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From: Al Steiner <steiner_al@hotmail.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} NEW: Aftermath by Al Steiner-Chapter 2 (Mf) 3/4
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 13:10:02 -0400
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AFTERMATH 2 3/4
Send comments to steiner_al@hotmail.com




The month of October in the Sierra Nevada Mountains signals more than
just the start of deer hunting season, it is also the harvest month for
the many illegal marijuana plantations that dotted the heavily wooded,
difficult to access portions of the mountains.  This was the reason
that Dave Madison and Matt Horn had been spared when the impact had
occurred.  Instead of being in their trailer park outside of Rocklin,
where they surely would have been drowned by the water surge that took
the valley, they had been at an elevation of 3500 feet in a thickly
wooded section of the mountains, preparing the half acre of plants that
they had raised for picking the following week.

Unfortunately the two men had been prepared only to stay overnight and
had brought only enough supplies to sustain them for that length of
time.  After the impact they had made a feeble attempt to ration their
holdings but had been unable to stretch them more than three days.

They had been sitting under a tree, on the verge of starvation when the
hunter and his son had walked by them two days before, not even seeing
them so intent were they on ascending the hill they'd been climbing.
Though Dave and Matt had both been in numerous fistfights in their
lives, though both had done some time in the county jail from time to
time, neither had ever robbed anyone or killed anyone.  They would have
been genuinely appalled had anyone suggested to them that they would
one day kill for food.  But that had been before.  Things were
different now.

They had held a quick discussion with very little argument and with a
great deal of rationalization in it.  Both of them, as was customary in
the mountains, were armed with pistols.  They had gotten up and,
utilizing the last of their strength reserves, began to move through
the forest behind the two hunters.

They'd moved tree to tree, making short dashes from one place to
another, steadily closing the gap between themselves and the hunters
without alerting them.  They'd known that they would have to get very
near in order to make their plan effective.  Pistols were notoriously
inaccurate at much more than ten yards.  It was when their quarry
stopped for a moment to catch their breath before climbing the last
section of hill that the two men managed to get near enough to act.

They crept slowly, carefully forward the last few feet, their guns out
and ready to fire at the first sign of detection.  But the hunters
remained oblivious, the father saying something to his son that could
not be heard.  They were able to get within fifteen feet before Dave,
who was tacitly in charge of this operation, signaled that it was
time.  He took careful aim on the father with his .357 magnum, putting
the sights right on the back of his head.  Dave was not an expert shot
by any means but he had done a fair amount of shooting at cans and
signs and other inanimate objects during his many trips to the
mountains in the past.  When he pulled the trigger the bullet went
where he wanted it, dropping the older man instantly to the mud.  Less
than a second later, while the kid was still turning to see what had
happened, Matt had pumped three rounds into his chest with his 9mm.
The kid quickly joined his father.

They had been disappointed to find that the only food the hunters had
had on them had been a few energy bars and a bag of trail mix.  It was
hardly enough to sustain them for more than a day or two.  Had this
been the only bounty they'd taken from the operation they would have
probably felt guilty for murdering two people for it.  But the thick,
winter jackets that the two had had on almost made up for the lack of
food, as did the fine hunting rifles that they'd carried.  They had
stripped the bodies of everything usable and had sat right there eating
the bulk of the food.

Now, less than two miles from where they'd killed the first time, they
were reasonably warm and fairly well armed but once again on the verge
of starvation.  Their last rations had been consumed more than twenty-
four hours before.  They were resting with their backs against a tree,
both feeling the heaviness in their stomachs that went with extreme
hunger, when movement below them caught their eyes.

Both stiffened up, watching as three people, a man and two teenage
children, passed less than a hundred yards from them.  All were
carrying assault rifles and they were walking in what appeared to be a
military formation.  They all three had large packs and sleeping bags
upon their backs and they did not appear to be grappling with food
deprivation.

"Did you see that?" Dave whispered to Matt, his mouth actually
drooling.  "I bet they had food in those packs."

"Yeah," Matt said, drooling himself, "but did you see those guns they
was carrying?  Those are fuckin' M-16s."

"Let's follow 'em," Dave said, getting to his feet.  "We need to get
those packs."

