by Eric Walters
“Away to where?” Tom asked.
“Back to the houses,” I answered.
“And then?” he asked.
“And then we’ll regroup.”
I knew what our plan was, but really, was it a plan anymore? The bridge had been blown up. The channel was under attack. There were twenty enemy boats off the beach and the wall had been taken. The back gate had been overwhelmed. We were on an island and there was no way off except into the lake. We had a few small boats stashed in the forest by the point, but there wasn’t going to be enough space for everybody.
“Why are they waiting?” Ryan asked.
“I guess they’re just waiting until they’ve all landed. Then they’ll come at us in force. They still must be worried about what we have,” I said.
“They’re worried?” Tom asked, and all three of us laughed in response. How could any of us find this funny?
“The waiting is the hardest part,” he said. “I just wish they’d get started.”
“I think you’re about to get your wish,” I said.
They were starting to move up from the wall toward the houses—toward us.
“Make your shots count,” I said. I felt like I was channeling my mother.
We all propped our guns against the rocks. I took aim at the first man in the first group. I hoped they were both aiming at somebody else. There was no gain in killing the same man three times.
“Wait…not yet…wait for Garth to fire,” I said quietly.
I kept my focus down the sight of the gun. I looked at the man’s chest, right where I was aiming. They were getting closer, moving slowly and deliberately, their weapons at the ready. Closer and closer. What was Garth waiting for? Maybe we should just fire now. They’d soon be on top of us and—the sound of gunfire exploded off to our right and I pulled the trigger.
The lead man recoiled with the bullets hitting him and he toppled backwards. I aimed the gun to the left, spraying bullets as another and another and another man crumpled to the sand! Those to the sides either dropped to the ground to take cover or started running back, retreating, some even dropping their rifles as they ran.
I kept my finger on the trigger and I could hear the sounds of Tom and Ryan firing—single shots mixed with the constant recoils and explosions coming from my assault rifle. Then there was silence. My finger was still on the trigger but there were no more bullets left. My gun was empty.
Out on the beach there were bodies strewn about. How many of them were dead and how many had just dropped for cover? The rest were far back, having taken cover by the wall, where the slope protected them from our fire.
“So do we run now?” Tom asked.
I looked down toward Garth. He wasn’t firing but he wasn’t moving either. Suddenly he got up on all fours and started scrambling toward me. He stopped before there was an opening that would have exposed him.
“Here,” he said. He tossed something—a clip—and it landed in the sand beside me. I grabbed it. I removed the empty clip from the rifle and clicked in the full one.
There was a gunshot and I looked over. Tom had just fired at one of the bodies on the beach.
“He was getting ready to fire,” Tom explained, sounding like he needed to defend himself.
“Good…thanks…keep your eye on the bodies that are closest to us.”
There was now complete silence. I couldn’t allow myself to believe that somehow we’d scared them away for anything more than a few minutes. They were just regrouping, waiting to charge again, or—they started to move. They were coming up the beach slowly, carefully, practically crawling to keep themselves at least partially hidden. A few would run forward a dozen paces and then throw themselves down, weapons aimed at us as the next group ran forward. They weren’t going to just recklessly walk toward us. This time there would be fire directed at us. As soon as we shot there was going to be a hailstorm of bullets coming our way. This time, what we’d done before wasn’t going to work. It was time to fall back.
And then the silence was broken by the sound of gunfire. It was distant and steady but also different. I’d been around enough firing ranges to recognize heavier guns being fired. If they had heavy guns as well as the assault rifles, we were doomed. Anxiously I turned my head trying to figure out where it was coming from. Was it the back gate, or the channel?
Then there was another sound. It was an engine.
It got louder and louder, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from or what it was or—an airplane raced over the tops of the houses, almost skimming the roofs. It was one of the Mustangs from the airport—it was one of Colonel Wayne’s planes! It dipped down, guns blazing, as bullets carved a path across the beach, right through the men moving up the sand! The sound of the engine, the .50-caliber machine guns pounding, and screams of anguish filled the air.
The second Mustang swooped down, guns blazing, ripping into the ground and tearing the men lying there into pieces! It was almost beyond belief, watching this unfold before my eyes. And almost before it had arrived it was gone, with the second plane, shooting off over the lake.
The men on the sand, those still able to move, those still alive, jumped to their feet and ran back down toward the wall. Some raised their rifles in a futile attempt to fire off a few rounds at the planes, which had disappeared over the water. I raised my rifle as well and fired at them as they ran. A couple crumpled to the sand, either shot or taking cover.
The planes were well over the lake but had started to bank back toward the beach. As the first of the two came closer it let out another blast of fire, and I could see that it was targeting some of the boats. One of them rocked under the impact of the bullets hitting, and then a second and third vessel were hit.
