The day after: An apocalyptic morning (133 page)

              "All right, girls," Maddie, taking charge again, told her group of forty. "You know the drill. You're divided into four teams. All of you have a radio, right?"

              The leaders of each group held the radio up for her perusal.

              "Let's do it. Remember, you need to be in position before six o'clock. So let's hurry, shall we?"

              They hurried. By 5:58 AM each guard position had a group of women in the shadows below it. Barnes had set up his guard posts well as far as keeping people from attacking them from the outside went. Each one was atop a hill on the outskirts of the town (with the exception of the bridge position - it had been moved into a building on the Auburn side of the canyon for the duration of the march and the manpower shortage that had resulted). But Barnes had never counted on his positions coming under attack from the inside. As a result, the women were able to easily position themselves at the main egress points for each place.

              When 6:00 AM came and went without any sign of relief showing up, the guards manning these positions began to get a little antsy. They did not think that a revolt had occurred in town of course, the very thought was beyond absurd, but they did wonder what the hold-up was. Each team was under the impression that their position was the only one not relieved. All had been on duty for twelve hours and were more than ready to go home and get some sleep. Showing up late for guard duty was not a common occurrence in Auburn since the penalty for such a thing was three days of house arrest. None of them, however, considered leaving their posts. The penalty for that was hanging.

              It was Sergeant Pillows at guard post number three, which guarded the west side of town, that finally broke the silence. He keyed up his radio. "Post three to admin," he said, fighting to keep annoyance out of his voice. "We're still in position here. Is there a holdup with our relief?"

              There was no answer. "Well what the fuck?" Pillows said. He was about to key up again when another voice came on the radio. It was Sergeant Strickland at post one, which guarded the east side of town and the entrance maze.

              "Post one to post three," he said. "We haven't been relieved either. No sign of them in fact."

              That was when Pillows started to feel a little worm of dread in his stomach. "10-4, post three," he said into the radio. "Let's try and figure out what's going on. Admin, are you there?"

              Nothing.

              "Post one and post three," said another voice. "This is post two. Something must be up. We haven't been relieved either."

              "This is post four," said yet another voice. "We're in the same boat out here. I think maybe there's a problem of some sort down there."

              "You are correct, gentlemen," said a female voice, one that a few of the guards monitoring the radios recognized as belonging to Maddie Livingston. "Something is up down here."

              Pillows and his partner looked at each other in disbelief for a moment. "What the fuck?" Strickland said. He keyed up the radio. "Whoever the bitch on our frequency is," he demanded, "identify yourself immediately. And you'd better have a damn good reason."

              "This is Madeline Crandall," Maddie said, using her previous name, the name that had been banished with the comet. "I am speaking on behalf of the women of this town. We have taken control and you are now our prisoners."

              Pillows' jaw dropped, as did the jaw of the other seven men listening in. "Now listen up," Pillows said after composing himself. "I don't know what kind of game you're playing down there, but you've already earned yourself a severe beating from your husband for talking on the radio. Now tell me what you are doing down there."

              "That piece of shit that used to rape me is dead," Maddie's voice replied calmly. "So is every other man that was off-duty last night. We cut their fucking throats in their beds and they're all rotting there now. In addition, we have taken Barnes, the interior patrol, and both of the admin guards into custody. You eight men are the only ones left."

              "You did no such thing," Pillows said, refusing to believe it.

              "Then how do you explain the lack of relief?" Maddie asked him. "But that is neither here nor there. The reason I am talking to you all now is to inform you that you have a group of women below each of your positions that are armed with automatic weapons and the odd rifle. You will drop your weapons immediately and surrender to them or you will die."

              Pillows stared at his radio for a long time, long enough so that someone else picked up the thread of the conversation for him.

              "You're out of your fucking mind," said Strickland. "You'll hang for even saying such a thing. I don't know how you got your little bitch hands on a radio or how you managed to keep our relief from showing up, but you'd better get our relief out here within the next two minutes or you're gonna burn."

              "Perhaps," Maddie's voice said, "a little extra proof is needed. Stand by for that."

