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From: "Al Steiner" <steiner_al@hotmail.com>
Subject: {ASSM} NEW: Aftermath by Al Steiner - Ch 15 (FF) 1/1
Date: Fri,  9 Mar 2001 18:10:03 -0500
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AFTERMATH
By Al Steiner

Send all comments to steiner_al@hotmail.com
Previous chapters can be found at www.storiesonline.net




CHAPTER 15




Brett was finding that he was having a major time-management problem as the
frantic, pre-battle preparations were being undertaken in and around the
town.  There were many things that required his attention and his attention
alone and only 24 hours in each day to do them all.  The bulk of his daytime
hours were being spent behind the controls of the helicopter.  In the three
days since the deal had been struck with El Dorado Hills he had logged more
than thirty flight hours.  In a marathon two-day operation, all of the
promised grain and canned food (except the chili, the peanut butter, and the
baby food) had been delivered to El Dorado Hills either in water heaters or
upon pallets.  And El Dorado Hills, keeping with their end of the bargain,
had supplied Garden Hill with more than eighteen thousand rounds of
ammunition, six automatic weapons, and, as a gesture of good faith, four
hundred pounds of dried fish.  When not flying recovery missions for El
Dorado Hills, Brett was flying them for his own town.  Just this day he and
his crew of four had recovered 400 boxes of Tide laundry detergent and 500
gallons of gasoline from the tanker car on the railroad tracks.  Brett had
special plans for these two substances.

The bulk of his early evening hours was being taken up by basic infantry
tactic lectures that he gave to the entire town.  He had had Chrissie and
Michelle - both of whom were considerably more artistic than he was - make a
large, scale model map of the surrounding terrain.  This map was very
detailed, showing the location and name of every hill large enough to hide a
squad of troops on.  Brett would stand with a pointer and explain to his
audience the best way to go about defending their town while hopefully
keeping casualties to a bare minimum.

"We'll be fighting a purely defensive battle here," he would tell them,
"and, once the enemy gets into our playing field, we're going to be using a
fighting retreat tactic.  These outer layers of hills to the north and the
west, the ones out beyond our main guard positions, that is where we're
going to meet them first.  Now many of you know exactly what I'm talking
about since you've been out all day digging foxholes in those hills.  What
we're going to do is move our forces to whatever hills are between the town
and their avenue of advance.  More than likely, they'll have more than one
such avenue and they might have as many as three.  You'll engage them with
your weapons as soon as they come into range.  We're not going to be doing
any of that until-you-see-the-whites-of-their-eyes shit.  Our goal is to
keep these fuckers as far away from us as we can.  We have plenty of ammo
now so don't fret too much about wasting it.  We're going to make them pay
heavily for each advance that they make and then we're going to pull back as
soon as they start to get close.  Remember that you'll be in well-protected
positions while they will be forced to move across open ground.  The
advantage goes to the defender.

"Once they close with our first positions, we'll retreat to our next set of
prepared defenses.  Once again, we should have foxholes already dug there
and the whole process will start over.  We'll bloody them some more and then
we'll retreat again when they start to get close.  Layer by layer that's how
we're going to fight them.  Eventually, if necessary, we'll fall back inside
the wall itself and make our final stand in the park outside of this
community center.  We're already in the process of setting up bunkers in the
grass and we're working on setting up some minefields to channel them into
killing boxes."

He went over this plan with everyone again and again, explaining it and
pointing at the map every evening after dinner.  He encouraged questions and
there were many.  He answered each one to the best of his abilities and with
complete, sometimes brutal honesty.  "Yes," he told those who asked about
casualties, "we will more than likely have some of our people get wounded or
even killed.  I don't like it and I wish I could tell you that it won't
happen, but this is a war and that is the nature of war.  What I can promise
you is that we will make every attempt to care for those who are wounded.
Paul and Janet will serve as our battalion aid station and El Dorado Hills
has agreed to take in our wounded and allow their doctor to treat them if we
can get them there.  Unless the fate of the entire town is resting upon
using the chopper for something else at the moment, I will fly our wounded
immediately there."

After the evening's lecture was wrapped up it would be time for the recon
flight to check the vicinity of Auburn for the invasion force.  So far,
there was still no sign of them.  Brett was grateful each night that he and
Jason flew out there and saw nothing on the FLIR but empty woods and
abandoned interstate.  He was not so optimistic as to think that they might
have called off the attack but he was grateful for each additional day of
preparation that they were given.

After returning from the recon missions he would then typically spend an
hour or two going over the status of the day's work with the people that had
been placed in charge of each task.  Chrissie was in charge of the digging
crews while Matt was in charge of the weapons and ammunition crews.  There
were also several other special projects that were underway that Steve
Kensington was working on.

If he got to bed before midnight, Brett considered himself lucky.  In the
morning, he would wake up to the blaring of his wind-up alarm clock at 4:30
AM so he could spend a few hours training the eight people that had been
chosen for the task of harassing the advancing Auburnites.  Chrissie and
Michelle, his original guard force members, were his two squad leaders for
this force.  They were each in charge of a four-person team who were going
to be dropped in the woods very near the advancing enemy.  Though everyone
who was in this task force had been through either Brett or Chrissie's
advanced training class, this type of warfare was something that he felt
they needed additional instruction on.  Most of the training consisted of
lectures.

"There's no reason why any of you should get hit out there," he told them.
"You actually have one of the safest jobs in this whole conflict if you do
it right.  You pick your ambush site carefully and you make damn sure you
have good cover and a good path of retreat.  When they come into view, you
hit them fast and then you get the hell out of there before they have a
chance to engage you.  Chrissie and Michelle, you assign targets to your
riflemen and make sure they know who they're going to be aiming at.  If two
people shoot the same person, it's a waste of ammo.  Riflemen, you all fire
at the same time at your assigned target and just like that, three enemies
are dead or wounded.  Once the riflemen fire, the squad leader opens up for
a quick burst with the automatic weapon.  And I mean a quick burst.  Don't
get greedy.  That's how you get killed.  As soon as they start to return
fire, get the hell out and back to the helicopter."

As exhausted as he was all of the time, Brett was still quite pleased with
the pace that the war preparations were moving forward.  The townspeople had
pulled together like they never had before.  Previous enemies had managed to
set aside their petty differences in the interest of efficiency.  Most of
the workforce marched out after breakfast each morning and dug trenches in
the hills, filling their best pillowcases with the mud that they dug out of
the ground to make sandbags.  Others ripped the gas tanks out of cars so
that Steve could use his welder to convert them into bomb casings.  Others
still helped load ammunition clips and clean weapons or assembled combat
packs out of children's backpacks.  And because all of this war-related
labor did not allow for such routine tasks as wood gathering and drying,
they were forced to go without their once-demanded luxury: hot baths in the
evenings.  They did not complain about this, not even the most vocal of
them.  They simply bathed in cold water or went without.  Similarly the food
that they were served was now usually served cold for the same reason.
Although Stacy and Tina managed to put fresh bread on the table every night,
they did this only with the wood that they gathered themselves and
everything else was served directly out of the can.  Again, no one
complained, apparently realizing that survival took precedence over luxury.
Brett sometimes found it hard to believe that these were the same yuppie
women that had followed Jessica's teachings and tried to oust him from town.

He began to have hope that his crazy scheme just might work.



+++++



"Brett," said Steve Kensington on the morning of January 11, just as he was
heading from his early training session with the harassment force to the
cafeteria to pick up his ration of cold food.  "You got a minute?"

"Sure," Brett said, stifling a yawn.  "What's up?"  He noted that Steve, who
had been working like mad for the last three days, looked even more tired
than he himself felt.  There were dark circles under his bloodshot eyes and
his skin had an unhealthy pallor to it.

"I think I managed to make an operational mine," he said.  "Come outside and
have a look."

"Yeah?" Brett asked, pleased.  Part of his defensive plan called for some
sort of landmine to help protect certain parts of their perimeter.  Steve,
as their resident mechanical genius, had been tasked to come up with a
design if he could.  "Let's go check it out."

"I got the idea from what those assholes that killed Mitsy and Dale did with
the Raid cans," he said, leading Brett down a hall and out through one of
the side doors.  "They key to the whole thing are the mousetraps."

"Mousetraps?" Brett asked.  "Where did you get mousetraps?  There weren't
any of them in the supply room."

"But there were in the grocery store," Steve said.  "We never brought them
over here because we didn't have a use for them.  None of the stragglers
that picked through the store in the early days had a use for them either.
They were still sitting in the storage room yesterday, four boxes of fifty."

They walked through the rain to the maintenance shed, a room that had become
Steve's workshop.  He had a variety of tools and equipment stacked on the
floor of the shed, including an air compressor, a welder, and various power
tools, all of which he powered with the inverter on the fire engine.
Several of his gas tank creations were sitting on a shelf, waiting their
turn to be turned into bomb casings, and several completed ones were stacked
outside.  Brett saw that he had been using a power saw and a drill recently.
The former was sitting on the edge of the bench, it's blade dusty with
sawdust.  The latter was sitting on the floor next to a vise.  It was still
plugged into the power cord that ran from the fire engine and it had a
one-inch drill bit installed in it.

"It's very simple actually," Steve explained as he picked up a three-foot
length of lumber that looked like it had been cut from a two by four.  "All
I need is scrap wood from the collapsed houses, a shotgun shell, a
mousetrap, and some fishing line.  Here," he handed it over, "check it out.
This one is safe, it doesn't have the shotgun shell in it yet."

Brett took the offered piece of wood.  He saw that three holes, one large
and two small, had been drilled in the center of it.  On either side of
these holes was a see-saw type of assembly made out of 3/8 inch dowels and a
twelve-inch wooden ruler.  Fishing line had been tied to the ends of the
rulers and run through the smaller holes where it was attached by means of a
fishing hook to the spring of a mousetrap.  "How does it work?" he asked.

"You put the shotgun shell in the big hole with the primer side facing the
trap," Steve explained.  "The hole is just the right size so the shell will
fit snugly.  If you look at the mousetrap you'll see that I cut a small hole
in the base of it and cut the trap part in two and bent it upward.  The
bent-up piece will strike the primer of the shell when it's tripped.  The
wood will act like a small shotgun barrel and channel the blast upward."

"And these rulers set it off?" Brett asked, running his finger over them.

"Right," Steve said.  "Go ahead and arm the trap."

Brett did so, forcing the powerful spring backwards and setting it.

"Now you see," Steve explained, "that fishing line is connected to the
rulers on one end and the trip mechanism on the other.  If anyone steps on
this thing on either side, they'll push the far end of the ruler down which
will force the near end up which will then pull on the string and spring the
trap.  Go ahead and try it."

Brett pushed on the ruler.  Nothing happened at first except the ruler bent
a little.  Steve told him to push a little harder and he did.  This time
there was a snap and the trap slammed home.

"Boom," Steve said with a grin.  "They step on that thing and the pellets
will blast upward right into them.  It'll either take them in the crotch if
they happen to be straddling it or it'll take out the side of their leg if
they're off to the side."

"Ouch," Brett said, wincing a little at the thought.

"It probably won't kill them," Steve said apologetically.  "Especially if we
use the birdshot shells that we have."

"It doesn't have to kill them," Brett assured him.  "In fact, it demoralizes
the other soldiers even more if it doesn't.  Especially considering the lack
of field hospitals and medical care.  Trust me, you blow a guys balls off
with that thing and leave him writhing in agony on the ground, it has a
detrimental effect on morale."

"I guess it would at that," Steve said.  "Anyway, that's the ground version
of the mine.  I've also come up with one that you can mount on a tree or in
a bush or on any other solid surface."

