Hell's Fortress

by Michael Wallace

  He cut his lights and turned the Humvee off the highway to the frontage road that circled the reservoir in a counterclockwise direction. Behind him, men jumped down from pickups and fanned out with guns at the ready. Under their cover, other men connected chains to the downed tree to winch it out of the way.

  Using the glint of moonlight off the placid waters of the reservoir as his guide, Jacob crunched along the dirt road at two or three miles per hour. They reached the penstock that led down to their hydro turbines, which provided the largest, steadiest supply of electricity for the valley. The turbines were below, at the base of the cliffs, where the head of water was strongest, but someone could have messed with the penstocks themselves. Destroy them and the cobbled-together electrical grid below would fail. Jacob considered it fortunate that nothing like that had happened.

  But if the enemy had failed to consciously harm the valley, their unconscious actions had done plenty of harm. Debris had almost clogged the sluice gate into the penstocks.

  Jacob checked his watch. Ten minutes until the scheduled attack. He’d be around the reservoir in less than five. He warned the others in the vehicle, called up to David to alert him of his intentions, then hopped out of the Humvee.

  The first thing he noticed was the bodies in the water. There were dozens, mostly naked. They were thin, starved, some rotting and chewed up by fish or scavengers. Others had distended abdomens bloated from expanding intestinal gasses. The squatters must be simply tossing the dead into the reservoir, where they gradually drifted across to pile against the grating. Other refuse floated among the bodies: branches, discarded cloth diapers, a pair of pants, plastic bags, and a battered cooler.

  Smoot came out. “Disgusting. My hogs care more about keeping clean.”

  “These people are starving. They have bigger worries than the integrity of our water supply.”

  “Maybe so. But we don’t. We’re damn lucky there hasn’t been an outbreak of cholera in the valley. But there will be if we don’t stop it now.”

  Jacob didn’t answer. The man was right.

  “They shot Clancy Johnson in the leg when he was hunting deer east of the reservoir,” Smoot added.

  “I know, I treated the wound.”

  “And someone was up in the cliffs yesterday shooting down at Yellow Flats.”

  “Sister Rebecca told me that. She also said the range is too great and they’re wasting their ammo.”

  “We should go,” Smoot said.

  Jacob hesitated. There was still time to radio the others, call it off.

  “Brother Jacob, for the love of all that is holy. We have to do it. There’s no other choice.”

  “Five twenty-nine,” David called from atop the Humvee. “We have six minutes.”

  The two men returned to the vehicle and continued to inch around the reservoir. With every roll of the wheels the leaden feeling in Jacob’s gut grew heavier. Gunfire sounded on the opposite side of the reservoir. The main Blister Creek force. Muzzle flashes answered from the darkness on the hillside and the lakeshore in what was proving to be a spirited defense. The gunfire from his own forces was stronger, but not overwhelmingly so. Jacob’s caravan looked to be bogged down, and was no doubt taking casualties.

  Campfires lit his way as he flanked the camp from the east side of the reservoir. True to the boasts of the squatters during the previous confrontation, the camp had metastasized since his last visit. It spread all along the far shore and into the woods to the north. The forest itself was gutted, replaced by hundreds of tents and lean-tos. If the population above the valley hadn’t yet outstripped the number of people living down below, it would soon.

  The road didn’t completely circumnavigate the reservoir, but ended a few hundred yards short of the camp. There had been a dock here once for canoes and small fishing boats, but the decking was gone, the planks apparently pulled up for firewood, leaving only the pilings sticking out of the water. The gentle slope between the missing docks and the camp was a trammeled, muddy meadow.

  Jacob checked his watch. One minute.

  “Time to go.”

  One of Bill’s sons climbed up above to help David feed ammo into the .50-cal. When he was secured, Jacob pressed the pedal to the floor and lumbered toward the camp.

