The day after: An apocalyptic morning (152 page)

              "Copy that you're up to strength again. I'm gonna spread your platoon out a little bit to try and get you closer in to where the action is going to be. Split in two and occupy the trenches to the east and west of you. That'll be 12, 14, 15, and 17. Once you're there you'll be able to provide a little crossfire on both sides of you. However, if they change their minds and come up the middle, you're gonna have to try and hold the whole shebang back until the flanks can get back over to reinforce you."

              "What do you think the odds are that they might try that?" Christine asked, obviously uncomfortable with the though of holding the whole shebang back with only 27 troops.

              "Slight," Skip assured her. "But this is war and anything's possible."

              "Copy," she said. "We're moving."

              Skip watched them move. From the friendly positions the Garden Hill soldiers began to scramble out to the rear. They looked like ants leaving an anthill from his altitude. They moved quickly, not quite in formation, trotting back for sixty or seventy yards and then moving parallel to the trench network towards their new assignments. Skip, watching from above, could plainly see that the hills and trees of the terrain were between they and the peering eyes of the enemy. He was reasonably certain that the shifting of forces would be unobserved and therefore unexpected.

              It took the better part of ten minutes for all of them to make the shift. During this time Skip saw no noticeable change in the Auburn formations, which were still in the process of moving themselves. "It looks like we pulled it off," he told Jack. "Now let's get Steve on the horn and tell him to get another egg ready for us. We won't drop it yet, we'll just hover up here with it to intimidate them."

              Jack grinned. "I'd hate to have you fighting against me," he said, reaching for the radio controls.

              Skip returned the grin silently, only hoping he was worthy of this praise.

              Skip touched down a few minutes later, reasonably confident that the battle would not start without him. While Steve and his crew wheeled over another napalm tank and began to attach it, Skip stepped out of the helicopter, leaving the engine running. He stretched his cramped muscles, feeling a little twinge in his back. "I'm gonna go drain some fluids while we're down here," he told his own crew. "Be right back."

              He trotted across the parking lot, his feet splashing through the perpetual puddles in the asphalt, and in the side door of the community center. He headed for the nearest bathroom, which was just off the staircase, and went inside. It was very dim in the room, the only lighting coming from a small window over the urinals. He ignored the stand-up fixtures and went instead to the stall, where the inevitable hose assembly and bucket of water was in place for ease of flushing.

              After draining his bladder into the toilet and going through the flushing procedure, he went back out into the hallway. Instead of heading back to the parking lot right away, he headed in the other direction, towards the makeshift hospital room that had been set up in the former conference room. He opened the door slowly and stepped inside.

              The room had been stocked and set up well in advance of the battle. Ten cots or rollaway beds had been placed side by side in rows with only narrow corridors between them. In one corner of the room a large shelf had been constructed and it was full of linen, bandaging material, IV bags from the helicopter, and various medications. Currently only one of the beds was occupied. Susan Michaels lay with a sheet and blanket pulled up to her mid-chest, just above her breasts. She was awake but appeared to be heavily medicated. Her eyes were half-lidded and, despite the wound she had suffered, there was a slight smile on her face. A heavy trauma dressing had been taped to her right shoulder. Little spots of dark blood stained its otherwise white surface. Hanging from a makeshift pole on the left side of the bed was an IV bag. The tubing ran down to her left arm. Janet, who had been moved from the childcare detail to the medical detail for the time being, was sitting in a stool next to her.

              "Hi, Skip," she said, smiling a little as she saw him. "What are you doing down here?"

              "We're down getting another air strike ready," he replied, "so I came in to tap a kidney. How we doing in here?"

              "I'm hangin in there," Susan said, her grin widening a bit. Her words were thick and slurred, as if she was drunk. "I can't move my arm any more but Janet here gave me some really good dope to help me out."

              "Oh yeah?" Skip asked. "Did you give her some of the morphine?" El Dorado Hills, though they had not volunteered to allow their physician to fly out for the battle, had donated considerable medical supplies for stabilization and pain control. Morphine, Dilaudid, and Demerol - all heavy narcotics - were among those staples.

              Janet nodded. "And a few other things," she said.

              "She let me burn a joint in here," Susan said. "Some of the good shit too. I'm flyin higher than you were."

              Skip laughed a little. "I'm glad you're feeling okay, Suse," he said, reaching down and giving her good hand a squeeze. "I'm sorry you had to get shot up to have it happen."

              "Fuckin bullet just came flyin in there," Susan said. "Boom, and next thing I know, I'm bleeding all over the damn place. Some soldier I am."

              "It's not your fault you got hit," Skip told her. "You did good out there. You guys threw back that first strike and put a serious fucking hurt on those assholes."

              "Good," she said. "I only wish poor Helen would've been as lucky as me. I saw her when they brought us in." She shook her head a little, a tear forming in her eye.

              Skip had noted the absence of Helen in the room when he came in. "Did she go easy?" he asked Janet.

              "As easy as could be," Janet told him. "She was still awake but couldn't breathe very well. I... well... I gave her morphine to quiet her." She paused a little, a tear forming in her eye as well. "A lot of morphine."

              Skip put his arm around her and gave her a comforting hug. "That's all you can do, Janet," he told her. "It's better that way."

              "I know," she said softly. "I just wish I knew why we're going through all of this. Why are those men attacking us, killing our people and making us kill them? What's the point of it all? Haven't enough people died from the comet?"

