Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises (5 page)

As he rounded the corner, his view of the rear left corner of the house was blocked by the deck but he could see Andrew firing from
a crouched position behind the woodpile to his left. He ran around the deck and Andrew’s head swiveled towards him. His eyes were wide and his mouth was open with a kind of slack dazed expression. Seeing his dad he turned back and continued to fire to the left.              

Jack
came round the deck and saw one of the bad guys lying on the ground. Another was firing from the corner of the house; they must have sent a flanking team to the left also. Jack just kept on going, weapon up, walking forward rapidly, engaging the enemy gunman until he went down. Just as he looked back to see if Andrew was ok there was a massive crash from the front of the house.

“Stay here
!” Jack shouted, running towards the back door, “Cover the rear!” As he ran, he dropped the magazine off his weapon, letting it fall to the ground, as he whipped another out of a pouch and slid it home.

Caitlin was in the basement covering the two babies with her body as she heard the men shouting outside of the windows, which were up high at ground level on the left side of the house. The windows were large enough to let someone crawl through.

She could hear the
intense violence of the firefight going on above with the rounds cracking and whipping through the house. Jack had not covered the basement windows with plywood, to let light in during the day, and they were simply covered with curtains. Jasper was barking like crazy at the windows.

Suddenly one
of the widows exploded inwards. She was instantly up on her knee pointing the shotgun at the opening and she heard one of the men outside shout “Fire in the hole!” before silhouetting himself in the small window.

Caitlin
fired the shotgun and the ‘00’ Buckshot smashed into the shape. There was a scream of agony and then the flash-bang went off outside, followed by a stream of curses from the attackers outside. She kept pumping and firing the shotgun through the smashed window, and also into the walls to each side, before she reloaded with spare shells from the side rail.

With one hand she reached for the kids who were both crying
and screaming, “It’s ok, it’s ok, mommies here - it’ll be ok.” she repeated, as she kept the weapon trained on the window.

Around the front of the house, the two guys in the back of the truck jumped clear just short of the front door and the truck accelerated, bumping through the shrubbery and smashing into the reinforced front door. The door went flying back out of its frame and the reinforced bull bars on the front of the grill smashed the piano back and it skewed across the foyer with a ringing crash of discordant notes.

The truck reversed and the two
dismounted guys ran in through the smashed doorway. One of them carried a SAW with a box of two hundred rounds on it and as he stepped to the right of the doorway, the other guy going to the left, he unleashed a long burst of fire, swinging the weapon in an arc. The long burst spewed across a large arc in front of him, smashing through the walls and passing through into the back of the house.

Luckily, he had not aimed the
weapon down through the basement floor. His next arc was aimed up, chewing through the roof and into the upstairs rooms. The two guys from the truck cab joined the two already in the house and they prepared to stack up and move through the house.

Just as the last roar of SAW fire died away, Jack burst through the back door. He had line of sight through the archway where the basement door was situated, central to the house, and into the foyer.

He came on
with righteous fury.

The piano was between hi
m and the three men preparing to clear through the house, the SAW gunner was out of sight to the left. He came on with the M4 in his shoulder, both eyes open, firing rapidly and instinctively into the three men in front of him. He saw his rounds hit at least two of the men; one was hit in the throat and his blood sprayed out across the foyer closet, the other took a round through the skull, snapping his head back.

Jack
pushed through the archway and as he did so he saw the third guy behind the piano break and try to run through the broken doorway. He instinctively laid the weapon onto him and pulled the trigger rapidly, dropping him in a sprawl as the corpse slid over the concrete step and into the shrubbery.

Jack
was still walking forward firing and as he rounded the arch he heard the distinctive ‘clunk’ empty sound as he expended the last round in his magazine and the bolt locked itself to the rear.

Shit
.

At the same time, he caught sight of the SAW gunner out of his peripheral vision to the left.

Jack dived behind the piano as a burst of fire ripped through the wall above him. He ended up sprawled on the ground, cheek pressed to the decorative tile, looking into the eyes of one of his daughter’s dolls, incongruous in the violence.

He rolled, reached and freed the Glock from
its holster, low crawled and moved to the right side of the piano as the SAW rounds continued to smash through it, the gunner trying to annihilate him. Jack popped around the piano and shot the guy rapidly in the legs, working up into his pelvis; as he fell to the floor Jack was up on one knee, firing into the gunner, before moving rapidly forwards and finishing him with a double tap to the head.

Jack
realized that he was now exposed in the open doorway and he moved quickly back to the archway, holstering his handgun and putting a fresh magazine in his rifle. Suddenly there was silence, except for the crying of his babies in the basement and the barking of Jasper.

He ripped open the
basement door, “Hon, are you ok? The kids?”

“Yea, we’re good. You ok -
and Andy?”

“Yea, we’re good,” he replied.

“Thank God. I‘ve got bad guys round the side, trying to get in the windows.”

“Ok, stay there, I’m gonna check it out.”

Jack headed out back. “Ok, cover me,” he shouted to Andrew, ‘are you ok?”

“Yea Dad
. Wow that was some crazy stuff.”

“Ok, keep it focused, you did real good son. I’ll clear the side of the house; we’ll take it from there.”

