The day after: An apocalyptic morning (63 page)

              "So you have four left?"

              "Affirm. Eight entered the trees. Four came out to advance. I don't know if we've hit any of the remaining ones or not. We're somewhat at a stalemate here."

              "And your people?"

              "No one is hit but we're starting to get low on .30 caliber ammo. I still have two more clips of 7.65."

              "Slow down your rate of fire a little," Skip told him. "We don't have any way of getting someone out to you without putting them at risk. The other group is down now so I'll get you some help."

              "We'd surely appreciate that," Mick said, signing off and putting his radio back in his pocket. He told his people to ease up on the ammo consumption a little and then sighted in on the trees and squeezed off another two rounds.

              Skip was elated to hear that Mick, who had not been tested in combat until now, had managed to wipe out half of the force attacking him. With his elation came a plan. He directed Christine around to the north and then the east, telling her to link up with Jack at his position to augment his automatic rifle with her own. Maggie went along for the ride in case her long-range scoped rifle was needed. Once they made the link-up, he told them to move south until they had the trees in sight and in range. While they were making the trip, and while Paul and several of the women from inside the community center came out and began tending to Dale and Sherri, Skip led his group back to the supply room (all of them giving contemptuous looks at Jessica as they passed her) where they quickly grabbed extra ammunition.

              "Okay, guys," he told them. "It's time to end this thing. Follow me."

              He led them out a side entrance and pointed across the park, towards the flooded baseball diamond. "We need to get over there," he said. "We can put some fire on those assholes if we can get in the dugout."

              "The dugout?" someone asked. "How are we going to do that? They'll see us when we cross the parking lot and the grass."

              "No they won't," Skip said, "because we're not going to cross the parking lot and the grass, at least not from this direction. Come on." He began to head off to the west, away from the diamond, keeping the community center between his group and the trees where the enemies were located. He moved at a fast pace, not quite a full-out run, but a little more than a simple jog. His group of recently popped cherries consisted of seven women and three men. They ran single file behind him, their weapons clanking and their extra ammo rattling.

              He led them out of the park and into the residential area, down a street where many of the town residents, including Dale and Jessica, kept house. They went down one block and turned left, to the south, keeping up the pace they were setting for two more blocks, at which point Skip hooked back towards the park. When they reached the street that ran alongside of the park, the wooden backstop of the baseball diamond was now standing between them and the trees, keeping the enemy from spotting them.

              "Move up to the backstop," Skip told them. "Keep low as you move, so your heads don't show on the other side." He then led by example and did exactly as he had told them to do. It was a rather tense dash but a minute later all eleven of them hunched down against the painted green wood. They took a moment to catch their breath.

              "Good job," Skip told them. "Now let's get into position."

              The dugout was just that, a pit dug out of the ground and lined with concrete where the baseball players that had once romped here sat awaiting their turn to bat or take the field. It was about four feet deep and twenty feet long and, since it was a low spot in the park, it was about half filled with rainwater.

              "Keep your weapons out of the water," Skip told his troops as he made the five-yard dash from the back of the backstop, across the muddy first-base line, and into the dugout. He made a splash in the water and his legs were instantly chilled to the bone. He ignored it, submerging his hips and lower stomach as well as he crouched down to keep his body covered. He kept his rifle and the radio carefully out of the wetness. "Come on," he told the next person. "Get the hell over here."

              One by one they followed his lead, stomping through the mud and then splashing into the water. Skip kept expecting the gunfire from the trees, which was still popping, to turn towards them at any time since the dash from the backstop brought every person that did it briefly into the view. But apparently the tree people were a little too busy exchanging shots with Mick's people to notice that. It would be their undoing.

              "Perfect," Skip said, once all of them were in. He set his radio down on the ground in front of him and trained his rifle towards the trees. He could see two of the invaders without even looking through a scope. From his angle they were perpendicular to the trees instead of behind them. "Those of you with scopes," Skip said, "find a target and get ready to shoot. Once we start shooting, keep it up and keep the pressure on them. We're going to drive them right out of there and into a trap."

              There were some murmurs of agreement and they took aim. Skip picked up the radio and called Jack and Christine.

              "We're in position," Jack told him. "We have good cover and an escape route if we need to pull back."

              "Copy that," Skip said. "Get ready to rumble over there, we're gonna drive 'em right into you. Hold your fire until they break cover and come at you. Mick, when you hear us open up over here, you do the same. Pour fire on those motherfuckers and we'll do the same."

              "Ready when you are," Mick assured him.

              "Okay, let's do it."

              Bill was doing all he could to keep his people in position. Their ammunition was getting short and with each bullet that thunked into the tree trunks opposite of where someone was hiding, their sense of panic and doom grew. It was now apparent that a big mistake had been made in attacking this town, had been apparent from the moment that four of them were cut to pieces out on the grass by the group that was now firing at them, but there was nothing that could be done about it now. He was trying to figure out a way to get his people out of here so they could live to fight another day but he saw no escape. If they went back the way they had come, they would be mowed down in the open ground. If they went forward, they would be mowed down from there. If they went sideways, towards the houses on the far side of the park, they would be mowed down by the group that Glenn's group had been exchanging shots with (an exchange which had come to an abrupt end a few minutes ago) or by people inside the community center itself. They were trapped like rats. So far no one had been hit by gunfire but how much longer could that last?

