“I’m staying right here,” Doc Robertson declared, proudly and confidently. “I may not be young and strong no more, but I’ll fight with every ounce of strength I have in these old bones. I stand against tyranny, thieving, and thuggery!”
“Me too!” Jonathan declared.
“You can count on me, Phil,” Eddie said, folding his heavy arms across his broad chest.
Everyone else confirmed that they were in this fight until the end, and tears of pride rolled down Phil’s cheeks. He could see the sincerity in everyone’s eyes and hear it in their voices. A tight knot of emotion gripped his throat, and it was a few seconds before he was able to speak.
“Thank you, everyone,” he said, still choking up. “You’re true heroes, every last one of you, and you mean the world to me, all of you. And now…let’s get everything ready for the coming battle.”
34
The sky had cleared completely from the earlier rain, and the sun was hovering close to the distant mountaintops. There was perhaps an hour of daylight left, all the traps had been set up, and the battle preparations had been laid out. Every person on the ranch was suited up in a bulletproof vest, and all of them were carrying a rifle—either an AR-15 or a semi-automatic hunting rifle—and a sidearm or two, along with plenty of ammo for both firearms.
There hadn’t been time for anyone to make any food, but Phil insisted on sitting down for one last meal with everyone before sunset. Alice had some cornbread in the morning, and there were plenty of cans of food that were easy to heat up in a hurry. It wasn’t exactly a dinner fit for a king, but it was hot, wholesome food, and after the hard work everyone had put in throughout the afternoon, they were all grateful for it.
Phil opened a few bottles of wine from the cellar too. He certainly didn’t want anyone to get drunk, because they all needed to be mentally alert and sharp for the coming battle, but a little alcohol would at least take the edge off their nerves. He even allowed David to have half a glass.
Before the meal, Phil said grace, and then raised his glass of wine. “I’d like to thank each and every one of you one last time, from the bottom of my heart,” he said. “Here’s to your courage and valor. I’m honored and humbled to have every one of you here with me. Thank you, all of you.”
Everyone raised their glasses to Phil. “You’ve kept us alive these past few weeks, Phil,” Doc Robertson said. “Most of these folks around this table didn’t have no place to go, nor a crust of bread to chew on a couple of days after E-Day. Thanks to your foresight and this wonderful ranch, every person here has not only been able to survive but to thrive. We’ll defend it to the last; I promise you that.”
Everyone else added vocal and enthusiastic support to this statement, and another wave of intense emotion surged through Phil.
“Thank you, everyone,” he said, his voice cracking, his heart swelling with pride in his friends. “Thank you all so much. For the rest of the dinner, let’s just act as if it were an ordinary Sunday evening, how about that? In these last moments of peace we have together, let’s look back at some good memories we’ve all had here. Let’s smile and laugh and worry later about what’s to come.”
Everyone agreed heartily with this, even though there were tears in many of their eyes and fear in their hearts. Eddie stood up and smiled. “Hey Phil,” he said, “remember that time one of the calves got out and got lost, and I had to go try to find him after dark, and I fell in the creek and got all covered in mud…”
“And my friends and I were camping down in the woods,” David said, picking up the story, grinning, “and we’d just watched that documentary about sasquatches.”
Phil chuckled. “How old were you, about nine or ten, right?”
“Yeah,” David said.
“And I was all covered in mud and twigs, and I was mad as all hell after having been traipsing around the damn woods in the dark, soaked to the bone after falling in the creek,” Eddie said, “and I came stumbling outta the woods just as your buddy got out of the tent to take a leak, Davey. I ain’t never heard a kid scream so loud!”
Everyone laughed, and the tension and stress were lifted, at least temporarily.
“When you and your buddies ran into the house,” Phil said to David, chuckling, “screaming about a sasquatch in the woods and looking like you’d seen a ghost, and I realized it was just Eddie all covered in mud and twigs, I almost bust a rib laughing!”
Everyone continued to tell amusing stories over dinner, and they got so lost in their memories and recollections that they almost forgot about the looming battle…almost. Soon enough, though, the sun brushed the tops of the mountains, and the air became thicker and thicker with bottled-up tension.
Phil looked out of the windows and saw that the sun had almost disappeared behind the mountains. The smile faded from his face, and it was replaced by a look of grim determination.
“All right, everyone,” he said. “The time has come. The battle will be starting soon.”
“Remember what I told y’all,” Wyatt said. “Work in pairs, with one providing cover fire at all times, especially if the other has to reload. Don’t pop your head out at the same spot every time when you’re shooting from behind cover. They’ll wait for you to do that and aim at that spot. Keep your bodies as low to the ground as possible; present as small a target to the enemy as you can. And follow orders! The rabble who’ll be attacking us probably won’t have any discipline, and that’s one area we can beat ‘em in, even with far fewer numbers. Well-disciplined sharpshooters in small numbers have overcome crazed masses of undisciplined rabble many times in military history.”
