By day seven, Harper had to pinch herself to stay alert. Her daydreams threatened to mold into real dreams. During that evening, Harper saw Brandy watching her from the road. When Church said her name, the intruder vanished into nothing.
Day eight arrived, and everyone had reached wit’s end. Intense rationing, overall low morale, and the lack of rest led to multiple disputes. One woman threatened another with a knife-spear. The other one swiped back. Trudy, with sunken eyes, separated the two with threats of exile. That ended the argument.
That night, Harper suggested to Church that they cut the number of watchmen in half to attend to other duties in town. Reluctantly, he agreed. James and Eli were sent away but not Harper. Around noon on the ninth day, the watchmen had been diminished to a fourth of their original size. Farmers attended crops, Trudy returned to Supply, Kimmy offered everyone haircuts in the diner, Sawyer and his daughter helped James work on the wall, and Eli and Dustin took care of general maintenance. Harper stayed on the Fence with Church. The beautiful view had turned dreadfully boring, and Brandy slowly exited out of Harper’s dreams. The mayor had lost weight and boasted a bundle of new gray hairs on his head and grizzly face. Skin drooped under his beady eyes like sagging pockets. Harper could taste his pungent body odor ten yards away.
The two of them didn’t talk much. Every hour, Harper wanted to walk away, but duty kept her bound. The tough old man reminded her of a stern version of Commander McCulloch or an identical match to her father. Harper wondered what her father would think of her now. Would he be proud that she was protecting her son or see her as a complete fool for wasting her life away on a waterlogged wall?
Day twelve. Church lowered his rifle and sat with his back to the battlement. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Harper kept watch.
“Thank you,” the man said, rolling his neck. “I should be… overjoyed that he didn’t return. Instead--”
“You feel disappointed,” Harper finished.
Church rested his rifle across his lap. “Go see your family, Murphy. That new house isn’t going to clean itself.”
Harper did a scan over the farmhouses and field, expecting Brandy and his host to appear. “What are you going to do?”
Church propped his head against the battlement. “Sleep.”
Harper plopped down next to him and stretched out her fatigued legs. She looked at inner Brighton. Her son and husband moved table barricades off the road. Trudy read a story to children. A gaggle of women giggled as they dug up potatoes. The scene faded, and Harper let sleep steal her from the village wall.
Ding-Dong! Ding-Dong! Ding-Dong!
The tolling punched Harper from her slumber. The world in front of her came alive. Through the wooden blinds of the chapel's tower, the bronze bell sang its savage song. The sun fell in the west as dark clouds inched across the sky. People ran to the Fence’s stairs. Dustin shouted orders. Trudy shooed the children into the town hall. Harper’s body moved faster than her mind. She fumbled with her heavy rifle, twisted herself around, and peeked over the battlement.
Without hesitation, her finger tugged the trigger.
Chapter Ten
Battle of Brighton
The shot rang out. It zipped over the outer street and punched the hairy, drab-dressed man in the chest, sending him flying backwards. The three dozen men and women on both sides of him shot pitiful glances at the corpse but continued their barbaric charge. They raised their hatchets, rusty knives, and clubs up high and bellowed a ferocious war cry, sprinting over asphalt, knee-high fields, and mud. Some toted ladders over their heads. Others clenched unlit Molotovs. A few drew Glocks, Berettas, and other handguns from the waistband of their pants and opened fire. The bullets cracked the battlement, spitting shards of wood and sawdust over Harper. She ducked, cocked the rifle, and readied another shot.
No outside cover separated the intruders from the wall. Church had made sure of that when he built the Fence. However, plunging out from the center of the disjointed line of ruffians, Brandy jogged behind a tall, rectangular police riot shield, hooting wildly. Behind them, tall flames exploded out from the ancient farmhouses, creating massive crackling bonfires across the picturesque landscape.
