Enclave, take out the snipers so more monsters make it into the Enclave, and then rush in once everyone was exhausted or most of the monsters had been destroyed. Simple and effective.
It was clear, though, that they hadn’t dealt with many Wayfinders, though. Or at least not big groups of them. As far as I could tell, most of the sniper nests were still operating and the ones that weren’t had likely stopped due to a lack of ammo rather than anything else. The bandits would have needed to send in more than six to ten people at once if they wanted to overwhelm our defensive positions and the groups clearly lacked much in terms of specific plans. They had communication between groups and a plan to take out sniper nests, but they just wandered around, looking into buildings, and approaching each nest they found with only their one small group since they never discovered that another group had already failed to take out the sniper nest.
Only after I got their attention did they all start to move like they had a plan. They all slowly started to converge on the building, moving from bit of cover to bit of cover. I took shots where I could, but I didn’t get many hits. I could still hear Natalie firing away several rooms down, so I started the second part of my plan. I pulled my gun and the reflector from my lantern away, packed up all my stuff, and turned on one of the walkie talkies I had in my pocket. I tied the communicate button down and dropped the little signal bomb at the edge of the room.
I sprinted back to Natalie’s side and started packing up all of our gear. As I clattered empty rifle magazines into my bags, Natalie looked over at me, a question in her eyes.
“Keep shooting, but let me know as soon as they start coming this way and how many of them do.”
“Marshall.” I turned away to grab the pile of magazines and loose ammo Tiffany had been combining during her down time. When I didn’t answer, Natalie spoke again. “What did you do, Marshall?”
“I turned on one of the walkie talkies we were given and tied the ‘talk’ button so it’d stay on.”
“What?”
“I am doing to the bandits converging on our position what they tried to do to us. They’ll surround the building, start trying to make their way up here, find the traps, try even harder, and then they’ll be surrounded by monsters.”
“So will we!” Natalie turned all the way around to face me. “Jumping to the next building won’t work when the monsters are here. They’ll just follow us! We won’t be able to sneak through the crowd of them even if they don’t spot us jumping to the next building.”
“Which is why we leave as soon as the bandits set off the first trap. I’m going to grab Tiffany, so just keep shooting. Keep track of how many of the monsters start coming our way.” I shoved the last of the magazines into a pack and then ran off down the hallway, almost bowling Tiffany over as she rounded a corner.
“Captain!”
“C’mon, Tiffany. We’re making the jump as soon as the first trap goes off.”
“What? What happened to making a glorious last stand here?”
I pulled her along with me, back to where Natalie was. “I’d rather take a chance at surviving since, if my plan works, it should buy the Enclave enough time to fix the hole in their wall.”
“What plan?”
Natalie appeared in the doorway to the blown out room we’d been using, lugging the packs behind here. “He set up a radio and every single monster not a part of the main press on the walls is heading our way. I estimate at least five hundred of them, and those are the ones directly west of us. I’m sure there are more to the north and south.”
“Cool.” I grabbed my pack, slung it on my back, and tightened all the straps until it was almost painfully gripping my chest. “Now let’s get ready to jump since the bandits won’t be far behi-”
The first explosion rocked the building, carrying with it the sound of shrieking metal. Tiffany shook her head and started toward what used to be a conference room with floor to ceiling windows. “Of course they went for the fire escape first.”
I helped Natalie get her pack on and then helped Tiffany tighten down her straps while we all jogged toward the spot we’d picked as our jump point. By the time we got there, another explosion had gone off and Tiffany was muttering a commentary on the bandit’s location as I sprinted toward the empty window pane and leapt.
I had a moment of open air and grey, cloudy sky as time stood still. I fought the urge to wave my arms and kept my body compact as I hung, exposed, in the air. Before my heart had a chance to sneak even one beat in, time came rushing back. The wind whistled in my ears, the light-grey blur of the mid-morning sky became the dark grey blur of an approaching ruined building, and I landed in the best roll that I could. I felt something give way as I made impact and then the grey faded to black as the world fell silent.
Coldheart and Iron: Part 18
When we opened the door, the rain of bullets flying out met nothing but empty air. One grenade rolled out, but Camille kicked it back as she and two other Wayfinders chucked a handful of grenades through the door. Half a second later, the bang of the grenades exploding was accompanied by the shriek of metal and the screams of whoever had been trying to keep us out. Camille dropped to the floor, peeked around the door, and then waved us in.
At the end of the hallway, right in front of the next door, was a machine gun mounted on top of what used to be a metal barricade. All that was left of the checkpoint was some gore, twisted metal, and the acrid smell of explosives. I stacked up on the door, two Nomads behind me and Tiffany, one of the Wayfinders trainees, across from me. I nodded to her and, after nodding back, she pulled the door open.
I fired at the first bit of movement I saw and heard someone curse as they dodged away behind one of the I-beam pillars. As I took in the rest of what looked like a large gathering hall, I noticed there were barricades set up around the bases of each of the pillars. A closer looked showed they were our barricades, but I had to duck behind the door again before I could get a count of how many there were.
“They’ve got our barricades set up!” I yelled over the din of gunfire from the gathering hall to Camille who was still looking around the corner at the far end of the hallway. “We’re going to need more grenades.”
“But your barricades!” One of the Nomads, a man who looked maybe a few years older than I was, poked his head out into the open doorway for a moment before a bullet whizzed past his face. He flattened against the wall again, his eyes glassy with a mixture of fear and adrenaline. “Won’t you need them?”
“Not if we’re dead. Pull!” I grabbed one of the grenades tossed forward by Camille and, after pulling the pin and waiting a second, tossed it high into room. It landed behind the barricade my first target had hidden behind and I watched as three bandits scrambled out from cover to get away from the grenade. They weren’t fast enough.
One of the grenades that had landed near the center, short of the others, burst into smoke and, after a few seconds, I waved my group forward. We rushed forward and off to the side, directly toward the now-smoking ruins of the barricades I’d hit with my grenade. With the Nomads covering us, Tiffany and I did our best to reassemble the barricades in a dozen seconds, took cover behind them, and cleared out the next set of barricades from our position. After trading places with the Nomads, Tiffany and I rushed forward again, to the next barricade, moved them around, and then settled in for a longer slug fest.
All across the smoke-filled room, we listened to the crack of rifles as our squads moved through the smoke to engage the bandits. Every so often, a bandit would pop up from behind a barricade to shoot and Tiffany or I would take them out. Just as the smoke started to clear, a grenade sailed out of the smoke and landed next to us. I kicked at it, scooting it across the floor, but Tiffany tackled me away from the barricade, swept around to the front, and then started pulling me around it as the grenade went off.
A few bits of shrapnel hit me in the left leg as I was being dragged around, but the barricades protected us from the worst of it. I started to roll around to the front, but Tiffany slumped over on top of me. I immediately pulled her around the other side of the twisted barricade and fired a few blind shots over it to cover me while I checked her out.
The battle raged around me as I provided first aid to a bullet wound in her side. Thankfully, it had mostly just taken a chunk out of her side as it went rather than going through her or hitting bone, but she was definitely out of the fight. I covered it with gauze, wrapped the whole thing in some duct tape, and then told her to get back to the rest of the injured people when we cleared the room. After she nodded, I wrapped some tape around the oozing shrapnel wounds in my leg, and rejoined the battle.
A few minutes that felt like hours later, we’d cleared the hall, blocked all the doors but the our retreat, and started taking the wounded back to join the rest. No one died, thankfully, but we had two more Wayfinders out of commission, including Tiffany who was angry she wouldn’t be able to help rescue Natalie, and only one Nomad. After collecting the surviving bandits, we took their remaining ammo and grenades before tying them all to tables, spread eagle so they couldn’t move.
While I was heading that up, trying to ignore the pain in my leg as I walked, Camille rigged up traps on every door but the first one we planned to search. There had been no sign of Natalie, Jonathan, or the bandit leader, so we were going to have to search through what the map we found called the dormitory, the training rooms, and the ‘homes,’ which were basically large apartments that went underground rather than further up. Apparently, the bandits had planned to make this a permanent city.