“He’s right,” Phil said. “Each group or pair, you must keep your walkie talkies on at all times, and when we say retreat, retreat! Don’t try to be a hero and ignore our orders to go out in a blaze of glory or anything stupid like that because you’ll only be hurting the rest of us. The orders aren’t about Wyatt and me having some sort of authority and power over the rest of you; they’re about winning this battle and suffering as few casualties as we possibly can.”
“We understand that, Phil,” Doc Robertson said. “Don’t worry, we’ll obey to the letter, just like real soldiers, won’t we, everyone?”
Everyone gave an enthusiastic cheer.
“Excellent,” Phil said. “Have faith, shoot straight, be disciplined and brave, and we can overcome this mob of savage criminals.”
Everyone cheered again.
“All right people,” Wyatt said, “you all know where your battle stations are. We’ve been over the positions for the first, second, and third phase of the battle a few times, and you all know where to retreat to when we give the orders. Let’s move out. Everyone get over to your first phase battle stations!”
The defenders all picked up their rifles and moved out to their various battle stations. Phil was certain that Jackson would come through the main gate because the trees lining the long drive would give his army cover from fire. If he tried to attack from any other point, he’d have to move his troops across the wide-open ground with no cover at all, where they could be cut down in masses. Even so, Phil and Wyatt had made contingency plans in case Jackson tried to do something as suicidally stupid as this and had given everyone alternative battle stations in case the attack came from the south, east, or west.
Phil gave Alice a long, tight hug and a long kiss, and then he hugged David as well. Then all three of them hugged as a family. When they stepped away from each other, tears were glistening in all of their eyes.
“I love you, Phil,” Alice said, choking up. “So much.”
“I love you, too, honey. You keep her safe, Davey, you hear?”
“Yeah, Dad,” David said, tears running down his cheeks and his lower lip quivering.
“Stay alive, both of you,” Phil said hoarsely. “Whatever happens…stay alive.”
“Come on, Phil, we gotta go,” Wyatt said gently. “It’s already getting dark out there.”
Phil took one last emo
tion-drenched look at his family, and then turned and strode briskly out of the farmhouse, stifling the sob that was rising up his throat. He and Wyatt hopped onto the dirt bikes, kicked the motors to life, and then raced up the drive to take their first battle positions. Once Phil was on the bike, he began to feel less emotional, and a hard, fierce sense of determination took over. An image of Jackson formed in his mind as he rode through the dusk, and a vengeful loathing for this evil warlord burned in his belly. He growled wordlessly and cranked the throttle, accelerating ahead of Wyatt. A part of him that rarely awoke, a part that he’d only discovered a few times—in Alice’s apartment building, in the motorcycle chase, and in the drugstore—was coming to life again. He knew that he had to fight, and he knew that he was fighting on the side of good against the forces of evil. These feelings of righteous aggression filled him with fresh energy and zeal, and he felt ready for the coming battle. All that mattered now was defeating their enemy.
He and Wyatt got to their battle stations after two or three minutes of riding. They’d chosen to begin their defense from two large boulders on either side of the drive, on top of a rise. From this vantage point, they had a clear view of the main gate, around three hundred yards away, and much of the drive, although the many trees along it would provide cover for the invaders.
Phil and Wyatt had Remington 700 rifles set up on tripods next to each of their boulders. These would be used for long-range, sniper-style shooting when the first wave of attackers came down the drive. If and when the attackers pressed on and got closer, the men would discard these rifles and use their AR-15 rifles instead and then retreat to the next position, where they’d be covered by rifle fire from multiple points. The attackers would be funneled through a killing alley if they continued to try to press on up the drive, and there would need to be hundreds of them to continue past this point.
Phil was still hoping that when his first big trap went off, it would cause enough damage to demoralize the attackers and dissuade them from coming any farther, but he knew that starvation and desperation would probably be enough to push them to continue their attack…and he was prepared for this.
The sun had disappeared behind the mountains already, and above them, the clear sky was dotted with hundreds of stars and was turning from deep blue to black. Dusk was giving way to night, but there was no sign of Jackson and his army yet.
“Where the hell is that asshole?” Wyatt asked, getting impatient.
“Maybe he was bluffing,” Phil said. He doubted that this was the case, though.
A voice crackled through Phil’s walkie talkie. It was Doc Robertson. “I’m getting these cattle pretty riled up, Phil,” he said, “but soon enough, they’re gonna become accustomed to what I’m doing, and they won’t be spooked out anymore and won’t stampede. Any sign of the enemy yet?”
“Nothing Doc,” Phil replied. “And honestly, if they don’t show up at all, it’ll be the best outcome we could have hoped for. Be ready, though; I have a feeling they’ll come eventually.”
“All right but be aware that the cattle might not do what you’re hoping they will.”
“I’ll take that into account. Over, Doc.”
“Over.”
Despite the chill of the evening air, Phil was starting to sweat. He wondered if Jackson was delaying his invasion just to mess with their heads. If that were the case, it was working.
