Just then a man came in and addressed the Sergeant,
“It’s all ready to go, Sarge.”
Randal nodded and turned to Beth, “Come this way, Miss Kelly. We anticipated your needs.”
Sam followed as they went into another large room, the main Armory.
“Do you think any of this will do you any good?”
“It’s makin’ my mouth water,” Sam replied, “And I swear I’m gettin’ a hard-on… oops, sorry, Beth.”
“Okay,” Randal spoke with authority, “Let’s load it up.”
Several of the men began to move to a Humvee that was parked adjacent to the Armory door.
In ten minutes Sam, Beth, and four soldiers from the Armory were on their way to the battle… in style. She was driving so Sam kicked back in his seat and enjoyed the ride. Beth looked over at him and said,
“We’ll go back to the camp and swing south from there; I want to be able to find them.”
“Just follow the shootin’ noise, ma’am,” Sam replied, “And we’ll find ‘em.”
As Beth headed toward what she hoped would be her final battle for quite some time, she thought of the children. They had come a long way together, and, after meeting Mike and his group from Avalon and the good people from Fitch, she knew the children would be safe now.
And that place upon the mountain… that place called Avalon… that place her father had taken her to so many years before, it really existed. She had traveled so far to reach it, uncertain if it was still there, uncertain whether it was a place of refuge or a place of danger. Avalon, she knew now, would be the safe haven where she could make a new life for herself, away from a world that had gone mad!
Sheriff Waters and a number of his people waited outside the large store in the parking lot where several deuces and a half and sixes by six sat. Men came out of the store and loaded into the back of the vehicles. The men from the Armory wore uniforms and were equipped with full battle dress, packs, weapons, grenades, and lots of ammo.
There were M-16s in the back of one of the trucks and they would be used by the Sheriff’s men. It was important that they all use the same ammo. Once they were all loaded, they started for the end of town toward the north where the highway began a swing to the west near the river. They heard a large boom and knew that it was the sound of dynamite.
Chapter 35 The Firefight
The Slavers had been stopped for a little while, but once they had a chance to re-group, they would be ready to attack again. Bone Breaker was guessing, but he estimated that he had lost about thirty or forty men. They couldn’t get away from the flames in time, and many of them got blocked in completely and couldn’t escape. The smell of burnt grass and flesh was heavy in the air, but the breeze was, thankfully, moving it away from them.
The smell was putrid.
The only saving grace was that the fire ran out of grass and burned itself out. It was rocky and sandy here, which created a natural fire break. The terrain was devoid of thick grass, with only a few clumps scattered around the area. It looked to be an old prehistoric river bed.
Bone Breaker stood on the seat of his bike, and his booming voice came out strong, so most of them heard what he had to say,
“Okay we had a little set back, but the battle has yet to really start. We will charge straight on in a frontal attack and overwhelm them by sheer numbers. We are strong and we are used to killing. But just to cover our bases, I want one group to swing wide left and another to swing wide right. If we charge their flanks, there is no way they will be able to survive unless they are an army, and I don’t believe they are. I think there are a dozen of them at best. Kill ‘em all, but save the leader for me!”
“You,” he pointed to one group, “Go right!”
“You,” he pointed to another group, “Go left. The rest of you go straight on. Hit ‘em hard and hit ‘em quick. Let’s go boys; do it now!”
The motorcycles roared as they started up and the men revved them, making a cacophonous crescendo of almost one huge explosion of motor noises. No one could hear anything but they could all feel the noise, and the exhaust smell was overpowering.
Bone Breaker and several of his top lieutenants went back to the small hill that led up to the woods where Beth and the children had been camped out. He would observe the battle from there with his top people. The motorcycles closed in on Mike and his nine men.
“Keep your heads low,” Mike yelled at them, “And make every shot count!”
The Slavers drew closer and the noise from the motorcycles was deafening. The fumes were thick in the air but blew away from Mike and his people. Mike took one stick with the dynamite attached, lit the fuse, and lobbed it nearly the length of a baseball field. It laid there with smoke pouring from the fuse. He lit another and threw it off to the left and another went off to the right. They sailed through the air and landed.
He was counting mentally, five thousand, six thousand; in twenty nine seconds the first one blew right beside fifty or more bikers. In a few seconds, the second went off and more bikers were thrown into the air… and then the third went off. It rained motorcycles and riders. Many of the Slavers were missing arms or legs and a few heads, and some were on fire. The rest of the bikers laid down their bikes and started shooting at Mike and his people.
Bullets ricocheted off the rocky soil and whizzed away with a zinging sound that lasted for just a split second, flying like angry hornets coming from a nest someone had just swatted with a stick. All Mike and his people could do was keep their heads down. The cover of the creek bed was protecting them but they couldn’t shoot back for the hail of bullets coming their way. Suddenly there was firing coming at them from both the right and the left.
This was really bad!
Mike passed the word to keep low and move with the creek bed toward the east, which helped a little. Now instead of being nearly surrounded, they only had fire coming from the front and one side. The attack from their left suddenly stopped for some reason.
