by J. J. Holden
She turned to Choony and smiled. “Thanks for coming up. I think I’ve come to respect your opinion, and your motives, despite our earlier conflict. Or rather, my earlier conflict. Anyway, let’s go back down to the farm. I’m sure people will be wondering where we went if we’re not back soon. I think maybe tomorrow we’ll have a party, a celebration of life. It may be our last, after all, and I have a barrel of apple cider that we should drink while we can. I don’t intend for those looters to have it if things go sideways.”
She hopped off the haystack, waited for Choony, and the two walked side by side back to the homestead, leaving the animals asleep behind them. For some reason, she felt good now, better than any time since Peter’s insanity arrived at their border.
* * *
0200 HOURS - ZERO DAY +27
Cassy woke to the sound of gunfire. It came from up on the hill where their chickens, goats, and hogs rested—when they weren’t being used to intensively graze a plot of land—but it didn’t sound like the shots were aimed at the homestead. Hard to tell, with the rifle reports bouncing off the hill, the trees, the buildings. She scrambled to her feet, grabbed the M4 next to her bed, and charged out of the farmhouse. Outside, a trickle of other Clanners was turning into a flood as just about everyone awoke and came out with their weapons ready. Cassy observed with a chill that they looked afraid. A lot would depend on how she acted now. Damn.
“Michael, get defenses organized! Mueller and Sturm, recon that hilltop!” Cassy shouted over the din, her voice rising high and clear.
The milling, frightened Clanners seemed to suddenly change gears at the sound of her voice directing them. People sprinted away toward their positions, determination clear on their faces, while others quickly but calmly herded the children into the bulletproof earthbag house. The rest formed a perimeter, prone in the dirt, and the sentry in the little guard tower sounded the airhorn. “A little late, whoever’s on duty,” she muttered to herself, then called to those who could hear, “That’s great, people. Now let’s make our practice pay off!”
She heard random shouts in return as she ran to her own position inside the farmhouse, at the upstairs windows.
A couple minutes later, her little hand-held radio crackled. Mueller’s voice came through the static: “Scout team to base. OpFor has retreated. They’ve seized assets—our pigs and goats—and faded away before we could engage them. There is also a note here. Scout team exfiltrating engagement area, returning to base. Stay frosty, people.”
Cassy heard two brief exchanges over the radio between Michael and Mueller, then her radio again went silent. She waited for Mueller and Sturm to return, and the two minutes it took seemed like two years. Finally, Mueller entered her upstairs room with a paper in his hand. She wouldn’t leave her post until Michael cleared everyone to stand down, as Mueller knew, so he had come to her. He handed the paper to her, his face a neutral mask that Cassy couldn’t read.
She looked down at the folded piece of printer paper and saw crude handwriting in blue pen. It read simply, “Consider this a warning. Decision is due by next dusk. If you comply with terms, we will consider these animals to be part of our half of your supplies. Those who stand against our just cause will be dealt as you’d expect. We are coming for the spy in any case. Lovingly yours, Peter Ixin, White Stag Farms.”
A flood of relief washed over Cassy, and the room reeled. She’d almost surrendered to this monster, yet he couldn’t even honor the time they’d agreed upon for the Clan to decide. Thank God Choony had talked her out of going… No, the die was now well and truly cast, and Cassy swore to kill that sonofabitch before this mess was over, even if it cost her life to do it.
- 10 -
0600 HRS - ZERO DAY +28
CASSY LISTENED AS Michael briefed the defenders. His voice was calm and level, yet it carried over the crowd, and Cassy again marveled at that military bark of his. “Remember, Clanners, if you have one of our M4s it’s because you’re a good shot, but this weapon will fire up to sixty times faster than its ability to cool down. What this means is that on burst, its sustainable rate of fire is only twelve or so per minute in a lengthy firefight. If you engage in prolonged intensive fire, then you must provide adequate cool-down time or it will overheat. Remember your training and fire deliberately. Your goal is to kill the enemy, not fire off all your ammo. Remember to use your pistol if your primary weapon gets hot! We can’t replace those M4s. Any questions?”
A woman’s hand rose. She carried a Remington 700 rifle—bolt action, slow, but accurate. “Are there any more of the M4s? This rifle is painfully slow.”
Michael didn’t even break stride to look to see who was speaking when he replied, “No, they all went to the top marksmen among us. But there’s no such thing as a bad weapon, only bad warriors. No one here is a bad warrior, but we only have so many Mil-grade weapon systems available. Next?”
No more hands went up. It had been a lengthy briefing as Michael and Cassy went over every aspect of the defense plan with the assembled Clanners. Over a dozen with M4s, and two dozen with other weapons ranging from bolt-action hunting rifles to shotguns. Grenades were given to those with military training, but there could never be enough of them to make Cassy feel well supplied.
As Cassy ran through the plan and contingencies in her head, Choony walked up to her, a tense smile on his face by way of greeting. “Hi Cassy, got a minute?”
