Avalon: The Retreat (41 page)

“Assemble every available troop,” he said while looking up. “I want all the trucks ready to roll and a Humvee for me. Load an M-60 on the Humvee and throw on a couple of cases of ammo. I want all the men in battle dress and combat ready. We’re going to finish this once and for all. And bring out the little surprise we’ve been preparing; we’ll place it on the west end of town. Make sure it has plenty of ammo.”

“I’ll get right on it, sergeant,” the corporal said as he headed out the door.

The alarm was heard throughout the building about sixty seconds later, an intermittent sharp buzz that everyone knew meant trouble. In fifteen minutes they were ready and heading west on the main road that trekked through the center of the town.

Sheriff Waters looked at his watch and it had been twenty minutes since the message came down from Avalon. That would put the Slavers just about here and he made a note to himself as he looked at the big map on the wall before him. He pushed the intercom and Marci came back to him,

“Yes, Sheriff?”

“Marci, how many citizens do we have deputized?”

“Counting me, six.”

“Send a car out with a PA system on it. Tell the deputy to say, ‘All able-bodied men assemble at the Sheriff’s Office immediately. A Slaver attack is imminent.’ You got that?”

“Got it, Sheriff!”

In five minutes the car was going up and down the street broadcasting the alert. People ran down the street toward the Sheriff’s office, all armed with M-16s and ammo bandoliers with clips full of NATO .223 Ball. They all had side arms and bayonets, and some had pockets on their vests with a grenade on each side. In five more minutes, eight trucks, mostly pickups, pulled up in front of the Sheriff’s office and the men climbed in… three men plus the driver in the cab and the rest in the back.

The Sheriff took his radio out of the pouch, “Marci, shut that siren off now.”

“Okay, Sheriff.”

In thirty seconds, just as the Sheriff was getting ready to call her again, the sirens wound down into a progressive deeper and deeper groan and finally stopped.

“Let’s go get them,” the Sheriff said to the men. “No prisoners. No mercy. If any of them gets away, it won’t be because we didn’t try to kill ‘em all. Let’s go to the west of town!”

Mike and the rest of the men rode their dirt bikes down the old track bed and in thirty minutes, they were at the base of the mountain. The Slavers had already gone past them, but it was their intention to cut them off and allow the attack to come in simultaneously on the Slavers from both the front and rear. They all had radios and were able to keep in contact with one another.

Mike had searched for Bone Breaker’s body after the last attack but he never found it… he knew the Slavers would return eventually…and that time was now.

Bone Breaker rode along in front of his four hundred bikers. It had taken a couple of months to gather that large a number for a payback visit to Fitch, and this was going to be his big day. He was going to either kill all of them or enslave and sell them back on the coast. The clear blue sky was an omen that all would go well.

He relished this moment; it nearly gave him a hard-on just thinking about the cries for mercy and the blood that was going to flow… and knowing that the bloodshed today would not be that of his troops. He was confident and eager for battle, which made his ride toward Fitch tedious and filled him with impatience.

The Avalon sentry at Eagle’s Nest, now armed with those large binoculars, had spotted the Slavers going down the highway headed for Fitch. He got on his handheld radio and alerted Mike at the main building and Mike and Sam, in turn, alerted the main battle group at Avalon to prepare for combat. They jumped on their bikes and headed out to the large binocular site to talk to the sentry about what he had seen.

Dan was on the Ham set with Fitch. “Sheriff,” he said, “They’re on their way. From what Mike just told me on the handheld, it looks about like three or four hundred of them coming at you fast.”

The air raid sirens sounded and people converged on the Sheriff’s office once again, just as they had two months earlier. The Sheriff stood in front of his office with his hands on his hips and said in a voice they could all hear,

“They’re coming. Mike says maybe three or four hundred of them. We need to go west and meet them. Randall, is the tank ready?”

Randall stuck up a hand with his thumb straight up.

“Let’s roll and this time, let’s put an end to every one of them.”

The pickups, deuce and a half, and Humvee rolled out of town toward the west with the tank lurching behind. The group stopped and waited as the old Bradley continued toward the Bikers at thirty miles an hour. Blue smoke came out of the exhaust pipe as it rattled and clanked at high speed.

The Slavers rounded the large curve that skirted the river just before crossing the bridge that led to the main road running through the middle of town. A movement caught Bone Breaker’s eye and one of his riders, a tough lieutenant and trusted adviser, slumped on his bike, veered off the road, and went into the river. Another rider fell and several others ran over the lieutenant or hit him, lost control of their bikes, and crashed. Thirty or so riders crashed before those coming behind them could veer off and avoid the conflagration.

Bone Breaker signaled and one after the other pulled over, but not before more of them slumped at the controls of their bikes and showed a profusion of blood where a round had penetrated their chest or head. One man had an arm just hanging at what was left of his elbow. They were sitting ducks; sharpshooters were picking them off one-by-one. He saw rounds hitting the road and tearing chunks out of it. “Turn back!” he yelled to his fellow Slavers, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

In a moment they were turning and going west toward the coast again. More men went down on the road as round after round found one or more of them and tore holes through their bodies. In a moment they were out of range, but never saw who fired at them. Bone Breaker couldn’t believe there were enough of them left alive to put up this kind of resistance, and then he remembered the big cement walled store and the Armory. There must have been more of them left than he thought and they were putting up a good fight.

