by David Peters
Dylan nodded happily, “You have a deal.”
Chapter 4
The Murphy family, Cap-Cap and Jen sat around the dining room table having a celebratory dinner. Jen had quite happily said yes to the captain’s proposal and now they were getting down to the business of planning the event. Anything to keep their minds off the attack that all knew just had to be coming tonight.
“So Niccole, do you think you are up to being my Maid of Honor? I don’t want to push your recuperation.” Jen asked directly and added a wink.
“You can count on me! I’d be, well, honored. Have you two set a date yet? Do you know what you are going to wear?”
“We haven’t quite figured out what I’m going to wear yet, I didn’t pack a dress with my fatigues. As far as the date?” She left the question open and looked at Cap-Cap.
“Sooner rather than later I would think. Dylan, I’d like it if you would do me the honor of being my Best Man.” Cap-Cap said as he put his hand on Dylan’s shoulder.
Dylan looked slightly surprised, “I’d be more than happy to. What kind of ceremony are we talking about?”
Cap-Cap looked at Jen and looked back, “Something non-conventional we think. Neither one of us has much of a church background so it isn’t critical that it be done in any particular denomination. We would really like to focus on the family and friend aspect. Kind of bring everyone in on it if that doesn’t sound too weird. Little more community, little less privacy I guess.”
“I’m not even aware of any religious leader type people in town. It just isn’t something that comes up; everyone kind of practices their beliefs in private and it just doesn’t come up in every day conversation. I guess being mayor might give me some ability to preside over it if that doesn’t get in the way of the Best Man part.”
“That would be great Dylan,” Jen said with a smile, “I don’t think it would get in the way at all.”
Dylan looked over his shoulder and out the front window of the cabin. Dusk was setting in and the glow of daylight was rapidly fading. He knew the attack was coming. The Corrupted had one hell of a vindictive streak in their blood. They were angry enough having the three women stolen from the nest, but the way they were turned back the night before would have them seething. Travis had been given free range with Whitey close by this side and the system they came up with was absolutely remarkable. Dylan caught himself shaking his head as he thought about the contraptions that the young men had come up with. He met the captains’ eyes and could see they were thinking the exact same thoughts. They nodded a quick mutual understanding and turned back to the conversation going on around them.
They would find out soon enough how well the best laid plans of man worked out for them.
--1--
Dylan looked at the softly glowing numbers on his father’s old watch for the fifth time in as many minutes. He moved his leg nervously as he watched the slow moving hands move towards midnight. The normal sentries were walking the wall and not attempting to hide their presence like they had the previous night. Dylan looked around the small shed. He and four other people from the town were packed into the shed with all of their gear for fighting. Every building and shed near the wall was filled with people ready to attack. He was absently drumming his fingers on the stock of his lever action rifle as he went over the pending battle again and again in his mind. He had no idea what to expect but knowing how hard they were hit the first time they went near the hive he didn’t think they would hold anything back this time. Paradise Falls had become a thorn in the side of the Corrupted that needed to be removed and disposed of.
They had been in the shed for just under two hours when Jokester quietly ran by and whispered into the open door, “They’re coming. Lots of ‘em.” His voice carried with it the slightest sensation of a growing fear.
Those few simple words hit Dylan like a physical blow and he felt a needed rush of adrenaline surge through his body. They silently filed out of the shed to the base of the wall near the stairs and waited. Dylan could just make out Jokester as he climbed the narrow ladder on the lookout tower in the center of town.
Dylan was mid-way up the wide stairs when the first shot was fired from somewhere off to his right. Behind him the alarm bell started ringing and signaled those that still remained in hiding to move out. Without a word the townsfolk climbed the walls and began what they knew was going to be a long and tough battle.
His station was dead center on the wall between the two circular turrets on this side of the camp. The turrets were closely modeled after the turrets of old style castles. They were elevated another six feet above the normal wall height and hung out over the outside another five feet. They allowed the defenders to give a withering crossfire to anything that got close to the wall and wouldn’t risk shooting those on the wall but not in the battlements.
Dylan worked the lever action on his rifle and looked out over the battlefield. He nearly dropped the gun when he saw what was happening out to his front. Waves of Sappers were running out of the woods and across the field. He hadn’t seen them this thick since they had tried to escape from Sumter. There were thousands of them on the field running shoulder to shoulder and lined up past where the sodium lights could illuminate them. The thumping double explosions singled out where the Sappers had triggered one of the antipersonnel mines then self-detonated as their bodies were torn asunder by the shrapnel forcing a mixture of the incredibly flammable material contained in their body cavities. The ground was rapidly being covered with the bio-napalm pools of the Corrupted. As the wall of fire marched closer to the trench in front of the defenders, gunfire became sporadic as they would seek out targets behind the Corrupted built smoke screen. After nearly twenty minutes there was nothing but black smoke lit by the bright lights beyond the wall.
