by Ricky Sides
Herb issued instructions to his defense leaders to see to it the men ate and rested in shifts at the berms. At least it wasn’t raining, but it was going to be a very cold night for them all. Conduction from their contact with the cold dirt would draw the heat from their bodies. To help alleviate that problem, he had some of the wool army blankets distributed to the men on the berms. They could lie on half the blanket and fold the other half over their bodies.
***
It had taken hours for Big John’s men to get into position because several had stumbled into traps and been wounded. Those men had to be assisted back to their convoy, where they joined a growing number of fighters whose wounds were too serious for them to continue to fight. Therefore, it was dark by the time the last team was in place and ready to proceed with the plan.
Inside Big John’s RV, Dana paced the floor. “What’s wrong with you?” John asked her. “You’re acting as if it’s your ass on the line. I’m the one who gives the orders. Some of the men are already muttering about this operation. They’re saying that the refuge is too well defended. They are right about that, and Bennett has a very good team out stalking my people.”
“Then maybe we should cut our losses and leave,” Dana said.
Big John stared at her incredulously. He shook his head and said, “They have killed and wounded way the hell too many of my men for us to stop while they’re ahead. I wouldn’t last another week as the leader if I did that.”
“She’s coming for us, John. Why do you think none of those groups that were supposed to join us has shown up? She killed them. Her and her ragtag group of zombies ate them.”
“One group made it through,” John argued.
Dana nodded her head and said, “Yes, and those six men took one look at our wounded and left. Besides, they came from the west. None of the groups to our east made it past her.”
“Damn it, woman, get hold of yourself. You’re talking about a zombie. They aren’t intelligent. Not like you’re implying. They don’t employ any strategy beyond following a food source. If the others ran into a big enough mob of zombies, then sure, they could have been taken out, but let’s not make a superhero out of the bitch. She’s just another undead creature waiting for someone to take her out. If she shows up here, then that’s exactly what I’ll do too.”
“We need to get inside that fence, or leave tonight,” Dana said doggedly.
“I’m about to order the next phase to begin,” he replied. “We’ll begin in five minutes. And, Dana, when this is over, I expect to be using Bennett’s woman. Hard. And I better not hear you bitch about it either.”
“Can I watch?” Dana asked.
John noticed her eyes light up with interest at the prospect of seeing her enemy tortured by him. He chuckled and said, “Only if you promise to leave us alone. I don’t want you interfering in any way. I know how to use a woman, and I also know how to break one if that’s what I want to do.”
“Break her for me then,” Dana said with a contented expression on her face.
“And you’re not going to get all pissed off and try to deny me my pleasure the next time I want you?”
Dana laughed as if she thought that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “You just don’t get it in your head to replace me with her. I doubt she’ll be able to accommodate you the way I can, but I don’t want you getting the idea all the same.”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” John pledged. He turned and walked to the door. “This may take a few hours. Get some sleep if you like.”
Dana nodded as if she would do as he suggested, but she had no intentions of sleeping until they were behind the fence and safe inside the refuge.
***
Trevor was once again in the southeast tower. It seemed to him that he had been present in that watch position during the most important events that had ever transpired at the refuge. He wondered if anything of great importance would happen tonight. He scanned the ground in front of his position, but it was so dark that visibility was down to nothing. He thought he heard a muffled thud, but there was no repetition of the sound, so he wondered if he had just imagined it.
He stood up and moved closer to the edge of the tower, leaning his hands against the low wall as he strained his eyes and ears. His efforts were rewarded when he detected another soft thud. This time, he heard a muffled curse and his eyes grew wide in alarm, because he knew it had come from outside the fence. He backed away from the wall and drew his radio from his belt. He squatted down and spoke softly into the unit. Within a matter of moments, he was talking to Randy and explaining what he had heard. Randy instructed him to continue to observe for the moment while he contacted the other towers to alert them as well.
Trevor got back to his feet and grabbed a flare. If he was certain he saw or heard something, he would use the flare to illuminate the area. If he did that, then the enemy would know that they were using the towers again, and they were sitting ducks up there against determined and experienced humans. Therefore, he had to be certain before he took the risk.
He was still waiting for confirmation when Herb came on the radio and informed the tower guards that he was sending members of his team with their night vision equipment to help see if the enemy was working on a plan near their defenses. He added that they had seen nothing from the berms.
Trevor thought about it. He’d had hundreds of hours during his shifts at guard duty to think about how an enemy might breach their defenses. Since the addition of the ditch, the obvious first move would be that they had to get across that formidable barrier with its sharpened stakes. He was still considering that when he heard a metallic sounding ping. He felt his ears twitch when he heard the sound, and he felt a stab of stark fear because the sound was one that he recognized from the construction of the outer fence. That had been the sound of a wire under tension being cut.
Trevor wasted no time reporting the incident. Instead, he launched his flare over the area where he thought the sound had originated, and then he grabbed his rifle.