"There's three of 'em," Matt protested.  "That's three people with
combat rifles.  We're only two with hunting rifles."

This argument did not carry as much weight as it would have with full
stomachs.  "What do we got to lose?" Dave asked.  "If we don't get some
food pretty soon, we're gonna die anyway.  Maybe they'll drop their
guard.  They have to rest sometime, don't they?"

Dave thought this over for a second and found himself swayed.  "Yeah,"
he said, standing.  "I guess you're right.  Let's go."

They kept to higher ground as they stalked their new prey, moving, as
with the two hunters, tree to tree, steadily closing the gap.  They
kept that gap a little larger with these three however and they kept
themselves more carefully concealed as they moved in.  This group was
considerably more alert than the hunters had been.  The one in the
lead, the older man, made a point of turning around every fifty feet or
so to check their rear.  It didn't matter too much though.  They, the
stalkers, were now equipped with weapons capable of hitting targets
from a much greater range.

"When they stop," Dave whispered at one point, "I'll bag the big one
and you bag the boy."

"What about the girl?" Matt wanted to know.

Dave grinned.  "We'll try to take her alive if we can.  Maybe we can
have a little fun with her after we eat."

Matt returned the grin.  "Yeah baby," he said, imitating Austin Powers.


+++++


Brett had had this feeling before.  It was a prickly sensation on the
back of his neck, a quickening of the pulse, a feeling of being
watched.  He sensed something up on the ridges above them, something
hostile.  It was an instinctive knowledge, born from years of working
in hostile situations, and something that he had long since learned to
trust.  Had he been asked, he would have attributed this instinct to
some sort of extra-sensory perception, a weak psychic ability that some
people learned to utilize as an early warning system of danger.  In
fact, it was no such thing.  It was merely his subconscious processing
a variety of tiny inputs from his normal senses, inputs too weak for
him to notice individually.

His auditory sense was the first to pick up a signal.  Out of the
thousands of sounds that were being processed every second by his
brain, one pattern did not belong.  Though Brett did not consciously
hear the soft breaking of wet twigs, or the gentle sucking of boots
coming free of mud, or the occasional scraping of a hand against tree
bark from above and behind, he DID hear them.  And though he did not
consciously smell a wet odor of sour sweat drifting on the breeze, a
few molecules of this scent did reach his olfactory nerve which was
able to identify the fact that it belonged to neither Chrissie, Jason,
nor himself.  His eyes, when he looked back for routine checks of their
rear, did not consciously see, among the thousands of other things, a
few broken branches or fresh indentations in the mud where feet had
recently trod but his brain did recognize that SOMETHING was just a
little different.  His brain would have dismissed any one of these
things individually.  But when they were all added together in the
subconscious, warning bells began to go off.  The sympathetic nervous
system activated the adrenal glands, dumping fresh adrenaline into the
blood stream.  As the inputs grew stronger and more constant, the
subconscious began to yell at the conscious that something was wrong.

Brett swallowed forcefully when the sensation became too much for him
to dismiss as nerves.  He did not break stride or make any indication
that he was nervous but his senses were now on full red alert status.
He glanced at Chrissie and Jason with his peripheral vision, seeing
that they were keeping tightly in formation.  That was good.  Trouble
was coming soon and he hoped they would react correctly to it.  He
gripped his rifle a little tighter and began to scan the area around
them, looking for favorable cover that would protect them from fire
coming from above.

He found it less than a minute later.  A group of three tall pine trees
had been blown down, probably in the hurricane winds that had followed
the initial impact.  They lay on the ground like fallen soldiers, their
root systems sticking up into the air in an interwoven pattern of mud
and wood.  If they could get behind those trees the trunks would
provide cover and the roots would provide concealment.  But would they
be able to get there in time if whatever was triggering his instincts
turned out to be hostile?  He didn't know, but he was about to find out.

"Chrissie, Jason," he barked when they were almost upon the trees.
"Behind those trees!  Now!"  He waved his gun towards them.

They both hesitated for the briefest of instants, probably more out of
surprise than fear.  It could have been a lethal mistake but this time
they were allowed to get away with it.