After Camille was finished, we stacked up on the door again and repeated our earlier procedure, this time with the help of the mobile barricades we hadn’t wrecked. Open door, let bullets fly, grenades, approach, cover, return fire, and then throw a couple of grenades or shoot until all bandits are killed.
The first door, to the training rooms, went quickly. There were almost no bandits in there and, after we blew up the checkpoint and machine gun nest, the rest surrendered. The apartments weren’t even dug up yet, so the hallway ended in a gigantic empty concrete room–larger than even the gathering hall–with a dirt floor covered in digging equipment. By Camille’s count, we’d only killed a little over half of the bandits we’d seen and only a handful of the Laborers. As a result, we changed strategies a little bit when it came to assaulting the dormitory.
This time, when we opened the door, we just threw in a few grenades and then slammed the door shut again. After they went off, we opened it back up and fired blindly down the hallway. When no response came, we peeked around the door and found the checkpoint deserted. The machine gun, a chunk of twisted metal at this point, resting on the ruined remains of the metal barricade.
“Camille.”
“Yeah, Cap?”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, Cap.”
“What now?” I stepped into the hallway, following Camille as she silently stalked forward.
Camille shook her head and signaled me to stop following her. I fell back to the door, gesturing for every else to do the same. She held her rifle tightly to her chest and crept forward until she was pressed against the wall next to the door. She carefully put an ear to the door and didn’t move for a couple of minutes. Eventually, when she finally heard whatever she was listening for, her face hardened and she made her way back to us, silently but swiftly.
“They’ve got something prepared on the other side of that door.” Camille was whispering as she pulled everyone back from the hallway and closed the door.
“We need to figure out how to spring their traps safely. Can we blow through the door?” I held up my last grenade.
“Probably not.” Camille held up a single grenade. “We’ve only got five left and it took almost two dozen to get that first door open. I’ve got a different idea.”
I put my grenade back on my belt and stood back. “You’re in command. You don’t need my permission.”
She nodded but I the hard look on her face still hadn’t faded. “Grab some of the injured but still mobile prisoners.”
“Ah.” I took a deep breath and looked her in the eye. “You sure?”
“I said it, didn’t I?” Camille gestured to two of the Wayfinders. “Each of you pick out a prisoner and bring them back here.”
Five minutes later, hands tied to their empty guns, Camille sent them forward to stack up on the door and, after a moment, open it. Judging from the way the prisoners eagerly went along with the plan, Camille seemed torn about changing it. Before she had a chance to change it, the prisoners rushed forward and yanked open the door. As they did so, we all dove for cover and prepared for the worst.
A moment later, the door into the hallway was blocked by concrete and everyone outside it was covered in aggregate dust. “Shit.” I coughed.
Camille stood up and shook most of the dust off her head. “Everyone up and get your guns on that door way! I want Marshall, Alice, and Lauren to set up barricades to cover our backs if they show up through some secret door. Everyone else, pair up with someone and take turns getting your faces clear. Move!”
A busy minute later, we were all set up around the filled doorway, waiting for something to happen. A few more minutes ticked by until, finally, we heard the voice of the bandit leader somewhere above us.
“A pity that trap didn’t catch more of you. Three should be enough, though. There are so few of you left.”
We all looked up. At the top of the main hall, some thirty feet above the ground at the opposite end that we’d originally entered from, a light had turned on and a small balcony was being lowered. I could see figures standing in the shadows of the alcove that must lead to somewhere in the dormitories.
“You’ve done an excellent job, but it ends here. You’ve got some of my soldiers, and I’ve got some of your commanders. We can trade and you can be on your way with whatever you’ve got in your hands, or we can kill your commanders and then shoot you from up here. There’s not enough cover for you to hide behind, at this angle.”
Al stepped forward, pulling Natalie by her elbow. From the bloody look of her face, they’d apparently been interrogating her. Jonathan didn’t look any better. They both had their hands restrained behind their backs and both got prodded to the edge of the balcony by Laborers wielding automatic rifles. “If you do anything but lower your guns, we push your people to their deaths.”
“Cam.” I whispered, not even daring to move my mouth. I heard her clear her through and the almost silent click of safeties being released. “How do we know we can trust you? What’s to stop more of your people from gunning us down as soon as we lower our weapons?”
“My word.” Al spread his hands smiled his same, vile little smile. “That’s all the assurance you’ll get fro-”
Five rifles cracked in unison and Al, two bandits, and the two Laborers with their guns trained on Natalie and Jonathan, all fell. Natalie spun, ducked, and pulled her hands around to the front. She grabbed one of the automatic guns and kicked the other to Jonathan. They both opened fired into the alcove and the rest of the Wayfinders weren’t far behind. A few seconds later, it was all over.
I ran forward and started stacking tables with the help of the other Nomads while Camille got the rest of the Wayfinders into a better position to monitor the alcove. Within a few minutes, we had a stack that was high enough for Jonathan and Natalie to drop down onto. Instead of them both hopping down, Natalie lowered Jonathan to me. “Grab him!”
I grabbed Jonathan and helped him to the floor, Natalie following behind. When he got there, I realized he’d been hit in the chest during the firefight, only staying on his feet due to adrenaline. “Shit!”
Natalie swept up, grabbed my first-aid kit, and started cutting off Jonathan’s shirt. “Hold him. I need to see if it came out the back.”
I called over two of the Nomads and we gently rolled Jonathan onto his side as Natalie continued to cut his shirt away. A moment later, I heard her swear. “No exit?”
She shook her head. “It’s still in there, somewhere. Where’s Tristan?”
I gritted my teeth. “He died in an ambush at a checkpoint when we first broke out.”
“Can you do it?”
I looked down at my suddenly nerveless hands. “I can try. I don’t know nearly enough for this, though.”
Jonathan coughed suddenly. “I can…” Jonathan coughed again and I saw blood fly out of his mouth. “W-walk you through it.”
“Sure thing, Jon. Just take it easy.” Right as I turned to yell, two Wayfinders appeared with a stretcher. “Get him on that and get him into one of the storerooms. They’re cleaner than this place, right now. Grab all the first-aid kits you can find and see if they still have Jonathan’s pack in the storage room.”
I leapt to my feet, pulled Natalie to hers, and gave her a kiss. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
“Ow” Natalie winced.
“Sorry.”
“You’re okay. I’m glad you’re safe, too. I love you.” Natalie pushed me toward the door, where the Wayfinders bearing Jonathan had already disappeared.
“I love you, too.” I ran after Jonathan. “While I’m performing my first surgery, send someone else to tell the other injured people to do something longer-term about their injuries.”
“Aye, Captain.” Camille saluted. “We’ll take care of rooting out the rest of the bandits and Laborers. You save our surgeon.”
I fought down the urge to scream as I ran and settled for a single word as I entered the makeshift surgery suite. “Shit.”
Coldheart and Iron: Part 7
The final tally of the dead was worse than I had hoped but not as bad as I had feared. Six dead laborers, a dozen dead nomads, and two dead Wayfinders. Most of the injured survived, except the one Wayfinder whose wounds claimed him about two hours after the battle ended. Most of the dead had been in the farmhouse, where the bandits had crashed through the door on the tail of their flashbang.
The nomads’ medic was one of the guards in the basement, so he got to work right away after we gave them the all-clear and was instrumental in saving a couple of the more injured laborers and nomads. He worked with Jonathan, our medic, to stabilize everyone we could before we moved them all into the barn to recover, rest, and hide while half of the uninjured Wayfinders scouted to make sure there were no more bandits around.
I personally led the squad to follow the tracks of the group that snuck up on us. It was relief to discover they had split off from the main force before they were in sight of the bandit’s base camp, even if it was frustrating to see how our scouting had failed us. We got back to the farmhouse around ten a.m. and immediately went to work digging graves with the other able-bodied Wayfinders. A mass grave for the bandits and individual graves for everyone else.
Around noon, the laborers and nomads emerged from the barn and started lending a hand. They knew as well as we did that the bodies needed to be buried by nightfall, and they wanted time to lay their friends and family to rest. They just needed more recover after the firefight than we did. Around five in the afternoon, the last shovel of dirt was placed, the last words were said, and any Wayfinder not preparing to leave in the morning was busy hiding all traces of the battle.
