Everyone Dies in the End #29

Cindy

“There and there,” the soldier gestured with his finger, keeping his other hand on the M-16 propped on the small mound of rubble in front of him. Cindy and Zack Dixon scanned the indicated area. They were looking out on a broad, four-lane street, the same street where the firefight they heard only minutes before had occurred. The concrete was strewn with corpses, civilians judging by their clothes, and the pair of “theres” the soldier alluded to was a soldier walking among the corpses, and a machine gun barrel protruding from a Best Buy not a hundred feet down the right side of the street.

The walking soldier stopped, bending to a body on the street, Cindy saw a flash of steel as the soldier’s hand moved across the body’s throat. The soldier stood and moved on, examining the bodies as he walked through them.

“What the hell is that barbarian doing?” Cindy whispered.

“It appears he’s slitting throats,” Dixon answered, his voice icy.

Cindy rolled to her side to look at Dixon, mouth agape, eyes wide. “You do that? That’s…that’s…”

Dixon’s eyes never left the walking soldier. “He’s not a barbarian, that’s a Soviet soldier, and frankly, I don’t know if I would have my men do that or not.” Dixon looked behind him, at the young sergeant he had spoken with earlier.  “Get the M-60 up here, set up a field of fire, I want the M113 on the street the second the shooting starts, give me two men, I’ll flank them.”

“I’m coming with you,” Cindy wasn’t asking.

Dixon looked at her, but didn’t comment. “Sergeant, open up in five minutes. Does that give you enough time?”

I’ll make it enough, the Sergeant replied.”

Dixon nodded, and back away from the mound of rubble that hid them from the patrolling Soviet soldier. Cindy followed his lead. 

Four minutes later they were in the narrow alley paralleling the corpse-strewn street.  The alley was perhaps ten feet wide, and the entrance had been mostly obscured by a local transit bus that had crashed into the corner building. The four of them—Cindy, Dixon, and two other soldiers—had squeezed through and now crept between the ally’s buildings. Dixon and his two men were on the right, Cindy on the left. Dixon held up a hand, halting all of them. Without sound he pointed ahead at the wall on Cindy’s side. There was a heavy metal standard-sized door, above it a square yellow sign. It read “Best Buy: Deliveries Only.”

Abruptly, an automatic rifle fired from beyond the door, a short, quick burst. The four scurried to the door. Dixon pressed himself flat on one side; the two soldiers did the same on the other. Cindy, not sure what to do stood behind Dixon. “I can get in there,” she whispered. Dixon knew what she meant.

“No, us first.”

Cindy expected something dramatic, but she was wrong. At least she was wrong as far as their entrance into the Best Buy. Later she would get all the drama that she wanted, and more.

Dixon was on the side of the door knob, and the knob was missing. No doubt removed by the looters. He bent to look through the small circle where the knob had been, and cursed.

“What?” Cindy whispered. Dixon ignored her, and once again placed his eye to the hole, tilting his head to get a better look. When he pulled back he stared at the soldiers across from him, shaking his head.

“It’s a ManPot.”

The word meant nothing to Cindy, but—judging by their wide eyes—meant quite a bit to the soldiers.

“What,” she repeated. “What’s a ManPot, a portable potty?” No one laughed.

Dixon’s head dropped for a second, and then he spoke. “A ManPot is a portable thermal nuclear device, and unless I miss my guess, there is one leaning up against a tipped CD rack in there.

“No,” Cindy shook her head. “You must be wrong.”

Both soldiers eyes were focused on Dixon. “I wish I was, Cindy, but I’m not. The ManPot uses a distinctive, quilted pack, lined with Kevlar, to cushion the device and protect it from shrapnel. That pack is sitting against the CD rack.”

“What can we do?

“Kill them,” Dixon hissed.

“And hope they don’t put a bullet into the ManPot first,” added the taller of the two soldiers on the other side of the door.

“But I thought you said it was protected by Kevlar. Isn’t that the same stuff they use in bullet proof vests?”

“Yes, it is,” whispered Dixon, “but the term bullet proof is misguiding. Nothing stops a bullet at point blank range. If someone pumps a round into that back pack from five feet away there’s a damn good chance we are gonna get to see a nuclear explosion up close and personal.”

“What do we do?”

            “We make sure that doesn’t happen.” He bent his head to hole one last time, nodded, looked at the other two soldiers, and held up one finger. The gesture could have meant one man, one minute, one God, Cindy didn’t know. A breath or two later she did.