"Have you shot those things before?" Their hands were shaking. They were visibly nervous.
"I kilt a rabbit and an armadillo," the boy, Josh, said proudly, barely hiding a waver of uncertainty in his voice. The girl, Amy, shook her head. Her lips were drawn and her face was pale. She looked like she was on the verge of tears.
"You know you don't have to do this." I tried to be gentle. "No one would think less of you."
"I want to defend our home. Daddy said those men are coming to kill us all..." She broke off, tears welling up.
"Sweetheart, there's no need for you to fight anyone. We've got sixty crack shots in this neighborhood, those men won't even get close to you. I'll tell you what, the best way for you to help defend this place is to keep a sharp lookout. You keep those eyes peeled. If there's fighting in one spot I want you looking somewhere else. People are going to be focused on what's in front of them, I need you to be watching their backs. That goes for both of you. Can you do that for me? If you watch our backs I promise no one will get close enough for you to have to use that thing. You remember the signals right?"
She nodded, wiping her eyes with a sleeve, "one blast for North, two for East, three for South, four for West."
"Perfect, and which way is North?"
She pointed, more confident now.
"You'll do just fine. Once the reverend shows up I'm going to go down there to speak with him. You two will be all alone up here, but I know you'll be brave. We're all counting on you."
I smiled at each of them. Josh puffed up his chest, Amy dried her eyes, and the three of us turned to look out over the grey landscape. I had to put up a brave front for the kids, but inside I was terrified. I had never been in a real firefight. I glanced at a few of the other platforms, everyone was restless, some were shaking. We were all just as green as the two brave kids next to me.
Hours passed, there was little conversation. Everyone was keeping to themselves, minds racing, the dread beginning to pile up. I hoped that adrenaline would help to clear our heads, but there was no way to find out until it was too late.
Late in the afternoon, one of the sentries near the road shouted in warning. He pointed down the highway at two figures, one tall, one short, proceeding on foot down the trench we had carved with the dozer. I motioned for Amy to sound the appropriate alarm and then climbed down.
By the time I reached the gate, the reverend and his 'archangel' were waiting with calm smiles.
"Good day Brother!" Began the reverend in his booming voice. "I hope I find you well on this good day. Have you had sufficient time to consider Salvation?"
"We've talked it over, reverend. I'm afraid we won't be joining you."
The reverend's smile dropped. He leaned down to whisper in his companion's ear. The boy shook his head and whispered back.
"Very well," said the reverend, straightening up, "As I told you before, I have been mandated by our Lord and Savior to cleanse the earth of the corruption of man in preparation for the Kingdom. Your dwellings, vehicles, and possessions are forfeit. They will have to be destroyed immediately. Any supplies you have which might assist me in my duties will be requisitioned. The Lord is not without Mercy: any heathen sinner who does not interfere with our work will be spared. Any who resist will be exterminated humanely using..."
His sneering companion suddenly tugged his sleeve. The reverend leaned down again to exchange whispers. Turning his suddenly cold eyes back to me, he growled, "Zadkiel has told me of your crimes, heathen. The Lord's Mercy will not extend to you or your wife."
"And what crimes does 'Zadkiel' accuse us of?"
"Why, murder of course. There is no sense in denying it, the Lord sees all. You shot down the Lord's messenger and therefore impeded His plans. There can be no forgiveness for you."
At this, I lost my temper. I raised my rifle to my shoulder and leveled the sights on his chest.
"I'm done with this, " I said, savagely, "turn around and walk away or I'll shoot you both down where you stand. This is your last chance to leave here with your lives. These people have done nothing to you, and they aren't going to give you a damn thing."
The reverend's smile returned, "I fear not your earthly weapons when the Lord is at my side. Come, Zadkiel, the Fellowship awaits our orders."
He turned and began walking back down the road. Werner sneered at me one last time and turned to follow him.
I should have killed them both right there. I don't know why I didn't. I just stood there, my finger trembling above the trigger, and let them walk off. I've regretted that moment every day since.
