Southlands Read online

  He pressed his cheek against the buttstock. Sighted through the scope.

  The magnified image met his eyes.

  Weeds.

  A house front.

  “Call ‘em when you see ‘em,” the corporal coached.

  “Hey, I got movement at nine o’clock,” someone called.

  “I got some at six. Shit. Fuck these things…”

  Grass.

  Leaves.

  Eyes.

  Allen’s whole body locked.

  Breath caught in his chest.

  Heart stopped.

  It stared right at him. Two, big, wild eyes fixed on him over the tops of the weeds.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Allen squeezed out.

  “Whatcha got?”

  The thing in the grass charged.

  Allen felt his brain short-circuiting. His finger touched the trigger before he meant to, and he pulled himself back at the last second before firing, knowing that he had to wait for the thing to get clear of the grass—he needed a shot at its torso.

  “R-R-Right! Right!” Allen gasped out.

  Gunfire suddenly erupted. In the enclosed space of the SUV, Allen’s hearing went out like a light, and it was all a muddy wash of noise. All he perceived was his own breath hissing in his throat, and all he saw was the primal charging at him.

  He saw the chest. The heaving of the fatless muscle. The long, loping arms.

  He squeezed the trigger.

  Saw the dart hit, dead center in the chest.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Allen screamed, jerking himself back into the SUV, and backpedaling away from his open window.

  “Drive!” the corporal yelled, but the driver had already hit the gas.

  The primal hit the side of the vehicle, then rolled off the side, and Allen lost sight of it.

  They were still firing.

  “Don’t shoot that one!” Allen yelled, though he wasn’t sure anyone could hear him over the gunfire, and even if they could, did they even know which one he was talking about?

  The one with the red-feathered dart in its chest!

  He felt rough hands shoving him.

  “Get the fuck off me, man!”

  In his haste to get away from the window, Allen had pressed himself against the soldier on the driver’s side. Allen tried to get off him, but the driver swerved around a fallen tree, causing Allen to lose his balance again and topple back into the soldier amid a flurry of curses.

  The SUV ramped a curb with a bang as loud as a traffic collision, then slammed through an old mailbox, and then tumbled back onto the roadway, going about forty-five miles an hour now.

  Allen was propelled back into his seat by the angry soldier.

  The corporal shouted: “Take the circle, right here, right here!”

  The SUV skidded through a hard right turn.

  The neighborhood street they were on meandered through houses for a while, but would bring them back to where they’d been. They’d been driving this same circle for the last hour.

  “Slow down,” the corporal ordered. “Give them some time to chase us.” He turned into the back. “Everyone okay? Anyone have physical contact?”

  The other four soldiers reported that they were good, and no, they’d driven off before any physical contact was made.

  “Allen,” the corporal looked at him. “Get the collar ready. We’re gonna be back around in about a minute.”

  That minute zipped by like a bullet.

  Allen already had the collar prepped, but he double- and triple-checked it like he had his air rifle. It took him longer than he wanted to fumble through this. His hands trembled.

  “Stop here,” the corporal ordered.

  They rolled to a stop.

  The thrumming engine.

  The silence of the outside world, cut through by the sound of bugs chirping.

  “Hit the horn again. See if we can’t draw them further away.”

  The horn blared, making Allen flinch again.

  “Hey.” It was the soldier to his left. Not angry anymore. He leaned over and squeezed Allen’s shoulder. “Breathe, bro. Take big breaths.”

  Allen wanted to shrug the man’s hand off him, but he resisted the urge. “I’m fuckin’ fine.”

  “There you go. Hardcore.”

  “Alright,” the corporal called. “Chris, hit it.”

  The SUV lurched forward again, accelerating through a series of turns.

  “We got one shot at this, and we need to move fast. If I call ‘abort,’ get your ass back in the truck, no questions asked.”

  The SUV turned onto the same stretch of street where they started.