              "I don't know, Janet," he said. "It doesn't make a lot of sense to me either."

              They stood that way for a moment, Skip's arm around her, both of them silently watching Susan, who had lost track of the conversation and was staring intently at a Thomas Kincaid reprint on the wall.

              "I'd better get back up there," Skip said at last, breaking the embrace. "Part two is about to start."

              "What kind of casualty count are we looking at?" Janet wanted to know.

              He shrugged, unable to give her even a guess. "As few as possible I hope," he told her.

              "Another napalm canister on the chopper, sir," Corporal Andrews said, pointing up at the aircraft that was just now spiraling up to altitude from the direction of the town.

              "Jesus," Stu said, shaking his head and looking at it with fear. "How many of those fucking things do they have?" He was gripping his rifle closely as he lay on his stomach behind a fallen log three hundred yards from the center hill held by the Garden Hill bitches. Around him, on both sides and utilizing every piece of cover they could find, was every man that had not been sent out to accomplish the flank attacks: a grand total of ten uninjured and twelve that were too wounded to participate in the attack but well enough to fire a gun. He and this rag-tag understrength collection made up the new fifth platoon of the militia and their job would be to put covering fire on the center hill during the attack.

              "What should we do?" Andrew asked fearfully, wanting very badly to bolt and run as far away as he could.

              "Hold here until they start to close," Stu said, lifting up his radio. He keyed it up. "Heads up everyone," he said into it, transmitting his words to all squad and platoon leaders, "the chopper is back in town and it has another canister beneath it. Keep an eye on it and scatter if it tries to close with you. Remember, do it organized and that thing can't hurt you. Panic, and it'll kill you."

              No one acknowledged his words but he knew that everyone had heard them. He continued to watch the helicopter and it's deadly cargo, waiting for it to start an attack run. But it didn't. It simply took up a watching position over the Garden Hill positions and went into a hover.

              "Come on, asshole," Stu challenged. "You want to hit us, then do it."

              The chopper didn't budge. Soon Stu was forced to conclude that it was holding its canister in reserve. Probably, he figured, because they didn't have any troops near the main concentrations to fire the tracer rounds that would ignite the napalm. Maybe they were even now moving those troops over!

              "Sir?" Andrews said, breaking his concentration a little.

              "Shut the fuck up," Stu barked at him. "I need to get this attack rolling before they think to shift their positions around." He keyed up his radio again. "Stinson, Lima, are you in position?"

              "We're formed up over here," Stinson's voice said. He was in command of the troops hitting the left flank. "What's the word on that helicopter? Is it going to hit us again?"

              "I don't know what the fuck its gonna do," Stu barked into the radio. "Do I look like a fuckin psychic? Just get ready to move in."

              There was a crackle of static on the frequency and then a prolonged pause with the carrier open. Finally Stinson's voice replied: "Sure, we're ready when you give the word."

              "Good," Stu said. "Lima, you there?"

              "Here, sir," Lima, who was a little greener than Stinson, replied instantly. "We're in position and ready to advance."

              "All right," Stu said. "We're going to start putting fire on that hill in front of us to keep their heads down. Once you hear our gunshots, both of you move in. Keep me advised on your progress. I want to be standing on top of those fucking hills looking down at a bunch of dead bitches in less than thirty minutes."

              After both leaders acknowledged his orders he turned to his own men. "All right," he told them. "Let's start shooting."

              They opened up, most firing single-shot rifles, a few with semi-autos, and Stu with his fully automatic M-16. They peppered the ground on the hill before them, the concussions from the shots stinging their ears. They had absolutely no idea that there was not a soul in occupancy on the hill they were firing at.

              On the flanks the two groups of fifty-six men heard the echo of the fire reach them. Their commanders gave the order - in both cases with a distinct lack of enthusiasm - and they stood up and began to move. They formed up loosely, as they had before, with no clear point position and with their numbers spread widely, only a few layers deep. They moved at a near run, their weapons held at the ready, their eyes searching the terrain before them for the telltale flash of weapons firing. Though they were anxious, none of them thought that they were going to be fired upon until they were well forward and starting to come around behind the outside positions that had pasted them so soundly in the first attack. They were at the far end of the range of those hills. None of them, not a single one, seriously considered the thought that their enemy might have shifted place to put themselves in front of them once more.

              "They're moving in," Skip's voice announced over the VHF radio a moment later. "Estimate fifty to sixty troops heading rapidly towards both flank positions. Mick, Paula, get ready for them. You should have a visual any second now."

              Paula spotted her quarry first, or at least one of her women did. Within a few seconds, everyone had spotted the line of dirty soldiers trotting towards them through the mud and around the trees. Weapons came to bear and safeties were clicked off. Everyone felt the anticipation of battle slip away to be replaced by the almost relieving adrenaline rush that came with the actuality of it.

              They watched silently as the line continued to close in, not needing to assign targets since everyone already knew their sector of responsibility. Paula gave no last minute reminders to her troops as she had the first time. Her troops were veterans of this technique now and to do so would be insulting. Finally, after three agonizing minutes, the first of the enemy crossed the three hundred yard-yard barrier.

              Paula waited until nearly half of them had crossed over and then gave the order: "Riflemen, fire at will."

              Rifles began to crack and bullets began to fly downrange. Even before the first bullet hit, the enemy were diving into the mud. Before the second volley was sent out, they were returning fire.

              Within one minute of the first shot from Paula's position, Mick's position a half a mile to the west opened up on the group advancing on them as well.