by Ginger Booth
Arriving at the MRE pile, Ava spelled Cookie at loading food on trucks, so he could don his armor. Then she pulled on her own. They rammed a few MREs into the back of each other’s vests, before Ava continued on to collect up ammo. Some of her squad snagged backpacks along the way, the better to carry mortars and other implements of destruction. Ava herself wasn’t on a heavy fire team. She thoughtfully added flares and grenades to her tactical vest.
Deluca’s company didn’t make it out in the first few transports this time. Fresher troops, who hadn’t begun the day with a loaded march and run, secured that honor. Then Major Thurston belatedly decided that adding night vision NV gear to their kit was worth the wait, and sent a team running to collect it.
In the controlled pandemonium, their arch-rivals, the Hauppauge platoon, ended up just ahead of Ava’s on the Plain. Puño swiped Gonzo’s phone with its boom-box grade speakers, to crank up the tunes for a dance contest. He started with Prince’s urban anthem, Let’s Go Crazy!
Let’s go crazy
Let’s get nuts
Let’s look for the purple banana
’Til they put us in the truck, LET’S GO!
By gang rat lights, getting in that perfect choice of first song won them a point. Hauppauge was already pissed that they were headed for the Bronx to garrison a warehouse, instead of into live fire. They didn’t even get to draw armor plate. They brought out their A game with line dancing.
Puño and Marquis, Ava and Fox tacitly declared them pansies by leading chorus lines of high kicks and lunges, with synchronized carbine waving over their heads. Lieutenant Mattey swooped in with her phone to catch video of the honorable discharge ‘weaklings,’ dancing fully integrated with the hard-bodies. Ava and Fox and Yoda were right in the thick of it.
Hauppauge had just brought out a Beach Boys paean to retaliate, when the NV goggles arrived.
“Gotta go! You lose!” Gonzo yelled toward a rival sergeant. “Better luck next time, Hauppauge! Platoon! Give it up for Hauppauge!”
Lining up to board yet another olive drab school bus, Ava’s platoon regaled Hauppauge with boos, raspberries, obscene gestures, and catcalls, in warm Manhattan sportsmanship. From long association, the LI gavis had finally learned to give as good as they got. If it weren’t for their tactical load-outs, no doubt pants would have dropped for some mooning.
Ava’s platoon only received 10 sets of night vision gear, one for every fifth recruit. The sergeants didn’t micromanage that sort of thing anymore. The recruits would dole out equipment as they saw fit, anyway. Calderon and Gonzo just handed five sets to each side of the bus, as Sergeant Clarke pulled the bus out and started driving. Cookie claimed night goggles to aim his machine gun. Ava, Puño, and Marquis were old hands at fighting in the dark. Toward the back of the bus, debate erupted. Two sets of goggles were passed back up front for the sergeants to use until someone else needed them more.
Ava sat back and considered their transport. They automatically sat in the same positions in the bus from tsunami duty, and knew the layout intimately. No doubt that’s why the sergeants chose the vehicle for a fast start. On the downside, there was no armor and little protection in the bus sides. The emergency exit in the back was clogged with their water and food. That could be shoved under seats. In a hurry, though, there was only the one door. The windows opened, which was good. Ava and Fox were small enough to escape the larger driver’s window, if they stripped off their vests and armor first. No one else could fit through any of the windows, even stripped naked.
Puño, Cookie’s wingman on their squad’s machine gun, was thinking along the same lines. He got up on his knees and called out to ask if the other squad’s machine gun team was assembled. They weren’t, and decided to swap seats to mid-bus. Ava called Fox to swap forward across the aisle, in case they needed to slip out the window. Calderon and Gonzo stood propped at the front, listening to all their many deliberations. Within a few minutes, the recruits settled down where each believed they ought to be, ready to fight from the bus.
Calderon called out thoughtfully, “Did you prep the emergency door for exit back there?”
“Yes, sergeant!”
“You guys are getting scary. Relax a bit. We don’t have our ingress or assignment yet.” He sat to apply his phone, right in front of Ava.
