The Retreat #5: Crucible

by Stephen Knight

  “Hey—!” was all Nutter could say.

  Muldoon lifted the jar to his mouth and chugged back its entire contents. Rawlings made a sound of disgust. He didn’t even chew the mushrooms, he just shotgunned them down like he was knocking back a beer. Nutter made a sound of his own, though it was infinitely more mournful as vinegar-laced fluid disappeared down Muldoon’s apparently endless gullet in a single stream. If there was a single chug to the sequence, Rawlings couldn’t see it from where she stood.

  Muldoon finished up, cleared his throat, and handed the empty vessel back to Nutter. Nutter looked at it, eyes sad, mouth curled downward in a crestfallen frown.

  Muldoon smacked his lips. “A little too much vinegar for me, but—oh, hold on...” The big man paused for a moment, then released a cavernous fart that even the driver in the Stryker a hundred feet away heard. “Yeah, that’s gonna be fire later. Thanks for the warning, Colonel.”

  “Damn, Duke.” Nutter looked at the empty jar in his hand. “I mean...ain’t even a stem left.”

  Muldoon leaned forward and poked Nutter in his chest protector. “I want you on your fucking rifle, paying attention to what the fuck is going on in your lane. I do not want you stuffing your hillbilly face with mushrooms or artichokes or lima beans or whatever the fuck you find in the Underground Hotel, you get me? You’re here to shoot klowns, and that means you need to have your shit in your hands, not hanging around your neck by its patrol strap. You read me on this, Colonel?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, loud and clear, Duke. Shit.”

  Muldoon leaned in even closer. “Then drop that jar and get on your fucking rifle!” he thundered, voice so loud that no one in the field could miss it. Rawlings cocked her head to one side. All the running, all the fighting, all the waiting for the klowns, all the killing. It was finally getting to Muldoon, and unfortunately for Nutter, it was coming right at him. Rawlings found that curious. Curious as hell, actually. It meant Muldoon was as human as the rest of the unit, and even he was starting to unwind a bit.

  “On it,” Nutter said, a quaver in his voice. He tossed the empty jar into the grass and snatched a hold of his rifle. As Muldoon did the same, he looked over Nutter’s helmeted head and smiled at Rawlings. She was certain he probably threw in a wink too, but she couldn’t see it past his sunglasses.

  Rawlings shook her head and went back to scanning the tree line in her firing lane. While it had been quite some time since the klowns had attempted a coordinated attack, they were still out there, lurking about. There had been daily intermittent contact with them, but their numbers were diminishing. That meant the crazies were either up to something, or they had found another area of interest greater than the First Battalion, Fifty-Fifth Infantry Regiment.

  Rawlings didn’t believe the latter for an instant. The klowns were still out there, plotting and planning something. She felt it in her bones. They didn’t give up, they didn’t retreat. Ever.

  The lieutenant commanding the drop recovery zone waved his arm in the air. “Two minutes!” he shouted. “Muldoon, make sure your people are ready!”

  “Done, sir,” Muldoon shouted back. As he spoke, Muldoon turned from side to side, ensuring his shooters were in their assigned locations and ready for the drop. “Everyone’s in position.”

  Rawlings listened. The day was warm and only slightly overcast. Birds chirped, insects buzzed, and in the near distance, the sound of men and machines could be heard moving around High Point’s fortified entrance. Rawlings paid close attention to the trees and brush surrounding the meadow, listening for the telltale noises of a mass of enemy fighters pushing through the overgrowth. Beyond the usual rustle of leaves in the irregular breeze, she heard nothing untoward.

  Then: a distant rumble. Jet engines.

  “On your rifles,” Muldoon snapped.

  The rumble swelled to a shrieking roar as two C-15 cargo jets cruised past overhead. At an altitude of six hundred feet and an airspeed of two hundred fifty knots, they didn’t remain in view for very long. The fat, four-engined jets practically darted over the meadow in a staggered formation. One jet dislodged four objects, the other two. For an instant, the palletized container delivery systems plummeted toward the earth in complete free fall, tumbling and turning. Then their parachutes deployed, snapping full of air before the containers they were attached to had fallen more than a hundred feet. As soon as the loads were clear, Rawlings heard the C-15s spool up as their pilots increased power to get the hell out of klown territory as quickly as possible.

