The day after: An apocalyptic morning (148 page)

              Skip touched neatly down forty feet from the shed where Kensington's magic was made. While the fuel truck, which had once been a water truck, came rumbling over to fill the helicopter's tank, Steve and his crew emerged from the shed with one of their "eggs" attached to a handcart.

              The egg was actually one of the gas tanks that had been removed from the cars in town. Steve had cut it in half with a torch and then welded it back together using a strip of thin metal to adhere the pieces. It was a strip that would easily come off if enough pressure were put on it in the right way. The top of the tank had two hooks welded onto it as well. One hook was in the center of the tank and the other was attached to the thin strip that held the two halves together. Inside of the tank was a mixture of gasoline from the railroad tanker and Tide laundry detergent from the tractor-trailer. The concoction was nothing more or less than a very simple form of napalm.

              While the fueling crew put the hose in the helicopter's inlet and began to pump, Steve maneuvered the handcart next to the right skid and set the egg down on the ground so that the two hooks were facing upward. Behind him two of his helpers were carrying an enormous coil of rope. This coil contained fifteen hundred feet of rope and was neatly wound up so that it would (probably) play out without snagging or hanging up. This was no small accomplishment considering that the rope was not all one piece but many spliced together from scavenged supply rooms and garages throughout the town. It was not even all the same diameter. In the test run however, it had worked perfectly, the coils unwinding just as Paul - their rope expert - had told them they would.

              "Let's get these doors off," Skip told Jack as they climbed out. "Steve, can we borrow a couple of socket wrenches?"

              "Help yourself," Steve told them, waving them towards the shed.

              It took five minutes to remove the two side doors from the aircraft, ten minutes to fuel it up, but by the time that was done, the egg was still not attached. Skip sat in the cab of the aircraft, nervously monitoring the VHF frequency. So far nothing had come across. "I don't mean to rush you or anything, Steve," he said worriedly, "but they're about to make first contact out there."

              "I'm going as fast as I can," Steve said. "Don't worry, they'll be fine."

              With the assistance of his helpers Steve hung the tank from the cargo hook on the bottom of the helicopter, utilizing the larger of the two hooks that had been welded to the tank. It hung there neatly, swaying back and forth a little bit but otherwise not moving. Once that was accomplished, Steve tied one end of the long coil of rope to the smaller of the hooks, the one that was on the welded strip of metal. The other end of the rope, which came from the inside of the coil, he stretched out and passed under the helicopter, threading it between the bottom and the hanging tank. He then passed it through the two open doors and tied it off, using a knot that would not easily come loose when jerked from below. The rest of the rope was set in the passenger compartment of the helicopter and strapped down with bungee cords.

              "You're in business," Steve told Skip. "Make it count."

              "You know it," Skip replied, climbing back into the aircraft. He made no move as of yet to go through the start-up procedure.

              "Aren't we gonna go back up?" Jack asked. "The battle's about to start."

              "Not yet," Skip told him. "We'll stay down until it's time to make a nape run. We don't want them to see the egg until we're just about to use it. Get on the radio and let them know that we're standing by for an air strike when they need it."

              Mick, who had been the one to exercise and train with the ground forces over the last two weeks, was technically in charge of them at that level. He was in one of the trenches with eight other people, holding on to one of the automatic weapons and trying to keep himself calm. He listened to Jack's report over his VHF radio and acknowledged it. "Did you copy that, Christine?" he asked his second in command, the leader of the platoon that was going to make first contact.

              Christine and her understaffed platoon of twenty-four women and three men were deployed in a series of three trenches atop of two hills overlooking the alleged avenue of advance. Though Skip had assured her that she would be the first to engage the enemy, there was still no sign of them. "I copy," she said. "And I'm still clear on the horizon."

              She sighed a little, wishing for the comfort that came from having Skip and Jack hovering above them, keeping an eye on things. Though she understood why they were holding back at the moment, she still didn't like it. She felt out of touch.

              "Movement ahead," said Anna, who had once lived with these monsters and who was now assigned to Christine's platoon. She was in the adjoining trench but her voice carried easily over. "Three men, coming around the hill at eleven o'clock."

              Christine, along with everyone else, turned her eyes that way and, after a moment, spotted the men. They were about ten feet apart, rifles held out before them. Their formation was somewhat loose and they were moving very rapidly, almost at a run. Within a few seconds, other men began to appear, both from around that hill and the hills to the sides of it. They passed out of the gaps and moved forward, all of them moving at that rapid, almost careless pace. As Skip had said, the line stretched for a considerable distance.

              Christine reported her sighting over the VHF frequency. "They're outside of firing range right now but closing fast," she said. "Estimate contact in two to three minutes. We'll hit near the center of their line but the flanks are out of our range. They stretch all the way over to..." she consulted her map for a moment, "to grid D-delta five. Paula, you'll be able to hit their left flank when they move in."

              "Copy that," Paula said, her voice almost supernaturally calm.

              "Mick, their right side should swing right towards you if they keep on course," Christine said.

              "Copy, Christine," he said, his own voice a little more tense. "They'll probably move to flank you when you start firing though. We'll hold here and catch them in a crossfire if that happens."

              "Copy," she said, putting her radio down. She looked over the muddy hills and the trees to her soldiers. "All right," she told them. "The fun's about to start. Riflemen, start picking targets."

              Those with the hunting rifles aimed out through firing ports in the camouflaged sandbags and began to scan their area of responsibility. The automatic and semi-automatic riflemen also put their barrels through firing ports but they knew that it would be a few minutes until their time came. Everyone watched tensely as the men continued to advance towards them. They moved through trees and over small mudfalls, weaving in and out but always getting closer.

