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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/RandomAppalachian468 on 2024-03-11 19:56:23.

[Part 25]

Darkness crept through the forest in a silent march, snapping at our heels as we hurried down the lonely gravel road at a light jog. The sky swirled with the beginnings of another bout of rain, but further ahead, the horizon lit up with the occasional orange and red flash, which emanated deep ka-booms that I knew belonged to no act of nature. Smoke hung faint in the air, oily and tasting of rubber, many of the routes under our shoes familiar to me. I’d come this way before on patrols as a Ranger, which mean New Wilderness couldn’t be more than thirty minutes’ walk from us. We were close, excruciatingly so, but with the night swarming in, old whispers rose in my ears like nagging curls of dread.

I turned once more to check on the column and swallowed hard at the cold sensation of metal against my skin, the second launch key suspended by a spare shoelace I had tied into a necklace.

If Vecitorak is still out here, he could be watching us right now. Good God, what if he discovered the missiles? An army of intelligent freaks with nukes . . . it’d be the end, the absolute end of everything.

Rifle fire clattered beyond the trees, and I waved to urge the children on, racing up the incline that the road followed up a small hill. “Faster! Come on, we’re losing the light! Keep up the pace!”

At the crest of the hill, the road started to slope downward again, and I ground to a halt in shock.

New Wilderness stood like an island in the fading sunset, ringed with its strong walls high above the creeping shadows, but it was not how I remembered it. Flames dotted the outer fields, spats of light shot from the walls, and more chattered back from the broad scrubland surrounding the fort. Smoke roiled into the air from more fires on the hilltop, and whistling streaks of white smoke zipped through the air to explode against the defenses with deafening eruptions. Geysers of dirt went up around the fort, shells screaming from inside, and in the glow of the firelight, I could just make out a wide ring of dugout emplacements surrounding New Wilderness.

“We’re too late.” I gasped.

My misadventures in the north had taken almost two weeks, far too long to reach the wooden redoubt before Captain Grapeshot’s forces. Judging by the black marks on the palisade walls, the flames, and shell craters, this had been going on for days at least, perhaps more. The pirate gun pits looked well-dug, even for a crew of vicious children, and the rockets flying toward the fort came in faster succession than whatever shells that replied. Bullets slashed across the roughly hundred-yard stretch of dead ground between the siege lines and the besieged, a deadly upward slope that held more than a few bloated corpses. Our flag clung to its skinny pole above the battlements, the white and green cloth ripped from shrapnel, while a black skull-and-crossbones fluttered from the siegeworks in a similar state of wear.

Around me, the others slowed to a stop, panting and pale-faced, their eyes taking in the specter of war with horror.

One of the younger members of the group looked to me, her brown eyes gleaming with fear. “Who are those people?”

“I thought you said this place was safe?” Grumbled another girl, this one closer to adulthood, as she scowled at me.

“There’s no way we can get in there.” An older boy shook his head and took a step toward the direction we’d come. “We have to go back to the bunker. Maybe we can get the power working and stay there until the fighting stops.”

Vecitorak would get us first.

Just thinking his name made the scars on my skin itch, and I could almost feel the cruel eyes in the trees on the back of my neck. I swallowed, and searched the war-torn landscape, trying desperately to find something, anything to give me a hint as to what to do next. Even as I sought for answers, a panicked, primal voice in my head screamed the same thing over and over into my ear.

Chris was in there.

Lucille appeared at my side, her own gaze riveted to the fort, and she shrugged her sister’s rifle higher on one shoulder. “What do we do now?”

Closing my eyes for a moment, I sucked in a breath, my composure barely held together by strings of petrified hope. I just needed something, some indication of what to do, but I couldn’t think of anything. My heightened senses had failed me, my wits deserted me, and I found myself utterly inadequate to deal with the crushing weight of despair that threatened to bury me forever.

Somewhere in the back of my mind’s eye, I saw again the stranger in the yellow chemical suit, standing there with his lantern and umbrella in the pouring rain of that mysterious road from my dream.

Breathe.

