After the Fall: Catherine's Tale Part 2: The warrior's fight for survival begins

by David Nees

  “Gold. Really?” The second guard’s voice sounded interested.

  “Why don’t you just join the militia?” the first guard said. “You can get a rifle for free, and regular meals as well.”

  “I just quit the army. I ain’t interested in joining another group. Following orders and stuff.”

  The second guard leaned forward, his quiet voice beginning to sound eager. “So, we sell you one, you can’t stay here. Can’t have you knocking people off in town.”

  “Ain’t planning on sticking around. I’m heading out on my own. Going to get back to my family. Now you want to sell me a rifle or not?”

  “Why don’t he buy one from you?” the first guard asked Hank.

  “‘Cause we don’t have that many. Someone would notice a missing rifle. Shit, I figure you got hundreds in the warehouse, so who’d know if one was missing? And if anybody notices, it’s like someone counted wrong in the first place.”

  “Okay, what you got?” the second guard said.

  Tommy took out the two gold coins and a gold necklace, held them up so a faint glint could be seen. “What’ll this buy me?”

  The guard looked at the gold with a greedy eye. “That real?”

  “The weight says so. You want to feel, you gotta show me something.”

  “That’ll get you a rifle and some ammunition. Won’t be our best, but it’ll work.”

  The second guard turned toward the door. The first guard looked at him dubiously. In that instant Tommy and Hank struck. They grabbed both guards. Hank stuck his pistol in the side of the guard who had spoken to them first. Tommy pulled his knife and stuck it against the other man’s neck.

  “Don’t make a sound or I’ll slit your neck open. Open the door.”

  “You shoot us, you wake up the other men and they’ll kill you,” the first guard gasped.

  “Don’t need to shoot you. I just slit this guy’s throat and then slit yours. Then we take the keys and go right in. Either of you yell, you both get your throats cut.”

  “Reach down, slowly, take your keys and unlock the door,” Hank ordered.

  The second guard complied. Tommy and Hank shoved the men inside. It was dark and silent; they seemed to be in a small anteroom that opened up into what they sensed was a larger space.

  There was a sudden small, bright light. Hank had snapped on a small flashlight and put his hand over the beam to let out only a sliver of light. “Rechargeable batteries,” he said as Tommy looked at him in surprise.

  They could now see that the back of the room had a large opening with the main warehouse beyond. An immense space with shelving that faded away into the dark.

  Handing Tommy the flashlight, Hank quickly handcuffed the two guards to a steam radiator. Tommy went over to them and whispered, “You don’t have to die, but you will if we run into any problems. Now I’m going to ask you a question and I want a straight answer. If you lie to me, I’ll slit your throats now and I won’t have to worry about you. Got it?” The two guards looked terrified.

  “Okay, here’s the question. How many other guards are there and where are they?”

  “There aren’t any,” the second guard said in a quavering voice.

  “You’re sure now. None at the other doors? Remember your life depends on the answer.”

  “There are no other man doors,” the first guard said. “There’s just the rear loading bay doors, four of them. They’re big roll doors and they don’t open from the outside. You gotta open them with the chain hoist from the inside. It’s a pain with no motors.”

  Tommy looked at Hank and nodded. Hank slipped back out the door, closing it gently behind him. Ten seconds later Terry Jackson came in, his rifle at the ready position in front of him. They waited in the dark.

  Many long minutes later, Tommy heard the low mutter of the police van’s engine pulling up outside the door. A moment later the door opened, and Hank and Les Hammond joined them.

  Tommy left Hammond to watch the two guards while the others quietly went through the warehouse. It wasn’t hard to find anything. The weapons were stored for easy access. They collected arm loads of M16s, and they found two M60 machine guns with cans of 7.62mm ammunition. Those went straight out to the van. Boxes and boxes of 5.65mm ammunition for the M16s were loaded into the increasingly heavily loaded van. Tommy figured they had a couple of thousand rounds of rifle ammunition. His only concern was that he could not find any mortar tubes or rocket launchers. He did find some mortar bombs, which he took. At least they wouldn’t be available to the militia in a fight, and the platoon had mortars that could use them. An hour later they had the van fully loaded and riding low on its suspension.