              "Hold your fire until I say so," Christine said. "We'll wait until they're inside three hundred yards."

              They waited, fingers tight upon triggers, eyeballs glued to scopes or peering over sights. They watched as the men who wanted to enslave them, to rape them, to steal their food and take their children advanced in a neat, rapidly moving line. Soon the first of them crossed the invisible line that marked the three hundred yard range. And then more passed over it.

              "All right," Christine said, just loud enough to be heard. "From this point on, we're off radio silence. Riflemen, fire at will!"

              More than twenty fingers squeezed twenty triggers, all within a second of each other. The noise was tremendous, a shattering, drawn out explosion that rolled off across the landscape. Before the first bullets even hit, the riflemen were working their bolts, putting in the next rounds.

              The front lines of the militia easily saw the muzzleflashes of the first barrage. It would have been quite hard to miss it. As such, most of them dove to the ground before the bullets could arrive on target, their instincts hurling them into the mud almost before their brains could comprehend why. Several people however, either did not see the flashes or did not react to them quickly enough. Of these, two of them were hit, the bullets slamming into their bodies with meaty thuds.

              "Take cover!" squad leaders yelled as whizzing projectiles came flying in. "Get the fuck down!"

              The shots landed in the mud and plunked into trees, coming in waves as the enemy on the hillside ahead fired and then jacked in new rounds. Those in the open began to crawl for cover, looking for anything that would shield them: a rock, a tree, a hole. Most found such things but a few were hit as they scrambled along the ground. One corporal had his head blown clean off by a shot from a .460 magnum rifle. Another took two .30-06 rounds in the side.

              Stu and Colby, both of whom were safely out of range of the gunfire, took cover behind a fallen log. They watched as the first few volleys came rolling in and as the men up front tried to get out of the path. The sound of the gunfire echoed around them, badly out of synch with the pattern of flashes because of the range and the slow speed of sound. This sound was contrasted by the sharper cracks of the militia rifles as the men began to return fire.

              Stu didn't even bother clearing his orders with Colby. He simply grabbed the radio and began to bark into it. "First platoon," he yelled, "pour fire on that fuckin hillside. Third platoon, you guys move up and get ready to advance to the right flank. Fifth platoon, you get ready to advance to the left flank. Everyone else, you'll be covering fire for the advance. Let's get to it. We need to take that fuckin hill now!"

              Colby simply watched in amazement as the men scrambled around and got into position in response to Stu's commands. It simply didn't occur to him that he was supposed to be the one giving the orders.

              "Keep the pressure on them," Christine yelled into her own tactical radio. "Keep firing. Try to hold them in place."

              No one answered her but they all did as she asked. The riflemen worked like machines. They aimed out over the area where the return fire was coming from, unleashed a round, worked their bolt, and then did it all over again, setting a pace of only a few seconds per shot. Every fifth or sixth round, depending on the size of their magazines, they would reach down to a box of shells between their knees and shove in a fresh load. They had no way of knowing if they were hitting anyone, but the barrage had already had the desired effect. It had stopped the advance of the militia, forcing them to start setting up a charge to take the hill.

              The return fire was quite intense. From below the sound of uncountable rifle shots and the chattering of automatic assault weapons could be heard crackling like firecrackers. Bullets slammed into their positions ruthlessly, riddling the sandbags that they hid behind with holes and making frightening thuds each time one hit. Other bullets whizzed over the top of them or slammed into the mud around them. So far, the sandbags were doing their job and no one had been hit.

              Christine watched through her firing port, her own weapon unfired as of yet. She saw well over a hundred muzzleflashes winking at her from down below and she took a moment to worry that one of those bullets just might find its way through the small hole and into her face. The odds were against it, that was true, but that was how Hector had been hit. She put this out of her mind as an irrelevant worry and hauled out her VHF radio.

              "We're in contact," she said into it, mostly for Skip's benefit since the other platoons would easily be able to see and hear what was going on. She did not identify herself on the radio because she knew that everyone who was listening to this frequency would recognize her voice. "They're pinned down at the moment behind the hills to the north of us. Heavy return fire, no casualties at this point. It looks like they're setting up for an envelopment maneuver to the east and west of us."

              "We'll hit 'em as soon as they start to move," Paula's voice assured her. "How's that left flank looking though?"

              "We'll be able to hit them from here," said Mick, who was stationed on that side. " Christine, once they start to swing around on my side and we engage them, we'll lay a crossfire down on them. Try to hold your position but don't hesitate to get the fuck out if they close to within a hundred yards."

              "Got it," Christine said, wincing as a bullet zinged off the top of the sandbag above her, showering her with a small spray of mud. "Skip, are you there?"

              "I'm here," he said. "We're firing up the engine right now."

              "We could use a little air strike if you're ready," she told him.

              "Just tell me the place," he said, "and I'll be there in three minutes."

              Skip lifted off carefully, mindful of the tank of explosive material slung just beneath them. Jack was strapped into his usual place on the passenger side and Sherrie, one of Steve's assistants, was holding on to the bungee cords that secured the rope for dear life. Sherrie's leg had healed up enough for her to walk but not enough for her to participate in combat out in the trenches. After her last pitiful performance under fire, she sought redemption by volunteering to be the spotter and rope gatherer for the drop missions. This was only her second flight in the chopper and she was still quite terrified of it. Especially with no door on and especially in combat conditions. In her mind she kept seeing them crashing to the earth and burning to death.