Renewal 10 - Blind Force (8 page)

Having run through the layout in his head, Bill began to calm himself enough to pay attention. The approaching Dragons were dangerously bunched up, but almost as soon as he noticed, they began to spread out across a long span of George Carroll’s old fence. Its weedy halo provided some visual cover for the Dragons, but no real protection to anyone behind it. Meanwhile, the main force of the Dragons was still working its way west, far out of range for the two groups to support each other. Excellent. Two separate battles would work better for Bill, who was sure that his organization was superior.

Wyatt was very nervous when Gary had split his army into two segments. His plan depended on having as many Dragons as possible, and that was aside from the simple fact that he believed the only way to win was to have overwhelming force in one place. Apparently Gary felt that he was overwhelming either way. None of these thoughts made Wyatt feel confident as the platoon-sized groups slowly took turns creeping towards the lights ahead. Trees to the left and the woods ahead made Wyatt slowly work his own men to the right of the column. There could be countless Carter forces in the open land in that direction, but it still seemed like a safer bet. If the Junior Dragon noticed Wyatt’s maneuver, he didn’t show it.

Gary could almost taste it now. The town was within rifle range, and he worked hard to control his desire to open fire. He would be patient and get closer so that when he did turn his men loose, there would be no warning for Bill Carter. No escape. His own discipline was breaking down. He stopped his careful leap frog approach, and simply hiked forward. His men took that as a directive, and followed his example. Other than the flash of light almost a half mile behind them, they had seen no one, encountered no resistance, and began to think of this as another cakewalk into unprepared territory. It was a scenario they had played out in their own county hundreds of times.

Gary crossed the threshold of the woods and stopped fifty feet inside the trees. Gray light was beginning to filter in from behind them, but it was nothing compared to the electric glare in front. He waved his army outward in both directions to build a wide skirmish line, a wall of irresistible force. He failed to notice that Wyatt had peeled off from the Dragon army at the edge of the trees. Gary stepped forward into a yellow cone of light, revealing his legs to the men in the trees. No way to avoid that. His entire army paralleled his movement. One more step and his face was exposed to the light.

A voice yelled from the darkness ahead, “Hey! It’s...”

Gary pulled the trigger. An instant later, the entire Dragon army was spraying rounds wildly into the woods. The smart ones were aiming for the lights. The rest were not aiming at all. Even to a man raised on guns and bullets, the sound was shockingly loud. Gary ran through a magazine in no time, and squatted to the ground to reload. It was in that brief pause of quasi-synchronized reloading that he understood. Bullets came in with shrieks and whispers, hitting his men with wet, meaty pops. He was fortunate to survive the first return volley. One hundred of his men were not. Gary saw the muzzle flashes high in the trees, but it didn’t make any sense to him in the darkness. Then it did make sense, and he shouted, “In the trees! They’re in the trees!” He rose to his feet and aimed by the afterimage on his retinas. His army adjusted their own aim upwards and began to hose down anything that looked like a target, but it didn’t help. The ghosts in the trees were invisible, but they could see the Dragon army with no trouble at all.

The crackle of gunfire to the southwest reached Bill’s ears seconds after he had decided the Dragons in front of him were settling in to wait for sunrise. If that was ever the case, it changed in an instant when muzzles began to flash right in Bill’s face. Once he recovered from the shock of all those rounds bouncing off the front of the roof and over his head, Bill said, “Ok, Jeffry, all yours.”

Jeffry never hesitated. His .50 caliber thundered at a target it was impossible for him to miss. A head disappeared in red mist, leaving a trucker’s hat tumbling in perverse slowness through the air. Bill’s second group joined the fight from behind the fence. In a very short amount of time, the remaining dragons were using the bodies of their fallen comrades for cover. Bill didn’t even bother to raise his rifle. The harsh popping of assault rifles blended in chattering rhythm with the steady sequence of booming sniper rifles. The pile of bodies became too confusing to target, until the Dragons began to run. It would be generous to call it a retreat. They bounded away from the fence like rabbits.

Once the firing began, Terry called his men to their feet. Seth passed the word to the men behind the barn. Terry could see that the Dragons were withering under Bill’s defense, and he could anticipate that at some point, the enemy would run for safety. What he couldn’t see was a way to bring his men into the fight without walking right into the fire from his own people across the road. Terry actually saw the friendly rounds plowing little furrows in the soil near the barn. He was pinned down.