  For the first few seconds he thought he’d break through undetected. Then a torch waved to his right and the air filled with flashes of light. Most of it missed the dark shape lurching toward the squatters, but a few shots pinged off the front and right side. The Humvee did not yet return fire.

  Moments later, they burst into camp. Jacob gritted his teeth and plowed into tents and mowed over lean-tos. People scrambled out of the way or simply cowered. Others stood upright and shot at them with pistols and shotguns.

  And now David answered. An arc of tracer bullets cut like a glowing knife in big, sweeping movements. Smoot and the others opened their doors periodically to gun down the closer opposition. Smoot’s son tossed grenades into the night, which exploded in flashes of light and ear-splitting booms.

  Jacob found a flattened stretch between a line of tents, where he accelerated and swung in a loop through the camp. Gunfire erupted all around them, as if they’d kicked over a giant hive of wasps that darted in, desperate and stinging. Everywhere he looked, more gunfire. Jacob’s companions mowed down the shooters without mercy, and anyone else who moved as well.

  David stopped shooting and screamed down for more ammo. The Hawthorne brothers passed up fresh ammo cans while the other men—Jacob included—fired out the sides of the Humvee to keep them clear. The enemy took advantage of the quieted machine gun to rush in with guns blazing. Calmly, the men inside the vehicle picked them off.

  And by now the trucks from Blister Creek had broken through to the west and the gunfire from that direction was more intense than the slaughter on this side. Jacob turned the Humvee around as David started up the .50-cal again, this time with shorter, more carefully considered bursts. No longer worried about giving away their position, Jacob turned on the spotlight and swung it through the camp as he drove. Every place he illuminated, people were dying. His light caught a woman with a child in her arms and he tried to turn the light away, but not before bullets dropped them to the ground.

  Dear Lord, wouldn’t it ever stop?

  Not until you call them off.

  Jacob could finish it now in one final, bloody orgy. Give the orders to go back and forth over the land until there was nothing left but bodies.

  What would that accomplish? The dead already numbered in the hundreds. Many more would die from their wounds. People were fleeing north, away from the reservoir, and the enemy gunfire was flagging. Soon the battle would be nothing more than shooting people in the back.

  He picked up the radio. “It’s over. Pull back. Everyone, back.”

  “What are you doing?” Smoot shouted. He stood at one of the gun ports with his shotgun shoved out. “We’re winning. Don’t retreat!”

  Jacob barely heard him over the buzzing in his ears. He kept seeing the woman with her child, taking a bullet in the back, sprawling over. What about the child? He wanted to be sick. All those injured people back there—he was a doctor, he belonged in a trauma room, not causing trauma.

  Smoot kept complaining until Jacob got the Humvee out of the camp and was heading back around the reservoir, then the elder sank to the ground with a long, heavy sigh. David came down from the machine gun and took out the first aid kit. He examined his own arm with a penlight.

  Jacob glanced back. “You okay?”

  “It’s nothing.” His tone was bitter.

  Then he slammed his fist into the roof and let out a string of oaths that Jacob hadn’t heard from his brother since the days when he was a Lost Boy, drug addicted and living in Las Vegas.

  Smoot grunted with displeasure. “Remember who you are, brother.”

  “
Leave him alone, Dad,” one of Smoot’s sons said, his voice raw. “We were all thinking it.”

  “That woman,” David said. “Why did I have to see her face? That look in her eyes. Oh, God.”

  “Proved one thing, anyway,” Smoot said, his own voice flat. “We didn’t need the women after all.”

  “Please, all of you,” Jacob said. “Can you be quiet?”

  He was so distracted by his own thoughts that he almost forgot to look across the reservoir to see if the others had obeyed his command to retreat. They had. Their lights were on, but the sky was turning gray with the predawn and it was no longer necessary.

  Jacob looked at his watch. 5:53. The battle at the camp had lasted less than twenty minutes. And only forty-five minutes had passed since they’d driven into the hills and faced their first opposition. Forty-five minutes, thousands of rounds spent, hundreds dead.

