The day after: An apocalyptic morning (125 page)

              He did it.

              Paula and her team were using a field of granite boulders for their firing position, each team member crouching behind one of the larger boulders and using the gaps to aim through. It was almost two hours after the first successful hit and run strike by Christine and her team and Paula, though she was about as nervous as she'd ever been, was ready to get on the scoreboard as well. She didn't relish the thought of killing people, not in the least, but she was fully prepared to do it in defense of her town and her friends.

              "Lead elements coming into view," she said, watching the first few squads of men came walking around an outcropping of rock.

              One by one her team acknowledged this information. She then checked in with Skip on the radio to let him know that the attack was imminent.

              "Unfolding the wings," Jack assured her.

              "Okay guys," she told her team. "Remember what Skip said. We're gonna pound on the point positions for now until nobody down there wants to take point anymore. So let's assign targets, shall we?"

              Colby's platoon was still on point although Stinson's squad, which pretty much didn't exist anymore, had necessarily been relieved at the head of the line. Stinson himself was walking near Sergeant Butano, whose squad did have the front duties. They had been underway from the location of the first attack for a little more than an hour now and they were still talking about it.

              "I can't believe he fuckin shot Jankowski," Stinson said for perhaps the tenth time. "I mean, I know he probably wasn't going to make it, but Jesus!"

              "I never seen any shit like that before," Butano, a native Auburnite agreed. "That was cold. Just stone fucking cold."

              "It could've been any of us. Any fuckin one. That's what the fuck you get for being part of this great militia? Shot in the head 'cause you get wounded?"

              "Yep."

              These sentiments of shock at the way that Jankowski had been treated were not isolated to those - like Stinson and Butano and their men - who had witnessed it. All up and down the formation nearly every man had heard what had happened and was soberly considering what it meant to him. Being wounded meant death? Just how bad of a wound did one have to suffer before being condemned? Would a simple arm wound be enough? Though everyone intellectually knew that Jankowski wouldn't have made it anyway, there was still a strong sense of wrongness to not even trying to help him. It went against every value - including God's law that Barnes and Bracken were always going on about - that these men had been raised with.

              "And what do you think about that shit Bracken was spouting about isolated stragglers?" Stinson asked next. "Why the fuck would a group of stragglers hit us from cover like that?"

              "And then disappear without a trace into the woods," Butano added. "I ain't buying it."

              That was another opinion from Bracken that was not receiving a whole lot of respect from the troops. Bracken - after the dead had been pulled to the side of the road and left there - had assured everyone that some fringe group of comet survivors, probably only four or five strong, had been the ones to attack them. There was no other explanation that made sense, he proclaimed. Except most of the men thought that there was another explanation that made sense.

              "That was an ambush by the Garden Hill people," Stinson said, articulating what everyone seemed to instinctively know. "What else could it have been?"

              "Fuckin aye right," Butano said. "I'll bet they used that fucking chopper to drop a hit team in front of us and then picked them up again after the ambush."

              "How would they know we're coming though?" asked Corporal Rivers, who was marching in front of them. He wanted to believe Bracken. He wanted to but was having difficulty. "Did they just happen to notice us on one of their flights, or what?"

              "Those two bitches made it to Garden Hill," Stinson said. "That's the only way they would've known."

              "What?" Rivers said in disbelief. "You gotta be shittin. There ain't no way them two coulda walked all the way to Garden Hill. What would they have eaten? They didn't take no food with 'em."

              "How do you know they didn't take any food with them?" Stinson inquired. "We don't even know how the hell they got out, but somehow they did. If they were smart enough to get around our security, wouldn't you think they'd be smart enough to..."

              Before that thought could be completed, the point man suddenly gasped and fell forward. An instant later the two men nearest to him went down as well. Within a second of this, the air was once again filled with whizzing projectiles, flying pieces of bark, and the screams of men being struck by automatic weapons fire.

              Paula raked her fire back and forth, concentrated on the large group of men that had been marching just to the rear of the point men. She fired five to six round bursts - just enough to keep the barrel of the weapon from being forced too far upward. Their reaction down there was not very controlled. She saw men scrambling to get under cover, some running blindly into the woods, others falling under the barrage she was sending at them. Two men simply froze in place, neither getting down nor shooting back and they drew her fire as a magnet draws steel. She covered them with her sight and pulled the trigger, moving the barrel back and forth. Both of them dropped to the ground in a very graceless manner.

              Less than ten seconds after her riflemen had fired the first volley, just as the Auburnites below were starting to fire back, the chamber of her M-16 locked open after ejecting the last of her thirty-round clip. Bullets from return fire were now starting to plunk into the rocks around her and her group.

              "Let's go!" she shouted at them, shouldering her rifle and scrambling backwards.

              "Covington!" Bracken screamed into his radio over the sound of the return gunfire. "Get your platoon around on that right flank! Get over there before they pull back again!"

              "On the way!" Stu's voice came back.

              "Colby," he screamed next. "Give me report!" Nothing in reply. Had Colby been hit? He hadn't been up near the front of his platoon had he? "Colby! Goddammit, are you there?"

              "Here, sir," Colby's voice answered up. "My second squad's been hit hard this time! I've got six men down!"

              "Rally the rest of your platoon now and get around on that left flank!" Bracken ordered. "Covington's moving around on the right. Box those fuckers in!"