“Not really,” Cassy said. “We have more things to do than time to do it in, as always. But what’s up? Walk with me while I inspect the foxholes. Or ‘fighting pits’ as Michael calls ’em.” Cassy walked toward the first of the pits, with Choony at her side. He seemed calm, not frightened, and she wished she had that kind of courage. He and Mandy both seemed to have it. Maybe it was a “faith” thing.
“While we still have the chance, Cassy, I just wanted to thank you for allowing me to stay. I know I disappointed you when I declined to take part in the gun violence, but I assure you I’ll work hard and will be useful in other ways. Michael tasked me with running ammo to the field positions, if anyone runs out, and getting any wounded to our makeshift first aid station in the unfinished earthbag house. You can believe me when I promise I won’t fail our people in this duty, so long as I still breathe.”
Cassy stopped mid-stride, then turned to face a rather surprised Choony. The guy was rock solid, and here he was thanking her for putting him into what Michael said was one of the most dangerous roles in the coming battle. She spared a quick prayer of thanks that God—if He was up there listening—had put them in the way of meeting this amazing young man. Cassy put her hand out to shake his, and when he took the offer and shook, she gave him one slow nod of approval.
And then she was on her way again, with more things to do than time to do them in. Peter was coming, at an unknown time and with an unknown plan of attack. Michael had put their odds of survival at fifty-fifty, and Cassy hoped that wasn’t overly generous.
* * *
0800 HOURS - ZERO DAY +28
Cassy stood with Michael in the guard tower, which gave them the best view of the property. They wouldn’t stay there when the fighting started, of course; she and Michael would be in the loft of her house manning radios and issuing commands, keeping track of the battle’s progress. They’d both swapped their M4s for bolt-action rifles, good for sniping from their position and freeing the more combat-effective weapons for the people doing most of the real fighting and dying. Hopefully more fighting than dying.
Cassy looked out at the vista of her property and the land beyond, and felt a certain solid pride at all she’d accomplished in turning the property from an overgrazed wasteland into a verdant oasis. The house sat halfway up the gentle slope that distinguished her property. The earthbag house now under construction, the guard tower, several sheds, and the tent enclave all sat with the main house in a roughly circular cluster on the gentle hillside.
North of the house, farther uphill, was a series of swales and berms whe
re the farm collected and channeled rainwater, slowing it down so it could infiltrate the soil thoroughly before draining as runoff into the collection ponds. The entire area was a food forest—fruit and nut trees with dozens of companion plant varieties. Beyond that, at the top of the hill, were grassy paddocks for livestock, though the animals were now gone thanks to Peter’s earlier raid. Normally, the animals’ natural wastes would leech into the ground or flow down into the swales, keeping their nutrients in use as they meandered down the hill over time.
The problem with that setup was that the food forest blocked the view to the north and gave any approaching enemy excellent cover and concealment. Michael had constructed the sniper nest he wanted and also a second one, there in the trees. Those snipers would hopefully hold off any approaching attackers, who had to travel over open ground to get to the trees, and the trees themselves blocked the enemy from sniping at the farm’s defenders from the hilltop. It was still their weakest area, however.
To the east and west of the homestead lay interconnected ponds with thick foliage growing on their shores, holding the soil together and incidentally making attack from those directions difficult. The sniper nests in the woods to the north each overlooked one of the ponds as well, and they’d create a high casualty rate for any enemy trying to swim across the ponds.
To the south, the other half of the homestead consisted mostly of the Jungle, that maze of growing things and food plants carefully balanced by Cassy to keep the soil renewed and healthy. Its seemingly arbitrary lack of pattern had been dictated by the curves, dips, and rises of the land itself and by the nature of the surrounding plants. Now the resulting Jungle would impede movement unless they followed the network of paths, which branched out repeatedly the farther from the house they went. Anyone coming through would be channeled into only a handful of exit points as they approached the house, and Michael and the Marines had densely booby-trapped both the paths and, especially, the growing areas between them.
South of the Jungle lay more food forest, stretched across the southern border of the homestead. Though it could provide Peter’s attackers with a less disorienting route to the house than the Jungle, it lay downhill from the living complex and wouldn’t be much real use as cover for the attackers, since the Jungle still blocked any clear line of sight between the forest and the complex.
So, as Michael had explained it, the enemy would likely be channeled to attack either en masse in a wave from the south, or haphazardly from the north. The foxholes—or “fighting pits”—lay mostly between the Jungle and the house, with a couple to the north as well for good measure. These would be the front-line defense for Cassy’s people so it was strictly a volunteer posting, but Michael had no shortage of volunteers. He made sure all were well trained to use their M4s, and he often took Choony with him on these tours of the fighting pits, both to drill the small Asian on the routes between the pits and to make sure all their fighters knew Choony would restock them with supplies during any fight. Choony’s support would be psychological as well as tactically necessary to the defense.
Roughly two-thirds of their fighting force was in the foxholes or other cover, while Michael held the final third in reserve at the house, where they could respond to threats and defend the house itself if Peter’s people pushed that far through the defenses. The kids were hidden well inside the earthbag house, as safe as any place could be in combat, and a few people would stay there with shotguns as a last line of defense if it all went bad.