On the ground below, Herb and Randy were surprised when Trevor’s flare illuminated the night sky. Then they heard his rifle open fire. Other weapons fire soon joined in as Randy yelled into the radio for all tower guards to pop their flares.
The marauders had sent in small teams with small logs that they laid across the ditch to form a crude bridge they could use to get to the other side. Then they began to cut the wire so that they could gain entry. Once the way inside was open, other men waiting in the forest would make their way to the compound, cross the logs, and be inside with the defenders none the wiser. Their plan might have worked too, if not for Trevor’s keen sense of hearing and the fact that he had fired his flare without waiting for Jason to reach him with his night vision gear. Had he waited, a dozen men could have been inside the refuge by the time Jason arrived.
All around the refuge, the defensive teams worked to fight off the marauders. John’s men had timed all four of their attacks to coincide in the hopes that at least one or two of the teams would succeed, or that they could overwhelm the defenders’ ability to fight them off effectively.
This time, the defenders aimed to kill the enemy. The fighting was conducted at a furious pace. Trevor was wounded almost immediately, but he managed to kill two of the attackers before he was taken out of the fight by a shot to his right shoulder. The berms gave the defenders the high ground, and thus, they enjoyed a serious advantage. They were able to fire from prone positions, thus exposing little of their bodies to return fire, whereas their enemies who were attempting to penetrate their defenses were out in the open. John’s men had no cover whatsoever and were therefore much better targets.
The shooting lasted less than two minutes, during which time most of John’s penetration team members were killed. Many of the survivors were wounded as they sought to make their escape. The men waiting in the woods were forced to retreat as well. They saw the heavy concentrations of firepower being directed at the
fleeing penetration team members who were running in their direction. They knew they had no option but to withdraw.
John moved through the woods with a group of his men on their way to the road. The walking wounded from the southeast side of the attempt to penetrate the refuge followed them. Behind them were men carrying two of the wounded who couldn’t walk out on their own.
The attack he had hoped would lead to the occupation of the refuge by his forces had been a miserable failure. If it weren’t for the zombie threat, he would have left many of his men in the woods to prevent the people of the refuge from making repairs, but that wasn’t a good option to pursue. He was all too aware that the gunfire would pull in more of the undead. His camp had already come under attack by several zombies that had been attracted. He knew it was a matter of when and not if more would arrive.
“What do we do next?” asked one of Big John’s men.
“We fall back and form a strong camp to ride out the night. Tomorrow, we’ll try another attack, but for now, we need to concentrate on making it through the night.”
Back at the refuge, Herb’s team made the rounds checking the security of the compound. They found two places where the wire had been cut, so they stood guard while the other men made emergency repairs.
“We were lucky tonight,” Herb said. “This could have ended much worse.”
“We all owe Trevor a debt of gratitude,” Randy agreed. “How is he? I heard he was wounded.”
Herb nodded. “You never know with bullet wounds, but I think he’ll make it. He took it in the right shoulder though, so no matter what, he’s going to be out of action for a long time.”
“We’ll miss him in the towers,” Randy observed.
“You’ve got that right,” Herb responded. “If he hadn’t detected the enemy, we’d be fighting for our lives by now, and I’m not at all sure we could beat them. Their men are experienced soldiers. Most of ours are civilians.”
“Not anymore,” Randy quipped. Then he said, “You’d think they’d give up. We must have killed or wounded a third of their people by now.”
“Yeah, well, we may be victims of our own success as far as that goes,” Herb countered. “We’ve hurt them so much that he may feel he has to take the refuge or else some of his people may get to thinking a change of leadership is needed.”
“You could be right about that,” Randy said.
“We should let them bed down for the night, and then go out and attack them,” Jason said. “If we could hit them hard enough, they may panic and pull out when we break off our attack.”
“We shouldn’t risk it,” Herb replied with a shake of his head. “We only have a limited amount of night vision gear, and we need that in the towers. I wouldn’t even want to think about traipsing through the woods at night after all this gunfire without that gear. You guys know as well as I do that all this shooting will draw in the zombies from miles around. We should let them go after the marauders and not put ourselves at the additional risk. It’s bad enough that Bernie and Hernando are still out there, but they’ll be holed up someplace where the undead can’t just stumble over them. And there’s no way to know whether or not the enemy will try another attack on the fences tonight. If they do, and they bring explosives with them, we’ll need every able bodied man in here to hold them at bay because they’ll flood through the breached defenses.”
“All of those are good points,” Jason conceded. “But damn it, I’m getting tired of letting them make all the first moves.”
“They aren’t. Like Herb said, Bernie and Hernando are still out there, and they have been taking the fight to the enemy,” Randy interjected.
“Do you guys think they’re still alive?” Jesse asked.
“Oh yes,” Jason said with assurance. “If they had captured them, they’d have used them as hostages to try to force us to open the gates, and if they were dead, they’d show us their bodies to demoralize us.”
“You’re probably right about that,” Jesse said. Then he shook his head and added, “I should have gone with Hernando. He’s my friend. He saved us all a dozen times over back in Newport, and I let him go out there alone.”