              The radio link clicked off and then, a moment later, it clicked back on. "This is Sergeant Schuyler," said a male voice, obviously strained, but obviously Schuyler's. "I'm inside of the high school building right now. The women have seized the building and they are in possession of the weapons in the supply room. They have taken myself, Dewey, Barnes, and the entire interior patrol into custody and we are currently tied up to chairs. She is..." his voice broke a little "is telling the truth."

              "Holy shit," Pillows said. He keyed up his microphone. "You won't get away with this," he told Maddie. "I would suggest you surrender now before things go too far."

              Maddie was laughing when the link opened from her end. "Tough talk doesn't work any more, dickwad," she said. "Now listen up, all of you on this frequency. We have you pinned down and covered. You can stay up there if you want, but eventually you're going to have to come down for food, aren't you? There aren't many provisions up there and we're prepared to stand guard below you for as long as is necessary. You can try to fight your way down if you think you can take out our teams, but let me warn you, they're well hidden and they're well led. Apparently many of you have forgotten that women were allowed in the army as well and that most of us in the foothills here knew how to shoot. Don't force us to remind you. Do the smart thing and come down right now. You'll be held prisoner until this revolt is settled one way or the other."

              "Give this up now!" Pillows warned them. "Don't you know what's going to happen when the militia returns from Garden Hill? They'll massacre you!"

              "That's for us to worry about, not you," Maddie told them. "Now make up your minds. Are you coming down, or are you going to go the hard way?"

              Two of the teams chose the easy way. Post one and post four both dropped their weapons into their bunkers and made their way down to the waiting women, their hands high in the air. All four of these men figured that the militia would easily take the town back when they returned and that their best chance for living to see that was to cooperate for now. They were taken into custody and quickly spirited off to the high school where they joined their comrades under guard.

              Post two elected to call what they thought was a bluff. They began marching down the hill, their weapons out in front of them, prepared to blow away any bitch that dared fire upon them. They were cut to pieces before they made it halfway down, the women below waiting until they were just into view in the darkness and then illuminating them with powerful battery-operated flashlights. The two men managed to fire a total of ten rounds back at their attackers before they fell dead to the ground. None of the women were hit.

              "What was that firing?" demanded Pillows, at post three, as the sound of automatic weapons fire reached him.

              "That was Law and Weatherly being blown to shit," Maddie's voice replied. "Are you ready to go next, Pillows?"

              In the end, Pillows and his partner stayed up there until nearly one o'clock in the afternoon. By that time, the complete recruitment of all of the remaining women in town was in full swing. Finally, conceding defeat - at least until the rest of the militia returned from Garden Hill - he formally surrendered and was taken into custody along with his partner.

              The town of Auburn was now completely in the hands of the women.

              It was one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time, particularly to sleep-deprived, adrenaline charged minds that were trying to come to grips with a worsening military situation. Stu was the one to suggest it but Bracken, after hearing the proposal, quickly adapted it on an experimental basis without stopping to completely examine the ramifications.

              "Let's send a squad out in front of us," Stu told him at breakfast that morning. "We'll lighten them up by taking their packs away from them, arm them up with five of the automatic weapons and five of the semi-autos, and then have them try to ferret out these ambush teams before the main group gets to them."

              "Ferret them out?" asked Bracken, whose face was gaunt and worried. He was living on less than two hours of broken sleep in the last forty-eight.

              "Right," Stu said. "They'll move faster than the rest of the group. They can circle around and up on some of those hills before we get there. They'll be a scouting squad able to locate attack zones in advance of the main group."

              "A scouting squad," Bracken said, rolling those words around on his tongue. He liked the sound of it. With a minimum of discussion, such a squad was quickly formed, equipped, and enlisted with their new mission.

              Nor did the squad, which consisted of ten of the most experienced troops below the rank of officer, pause to consider the wisdom of what they were being ordered to do. They knew it was marginally dangerous of course, but then simply walking to their desSaration or sleeping in their sleeping bags was dangerous these days. They felt like they were doing something to strike back at the ghosts that had been tormenting them. And they would be armed with the very best weapons available. The mission gave them a sense of elitism, of special privilege. The fact that they would be more than a half a mile in front of the main group and the support that it offered just didn't enter into their calculations.

