Winter Igniting

  Another smell had him stopping cold. It wasn’t rubber. He pivoted to put his body between Greyson and the fence until he could see what it was.

  Grey paused. Soot was already falling to coat his black hair. “Ah, shit.”

  “Mierda.” Jax’s jaw tightened, and he tucked his gun into the back of his jeans. “Cover me.” Without waiting for an answer, he unlocked the gate and swung it open. “Mercs go left, I’ll go right.” He launched smoothly into motion.

  Damon kept low and went left, trusting Greyson to have his back. The second he made it around the truck, two bodies came into view. Partially burned, still burning, a man and a woman lay face down on the cracked concrete. From their backs, he didn’t recognize them.

  Jax came around the other side and rushed the bodies, slapping out the flames. He turned the woman over, and her dark, curly hair spread across the scalded concrete. “Fuck.”

  The woman was in her early thirties with a bullet hole in her forehead. Her brown eyes were still open and staring sightlessly at the sky. Damon gingerly reached out and rolled the guy over to reveal a similar wound. But he was younger. Maybe eighteen. “Jax?” he murmured.

  “Scouts. Jennifer and Lewis Washington. Mother and son who somehow survived the pandemic,” Jax said, his voice hoarse. “They were out scouting with a larger group early this morning.”

  “Where?” Greyson asked grimly, his gaze skirting past the overturned trucks and stacks of tires that protected the outside perimeter of Vanguard territory.

  Jax shook his head. “Dunno. I’ll have to check the records.”

  Damon crouched down and studied the kid’s body. Muscled and strong. His knuckles were split, and his left wrist looked as if it had been broken. “He put up a good fight.” Damon looked up at Jax. “How many people are in your scouting parties?”

  “Four to six,” Jax said, his powerful shoulders down, his accent sharp. In the blazing sun, with the stench of burned flesh all around them, he had gone pale beneath his bronzed skin. “This is the third murder with an explosion around the territory in the last week.” Wiping sweat from his brow, he jerked his head. “Check his pocket.”

  Damon gingerly reached past the burned shirt and tugged out a piece of purple bandana from the dead kid’s left pocket. “Twenty gang.” He’d fought the gang before the pandemic, and even then, they were deadly. “Weren’t you a member?” he asked quietly, reaching up to close the eyes of both victims. They didn’t need to watch this world any longer. His chest hurt. Bad.

  “Yes,” Jax said. “I was a member until I turned seventeen and entered the service. I’ve been fighting them since creating Vanguard.”

  Damon stood, the piece of purple bandana oddly soft in his hand.

  The hair on his arms rose. He paused, filtering out the sound of the crackling fire. “Wait.” Slowly, he turned his head, going on full alert.

  A glint from a railroad boxcar caught his eye. “Gun!” he yelled, leaping for Greyson and taking him to the ground. Bullets pinged off the burning truck. He jumped up and ran for the nearest stack of tires, leaning around the edge and firing.

  Grey reached him in a second. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “My job.” Damon reared up and fired again, aiming for the glint he’d seen earlier. He nodded toward Jax and two of his men, all three crouched behind a turned-over SUV, firing in turn.

  There was a cleared area of two rows of tracks between them and the old car with the shooter, so heading in that direction would be suicide. “We need to get rid of those old cars,” he yelled to Jax.

  Jax cut him a look. “No shit,” he called back. “You have a tractor handy?”

  No, actually. But this was a serious threat to security, and they had to figure it out. “I’ll get one to you this week,” he muttered. If he were going to concentrate on the inner territory with the crazy church, he had to know the perimeter was secure. “Any ideas?” he gasped quietly to Greyson.

  Grey wiped blood off a cut above his left eye. “It’ll be a huge waste of fuel, but we’ll have to use the trucks. The ones they haven’t turned over, of course.”

  A blur of purple caught Damon’s attention. He levered up, aimed, and squeezed the trigger. A cry of pain echoed over the sound of the burning tires. “Got him.” Now, it was time to figure out who was out there. “Cover me.” With that, he launched into motion.