Jack moved up to the corner of the house. He could see the guy on the ground that Andrew had shot, and then laying out from the corner was the one he had got. As he approached, he put a round into each one, to the head, to make sure they were dead.

No live enemy left behind him.

As he neared the corner he stayed back from it and circled out to the left, keeping his weapon back from the corner but scanning carefully as he ‘sliced the pie’ and brought more and more of the area beyond the corner into view. Eventually, he could see two men lying by the broken basement window, one moaning in place and the other trying to drag himself away across the lawn, both legs shredded and bleeding. They got the same treatment, double taps to each, then again, until they stopped moving.

Jack
did not want to move up to them because he would be exposed to fire from across the road to his left. He was already exposed but having cleared the left side he moved back to the corner. He wasn’t prepared to expose Andrew and himself by moving out with bounding over-watch to where the enemy had been. Such a clearance patrol would have been the only way to ensure there was no enemy out there, but it was too risky to expose Andrew. Anyhow, the two Suburbans were no longer there, they must have bugged out during the fight in the foyer.

“Ok, let
’s secure the house,” he said to Andrew as he moved back to him. “We’ll confirm the bad guys are dead and get them out of the way so the kids don’t see them. Then, we’ll get the hell out of here. Andy, you realize we can’t afford to let any of these guys live right, it’s just too dangerous?”

Andrew nodded.

They moved through into the foyer and dragged the bodies to the door, pitching them out. They took anything of value, their weapons, ammunition and body armor, in particular the SAW.

As they were picking up the last guy from the foyer Andrew noticed a chain round his neck and what looked like an ID badge stuffed
inside his shirt. He brought it to Jack’s attention. Pulling it out, it was a Department of Homeland Security ID badge, current.

They checked the others, they all had them. Civilian clothes, unmarked vehicles, with state of the art tactical vests and weapons, with full auto capability; it all made sense now. These bad guys were not marauders at all. They were FedGov, Regime thugs.

The currency of the Regime was fear. What better way to spread it.

C
hapter Three

T
he only choice was to leave, to bug out. Not only was the house uninhabitable, shot to pieces and covered in blood from the attackers, with the front door hanging off, but the discovery that the marauders were in fact all part of the Regime fear machine made it doubly worrying. Had they called in the address with a ‘contact report’ during or after the battle?

The
Suburbans had gone, so at least a couple had managed to run away. There were no emergency services anymore outside of the zones, no 911 call, flashing lights and police sirens coming to their aid.

The family
had bug out bags ready to go and they started to load the two cars. Jack had already mostly loaded the trailer with their stored food for just such an eventuality, leaving it loaded in the garage, and together with Andrew they started collecting the rest of their gear and bug-out bags and rapidly throwing it all either into the trailer or into the cars. They grabbed personal bags and also family camping gear and loaded up the vehicles and the trailer. Caitlin was grabbing the kids’ clothing and all the various ancillaries that they needed, throwing it into bags.

They moved as fast as they could.
They could have just jumped in the cars and left, but Jack felt they had to take the gamble that the marauders were a ‘deniable’ asset without immediate backup, because they needed to pack their supplies and equipment if they were to survive out there and not become refugees.

During the packing, they saw no-one. Not a single one of their neighbors had helped, nor did they come out of their houses now, those that were left.

Fear.

Even the Johnson
s were no longer around, and Jack did not want to go down there and get involved in their grief. It looked like they had moved Mr. Johnson off the front lawn, probably taking him inside the house.

             
The Berenger’s plan was to put the seats down in the minivan, which made a large cargo space, and load it up. Jack would drive it, alone, as the lead vehicle. The Suburban would be driven by Caitlin, towing the trailer, Andrew riding shotgun with the kids and dog in the back,

They would keep a ‘tactical bound’ behind
Jack, the theory being that a tactical bound was not a specific distance, but depended on the ground. In close country it was shorter, in open country longer, the idea being that the distance of the tactical bound would prevent the family vehicle being caught in any contact that Jack might drive into up front.

They knew that the streets were not deserted, and although traffic was limited by the fuel situation, there was still traffic around. So although it was not
completely unusual to be out driving, it was sufficiently unusual to be noticeable. Particularly if they were tied to the battle that had just taken place and ended up on any law enforcement BOLO lists.

They simply could not trust any law enforcement given what had just
happened and given that they were armed and weapons were being confiscated; being stopped, questioned and searched would not go well for them.

             
Jack and Caitlin agreed that their best plan would be to go to Bill and Cindy’s farm, if not to stay with them at least as a goal to get out of town and see them on their way. They knew that the great danger of bugging out without anywhere to go was that they could end up as refugees. They did have supplies, so long as they could keep them out of other people’s hands, but without a solid base anywhere they went would be tenuous.

In fact, that first afternoon they didn’t go anywhere far. They drove to one of the outdoor swimming pools that the HOA ran in their neighborhood, open only during the summer months. This particular pool was a couple of miles away and down a secluded lane, without having to leave the network of suburban
back roads.

Jack
cut the padlock on the gate and, once they had driven through, replaced it with a spare. He had collected breaking tools for just such a purpose. They drove into cover at the back of the pool buildings and got the cars into the trees. Jack figured that if law enforcement worked out what had happened at the house, and that the family had bugged out, it would be easy to catch them in a net of roadblocks.