"Yeah?"

Steve picked up a smaller piece of two by four, this one only about four
inches square.  It had the same hole for the shotgun shell drilled in the
center of it but only one smaller hole to string fishing line through.  The
bottom of it was different as well.  Small strips of plywood had been
screwed into all four sides of it.  These strips extended about four inches
past the bottom of the thing so that there was a hollow area under it to
give the trap room to swing shut.

"It fires with the same principal," Steve told him.  "A fish hook connected
to the trap mechanism.  Only this time you put the thing on the tree or
whatever, camouflage it with some branches or some mud, and then run a
length of wire down to the ground.  I figure that we put a small pulley on a
stake and then string the wire about two inches or so off the ground.  When
someone trips over the wire, boom, that's their ass."

"Fucking brilliant," Brett said.

Steve gave an embarrassed shrug.  "Just doing my part," he said.

"Well you just keep doing your part," Brett said.  "How many of these things
can you make us?"

"I can make two hundred of them," he said.  "That's how many mousetraps I
have.  Can you use that many?"

"I can use them," Brett said.  "Trust me on that.  Make a hundred and fifty
of the ground mines and fifty of the tree-mounts."

"I'll get right on it.  I'm almost done with these gas tanks so I'll have
the crew that's been stripping them out for me start working on these."

+++++


"Coming up on the mudfall," Jason, looking through the FLIR scope, reported
that night at 9:30.  They were on the nightly recon flight to the vicinity
of Auburn and the mudfall in question was the first one east of the town -
the same one that Anna and Jean had walked to in the darkness on their first
night of freedom.

"Copy," Brett said.  "Slowing up."

"You're about two miles and closing," Jason reported.  As they got closer he
continued to read off distances every fifteen seconds or so.  "Okay," he
finally said.  "About a mile out.  No sign of activity."

"Right," Brett told him, exhaling a breath of air.  "Banking left to check
the south."  He turned to the left, keeping a careful eye on his compass and
his altimeter.  As often as he had done night flights over the past few
weeks, he was still not comfortable with him, he couldn't afford to be
comfortable with them, although he had learned to trust Jason, his navigator
and remote eyes, implicitly.

"Still looking good," Jason reported as they neared the edge of the
impassable zone.  "And still no signs of soldiers.  Go ahead and come around
to 270 now, we're past the edge."

"Banking right," Brett said, watching the compass swing around to 270
degrees.

They flew in this direction for nearly five minutes and then banked right
again, heading back to the north to pick up the interstate again.  It was in
this area that Brett figured they were most likely to find the soldiers they
were looking for.

"Nothing," Jason reported as they ambled along at 30 knots.  "Coming up on
the interstate again.  It's about two miles in front of you."  Once again he
started announcing the distance as they closed.  Brett's goal was to stay
about a mile away from the actual roadway - close enough to see if the
troops were camping on it but too far away for them to hear the helicopter
if they were there.  "One mile," he announced when they reached that point.
"And still nothing visible."

"Turning left to 270 again," Brett said.

They flew parallel to the roadway for another five miles, Jason constantly
scanning back and forth, searching for the telltale glow of body heat.  He
saw nothing.  Once inside that five-mile zone Brett turned back to the
north, not going any closer to Auburn.  They were only about four miles east
of the eastern guard positions and they figured that the Auburn force, had
it left that day, would already be well past this point no matter how slowly
they'd marched.  They crossed the freeway and made a check around the base
of the large hill that had collapsed over the freeway, causing the mudfall.
This check was just in case the Auburnites had elected to bypass to the
north instead of the easier route to the south.  They hadn't.  This route
was just as empty as the southern route.

"No armies out there tonight," Jason said gratefully once they'd come back
to their original position.

"I guess Anna and Jean's escape really did throw their schedule off," Brett
said, picking up his airspeed a little.  "They're now three days behind."

"Maybe they won't come at all," Jason said with a shrug.

"They'll come," Brett said.  "That's the thing about people like that.  Once
they decide to do something like that, they follow through."

"I can always hope, can't I?"

"That's true.  You can always do that.  Why don't we do a little more target
practice on the way back?"

"You bet," Jason replied with a grin.  He liked playing with his new toy
that Steve had installed for him.

"Let me know when you find a target and we'll do some runs on it."

It took less than five minutes before Jason spotted an abandoned car on the
side of the interstate below.  "Okay," he said, "I've got a car about a mile
ahead.  Let's set up."

"You're the boss," Brett told him, pulling into a hover.

While they held in place, Jason opened up a compartment and pulled out a
banana clip.  Inside of this clip were 30 rounds of 5.56 millimeter bullets,
every third one of which was a tracer.  Between their two seats, sticking
half in and half out of a hole that Steve had cut in the chassis of the
helicopter, was an automatic M-16 rifle, mounted upside down on the
telescope tripod mount so that it could spin back and forth, up and down.
Using the scant ambient light from the cockpit instruments, Jason put the
magazine into the weapon and jacked the first round into the chamber.  He
flipped off the safety and made sure that the weapon was set on full
automatic fire.

"Locked and loaded," he reported, swinging the weapon back and forth and
then making a small adjustment to the mounting tension.  He kept his finger
well clear of the trigger for the time being.

"Okay," Brett said, taking another deep breath.  "Bring me in."

What they were practicing was a very dangerous tactic but one that they
needed to perfect.  Jason, as the gunner and as the eyes of the helicopter,
was basically in charge of the machine.  Brett's hands and feet controlled
the motions but, since he was effectively blind, Jason's voice controlled
Brett's hands and feet.

"Drop down," Jason said, "and we'll circle around to the left to get into
position.  There's a ridge just to the north of the target that rises about
sixty feet over the roadway.  Stay above 500 AGL and you'll be well clear of
it and the higher ridge to the northwest of it."

"Copy," Brett said, reducing altitude much faster than he really felt
comfortable with but doing it anyway.  He watched the radar altimeter -
which gave a readout of his altitude above the ground as opposed to above
sea level - as he dropped.  He pulled up and back into a hover when it
reached 550 feet.

"Okay," Jason told him, watching his target with one eye and the ridgeline
with the other.  Using short, concise commands he guided Brett around in a
large circle and back towards the highway until they were about half a mile
away from the car and heading right at it.

"How we doing?" Brett asked after a long silence.

"Right on track," Jason said.  "Target area is at twelve o'clock, half a
mile away.  We're ready to make the firing run.  After the run, come off
target ninety degrees to the left and you'll be clear of obstacles."

"Got it," Brett told him, putting on the speed.

Jason let his finger inch onto the trigger of the weapon as his eyes
remained glued to the FLIR.  He made a few adjustments to the rifle's
attitude until he thought it was pointed approximately at the car, which was
growing bigger and bigger on the display.  "Looking good," he said almost
absently.  "Looking good.  Almost in range.  Slow up a bit."

"Slowing to twenty knots," Brett told him.

"In range," Jason said.  "Opening fire."  He squeezed the trigger and the
gun began to buck as it sprayed a stream of bullets from the barrel.  The
sound of the gunshots were muted, both because of the headsets they wore and
because the barrel was outside of the vehicle.  On the display Jason saw the
white streaks of the tracers arcing outward.  They were impacting in front
of and to the left of the car.  Without releasing the trigger, he adjusted
the angle of the rifle, turning the tracers to where he wanted them.  He
raked back and forth and was able to see the windows of the car explode, the
tires flatten, and neat rows of holes appear in the body.   "On target," he
said excitedly.  He continued to hold the trigger down until the last shell
was ejected below them and the action locked open on an empty chamber.

"Banking hard left," Brett said once the last round was fired.  He came off
target and immediately began to climb and put on speed.

"I got it on target in less than a second that time," Jason said once they
were back up to cruising altitude.  "Probably didn't waste more than ten
rounds or so."

"You're getting a lot better," Brett said.  Although he would take a look at
the videotape back in Garden Hill, he had no doubt that his young friend was
telling the truth.  Jason was not prone to exaggeration.  "How many more
clips do we have loaded?"

"Three more."

"Let's make another run," Brett suggested.  "A simulated follow-up attack.
We'll spin around to the south this time and hit the same target."

It took them another ten minutes to set up and get back around to a firing
position from the south.  This time Jason blasted apart the other side of
the car without wasting more than six or seven rounds.  That was a far cry
from when they first started practicing and it would take him two entire
magazines of ammunition before he could hit a target the size of a
tractor-trailer rig.

"Those Auburn fucks are gonna hate your ass," Brett told him after hearing
the results of the last run.

"Good," Jason told him.


+++++


Early the next morning, just after first light, the Placer County Militia of
Auburn was once more assembled on the lawn of the football field.  They were
divided into three different companies of four platoons apiece, all of them
loaded with heavy packs of food and extra ammunition, all of them with
rifles on their backs.  They stood at attention in neat, military rows,
listening as Colonel Barnes, their commander, gave his traditional departure
speech.

Barnes outdid himself with patriotic and militaristic fervor, ranting on for
nearly fifteen minutes about God and conquest and unification and the need
to secure air superiority for further conquest.  He told his troops that he
was proud of them - as proud as a father was of his sons.  He told them that
they would prevail on this most important mission and that the rewards would
be great.  He seemed almost near tears at several points as his voice went
up and down with his emotional outpouring.

So wrapped up in his speech was he that he didn't notice several disturbing
things that had never happened before.  Instead of listening with rapt and
even hypnotic attention as they usually did, a good many of his troops were
making sour faces, or snickering, or whispering comments to each other just
below the auditory level.  A few made obscene gestures for the benefit of
their friends.  Sergeant Stinson actually went so far as to make a jerking
off motion with his hand during the God and conquest sequence.

The cheer that went up at the end of the speech was unenthusiastic at best.

"Lieutenant Covington," Bracken barked to his newest platoon commander.

"Yes sir," Covington said, straightening up and looking sharp.

"Your platoon has the point.  Lead us out."

"Yes sir," he replied.  "Sergeant Markwell!"

"Yes sir," Turbo, a newly promoted sergeant replied.

"Your squad is on point."

"Yes sir," he said.

The attack force assembled smartly into marching formation and the order was
given.  As one, four hundred feet began to march, heading east.  Within
thirty minutes, they had all passed through the sandbag maze that Jean and
Anna had once navigated through and were on their way.




+++++



Jessica did not see them go.  She was in the middle of hanging a huge load
of wet towels up on the improvised clothesline deep in the bowels of the
high school.  No more than ten minutes after their departure however, the
word was brought to her by two of her closest associates.

Alice and Susan were two young women that had recently been added to the
cleaning staff of the high school to replace the two escapees, Jean and
Anna.  In addition to the change in job assignment, they had also both
changed husbands.  Since Bracken had been left wifeless by the escape and
murder of his previous harem, Barnes had pressured two of the lower-ranking
militia members to each "donate" a wife to the field commander.  Nor had
Bracken and Barnes been satisfied with the simple donation in and of itself.
Alice and Susan both had been the pick of the litter of each man's three
women.  In this case the resentment towards Barnes and his underling had
gone in both directions.  The two young corporals had both been angry at
having their best bitches stolen from them and the two young women had been
angry at this further proof that they were nothing but property.  Jessica
didn't give a damn what the two corporals thought or felt, but the insult to
Alice and Susan had helped her recruit them into her inner circle of
cohorts.

"They're on their way," Alice, a redhead who had once been a hair stylist in
Auburn's most fashionable salon, told Jessica.

"Good," Jessica said, allowing a little smile to touch her face.  "And did
all four hundred march out?"

