TEOTWAWKI: Beacon's Story (8 page)

Beacon's offer to give firearms instruction and devise plans of actions to respond to various scenarios had been vetoed by Sam and Virginia as too "militaristic" for a peaceful settlement. Beacon and Old Bill made sure all of their guns were fully loaded at all times after that.

First Blue Head Attack

The attack came in mid winter just before midnight. Beacon saw them emerging silently from the tree line and opened fire with his M1A trying to take out the ones in the front hoping that seeing the ones in front of them fall would discourage those behind. The big thirty caliber rounds knocked the Blue Heads flat on their backs with every center of mass shot. It didn't work. There were hundreds Blue Heads, too many to notice the few that were falling.

About half of the men in the Sanctuary Settlement owned guns but only a few of those really knew how to use them. When Beacon started shooting most of the men in the settlement jumped out of bed and stopped to put on their pants before coming outside to see what the ruckus was about. By the time they'd figured it out and gone back inside to retrieve their guns dozens of marauders were already inside of the circle of vehicles.

Many marauders had guns but ammo seemed in short supply. The rest of the Blue Heads had knives, axes, homemade spears and Beacon saw one sword. Most were no more proficient in the use of weapons than the settlement men. A free-for-all ensued.

Ignoring the danger until a few rounds whizzed by his head Beacon switched from shooting the leaders of the charge to anyone with a visible weapon until they got into the circle where he couldn't reliably tell friend from dark blue headed foe in the moonlight.

Then he took a kneeling position shooting around the edge of the tower's entrance opening. The tower's weathered plywood wouldn't stop bullets, but it provided concealment while Beacon concentrated taking out any marauder outside the corral carrying a gun. The ruse seemed to work, no more bullets came his way.

When he'd fired up all of the hundred 7.62 rounds he had up in the tower with him he left the now useless M1A in the tower and climbed down.

Using his forty-five and his Randall's seven and a half inch blade Beacon fought his way through the mêlée towards Old Bill who was standing in the doorway of their trailer in his long johns rapidly building a semicircle of dead marauders around him.

Numbers were the Blue Heads greatest strength and a major weakness in this fight. The real estate within the circle of trailers, SUV's and mobile homes was overpopulated to the point that those wielding rifles, axes and spears could find little elbow room to bring their weapons to bear effectively. Pistols and knives were the most effective weapons in the brawl giving way to knives as ammo ran out.

Beacon's pistol was empty and his Randall bloody to the hilt when he reached their trailer. He reloaded the pistol once inside and started grabbing guns and ammo. It seemed like there were hundreds of them inside the circle of vehicles. He and Old Bill had expected a fight, but nothing like this!

His Ruger Mini-14 was obviously the weapon of choice for this operation, but he didn't have a readily available container for the loaded 30 round magazines he'd need to carry out his plan. He grabbed his Ruger 10/22 and began stuffing 25 round "banana clip" magazines into the front of his coat and every pocket. The tiny twenty-two caliber bullets weren't meant for combat, but he had loads of loaded 10/22 magazines and only no way to get enough of the larger loaded magazines for the Ruger Mini-14 up to the roof with him.

Old Bill's Sheffield Bowie knife was being bloodied by the time he got back outside with both of Bill's backup six shooters and Bill's extra lever action rifles and a double-barreled shotgun.

Dropping the double armload of old guns and a box of shotgun shells by Old Bill he climbed up on the roof of their trailer his with his scoped Ruger 10/22 and went prone. He would, once again, remonstrate with Bill on the inadvisability of insisting on using old slow loading Cowboy Era weapons when this was over, he didn't expect to convince the old codger.

A twenty-two caliber bullet in the body of an excited adult although deadly long term given the current lack of antibiotics might not be noticed right away by an excited or drugged up man, but most people found one of the little hollow points in the face or neck worthy of instant attention. Stumbling around holding their faces or throats they were not only dead men walking but, more importantly, out of the fight.

Taking aim at a gap between two of the vehicles that seemed particularly popular to the invading marauders Beacon began empting the first to his twenty-five round magazines into the gap. Not having to worry about identifying friend or foe he simply popped a round into every face that showed itself in the gap. Soon the marauders had to pause to climb over their fallen comrades making it easier for Beacon to shoot the next one in the face. He'd plugged two gaps that way and was working on a third when he ran out of ammunition again.

He jumped back down and was putting both the Colt and the Randall to good use as he fought his way back to the trailer for the Mini-14 when three whistles sounded from somewhere along the tree line. One whistle was high pitched another low pitched and the third warbled quavering up and down the musical scale. The marauders began flooding out of the settlement as quickly as they'd entered it.

Picking up one of Old Bill's six-guns Beacon crammed a few rounds in the loading port as he followed the retreating Blue Heads to the edge of the circle of vehicles and was carefully emptying it into the backs of the retreating horde when Maggie; echoing her parent's admonitions of peace, love and brotherhood demanded he stop shooting because they were running away. Beacon opined that they were just regrouping for another charge but the revolver was empty by then anyway.

Maggie changed her tune when she discovered her parent's dead bodies inside the tent they had set up at the base of the tower. Beacon was reloading magazines when he heard her scream. She took up a pick ax and began attacking the bodies of marauders as she screamed curses at them.

At dawn, as Beacon finished tending to his and Old Bill's weapons, Maggie began tying dead marauders to each other by their necks then to horses. Beacon hurriedly searched the corpses for guns, knives and ammunition before Maggie dragged them out of the camp.