His words flowed like cool water over my frantic thoughts, loosened my tight muscles, and brought my heartrate down to somewhat-normal levels.

You’ve done well, filia mea. Look closer.

Opening my eyes, I squinted at the chaotic rolling plain ahead, and the air caught in my throat.

About a quarter mile down the road from the gates of our outer perimeter fence, the gravel diverged into a crossroads overlooked by an old railroad bridge, known locally as Eldar Crossing. Back in the mining days, it had been used to dump coal from trail cars into trucks, or so Jamie had said. From here I could just make out the orange-brown girders of the bridge, the boxy metal chutes bolted to the underside, surrounded by thickets of multiflora rose. To anyone who didn’t know, it looked just like another decaying relic from the coal era, left to rust away in the forgotten wastes of Appalachia.

I, however, knew we had an outpost there; an outpost with fellow Rangers, weapons, and a radio connected to the fort’s network.

“Follow me.” With renewed fervor, I lunged back into a run, the others in pursuit as we turned right down the parallel roadway.

As if I’d been touched by some magic wand that had restored my stamina, I raced on through the encroaching night, the others doing their best to keep up, and we swung around the edge of the siege buy the decrepit backroads of post-human Ohio. If I could reach the outpost, we could radio the fort, maybe arm up with better weapons, and help break through the siege lines from the outside. Victory was near, so close I could almost taste it behind the ashy soot and rubbery smoke.

I’m coming, Chris. Just hang on. I’ll be there soon.

It seemed an eternity, but at last, we reached the crossing, and I threw myself toward the access door at the top of the steep incline.

“Friendlies! Friendlies coming in!” I shouted, uncertain if the defenders would mistake our advance for the pirates and waved my hands over my head. “It’s Hannah, don’t shoot!”

Ducking a few lopsided strands of barbed wire, I reached the metal door at the top of the embankment and beat my fist against it three times.

No challenge or reply came from inside.

“Guys?” I gasped, my heart thumping like a trip-hammer, and tugged on the handle.

The door swung open freely, and the foul stench hit me like a freight train.

No.

Bodies lay draped across the room, stripped of their weapons and gear, mutilated and butchered to the point of being unrecognizable. In the shadowy gloom of the outpost interior, I noticed the bullet holes in the walls, the spent casings on the floor, and the blood spattered across the corroded metal. I now understood that the door had been ajar because the lock was smashed, the barbed wire lopsided because it had been cut, and the room stank of copper because a hand grenade had smeared the defenders’ insides all over the walls and ceiling like sticky finger-paint. I could taste the salty burned gunpowder on the back of my tongue, and in the stony silence of the wrecked outpost, I tried not to imagine their cries of pain as our men were cut down. All the dead rangers were missing their hair, the scalp sliced away with crude, ragged edges to the torn flesh. Eyes had been gouged out, limbs broken or chopped off, skulls stomped in, as if the pirates had been in some kind of blind rage that death itself could not quench. The dead had been stripped bare, their naked bodies pockmarked with slashes, cuts, and puncture marks from a storm of cruel blades. Judging by the amount of brass on the floor and the bullet holes in the bodies, most of the rangers had either died from the grenade, or went down fighting, but I pitied any that might have lived long enough to endure the pirates’ wrath.

They picked the place clean, the filthy cretins. Didn’t even leave them in their clothes. God on high, the smell . . .

Gagging noises erupted from behind me, and Lucille leaned out the door to vomit onto the grass. The others recoiled in similar fashion from the charnel-house interior, but I couldn’t let our only respite go to waste.

“Everyone inside, now.” My shoes squished on cooled blood and a few severed fingers, and I propped open the metal gunport shutters to let in some fresh air. “Move it, we don’t have much time.”

“Why?” One of the children tried to protest, but I stalked back to the doorframe and began to pull them in one-by-one, a hazy plan forming in my mind.

“You’ll be safe here.” I press-checked my Colt and peered through the steel shutters to survey the battlefield, my eyes following a line of unburned brush that clotted near the base of the hill. It would be a half-mile run to ...

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