"We counted every last one," confirmed Susan, a longhaired brunette.  She
had once been a bureaucrat in the county administration building.  "They
made it easy to do that in those neat lines they were in."

"And the weapons?" Jessica asked.

"Just like they said," Alice told her.  "Most of them had regular hunting
rifles.  We can't tell the difference in the assault rifles, but it looks
like they really did leave all of the automatic weapons here."

"Just waiting for someone to take possession of them," Jessica said.  "I've
got close to two hundred women in on this now."

"Two hundred?" Susan asked, wondering if she was exaggerating.

She wasn't. The uprising that she was trying to ignite would not have been
possible two weeks before.  But since the group punishment of everyone and
the murder of three women because of Jean and Anna's escape, resentment of
the men in town that had been only simmering before had boiled over.  The
realization that anyone, no matter how loyal or obedient to their husband,
could be killed or beaten independent of their own actions had had a
powerful effect on the Auburn women.  Suddenly much of the petty fighting
for favoritism and special treatment seemed a joke.  The women, instead of
competing against each other, began to see themselves as a group, as an
oppressed entity, as an US against a powerful THEM.  Jessica had fanned
these flames to the very best of her abilities by doing what she was
absolutely best at: talking and gossiping.  Whenever a group of women
gathered somewhere, she was there, whispering things to them, riling them
up.  Whenever someone expressed doubt about what she was saying, she quickly
turned the fury of the group against them, shaming them or even threatening
them back into line. "Two hundred," she confirmed.  "And that's not all.
I've got at least one of my girls in the household of every man that is
remaining behind.  This will insure our success.  Those bastards will never
know what hit them.  I only wish Stinson was one of the men staying here so
I could have the pleasure of cutting his fucking throat myself."

"You've been a busy little bee, haven't you?" Alice asked.

"It's what I do," Jessica told her.  We'll let the attack force get two days
out of town, just to make sure they don't come back unexpectedly, and then,
on the third night, while everyone but the guards on post are asleep..." she
gave a predatory grin, "We strike."

Alice and Susan both shuddered a little, a mixture of excitement and fear.
"Are you sure everyone will follow through with it?" Alice asked.

"I think so," Jessica said.  "After the hangings, I really think that
they'll do it."

"What about Barnes' women?" Alice wanted to know.  "Have you made contact
with any of them?  How do they feel about this?"

"I haven't approached any of them," Jessica said.  "They're probably with us
but I just couldn't be sure.  We'll see what they do when the time comes."

"And you're sure that they won't be able to just take the town back from us
when they get back?" Susan asked almost timidly.  "I mean, I know we'll have
the automatic weapons and all, but there'll still be four hundred of them."

"Four hundred minus whoever gets killed in Garden Hill," Jessica corrected.
"And they'll be tired and low on ammunition from being out there for a
month.  They'll also have supplies and prisoners from Garden Hill with them.
We'll be able to keep them out if we do it right.  And when they surrender
to us, they'll come back in under OUR rules."

"And the shoe will be on the other foot for once," Alice said, smiling at
the very thought.

"Exactly," Jessica confirmed.  "Our day is coming soon."


+++++


"Slow up Brett, slow up!" Jason barked from the observer seat of the
helicopter that night.  "Slow way up!"

"What is it?" Brett asked, pulling instantly into a near-hover, slowing the
aircraft so quickly that both of them were pushed against their safety
harnesses.  "Do you have something?"

"Affirm," Jason said fearfully, seeing the glow of hundreds of people on his
scope.  "Multiple warm bodies on the roadway, right before the mudfall."

They were just outside the one-mile range of the interstate on the west side
of the first mudfall.  Almost exactly where Brett had predicted the
attacking force would stop the first night of their march.  It was 9:26 PM.

"How many?" Brett wanted to know.

"Hundreds," Jason said.  "I can't even see them all yet, they stretch from
the mudfall to the end of my panning range."

"Are they stationary?"

"Yes, most of them seem to be lying down.  Their signatures are dimmed, like
they're in sleeping bags."

"Can we move in a little closer?"

"A little bit," Jason told him.  "It looks like they have a couple of people
standing watch just to the south of them but they're only a few hundred feet
off the roadway."

"Guide me," Brett said.

Jason directed him forward and to the west at twenty knots, halting his
forward motion at about three-quarters of a mile out.  He then told him to
hover.

"Hovering," Brett reported, wishing he could see, just for an instant, what
Jason was looking at.  "Be sure to get some film."

"Doing it now," Jason said, panning slowly from east to west.  "Too many of
them to count right now.  We'll have to do it back in town.  They have
two-man guard teams posted north and south of the roadway.  Three sets in
each direction; one in the middle and one at each end.  The rest of them are
clumped pretty tight together right on the asphalt.  No tents or lean-to's
or anything like that, they're just sleeping in the road."

"Like they don't have a care in the world," Brett said.

"Should we make a firing run on them?" Jason asked hopefully.  "I could take
out ten or fifteen of them."

"Not tonight," Brett told him.

"Why not?  We have three clips of ammo and they're lying in a nice even row.
Maybe they'll turn back in the morning."

"They won't," Brett said.  "And it's too soon to tip our hand.  We need to
hit them first in the daylight.  If we spend all day harassing them, the
realization that we have night capabilities as well will have a much greater
effect on their moral.  Trust me, that's the way to do it."

Jason wasn't entirely convinced of this but he made no further protests.  He
spent another ten minutes directing Brett from point to point and filming
the enemy in infrared.  "I'm pretty sure I've got them all on tape," he said
at last.

"Then let's get ourselves home.  We're gonna have a long day tomorrow."


+++++



Traditionally, the average adult bedtime in Garden Hill had been around nine
o'clock or even earlier.  In a town with no electricity and with nothing but
black darkness outside after sunset, the residents had reverted to the ways
that their ancestors had used before electrical wires and streetlights and
television sets.  But since the news that an attack force would be leaving
Auburn soon, almost everyone in town had adjusted this early-to-bed credo in
favor of awaiting the return of the recon flight around 10:00 PM.  Groups of
them would gather inside the community center waiting for the radio call to
Chrissie from Jason.  Even before landing he would give the all-clear signal
and the word would quickly be passed.  For some reason the townspeople just
slept better knowing that they'd been granted an extra day.

On this night however, no one went to bed after the check-in radio report.
The all-clear signal wasn't given.  Instead, Jason passed on Brett's request
for an immediate community meeting.  By the time the helicopter was refueled
and secured for the night, every adult in town was sitting anxiously in the
cafeteria.

Brett did not mince words with them.  "The attack force has left Auburn," he
announced through the microphone.  "They are currently camped out
approximately eight miles east of their starting point."

The uproar was immediate.  Though it had a fearful vibe to it, it was not
the terror that had come with the initial announcement that an attack was in
the works.  Now, they were only receiving confirmation of facts that had
already been told.

"I haven't had a chance to go over the video images that Jason made of the
flight yet," Brett said when the voices died down to a manageable level.
"But from what he described to me as he was making the video, it certainly
appears that our friends Anna and Jean from Auburn were correct in their
assessment of the threat against us.  There are literally hundreds of troops
camped out on the lanes of the interstate, quite probably the four hundred
that we've been told about.  We have no reason to believe that they are not
heading this way and that they do not have evil intentions towards us."

Some more uproar came at this revelation.  A few questions were shouted to
Brett about irrelevant things and he pretended not to hear them.

"Now listen up people," Brett said, gesturing for them to hold it down.
Eventually, they did.  "We've been through all of this already.  We KNEW
they were coming and we have been preparing for them ever since finding this
out.  This announcement tonight is nothing more than the confirmation of
what we already knew.  In a way, I'm glad they finally showed themselves to
us.  Now we know EXACTLY what we're dealing with and we can begin to put our
plans into operation.  Remember, if they want to fight, we're going to give
them a goddamn fight that they'll never forget!"

This statement served to boost the morale up a little bit.

"All right," Brett said, once it was relatively quiet again.  "Now tomorrow
is just another day for most of you.  We still have at least ten days,
probably a lot more, until they get here.  So trench and sandbag crews,
we're still going to need you out there in the morning.  Those of you on
Steve's detail, we're especially going to need you out there.  All township
defense teams need to report to your normal duty station at the normal hour,
just like always, okay?"

The murmurs of assent came babbling upward to him.

"However, those of you on the hit and run teams," Brett said with a rather
wicked smile.  "Report to me at 0600 sharp.  We will be starting full
operations first thing in the morning."


+++++


 Stacy and Tina had provided them with a large thermos of strong black
coffee for their first official briefing.  They were in a small conference
room that had been decorated with large maps of the terrain between Auburn
and Garden Hill.  Again, Chrissie and Michelle had been the artisans for
this cartographic masterpiece and, using videotape of previous recon
missions, had truly outdone themselves.  Though the maps were not exactly to
scale, they were very close, closer even than their drawers knew.

"Okay," Brett said, holding a pointer in one hand and a steaming cup of
coffee in the other.  "Here is where they are now."  He tapped the point
where the interstate - represented as a black line - met the mudfall - which
was represented as a dark brown blob.  "In all likelihood, they will move
south from this point, taking the easiest path around this impassible
obstacle that blocks the interstate.  More than likely they will stick to
standard military doctrine and move out shortly after dawn.  Obviously, the
going will not be as smooth or easy for them in this stretch.  If they can
make five miles in a day, they would be pushing it.  So what we're going to
do is set up our first attack about a mile south of the interstate.  My
suggestion would be to conceal yourselves here."  He tapped a series of
hills that stood off to the southwest of their path.  "Chances are they will
march right down this natural corridor.  If that is the case, all of them
will be to the east of this position.  If any of them are to the west of it,
you must abort the attack and wait for them to pass.  Remember OUR doctrine
here: do not put yourself into unnecessary danger.  Having them on both
sides of you will impede, if not actually destroy, my ability to pick you
up, so don't do it."

Everyone nodded his or her understanding of this.

"Now what we're going to do on this first day is take full advantage of our
mobility and their ignorance to our presence.  I'll drop the first team -
Chrissie's team, right here."  He pointed to a spot just west of the attack
position.  "And then I will come back and drop the second team - Michelle's
team, over here."  He pointed to another series of hills further south along
the projected path.  "You will have your radios with you and I will keep
myself in a place where I can maintain radio contact with both of you.
Remember your code words!  Do not speak in clear-text because we have to
assume that the Auburnites are monitoring a scanner.  Chrissie, after you
make your hit, you withdraw immediately to the place where I dropped you
off.  I will fly you out of there and drop you to yet another spot south of
team two.  That way, we'll leapfrog our way along their march all fucking
day long.  Any questions?"

There were none.

"Then lets get suited up," Brett announced.  "Don't forget to muddy your
faces when you get out there.  We lift off the moment there's enough light."



+++++


Breakfast rations consisted only of powdered diet drinks mixed with
rainwater.  Most of the militia members were out-of-sorts and cranky on this
first morning since they had not slept terribly well in the dampness of the
outside.  Typically it took three or four days for everyone to get
reacquainted with the outside conditions that a march imposed upon them.

Bracken heard much of the grumbling as everyone packed up their gear for
another days march but he chose to ignore it, knowing it was an integral
part of the early days of a mission.  His mind did try to let him know that
this grumbling seemed worse than it ever had before, that the troops were
not trying as hard to keep it under control within his earshot, but he
dismissed this as being nothing more than a high amount of newbies on the
attack.

"Lieutenant Colby!" Bracken barked once all of the packs were reassembled
and once all of the rations had been consumed.