The firefight lasted for another thirty minutes and, incredibly, nobody on Mike’s side was hurt or wounded. Mike lit another stick of dynamite and threw it as hard as he could toward his front and quickly threw himself to the ground. As many as fifty or sixty bullets struck the ground but he was sheltered from them. The dynamite went off and killed at least another ten bad guys, but it wasn’t nearly enough. It looked grim and the good guys weren’t going to win this battle if they couldn’t fire back.
Then he heard it.
It was the unmistakable sound of an M-60 firing off toward the east that raked the landscape with murderous fire. Whoever it was, they knew how to handle that weapon. They heard the sound of motorcycles starting and moving away. The M-60 kept firing and they heard yet another M-60 along with small arms fire. The battle ground was getting lively and Mike noticed there were no more rounds striking the ground around him. He poked his head up and could see the army trucks parked to his left. Sam was frantically firing the M-60; his mustache making him look like a wild man.
The firing continued for at least another ten minutes and smoke was heavy everywhere; it was as if a fog unexpectedly descended into the small pocket of the battlefield. Several of the men’s faces were blackened by gun smoke and burned cordite. The breeze that had moved the wildfire slowly dissipated the heavy smoke. Several soldiers from one of the army trucks got up from their firing positions and walked the areas where so many of the Slavers lay. Some were smoking from the fire and others were torn to pieces from the hammering of the M-60. When the final count was in, they totaled two hundred thirty bodies. Only two were still alive and they were both dispatched with a single shot to the head.
Bone Breaker scanned the killing field with binoculars, studying the area with an intense scrutiny.
“Well boys” Bone Breaker said in a perfectly normal voice, “We need to head for the coast. I feel snow in the air.”
They cranked their bikes up and swung well south and west… for now… but they
would not be beaten… they would be back later on with more men to finish this fight!
Back at the Armory, Sam saw a corporal open a large storage area and come up with the largest pair of binoculars he had ever seen. When he inquired about them Sergeant Randall said,
“Those came off a Heavy Cruiser that was being decommissioned, the U.S.S. Des Moines in fact. They were given to the Colonel who was in charge back in the mid-sixties because his dad was the last skipper on it. The Colonel died and the binoculars remained here. There’s a stand for them in another room that, when mounted, swivels 360 degrees in any direction. Why do you ask?”
“I have a spot up on our mountain where we could mount them.” Sam replied, “We could mount them up there and cover the entire road in to Fitch through the valley. It would give us all an early warning if anyone were to attack from any of those directions.”
“Well, from one Sergeant to another,” Sergeant Randall said, “Consider them yours.”
After returning to Avalon, Mike’s group began an all-out effort to build what was referred to as “Eagle’s Nest.” They mounted the oversized binoculars in a tower with a roof over it and manned them every day from first light to just before dark.
The glasses were extremely powerful and viewers were able to see the road coming in from Bishop to the East, all of Fitch, down into the valley toward the river south, and over to the road that headed away from Fitch toward the Coast. They could even see the old Slaver campgrounds clearer than grains of sand.
Chapter 36 Regroup: Slaver Faceoff
The radio message came into the Armory, breaking the silence. Corporal Linden answered, acknowledging receipt, and he jumped up and ran down the hall to where Sergeant Randal Stone kept himself busy. He burst into the office without knocking and put the message down on the Sergeant’s desk in front of him, who was a bit miffed at the intrusion until he read the message.
“Assemble every available troop,” he said while looking up. “I want all the trucks ready to roll and a Humvee for me. Load an M-60 on the Humvee and throw on a couple of cases of ammo. I want all the men in battle dress and combat ready. We’re going to finish this once and for all. And bring out the little surprise we’ve been preparing; we’ll place it on the west end of town. Make sure it has plenty of ammo.”
“I’ll get right on it, sergeant,” the corporal said as he headed out the door.
The alarm was heard throughout the building about sixty seconds later, an intermittent sharp buzz that everyone knew meant trouble. In fifteen minutes they were ready and heading west on the main road that trekked through the center of the town.
Sheriff Waters looked at his watch and it had been twenty minutes since the message came down from Avalon. That would put the Slavers just about here and he made a note to himself as he looked at the big map on the wall before him. He pushed the intercom and Marci came back to him,
“Yes, Sheriff?”
“Marci, how many citizens do we have deputized?”
“Counting me, six.”
“Send a car out with a PA system on it. Tell the deputy to say, ‘All able-bodied men assemble at the Sheriff’s Office immediately. A Slaver attack is imminent.’ You got that?”
“Got it, Sheriff!”
In five minutes the car was going up and down the street broadcasting the alert. People ran down the street toward the Sheriff’s office, all armed with M-16s and ammo bandoliers with clips full of NATO .223 Ball. They all had side arms and bayonets, and some had pockets on their vests with a grenade on each side. In five more minutes, eight trucks, mostly pickups, pulled up in front of the Sheriff’s office and the men climbed in… three men plus the driver in the cab and the rest in the back.
The Sheriff took his radio out of the pouch, “Marci, shut that siren off now.”
“Okay, Sheriff.”