We hunkered down in our fighting positions, expecting attack at any moment. Hours passed with no signs of movement. As the sun neared the horizon, we sent out three men to scout the enemy. They found nothing.
At sundown we changed shifts. Those of us who had spent the long day anxiously squirming in fear with our eyes darting in futility along the horizon were exhausted. We retreated to our beds gratefully. We were more than willing to relinquish responsibility for a few hours. The fatigue overwhelmed any lingering apprehension of attack. I collapsed into bed fully clothed.
I awoke to the blaring of a car horn. Grasping for my weapon in the dark, I tried to count the blasts. I quickly realized it would be impossible. It sounded like every horn in the neighborhood. Several booming shots rang out; screams and staccato shouting followed. Mike burst through the door, still strapping on his gear, just as Deb and I entered the living room.
"They're over the wall!" He shouted, the alarms deafening.
"Everywhere?" I replied, indicating the caucophony of horns.
"That's not us. Clint just woke me up. They've got trucks all up and down the highway, laying on their horns. Sentries didn't even see them pull up. Christ, it’s dark! It's the Northwest corner. Everybody's already heading up."
"How did they..." I broke off at a sudden crackle of rifle fire.
The three of us scrambled outside. Beyond the crest of the hill, an orange glow reflected off the low clouds. Screams of rage and fear drifted toward us, intermixed with frantic shooting and the blaring of the horns. I stopped, shocked at the scene. Hell. Maybe the reverend was right. The rapture had come and gone.
I shook myself free from the vision and followed Mike and Deb up the hill to join the fight. This wasn't hell, we weren't doomed to this by some god. The chaos before me was man-made, or boy-made. The 'Archangel Zadkiel' had not commanded righteous men to dole out God's vengeance, a twelve year old psychopath had manipulated an army of criminals into exacting personal revenge.
I looked up at a shout from Mike. Three figures had crested the hill, silhouetted in the orange glow. We left the road and took cover behind the nearest house before they noticed us. They were walking casually down the street, joking with each other and chuckling. In the dim light it looked like they were wearing long flowing white robes. The group turned and walked up the driveway across from our hiding place. One knelt at the front door for a moment and then jumped up quickly and ran back to his comrades. Before I could form a thought, the front of the house exploded in flames with a heavy whumph. In the sudden light we could clearly see the three arsonists as they slapped each other's backs and guffawed in merriment. Each was wrapped in a dirty bedsheet, surprisingly effective camoflauge in the ash.
We raised our rifles at the clear targets and let loose a brutal volley of semi-automatic fire. All three of the enemy fell, patches of dark red spreading across their grey camouflage. We rushed over, but the flames had already taken hold; the house would soon be consumed. Mike checked the three corpses and found several small homemade bombs in their pockets. Only one of them had a gun, the other two were armed with knives and axes.
A burst of gunfire from the top of the hill excited puffs of ash around us. We blindly fired back at the source as we ran for cover. More bullets hummed past. Our attackers soon lost sight of us in the oppressive darkness and went in search of easier targets.
We moved cautious
ly to the top of the hill, hoping we weren’t too late. The shooting had grown to a crescendo. It was now a rolling clap of thunder which nearly drowned out the blaring of the horns. From the top of the hill we could see with relief that most of the gunfire was from our own fighting platforms. Our neighbors were stacked five or six to a rooftop, firing down at shadowy, running figures. Blooming muzzle flashes lit the chaos.
Two of the houses which held platforms were already burning. I could see a few of our people still crouching behind their barricades, screaming in despair as flames began to lick at the roofs below them. We ran to the nearest one, desperate to help. Two Fellowship goons were standing with their backs to us, watching the inferno in amusement, snapping off a shot each time one of our neighbors tried to make a break for the ladder. Deb walked right up to them without a word and shot them both in the back of the head. They slumped forward into a mess of their brains.