Colby was the senior lieutenant among the attack force.  Though he was
technically second-in-command Bracken actually shuddered at the thought of
him leading anything.  He was a nice enough guy but he was not very
experienced in actual fighting or militarism.  His pre-comet experience was
only the Placer County Militia.  He had never actually been in the service.
"Lieutenant Colby, reporting as ordered sir," he said.

"Colby, I'm going to have your platoon take point today," he said.  "We'll
be taking the most direct route around the mudfall."

"Yes sir," Colby said.

"Keep you maps open and keep everyone tight.  It's easy to get lost out here
if you wander too far away from the mudfall."

"Yes sir, I will sir."

"And keep an eye out for the bodies of those two bitches that used to be my
wives," Bracken added.  "My guess is that we'll find them along here
somewhere."

"Yes sir."

"Gather your people and let's move out.  My goal is to get us halfway around
this mudfall by night."


+++++


The MD-500 was not a very large helicopter.  Though the pilot and the
observer were able to sit in relative comfort, those assigned to the back
found it to be cramped, noisy, and very uncomfortable.  And that was when
only two people were sitting there.  The back had never been intended to
hold four people in any arrangement, let alone four fully armed and equipped
soldiers, not even after Brett had removed every piece of unneeded equipment
and storage.  But by cramming, twisting, and depriving them of any personal
space or indeed breathing room, Chrissie, Maggie, Mike Monahan, and Maria
Sanchez all managed to fit.  Chrissie had the door handle pushing painfully
into her shoulder on the left side of the aircraft while Maggie, who was
actually quite petite, had the handle on the right pushing against her
breast.  Mike, though he normally might have enjoyed the sensation of his
legs intertwined with Maria's, was more concerned with the fact that the
magazine of Chrissie's M-16 was pushing against his knees.

"All we all ready?" Brett asked, talking to no one in particular but knowing
that only Jason and Chrissie had headsets on.

"Let's get this shit over with," Chrissie snarled, trying to take a deep
breath and failing.  "At least on the ground we'll be able to move."

"Right," Brett said, diplomatically withholding any sarcastic comments.
"Lifting off.  We're talking about a twenty minute flight and a five to ten
minute check of the area."

"Yeah yeah," Chrissie said impatiently, "let's go."

He went, applying power and lifting off into the rainy, barely lit morning
sky.

He approached the landing area carefully, keeping his altitude high enough
to see what needed to be seen, but not so high that there was a possibility
of the Auburnites spotting the aircraft.  Below them the mudfall was a huge,
brown expanse of snapped trees and thick, still running mud.  He circled
around to the far west of it several times while Jason checked everything
with the FLIR and his own eyeballs.  No sources of body heat were seen
except for a small heard of deer that had miraculously managed to survive to
this point.

"Figures," Jason said bitterly.  "We finally spot some game and we can't do
anything about it."

"Mom wouldn't want you shooting them anyway," Chrissie said.  "She'd be real
proud if you took their picture though."

"Mom never had to eat fucking chicken noodle soup every day either," Jason
shot right back at her.

Brett listened to exchange and couldn't help but smile a little bit.  That
was the first time Chrissie and Jason had ever been able to mention their
dead mother or her hobby in anything other than a tearful manner.  Though no
one who survived the crash of Comet Fenwell had been allowed the luxury of a
proper mourning period for their loved ones, it seemed that that mourning
had come and gone anyway.

"We're clear down there Brett," Jason reported.  "Ready to hit the LZ."

"Right," Brett said, seeing the hills and the area beyond them that he had
pre-planned for the insertion and extraction point.  "Let's take us down.
Chrissie, get everyone ready for unload.  We're going down."

Chrissie gave a hand signal to everyone, conveying this information to them.
Unfortunately they could not lock and load while still in the aircraft -
their simply was not enough room - but they all understood that that would
be the first thing they did when their feet hit the ground.

Brett made a combat landing, similar to the ones he had made in his army
days when he'd flown the Blackhawk.  He did not circle around and carefully
come down upon the landing zone, he simply dropped down upon it, letting the
aircraft nearly fall out of the sky.  More than one stomach nearly gave up
its breakfast from this maneuver.  He pulled up at the last second and
someone DID lose their breakfast.  Chrissie, who was struggling with morning
sickness anyway, vomited all over herself and Mike.

"Sorry," she mouthed to Mike as the skids touched the ground and the doors
were thrown open.  Before he could reply or even be properly disgusted by
what had happened, they were out the door, their feet on the ground and
running towards the safety of the nearest tree line.

Once they were clear, Brett lifted back off, keeping low and heading out to
the south.  He would be heading back to Garden Hill to pick up Michelle's
team and drop them off.  Within seconds the sound of the helicopter's engine
had faded, leaving only the sound of the rain.

"All right," Chrissie said, hiccuping once and giving her sour stomach a few
rubs.  "Sorry about that Mike.  Maybe pregnant women weren't meant to be on
special forces.

"Hey," Mike said good-naturedly, "it's just extra camouflage, isn't it?"

She chuckled, already feeling better.  "I guess so.  Let's lock and load and
get ourselves into position."

They locked and loaded and then spent a few minutes putting mud on their
bodies and faces to help them blend into the background.  Every hand that
applied mud was shaky with adrenaline as they all tried not to think of what
they were about to do.  Soon they all looked like stragglers that had been
out in the woods for weeks.  They cleaned their hands with baby-wipes and
then buried the trash just to make sure no sign of their presence was noted
later.

"Okay," Chrissie said, holding her M-16 out before her.  "I'll take point.
The rest of you remember to keep those rifles out of the mud.  Remember,
they're not meant to be dirty like this thing is."

The hill they were planning to occupy was less than a half a mile in front
of them.  They walked carefully through the pine needles and mud, stepping
over logs and between trees, their boots squelching a little with each step.
When they got to the hill they climbed up the south face.  The going was a
little steep but they were assisted by the presence of numerous trees, both
standing and fallen.  They reached the summit a little more than fifteen
minutes after they had first started marching.  The return run would have to
be even quicker.

"Right here," Chrissie said, spotting a series of fallen trees.  "Let's
check out the view."

They took up position and looked through a gap in the trees.  Below them
they could see the flat ground that lay along the edge of the mud; the most
likely avenue of advance of their enemy.

"This is perfect Chrissie," Maggie told her, looking through the gap.

"Yes," Chrissie said thoughtfully, looking at everything.  "I think you're
right.  We can hit them from here and the trees will act as cover for return
fire.  If we egress that way," she pointed to the southwest; "the bulk of
the hill will protect us.  As long as Brett's there to pick us up, we'll be
able to make it to the LZ before they get any troops on our flank."

"So this is it then?" Mike asked.

"This is it," she confirmed.  "Everyone get a firing hole and let's start
waiting."


+++++


Brett and Jason picked up Michelle and her squad and flew them out to their
drop zone.  Michelle's squad consisted of Leanette, Hector, and Doris
Campbell.  Their drop zone was a mile south of Chrissie's, along the same
path that had been predicted as the Auburnite's avenue of advance.  Once
they were down and safe Brett, keeping low, zigged and zagged his way
between hills until he was close to where Chrissie's squad was positioned.

"Hatchling one," Jason said into the radio, "this it mother bird.  Are you
there?"

The response was immediate.  "Hatchling one in position," answered
Chrissie's voice.  "No sign of the wolves yet."

"Copy that," Jason told her.  "Mother bird is going to nest 3.  Repeat,
mother bird is going to nest 3.  We'll check in with you there."

Nest 3 was the code word for a small clearing just on the other side of a
row of hills.  It was well off the path that the Auburnites would take even
under the most wild conditions imaginable but still within line of sight of
Chrissie's team and therefore in radio contact.

Brett flew there, keeping terrifyingly low to the ground, and landed in a
small clearing that was relatively free of mud.  Once the skids were on the
ground he shut down the engine, letting the rotor wind down to a halt.

"Mother bird to hatchling one," Jason said.  "Can you hear us?"

"This is hatchling one," Chrissie's slightly scratchy, though readable voice
replied.  "We're here."

"We're in nest 3," Jason told her.  "Awaiting further.  We can be out of the
nest in two minutes."

"Copy that," Chrissie said.  "Still no wolves on the horizon.  We'll advise
when there are."

Jason then checked in with hatchling 2, also known as Michelle and her team,
and confirmed a good radio contact with them as well.  That done, Jason and
Brett began the arduous task of waiting as well.



+++++



Sergeant Stinson was one of the squad leaders of Colby's platoon and his
squad of ten had been chosen to have the honor of taking point on this
glorious morning.  They were about thirty yards in front of the rest of the
formation, walking slowly though not terribly carefully along through the
soggy ground.  About two hundred yards to their left, the wall of mud and
trees rose up nearly a hundred feet into the air.  To their right were a
series of small and large hills that made up a natural ridge.  They marched
in a loose wedge formation, their weapons slung low on their bellies, their
packs heavy upon their backs.  Private Winston, who had been recruited from
Grass Valley on the last major raid, was the front man.  Stinson himself,
like any sergeant, was lingering near the rear of the squad.

"God damn, this shit sucks," complained corporal Feathers, a twenty-five
year old from Meadow Vista.  "How long until we get back to the interstate?"

"Late tomorrow if we're lucky," Stinson told him, adjusting his pack a
little on his back.  "Now stop talking in the ranks."

"I got the fuckin' ranks right here," Feathers said, taking his hand off his
weapon long enough to grab his crotch.  "I could be in some puss right now,
instead, I'm walking through the fuckin woods."

"Nobody's happy to be here," Stinson said, "but..."

"You got that shit right," interjected Private James from in front of him.

"But you gotta do what you gotta do," Stinson finished tiredly.  "Orders are
orders and all that shit.  So keep walking and stop bitchin."

They walked on, putting one foot in front of the other.  Nobody, the point
man and the point sergeant included, paid much attention to their
surroundings.  After all, what could possibly be out there?


+++++

"I got 'em," Chrissie, looking through binoculars reported, a touch of
excitement in her voice.  "Lead elements are coming over the ridge."

"I got em too," reported Maggie, who was looking through the scope on her
rifle.

"In view," confirmed Maria, also looking through a telescopic scope.

"Me too," said Mike.

"Keep an eye out on the flanks," Chrissie directed as the first ten men came
strolling over the hill.  "Remember, if they've split up into two elements,
we hold here with our heads down."

The approaching targets were still more than half a mile away.  Group by
group of them followed the lead squad over the rise and down the trail until
well over a hundred of them were visible.  And still they kept coming.
Heads would bob up and materialize into men carrying guns.

"Jesus, look at them all," Maria said fearfully.  It was one thing to hear
about four hundred armed men coming at you and it was quite another to
actually see them.

"Keep chillin," Chrissie said, borrowing an expression from her brother.
"Remember, we're not here to fight them, just to sting them a little at a
time."

As the lead elements came closer to gun range, Mike and Maria kept a close
eye on the area to the northwest of their hill.  It was very rugged over
there but far from impassible.  But again, as Brett had predicted, none of
them chose to walk there.  Every last man stayed in the two hundred yard
corridor where the going was easiest.

"I'm gonna report in," Chrissie said.  "Keep an eye out to see if it looks
like anyone is monitoring."  She picked up her radio and keyed it.  "Mother
bird, this is hatchling one."

"Go ahead hatchling one," came Jason's voice.

"Wolves are in view," she said.  "They're heading for dinner.  It looks like
we're a go."

There was a slight pause.  "ETA?" Jason asked at last.

"We'll feed them in about five minutes it looks like.  We'll recontact just
prior to dinner."

"Copy that hatchling one, we're unfolding our wings right now.  We'll be
ready."

She put her radio back down and gripped her rifle again.  "Anything?" she
asked her team.