  “Jones, you’re with me and Allen. Three sixty coverage. Call what you see.”

  The driver let the Expedition drift down to about thirty miles an hour, then twenty. Everyone’s head was on a swivel, searching the grass and the weeds and the places around fallen trees—not just for primals hunting them, but for a body…

  “Got him!” the driver yelped, and stomped on the brake.

  By the time the SUV rocked back on its chassis, Allen and Jones and the corporal had already spilled out of their doors. Allen clutched the collar in one hand, his eyes sweeping left and right along the roadway.

  Great drifts of leaves had gathered against the curbs, and gradually turned to dirt, so that the edges of the neighborhood street were slowly being digested, and the weeds infiltrated that dirt, and in another few years, perhaps the entire road would be engulfed, the planet absorbing and metabolizing the unnatural, returning itself to homeostasis.

  Ain’t nature grand?

  It was there, in a peninsula of dirt and weeds that jutted out into the road, that Allen saw the shape of the thing. Just the head and shoulders, slumped on its side. A few yards past it, Allen saw the tire marks from where they’d sped off.

  The primal had rebounded off the back of the Expedition, and kept its feet for another few yards before collapsing.

  That was good. That meant the tranquilizer was working as fast as it should.

  Hopefully he hadn’t tranq-ed the damn thing to death.

  Allen rushed towards it, feeling sicker the closer he got. The corporal was in front of him, and Jones was behind.

  The corporal reached the body first and barely broke stride, terminating his run with a kick to the thing’s torso, to see if it was still reactive, which it wasn’t.

  “You’re good,” the corporal breathed out. “It’s down for the count.”

  The corporal hopped over the body and began scanning the weeds and windows and doorways around them, his rifle up.

  Allen skittered to a stop, his breath clenched. He’d never been so close to one of these things. It shook him to his core, and he didn’t want to touch it but he knew that he had to. He saw the thing’s chest rising and falling, so he knew that it was still alive.

  What freaked him out was that the eyes weren’t closed.

  This shouldn’t have surprised Allen, but it did.

  When he’d tranq-ed the bear in that neighborhood, the thing’s deep brown eyes had been half-opened, staring out at nothing. It was the same here. But it was a human’s eyes—sort of—and that similarity almost made Allen stop.

  What kept him from stopping was the screech that suddenly split the stillness.

  Deeper in the neighborhood. A few streets over.

  It should’ve been a comfort—the primals only called when they were honing in on you, but when they had you dead to rights, you never heard them coming. But it slammed his body with adrenaline and all he wanted to do was get his job done and get out of there as fast as possible.

  He dropped to his knees beside the thing and shoved it so that it lay on its belly. It was a male, he thought, though he didn’t take the time to check the equipment down below. He already had the collar opened up and adjusted to the approximate width of a neck.

  “Come on, Allen,” the corporal hissed at him. “Get it done! We need to leave!”

  Allen didn’t reply
. With trembling hands, he fed the transmitter collar around the primal’s neck, then tried to bring the two buckles together…it was too tight. Wouldn’t buckle.

  Allen let loose a string of curses under his breath.

  “What’s taking so long?” Jones demanded.

  “Too tight,” Allen gasped, removing the collar and loosening it.

  He listened for another call from the primals. But they were quiet now.

  The damn collar was brand new and stiff as hell. He struggled to get the D-ring to loosen.

  “Allen, are you gonna get this done?” the corporal said.

  “I’m trying!”

  “Contact!” Jones called. “Between those two houses!”

  “Shit! Allen! Do it now or let’s go!”

  Allen shoved the collar down around the thing’s neck. It let out a thready grunt and Allen almost jumped back—almost wet himself, too—but managed to keep his hands on the collar, and pulled the two ends together.

  Still snug, but he wasn’t worried about the primal’s comfort at this point. He snapped the clasp together, and then bolted upright. “It’s on! Let’s go!”

  He was already running for the Expedition.

