The Final Homestead: EMP Survival In A Powerless World Page 29

  “This is it,” James said. “Fan out. Keep moving. And do not let them capture you.”

  While the others spread out, James picked a spot a few yards ahead of where they had stopped and brought the rifle’s scope to his eye, waiting for his first shot.

  The world narrowed through the high-powered lens of the scope, thrusting James toward the enemy until he could see the whites of their eyes. He spied three fighters marching their way through the foliage. He knew that he wouldn’t have enough bullets to take down the entire army, but he wasn’t going to try and beat them all, he just needed to remember why he was fighting in the first place. He was doing it to win, to beat the people who had hurt and killed so many innocent lives, who had changed the future to a world cloaked in blood and fear.

  James wanted to put fear into those that harnessed it as a weapon. He wanted to prove that the enemy that had brought the country he loved to its knees could be destroyed and that there was a future for those that still believed in good triumphing over evil.

  James took a breath, his finger over the trigger. The moment he squeezed it, there would be no turning back. But all James had to do to harden his resolve was to remember Luis, and how he had given his life to protect this place, to protect his family. And that was all the courage James needed.

  The first bullet went through the terrorist’s neck, dropping him instantly while the other two fired randomly, unable to determine where the shots were fired from, giving James time to line up his next shot.

  The second bullet entered the target’s chest, right over the heart, knocking him to his back, where he lay still.

  James swept his rifle over the woods smoothly, falling into a trance-like state in which his movements were guided by the perfect combination of instinct and skill.

  Every fighter that came into his crosshairs was brought down. He emptied the first clip of his remaining three and never missed a shot.

  More fighters flooded into the woods, the Humvees forced to stop since they couldn’t make it through the dense woods, and it bought them just a little more time.

  The pop of gunfire thickened as Zi and Ken both fired from their positions from deeper into the woods, and it didn’t take long before the forest was alive with gunfire. Gunpowder and lead poisoned the world, but James remained steady, bringing down fighter after fighter, and with each body that he dropped to the forest floor, two more took the dead man’s place.

  And slowly, inch by inch, the enemy pushed forward by the simple fact that James couldn’t reload fast enough to bring the men down. The only reason he knew how many men he killed was because of the fact that he knew how many bullets he had left, and James hadn’t missed a shot since he started firing from behind the tree.

  Shells stacked up around James’s ankles, the recoil of the rifle against his shoulder becoming as steady and rhythmic as the beating of his heart. And he knew that the moment the pounding ended against his shoulder, so did his pulse. Because the two were connected now, each needing the other to survive.

  James loaded his last magazine into the rifle, and he felt the feeling in his hands start to numb. He wondered if the others were still alive. He hoped they were, and he suddenly regretted them staying. They didn’t have to stick around to fight, but that was their choice. And just as James made his own choice to stay, so they made theirs.

  One of the fighters managed to move within ten yards of James, and he didn’t see him until the terrorist already had an opportunity to shoot. The bullet only grazed James, but it was enough to cost James his momentum. The fighter lunged forward, tackling James to the ground.

  The fighter wedged the rifle against James’s throat, pressing down hard, choking him. James struggled to fight back. The man was strong, and he was so tired, but somewhere deep within him erupted that primal strength that was only used whenever life was nearly gone.

  James thrust the man off of him then unholstered his side arm, shooting the man down, and then a second that appeared from out of nowhere. He emptied the pistol, then picked up the rifle again. But before he could get a firm hold, another fighter appeared, and James was surrounded.

  The rifle was kicked from James’s hands, and instead of bullets, a hail of fists rained over him, the punishment relentless. And somewhere between the fists and the boots, James rolled to his back, no longer able to defend himself against the assault.

  But between the heads of the men that were beating him to death, James saw a glimmer of the blue sky above. It was clear, cloudless. And even in the midst of such savagery and death, James was reminded that the universe was always expanding, and that while his life was about to end, others would start. Like his unborn child.

  “Enough!”

  The voice thundered through the woods and the beating stopped, though James was already too far gone to feel anything now. He was limp and broken. At least that was how it felt. But, with the beating reaching a momentary pause, James managed to roll to his right and he sat up, leaning on his elbow, which was starting to regain some of its feeling.

  “Is it you?”

  Wincing, his vision blurred, James turned toward the voice that had ended the beating. Blood dripped from his lip, his cheeks were beginning to swell, and when he bent his left leg, his knee made a terrible grinding sound.

  “The other man I found said he was not James Bowers.” The man who spoke was squat and muscular, and wide as a barn. He had soulless eyes and a mechanical movement to him, as if he were a robot posing as a man. “Are you him?”

  James forced himself to his hands and knees, and then with what remained of his strength, he stood, slowly straightening out his back, so he looked down on the man who spoke. “I am.”

  A devious smile spread over the man’s face, and he spread his arms wide. The fighters that had circled them stepped back, creating a space.

