The day after: An apocalyptic morning (130 page)

              He walked over the same ground that his men had just trod upon but somehow he managed to step in one place where no one else's foot had happened to come down. Without warning, something exploded beneath him with a sharp crack and a bright flash of light. It felt like someone wearing steel-toed boots had kicked him harshly in the balls. He felt an intense burning in his crotch and in the inner portions of both legs. He looked down and saw that his entire lower body was dripping blood onto the muddy ground. His pants had been shredded in the crotch and he could see muscle and fat tissue hanging by pieces of tendon and shredded veins. While the men around him dove to the ground at the sudden explosion, he gasped in shock as the pain intensified. He fell forward, his hands grasping at the bloody remains of his reproductive organs and wished to lose consciousness. Unfortunately, until he was "put out of his misery" five minutes later by his first sergeant, that did not happen.

              "It's some sort of homemade mine, sir," Sergeant Costigan, the new leader by default of the reserve platoon, told Bracken when he met with him twenty minutes later. "It was buried just under the mud in a small hole in the ground. When Lieutenant Roberts stepped on it... well..."

              Bracken looked at the remains of the mine that had killed his second most senior officer. The shotgun shell that had been fired by the mousetrap was still wedged into the hole, empty of the powder, wadding, and birdshot pellets. The force of the detonation had cracked the piece of lumber quite badly but, as evidenced by the success the weapon had had, that hadn't really detracted from the effectiveness much. He threw the device down, reluctant respect for the ingenuity of those Garden Hill people worming into his brain. "Clever," he said. "We're dealing with some very devious minds here, Costigan, wouldn't you agree?"

              "It would seem so, sir," he said, still shuddering at the image of Roberts' shredded private parts. It had actually been a relief to end his suffering, to silence his screaming with a bullet to the head.

              "What affect did witnessing this have on your men?"

              "They're rather shaken," Costigan said, giving a rather broad understatement. "It would've been better if that thing would've just killed him outright. Seeing what it did to him... well... it was not very pretty, sir."

              "No, I don't imagine it was," Bracken sighed. "And you say there was no way of detecting the presence of this thing before he stepped on it?"

              "It left a hole in the ground after it went off," Costigan said doubtfully, "but no one saw it before that. I don't know, sir. Maybe if we knew to look for things like that, we'd be able to find them. I just don't know."

              "We're going to have to keep our eyes out for more of these little Garden Hill surprises," Bracken said. "If they planted one, they'll plant others."

              The militia continued its march around the first of the mudfalls, keeping themselves spread out and straddling the row of hills from which the previous day's attacks had come. The safety that this tactic gave them lasted only as long as it took for Skip and his strike groups to recognize and adapt to it. Here came the advantages of mobility that the helicopter offered. No Micker where or how the militia marched, there was always a place to attack them from and it was only a simple Micker of predicting their advance and moving a team to a spot where they could get away safely. The mountains were full of such places.

              Christine's squad hit the middle of the advancing militia shortly after 11:00 AM, firing from a well-protected hill to the west of them - the same hill that Paula had suggested they occupy. Two soldiers were killed outright by the initial shots and one was badly wounded. Christine's automatic fire with the M-16 was not as effective as it had been the previous day - the Auburnites had learned quickly to throw themselves down when people started to drop - but she still managed to inflict one more death and one more serious injury before her clip ran out and her squad fled their ambush site.

              The militia platoon tasked with examining the site of the ambush was wary of the mines that they now knew their enemy to possess. They stepped gingerly around, their eyes searching for depressions in the mud or other signs of the devices. They saw no such thing. Even so, Corporal Janders' left foot managed to find one of the devices the hard way. Though his crotch was spared much of the brunt of the shotgun shell blast it was only because the inside of his left calf and thigh absorbed most of the pellets. Though his favorite appendage was saved from too much harm, his life was nonetheless sacrificed because his left leg was now a bloody mess of torn flesh and shredded muscle. Despite his begs and pleas that he could walk, just give him a chance, he was shot in the head by Lieutenant Powers and, after his weapons, ammo, and food were stripped from him, left to rot there.