  Down the road, less than a hundred yards behind the Expedition, two shapes galloped towards them on all fours.

  “Oh Christ, oh Christ, oh Christ…”

  Allen’s door was still open. He threw himself inside.

  “Go! Drive!” he belted out.

  The driver didn’t drive. He was still waiting on the corporal and Jones.

  “Contact, rear!” the soldier called from the back, and then gunfire punched at Allen’s eardrums again.

  Allen was on the floorboards. His feet still hung out of his door, and it felt like when he was a kid and his feet were outside the covers where the monsters under his bed might be able to get them…

  He was peripherally aware of Jones hurtling into the SUV. Jones’s boots clambered over Allen’s head, but Allen didn’t care, not even when Jones cussed him out. Allen curled himself into a ball, trying to get his feet into the Expedition before the monsters grabbed them.

  There was yelling, but the language was hard to interpret past the jackhammering of his heart and his dull, aching eardrums.

  He felt the SUV lurch forward.

  Felt doors slam.

  And they were driving.

  Jones kicked at him. “Get back in your seat, you fucking cherry!” he screamed. “I almost couldn’t get in the fucking car because of you, you piece of shit!”

  Allen didn’t care. Relief flooded him so hard he thought he might lose control of his bladder again. He had enough shame left in him not to let that happen, but it was a close call.

  He pulled himself away from Jones, and had enough of a spurt of anger to give the soldier a shove to the chest. Jones gave him a fiery glare and looked about ready to pummel his face.

  “Cool it!” the corporal barked. “Jones!”

  Jones drew himself up with mighty indignation. “Fucking cherry,” he griped, but said no more.

  Allen pulled himself into his seat with muscles that felt like they’d turned to pudding. He leaned forward so his sweating face was pressed against the faux-leather of the front passenger’s seat.

  The engine roared. The driver pulled them through twists and turns.

  Safe.

  Safe-ish.

  The tension broke when someone started laughing.

  Allen wasn’t sure who it was. His eyes were squeezed shut.

  The corporal was telling everyone they did a great job.

  Amid the laughter, Jones loosened up. He reached over and patted Allen on the back. “Sorry ‘bout that. Just…you know how it is. Got a little hot there for a second.”

  Allen pushed himself off the front seat, wilted back into his own. “It’s whatever,” he mumbled. Glad to be done. Glad to be heading back to the Fort Bragg Safe Zone. At least until the time came to come back out and start tracking the damn thing they’d just strapped a transmitter to.

  But he chose not to think about that right now.

  The nervous, cathartic laughter petered out.

  A few giggles, like troublesome schoolboys in the back of a classroom.

  The engine thrummed on.

  All was silent for a while.

  The driver started fidgeting in the front seat again. Started glancing over to his corporal as though he had something to say.

  The corporal watched this for a few seconds. “What?”

  The driver huffed through his nose. Gripped the wheel and rung it in his hands.

  “I mean,” he said, plaintively. “How can she be a dependa when there’s not even any military benefits anymore?”

  THREE

  ─▬▬▬─

  MERCY

  Julia was getting a lot of attention that she didn’t care for.

  After their shaky victory at the airport several days back, they’d sent some of the tankers that they’d captured from Nuevas Fronteras off with the Marine detachment. Then Julia, Lee, and Abe had dusted out with Captain Terrence “Tex” Lehy, back to Texas.

  There, they’d started to get familiarized with Tex’s guerilla-style campaign. While Lee and Abe healed up from their various wounds, Julia decided to start making herself useful and going with Tex’s squads on their raids.

  It seemed like there weren’t many females in any of Tex’s squads. Which was understandable, given that they were almost entirely military, most of them from combat MOSs.

  They would’ve been happy to see Julia even if she was plain. But she wasn’t. She was naturally pretty, so even though her tawny hair hadn’t been washed in a week, and her face had dirt on it, she still got looks.