  The containers didn’t sway much on their parachutes, as these were what the Air Force designated high-velocity deliverables—the chutes only slowed them down a bit and kept them more or less stable during their transit to the deck. The first one landed only a few seconds after being ejected from the jet, and it bounced in the tall grass, its chute still full of air as the breeze suddenly picked up. In response, those drops still airborne began shifting uprange, riding the wind. They actually moved toward the waiting five-ton trucks, which Rawlings thought was rather fortuitous. It meant the troops could load up that much faster and return to the main encampment surrounding High Point.

  “Hey, is that one gonna hit the truck?” Nutter shouted suddenly, pointing at one of the rapidly descending containers. One of the OD green straps that secured the load to the pallet had come loose, flapping in the air like a streamer. Rawlings glanced up. Sure enough, the pallet was heading almost right toward one of the waiting five-tons. As she watched, it struck the truck right in the center of the bed, moving at almost sixty miles an hour.

  “God damn Air Force!” Muldoon thundered.

  The racket was immense. The truck bounced on its suspension, and its driver bailed out of the cab, thinking it was taking enemy fire. The remainder of the straps broke loose, and crate after crate of supplies spilled all over the place. The pallet itself disintegrated, sending shards of wood hurtling through the air. The parachute remained inflated by the wind, and it dragged the remains of its cargo across the truck’s bed and enveloped the cab. The gunner manning the M240 in the ring there struggled against it, trying and failing to keep his weapon clear. Finally caught up, the chute fluttered in the breeze. To Rawlings, its rippling sounds vaguely resembled that of some constipated giant farting.

  “Fuck! Get that shit clear, sir!” Muldoon ordered, looking at the lieutenant presiding over the recovery team.

  The lieutenant looked a little put out at Muldoon’s form of address, but waved a hand in contrition. “Yeah, we’re on it. You guys watch your lanes!”

  A PFC named Campbell from the Pennsylvania National Guard suddenly stepped back, firming up her grip on her M4. “What was that?” she snapped, eyes sharp beneath the brim of her helmet.

  “What was what?” Rawlings replied.

  “Listen!” Campbell snarled as another container hit the ground. As expected, the recovery team went for it immediately, but Campbell kept a war footing. “I hear laughing!”

  Rawlings tucked her rifle in closer. She listened as well as she was able. She heard the containers hitting the deck, the directions shouted by Muldoon and the rest of the troops, and birds chirping in the trees.

  Then she heard a titter, one with an irregular cadence. She’d heard it before. And as the soldiers wrestled with the parachute that was enveloping the M925’s cab, she knew exactly what it was. She’d never be able to forget it for the rest of her life.

  A klown. Chortling with uncontained, demented delight.

  And it was close.

  “Muldoon!” she shouted.

  The first shots rang out, and soldiers to her left shouted and fell as hot rounds struck them. Rawlings took a knee a millisecond after Nutter, and the scrawny soldier immediately slewed his weapon around and began firing into the trees to his left, his M4 ejecting spent cartridges that twinkled in the bright summer sunlight. Rawlings added her own rifle to the fray, though she had no targets, and there were friendlies in her lane of fire. She avoided them as best as she c
ould and pumped several rounds into the forest. She saw shapes moving amidst the greenery there, and for an instant, she wondered if she and Nutter were opening up on a security patrol she didn’t know about. Things were so fluid and so dynamic in the new world that she didn’t dare take the time to verify her targets. Friends could be mistaken for foes in a heartbeat, something she realized was a paramount danger. Yet here she was, leaning into her M4 as it barked and shot hot rounds into the surrounding woods, all without first verifying that she was actually in contact with the enemy.

  But more weapon fire came from the tree line, and more soldiers went down.

  Yeah. This is enemy contact.