  Before they left, the men stopped to look at the guards handcuffed to the radiator.

  “Should we just leave them?” Tommy asked.

  “You’ll never get away with this,” the guard who had been eager for the trade said. “We know who you are.” The other guard’s head snapped round toward his partner, horror on his face. “Shut your mouth,” he hissed.

  “So we better kill you so you won’t talk,” Hank said.

  “Maybe we should finish them off now, since they know you,” Tommy said.

  Hank pondered the proposition. “They’ll be found sometime tomorrow. If they’re alive, they’ll tell everyone, so I can’t be seen again. The whole militia will be looking for me.”

  The guard who was clearly more intelligent said, “Listen, we won’t say anything. You don’t have to kill us. That ain’t right and you know it.”

  “Funny, you talking about what’s right,” Tommy said. He looked at the two hapless men. They stared back. Killing them would be the simplest solution. He could imagine Sergeant Gibbs making that call. He couldn’t imagine Lieutenant Cameron making it. Cameron would say they were called to a higher standard. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right to just shoot them or slit their throats.”

  Hank looked at the guards. “You’re right. I guess it’s your lucky day,” he said to them.

  Tommy cut the shirts off the men and tore them in half. He stuffed wads of fabric into the guards’ mouths and tied the other strips around their heads to hold the gags in place. “That’ll keep them quiet ‘till someone comes in the morning. Gives us a little more time.”

  With that, they left. Tommy locked the door behind them and then dropped the warehouse keys down a storm grating. Hammond started the van and they drove away through the dark city.

  Chapter 13

  Early the next morning, before the sun came over the eastern ridges, Catherine and Bird woke up to the sound of gunfire. It was far off, fading in and out in the slight morning breeze. They were instantly awake.

  “The bridge,” Bird said. “They attacking there. Maybe we should go help.”

  “That would take too long,” Catherine said. “By the time we got there it would be all over.” She paused. “And I don’t think we should abandon our post. They could be attacking from both directions.”

  As she was speaking, she heard the sound of engines above them.

  “I think they’re coming over the ridge,” she announced.

  About a minute later, the dark, rectangular shape of a pickup appeared against the sky.

  “There at the top of the ridge,” she called out.

  Bird grunted. Two other silhouettes came into view, one after the other. Catherine and Bird took up prone positions on the rock, carefully propping their rifles up on their blankets to give them a firm support for aiming.

  After a moment, they were able to see the three pickup trucks quite clearly. They moved downward from the pass for twenty yards, angling to the left, and disappeared into the trees. Now the two teenagers would have to wait for them to appear at the next switchback where it showed like an exposed elbow.

  The first shot would be a long one, about three hundred and fifty yards. The switchback after that would bring the road back closer to them, within two hundred yards. Their fallback shooting positions below maintaine
d a range of one hundred and fifty to two hundred yards.

  “This is a long shot. Are you good with that?” Catherine asked.

  “I’ll figure it out. Make sure you get some good first rounds in,” Bird said. “With that fancy rifle and all.”

  Catherine smiled to herself. Just shooting targets, that’s what it is. Somehow this seemed easier than the desperate fight at the bridge.

  It had taken some time, but Leo had finally found the old road. They lost a couple of hours dismantling a barrier blocking the entrance. Steel posts had been planted in the ground to block vehicular access to the old track. Perhaps the Forest Service had done it.

  There were too many large boulders on each side of the entrance for the convoy to just go around the barrier, so Leo had the men tie ropes and chains to the bollards so that the pickup with four-wheel drive could pull on them. One of his men found an iron rod that had been left unnoticed in the bed of one of the trucks, and Leo set him to work jamming it into the rocky ground around the steel pipes. Slowly the bollards began to rock back and forth as the rocky soil loosened its grip on them. One by one they finally came out of the ground.