Camille was busy with after-action reports and Natalie was updating the supply logs with Jonathan, so I took Lucas aside to help me scatter snow over the graves. We worked in silence as the sun set until the last glimmers of light were disappearing through the haze of clouds coating the sky.
“You should have checked with me first.”
Lucas didn’t say anything. He stopped working and started off toward the setting sun. I let him have his silence for another minute before speaking again.
“I know the nomads would have been captured or worse if we hadn’t done anything, but we’ve lost six of the people who paid us to get them safely across the tundra and you broke one of the biggest rules of the Wayfinders. Again.”
“What do you want from me, Marshall?” Lucas turned to look at me, his usual grin replaced by a mixture of sadness and anger. “I see people in need, and I want to help them. You would do the same thing, if you found people running for their life.” Lucas sighed and looked down at his feet. “Or at least you would have. I don’t know anymore.”
I stared at my oldest friend and tried to keep my roiling emotions off of my face. “We have rules, Lucas.” His head snapped up, eyes meeting mine and face as carefully neutral as mine. “Over the past fifteen years, we’ve added more and more rules as what we’ve done has turned from a past-time to fund our searches into something bigger than-”
“Than helping people?” Lucas stepped toward me, lowering his voice so no one would overhear. “We started this whole organization in order to help people, Marshall, or have you forgotten that?” I clenched my hands but kept my face neutral as the roiling was replaced by indignation and anger. Some part of me knew that we were both tired, Lucas especially so since he hadn’t gotten much rest the night before all of this had started, either. I took a moment of silence to try to calm down a little, to resist the urge to knock him down, but he took my silence as an answer.
He took another step towards me, getting in my face and dropping his voice to a hiss. “Are you so caught up in playing ‘King Cowboy in the New Frontier’ that you don’t remember what this was all about?”
I punched Lucas in the solar plexus and swept one of his legs. It felt good to be standing over him, but I knew he was just as angry as I was, if not angrier. I relaxed my fists and arms, looked up at the sky, and took a deep breath. I acknowledged the part of me that knew I messed up and tried to get the anger I felt under control. This wasn’t the first time we’d had this argument and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
When I looked down again, he was still on the ground, clutching his chest and gasping for breath. I squatted down next to him and, after he’d recovered enough to stop squirming, I grabbed his shoulder. “Dude, you can’t keep saying stuff like this. You know I don’t think that. You know why I started all this. You know why I’m STILL a Wayfinder after almost twenty years of fruitless searching.”
“That’s…” Lucas gasped and coughed. “That’s no excuse. If anything…”
I felt the anger creeping back and tried to keep myself calm. “You know better than anyone else what this disaster has cost me. You’ve got family and friends you could be living with instead of wandering around out here. You chose this life. This life is all I have.” I sat down next to him and rubbed my face.
I took another deep breath and softened my tone a little more, trying to sound a little more apologetic. “I would have helped them, that’s not the problem. That’s not the rule you’re in trouble for breaking. You knowingly led a group of bandits back to our group. You compromised our secrecy and, as a result, people died that otherwise wouldn’t have if you had followed protocol.”
Lucas glared at me as he pushed himself into an upright sitting position. His voice was angrier that mine had been and I was glad that almost everyone else had gone into the barn. No one else would be able to hear us if we started shouting. “Protocol would have meant taking them to Chicago and they had just been chased away from there! What good would that have done them?”
“More good than this would have.” I gestured at the graves we were sitting near. “You could have taken them to Rockford instead. That’s much closer than Chicago and you would have been able to get them there by tomorrow morning if you pushed them hard enough. They’d have been safe behind the walls of the enclave there.”
“And risked getting shot at while trying to push children and elderly at a quick pace? We’d have had to leave that old woman behind in order to have a chance of making it, because she’s too big to carry.”
“At least then everyone else would have had a chance.” I stood up. “Also, I’m pretty sure that old woman could have outpaced most of the other nomads.” I chuckled, trying to lighten the mood.
“Sure, then she would have had an equal chance to get shot in the back, just like everyone else..” Lucas started struggling to his feet. I offered him a hand but he smacked it away and glared at me instead.
“Stop arguing. You know I’m right or else you’d have hit me back by now.”
Lucas slipped in the partially melted snow I’d been sitting on and he fell over again. He shot me another dirty look from his place in the snow before just laying back and covering his eyes. “I can’t even stand up, much less strike a superior officer right now. I’m too tired. Couldn’t this have waited until after we found shelter for next week’s blizzard?” He let his arms fall to the side and picked his head up to meet my eyes. “Or at least until after I’ve gotten some sleep?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry I hit you, Lucas. That was way out of line and I know you don’t really think I’ve forgotten anything. I wish this could wait, but we have to talk about this today. If nothing happens to you, if there isn’t a clear resolution about what happened, then the laborers, the nomads, and the Wayfinder trainees will start to wonder about why their friends and loved ones are dead. I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a problem with the laborers before the week is out.”
I offered Lucas my hand again and, after a moment’s hesitation, he took it. “They paid us to keep them safe.” I grunted as I hauled Lucas to his feet. “They all know that nothing is certain out here and that we couldn’t guarantee their safety, but this will be a hard thing for them to handle. All the trainees now realize just how likely it is that they’ll die out here if they stick to guiding large groups. This will seem like a slap on the wrist to them, but you did break a rule and these are the recommended consequences.”
Lucas took a step back after he gained his feet and brushed the snow off his pants and coat. “Yeah, that you wrote.” His voice was calmer, but I knew I’d need to do more to make it up to him than apologize.
I nodded. “You’re still head of the scouts, but your pay for this trip is going into the death benefits of our dead Wayfinders and you’re demoted to Lieutenant. Once we’re back in an enclave, we’ll look into getting you promoted again since the only reason you’re not higher ranked is that we don’t have higher ranks. No matter what, though, your pay won’t change for future jobs”
I stared at him, stony-eyed, while I waited for him to acknowledge my orders. After a another few swipes at snow that was no longer there and a deep breath, he saluted. “As you say, Captain.”
“Good.” I nodded and gestured toward the barn. “Now let’s finish up so we can go inside, eat, and get some sleep.”
Once we had finished, we walked off toward the barn. Someone had set up a LED floodlight near the door so we could finished up. Once we got near the door and started taking packing up the flood light, my nose detected the first hints of someone making hamburgers. My stomach growled in response and I was suddenly struck by the realization that it had been over twenty-four hours since I had eaten. I was so focused on the hamburgers that it took Lucas pointing it out for me to realize that the noise I was hearing was shouting coming from the inside barn. I left Lucas to finish up and, rushed inside. When I saw what was going on, my heart fell.
Coldheart and Iron: Part 6
Dawn broke just after six. I’d made two more quick patrols of the grounds, silently moving from post to post, to make sure everyone was alert and ready. Aside from the scouts that Lucas had taken with him to find the bandits forty-eight hours ago, everyone was still alert. The scouts were split up amongst the groups and, aside from a quick scrub of their eyes every so often, were handling their sleep deprivation fairly well. Even us older Wayfinders could handle a couple of days without sleep before our ability to function, and all of the scouts except Lucas were still only in their late twenties.
Right as I was about to start my third patrol, one of our snipers gave the signal. A quick, two-beat bird imitation that let us all know the main force had been spotted coming out of the hills. A five-beat version of the bird call let us know we were facing a force of around fifty people. Compared to the scouts, of which there had only been twenty over-confident morons who fell into our trap, they were going to be a significant problem. We’d wiped out the bandit scouts, so our preparations would still be a mystery, but they’d be more cautious and the morning light that was slowly suffusing through the clouds was only going to help them.
