Determination

by Nathan Jones

  Although he grieved the fallen, Lewis was at least relieved to see that Trev's squad had found time to move their supplies up over the ridge like he'd asked. He was especially glad for it when he looked down the burning, blackened, ash-choked slope and saw the enemy force gathered below. That looked like a determined bunch of soldiers who obviously weren't going to let the fires stop them, and two and a half squads of volunteers had very little hope of turning them back either. It was almost certain they were going to have to give up these emplacements.

  Jane ran over to hug him when he arrived, followed moments later by Trev. “Good thinking getting the fire into the canyon,” Lewis told his cousin as he hugged him back.

  Trev grimaced. “It was enough, barely. And it didn't burn any of our guys, so that's a plus. But my squad's completely out of grenades and any other toys. We've just got our guns, and we're running low on ammo.”

  “My squad's down to our guns, too,” Jane said. “And if the fighting in the canyon was as bad as it sounded I'm guessing it's the same for you, right Lewis?”

  Lewis smiled crookedly. “Yeah, within the first hour. Good thing we've got plenty of rocks to throw.” He glanced a hundred yards up the slope to the ridgeline above, where he could just barely see the top of a modestly tall pile of rocks running all the way along the stretch they had to defend. A ridge that petered down to half a mile at the top of the ever-narrowing mountainside, but was still almost too much distance to manage. That rock pile was their last line of defense once they lost these final emplacements.

  Neither of the others smiled back at his weak attempt at humor. “Here they come,” Rick called as he stared over the sandbag fortifications.

  So this was it. “All teams to their emplacements,” Lewis ordered as he hurried over to join his friend.

  He needed to know how the enemy was attacking so he could plan their response. If the blockheads sent just a few squads ahead to try to clear the ridge, his fighters should be able to wipe them out without too much threat to the emplacements.

  The enemy had to know that. There was no good way to fight up this slope aside from to come in one massive group, scattered as much as possible in case of grenades or other explosives. But they also had to be close enough together that when the hail of gunfire finally poured down at them, they were in a position to charge up the slope as fast as they could manage and try to storm the emplacements by sheer numbers.

  It would be costly for them, but they had the soldiers to do it. And if they had grenades of their own they'd be able to soften up the fortifications before they got too close, improving their odds even more. Lewis still had nightmares about the rocket-propelled grenade that had killed Carl, and it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that a force this large had some of those.

  At least the wildfire would force the blockheads to bunch up. But unfortunately by the time they got within range of the emplacement they'd be mostly past the fires and could spread out again, since the firebreak provided a good gap for them. Lewis hoped that wouldn't impact his plans too much.

  As he'd predicted the blockheads came in one single mass, swirling around the fires then rejoining as they spread across the slope. They climbed with the relentless determination of disciplined professionals, even when scorched by the piles of ash they waded through up to their ankles, or reduced to coughing fits by the dense smoke and swirls of sparks.

  Within the first hundred feet the enemy soldiers were covered head to toe in white streaked in black. The ash and soot on the ground was kicked up into clouds around them, obscuring the lower hillside, but he knew the enemy was there marching on, faces covered by bandannas or their undershirts pulled up to filter the choking mess.

  “Hit them hard as soon as they're in range,” he said quietly into his mic. The blockheads would charge as soon as they realized they were under attack, and running into a withering hail of gunfire would decimate their forces. But eventually his fighters would need to reload, or they'd run out of ammo, and by then the enemy would've reached the emplacements.

  Maybe, he could hope, the blockheads would break and run before then.

  Everyone fell into tense silence as the enemy got closer, step by step. At some spots they broke into a run to get past patches of intensely hot ground created by the flames, or to circle particularly large patches of the wildfire. But for the most part they conserved their energy, preparing for the final sprint at the top.

  Lewis waited until they were four hundred yards away. That was a long shot, but in some places they were bunched up enough that even a miss wasn't necessarily a miss. And the sooner his volunteers started thinning the enemy ranks, and more importantly the sooner they goaded the blockheads into their charge, the longer the enemy would have to run into gunfire and the better his people's chances.

  He targeted a clump of blockheads circling around a stand of trees that still burned hot, and after several seconds of careful aiming opened fire. He heard the reports of gunfire all around him as his friends opened fire, and below blockheads began to drop.

  Too few, and too slowly. The enemy broke into a trot, weaving their way up the slope. More dropped, the enemy casualties getting higher and higher the closer they got, but still not enough. Then, at some command Lewis didn't hear, they broke into a sprint all at once.

  “Give it everything you've got!” Lewis shouted. He'd reloaded while they were still a good distance away, so he had plenty of rounds left to unload on the enemy. Around him the steady cracks of gunfire became a staccato roar, as thirty men and women emptied their magazines on the hundreds of soldiers coming at them.

  He estimated over sixty enemy soldiers died within the next ten seconds, before their magazines all ran out at near the same time and they had to reload. Some blockheads were shooting back on the run, but most had dropped their heads and were simply sprinting all out into the hail of death hoping to get through.

