Fire From The Sky | Book 10 | Damned Nation

by Reed, N. C.

  “Of course, it is. I made it,” Jose chuckled, turning Clay’s line around on him. “Anyway, just thought I’d let you know that so far, your number is holding.”

  “What can I say?” Clay shrugged nonchalantly. “I’m just that good.”

  -

  “I think I’ve got it,” Amy Mitchell said excitedly as she managed to start spooling thread from cotton. “Look!”

  “I do believe she’s got it,” Lainie laughed in delight, watching the spool fill. “You just set us on the path for making our own cloth and thread, girl!”

  “I have no idea how we’ll use it, though,” Amy declared as she kept working the fine haired cotton through her fingers.

  “Well, with this coarser stuff, we’ll learn to make material,” Angela explained, having come to see what the excitement was about. “As we learn to spin it finer, we’ll be able to make thread. By the time next year rolls around and we have a larger harvest of cotton, we’ll be set and ready to go!”

  “Seems like a long time until then, doesn’t it?” Evelyn Lacey remarked from her seat where she was busy making a quilt square. “But you have to start getting ready for next winter as soon as this winter is over in these conditions.” She paused for a minute, looking away. “And these conditions are pretty much permanent, aren’t they?” she mused aloud, more to herself than the others. Suddenly aware of the lack of noise from around her, she looked over at the group to find them all looking back at her, their good cheer evaporated.

  “Didn’t mean to bring down the good vibes,” she apologized.

  “I don’t think you did,” Angela sighed. “I think we all tend to forget that very thing when we’re doing good, but as soon as it rears its ugly head, we lose every bit of good hope we’ve found. It’s a purely natural thing, to dread toil and suffering.”

  “We’re not doing so bad at the moment,” Amy said over her shoulder, still working the spindle. Her conversation with Lainie was still fresh in her mind.

  “No, we aren’t,” Angela admitted. “But the things we’re depending on will eventually stop. I’ve learned that from my son if I’ve learned nothing else,” she smiled slightly at Lainie, who nodded. “When they do, we have to be able to keep going. Even if we never need the thread or material that this will make,” she indicated the equipment around them, “our children or grandchildren one day will. And they will have to learn it from someone. Better that we go through all this now, when it isn’t important, than to wait until they have to figure it out or do without.”

  “That’s very well put,” Evelyn nodded. “I’d not thought of it that way, but I’m not a mother. That kind of thinking comes more with maternity I think, or at least maternal responsibility.”

  “You may be right,” Angela agreed. “I know my way of thinking, my way of doing things, changed the minute we found out I was pregnant. I started looking at everything differently from that point on.”

  “Amen,” Dottie Greer all but whispered, with Amy Mitchell echoing her a second later.

  “Okay, enough of this maudlin stuff,” Angela clapped her hands suddenly. “Let’s see how long Amy can keep this going. Then someone else can try.”

  -

  “Eunice, you have got to loosen your hold on the reins,” Gail Knight fought to keep her patience. “When you choke up on them like that, the horse begins to panic and fight against you. They need to be able to see the ground, just like you do.”

  “I’m just so scared of falling off,” Eunice Maynard admitted, clutching the reins to her chest.

  “Then hold on to the saddle horn,” Gail told her. “That’s partly why it’s there. But stop pulling so tightly against the bit. Not only are you causing the horse to be nervous, you’re also hurting him.”

  “But I’ll fall!” Eunice complained. Before anyone else could speak, Eunice suddenly cried out, toppling off her horse and onto the ground. Kurtis Montana walked around the front of the horse, catching the reins as he tried to bolt and calming him down.

  “There,” he looked down at Eunice, who was getting to her feet. “Now, you’ve fallen. Shouldn’t scare you so badly anymore.”

  “That hurt!” Eunice all but screamed once she was standing again. She brushed dirt and dust off her clothing.

  “Got any broken bones?” Kurtis asked.