There were now well over three hundred Auburnites over the ridge.  "As far
as I can tell," Mike said, "nobody seemed to react when you were talking on
the radio."

Maggie and Maria both echoed this sentiment.

"Okay," Chrissie said, her pulse beating rapidly with adrenaline.
"Apparently they're not listening to a scanner.  It looks like we're in
business then.  We're gonna hit the point elements first this time.  A nice
easy one for the warm-up attack.  Let's assign targets.  Mike, you get the
point man.  Remember, go for a body shot, don't worry about trying to blow
his brains out.  A wounded man is as good as a dead one."

"I'm on the point," Mike agreed.

"Maggie," Chrissie said next, "you hit the man behind and to the right of
the point.  He's your man even if he changes position before firing time."

"I got him," she said, already scoping in on him.

"Maria, the man to the left and behind the point is yours.  Same drill.  You
keep on the man, not the position."

"Got him," Maria said, her voice more than a little shaky.

"Let's let them get under two hundred yards," Chrissie said.  "Nobody fires
until I give the word."

The next five minutes passed slowly, almost agonizingly so.  Four hands
shook on four weapons as four minds contemplated what they were about to do.
Would this work?  Would they all die?  Could Brett really get them out of
there in time?  Nobody talked.  The only sound was the ebb and flow of
rapid, adrenaline accelerated respiration and the incessant patter of
raindrops.  The lead squad of the Auburnites came closer and closer, step by
step, seeming almost to shuffle along.  Finally, at long last, the front men
passed into the two hundred yard range.

"Everyone on target?" Chrissie asked softly, her M-16 in her hands.  She was
sighting out over the men behind the front three.

"I'm on," said Mike, who was centering his crosshairs on the chest of the
man in front.

"I'm on," said Maggie, who had her own crosshairs perfectly aligned.

"Me too," said Maria.  "I don't think I could miss him from here."

"Okay," Chrissie breathed, her finger tightening on the trigger.  "Let's do
it.  On the count of three.  One... two... three."

Three fingers depressed three triggers.  The noise of the gunshots sounded
as one, a shocking blast in the stillness of the surroundings.  Even before
the bullets hit their targets, Chrissie was firing lengthy bursts down after
them.


+++++


For Stinson, it was like something out of a nightmare.  Since he was not
looking in the direction from which the shots had come and since sound
travels slower than the bullets that were fired, his first indication that
something was wrong came when his point man stopped in his tracks and fell
forward.  At nearly the same instant the two men immediately behind him both
jerked in spasm.  They too fell forward, landing face-down on the ground.

"What the..." was all he had time for before two more men in the formation
screamed and fell to the mud.  One of them had a visible wound on his hip
that was pouring blood down onto his pants.  Things were suddenly whizzing
through the air all around him, passing over his head, chipping wood off of
the trees, plunking into the ground, and striking other men.  Two more of
them fell.  Just as the sounds of the gunshots began to reach him, a hole in
the back of Private James' head opened up as a bullet exited out of it.  A
fair amount of blood and brain matter splattered on Stinson's face and neck.
James dropped lifelessly, joining the rest of the dead and wounded on the
ground.

"We're under fire!" someone, he knew not who, screamed in a panic.

Stinson then saw the flashes of an automatic weapon firing at them from the
hill in front of and to the right of them.  "Fuck!" he screamed, the fact
that they were under attack finally clearing his circuits.  He threw himself
to the ground, desperately trying to bring his weapon up into a firing
position.  "Get down!  Get down!" he yelled.

Corporal Feathers wasn't fast enough.  Instead of getting down, he was
trying to shoulder his rifle to shoot back.  A burst of fire struck him
solidly in the stomach and he crashed face-first into the mud.

"Return fire!" Stinson yelled at the remaining members of his squad.  "On
the hillside at two o'clock!  Return fire!"

But by the time the first man was able to aim up there and unleash a round,
the firing had stopped, almost as fast as it had started.


+++++


"Go, go, go!" Chrissie barked, crawling on her stomach to the downside of
the hill.  "Let's get the hell out of here!"

Her troops didn't need any encouragement.  They crawled along with her,
their weapons on their back, just as the whizzing of bullets passing
overhead reached them.  It was only a few at first, but soon there were
many.  Chips of bark exploded upward as the logs they had been hiding behind
were riddled.  The sound of the shots reached them a moment later, again,
only a few at first but quickly swelling up until it sounded like a shooting
range in the midst of a tournament.

"Mother bird," Chrissie yelled into the radio as she rolled over and began
sliding down the hill on her butt, "this is hatchling one, the wolves have
been fed and they're fucking-aye pissed off!"

"Copy hatchling," Jason's voice said.  "We'll be at the nest when you get
there!"


+++++


The noise was deafening as the survivors of Stinson's squad and the two
squads behind it all fired up into the hillside at the point where the
flashes had been seen.

"Point, this is Bracken, what the fuck is going on up there?" screamed
Stinson's radio.

As a squad leader, he had one of the automatic weapons.  He fired another
burst up into the hillside and then fished the radio out of his belt.
"We're under fire!" he yelled.  "We got hit from the hillside in front of
us!"

"Who the hell is firing at you?" Bracken's voice asked.

"How the fuck should I know?" Stinson yelled back.  "My whole fucking squad
is down from it though!"

"How many enemy?"  Bracken asked.

"I don't know, four or five of them.  It was a fucking ambush!  They fucking
ambushed us!"

"Are they still firing?"

"No!" he yelled.

"Then cease fire!" Bracken ordered.  "Don't waste your ammo.  We need to
flank them!"

Stinson looked up and yelled at his remaining men.  "Cease fire, cease
fire!"

It took a lot longer than it should have.  He had to scream it several more
times before the sound of the gunshots finally echoed away. "Jesus fucking
Christ," Stinson said, trying to calm himself.  What the hell had happened?
Less than a minute ago they were walking along, grumbling and bitching
without a care in the world, and now he had at least six of his men shot up.

.


+++++


They ran.  Once at the bottom of the hill they moved as fast as they humanly
could over the muddy ground, their weapons slung over their backs, their
breath dragging in and out of their lungs.  From behind and to their right,
the sound of gunshots seemed to reach a crescendo and then slowly, almost
gradually, it tapered off.  There were a few more isolated pops and then it
was once again silent.

Chrissie was in the lead.  She ran across a small stretch of open ground and
then rounded the base of another of the hills.  On the backside of it, about
a hundred yards away, was the most welcome sight she had ever seen: the
idling helicopter.  The doors had been thrown open and she could see Brett
in the pilot's seat, behind the controls.

"Safe your weapons," she panted to her squad, her words broken and out of
breath.  Nevertheless, they obeyed, all three of them activating their
safeties.

Chrissie dove in first, quickly scrambling to the far rear corner.  She left
streaks of mud and pine needles on the floor.  Maggie followed her,
scrambling to a position directly opposite.  Mike and Maria, after one last
check behind them, forced themselves in as well.  Having to strain in the
crowded confines, Mike shut the door, pulling on it until it latched.

"Go!" Chrissie yelled to Brett.

He took off as rapidly as his weight-load and his engine would allow, rising
fifty feet off the ground and turning the nose to the southwest.  He added
forward speed and less than a minute after Chrissie's squad had climbed
aboard, they were passing between the hills to the south and making their
way out over the canyon.


+++++


"Covington, take your platoon around to the north side of that hill and
secure it," Bracken ordered over his radio.  He was behind a fallen log
three hundred yards to the rear of the area where the fighting had taken
place and was watching everything through a pair of binoculars.

"On the way," Stu replied, his voice actually sounding excited, like he was
having a good time.

"Colby, you there?" he then asked the leader of the platoon that had been
hit.

"Right here sir," Colby's rather shaky voice replied.

"What are your casualties?  Give me a report!"

"My first squad is all shot up," he reported.  "I have six dead and two
wounded.  The other three squads have moved forward to protective
positions."

"I understand," Bracken replied, feeling a little numb.  Six dead?  What had
happened?  Who had done this?  "Hold in place," he told Colby.  "I'm gonna
move second platoon behind you and off to the left flank of that hill so we
can get the fuckers who did this.  Give them covering fire when they move
in."

"Ten-four," Colby said.

It took nearly ten minutes to accomplish but it was a well-planned,
well-executed attack on an enemy-held piece of high ground.  Stu's platoon
moved in from the right flank while second platoon moved in from the left
flank.  Colby's platoon fired up into the position to cover the initial
advance.  Soon Stu and two of his squads were standing atop the hill
reporting back down to Bracken that it had been all for nothing.

"They're gone whoever they were," Stu told him over the radio.  "I have
nothing but some shell casings up here.  Looks like 5.56 millimeter rounds.
Thirty of them or so.  There are also a few .30 caliber casings that look
like they came from hunting rifles.  They were hidden behind a bunch of
fallen logs and probably fired from between them."

"No bodies, no blood?" Bracken, still covered behind his own log, asked.

"Nope," Stu reported.  "I have some fresh tracks heading down the hill to
the southwest.  I could try to follow them but I'm pretty sure I'll lose the
trail at the bottom of the hill where it's not so muddy."

"Go ahead and take your platoon down for a look anyway," Bracken reported.
"Whoever did this has to be out there somewhere."

"On the way," Stu reported.

While Stu and his group of forty went tromping off into the woods, Bracken
extricated himself from his place of cover and jogged up to where the action
had taken place.  Had Colby really said six dead?  It didn't seem possible.
The Placer County Militia had never had a soldier killed.  There had been a
few minor wounds at the Battle for Colfax and at the Battle for Meadow
Vista, but no deaths.  And now six at once?  While they were still over
thirty miles from the target?

As soon as he reached the scene however, he saw that no exaggeration or
miscommunication had taken place.  Six of his men were lying dead on the
ground in various places, some lying on their backs, some on their stomachs.
Two of them had been hit in the head and brain matter was leaking onto the
ground but the rest seemed to have succumbed to body shots.  It was a
shocking sight to Bracken and it was even more shocking to the other
soldiers that were standing around looking as well.  Most of them couldn't
seem to take their eyes off of the bodies.

Lieutenant Colby walked over and offered a salute.  His face was drawn and
scared.  "They hit us without warning sir," he said.  "The first three men
were down before we even heard the shots."

"An ambush," Bracken said, looking up at the spot from which it had come.
"Somebody decided to ambush us.  God knows who or why but Covington's
platoon is out after them right now.  They'll pick them up."

"Yeah," Colby said, although it was plain to see that he had his doubts
about that.

"What about the wounded?" Bracken asked next.  "How bad are they?"

Colby took a deep breath.  "Colton is pretty bad," he said.  "He took two in
the chest.  It looks like his lung is gone.  I don't think he'll make it
much longer."

Bracken nodded sympathetically.  "And what about the other one?"

"It's Jankowski," Colby told him.  "He took one in the stomach.  It went in
just below his belly button and out just above his butt.  We got the
bleeding under control."

Bracken sighed.  "Do you?"

"Yes sir," Colby assured him.  "We're gonna have to get him back to Auburn
somehow.  Maybe a litter?  It might take a few days but..."

"We can't do that," Bracken said softly.

Colby looked over at him.  "Sir?"

"We're too far out," Bracken said.  "He might make the trip back... maybe...
but he'll just die of infection within a week.  As you know our medical
facilities are pretty primitive.  I'm afraid that we're going to have to put
him out of his misery."

"But sir..." Colby said, appalled by what Bracken was suggesting.  "He was
wounded in battle.  We can't just..."

"We can and we will," Bracken told him.  "Be discrete about it though.
Don't..."

