The day after: An apocalyptic morning

by Jessy Cruise

Three of the men were completely engulfed in flames, dying right were they lay. Two more were partially engulfed and they ran screaming into the woods. They tried to do as they were taught back in school and stop, drop, and roll, but that would not put out the fire. Their clothing, hair, and flesh burned away in only a few moments. They screamed wildly, frantically until some horrified soldiers gathered their wits enough to shoot them. Two others got slightly hit from the attack, sustaining second and third degree burns that would eventually kill them from infection but that allowed them to fight on for the moment.

  In the air above, Skip spun the helicopter around and began to move slowly off to the south once more. Sherrie, after confirming a good drop, began to pull the rope back inside. Paul himself had taught her how to do this and within ten minutes she would have all fifteen hundred feet of it ready for the next drop.

  "What the fuck was that?" Colby yelled, smelling the strong gasoline odor mixed with the stench of burning flesh. The ground around the drop zone was still ablaze, though weakening. The two halves of the tank had dropped to the ground just on the sides of the position. They too were burning.

  "Holy shit," Stu said, stunned and doubtful for perhaps the first time. "Fuckin' napalm. They dropped fuckin napalm on us!"

  "Napalm," Colby said, nearing hysteria. "Where the hell did they get napalm?"

  "It's homemade," Stu said. "They're dropping it out of gas tanks and igniting it with their tracers." He shook his head a little. "Clever fuckers, aren't they?"

  "How the hell can we win against someone with napalm?" Colby asked. "Maybe we'd better pull back and think about this a little."

  "No," Stu said. "We need to push forward. They only have one chopper and it takes time to load those things up. They won't be able to use it that often."

  "But..."

  "We need to clear that hill and push on," Stu said. "The quicker we get inside that wall, the quicker we'll be safe. They won't drop that shit in their own territory. Now let's get those troops moving."

  Colby said nothing, just continued to stare at the smoking corpses in fear. What a horrible way to die! Being burned alive by jellied gasoline dropped from the sky.

  Stu didn't wait for his acknowledgment or his consent. As far as he was concerned, Colby was just a useless appendage at this point. He keyed up his radio. "First platoon, get back into position and start shooting. Third and fifth platoons, get ready to move in. We'll cover your advance while you close in on the flanks. Everyone else, covering fire on that hill, right now!"

  The volume of fire at the hillside picked up to a ferocious level as more than a hundred guns opened up on it.

  "Third platoon, fifth platoon," Stu ordered, "go, go, go!"

  "Holy Jesus," Christine said as the barrage came rolling in. Sandbags exploded, spraying dirt everywhere and it sounded like a swarm of angry insects was buzzing overhead. There was a thud and a scream from the end of her trench and she looked over to see that Sally Brigham had taken a round right in her face, blowing the back of her head off. The scream had come from Laura Mint, who was looking at her former friend in horror.

  "Oh my God, Sally!" Laura screamed, edging over to cradle her.

  "She's dead," Christine yelled, unable to feel anything but fear at the moment. "Get back to your position. They'll be moving in on us!"

  Sally gave a terrified look at Christine, a longing look at Sally, but did as she was told and got back to her firing port.

  A moment later Maggie, who was in the next trench over in charge of a squad, reported on the tactical radio that she had one of her troops wounded.

  "How bad?" Christine yelled into the radio.

  "Shot through the shoulder," Maggie's voice said, abandoning code for the moment. "She needs to be pulled out. She's bleeding bad."

  "Copy," Christine said. "Get some bandages on her and get ready to evac her. As soon as the firing slacks off, get her out of here."

  While Maggie acknowledged this, Christine put her head back to her firing port. She saw what seemed to be hundreds of flashes down below and an actual haze of gunsmoke over the enemy positions. Bullets continued to slam in all around her, shredding her protective sandbags even more. From the right side of the militia line a large group of men, about forty or so, suddenly broke from cover and began to dash towards the eastern side of her hill. At the same time another group of forty to the west broke cover and began running towards that side.

  "They're moving in," Christine told her platoon. "Shift fire to the flanks!"