  You had to do it. They left you no choice.

  Jacob had almost convinced himself of this when the Humvee reached the end of the dirt road and connected with the highway at the top of the cliffs. Some of the other trucks had arrived already and waited, idling, as if wanting him to lead a triumphant procession into Blister Creek. To show the women that their men had protected them. The very thought was ridiculous.

  Not to mention dangerous. He could see injured men in the truck beds. They had to be carried to the clinic, where a hellish day of triage and emergency operation awaited. The sooner they brought the wounded to the Christianson compound, the better.

  And then he glanced down to the valley floor as the sun rose from behind the eastern mountains. The light caught the golden Angel Moroni atop the temple spire, and turned the sandstone columns of Witch’s Warts brilliant hues of red and orange. Carpets of neatly laid alfalfa and corn sprouted with hopeful green in those fields Jacob had dared plant in defiance of the crippling late frosts.

  It was when his gaze fell on the black ribbon of highway south of the valley that he understood why the trucks had stopped. The reason lay south of the gridded streets at the center of town, past the cemetery on the knoll, past the abandoned service station where he’d hidden his father’s hoarded diesel in underground tanks.

  Smoke climbed into the air at the south end of the valley. A black trail of ants crawled up the road. It could only be men and equipment entering the valley. A cold, greasy knot formed in the pit of Jacob’s stomach.

  While Jacob and his men had been at the reservoir battling squatters, an invasion force was thrusting into the valley from the south.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The second time Eliza cauterized Grover’s wound, he didn’t scream. He only watched Eliza through those awful, bulging eyes. The smell of charred flesh hung in the air when she finished. At least this time she’d done it properly.

  When the ugly business was finished, she got them back on the road. Steve guided her through the streets. The main fighting, judging by flashes of lights and thundering explosions, lay to their east, but the west side was still burning, and whenever they had an open view, pockets of gunfire and explosions flashed throughout the city.

  The fighting seemed pointless. What were they fighting for? A ruined ghost town in the desert?

  Her worry was that she’d round a corner to find themselves in the midst of a full-scale battle. And if the Californians were making a major push, as Chambers seemed to think, what if they’d completely overrun the highway? There might be no gap to thread.

  They crept forward another mile before a foot patrol spotted them and dove for cover behind the wreckage of a downed helicopter, then opened fire. Moments later, more gunfire lashed from windows on either side of the street, all targeting the armored car.

  Eliza hit the lights and punched it forward while Steve ducked into the back to help Miriam and Chambers. Their two main guns opened up in sharp bursts. Tracer bullets slammed into the buildings on either side.

  “Look out!” Miriam shouted.

  Something streaked in from Eliza’s left. A rocket-propelled grenade. It hammered into the vehicle with enough force to make it rock off its wheels momentarily.

  This is it. This is the end.

  The grenade failed to detonate. Chambers let out a string of oaths.

  Miriam let loose her gun in a sustained burst that lasted several seconds. “Got you!” Then, to Eliza, she said, “Get us out of here!”

  The truck was sluggish to respond. It carried extra armor, water, spare fuel, cans of ammo, boxes of food, and six people. Gunfire rattled against the sides. Most of it was no more effective than a handful of gravel flung against a tin roof. But then a hollow thump-thump-thump started. A fist slammed into them. Tracers lit up the night on either side.

  Miriam and Chambers kept firing, while Steve and Grover struggled to keep the guns fed. Eliza was finally picking up speed. She rammed aside two wrecked cars, swerved to get around a burned-out army truck.

  At last they rounded the block. The road lay open ahead of them. Gunfire followed, but they shortly outran it. For a long moment there was nothing but heavy breathing and Fayer groaning in the back.

  “Thank you, Father in Heaven,” Miriam said in a solemn voice, “for sparing our lives this night.”

  The night may have been ending, but surviving the day would be another matter. They hadn’t yet escaped the city, and two hundred and fifty miles lay between them and the safety of Blister Creek.