The second plane made one more pass over the beach, flying so low that I could see the pilot. As he dropped down he started firing and a path of bullets hit the wall. The dip in the beach stopped me from seeing what he was firing at, but whatever was there would be torn to pieces.
I heard movement behind and realized we’d been so busy looking in one direction that we’d left ourselves completely exposed. I spun around and—it was my mother and a few others coming to help us!
And then I saw they weren’t alone. There were others—heavily armed—running right after them. There had to be twenty of them. Leading the group was Colonel Wayne! It wasn’t just his planes, he and his men had come to help us! We were saved. We were safe. Well, safe except for the armed men still alive at the water’s edge, and whoever else was still at the back gate or moving through the houses. This wasn’t over. Not yet. But that was more than I could have hoped for five minutes earlier. We at least had a fighting chance now.
31
It was still early enough that the day was calm and quiet. If I didn’t look too hard or inhale too deeply it was possible to believe that it had all been a bad dream. Of course, dreaming would have involved sleeping, and there hadn’t been much of that the past three nights for me or for anybody else.
The thing I couldn’t escape, even if I closed my eyes, was the smell—the lingering smoke, the residue of the fires. The last house fire had been extinguished yesterday but almost twenty homes had been damaged during the attack, and after, when we’d driven out the last of the invaders who were taking shelter in them.
I was heading toward Chris’s house, and when I turned a corner I was startled by a couple and a small child coming toward me. I knew them. As they passed, the little boy—Emerson—offered me a smile and a little wave. I waved back. His parents passed as if they didn’t even notice me. Their expressions were frozen. It wasn’t that they were ignoring me; it was as if they hadn’t seen me at all.
That dazed, glazed look was everywhere. So many people had lost loved ones, had even seen them die before their eyes, or had seen things happen that they’d never thought possible. There was so much death. And that was another smell—the smell of death, the smell of the bodies. There were so many bodies. There was no final count
yet but I’d heard the number two hundred and eleven being mentioned. Two hundred—one out of every four people who lived here…had lived here. In the end, though, the invaders who had died outnumbered that. The planes had had devastating consequences.
Volunteers willing to collect the bodies had formed a team and started with the people who had belonged to our community, moving on then to the bodies of the invaders who had died in or near the houses. Because there were too many bodies to bury it was decided that we would bury only “our” people. The bodies of the invaders were gathered up, thrown into wheelbarrows and kids’ wagons, and brought to the beach, because there were so many of them there to begin with. They were thrown into a big pile right at the edge of the water by the stone breakwater and then soaked with gasoline and set on fire. Fortunately, for the most part the wind blew the smoke and smell and ashes away from the houses and toward the city. Sometimes, though, the wind swirled around and changed direction, and then the odor would reach us.
There was still a chimney of smoke rising above the beach. In the beginning it had been so thick and dark it had stained the sky, but now it was thin and wispy and whitish. There probably wasn’t much left to burn. I hadn’t been down there. In fact, I wanted to be as far away as possible.
In the end we counted 232 invaders killed. That didn’t include the men who had been blown up at the bridge, or those who had died on the boats, or who had drowned trying to escape.
The day before, our people had cleared out the last of the stragglers who hadn’t been killed or fled. It was difficult and dangerous, and Colonel Wayne and his men had led the way, going throughout the community house by house, and then into the forest, killing or chasing the invaders. They’d steered them to the beach and then driven them into the lake. Some of them had left behind their weapons and shoes and swum out, thinking it was better to risk drowning than being shot.
It was terrible and tragic that the invaders had made it to the houses before our rescue came. I guess I shouldn’t have complained, though. I was one of the lucky ones. If my mother and the colonel hadn’t come when they did, the six of us by the beach would have been dead. As we were firing onto the beach, our backs to the houses, other invaders were moving in right behind us. From what I could gather we were no more than thirty seconds away from being killed. And without their help—the men on the ground and the planes in the air—we all would have been killed.
There had been just too many of them, and their superior firepower had allowed them to sweep over our defenses. Guards with fake guns and even real single-shot rifles were no match for them. So many of our guards had been killed. It was terrible, but at least I understood those deaths. It was what had happened next that I couldn’t understand or forgive.
The invaders had fired indiscriminately at everything that moved. They’d shot women and children and old people who were hiding or just trying to run away. They took no prisoners. They shot the wounded. And that was why there were so many dead.
The numbers were easy. The real individuals were not. Everybody had lost somebody. Most had lost more than just one person. In a community this small and tight everybody knew everybody else. Sometimes their families went back together for generations. The dead included friends, neighbors, and family. People who played tennis together, or shared meals, played stand-up bass in the same acoustic group, were chess partners, or shared boat rides over to the mainland, acted in the same plays, sang in the community choir or…it went on and on in a thousand different ways.
Nobody was free of grief, but some had more than their share. A wife who’d lost not just her husband but her mother, or perhaps an oldest son or daughter. A husband who had been on the wall to defend his family, and then returned home to find they had been murdered. What sort of person could do that? What sort of person could just murder unarmed innocents?
