Chapter 1

"Bridge coming up," Jose Garcia said into his radio, as the convoy hummed toward the old I-55 bridge across the Mississippi River.

On this side of the river, they were in friendly territory. The old city of West Memphis had been razed to the ground to make sure they had clear fields of fire, and the fortifications that Phoenicia had built, combined with continuous, random patrols all up and down the west bank of the river and the surrounding countryside would make it very difficult for scavs or barbs to do any damage in the former state of Arkansas. The east side of the river was a different story altogether. Memphis, or at least it's skeleton, was still in the hands of the barbs.

Jose hated taking convoys through the old cities. there were just too damned many places for the scavs and barbs to hide - too many chances for ambush. Problem was, there just weren't many usable bridges left over the old Mississippi river, and all of them connected through the old cities on one side or another. Why the hell they had to annex some damned place in Mississippi before pacifying its northern neighbor, Jose didn't know. Like most Phoenicians, he had voted for Gavin Thompson's son for President in the first election, and for the most part, had no real reason to regret his choice, but sometimes he wondered about the decisions that were made on behalf of Phoenicia.

Phoenicia continued to grow, and President Chen-Thompson had continued his father's policy on expansion: He annexed only those places that were unclaimed or that asked to be annexed. In the early days, though, it had been a little easier. Sure, there had always been fighting with renegade bands of scavs or barbs that wanted to set up their own little kingdoms, but most of them had been afraid of the might of Phoenicia. Still were, truth be told, but with fewer and fewer pre-sickness things of any value to be found, the lure of Phoenicia's seemingly limitless food, fuel, and ammo supplies as well as her manufactured goods, including operational vehicles and the fuel to run them, was just too strong for fear to keep the scavs at bay for long.

These days, they were smarter, so Phoenicians who ventured in or near their territory had to be, too. Instead of sending scouts ahead in the old urban areas, the entire escort stayed with the trucks. What this tactic lost the convoy in forward intel, it gained them in not having the scouts captured and held hostage. So far, in all of the cases Jose knew about, that ploy had done the scavs no good. Following the example set by Gavin Thompson at the battle for the Citadel, Phoenicians did their damndest to rescue the hostages, but whether they were successful in the rescue or not, they made damn sure the scavs got nothing for their trouble but death. It was tough, attacking when your friends or comrades might get killed, but if Coyote Who Rides a Horse could do it with his wife's life at stake, it was incumbent on the rest of them to uphold the policy. In the long run, Jose guessed, it would mean fewer kidnappings. In the short run it meant fewer scavs, and occasionally, fewer Phoenicians, so they kept the scouts with the convoy in the danger zones.

As the convoy reached the middle of the bridge, they left Phoenicia held territory, and the cleared roadway behind. From this point forward, they would have to avoid roads congested with the rusting hulks of pre-sickness vehicles when possible. As in the case of the bridge now facing them, it was sometimes impossible to avoid the congestion. In those cases, they cleared their own path. The car mover at the front of the column systematically picked up the old piles of rust and stacked them to either side, clearing the way for the trucks that followed, and making it even more dangerous for barbs to hide among the hulks.

The car mover was an invention of the folks up in Sillyvale. It greatly eased the task of running convoys on the old freeways, especially when they expected to need the road more than once. If things went well with the new annex, they would soon have their own forge in operation and cleanup crews would begin collecting the old cars in this area to be melted down so the metal could be re-used.

Every muscle tense, every sense alert, Jose watched through the mesh that protected his vehicle's windshield from thrown objects as they approached the eastern end of the bridge. Once they got off the bridge and into Memphis proper, they left the freeway and hit the city streets. The car mover switched to its armored blade as it got to the relatively clear city streets again, pushing aside the few vehicles they encountered rather than taking time to lift them out of the way, and the convoy headed southeast.

They avoided the interstates until the ruined buildings began to thin out. They traversed almost due south on a wide thoroughfare with very few of the old cars on it. Finally, the old map that Jose carried told them it was time to turn east onto Winchester Road. They would cross the old Airport and hit Lamar Ave/US 78 just before it left Memphis and headed south into Mississippi. Scouting reports said that route was pretty open all the way to New Albany, with only a little congestion before they reached their destination near Tupelo. By avoiding the vicinity of the hospital they should be able to reach the new annex without too much trouble - if they made it out of Memphis.

They had smooth sailing along the wide expanse of Winchester Road and Jose began to think they might make it without a fight. Once they reached the airport, the terrain would be too open to allow for any good ambush spots. True, there was the tunnel under the old runway, but he didn't plan on taking them through that. They would simply cut across the runways and re-join the road on the other side.