The people on the roof saw this and scrambled into action. They made it down just as their platform began to burn and ran toward us. When they drew near, I recognized Scott and three of the neighborhood teenagers. We sent them to the meeting house to begin the evacuation of the children and made our way toward the escalating firefight.
Two more houses were on fire now. The Fellowship were avoiding the fighting platforms and focusing on sowing more confusion and destruction. The shooters on the rooftops continued firing at the shadowy figures, to little effect.
As we ran forward, the people on the platforms nearest the new fires broke in terror and began jumping off their rooftops and running up the hill. Fellowship thugs jumped from the shadows as they ran, cutting them down with axes and machetes. We tried to cover them but soon gave up for fear of hitting our own in the darkness. Half a dozen of our neighbors made it through and thundered past us. I yelled at them to rally at the meeting house as they fled.
After the panicked retreat, there were only two fighting platforms left. As their ammunition began to run low, their rate of fire began to decrease. Smelling blood, the Fellowship sharks began to gather around the two houses. In an attempt to take advantage of the closely packed targets, a man on the larger of the two platforms stood up to throw the flaming molotov cocktail in his hand. In the light of the strobing muzzle flashes, I saw him standing upright, flaming bottle held over his head. The next flash showed him doubled over, hand clenched to his gut, the gas filled bottle falling from his grip. Six of my neighbors burst into flame when the bottle shattered on the platform. They died screaming as a throng of the Fellowship stood below them, jeering in their grey sheets.
We turned from the sight; the battle was clearly lost. The brave men and women on the final platform kept firing, determined to hold out, but we were under no illusion. It was time to get out while we could. I took one look back before we crested the hill. The light of the burning houses illuminated dozens of grey figures swarming up the ladder of the last holdout.
Two SUV’s full of frightened children were just pulling out of the driveway when we made it to the meeting house. Clint was there with a few others, standing by the pickup which would carry the rear guard. The look on my face was all he needed to fire up the truck. The three of us jumped in the bed, crouching behind the tailgate as we sped down the hill toward the waiting convoy.
I took one last look at our neighborhood before we followed the convoy into the cut in the yaupons. The whole sky was a somber orange. Smoke and flames billowed from a dozen of our homes. At the top of the hill I saw a small silhouette waving at us. A taller figure soon appeared next to him. They stood watching as we fled.
Chapter 6
June, 31 PC (2046 AD)
*
“The last geologist is dead, I’m calling it off. The expedition is a failure, we’ll retreat with our tails between our legs, defeated by a supervolcano bigger than the sky.”
-Colonel Edward Mendez, ‘The First Expedition to Yellowstone: Excerpts From The Journal of a Self-Proclaimed Failure’; RNT University Press, 55 PC (2070 AD);
*
The Captain spent the rest of the week looking over piles of supply lists, purchasing invoices, fuel tallies, and personnel rosters. He was commander of the scouting force, but there would be little scouting to do until the army was on the move. The Colonel had decided to keep him busy by delegating the lion’s share of the logistics duties on him. The assignment was meant to be an insult, it was a job more suited to one of the staff lieutenants, but McLellan did his duty without complaint. He wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction of seeming miserable. Still, despite his feigned zeal for the work, the Captain was annoyed with the enormity of the task.
The small factories on Campus were churning out ammunition, uniforms, and other gear as fast as they could. The scale of production was inspiring, but it paled in comparison to the pre-pillar days. It took all the resources of the fledgling Republic to arm and feed less than a thousand men. Thirty years before, that kind of industrial output could be handled in a morning’s work by the factories of cities like Houston.
Still, it was impressive. There were only a few primitive city states in the area that could come close to the productivity of the RNT. Their closest neighbor to the west and greatest rival, The Texan Union, was the most powerful of those local city-states. An industrial arms race between the two had driven the RNT to develop better trade goods and more efficient factories over the past several years. Plentiful in-house engineering talent and a steady stream of petrochemicals and fuel from the Refinery gave the RNT the edge in the feud. More and more communities and settlements had turned to the RNT for vital manufactured goods and protection.