At thirty miles per hour, the Bradley came down the road heading directly toward the Slavers. The big gun was locked and loaded, and the gunner had strong instructions,

“Don’t ruin the road with that gun; we need it.”

The fifty caliber machine gun mounted in the turret was manned and hot. A few rounds already sent into the group had found their mark several times. The turret gunner was to shoot if the bikers headed off the road; at that point, they were his. They barreled down the road and the gap separating them was quickly closed as the big machine quickly ate up the distance. A large group separated and went north away from the river, and the turret man yelled to the gunner,

“They’re splitting off ahead to the right! Do you see them?”

The gun moved right and detonated; fire and smoke came out of the muzzle and the explosion was enormous. A huge ball of fire erupted where the bikers were and they were all torn to bits. The fire ignited the landscape.

“Great shot,” the turret man congratulated in glee, “You smoked the whole bunch!”

Bone Breaker saw it happen and could hardly believe his eyes.

“A tank?…” he said in disbelief. “They have a tank?…” he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Freakin’ bloody ashes! Everybody head west if you don’t want to die; we can’t fight a freakin’ tank!”

As they turned, the fifty calibers started chewing holes in them. Panic set in and it became every man for himself. Every time some of them headed off the road, the big gun barked and that group ceased to exist. Ma Deuce, a fifty caliber machine gun did its job grinding the Slavers into hamburger. The bikers had to cover a lot of territory in a hurry to get out of range, so they rolled on the power.

Pickups loaded with Sheriff Waters’ men sped past the tank at about eighty mph and caught up to some of the Slavers. The men in back of the truck shot at the bikers with shotguns and M-16s and the bikers went down, one after another. It was a rout and they were killing the Slavers ten and twenty at a time. The huge group was quickly pared down to a manageable number.

The Sheriff and his men were not done yet, though, and they kept at it. More bikers went down and another pickup full of men came along, stopped at the bodies along the road, and shot each one in the head, whether they were alive or not. One man lost his whole family to these scum and he was making sure he got his fair share of them.

Some of the wounded bikers begged for mercy and he shot those twice, once in the knee and then in the head… not too quickly so they had plenty of time to suffer. He was in no hurry; he had all day.

A large group of bikers managed to get far enough ahead of the others, roll on the power, and get away from those deranged farmers… but the scumbag bikers would be in for a big surprise in a few more minutes. Dead ahead and coming at them at eighty plus were Mike and his boys. In about ten more minutes they split into two groups. A radio message from the Sheriff made them stop. One group of Mike’s men placed themselves in position on each side of the road and Mike gave them strict orders,

“Do you all see that big tree over there? Everyone stop firing until they get over to that large rock. Does everyone see those two objects?”

His men were acknowledging that they understood.

“We don’t want to get ourselves into a crossfire situation,” Mike continued. “Take your time, make your shots count, and kill as many of them as you can. Good luck; I think I hear them coming. Get ready. Hoooraaah!”

The bikers rode into the trap and Sam, who kept the M-60 he “borrowed” from the Armory, opened fire well beyond the tree Mike had pointed out to his men. The bikes went down on the road and sparks flew much like a Chinese New Year celebration. The asphalt ground down machine and gas tanks as the bikes slid more than a hundred feet and blew up when sparks ignited the gas.

Bikes and men were blown into the air by the explosions like a string of firecrackers lit and going off, one after the other in a rapid staccato of shrieks and balls of fire.

Bone Breaker and several of his lieutenants saw it happen. Since they had stayed safely near the middle of the group, they were able to veer left and head south out of danger. They weaved back and forth and made it to the river where there was a small area they had to cross. Once on the other side, the weaving began anew as they tried to stay away from the big gun on the tank. The tank didn’t fire at them because the gunner didn’t see them. They were now out of range and away from the racing group of bikes.

After a few minutes, Bone Breaker stopped on a hill near a small patch of trees to the rear of all the action. He took out his binoculars and surveyed the area before him. Out of over four hundred fellow pillagers, only he and his seven trusted Lieutenants were left alive.

As he scanned the area, he could see smoke rolling up into the blue sky like black ribbons curling upward. Hundreds of bikes burned fiercely and, although he could barely make them out, his men lay everywhere, dead. Several townspeople were going from one man to the next, finishing them off.

“They nearly killed us all,” there was a mix of disbelief and anger in his voice. “I’ll be back, Fitch,” he said with determination. “You can count on it. You only won a couple of battles, but this war ain’t over!”

The townspeople of Fitch, under the leadership of Sheriff Waters, began to rebuild their town’s infrastructure, especially the businesses and the moving of goods and vital materials from one place to another. Doctor Dan Crowley and Caroline came down and helped the citizens of Fitch put their small hospital back in working order. The Fire Department was overhauled to the best of their abilities and the Sheriff deputized more people.