              Just when he thought things couldn't get worse, they did. Bullets began to fly in from the left of them. A lot of bullets. They slammed into the trees and whizzed through the air. There was a scream as one of the men was hit and fell to the ground. Bill looked just for an instant, just long enough to see flashes coming from the baseball diamond. Instinctively he tried to edge around the tree he was using for cover to get away from this new threat. As he did so, he edged right into the line of fire from Mick's group. Before he had a chance to realize his mistake, he felt something strike him in the chest. It felt like someone had punched him while holding a roll of quarters. Suddenly his legs would not hold him up anymore and he was falling, pitching forward. He landed in the mud, unable to move because the .30 caliber bullet had cut his spinal cord as it had passed through his body. He found it difficult to even breathe, since it had passed through his right lung on its way to the spinal cord. As his consciousness began to fade he was cognizant that his two remaining men were fleeing in terror. One of them stepped on his head as he tried to make his escape.

              That was the end of the battle. The two men managed to get across the field without getting hit by any of the fifty some odd bullets that Skip and Mick's group fired at them, but the moment they reached the street, they ran smack into Jack, Christine, and Maggie. The trio had hidden themselves in a row of bushes that separated two houses, their guns pointing outward through the dead leaves. They held their fire until the two men were less than forty yards away and then they opened up. A hail of lead smashed into them, killing both of them before they even had a chance to realize they were under attack.

              It was quite some time before things settled down. The immediate worry was the two people left in the trees. Though two people, one from Mick's group and one from Skip's, thought they had hit someone in there, they weren't sure enough that Skip felt comfortable just walking in to look. Instead he had all three groups of combatants - his, Mick's, and the Jack, Christine, Maggie combo - converge upon the area at once, their weapons ready.

              They did in fact find someone still alive in there, but he wasn't in good enough shape to put up a fight. Ten feet away from the dead body of Bill, the leader of the ill-fated attack upon the community center, they found a man writhing in pain in the mud and leaves, a bullet through his pelvis. Skip searched him thoroughly, removing a pistol and two hunting knives, and then ordered his group to drag him back to the community center.

              "Put some bandages on that bleeding," he told them. "I don't want him to bleed out before I have a chance to talk to him. Stick him in one of the empty storage rooms and keep him under guard."

              They dragged him off, not being particularly gentle with him as they did so.

              Skip turned to Christine, laying eyes on her for the first time since early that morning. She looked back at him, the hood of her rain slicker pulled back, her blonde hair drenched and dripping, her rifle pointed at the ground. They shared a smile with each other. He wanted to tell her that she had done a good job, that he had worried about her, that he was proud of her. He didn't, not wanting it to seem like he wasn't worried about and proud of the rest of those around him. All the same, she got the message.

              From atop hill 1519, Lieutenant Bracken and Stu had watched the entire battle unfold, from the time the first Raid-bomb was tossed to the time the last shot was fired at the escaping tree people. Stu, when things had seemed to be going well for the invaders, had urged Bracken to take the platoon down to join the battle.

              "We can get fresh recruits down there and we can capture our pick of the women!" he'd pleaded.

              But Bracken insisted upon watching only, seeing how things unfolded. The entire battle, from start to finish, had lasted less than thirty minutes and Bracken was somewhat confused on just what he should think about it. On the one hand, the town had been taken almost completely by surprise. The invaders had already been inside the wall when the sun came up, something that should never have been allowed to happen. But on the other hand, the guards at the near position had reacted well to the attack, preventing their position from falling and, obviously, getting the word out to the community center that an attack was underway.

              "This entire thing," he told Stu now, watching through binoculars as Mick's group emerged from the community center and began heading west, towards the wall, "was a case of two different extremes."

              "What the fuck does that mean?" asked Stu, who, while clever, was not blessed with a terribly large vocabulary.

              "It means there was a mixture of some pretty hideous discipline - such as when the defenders broke and ran from four people shooting at them - and some rather brilliant defenses. The flanking maneuvers were first-rate, performed with precision in exactly the right places at exactly the right times. That final maneuver, flushing those people out of the trees by shooting at them from the baseball diamond, that was planning and execution at it finest. I couldn't have done it better myself. I just don't understand how someone, probably your friend with the kids and the M-16s, could be so smart about these tactical decisions, but so dumb about the basic defense arrangement."

              "Who knows?" Stu asked, watching as another group started piling into the truck they used to gather wood with. It was one of the few that had been undamaged in the battle. Three got in the front of it and four got in the back. It started up and began heading towards the northeast corner, probably to check on the guard position that had been struck in the opening moves. "Listen, Bracken," he said, "this is the perfect time for us to strike. They're all in disarray from the first attack. It will be the last thing that they're expecting. We could go in from the north before they have a chance to replace their guards. We stay off the main road and work our way south and I bet we can be on top of that community center before they even know we're there."

              "No," Bracken said without hesitation.

              "We can take them!" Stu said.

              "I'm sure we could," he replied. "But how many would we lose doing it? Ten maybe, perhaps fifteen if our friend rallies quickly enough. Not only that, we would end up having to kill a lot of the women since they seem to be using them as soldiers."

              "That's the cost of war," Stu said.

              "Yes, but there's no sense paying it if you don't have to. We'll take this town, and soon. But we're not going to do it with a platoon. Tomorrow at first light, we're gonna head back to Auburn. When we come back here, it will be with a company at least. As incompetent as they look on the surface, I don't think we should take any chances with them. When we strike, we'll strike with overwhelming numbers."