“That’s going to get ugly,” Chuck said. Peter didn’t have to ask him what he meant. He also saw two lumbering military cargo trucks coming at each other down the main street.
“Let’s throw in on that one,” Larry said, shifting to get a better angle on the intersection where the two trucks were set to meet.
The two vehicles broke off their game of chicken and turned so they were broadside to each other. They both stopped, and the volume of gunfire from that direction drastically increased.
People started hopping out of the beds of both trucks. Peter took aim at a man in an Army uniform who’d stumbled when he’d hit the ground. The small bit of time it took him to get his feet back under him was his undoing. Peter wasn’t sure if it was his shot or one from much closer, but the man went down.
Every couple of seconds, one of the three rifles in the attic fired. Peter was feeling like his small crew had found the right spot to put some honest leverage on the fight. He wasn’t hitting with every shot, but he didn’t feel like he was just throwing away ammunition either.
Then he heard a window downstairs shatter, followed by a percussive pop and a strange whooshing noise. “What was that?” he asked. A second object went through a window, with the same sounds.
Larry stared out his window, and pointed toward the south of town, where it was clear several houses were ablaze. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“No!” Chuck shouted, peering through his scope. “They’re covering the front door. See anybody at the back?”
Peter raised his rifle and put his eye to his scope. While he was still looking, bullets came flying through the skylight and ceiling all around him. As he threw himself backward, he caught two distinctive muzzle flashes.
“Front or back?” Peter asked. “Concentrate fire on one of the two sides, clear out the opposition so we can get out.”
“Back,” Larry said, firing his rifle. “I’ve got eyes on them both. They’re covered but I see them.”
Another burst of automatic fire forced Larry to step away from the window and get low.
“Keep an eye on the front,” Peter told Chuck, creeping closer to the skylight. At least the shots fired at him had shattered the glass. He was able to stand farther back from the opening, in shadows, and fire out. He had just put eyes on one of the men behind the house when another burst of automatic fire forced him to back away again. There wasn’t enough concealment or cover to safely take the time to aim.
The smell of acrid smoke started drifting up the attic stairs.
27
“We’ve got to pull you back, sir!”
Tom Grossman shook off the deputy that was trying to pull him back from the fighting. “Not with that bastard right there! We’re finishing this now.” He’d lost sight of Carter, but knew he had to be somewhere close.
At the same time, he knew there was a lot of wisdom in getting back. He could tell there was a lot more action happening back at the town hall. Houses to his right and left were starting to burn up, victims of whatever creative firebombs Carter’s men were carrying. His left flank was falling apart, and the right was getting pushed.
Carter’s true advantage in this battle was that he’d shown up with ruthless killers this time. They were fearless and determined, seemingly motivated by a love of violence. Any one of them was easily worth a half dozen well-meaning citizens with hunting rifles, pistols, and shotguns.
“Sir, come on!”
“All right,” Grossman said, letting the deputy guide him between two buildings. As soon as he got out of the heat of the firefight, his leg started burning. He’d switched his cane to his left hand so he could fire his pistol, which put a lot of pressure on the bad knee.
“Chief needs you to rally downtown. The guys from the west are pressing in real close,” the deputy said.
Grossman considered that Davis might have been right about Carter sending in three equal-sized forces, instead of two diversions to screen a main force. He considered that maybe Carter was playing a bit of chess, making himself the diversion to draw attention away from his other men, who were tasked with retrieving Prange.
As they crossed the last street before the town hall, Grossman saw young men and women running from the building with loaded magazines and fire extinguishers. The incendiaries were really making the defense of the town difficult. Bowman was an old town, with most of the buildings dating back to the early twentieth century, a few all the way back to the 1800s. Many still had wood clapboard siding instead of vinyl or aluminum. One house going up could easily threaten its neighbors if the flames were not controlled. Carter’s men had lit up well over a dozen, and he saw men still carrying rucksacks as they moved deeper into town.
The threat of the whole town going up was quite possibly scaring people more than the bullets flying through the air. Grossman also remembered hearing the promise Carter had made as he was driven out of town the first time. Several people said that he swore he was going to come back and burn the whole place down.
The crossfire getting to the town hall building wasn’t bad. Once he got inside and had brick walls for cover, Grossman let out a sigh of relief and found something to lean against. He needed to get weight off of the bad leg for a minute.
He was just about ready to get back at it when he heard somebody shout, “We need everybody around back. Everybody around back!”
Grossman went down the hallway and turned left to get to a door out to the back parking lot. The sound of bullets slamming into the brick walls was painfully loud, as was the shouting of the people inside the building. He had to step aside for another person ferrying full magazines up from the basement.
He checked his own supply of ammunition. He had three empty magazines in the left cargo pocket of his pants, which left him with one full magazine at his belt, and a partial in his weapon. He knew he had two more full boxes of ammunition in his desk upstairs. He had even more at home, but those rounds may as well have been on Mars for how likely he was to get at them.
