Renny finally got Sarah’s suppressed carbine off of her and fired at the soldiers over the hood of the Growler. They were barely fifty feet away and completely exposed. He dropped two of them, and the rest ran inside the church, which with its arched doorways, impossibly whole stained-glass windows (apparently there was something to be said for living in the Blue Zone), and ornate brickwork looked like it had been constructed for King Arthur’s court.
Out of sight inside the darkened church the men fired at Renny and Weasel. Weasel looked behind him, then kicked at a door and forced it open. He staggered inside the building.
Ed stumbled through the door and fell to the floor, scattering years of debris. Jason grabbed him and dragged him inside a few feet, into cover, then stepped over him to fire a few shots. Return fire thudded into the walls behind them.
Wheezing and hacking as he lay on the floor, Ed felt like he was dying. In all his years of fighting, he’d never seen anything like it. Tabs came at you in vehicles, behind armor, and only got out on foot to search buildings. But these soldiers today, they only had a few Growlers, and everyone else seemed to be on foot. He’d rarely seen so many Tabs on foot, and no matter how many they’d killed they kept coming. And coming. It had been a fighting retreat that had lasted… forever. Shoot and move, shoot and move, covering fire, short rushes between cover, zig-zagging through the neighborhoods, in-between houses, running through waist-high grass and over piles of bricks and wood that used to be homes, unable to breathe, legs leaden with exhaustion, eyes burning from sweat…
Ed rolled over onto his hands and knees and threw up for the third time, but there was nothing left in his stomach. Sweat was pouring off of him like he’d left a faucet on somewhere inside his armor.
Jason fired twice more and then there was a loud crash. Ed looked over to see Mark on the floor next to him, his face red and shiny. He looked like Ed felt. “I can’t… I can’t…” Mark gasped. His chest bucked as he fought for air like a fish out of water.
Ed staggered to his feet and joined Jason in the doorway, using the exterior bricks for cover. The street they’d been running down had ended here, in a T-intersection. The street stretching away from them was two lanes in each direction, low commercial buildings lining each side of the road past the cement sidewalks. There was a Growler less two hundred yards down, and Tabs on both sides of the street ahead of it, advancing in quick rushes, using the building doorways for cover. Ed saw at least ten soldiers on foot, plus however many were in the Growler.
He braced against the door frame and fired two shots at a distant running soldier, then his bolt locked back on an empty magazine. He moved back behind cover reflexively. With a grunt he dropped the magazine and reached down to his chest for a fresh one—and saw it was the last one left. He shoved it into place, hit the bolt release on his Geissele, then backed into the building and dumped his pack on the floor, then knelt next to it. He had several loaded thirty-round magazines—four, five? he couldn’t remember—in the top of his pack. And if he needed them that meant he’d already gone through ten magazines since entering Nakatomi that morning. Had it been just that morning? It felt like weeks ago. He grabbed the magazines and stuffed them into the pouches on his chest, then thought to look around. To his surprise he discovered he was in the lobby of a McDonald’s restaurant. He realized he could smell the grease from the French fries. Maybe it had soaked into the walls.
“I’m whipped,” Mark wheezed. Running hadn’t done his fractured ribs any good, and he pulled his blood-soaked shorts up his left thigh. There was a bullet wound in his leg. The bullet had gone in the back and out the front, on the outside of his leg. Both entry and exit wounds were bleeding steadily but there was no spurting, which meant it hadn’t hit an artery. And he was able to walk on it, which meant it hadn’t hit his femur.
Ed nodded. He could barely walk in a straight line, much less run any further. He was pretty sure he’d broken his foot about a quarter mile back jumping onto a pile of broken bricks. “Making a… stand here,” he panted. “You need to bandage that up.”
Jason fired again as counterpoint. The side of his head was covered in blood from a near miss that had embedded chunks of brick in his scalp.
“How… many… mags you got?” Mark panted. “Last one’s in… my gun.”
Ed slid a magazine over to him. He coughed, and spit a wad of vomitous phlegm on the floor. “Jason, how many mags you got left?”
The boy pulled back behind the wall and checked the pouches on his chest. “One… one and a half. Plus… five, no, six in my pack.” Rifles cracked down the street and they could hear bullets hitting the bricks outside.
Ed gestured as he got back to his feet. “Give Mark two. We’re taking a stand.” He gestured at the restaurant around them. “This is the Alamo.”
“You get that fucking reference, kid?” Mark growled.
Jason gulped, and nodded. He shrugged his pack off and set it on the floor.
“You’ve got two good legs,” Ed told Jason. “You grab what you need out of it but leave your pack, pretty sure you can outrun the Tabs, get out of here, live to fight another day.”
Jason blinked and frowned. “And leave you?”
“We’re not running anywhere.”
Jason was visibly angry at the suggestion. “Fuck that,” he nearly shouted. He stared at Ed. “And fuck you, for making it. Sir.”
“That’s the spirit,” Mark said. “You stay there, keep an eye, I’ll grab the mags,” he said, crawling across the floor. Jason edged out, fired a shot, then ducked back.
“Make your shots count, because we’re not getting any more ammo,” Ed said. He kept low and moved to the far side of the restaurant, every step agony. It felt like someone was shoving a red-hot knife into the top of his foot. He peered out the window frames which hadn’t held glass in nearly a decade. He blinked his burning eyes and focused on the street signs at the nearby corner, then referenced his mental map of the city. Holy shit, no wonder they were exhausted, the Tabs had chased them for three miles. Three miles of short sprints, wearing armor and a pack, shooting and moving and trying not to die. He was somewhat shocked he hadn’t had a heart attack. Ed ducked back down and a quick volley of incoming fire chewed into the walls around him.
Ed pointed. “Check the back door,” he told Mark. “See if it’s even there.”
Mark finished stuffing magazines into his chest pouches and got to his feet with a grunt. He swayed, almost blacking out, then headed behind the counter into the kitchen. Ed stared at the counter and would have snorted if he’d had the energy. It was lined with the self-serve computerized ordering kiosks that had replaced every human cashier in every fast-food restaurant when the government raised the minimum wage to $20 an hour, costing tens of thousands of people their jobs. Anyone who was economically literate foresaw that happening, but then again economically literate people knew socialism was only good for spreading misery and death. Although, he supposed, they could be economically literate and just plain evil.
“Stick those mags on your body,” Ed told Jason, and nodded at his pack which was sitting beside him with its top open. “And drink some water, we’re all dehydrated.”
“They’re getting closer…” the boy warned. He couldn’t believe how calm Ed was.
“They close enough to throw grenades? No? Good. Then drink some water.” He grabbed a bottle of Gatorade out of his pack, courtesy of Uncle Charlie, and downed half of it in one swallow. Then he threw it to Jason. “Here.”