Far to his right he could see the rising plumes of smoke and fire at the front gate. They were attacking both the open wall and the narrower main gate. He watched for a brief second to make sure the lighter defense at the gate wasn’t going to get overwhelmed then turned back to the fight in front of him. Up in the high-tower behind them Jokester opened up with a lightweight belt fed machine gun. The tracers stitched lines in the air above the defenders heads and walked across the waves of Sappers. Jokester would then turn to the gate side and pour several hundred rounds in support there. The rolling sound of the battle was nearly overwhelming to the senses. The smoke was billowing now as the scrub that hadn’t been burnt away in previous attacks began to burn. The clouds of grey-black smoke slowly drifted away from the wall and out into the woods.
The Corrupted were creating a walking wall of fire. Sappers would run through the fire created by those in front of them and continue until they too were burned and detonated or they were hit by bullets and exploded. Dylan watched as a Sapper stopped mid dash and belly flopped onto one of the small dirt mounds hiding the antipersonnel mines.
Dylan turned a stunned look to Cap-Cap a few feet to his left, “You seeing what I’m seeing?”
The captain stopped shooting long enough to answer, “Ya, little bastards are torching our mines. This is just the suicide run to prep the battlefield! They aren’t even trying for the wall yet. We must have had one watching us all day while we hid those.”
Dylan nodded in agreement and brought his rifle back up to his shoulder. He continually scanned the edge of the field for Hunters moving about controlling the fight from their side. He found one standing on a stump screaming orders and took the thing’s head clean off. The body stood motionless as if it didn’t quite understand what just happened before toppling backwards behind the stump.
The first attack was beginning to lose its energy. They had gotten as close as the moat and detonated nearly every mine they had spent most of the day hiding. They had certainly torched all of the command wires that would have allowed a controlled detonation by the defenders. They had chosen not to bury them as even in the daylight they were nearly impossible to make out in the scrub brush.
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As the last Sapper fire died down an uncomfortable quiet descended over the battlefield. Dylan continued to scan the far wood line but couldn’t see anything moving. He turned and met Cap-Caps eyes. Both shrugged and looked back over the field. After several minutes the ringing brought on by the gunfire began to subside in his ears. He could hear the soft crackle from the many small fires to his front, the sound of magazines being changed out all along the wall and even the clank of steel as Jokester loaded another box of ammunition into his machine gun.
“Dylan, you think that was it?” Whitey asked from several yards down the wall. He never took his eye away from the scope as he asked.
“No way, that was just preparation for the real attack. Like the artillery your guys would have used. They were setting the field up for how they want to fight. They didn’t’ want the mines for whatever the hell they have planned for us.”
Several solo Sappers dashed out but after another ten minutes they stopped coming all together. Dylan was shaking his head as he looked around the field, “Those little shits torched every mine we had out there. Where were they watching us from? Have they been out there watching us work all day?”
As the last pool of fire burned out on the field a low booming cry came from somewhere deep in the forest. Dylan could feel it as well as he heard it. It was like the distant call of an angry foghorn that carried for several minutes. People around the walls looked around in fear as the call was answered by several more. It was then that the thundering footsteps could be heard crashing from somewhere in the woods. The sharp cracks of shattering timber as something huge powered its way through the trees was unmistakable.
“Something is coming Dylan, and it is fuckin’ huge.”
Dylan tried to load another round in his rifle but found it was already full. He worked the well-worn lever action and watched the spent shell flip into the darkness.
Sappers began coming out of the forest in single groups. For the first time they were not sprinting in a straight line or packed together for easy shooting. These would run several yards in one direction then alter their course a little bit left or right. Not one was hit before reaching the moat and leaping into the pit.
“These are going after the Pikes!” Dylan tried with little success to hit the rapidly dodging single targets. Between the smoke and the fire covering the field picking out the single Sappers was difficult at best. To his left Dylan heard a deeper boom and saw two of the Sappers detonate as one.
Whitey broke open the barrel on the short single shot grenade launcher. He slid a second round into the breach and with a flick of his wrist flipped it closed. He took quick aim and fired another round. The gun bucked against him tremendously, rocking his entire body. Dylan followed the line of fire and saw an area about twenty feet across jump as the round hit. The forty millimeter grenade launcher firing a shotgun type round was devastating but was far too slow to load.
At the defender side of the moat there were large wooden spears planted in the ground and pointing out away from the wall. The ends of the pikes were roughly chest high to the average man. They were sunk deep in the soil about one every foot. They were sharpened and then heated leaving the spears with a very dangerous point. The spacing left very little room to get past. This forced the attackers to climb against the spikes of wood. The idea was the attackers would have to slow to get around the wooden lances and be easy picking for the defenders shooting down on them.