  The road beyond had been left alone to return to nature, but here in the mountains growth was slow. Very little vegetation had grown on the rocky bed of the road. It was passable, but the journey up was slow. On two occasions they had to use the four-wheel-drive truck to pull the other pickups up over some boulders that had pushed up through the bed of the road.

  Leo started fuming. He had wanted to be down in the valley by dawn. Now the day would find him at the top, just starting down. He would be late to join up with the feint going on at the bridge. He had to get down there before the defenders figured out the main attack wasn’t coming at the bridge. When they did, they would know where to look next. They knew the valley, and his element of surprise would be gone.

  Finally he saw the top of the pass ahead. There was enough visibility that Leo stopped the group just short of the ridge and ordered all the headlights turned off. In the dim predawn light the trucks finally crested the ridge and started down the valley side.

  Leo noted with satisfaction that they would be under tree cover for most of the way. And the road seemed more passable on this side of the slope, maybe because they were now going downhill. Things were looking up.

  Catherine and Bird waited for the trucks to emerge at the second switchback. They had their rifles trained on that spot. Catherine had estimated the distance yesterday when they had set up their position. Now her scope was dialed in. There was barely any breeze. She was ready.

  “You take the first shot,” Bird said. “You probably more accurate than me at this distance.”

  Shoot the lead driver to stop the truck. It was what Jason had told her. In their fights with the gangs she had seen it in action twice. She repeated it to herself as she emptied her mind of everything but the switchback she saw in her scope.

  There was motion, and then the lead truck was squared to her, in the middle of the corner, the windshield in her sights. Catherine squeezed the trigger. The rifle’s loud crack was accompanied by a sharp kick against her shoulder. A huge hole appeared in the windshield. She heard someone cry out, but she didn’t think that she had hit any of the three dim shapes behind the glass squarely. Bird now fired, smashing in the top left corner of the windshield. The sound startled Catherine. She quickly refocused and fired again, and this time the glass blew in immediately in front of the driver. She saw his torso flung backward and then falling forward over the steering wheel. The truck straightened out in the middle of the turn and rolled downslope to bang into a boulder on the edge of the road. A man was already out, dashing for the cover of some boulders. He must have jumped out of the passenger side with the first shots.

  Bird had switched his aim to the trucks that followed. His initial shots were off target, but he quickly zeroed them in with deadly effect. Another man was scrambling out of the lead truck where it had come to rest. Catherine shot him. The first man had already made it to the rocks and cover. The other trucks had stopped. Men were scattering to the sides of the road or getting behind the pickups.

  Gunfire was beginning to come from the caravan, but it was unfocused. The raiders didn’t know where she and Bird were.

  Yet.

  Leo looked out from behind the rocks, thankful for his escape. His instincts had caused him to throw himself out of the truck as soon as the first shot had torn through the cab. He tried to pinpoint where the shots were coming from. He could only see woods.

  He turned and shouted to the men to get the machine guns from the backs of the pickups. Lucky they weren’t in my truck, he thought; that was a hot target. One of his men opened the tailgate of the second truck and crawled into the bed. Lying flat on his stomach to stay out of sight of the snipers, he pulled the M2 back to the tailgate. The gun crashed onto the dirt road, the man slipping down beside it. It was a heavy gun, Leo knew, weighing one hundred and twenty pounds with its tripod. The man stopped at the back of the truck, clearly not wanting to risk dragging the gun across the open ground to the cover of the rocks and trees. Leo approved. If they lost that gun in the open, they’d die one by one if they tried to get to it.

  Others had retrieved the M60s, which were considerably lighter. The last of his men scrambled to cover along the side of the road.

  “Look for the muzzle flash when they fire,” Leo yelled. “Don’t waste shots if you don’t know what you’re shooting at.”