  “Damn it, Winter,” Jax bellowed.

  Damon crouched and ran in a zigzag pattern, Greyson on his heels. They both fired toward the offending railway car, even as more gunfire exploded all around them. So, two shooters with automatic weapons.

  Fuck.

  A gun emerged from the opening of the car, discharging with the shooter’s body off to the side. Damon slid left and fired in the direction of the gun.

  Blood burst out, and a man screamed in pain.

  “Hit the hand,” Grey grunted just as they reached the rusting car. Damon jumped inside, fell to his knees on the rough wood, and slid, turning with his gun ready to fire.

  Two men in their early twenties sat on the floor, the first dead from a head shot. The second guy held his bloody hand to his chest, rocking back and forth. Tears and snot slid down his face. His gun had fallen to the scrub grass outside.

  Damon angled his body and looked out the opening on the other side. More cars and basic quiet. They had to clear this area, damn it. “Two down in here,” he called out.

  Greyson suddenly filled the doorway. Soot and dirt still covered his black hair, and his eyes looked pissed. “Twenty.”

  Damon eyed the injured gang member, who hadn’t looked up. “We have doctors.”

  “Good for you,” the guy muttered. Dirt matted his dark hair and nearly covered his face. “If you’re going to shoot me, just do it.”

  “Haven’t decided yet,” Damon said conversationally. “You’re obviously a member of Twenty.” The purple bandana tied around the guy’s left leg was a bit obvious. “Who’s giving orders these days?”

  The guy finally looked up, his eyes blazing. “President Atherton is giving orders, asshole. He’s our Commander in Chief, and Twenty has been subscripted into service as the front line. We’re the Marines, 2.0.”

  Damon cocked his head. “Subscripted? That’s not the correct usage of that word, bud.”

  The guy shrugged. “Whatever.”

  Yeah. Genius material.

  Jax appeared next to Greyson. “How many members in Twenty these days?”

  The guy shrugged again.

  Damon cut Grey a look. They needed those answers, and no doubt, the Vanguard lieutenants had no problem extracting information. He didn’t see the need for torture. Never had. “Listen, buddy. The world has gone to shit, and it’s nice to find a place. But are you really a guy who just blows things up, scares people, and then shoots at folks you don’t know? What did you do before this?”

  The guy looked up. “I was serving ten to twenty for drug distribution.” He grinned. “I was a member of Twenty before it became the president’s front line.”

  That was unfortunate.

  Jax leaned in. “Must’ve been after my time with them.” He shrugged. “Tell us what we want to know, or we’ll take you to the inner territory, and then you’ll tell us what we want to know.”

  Damon stood, his body stiffening. The former cop inside him hated this part of survival. The soldier he’d become understood it. “Listen. These guys aren’t kidding, and I’d rather just see you go to the doctor and get that hand fixed. Answer the questions, and we’ll even get you medical help.” He’d make sure of it.

  The guy looked up again. “Fuck you.”

  “That’s a no,” Greyson said softly. “Plan B it is, then.”

  Gravel crunched lightly on the other side of the boxcar. “Unfriendlies,” Damon bellowed, leaping for both Grey and Jax, taking them down to the hard railroad ties as gunfire hit right where he’d been sitting. His elbow hit first, and pain ricocheted up his arm. He was up and moving in unison w
ith the two soldiers in a split second. Grey went left, Jax went right, and Damon pivoted to leap back into the car.

  Agony pierced his right shoulder, and he rolled, coming up and tackling the newest shooter center mass, Damon’s head in the guy’s solar plexus. The guy shouted with a shocked “oof” as they flew through the heated air and landed on the railroad ties with a hard thump.

  Damon swiped the gun out of the guy’s hand with one quick punch.

  Three shots echoed behind him, and he rolled, coming up on his knees.

  Jax had taken down two to the right, and Grey had killed one member wearing a lot of purple to the left.

  “Scan the area,” Damon muttered as the guy next to him struggled to get up. Enough of this shit. Damon partially turned on the ground and punched the roughly forty-year-old beneath the jaw hard enough to snap his neck back. The guy fell unconscious, his head bouncing twice on a wooden railroad tie.