Harper’s friends stormed up the rickety stairs, pulling knife-spears and chunks of rock from various crates scattered across the wall. A few farmers nocked arrows on their compact hunter bows’ taut strings. They loosed a swarm of arrows that stuck into dirt, grass, and flesh. Screams of agony sliced into the intruders’ ever-growing battle cry. Harper shot at Brandy. The bullet created a spiderweb crack on the riot shield. The man flinched but didn’t slow.
Church’s semiautomatic rifle sounded off to Harper’s left. Before her, husky men and women with crazed eyes toppled to the dirt and were trampled by those charging behind them. The farmers opened fire. Buckshot and slugs rained down on the attackers, whose original changing formation had become quickly disrupted by corpse hurdles and bullets. They zigzagged as shots ripped by their heads and tossed dirt into the sky.
“Count your shots!” Church shouted. “Keep them at bay! They cannot reach the wall!”
They were nearly a football field away now. A third of them had been dropped, and Harper guesstimated over half of Brighton’s ammunition had been spent.
“I was hoping we could have a trade deal,” Brandy yelled as more bullets thunked against his translucent shield. “I guess that’s out of the equation!”
The chapel bell rang again. Harper twisted back. The snipers on the building’s rooftop pointed to the southern wall.
“Church,” Harper shouted. “They’re hitting us from the rear flank.”
“Get men back there!” The mayor dropped another target.
Harper nodded. She moved behind the battlement as 9mm rounds zipped by. She passed Ferris just in time to see him get hit in the chest. His straw hat flew off as he crashed to the wall-walk and cussed up a storm. His frizzy-haired wife rushed to his aid. Harper moved around to Eastwatch, reaching James and Sawyer.
“There’s not enough guns for all of us,” Sawyer complained. “I told you we should've retreated. We had two weeks to pack and go, but no, let's not listen to reason.”
Harper ignored him. “Both of you, rear tower. Now.”
Wide eyed, James grabbed her upper arm. “Look!”
Harper turned her attention to the eastern side of the Fence. Another dozen men and women rushed toward them with ladders. Like the first group, they were dressed in a variety of stained and torn clothing.
James cursed. “You go on ahead. I’ll take care of this.”
“Where’s Eli?”
“West tower.”
“I’ll loop around.”
Harper dashed across the wall-walk, passing terrified allies armed with crude weaponry and waiting for the attackers to reach the wall. She continued around to the south watchtower. The intruders had already arrived. Karla and Dustin pulled spears from a large pile and chucked them at the ten or so attackers. Dustin’s first two javelins stuck into the dirt and wobbled. He whimpered and grabbed a third. Karla, however, pierced a buff man in the thigh on her first toss. Howling, he forcefully kneeled, too terrified to touch the wood and kitchen knife sticking out of both sides of his leg.
Harper took aim with her rifle and popped two of the remaining nine. They thumped to the grass. The others didn’t slow. They were fifteen yards away. Harper yanked out whiskey bottles from a milk crate and tossed them to Dustin and Karla. She pointed to the lighters.
“Save the spears. Use these.”
Dustin snatched up the lighter and ignited the dishcloth partly jutting out of the bottle neck. With two good flicks, a tiny flame rose from the lighter. It touched the cloth, setting it ablaze. The attackers saw the fire and jumbled their movement. Dustin and Karla threw the Molotovs. The lit bottles sailed through the air and shattered on the grass, erupting in a splash of fiery alcohol in front of two attackers. One leapt back. The other jumped over. Harper shot him, and h
e lunged back into the fire. A third runner, hoisting up an orange plastic ladder, darted forward. A Molotov crashed into a rung, soaking his hands and hair with fire. He screamed and let the ladder fall while he ran for the Fence. The flame took him before he reached the wall’s wood.
The final five exchanged glances and took off sprinting in the opposite direction. Dustin, Karla, and Harper took a breath.
“Holy hell,” Dustin said, wheezing.
Karla chewed on her bubble gum and lifted another spear. Remnants of pink dye lingered on the tips of her long brown hair. “Cheer up, country boy. I think we scared them off.”
With her forearm, Harper wiped sweat from her brow. “Don’t leave this post. They may come back.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dustin said. He took off his cap, bent the bill, and put it back on.
