by G. R. Carter
“No, but all indications are it’s the biggest group of ditchmen and rateaters ever assembled. Remember when we ran that gang out of Decatur? Well, turns out that must have been an affiliate to the real base of power in Springfield. We let that area go thinking there was nothing left living there but savages. Figured they’d die out over time. Meanwhile, they must have been the ones organizing the raids on the Blackhawks out west,” Alex said.
He was angry with himself for overlooking such an important piece of geography. The Blackhawk Confederation in what was once western Illinois and eastern Iowa repeatedly warned him that there must be someone organizing all the raids on their communities. Alex didn’t ignore their concerns but he had other things on his mind closer to home. Constant vigilance north towards New America and an obsession with defeating them caused a back door to be left wide open to the Republic’s capital.
“I would have figured the ditchmen to go after an easier target. If they’re organized like this, they could have easily taken out the Blackhawks. So the Grays stooped so low as to join up with a gang of bandits?”
“I guess their hatred for us knows no bounds,” Alex smiled. “I need you to get to Sheriff Olsen as soon as possible. Thank you, Easton, for answering the call to defend the Republic.”
“Fall before the crawl,” Stabler growled with a sinister gleam in his eye as he headed back to the truck.
“Fall before the crawl,” Alex replied and turned back towards the Chief Engineer of the Wizards. “Celeste, please take that rolling death trap back behind the city gates,” he said, pointing to the landship that still sat idling. “I’m only taking vehicles into the fight that I know the capabilities of. And I sure don’t know what that thing does except make a nice fat target.”
He sighed and said as much to himself as to his Wizard Chief: “That makes eleven Rhinos and a couple of Razorbacks to help Olsen hold Tower Hill. I just hope that’s enough.”
Red Hawk Republic Capital
Day of the New America/GangStar Invasion
“There’s too many! Abandon the vehicles and get behind the walls!” Alex shouted above the roar of the guns and engines. A look of indecision passed over the crew members' faces as they pondered what leaving behind their precious vehicles meant.
“There’s no time to open the main gates and get them through! Rig them for self-destruct and let’s go!” the Founder shouted at the top of his lungs.
The few remaining Red Hawk warriors sprang into action. Exhausted, each man and woman reached down for their last measure of will to accomplish their Founder’s orders.
Alex urged each one through the narrow opening wedged beside the city gates. The single-person entrance would only be open long enough to let them reach relative safety behind the three-story city walls. Finally, he entered himself, listening for the reassuring clank of metal being reinforced as the entrance was locked by the guards. He sprung to the staircase leading up to the ramparts at the top of the wall. Eight-foot wide platforms stood just below the parapet, holding every man, woman, and older child who could handle a weapon.
As Alex reached the top and looked out over the open fields he was horrified. We’ve killed hundreds, probably thousands, and there seems like just as many now as at the beginning of the day. Mass hordes of men and vehicles converged on the city; black flags with a white ring the only markings to be seen. We’ve lost so much already, and I still don’t even know who they are. He thought he recognized the symbol from somewhere, but couldn’t quite place it. No matter, all that’s important is keeping them out of here.
Alex spotted the first of the surviving ditchmen reach one of the abandoned Turtles. As the savage climbed up the armored slope, Alex could clearly see the matted blond hair that strung down his back and tied up with some kind of vine or twine. Blue and blurry tattoos spread all over his arms and back like creeping ink vines. Two scraggly hands reached up with middle fingers extended, flashing them back and forth to the defenders above. Piercing eyes glanced up at the wall, meeting Alex’s own. The ditchmen had a blue circle tattooed on his forehead, matching the symbol on the flags flying over the surging masses.
Alex felt the hatred in the man’s eyes, like this fight was personal. Do it you SOB Alex thought as the savage opened the Turtle’s hatch. Instantaneously the vehicle erupted as explosive charges were triggered from inside. The bandit disappeared in a fireball that claimed ten others beginning to climb over the stricken vehicles. Something registered in their warped minds alerting them to hidden danger. Only a fresh batch of arrivals caused the second vehicle to be breached, leading to another dozen dead ditchmen and a final lesson not to touch abandoned Red Hawk vehicles.
