Hell's Fortress by Daniel Wallace, Michael Wallace Read Free Book Online Page B

ears were ringing and when he spoke it sounded like he was at the bottom of a well.
    Stephen Paul groaned and reached back to grasp at the splinter of wood. It was the width of his thumb and as long as his forearm.
    Jacob took the man’s wrist and moved his hand to his side. “Leave it alone. You’ll break off the tip.”
    Not to mention Jacob’s worry that it might be nicking one of the lumbar vertebrae. That could be disastrous.
    The first blast had stunned Smoot, but the elder seemed to be recovering. Now he was calling in anguish for his sons. Bill, blown to kingdom come. Grover, missing.
    “My wife,” David said. He lay a few feet away. “Oh, God. Please.”
    Lillian was blinking and stunned, but he meant Miriam, of course. She should be home nursing her child, only a few months old. Jacob never should have called her out. And now she was missing.
    But alive. They were all alive except for Bill. Jacob saw them get onto the school bus, first Grover, then Eliza and Miriam. And Trost was there too, already on board before the attack started.
    “My boys,” Smoot said. He was trying to get up. “Dear Lord, why?”
    “Stay down,” Jacob said. “That’s an order.”
    “I have to see.”
    “There’s nothing you can do for Bill. Grover got on the bus. So did Miriam and Eliza. He’s safe with them.”
    “We have to—” Smoot began.
    “No. We don’t. They’re gone. There wasn’t a third blast. The drone let them go. But it might still be overhead. Stay down.”
    What had happened on that bus? Miriam was armed. Eliza too. A fight? Why did they keep going instead of stopping? Kemp had taken an insane risk driving off like that. One more missile and dozens would have died.
    The bunker kept burning. Inside, ammunition exploded like popcorn. A booming woof rumbled through the air as one of the larger crates went off. Bullets whizzed overhead.
    Worse than the burning bunker were the screams of dying horses. One of them, trailing its intestines, had staggered from the road and lay gasping a few feet away, with blood foaming at its nostrils. Another had run several yards on pure momentum before collapsing.
    Slowly, the bunker fire began to die as it burned up the limited fuel inside. Jacob rolled over and squinted against the sun. Nothing. No movement. No sound.
    “Stay down. Don’t sit up, don’t draw your weapons. Nothing.”
    “What are you doing?” David asked.
    “You too. Stay here.”
    Jacob climbed to his feet. He moved quickly away from the others to the highway. If the drone was lurking, he’d rather it target one person and not all five.
    The pickups were burning, one a total wreck, and the other with a fire in the truck bed, where a canvas tarp provided fuel. He grabbed a fire extinguisher from beneath the seat and hosed it down until it was out. Then he retrieved a box of shells from the glove compartment and searched the highway until he found his rifle.
    He went first to the horse with its intestines lying in the dirt. Flies were already dropping to lap at the blood. The horse looked up at him with its eyes rolling back in their sockets.
    “I’m sorry,” he murmured. He aimed at its skull and fired. Its hooves shuddered, then went still.
    Next came the two horses with broken legs—shattered, really—and then a pair of mules on the highway, one of them pinned beneath another dead animal. Most of the animals had run off. He looked through the scope of his rifle and was horrified to discover his own horse a hundred yards off, on her knees. Her rib cage lay open and three splinters stuck out of her neck like spears broken off at the shaft. She was a good horse, patient and tireless, which was why he’d planned to send her into the desert with Eliza.
    He’d named the mare himself. Jenny. Father hadn’t liked it. “A horse shouldn’t have a woman’s name.”
    “Why not? You give horses male names all the time. Even the old billy goat is named Heber, after your uncle.”
    “That’s