  The klowns exposed themselves a moment later, pouring out of the trees, an element at least fifty to sixty strong. They streamed toward the waiting trucks in a picket formation, those with weapons firing on the move. That and the fact they were laughing uproariously did little to improve their accuracy. The soldiers were able to recover almost immediately, and their return fire wasn’t anywhere near as imprecise. After months of constant contact with the crazies, the soldiers of the Tenth and the Pennsylvania Army National Guard were battle-hardened and knew what to expect. Their defensive fires, while not nearly as surprising as that of the attacking horde’s, was disciplined and constrained. Klown after klown went down within a hundred feet of the trees.

  And then, the Stryker’s engine bellowed as the armored, eight-wheeled vehicle advanced into the clearing. Its cupola-mounted GAU-19 roared its electric song, sending hundreds of fifty-caliber rounds hurtling downrange. The klowns literally exploded beneath the onslaught of such a capable weapon, disintegrating into loose collections of pulped, bloody matter as the heavy bullets sliced through their targets and continued on until next Thursday. The attacking force was blunted in less than thirty seconds, and the only thing left to do was separate the dead from the dying.

  “Hey, that didn’t last for long,” Rawlings called out to Campbell.

  “Don’t trust ’em,” Campbell replied. She kept her rifle shouldered and oriented onto the engagement area. She had braces, and they glinted in the sunlight when she spoke. In the near distance, Muldoon exhorted the troops to maintain security and remain focused on their firing lanes. The Stryker came to a halt, its turret still oriented toward the tree line to the left from where the klown attack had originated. Many of the fallen enemy there still squirmed, hacking out their dry laughter as they bled out, marinating the soil beneath them with their circulatory fluid. Already, Muldoon had soldiers walking amongst them, popping any who might still be deemed a threat while the medics treated the wounded friendlies. There were only two soldiers down that Rawlings saw, and one of them was already being helped back to his feet.

  “Come on, let’s get the wounded out of here, then get this shit loaded up!” Muldoon shouted to the drop recovery team. He waved one thick arm toward the delivered pallets, the last of which had just grounded in the field.

  As the situation stabilized, the troops went to work. Rawlings and Campbell exchanged a glance before both went back to watching their lanes.

  Thunder clapped to Rawlings’s right. Something hissed—a quick sssst! as a trail of fire raced across the field. She started to turn toward the noise when the Stryker exploded. She let out an involuntary shout when the shockwave hit her and she saw the vehicle’s turret separate from the rig’s body, its tri-barrel .50-caliber weapon mangled and trailing a tongue of belted ammunition. Something slapped her in the shoulder as she started to crouch. It was the gunner’s severed, sleeveless arm, naked and without a trace of uniform aside from the glove on the hand. There was a barbed wire tattoo around the bicep, right below the bloody tear where the limb had been deboned from the explosion.

  The Stryker began to burn, and Rawlings heard the driver screaming as smoke boiled out of the stricken device.

  “Never trust ’em!” Specialist Campbell cried as she turned, orienting her rifle toward the trees beyond the burning Stryker. Rawlings did the same, just as a mass of klowns emerged. This force was substantially larger than the first, and there were plenty of uniforms in the mix. That caused a chill to form around Rawlings’s heart, one that deepened as the new wave of attackers opened up. Bullets flew.

  Rawlings and Campbell opened up immediately, returning fire. Something landed beside Rawlings, and she caught a glimpse of Nutter, dropping down to one knee a few feet away, adding his own M4 to the mix. They fired on semiauto, dropping attackers as they emerged from the trees. Behind her, more rifles cracked, and more attackers fell, cackling and guffawing. To the klowns, bullet wounds hurt so good.

  Rounds ripped past Rawlings. Those that passed a few feet away made a buzz. Those that passed a few inches from her made a firecracker-like pop. Many of the attackers didn’t have firearms, but they held weapons regardless—bats, knives, machetes, axes, hammers, and in one case even a croquet mallet. The horde was filthy, decorated with all manner of tribal-like adornments. Some were naked. Others wore full-on business suits, now soiled with blood and mud and food and excrement and Rawlings didn’t know what else. The crazies charged right into the recovery team’s guns, even if it meant their deaths.

  Which it did.

  The driver in the Stryker finally stopped screaming. Several .50-caliber rounds began cooking off as the vehicle continued to burn, sending a thick pillar of twisting, black, undulating smoke into the clear blue sky. It smelled harsh and acrid even from over a hundred feet away, but Rawlings actually appreciated the smoke. It would tell everyone at High Point where they could be found.