  Damon stood, his gun ready as Jax and Greyson swept the five remaining railroad cars.

  Finally, they both called out an “all clear.”

  Damon ran back to the original car to see the wounded man flat on the floor, the top half of his head missing. Apparently, his buddy hadn’t aimed very well.

  Nausea rolled in Damon’s gut, and he swallowed it down.

  Grey jogged up. “You okay?”

  Damon glanced down at his bleeding shoulder. “Yeah. Bullet just nicked me.” He jerked his head. “I’ll help carry that guy.”

  “No,” Jax said, moving their way. “You’re bleeding, and he might be bleeding. You have to stay away from fluids.”

  Man. Sometimes, Damon forgot he was one of the few who hadn’t been infected by Scorpius.

  Yet.

  6

  I am so out of my league, it’s not even funny. My entire life, I’ve avoided risk and danger. Those might as well be Damon’s middle names.

  ——April Snyder, Journal

  April finished settling the kids back at their games on the first level of the apartment building after being given the all clear by one of the soldiers. This guy was a Mercenary, as evidenced by the dark T-shirt and ripped jeans. All the Mercs wore the black shirts on duty. He disappeared back outside.

  It was nice to have the new soldiers providing extra protection, but none of them seemed all that happy to be there.

  Of course, who was happy?

  She sat at a beat-up table and read through the notes she’d made on an old legal pad outlining information on the kids and their routines, just in case something happened to her.

  The front door opened, and Sharon Matson slipped inside, her face red and sweat dotting her upper lip. Her curly, blond hair was piled high on her head, and somewhere, she’d found mascara to highlight her stunning blue eyes. In her late twenties, probably, she had joined Vanguard three months ago, quickly disappearing into the Pure apartment building. Today, she wore jeans and a long T-shirt, her hands covered by thin gloves.

  For goodness sakes. Gloves in this heat? April forced a smile. “I’d offer iced tea, but I don’t have any.”

  “That’s all right.” Sharon’s fake smile outdid April’s by a mile and a half. “I wanted to make sure you and the kids were all safe.” She strode forward and pulled out the other chair at the table, sitting gracefully.

  If that were the case, shouldn’t she look around at the kids playing on the floor? “That was nice of you,” April murmured, setting down her papers. “A soldier came by and helped us out of the basement.” The Merc soldiers weren’t known for their conversational skills. Except for Damon. Now there was a guy who could talk. “All I was told was that it was safe to emerge.”

  Sharon folded her gloved hands in her lap, away from the table. “I heard it was the Twenty gang again. They’re stepping up their harassment since that Merc killed the vice president.”

  “That Merc” had been Greyson Storm, and he was defending pretty much everybody from the psycho president and his sidekick. “The president is crazy, and Grey had no choice.” April swallowed, and sweat rolled down her back. Man, she missed air conditioning.

  “Maybe.” Sharon wrinkled her nose. “Do we really know that for sure? I mean, Scorpius does make some people crazy. Maybe we’re being fed lies by Vanguard and now the Mercs.”

  April shook her head. The president had tried to bomb Vanguard territory. Some Scorpius survivors lost their sanity in one way or another. Some became animals, while others turned into super brilliant serial killer sociopaths. “I believe Jax about the president,” she said quietly, tugging out a nearly empty plastic bottle of hand sanitizer to rub over her palms.

  Sharon swallowed, her gaze on the gel. “It’s not safe here for you.”

  April finished rubbing and tucked the bottle away. “I’m not sure about that. It has been so long since anybody contracted the bacterial infection from a surface.” These days, only the exchange of bodily fluids led to infection.

  Sharon shook her head, her cheeks now the color of an over-ripe red apple. “We’re some of the few people left uninfected, and since we’re the only ones who can have babies, we have a duty to keep ourselves safe. Right?”

  Oh, April was no way ever having another baby. Losing one child was all she could take. “Not really.”

  Sharon’s lips tightened. They were a lush pink. Had she scrounged up lipstick for her outing, too? April squinted and tried to look closer.