              And so it came to pass that ten of Bracken's best soldiers trotted off in front at 7:00 AM, moving at a near jog, where they began traipsing up and down and all around the hilly terrain southeast of the first mudfall, searching for hidden ambush teams.

              It wasn't long before they found one.

              Christine's team was up for the first mission that morning. Skip and Jack had dropped them off just after sunrise near a group of hills a mile and a half from where the militia had spent its restless, often interrupted night. It had been almost taken as a given that Christine and her squad would do nothing more than recon for this mission. They figured that the militia would either split into two groups, surrounding the hills as they had done at the beginning of the previous day, or that they would tighten up and move along another corridor to the east, therefore putting them out of range. The job of the first group would be to pinpoint the direction of their march so that the second group, Paula's squad, would be able to set up a better ambush point.

              It was therefore a great surprise for Christine and her team to see a group of ten men, moving quickly in a wedge formation, coming towards them by means of darting in and out of the hills.

              "What the hell are they doing?" enquired Mike Monahan, looking at them through the scope of his rifle.

              Christine was watching them through her binoculars. They were still nearly a mile in the distance. "They're checking the hills," she said in wonder. "They sent a squad out in front of them to check the hills."

              "Where are the rest?" Maggie asked. "They wouldn't send them out there all by themselves, would they?"

              "You wouldn't think they would," she replied. "I'm not a great military genius or anything, but even I am not dumb enough for that. Those guys are completely cut off from support."

              "What do we do?" Maria asked, taking her eyes of her own telescopic sight to look at her leader.

              "Let's let them get closer," Christine said. "Just keep an eye on them and keep a watch behind them. This might be some sort of trap."

              The group of ten men continued to get closer and closer to the hill where Christine and her team were hidden among fallen logs and boulders. When they got within a half a mile it became apparent that they were all packing assault rifles, probably the automatics, and that they were traveling without packs. It also became apparent that the rest of the militia was far behind them. Only when the advance team closed to within 500 yards did other members of the militia begin to appear in the distance. Christine reported all of these developments to Skip and Jack, who were parked two miles to the east, near the rim of the canyon.

              "Are you sure?" Skip asked her.

              "We're sure, mother bird," she said. "They're heading right our way. The main formation is nearly three-quarters of a mile back."

              "I copy," Skip said. "What are your intentions?"

              She told him. Though he was worried for her safety, he did not disagree with her. It was simply too good of an opportunity to pass up.

              "All right, guys," Christine said as she watched them close even further. They were now two hills over, checking around the perimeter, their guns at ready. "Are you all up for this?"

              "Hell yeah," Mike said with a grin. "I'm actually going to enjoy this." The others all echoed this sentiment.

              "Remember," Christine said, digging in her backpack and pulling out two more banana clips full of ammunition, "we let them close to within sixty yards, until they get into that bare patch where there's nothing for them to hide behind. Stay under your cover and use your scopes once they hit the mud. Now let's assign first targets and second targets."

              Once it started, it was all over in less than a minute. Just as the militia recon team began to approach the base of the hill where Christine and her team were sequestered, three rifle shots rang out and three of the men dropped lifelessly to the mud, drilled through with devastating body shots. No sooner had those bullets left the barrel than Christine was raining 5.56 mm shells down upon the survivors with her M-16. Though the militia members were quick about hitting the dirt once the shooting started, it didn't really Micker in this case. They were far too close to where the fire was coming from and there was absolutely nothing for them to use to hide behind. Even before they began to return fire, Christine had taken out two more of them.

              Bullets began to slam into the logs they were hiding behind and to plunk into the mud and trees around them but they ignored them, having picked their own positions well. Instead of retreating as they usually did, the three riflemen jacked new rounds into their chambers and took aim at the heads of the crouching soldiers below. From this distance it was almost impossible to miss. Three more rifle shots rang out and three heads exploded into blood and brain down below. This left only two of the original ten alive.

