Radio hope toxic world b.., p.21
Radio Hope (Toxic World Book 1), page 21
Marcus hesitated again. At last he left without saying anything.
Approaching the wall he saw Abe’s men still guarding the gate, their boots sunk into mud made up from the blood of their victims, both guilty and innocent. A pile of ladders lay nearby. Clyde stood on the wall overseeing the M60 crew as they tried to unjam their weapon.
“How did you get the ladders?” Marcus asked when he joined them. Most had been pushed over in the last fight.
Clyde grinned. “Hook on the end of a rope. Don’t expect it to delay them long. Soon as we got them up they started pulling boards off of houses. Hear that?”
Marcus listened. The sound of hammering came from the Burbs. He peeked though a gun port. Enemy riflemen looked back at him from windows and around corners. The machine gun and its protective mantlet had been pulled to the far end of town, where the mass of men with machetes and spears sat and rested. A group of riflemen stood nearby watching them.
“Got it,” one of the M60 crew said, yanking a cartridge out of the ejector.
“Strip it and clean it,” Clyde ordered. “Looks like we have the time.”
“What about our other machine gun, the D-whatever?” Marcus asked. How Clyde kept all these acronyms straight he’d never know.
“The DShK-4? Almost out. I only let them fire a couple of bursts to test that mantlet. If things get bad I’ll let them open up.”
“Don’t be stingy with the ammo. If it saves New City it’s worth using every last round.”
Clyde grinned. “Remember the early days when we had heaps of 12.7×108 mm? That beautiful machine saved us a dozen times over.”
Marcus nodded. That was back when the remnants of the old city-state militias still prowled the land, looking for loot now that their homes had been obliterated. Once about fifteen years ago they’d even been threatened by some bandits who claimed they were a division of a national army. What a sad, sad, joke that was.
“You think they’ll attack again today?” Marcus asked.
“From what that scavenger said they’ll have to. They might wait until nightfall, though. What’s happening with Abe?” Clyde lowered his voice as he asked this question. The Merchants Association members at the gate weren’t far off.
“I don’t know. Looks like he’ll protect his own and nothing else. He’s smart enough to realize that if the wall falls he’s a dead man, though. That’s why he sent this bunch. The thing is, he’s so scared the scavengers will rob him that he’s putting the whole city at risk.”
Clyde’s mouth made a grim line. “He’s not entirely wrong, you know. My patrols arrested a couple of guys breaking into a house not far from yours.”
Marcus slapped a palm to his forehead. “Oh great. That’s just super. What did you do?”
“Hunted up a couple of members of that so-called Burb Council and told them I wanted to shoot them. They didn’t object so I shot them.”
“That’s not going to help with goodwill.”
“Like it’ll make a difference after what these Merchants Association idiots did.”
Marcus sighed. “No, I guess not.”
“Get some rest,” Clyde said. “You’ll need it soon enough. Try and get The Doctor to get some rest too.”
“Yeah,” Marcus turned to step away and then stopped and thought a moment. He knew he couldn’t rest, not while that kid was dying in his spare bedroom. He looked at Clyde. He had never really liked him with all his middle-aged bravado and paranoia, but they’d been through it all together. Met as refugees when The Doctor first found this place and decided to start a new home after the last city-state had fallen. They’d built this place together, made countless hard decisions together, grew older together. Life doesn’t give you many people like that. Should he ask him?
He took Clyde by the arm and led him a little away from the M60 crew. In a whisper he unburdened himself on him, telling him about Pablo, about how he felt, and how the boy would die if he didn’t get that little vial from the Old Times that sat somewhere in The Doctor’s medical cabinet. Clyde listened without interruption, once waving away a guard who approached to ask a question, and took it all in without a word until Marcus finished.
“Damn,” Clyde said at last. “That’s tough. If you ask he’ll give it to you, you know that right?”
“Yeah,” Marcus nodded sadly. “That makes it tougher.”
