The day after: An apocalyptic morning (163 page)

              "I copy 38 and 39," she told him. "And I'm glad to hear you back again too."

              Skip watched for a moment as his orders were carried out. As before it looked like ants leaving their nest and moving to another. And also, as before, they moved off to the south first in order to keep their shift a secret from the enemy.

              "Paul," Skip said into the radio. "Are you still with me?"

              "I'm still with you," he answered up.

              "Get Steve to get an egg ready for me, will you? We'll be coming down in another minute or two. And also, will you dig up Sherrie and ask her if she's ready to have a little more fun? I'll understand if she doesn't, but we really could use her up here."

              "Copy that," Paul said. "We'll see you on the ground. How are you doing? Do you need another shot?"

              "I'm cool for now. Just get everything ready." He unkeyed the microphone and looked over at Jack. "Well," he said. "Shall we try another landing lesson?"

              Two weeks of firing back at hit and run attacks and night runs by the helicopter, combined with the desertions of many of their supply carriers and finally, two bloody attacks on the Garden Hill positions, had left the remaining militia nearly out of ammunition. The supplies on hand for the automatic and semi-automatics had been the most critical, leaving less than a single full magazine per bearer when it was all divided up. This amount, as well as the also critically low rifle ammunition supply, had been boosted a little by the stripping of the dead and wounded from the first two engagements. That had yielded nearly a thousand additional rounds total, which sounded like a lot but really wasn't when it was distributed among fifty-six people.

              "If we don't do this quick," Stinson told Stu, "we're going to be hitting them with our guns instead of shooting them with them."

              "Don't worry," Stu had assured him, trying (and not succeeding very well) to project confidence. "We'll take them quick. They'll scatter like rabbits now that they don't have the safety of their trenches to hide in. And remember, they're probably almost out of ammunition as well. Remember how much that bitch of yours told us they had? She was one of their leaders so she should have known. At the rate they've been firing at us I don't see how they can have much left."

              "No," Stinson was forced to agree, "I don't imagine that they do. Unless they found another supply somewhere."

              "Where the hell would they find more ammo?" Stu scoffed. "It's not like they can drive down to the fuckin gun shop and pick some up now, is it?"

              "I guess not," Stinson said.

              And now, just as they were finishing up the loading of their weapons and magazines and about to form up into their new squads (their fourth reorganization of the day), another prediction of Stu's was proven wrong. The helicopter, which Stu had been counting as a casualty, had reappeared in the sky above them. True it had seemed to be flying just a little strangely, as if it was somehow more difficult to control, but there it was, hovering two thousand feet up once again.

              "Don't worry about it," Stu barked at the men when they started grumbling about it. "It doesn't Micker anymore, you pussies! Don't you get it? They've lost! We've chased them out of their trenches and now all that fucking chopper is going to be able to do is direct those bitches into our gun sights. It'll be doing us a fucking favor!"

              And though his speech did very little to alleviate fear or to instill confidence, it shifted the balance just enough to stave off an open rebellion for the moment. When Stu barked the order to form up a minute later, the men, Stinson included, obeyed him.

              It was as they were establishing the new chain of command and assigning radio sets to the various leaders that the helicopter suddenly turned on its heels and began a shaky descent to the ground, finally disappearing over the hills a few minutes later. Everyone watched it go. No one, Stu included, commented on it. All had a pretty good idea what it was going to pick up.

              Jack only had to come around again twice before he was able to set the aircraft down in the community center parking lot. And the landing zone he ended up in was only twenty feet away from where he'd intended to land.

              "You're getting better," Skip told him, clapping him on the shoulder as he idled back the engine. "Pretty soon you'll be flying circles around me."

              "Every landing is a good landing, right?" Jack asked, still trembling from the adrenaline rush that setting them down had caused.

              "That's the gospel," Skip assured him.

              "I'm gonna go take a leak," Jack said, unstrapping his harness. "Maybe I'll throw up a little while I'm in there. Be right back."

              "Bring me an empty bottle when you come back," Skip told him as he opened the door. "A big one."

              "An empty bottle?" Jack asked. "What for?"

              "Pretty soon I'm going to have to take a leak too," he answered.

              "I see," Jack said, flushing a little. He closed the door and headed off towards the community center at a jog.

              Skip opened his own door to let in some of the fresh air while Steve Kensington and his crew came over with their handcart, a fresh tank full of napalm resting on it. While the crew worked on installing the tank itself, Steve attacked the side doors with his wrench, removing them once again. He hardly looked at what he was doing as his hands loosened the bolts and pulled them free. He asked Skip about Sarah, his wife, and how she had fared on the flight over. Skip assured him that she had been doing well when they'd left, that she had been the first one taken into surgery. As they talked and as Steve worked, he kept glancing at the dead body of Megan, which was still lying in the cargo area, rapidly stiffening. Neither of them commented on it.

              Paul came out a minute later, leading Sherrie with her. They too took in the sight of Megan lying in the back. Paul looked sad while Sherrie, who was pale and drawn, made the sign of the cross.

              "You decided to go back up with us?" Skip asked her.

              "I almost didn't," she said, looking at him meaningfully. "But in the end... I knew that I had to. I'm the only one besides Paul that knows how to do this. And we can't very well spare Paul down here, can we?"

              "No," Skip said. "We can't. And don't worry too much. Jack flies pretty good for a rookie, and I promise we won't be doing any more dives down on the militia. Hell, if everything goes all right, we won't have to use this egg at all."