"Go, goddammit!" Brett yelled, "Go!"

That got them into gear.  They began running as fast as they could,
their ankles and knees rising and falling, splattering mud.  Within a
second or two they rushed past him.

"Get under cover!" he commanded, beginning to run himself.

Up on the ridge, Dave and Matt saw them break and run, heard Brett's
frantic shouts.

"They know we're here," Dave told Matt.  "Get them!  Don't let them get
away!"

Both men raised their rifles and tried to sight in but their targets
were now moving rapidly across their view, making a precision shot
impossible.  They tried their best anyhow, both pulling off shots at
the running figures.  The battle began.

The bullets traveled faster than the sound of the exploding gunpowder.
Brett heard something whiz over his shoulder just as Chrissie, who was
in the lead, rounded the roots and dove behind the tree.  An instant
later bark exploded from the tree, sending chips through the air.  Just
to the right of this, another shot buried in the mud.  Then came the
sound of the shots.  Two rifle blasts echoed through the air around
them.  Jason screamed a little but kept moving.  He followed his sister
around the tree and dove to the ground.

Brett was right behind them.  Just as he pulled himself around, another
shot impacted into a standing tree five yards in front of him.  It was
followed by the sound of another shot.  He threw himself down into the
mud behind the logs, scooting as close to it as he could.

"Somebody's shooting at us!" Chrissie yelled from her position.  She
sounded greatly offended by this.

"No shit!" Brett yelled back.  "Return fire at them!  Shoot and then
duck!  Don't let them close with us!"

Brett raised his head up over the log, training his rifle up towards
the hill where the shots had come from.  He saw nothing but forest,
trees, and mud but he knew that at least two armed people were up
there.  He fired a series of shots across the landscape, the M-16
bucking against his shoulder, the expended casings flying out behind
him.  To his left, Chrissie and Jason both did the same.  Up on the
hill, Matt and Dave were forced to dive behind bushes in terror as
muzzleflashes winked up at them and bullets began to plink into the mud
all around them.

"Fuck me!" Dave cried in terror, realizing belatedly that he and his
companion were now trapped.  There was no way for them to get out of
the field of fire without exposing themselves.  "Shoot!" he yelled at
Matt.  "Shoot them or they're gonna kill us!"

 Below, Brett ordered the kids to hold their fire.  They each squeezed
off one more round and then ceased.

"Now get down!" he shouted, following his own advice even as it left
his lips.  They put their heads down and an instant later, two shots
slammed into the log right on the other side of them.

"Move down that way," he told them, pointing further down the log.
"Shoot and then cover!  Don't fire from the same place twice!"

While they crawled along the muddy ground to their new positions, Brett
eased three feet to the right and then popped up again.  He fired three
more shots into the hillside, again not seeing a target but wanting to
keep them pinned down.  He ducked back down just as Jason popped up
twelve feet to the left of him.  Jason, his face with an absolute look
of terror upon it, unleashed five rounds up the hill before diving back
to the mud.  The moment he was down, Chrissie popped up from the far
end of the log and fired four shots.

Things then happened very quickly.  As soon as Chrissie was back under
cover, Brett raised up again, preparing to fire another quick burst.
But just as he did so, he saw a muzzle flash from behind a small mound
of earth with bushes atop it.  One of their attackers had fired at the
spot where Chrissie had just been.  In doing so, he had given away his
position.  Worse still, for him anyway, he was only behind concealment,
which just hid a person, instead of cover, which hid and protected.
Brett quickly sighted on the bush from which the flash had emitted and
pulled the trigger five times in less than two seconds.  Just as he
ducked his head back down he saw a body come rolling down the hill, a
rifle trailing after it.

At that instant, another muzzle flash erupted from yet another bush ten
feet further up the hill.  The bullet slammed into the log less than
six inches above Brett's head, peeling a large sliver of wood off and
throwing it over the top of him.  Specks of wood and mud struck him in
the face, stinging his eyes.  A fury of rifle shots answered this as
Chrissie and Jason unleashed a barrage at the spot where the shot had
come from.

"We got him!" Jason yelled triumphantly.  "We got him Chrissie!"

"He's down Brett!" she answered back gleefully.  "We got him!"

