by Lopez, Rob
As an old soldier, Scott likely encountered that more than Rick.
Rick stood up. “Talk to your people,” he said to Doug. “I want to know exactly who’s coming with us tomorrow morning. And we’re going to be starting out early. Tell them how important this is. If we get tomorrow right, this nightmare can be over. They’ll be able to sleep in real houses instead of shacks, and nobody will push them around. But they’ve got to be willing to die for it, otherwise I’m not going to waste my time.”
Doug sucked in his breath. “Might leave out that last part.”
“Don’t. It’s all or nothing. That’s what I want you to tell them.”
Rick left Doug and walked over to Scott’s fire. Acknowledging April, he sat himself down. Daniel was asleep, and Scott stroked the sleeping boy’s hair.
“Still pissed at me?” Scott said absently.
“No. You?”
“I never had a problem with it.”
April could see it was a moment for the two men to be alone. “I’ll put Daniel to bed,” she said, lifting the boy up.
“You don’t want to be doing that,” said Scott. “The kid’s heavy.”
April gave him a complicit smile. “I’ll be fine. You two talk.”
When they were alone, Scott turned to Rick. “So, we talk.”
“Are you in this tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
“No. I mean really in this. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”
It was Scott’s turn to give a complicit smile. “There might be a time for that someday, but tomorrow’s not it.”
“It’s got to be for real. No doubts.”
Scott thought for a while. “It’s real. Let’s finish this.”
“Okay.”
Rick stood up to leave.
“What would you have done if I’d said no?” asked Scott quietly.
“I’d have canceled the operation.”
Scott inclined his head. “That would have made sense.”
“It’s going to be a dawn attack. Make sure you’re ready.”
“Aren’t I always?”
Rick looked at him for a moment, but said nothing. Nodding once, he walked away.
*
“More wine?” said Connors.
Jeffries held up his cut-glass goblet, and Connors poured the crimson liquid in, the candle light refracting and swirling in the goblet as it was filled.
“This place is amazing,” said Jeffries.
Connors had already shown him around the chateau with its various wings, servants’ quarters, tower observatory and libraries. They were now alone in the vast banquet room, replete with tapestries, intricate moldings and three side-by-side fireplaces underneath a six-foot tall carved frieze of peasants, horses and carts.
“Vanderbilt certainly had taste,” agreed Connors. “Here’s to the gilded age.”
“Where did you find this wine?” said Jeffries. “I thought it all got taken in the looting.”
“The place hasn’t suffered too much, and I found a secret cellar. You wouldn’t believe the number of hidden passages this house contains.”
“You can’t really call it a house.”
“No. It makes all of Saddam’s palaces look cheap. You don’t need golden toilets when you’ve got this level of artistry.”
“And you’ve got the militia housed here?”
“Yeah, but they only take up a fraction of the space. I don’t let them into this area. Most of them are on maneuvers or home leave anyway. We only really have to house the recruits we’re training, like the group we got from Hendersonville. We’re putting them through their paces right now. Won’t be long before we field a second company. And that’s where our problems begin.”
“How so?”
“More mouths to feed. While our guys are pulling security, they’re not able to do more productive things like farming or hunting. Meanwhile, the communities we’re protecting are able to do more of these things, on account of it being safer to go out. They’re getting our protection for free, and we’re not getting anything back.”
“Sorry, you want to bill them?”
“I’m thinking of a tax.”
“You’re serious?”
“Sure. Think about it. You’ve already got the General Assembly and a bunch of staff, all doing vital work. The more territory we expand into, the more administrators we’ll need, and it’s all on behalf of the people. It’s only right that the people should contribute something. We can’t run this enterprise on fresh air. As citizens, they all gain from the peace and organization we bring. No such thing as a free lunch.”
“I get what you’re saying, but how are we going to administer it? We’ve got no currency, and there’s no way to monitor people’s earnings and stuff anyway. Unless you’re hoping they’ll volunteer to donate their surplus. We can’t keep track of every individual.”
“No, that’s impossible, so we’ll do it the old way. We assess each community according to what they can give on a monthly basis, say ten percent of crops, skins or meat, then we leave it to the community leaders to administer their own people.”
“That’s going to cause a lot of discontent.”
“It shouldn’t. Less than six months ago, everyone was paying taxes. Hell, they were paying more than ten percent when you included federal taxes, registration taxes and sales tax. I think it’s also important for the state to administer a surplus of supplies in case of hard times. You could even run a program to help out the poor. Or the lesbians, I don’t mind.”
“No need to be so flippant about it.”
“I’m not worried about the details. Just run it through the General Assembly and see what kind of bill you can come up with. If there’s no agreement, well, fine. We tried. But we do have people who need help. Not everybody can hunt well, or grow enough food. After a terrible winter, you’ve got single moms who are single through no fault of their own. There’s old folk, cripples, people who are ill. We need to nurture our population, because we’ve lost enough people as it is. And what about the children? Thinking of making sure they get educated? You might not be thinking of that now, but one day you will.”