              Christine ejected her empty magazine and quickly shoved in a fresh one. She jacked in the first round and aimed back down below. One of the two men had stood up and was attempting to flee. She sighted on him and squeezed off two quick bursts, sending six rounds into his back and dropping him lifelessly back to the ground. The other man, still lying on his stomach, was desperately trying to reload his own weapon. Before he could even get the empty magazine out, Christine turned her sights to him and began to fire. Simultaneously Mike and Maria both scoped in on him and fired as well. He jerked and rolled as he was struck from several different angles and then it was over. The sound of the final shots rolled off into the distance and then all was quiet.

              "Goddamn," Mike said, his body trembling with adrenaline. "That was some shit."

              Christine, also quite jazzed by her adrenal glands, looked off to where the rest of the militia was advancing. The closest of them were still nothing but tiny figures rushing in their direction, well out of firing range.

              "Shall we boogie?" asked Maria, anxious for the safety of the helicopter.

              "Not yet," Christine said. "We have a few minutes. Let's go get those weapons they had."

              "What?" Maria asked, as if Christine was mad.

              "They had four or five automatic weapons down there," Christine said. "Let's get them."

              And so they rushed down the hill, their own weapons out before them, and stripped the bloody, dead or dying men of their rifles and ammunition. They considered taking their sidearms as well but there was not quite that much time.

              "Lets go," Christine said when the deed was done. Her hands were bloody and she was carting three rifles in addition to her own.

              Her team did not need to be persuaded. Their own bloody arms full of stolen rifles, they made a run for their pick-up point where Skip was already touching down.

              The sight of their ten best soldiers lying dead in the mud, their bodies stripped of their weapons, had a powerful effect on the members of the militia who saw it. The glaring mistake that had been made in sending them out in front of the main group became painfully obvious in retrospect, even among those men who'd thought it a good idea initially.

              "What the fuck was Bracken thinking?" asked one sergeant to Lieutenant Colby. "He sent those men out to slaughter."

              "I don't know," Colby said, shaking his head a little and wondering if it was really worth it to keep going on. "I just don't fucking know."

              Bracken himself took this mistake especially hard since he was the one who had ordered it. Why had he done it? Why hadn't the thought that he was cutting off and isolating a group of his men occurred to him until after the disastrous results? Was he that tired, that shell-shocked? It was only the third day of the march. There were at least eight more to go. What other mistakes would he make? How many other men would die?

              He found himself walking next to Stu about an hour after leaving the sight of the massacre. Though it was against their current doctrine for two people to walk close enough to each other to be taken down in one burst, experience had taught him that they had another hour at least until the next attack. Stu, though rough and unrefined, was a competent soldier and one of the men he confided in.

              "What do you think?" he asked him, shifting his rifle from one side to the other.

              "About what?" Stu said, spitting a stream of tobacco juice into the mud.

              "About this mission," Bracken said. "We've already taken twice as many casualties as my very worst case estimation. Twice as many and we're still at least eight days out, maybe more at the pace we've been slowed to. We're starting to make mistakes because of fatigue. That little recon group is a prime example. We've lost five of our automatic weapons. The men are grumbling and scared and discipline is starting to slip."

              "What are you saying?" Stu asked.

              "I'm saying that maybe we should abort," he said, putting it into words for the first time.

              Stu shook his head vehemently. "Allow me to speak freely," he said.

              "By all means," Bracken told him.

              "We've gone too far to stop now. Sure, we've taken losses and we'll probably take more if they keep hitting us like that, but we have to push on."

              "Why? What's the point? There's only two hundred or so women in that town and a helicopter. They don't have a very big food supply for us to take. What's so damn important?"