After a quick breath to steady my pulse that had jumped up when the warning signal came, I got up from my post by one of the windows and made a silent circuit of the farmhouse, telling everyone to keep their eyes peeled, stick to their assigned window or crevice, and shoot as soon as they see someone walking toward the house or the barn. While reissuing Camille’s orders, I check over the barricades everyone had made. Most were just pieces of scrap wood we had collected, layered around their firing positions so the bandits wouldn’t simply be able to fire through the walls. A sufficiently powerful sniper rifle still could pierce the multiple layers we had set up, but the laborers and nomads would be protected from most stray bullets when they were taking cover or reloading.
My post was a bit better defended, since I was facing the direction the bandits were most-likely coming from. I had my barricade set up underneath my second-story window and I was the only person here so I’d be able to hide entirely behind it. The wall around the windows was layered with more wood, of course, but my barricade would stop anything but the largest caliber rifles. One of Natalie’s most ingenious ideas, the portable barricades had saved countless lives. Lightweight and incredibly durable, they were a lot like body armor you could take cover behind. Most sniper rifles would leave a huge dent in them, but they’d leave you alive as well, and the repairs were fairly easy to do in the field.
I settled in behind my barricade, head down, and eyes waiting on the signal. The seconds thudded by, each measured by the silent passing of seconds on my watch while my heart supplied the sound effects. Five whole minutes of silence and the repeated mantra Camille had taught us when we first realized marksmanship was the only thing we’d be able to depend on as the world fell into chaos around us. Sight, exhale, squeeze. There was a lot more to it than that, but breaking it down into single words that represented the whole made it easier to focus during moments like right now.
Then, so dimly I almost couldn’t see it, was the change in light I was looking for, shining in through the window. I popped up, legs bracing me against my barrier and eyes darting past the flares that were just coming to life on the treeline. I picked my first target and fired. The rifle pushed into my shoulder, the thunderclap boomed through my earplugs, and I saw my target fall. I switched focus to another one and fired off a trio of shots, hoping to get something vital through the bush she was standing behind. She went down. I swapped to another target, but then bullets started flying out of the trees and I ducked back down.
I heard a few cries of pain from the floor below me and more from the woods. A few bullets zipped through my window and out the wall opposite and one blew a hail of splinters out of the reinforced wall as it exploded on impact. I pounded the floor three times, signalling to fire at will and then scooted away from the window on my stomach. I crawled out of the bedroom, down the hallway, and stopped at the top of the stairs. There was a window facing the opposite side of the farm clearing and I carefully poked my head over the sill.
Creeping up the slight incline, through a scattering of grass clumps and bushes, was another group of bandits, almost as large as the group attacking us from the east. I hadn’t taken a close count, but I could definitely tell it was way more than fifty between the two groups. I thumped the floor twice, and fired a few shots out of the window. They group of bandits scattered, but didn’t manage to avoid the rain of bullets coming out of the farmhouse. Most of the laborers weren’t skilled with a gun, but we’d given them all the guns and ammo we’d taken from the bandits, so they were given free-reign to fire as they liked.
Once the bandits started regrouping behind whatever cover they could, I rolled away from the window. I went back to my original position and started adding a dozen potshots to the chaos that had engulfed the area around the barn. When I came up to shoot the last four bullets in my magazine, I added a whistle signal to the roar of my gun. Two beats, two beats, a short pause while I took cover again, and then four beats. Almost forty bandits coming from the west.
A couple of moments later, as I reloaded, I heard Camille’s distinctive whistle pierce the battlefield. A single, long note cut through the bark of combat rifles and then the small contingent of Wayfinders that had hidden in the snow, waiting for the bandits to pass them, went about their work. We sent a few more volleys into the forest, but had to stop soon so we wouldn’t hit our own people. I banged the floor twice, telling the nomads to stop, and then banged it four times. Following my own signal, I returned to my westward facing window and started shooting at the bandits from there.
The bandits seemed content to focus their fire on the first floor, doing their best to chew through the walls around the windows and being rewarded with several screams. I got a faceful of splinters when I rolled off to the side, thankfully avoiding the bullets that ripped the wall up but unable to get my hands up in time to protect my face from the wooden shrapnel. My eyes were fine thanks to my goggles, but I was going to either die with a face like a porcupine or spend a few hours pulling splinters out of my face.
I tugged out the largest ones on the right side of my face and kept firing. One cluster of bandits made a break for the farmhouse and, as I went to fire at them, the remaining two dozen bandits started blind-firing at the farmhouse. They didn’t hit much, but they succeeded in forcing everyone back behind their cover. I blindly emptied my magazine in what I hoped was their direction. A couple of seconds later, as I was reloading, one of the doors crashed open and I heard the unmistakable shriek of a flashbang grenade. I popped over the sill and started shooting at the rest of the bandits that had started running toward the farmhouse, doing my best to ignore the dizziness and ringing in my ears despite my earplugs.
I got almost a dozen with solid body shots before the ones in front realized what I was doing and started shooting back. Bullets flew through the walls and even the floor around me, filling the air with wooden shrapnel that bounced harmlessly off my thermal jacket and pants. I shifted my position to get a better angle on the bandits approaching the house but, as I shifted into a kneeling position, I took a bullet through the meat of my calf. I shouted in rage and pain, trying to keep my balance, but failed. As I crashed to the floor, I kept firing, blindly shooting through the wooden defenses. If more bandits got into the farmhouse, it would be a slaughter. Right now, there was a chance that some of the people would survive. As I slammed a new magazine into my rifle, there was too much shooting inside the house to be just the five or so bandits that had broken down the door. The amount of screaming certainly sounded like everyone down there was dying.
Bullets whizzed past me as I grunted in anger at rapidly devolving situation, rocked back on my uninjured leg, and then threw myself down the stairs. I rolled so my uninjured leg would hit ground first and gritted my teeth against the pain of banging my injured leg against everything I could find. At the bottom, I used my momentum to throw myself to my feet and spun around the corner to face the room where the grenade had gone off.
I looked past all of the collapsed bodies and focused on the still standing ones. A couple of the laborers where struggling with bandits for the control of guns, so I took a quick shot at each bandit, ending the scuffles, and then sighting on the doorway as the rest of the bandits showed up. There were only eight, and they didn’t enter after a flashbang, but I got lucky. I had a direct line of fire on all of them and they were too focused on the laborers screaming and hip-firing right next to the doorway.
Once they were down, I limped my way back to the east-facing side of the farmhouse and peeked through a window. The Wayfinders were cleaning up there, chasing after a group of bandits that had fled and finishing off any bandits left alive. I clicked the safety on my rifle and slung it over my shoulder.
I collapsed into a chair along the wall, popped out my earplugs, pulled out my first-aid kit, and started inspecting my wound. While I let my hands and all my practice take over, I called out. “Any further sign of bandits?”
There was a few moments of silence before a scattered chorus of “no’s” came back. I grunted and held my breath as I started bandaging the wound. A quick plug, then a cotton wrap around my leg to hold it in and prevent my thermal pants from shifting. After securing everything, I tentatively stood up and discovered I couple manage on my leg as it was. I stumped over to the other room and started assessing the mess.
There were a dozen dead bandits lying on the floor near the door, and about that many of the nomads. It seems like they had taken the worst of the flashbang attack, though there were a few dead laborers as well. The cries and whimpers of the injured made it hard to listen for the signals from the Wayfinders, so I set all of the uninjured laborers to clearing the dead bodies away, figuring out how many people had been killed, and collecting all of the gear from the bandits. I had the nomads collect all of the wounded and take them upstairs, away from all of the dead. There was only the one room and a large storage closet up there, but it was a bit room and there weren’t many wounded who would be back on their feet quickly.
While the laborers and nomads shuffled off to do what I had said, I went outside and whistled the all-clear signal. I got one back from the barn and carefully made my way to the big double-doors. Camille met me just inside them.
I saluted. “Getting numbers now, but it looks bad. Lots of dead nomads and laborers. There was a breach and they had flashbangs. I’ve got the survivors taking stock and sorting the injured from the dead right now.”
“We’ve got one dead Wayfinder out here. Diego. Got hit by a few lucky shots when he popped up to provide some covering fire for the snipers to reposition. Still waiting on final injury reports.” Camille saluted and then we took a moment to steady each other. I looked her over and, aside from the stress I could see in her eyes, she seemed fine.