  Everyone in the three trenches abandoned the effort to pin down the platoon in front of them and moved their guns either to the left or the right to engage the men trying to envelope them. From the distance they were at their fire was not very accurate and only a few men on each side fell, the rest continuing to rush forward. It was terrifying to watch.

  In a set of trenches a quarter mile to the west, Mick's platoon watched this advance and tracked targets with their weapons. They were about to give the charging Auburnites a big surprise. In yet another set of trenches to the east, Paula and her platoon were preparing to do the same.

  It was Paula's group that opened up first. The advancing fifth platoon nearly ran right into them. When they were less than three hundred yards in range, the riflemen opened up. This time surprise was almost complete. So intent was the enemy on reaching their objective and getting around behind it, that they didn't notice the flashes off to their left until four of their number suddenly fell to the mud. And even then it took them a minute to figure out that the shots had not come from their objective. By that time they were well inside two hundred and fifty yards and easy fodder for the semi-automatic and automatic weapons of Paula's squads. They opened up with a harsh chatter, spraying bullets down all over the formation. More men fell, their heads splitting open, their chests riddled with bullet holes. Others, finally figuring out that they'd been trapped, dove to the ground and began returning fire.

  Their own shots were ineffective, doing nothing but slamming into sandbags and mud, but they themselves were caught between two groups of armed enemy and the crossfire on them was murderous. More men fell as aimed rifle shots and bursts of automatic weapons fire raked over them. Within three minutes more than half of the forty-man platoon - including the leader - was dead or dying and more than ten of the remaining twenty was wounded.

  Sergeant Stinson had started off the march as nothing more than a simple squad leader. Now, with more than half of the army dead or deserted, he was the commander of a rag-tag platoon that had been formed from pieces of other platoons. It was a responsibility that he had never hoped for and that he did not enjoy, especially not on this mission.

  It was his platoon - the third platoon - that was tasked with hitting the right flank of the hill. He was near the rear of the formation as they jogged across the uneven, muddy ground, heading towards a gap between two hills. Bullets from the objective zinged in at infrequent intervals but the range was at the extreme to hit moving targets. Still two of his men, he didn't have time to identify just who, had been felled by lucky shots.

  "Almost there," he yelled encouragingly as they continued their run. "Keep it up!"

  No one answered him but they kept running, more out of fear for their lives than his command magnetism. Just as they began to think that they were going to make it to the relative safety of the gully between the two hills, bullets began to hit them with frightening accuracy.

  Three men dropped within two seconds, two from body shots, one from a leg shot. Two more quickly followed, thumping to the mud and sliding on their faces. Stinson just had time to wonder how the troops firing from the objective were getting so lucky all of a sudden when the automatic weapons fire began to rake across them. Three men were cut down in two seconds, one of them screaming as he fell. It was then that he saw the flashes coming from the hill to the right of them. They had been tricked!

  "Get down!" he screamed, throwing himself into the mud and trying to scramble behind a tree.
All around him other men were doing the same, more because they had come to the same realization as he had - that they were caught in a crossfire - than because of his order.

  He made it behind the tree and managed to successfully place it between himself and the direction that the most accurate concentration of fire was coming from. The problem was that there was no way to protect yourself from both angles at once. Though he was not hit it was only through providence - he was horribly exposed. Others around him were not so lucky. Private Jennison, who was lying on his belly preparing to return fire, was hit right in the face, blowing his head apart. Corporal Preston, who was less than six feet away from him, took a four round burst in the chest. From behind him he heard the screams of several others as bullets plowed into them.

  "Stinson!" Stu's voice yelled from his radio. "What the hell is going on? What's your situation?"

  "Return fire," Stinson yelled at his men, terrified, sure that he was going to feel a bullet thudding into him at any moment. "Return fire at the closer ones!" He pulled the radio out of his belt and keyed it up. "Stinson here," he said into it, his voice broken with fear. "We're taking heavy fire from the hill west of the objective. We're also getting hit from the objective itself. We're taking heavy casualties."