              "But, sir," Colby returned. "My wounded!"

              "Fuck your wounded!" Bracken yelled, not noticing the glares of those men around him at these words. "Get your platoon over there and get the motherfuckers who are doing this! Do it now!"

              "Jesus fucking Christ," Colby swore to himself as he pocketed his radio. He stood up and yelled for his sergeants. "Get everyone around to the left flank of the hill right now," he ordered. He had to repeat himself several times before they actually did it.

              The two pursuit platoons weren't even close to catching Paula and the others. There was simply too much ground between their stepping-off point and the back side of the hill from which they'd fired. There were too many obstacles for the militia to go over or around, too many potential trails that their quarry might have taken. By the time the two platoons met on the far side of that hill, Paula and her squad were already climbing into the helicopter on the far side of the next hill.

              But all was not for nothing this time. Though they were not fast enough to catch them, they were fast enough to see the helicopter buzzing away to the south as it made good it's escape from the area. Stu's lead squad saw it plainly and even popped a few rounds at it despite the fact that it was much to far away to be hit.

              "Well," Stu said, watching as the small aircraft disappeared over the next set of hills. "It seems that the isolated stragglers theory is all blown to shit, ain't it?"

              He reported this information to Bracken who replied to it calmly but with an obvious strain to his voice. Stu understood. The spotting of the helicopter changed things. No longer could they delude themselves that they were embarking on a surprise attack upon Garden Hill, that they were going to fall upon an unaware enemy in ten days who would then give up without a fight. Garden Hill not only knew they were coming, they were bringing the fight to the enemy.

              Stu led his platoon up to the top of the hill on general principals. Once up there they found the signature of the ambush teams: a pile of 5.56 millimeter shell casings and a few isolated .30 caliber casings. The smell of burned gunpowder was still in the air up there. As they were looking this over they heard the sound of single gunshots coming from below as the wounded from the latest attack were "put out of their misery".

              The Placer County Militia learned quickly as that day wound onward. They learned to fear narrow corridors in the trail, especially corridors that were ringed with hills. They spread out and marched more slowly. They kept their weapons at ready as they walked and their eyes on the landscape. And still they were hit by ambushes four more times before the sun went down.

              Their reactions were quicker with each attack. The soldiers learned to dive to the ground and find cover the moment the bullets started rolling in. By the third attack, everyone was down and returning fire almost before the sounds of the first gunshots reached them. But they could not prevent or predict the attacks because they did not come at any time intervals that could be plotted. And because of this they could not prevent the first two or three casualties of each attack from occurring. The first warning of an attack would be the dropping of the point man and the two men nearest him. There was not even the hope that you would be merely wounded instead of killed. A wound that was more serious than a scratch was a death sentence, as had already been proven. This led to a near mutiny when the sergeant in charge of the point squad would try to assign someone to the front position. Men flat out refused the order to take up point, even if the face of Bracken's threats to have them shot on the spot.

              "What the fuck's the difference if you do it or they do it?" one private screamed hysterically at Bracken. "I'm still a dead motherfucker if I'm in the front."

              Bracken didn't shoot him or anyone else that refused the order to take point. Instead, he came to a compromise of sorts. He eliminated the point position entirely. After the third attack he had the entire front squad spread out in a line with no one man out in front. This was not as effective as far as keeping an eye out to the front went, but it did give those in the first squad the slight sense that they would not be singled out.

              By day's end the final tally of casualties for the militia was eleven killed outright and nine wounded. Of those nine wounded however, seven had to be "put out of their misery" by their commanding lieutenant. As the militia made camp that night they were a group that was very much on edge.

              "Is this shit gonna happen all the way to Garden Hill?" a lowly corporal dared to demand of Bracken during dinner break. "Are they gonna kill eighteen motherfuckin people every Goddamn day?"

              Bracken chose not to be offended by the insolent tone or the insubordination. Instead he gave his humble opinion. "There's no way they can keep up this pace," he said. "They have to be leap-frogging at least two teams just to do what they've done today. I think this is as bad as it's going to get. They'll try this a few more times and eventually we'll get them. I guarantee it."

              And strangely enough, even though nothing else that he had opined that first horrible day had come true, the men locked onto this thought. They bedded down that night confidant that the worst had passed.

              On the Garden Hill side of the equation, the troops that were performing these attacks were elated. Not even the quickening reactions of their prey with each successive ambush daunted their rising spirits. They suffered no casualties as a result of their attacks and in fact nothing that could even be considered a close call. They had learned as well. They picked their positions carefully and opened fire from the two hundred yard range. As long as they did not "get greedy" as Skip would have said, they found that they could easily jog back to the safety of the helicopter long before any Auburnites could approach their positions. They started to feel almost invincible.

              Just before sunset, after his second fuel stop of the day, Skip flew the two teams back to Garden Hill for a hero's welcome by the township. Already the word had been passed that some serious ass kicking had gone on.

              "All right, Jase," Skip said wearily as he shut down the engine. "The hit squads are done for the day but our work is just begun. Let's give this aircraft a once over and then catch a few hours of shut-eye, shall we? We'll lift off again at 10:00 PM sharp."

              "Are we gonna use the nape tonight?" Jack asked, excited at the thought. They had done one practice run with it and it had worked like a dream.