  “No,” came the sullen reply.

  “Any blood gushing from anywhere?” Kurtis asked.

  “No!” Eunice shot back.

  “Then you’re fine,” Kurtis told her flatly. “You were afraid of falling, now you know what it’s like. Get back on the horse and try again. If you don’t do it now, you’ll be scared to do it later,” he warned.

  “Are you going to dump me on the ground again?” she demanded.

  “Don’t need to,” he shook his head, handing her the reins. “You know now what it feels like to fall off a horse. Stop being so afraid of it and just let the horse do the work while you guide it. Same way you drive a car. You don’t actually make the car move, you just give it fuel and steer it where it needs to go. The car does the work. Same with the horse. You guide him where you need him to go, and he’ll head that way. A good, well-trained saddle horse will do as much to keep you in the saddle as you do, by the way,” he added. “And this seems like a pretty good horse.”

  “He’s telling you right,” Gail told Eunice. “And that is a good horse, by the way,” she added as she grinned down at Kurtis.

  “That’s how my daddy taught me to fall off a horse, too,” she laughed.

  “Old man at the Rafter T did it to me,” Kurtis nodded. “I guess I was ten, maybe. Never had really been on a horse alone before. He got tired of me fidgeting and just hauled me off onto the ground, then made me climb back on.”

  “What is the Rafter T?” Eunice asked.

  “A big ranch out in Montana,” Kurtis told her. “Long way from here,” he chuckled as he went back to his own work. “Long way from here.”

  -

  “The first thing you need to know is how to get out of a fight.”

  “Huh?” Amanda Lowery looks surprised. “How to get out? After all that training of how to fight to begin with?”

  “That’s correct,” Jose nodded. “We are not a large operation. We have no armor to speak of, no artillery, and few heavy weapons. We are also not a military unit, regardless of how we may train. If we encounter enemy action when there is nothing at risk for us, we withdraw. There are very few times when we will stand and fight. Whatever it is the enemy is after, we can probably live without it. We can certainly live without it better than we can any of our own people.”

  “The tactic we are about to demonstrate is called by several different names, but we merely refer to it as ‘peeling’. The tactic was developed by the Aussies, so far as I know, and it is an effective way to break contact while still placing suppressing fire on the enemy. Gentlemen?”

  Behind him, Shane Golden, Kevin Bodee, Zach Willis and Heath Kelly waited. At his word, they moved into position, Kevin to the front, then Shane, Zach and Heath. All four kneeled on the ground in a diagonal line, rifles to their shoulders.

  “Anytime,” Jose nodded.

  “Prepare to peel!” Shane shouted suddenly.

  “Prepare to peel!” the other three repeated loudly.

  “Go, Go, Go!” Shane called out and Kevin Bodee jumped to his feet, backed up three steps with his rifle still at his shoulder, then whirled, slapping Shane on the near shoulder as he went by, careful to run behind his teammates rather than in front of them.

  “Peeling!” Kevin ran to the far side of Heath Kelley and knelt again, rifle to his shoulder once more.

  “Peeling!” Shane was next, tapping Zach on the back of his shoulder as he ran by, leaving Zach in front.

  This drill continued for three complete rotations until Jose called a halt to it. He looked at the new students.

  “Notice how that even as they were withdrawing, they continued to place suppressing fire downrange,” he said
. “Simulated suppressing fire, I should say,” he chuckled. “Anyway, the first man out will take a new position at the far end of the line and again engage the enemy. The next man in line will then do the same, and so on until either the enemy is dead, you are dead, or you have successfully broken contact and can withdraw. Questions?”

  “Why not just run?” Janessa Haynes asked. “Not to be mean or nothing, but I’m simply curious. Why not just run until they can’t see you to shoot at?”

  “Heath?” Jose called out.

  “Expect the enemy to be able to do anything you can do, and do it better,” Heath said at once. “If you can run fast enough to disengage, assume they can run fast enough to keep you engaged.”

