“Liu, we don’t know how many are going to attack us. We are down to four shooters and Ashley. If we start losing this firefight, grab a motorcycle and run. Zeke and I can provide cover for you to get away,” David said.
“No,” said Liu instantly.
“Liu, you really don’t want to be captured,” David said.
“Understood. I already decided- I won’t be captured,” Liu said.
It was quiet for a few seconds.
“Karen talked about that a lot on the woman’s side,” Liu said. David looked away.
“I will play it out here,” Liu said quietly. “I am not leaving Karen,”
“Or you,” Liu said slowly, looking at him.
David did not respond.
“Ever watch the You-Tube video “White Flag” by Dido?” Liu asked.
“Yes,” David said.
“There won’t be a white flag of surrender.”
33.
“Its David,” he shouted as he crawled up the overpass to Jorge and Ashley’s barricade on top. David could see Zeke at their fallback position about twenty feet down range.
Ashley had added chunks of cement debris with shooting space on all four sides about two feet high. Zeke had dropped off an AK 47 and four clips, and Ashley had the shotgun slung around her shoulder.
Jorge was drinking his coffee that looked like maple syrup. Ashley had been crying, her hands shook, and she was staring out towards the semi pileup.
“When do our guests arrive?” Jorge asked.
“Probably just before dawn, ” David said.
“What’s the plan?” asked Jorge. His voice quivered, his hands trembled, and he spilled the coffee. He tried to hide it from David.
“You are in good company,” said David, handing him a rag. “If anyone is not terrified, they don’t understand the situation. This is not a video game.”
“In an hour, about thirty minutes before dawn, Zeke and I will come relieve you here,” David continued.
“You will retreat to where Zeke is now,” David continued, pointing.“Karen, Doron and Liu will join you there. The greens will probably attack through semi pileup and the overpass,” he said.
“Why attack there?” Jorge asked.
“They have cover until just before they reach us, and they can attack us on both ends,” David said. “We need to be flexible, but that’s what I would do.”
“And if they do, Zeke and I will light the gas on the side of the overpass to backlight them. Anything on that side of the gas you shoot,” David said looking at Ashley.
“Why are they attacking us?” Ashley cried.
“Probably they were just going on a trip, then saw us and decided to steal our food or motorcycles,” David explained, leaving out the women sex slaves part.
“Now they want payback for their dead,” David finished.
Surprisingly, Ashley accepted that as normal, and quit crying.
“David,” Jorge said.“If everyone is running, don’t wait for me, I will slow you down.”
“No can do,” David responded, shaking his head as he paused, scanning the perimeter.
“We do not leave anyone behind,” David said.
It was quiet, then David squeezed Jorge’s shoulder, and got up to leave. David noticed, but pretended not to, Jorge’s tears.
After David crossed the overpass, he could still faintly hear Jorge tell Ashley, “David will not leave us, no matter what.”
34.
Everyone made final preparations for the attack. Liu stoked a roaring fire, and wrapped Karen like a cocoon in her wool blanket. Zeke and David folded a poncho lengthwise, then slid her wool blanket on top of the poncho.
“Stoop low, stay beneath the rubble,” David said as they carried her out, grabbing the corners of the poncho. They slowly carried Karen to the fallback position.
The first streaks of dawn backlit the rubble to the east. It was still dark, and the stars were visible in the west. The patchy ground fog would help the attackers, David thought.
David’s hands trembled as he checked his M16, his 9mm, and each reload clip again. He turned his head to puke, but not quick enough, splattering his backpack.
This was for real, there would be bloody, mangled bodies in the next few minutes. Like from last night. But whose bodies would litter the ground this morning? Not only had the Nuclear War Club never practiced combat maneuvers as a group, half his group had never fired a gun. You are a lousy leader, he thought to himself. David smiled as the thought occurred to him that he should have checked to see if the library had a paperback, yellow and black book “Combat Leadership for Dummies” .