“Sorry buddy, I don’t know what to say,” Clyde shook his head and raised a hand toward the machine gun and the dead bodies littering the base of the wall. “I’m better at this stuff. It’s a lot more clear-cut. All I can tell you is to do go with your heart.”
Marcus nodded and left. He felt better for having told someone even if it didn’t give him a good answer. Clyde had given the best answer he could—to follow his heart. The problem was, his heart was telling him two different things.
The Righteous Horde waited until dark to attack. They brought up the machine gun and raked the top of the wall. The weakened metal burst in dozens of places, sending citizens and associates tumbling off the catwalk. The men with the ladders came next, covered by the riflemen behind. Despite having taken all the enemy ladders earlier in the day, the defenders faced even more in the night.
Desperate, Clyde ordered the DShK-4 to hit the line of riflemen. The crew poured an steady fire down the line, mowing a third of the men down before the final heartrending click told Marcus that gun would not fire in this battle again. It was enough to break the enemy rifle line into confusion and give the defenders on the wall the chance to fire on the oncoming horde. For once the M60 didn’t jam and shot down entire swathes of the crowd. Roy and his assistants threw the last of their Molotov cocktails. The scene was lit in the garish yellows and reds.
The cult’s machine gun focused on the DShK-4, spattering bullets around their gun loop. The enemy crew’s accuracy was frightful and the citizens on that section of the wall fled for their lives and bullets punched through metal and panged off the machine gun.
It didn’t matter. The DShK-4 was out of ammo and the damage had already been done. The emboldened defenders savaged the crowd of half-starved men trying to scale the wall.
Still they came, scrambling up ladders and dodging the falling bodies of their comrades. A few made it to the top, hacking at arms holding guns, jabbing at faces peering over the wall. Clyde was everywhere, his M16 blazing as he emptied clip after clip into the crowd. Marcus moved about the wall too, calling up familiar scavengers to help in the fighting, and then hurrying down to the gate to keep the scavengers away from the gate when the pounding of a dozen hammers told them this was a danger point too. The Merchants Association guards at the gate looked as afraid of the scavengers there to help as they were of the cultists there to conquer. Marcus had to impose himself between the drawn guns of both sides to keep the peace.
The gate buckled in several places. Marcus hurried back up to the catwalk, ignoring the agony in his back, and got the M60 crew to move directly over the gate, tip their gun to point directly down over the men with the hammers, and fire into them.
The M60 took that moment to jam again. Almost weeping with frustration, the crew tossed the gun aside, pulled out sidearms, and exposed themselves to pump .22 and .38 rounds into crowd at the gate.
The enemy riflemen concentrated on the M60 crew and took out two despite their Kevlar, but once again the damage had been done. The men with the hammers fell back.
The whole assault started falling back. The riflemen fired into the crowd, their own people, and the mass of humanity moved back to the wall.
Clyde snapped another clip into his M16 looked at Marcus with wild eyes. “Both machine guns out, no more Molotov cocktails, we better hope these guys break soon.”
Everyone ducked as the enemy machine gun raked the top of the wall again. A hole sprouted in the metal barrier next to Clyde’s head and the bullet panged off his helmet. The Head of the Watch fell dazed into Marcus’ arms.
“Look!” a guard said, pointing toward town.
Marcus saw the muzzle flashes on the shore along two sides of the peninsula. He grabbed Clyde’s binoculars from the case on his belt and put them to his eyes.
Cultists on rafts made of planks of wood and corrugated iron were paddling along the water to both sides of the peninsula on which New City stood. They kept up a steady fire into the city while the scavenger patrols Marcus had set up returned fire. Men splashed into the water, boats bobbed along the current empty of their crews only to be replaced by more boats.
“These people are organized. They’ve taken half the Burbs apart,” Marcus moaned.
One cluster of boats was approaching shore, too close to his own home for his liking.
Clyde groaned and sat up.
“You OK to take command here?” Marcus asked him.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, getting up with the help of one of the guards.
