The day after: An apocalyptic morning (142 page)

              "You can't be serious," Stu said.

              "I'm as serious as I've ever been," Bracken assured him.

              "What if they hit us on the way back?" Stu asked. "What if they pound on us and ambush all the way home? We'll lose less by going three days forward than we will by marching ten days back. Sir, we have to take that town, if for nothing else just to put that helicopter out of commission."

              "We're not going to be able to do it on this trip," Bracken said. "I've made up my mind, Stu. This is the way it's going to have to be. I don't believe that the Garden Hill people will attack us anymore if they see that we're pulling back."

              "Why wouldn't they?" Stu asked. "They would have us vulnerable. That's the perfect time to attack us!"

              Bracken shook his head. "They're just not that kind of people," he said. "They're reacting fiercely towards us because we're planning to invade their homes. They're willing to lay their lives on the line to protect that. But once they see us heading back the way we came, they'll have accomplished their mission. They won't risk themselves to hit us as we retreat."

              "What are you, a fucking psychologist?" Stu asked.

              "No," Bracken said, tossing his cigarette down into the nearest puddle of water. "I'm just a soldier." He started to get up. "I need to brief in the other platoon commanders on my decision," he said. "Why don't you head off behind us and round the ones up over there? I'll go get the ones up near the front. We'll meet back here in twenty minutes for a conference."

              "Right," Stu said slowly, getting up as well. He took one more puff on his smoke, sucking on it hard enough so that the glowing of the tip provided enough light to show him the outline of his commanding officer. Armed with this reference, he moved quickly, picking up the automatic M-16 he carried and turning the butt towards Bracken's head. He stepped forward and slammed it into his skull as hard as he could. It struck just above the base of the neck, the weapon clanking loudly. Bracken fell forward, his consciousness instantly driven from him by the blow. He landed face down in the mud with an involuntary expellation of the air in his lungs.

              "What the fuck was that?" someone yelled from about fifty feet away.

              "Nothing," Stu calmly yelled back towards the unseen speaker. "I tripped over a fuckin rock. I'm all right."

              This was not questioned since it was something that happened many times a night out in the woods. The voice inquired no more.

              Stu set his rifle down on the ground and then kneeled down by Bracken's unconscious form. Not being able to see, he felt his outline, finally finding the wet, bloody mess that had become the back of his skull. Bracken was still breathing and starting to stir a little. Soon he would wake up.

              Taking his hands off of Bracken he felt along the ground around him until he located a puddle of rainwater. Thanks to the constant precipitation it did not take him long to find one. It was shallow - maybe only four or five inches deep and about three feet square - but it would serve his purposes. He grabbed Bracken by the shoulder and dragged him over to it. Once he was there, he pushed his face down into the water and held it there with both hands.

              Bracken struggled a little, but the blow had weakened him and it didn't last long. When he finally stopped moving, Stu continued to hold him under there, counting slowly to himself until ten cycles of sixty seconds had gone by. Finally, satisfied that there would be no coming back, he rolled him over onto his back again.

              "Sorry I had to do that," he told the body of his commander. "I really am. But that town has simply got to go. You understand, don't you?"

              Bracken just lay there, unanswering.

              "I thought you would," Stu said. He grabbed Bracken by the armpits and dragged him back towards the tree, where someone would be unlikely to stumble upon him.

              Stu sat there for the next ninety-three minutes, his M-16 in his hand, his ears open for the sound of anyone searching for the commander. He heard the sound of men climbing into their sleeping bags (everyone had their own theories on the best way to position your sleeping bag to ward off attack) and men walking back and forth at the guard positions. Nothing came up during the course of that time that required Bracken's attention.

              Finally, what Stu had been waiting for occurred. From the south of them the night's first helicopter attack came. The stream of tracers blasted out in two short jabs, impacting some sixty yards to the west of Stu and the recently dead Bracken.

              As with the daylight attacks, the response by the militia had evolved to the point that it was very quick indeed. The guards opened up on the place where the tracers had come from, their guns echoing from all directions. Even as they fired back, the rest of the militia was sitting up in their sleeping bags, their own rifles in their hands, ready to join their fire when the next attack occurred.

              They did not have to wait long. The next firing run came from a position about an eighth of a mile from the first, again the stream of tracers stabbing out, blasting some poor soul to bits, and then disappearing. This time the return fire was much louder, as nearly the triple the guns shot back. It was during this barrage that Stu acted. He turned his own weapon towards Bracken and, using the flashes from the rifles around him to sight in, fired a three round burst directly into his chest. He then moved as far away from the body as he could possibly get.

              The helicopter made one more firing run and then disappeared. It was nearly ten more minutes however before everyone was convinced that it was gone for good and started taking count of the latest casualties. Flashlights came on as men moved towards the screams and cries of the wounded. The scene was not quite the chaos and confusion that had come with the first attacks from the air, but it was not exactly a calm, cool, rational discourse either.

              It was another five minutes before someone found Bracken's body lying in the mud. Corporal Waters basically stumbled across it by accident. Until that point no one had even realized that Bracken was missing.

              "Hey," he yelled, shining his flashlight down at the body, seeing the holes. "We got a problem here!"

              It was yet another three minutes before he was able to find an officer and drag him over there. The officer in question happened to be the man who was next in command: Lieutenant Colby.