  “So… I’m here for a reason,” Sharon said, her placid smile back in place.

  No kidding. “Oh?” April asked.

  The front door opened, and Damon walked inside. She partially pivoted toward him. Heat wafted inside, swelling toward her. Though not all of it was from the sun. Her limbs tingled. Why did that happen every time he entered her space? It was just crazy.

  Sharon twittered.

  April wanted to look at the crazy blonde to see what a twitter looked like, but she couldn’t move. Damon was moving in her direction, doing a full body scan of her, head to toe and back up, his deep gaze missing nothing. Now, her knees tingled. Then her breasts.

  She should say something, but her throat had gone dry. So she studied him from beneath her lashes. For a big guy, he really did move quietly. There was a sense of grace to him that held an edge of danger. “What exploded?”

  He drew out a raggedy velvet chair and dropped into it. “Another truck. The Twenty gang is conducting a campaign of general harassment at the moment.”

  “Why?” she whispered. In a time when food was getting scarce, who had the energy to harass anybody?

  “They’re out for revenge. They work for the president, right?” Sharon blurted, her darkened eyelashes making an impressive fluttering motion as she ran her gaze over the sexy ex-cop.

  A hot wave of possessiveness, shocking in its strength, rippled through April. She frowned, her stomach clenching. What was happening?

  “You okay?” Damon reached out and brushed a strand of wayward hair away from her cheek.

  Electricity zapped through her skin. “Yes.” April cleared her throat. “Sharon and I were just chatting. You’ve met, right?”

  Sharon leaned toward Damon, leading with her impressive chest. “I think you nodded at me once.”

  His grin relaxed the tension around his eyes. “That’s how the Mercs say hello. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “You, too.” Sharon’s voice became slightly husky.

  Nobody moved to shake hands. Those days were long gone.

  April studied the blonde. She was nearly purring, her gaze running over the very hard planes of Damon’s chest. Slapping her would be totally inappropriate. Probably. Should she stake her claim? In a mission, on-op, undercover type of way? She was pretending to date Damon, right? “I, um, missed you,” she said quietly.

  Amusement sparkled in his brown eyes. “Missed you more.” He caressed down her arm to take her hand.

  He was so good at this. April tried to smile, but her cheeks hurt. Her lip started to tremble, so she gave up the f
ight.

  Sharon preened. “Our territory is so much safer now that you’re here. I heard you just took out the Twenty gang member shooting at Vanguard, Damon.”

  Well, that was information the blonde hadn’t shared earlier. April’s skin cooled. Awareness and a familiar fear slid beneath her anxiety. Was he okay? “You did?”

  He lifted one powerful shoulder. “Somebody shot at us, and we shot back. Everyone is fine on this side of the fence, baby.”

  Even the endearment said in that sexy voice didn’t diminish the reality of danger. What was she doing, trying to play a secret agent in this crazy and sucky world? She couldn’t even hold his hand without getting all mushy. She tried to free herself, but his fingers tightened around hers. Shock grabbed her at his easy strength, and then an unsettling warmth spread through her lower half. Why did he have to be so sexy? “How many aren’t fine on the other side of the fence?” she asked.

  His expression didn’t change but a glint—a hardness—filled his eyes. He turned toward Sharon. “I hope I didn’t interrupt your talk.”

  “No, not at all.” Sharon sat back in her chair, the blue of her eyes seeming all for Damon. “I was actually here to invite both you and April to a little get-together at our church tonight. Before the pandemic, did you go to church?”

  Now that was an inappropriately personal question. April opened her mouth to answer and then realized Sharon wasn’t asking her.

  Damon nodded. “Every week. The entire family went every Sunday, and even after we lost Dad and one of my brothers, it was still a tradition. Kept my mom happy.”

  His mom sounded fascinating. Growing up in a family, an actual unit, was something April had wished for every night while in one of her foster homes. But how could he live, how could he even smile now that he’d lost everybody? The tingles in her body cooled and left her limbs feeling heavy. As usual. “Do you miss church?” she asked, wanting inside his head.