The Reaper: No Mercy by Sean Liebling Page B

familiar.
    Pocketing his binoculars he started running, dodging around cars and container trucks until he neared the easternmost entrance. He slowed to a walk, propping his rifle once again against his shoulder and then stopped, for he could hear sounds coming from within. He shook his head and, seeing a stack of pallets off to one side of the entrance, slung his rifle and started stacking then in the center of the foremost bay. Soon he had a stack of six, high enough to sit comfortably, and propping his rifle against the side of the wooden stack he pulled his ruck around and quickly dug down to the bottom. There in a secret Velcro compartment were documents and he withdrew the top two packets. These he opened quickly, for the sounds from behind the bay door before him were becoming more urgent, and he heard the clatter of main guns charging.
    The Reaper grinned as he relaxed with the papers in hand, and watched as the sheet metal door rolled upward. Two M-ATVs greeted him, guns pointed, along with four soldiers arrayed alongside them. They stared at him in surprise while wildly looking around.
    "Do you men realize how loud you are when you're getting ready?" he spoke in a low, gravelly voice. "You should work on that."
     
    *****
     
    Rodriguez turned away from the window after watching the pillar of rising smoke for several minutes, his fingers drummed softly on the stair railing beside him as he thought about their current situation. They were in a no-win situation. This wasn't how it was supposed to be, yet here they were. A large gang that vastly outnumbered their own experienced fighters were right at the brink of attacking them. Rodriguez knew this, just as surely as he knew the sun rose in the east and settled in the west.
    Shifting around to continue watching out the narrow window on the second floor of the industrial complex they were hiding in, he spoke out of the corner of his mouth to his second-in-command, Staff Sergeant Brian Schuster.
    "Shue, if those jack wipes are burning down the city we'll need to relocate, and quickly. I want you to take two men out the back and scout for any large facilities to our south at least ten miles away. If you can make it back tonight, great; if not, hole up somewhere safe after radioing us. Take one of the Humvees. Those cabron will attack us sooner or later, probably sooner and this worries me, so be careful and don't take any chances."
    "Got it, Sergeant. I'll take two men and leave now while we still have a few hours of daylight left," the man beside him responded. Both were wearing camouflage fatigues, just as both wore their hair short. Assault vests adorned their forms, and the M4A1 carbine in its three-point sling rested across their chests. This, along with the similar physiques of average husky males completed the picture of combat-ready soldiers.
    "What's going on, Dennis?" The soft, inquiring female voice behind Rodriguez caused him to turn around quickly and smile.
    "Hey hey, Nance. Nothing really. Just doing a recon in case we need to move."
    "Why would we need to move? We have wounded and we've just finished gathering enough supplies for the winter," she said. Nance, or Nancy, was a nurse and a damn good one. Formerly an employee of the Surgical Center of Northcentral in Moberly, Missouri, she had been lead surgical nurse when the shit hit the fan. Almost twenty years of experience helping and assisting other surgeons had turned her into a great field doctor. Though somewhat out of her element, she had excelled when push came to shove and had saved a great many lives. Right now, she sounded worried and scared. Dennis smiled brighter as he reached out to pull her close and hug her with a hug that was returned. She may have been forty-five but she looked thirty-five with her brown hair, green eyes, and curvy figure. Since the day the world ended and they had barely escaped Moberly with their lives, he and Nance had grown close ... very close.
    "Hey hey, baby. Don't