              "Holy shit," Colby said, looking down at the body. He did not have the least bit of suspicion that Bracken's death had been anything other than a result of enemy fire. Although none of the tracer streams had hit anywhere near this place, Colby did not know that, nor did anyone else. It was impossible to remember just where the attacks had hit or even just how many of them there had been. And of course a forensic pathologist would have taken one look at the body and known that the bullet wounds had been inflicted post-mortem, but Colby was not a forensic pathologist.

              Soon a fairly large crowd of soldiers was gathered around their fallen commander. Had the Garden Hills helicopter chosen that particular moment to return, it would have found a tantalizingly close group to fire at. They stared down at him, illuminating him with their lights, looking at his dead face, at the bullet holes in his chest, wondering what came next. Many of them were relieved. Surely they couldn't go on now that their commanding officer was dead, could they?

              Stu wandered over, as if he was just happening across the scene. He looked down at Bracken, as if seeing him for the first time. "Looks like you're in charge now," he said to Colby.

              "Me?" Colby said, terrified at the very thought of leading this beaten army into battle.

              "You," Stu confirmed.

              Later he would take Colby aside privately to let him know that he would offer any assistance necessary to carry on Bracken's plans. "I'm here for you," he told him. "If you need help, just ask."

              A grateful Colby thanked him graciously for his assistance.

              Part 18             

              The altimeter on the helicopter's instrument panel read 6300 feet above sea level, about three hundred feet above the point where the rain turned to snow. This put him almost two thousand feet above the rooftops of Garden Hill, high enough to see the entire subdivision and the surrounding landscape. Of course what he was doing would not have been possible even a month ago. The snow would have quickly iced up on his rotor blades, degrading their aerodynamics, eventually enough so that they would no longer be capable of providing the necessary lift to hold up the aircraft. Nor would he have been able to see anything, even before the icing became a problem. But over the past month the precipitation had slacked off some. Not a lot. It was still a moderate rainfall down in Garden Hill and a moderate snowfall at elevations above 6000 feet, but it was certainly not the heavy rain that had been the norm since the crash of  Stendell and the aftermath. It was moderate enough that Skip could risk being up above the snow level for a while.

              "We've been some busy people down there," Skip said in admiration as he hovered in place and looked below at the impressive array of trenches and fortifications that the townspeople had been digging and constructing since the news of the Auburn attack force had reached them.

              "No kidding," said Jack, who was also looking down from his position in the navigator's chair. He had a large map of the area around Garden Hill, an update of the one that Skip had used to brief everyone in before the attacks had begun, unfolded on his lap.

              The reason for this flight this morning was no more or no less than an area familiarization. The remains of the Placer County Militia were just breaking camp a little more than seven miles to the east of them. After being harassed and hindered for the past fifteen days and nights, they were now in striking distance - about to enter the ring of the Garden Hill main defenses. Skip would be responsible for directing the battle that was imminent in no more than a day or two and - so busy had he been ferrying strike teams and flying night missions - he had not been able to keep as close an eye on the new defenses as he would have liked. He and Jack were now comparing the terrain below them with the map, making sure the two were compatible with each other and that Skip would be able to reference correctly when a troop movement needed to be made.

              The work done by the women and men of the trench teams was admirable indeed. To the north of the wall, towards the interstate, was the area that Skip had always considered their most vulnerable to mass attack. The landscape between the wall and the lanes of the highway was marked by gently rolling hills dotted with pine trees and the occasional redwood. To the far east of this area and to the far west of it, close in towards the wall, were the taller hills that served as the main guard positions. Between these two hills, which were not close enough to each other to provide overlapping fields of fire, the majority of the trenches had been dug, starting from just south of the freeway and stretching all the way to within fifty yards of the wall itself. Each trench was, of course, atop of a hill and well covered by trees and fallen logs. The trenches themselves were lined with sandbags made out of dirt and pillowcases for the most part and could hold ten to fifteen troops. If the militia chose to advance through this corridor - which would seem the easiest route to them - they would meet some very nasty surprises.

              To the west - their second most vulnerable avenue of attack - the hills were a little higher and steeper, covered with denser layers of trees. The going would be somewhat rougher for the militia over on this side but there was also a much wider corridor through which they could potentially travel. It was also the closest approach to the wall and the community center, around which the final defense lines were even now being dug. There were not as many trenches dug over on this side and they were both smaller and with greater distance between them. The trade off was that if the militia attacked from this direction, many of the defending troops could station themselves atop of the various hills and snipe at them as they advanced before falling back into a solid network of bunkers a quarter-mile from the roadway and the western wall.

              Unfortunately, Skip saw that there were a few large gaps that could potentially be exploited if the militia knew about them. Though it was almost impossible to approach the town from the east due to the cliffs on that side, a group could conceivably hook around from the north and penetrate along the east side of the subdivision between the wall and the cliffs. They would have to pass very close to the large hill on that side of the town to do this and would take considerable casualties from that alone, but once past that hill, no trenches had been dug and a defense would be very difficult indeed. Another such gap was along the southwest corner of the subdivision, near the canyon itself. If a group marched along the rim of the canyon and penetrated from this direction they would once again find their only major obstacle to be the hill that guarded the southern tip of town.

              Skip was uncomfortable about these gaps and, had he been given the time, he would have done his best to close them, but he had not been given the time and he had felt it more important to shore up the areas where the militia probably would attack from. He took a little comfort in the fact that it was unlikely that the men commanding the Auburnites would attempt such feats in the absence of any intelligence that such a thing was actually their best bet. It was a gamble, but Skip was reasonably certain that the attack would come from one of the two predictable directions. Nevertheless, trying to cover all of his bases, his mind began turning over just how he would react if they did do the unexpected.