Trail of Tears Read Online Free

well
armed? A hail of bullets buzzed from the darkness and his left
crutch was torn from his grasp. He fell awkwardly into the mud and
one of the weapons dug painfully into his back. He felt hands grasp
him and pull him towards a low wall.
    “Determined to get yourself killed, aren’t
you?” There was no humour in Delilah’s face.
    “I brought presents,” he said weakly and
offered her an assault rifle. She grabbed it but said nothing,
turning instead and scanning the darkness.
    “You’ll have to stay here now,” she said
softly. “You make too big a target with those silver stilts of
yours. Pull yourself up here and make yourself useful.”
    “Is this a date, then,” he tried again to
lighten the mood but her continued silence left him in no doubt
that she was not amused. Suddenly the impending attack seemed less
worrying than the tongue lashing he would invariably suffer later.
If they survived.
     
    * * *
     
    Emma heard the whispering and stopped
moving. She had thought the invaders were further to her left but
it was hard to tell with the rain hammering down and that damn .50
calibre chattering incessantly. Jesus, they were so close. She had been trying to make her way back towards the complex but
the .50 calibre was tearing through brick and rock as the defenders
swept across the wasteland. It was certainly keeping the bad guys
from launching an attack but it was also ripping everything to
pieces around her and sending deadly ricochets and shrapnel
buzzing. She had already been hit twice by small pieces of
shrapnel. Both wounds hurt like hell but she dared not move to
examine them. She lay with the rain soaking her back and hair and
the mud seeping into her clothes. There seemed to be nowhere that
was safe.
    The bullets washed over her every eight
seconds or so and the thunder of the heavy weapon along with the
noise from the flying hail destroyed her hearing. She had only
heard the whispering at all because the heavy weapon was obviously
being reloaded.
    “Sir, the radio isn’t working,” the voice
whispered urgently and there was a faint squeal of static as if in
support of the report.
    Wilkins must have finally gotten the radio
shield back up. Thank God. For whatever reason this patrol hadn’t
reported in before they began the attack. That was the only piece
of luck they’d had tonight.
    “Forget it,” a voice replied. “This won’t
take long. We’ve done what we needed to do here. Bravo team will
have flanked the complex by now. Once they take out that fucking
heavy calibre we’ll tear through these bastards easily.”
    Emma felt cold fingers of dread grip her
heart. She was about to move slowly away from the patrol when the
.50 calibre suddenly began to chatter and bullets swept over her
again, pinning her to the ground. Every time she tried to move she
felt sharp needle-like stings as shrapnel pricked her skin in
countless places and forced her to remain huddled in her hollow.
She had to warn the others, but with the friendly fire and the
threat of the patrol in front of her she was effectively out of the
fight. If the flanking force took out the .50 calibre it would
allow her to move but, if that happened, then it would already be
too late.
     
    * * *
     
    Sandra fumed as she made her way over to the
heavy machine gun emplacement. How could they continue to fire when
one of their own was still out there? She wasn’t stupid, she knew
that they needed to keep the patrol pinned down until they got
organised. But Harris would have found a way to do both. They had
not been gone that long but already the community seemed colder
than before. Yes, it was larger and it wasn’t always possible to
maintain the sense of community they had enjoyed when there had
been only a few of them. But, somewhere along the way, the
community had lost something. She wasn’t particularly religious,
especially in light of what had happened in the world, but the only
way she could describe it was that the community