Shots from the top of the wall reached out to mow down waves moving ladders into position up on the smooth sides of the metal and concrete walls. The sprinkler system engaged, spurting diesel fuel. Flames burst from the walls engulfing the ladders and the men who carried them. Intense heat rose from the base of the wall, causing survivors to stagger backwards.
Heavy machine guns from towers interspersed every thirty yards joined Civil War-style howitzer's firing canister shot to provide a crossfire kill box. The lines of outlaws wavered, unable to withstand the death coming at them from the city’s defenses. Without a single command the tide receded, leaving behind a carpet of dead and dying. The wall guns continued to fire on the retreating mass, until finally the range was too great to accurately find targets.
An uneasy calm fell over the field as both sides considered their next moves. The city defenses were well organized thanks in large part to the designs of Paul Kelley, who heeded the council of his sister Nicole. Many of the same concepts she built into the updated defenses of ARK’s headquarters in old St. Louis influenced the design here. While Paul still held his original duties managing the biofuel refineries now dotting the Republic, Alex couldn’t let the engineer’s mind for details go to waste. So Paul drew up standardized plans to help each Fortress Farm and small town in the Republic get their defenses in order as quickly as possible.
A cheer rose up from the city’s defenders as the Greenfield Shield rose up from each and every gun tower along the bulwarks. The original flag of the Okaw Valley Self Defense Cooperative, the predecessor of the Republic, still served as the flag of the capital city itself. A trademark of the Republic was that each community that joined got to keep its own symbols. Alex couldn’t think of a better rally point than the emerald banner made famous by his father.
Cheers turned to gasps as people began to point towards the field in front of the gates. Sun sparkled off of metal as half a dozen gray towers crept toward the city walls, pushed by large trucks or tractors. The towers had ten-foot tall tires on each of the four corners, spread out evenly enough to maintain the balance of the sloped rectangles that appeared to be at least forty feet tall.
Alex mind raced as he considered the options. I shouldn’t have abandoned the Turtles, he cursed to himself. And now there was no way to get the vehicles back without setting off the self-destruct charges. With some time they could disarm the charges, but he estimated the towers would be at the walls in less than five minutes. Think, man! Think!
His vision was distracted by the flash of a Talon, one of the new twin-engine bombers the Wizards were developing. Smoke poured from the nose, and Alex worried that a stray bullet from the massed army below found its range. Relief settled in as he realized the smoke belonged to the new Gatling gun mounted underneath the pilot’s compartment on the experimental craft. The relief then mixed with delight as one of the mobile towers ground to a halt; fire and smoke rising from the vehicle pushing it forward. A mighty cheer rose from the walls…and then just as quickly died out as the Talon banked and flew over the city, waggling its wings in salute to the defenders. One pass, and the ammo is gone, Alex thought. I guess that’s why they call them prototypes.
Now he had to deal with the remaining towers. Once the ditchmen leaders sensed the towers were close enough, they sent their les
s-disciplined savages forward once more. The filthy masses surged at the walls, again trying to set ladders even though the safer towers were just moments behind. Something I’m missing here, Alex thought. This doesn’t make sense, even for a mass mob attack. His mind raced, calling up lessons taught to him by Martin Fredericks and Gordon Steinbrink in his military history classes. Sandbox tactics, Alex thought. Fredericks said the Jihadis would use distractions before hitting them with a…
Alex watched in horror as a six-wheeled transport broke from the ditchmen positions and headed straight for the city gates. Black exhaust smoke poured from the exhaust as the massive vehicle tried to make the hundred-yard dash before the city defenders could stop it.
“Kill that truck! Extra bracing at the gate!” Alex shouted, sprinting down towards the metal stairway that switched back and forth down the wall. The shouts went unheard over the screaming and shooting. His eyes flicked back and forth, finally landing on the landship Celeste had placed behind the gates just as Alex commanded.