  A block of gutted apartment buildings sat to their right. Dawn’s first light streamed through perforated walls and shattered windows, emerging in glowing shafts through the thick smoke. The tang of burning fuel and plastic seeped into the truck.

  Steve returned to the passenger seat. He gave Eliza a wan smile. He reached for the map, but there was no point. Block after block of ruined buildings stretched ahead of them, and in some places it was impossible to tell the former street from the general destruction. There certainly were no more road signs in this part of the town to guide their way.

  “Look,” he said. “There’s the highway.”

  The smoke was especially thick to the north, but the wind was shifting and it cleared a path. Her heart lifted as she caught a glimpse of the long ribbon of cement and its overpasses cutting through the north of the city. Less than a mile to go.

  Then the smoke cleared further and what she saw was a punch to the gut.

  An army marched east along the highway, cutting across the vehicle’s path: trucks, horses, men on foot, mules hauling artillery pieces. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Four tanks rolled along the near flank, creeping along at a few miles an hour. It looked like a major offensive by the rebel forces, pushing toward the federal troops that held the north and east of the city.

  Then, to her horror, the trailing tank stopped. It swung its turret in their direction.

  “Stop the truck,” Steve said.

  Eliza hit the brakes. The armored car came to a halt.

  “Nobody shoot!” Steve said.

  The tank aimed its main gun directly at them. It sat on an overpass, maybe twenty feet above their own road, and five or six blocks distant. The rest of the caravan kept moving while the tank seemed to study them. Eliza braced herself. She would see a flash of light and then it would be over.

  The others came up front, with the exception of Agent Fayer.

  “One false move and the gunner will blow us to hell,” Steve said. “It won’t miss.”

  “Why hasn’t he fired?” Eliza asked.

  “Look at all the nonstandard equipment in the column. Our armored car wouldn’t look out of place up there. That gives us cover while he radios for instructions.”

  She didn’t know what she was looking at, only that the size of the enemy formation filled her with dread. Two foot soldiers stopped and studied them through binoculars, no doubt looking for identifying marks.

  “I can’t sit here forever.
”

  “They’re using smoke as cover to infiltrate the city,” Steve said. “And that helps us as much as it helps them. When the wind shifts again, make a run for it.”

  That made a lot more sense. “Where do I go?”

  “Run straight at them,” Steve said. “Get under the overpass where they can’t see us.”

  “Are you crazy?” Chambers asked. “Take us back the way we came.”

  Miriam snorted. “Into that firefight? You think that’s safer?”

  “We could be killed either way,” Steve said. “But they’re not securing the road, they’re trying to force men and materiel into the city. We can wait it out. And if we have to run, we’ll be north of the highway, not south. Eliza, what do you think?”

  “I don’t want to backtrack.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Miriam said.

  All the while, the tank kept its gun trained on them. The smoke wasn’t rolling back over the freeway; it was clearing in the face of the morning winds that so often blew off the desert as the sun warmed the air. Visibility opened both east and west, all the way to the Strip, where columns of smoke still rose hundreds of feet into the air.

  “Get back there, all of you,” Steve said. “Get those guns ready.”

  For what? They sat in the open, with a tank pointing its main gun at them. If the gunner got the orders, there would be no fighting back. No warning, even.

  The armored car shook. It sounded at first like another heavy artillery blast, then the freeway erupted in flames and roiling explosions. Two jets thundered over the freeway, their guns spraying down on the troops. They were in view a split second, then were gone.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Steve yelled.

  Eliza threw the truck into gear and mashed down on the gas. The vehicle rumbled forward. Little by little, she picked up speed as she approached the freeway underpass. In the smoke and fire and general destruction, she could barely keep on the road.

  The smoke pouring from the city fires changed direction again. Suddenly, everything was night and her visibility was only a few feet. They reached the freeway. She passed directly underneath.