"You want ME to do it?" Colby asked, actually feeling ill now.

"You're his commanding officer," Bracken said.  "Have him roll over like
you're checking the exit wound and then shoot him in the back of the head
with your pistol.  It's quick and painless and he'll never know what hit
him."

"Sir, I..."

"Do it," Bracken said firmly.  "It needs to be done."

"But the men..."

"I'll take care of the men once it's done.  Now get over there and do it."

He did it.


+++++


Michelle and her team were using a field of granite boulders for their
firing position, each team member crouching behind one of the larger
boulders and using the gaps to aim through.  It was almost two hours after
the first successful hit and run strike by Chrissie and her team and
Michelle, though she was about as nervous as she'd ever been, was ready to
get on the scoreboard as well.  She didn't relish the thought of killing
people, not in the least, but she was fully prepared to do it in defense of
her town and her friends.

"Lead elements coming into view," she said, watching the first few squads of
men came walking around an outcropping of rock.

One by one her team acknowledged this information.  She then checked in with
Brett on the radio to let him know that the attack was imminent.

"Unfolding the wings," Jason assured her.

"Okay guys," she told her team.  "Remember what Brett said.  We're gonna
pound on the point positions for now until nobody down there wants to take
point anymore.  So let's assign targets, shall we?"


+++++


Colby's platoon was still on point although Stinson's squad, which pretty
much didn't exist anymore, had necessarily been relieved at the head of the
line.  Stinson himself was walking near Sergeant Butano, whose squad DID
have the front duties.  They had been underway from the location of the
first attack for a little more than an hour now and they were still talking
about it.

"I can't believe he fuckin shot Jankowski," Stinson said for perhaps the
tenth time.  "I mean, I know he probably wasn't going to make it, but
Jesus!"

"I never seen any shit like that before," Butano, a native Auburnite agreed.
"That was cold.  Just stone fucking cold."

"It could've been any of us.  Any fuckin one.  That's what the fuck you get
for being part of this great militia?  Shot in the head 'cause you get
wounded?"

"Yep."

These sentiments of shock at the way that Jankowski had been treated were
not isolated to those - like Stinson and Butano and their men - who had
witnessed it.  All up and down the formation nearly every man had heard what
had happened and was soberly considering what it meant to him.  Being
wounded meant death?  Just how bad of a wound did one have to suffer before
being condemned?  Would a simple arm wound be enough?  Though everyone
intellectually knew that Jankowski wouldn't have made it anyway, there was
still a strong sense of wrongness to not even TRYING to help him.  It went
against every value - including God's law that Barnes and Bracken were
always going on about - that these men had been raised with.

"And what do you think about that shit Bracken was spouting about isolated
stragglers?"  Stinson asked next.  "Why the fuck would a group of stragglers
hit us from cover like that?"

"And then disappear without a trace into the woods," Butano added.  "I ain't
buying it."

That was another opinion from Bracken that was not receiving a whole lot of
respect from the troops.  Bracken - after the dead had been pulled to the
side of the road and left there - had assured everyone that some fringe
group of comet survivors, probably only four or five strong, had been the
ones to attack them.  There was no other explanation that made sense, he
proclaimed.  Except most of the men thought that there WAS another
explanation that made sense.

"That was an ambush by the Garden Hill people," Stinson said, articulating
what everyone seemed to instinctively know.  "What else could it have been?"

"Fuckin aye right," Butano said.  "I'll bet they used that fucking chopper
to drop a hit team in front of us and then picked them up again after the
ambush."

"How would they know we're coming though?" asked Corporal Rivers, who was
marching in front of them.  He wanted to believe Bracken.  He wanted to but
was having difficulty.  "Did they just happen to notice us on one of their
flights, or what?"

"Those two bitches made it to Garden Hill," Stinson said.  "That's the only
way they would've known."

"What?" Rivers said in disbelief.  "You gotta be shittin.  There ain't no
way them two coulda walked all the way to Garden Hill.  What would they have
eaten?  They didn't take no food with 'em."

"How do you know they didn't take any food with them?" Stinson inquired.
"We don't even know how the hell they got out, but somehow they did.  If
they were smart enough to get around our security, wouldn't you think they'd
be smart enough to..."

Before that thought could be completed, the point man suddenly gasped and
fell forward.  An instant later the two men nearest to him went down as
well.  Within a second of this, the air was once again filled with whizzing
projectiles, flying pieces of bark, and the screams of men being struck by
automatic weapons fire.


+++++


Michelle raked her fire back and forth, concentrated on the large group of
men that had been marching just to the rear of the point men.  She fired
five to six round bursts - just enough to keep the barrel of the weapon from
being forced too far upward.  Their reaction down there was not very
controlled.  She saw men scrambling to get under cover, some running blindly
into the woods, others falling under the barrage she was sending at them.
Two men simply froze in place, neither getting down nor shooting back and
they drew her fire as a magnet draws steel.  She covered them with her sight
and pulled the trigger, moving the barrel back and forth.  Both of them
dropped to the ground in a very graceless manner.

Less than ten seconds after her riflemen had fired the first volley, just as
the Auburnites below were starting to fire back, the chamber of her M-16
locked open after ejecting the last of her thirty-round clip.  Bullets from
return fire were now starting to plunk into the rocks around her and her
group.

"Let's go!" she shouted at them, shouldering her rifle and scrambling
backwards.


+++++


"Covington!"  Bracken screamed into his radio over the sound of the return
gunfire. "Get your platoon around on that right flank!  Get over there
before they pull back again!"

"On the way!" Stu's voice came back.

"Colby," he screamed next.  "Give me report!"  Nothing in reply.  Had Colby
been hit?  He hadn't been up near the front of his platoon had he?  "Colby!
Goddammit, are you there?"

"Here sir," Colby's voice answered up.  "My second squad's been hit hard
this time!  I've got six men down!"

"Rally the rest of your platoon now and get around on that left flank!"
Bracken ordered.  "Covington's moving around on the right.  Box those
fuckers in!"

"But sir," Colby returned.  "My wounded!"

"Fuck your wounded!" Bracken yelled, not noticing the glares of those men
around him at these words.  "Get your platoon over there and get the
motherfuckers who are doing this!  Do it now!"

"Jesus fucking Christ," Colby swore to himself as he pocketed his radio.  He
stood up and yelled for his sergeants.  "Get everyone around to the left
flank of the hill right now," he ordered.  He had to repeat himself several
times before they actually did it.

The two pursuit platoons weren't even close to catching Michelle and the
others.  There was simply too much ground between their stepping-off point
and the back side of the hill from which they'd fired.  There were too many
obstacles for the militia to go over or around, too many potential trails
that their quarry might have taken.  By the time the two platoons met on the
far side of that hill, Michelle and her squad were already climbing into the
helicopter on the far side of the next hill.

But all was not for nothing this time.  Though they were not fast enough to
catch them, they were fast enough to see the helicopter buzzing away to the
south as it made good it's escape from the area.  Stu's lead squad saw it
plainly and even popped a few rounds at it despite the fact that it was much
to far away to be hit.

"Well," Stu said, watching as the small aircraft disappeared over the next
set of hills.  "It seems that the isolated stragglers theory is all blown to
shit, ain't it?"

He reported this information to Bracken who replied to it calmly but with an
obvious strain to his voice.  Stu understood.  The spotting of the
helicopter changed things.  No longer could they delude themselves that they
were embarking on a surprise attack upon Garden Hill, that they were going
to fall upon an unaware enemy in ten days who would then give up without a
fight.  Garden Hill not only knew they were coming, they were bringing the
fight to the enemy.

Stu led his platoon up to the top of the hill on general principals.  Once
up there they found the signature of the ambush teams: a pile of 5.56
millimeter shell casings and a few isolated .30 caliber casings.  The smell
of burned gunpowder was still in the air up there.  As they were looking
this over they heard the sound of single gunshots coming from below as the
wounded from the latest attack were "put out of their misery".


+++++


The Placer County Militia learned quickly as that day wound onward.  They
learned to fear narrow corridors in the trail, especially corridors that
were ringed with hills.  They spread out and marched more slowly.  They kept
their weapons at ready as they walked and their eyes on the landscape.  And
still they were hit by ambushes four more times before the sun went down.

Their reactions were quicker with each attack.  The soldiers learned to dive
to the ground and find cover the moment that the bullets started rolling in.
By the third attack, everyone was down and returning fire almost before the
sounds of the first gunshots reached them.  But they could not prevent or
predict the attacks because they did not come at any time intervals that
could be plotted.  And because of this they could not prevent the first two
or three casualties of each attack from occurring.  The first warning of an
attack would be the dropping of the point man and the two men nearest him.
There was not even the hope that you would be merely wounded instead of
killed.  A wound that was more serious than a scratch was a death sentence,
as had already been proven.  This led to a near mutiny when the sergeant in
charge of the point squad would try to assign someone to the front position.
Men flat out refused the order to take up point, even if the face of
Bracken's threats to have them shot on the spot.

"What the fuck's the difference if YOU do it or THEY do it?" one private
screamed hysterically at Bracken.  "I'm still a dead motherfucker if I'm in
the front."

Bracken didn't shoot him or anyone else that refused the order to take
point.  Instead, he came to a compromise of sorts.  He eliminated the point
position entirely.  After the third attack he had the entire front squad
spread out in a line with no one man out in front.  This was not as
effective as far as keeping an eye out to the front went, but it did give
those in the first squad the slight sense that they would not be singled
out.

By days end the final tally of casualties for the militia was eleven killed
outright and nine wounded.  Of those nine wounded however, seven had to be
"put out of their misery" by their commanding lieutenant.  As the militia
made camp that night they were a group that was very much on edge.

"Is this shit gonna happen all the way to Garden Hill?" a lowly corporal
dared to demand of Bracken during dinner break.  "Are they gonna kill
eighteen motherfuckin people every goddamn day?"

Bracken chose not to be offended by the insolent tone or the
insubordination.  Instead he gave his humble opinion.  "There's no way they
can keep up this pace," he said.  "They have to be leap-frogging at least
two teams just to do what they've done today.  I think this is as bad as
it's going to get.  They'll try this a few more times and eventually we'll
get them.  I guarantee it."

And strangely enough, even though nothing else that he had opined that first
horrible day had come true, the men locked onto this thought.  They bedded
down that night confidant that the worst had passed.


+++++


On the Garden Hill side of the equation, the troops that were performing
these attacks were elated.  Not even the quickening reactions of their prey
with each successive ambush daunted their rising spirits.  They suffered no
casualties as a result of their attacks and in fact nothing that could even
be considered a close call.  They had learned as well.  They picked their
positions carefully and opened fire from the two hundred yard range.  As
long as they did not "get greedy" as Brett would have said, they found that
they could easily jog back to the safety of the helicopter long before any
Auburnites could approach their positions.  They started to feel invincible
almost.

Just before sunset, after his second fuel stop of the day, Brett flew the
two teams back to Garden Hill for a hero's welcome by the township.  Already
the word had been passed that some serious ass kicking had gone on.

"All right Jase," Brett said wearily as he shut down the engine.  "The hit
squads are done for the day but our work is just begun.  Let's give this
aircraft a once over and then catch a few hours of shut-eye, shall we?
We'll lift off again at 10:00 PM sharp."

"Are we gonna use the nape tonight?" Jason asked, excited at the thought.
They had done one practice run with it and it had worked like a dream.

"Not tonight," Brett told him.  "Remember, we want to introduce our
surprises to them one step at a time.  We want them to think that things
can't possibly get any worse and then show them that they can.  These are
going to be some fucked-up individuals by the time they get here."

"Good," Jason said.  "Maybe they'll decide not to come at all."


