Hell's Fortress by Daniel Wallace, Michael Wallace Page B

shoulder of the road and got out and bent over. It was hot and he thought he’d pass out. Gradually, the feeling subsided.
    The ground was soft sand, anchored with clumps of grass and sprawling thickets of prickly pear cactus. It would have been a good place to bury his mother, had there been anything left of her to bury. He blamed the polygamists for that too. That bastard Christianson above all.
    “Kemp, what the hell?” It was Tippetts, the guy with the burned-out lungs. Special delivery from the Persian First Army, extra mustard. He stood at the bus door, leaning out, wheezing.
    “I’m leaving. You’re on your own.”
    “What?” Tippetts said.
    “You heard me.”
    “Yeah, but look.”
    “I know it’s a desert, dumbass. I’m taking a walk, got it? Drive, stay, do what you want.”
    “Not that. Look. ”
    Tippetts pointed down the highway. A pair of vehicles drove side by side from the south, using both lanes. The heat radiated in waves off the blacktop, making the vehicles shimmer. Still too far to pick out details.
    Military. Who else had fuel? Bandits these days were on horseback, rarely motorcycles, but never two trucks driving side by side. But what was the army doing down here? There were no towns, no bases for two hundred miles, so far as he knew. Unless they were more polygs. Could be.
    He hurried back to the bus and shouted for people to arm themselves.
    Kemp couldn’t outrun the oncoming trucks, but he could get the bus turned across the road. Swing it wide like a battleship to present a broadside of pistols and rifles out the windows. A few volleys and maybe they’d convince the other side to find a softer target.
    The bus wouldn’t start. It coughed and sputtered, almost caught, then died with a cough and a gasp. He turned the key again, pumped the gas. Again, nothing. He’d turned it off without thinking, worried subconsciously about fuel, he supposed, but forgetting how much effort it had taken to get the engine running in the first place.
    “Wait for my orders,” he cried. He grabbed a box of shells and one of the rifles he’d taken from the polygamists, jumped out of the bus, and took position next to the front tire. What he wouldn’t give for an M16, but the deer rifle was good enough. Good penetrating power, a decent scope. His hands had been working automatically as he dropped, and he had a shell chambered when he lifted the rifle to his shoulder.
    Tippetts took up position with another rifle, and Kapowski, the one-legged marine, hopped down and readied his own gun.
    Inside, children screamed, men shouted, women cried for ammunition to be passed forward. The windows of the bus were already lowered against the heat and weapons bristled out.
    The two vehicles—military Humvees, the tan paint faded and sandblasted—rolled to a stop a hundred yards forward. They had heavy machine guns up top, armor plating all around. Kemp’s throat tightened.
    A voice came through a megaphone from one of the Humvees. “Put down the weapons.”
    “Who are you?” he shouted back.
    “It won’t be a fight. It will be a massacre. Now put them down.”
    “Could be a bluff,” Tippetts said. He was so close that his wheezing was the loudest thing Kemp could hear. “They might be out of ammo.”
    “We still couldn’t penetrate that plating.”
    “I know. But what are they going to do, ram us?”
    “Kap, what do you think?” Kemp asked.
    “I don’t know,” Kapowski said. “They probably know the bus is dead. Otherwise we would’ve run.”
    A long moment passed. Kemp looked through the scope. Soldiers in fatigues manned the blast shield of the mounted guns. Body armor, helmets. One of them held a megaphone and the other stared back at Kemp through a pair of binoculars.
    He made his decision. “Stand down. We can’t win this.”
    Guns withdrew into the bus. Kemp and the other two ex-military guys set down their rifles and rose to their feet. Kapowski gripped the side mirror so he could support