  When the enemy was two hundred yards away Lewis dropped down and grabbed his pack. “Retreat!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. He thumbed his mic and repeated the order in a more moderate tone. Then he turned and began sprinting up the slope himself.

  In most situations, giving up their defenses with barely a fight would be a huge tactical mistake. Lewis just hoped it wasn't in this case as he pushed for more speed.

  They'd built the sandbag fortifications in the emplacements taller than usual. The specific intent for that was so they'd be high enough to block the line of sight of the volunteers' flight up the slope from the enemy below. Which meant that whatever time it took for those blockheads to run the remaining distance and scale the emplacements, that was the time he and his friends had to get one hundred yards up to the line of piled rocks atop the ridge.

  His team was close on his heels, the rest of his squad coming from their respective emplacements and Trev's and Jane's from theirs. It was a mad scramble up the slope, ducking and dodging where they could just in case the sandbags didn't do the job.

  Lewis had prepared paths directly above the emplacements, giving them narrow ways to get through the piles of rocks, so his people wouldn't have to clamber over the piles and expose themselves to enemy fire. He reached the path above his emplacement and bolted down the narrow corridor with rocks rising to either side, doing his best not to trip over the loose stones underfoot.

  Once he was past the rock pile he sprinted across the relatively flat space beyond, all his volunteers following close behind. Not a single one of them had paused to look behind them, which he was relieved to see.

  As the three squads continued past him to safety, Lewis clambered up the rock formation that formed the absolute peak of the ridge. It was barely high enough for him to see over the piles of rocks to the abandoned emplacements below, which the enemy had nearly reached by this point. Lewis estimated there were still over three hundred blockheads down there at a quick count, even after everyone they'd lost.

  He had to give it to the blockheads, they weren't lacking in courage. Saf
ety in numbers had carried them through a killing field, but if they thought it would help them now they were sorely mistaken. “Chauncey, you ready?”

  The retired schoolteacher's voice came back sounding eager. “Are you kidding? I've been waiting for this day since my youthful years playing in a sandbox.”

  Well, at least someone here wasn't sunk into the gloom of their impending demise. Lewis watched the blockheads swarm over the abandoned emplacements. A few braver or more foolish souls leapt atop the sandbag fortifications, whooping and waving their weapons over their heads to spur the soldiers still climbing the slope onwards.

  Lewis targeted one and shot him in the head, then singled out and shot a few more. That stopped the cheering from below, and progress up the slope temporarily froze as the exhausted blockheads sought cover to prepare for another suicidal charge.

  He couldn't have asked for a better setup. “All right, Mr. Watson. Give our friends below a lesson on the Law of Gravity.”

  There was no response, other than the sputtering sound of a diesel engine starting below and to his right. With a grinding of gears the backhoe loader at the end of the line of piled rocks started forward, its bucket shoving them over the edge just enough to start them moving in a suspicious rumble, a catalyst for more and more rocks and sections of the hillside to follow them in a spreading cascade.

  As the tractor continued down the line the landslide started behind it, tons and tons of rocks and dislodged earth sliding down the slope towards the blockheads below.

  Who began to scream, especially when they realized that the fires had loosened the ground and destroyed anything that might've stopped the cataclysm heading their way. Those with heads on their shoulders began bolting northwards or southwards to try to escape the landslide, but Lewis had planned ahead for that. Once they'd reached the ridge Jane and Trev had immediately moved their squads, taking them north and south to circle around the piles of rocks. They were there now, ready to shoot anyone who managed to get away.

  Which turned out to be not many blockheads. The spreading landslide rolled over hundreds of enemy soldiers, breaking and tossing them down the slope along with the rocks, dirt, ash, and uprooted blackened stumps as it also snuffed out the remaining fires. Not even the blockheads nearest the bottom of the slope had time to outrun the landslide, and as it churned its way down around the hills to the level ground below it even caught some enemies there. Including a few trucks whose drivers were too slow to drive to safety.

  It was a horrible sight, but even so Lewis couldn't help but feel a surge of satisfaction as he watched the catastrophe unfold for the enemy. That was a lot of blockheads who wouldn't be shooting at his friends. Who wouldn't be capturing any more civilians and doing horrible things to them.

  And he doubted even the most insane commander would order troops back up that slope. Not after what had just happened.

  When Lewis had learned about the town's new backhoe loader, he'd immediately begun making plans. First off he'd searched the top of the ridge and selected the best spot to start a landslide from, where the slope was steepest and already rocky and treacherous. Then he'd contacted Chauncey, who'd agreed that the town had gotten enough use out of the tractor for now and could spare it. Anything to give the volunteers a better chance to survive and come home to their loved ones.

  The retired teacher had driven the thing all the way down from the valley refuge, then spent the last several days putting his newfound skills to use. Showing great care and precision, he'd managed to pile up rocks in preparation for a controlled slide, in such a way that they'd stay right where they were until he was good and ready for them to come down. Just as tricky was finding a way to bring the whole mountainside down in a relatively short period of time, across a stretch of half a mile with a tractor that couldn't move all that quickly. Luckily Chauncey had set things up so when he began it would start a chain reaction, which would only grow as he pushed more and more of the line of piled rocks over the edge.