The increasing sphere of influence of the RNT and the declining prosperity of the TU gave rise to a rash of raiding and border skirmishes. Quelling the violence in the rolling hills beyond the Brazos had been the Captain’s responsibility for the last three years.
Now all of that industrial capacity was pouring materiel and ammunition straight into the Captain’s lap. Cursing his overdeveloped sense of duty, he slammed the ledger closed with a puff of dust, leaned back in his chair, and stared out the window at the low grey clouds with a sigh of resignation. A timid knock at his door interrupted his moment of self-pity. A thin, bespectacled clerk, looking slightly harassed, leaned in and threw him a hasty salute.
“With respect, Captain, the Colonel has called a general inspection in one hour on the parade ground.”
“Thank you corporal. I was just about to take a walk to clear my head anyway.”
The clerk nodded and retreated to his desk. The Captain stomped out after him. It was another inevitably somber grey day. Light rain fell sporadically; never enough to clean the grimy buildings but plenty to wet the ash at his feet into a persistent sludge. A particularly heavy ashfall had sprung up in the night, and the maintenance crews had not had time to scrape the sidewalks. His boots were soon thoroughly filthy as he stalked across the Campus, looking for a victim for the foul temper he felt brewing.
Lost in thought and wandering aimlessly, he found himself near the new Ranger headquarters. After the roof collapse which had killed his old troop, the Rangers had been billeted in an ancient building in front of the Library. The remaining rusting letters above the front steps spelled a portion of the original name: “G. GLASSCOC”.
He played along with fate and walked through the door. Inside, a few of his rangers were lounging in the central lobby.
“Captain on deck!” shouted Legs, arranging his strange body into a clumsy salute. He had recently begun inserting naval jargon into his pronouncements, to the Captain’s great irritation. Mason, Grumps, and Casper rose as one from their seats nearby, drunkenly waving leveled palms near their faces.
”At ease, assholes,” the Captain replied, his sour mood suddenly draining away at the sight of his inebriated troops. He grabbed the bottle of whiskey from Legs’ clenched fist and savored a generous pull.
“Legs, I will never forgive myself for suggesting that book to you.” H
e said, the fiery draught already warming his blood. “We’re not on a ship goddamit! Is the rest of the troop nearby?”
“Yessir,” slurred Mason, “Everbody else is sleepin it off for now. Want me to wake them up to fall in?”
"Hey! Siddown you big lout, I'm tha corpal...corpral...cor-por-al here, hic, eff anywon's gonna fallem in, s'gonna be me!" mumbled Legs as he turned unsteadily to face the big grunt.
“At ease rangers.” McLelland waved them into their seats. “Let ‘em sober up. I’m just looking for the wife.”
“Sheeze upstairs drillin th'new r'cruits.”
“I’ll leave you to it then, but go easy. Remember we move out in two days. Don’t tie one on that you can’t get loose of by then.”
“Aye aye Cap’n!” The three young men grinned and repeated their sloppy salutes as the Captain walked up the stairs, shaking his head. The rangers were not officially part of the army; they were considered a separate autonomous entity, part military and part law enforcement. The special status allowed them more freedom and saved them from participating in the general inspections that the Colonel was so fond of.
He found his wife on the third floor. She was kneeling by a window and holding a battered pair of binoculars to her eyes. At the next window, two forms were crouched under a camouflage net. One was folded around a huge rifle, the other peered into an enormous spotting scope. The Captain paused a moment at the top of the stairs to watch them work.
“Blue Jay” said Deb, softly, keeping her binoculars raised.
There was a soft muttering from under the lump of camouflage. The spotting scope tracked slightly and stopped. After another soft murmur the barrel of the rifle moved to point at the same spot. A moment later, the big gun coughed a muffled crack around its silencer.
Ash: Rise of the Republic Page 9