One of the high school messengers was crouched in the hallway looking terrified. Grossman handed her his empties and told her where to look in his office for reloads. She looked relieved to have some useful task in the midst of the chaos.
There was a sudden sound of gunfire from the basement of the building and a lot of shouting.
He heard Prange’s name spoken a lot. There was no way that could be good. He was halfway to one of the stairways to the basement when he heard somebody grunt and collapse. Just as he got to the stairs, somebody else tried going down but was repulsed by gunfire.
“He out of his cell?” Grossman asked.
“Yeah, with hostages. Schoolkids we had reloading magazines.”
“Damn it. We’ve got to get those kids freed up. Let me talk to him.”
The man who’d just tried going down the stairs blocked the way. “He’ll kill you.”
“I’ve got to try and at least get the kids out of harm’s way,” Grossman said.
“They’re his only chance of survival. He’s not going to give them up.”
Behind him, Grossman heard a pop and whoosh. He knew exactly what it was. “Firebomb! Fire extinguishers. Get the flames out!”
“We don’t have any left,” somebody said. “Sent them all out to houses.”
Another incendiary blew somewhere in the building. Grossman heard a sound he’d hoped he’d never hear again after the Gulf War, the agonized wailing of somebody on fire. People started fleeing the short passages to the back doors, and the scent of burning started to fill the building.
The mayor tried to keep people from bolting. Some took courage from him holding firm, some just kept going, running out the front doors of the building. The sounds of gunfire from the back got louder and much closer. Behind him, there was the loud bang of a door being kicked open. He turned to see that one of Carter’s men must have jumped in a window and had just gone through the room into the hallway. Grossman put two rounds into the man, but i
mmediately two more of Carter’s men appeared, spraying the hallway with their M-16s on automatic. Grossman got himself low and behind a wall, waiting for the telltale pause of reloading to make his move.
Before he could do that, somebody coming around a corner in a blind panic tripped over him, kicking his bum knee in the process. The pain blinded Grossman for just an instant, but it was enough for him to lose his window of opportunity to take a couple shots while one of his opponents was swapping magazines.
There was a lot of sudden commotion in the basement, and at the far side of the building, Grossman heard Prange’s voice just down the hall. He must have come up the other set of stairs.
The sound of Prange seemed to fire up both sides in the fight. The invaders could hear the person they’d come for. The defenders found deeper reserves of willpower and committed themselves to not letting him go.
The hallway suddenly lit up in gunfire and shouting, three young voices screaming and a lot of encouragement. Grossman peeked around a corner and spotted the three students that had been downstairs reloading magazines crawling down the hallway while friendlies fired madly over their heads, burning ammunition at an astounding rate. It kept Prange’s forces from shooting the kids, but even at a quick glance, it was clear that all three were bleeding.
As soon as they hit the first secure intersection, hands reached out and yanked them to safety. There was a whole sentence of silence inside the building as the townsfolk ducked back behind cover to reload and before the thugs realized it was safe to peek around. One single shot broke the tenuous calm.
Grossman fired a couple shots blindly around the corner as the violence inside the town hall ticked up immensely. Prange’s men poured lead down the hallway, forcing everybody to retreat. In the shuffle, Grossman was thrown off balance and backed into the stairway. He got just enough of the railing to keep himself from breaking any bones on the way down, but he still hit the basement floor hard enough to knock the wind out of himself. His cane had gone flying somewhere, but at least he’d kept a grip on his pistol.
At the edge of his awareness, he heard Prange’s voice call out, “Anybody see the mayor? He’s a crip with a cane.”
“Gimp just fell down the stairs,” somebody said, and he heard people start running down into the basement from both sides. Sucking wind as hard as he was and with his back locked up from hitting the stairs as he went down, he knew the best he’d be able to manage was a slow crawl. He’d never make it back up the stairs without help, and if he stayed where he was, he was going to be stuck in the crossfire.
Grossman was right by the archive room, the one where his brother and the other guys that helped him get a riot started had been detained. It had a big metal safe in it, probably the best cover he could get. He may not have been able to get up, but he was able to roll out of the hallway and drag himself into a protected nook to try and catch his breath again.
28
“Where are those shots coming from?” Carter bellowed from behind his truck. Two of his men had clearly just been hit from the side. Even with the din of combat happening all around him, he should have been able to peg where they’d come from if they were close.
One of his men had a long rifle with a big scope. He found a spot where he could focus on the flank with reasonable cover and started scanning houses.
“And get eyes back on the mayor!” Carter called out. He’d lost sight of Grossman. It still amazed him how somebody who hobbled around the way he did was so proficient at just vanishing.
A bullet ricocheted off the rear bumper of his truck, just a foot in front of him. It had passed close enough to one of his men that he literally jumped up and backward. “Gotta be a sniper. You found him yet?” Carter yelled at his own sharpshooter, who was still staring through his scope.