The Dragons ran away from the fence, and it was the perfect time to intercept them. If only Bill would stop firing. Then the rain of Teeny Town fire stuttered to a halt, and Terry knew. He scrambled down the ladder hollering, “Let’s go! Fire on my command!”

Manchester men swarmed from the barn doors and out into the open. The men from behind the barn sprinted to catch up. Terry wasn’t the first out the door, but he managed to regain the lead quickly. Seth joined him within seconds. Who knew the big guy was so fast? The Dragon men were running directly towards Terry. Perhaps they had intended to use the barn as a place to regroup. As his men blocked the barn, the Dragons began to veer to Terry’s right, heading for the last safe place they could recall. The Dragons were too late. The Manchester men had angled around to cut off the retreat, and Terry was proud that not a single one of them fired on the trapped Dragon army. The intruders stumbled to a halt, and as if it were a single thought, dropped their weapons on the ground.

Gary was in a literal hell. In a matter of two minutes, his God had hung him out to dry. It was an odd thought considering he was thoroughly sprayed with the blood of his men. At his last glance, he realized that he was almost alone. God had left him for last to see the error of his ways. He did the only thing he could do. He ran.

In fact, it wasn’t God at all. It was Kirk who had given orders not to shoot Gary Tucker if it could be avoided. It was Kirk who sat through the short-lived battle in the shadows, and it was Kirk who chased Gary down. It wasn’t easy. Gary was running like the devil himself was on his tail. Kirk sprinted through his familiar woods, his feet knowing the way as well as he did. It was Gary’s fourth stumble over a protruding root that gave Kirk his opportunity. He leaped over the sprawling Junior Dragon and landed on the man’s hand with a distinct crunching of bones. The momentum tore skin from Gary’s hand and scrubbed the rifle away from Gary’s broken grip. Kirk swooped down in a blur and tossed the visible weapons from Junior’s prone form. With a knee between Gary’s shoulder blades, Kirk searched for hidden weapons and found a small revolver tucked into Gary’s waistband. Kirk used old fashioned stainless cuffs to bind the hands, and a forceful prod with his favorite handgun to get Gary to his feet. Gary was forsaken. He stood slowly with his head bowed low and blood from his hand dripping down the back of his pants.

Daylight was dawning on the field as Bill’s second group emerged from cover and met Terry’s men in front of the barn. Terry had led the split Dragon army away from their abandoned weapons and had seated them in the bare dirt. Seth had gathered some volunteers to frisk the men for hidden weapons, and found surprisingly few. Terry made a count and found that only seventy-nine Dragons had survived. He had no idea what remained of the other group.

Bill limped across the field. His leg was stiff from the long night, but still much better than a short week before. He extended his hand to Terry long before he arrived, and Terry was surprised when the handshake turned into a full strength bear hug.

“Perfect timing, my boy. Perfect!” Bill thumped Terry’s back as he spoke.

“Thanks, Bill. I thought we were going to miss the whole thing.”

Bill stepped back and swept his eyes over Terry’s men from Manchester. “You missed the crappy parts, that’s all. But, if I had known you had the biggest army, I might have done things differently.” At that, Bill began to pick random men from the crowd to offer handshakes and profuse thanks to the smiling members of Terry’s army.

In the midst of Bill’s personal celebration, a teenaged runner showed up and tapped him on the shoulder. The boy whispered in Bill’s ear.

“What?” Bill responded with wide eyes.

The boy whispered again.

“Ok. Thanks, Jay. Tell Kirk we’ll be there shortly,” Bill said, turning to face Terry. “Go get your truck. We’ve got work to do.”

Chapter 10 – 14

Terry pulled Big Bertha up the slope, feeling quite thankful that his armored truck was unscratched by the battle. He pulled to a stop by the side of the barn and asked Seth to distribute the rest of the food to his men. Once the food was unloaded, Bill joined Terry in the truck. Terry dropped Bertha into gear and drove out through the front gate. As he turned onto pavement, he saw a sizable group of Kirk’s men standing in a huddle on the pavement. The gathering appeared to be almost even with the entrance to the western access road. Terry assumed that was their destination until Bill told him to follow the dirt track to the training ground.