  In fact, they spent as much time watching her as they did the long, empty stretch of highway that led out of Texas.

  Julia was acutely aware that only groups of women had a civilizing influence on men. A lone woman was just something to chase down and screw. She didn’t think it would come to that, but men starved of women could be unpredictable. So she kept as much of the squad in front of her at all times, frequently checked her six, and didn’t let her rifle leave her grasp.

  They were positioned near a solitary overpass on a long, straight section of the I-35 corridor, about a mile from the Oklahoma border.

  There were two squads total. One on either side of the interstate, hiding just inside the clumps of forest that stood in the unpaved sections of the interchange.

  Somewhere on the highway that ran across the overpass, far enough to be out of sight, a tractor-trailer waited.

  Julia sat with her back against a tree, about twenty feet in from the edge of the woods. The air was very still, and getting hot. Inside the shade, it was bearable, but humid.

  From her vantage, she could see all ten members of the squad, of which she was number eleven. Eight of them lay prone at the very edge of the trees. One of them had an M249. Another had a tripod-mounted M2.

  The squad leader and his radioman sat back, closer to Julia.

  Sergeant Menendez was a good-humored guy of about twenty-five, with short, scraggly facial hair. While his gaze still lingered a bit long every time he looked at Julia, it seemed like he considered it his responsibility to be the gentleman of the group, and gave a good faith effort to make Julia feel comfortable.

  The other guys would peek over their shoulders, as though making sure she was still there, and then they would huddle and mumble and chuckle to each other at whatever ribald joke they’d made.

  “So,” Menendez said, conversationally. “What’s the United Eastern States like?”

  Julia frowned at him. “How do you mean?”

  Menendez eyed her up and down, then shrugged and looked away. “Like…you guys got enough food to eat? You got a lot of civilians? Is life pretty normal, or is it pretty militaristic? Like, for us, it’s like active duty all the time, you know? Always with the squad. Always doin’ ops. Always outside the wire.” He looked at her aga
in. “You guys have a wire? Isn’t that right? Fortifications and shit?”

  Julia nodded. “We have places we call Safe Zones. They’re secured with fences and high voltage. Keeps the primals out. Mostly.”

  “Primals is teepios, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Fuck those bastards.” Menendez shook his head. “Who’da thought, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Julia replied. “Who’da thought.”

  “Sounds nice,” Menendez sniffed. “Makes me wanna visit.”

  “How’s that?”

  He shrugged. “Like I said. Been a long time since I’ve been around civilians, you know? Long time since I could just walk around without my rifle and shit. Y’all probably have a lot of pretty girls like yourself.”

  Julia smiled in spite of herself. “Y’all sound like you need some R&R.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Julia watched him for a moment, then looked away. For a flash the conversation made her think of Lee, and a topic that he’d been bringing up since they’d left Fort Bragg. It usually started with something like, “Once we’re done here, and we get back to Bragg…”

  Lee wanted out. That was the long and short of it. And Julia couldn’t blame him. She wanted out too. They’d all been running ragged for years. No stops. There simply wasn’t time to stop. But they were going to burn out hard if something didn’t change.

  Besides that fact, as Lee often pointed out, Fort Bragg had relied on Lee’s team and Carl’s team for the vast majority of their dirty work. If things continued to heat up between the United Eastern States and Acting President Briggs in Greeley, Colorado—not to mention this oil cartel—then they would need more than two small teams to handle their business.

  And Lee was going to train them.

  Once they got back.

  Julia responded as little as possible to this line of conversation that Lee brought up. She didn’t want to encourage it. Because she was the type of person that didn’t like to get her hopes up, and history had shown her that hoping for things was a great way to get disappointed.

  But she also recognized that maybe Lee needed that hope. Maybe he needed something to look forward to.

  In any case, she was worried about him. His attitude had changed in subtle but alarming ways. Ever since they’d lost Tomlin and Nate.