by Chris Blake
Sensing how stupid this man is, Logan runs up to Roger, pistol whips him in the head and takes his gun away from him. Roger’s guys all freak out. Logan disarms two of them in under a second in what played out like the scenes in a kung fu movie. The other two spin their rifles towards him and prepare to fire. Vintago finally draws his weapon from his holster, raises it, and shoots one of the men in the head. The other man is shot in the chest by Mitch, who had his 9mm Glock out.
Roger lying on the ground holding his bleeding head looks up at Vintago with a sad defeated look. Then the look turns to outrage, and he tries to get up. Vintago kicks him in the ribs and tells him to stay down.
“You listen to me now.” Vintago says, “Two more of your men are dead, and if you and these other two want to leave this hilltop alive, then you best calm the fuck down and get out of here while you still can.”
Roger thinks about this as he lies on the ground, and then he feigns obedience and slowly rises. Logan waves him and his men to their vehicle and tells them to leave their guns since they will not need them anymore.
“I want you all to go home, and think about this, and decide how you want to proceed from here. I don’t want to start a battle with you Roger.” Vintago explains.
“You haven’t started a battle, you’ve started a war!” Roger says as he jumps in his truck and speeds off down the road.
Everyone looks to Vintago to see if he wants them to follow or not. Vintago just shakes his head, not wanting to proceed. For all, he knows this could be their entire strategy, lure them into a chase and then ambush them. Vintago decides it would be best to prepare for a counter attack and get everyone ready. He tells the group what he wants to do, and his command team is in agreement.
Logan quickly tells everyone to gather their gear. One rifle, six extra mags, one handgun, three additional mags, and the rest would be brought down later. Logan sends Greg down the hill to get the rest of the fighters that had been left behind when they made a dash up the hill.
Logan told the group to stay off the road and start heading back to the hatchery, but he hopes they listened.
Alpha team is the first team ready to go, and Vintago has his four men pile in a truck and waves Alpha over. They all jump in the back of the truck, and Logan hauls ass down the hill.
As they drive down the hill, Greg passes them heading back to the hatchery. Thankfully, all their men are fine. They look a little shaken up, but they must have hidden off the road like Logan told them to.
Vintago calls Lieutenant Quinton, whom they left back at the hatchery and tells him that the rest of Bravo team will be there shortly and to get them ready.
Logan makes the trip down to the road quickly, and he pulls the truck perpendicular to the highway. The five command team members and four Alpha team members get out of the truck in a hurry and spread out. They check across the road for signs of the resort group and see nothing. Vintago radios back up to Quinton and asks where they are at. He says that they are almost done loading up and will be down in ten minutes.
“We need to get a barricade put together so they can’t just drive up the road. This is the only road into the compounds, and unless they intend to take a hike up the canyon, this is where they will come from.” Vin tells the group.
Logan begins issuing orders to Alpha team, Mitch, and Robby. He wants them to bring boulders and logs down from the surrounding forest to create a thrown together palisade. The men start rolling down massive boulders and carrying heavy logs to construct a barrier across the road. The road leading to the hatchery is only two lanes and has a ridge on both sides so it will be fairly easy to block off.
After what seems like forever, but realistically is nine minutes Quinton and Bravo team arrive in two more pickup trucks. They all pile out of two vehicles and form up near Vintago and Logan.
Vintago immediately gets them working to help strengthen the wooden palisade. Thirty minutes go by, and the guys have constructed a standard four foot high rock and wooden defensive position. If a truck rammed it, they might make it through, although the boulders would wreck the hell out of it.
Vin takes a step back to admire their handy work, when he hears another vehicle approaching from the rear. He turns to look, and it is the big flatbed truck. The truck is piled high with munitions, and people. Both the builder team and the maintenance team have loaded into the truck and driven down to the highway. They brought enough guns and ammo to start a real war.
As the truck pulls to a stop, Greg leans out the window and waves, “Thought you boys might need extra guns, and men to hold them!”
Vintago just shakes his head. He’s not quite sure he wants the entire camp down here at the highway. Someone needs to protect the compound and the women and children. Vintago speaks with Logan about this, and Logan agrees. They decide to send Greg and the men back up the hill and tell them to arm up. They also need to get everyone from both compounds located at the hatchery, that way they can all be protected easily.
As Greg loads his guys back up in the truck, Vintago takes him aside and talks to him privately.
“If something happens to us down here, I want you to pack everyone up in the trucks and get the fuck out of there. Take the back road, and don’t come back.” Vin says quietly.
“Where should we go?” Greg asks with a concerned look.
“Just load up and head towards Heber. If we make it out, then we will regroup outside of Heber.” Vin tells him.
Greg just nods slowly and gets in the truck. The idea of having to leave their new home and run for the hills was not something either of them wanted to seriously consider.
Vintago, Logan and their men spend the last few remaining hours of daylight expanding their defenses to include improvised pillboxes on each side of their line. The pillboxes did not constitute more than logs stacked on top of each other with rocks in between to make shooting space, but they would do. They had put one M249 in each pillbox which enabled them to sweep the entire highway across from them.