  “Shit’s gettin’ close, gonna lay down a frag!” Nutter said, his voice high-pitched, bordering almost on girlish. He released his rifle and pulled a fragmentation grenade from his tactical harness.

  “You know how to throw that shit, little guy?” Campbell yelled over the din. A soldier with a SAW ran up and flopped down beside her, setting up the automatic weapon where it could do some good.

  “I’m sure you’re probably better at hurling balls than I am!” Nutter grabbed the grenade’s pin and pulled the explosive away from it, ripping it loose. It wasn’t done like in the old movies. He actually yanked the weapon away from the pin, not the other way around. He wound back and lobbed it toward the oncoming band of combatants.

  “Frag ou—!” his warning was cut short and Rawlings thought she heard a metallic ping from where he stood. He staggered backward with a loud sigh and fell onto his narrow ass. Nutter had been hit, but he’d still managed to deliver the goods.

  “Frag out!” Rawlings shouted.

  The fragmentation grenade arced through the air, and one of the klowns actually swung at it with a bat, tipping it slightly. But the explosive was too heavy to be deflected by anything other than a perfect connection, and it disappeared inside the tall grass. The klown with the bat laughed and pointed at it, then leaped toward it. Arms outstretched in an award-winning Superman demonstration. The grenade went off while the man was still in midflight, blasting his body backward ten feet in the air, tumbling ass over tea kettle. More klowns went down, screaming in laughter as they coiled and writhed, caught up in the clutch of hysteria-fueled amusement at their own injuries. Then the SAW came to life, and one side of the attacking skirmish line imploded as bodies fell.

  Rawlings kept her rifle shouldered and continued firing. The grenade had halted the klown advance, but it was a temporary fix to an everlasting problem. Her mag ran dry. As she ejected it and allowed it to fall to the grass before her, she glanced over at Nutter. He was sitting in the grass, bent forward a bit, holding his chest.

  “Nutter! How bad are you hit?” she yelled, pulling a fresh mag from her vest.

  “I’m cool—chicken plate stopped it!” Nutter sounded amazed at his good fortune.

  “Then get on your rifle, you little prick!” This came from Muldoon as he thundered forward, taking a knee beside the SAW gunner. “Ain’t no time to be gazing at whatever’s growing outta your navel!”

  Ra
wlings went back to firing. From the corner of her eye, she saw Nutter seize up his M4 and commence shooting from his seated position. In the tree line, more figures emerged, a good fifty to sixty more cackling lunatics. They lunged forward as if of one mind, howling at the hilarity of it all as they threw themselves into the mix. Rawlings and the others fired as fast as they could, and even with the SAW gunner kneecapping as many klowns as his weapon could fire, the new wave fed the first. Within moments, the klowns were within feet of them.

  Campbell’s rifle ran dry, and a klown leaped toward her. The short black woman didn’t fall back, didn’t quail in fear. She released her weapon and darted forward, slamming the crazy right in the face with her helmet. Blood poured down the man’s face courtesy of his now broken nose, but it didn’t faze him in the slightest.

  “Oh yeah, baby! Where you been all my life?” he jeered as he slashed at Campbell with a knife. She danced back, but the blade slashed open the right sleeve of her uniform blouse. The close call didn’t deter her. As soon as the blade was on its downward arc, she stepped back in and threw a solid right jab that was instantly followed up by two solid lefts. The attacking klown was much larger than she was, but his eyes rolled up in his head and he dropped like a sack of potatoes, collapsing into the tall grass. For an instant, Campbell stood over him, fists raised, and looked down on him with hard eyes.

  “That’s right, white man—you just got your ass kicked by a five-foot-two-inch can a’ fucking cool!” she shouted. She dropped down on top of him and slugged him again and again, putting her one hundred pounds of body mass behind each punch.

  A clutch of klowns reached for her then, and Campbell stepped back. Her eyes were still hard, but she snatched a magazine from her vest and ejected the empty one from her rifle. She wasn’t going to be fast enough. Rawlings couldn’t turn her weapon away from the targets before her—she was danger close as well.