“Calderon,” Clarke said, “tell Deluca we’re good to go in. As far he needs.”
“Already on it,” Calderon assured him. “Marquis. Sit with me. Cookie, swap with Puño. Panic, I’m going to miss our little planning sessions.” He grinned at her evilly. “You have a devious mind.” Calderon handed Marquis his tablet, and the recruits started poring over the maps in glee. Across the aisle, Gonzo called forward his brain trust to study the maps in the stairwell, Fox among them.
“Guys,” Calderon said at one point during their brainstorming, after Ava spotted a particularly clever shortcut. “Remember this when you’re deployed. Think, what would Panic do? Just because you can go in brute force, doesn’t mean it’s better.”
Ava grinned at him gratefully. Combat in Jersey was a much better victory lap than lugging a stupid overweight rucksack around campus.
“Why don’t they just light up the ammo dump already?” Ava asked Calderon, ten hours later.
She didn’t feel tired. Actually, she was having a ball, but she was curious. For the moment, the squad was taking a dinner break inside a crappy abandoned apartment – literally crappy in the foul bathroom. They’d fought from the bus like a tank as long as they could. Its burnt and bullet-riddled carcass was hours behind them now.
Colonel MacLaren set up the Apple food distribution hubs. They shared a key design feature – he liked to put an ammo dump next to his food supply. That way, his defenders never ran out of ammunition. And whenever attackers got the upper hand, he blew up the food along with the looters. Manhattan ran through three hubs that way until he simply stopped siting them there. These days Manhattan was trickle-fed from depots in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn. Every time MacLaren lost a food hub, all six boroughs went on half rations for a week. He considered this win-win. The locals, tempted by the food and ammo, were trained to inform on any serious attack schemes they got wind of. And looter wannabes rarely succeeded at ripping off much food, or ammo.
“Focus,” Calderon replied. “Keeps the attackers concentrated on one goal. Soon as you explode the food hub, the bad guys scatter.”
“Got it,” Ava said. She hadn’t considered what happened after the explosion. She was looking forward to it, though. That would be epic. “What happens with the exploded food? People come and scavenge?”
Calderon shook his head. “It’ll burn. Scorched earth. We can’t have it, nobody can.” Done with his MRE, he pulled over his map tablet with a booted toe. “We’re getting close.”
Ava and Marquis leaned in to look. Puño, still eating, examined his memory instead. He was better at holding a map in his head, and the street view images as well. Of course, those pictures were several years out of date. The Upstate recruits clumped on the other side of the apartment, consoling each other, and coming to terms with their first kills. Or suspected kills – Ava questioned whether they’d hit anyone. The gang rats didn’t get sentimental about shooting people who shot at them. In fact, it was nearly orgasmic to fight door-to-door so well-equipped. They enjoyed the hell out of mowing down opponents today.
“The goal is to kill looters, not get there, right?” Marquis confirmed. They’d already fought their way ten blocks, and had two more between them and the hub facility.
The blocks were short urban, in Ava’s mind, meaning that the buildings were four stories or less, mostly brick, and attached to each other, except for the odd alley here and there. Mixed residential and commercial. The depot was a clutch of big box stores, surrounded by immense parking lots.
“Someone needs to blow it,” Ava said hopefully.
“Someone not us,” Calderon squelched her. “The kill switch is remote-controlled. Th
e manual backup is special ops with RPGs. Which stands for?”
“Rocket-propelled grenades,” they chorused. “Shoulder-mounted weapon,” Puño added. “I want one.”
“So it’s a herding problem,” Ava said. “Question is, how many cattle are on this block, versus the next.”
“Eh, herd them all to the next, then box ’em in for slaughter,” Marquis said.
“The cross street between those two blocks is the first problem,” Calderon corrected him. “Maybe the biggest one.”
38
Interesting fact: The world’s most popular gun was the AK-47. The name stands for Avtomat Kalashnikova model year 1947. Originally from the Soviet Union, the AK-47 and its derivatives were manufactured world-wide, including the U.S. It didn’t break or jam, and would shoot even when covered in mud or filled with sand.