              The next ambush took place a little more than two hours later. Paula's squad was able to kill three and wound one with the initial attack. Though the militia rushed at them at top speed, as per Bracken's orders, they could not catch anything but another glimpse of the helicopter departing to the south of them. This time Bracken did not allow a platoon to approach the hill from which the attack had come. He wanted to waste no further men to mine warfare and he suspected that they would not have obeyed the order to walk there anyway.

              Before the sun set that night, bringing darkness to the land, two more ambushes occurred, costing them five more lives. With each attack Bracken tried to shift formations and course of travel but they still happened with frightening unexpectedness from a direction that no one had happened to be looking in. Each time his troops gave pursuit and each time they were able to do no more than catch a glimpse of the retreating helicopter.

              "It's like we're being attacked by fucking ghosts!" one sergeant, angry and frustrated and scared, proclaimed as he stood over the dead bodies of two of his men. "How the hell can we fight back against this?"

              "We'll get them," Bracken soothed as best he could. "They'll slip up and we'll get them. This can't go on forever."

              His words sounded like a lie, even to himself.

              The militia bedded down at 8:00 PM that night, knowing that the nightmare attacks out of the darkness would surely commence at some point. They spread themselves out widely, over an area of more than a hundred acres, with no man putting himself any closer than thirty feet from another man. Twice the usual number of guards were posted around the perimeter and in the middle of the formation, all of them equipped with automatic weapons and powerful flashlights. They braced themselves for attack and they were not disappointed.

              The first hit came shortly before 10:00 AM, from the north of them. There was no warning beforehand, no sound of a helicopter engine, nothing. Suddenly tracers were slamming down into the ground, moving from one sleeping bagged figure to the next with devastating accuracy. The attack lasted less than five seconds, just long enough for the guards to begin returning fire. Entire clips of ammunition were blasted into the dark sky in the general direction that the tracers had come from, but with no aiming point and no visual reference, none of them came within twenty yards of the helicopter. Just as the guards were reloading and starting to take count of the wounded, more tracers slammed in, this time from the northwest. The guards themselves were now the targets and two of them were mowed down by lightning bursts of 5.56-millimeter shells. And again, before an accurate defense could be initiated, the attacker disappeared.

              Follow up attacks took place at 12:30 AM and at 3:00 AM, each of them killing an average of two soldiers per firing run. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough to keep the militia awake and trembling, to keep most of them on edge and scared. By the next morning the exhaustion that resulted would start to affect judgment.

              And little did the militia know that back in the town they had left behind, other events were taking place that would have a profound effect on their future.

              Lieutenant Livingston was currently second-in-command of all the troops remaining in the Auburn township - second only to Barnes himself. He was a long-standing veteran of the militia, his service in it stretching considerably back to before the fall of the comet itself. He had personally led the assault on the town of Colfax and Grass Valley. He had once served in the United States Army as a military policeman.

              At 1:45 AM, while the rest of the militia was lying awake some fifteen miles to the southeast, trembling in fear of another air attack, he was sound asleep and snoring in his bedroom, Mindy, the favorite of his three wives, sleeping soundly beside him. Mindy was naked, as was Livingston himself - they had engaged in a lengthy session of sexual congress before retiring four hours before. Mindy had no idea what was about to occur - she was not one of Jessica's inner circle. Livingston certainly had no idea either.

              The door had been left open as they slept but neither heard the stealthy footsteps of Madeline, the junior of the three wives, and Kendall, the senior of them, as they crept out of the bedroom down the hall and made their way down to the kitchen.

              "Are you sure," Kendall, who had never been more scared in all her life, asked her companion quietly, "that the other women are going to go through with this too? If they don't, we're going to be burned at the stake in the morning."