+++++


Before climbing into an empty cot on the top floor of the community center,
Brett gave a briefing to his two ambush teams about their next day's
mission.  This took place in the weapons storage room while the eight
troopers had been disassembling and thoroughly cleaning their weapons.

"You can already see that you're having a detrimental effect on them," he
said, sipping out of a warm can of diet cola.  "As you've pointed out in the
debriefing, they no longer keep a single point man on duty and they've
spread out their formation considerably.  They've changed their tactics a
little to adapt to the situation and now we're going to change our tactic as
well."  He stood up and picked up a pointer, which he carried over to his
large map.  "Now this," he said, pointing to the area near the southern tip
of the mudfall that the Auburnites were currently maneuvering around, "is
where we're going to hit next.  As you can see, this is premium ambush
ground as it has hundreds of small hills overlooking a fairly narrow
marching corridor.  There's nothing different about that.  Only now, instead
of hitting the lead elements, you're going to hit the middle of the
formation."

"Hit the middle of the formation?" Maggie asked doubtfully.  "But won't that
give them troops on both of our flanks to surround us with?"

"It will," Brett agreed, "but as you found over the course of the day, YOU
have the advantage when it comes to making your getaway.  You see, you're
already gone by the time they start moving their troops to intercept.  I'm
confident that you can still get clear of the area before they can rally
after you as long as you stick to doctrine and make a quick, stinging
attack.  The purpose this will serve is to destroy the feeling of safety
that those troops NOT in the front are currently enjoying.  After your
attack you will proceed directly to the rear and I will pick you up there."

"Brett," Chrissie said, "that's still quite a close margin for error.  What
if - God forbid - one of us is wounded?  Or what if someone twists their
ankle on the way out?  If we're slowed up even a little, then we'll be
forced to either leave our wounded behind or get captured."

Brett smiled.  "I understand that," he said.  "And that's why I'm going to
drop you a little bit earlier than normal and let you make a few
preparations to slow your pursuers down a bit."

"Preparations?"

"Preparations," Brett said.  He then explained what he meant.  "Steve will
be in to show you just how you're going to set these things up.  Now we only
have a limited number of them, so use them wisely, but USE them."


+++++


"How do you deal with it Chrissie?" Maggie asked her squad leader about an
hour after the briefing had ended.  "Killing people I mean."

They were in the community bathing room, both of them stripped down to their
bare skin, washing their filthy bodies with washrags and cold water from the
tub.  Both were shivering lightly, their flesh a series of goose pimples
from the chilly air, but all the same the desire to get the mud from their
bodies overrode their desire to be warm.

"I don't look at them as people," Chrissie told her.  "I mean, deep down
inside, I know that they are, but I don't look at them that way, I just
can't.  They're targets for me to take down.  They're things that need to be
destroyed in order to keep me from being destroyed.  That's how I justify
killing them."

Maggie nodded doubtfully, not saying anything.  She dipped her washrag and
scrubbed a little at a stubborn stain near her upper thigh.

"Are you feeling guilty for it?" Chrissie asked gently.

"Well..." she said, hesitating, "in a way."

"In a way?"

"I enjoyed killing those people," she said.  "I liked it.  When I was
looking through that scope today and saw those bullets hitting those
fuckers, I LIKED it.  That's what I feel guilty about - liking killing
someone.  I wonder if it means that I'm some sort of... you know?"

"Psycho?" Chrissie offered, scrubbing at the slight swelling of her pregnant
stomach.  How had dirt managed to get there?

"Yes," Maggie admitted.  "It scares me that I might... well... want to keep
doing it after all this is over."

"You won't," Chrissie assured her.  "You're just justifying what we have to
do in your mind I think.  We weren't raised to kill people Mag.  And now
that we have to do it we have to come up with some sort of way to... what's
the word I'm looking for?"

"Rationalize it?"

"Right," Chrissie said with a smile.  "You have to rationalize it."

Maggie nodded, feeling a little better.  "There's something else that it
does," she said.

"What's that?"

She blushed.  "Oh... never mind.  It's nothing."

"What?" Chrissie asked, suspecting what her friend was talking about.  "You
can tell me."

Maggie giggled a little nervously.  "Well... this is embarrassing but... to
tell you the truth... it makes me... well..."

Chrissie smiled knowingly.  "Horny?" she suggested.

Maggie let out a laugh, blushing deeper.  "Yes," she admitted.  "I know it's
strange and it probably means I'm deranged, but I've never been so horny in
all my life.  Why would killing people do that to me?"

"It's not killing people," Chrissie told her, "it's the combat itself.  It's
happened every time I've been in a gunfight, starting with the first time
Brett, Jason, and I were attacked on the trail before we even got here.
Brett told me that it's a normal reaction to surviving a life-threatening
situation."

"Really?" she said, relieved at the thought that what she was going through
might be normal.

"Oh god yes," Chrissie said.  "Didn't you get it after we had the gunfight
with those hunter assholes before?  I boffed the living shit out of Brett
after that.  That was the day we made up from the fight we'd had over Mitsy.
And oh boy did we make up.  I would've jumped him tonight as well but he's
upstairs trying to get some sleep for his night mission."

"Now that you mention it," Maggie said with a giggle, "I was rather randy
after that.  Only I didn't have anyone to... you know.  I do seem to
remember going home and having a little session with my best friend that
night though."

"Your best friend?" Chrissie asked, not getting her.

Maggie smiled.  "You have a man so you wouldn't know about it," she said.
"My long, cylindrical best friend that runs off of batteries."

Now it was Chrissie's turn to blush.  "I see," she said.

"May you never have to rely on such a friend all the time," Maggie told her.
"So what I'm getting out of this conversation is that I shouldn't feel
guilty about going home right now and breaking him out of the drawer.  I
think he's going to earn his batteries tonight."

Chrissie giggled, still blushing and a little embarrassed, but also
suffering greatly from the affliction that she had just described.  She
found herself looking at Maggie's nude body, at the graceful curves of her
form.  Maggie, a natural blonde like herself, did not have a natural set of
breasts on her.  They were the size of softballs and stood out firmly from
her chest, a clear valley between them.  Her surgeon had done a good job of
it Chrissie noted.  There were no scars visible.  Maggie's nipples were
standing firmly erect, poking out into the moist, chilly air.  Whether it
was from the arousal she had been speaking of or from the cold - or perhaps
a combination of both - Chrissie did not know.  She did know that she had a
powerful urge to touch those breasts however.  Since she and Michelle had
begun sharing certain marital liberties with each other, Chrissie had
discovered a latent attraction for members of her own sex.

"Well," Chrissie said, taking a step closer to her, close enough to invade
the envelope of Maggie's personal space, "I'm not sure you should do that.
We are in the midst of a battery shortage here you know."

"What?" Maggie said a little uncomfortably, wanting to take a step backward
but prevented from this by the bathtub behind her.

"What I mean," Chrissie said, stepping even closer, so that the tips of her
own breasts were only inches away from Maggie's, "is that if there's another
way to take care of these things, shouldn't we conserve our supplies?"

"Uh... uh... another way?" Maggie gasped, now backed completely up against
the tub.  She could feel the cold porcelain against the backs of her thighs.
What was Chrissie doing?  She wasn't really suggesting... was she?

"Let me help you Mag," Chrissie said, reaching out and putting her hands on
those breasts.  They felt firm to the touch, almost rubbery.  Not as nice as
Michelle's natural boobs, but not bad either.

"Chrissie," Maggie protested shakily, trying not to notice how nice it felt
to have someone touching her body - it had been so long, "Maybe I've given
you the wrong impression about me, but..."

"Shhh," Chrissie said, her mind spinning with impulsive lust now.  She did
not consider what she was doing to be cheating on her husband, although had
it been Brett doing what she was, she would've been furious.  She just
needed some relief and here, in front of her, was someone who could maybe
provide it for her.  That wasn't so bad, was it?  It wasn't like she was
trying this with another man.  She lowered her head and took Maggie's nipple
into her mouth, sucking it and tonguing it.

"Chrissie, oh God, don't do this to me," Maggie cried, feeling tingles
running through her body at the feel of a pair of lips on her nipple.  The
fact that they were a girl's lips seemed to add a perverse thrill to the
experience.

Chrissie didn't listen.  The fact that Maggie had not physically pushed her
away in disgust spoke volumes.  She switched her mouth to the other breast
and began suckling it as well.  Her hands slid down Maggie's stomach and
into her thick nest of curly blonde hair.  Her fingers sought out and
quickly found the target she was after.  Maggie's lips were already swollen
and wet, ready for penetration.  Chrissie provided this.  She slid her
middle finger up into her friend's body, pushing and pulling it in and out
until the juices began to drip onto her hand.

"Oh god," Maggie moaned, her hips involuntarily pushing against the invading
hand.  She knew what she was doing was wrong, was a perversion, but it felt
so good.  She couldn't bring herself to stop her.  Instead, she found her
hands resting on Chrissie's bare back, actually encouraging her, actually
pulling her closer.

"Isn't this better than a dildo?" Chrissie whispered, adding another finger
to Maggie's wet pussy and increasing the force of her penetrations.  She
freed her mouth from the nipple and moved it up to Maggie's neck instead.
She began to kiss and suck the soft flesh, giving little bites here and
there, tasting the salt, smelling the soap.

"Yes," Maggie heard herself saying.  "Oh yes Chrissie, but..."

"No buts," Chrissie whispered, putting her lips against Maggie's and kissing
her.  Maggie resisted at first until Chrissie began to lick sensuously at
her mouth with her tongue.  Gradually Maggie allowed her mouth to open and
her own tongue to peek out.  The tips touched, just for an instant at first
and then for a long, swirling session of saliva exchange.

Maggie gave in, pulling Chrissie even tighter against her, feeling the touch
of their breasts in intimate contact.  She never would have thought that the
feel of another woman against her would be so... so... sexy, so soft.

They kissed and sucked each other's tongues, Maggie's hands straying down
and experimenting with the exploration of Chrissie's pregnancy swollen
breasts.  Chrissie, meanwhile, continued to slide her two fingers in and out
of Maggie's body, angling her thumb upward to caress the swollen clit with
each stroke.

"Oh Chrissie," Maggie breathed when the kiss broke for a moment, "that feels
so good.  It's been too long since anyone's touched me there."

Chrissie smiled, giving her upper lip a long, teasing suck.  "You ain't felt
nothing yet," she said, pulling her hand free.  "Sit on the edge of the
tub."

"What?" Maggie groaned, distressed at the sudden loss of sensation just as
she was starting to feel the approach of orgasm.

"Do it," Chrissie commanded, taking a half step back.

"What are you going to do?" she asked, her nervousness returning.

"I think you know what I'm going to do," Chrissie said.  "Now sit on the
tub."

Trembling with desire, fear, and guilt, Maggie sat on the edge of the tub.
She let her long, sexy legs fall apart, opening herself.  Slowly Chrissie
sank to her knees on the ground before her, bringing her face right to the
level of Maggie's crotch.  Her pubic hair was very thick, especially for a
blonde, but her lips were swollen and open, an angry red in color.

"I've never done anything like this before," Maggie said weakly, shivering
at the look of lust in her young friend's eyes.

"That's okay," Chrissie whispered to her.  "I have."

She leaned forward and put her lips against Maggie's inviting sex.  She gave
no build-up or teasing strokes first.  Things had already gone beyond that.
She simply started licking her, running her tongue up and down, inhaling the
aroma, tasting the tartness of her juices.