Ava skimmed a brick wall along the sidewalk, taking point in the scouting party. She reached the alley in their way, breathed out slowly. In ultra-slow motion, she took a peek around the wall corner, and watched for half a minute. But that alley remained pitch black. Doc and Yoda caught up silently behind her. She motioned at her eyes, and let Doc take a look with the NV goggles, Calderon’s set. Doc didn’t see anything either, so they slunk past the alley to the next building.
From here adjacent roofs were available to the crossroad, one block back from the food hub’s parking lots. Every window on the bottom stories appeared to have been shot out. Ava could feel gunshot holes in the brick. The militia did that sometimes near a food hub, to discourage neighbors by ruining the housing.
Doc took point and entered the apartment building through a gaping hole with a splintered door. Ava listened behind him. Yoda stayed behind on the street to watch their backs. No obvious sounds here. But the world was noisy, with active shooting a block away, and occasionally bigger weapons farther off.
Doc tapped her arm, and whispered, “Rabbit.”
Ava released the safety on her gun, then stepped ahead of him silently to the hallway, running parallel with the building face. “Honey?” she called out tremulously. “Is that you?” She stumbled audibly left around the corner. “Honey, where are you?”
She couldn’t hear words, but someone swore, two doors down on the left, the street side. A second voice replied. Ambush team. Ava struck the wind vane pose for Doc’s benefit, pointing as she crossed past the voices. She flattened herself against the wall facing the door. “Honey? Are you there?” she called out facing the occupied door, a sob in her throat.
Footsteps approached from the apartment. A man opened the door, and a short burst of bullets hit him from two guns, Ava shooting at knee-height, Doc chest-height. They sprayed ammo three feet to either side of the door, as well as directly at him. After the one victim thudded to the floor, the recruits stood very still and listened. Drat, the other one was playing dead.
Ava slid back toward Doc and whispered, “One more.” Then, she stepped audibly farther down the hall, fingers trailing along the wall, skipping across apartment doors. It was pitch black in there. “Honey? Where are you? Honey?” Her voice took on a teasing, cruel edge now. After the shots, she was all too obviously no rabbit. But the remaining opponent could hear her progress. Her fingers felt a cooler steel door, with windows. Stairwell.
She pushed in, and used the door frame for cover, aiming back down the hall. “Honey?” she called up the steel stairs.
She didn’t see the next looter, only Doc’s muzzle flash. She shot along with him, still at knee level. Two body thumps to the floor, one gun clatter, and cursing. She and Doc paused, and heard shooting from Yoda on the street. Fast footsteps came pelting in after that.
“Yoda,” Doc and Yoda said softly together, as he turned into the hall.
“Sorry,” Ava said, “I only heard two.”
“Four, then?” Doc said. “Or more.”
“In that one apartment,” Ava returned. “Dunno about the rest.” She carefully stepped back toward them, and turned her flashlight to study on the guys on the floor. Two emaciated black guys, civilian clothes, interchangeable with many they’d seen that day in Passaic. She kicked their guns out of reach. The locals were painfully thin compared to the Apple boroughs these days, or even the recruits from North Jersey when they arrived. But one, the first kill, was a hefty skinhead white guy, face down. He wore camouflage fatigues, but in big blotchy beige, not the Hudson standard forest pattern.
One of the men wasn’t dead yet. Doc put another bullet in his head. “One of these things is not like the others,” he said, in a Sesame Street sing-song. “One of these things just doesn’t belong.”
After a careful glance into the apartment, Ava flipped the white guy over. “White Rule,” she confirmed. She’d seen this one with Hendricks, the psychopath who inspired her to part ways with Frosty in August. “Gun dealer, ammo. We got AKs from him. Rifles. Few dozen. Last summer.”
“Maybe it’s just business,” Yoda said.
“Supplying black insurgents?” Doc snorted. “Sure.”
Makes sense if they’re trying to get the black insurgents killed, Ava thought. Throwing them at a food depot, would get them killed. “Let’s scamper to the rooftops.”