  “I have been waiting to see you,” he said. “My name is Khan, James Bowers. And I am the root of everything that has happened to this place, to this country.” He removed his armor and his weapons and finally his shirt, revealing a physique that could rival Mr. Olympia. “You have caused me great trouble. I instructed my men to keep you alive until I could kill you myself.” He tilted his head to the side, examining James’s beaten figure. “I’m disappointed they didn’t leave me more to work with.”

  James was convinced that he had at least two ribs broken, and the pain in his left arm had gotten worse. He couldn’t even move it now. His left eye was beginning to swell shut. “Still more than enough to deal with you, I think.”

  Khan was quiet for a moment, and then that smile spread even wider, followed by a laugh so deep it shook the trees. “I had hoped you would still put up a fight.” He raised his boulder-sized fists and stepped forward.

  James kept his distance at first, testing his legs to see what he was working with. His right arm was fine, but his entire left side was exposed, making it an easy target. But if the man in front of him was in charge of the army, then James finally had the head of the snake within reach, and he had no plans of letting it get by him without a fight.

  Khan made the first move, moving in quickly with a stiff jab to James’s face, which he didn’t land fully, James able to bob out of the way before it connected fully.

  “Fast,” Khan said, hands still up and circling James like a tiger. “But so am I.”

  The next punch that came was so quick James didn’t even see it, but he felt the pain light up his left side, his body wanting to cave inward. His knees buckled, but he remained upright, refusing to go down so quickly.

  “Yes!” Khan shouted, continuing his dance around James. “He’s not given up yet!”

  The next few minutes were nothing more than Khan toying with James, landing blow after powerful blow into James’s face and body until James couldn’t even keep his one good arm up anymore for defense or offense.

  But that fighting spirit, that defiance forced James to remain upright. Even if all he could do was stand, it would at least
keep the fighting away from the others. That was his mission. And he would see it through until the end.

  Khan landed a final blow square on James’s chin, knocking James to the ground and sending him into a spinning world of stars.

  “You are a weak man, James Bowers,” Khan said.

  James struggled to get off his stomach. The world just wouldn’t stop spinning, and his vision was fading. He didn’t think he’d be awake for much longer.

  “And weak men die,” Khan said. “It’s why I’ve brought my army, my people. We will purge this world of weakness through the truth of fire and blood.”

  James flattened to his stomach for good this time, and he drew in a few wheezing gasps.

  “Do you hear me, James Bowers?” Khan knelt and grabbed hold of James’s chin, James unable to keep his eyes focused on any one spot. “I will burn you all. And I know that you have family. I will burn them too. I will burn your friends, your neighbors. I will march across this land until everything behind me has been scorched to dust.”

  Staring at Khan, James saw the same madness in his eyes that he saw in Dillon’s and in all of the fighters that he’d met. There was dedication and conviction in those eyes. But they lacked humanity, they lacked any semblance of life, and James remembered the universe.

  “Death might win the fight,” James said, forcing a smile. “But it will never win the war. Because of people like me. They won’t kneel, and they won’t stop. You can only torture people for so long before they fight back. Life pushes forward.” He thought of Mary. “All the way. No matter what.”

  James watched the smugness in Khan’s expression fade, and when he stepped back and was handed a firearm, James prayed that Banks was ready for the fight that was coming.

  And when the pistol was aimed at James’s face, he only saw his wife and son. He would meet them again someday, along with the unborn child he had yet to meet. It would be a hard world to live in when she was born, but she would be a Bowers. And Bowers never quit.

  Suddenly, James smiled, laughing to himself, realizing what he’d just thought. “It’ll be a girl. Mary’s going to have a girl.” No, James thought, still smiling. We’re going to have a girl.

  The gunfire that came next was far too loud to have been the product of the pistol in Khan’s hand, but nevertheless the world erupted in heavy machine-gun fire.

  At first James thought that it must have been Zi or Ken coming over to join James in his last stand, but as the shouting continued and the war raged on, James managed to retain a conscious awareness that it was something else. Something bigger.

  For a long time, James’s senses drifted in and out of consciousness, and he couldn’t tell what was reality and what were dreams and nightmares. For a while he thought that he had died, and he was in the fires of hell.

  Heat blasted James’s face, and a terrible pain ran through his body, making everything hurt something fierce. But then, slowly, the heat subsided and the pain dulled, and he drifted from a world of war and into the soft throes of clouds and weightlessness until he finally woke.

  Expecting to find himself either in the woods or the inside of a coffin, James was surprised to see that he was back in the bunker. His bunker. On his cot with an IV hooked up to his arm.

  “The girl put that in you.” Banks appeared from the back of the bunker and moved up toward the bed. “She looked like she knew what she was doing, so I didn’t stop her.”

  James stared up at Banks, unable to speak from the shock.

  “Surprised?”

  “What are you doing here?” James asked.

  Banks found a chair and sat down. He wasn’t armed, and they were the only two in the bunker. He rubbed his palm over the rough stubble on his shaved head. “Saving your ass.” He leaned back in his chair, examining James in the bed. “Though I can’t say you might not be better off dead.”

  “My wife—”

  “You can thank her when we get back to the compound,” Banks said. “She was the one who convinced me to come over here.” He tilted his head to the side, smirking. “Well, she called me a coward, and I filled in the blanks myself.”