The bell tolled for a third time, and Harper started hating the sound. The sniper standing on the town hall pointed to Westwatch, and Harper was reminded of her nightmare.
Eli, Kimmy, Martin and Martha Doyle, and Mitchell, the elderly bookstore owner, showered football-sized rocks upon the attackers. From twelve feet up, they bruised and fractured skulls but didn’t kill. Unlike Brighton’s front and eastern side, the west watchtower overlooked a thick cluster of aged trees that housed multiple gunners. A shotgun slug blew from the tree line and hit the scout on the tower. The man toppled over the front plywood and crashed sixteen feet with a sickening thud. The unseen gunner laid down suppressing fire, breaking chunks off the battlement. Everyone ducked, tossing rocks blindly over the imminently shattering cover. Harper crouched next to Eli.
“How are you holding up, babe?”
Her son swept the brown bangs away from his eyes. “We can talk later. Right now--”
A ladder clacked against the side of the wall. Harper jumped up. A shotgun blast blew over her head. It didn’t prevent her from slamming her palms on the tops of the ladder’s side bars and heaving it backwards. Two bearded men climbed, clenched knives in their teeth, and resisted her strength. She caught a glimpse of the shotgunner glancing out from behind an oak tree and ducked. The two men on the ladder ascended eight feet, their boots rattling the rungs with each hasty step.
Harper pushed again. The ladder moved away from the wall another two inches, almost enough to unbalance it. She growled through her teeth as the first man came into view. He extended his grasp, his outstretched meaty fingers an inch away from her red face. Suddenly, the ladder’s weight decreased, and the men got farther away. The white of the man’s eyes grew ever brighter. Harper turned to her son beside her and gave a final push. The ladder went vertical and then toppled backwards. Eli smiled. Behind him, another ladder landed and then another.
A giant thirty-something-year-old woman scurried to the top of a ladder and raised a hatchet. Martha plunged a knife-spear into the invader’s ribs and, with the help of her husband, pushed the wooden spear so deep that the woman went down with the spear still inside. Another shotgun blast sounded, and Martin went stumbling back. Martha wailed and dropped next to him, scrambling to put her lover’s head back together.
Harper swiftly aimed at the shotgunner, only spotting his elbow. Out of her peripherals, a man climbing up the second ladder grabbed Kimmy by her blond pixie hair. The diner waitress screamed, and the burly man laughed, calling her coarse names. When the shotgunner leaned out from behind the bark on the tree, Harper fired a shot. The man discharged a final bullet as he fell to the grass. Harper twisted the rifle to the man grabbing Kimmy and took him out. He dropped from the ladder with a hole in his head. From behind her, a skinny man with greasy hair grabbed ahold of the battlement top. He howled and tore his shredded palms from the glass shards glued across the battlement’s top. Eli smacked him with the blunt end of a spear and used the opening to push the ladder off. Harper and the elderly bookstore owner pushed off the remaining ladders. The men and women scurried like frenzied bugs down below.
Harper lit up a Molotov and hung it over their heads.
“Run.”
Tripping over bodies, the remaining men and women scrambled into the tree line. Harper tossed the Molotov as final warning and knelt next to Martha. She put her hand on the devastated woman’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
Slouched on her knees, Mrs. Doyle’s hands rested upwards on her thighs. Slack jawed, she looked over Martin.
Harper gestured for Kimmy. “Take her back to the motel. Find a replacement for yourself along the way.”
Kimmy helped Martha up and escorted her down the stairs. All the while, the widow mumbled to her husband’s cadaver. “Marty… oh my poor, poor Marty…”
Harper spotted a few farmers holding down the southwestern elbow. She yelled for them, and they arrived at the watchtower speedily. “Don’t stay stagnant. This wall must be held.”
Holding her ponytail, Harper fixed the hair band until her hair was tight against her head. She looked to Eli. “The western wall is yours. If it gets too overwhelming, fall back to the town hall.”
“I know, Mom. You can count on me.”
She embraced her son, not wanting to ever let go. “I love you, Eli.”