Several minutes later, Big Bertha bounced into the edge of the wooded training grounds that the community had been using as a jail. Terry took one look at the carnage and focused very intently on the ground right in front of the truck. Unfortunately, he ran out of room and was forced to leave the safety of his driver’s seat and its limited view. Terry had never seen enough death in one place to truly experience the smell of it. The coppery tang of blood mixed poorly with other bodily excretions into a head pounding combination that had Terry swallowing silvery bile as fast as he could. Kirk was holding his personal prisoner in the best position to experience everything the aftermath of battle had to offer.

Bill seemed unaffected by the mess, and Terry leaned on his leader’s strength to gather himself, to step into the blood-soaked patch of earth. Once the shock had passed, Terry felt a little better. He realized that the remains extended into the trees. Blood dripped from nearby platforms and streaked down the bullet ridden walls of the training headquarters farther into the woods. Terry caught glimpses of unmoving limbs dangling over wooden edges. In the deeper surrounds, Terry spotted single bodies in several places, and caught his dropping stomach again as he suddenly understood that those were his people, dead on the forest floor.

“Hey, Bill,” Kirk said in greeting. “I was just showing Mr. Tucker his handiwork.” Kirk turned Gary around, exposing Terry to a view of the Junior Dragon’s hand. It looked almost shredded, and Terry wondered how that had happened.

“Hello, Kirk. How’d we do?” Bill asked.

“We lost some, Bill, but in the grand scheme of things, we did well. In our four layers of defense, these jerks didn’t even get past layer one,” Kirk replied with a grim look of satisfaction.

“Good work. What happened to the prisoners?” Bill asked, casting his eyes around the platforms in the trees.

“Junior’s people cut them to ribbons. We have eight survivors, though. They are pretty messed up in the head right now.”

“Did the Jenkins boy make it?”

“No, Bill. He didn’t. Nobody on the front platforms made it. Only some of the Dragons you brought in.”

Now Bill looked sick. He took a couple of deep breaths. “I can’t talk to this guy right now. Let’s just load him in the truck.”

Kirk walked Gary over to the truck and shoved him into the cargo box. He jumped up and removed Gary’s handcuff from one wrist, attaching it to the tubular leg of the steel bench running the length of the truck bed. He retrieved another set of cuffs from his vest and attached the other wrist to the same tube. Gary tried to sit on the bench, but found himself straining his forearms against the hard metal bench. He slid to the floor and faced away from the men outside. Wherever Bill intended to take him, it would be an uncomfortable ride.

Kirk dropped to the ground and latched the doors to the truck. He stepped back over to Bill and seemed to notice Terry for the first time. “You ok, Terry?”

“Yeah, I’m all right. This is just a terrible mess, that’s all.”

“It really is. It could have been a lot worse, though,” Kirk said.

“Yeah. It could have been us piled up like that.”.

Kirk gave Terry a gentle slap to the shoulder. “It never gets easier. We just learn to ignore it longer.” Kirk turned to his younger brother. “What’s next?”

“We have any wounded?”

“I sent them to town twenty minutes ago. Nothing life threatening.”

“Ok. Well, I guess we’d better get started on the cleanup. Let’s bring our people down to the north barn until Sue can decide how to handle it. Get me a list so I can talk to the families,” Bill said with real sadness and fatigue.

“I’ll do it, Bill. They’re my people, my responsibility.”

Bill was surprised. Kirk was never one to handle the human side of his job. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah... I never let it show, but I loved all of them. It’s only right.”

It was Bill’s turn to drop a comforting hand on a shoulder. Kirk took it with tear-filled eyes. “All right, my brother. I’m sorry to leave you to it, but we have one more piece of business. Wyatt.”

“Wyatt Jenkins? I figured he was in this pile somewhere,” Kirk said with his first real surprise of the morning.

“Nope. He’s sitting in the middle of the road with his men. I’ll let you know, ok?”

“Ok, Bill. I love you.”

“I love you too, Big Brother. See you later.”

Bill and Terry turned to the truck to leave. They took a couple of steps before Kirk called out, “Hey, Bill. What about the rest of these bodies?”