Cassy, without turning to look at him, told Michael, “Ethan should be in the bunker by now, manning radios. That was a great idea, by the way, but he’s a good fighter, too. I wish he could be more active in the fight.” She sighed. “We have so few people, compared to Peter. But I guess we’re as ready as we’re going to be—now we wait.” Then she turned to regard Michael directly and added, “I have huge respect for you now, knowing you did this every day in the Sandbox. It amazes me. It’s torture. I almost hope Peter shows up soon just so we can get this over with.”
Michael only nodded, and Cassy was sure the warrior knew just how she felt.
* * *
In an abandoned farmhouse not far north of the Clan, Peter stared at his scout’s map, and his fingers dug into the edge of the dinner table where it lay. “So you’re telling me,” he said to Jim, “they’re all wearing the same outfit? Hunting camouflage BDUs, with matching hats. We have no way to tell which one is Cassy when we start the fun.”
“Sorry, boss, but no we don’t. I can’t tell her from any of the others, even though I met her before.”
Peter saw Jim’s slight shudder as he recalled his early encounter with Cassy. It had nearly cost him his life, and Cassy hadn’t even toughened up yet before the ’vaders started killing their countryside. It wouldn’t do to underestimate her.
Peter continued: “We know the southern route is booby-trapped, and we know they’ve added lethal stuff to the early warning devices they had already planted there. After that, we’ll have to go through that weird overgrown crop area, which is also laced with traps, or follow the trails that lead through it. They might also be trapped, but those trails only let us approach from a couple places even without any traps. They’re sure to have some sort of crossfire set up there by now, covering all those exits.”
“Kill zones, yeah boss. I’m sure they do. But what about from north of the farm, where we snatched their animals?”
“I don’t much like coming from that way, either. The wooded area has to be trapped, and we know they have some bunker-holes built up between the bulletproof house and the woods.”
Jim said, “I hope you aren’t thinking of crossing those ponds. There isn’t much defense there, but there’s zero cover. It would be a slow crossing right out in the open.”
“No…” Peter said, voice trailing off. “I think we’ll have to risk a northern attack. Come in through the forest and just expect some casualties along the way. If we can get through the woods and bum-rush the bunkers, we can overwhelm them and come right up to the house itself. I think if we take the house with all those kids in it, the rest of them will surrender just to protect the kids.”
Jim nodded, a smile on his face. “Then we take all their stuff, not just half, and the farm is ours.”
Peter grinned back at him. “You’re an idiot, Jim, my friend. I was never going to honor that deal anyway. If she’d been stupid enough to surrender, all it would have done is thrown the defenders into some confusion. Made them less effective. I offered it just in case they’d fall for it, not because it was a real deal.”
Jim smiled and nodded. Ass-kissing psycho. Still, Jim was useful in so many ways, and Peter didn’t give two shakes what he did to the prisoners. Or to the White Stag people for that matter—the more scared they were, the more they followed orders without any back-talk. It was all coming together beautifully.
“Alright, it’s almost time. Get our people together, groups of four, and line ’em up on the back side of the hill where we got the livestock off of. When I’m ready, we’re gonna run their asses south, right through the woods and into those bunker things. I mean, they can’t all get killed by two guys in dirt holes, right?”
* * *
0845 HOURS - ZERO DAY +28
Cassy sat at a window in her loft bedroom with Michael at another, each armed with a 7mm hunting rifle. Their roles during the impending attack would be primarily to direct the flow of battle via Ethan’s radios, but also act as snipers for any “targets of opportunity,” as Michael called them.
Michael said, “If they’re smart, we’ll get hit at dusk or dawn. But controlling the pace of conflict is hard enough in broad daylight, so we’ll probably be engaged soon. Peter’s a farmer, not a military man, from what that scout said. He might make some stupid mistakes.”
At the mention of the scout, Cassy was flooded with gruesome images of Michael’s handiwork, and shuddered. Michael was such a good person. How could she reconcile the man before her now
with the savage warrior who could do such things? She fought back the images and reminded herself that Michael had been right. The information they got probably saved lives, and if they won the fight for the farm it would only be because Michael had stacked the deck in their favor with the knowledge he’d gained.
Cassy said, “I hope it’s soon. The wait is killing me. But I’m terrified, as well.”
Michael looked at Cassy intently, no doubt sizing her up. He must have been okay with what he saw, because he looked away and back out the window once again. “We’re all terrified. Don’t fight it, channel it. Use it. We feel fear for a reason. You can channel it so that it helps rather than hinders you. Adrenaline is a hell of a combat drug, and we all make our own,” he said, and shrugged.
Cassy didn’t reply. There was no need. She wasn’t in the mood for chatter anyway, and Michael probably wasn’t either, though he was too much the good warrior, loyal subordinate, to say so to the Clan leader. Cassy looked out the windows, gazing first out the north window and then the east, looking over one of the ponds. At least the pond was peaceful. Michael had the other two windows covered. She could focus on just these two.