If the resort crew was stupid enough to come up their road and storm the hatchery road, they would be literally cut to pieces by the two machine guns.
After their makeshift defenses were constructed, they decided to hunker down and settle in for the night. A nasty looking thunderstorm was coming, and with temperatures in the high twenties at sundown, they were looking at snow tonight. Not the best night to be sitting out on the highway in the open.
As night approached, so did the storm, and just after the sun went down, the first snowflakes started falling. Vintago and his men were freezing their asses off, and the guys wanted to start some fires to warm up. Logan knew fires were not smart in a combat situation, but decided to keep that to himself. These men were not soldiers, and letting them sit and freeze all night would make them combat ineffective, so either way they were screwed.
The guys gathered up whatever wood they could scrounge up from the forest nearby, and made a large pile in the middle of the road near their defenses. The wood, being slightly damp from the snowfall refused to light. They did what any hillbilly would do, and doused it all in gasoline. Within minutes, they had a roaring fire going in the middle of their position and everyone huddled around it to warm up.
The hours went by without incident, and everyone started to get tired. The men wanted to get some sleep and perform shift rotations for guarding the highway. Vintago decided this was a reasonable idea, and they split the group up. Logan decided to stay behind with the first group of guys and keep an eye on things. Logan decided it would be good for Mitch, Robby, and Alpha team to take the first watch. Vintago also thought it would be wise to have half of the command team at the Hatchery as well, so him, and Colonel Bradley decided to take off.
The rest of the command team and Bravo team piled into the trucks and left to get some sleep at the hatchery. They waved to the remaining men and said their goodbyes. Vintago told Logan that they would be back in four hours and to call him on the radio if anything came up.<
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Logan sat back down next to one of the fires and tried to get warm. As he sat down, he could not help but think that night was going to be a long one. They may only be defending the road against a bunch of civilians, but he knew what people could resort to when they were trying to survive. This was going to complicate their plans indeed.
Chapter Twenty One
Assault
February, 2013
Roger Wilson walked quietly through the new fallen snow. They had followed the creek under the overpass and were slowly but surely approaching the position that Vintago and his men had constructed. Roger had been watching Vintago and his men build their defenses all day, and as night came, he knew there was no way that they could take them head on, especially after he watched them load up two machine guns.
Roger went back to his people, and they began to formulate a plan. There were thirty of them total that were willing to take out their neighboring enemies. Everyone but a few adults and the children had left their camp. Once Roger explained what Vintago’s group had done, what kinds of supplies and munitions they had, it was an easy sell for him.
Roger was never a fighting man. He was a boring person before the outbreak. He sold used cars and dabbled in other sales related positions. That’s mainly why his group had chosen them as their de facto leader. He was a smooth talking man and could create a good story. The people were more than willing to fight with him, once he told them the grass was greener on the other side.
Roger knew that he was extremely outgunned by Vintago’s group, but he had more men than Vintago by almost double. That being said, Roger knew that Vintago had some highly trained men, even a couple of his own highly trained men. That’s what pissed Roger off the most. He lost four good fighters to that asshole, and it was going to cripple his camp in the long run. What if they ran into more groups like Vintago’s? Roger needed to end this right now, and he was prepared to do so. He regretted having to shoot at men that were until yesterday part of his camp, but in the end, they chose the wrong side.
Roger got everyone packed up and assembled in the lobby of their resort. They grabbed whatever firearms they had, and all the spare ammo. They didn’t need to conserve it because when they were done, they would have more than enough.
Roger didn’t want to kill everyone, he was not a murderer. He was hoping that they could take them by surprise, get them to surrender, and then take their supplies. What he would do with them after that he did not know. He just figured that he would cross that bridge when he got there.
They all stalked out of the lobby and trudged down to the creek below their resort. It was a two mile hike along the creek, under the overpass, and to the bottom of the hill where Vintago’s men were waiting. It took his group about three hours and well into the middle of the night to get setup.
It was about two hours from sunrise when Roger finally got everyone in position and ready to attack the group from their right flank. Roger’s plan was to overwhelm the group quickly and prevent them from calling the rest of the group at the hatchery.
Roger and his party slowly creep up the hill. At about thirty yards out, he gets down on his belly and starts low crawling towards them, like he had seen in the movies. He got so close that he could see the men sitting around the fire, their silhouettes casting shadows across the forest behind them.
A single stick breaks in the distance and Logan spins his head around. His senses, trained like an animal, had not been dampened by his years of retirement from the Navy.
Logan stands up, clicks on his flashlight, and walks towards the edge of the road. His son stands up looking groggy, but still sharp. Logan waves Robby to back off a bit and his son complies.
He walks a few feet into the edge of the forest, and within a heartbeat, all hell breaks loose.
A bullet zing past his head, so close he can feel the heat, and suddenly the forest erupts in gunfire.
Logan dives to the ground and yells to his men over the gunfire, “Everyone get down! They are coming up from the creek!”
Logan grunts as he pulls his rifle out from under him and returns fire. While he is shooting, he slowly scoots back towards the fire and his men.