“I really hate waiting around like this, not knowing when these assholes are gonna attack,” Wyatt grumbled. “I wish they’d just come outta the woods with guns blazing, so we could get on with this damn fight.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Phil cautioned, “because you just might—”
Before Phil could finish his sentence, a loud bang echoed from the woods beyond the gate, and an orange flare streaked up into the sky; one of the tripwires by the gate had just been set off. Jackson and his army had arrived.
“Here they come,” Phil muttered grimly, pressing his eye up to the rifle scope and easing his finger onto the trigger. “Let’s get ready to—”
Again he was cut off from finishing his sentence by a bang—but this one was a distant boom, barely audible, coming from far off. It was followed by another distant bang. Alarmed, Phil looked over his shoulder and saw two more orange flares shooting up into the sky in the distance.
“Oh shit,” he gasped as he was hit by the realization of what these flares meant. “They’re attacking from three different places at once!”
35
Phil and Wyatt hadn’t been completely unprepared for a multi-pronged attack. Phil knew that it was dangerous to underestimate an opponent and knew that as loathsome as Jackson was, he had to possess at least some measure of intelligence to have risen to the position of leader, even if what he was leading was nothing more than a glorified gang of murderers, rapists, and thieves.
Therefore, they had a contingency plan in place in the event that Jackson split his force in two and attacked from two different spots. They knew that while this presented a danger for them, it was also risky for Jackson. By splitting up his force, he was weakening the strength of his superior numbers. However, it would also split the defenders’ force, so Phil had figured that it would be a very real possibility.
What he hadn’t prepared for was a three-pronged attack. He simply hadn’t assumed that Jackson could have that many soldiers. Now the battle had started, and Jackson had taken the upper hand without a single shot being fired.
“They’re coming from three directions!” Phil yelled into his walkie talkie. “Red team and blue team, move down to the barn and cut down anyone you see coming across the pasture! Yellow team, move to the stables, you’re gonna be fighting from there because they’re coming from the south as well! We’ll hold them off as long as we can from this side! Everyone move now!”
Phil knew now that there was going to be a fierce fight regardless of what happened in this area, by the main gate. Even so, he knew that with his traps and sharpshooting, he and Wyatt would be able to decimate the segment of Jackson’s force that was attacking the main gate.
“Stay calm, keep your wits about you,” Phil muttered, half to himself and half to Wyatt. He peered through his rifle scope, watching as the first of the invaders emerged from the woods opposite the main gate. In addition to the damage that his traps would do, he was hoping that he could get a clear shot at Jackson early on in the battle. If he could take out Jackson, he hoped that it might demoralize the rest of the invaders.
The men who were emerging from the woods were all armed with firearms—there were shotguns, rifles, AK-47s, M-16s, and plenty of handguns—and most were wearing items of makeshift armor. Some were armored up in police SWAT gear, many had bulletproof vests, and some were wearing football or baseball helmets and other protective gear. They had clearly come ready for a fight. Well, Phil thought, they’re gonna get one.
He panned his scope across the gathering crowd but frustratingly saw no sign of Jackson. He wasn’t too surprised about this; he knew Jackson wouldn’t be standing out front when it was obvious that there would likely be traps and sniper fire to overcome. He had surely placed his more expendable men in the front lines.
“I’ve got clear shots at so many of these bastards,” Wyatt growled from his boulder.
“Hold off, brother,” Phil said. “We want ‘em to come on confidently so the big trap can take out as many as possible. Any rifle fire will make ‘em scatter and run for cover.”
“I know, I know…it’s just hard to refrain from taking out so many easy targets,” Wyatt said.
Phil watched as a crowd of invaders gathered outside the gate. He could hear his pulse pounding in his temples, and his mouth was dry. A man dressed in SWAT gear holding a combat shotgun stepped forward and yelled something to the others. Phil couldn’t hear what he said from this distance, but it seemed clear that this man was some sort of leader. It wasn’t Jackson—this man was much shorter than he was, although he was broad and powerfully buil
t too.
The man stepped up to the lock and blasted it twice with the shotgun. The lock shattered, and the thick chain holding the gate shut crashed to the ground. The crowd of invaders cheered, and one of them rushed forward to grab the gate.
The moment his hands came into contact with the steel, there was a dazzling burst of sparks and a loud bang, and the man was flung back with such force from the shock that his body bowled over two of the other invaders behind him. The man was dead before he hit the ground, the first casualty of the battle, which had now officially started.
“Zap!” Wyatt grunted, chuckling darkly.
The invaders hesitated, examining the smoking body of their dead comrade. The leader yelled something at them, and they seemed to get some of their courage back. A few of them broke off long pieces of grass and gingerly tested the gate, checking to see if any more deadly electrical current was flowing through it.
They quickly found out that it wasn’t, so they grabbed the gate, and when nobody else was electrocuted, they roared out a cheer of triumph and yanked it open. The crowd of attackers surged, looking like they were going to charge through the gates in a raging mass of aggression, but the leader held them back, correctly suspecting that there were more traps laying in wait for them.
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 19 | EMP Ranch Page 19