He noticed Zeke was trying not to stare at him. David was pretty sure this was not how combat commanders were supposed to inspire soldiers in battle, so he swallowed hard.
Then he saw something move, or thought he did, in his peripheral vision. Dad always told him to keep his eyes scanning on patrol, peripheral vision could catch movement. He couldn’t be sure it was the greens. He had not slept in twenty four hours. He would try to hide it from the others, but he was not just scared, but dry mouth terrified. He knew just how desperate this firefight would be, maybe to the knife. And his combat adrenaline had now been ignited by Jorge’s high caffeine coffee syrup. It all had fried his nerves.
Am I hallucinating, he wondered. Focus, focus, he told himself, run a checklist. People lives are depending upon me, he thought as he wiped off his hands. If I shoot at a non-target, I expose our new position and destroy our advantage. Confirm before acting, get into position, he told himself, that’s the checklist.
He motioned for Zeke to stay, and slithered down to the midpoint of the overpass to check. He saw it again, there were dust clouds near the semi pileup. He silently pointed to Zeke.
Zeke raised his thumb and moved his rifle, trying to acquire a target. Seemed like dust clouds of four maybe five people. They were hidden behind the cars, but the disturbed, dirty white dust was now visible.
The greens were coming up between the overpass and the car pileup, just as David had predicted. David squinted, but was unable to see anyone. He needed to know how many were coming.
David saw the point man jump behind a car, pause, and motion to his right. David could not get a clear shot, and the man on the right circled around the campfire.
The man on the right was between David and the campfire for a brief instant, as he ran for cover. David fired three times, hitting his chest, then immediately shifted back to the point man. But the point man did not move, and David could not get a shot.
David heard the downed man gurgling in his blood, and saw him trying to reach his AK 47. He shot him again twice, and saw someone else moving to his left. David lit the gas, and scrambled up the overpass.
The gas running down the cement lit up the entire overpass, and he saw Zeke shooting at the point man.
David tried to war-game what the attackers would think. It was hard to think, all he wanted to do was act, to charge, to shoot. The attackers now had one more man dead, they were getting aimed fire from three directions, and the gas illuminated their every move. They had lost a four man patrol to a recon ambush outside the camp, so they probably assumed there must be at least another patrol out there to reinforce the camp. Two of their men hung from the overpass.
The point man shouted something about the US Army, and directed the two on his left to retreat.
David took aim at the two on the left but missed. Zeke was shooting at them also, but they ducked behind the semis.
Doron suddenly stood up with an AK 47 and ran down the overpass, chasing the two on the left. Doron emptied a full clip as he shot both within fifteen feet. David was stunned at Doron’s pursuit, it was like something out of a John Wayne war movie, but they moved quickly to give him suppressing fire. The football training of blocking for whoever is running with the ball kicked in. Zeke tried to track the point man, but they lost the trail.
David thought his watch must be broken. There was no
way all this happened in about a minute.
35.
“We need a truck for Karen,” David said.
“I can go, I am fine now,” said Doron.
Doron saw Zeke raise his eyebrows at David .
“Yes, I just puked, and am shaking,” Doron said. “But Zeke, you and everyone else were all puking too.”
“We will take three motorcycles, Zeke, David and me,” Doron said, trying to sound confident.
“David, the best place to get an old usable truck will be off the interstate near the railroad tracks, the low cost ‘buy here pay here’ dealers where you pay by the week. I used to be a repo man for them. They keep a key when they sell the car. If the buyer doesn’t make his weekly payment by Friday, they repo it, or turn on the satellite kill switch, which disables the engine,” Doron explained.
“Lead the way,” David said, shouldering his M-16 and patting Doron on the back.
“Liu, can you and Jorge set up a perimeter until we get back?” David asked.
“Yes. We will be fine, but be back no later than two hours from now, before sunset,” Liu said.