“Cover me!” he yells back to them.
When he gets within a few yards, he hops up, turns, and runs like hell. He dives behind the embankment and keeps shooting into the forest. It’s way too dark to see into the woods, and all they can see is muzzle flashes. He mentally kicks himself for letting them have the fire because it is outright killing their night vision right now.
“Put out that fire as best you can!” Logan tells his son.
Robby hunches over and runs towards the fire, kicking it over and spreading it out with his boot. Nathan and Jose finally manage to get the M249s moved to the embankment and fully open them up on the resort group. Suppressive fire to the maximum should keep their heads down Logan hopes.
Just as Nathan gets the gun set up on its bi-pod and starts firing the weapon he takes a bullet to the neck. The round slams into his neck and comes out the other side spraying blood all over his Lieutenant.
Trevor immediately drops to the ground and tries to stop the bleeding. He grabs a Quikclot from his pocket and splashes it into the wound on his young friend’s neck.
Logan watches in dismay, but orders Anthony to get on the M249. Anthony drops his rifle and worms over to the M249 to keep the weapon firing.
Mitch is huddled behind the engine block of their truck and has the radio pressed to his lips with one hand and his M4 rifle in the other hand firing blindly over the top of the truck towards the forest.
“Hatchery come in!” he yells into the radio, “We are under attack, and need assistance!”
Before the radio call even came in, Vintago heard the exchange of gunfire down by the road and was already moving. He was running through the compound telling everyone to get out of bed and collect their gear.
Within two, minutes, every man he had was armed and stumbling out of their quarters. He waved them towards the vehicles and jumped in the driver’s seat of one of the trucks. Before even checking to ensure everyone was loaded in the truck, he slammed the gas pedal down.
As the first turn in the road approached to quickly, Colonel Bradley yelled out, “Slow down Vintago! You killing us on the road is not going to save our boys!”
Vintago slams on the brakes and power slides the weighty truck around the corner, sending everyone in the back of the truck flying across the truck bed. They all slam together and land in a big pile, grunting and cursing.
It takes what seems like an eternity, but realistically is only minutes to reach the bottom of the hill. They can see muzzle flashes coming from the forest. It looks like there are hundreds of them in the forest shooting at his men, and there are only a few weapons returning fire.
Vintago’s heart jumps into his chest as he wonders who is hit, and hopes that it is not Logan, Robby or Mitch. The three of them are far too valuable to him.
Logan heard the trucks approaching from the north, and turns to look as Vintago, and the rest of the men pile out. It looks like every single individual has come to their rescue, and Logan needs it.
Lieutenant Trevor had taken a bullet to the chest while performing compressions on Nathan trying to save him. Trevor was now bleeding out on the ground next to his brother he was trying desperately to save. Nobody has time to tend to Trevor, and his wound was quickly draining his life.
Jose had been shot in the shoulder, but continued to fire the M249 like nothing had happened. Anthony had been caught in the eye by some shrapnel as a round nicked a rock. He was blind in one eye but fired his M249 anyway. The two men were tough soldiers. They watched two of their friends go down, but continued to provide suppressive fire, knowing that it was the only thing keeping the enemy at bay.
Logan and Robby had made it so far without getting hurt, but Mitch had taken one to the leg and he laid in a pile behind the truck he was using for cover. He was lying on the ground stil
l calling out over the radio.
Roger Wilson, on the other side of the embankment, was about to lose this battle. He had lost nine men to the far superior firepower. He had thought that with only seven men guarding the highway, it would be an easy fight. The mistake had cost him almost one third of his men, and he saw the trucks pull up and Vintago jump out. He knew that all was lost as Vintago brought another two dozen men into the fight.
Roger quickly tells everyone to keep firing, but to make a run for it underneath the overpass and back to the resort. They would have to fight them from the lobby of the resort and hope that they could kill enough of them to make them give up.
Vintago watches as the gunfire slows down and starts getting farther away. They must be retreating, and he knows, now is the time to strike.
Vintago, Bravo team, and the rest of the men all run towards their friends. When they get there, the scene is unreal. There is blood everywhere, illuminated by the remnants of the fire. Nathan is clearly dead, and Trevor looks to be barely holding on. Two other men are wounded pretty badly.
Logan stands up and tells Vintago they need to counter attack and finish this off once and for all. Vintago tells Bravo team to follow them and tells the builders to get the wounded men up the hill for triage.
The two commanders, Robby, and Bravo team all start running towards the highway. They want to cut them off as they come out from under the overpass. They should be able to cut them down from an elevated position.
Vintago leads the way and runs as fast as he can towards the overpass. As they approach the wall, bullets ricochet into the top of it, causing them to duck down. Not to be dissuaded, Vintago pops his head up over the overpass and fires down into the men and women. He sees at least two of them drop dead in the breaking light of dawn.
The rest of Vintago’s men arrive, and they pour lead into the resort group as they all flee towards their home. The enemies go from twenty survivors down to ten in under a minute. The smart ones take cover behind boulders and return fire.