“Good,” Marcus said. He grabbed his rifle and headed down the steps just as the roar of the crowd outside told him they were making another charge.
Marcus couldn’t worry about that now. He had to check on Rosie and the kids, and find out what was happening with this new danger.
As he hurried toward the fighting he ran into a group of Merchants Association men headed the same direction.
“What are you doing out of hiding?” Marcus asked.
“Shooting looters,” one of them grinned, missing the sarcasm. “Now we’re going to beat off this attack.”
They arrived on the scene to find the scavengers were doing that just fine. The razor wire came right down to the water so when the boatmen got to the shore they found they didn’t have anywhere to land. They stood waist deep in the sea, hacking at the wire with machetes and a couple of rusty wire cutters while their companions on the boats tried to give them covering fire.
They made easy targets for the scavengers, who picked off the riflemen on the boats first, then slaughtered the men at the wire. By the time Marcus and the patrol got there it was almost over. Most of the rafts were emptied of their crews, the few survivors swimming madly away as the rest bobbed dead in the water or hung bloodied on the wire.
Marcus told the Merchants Association to check the other side of the peninsula, from which he could still hear firing, and without bothering to see if they did what they were told he hurried back home.
Rosie stood at the door with her rifle in her hand. Tears ran down her cheeks. Marcus stopped short.
“Is he. . .?” he couldn’t finish the question.
“He lost consciousness half an hour ago. Now his heartbeat is irregular.”
Marcus looked at his wife, then turned and sprinted for the warehouse. He didn’t even notice his sciatica anymore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
When they got back to the others, Jackson saw Ha-Ram handing over the radio direction finder to three masked figures. One of them, more heavyset than the rest, detached himself from the group and walked over to Jackson.
“She got him,” the sentry told his friend.
The other man nodded. Jackson thought it strange to see two nearly identically dressed men in identical masks talking to each other. It gave them a mirror-like quality that made the scene seem surreal. He supposed that was part of the point. The heavyset man put a hand on Jackson’s shoulder.
“Ha-Ram here tells me you didn’t know any more than Annette about the true reason for your journey.”
Jackson tensed. It was weird feeling so familiar a gesture from a masked stranger.
“Once I figured it out I planned to stop them,” Jackson said.
Annette pointed at a Kalashnikov lying in a pile of weapons taken from the cultists.
“Isn’t that Mitch’s AK?” she asked.
Jackson nodded. “I disarmed him once I realized you led him in the wrong direction. Thank you for doing that. I should have trusted you earlier.”
“There’s been quite a bit of backstabbing in your little group,” the heavyset man said. His mask made it look like he was laughing at everything. “So where is he now?”
Jackson thought for a moment. “Well, the cultists didn’t get him. I figure he’s heading back to the city.”
Then a terrible thought came to him. He looked to Annette, who gave him a troubled look in return that said she was thinking the same thing.
“He needs to be stopped,” Jackson said. “He’ll tell Abe where the transmitter is. He doesn’t have the topo, but he knows the location close enough that it wouldn’t take long to find this radio station.”
“That won’t help,” Ha-Ram said, gesturing at the radio tower. “It’s a repeater. I couldn’t tell until I got close enough.”
“A repeater?” Jackson asked.
“It picks up a signal from somewhere else and boosts it. Radio Hope could be hundreds of miles away,” Ha-Ram explained.
The heavyset man tensed. “If you’re going to join us you need to learn when not to reveal what you know.”
“What!” Jackson and Annette exclaimed.
Ha-Ram grinned. “I managed to convince them.”
“How?” Annette asked.
“You’re joining them?” Jackson asked, trying to keep up with the conversation.
“That’s right,” Ha-Ram nodded. “Well, while this is a only a repeater, it wouldn’t be hard to find the original radio signal if you stood at this vantage point. And since I’m the only person in New City who knows how to make a radio direction finder. . .”
He turned and smiled at the members of Radio Hope. Their masks smiled back at him with frozen mouths.