Dylan scanned the smoky battlefield and couldn’t find a target fast enough to kill it before it detonated. He stood in horrid fascination as a Sapper launched itself across the wide moat and impaled itself on a pike. It then grabbed the large branch with both hands and pulled the pike through its body until it was on the defender side of the moat and detonated. The four nearest pikes were nearly instantly turned to ash.
“The pikes won’t last another minute or two tops,” Dylan said as he took two more shots without scoring a killing blow.
Dylan shot wildly at the last few that ran across the field. Two went down but the third was able to burn the last remaining stand of pikes.
“Ok Dylan, that’s it. It’s a wide open field for them all the way to the wall. If you have any sudden flashes of brilliance it would be a great time to share.” Cap-Cap said with concern.
For the first time Dylan was starting to feel like they simply didn’t have enough to stop them. Another booming angry foghorn cry carried through the air as the Corrupted’s main attack broke free of the forest line and came into the open. Dylan met Cap-Cap’s eyes with a look of fear, “What the hell is that?”
Another deep roar echoed across the battlefield and was joined by several Hunter cries as well. Sappers began once again too pour out of the forest towards them in yet another suicide wave but this time they weren’t alone. Mixed in with them were six of the largest Corrupted Guards they had ever seen. The beasts easily stood twelve feet tall and looked solid as stone. Their huge legs churned up the soil as they ran. Dylan began pumping rounds into the closest guard but they had almost no effect. All six stopped as one a little over one hundred yards out. The Sappers continued to flow around them towards the wall like a river flowing around a giant rock.
As Dylan watched in horrid amazement the guard directly in front of him picked up a passing Sapper like a toy and threw it towards the wall. The Sapper traveled in a high arc as its body twisted and flailed in the air. The first throw fell short and hit the wall directly below the battlement to Dylan’s left. The sheet metal nailed to the base of the battlement would keep the fire at bay for several minutes but the heat was already forcing those inside to pull back from the edge. Another body flailed through the air and landed with a boom on the tin roof of the battlement. Almost immediately red droplets of melting metal began to land on those inside. They evacuated without having to be told twice.
“Take out those Guards!” Dylan yelled over the increasing gunfire. Whitey finally found his mark on the far left Guard after pouring nearly the entire magazine from his high powered sniper rifle into the monster. The thing fell forward like a granite statue plowing up the earth when it struck the ground. Several Sappers underneath it detonated from the crushing weight and started a large smoky funeral pyre for the Guard.
The second wave of Sappers had reached the moat and began climbing up the defenders side. Dylan switched his focus and began shooting them as they climbed out of the long ditch. He was nearly deaf now due to the sheer volume of gun fire and the explosions on the battlefield but he could hear Cap-Cap yell to him from several yards down the wall.
“There’s too many of them!”
“Just keep shooting! Use their own fire against them so we can focus on the Guards!” He yelled back.
The two Guards to their left began landing Sappers on the last battlement on this side of the small town. In a short time both defensive structures on the wall were sending flames and billowing clouds of black smoke high into the night sky. The fire crews in the yard below were putting water on the fires but until the bio-napalm of the Corrupted was exhausted they stood little chance of knocking the flames back. They could only hope to keep it from spreading. With a loud crash of rending steel and lumber the roof on the remaining battlement collapsed onto the wall.
With both battlements down the Guards began focusing on a single section of wall about twenty feet to Dylan’s right. Body after body would thud into the wall with a sickening sound then explode in a rolling wall of flame.
As one of the bodies flailed through the air Dylan heard the sound of Whitey’s forty-millimeter grenade launcher loudly thump to his left. In midair the Sapper detonated and showered a large section of the wall with flaming bits of Corrupted.
Dylan ducked as the flaming bits of remains landed around him. He flashed Whitey a look, “Nice Shot!” he yelled down the wall, “I’m impressed, don’t do it again!”
“Ya Boss, that didn’t work quite the way I thought it would!” Whitey yelled back as he fired anothe
r round into the surging crowd below.
Movement from the high-tower in the center of town caught Dylan’s attention. Jokester tore the canvas cover off of the heavy machine gun and pulled the charging handle. The loud rapid booming of the large weapon’s fire was easily heard above the cracks of the smaller weapons around him. Dylan saw the red baseball sized tracers were passing mere feet above their heads and tearing into the writhing mass of Sappers crossing the open ground. Where the heavy bullets found Corrupted flesh there was an instant detonation. Rounds that didn’t find a target would leave a geyser of dirt, ash and fire where they struck the ground.
Dylan put two more rounds into the Guard to his front and it went down once and for all. A flailing Sapper crashed into the wall underneath him and a wave of fire rolled up from below. He took several steps back as he recoiled from the heat and smoke, looking over his should he saw nothing but air behind him as he balanced on the edge of the wall. Another detonation followed the first and the wall began to slowly shift underneath him. Two more concussions rolled through the battlement in rapid succession as the surviving Guards continued to throw their brethren like grenades.