Brett, having poked his head back up, saw that they were right.
Another rifle and another body was sliding down the hillside.  It
fetched up against a rock and lie still.  He then looked at the two
kids, seeing that they were staring at the spot, mesmerized by what
they had done. "Get the fuck back down!" he screamed at them. "There
might be more out there!"  He fired another three rounds up the hill as
soon as these words were out of his mouth.  Jason and Chrissie, heeding
his warning, both hit the dirt once again.

Brett slid about five feet to his left, switching his rifle to
automatic fire as he did so.  It was time to bug the hell out of
Dodge.  "Regroup," he yelled at them.  "Form up on me!  Keep low!"

He put his head up once more and squeezed the trigger twice, sending
two short bursts upward before diving back down.  No fire answered
this.  He allowed himself to be slightly encouraged by this.  He had
only heard two rifles during the battle and two people were down.  But
that did not mean that there was not another person lying in wait up
there.

He began to slide to the left, meeting the two kids near the center of
the log.  He raised up and fired another burst, again receiving no
answering fire.  He looked at his two companions.  "Is everyone okay?"
he asked them.

"Yeah," Chrissie said, nodding rapidly.  Her eyes were bright and wide
with terror, the pupils so dilated that they almost completely erased
the blue surrounding them.  Her hands gripped her rifle tight enough to
make her knuckles white.

"I'm okay," Jason echoed, breathing rapidly and fidgeting.  "We shot
that guy Brett!  We fuckin' shot him!"

"Yeah," Brett agreed.  "You did good.  We'll talk about it later, after
we're the hell out of here.  I think there was only two but I'm not
sure, so we're going to exit this place as if we were under fire, okay?"

They both nodded.

"Jason, you go first.  Chrissie and I will give you covering fire while
you move.  Head for that small hill over there about twenty yards past
these trees.  Run as fast as you can without tripping or falling.
Zigzag as you go but do it irregularly, without a pattern, understand?"

"Yeah," he said, looking where Brett was pointing.  "I think so."

"Do you think so, or do you know so?"

He took a deep breath.  "I know so," he said.

"Good.  Once you're over there, find a firing position.  When Chrissie
comes across, both of us will cover her.  Use short bursts on
automatic.  Short bursts.  Don't waste your ammo.  We don't have a
whole hell of a lot of it.  Once you two are both over there, spread
out and give me covering fire when I come over.  Got it?"

"Yeah," they both agreed.

"Then let's do it."

They did it, the entire operation taking less than two minutes to
accomplish.  Though there was no one else left alive to oppose their
transit, it was unlikely that anyone would have been able to hit them
even if there had been.  It was an almost textbook retreat under fire.

Once they were behind the dirt mound, Brett popped out his expended
magazine and let it fall to the dirt.  He reloaded his rifle with a
fresh one.  He then directed the two kids to do the same, even though
they both had a few more rounds in their clips.  They saved their
partially emptied clips as an emergency reserve.

"Now," Brett directed, his eyes never wavering from the direction from
which they'd come, "we're going to move down this hill and over to that
grove of trees by the mudflow as fast as we can.  Don't stop for
anything.  Keep up the zigzag pattern and don't worry about keeping in
formation.  Once we're over there, find the best cover that you can and
pull yourself into it.  We'll hold there for a while and keep an eye
out.  Are you ready?"

They told him they were ready.

"Then let's do it.  Go!"

They continued to leapfrog from one place to another for the next two
hours.  They dashed from one area of cover to the next, spreading out
and holding once they got there to watch for followers.  Once they were
reasonably certain that they were alone and unobserved, they moved on.
Finally, more than an hour after their traditional lunch break, Brett
allowed them to stop.

"If there was anybody back there," he said, sitting down on a log,
"then we've lost them."  For the first time in hours he set his rifle
down and relaxed.  His nerve endings were all tingling with adrenaline
overload and a sudden wave of fatigue, common following combat
situations, washed over him.

Chrissie and Jason, both equally exhausted despite their youth, slumped
down next to him.  He looked at them affectionately, these two children
of a screaming liberal Berkeley professor and his environmentalist
wife.  They had done good.  He could not remember ever being as proud
of someone as he was of those two at that moment.  "We're alive right
now," he said matter-of-factly, "because of you two."