"Hey, Jose," the driver of the car mover called over the radio. "We've got a problem. Looks like the little bridge over that creek just before the airport is out."

"Crap!" Jose cursed. "Okay, hold up while I check alternatives..."

His natural inclination was to head south toward East Raines, but as he studied the route, he realized that he would have to cross I-55 at least twice, and couldn't be sure that those overcrossings were stable. True, the one they had just crossed on Winchester had been okay, but ... If he went north on Winbrook, it was a much shorter jog to East Brooks, which would bring them out not far from their planned route across the airport.

"Turn North on Winbrook. That takes us through an industrial area, but there should be another crossing over that creek on East Brooks," He told the driver of the car mover.

"Which one's Winbrook?"

"Oh, sorry," Jose said, "last one to the left before the bridge."

"I see it. Here goes."

Jose didn't have to tell his people that a forced detour could mean an ambush. There were enough veterans on this trip, and they would tell the rookies.

When the bridge on East Brooks turned out to be down, also, the hair went up on the back of Jose's neck. What to do? They were pretty heavily armed, and to the best of his knowledge, the scavs in Memphis only had crossbows, but his knowledge was pretty sketchy. He was about to order the convoy to turn around, when the driver of the car mover came back on.

"Hey, I can see an intact bridge just to the north, there. Can we get to that?"

Jose studied the map and saw that a street called Directors Row led to another bridge over Days creek. That was probably the one the driver was seeing. He surveyed the surrounding area. It was fairly open - not great terrain for an effective ambush. He looked at his driver, a veteran of several years.

"What do you think?"

The driver looked around, checked that his M16 was ready and easy to get to, then spat out the window and said, "It's your call, Jose. Was me, I'd head back to Ar-kansas, but then I never wanted this job to start with. I reckon there's scavs down that road, but I reckon we can handle 'em. Always have before."

Jose nodded. He had never failed to get a convoy through, but he was pretty sure they were going to have a fight on their hands.

"Listen up everyone," he said into the mic. "We're probably being led into an ambush here, but the only other way across this creek is pretty far to the south, and we don't know much about the terrain that way. Everyone make sure your armor is secure and if you're not driving, try to get to a firing position. Car mover, you go first. If you make it through, we'll follow. Don't try to be heroes. If it gets too hot, hightail it out of there and we'll find another route."

The car mover drove slowly through the industrial area traversed by Directors Row, and appeared on the other side of the creek.

"Didn't see anything in there boss," the driver said, as he pulled up on the other side.

"Okay, people," Jose said as he motioned his driver forward, "let's go, but keep your eyes peeled."

The last truck in the convoy had just made the turn and was about half a block up Director's Row, when the bridge was blown.

"Reverse!" Jose shouted into his mike, too late.

A blast on the street side of its base toppled the four- or five-story building on the corner into the street behind them, effectively blocking their retreat.

"Out of the trucks!" Jose didn't have to hear the blast to his rear to know that they were boxed. "Fifties, covering fire! Everyone else take cover!"

He had no way of knowing, yet, just what they were up against, but from the look of the buildings on either side, this was going to get ugly. This had once been an industrial area with widely spaced, warehouse-type buildings lining both sides of the street. The gaps between those buildings suddenly filled with heavy wooden barricades, pushed from inside the warehouses by raggedly clad barbs. They were well and truly screwed.

The fifties were chewing the facades off the buildings, trying to keep the ambushers away from the windows and rooflines, but already three of his people were down with crossbow bolts sticking out of them.

"Kill the ones pushing the barricades!" Jose shouted. If they could leave some gaps in the defenses they might be able to ... Even as he thought it, he realized it was already too late.

He could have let them stay in the trucks, of course, and they would have had some protection, but experience had taught them that because of the limited fields of fire from inside the vehicles, they could not fight effectively if they stayed with the trucks. More than one convoy had been found stripped with the bodies of the people still inside the vehicles, looking like porcupines.

"Lander One Zero, get the fuck out of here!" Jose told the car mover. "See if you can make it to the new annex!"

"But sir... !" the driver of the car mover protested.

"You can't help us, One Zero!" Jose cut him off. "Just get your asses out of there! They're more interested in us, anyway!"

"Roger, Lander," the driver said reluctantly as he moved his vehicle off toward the airport.

Jose switched frequencies on his radio as he dashed into a recessed doorway. "Moonbase, this is Lander One, do you copy? Over."