David nodded, and checked his watch. Liu had cleverly been logging the time of sunrise and sunset each day, and recording the compass heading to set up camp at night which would face the sunrise.
Doron kicked up a fallout cloud racing through the streets. He reached an area shielded from direct blast by an elevated railroad track. Three beat up pickup trucks were parked in the garage next to the trailer office. The top of the garage was higher than the railroad embankment, and was blown away, but everything underneath was stable. The trailer office was twisted and tilted sideways.
Doron smelled multiple dead bodies rotting nearby. He was becoming adept at estimating distance and decomposition time. He marveled at human adaptability now that detecting fresh bodies was a survival skill to avoid ambushes.
“These trucks will not have chips and will run even after any EMP”, Doron said. He immediately went to the Ford pickup truck, pulled out his knife, and within thirty seconds it cranked up.
“Once a repo man, always a repo man,” Doron laughed. The truck had less than a quarter tank so David started siphoning the gas from the other two trucks.
“Let’s load my motorcycle up on the bed,” Doron suggested. Zeke washed the dirt off the windshield, and then looked underneath for a spare tire and a tire wrench. They took a large piece of sheet metal and made it a ramp and walked the motorcycle up the truck bed, then Zeke slid the metal in upright next to the motorcycle.
“Doron, we are the scouts. We can turn around quickly and are less visible. Do not go anywhere we don’t clear first, you are a large target,” David explained.
“Keep your guns handy. Zeke, lets slide that sheet metal behind Doron to block a sniper headshot,” David suggested.
“We need to get another can of gas,” Doron said. They had to look around before they found another truck and were able to siphon out ten gallons into two plastic containers.
Doron slowly accelerated. He adjusted the rear mirror, and tried all the radio stations but got only static. He pressed in the unmarked cassette. Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” blared. Doron cranked the volume up, tapping the steering wheel.
Doron began to panic when he saw how easy it was to follow his truck tracks on the road back to the overpass. This fallout ash was like greasy, sticky, snow that never melted. He wondered if that was because the fallout had human fat residue. That was probably never simulated in all the nuke tests. Moving during, or after rain would be ideal, like walking along the seashore and having the tide erase your footprints.
Doron enjoyed driving the truck. It was old, it was slow, and it was much smaller than new pickups. He didn’t know the year, but it didn’t have seatbelts.
Jorge and Ashley were both on point at the top of the overpass, and waved at the bright red pickup. Zeke and Doron circled the truck.
Zeke suddenly stopped and motioned to David. There were two more dead greens just past the semis, each with a single head shot.
Doron stopped and checked out the battleground. He realized Karen had hit them with a head shot, in the dark, with no scope, when she was taking fire. Karen had killed four greens, running at night, before she was shot twice. Doron now knew that they would have been overrun by the first wave of greens, except for Karen.
“David these are all head shots by Karen in a firefight,” Doron said.
“That’s very hard to do when taking return fire,” Zeke said.
“It’s hard to do at a shooting range, with no one shooting back,” David said.
Doron walked around the debris, crouched from Karen’s firing position, then pointed to David and Zeke.
“Karen would not have been shot in the leg if she was firing from behind debris. She had attacked the greens, alone, in the dark, to cut them off from reaching us,” Doron said.
When they returned to camp, Karen was still asleep. Now she had a raging fever. The shoulder seemed ok, but the leg was turning red.
“She got up for a few minutes, mixed some salt and white sugar into about half a gallon of water and drank every drop. Then she took several of acetaminophen tablets , and ibuprofen. She told me she thought you could take both at the same time from the bird flu medical manuals. She said her leg hurt bad, then went back to sleep,” Liu reported.
“We are going to have to check her leg,” said Doron. “It could be infected.”
“What do we do if it’s infected?” asked David.
“Don’t know,” said Doron. Haven’t read that chapter yet. I am only qualified as a medic for injuries in the first three chapters,” he deadpanned.