“There’s got to be more than one of them,” the sharpshooter said, as two more bullets hit the back of the truck. While most of the shots were missing, the way they were screaming right along his front line was completely disrupting his ability to get his men into a solid front.
“Got it!” The sharpshooter leaned to the side and pointed up toward the rooftops. “That pinkish house with the skylights.” He stepped a couple more feet to the left, peering intently through his scope. “At least two up there, got a great line on us here.”
The sharpshooter’s throat suddenly spouted blood, and the man’s head jerked back and to the side. Carter heard two more shots whiz right past him. He and his man had been so intent on the people sniping them from the side that they’d neglected the much larger number of people in front of them.
Carter ducked back behind the truck and said, “You three. You heard, right? That ugly house there. Burn it down.” Carter pointed to another fighter. “You. Get that rifle. You’re a sniper now.”
Having some people putting pressure on the people lighting up his flank, he was able to put his attention back toward the front. He had two teams working their way up to flank the townsfolk defending the street. Between the pressure he was exerting on their sides, and the judicious use of incendiary bombs, his foes were close to breaking. He could almost smell it.
Taking a moment to look over the rooftops all around, he noticed several columns of smoke rising to the sky. Behind him, what townsfolk he could see were too busy not getting shot by his rear guard while running fire extinguishers to present any real threat. Turning his attention back to the front, he saw the same story playing out there. Behind Grossman’s defensive line, people were running frantically with blankets, buckets, and garden hoses toward a line of smoke that was just a block out from the town hall.
He looked at the town’s water tower. During the brief period when he and Prange had owned the town, there had been generators set up to keep the pumps filling it. Carter called for his whistle man. “You got any way to tell the guys to the west to break off and go knock that down?”
“No. Nothing that complex.”
“Well, shit.” He looked around to see if he had enough men to spare to run a message over, but he was close enough to busting through the line that it wasn’t worth risking the immediate win.
“East-side boys are in position to start an assault on the town hall,” the whistle man said.
“You can give me that, and not instructions to shift targets?” Carter said, waving off his signaler’s attempt to explain. “Tell them to hit it.”
The news that one of his teams was in position to take the town hall caused him to make another assessment of the overall situation. Looking to his right, he could see smoke starting to rise from the pink house, and little sprays as automatic fire splintered the walls around the skylights and shattered the glass. With that problem appearing to be under control, Carter decided it was time to really press.
“Break the line! Break the line! Everybody, go. Break the line!”
In front of him, rifles opened up on full automatic as his men burst from cover and charged forward. In the face of such a determined advance, the defenders broke. Some ran backward, firing as they retreated, some simply went balls out toward the town hall. None of them fared well, being cut down by the relentless storm of bullets flying down the street.
“Go!” Carter shouted. “Get to the end of the block, and we’ll regroup to hit the town hall.”
As he followed his men, he could hear a marked uptick in the action near the town hall and assumed that his eastern crew had started. The timing seemed good to Carter—he was driving a few townsfolk into the chaos and opening a new front on the defenders while their attention was focused on the attack already in progress.
“Hey,” Carter’s signaler said, panting from the combined efforts of running, blasting at his whistle, and trying to absorb the incoming communications all at once. “Grossman’s in the building.”
“Perfect,” Carter said. “Tell them to fire it up.”
“Prange’s in there, too.”
“Hold that order, then,” Carter said. He stepped up his pace and got to th
e head of his line just as the men were grabbing cover to take aim at the building.
“Messenger coming from the right. Don’t shoot!” Carter’s whistle man said. Shortly after, somebody in an Army uniform sprinted around the side of the town hall. Carter’s men blasted away at the building to give him some cover for the couple dozen yards of open land he had to cross.
“There’s some fierce resistance inside,” the man said to Carter. “They managed to push our guys out of most of the building. They’ve got the entire second floor and north half of the first floor. The middle’s a no-man’s land.”
“What about the roof?”
“Seems like everybody got pulled to the fight inside the building.”
Carter nodded. “What about Mayor Dipshit and Prange?”
“Somebody saw the mayor take a tumble down the basement stairs. Prange has command of the guys inside the building. If you guys can press in on this side, we may be able to break the stalemate.”
“Perfect,” Carter said. “Listen up, everybody. Shred and burn everything from the front door there to the left. Boss man is on the right half of the building, so leave that side be. Once we get in, anything coming up from the basement steps dies. Got it?”
He saw nodding heads and men checking magazines or pulling incendiary bombs out of rucks.
“This is what we came for. Let’s go!”
29
“Think we’ve got a chance of surviving if we can get to the basement?” Peter asked. They were still up in the attic of Larry’s house, with smoke starting to drift up from the floors below.
“Probably not,” Larry replied. “Place would likely collapse on top of us, if it didn’t suck all the oxygen up first.”
“Take our chances fighting our way out?” Chuck asked.
Peter looked out the skylights again. It was way too far to jump across to either of the neighboring houses. “Probably our best bet.”
Age of Survival Series | Book 3 | Age of Revival Page 17