They looked at him questioningly.

"You guys were bad-ass," he said.  "You did everything just right.  You
didn't panic, you didn't falter.  If you hadn't of helped me fight
those guys off, they would've nailed us.  That was some good teamwork
back there.  We fuckin' kicked ass!"

"Yeah," Jason said, picking up the giddiness.  He raised his rifle in
the air in triumph.  "We fuckin' kicked ASS!"

"Hell yeah," Brett said, laughing now that the tension was relieved.
He looked at Chrissie.  She was trembling a little, her mind seemingly
on overload.  She was not smiling.  "What do you say Chrissie?" he
asked her.  "Did we kick some ass today, or what?"

"Yeah," she said, unenthusiastically.  "We kicked ass."

"No, no, no," Brett said, shaking his head strenuously.  He moved over
next to her and put his arm around her companionably, pulling her
against him.  "You take away from the victory when you say it like
that.  What you mean is that we kicked some fuckin' ASS!  Right?"

"Right," she said, the hint of a smile marring her face.

"Then say it goddammit," he chided, rubbing his hand up and down her
arm.  "Are we a team or aren't we?"

"Yeah," Jason agreed, pushing at her legs.  "Say it."

The smile blossomed to full.  She shook off his arm and stood up.  She
raised her rifle above her head.  "We kicked some fuckin' ASS!" she
yelled happily, loud enough to echo off the nearest cliff.


+++++



Brett allowed them double rations for lunch in celebration of their
victory.  They ate greedily, their stomachs swelling in a pleasantly
uncomfortable way.  Afterwards, instead of moving off right away like
they usually did, they continued leaning against the log, their feet
stretched out before them.

"I still can't believe I actually shot someone," Chrissie said
reflectively.  "I mean, it was like the most intense thing that ever
happened to me when it was happening, but now that its over, it seems
like it was a dream or something.  Something that happened to someone
else."

"Yeah," Jason agreed.  "I keep thinking about it like it was a video
game I'd played or something.  It's like they weren't really shooting
REAL bullets at us and we weren't shooting real bullets at them.  It's
like they weren't even real people.  But then when I think about it a
little more and remember that they WERE real, and that they WERE trying
to kill us, I get all freaked out."

"Understandable," Brett said, taking a sip from his canteen.
"Sometimes it doesn't seem real to me either.  When I shot those guys
that killed your parents, it was the same way.  I would find myself
wondering at times if that had really happened at all.  I think it's
because you're a different person when you're in a combat situation
like that."

"A different person?" Chrissie asked.

"Uh huh," he said.  "You're in a completely different mode.  You get
pumped up with adrenaline and your mind starts to speed up.  When this
happens you either panic and go rushing off blindly, usually right into
trouble, or you start to make instant decisions that are geared towards
the most basic need: to stay alive. You two were in that category.  You
didn't panic.  You were obviously scared to death but you did
everything you were supposed to do.  You moved fast, you listened to me
and did what I told you to do and you shot back well enough to kill
that fuck that was trying to kill us.  But the thing is, after
everything is over and done with and your body goes back to a normal
mode, it gives you the feelings that you're experiencing now.  You feel
like it wasn't really YOU that did those things because you never
imagined yourself doing them.  Or if you do accept that it was you that
did it, you feel like it wasn't as serious of a situation as it really
was."

"That's trippy," Jason said.

"Yeah," Chrissie agreed.

"Well, trippy or not," Brett told them, "you two are now official
combat veterans.  Your cherries have been popped, as we used to say
back in the 3rd ACR."

Chrissie started to giggle.  "Gee Jase," she said, elbowing him in the
side, "bet you never thought you'd lose your cherry THAT way, huh?"

Jason managed to look amused, offended, and embarrassed all at the same
time.  "Shut up Chris," he barked, pushing her.

Brett smiled as he watched this exchange.  Though the world had forced
his two friends into a brutal adulthood much earlier then they were
meant to be thrust into it, for just a moment he was able to catch a
glimpse of the kids that they had once been.

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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