“You, too.”
After a moment, Harper forced herself away. “Are you sure you’ll be okay? I know it’s a stupid question at a time like this, but…”
“Yeah, Mom. Get moving. These people need you.”
Harper left him behind as she finished traveling the circumference of the Fence. Church and ten others held down the top of the gate as the bulk of Brandy’s force swarmed below. A few stomped on concealed bear traps and made for easy targets. Others tripped over the thin line of barbed wire and were stuck with spears in their backs and shoulders. Brandy and three others used their riot shields as umbrellas for the falling rocks. They pushed to the gate. Church dropped a Molotov on top of them. A blanket of flame enveloped the plastic.
“Come on, old man,” Brandy yelled as the fiery liquid spilled off the shield and splashed the road around his feet. “Open the gate, or I will!”
The archers released their final arrows into three more invaders and traded their useless bows for cutlery. Two ladders sprung up on the far side of each front watchtower. The farmers swiftly pushed them down. An enemy Molotov twirled into one of the towers and lit up the man inside. Flames enveloped the tower, forming a gigantic torch on the wooden wall. Harper darted over and snatched up one of Brighton’s few fire extinguishers. She hiked into the watchtower, where flaming wood crumbled from the ceiling, and sprayed the foam everywhere. At the front wall’s northern bend, more flames spread across the wall-walk and battlement.
“Get those fires dealt with,” Church shouted.
Taking Harper’s extinguisher, half of the farmers dispersed across the wall-walk, leaving openings for more ladders to spring up. Harper took up one of the remaining knife-spears and tossed at a man climbing a ladder. It stuck him in the shoulder, and he fell on top of the man behind him. The wall-walk rattled as men and women leapt from their ladders onto wood.
“They’re over the wall!” Harper shouted.
A man straight out of a biker gang charged at a farmer and thunked his axe into the rustic man’s skull. Church slung his rifle over his shoulder. He pulled a machete from the leather sheath on his back and stomped toward the biker. The biker swung, missed, and was hacked until he lay facedown and shredded on the walkway.
On the other side, a female drilled her knife into a lady farmer’s gut. The woman gasped and hobbled away until she collapsed. Harper took aim with her rifle. The knife-wielding female took a step forward and was instantly dropped by a shot. Harper checked her clip. Empty.
The melee commenced across the wall in a fury of swings and screams. The snipers on the rooftops fired into the fray. The farmers’ spears and pitchforks had the much-needed reach to keep the invaders far enough away that snipers would hit the intruders instead of their allies. Bodies tumbled into Brighton, spilling blood across its streets. A burly man deflected Church�
�s blow with his axe. Church lunged at him, taking them both off the wall and down to the inner street. Meanwhile, Harper stepped back at each violent and nearing swing of a baseball bat. The man behind it had a pudgy belly and muscle shirt. Harper remembered him from Briersville.
“You’ll pay for what you did to Miss Gretchen,” the drunken man shouted, swinging his bat.
It broke the wind in front of Harper’s nose, and she swung back with her rifle. Their clubs met. The impact strained their wrists. Both weapons tore from their hands.
The bell rang two more times, and the words “East” and “South” were faintly heard over the chaos.
The drunkard grinned. His breath reeked of alcohol. “Looks like you’re getting overrun.”
Behind him, three more bloodstained thugs lifted their axes and knives from a farmer’s hacked corpse and turned their hideous faces toward Harper.
“She’s the one, huh?” said one thug. “Pretty eyes. Green was always my favorite color.”
The drunkard nodded as all four advanced to Harper. She backstepped, glancing into the milk crate. No rocks. No knife-spears. No Molotovs. Fire blazed seven yards behind her and in patches around Brighton. Most of the gunfire had ceased, barring the snipers taking potshots from the roof. If Harper estimated correctly, they’d be out of ammo far sooner than expected. Honestly, time held no merit during the fight. The sun was still out, but Harper didn’t know if it’d been twenty minutes or an hour. The thugs approached.
“You can walk away,” Harper said as she neared the stairs.
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