The day after: An apocalyptic morning (129 page)

              "Who would've thought," Leanette said wistfully. "Someday, if we live through this, we'll tell our children that we used to be able to pick up the telephone and have a pizza at our house in thirty minutes and that we used to worry about things like the rise and fall of the NASDAQ and how it would affect our retirement account. They won't have any idea what we're talking about. They'll be worried about whether the next year's crop is going to feed everyone, whether or not the glacier forming on the mountain is going to crush us, whether or not our gene pool is wide enough to continue the species."

              "Like you said," Hector said, "we're down to basic survival now. In a way, maybe it's for the best for this fucked up species. You ever think of that?"

              Before anyone had a chance to respond to this thought, Paula spotted the first of the Auburnites coming into view to the northeast. "Troops coming into view," she said calmly, though with unmistakable command in her voice. "Everyone get ready."

              Everyone immediately dropped the subject at hand and picked up their weapons. Rifles were trained out over the terrain and eyes peered into scopes as more and more men came into view. It was immediately recognized that something was different this morning.

              "They're all spread out," Paula said, seeing that the tiny figures were stretching all the way across her field of view from left to right instead of marching in a loose line. "It looks like they've learned a few things."

              "Paula," Leanette, who was on the far left side of the group, suddenly spoke up. "They're stretched all the way over to the far ring of hills."

              She looked that way, seeing that Leanette was correct. Instead of merely marching in the relatively flat and featureless corridor along the edge of the mudfall, there were now well over a hundred troops moving over the hilly, rough ground to the west as well. These men also were spread considerably out as they marched, with no two men closer than twenty feet of each other. "Oh shit," she said, feeling a worm of dread working into her. "If they keep coming at us this way, half of them are gonna be on our left flank when they get into range."

              "Which is probably why they're doing it," Hector said, a trace of fear in his voice. "They're trying to surround the hills we've been attacking from."

              "They're heading right towards Skip as well," Doris said. "Paula, what do we do?"

              "We need to get Skip and Jack the hell out of there," Paula said. She put down her binoculars and picked up her radio.

              "But what about us?" Leanette asked.

              "We hunker down," she said. "This is just one hill out of hundreds. They'll have no reason to climb it to check it out unless we give them one. We stay put until they pass us."

              Everyone looked at each other nervously at these words. While the militia was passing below, they would be completely cut off from support or extraction. If they were discovered up there on the hill, they would be easy fodder.

              "Hatchling two to mother bird," Paula said into the radio. "Do you copy?"

              "Mother bird here," came Jack's rather tired sounding voice. "Go ahead, hatchling two."

              "Wolves are in view," she said. "They're spread out widely and they're going to pass on both sides of us. We're not going to feed them. We're going to hibernate instead."

              There was an extended pause and then Skip's voice came on the radio. "I copy that, hatchling," he said. "Do you need emergency extraction?"

              "Negative," Paula said, unfolding her map. "You wouldn't get to us in time. We'll be all right. Their path will take them right to your nest though. You need to unfold your wings and go find another nest." She put her finger on a ring of hills to the far west. "I would suggest going west of the area in grid B-5, that's Bravo-five. That will put you well west of their position. You can circle around from the north to pick us up after they pass."

              "Copy that," Skip, who was undoubtedly looking at a copy of the same map, told her. "Hatchling one is located at grid Delta-5. Are they in the path of the advance as well?"

              Paula consulted her map, tracing her dirty fingernail over the reference grids and quickly locating the small collection of hills where Christine and her team had been dropped. "Yes," she said into the radio. "If they stick to the same manner of marching, they'll pass on both sides of that grid as well. You'd better get them out of there."

              "Unfolding the wings now," Skip said. "Can you give me an alternate drop point for them?"

              Paula took a deep breath, not really wanting to make such an important and potentially life-threatening decision on her own. That was Skip's job Goddammit! But she was the one looking at the troops right now, not him, and she was the one in the best position to estimate their advance. She continued to run her finger over the map for a moment, taking several glances down at the slowly approaching soldiers and comparing the terrain with the map. She keyed up her radio. "They seem to be staying east of the edge of the Charlie grid on the map. If you put them on a hill somewhere near B-5 and can find a LZ west of there, they should be able to feed some of them in another hour or so. But have them keep a sharp lookout."

              "Copy that," Skip said, his voice clearer now and the distinctive hum of the engine noise now in the background. "We're taking off now. Keep hunkered down until they pass and I'll pick you up just to the north of your location. Keep yourselves hidden and let me know if there's trouble."

              "Will do, mother bird," Paula said evenly, knowing of course, that if there was trouble, there would be nothing Skip or Jack would be able to do about it.

              It took the Auburnites more than fifteen minutes to pass their location once they got close enough for detection to be a serious worry. They moved slowly, carefully, their weapons out in front of them at the ready, their eyes searching the hills around them for signs of attack. Each step they took was a cautious one, the steps of soldiers in enemy territory - a sharp contrast from the carefree gait of the previous day.

              Atop of the hill Paula and her team were flat on their bellies in the mud, pine needles pulled over the top of them for camouflage, their faces thoroughly covered in mud. They kept their weapons flat against the ground as well, although in easy reach in case a last stand became necessary. At Paula's direction they lay facing outward in four different directions, their feet forming the hub of a wheel. They watched anxiously as man after man on both sides went by the bottom of their hill on their march. Many of them looked upward towards the hidden squad, their eyes searching for danger, many of them probably seeing the brown lumps that looked like just another collection of mud in the trees without recognizing it was four people in hiding.