              "We're going through with it, aren't we?" Madeline, or Maddie, as she was known, asked with cold logic. "The others will do it too."

              "But if they don't?" Kendall asked. "What happens then?"

              "Then all is lost. It's a chance we'll have to take. To tell you the truth, it'll be worth it in any case. Now let's get it done."

              Kendall offered no further protests. Slowly, carefully, Maddie opened a kitchen drawer and removed a huge butcher knife of the sort that was usually used for chopping very large cuts of meat. It was a knife she had spent a good portion of the previous day rubbing obsessively with a whetstone and it was now nearly sharp enough to shave with. She hefted it, testing its weight for a moment and liking the way it felt in her hands. "Let's do it," she said, holding it down near her side. She opened another drawer and pulled out a two-cell flashlight. She handed this to Kendall, who took it blankly, keeping it turned off. Without waiting to see if her companion would follow, she began tiptoeing towards the stairs.

              Kendall, feeling her body surging with nervous adrenaline, feeling her very hands trembling, started after her. The dice had been thrown.

              They made their way upstairs and then down the hallway until they were standing outside the darkened master bedroom. They could see nothing but they could hear Livingston snoring lightly and both knew the interior of the bedroom intimately. They made their way to the side of the bed and paused.

              They didn't talk, didn't make a sound until Maddie, the knife in her left hand, gripping it by the handle, said: "do it."

              Neither Livingston nor Mindy reacted to the voice. Both however, reacted when the flashlight was suddenly switched on, its beam spearing Livingston's head with illumination. Their eyes flew open at the sudden barrage of light but neither had any time to react to what happened next. Livingston was lying on his back, the covers pulled up to his shoulders, his arms beneath them. While he blinked in confusion and his sleep-muddled brain tried to figure out just what the hell was going on, Maddie reached forward with her right hand and grabbed him by the hair on the top of his head. With a sharp jerk, she yanked his head backward, exposing his neck. While he tried to free his hands from beneath the covers to fight back at this sudden attack, Maddie chopped downward with the butcher knife, it's edge slamming into his throat, just below the bulge of his Adam's apple. With a vicious, powerful stroke, she pulled it across, slicing deeply into his neck, severing his trachea as neatly as she would have the neck of a chicken. Blood began to spray into the air, both from the gaping wound and from a partially severed right carotid artery. She finished her swipe and then stepped backward, out of reach, her knife blade now red and dripping.

              Livingston sat up in bed, his eyes wide in disbelief and fear, his hands abandoning their attempt at defense and going to the wound on his neck. He tried to scream but no sound came out but a pitiful, dying gurgle. He tried to inhale and found it impossible. His eyes grew wider, his hands tightened around his throat, trying desperately to repair the irreparable damage.

              "There, you motherfucker," Maddie spat, her eyes blazing. "There's the motherfucking God's law for your ass!"

              "Maddie!" Mindy suddenly screamed, her face a terror as she saw the second mouth that had been added to her husband, as she saw the blood spurting out onto the linen. "What are you doing?"

              "I'm killing this piece of shit," she said. "Now shut the fuck up unless you want some of it too."

              "But..."

              "Shut up!" Maddie barked. "You just sit there and don't say a fucking thing!"

              While Mindy trembled in place, uncomprehending at what was taking place, Maddie and Kendall watched Livingston's desperate struggle on the bed. He flopped up and down, raising and lowering his head, his eyes growing wider and wider as he slowly suffocated to death. The only sound was the banging of his feet on the bed and the pathetic gurgling and whistling of his severed windpipe. Shortly he began to seize, his body flopping up and down as his oxygen-starved brain began to send misfired signals down his spinal column. In less than three minutes, it was over. Either the hypoxia or the blood loss - which was considerable - got the better of him. He gave one last tremendous flop and then he lie still, his body in the middle of the blood-soaked Mickress.