              "You have a plan?" Paul asked.

              "I wouldn't exactly call it a plan," Skip said. "Maybe a little psychological warfare will help though. I don't know their exact state of mind over there, but it can't be good. We've killed too many of them for it to be good. Maybe a few plain facts will push them over that edge."

              "You're going to talk to them?"

              "I'm going to talk to them," he said. "We know what frequency they're using. It's a simple Micker of tuning our radio over to it and pushing the button. I'll give it a shot once we're back in the air."

              "It would be nice to think this thing will be over soon," Paul said. "It's been one long-ass day. It'll be even nicer to end it without anyone else ending up like poor Megan here."

              "Amen to that," Skip said.

              Jack came back out a minute later carrying an empty apple juice bottle he'd scrounged from their supply room (Garden Hill never threw containers away). He handed it over to Skip and then he, Paul, Sherrie, and Steve went about the distasteful task of removing the corpse from the helicopter. Without the time for a proper interment, and lacking any pomp and ceremony, they simply dragged her over to the storage room and put her inside. A puddle of blood, now congealed, marked the spot in which she had lain. Sherrie and Jack quickly wiped it up.

              The rope coil was brought back from the storage room once again and installed in the same manner it had been before. Steve was able to move a little faster this time and had the entire set-up ready for action within ten minutes.

              "You're ready to rock," he said, slapping the side of the helicopter.

              "Let's get back up there then," Skip told his crew. "Time's a wasting."

              Sherrie climbed back into her spot, giving a little shudder as she passed through the doorway that she had sworn a little more than an hour ago that she would never pass through again as long as she lived. She took her accustomed spot and grabbed tightly onto the bungee cords that held the rope coil in place. She made the sign of the cross once more and then put on her headset.

              Jack climbed back in the pilot's seat, strapping himself into place and putting on his own headset. He seemed a little more confident in himself as he made a check outside to make sure everyone had cleared the area. He turned to Skip who gave him a nod and a moment later he throttled up and took off. He found the handling of the machine to be noticeably different now that the doors had been removed and with the extra weight and drag of the napalm tank, but he was able to adjust to it very quickly.

              Following Skip's previous examples, he turned towards the canyon and climbed up to altitude over there, rising up to 6000 feet once again. He then turned back to the north, towards the battle area. Skip leaned forward as far as he could as they approached at 50 knots and finally slowed up to a hover. He saw that the militia was now formed up behind their hills and apparently ready to make their advance at any time. He turned the knob on the radio set in front of him to the citizen's band frequency and tuned in channel 24, which was the command frequency of the militia.

              Stu was giving some last minute instructions on the coming attack to his squad leaders when the radio on his belt suddenly began to squawk with an unfamiliar voice. The squad leaders, who all had their radios set to the same frequency, heard it as well. Stu and everyone else listened in disbelief as they processed just what was being said.

              "This is the commander of the Garden Hill forces," said a male voice, "calling the commander of the Placer County Militia. Do you copy me? Please reply on this channel."

              Stu took his radio from his belt and looked at it for a moment, making no move to reply. Around him his men became silent, watching and listening to this new development, wondering just what it meant. The message came again, in the exact same words, and then once more.

              "Are you going to answer them?" Stinson asked, looking at Stu.

              "It's got to be some sort of trick," Stu said, feeling fearful for no good reason.

              "Hello down there," the voice said from the radio. "Anybody home? I know you can hear me. We've been monitoring your channel ever since the second day of your march. Why don't we talk? Maybe we can come to some arrangement that will prevent needless deaths. It's worth a shot, isn't it?"

              The voice sounded very calm, very reasonable, but unmistakably sure of itself. Stu did not want to answer it.

              "Maybe they want to surrender," someone suggested. He wasn't taken very seriously.

              "Come on," the voice chided now, as Stu continued to stand there, not doing anything. "You're all down there gathering up to attack us again. Obviously you're not cowards. Surely you're not afraid to talk to me, are you?"

              It was this ancient, schoolyard challenge that forced Stu's hand. Nobody called him a coward. He keyed up his radio. "This is the commander of the Placer County Militia forces," he said into it. "Who am I talking to? Is this the one they call Skip?" Stu figured that using the man's name would instill an advantage. He shortly found out that the name-dropping worked in both directions.

              "I'm glad you decided to talk," the voice said. "Yes, this is Skip Adams, commander of the Garden Hill forces. It would seem that you've been talking to Jessica Blakely. We heard that she made it to your town. And who am I addressing? Is this Bracken? I was told that Bracken was in charge of the group that would be making the march."

              Stu started a little at these words. How the hell had Adams known about Bracken? He fought to keep his voice calm and keyed the microphone again. "This is Lieutenant Covington," he said, "acting commander. Captain Bracken was killed during one of your night runs on us during the march. Who have you been talking to?"

              "We have our sources," Adams said mysteriously. "Covington huh? Would your first name be Stu? I've heard a few tales about you myself, particularly the group that you were part of prior to being absorbed into the militia."

              "Bracken's bitches," Stinson said upon hearing this. "Jean and Anna must've made it here. That's how they knew we were coming!"

              "Don't be fucking stupid," Stu barked. "There's no way those two bitches made it all the way here. They must have a spy or something in the town. Maybe that Jessica bitch has a radio transmitter or something."