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

by David Nees

  She made her way around the block and cut across into an overgrown parking lot.

  A half hour later she got to the building.

  Billy ran through the streets. He had a lot of distance to cover to get to the east side of the downtown area housing Stansky’s headquarters. His fury drove him. He was not trying to be stealthy. He actually looked forward to an encounter; it would give him an opportunity to lash out with the automatic weapon he was carrying.

  As he started down one block, a patrol of six men stepped into the intersection. They shouted for him to stop. Billy had the M16 set to automatic. He began firing short bursts as he ran towards the men. The unfamiliar weapon tried to jump and climb in his hands. He tightened his grip and kept it under control, sweeping the men in short bursts as he ran at them. Two of them went down before the rest began to return fire. He zig-zagged a little but kept going at a full run straight at the men and kept firing. Two more men went down and the last two turned and fled across the intersection. Billy ran past the fallen men as the others disappeared down the side street. He ignored the men who had run off. He would not be diverted from his mission. His focus was getting to the headquarters and Stansky. He wanted to be there and find him when the attack began.

  When he had gotten well east of the downtown compound, he turned and headed north two blocks before turning back to the west, more carefully now. The run and the fight had burned off some of the craziness. He walked, and he kept a sharp eye out for any patrols, always noticing where he could duck for cover if a patrol came by. When he was two blocks out, he came to his first clear view of the barricade in the street. There were heads and rifles poking up along it. Too many. Stansky had a sizeable group to defend his compound.

  Billy stopped. He didn’t think he had been seen. But this route wouldn’t work, and staying around could get him shot. He carefully backed up a block and headed north. He would go two blocks and then try another smaller street going west. Maybe he could find a weaker, less heavily defended place to get into the compound. The street he turned on to was a narrow side street, but again, within two blocks, he saw that it was closed as he neared the compound. The barricade here consisted of three cars lined up across the street and sidewalk. It looked like a hasty assemblage, but it was probably adequate for a minor side street. It would slow down any motorized assault while providing cover for the militia to fire on the attackers jammed in the narrow passage.

  Careful to stay out of sight, Billy found a niche with a door set into it and sat back. He was breathing heavily; sweat covered his face and arms. His initial recklessness fueled by his rage had dissipated, replaced now with a hunter’s cunning. He had to figure out a way to get inside the compound and then find Stansky.

  After some thought, he decided he would wait until the attack began. The extra confusion might allow him an opportunity to get inside the barricade. Would Stansky be in the thick of the battle or would he hang back at his headquarters? Billy pondered that question as he waited for the attack to begin.

  When Catherine got to the block she had chosen, she entered it through a narrow alley. She could see two buildings that might fit the bill. She stopped at the first building, which appeared to be the taller of the two. There was an alley door. It had two small windows in it, with vertical bars over the glass. Catherine thrust the butt of her rifle between the bars of the upper window; the third whack broke the glass. After knocking out the shards, she carefully slipped her arm between the bars. It was a tight fit, but she was able to reach down and flip the dead bolt.

  The door opened onto a stairwell. She closed the door behind her, so that it would be less likely to be noticed, and headed up the stairs. Her only source of light was the alley door windows, but the stairs were a back-and-forth pattern she could navigate in the growing dark as she ascended. At the top, the tenth floor as she counted, she opened the stairwell door and entered a corridor. She was at one end. There was a window at each end which dimly lit the hallway. Doors lined both sides, most of them ajar. More light came from them.

  How do I get on the roof?

  She walked down the hall, trying the knobs of the doors that were closed. None were locked. All but two of the doors opened onto offices. The only exceptions, at the midpoint of the hallway, were the restrooms. Catherine peeked in both, but it was too dark to see anything. There was nothing here.

  She headed back to the door to the stairs and went back onto the landing.

  She had not yet released the doorknob when she made out another door in the wall to her left, the side across from the stairs, just past the door she was holding. She stared at it. There was a sign on it. There was very little light coming from behind her, but the letters were big and blocky, and after a few seconds she was sure what she was looking at:

  ROOF ACCESS ONLY

  She smiled.

  Looking closer, as best she could while holding the hall door open, she could also see that the door had a heavy padlock on it.

  She went back out into the hallway and looked for a janitor’s closet for anything she could use to pry the lock. She found nothing, she had missed no doors the first time, so she returned to the stairwell. She took off her ball cap, pushed the door open as wide as she could, and wedged the cap underneath the door to hold it open. When it would stay, she went four steps down the stairs and laid down, arranging herself uncomfortably against the stairs with her head and rifle peeking over the landing. Then she aimed her carbine at the padlock and fired. The shot broke the lock and the bullet ricocheted off one wall before embedding itself high in the wall opposite.

  She lay still for a long time, listening. If anyone was in the building, they might have heard the shot. The last thing Catherine wanted was to be up on the rooftop and have someone sneak up behind her.

  Nothing. No doors opened, no footsteps on the stairs.