  Of all the people to come, Banks was the last person James expected to show up. “What happened?”

  “You did good work leveling the playing field,” Banks said. “We came up from behind, commandeered some of the Humvees, and unloaded on the rest. A few of them surrendered when they realized there wasn’t a way out, and the handful that talked to us we kept alive. This was the bulk of their forces, but they have other pockets around the country. And they only had the one bomb. Looks to me like the worst is over.”

  James lay still for a moment, trying to wrap his head around what the guy had just told him. It didn’t seem real.

  “What happened to Khan?” James asked.

  “Who?”

  “He was their leader. He was the one who worked me over and put me in my current spot.”

  “Oh, the big one.” Banks drew in a breath. “He was taken out by one of the heavy artillery rounds we dumped into the forest. One of his people identified the body.”

  “I want to see it.”

  With Banks’s help, James slowly moved out of bed and then carefully climbed the ladder out of the bunker, the sun blinding him as he stepped out onto the grass.

  When his vision finally adjusted, James saw the smoldering wreckage that was Khan’s army, and he saw the hundred fighters that Banks had brought with him. The dead were being moved, buried, or burned, depending on which side they represented.

  In all the years that James had worked and lived on the ranch, he had never seen so much death. “How many did you lose?”

  “Forty-two,” Banks answered.

  James turned and walked over to the man who had saved him, saved his land, and potentially saved millions of others across the country. “Thank you, Banks. You didn’t have to do this.”

  “Yes,” Banks said. “I did.” He looked past James and to the bodies being moved. “I didn’t realize how bad things have gotten. Probably because I’ve stayed on my own land for too long. It’s important to have perspective. I’m just glad I didn’t find it too late.”

  “James?” Zi pushed herself between two of Banks’s guys, then sprinted toward him and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Thank God.” She stepped back, frowning. “What are you doing up? You should be in bed, resting.” She cast Banks a hard glare, but James calmed her down.

  “I just needed to see Khan’s body,” James said.

  Zi walked with James, helping him over to the hole in the ground where they were putting the dead terrorists, but there was one body that was set aside. Khan was on his back, a hole in his chest the size of a grapefruit, those same pair of maddening eyes staring up at the blue sky.

  “Yeah,” James said, nodding. “That was him.”

  With his curiosity sated, James became suddenly exhausted, and Zi helped him back into the bunker, where she hooked the IV back into his arm.

  “Maybe this time you’ll stay asleep,” Zi said, tucking James in like he was a child.

  “I’m sorry about Luis,” James said. “I know you liked him. And he liked you too.”

  Zi’s lower lip trembled, but she didn’t cry. “I’m sorry too. He was a good man.”

  “He was the best man.” A tightness formed in James’s chest, and he drew in a sharp breath that caused his ribs to ache. “I couldn’t save him. I wanted to, but the wound was—”

  Zi grabbed James’s hand. “It wasn’t your fault, James.”

  It was the first time that James had allowed himself to grieve and as the tears came, he was thankful that Zi was there, because the guilt that plagued him over Luis’s death was magnified over the fact that he had torn apart two people who had grown to care for one another. And it was something that he could never make right.

  Everyone from the ranch had been confined to the same space, which was growing more cramped the longer that they were stuck together. The mood swayed between
fear, desperation, and anger, but Mary did her best to ignore all of that and instead focused on Jake.

  She gently brushed her fingers through his hair, praying that he would wake up soon. She needed something to hold onto, something to give her strength as she awaited to hear the fate of her husband.

  Banks had left hours ago, and while Mary was thankful the man had decided to go help, she was worried that the effort might have been too little and too late.

  Jake groaned and rocked his head from side to side, slowly awakening. He cracked his eyes open. “Mom?”

  Mary kissed Jake’s forehead. “Hey.”

  Jake glanced around, becoming alarmed once he realized that they were no longer at the ranch, but Mary was quick to calm him.

  “We’re safe,” Mary said.

  Still weary, Jake nodded. “Dad did the procedure?”

  “He did,” Mary answered, smiling with tears of joy. “He saved you.”

  “Where is he?”

  Mary hesitated, unsure of how much she should tell him in his fragile state. But deep down, she knew that the truth was the only way. “We had to leave the ranch. Those people that were in the town, the same ones that attacked us, your father believed they were coming back for the piece of the bomb. He wanted to make sure that we were safe, so he made a deal with the other prepper community.”

  Jake frowned. “What deal?” He sat up, shaking his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “Jake, you need to listen to me—”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  The rest of the group was looking back at Mary and Jake’s growing outburst. Mary grabbed both of Jake’s hands and forced her son still. “Hey, listen to me.” She waited until he was still and quiet and then looked into his eyes. “He stayed behind. To protect us. To save our family. And we have to accept that, no matter how much it hurts.” Tears formed in her own eyes now. “But no matter what happens, we are still a family.”

  Jake nodded, and then sniffled. “I just want to go home.”

  Mary lunged forward and wrapped her son in a hug. She rocked him gently, both of them crying now. “Me too, baby. Me too.”