In thirty seconds, just as the Sheriff was getting ready to call her again, the sirens wound down into a progressive deeper and deeper groan and finally stopped.
“Let’s go get them,” the Sheriff said to the men. “No prisoners. No mercy. If any of them gets away, it won’t be because we didn’t try to kill ‘em all. Let’s go to the west of town!”
Mike and the rest of the men rode their dirt bikes down the old track bed and in thirty minutes, they were at the base of the mountain. The Slavers had already gone past them, but it was their intention to cut them off and allow the attack to come in simultaneously on the Slavers from both the front and rear. They all had radios and were able to keep in contact with one another.
Mike had searched for Bone Breaker’s body after the last attack but he never found it… he knew the Slavers would return eventually…and that time was now.
Bone Breaker rode along in front of his four hundred bikers. It had taken a couple of months to gather that large a number for a payback visit to Fitch, and this was going to be his big day. He was going to either kill all of them or enslave and sell them back on the coast. The clear blue sky was an omen that all would go well.
He relished this moment; it nearly gave him a hard-on just thinking about the cries for mercy and the blood that was going to flow… and knowing that the bloodshed today would not be that of his troops. He was confident and eager for battle, which made his ride toward Fitch tedious and filled him with impatience.
The Avalon sentry at Eagle’s Nest, now armed with those large binoculars, had spotted the Slavers going down the highway headed for Fitch. He got on his handheld radio and alerted Mike at the main building and Mike and Sam, in turn, alerted the main battle group at Avalon to prepare for combat. They jumped on their bikes and headed out to the large binocular site to talk to the sentry about what he had seen.
Dan was on the Ham set with Fitch. “Sheriff,” he said, “They’re on their way. From what Mike just told me on the handheld, it looks about like three or four hundred of them coming at you fast.”
The air raid sirens sounded and people converged on the Sheriff’s office once again, just as they had two months earlier. The Sheriff stood in front of his office with his hands on his hips and said in a voice they could all hear,
“They’re coming. Mike says maybe three or four hundred of them. We need to go west and meet them. Randall, is the tank ready?”
Randall stuck up a hand with his thumb straight up.
“Let’s roll and this time, let’s put an end to every one of them.”
The pickups, deuce and a half, and Humvee rolled out of town toward the west with the tank lurching behind. The group stopped and waited as the old Bradley continued toward the Bikers at thirty miles an hour. Blue smoke came out of the exhaust pipe as it rattled and clanked at high speed.
The Slavers rounded the large curve that skirted the river just before crossing the bridge that led to the main road running through the middle of town. A movement caught Bone Breaker’s eye and one of his riders, a tough lieutenant and trusted adviser, slumped on his bike, veered off the road, and went into the river. Another rider fell and several others ran over the lieutenant or hit him, lost control of their bikes, and crashed. Thirty or so riders crashed before those coming behind them could veer off and avoid the conflagration.
Bone Breaker signaled and one after the other pulled over, but not before more of them slumped at the controls of their bikes and showed a profusion of blood where a round had penetrated their chest or head. One man had an arm just hanging at what was left of his elbow. They were sitting ducks; sharpshooters were picking them off one-by-one. He saw rounds hitting the road and tearing chunks out of it. “Turn back!” he yelled to his fellow Slavers, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
In a moment they were turning and going west toward the coast again. More men went down on the road as round after round found one or more of them and tore holes through their bodies. In a moment they were out of range, but never saw who fired at them. Bone Breaker couldn’t believe there were enough of them left alive to put up this kind of resistance, and then he remembered the big c
ement walled store and the Armory. There must have been more of them left than he thought and they were putting up a good fight.
At thirty miles per hour, the Bradley came down the road heading directly toward the Slavers. The big gun was locked and loaded, and the gunner had strong instructions,
“Don’t ruin the road with that gun; we need it.”
The fifty caliber machine gun mounted in the turret was manned and hot. A few rounds already sent into the group had found their mark several times. The turret gunner was to shoot if the bikers headed off the road; at that point, they were his. They barreled down the road and the gap separating them was quickly closed as the big machine quickly ate up the distance. A large group separated and went north away from the river, and the turret man yelled to the gunner,
“They’re splitting off ahead to the right! Do you see them?”
The gun moved right and detonated; fire and smoke came out of the muzzle and the explosion was enormous. A huge ball of fire erupted where the bikers were and they were all torn to bits. The fire ignited the landscape.
“Great shot,” the turret man congratulated in glee, “You smoked the whole bunch!”
Bone Breaker saw it happen and could hardly believe his eyes.
“A tank?…” he said in disbelief. “They have a tank?…” he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Freakin’ bloody ashes! Everybody head west if you don’t want to die; we can’t fight a freakin’ tank!”
As they turned, the fifty calibers started chewing holes in them. Panic set in and it became every man for himself. Every time some of them headed off the road, the big gun barked and that group ceased to exist. Ma Deuce, a fifty caliber machine gun did its job grinding the Slavers into hamburger. The bikers had to cover a lot of territory in a hurry to get out of range, so they rolled on the power.
Avalon: The Retreat Page 28
