The day after: An apocalyptic morning (141 page)

              "She had a set of balls on her," Maria said, sniffing a little. "I always knew that, ever since she tried to steal Hector from me. And how's Hector doing? You said he was wounded?"

              "He's in El Dorado Hills," she said. "He took one in the back. The doctor there is taking care of him."

              The rest of the flight was strangely silent until they neared Garden Hills and made radio contact with Paul, who was in the community center worried sick about how long the helicopter had been out. Paula, taking on the duties of radio operator in the absence of Jack, informed him of what had happened.

              "We're standing down the attacks for the rest of the day," she finished. "We're going to refuel and then head back to El Dorado to check on Hector."

              "I'm going too," Maria said. "I want to be there with him."

              Nobody disputed her.

              Word spread quickly through the town about the casualties that had been taken. Almost before the rotors had wound down and the refueling process had begun, everyone from the kitchen staff to the trench diggers and mine layers knew what had happened out in the woods. They took it harder than they probably should have, the death and wounding of some of their people bringing the unpleasant fact of their own mortality home to them in a way that the previous attack on the town had not been able to. Leanette was dead, killed by Auburn bullets fired from the advancing militia. If Leanette could die in this war, then so could anyone else. The work slowed down a little as conversation, much of it angry and scared, took its place.

              The helicopter stayed in town only long enough for Skip to refuel it and for Paula to give an extended debriefing to Paul. Within thirty minutes of landing, it lifted off once again, Paula and Maria its passengers, heading back to El Dorado Hills.

              Skip addressed the town at an after-dinner meeting that night.

              "By now," he told them over the public address system, "I'm sure that all of you have heard both about the death of Leanette and the wounding of Hector in a hit and run battle this morning. Let me start off by giving you the good news about Hector, which I'm also sure that you've heard rumor of by now. It looks like he's going to make it."

              A cheer went up from the crowd as they heard their first good news of the day.

              "Dr. Renee Sawyer, the physician in El Dorado Hills, spent nearly two hours operating on him after we took him there. You'll be pleased to hear that she has taken her agreement seriously when she said she would treat our wounded in this conflict. She has studied up extensively on traumatic emergencies from her medical texts and trained up some of her fellow townspeople as nurses and assistants. She has also blood-typed every person in that town so she was instantly able to find donors for Hector for the surgery. This pre-training in advance of us actually bringing her someone to work on is undoubtedly what saved Hector."

              There was some babble of admiration for a moment that Skip let continue until it quieted down.

              "What I was told by Dr. Sawyer," he continued, "was that the bullet entered Hector's derriére on the left cheek at an upward angle, fractured his pelvis, and passed through his left kidney before exiting out of his body. He was bleeding internally when she got to him and she was forced to remove that kidney due to the damage. Fortunately the good Lord saw fit to give us two of that particular organ so nothing vital was damaged. Hector has a lot of drains and tubes and a bunch of other shit coming out of his incision, but he was awake and alert when we talked to him and, barring any complications like infection, he should recover completely in time. He'll have to stay in El Dorado Hills for a while on IV antibiotics and such, but that is to be expected."

              Another cheer greeted this news.

              "And then there's Leanette," Skip said next, instantly quieting everyone down. He took a few deep breaths and then slowly, mechanically described what he had been told about Leanette's death in the field. As was his nature, he pulled no punches, letting these people know exactly what sort of battle they were involved in.

              "It was nasty," he said. "There's no doubt about that. And it was painful to have to leave her out there, a decision that I know is preying upon the minds of everyone in that squad, particularly Paula's, the commander of the mission. But I'm here to tell you, as a man of military experience, that there was no other choice in the Micker. Leanette was paralyzed and mortally wounded. To try to drag her out of there would not only have been futile, but would have probably cost the other members of the team their lives as well. Paula, Doris, and even Hector did what they had to do and so did Leanette. Her last request was that they leave her pistol with her so that she could maybe take out a few more of those fucks before she went."

              The silence continued as everyone solemnly considered his words, most of them, once again, thinking of their own mortality.

              "She died a hero as far as I'm concerned," Skip told them, "and I would be lying to you if I said that she will probably be the only one. Others will die in this conflict, of that you can probably be sure. We're fighting for our very lives here, people. Remember that.

              "It is my suggestion that we put a cross up in the school yard near the graves of those killed in our first battle. Though we don't have her body to bury, we have her spirit and she, as well as anyone else that falls fighting this menace, should be memorialized forever. God willing, there won't be many of those crosses when this is done and most of us will still be here to look at them."

              The silence was broken with encouraging agreement with his words.

              "And now," Skip finished, "we should all get a little bit of sleep. Perimeter teams, nothing has changed. We have an enemy on the way and you have work to do in the morning. Hit and run teams," he said next, looking at Paula, who was sitting in the front of the room, and Maria, who had reluctantly returned to Garden Hill to carry on at Hector's urging, "you have your normal missions in the morning. Paula and Christine have called up two replacements for Hector and Leanette. And Jack," he shifted his gaze towards his young protégé. "We take off in three hours for our regular nightly fun."

              The militia enjoyed one entire day without being attacked after killing one of the ambush "bitches". Their morale actually improved a little as they marched on, covering nearly six miles through the woods, without being molested or shot at in any way. People began to think that maybe Bracken was right after all. Maybe the Garden Hills fucks had been demoralized by the death of one of their bitches. Maybe, despite the loss of more than a quarter of their soldiers, things had gotten as bad as they could get and were now on the upswing. No one deserted that day and a little of the discipline returned to the ranks.