My mother and Ethan were okay. We’d all walked away alive and unwounded. In some ways I guess I was luckier than almost anybody else, because I wasn’t that connected to the people around me. I knew them but I really didn’t know them. We’d only been here a few months. How well could you get to know somebody in three months? I hadn’t lost anybody in my family, but I had still lost people close to me.
Jim had been killed trying to stop the invaders advancing from the back gate. Ken had been shot down at the wall. They’d been buried together along with another dozen people. I wasn’t sure if it made it harder or easier that the burial was shared by so many families. Shallow graves had been dug in a clearing behind what was left of the back gate. The place where Ethan and his friends had ridden ostriches was now a cemetery. Rows of crudely made crosses marked the clearing. People had promised to make better ones later on, but right now there was no time for that.
When I closed my eyes I could see Paula at the gravesite, trying to be strong, but in the end failing. Julian was the same. I stood well back and looked away, or closed my eyes and let my thoughts go someplace else.
I walked up onto the porch now, moving as quietly as I could, and peeked in through the living room window. Inside, Chris and Colonel Wayne and my mother and a half dozen other community leaders were meeting. Yesterday and the day before had been about death and its consequences. Today was about making decisions.
I’d been invited to join the meeting, and I was half an hour late. I had decided to go for a walk first to clear my head. Part of me was honored to be invited, and I did want to know what was going on. But another part of me simply didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to listen to any discussions, to hear any more information, or to make decisions. I just wanted to be a teenager again, whose most important decisions were what I was going to wear in the morning and who I was going to sit with at lunch, who wasn’t angry at anybody except maybe a teacher, or some jerk who had said something about me or my friends. I was supposed to be annoyed with my brother and angry at my mother for something she said or did. But as I looked through the window, I saw my mother sitting there at the kitchen table and realized how much she meant to me. How much she meant to this whole community. Even if she hadn’t been able to save all of them.
At that instant she looked up and saw me through the window. She smiled ever so slightly and motioned for me to come inside. There was no choice now. I opened the door and was greeted by nods and hellos as I entered.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said.
“I just got here myself,” Colonel Wayne said.
I took a seat on a chair set back from the table. Even if they wanted me in the room I didn’t deserve a place at the table. That was for the adult decision-makers.
“Were there any incidents last night?” Colonel Wayne asked.
“Nothing really, although there was a false alarm. People are pretty jumpy,” Sam said.
“That’s to be expected. If you were vulnerable before, you’re more vulnerable now.”
“But we won,” one of the women, Carol, said.
“Nobody won,” Chris said.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I just meant we defeated them.”
“We defeated some of them,” my mother said. “The rest got driven away.”
“How many do you think did get away?” Chris asked.
“It’s just a guess but I’d say at least twice as many escaped as were killed,” my mother replied.
“But we got lots of the weapons they left behind, right?” Carol asked.
It was so strange to hear her ask that. She had been one of the people most against defending the community, one of the most vocal against taking up arms against others.
“We’ve ended up with more than seventy assault rifles, plus the ammunition that they carried when they fell,” Sam said.
Half of the weapons and ammunition had been given to Colonel Wayne. That had only seemed fair because they’d used up so much of their ammunition in defending us.
“With all the new weapons we’re now more able to defend ourselves,” Carol said.
People looked toward my
mother to answer. She looked down at the table, and Chris jumped in to speak.
“We used up most of our existing ammunition trying to defend ourselves. We did get more weapons, but there are now fewer people to use them,” Chris said. “As well, our walls are shattered in places, the gates are destroyed. We’re weaker than we were, and the only reason we stopped them this time was because of Colonel Wayne and his men.”
The two planes had stopped the invasions across the channel and across the beach. They had sunk boats in the harbor and chased others away. What they hadn’t been able to do was attack those coming through the back gates, or those who had already made it to the cover of the houses.
“We owe you so much. We owe you our lives,” Chris said.
“Yes, we’re so grateful. Without you we would have, well, we would have all died. I know that,” Carol said.
“I’m just happy that Sam was able to get through and we got here in time.”
“If you’d been even a few minutes later,” my mother said, “well, none of us would even be here.”
“And I think that’s where this discussion has to start,” Chris said. “Colonel Wayne, would you still welcome us to move to the airport?”
“The invitation and the terms remain the same.”
The terms were clear. People needed to bring with them all the resources they had to support themselves. They had to be willing to agree to live under the authority of the colonel. This was not going to be a democracy but a strict military arrangement. I’d lived almost my whole life under that structure so it was almost reassuring to me.
“I don’t believe that we can stay here any longer,” Chris said.
“And if we don’t want to go anywhere?” Carol asked, and a couple of others nodded.
“That’s your choice,” Chris said. “We can’t make you go, but you can’t make us stay.”