“First is clean up and then a bit of scouting to make sure that was all of them. After that, rest. We’ll stay here for a couple of days to bury the dead and pick over the bandits’ supplies.”
Camille nodded. “I’ll get the scouting parties organized. Once the laborers and nomads are finished taking care of their dead, we’ll need their help collecting the bandits.” Camille turned to face the east, looking off into the woods. “Flashbangs?”
“Yeah.” I took a deep breath and shifted my weight so it rested more fully on my uninjured leg. “The way they attacked the farmhouse suggested they have at least a little training. Hopefully they have more grenades they didn’t use.”
Camille shook her head. “That’s not what I’m thinking. I’m just curious about why a group this well-supplied would be attacking nomads or a fortified position like ours. Even by typical bandit standards, this attack was idiotic. They know how to breach and enter a building, have the high-tech gear to do it, and yet used waved tactics to try to get to the barn.”
“And the house.” I sighed and rubbed my eyes, careful to avoid the splinters still stuck in my face. My usual post-battle headache was already forming. “Their approach to the farmhouse was horrible. I was able to just mow them down after the first group breached and they weren’t even using cover as they snuck up to the farmhouse.”
“Sorry about that.” Camille turned back to me, concern on her face as she looked over my pincushioned face and the hasty bandage around my leg. “I was sending the snipers over to your side when Diego went down. The bandits decided to rush then and the barn would have been overwhelmed if we had continued to turn away.”
I shrugged. “I’m alive. We’re going to have to explain what happened to the survivors, so let’s just focus on getting through the next twenty-four hours and then we can start in on all the guilt of losing people we said we’d protect.”
Camille smiled ruefully. “You’d think I’d get used to it after almost fifteen years of this.”
I walked over and put my hand on her shoulder. “Camille, I’d be worried if you didn’t still care.” I looked around and, sure that no one was watching, embraced her. “You did great. Most of us are still alive and that’s more than most would be able to say after a day like that.”
“You bet your ass I did great.” Camille laughed quietly and hugged me back. “Now stop with all this mushy stuff. You don’t need to hug me after every death.”
“No, I don’t.” I stepped back and smiled at my oldest living friend. “But I’m still going to. Makes me feel better.”
Camille punched me in the shoulder and I turned away. “Now, I’m going to check on the non-combatants. I’m going to need to spend some time talking to kids whose parents died.” I closed the barn down behind me and looked up at the overcast sky. The snow was holding off for now, but the skies looked fit to burst. There was light diffusing through the clouds, but the day wasn’t getting any brighter. It would snow soon and we had bodies to bury. I looked back at the ground, ignoring the bloody smears around me and the groans of the injured, and limped off in the direction of the cellar doors. At least the cellar would be a bit warmer.
Coldheart and Iron: Part 5
The attack came a little after three in the morning. They were silent, with top-tier pre-collapse gear: Night-vision goggles, motion trackers, and audio sensors. We had flares and synchronized watches.
That’s the thing about Wayfinders we never leave anyone alive to talk about. We don’t fight fair. Our groups are almost always smaller than the bandits roaming the tundra and we don’t have any hulking bruisers among us, so we’re usually individually smaller as well. As a result, Wayfinders avoid fighting at all cost and, instead, simply kill any threats we face. Our preferred tactics are ambush and surprise, but only when stealth killing isn’t an option. Someone who dies before they wake up can’t raise an alarm or escape their bonds in order to help their allies fight.
Camille was one of the first to take the practice of ending fights before they began and turn it into a codified practice taught to others. Before the Wayfinders were an official group, when we were just four people trying to find the rest of our friends and families, Camille protected us from bandits by killing every single one we found while sneaking from city to city. When I decided to turn our side job of guiding people from settlement to settlement into a business, she was ready with training and guidelines. She made us into the militaristically strong organization that we are today, the only strength and justice in the tundra for people who just want to travel safely. There were no better hands to be in than hers and the bandits only realized their mistake when it was already too late to save themselves.
The night was overcast with an ever-falling blanket of light snow to cover any noise as they approached. Our scouts had already spotted them and warned us of their arrival, well before they had even set up their small staging camp outside of the hills that separated this farm from the plains. They wore their night-vision goggles and all we had were eyes trained to make out detail even in the harshest blizzard. We watched the thin light reflecting off their goggles as they approached and, once they snuck up on the dummies we’d placed at all the barricades, we ignited our flares.
In the confusion that followed, the muffled crack of each silenced Wayfinder rifle firing was drowned out by the pained screams of our targets and the sharp roars of their guns as they blindly fired. Their confusion and blindness did more damage to their allies than we had done. After firing two rounds each, our snipers stood down, waiting for the bandits’ panicked firing to stop and for more targets to appear. Five minutes and a few careful shots later, the remaining bandits started their retreat. As they retreated, Camille signalled to my group.
We slipped out of our hiding spot near the entrance to the barn and started collecting weapons from the dead bandits. By the time we’d grabbed the dozen guns and all their ammunition, the second group was on its way back. Leaving the flares burning and hiding the looted guns in the bushes, we crept around behind them, sneaking through the gap one of our snipers made when she silently killed the pair approaching us from the south. Ten minutes later, as the Wayfinders traded shots with the bandits, we struck their base camp.
There were eight of us. I and one of the trainees went around the far side and started working our way into the tents. We killed the two bandits we found sleeping, finished off the injured ones that had been dragged back to the camp, and drew a line of kerosene through their camp. We poured from tent to tent and then dumped the rest over their ammunition after giving them a quick scan. While we did that, the other three trainees and three Wayfinders, led by Natalie, slipped through the sentries and awake bandits, swiftly killing them all. Once we were all finished, we dumped out their camp stoves and used them to light the trail of kerosene. While they burned, we dashed back to the cover of the hills.
A couple of minutes after we’d lit them, the fires reached the ammunition and the whole camp exploded. Natalie led us through the hills, taking us wide around the farm so we wouldn’t run the risk of encountering anyone racing back from the farm to find out what had happened to their camp. Half an hour after we had left, at about three forty-five, we made it back to the barn. Natalie signaled to Camille that were had finished and we made a dash for the barn.
Once we were all safely inside, I climbed up the spikes we’d stuck into one of the beams and crawled through the hayloft until I found Camille prone, peering through the scope of her rifle. I crawled next to her, raised my scope, and looked in the same direction she was. Just through the trees around the farm, I could see the red glow of the bandit camp burning shining off the tops of the hills. I watched it for a moment before lowering my gun and reporting.
“The camp was dead before we left. No major resistance and only one minor injury on our part. A bit of debris from the explosion nicked Matthews. Clean cut, just needed a quick wrap to stop the bleeding and a patch to his gear.” Camille grunted, pleased that her plan worked. “How about up here?”
“No injuries at all. They couldn’t handle the flares and were counting on their goggles giving them an advantage in marksmanship. Between our two groups, that should account for all of them. There were a few left alive when they left, so I had our ground troops follow the bandits back to their camp to make sure none of them returned again. Find anything useful?”
I shook my head. The bandit stores had been empty aside from their ammunition, which was useless to us, since we used rifles and all of their guns were semi-automatic. “No food or extra gear we could have used aside from the tents and blankets. They must have a much larger force following them if their scouting party was almost three dozen people. There’s no way they could live out of their packs alone for the entire time they’ve been following the nomads.”
Camille nodded. “That confirms the reports we got from one of the bandits we questioned. A survivor whose passing we eased after he answered our questions.”
“How did the laborers and nomads take that?”
“They didn’t see it. Luke took care of it while doing a second sweep right after they fled.” Camille lowered her rifle and looked over at me. “We need to reset quickly if we’re going to be ready for their main group. Have the nomads and laborers been handled?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “The non-combatants are hidden in the farmhouse cellar with our extra supplies and the cellar is barred from both sides. Two nomads were stationed there with their weapons and Natalie is passing them the extra guns and ammo. Just in case. The rest are hidden in the farmhouse with orders to use it as their fort if we give them the signal. They did a good job of staying silent through the fight.”