              And then, at 9:10 that evening, just as everyone except the guards had bedded down for the night and were anticipating what might be their first uninterrupted sleep since their first night, the tracers came rolling in, killing four with the first attack. Follow-up attacks at 12:30 AM and 4:20 AM killed five more. The next morning, at 9:50 AM, as they were marching through a thin layer of woods, shots rang out from the hillside beyond them, dropping two more and wounding one.

              It seemed that their reprieve was over.

              For the next four days they marched onward, moving only by force of will and threats from their commanders. They stuck to the heaviest woods they could find and spread out as much as practical. None of it did any good. Always when they were least expecting it shots would ring out and people would start to drop. Pursuit would be launched, but never again did they hit anyone, never again did they come even close.

              And in addition, a new tactic was being used as they entered the heavier woods. The Garden Hill teams began randomly setting mines in the trees that they were marching through. They were similar to the ground mines that had been planted at the bases of the hills from which ambush attacks had come but they were smaller. These mines were usually mounted at chest level and camouflaged by branches. Trip wires just under the layer of pine needles and forest debris set them off. When the wire was stepped on it would fire a shell into the chest or abdomen of the man walking by, usually from a range of less than five feet. As a general rule, this shot would not kill the man but would leave him gravely wounded and screaming - forced to kill himself. That the Garden Hills teams had deliberately set the mines to wound instead of to kill (which putting them at head level would have done) was quite obvious. Though only a small percentage of the total casualty count was because of these mines - either the ground version or the tree version - it was they that the soldiers lived in fear of almost more than anything else. They could be anywhere and they were almost impossible to detect before detonation.

              The night attacks were also kept up, sometimes coming only twice but sometimes coming as many as four times between the hours of 9:00 PM and 6:00 AM. Though each run usually only killed a single person, two if they were lucky, these numbers added up, steadily decreasing the force, night by night.

              Nor were the casualties the only thing bringing down the numbers as time went on and the attacks continued. Desertions began to occur with greater frequency, usually during the night hours since Bracken had pretty much closed the loophole by which Lexington and Zachary had wandered off (requests to go take a shit while marching were greeted with much more skepticism now). At night the guards simply could not police every soldier to make sure he was staying in place. It was an impossible task considering how widely spread everyone had to be to avoid being chopped up in the helicopter attacks. So what usually happened was a single deserter, sometimes a pair, always taking his weapon and pack with him or them, would quietly creep away in a pre-arranged direction, moving step by step until they were far enough away to use their flashlights without detection. They would then put as many miles between themselves and the militia as they could.

              Each night they lost at least one person to desertion. Most of them, having the same idea as Lexington and Zachary, headed north, thinking of the mountain towns beyond Grass Valley. Others just wandered off with no particular place in mind, knowing that they were probably going to die of starvation soon, but glad to be free of random attack anyway.

              It was as the sun left the sky on Jan 25 that Stu and Bracken sat down together near the center of the formation. They smoked from their dwindling cigarette supply as they leaned against a redwood tree. Both had their weapons lying next to them and were, for all intents and purposes, alone. Though intellectually the men knew that the first of the helicopter attacks would not come for at least an hour, instinctively they did not want to be anywhere near another person for fear of becoming an easy target.

              "You heard the count we took just before dark?" Bracken asked, taking a particularly deep drag.

              "I heard it," Stu said. It had been 221 men present and accounted for.

              "We've lost almost half of our people, Stu," Bracken told him. "We've shot up more than a third of our ammunition, consumed or just plain lost so much food that it's debatable that we'll get back without severe rationing, and we've lost nine of our automatic weapons to those Garden Hill teams and to deserters."

              "We still have the advantage though," Stu said. "We still have more than twenty automatics and a buttload of semi-autos. And as for food, we'll just use Garden Hill's rations to bring us home with."

              Stu sighed. "Do you remember what our objective was when we started out on this march?" Bracken asked. "Do you remember?"

              "To take that fucking town," Stu said, seeing the worried expression on Bracken's face in the glow of his cigarette. "That's still the objective."

              "The objective was to overwhelm them," Bracken corrected. "We were supposed to arrive there and take them by surprise, hopefully fast enough and with enough power that they would surrender without a fight. That's how we always did it before and that's how we were going to do it here." He took another drag, blowing the smoke out into the rain. "We don't have that element of surprise anymore. And it's quite obvious that they're not going to surrender. And they've killed or driven off nearly half of our force. We still have at least three more days of marching before we even get within range of that town. We'll be lucky if we have a hundred and eighty by then."

              "And we'll still outnumber and outgun them," Stu said. "It's bitches that we're fighting, remember? There is no way in hell that bitches can defeat two hundred men with automatic weapons. No fucking way! This march is going to be the worst part of this mission. Once we're there, we'll kill them in no time."

              "No," Bracken said. "We're not going to do that."

              Stu couldn't believe his ears for a moment. "What do you mean?" he finally asked.

              "We're defeated," Bracken said. "We're approaching fifty percent casualties, morale is falling apart, our squads and platoons are now jumbled up units because of the attrition. It's time to cut our losses and head back. Tomorrow morning, we're going home."