"Ooooh," Maggie squealed as she felt the tongue upon her most sensitive
parts.  She jumped a little, nearly falling backward into the tub at the
sheer pleasure of the sensation.  She had been licked before several times
in her life - mostly by her late husband -but never had she felt anything
like this.  Never had she dreamed it could feel this good.  Chrissie lapped
her up and down and drove her tongue in and out like a small penis.  She
rubbed against her throbbing clit with her nose.  She seemed to revel in the
taste and smell of her pussy.

"Mmmmm," Chrissie moaned as she captured that clit between her lips and
began to suck on it.  She couldn't wait to feel Maggie come in her mouth.

The sucking on her clit drove Maggie wild.  She began to gyrate up and down,
back and forth, making it difficult for Chrissie to keep her mouth where it
belonged.  She grabbed her legs by the thighs and held them tightly to keep
her in one place.  It was all over in less than a minute from that point.
Maggie felt it building in her stomach and then spreading through her entire
being.  She screamed into the air as she peaked.  When Chrissie finally
raised her head out of her crotch she was a panting, sweaty mess.

"Feel better?" Chrissie asked, standing up and kissing her lightly on the
lips.

"Yes," Maggie sighed, already starting to feel guilt at what she had just
done.

"Now I need a little relief," she said, kissing her again, touching her
breasts again.

"Chrissie," she said, "I don't think I can... I mean, I'm not really..."

"It's okay," Chrissie told her.  "It takes a while to work up to that.  I
know.  Just give me your fingers."

"What?"

"Your fingers," she repeated, taking her left hand.  "Put them inside of me.
I'll do the rest."

Maggie felt her hand being put down against Chrissie's dripping sex.  The
lips were slippery against her fingers.  They felt smaller than her own did.

"Put them in," Chrissie moaned, feeling the first touch.  "Please?"

Maggie slid first one and then two fingers into that tightness, again
feeling a strange sense of excitement and forbiddenness at the act.  She
felt her clutching at them.

"Yes," Chrissie said, starting to gyrate her hips against them.  "Now kiss
me."

"Huh?"

"Kiss me while I fuck your hand," she said.

They kissed, their tongues once more intertwining and Chrissie thrust her
body against Maggie's hand, pushing and pulling the digits in and out of her
body.  She ground her clit against the heel of her palm, pushing hard enough
to cause abrasions to her skin from the friction.  Soon she was panting into
Maggie's mouth as the sensation of relief began to course through her.


+++++


"Did you get some sleep?" Brett asked Jason as he flew more than two
thousand feet above Interstate 80 that night.  It was just after 10:00 PM
and they were five minutes into their flight.  "I noticed you left the
community center sometime after I sacked out."

"I uh... had some things to take care of at home," Jason said vaguely.  "I
got about an hour or so though."

"Uh huh," Brett said knowingly.  He had a pretty good idea what Jason's
"things to take care of at home" had been.  His young companion had not had
a chance to bathe yet and the smell of sexual musk was radiating off of him
quite strongly.  "It must be nice to be fifteen."

"Well, you know how it is," he said, a little embarrassed.

"Oh believe me, I do.  I would've had some things to take care of at home as
well if I weren't so damn tired.  And be sure to thank your wives for that
triple strength coffee they made for us.  I don't think I would've been able
to fly if it wasn't for that."

"I'll let them know," he said.  "Coming up on a left curve, about thirty
degrees."

"Thirty degrees left," Brett repeated.  "Banking."

The flight out to the target area did not take very long.  Since he knew the
exact location of the enemy formation - or at least within a kilometer or
so - Brett did not have to bother with creeping forward at twenty to thirty
knots and keeping an eye out for them.  Instead, he blasted right along at
nearly sixty knots of forward airspeed - about as fast as he dared go under
the blind conditions he was flying under - and soon he was over the top of
the mudfall that the Auburnites were currently negotiating around.  His
altitude was as high as he dared go without risking icing problems.  This
served the duel purpose of giving Jason a wider field of view and keeping
their engine noise from alerting the enemy if they happened to get too close
to them.

Once at the mudfall they continued on for another mile and a half and then
turned to the south.  Now Brett slowed his airspeed up to creeping range as
he homed in on the enemy camp.  Jason kept him advised of the proper route
with the FLIR scope.  It was not a difficult task for the young man to do.
After all of the drop-off and pick-up runs that they had made over the
course of the day, he damn near had the landscape memorized.

"Okay," he told Brett after about five minutes of southward flight, "we're
coming up on the area where we last saw them.  Slow up a little more and
maintain course."

"Slowing up," Brett said, doing so, "and maintaining heading of 174."

They continued on for another minute or so before Jason began to spot the
glow of warm bodies on his scope.  "I'm starting to pick 'em up now," he
said.  "There's a cluster of them at eleven o'clock, about a mile or so
out."

"Eleven o'clock," Brett repeated.  "Should I edge out to the west a little
more?"

"Yeah," Jason said.  "Turn about twenty degrees right and slow up some more.
I'll find the thickest concentration of them and we'll hit there."

"Sounds like a plan," Brett told him.

Jason had him make two passes about a mile to the west of the camped out
Auburnites just so he could get a good idea of their layout.  Like the
previous night, they were mostly bunched together in several tight groups,
arranged probably by squads and platoons.  There were a few guards walking
back and forth on both ends and in the middle of the group.  Several of the
guards could be seen to be smoking - which made bright flares on the
display.  Jason reported all of this verbally to Brett as he spotted it and
filmed all of it with the videotape installed in the FLIR system.

"So what do you think?" Brett asked after the second pass.  "You ready to
wake them up a little?"

Jason sighed, having a sudden attack of nerves now that the time had come.
He fought it down, successfully for the most part.  "I'm ready."

"Lead me in."

Jason had him circle way around, almost out over the canyon itself, and then
double back from the south, so that he was flying over the mudfall itself.
He then had him reduce altitude to less than eight hundred feet above the
surface of the mud.  When they were directly across from the largest
concentration of sleeping bagged glows on the display, he had him turn back
to the west and hover.

"Come off target ninety degrees to the left," Jason directed him as he put a
magazine into the mounted M-16 and jacked the first round into the chamber.
"Climb up another two hundred feet or so and maintain a due south heading.
There's no obstacles higher than that between here and the canyon."

"Gotcha," Brett said, watching his instruments carefully.  "I'm ready when
you are."

"Okay," Jason said, gripping the weapon and adjusting it on its mount.
"Start the firing run."

As the helicopter moved forward at twenty knots, Jason watched his display.
The rows of sleeping men didn't stir, nor did the team of guards beyond them
seem to raise any sort of alarm.  He watched them get bigger and bigger on
the display as they grew closer.

"Almost there," he said slowly.  "Almost there... in range!"

He opened fire, watching the tracers arc out on the display.  The first
burst slammed into the sleeping soldiers almost perfectly in the middle of
their group.  He began to rake his fire back and forth across them.  He knew
he was scoring hits upon them but, as had happened with the first daylight
attack, their reactions were pitifully slow.  His clip was completely empty
and Brett was turning off target before any of the sleeping figures that had
not been hit even started to get up.  A few shots came their way from the
guards on duty but they were not even close to being on target.

"Yes!" Jason said triumphantly, actually pumping his fist in excitement.
"Good run.  No wasted rounds at all.  That was almost too fucking easy!"

"Good job," Brett said, elated, imagining the confusion and fear that had
just been sewn down below.  He flew out to the south and was soon clear of
the area.

"How about a follow-up run from the south?" Jason asked.

"Set it up," Brett told him.  "We have three more clips don't we?"


+++++


To say that the attack had created confusion below was the equivalent of
saying that World War II had been a minor skirmish.  Screams and curses
filled the air as men leapt to their feet and pulled up their weapons,
looking for the unseen enemy that had struck them without warning out of the
darkness.  Several groups imagined that they saw something off to the east
and opened fire, sending hails of bullets out into the empty sky.
Flashlights came on all up and down the ranks as men peered into the forest
and up into the sky, trying to figure out just what the hell had happened.

The attack had only lasted about six or seven seconds and while almost
everyone had heard the chatter of an automatic weapon firing, only those
immediately near the impacting rounds had actually seen anything.  What they
had seen was a haunting vision of red tracers slamming down around them from
above.  Before they'd had a chance to even bring their weapons to bear, the
mysterious attacker was gone.

"Everybody, form up!" Bracken screamed, not bothering to use his radio.
"Defensive positions!  Now!"  He himself did not see the attack occur.  He
had been sound asleep, resting after this first trying day, when the screams
and the sounds of distant gunfire had awakened him.

"Turn those fucking lights off!" Stu ordered those around him.  Unlike
Bracken, he had been close enough to see the attack and he had a pretty good
idea of what had happened.  "You're giving them a goddamn reference point!"

Everyone scrambled around in the darkness, trying to find some sort of cover
or concealment, many of them running into each other blindly.  One young
private, who had no idea what was going on except that they had been
attacked again, heard the noise of another soldier - one of the guards -
running through the trees in front of him.  Acting on instinct he raised his
semi-automatic AK-47 and began to fire, killing his companion.  This
triggered return fire from another group of Auburnites that had taken cover
in the woods, one of whom had an automatic weapon.  The young private was
blasted with more than ten rounds.

"Goddammit cease fire!" Stu yelled at the top of his lungs as he saw
nightmare flashes of their own soldiers shooting each other in the
flashbulb-like strobe effect of the muzzleflashes.  "You're shooting at each
other you fucking idiots!"

It was a good three or four minutes before everyone calmed down enough to
stay in one place and allow some semblance of order to return to the group.
Bracken and Stu found each other and Stu was finally able to explain what
had happened.

"They hit us from the air with the helicopter," he said.  "They must have an
automatic weapon mounted on it."

"Are you sure?" Bracken demanded.

"I fuckin' SAW it!" Stu told him.  "Those tracers came from the west and
from the air.  They have a goddamn gunship that they're hitting us with!"

"How?" Bracken demanded.  "How the hell do they know where we're at?"

"It's a highway patrol helicopter," Stu said, feeling stupid for not
realizing this before.  "I bet it's got an infrared camera on it and that's
what they're using to home in on us.  Jesus, we need to take that chopper
out!  They're killing us with that fucking thing."

And killing was not an exaggeration.  A check of the area where the rounds
had impacted - it wasn't hard to find since screams of pain were emanating
from it - revealed four soldiers dead in their sleeping bags and three more
wounded.  Two of the wounded were serious enough that they would have to be
put out of their misery.

Just as everyone's heart rate began to return to normal, just as everyone
started to stir around and regroup, the next attack came.  From the south of
them the stream of tracers came blasting in, mowing through the people that
were standing near the front.  More screams filled the air and every last
person instinctively dove to the ground.  This time more than three hundred
people returned fire at the flashing weapon from which the tracers had
originated but by the time the first round was fired back, the tracers had
stopped and the helicopter was once again invisible.


+++++


Brett and Jason made one more attack fifteen minutes later, coming in from
the north this time.  The reaction by the Auburnites below was a little
faster on this run, prompting Brett to pull off target before Jason's entire
clip had been fired.  No bullets struck the helicopter.

"Let's head back," Brett said as he climbed back up to high altitude.  "I
think we've got our message through and there's no sense pushing our luck."

"I don't imagine they're going to sleep very well after that," Jason said,
pulling the magazine out of his weapon.

"Nope," Brett agreed, "I don't imagine they will.  They might start to drift
off around 4:00 AM or so just from sheer exhaustion though.  So what do you
say we get up at 3:30 and hit them again?"

"I'm up for it," he said with a grin.

They flew on into the night and landed safely twenty minutes later.






Al Steiner - 3-9-01
Chapter 16 to follow

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