“Make sure everyone is still in their places. I’d worry they fled if we hadn’t had eyes on the entire clearing.” Camille winked and made a shooing gesture with her hand. “I’ll keep an eye on things from up here.” Her small smile faded and her usual grimace returned. “Hopefully sniping can convince the main force not to push for the barn.”
I crawled backwards and turned around, ready to crawl out of the hayloft. “Hopefully killing their scouts without any major injuries or losses on our sides will accomplish that. I’d prefer to avoid another fight.”
“Sure. That’s exactly how things work out here.” Camille chuckled darkly and raised her scope back to her eye. “They’re just going to leave us alone because we’ve already killed enough of them to make them afraid. They’re definitely not going to decide that we deserve killing for daring to stand against them.”
After a moment of silence, I patted Camille on the calf, pushed her feet aside to make more room for my departure, and made my way back to the ladder. It was just about four o’clock in the morning and I was starting to feel it. I did a quick round of all posts, made sure everyone was good to go, and then settled in the farmhouse with the laborers and nomads to wait for dawn and whatever attack would come. Unfortunately, I didn’t have to wait long.
Coldheart and Iron: Part 4
I never really enjoyed babysitting duty. I was a fair shot by military standards and a good sniper by any standards, but all that meant to the Wayfinders was that our average recruit was a better shot than I was. I had a gun because every hand counts in the kind of combat scenarios we usually encountered, but I was always the first one stuck to any essential non-combat task. I was the least useful in terms of killing people. I was better than most Wayfinders at subduing people, due to my history in martial arts prior to the collapse and my skills at dealing with people, but subdual tactics are only ever used against people we’re guiding or within enclave territory. Everyone else gets lethal force because a dead person is someone who isn’t going to go grab their friends and come back for revenge and one less person in any follow-up raiding parties.
Thankfully, there was plenty to do. Children to comfort and hush, an anxious man to calm, an elderly woman to reassure that no, we did not need her to grab a gun and go shoot some bandit assholes. I was tempted to let her, given how angry she looked at the prospect of people attacking her family. Camille’s orders had been clear and this woman wouldn’t be in here without a good reason. She’d have figured out who to send to the reinforced supply tent during potential firefights and I was in no position to contravene her orders. I’d called combat stations and that meant she was in charge.
After the reassuring was done and everyone sat in silence, dreading the moment it would break and wishing for anything to happen if only to end the waiting, I turned my attention to the supply lists and busied myself with checking stock levels. Something to do to in order to appear calm and unconcerned while straining my ears for the sharp report of the rifles or the quiet phfnkt of the silenced sniper rifles.
Minutes passed. I finished a stock check and started filling out paperwork I’d need at the next city to get IDs and housing for the nomads since they’d never been a part of any enclave. I enlisted the two adults to help me get the information from all of the children and we were just started on the adult forms, half an hour later, when Lucas walked into the tent.
His eyes had lost their usual sparkle, though he kept his usual grin on his face, and he squatted down next to where I sat on a short stack of crates carrying oatmeal. I smiled at him raised an eyebrow.
Still smiling, he spoke. “Millie wants to talk. I’m taking over here.”
I nodded, patted him on the back, and gestured to the form. “Alright. You just pick up from where I left off. All that’s left is information about our group and where you found them.”
I hauled myself to my feet, handed off the pencil, and left the tent. While walking back toward the front of camp, I scanned the area for signs of an attack. I’d been in the tent for about forty-five minutes, but there was still no sign of anyone approaching the horizon. The day was completely silent though, aside from the wind in my ears, and you could feel the tension in the air.
I found Camille at the front barricade and crouched down beside her, saluting as I did so. “What can I do, sir?”
Camille absently returned my salute, never taking her eyes off the horizon. “Lucas reported overnight contact with bandit scouts and, while they fell for the ambush our Wayfinders set, they regrouped quickly, using standard pre-collapse military tactics.”
“Sounds like militia.”
“Yes. All of the actual military groups that were still around after the governments fractured picked an enclave to defend. All of the citizen militias that showed up as every hunter and would-be sharpshooter pulled out their guns either dispersed, were killed as everything went to hell, or turned into bandits. These guys must be ex-military. They’re too organized and professional.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Camille took her eyes off the horizon and looked at me. “I need permission to order us to move camp. This isn’t a good position, given what we’re up against. I need more natural defenses since this camp is too large to defend with the barricades alone.”
“Risks?”
“Snipers. We don’t know if we have any following us close enough to hit us today, but it’d be foolish to not assume so. We can leave a rear-guard again, but they’ll still be susceptible to that if the bandits are as good as they seem to be. Staying here isn’t that great either, since we run the same risk anyway, but we have our terrain scouted and all of the best sniper spots taken.”
“Permission granted. If that’s what you think we need to do, I trust your judgment. Set up whatever guards you want however you like and let me know if you want me to get the nomads or laborers to assist.” I saluted again.
“Go relieve Lucas and send him back here. I’ll send a few people to you in half an hour to start packing up. We’ll have to do it in shifts to make sure we’ve got enough lookouts, but we should be able to break camp in an hour.” Camille saluted back and then turned her attention back to the horizon.
Staying low, I hurried to carry out her orders. An hour and a half later, we’d finished breaking camp. Getting the nomads ready was a bigger ordeal than expected as they hadn’t repacked their gear the night before, and the young children did more to hinder than to help since they constantly needed to be reassured. As we started moving out, noisily enough that every Wayfinder was compulsively staring at the horizon, I reported in to Camille.
“Everyone is moving. Scouts are ahead, nomads are on children duty, and I’ve got the laborers reporting to me as they keep an eye out to the north and south.”
“Good.” Camille nodded and slung her gun over her shoulder. “I’ll keep the main force of our Wayfinders back here and our eyes on the east. Where’d Natalie go? I was going to have her lead a squad back here.”
“My apologies, sir. I sent her ahead to look for our defensive position. If we need to hole up there for a prolonged attack, I want to make sure there’s enough local forage to support us.” I nodded to the west. “Map says there are a couple small towns on this route as well, so she’s going to pick through for supplies as she goes.”
“Very well.” Camille saluted and turned away. “Keep everyone tight and going. We’re too large to do the usual single-file, but keep them in a huddled mass no more than four across and the scouts in single-file to the sides. I don’t think they know how many of us there are yet and I’d like to keep it that way.”
I turned away and jogged up to the head of the group, quietly relaying Camille’s orders as I went. Once I got to the head of the group, I gestured for them to continue and let myself fall to the back of the nomads. I stayed there all day, as we hustled through the snow, encouraging people to keep the pack our vanguard was setting and helping anyone who started to struggle. When Camille’s party dropped back, I got everyone down and a couple barricades up, just in time to avoid the few bullets that zinged our way on the tail-end of the thunderous crack of a rifle.
A few quiet phfnkt’s later, Camille had us on the move again. Twice more, as the afternoon dragged on, we repeated the same thing. Each time, we were up and ready by the time the bandit snipers were in place. Thanks to Camille’s decision to have the rearguard focus on calling out positions and our best snipers firing back from our collapsible barricades, we didn’t sustain any injuries. Our first encounter with the bandits was a success. They were good, but Wayfinders were better.
We arrived as the sun was setting and the clouds began to drop a serious snow on us. Natalie and her scouts set up camp in an old barn, a couple of miles away from the second of the two abandoned towns. While not bulletproof in the slightest, it was still sturdy and the bandits would be blind-firing if they chose to shoot into it. And in the fact that the barn was next to a relatively recent farmhouse and both were on a small hill and it made the perfect shelter for us. The pump needed to be unfrozen, but we had our first water in a week that wasn’t snowmelt.
With the little light remaining, I got the nomads and laborers to finish setting up camp, cook, and get themselves settled into guard rotations while Camille and Natalie organized the defense. An hour after sunset, Lucas and his three Wayfinders returned. After making sure they were fed, I settled in to wait for the bandit scouts to appear. Everything was in place, every Wayfinder was ready, and the bandits were soon going to learn just what a mistake they had made in giving us time to prepare.