  They were on the edge of a steep, wooded ravine carved by runoff from the ridge. The ravine had forced the road to turn away, the builders snaking their way up the ridge, always seeking the easier path. Leo studied the slope across from the switchback. Somewhere on the other side of the ravine, a couple of hundred yards away, was the sniper…or snipers. He couldn’t tell how many there were. Suddenly he saw a flash, then another one, and then the sound reached him. The granite knob near the upper part of the opposite ridge, that’s where they were. It looked like two separate shooters.

  “There!” Leo shouted out to the others, pointing to the ridge. One of the men stood up to get a better look and was dropped by a bullet. Leo swore. He couldn’t afford to lose many men here. “Get that M2 going. Light up that rock,” he yelled.

  “Cover me,” another man shouted back. His companions fired a fusillade of shots at the outcropping. The man grabbed the M2 and staggered across to some rocks near Leo, half carrying, half dragging the heavy machine gun.

  Leo liked the M2. It fired a .50 caliber round, a massively lethal projectile, capable of penetrating an engine block. It could chew up trees, rocks, and concrete walls. Its rate of fire was slower than the M60, but the M60 only fired a 7.62 mm round, and the M2’s deeper sound evidenced the enormous firepower being sent downrange.

  The man wrestled the heavy machine gun around. A bullet screamed off the boulder just above his head. He began to fire. The M2’s rounds peppered the outcropping, shattering the rocks, tearing though the brush. There were no more shots from the ridge. Whoever was up there had no choice but to keep their heads down. Leo jumped up and shouted, “Everyone back in the trucks! Get them round the bend and back in the trees!” He ran to the lead truck, threw open the driver’s door, and dragged the dead man out. Then he jumped in, reversed the truck, and sped around the corner. In his rearview mirror he made out the second truck in line jolting forward and stopping to pick up the man with the M2. Then he was away, and he could hear the other two trucks following.

  The stream of bullets blasted the granite, sending shards flying in all directions. Catherine and Bird were peppered by the fragments. They shrank back from the violence, putting their head down to protect their eyes.

  When the firing stopped they looked at each other. Both had blood running down their faces and arms.

  “Are you okay?” Catherine asked.

  Bird nodded. “You?”

  “Yeah.” She wiped her face with her sleeve, then she looked at the sleev
e and took out a scarf and tied it across her forehead to keep any blood from running into her eyes. “They got around the corner. We’ll have to hit them at the next switchback.”

  “Should we move position?” Bird asked.

  “Not sure. They know where we are, but this is a good shooting spot. Maybe we try one more round here, then move. We’ve got two more positions.”

  Before the next switchback Leo stopped the trucks, well back in the cover of the trees. He had his men set up a mortar and sent one to the edge of the trees to spot for them.

  They didn’t know how to aim it. There hadn’t been a chance to train out of earshot of the city. Joe hadn’t wanted the army to learn what he had.

  “Aim it the best you can and then adjust. The spotter will call out where you hit.”

  “How we get over the trees?” one of the men asked.

  Leo pointed. “Set up across the road to give you some clearance. Adjust the angle as you go.” They quickly moved the mortar.

  After it was reset, one of the men manning the gun asked, “Okay, I got an angle. I just drop the thing in?”

  “That’s it. Then get back from it,” Leo said.

  The first round slid down the tube. There was an explosive whump as it fired. Everyone flinched. A few men put their hands over their ears. A few second later the sound of an explosion shook the air.

  “You’re too high, it’s hitting way down the slope,” shouted the spotter.

  The subsequent rounds began to zero in on the rock outcropping.

  “We got to go,” Bird yelled. They were pressed flat to the ground. They had heard the mortar firing and had watched the explosions, each one further up the slope, closing in on the outcropping. Catherine had thought at first that the mortar bombs were not well aimed and would not be a real danger, but now the rounds were getting close to their position.

  When another blast hit upslope and to their left, spewing dirt and chunks of rock over them, they jumped up and dashed back away from the ravine. They ran through the woods, slipping and sliding on the incline, to get some distance between themselves and the mortar explosions. Catherine worried as she ran about hitting the scope and knocking it out of alignment. Once they were back far enough from the edge, they worked their way down to the second shooting position.