Alex jumped into the driver’s compartment, searching for the switch to fire the engines. Only a moment passed – the Wizards were famous for labeling every switch and knob in their creations, something about keeping dumb jocks from screwing up their masterpieces – and he had the vehicle running. He slammed it into gear and lurched toward the city gates, positioning the vehicle parallel to the wall just as a massive truck bomb exploded from the other side, jarring the metal plating and pushing in the seam holding the doors together. The multi-ton landship shifted with the force of the blast and the weight of the massive gates, but held firm just a few feet past its initial resting point.
Instead of an open area to surge into, the ditchmen found a narrow opening sprouting twisted metal that sliced invaders like a reaper's scythe. Waves behind pushed the first attacking berserkers into the opening where they were met by a pack of Guardian dogs, joined in attack by their human handlers. The unimaginable horror of sharp fangs meeting rusty blades turned the entrance into a pit of bloody muck.
Still trapped in the wrecked landship’s driver compartment, darkness washed over Alex’s mind. I couldn’t hold on, Dad. I’m sorry, I really tried. Please forgive me. He thought about Clark Olsen, fighting for his life surrounded by ditchmen and probably already dead. He thought about the Fortress Farms trying to hold on up north, hopelessly outnumbered. Then Rebekah and their children flashed through his mind. Please don’t let them suffer because of my mistakes. Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. As he repeated the prayer, Alex felt as much as saw a shadow pass above him. Then another as the sun itself was blocked by massive shapes quietly gliding through the crisp winter sky. He held on, wondering what it all meant. Then his consciousness faded, and the shadow became night.
New America
Lincoln City
New America Capital
Martin Fredericks lowered his field glasses for a moment, allowing his eyes to regain focus of his immediate surroundings. Instinctively, he turned around to make sure the long snakelike column of armored vehicles remained behind him. Satisfied once more, he raised the field glasses again, this time to make a final decision on what to do with the New American fortifications that lay in front of him.
“Force of fifty. No heavy weapons. No heavy armor, sir,” Fredericks' aide informed him. The young officer was the oldest child of one of his fellow Ten Vets. She was coming of age in a world strange to him, but apparently quite natural to her. That they sat on what once served as a busy interstate allowing commerce back and forth between American cities didn’t register with her. In her mind, there were enemy soldiers right ahead and her task was to kill them in the name of her own people. That there might be young people on the other side of those fortifications who thought the same way meant nothing to her. The Grays weren’t another sports team to be beat in basketball; they were mortal enemies to be removed at all costs.
Fredericks sighed at the thought, knowing they had to end this war now. Alex, Rebekah and all the leadership of the Republic agreed that if the conflict didn’t end soon, future generations would consider this a blood feud. They’d still be fighting over clumps of black land in a hundred years without anyone still around to remember what started the fight in the first place. Those who remembered America as one great nation, whatever her faults, would at least try to stop that.
Signals kept coming from one of the many observation balloons he had hovering over the New American capital city. No sense in being subtle now, the Grays all knew Red Hawk “barbarians” were at the gates. He laughed as he thought about the propaganda posters they found on the walls of the firebases captured on the trip north to the capital. Pictures of demon-looking hawks swooping down and snatching children away from frightened mothers. A caricature of Alex burning the homes of New American families while using the Stars and Stripes flag as kindling. Fredericks had intelligence officers collect a sample of each for his report back to the Republic senate when it assembled next month.
“Sir, more air recon reporting…signals say no heavy armor heading in this direction. No contiguous walled areas, either. Just some random firebases spread around the outskirts of the capital,” the young lieutenant reported.
“I sort of suspected this. But somehow I still can’t fully believe it,” Fredericks muttered.
“How’s that, Commander? Believe what?”
“We’ve all had years to build walls around what we want to protect. Survivors I mean. After the Reset our main concerns were food and security. Walls mean security right now. At least until artillery and air power become dominant again. But for now, defenses can hold when you’re vastly outnumbered if the attackers have to climb walls to get to you.”