              "It's gone beyond what's in that town," Stu told him. "If we go slinking back in defeat, we'll have a discipline problem that will make what we have now seem like a West Point senior class in comparison. We're talking about the fucking honor of the militia here man. Sure, the men are grumbling now. But no Micker how many sneak attacks those fuckers make on us on the way, they can't kill us all. They can't. There'll still be enough of us to take that fucking town when we get there and when we do, when we kill every last one of those fuckers that have done this to us, when we cut off their fucking dicks and shove them up their asses, when we rape every fucking one of those cunts in that town, then the men will have their honor back. We have to do this. We have to. If we don't, we'll fall apart."

              Bracken took this thought under consideration. He mulled it over until the next attack came two hours later, killing another four men.

              Despite the violence and suddenness of the Auburn takeover, Jessica insisted that the change in government, as it were, be democratically approved. At 5:00 that evening, just as the militia was preparing to bed down for another night of attacks, all of the women in town gathered in the bleachers of the high school. By that time every one of them knew what had happened in the town and the talk that day had been of nothing else.

              Jessica and her military leaders, Maddie chief among them, mounted the podium where Barnes had once ordered the hanging of women and addressed the crowd.

              "As you are aware," she told them, "we have taken control of the town of Auburn from the men that had been running it and, as of this moment, we are in command."

              The cheer that erupted with this statement served to convince Jessica that she would have no problem with what she was about to suggest.

              When it quieted down, she continued. "Now most of you were not in on the planning or execution of this takeover," she said. "Most of you did not even realize it was going on until you woke up this morning for your normal duties - duties assigned by those vermin that used to rule us. I apologize for leaving you out of this but it was simply not possible to include everyone in the plot we were hatching both for security and for logistical reasons. But now that it has taken place, we must have your approval to continue upon this path."

              Another round of cheers erupted, this one louder than the first.

              "So what I propose now is a vote," she said. "The question we must decide is whether or not to retain control of this town by any means necessary in the future. If we do this, we will have to fight when the rest of the men return. We will have to prepare for this fight and execute it despite losses. We will have to defeat that very army that marched out of here to attack our neighbors in Garden Hill. If you vote aye on this proposal, we will do this. If you vote nay..." she trailed off, letting those words sink in, "then we will release the men that we have captured and turn control of the town back over to them. Those of us in on the plot will undoubtedly be punished harshly if we remain, so I will ask that if you vote against us, that we be allowed to leave the township before the others are released. Now for a vote of this magnitude and with these far-reaching implications, I must insist that a two-thirds majority be reached. This may require paper ballets, but let's at least see where we stand at this moment, shall we?" She paused, already knowing what the result was going to be. "Those in favor of retaining control of the town and fighting to maintain it, please say aye."

              The ayes were loud enough to be heard in the farthest reaches of the town. There was not even a need to ask for those saying nay.

              That done, Jessica moved on to the next portion of her plan, the portion she was not so sure about. "Now that we've decided to govern ourselves," she said, "we must have a leader."

              It took less than ten minutes of coy talk and innuendo about leadership qualities before someone nominated Jessica to the post. The nomination was quickly seconded. No one stepped up to run against her. Five minutes later she was overwhelmingly approved as the leader of the new Auburn.

              "Thank you," she said, gushing at the crowd, acting as if overwhelmed. "I really want to thank all of you for your support and trust in me. I promise I'll do my best to lead you. Now, for my first act as leader, I would like to put a proposal before you. All of you have suffered greatly over these past few months at the hands of the men in town. Now most of these men are not here right now and most of the ones that were here are dead. Of the rest, we have captured them and are holding them in the high school building for the moment. Now it is not my suggestion that we harm these men - after all, they do serve a few purposes, don't they? But there is one man in there that is directly responsible for much of the suffering we have been under. There is a man in there that ordered the deaths of many of our friends. That man is Barnes."

              Cries of outrage met his very name.

              "It is my proposal that we deal with the crimes this man has committed against us right now, this very night! That way, if - God forbid - we should lose our battle to retain control of this township when the full militia returns, we will have at least enacted some justice for our struggle." She gave another pregnant pause. "I suggest that we try Barnes tonight, right now, for crimes against womankind, murder, rape, and human rights violations."

              The approval that this suggestion garnered from the crowd made a vote unnecessary.