The day after: An apocalyptic morning (122 page)

              "I think so," Jessica said. "After the hangings, I really think that they'll do it."

              "What about Barnes' women?" Alice wanted to know. "Have you made contact with any of them? How do they feel about this?"

              "I haven't approached any of them," Jessica said. "They're probably with us but I just couldn't be sure. We'll see what they do when the time comes."

              "And you're sure that they won't be able to just take the town back from us when they get back?" Susan asked almost timidly. "I mean, I know we'll have the automatic weapons and all, but there'll still be four hundred of them."

              "Four hundred minus whoever gets killed in Garden Hill," Jessica corrected. "And they'll be tired and low on ammunition from being out there for a month. They'll also have supplies and prisoners from Garden Hill with them. We'll be able to keep them out if we do it right. And when they surrender to us, they'll come back in under our rules."

              "And the shoe will be on the other foot for once," Alice said, smiling at the very thought.

              "Exactly," Jessica confirmed. "Our day is coming soon."

              "Slow up, Skip! Slow up!" Jack barked from the observer seat of the helicopter that night. "Slow way up!"

              "What is it?" Skip asked, pulling instantly into a near-hover, slowing the aircraft so quickly that both of them were pushed against their safety harnesses. "Do you have something?"

              "Affirm," Jack said fearfully, seeing the glow of hundreds of people on his scope. "Multiple warm bodies on the roadway, right before the mudfall."

              They were just outside the one-mile range of the interstate on the west side of the first mudfall. Almost exactly where Skip had predicted the attacking force would stop the first night of their march. It was 9:26 PM.

              "How many?" Skip wanted to know.

              "Hundreds," Jack said. "I can't even see them all yet, they stretch from the mudfall to the end of my panning range."

              "Are they stationary?"

              "Yes, most of them seem to be lying down. Their signatures are dimmed, like they're in sleeping bags."

              "Can we move in a little closer?"

              "A little bit," Jack told him. "It looks like they have a couple of people standing watch just to the south of them but they're only a few hundred feet off the roadway."

              "Guide me," Skip said.

              Jack directed him forward and to the west at twenty knots, halting his forward motion at about three-quarters of a mile out. He then told him to hover.

              "Hovering," Skip reported, wishing he could see, just for an instant, what Jack was looking at. "Be sure to get some film."

              "Doing it now," Jack said, panning slowly from east to west. "Too many of them to count right now. We'll have to do it back in town. They have two-man guard teams posted north and south of the roadway. Three sets in each direction; one in the middle and one at each end. The rest of them are clumped pretty tight together right on the asphalt. No tents or lean-to's or anything like that, they're just sleeping in the road."

              "Like they don't have a care in the world," Skip said.

              "Should we make a firing run on them?" Jack asked hopefully. "I could take out ten or fifteen of them."

              "Not tonight," Skip told him.

              "Why not? We have three clips of ammo and they're lying in a nice even row. Maybe they'll turn back in the morning."

              "They won't," Skip said. "And it's too soon to tip our hand. We need to hit them first in the daylight. If we spend all day harassing them, the realization that we have night capabilities as well will have a much greater effect on their morale. Trust me, that's the way to do it."

              Jack wasn't entirely convinced of this but he made no further protests. He spent another ten minutes directing Skip from point to point and filming the enemy in infrared. "I'm pretty sure I've got them all on tape," he said at last.

              "Then let's get ourselves home. We're gonna have a long day tomorrow."

              Traditionally, the average adult bedtime in Garden Hill had been around nine o'clock or even earlier. In a town with no electricity and with nothing but black darkness outside after sunset, the residents had reverted to the ways their ancestors had used before electrical wires and streetlights and television sets. But since the news that an attack force would be leaving Auburn soon, almost everyone in town had adjusted this early-to-bed credo in favor of awaiting the return of the recon flight around 10:00 PM. Groups of them would gather inside the community center waiting for the radio call to Christine from Jack. Even before landing he would give the all-clear signal and the word would quickly be passed. For some reason the townspeople just slept better knowing that they'd been granted an extra day.

              On this night, however, no one went to bed after the check-in radio report. The all-clear signal wasn't given. Instead, Jack passed on Skip's request for an immediate community meeting. By the time the helicopter was refueled and secured for the night, every adult in town was sitting anxiously in the cafeteria.

              Skip did not mince words with them. "The attack force has left Auburn," he announced through the microphone. "They are currently camped out approximately eight miles east of their starting point."

              The uproar was immediate. Though it had a fearful vibe to it, it was not the terror that had come with the initial announcement that an attack was in the works. Now, they were only receiving confirmation of facts that had already been told.

              "I haven't had a chance to go over the video images that Jack made of the flight yet," Skip said when the voices died down to a manageable level. "But from what he described to me as he was making the video, it certainly appears that our friends Anna and Jean from Auburn were correct in their assessment of the threat against us. There are literally hundreds of troops camped out on the lanes of the interstate, quite probably the four hundred that we've been told about. We have no reason to believe that they are not heading this way and that they do not have evil intentions towards us."

              Some more uproar came at this revelation. A few questions were shouted to Skip about irrelevant things and he pretended not to hear them.

              "Now listen up, people," Skip said, gesturing for them to hold it down. Eventually, they did. "We've been through all of this already. We knew they were coming and we have been preparing for them ever since finding this out. This announcement tonight is nothing more than the confirmation of what we already knew. In a way, I'm glad they finally showed themselves to us. Now we know exactly what we're dealing with and we can begin to put our plans into operation. Remember, if they want to fight, we're going to give them a Goddamn fight they'll never forget!"