“No thoughts on Whitey?” Doc pressed her.
Ava shrugged. “He didn’t have their best interest at heart.”
Yoda thoughtfully snapped pictures of the dead guys.
They advanced carefully, but the stairs offered no further adventures. At the top, Ava tapped out a progress report to Calderon. It was a nuisance to hide the glow of the screen outdoors. The sergeant acknowledged with a simple Go.
Doc hung in the rooftop doorway a few moments, scoping out the view with night goggles. “Machine gun, three crew.” He pointed to a roof across the street, above the intersection they were trying to scout.
Ava ducked back into the stairwell to place that landmark on the shared student map, and bring it to Calderon’s attention. Go, he replied.
She followed the guys, catching up to Yoda waiting at the lip of the roof. The next was a half story lower. Doc was already at the far side, using the final building for cover as he carefully scanned backward along the block. Ava and Yoda slipped down and took in the view forward from the closer corner. The roof felt spongy. Ava didn’t trust it. But with higher roofs on either side, they had better cover here than anywhere else. Ava settled to watch the target intersection while Yoda wandered to the back of the building, to check for features of interest. After a few more minutes they converged on Doc’s position.
Ava reported, “Think there’s a lot of people on that cross street. Counted seven. No stealth.”
“Back of this roof makes a good fall back position,” Yoda offered.
“Our machine gunners might want to take Whitey’s place downstairs,” Doc said. “Insurgents expect a gun there, and think it’s theirs. That’s it for here. Panic first. Stay low.”
Ava pulled herself up over the lip of the next roof, only about three feet higher, and dripped over the lip to lie prone for a moment. No reaction from the machine gun across the street. A few pots stood abandoned. Someone had farmed up here at one point, not too expertly. They used it as an open-air latrine, too. Ava was deeply unimpressed with local sanitation habits. She belly-crawled across the tarry surface, her uniform sticking to it in spots. Dragging herself by her elbows was tiring, pushing with her feet, while holding up her carbine so it didn’t make any noise. She kept her eyes on a few square feet in front of her.
Two thirds of the way across, she heard some slight sound behind her, then the machine gun opened up from the roof across the street. So much for stealth. She rose to a crouch and zig-zagged at a run, bullets tearing into the roof around her. She dove beneath the forward wall of the roof, for what little cover it offered. A medium machine gun could easily chew itself a hole through any flimsy bit of brickwork. A heavy machine gun could take down aircraft. She lay blotto for a minute, while the gun continued to fire bursts.
That�
��s not a very big gun, she realized. In fact, it didn’t sound much different from their carbines firing bursts. What else do I know? She doubted Doc or Yoda had been hit, because she didn’t hear them cry out. She doubted the turkeys on the other roof had night vision gear, because she was still alive. She risked a peek between her fingers. The gunners’ level was a few feet below hers, as she remembered. The lip of her roof actually kept her out of their line of sight. They were only about 40-50 feet away. More to the point, the edge of their roof was maybe 35 feet from the edge of hers.
I can throw that. She wriggled out a grenade, and blew out, for calm and focus. Then she heard the distinctive sound of an empty ammo magazine. Before thinking, she was on her feet and the grenade pin was out. She sighted. She threw. She hit the deck, hands shielding her neck. Bits of brick rained down on her painlessly from the explosion. Screams and curses came from the other roof. They were hurting, for sure.
“Sweet throw!” Doc called. “Flare!”
Oh, yeah! They were here to look at the street below. She rolled over and patted down her tactical vest to locate a flare. By the time she had it ready, Yoda and Doc flanked her.
“Yoda, gun on the neighbors,” Doc ordered. “Panic, record video.”
Good idea! Ava might have cunning in planning sessions, but there was no question of her leading in the field. Doc had ten times the live fire experience of her and Yoda, and that surely counted for a lot. They’d scouted together all day, and Ava hadn’t seen him miss a beat. She prepped her phone to take video, and set it down in front of her. “Ready?”
“No,” Doc decided. “Gimme the flare.”