  After that the older man had enjoyed a nice reunion with the volunteers, especially his son. Rick had been spending a lot of time helping his dad prepare the rock piles when he was off duty, and he'd confessed that after seeing his dad in a slump for so long after losing his leg, he was happy to see him in good spirits and filled with purpose.

  And Chauncey had every right to be proud. The volunteers could never have spared the manpower to set up something like this, and with his tractor the retired teacher had single-handedly won the biggest victory the town had ever achieved. And probably kept Lewis and all his volunteers from dying in some last stand on this ridge.

  His radio popped. “I take it that ringing in my ears means your landslide idea worked?” Davis asked.

  Lewis thumbed his mic. “Better than I could've hoped. We wiped out the entire attacking force.”

  On the north and south ends of the ridge his friends had broken into cheers, hugging each other and raising their weapons in victory, or dropping to their knees in relief and thanks. There were a few cheers from over the radio as well, at least until Davis cut in.

  “Well done. But in case I have to remind you, the battle's not over yet. If you're done on the southern slope there's plenty of need for you in other places. Leave as many people as you think are needed to hold the slope, and send everyone else my way.”

  Lewis shrugged out a crick in his shoulders, then dropped off the outcropping and started for his squad. “I hear you. But if you don't mind, I'd like to do something first.”

  “You would, would you?”

  “Yeah.” He walked over to the edge of the ridge, moving cautiously on ground that might not be stable, and looked down the devastated mountainside. First fire, then landslide; it could be a while before anything besides thistle and stinging nettle grew here again. “We're running low on bullets and there's a lot of weapons and ammo down there. I'd like to risk going after whatever we can get.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Retreat

  For Matt waiting through the fighting was its own kind of awful.

  He itched to go join his friends along 31, although he knew that he'd spend most of the day hiking down there, and during that time anything could happen. The fighting could very likely end, either in victory in defeat. The former meaning he'd wasted his time, the latter meaning he wasn't with his family and town helping them when they needed him most.

  He even considered gathering up the remaining defenders and leading them to join Faraday. But when he managed to get in touch with the lieutenant to broach the offer the man told him, in no uncertain terms, that Aspen Hill's defenders could do more good where they were in the valley refuge. Keeping the peace, reassuring frightened townspeople, and if necessary preparing for the worst.

  So all through the day he waited by the radio, with Sam at his side and the rest of his family around him. They were joined by close to half the town, hundreds of people sitting in tense silence listening to reports as they came in. With Chauncey down with the volunteers Scott had taken over manning the shortwave, sending requests for more information and changing frequencies when needed.

  The Mayor was rarely there with her husband, though. Catherine seemed determined to keep everyone working to distract them from their fears, but her efforts weren't very effective. Not many people were willing to keep on toiling, just to improve a place they might have to abandon within the hour.

  Matt wanted to help her, but in spite of his efforts to be hopeful he fell into that camp as well. Instead he spent any time away from the radio planning for yet another evacuation, deciding where they would go and what they would do if the blockheads broke through Faraday's line.

  It didn't help that as the hours passed a few trucks roared by on the canyon road hundreds of yards away, carrying troops away from Faraday's camp. Matt tried to reassure the worried townspeople that it probably meant the lieutenant was doing just fine, and had people to spare for places that weren't doing so great.

  But however you
looked at it, it meant less soldiers between the valley refuge and the enemy that wanted to take them out.

  At least it was a relief to get some good news from his friends to the south. Apparently they'd won a huge victory in the early afternoon, wiping out over a thousand blockheads just in the highway canyon and along the southern slope, all within the space of a few hours and with comparatively few losses of their own. They'd completely broken the enemy advance down there, driving the blockheads back and winning themselves a reprieve.

  Matt wasn't sure how long that reprieve would last, not with fighting happening everywhere and enemies breaking through from all directions. But it was good to hear it wasn't all bad news out there, especially where it mattered most for him and his friends.

  According to General Erikson's number crunchers, passed on over the radio to anyone listening, the blockheads had lost over fifty thousand men by late afternoon, while on their side they'd lost barely a tenth that. But the fighting was starting to swing in the enemy's favor as their sheer numbers overwhelmed one defensive position after another.

  One refugee camp to the north had been forced to evacuate, fleeing south with enemy soldiers hot on their heels. The few remaining fighters in the area fought desperately just to keep the blockheads from flanking other positions and hitting them from behind, and there wasn't much they could do to stop the enemy from pouring up into the mountains there.

  Then in the late afternoon things finally started going their way. General Lassiter, who'd been in the south where the fighting was a bit less fierce, had almost completely abandoned his defensive positions down there, with little more than a few thousand men and a host of booby traps to keep the enemy back.

  But instead of bringing his people up through the mountains to reinforce the defensive positions that were buckling, the General took every vehicle he had and struck out along I-70, blasting through the blockhead positions there. Then he roared up the roads east and west of the mountains, capturing and looting enemy encampments, freeing prisoners, and attacking the blockheads assaulting the mountain approaches from behind.