  “Zach?” Jose said next.

  “Withdrawing in good order is safer than running,” Zach said simply. “Running gives the impression that your morale is broken and encourages your enemy to pursue a beaten foe. By continuing to fire even as you pull back, you encourage the enemy to accept their losses and call it a day.”

  “Does that answer your questions, Miss Haynes?” Jose asked, though in no way unkindly.

  “Yes, sir,” she nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Of course. Remember that here, as is the case everywhere on this farm, the only stupid question is the one you didn’t ask. You’re here to learn, and you can’t learn if you don’t ask. Without knowledge, there can be no survival. We’ll do this drill again but break it down to individual moves as we go. Now that you’ve seen it in real time, you will be able to appreciate the finer details as we go step-by-step.”

  -

  Van Bronson was on his way back from telling Hank Rigley’s widow that she was in fact a widow when he heard the shot. He could tell this time that it was from well outside town, or at least outside the center of town. He stopped, waiting to see if there was more yelling. It took longer this time, but there was indeed more yelling. Sighing, he took off at a slow jog to try and trace it to the source.

  There was a crowd gathered near the old men’s store and Bronson closed his eyes for just a moment, afraid of what he was going to see when he got there. He made his way through the gathering crowd to find that he’d been right.

  Susie Latimer was lying face-up in the street, a hole in her chest that Bronson might be able to cover with his hat. A pretty girl, Susie was a tomboy to be sure. Avid hunter, fisher and outdoor enthusiast, she had joked that she only worked so she could afford to play. She had insisted on doing her part and serving as part of the town’s defenses, despite objections from more than one source. She had been on duty on the roof of the men’s store. Someone from well outside the center of town had shot her as she stood on the roof.

  “Dammit, why wasn’t she down and under cover!” Bronson almost shouted. Goggin was right there beside him.

  “She had just gotten there,” he told Bronson. “Hadn’t even got settled in.”

  “G-,” Bronson stopped himself, about to choke on his words. “Get some men to get her over to the clinic, too,” he ordered Goggin. “I have another visit to make, now.”

  -

  “You know, things aren’t looking too terribly bad at the moment,” Mitchell Nolan said as he stretched out in front of Building Two, empty plate in front of him on the table.

  “While my education says there is no such thing, my grandmother’s teachings compel me to tell you that you’ve just jinxed that,” Beverly chuckled, leaning into him.

  “Old wives’ tales,” Mitchell scoffed.

  “My grandmother used to say they called them that because following them was how old wives got that way,” she laughed louder that time.

  “That actually does make some sense when you think about it,” he had to admit. “Still, with everything that we’ve gotten done, we’re in much better shape than we were just a couple weeks ago.”

  “I will grant you that is true,” she nodded. “Makes you wonder what’s going to go wrong, doesn’t it?”

  “Way to be a downer, babe,” Mitchell laughed, hugging her close. “Way to be a downer.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Lake Adcock frowned slightly as his Hummer pulled up in front of Lewiston’s City Hall. There were almost no people out and about, completely opposite of his previous visits. More than that, there was a pall of sorts that seemed to hang over the town.

  “I don’t like this,” he said aloud.

  “Nor do I, sir,” 1st Sergeant Maxwell agreed. The older soldier was also uneasy. The two stepped down, looking around them.

  “Come in, come in!” Deputy Bronson was calling, waving for them to get inside. Both men complied, though they didn’t see a reason for it.

  “Man, am I glad to see you guys,” Bronson exclaimed as soon as the two were inside.

  “Deputy, what’s going on?” Adcock asked. His last trip here had not been met with such enthusiasm. While not hostile, it was made clear that the decision to base men in Lewiston for the winter would be unpopular.

  “We’ve been in hell for the last five days,” Bronson admitted. “Had sixteen people killed and seven more are missing. At first it was people being shot from long distance as they stood guard on the rooftops, but then it was happening on the ground, to, and after that it wasn’t just gunplay but people being cut up!”