“I have been thinking about it. It just seems obscene to be sitting here drinking wine in opulent surroundings while talking about taxing the people.”
“You can redistribute the bone china and tapestries if you think it’ll do any good. But really, I think the best thing you and the senators can do is give the citizens a state that works for everyone. Because another winter will come. Then another. We barely survived the first round of anarchy. If we’re not strong, we might not last out the next. I trust you’re familiar with Hobbes?”
“I am,” said Jeffries grimly.
“Then make sure it doesn’t come to that. I can only do so much out in the field. The rest is up to you guys.”
23
Only eight of the militia volunteered for the attack on Round Knob. To this, Rick added Lauren, Harvey and Packy. It wasn’t much, but his plan only involved Scott and himself doing the heavy lifting. If his calculations were wrong, it would turn out to be a very short operation.
Every member of the team was armed to the teeth with AR-15s, scoped rifles and backup pistols. In addition, Rick and Scott carried bows. They set out on a night march through the woods and over the hills that separated Bergen Mountain from Round Knob. Rick was against using vehicles. They would not only have been noisier, it would have meant using the roads, and Rick wanted to ensure complete surprise, as well as avoiding ambushes. Taking a group of civilian militia through the woods at night was fraught with risk, and Rick wasn’t sure how stealthy they could be, but these civilians had been living on a mountain for months without the benefit of lights. They’d become hardened and fit by dint of circumstance, and Rick had no complaints about their subsequent performance as he led them along the ridge that overlooked the deep valley where Round Knob Lodge lay. Slowly they descended to the rocky outcrop Rick had identified in his
earlier reconnaissance. Down in the raider’s camp, not a single light flickered, and the only noise was the sighing of the breeze in the branches and the burble of the creek that ran through the valley.
“You know what to do,” whispered Rick to Lauren as the militia set themselves up among the rocks.
They’d discussed the plan a hundred times and Lauren had nothing further to add. She simply nodded. Rick and Scott left them, continuing down the slope.
At the bottom they reached the rail line. A low moon cast long shadows along the tracks. Rick observed the line for a few minutes. Satisfied there was no one to see, he stole across and began climbing the next slope. Crossing a hump, he made his way to the road where he knew a log barricade had been set up. Gingerly, he moved through the trees until he was looking down on the barricade. Quietly, he unslung his bow and notched an arrow. Scott did the same.
Nobody appeared to be manning the barricade, but Rick waited. Sure enough, he heard a gentle cough, but try as he might, he couldn’t identify any human forms in the shadows. He waited some more.
There was a rasp as the guard lit a cigarette, illuminating a single face. The guard was sitting on the bank by the barricade. With another cough, he inhaled, the tip of the cigarette glowing bright red. Rick took aim. The string slapped loudly against the bow as the arrow flew. A split second later Scott’s bow clicked too. The glowing ember tumbled to the ground, and there was an exclamation of surprise, and a choking sound.
Rick slid down the slope, drawing his knife. The guard began an utterance of pain. Sprinting across, Rick silenced him with a stab to the throat, the knife going deep enough to grate against the spine. He held the shuddering body for a few seconds, then laid it down.
The closest cabin in the camp was over a hundred yards away. No door opened, and no footsteps came along the road. Sheathing his knife, Rick waited for Scott. Together the two climbed the bank, descended down the next slope and waded across the creek, moving in a wide circle behind the lodge. When they were in position, the lodge on the knob was silhouetted against the first light of dawn.
*
Lauren’s job was to provide the initial diversion. Give the raiders something to focus on, Rick had said.
She was also Rick’s backup if something went terribly wrong.
It wasn’t a role she relished. The plan was high-risk. The raiders knew they had lethal enemies now, and it wasn’t clear – to Lauren at least – how they’d react to an attack on their home turf. As the sun rose and color crept into the valley, she swept the compound with her scope. There was nothing to see, however. The raiders clearly weren’t early risers. Either that, or the place was empty. There were no vehicles around, so maybe they’d left.
Movement caught her eye, and a raider emerged from the lodge, walking down the steep steps with a bucket to get water from the creek.
Lauren nudged the nearest militiaman. He’d been drooping his head, as if falling asleep.
“Get ready,” she whispered to him. “Pass the word.”
The raider reached the foot of the knob and looked toward the road. Something seemed to be bothering him, and he paused. Lauren wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but she was focused on the watchtower, which was currently unmanned. She waited for the sentry to come out.
The raider with the bucket called out someone’s name, still looking toward the road. Slowly he put his bucket down and pulled his weapon forward on its sling.
“Nobody shoot until I do,” said Lauren to her troops.
A raider came out onto the lodge deck and began climbing the tower ladder. He stopped when he saw the raider at the bottom pointing his rifle. He called out, and the raider shouted something back to him.
Lauren didn’t bother listening in. Her target was clear. The range – according to Rick – was three hundred yards. Lauren hadn’t trained as a sniper. She didn’t know how to calculate windage, and her scope was too basic to click adjustments for range elevation. She settled for aiming just above the head of the sentry on the ladder. The range wasn’t excessive, but any amount of bullet drop would likely hit the target somewhere. If she could shoot accurately.