"Roger Lander, Moonbase copies."

"Moonbase, Lander has been grounded. Situation critical," Jose panted, then loosed a three round burst at the head that appeared briefly in a window across the street. "Will execute procedure Delta Tango as soon as Lander personnel are clear."

"Copy that, Lander," the operator at Moonbase, over in what used to be Arkansas, did not sound happy. "You will execute Delta Tango. Good luck, Lander."

"We'll need it, Moonbase. Lander out." Jose switched back to the convoy's frequency. He didn't blame the Moonbase Operator. He wasn't too happy about the situation himself. Delta Tango was the new policy to come out of Phoenix, and it made sense. If the convoy was lost anyway, there was no point in letting the scavs have it. The policy would serve as a deterrent, and keep scavs from using Phoenicia's own technology against them. "By the numbers, fifties rig for Delta Tango and join up. On my mark, Lander One One - go!"

The machine gun on the lead truck went silent and ten seconds later, the gunner appeared, dashing back past Jose's position. "Lander One Two - go!"

The gunner from the next truck joined Jose in his dash toward the rear of the column. "Lander One Tharee - go!"

As he said 'go!' Jose keyed the first detonator and the truck he had ridden in blew, taking a couple of over-eager scavs with it. He continued leapfrogging toward the rear of the column, triggering the detonators for each truck as the one behind it cleared. He waited until his unit had cleared the pile of rubble that blocked off the rear of the column before detonating the last two trucks. Those were the fuel and ammo carriers. The blast of the fuel truck didn't ignite the bio-diesel but the secondary explosions from ammo that cooked off in the ammo truck did. The entire block behind them became an inferno, and Jose smiled grimly when he saw a couple of scavs, coated in burning bio-D, staggering through the flames, screaming

Jose had paused to make sure his job was done, and the rest of the unit was already half a block away when he turned to join them. He had not gone ten yards when something hit him and his lights went out.

When he awoke, Jose was strapped to a wooden chair, naked. The pounding in his head was not helped by the shrieks of someone in agony nearby. There was a painful sensation in his groin, and as his eyes focused, he saw two copper clamps with jagged teeth, green with corrosion, attached to his scrotum. That was going to be really bad news later, but for now, the screaming drew his attention

Jose almost puked when he saw what was causing the noise. Ten feet away, one of the women from his unit who had fallen to a crossbow was being sodomized by a scav who looked like he hadn't washed since the Sickness. Every once in a while the rapist would grab the crossbow dart that protruded from her upper torso and twist it in the wound, laughing as his victim screamed even louder.

"So, Mr. Firebird," an almost toothless face, as dirty as the other, was thrust in front of Jose and he gagged at the fetid stench that accompanied the words. "You joined the party fin'ly!"

"You don't know how much trouble you're in, whoever you are," Jose blustered. "Phoenicia will hunt you and your people down and execute every one of you! You do not fuck with Phoenician convoys!"

"Wall," Toothless grinned, "fust, they gotta ketch us! Meanwhile, I don't think little miss tight ass over thar's gonna last a whole lot longer, so I better go git me some 'fore she croaks! Bubba'll be along ta see to you by 'n by!"

The first rapist gave the crossbow bolt a final vicious twist as he finished his business, and suddenly his victim was silent. Jose hoped fervently that she was dead, and that her suffering was ended. He had only met her yesterday when the convoy formed up, but she was under his command and it tore his guts out to know that he had let her down so badly. He hoped the fact that none of the rest of the unit was in the room meant that they had made good their retreat.

Toothless picked up a bucket of dirty water and splashed some of it in the woman's face. When there was no response, he bent to listen for breath sounds and touched his fingers to the side of her neck.

"God damnit, Cletus!" Toothless exclaimed. "You done kilt her 'fore I got my turn!"

"Hell," Cletus said, wiping himself with a dirty rag, "she warn't no fun nohow, what with bein' half dead an' all."

"Well, what the hell 'm I s'posed to do? Go around with the blueballs all day?"

"Hell, ya got another one right yonder," Cletus nodded in Jose's direction. "Have at it!"

"Now you know Bubba wants to talk to that'n! He'll have my hide if I..."

"Shit, Jack," Cletus laughed, "you really think yours is big enough to do that much damage? If anything you'll just soften him up a little for Bubba!"

Jose, listening, knew what was coming, and tried desperately to prepare himself despite the twisting in his gut. He knew that Toothless Jack wouldn't be able to fulfill his purpose if he left Jose tied to the chair, and the Phoenician waited for him to loosen the ropes that held him down.