Brad Zaxxon's Arc

Chapter 3 of 9

The garage was theirs, but the schematic changed everything. An informant meant the raiders would come back. So Brad ordered patrols twice a day, dawn and dusk, to guard the vault and the ground he still needed to map. At four in the morning he rode the armored carrier along the perimeter road. The engine growled low. Conner drove. Russel rode the gun. Brad watched the dark valley through his glasses and waited for nothing to happen. Russel found it first. She was Brad's youngest Ranger, sharp-eyed and quiet, the one who never missed a shift. She swung the white phosphor monocular up and froze. "Contact," she said, flat and fast. "Road ahead. A truck, stopped. Bodies moving around it. Six, maybe more." She passed Brad the scope. Through the green glow he counted armed shapes hauling crates. Raiders. Coming back for the vault, just as he feared. Brad keyed Donovan's radio. Static hissed, then cleared. "Donovan. We've got raiders on the perimeter road. A truck, six-plus, armed." "Oh man." A pause, keys clicking. "You bet they're the same crew. I've got you on the map. You want Greymire rolling? He can be there in ten." "Ten's too long. They'll scatter or dig in." Brad watched them work. They hadn't seen the carrier. "We hit them now. Get Greymire moving anyway." "Done. Watch the treeline behind that truck. Signal's clean if you need me." Brad cut the light. "Conner, kill the engine. Russel, the gun." The carrier rolled to a stop on the shoulder. Russel settled behind the machine gun, breathing slow. Brad braced his rifle on the hatch and picked his target. The raiders loaded scrap in the dark, blind and easy. "Now," Brad said. The gun opened up. Tracer light stitched across the road. Two raiders dropped by the truck. The rest scattered, firing wild into the dark. Rounds sparked off the carrier's hull. Brad squeezed off three shots and took down a runner. Russel walked the gun left, then right, and the return fire thinned. In under a minute the road went quiet. A wounded raider crawled toward the ditch. Conner put him down. Brad climbed out and swept the wreck with his light. Four dead. The truck bed held vault parts and cutting tools. Then he found the last man, gut-shot and breathing hard against a tire. Brad knelt. "Who told you where to dig?" The raider coughed blood and grinned. "You already know him. He's inside your wire." His head lolled. Gone. Brad stood. The patrol had worked. He'd stopped the raiders cold and saved the vault a second time. But the dying man's words landed like a stone. The informant wasn't out here in the dark. He was in the camp, near the garage, walking among Brad's own people. Brad keyed the radio. "Donovan. Wave off Greymire. It's over." He looked back toward the distant garage lights. "But we've got a bigger problem. And it's already home."