“He’s not alone. He’s with Bernie,” Herb reminded Jesse.
“Yeah, I know. That’s part of the problem for me. That guy tried to murder you.”
“He says he only meant to wound me,” Herb replied.
“Do you really believe that?” Jesse asked.
“If my opinion matters, I believe it,” a voice said from out in the dark near the team. Raman Chandler walked up to stand near the men. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop on your conversation. I was looking for Herb to ask about rotating some of the men who have been on duty the longest.”
“Do you have replacements for them?” Herb asked.
“Yes, but they are pretty green. Their training isn’t up to the same level as the first group we put through the system,” responded the man that Herb had put in charge of the refuge defenses.
“Then I’d keep the other men in their positions. Let them sleep in rotations, but I want at least half the men alert throughout the night. I’d like to relieve them, but as we just saw, we are vulnerable in the dark.”
“Okay, I’ll see to it,” Raman said, and he turned to walk away.
“Just a second, Raman,” Randy said. When Raman stopped and turned to see what he wanted, he added, “Do you really believe what Bernie said about not meaning to kill Herb?”
“Yes, I do. You’ve never seen the man shoot. I have. That would have been an easy shot for him. At first, I thought maybe his scope was off, but I tested the rifle before the trial and it was as accurate as ever, which was pretty damn accurate. That made me wonder why he missed, but I didn’t pursue it because any number of things can cause a man to make a bad shot, including an unexpected movement by the target.” Raman paused for a moment, and then he asked, “Did he say why he shot you, but didn’t try to kill you?” he asked Herb.
“He claims he planned to tell Dana that he almost got me, and that he would try again,” Herb explained.
“Now that sounds like something Bernie would cook up. Not that it excuses what he did, mind you, but it does explain a lot. Yeah, in that case, I believe him, but it doesn’t excuse what he did.”
“No, but Bernie has been punished for several months. He worked hard, and never complained or gave us a moment’s trouble. He volunteered for the sniper mission in exchange for his freedom,” Herb explained. “Would you trust him to have the run of the refuge with weapons?”
“Damn, now that’s a tough one. Yes, I think I would, but the main question is, do you? You’re the one he shot.”
“Oddly enough, yes, I think I would, and Erma is having a fit about that.”
“I’ll bet she is. If it makes you all feel any better, attach him to me. I’ll put him on one of my teams and keep him occupied. He used to be a good man,” Raman said.
“I was hoping you’d volunteer,” Herb replied. “You earned Erma’s trust when you told the doctor about Dana’s plans and later testified against her and Bernie at the trial, so if you take him under your supervision, I’m sure I can get her to go along with it.”
Raman looked Herb in the eyes and said, “You know, I was wrong about you when we first met. I took you for a man who would run roughshod over people to get what he wanted, but nothing could be further from the truth. You’ve been nothing but kind to all of us and treat everyone fairly. You even helped patch things up between the Gunn family and me.”
“That took some doing,” Herb admitted. Then he said, “I think I was wrong about you too. I thought you were a womanizer who’d do just about anything to claim a woman you wanted, especially after you tried so hard to get Tommy’s wife to stay with you.”
“Oh that. I just didn’t trust you people at the time. Don’t get me wrong. I do admire a good looking woman, but I’m not into forcing myself on anyone, or committing murder to get one to sleep with me. In a way, I can rel
ate to what Bernie did. I tried to play Dana, but she couldn’t keep her mouth shut so that fell apart. Bernie did play her, and he succeeded.”
“He would have gone with her though,” Randy inserted into the conversation.
“Yeah, he was always quick to fall for a woman, but she shot him down, and I’m glad she did. She’d have ended up getting him killed,” Raman stated. He looked at the stars in the sky for a moment, and then he said, “It’s getting late. I’d best get back to the men and get them started on that sleep rotation.”
After Raman left, the team went to the berm facing the gates and took up positions there. Herb instructed half the team to sleep in their positions. He’d decided that his own team needed rest as much as the other defenders. He promised to wake Randy in two hours, unless something happened. They would sleep in two hour shifts. He thought of Erma and Amy who were back at the clinic with the doctor and his wife, Nancy, taking care of their wounded. He would rather have the women in the shelter, but knew they were needed. He made a mental note to send men to evacuate them to a shelter if the fence was breached. He wondered if he would ever get to lie down beside his wife again and hold her in his arms. He was under no illusions as to their fate if they lost this little war with John’s marauders.
Chapter 16
Terror in the dark.
“John, we need to go. I’m telling you, she is coming,” Dana insisted.
“Enough! If you want to leave so damn bad, then be my guest!” John yelled. Then in a calmer tone of voice, he added, “I told you already, I can’t leave. Almost half of my people are either dead or wounded. If I pull out now, the men will replace me. That’s if I’m lucky. They might just shoot me in the back, and then replace me with a different leader.”
“John, they have thousands of those injections in the refuge. Maybe you should just demand they give you a couple of thousands of them and then we can leave. People would give you anything for those shots,” Dana said persuasively.