Coldheart and Iron: Part 3
The next morning brought a late dawn, grey skies, light snow, and allegations of infidelity. I’d had a nice night sharing the tent with only Natalie, since Camille was on guard duty and Lucas was still out on his rearguard mission. We’d had a quiet night in while I made dinner and we just chatted about the lives we used to live and some of the better times from the more recent years. Normally, I enjoy waking up on mornings after the nights Natalie and I are in the tent alone, but my pleasant warmth was interrupted by a muffled voice calling my name from outside.
After a quick ten-count to keep my temper, I hollered that I would be out in a few minutes and dressed quickly. Natalie watched me, still hidden in her warm cocoon, and I told her to enjoy the warmth while it lasted before I stepped into the cold. Outside, Camille stood with her rifle in her hands and her face set in the professional stony frown she wore when on duty. Once I was outside the tent and finished zipping the layered fabric up, she saluted.
“I have to report a small scuffle between the nomads and the laborers, sir.”
I saluted back and gestured for her to lead. “What about?”
“One of the married couples.” Camille strode off toward the middle of the camp, eyes darting around as we walked past people. I followed behind her, already seeing the tension sitting in the shoulders of everyone gathered around the supply tent. “One of nomadic men alleges his wife was seduced by one of the laborers and he looks mean enough to cause some damage. The woman doesn’t deny it happened, but insists her husband was fine with it the night before. The laborer doesn’t remember anything and is too hungover from last night’s festivities to follow what is going on.”
“Ah. I assume, then, that the laborers are now out of their smuggled alcohol?”
Camille nodded, her eyes now fixed on the angry-looking men gathered on the edge of the crowd. “And the nomads are through most of their stores of moonshine.”
“Oh.” I cracked my knuckles through my gloves and rolled my neck, trying to keep my muscles from tightening up in the cold. “Well, shit.”
“You said it, sir. Best of luck.” Camille stepped to the side, a dozen paces away from the group of nomads and laborers, and stood at attention with her rifle ready to jump to her shoulder at a moment’s notice. I walked past her and joined the group huddled in the lee of the supply tent, taking shelter from the wind and falling snow.
I set my shoulders and clasped my hands behind my back, going for the same dramatic look I’d established with the nomads the day before. “I want everyone who wasn’t directly involved in what happened last night to return to their tents. Once I have spoken with the involved parties, I will let you all know what is going to happen and we can proceed from there.” I glared at anyone who would meet my eyes and most of them walked away.
At the end, four people remained. Two laborers and two nomads I assumed were the married couple. “I hear from my lieutenant that there is a matter of marital infidelity and that it has almost come to violence. Is that accurate?”
The male nomad lurched forward. “That’s right! This man here slept with my-”
I stepped forward and pushed him back to stand next to his wife. “Shut up.”
The man spluttered, but the firm push and my renewed glare kept him still. After making sure he wasn’t going to say anything, I stepped back and looked at the whole group. “I don’t give a shit about this. You’re adults. Solve the problem between the three or four of you without using violence or I’ll leave you all to wander the tundra on your own. I’m sure the bandits now trailing us wouldn’t mind picking off a few stragglers who were sent their own way. If you make this a problem again, by getting the camp riled up or actually fighting, I’ll just leave you all behind. Now go tell everyone that the problem is resolved and that the group of you is going to discuss things quietly.”
The nomad stepped forward again, his face now redder than the cold could account for. “But she’s my wife and I-”
“Will resolve this problem quietly and efficiently between the two of you.” I stepped up to him and placed a hand on his chest, forcing him to take a half step back. “Split up or don’t. I don’t care. Just don’t make this my problem again or you will regret having opened your mouth.” I looked each of them in the eyes and got a nod from each of them, except the nomad husband. When I turned my attention back to him, he grimaced and then tried to grab my wrist.
I slapped his hand away and swept one of his legs out and to the side. He managed to stay up, but I pushed his shoulder and tipped him over. As he wiped snow from his face, I stepped over to him and looked down, face neutral. “Am I clear?”
He nodded and slowly pulled himself to his feet. As he wiped himself off, the sober laborer led the clearly still drunk laborer toward a tent a hundred feet away and the female nomad stalked off back to the nomad’s side of the camp. The other man followed shortly after her, shooting a couple looks over his shoulder at the drunk laborer. I took a deep breath and let the tension drain out of me.
“Well done, as always, Captain.”
“You know, you could do this yourself, Camille.” I rubbed my face with a glove and turned to look at my lieutenant and friend. “You have the same authority that I do.”
“Sure, but I don’t really get these kinds of squabbles. I’m not terribly interested in sex and I can’t really understand why people get super agitated about it.” Camille snorted and shook her head. “I tried to sort out such squabble out once, remember? At that bar just after the snows started?”
“I remember.” I sighed and trudged back toward my tent. “This is different though. Now, your approach would work just fine. You’ve seen me do it enough times at this point that you can probably quote me, word for word.”
“And when one of these inevitably goes sideways, I’m not going to have an appropriate response. Better for everyone to let you sort it out. You are the people person, after all. You’ve made it clear several times that people stuff is your job and fighting stuff is my job. I wouldn’t want to infringe on your area of expertise, of course.”
I rolled my eyes and sighed again. “I don’t think this was better for me at all” I muttered as I got back to my tent.
As I bent over to grab the zipper, Camille spoke over her shoulder as she continued on back to her post. “Tell Natalie I am sorry for interrupting you two.”
I felt my face heat a little bit, but I was able to make it inside the tent before anyone else came to talk to me. Inside, Natalie was sitting by the little cook fire, still wrapped in her sleeping bag. She looked up at me when I turned around after closing the tent and taking my boots off. “I made breakfast.”
“I think Camille knows.”
“Mar, she’s asexual, not stupid.”
“I know!” I sat down next to Natalie and took the oatmeal and kiss she offered. “I just thought we did a better job hiding it.”
“Millie has known both of us for at least two decades, Mar. I’m sure she and Lucas both know.”
I ate my oatmeal in silence as Natalie scooped herself a bowl. “Do you think anyone else does?”
Natalie shook her head. “No. No one else shares a tent with us. If anything, they probably think I’m sleeping with Lucas because of how flirty he is with Millie and I. He’s sleeping with a trainee, though, so I’m sure no one thinks it seriously.”
“Damn, now I’ve got to write him up twice.” I spooned the rest of my oatmeal into my mouth and licked my bowl clean. “Anything else I should know about, before I go back out there to lead?”
Natalie leaned over and kissed me on the nose. “Nope. I just hope Lucas is out on rear guard for another few days. And not just because I’d like another night to the two of us.” She kissed me on the mouth and then smiled at me. I smiled back at her as she sat upright and started eating her oatmeal. “I wouldn’t mind knowing there’s more space between us and the bandits than the nomads thought.”
“Me too.” I stood up, grabbed my water, and cleaned my bowl out. I put my boats back on and fixed my coat. “Hopefully we’ll have those nights and the safety they imply.” I unzipped the tent flap and dumped my bowl outside. I tossed it back into the tent to dry near the fire and stepped outside, giving Natalie a wink. “Don’t lay in bed too long. I’d hate to have to come back inside to get you.”
Natalie smiled around a mouthful of food as I stepped away to zip the tent up. When I turned around, broad smile replacing my usual glare, I scanned a morning that seemed brighter than it had the first time I left the tent. I started my morning patrol around the camp, watching everyone wake up and begin the process of packing to leave, and my good mood lasted until I went around the back. There, as I looked for the guard post, I noticed a few figures trailing down out of the hills away to the east. As the dread settled in my stomach like a rock thrown in a pond, I pulled my binoculars out of their pouch and examined the figures.
It was Lucas, returning from his post, and moving fast judging by their complete disregard for the trail they were leaving. I lowered the binoculars and whistled the Wayfinders to alert status. For a couple heartbeats, the camp fell silent. Then, intelligible over the sudden noise of people rushing about, was Camille’s voice.
“I want two squads with rifles up front, all snipers to your designated flanks, and someone get all these noncoms to the supply tent. I want only one person on babysitting duty and then everyone else to grab five armed travellers. Move, move, move!”