  Satisfied, she got up, retrieved her ball cap, and stepped hurriedly to the utility door. She pulled it open and climbed the metal steps behind it before the faint glow from the other door could cut off. The steps turned right at the top, and there was a door that opened to the roof.

  The dazzling sunlight blinded Catherine after the darkness. She waited in the doorway for her eyes to adjust. She put her cap back on and pulled the bill down over her eyes. She wished she had sunglasses. Shooting east. I should be okay, she told herself.

  She stepped out onto the roof. It was a wide, flat expanse of beige gravel, broken only by the hut she had just emerged from and by two air-conditioning units to her left. Ahead of her, she could see the top of Joe Stansky’s bank building jutting up in the distance. Along the edge of the roof there was a low parapet about three feet high. It would provide good cover for shooting.

  She laid her carbine down just inside the door of the hut, and she crept to the wall and knelt down behind it. She peeked over the parapet. From the roof she had an excellent view of the downtown area. She pulled out her spotting scope from her backpack and turned her cap around so that the bill wouldn’t get in the way.

  She scanned the barricades Stansky had erected. She was only one block from the near edge of the four-block barricaded area. The rooftops in the block in between were low enough that Catherine could see most of the barricades to the south and north. From her height, she had a perfect view of the space behind them. She could see men moving around, bringing out supplies and ammunition. Further back, her view of the compound was interrupted by the bank building and by another, shorter building across the center street to the left of it, which she understood to be the militia headquarters.

  Two other buildings gave her concern. They were similar in height to her building. One was to her left, at the northwest corner of the barricade, exactly where the northern attack would hit. The other was just to the right of the main street running up the middle of the compound. It was at the edge of the compound nearest her. It did cut off some of her view to the right, although Catherine felt confident she had enough of a view of the barricades on that
side to see the southern attack.

  Joe’s bank tower rose above all. It was at least eight stories taller than her rooftop. Its lower stories were half-hidden by the right-hand tall building that faced toward her, but she could see it down to the ground floor on the street that ran up the center.

  Catherine stiffened. Next to Joe’s tower, in the middle of the street, three men were setting up a mortar.

  Looking carefully, she could see three other mortar emplacements in the street, closer to her than the first one she had seen. They were surrounded by low mounds of rubble and debris. To shield the mortars from street-level gunfire, she thought.

  She looked for more. In the middle of the block to the right she could see the right half of an empty lot. As she watched, two clots of men were carrying mortars out into the lot, while two others followed them with loaded wheelbarrows and shovels.

  She remembered the mortars on the slope, and a violent shiver went through her. Joe’s people were ready.

  They’ll need spotters to be effective.

  Her alarm at seeing the mortars now turned to a more immediate concern. She focused on the two tall buildings to her left and right that were the same height as her own.

  Sure enough, there were figures moving about.

  On both of the rooftops.

  She hunched down behind the parapet. How would they communicate with the mortars? She didn’t know but they had to be dealt with.

  They were looking down, watching the streets beyond the barricade. They hadn’t seen her come out on the roof.

  She turned and sat back against the wall to contemplate her position. The spotters would be armed. If they discovered her, they could take her out, or they could keep her pinned down enough that she would be effectively neutralized as a sniper.

  She might not even be able to get back to the stairs so she could find a new position. She glanced back at the stairway door. This was a big roof; the door was twenty yards from her position, and she would be out in the open once she moved back from the parapet wall.

  Maybe even if she crawled. The two rooftops looked even with her own—a nice round ten stories, plus the rise to the roofs—but might they be a little higher? She could not see the surface of their roofs beyond their parapets, but could they see hers? It was impossible to be sure.

  It would be a dangerous gauntlet to run, with a high probability of getting shot. She knew she could make such a shot. Could they?

  She dared not assume that the men on the rooftops would be lousy shots.

  And if they saw her now, with the streets quiet, it would be simple for them to send a group straight to her building.

  Whichever way it went, she might never get into the fight.

  She ground her teeth. She could cause massive disruption in the militia’s defenses. When the attack started, the confusion would mask her initial shooting. The battle would allow her to keep shooting down into the barricades. Effective sniping could pin a lot of fighters down. She and Bird had slowed down three truckloads of armed men with some well-placed shots and the fear of more. Slowed them down enough that they had never reached the farms.

  I’ll have to take them out first. Otherwise they’ll pin me down.

  But not until the sound of her shots would be covered.

  She couldn’t afford to be seen. She would have to be careful in her observation of the fortified blocks.

  She settled in to watch and wait.

  Chapter 29

  “Gate One calling. We haven’t seen anything out here. It might help if we knew what direction to keep an eye out on—”

  “You watch the road leading to your checkpoint. It’s okay that you haven’t seen anything.” Joe’s voice was now sharp, his eyes blazing. The two militia officers standing by the door of his office stood rigidly, looking anywhere but at him. “You keep watch and keep checking in so we know you’re doing what you’re told. If there’s nothing to report, just check in and hang up. Got it?”