Fredericks suddenly felt a sense of dread, thinking about his countrymen in Tower Hill and the Red Hawk capital of Shelbyville. He prayed his theory was correct in those instances. Have to clear my head, get to the mission, make their sacrifice worth it.
He continued aloud: “Walsh has been so focused on his offensive wars that he neglected to build defenses for his own capital. Real defenses, I mean. Apparently, he’s emptied the place of every able-bodied soldier for the gamble that he can beat us right now. So all that’s left are the very young, the very old and probably the very wounded.”
“But sir, isn’t that what the Founder is doing right now? Aren’t we in the exact same position?” the lieutenant asked sincerely.
“Yes and no. War is a gamble. I mean, it’s always a gamble, you never know what’s going to happen. The Founder hedged by making sure any attacking force would have to fight for every mile. Our air power makes a difference, but the real keys are the Fortress Farms. If the Grays bypass them, the militia of each farm will harass the flanks and cut lines of communication. If the Grays attack them, they have to spend time organizing a costly assault on each one. That time allows us to organize our own counterattack,” Fredericks replied.
“So we bloody their nose and then give them the knockout blow,” she said.
“That’s the plan, anyway. But right now I’m trying to figure out how to capture the prize in front of us without killing a lot of civilians,” Fredericks said.
The young woman looked at the Commander of Red Hawk forces with a confused look. After a moment, all she could ask was, “Why?”
“Lieutenant Beasley, I’ve know your mother since we were in the Sandbox together. I know she raised you better than that. Frankly, I’m quite concerned at that question, and I can assure you we’ll be discussing it when this over,” Fredericks said, nearly spitting out the words in rage. “We don’t kill people because we can. We only fight when we need to. Have you learned nothing in your time with me? If we kill civilians with disregard then we’re really no better than those we wish to defeat, are we?”
The young lieutenant looked downcast, preferring to be anywhere but standing in front of her commanding officer. Fredericks was famous for a preternatural calm under even the most stressful of co
nditions. Few ever witnessed a reaction like this from him, and everyone quickly appeared busy for fear of facing this wrath storm.
“I’m sorry, sir. I guess I was just thinking about what the Grays have done to some of our people. They never have any concern for our civilians,” she said sheepishly.
“Are you a Gray?”
“No sir, I’m a Red Hawk.”
“Then why would you act like a Gray? Don’t you get it? Those are real people over there in those buildings! Flesh and blood, like you and me. They’re scared to death thinking we’re here to murder them and their children. Until just a few years ago, I was a soldier sworn to protect all Americans. Not just those who lived in a few square miles of what used to be Central Illinois. I’m talking about people who lived all over the world. American soldiers traveled to the most remote places on earth because our government thought they were helping others. The leaders were mistaken, but we as soldiers tried our best. I expect that same consideration out of each of you.”
A flash of light from one of the observation balloons caught their eye. Lieutenant Beasley began to jot down the message on her notepad. “Count twenty-two vehicles. Light armor. Heading east with haste,” the she said as she translated the dots and dashes. “Why east, sir? To attack us they should be heading south.”
“Because we just flushed our prey. Walsh is making a run for it. Just like the Founder said he would. He calculated the odds, figured out he can’t keep us from taking the city, so he’s going to try and reorganize in the capital of his Indiana province. He should be heading right into the net of Eric Olsen’s Task Force 49 just east of the city a few miles. I just hope he didn’t have any trouble setting up the trap on his end,” Fredericks said.
He turned to speak to his company commanders gathered around him. “Ok, here’s the plan of attack. Button up tight. You only fire if you’ve been fired on. If you stumble across a nest of vipers, pop smoke for it and wait for an observation balloon to get you the info. I want minimal casualties. If all goes to plan, these will be your fellow countrymen soon. They’ve had to live under Walsh’s thumb for several years, and unless I’m wrong, many will welcome us. But there are others who have been brainwashed into thinking we’re the devil incarnate,” he said, pausing to let that sink in. “Let’s not make them think they’re right by blazing away.”