Camille came dashing up, still trailing a bit of snow from where she’d been hiding. As she ran up, I handed off the binoculars to here. “Looks like Lucas and the rest of the Wayfinders I sent with him.”
“Thank you for your opinion, Captain. Kindly get your ass back to the supply tent and send the babysitter up here. We’re down four Wayfinders thanks to Lucas’ rearguard and I need every combatant I can get in case they’re being following.”
“Yes, sir.” I saluted Camille and dashed back through the camp, waving to Natalie as I passed her. She was leading a group of the laborers as they struggled to move one of our portable barriers into place. She nodded at me as I passed. Once I got to the supply tent, I sent Lauren up to Camille and started calming everyone who was too young or too inexperienced to fight.
The camp went from busy to quiet a few seconds later. In only two minutes, every Wayfinder was in position and ready for trouble. The only question left was just how much trouble that would be.
Coldheart and Iron: Part 2
When I next saw Lucas, it took everything in my power not to throw my gun to the ground. He jogged up to the group while we were taking our noon break, waving his way past the sentries. He wore his usual beaming smile, but I can see the worry in his eyes when he stopped in front of me. Behind him, and the reason for my urge to angrily throw my weapon, I could see a large group of people moving on the horizon.
“What did you find?”
“Hold on, Mar.” Lucas held up a hand gestured to a bit of clear space away from the sentries and the resting laborers. “Let’s step over here, quick. Officers only.”
I nodded and beckoned to Camille and Jonathan, our second-in-commands. Once we were a far enough away from everyone to have a whispered conference without being overhead, I took a deep breath and gestured for Lucas to speak.
“It was a group of nomads. Seven families for a total of thirty-one people. Twenty-three of them are combat capable and they have the firearms and ammunition to arm them, but two of them are currently pregnant and five of the rest are under the age of eighteen.” Camille shook her head at that, but I cut off the argument that Lucas was about to start.
“We can discuss child soldiers later, right now just keep giving me your report.”
Lucas grimaced but continued. “They had a semi-permanent residence on the periphery of Chicago, traveling through the old suburbs and living off the supplies they could find in old superstores. They moved out a couple of months ago when a large group of bandits moved into the area and the Chicago enclave decided they were too much trouble to chase off but not enough trouble to worry about.”
“That stacks with the last reports we have from the Wayfinder net.” Jonathan mimed swiping through a touch-screen display. “They’re on the fourth page of the Chicago report, so even the Wayfinders agreed they weren’t a big deal.”
“Makes sense. Those ruins are too picked-over to support anything larger than a few dozen people.”
“That’s what the leaders of this nomad group said, Mar.” Lucas wiped at his eyes, a nervous tic he’d had since we were college students together. “They were doing fine until they headed west. They ran into some bandit scouts, well-armed ones, so they’ve been on the move toward the plains ever since, trying to make themselves more trouble than they’re worth.”
“Any clashes?”
“A few, and only technically. No casualties on either side and only a few rounds shot by the nomads each time they see bandits catching up to them or sneaking up on their camp.”
“They’re trying to figure out their gear.” Camille crossed her arms and growled. “Shitlicking bandits are trying to get them to waste all their ammo on scaring them off so they can sweep in and clean up. We’ve seen tactics like that in the more militarized bandits. They’ve probably got a base they’re operating out of and they’re waiting for their main forces to show up before attacking the nomads.”
“Thanks, Camille.” I nodded toward the horizon, where the large group was growing slowly closer. “So you brought them back with you.”
“Yessir. I couldn’t leave them to die to a bandit attack like that.”
“So you brought them to join us so we could also die in a bandit attack?”
“No, sir.”
I took my goggles off and pinched the bridge of my nose as I squinted through the glare. Without my goggles to cut the sunlight from this unusually bright day, I couldn’t see the nomads on the horizon anymore. As I put my goggles back on, I spent a moment wishing this decision wasn’t in my hands. Once I’d adjusted the strap again, I cracked my knuckles through my gloves and started issuing orders.
“Lucas, you’re officially in trouble for this. It is against Wayfinder policy to pick up groups of nomads and offer protection to additional people while escorting a group that has paid us. We’ll worry about your punishment later because we can’t risk Mr. Eidetic Memory here when there’s someone else qualified.”
I turned to Jonathan. “Go with Lucas. Start cataloguing their gear and make a note of everything that either is a weapon, can be used as a weapon, or can be made into a weapon. When we make camp, I’ll need you to assess their abilities. Take a few hunting to augment our supplies and see how they stack up. Tell Natalie I’ve given you the run of our supplies outside of basic essentials.”
I turned back to Lucas. “Once you’ve brought them up and introduced me to whoever their leaders are, you are to backtrack until you find traces of bandits or an excellent ambush spot. Take all the scouts and whatever guns you need. Don’t worry about silencers. The more of them that know they’re facing a real force, the fewer we’ll have to shoot.”
“Camille, get this group moving. While I’m dealing with the nomads, you’re in charge of these people. We don’t want them mixing right away. Start figuring out if any of them have skills we can use or if any of them can fight. I don’t want it to come to that, but we need to be ready.”
Once I stopped, I looked each of them in the eyes and nodded. They saluted and hurried off to take care of their tasks. I had a while before the nomads caught up to where I was, so I started getting ready. A few small adjustments to my gear and I looked like the figure on the posters of Wayfinders they post in the hiring offices. I returned to my backpack, finished my meal, and started going through the pockets of my pack. Once I found the notebook and pencil, I flipped through it until I fought a blank page.
Suitably armed for my upcoming encounter, I slung my pack up on my back and started out toward the nomads. By now, they were close enough to make out distinct figures, but I lowered my head and focused on crossing the snowy landscape. Even with the goggles, the glare from the sun made the distance hard to judge. Every few minutes, I’d look up again until I could start to make out distinct features and spot the Wayfinders Lucas had taken that morning, who were scattered around the periphery of the nomads.
When they were a quarter of a mile away, I stopped moving and looked them over. They moved sensibly, the large people out front and the smallest ones in back, with a couple of adults back there to keep an eye on the children and function as a rear guard. They had good coats and packs, so they clearly knew what they were doing, but I could tell from the way they weren’t constantly looking around that they hadn’t fully adjusted to living in the wilder parts of the midwest.
Once they reached me, everyone stopped and started the process of having a quick meal. Three of the people from the front of the group moved over to me and one, a tall woman with a runner’s build, held out a hand.
“I’m Brianna. Your scout told me you were the famous Captain Marshall. I couldn’t believe our luck.”
I took her hand and shook it perfunctorily. “I wouldn’t count yourselves lucky, yet. You’ve got bandits trailing you and I hope you know that your tactics so far haven’t done much.”
“Shooting in their general direction has chased them off. That’s been good enough for me.”
“Well, if you want protection from my Wayfinders, you’re going to need the permission of the group that hired us to guide them and to agree to do everything I tell you without question.”
Brianna nodded. “We will ask and you will have our complete obedience. I know how effective you Wayfinders are and I’ll do whatever it takes to keep my people safe.”
“Good.” I counted the heads of the nomads and watched as Jonathan moved the camp, talking to the people who were eating. “We’re officially too big to have any chance of hiding from any group we run into, so there’s going to be a lot of fighting before we get to Des Moines.”
The woman and her two companions nodded. I gestured for them to get back to their meal and went to talk to the closest Wayfinder. After leaving instructions for her to make sure they set a pace to catch up to the other group by nightfall, I started out, heading back toward my company using the trail I’d made getting there. I caught up a couple of hours later and, as the sun was just touching the horizon, the nomads caught up to us. Luckily, the laborers were good sports and, when presented with the results of their hunters, were more than happy to share our guidance and protection.
While the nomads and laborers made friends over their fresh meat, I called all of the Wayfinders together and we made our plans for the first signs of a bandit attack. There was the usual amount of joking and banter among the veterans, but that quickly faded as everyone focused on their roles for the next few nights. Being a Wayfinder might be a prestigious position and one of the few things you could still do in the post-collapse world if you wanted to live freely, but it also had a high mortality rate. Now, we would begin the most dangerous part of our job.