He'd relieved the rest of the marauder corpses inside the corral of anything of value by the time she got back for the next load. Then he started on the bodies outside the settlement. He had to finish off a few, but all items of value had been removed from the corpses before Maggie got to them.

By the end of the day Maggie had built a mountain of corpses down at the trailhead where it came up from the village by the lake. She'd stuck a stake through a couple of the bodies with a sign on it: "GO TO HELL ZOMBIES!"

Maggie never again referred to outsiders as anything but zombies. Her parent's peaceful coexistence policy was buried with them. Maggie somehow blamed Beacon for not stopping the attack that killed her parents, but realized she needed his help to kill the zombies.

The surviving men of the Sanctuary Settlement spent the remainder of the winter felling and trimming trees for a stockade. In the spring when the ground thawed they planted the logs in a trench dug, more or less, where Old Bill marked the outline of a frontier style fort in the dirt.

Some wanted a second gate at the bottom of the fort where the stream exited the encampment for easy access to the corral and one fellow even quoted some OSHA fire regulation which caused Beacon to break out laughing.

Old Bill and Beacon wanted two story blockhouses at each corner extending out from the walls to keep attackers from hiding against the walls out of reach of the defenders in the fort who would have to expose themselves leaning out over the top of the walls to shoot down at them. Old Bill also wanted a gatehouse extending over the single gate for the same reason, but necessity and available manpower allowed neither blockhouses nor two story gatehouse. The existing watchtower remained their only lookout.

Bull

Beacon waited patiently where the game trail turned uphill as Bull stormed back up from the marsh. As usual he'd barged on ahead using strength to bull his way through the woods rather than pay attention to the sign the animals had left. He'd missed the faint trace at the turn in the trail and pushed through some briers stopping only when he was ankle deep in mud.

Beacon started up the trail as Bull approached swearing under his breath, using his big bore rifle as a battering ram against the briers.

"Wait," Bull bellowed, "I want to lead the way."

"Back into the fort," Beacon finished silently for him. Billy 'Bull' Waitly was supposed to be learning bushcraft from Beacon. Instead, as usual, he was using size and muscle to bully his way through the forest ignoring all of Beacon's softly spoken advice.

Taller and thicker than most; Bull looked his nickname. Before The Blowup any high school football coach would have loved to have Bull as an offensive lineman. But Bull had developed a bad habit of using his size and strength instead of his brain.

It had made him popular on high school football teams and with some girls, but the choice to concentrate on brawn and ignore developing his brainpower had stifled his growth into manhood.

Bull's armament reflected his philosophy in life; he carried an iron sighted rifle chambered in a caliber named after an African Big Game hunter. The .470 Capstick would stop a rhino in its tracks but was overkill for the game around the Settlement.

Beacon told him, "Bull, if you shoot a deer with that cannon it'll destroy half the meat."

Bull said he wanted to have "enough gun to do the job." But it really didn't matter because with all the noise Bull made tromping through the forest he never got close enough to see a deer much less shoot one. Which was a good thing because Bull didn't have much the ammunition for the elephant gun; the ammo for it had been hard to get even before The Blowup.

Bull's sidearm was a Dirty Harry .44 magnum revolver with a barrel over eight inches long again too much gun for the available targets but ammo was easier to find.

The teaching session was a total loss. Unaware that he was still several miles from the fort Bull was rushing to be first through the gate so as to proclaim his conquest of the forest. Beacon just wanted the patrol to be over so he could report Bull's failure and refuse to ever take the young man out on patrol with him again.

There would be resistance to his decision. Bull's sister had demanded Beacon teach her brother the "easy" job she claimed Beacon was keeping to himself. She would demand her brother be assigned to share the fort's scouting, hunting and trapping duties.

Beacon had already made up his mind. Bull couldn't find his way once he got off beaten paths and in his bullheadedness had become thoroughly lost three times turning what was supposed to have been a one day patrol into an overnight stay in the woods. Bull hadn't liked that.

Caught out in the wilderness without blankets or cooking utensils Beacon had made do. Spotting a squirrel midden Beacon chopped down a six foot sapling about an inch in diameter with his Randall and cut off all the branches. Then he tied it between the two trees nearest the midden with rawhide.

Reaching into an inner pocket of his buckskin shirt he pulled out two thin tightly coiled brass wires which he tied to the middle of the sapling about two feet apart. Each wire had a small noose at the other end. He bent the wire up so the nooses were exactly over the top of the sapling.

The snares set, Beacon guided Bull up into a box canyon scouting for a campsite. In the late afternoon he led the exhausted Bull back to the midden where two dead squirrels were hanging in the wire nooses.

Beacon harvested the squirrels, reset the snares and began working on the campsite since Bull's stumbling around in the woods had taken them so far from the fort he would learn how to sleep in the woods whether he liked it or not. The cloudless sky promised bitter cold but no rain or snow that night.

Beacon found a secluded spot between a boulder and a downed tree in a nearby depression out of the wind and, more importantly, out of sight of anyone not already in the small valley.

Pointing out a spot next to the boulder he said, "Just do what I do and you'll sleep warm tonight."

Beacon cut a digging stick and began scraping out a shallow trench, near the downed tree, about eighteen inches wide by a foot deep and as long as he was tall. The Randall would have dug deeper and faster, but Beacon wasn't about to damage its seven and a half inch blade in the dirt. Bull had no such compulsion and attacked the dirt with his twelve inch Bowie knife.

Once the trench was complete Beacon gathered and threw in some dry squaw wood from the ground and nearby trees alternating it in layers of a tic-tac-toe pattern for the length of the trench. Then he threw dry leaves and twigs on top to act as tinder and help spread the fire he was about to build.