No one said anything, the joke withered. David looked devastated, and turned away. Zeke patted his back.
It was quiet as they prepared to move out. Zeke motioned for Doron to help him carefully carry Karen into the truck bed on top of one wool blanket folded over. Ashley leaned against the cab, sitting on top of a backpack in the truck bed next to Karen. Doron drove.
Zeke, David and Liu fanned out in front of the truck on the motorcycles.
_______
Zeke noticed some of his hair was falling out. He was nauseous most mornings, and just before meals. Sometimes he didn’t feel like eating, but he tried to hide that, especially from David. But he no longer had headaches.
He now wore a hat all the time. He didn’t want to talk about his hair or the radiation. Ashley had asked about his eyebrows, but he had told her they were singed around the campfire.
They were all losing weight, and when you could be shot at any time by a green, people tended to focus on their own problems.
Nothing could be done about his radiation exposure, and he did feel stronger each day. His hair seemed to grow back, or maybe just quit falling out. He just hoped for the best.
36.
David heard Karen’s raspy voice, and watched Liu hurry to her tent. She helped Karen walk to the fire.
Jorge handed Karen a half filled cup of some of the rice with chicken liquid broth, as she leaned back against the overpass.
David was shaken at Karen’s appearance. She looked far worse, much more fragile, than he had remembered even this morning. Her skin was deathly pale, she was gaunt. Already thin, she could not afford the weight she had lost. Her pulse was rapid, and she strained to breathe. She was running a constant high fever, and shook even with the wool blanket covering her shoulders.
Doron had told him she had a bad infection in the lower thigh. The shoulder seemed fine, but the thigh wound was putrid, and had stained a greenish yellow pus seeping through all the bandages. They didn’t have any medicine. Even if they did they wouldn’t know what to do.
No one said anything as Liu patiently waited for each spoonful to cool before feeding it to Karen. Everyone just stared into the fire.
“This is good,” Karen said hoarsely, holding the soup. Her hands trembled, spilling the broth down her chin and over her blanket.
Liu grabbed the cup, and gently wiped off her face. She then spooned some into Karen’s mouth.
David wiped his eyes, his voice cracking “I have got to check the perimeter,” he said, hurriedly leaving.
David knew Karen was dying.
Each day Karen deteriorated a little more. David thought Karen knew she was dying, everyone knew she was dying, but no one said anything.
David was angry, burning with rage against an enemy he couldn’t fight. He was not sleeping. He was tossing and turning every night before guard duty.
Several times each night David would look for some excuse to walk by her tent to be sure he could still hear Karen breathing.
37.
Today they found Liu’s family. After three days of searching, it was confirmed. David and Zeke quickly removed the debris from the sidewalk, stacking it on either side. Doron thought this was all silly, but he helped Ashley sweep the sidewalk clean.
Doron watched Liu spray painted her parents’ names on the sidewalk, with a Christian Cross. She maintained her composure until she started to write Kim-ly, her little sister’s name.
“When I would leave the house to jog, Kim-ly would hide, then chase after me on her tricycle,” Liu explained.
Liu wiped away her tears, and spray painted a final goodbye. She recorded that she had survived, in case her parents were still alive. But their cars were all here, smashed under the rubble, and she knew.
Each day they would go to one of their former homes and assure themselves that the charred debris is what used to be their home. They called the short ceremonies, “sidewalks”. For some reason, no one ever seemed to believe their family was dead until they checked the rubble.
Doron was stoic when they found the remains of his home, and confirmed all his parent’s smashed up cars were there. David and Zeke were clearing off the sidewalk, when Doron motioned for them to stop.
“No need for a sidewalk. They were here, now they are gone. I don’t believe in God, or life after death. Neither did my parents, so that’s it. We can just skip it,” Doron said.
Nuclear War Club: Seven high school students are in detention when Nuclear War explodes.Game on, they are on their own. Page 13