The heavyset man still had his hand on Jackson’s shoulder. He gave Jackson a friendly squeeze.
“Tell me, how did old Casey Andrews end his days?”
“You knew him?” Jackson asked.
“Everyone from that time knew your father.”
“He died several years ago. He joined New City in the early days, when I was so young I don’t remember. He became a citizen but always fought for a better deal for the workingman. He was the one who established the idea of associate status, something The Doctor didn’t want. He got citizenship extended to more farmers too.”
“Sounds like he was true to the last.”
“He was. There’s still plenty of work left to be done, though. First thing is to stop Mitch.”
Jackson glanced at Annette, who looked decidedly unhappy.
“Try to reason with him,” Ha-Ram said.
Yeah right. Mitch is just like Brett, another lackey running to get approval from his master.
“Before you go I have a gift for The Doctor,” the heavyset man said. “Wait here.”
Jackson’s tension eased. So they really were going to get to leave. Ha-Ram had certainly helped with that, and his own and Annette’s actions had shown what side they were on. He looked at Annette with new appreciation. She just gave up a place within the walls for the sake of the greater good. That was hard for anyone to do, let alone someone with children.
The heavyset man and the woman walked away in the direction of the repeater tower and were soon out of sight. A few minutes later they returned. The leader carried a large case with red lettering and a logo Jackson immediately recognized.
“Medical supplies,” Jackson said as he took it.
“Give this to The Doctor. He’ll use it well. While he and your father didn’t always see eye to eye, he is a good man at heart.”
“A good man?” Jackson scoffed. “Have you noticed the brand on my cheek? That good man ordered it put there!”
The mask smiled back it him. Jackson felt an urge to punch it.
“You knew when you spoke out that such a thing would happen,” came the reply. “The Doctor was only bending to your will.”
Jackson blinked. The masked man went on. “You have marked yourself as a rebel, an outsider. It is people like you who often change society the most, whether for the better or worse depends on your choices, and your perspective.”
Jackson had no response to that. The medical pack had a strap, so he put it over his shoulder. He picked up Mitch’s Kalashnikov from the pile of weapons and two of the cultists’ rifles and ammo as well.
Might as well get something out of all this.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell us who you are or what your final intentions are,” Jackson said.
“Both those questions are answered well enough in our broadcasts,” the masked leader said.
Jackson shook his and Ha-Ram’s hand. Annette did the same.
“I guess this is goodbye,” Jackson said.
The technician nodded. “I may never see New City again, so best of luck to both of you. Tell Pablo I think he’d make a great radio man.”
Annette laughed, “He’ll love that.”
They walked away. After a few yards they turned and waved goodbye. Ha-Ram and the men and women from Radio Hope waved back before then turning and walking toward the repeater.
“I wonder how many of them there are,” Jackson said in a quiet voice.
“I wonder how many repeaters they have,” Annette replied.
That question sparked Jackson’s imagination. From what Ha-Ram had taught him on this trip, he knew that an AM radio signal could go hundreds of miles if it had enough power, and if a repeater could boost that signal hundreds of more miles, then Radio Hope’s base could be anywhere. They could be transmitting over the whole continent.
And their leader, or at least the leader of that scouting party. He had known Dad. His evasive response about everyone knowing Casey Jackson was just a dodge. From the way he talked it sounded like he actually knew him personally.
Jackson shook his head. There was no way of knowing now. Radio Hope wanted to stay secret, and that was for the best.
“I wonder what Abe had on Ha-Ram that made him willing to leave New City behind,” Annette said.
“Abe has his tentacles in everything,” Jackson said.
“He’s not going to honor our deal,” Annette said.
Jackson nodded sadly. “I know.”
Poor Olivia. She’ll be stuck in Toxic Bay. I’ll have to convince her to at least move to the Burbs. Assuming the Burbs are still there. I hope she got inside the walls. Abe promised. He’ll go back on that promise once we return empty-handed, but in the meantime if New City is safe then she’s safe.