              As they went by, Paula had a very nasty thought. The mines that they had laid at the base of the hill! What if one of the Auburnites decided to cross from one side of the march to the other at that particular point and blundered across the trap? True, it would disable the soldier in question, but it would also alert the other soldiers that there was something about this particular hill that maybe needed a closer look. Paula kept this thought to herself - although Hector and Leanette both had it independently themselves - and simply kept watch on her sector. No soldiers decided to cross over. No one went anywhere near where the mines had been set.

              Finally, at long last, the last groups of widely spread Auburnites marched by. They checked their rear continuously, obviously fearful of an attack from behind, but they continued on, eventually, thankfully, moving off to the south and the tip of the mudfall three miles beyond.

              "Christ Almighty," Paula breathed when the last of them were more than two hundred yards away. "I don't ever want to go through that again."

              "You ain't shittin'," Hector said, rolling up a bit and twisting around so he could continue to keep an eye out on the retreating figures.

              "Let's keep ourselves down," Paula told everyone. "They're still way too close for comfort. Leanette, you keep an eye out to the north, just in case they have a rear-guard back there we don't know about."

              "Right," she said, helping herself to Paula's binoculars and taking up position. She began to scan the area to the north of them.

              Paula pulled out her radio, which she had switched off when the Auburnites had come close to prevent an unexpected transmission from giving them away, and switched it back on. She keyed up. "Mother bird, this is hatchling two. Are you out there?"

              Jack's voice was full of obvious relief to hear her voice. "We're here, hatchling two. What's your situation?"

              "Wolves have passed by us without getting a sniff of us. We're ready to head on out."

              "We're in the air right now, five minutes past dropping off hatchling one at their new nest. We're currently hanging around grid Bravo 4, maybe three minutes from your location. Give us a nest and we'll be there."

              She unfolded her map and looked at it for a moment, quickly deciding upon the base of a hill that was about a quarter of a mile to the north of them. She gave Jack the coordinates and had them confirmed back to her. Just as everything was set, she had a sudden thought. Why should this entire mission be for nothing? "Stand by for a second, mother bird," she said slowly. She turned to her squad. "How we looking?"

              "They're still moving away," reported Hector, who was watching the backs of the Auburnites.

              "How about to the north?" she then asked Leanette.

              "Empty," she reported. "If they have a rear-guard, they're keeping it way to the rear."

              Paula looked out at the wave of troops to her south for a moment. "How far away do you think the closest of them are now?" she asked Hector, who was perhaps the best of them at estimating distance.

              He shrugged. "Maybe a little more than three hundred yards. Far enough that they shouldn't be a bother to us."

              "But close enough so that we could still be a bother to them?" she asked.

              Three faces turned to her, their eyes wide.

              "You're the riflemen," she challenged. "You think you can hit moving targets at more than three hundred?"

              Two of them could, aided mostly by lots of shooting practice prior to deployment and the almost complete lack of wind to throw the bullet off course. They made some adjustments to their scopes and sighted in on the backs of three of the soldiers. While they drew beads on their targets, Paula updated Skip and Jack as to what they were doing. Finally, after assuring each other that they were ready, they counted to three and squeezed their triggers. Leanette's shot passed within six inches of her target, which happened to be none other than Lieutenant Roberts, who was in charge of the reserve platoon. At nearly the same instant that Roberts heard something go whizzing by him, Hector's bullet smashed into the back of Sergeant Lyon's head, carrying a good portion of his brain out through his face. He dropped like a rock, never having known what hit him. Even as he was in mid-fall, Doris' bullet performed perhaps the most dramatic feat. Still traveling considerably faster than the speed of sound, it entered the backpack of Private Henson just below his sleeping bag. It burrowed through a box of 5.56 millimeter ammunition, exploding the gunpowder in several of the shells before burying itself into his right kidney. To those watching it appeared as if a small bomb had suddenly detonated in Henson's backpack. He staggered forward three more steps before falling screaming to the ground.

              Those in the rear of the militia reacted quickly, throwing themselves down and training their weapons to the rear. Since no one had happened to be looking back at the moment the shots had been fired, no one knew where the attack had come from (which did not prevent five of them from blindly returning fire anyway). Paula deliberately gave away their location by firing an extended burst with her M-16 at the prone soldiers. She wanted them to know what hill the fire had come from and though none of her bullets hit anyone, the muzzleflashes from her shots served this purpose.

              "Let's go," she said, scrambling for the far side of the hill just as the return fire started to roll in.

              They quickly put the hill between themselves and the Auburnites and began to run north, towards their pickup point. A quick circle around the next hill and there was the helicopter, idling on the ground, the doors open. They climbed in, shut the doors, and a minute later they were airborne and out of the area.

              Five minutes later the entire reserve platoon of the Placer County Militia approached the hill, weapons out and ready. Lieutenant Roberts knew that the attackers were long gone but he had been ordered by Bracken to check the hill anyway, to see if there was any wounded or dead. One by one his troops fanned out over the base and finally, one squad began to ascend it. Roberts, who would be responsible for giving report on what was found, stuck to the rear and then, once they were half-way up, started following them while the rest of the platoon fanned out towards the front.