  “Where do we think they’re gonna come out? ‘Cause if we knew that—”

  “We don’t know,” Joe said. “That’s why you’re out there watching. You just check in now and then, all right? Command out.”

  He put down the device carefully, resisting the urge to smash it.

  What no one but Joe and a few others had known was that Joe had a few working military radios. He had gotten them from the armory raids.

  Joe and Leo had kept the existence of the radios a deep dark secret, even from almost all of the militia. The devices had stayed safely stored away in a private area in Joe’s tower, charged but hidden. The radios represented too much of a potential surprise advantage to risk wasting for trivial reasons.

  But Leo had seemed sure that a big problem was about to appear, and over the years Joe had learned to listen to him. He had gone to bed the previous evening mulling over Leo’s preparations, and he had woken up early that morning thinking about the radios. If the threat really was as serious as Leo said, then there was no point in holding onto their ace in the hole. It was time to pull it out while the game was on. So the first thing Joe had done that morning was to take four of the radios and send two of them out to the guards at the two main entrances, with instructions to keep in constant touch with him.

  The radio crackled again. Gate Two reported in to say there was no activity at their checkpoint.

  Joe smoldered.

  And waited.

  He was barricaded into his downtown area with most of his men, but he was nervous. A street fight, a shooting or a robbery, he was good at that; used to it. But this strategic maneuvering for what could be a major battle left him uneasy.

  And Leo was missing. Leo was the guy who had been studying this kind of thing, strategy and tactics, ever since Joe had put him in charge of taking over the militia and running it. He was the one who should be on this end of the radio. He had gone off to take care of some business, something about his woman, and he should have been back already.

  That worried Joe. It wasn’t like Leo. Not when there was serious business to be done.

  Let alone this.

  Joe had finally sent a patrol out with another radio to fetch the son of a bitch. And now they were looking for him. Why the hell did they have to be looking for him? The patrol had gone to Leo’s hotel apartment and had discovered that Leo had apparently moved to other quarters. Joe could understand that, it made sense for security, but why didn’t he know about it? The guard at the hotel had just come on shift and had said that Leo had moved somewhere “on the south side.” They were headed that way now.

  Somewhere on the south side!

  When Joe got ahold of Leo, he was going to let Leo know he was pissed. But this was so unlike him that Joe couldn’t shake an uneasiness growing inside.

  The radio on the desk squawked again. Joe scowled at it and picked it up. “Headquarters.”

  The voice sounded different. “We just got attacked.” Not shouting, but hoarse.

  Joe tensed. “Which gate are you? How many?”

  “We still didn’t find Leo. But we got hit. There’s only two of us left.”

  It wasn’t either of the gates. It was the men he’d sent after Leo. “Who hit you?”

  “One guy. I think it was that guy from the valley that Goodman hired to hunt. Looks like he’s changed sides. Or else he’s gone crazy.”

  “Who?” Joe said incredulously. He tried to remember. He thought he remembered something about whiskey. An expert. Someone from the valley. He swore. That was another wild card he didn’t need. “Did you get him?”

  “No, he’s gone, headed east far as we can tell. We got no idea where Leo is. You want us to keep looking?”

  Joe growled out loud as he paced across his office, the radio clenched in his fist. Leo, you bastard, I need you!

  “Keep looking,” he ordered. “Southside section. You don’t find anything in another hour, come back. And don’t lose that radio.”

  There was no answer. He waited.

>   A live courier came in to report. Distant gunfire had been heard far across the city, location unknown; it had ended after less than a minute. No details about it. Joe nodded and wondered dully if it had been the same incident or another one. He was tempted to order a patrol out to investigate, just to do something, but he didn’t think sending men all around town made sense with an attack coming. Damn it! Leo had the plan. He needed him here.

  He waited some more.

  The radio came to life. “Hello! Headquarters, come in!”

  Joe thought he recognized the hoarse voice. “Headquarters here. Did you find Leo?”

  “No! But we’ve got this guy! He says he was a guard for Leo and he was tied up!”

  “What?”

  “He came running right at us. He says he was at Leo’s and a whole bunch of ‘em went upstairs. I still don’t know where he was, but they all went upstairs and this guy says there was a firefight, and then more of ‘em kept going upstairs. They all came down except Leo… I think Leo’s—”

  Faraway thunder reached the windows of Joe’s office.

  The two militia officers by the door stiffened and looked at each other, and one turned and ran out toward the stairs. Joe rose from his chair and moved to the window. The gunfire continued. It seemed to be coming from two directions.

  The battle was on.

  Chapter 30

  When the gunfire erupted, Catherine rolled smoothly over into a kneeling position and brought her rifle up on the parapet. During the wait she had used her spotting scope to measure the distance to both rooftops. She had estimated that they were level with respect to her own, which had made figuring out her scope adjustments much easier. She could feel only the barest trace of a breeze.

  Now she watched the rooftop to the left through the rifle scope.