Propping the rifle on the rock as securely as she could, she slowly squeezed the trigger, keeping the pad of her finger moving in a straight line backwards. The slightest deviation left or right would be enough to ruin the shot.
The trigger moved back, and the mechanism snapped cleanly, releasing the shot. The sentry jerked and slipped a few rungs down the ladder.
The rest of her militia opened fire on the raider standing by his bucket. The ground kicked up around his feet and he took off. He was a big guy who appeared to have eaten well over the winter, and it couldn’t have been easy for him to fly up that slope the way he did, but the barrage of near misses lent wings to his feet, and he reached the lodge in record time.
Lauren, meanwhile, prepared her second shot. She wasn’t sure if she’d hit the sentry, but he’d fallen and was hanging upside down, his legs tangled in the ladder. As he struggled to free himself, Lauren took a breath, held it, and pulled the trigger. The rifle kicked, and a split second later, the sentry’s arms flew out and hung limp. That was when return fire began probing Lauren’s position.
Raiders appeared in the windows of the lodge, firing blindly into the foliage that masked the rocky outcrop. At long range, most of the shots fell low, and the militia were fairly safe behind the rocks. Nothing moved or fired from the rest of the compound. It appeared that the raiders’ numbers truly were depleted, and they were all sheltered in the lodge.
“Keep their attention on us,” called Lauren to her troops, “but do not, repeat, do not shoot at the windows. Our guys could be in there right now.”
*
The guys, Rick and Scott, were already moving. As soon as the first shot was fired, they made their way up the back slope of the lodge. The battle echoed around the valley, and as he got close to the building, Rick heard the muffled shouts of the raiders inside. The lodge was a long, single story building with shingle-faced walls. Those walls were being ineffectually hit by the militia across the valley, but it was enough to spook the raiders. At one end of the lodge was a solid door. Rick checked it, but it was locked. He nodded to Scott and stepped back.
Scott removed from his bag an aluminum foil package with wires attached. Opening the foil, he molded the explosive over the door handle and against the lock. Feeding the wires back around the corner, he connected them to the charger and spun the handle.
There was a deafening blast and the center of the door disintegrated. Rick raced around and kicked it in.
Clearing a building room by room was a specialist activity, requiring hard training and a lot of experience. Rick and Scott had both. Working in tandem, they moved down the smoky corridor, kicking doors in: one man covering, the other shooting. It was hoped that the raiders would be confused by the multiple noises, perhaps unable to believe they were being assaulted. They certainly wouldn’t believe they were being attacked by only two men. Neither Rick nor Scott cared. Acting clinically and mechanically, they emptied their magazines into every raider they found, shooting first with lightning-fast reflexes.
*
Across the valley, Lauren watched the carnage through her scope. Raiders would turn from their windows, gesticulating and aiming their weapons, the shadowed interior would be lit with a flickering tongue of fire, and raiders would fall. Then the scene would repeat in the next room.
“Everybody move,” yelled Lauren to her troops. “Go, go, go!”
Breaking cover, she slid down the slope and sprinted toward the lodge.
*
Rick had plugged his ears before entering. The cacophony rendered them useless anyway. In a hazy, slow-motion silent movie, he killed from one room to the next. He didn’t need to think about it: he was completely in the zone, swapping out empty magazines without even realizing. His heart rate was through the roof, but he didn’t notice that either. Everything he did felt fluid and r
ight. Near misses and panicked shots from the raiders blew clouds of wood splinters around his head, but if nothing hit him, nothing stopped him, and he executed armed figures with deadly precision. Who those figures were mattered little. What they were doing mattered even less. If they were shooting at him, standing frozen or running away, they were all ticked off on his blistering to-do list. It was just another day at the office, and his rifle was simply a tool.
It was only when he reached the end of the building and there was no one left visibly to shoot that Rick took a breath and noticed how dry his mouth was. He glanced across to Scott, seeing the taut muscles of his face and neck, the same signs of hypertension he himself felt. The two exchanged a look: a quick acknowledgment that each was okay and that, once again, they’d made it.
The moment lasted less than a second. A spiral staircase to a basement level showed the building had yet to be fully cleared. The two went down, kicking in doors and scoping dark corners until they found a room with nine women sitting in candlelight, their shocked faces pale and drawn.
24
The news of the victory spread like wildfire through Bergen Mountain’s community. After hours of tense waiting, voices called out, and the shouts spread. At first Dee thought it was bad news, but then people started to holler and whoop. Packy entered the camp, strode up to April, bowed and said, “My Lady, you are called for.”
April wept after holding her fears in for too long. Smiling through her tears, she picked Daniel up and spun him around.
“Is it really okay?” she asked.
“Nah, everybody’s dead and I’m a ghost. Of course it’s okay. My lord and master requests your presence and that of the rug rats. Your carriage awaits.”
“Lizzy, go get Josh,” said April. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it’s over.”