  There was a long pause and then Stu's voice replied something but Stinson didn't hear what it was because the booms of return gunfire from the men around him drowned it out.

  "What was that?" Stinson asked. "Repeat?" He turned up the volume on the radio.

  "I said retreat!" Stu's voice yelled back, obviously disgusted by the failure. "Get the hell out of there and back to the main formation!"

  A bullet drilled into the tree right above Stinson's head, dropping a large piece of bark onto his helmet. He jumped a little, his heart hammering even faster. "You got that shit right," he said and then rolled onto his back. "Retreat!" he yelled. "Everyone, get back to the formation! Retreat!"

  Circling high above in the helicopter, Skip and Jack had a bird's eye view of everything. They saw the two flanking attacks by the militia surge forward and then watched the hidden positions on the hill pummel them. From up above it was a strangely surreal scene. They saw tiny figures rushing in and out of trees and over brown ground, they saw flashes coming from the trenches, and they saw some of those figures fall. They saw no blood, not even Jack who was watching through the FLIR, and they heard no gunfire, no screams.

  "They're retreating," Skip told the platoon commanders below. "Both of the attacking platoons are withdrawing in disarray. Estimate at least fifty percent casualties in both. We held them!"

  First Mick then Christine then Paula acknowledged his observation.

  "Are they forming up for another run?" Mick asked. "We have two wounded that we need to get out of here."

  The mention of friendly casualties served to take a little of Skip's enthusiasm away. "You have a clear corridor to the rear," he replied. "And it doesn't look like they're going to be attacking again at least until they get their troops back and have a chance to regroup. Evacuate your wounded now. Contact Paul's team on the VHF for a meeting place."

  "Got it," Mick answered. "We also have one dead. Should we pull her body out while we have a break?"

  "Negative," Skip answered regretfully but immediately. "We can't spare the manpower to move a body. Sorry."

  "Understood," Mick said, a little regretful sounding himself.

  A moment later, while the Auburn troops were still rushing back the way they had come, Skip saw two figures being taken from the trenches. One of them, from Christine's platoon, was walking and being escorted by only one person. The other - Skip didn't know who it was or how bad the injury - was from Mick's position and was being carried on a litter by two people.

  "Assholes," Skip said, shaking his head a little. "I think we need to make another nape run while they're regrouping. Keep them from getting too comfortable in our territory and maybe break up their rhythm a little more."

  "Fuckin aye," Jack said. He turned to Sherrie, who was holding tight to the bungee cord of the rope coil again. "We all wound up?"

  "Ready for action," she agreed.

  "Cool." He turned back to Skip. "Want me to get Steve on the VHF?"

  "Do it," Skip said. "If we need to airlift those casualties to El Dorado we'll have just enough time to make one run."

  Jack called Steve and used the code phrases to tell him to get another "egg" ready to drop. By the time they landed four minutes later the canister was on the handcart and waiting to be mounted. Skip touched down and let the engine idle but he didn't shut it down. He stepped out onto the wet parking lot and waved Steve's team over.

  "We're gonna hot load it," he told them as they rushed over. "I want to be back in the air in three minutes."

  "Right," Steve said. He turned to his team. "Let's get it on!"

  They quickly shoved the tank under the belly of the chopper and then crawled under there after it. Two of them lifted up on the sides on a count of three and, with grunts of exertion, maneuvered the bulky tank until the hook caught on the cargo hook.

  "Give me the rope," Steve yelled up at Sherrie, holding out his gloved hand for it. She passed the end of it down and he pulled it through, tying the end onto the weld strip. No sooner had he fastened the knot in place than he was scrambling out from underneath. "You're in business," he told Skip.

  "Good job," Skip replied, giving him a thumbs up. He climbed back into his seat and strapped in. As soon as Steve and his team cleared the rotors he was putting on the power and lifting back into the sky.

  By this time, Paul and his team were with the two casualties and dragging them back to the truck. Since they were in possession of one of the scarce VHF radios, Skip contacted them as he pulled up to bombing altitude over the canyon. Paul himself answered the hail.