              This statement served to boost the morale up a little bit.

              "All right," Skip said, once it was relatively quiet again. "Now tomorrow is just another day for most of you. We still have at least ten days until they get here, probably a lot more. So trench and sandbag crews, we're still going to need you out there in the morning. Those of you on Steve's detail, we're especially going to need you out there. All township defense teams need to report to your normal duty station at the normal hour, just like always, okay?"

              The murmurs of assent came babbling upward to him.

              "However, those of you on the hit and run teams," Skip said with a rather wicked smile. "Report to me at 0600 sharp. We will be starting full operations first thing in the morning."

              Stacy and Sara had provided them with a large thermos of strong black coffee for their first official briefing. They were in a small conference room that had been decorated with large maps of the terrain between Auburn and Garden Hill. Again, Christine and Paula had been the artisans for this cartographic masterpiece and, using videotape of previous recon missions, had truly outdone themselves. Though the maps were not exactly to scale, they were very close, closer even than their drawers knew.

              "Okay," Skip said, holding a pointer in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other. "Here is where they are now." He tapped the point where the interstate - represented as a black line - met the mudfall - which was represented as a dark brown blob. "In all likelihood, they will move south from this point, taking the easiest path around this impassible obstacle that blocks the interstate. More than likely they will stick to standard military doctrine and move out shortly after dawn. Obviously, the going will not be as smooth or easy for them in this stretch. If they can make five miles in a day, they would be pushing it. So what we're going to do is set up our first attack about a mile south of the interstate. My suggestion would be to conceal yourselves here." He tapped a series of hills that stood off to the southwest of their path. "Chances are they will march right down this natural corridor. If that is the case, all of them will be to the east of this position. If any of them are to the west of it, you must abort the attack and wait for them to pass. Remember our doctrine here: do not put yourself into unnecessary danger. Having them on both sides of you will impede, if not actually destroy, my ability to pick you up, so don't do it."

              Everyone nodded his or her understanding of this.

              "Now what we're going to do on this first day is take full advantage of our mobility and their ignorance to our presence. I'll drop the first team - Christine's team - right here." He pointed to a spot just west of the attack position. "And then I will come back and drop the second team - Paula's team - over here." He pointed to another series of hills further south along the projected path. "You will have your radios with you and I will keep myself in a place where I can maintain radio contact with both of you. Remember your code words! Do not speak in clear-text because we have to assume that the Auburnites are monitoring a scanner. Christine, after you make your hit, you withdraw immediately to the place where I dropped you off. I will fly you out of there and drop you to yet another spot south of team two. That way, we'll leapfrog our way along their march all fucking day long. Any questions?"

              There were none.

              "Then lets get suited up," Skip announced. "Don't forget to muddy your faces when you get out there. We lift off the moment there's enough light."

              Breakfast rations consisted only of powdered diet drinks mixed with rainwater. Most of the militia members were out-of-sorts and cranky on this first morning since they had not slept terribly well in the dampness of the outside. Typically it took three or four days for everyone to get reacquainted with the outside conditions that a march imposed upon them.

              Bracken heard much of the grumbling as everyone packed up their gear for another day's march but he chose to ignore it, knowing it was an integral part of the early days of a mission. His mind did try to let him know that this grumbling seemed worse than it ever had before, that the troops were not trying as hard to keep it under control within his earshot, but he dismissed this as being nothing more than a high amount of newbies on the attack.

              "Lieutenant Colby!" Bracken barked once all of the packs were reassembled and once all of the rations had been consumed.

              Colby was the senior lieutenant among the attack force. Though he was technically second-in-command Bracken actually shuddered at the thought of him leading anything. He was a nice enough guy but he was not very experienced in actual fighting or militarism. His pre-comet experience was only the Placer County Militia. He had never actually been in the service. "Lieutenant Colby, reporting as ordered, sir," he said.

              "Colby, I'm going to have your platoon take point today," he said. "We'll be taking the most direct route around the mudfall."

              "Yes, sir," Colby said.

              "Keep you maps open and keep everyone tight. It's easy to get lost out here if you wander too far away from the mudfall."

              "Yes, sir, I will, sir."

              "And keep an eye out for the bodies of those two bitches that used to be my wives," Bracken added. "My guess is that we'll find them along here somewhere."

              "Yes, sir."

              "Gather your people and let's move out. My goal is to get us halfway around this mudfall by night."

              The MD-500 was not a very large helicopter. Though the pilot and the observer were able to sit in relative comfort, those assigned to the back found it to be cramped, noisy, and very uncomfortable. And that was when only two people were sitting there. The back had never been intended to hold four people in any arrangement, let alone four fully armed and equipped soldiers, not even after Skip had removed every piece of unneeded equipment and storage. But by cramming, twisting, and depriving them of any personal space or indeed breathing room, Christine, Maggie, Mike Monahan, and Maria Sanchez all managed to fit. Christine had the door handle pushing painfully into her shoulder on the left side of the aircraft while Maggie, who was actually quite petite, had the handle on the right pushing against her breast. Mike, though he normally might have enjoyed the sensation of his legs intertwined with Maria's, was more concerned with the fact that the magazine of Christine's M-16 was pushing against his knees.