  “Calm down, Deputy,” Adcock trying to soothe the other man. “You say this has been going on for five days?”

  “This would be six, I guess? I don’t even know for sure, anymore,” he admitted. “I can’t recall the last time I slept, for that matter.”

  “Have you kept a written record of all this?” Adcock asked. “If you have then why not let me see it while you get some rest. We’ll see what we can do to help out.”

  “There’s a logbook,” Bronson pointed to a ledger on his desk. “I…I put everything down, but there’s nothing I could do. I mean, I tried looking, but it’s like hunting a ghost!”

  “Try and take it easy for a while, Deputy,” Sergeant Maxwell said carefully. “You’ve got to be exhausted. Is there a couch in the office you can lie down on, perhaps?” He guided Bronson out of the room while Adcock opened the logbook and began to read.

  -

  Thirty minutes later and Adcock was shaking his head.

  “Damn. This is bad. Someone is literally stalking this entire town.”

  “Sounds that way, sir,” Maxwell nodded. “And they apparently aren’t staying out in the periphery any longer, either. I am especially concerned to hear there are people missing. It’s possible they’ve run away, but when added to the killings, I would have to lean toward that not being the case.”

  “Same here,” Adcock agreed. “We’re going to have to get our men down here and begin culling through here, looking for those who don’t belong. I hate even thinking about that, but I don’t see an alternative. I think it’s obvious we’re looking for more than one person, based on the records Bronson kept. I also feel confident that this isn’t the work of a local, either. This is targeted aggression, intended to incite terror.”

  “Agreed, sir,” Maxwell replied. “We’ll need to be prepared for whoever it is to melt back into the brush when we bring the company in, sir. That means using some of our manpower here in town to flush the aggressors out, while employing the rest in searching the area around the town. It’s going to be hard going no matter what.”

  “That is true,” Adcock sighed. “Let’s get the rest moving and then plot these victims on a map. We can possibly eliminate at least where the long shots came from if we can determine who could be seen from where.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  -

  “What’cha doing?”

  Zach looked up from cleaning his rifle to see Kim Powers looking down at him. Zach was sitting at the table in front of Building Two, serving his four hours on the Response Team. He usually passed that time by cleaning weapons and sharpening knives or else checking either his own gear and equipment over or else the gear assigned to the response team.

&n
bsp; “Just brushing my rifle’s teeth,” he joked, holding up the oil stained toothbrush he was using on the port of the rifle.

  “Why is yours so different from mine?” she asked, taking a seat not quite beside him.

  “There are a number of ways I could reply to that question,” Zach grinned, and was rewarded with a delightful blush spreading across her face. Then she laughed.

  “Point. I could have asked that better,” she offered him a hi-five. “What I meant was, why is your rifle a different one from mine?”

  “I suspect if you make the cut for operations off the farm, you’ll be trading up,” Zach informed her. “But your rifle is one of several we took from a group out of Huntsville that attacked us. They weren’t using them,” he added at the look on her face, “just had them in storage. Most of them were new. I guess they’d still be considered new,” he shrugged.

  “Anyway, your rifle fires the same ammunition as mine, but it has a bit more tolerance. It’s a lot more forgiving of errors than the M-4. When they first started training people to defend the farm, they armed them with the AK-47 rifles you still see some people carrying. They’re also easy to work with. I had thought they were going to start exchanging those Mini-14s that you guys were given for the AKs, but apparently your arrival stopped that.”

  “Is that bad?” she asked, frowning.

  “Nah. It means that all of you can share magazines and ammunition. The AK rifles use a different round as well as a different mag.” He finished brushing some imaginary dirt from the chamber of his rifle before closing the dust flap, as all the boys referred to it.

  “Who are the guys that are always carrying the hunting rifles?” she asked next.