  "What's the word on the wounded?" Skip asked him. "Do I need to make a run to El Dorado Hills?"

  "That's negative," Paul responded, sounding somewhat dejected. "I have Susan Michaels with a shoulder wound. It's painful but she can wait for evac to the doctor's office for a while. The other is Helen Johnson. She's... well... she took one in the chest. I don't think that she'll be needing evac either."

  "I see," Skip said slowly, clearly reading the message that Paul was sending about Helen. A chest wound that wouldn't require evac to the doctor could only mean one thing. Helen would not live long enough to make the trip. "Keep us updated on Susan's condition. Bring us in if it gets worse. Remember, priority for the aircraft goes to the wounded."

  "I'll keep you updated," Paul promised. "And she will have to go there eventually."

  "Understood," Skip replied. He looked over at his altimeter, which was coming up on 6000 feet. He then looked over at Jack and Sherrie. "Are we ready to rock?"

  They agreed they were ready to rock and Skip, putting thoughts of Helen Johnson out of his mind, turned to the north and the battle area once again.

  The militia's ranks were once again gathered in force behind the hills and trees of their embarkation line. Isolated pops of gunfire came from both sides as they sniped at each other, neither side suffering any casualties. The troops themselves were in a semi-chaotic state, stinging from being repulsed in their first attack so soundly (by bitches no less) and at the cost of nearly forty soldiers. Some of the wounded were being tended to by those with medical training just behind the main groups. Though some of them would have qualified to be put out of their misery on the march, they were now being spared on the theory that soon the Garden Hill community center would be in their hands and they could now be cared for.

  Stu and Colby stood near the wounded area, Stu talking hastily to his platoon leaders, Colby still trailing behind him like a pet dog, contributing nothing to the discussion.

  "Stinson," Stu barked, "we're going to combine the remnants of your platoon and fifth platoon. You'll be in charge of it. You'll still be designated as third platoon. Get your men together and reorganize your squads as qui
ck as you can. I want to be able to attack those positions again in twenty minutes."

  "Yes, sir," Stinson said, not bothering to salute or even sound enthusiastic about his orders. He had nearly died out there, was still alive only by virtue of random chance after the disastrous first charge. He wished Colby, who was really supposed to be in charge of this abortion, would step in and put a stop to this madness before they lost everyone. But as a simple sergeant he did not question. He trudged off and began gathering his new men into one group so he could pick new squad leaders.

  With that taken care of, Stu called over the platoon leaders of the other platoons. "All right, guys," he said, "this is what we're going to do next. We need to..."

  "Incoming napalm run!" someone screamed, pointing into the air at the approaching helicopter. Fear rippled through the ranks as everyone saw that it did indeed have one of the gas tanks slung beneath it and that it was indeed heading right towards them.

  "Shit," Stu muttered, trying to gauge the speed and distance of the aircraft. He guessed it would be over the top of them in less than a minute. "Take cover!" he yelled to the troops. "Don't bunch up!"

  Those that were standing or kneeling or lying near each other quickly began to scramble around, trying to put as much distance between themselves and anyone near them. For the most part this accomplished nothing since many of them, in their panic, ran into each other instead. Several of the front soldiers that had been trading shots with the enemy were hit with gunfire as they exposed themselves in their efforts.

  "Goddammit," Stu screamed in frustration, "if you're in the front, keep your asses down, you morons!"

  The troops were still in a state of flux when the helicopter banked and began to move slowly right over the top of them. Faintly a face could be seen leaning out one of the doors, obviously to guide the drop. Stu screamed again for everyone to move faster but there simply wasn't enough time. The tank dropped while the helicopter was still moving forward, falling down at an angle behind the aircraft. Because of the motion it was very difficult to see just where the tank was going to hit. Again, just before it reached the end of the rope, solid streams of tracers blasted out from the enemy positions, four of them this time. The tank jerked roughly and ripped in half, spraying a wide pattern of the napalm out over the top of them. The tracers hit it, there was another one of those whoomph sounds, and the burning concoction landed, spraying over a thirty-foot area and igniting everything within it.