Desolation

Some poor unfortunate resident had been hiding in the recesses of one of the cars making up the western wall. He must have been hoping to wait out this battle, but when he heard the men coming closer, he panicked. He dashed across 1^st Street attempting to make it into an alley directly across from his hiding place. His arms and legs pumping in unison, he chanced a look at the troops, hoping they either wouldn’t see him or wouldn’t shoot since he had no weapon.

One of the intruders raised his automatic rifle, focused his sight, and let loose a spray that cut the man down instantly into an unrecognizable tangle of legs, arms, and blood, and sent his ball cap flying. The gunman’s laugh brought a few guffaws from his fellow murderers, which clattered off the buildings. Gene looked away, nauseated.

Sue jumped, startled by the gunfire behind her, close to Gene’s position. The cold sweat of anxiety slapping at her senses was not from this, but from the two cannons and twenty-five men coming from the other direction, marching her way on 1^st Street.

As if reacting to Frank Patton calling out battlefield instructions over a radio (which wouldn’t have worked even if they had one, it occurred to her), both Gene and Sue clicked off their safeties and hovered their forefingers over their triggers.

There was a low rumble, like a distant summer thunderstorm, starting outside the city. It rolled their way until it boomed through Fort Laramie, and then everything vibrated in a deep-throated roar. All heads, whether antagonist or protagonist, popped up in an effort to see and comprehend what their senses were telling them. One of the intruders near Sue bellowed the one word rattling in many of their minds. “EARTHQUAKE!”

36. Death Has Found You

Wright Ranch, Illinois

John Parkington heard frantic clanging from the wind tower. That was the agreed-upon signal that Buck had spotted someone. John watched the flashes, Buck’s Morse code message sloppy but passable.

“C O N T A C”… “N O R T S I D E”

What followed were the unmistakable little cracks of Buck’s .22 with suppressor, three times and all three times followed by a brief thump — all three of his shots connected, but where or with whom? Then John heard a thud and felt a shudder from the pig-shed that was his lookout point. It was then he realized, the contact Buck signaled about and fired at was here. Adrenalin hit. He briskly spun around, attempting to make no noise, bringing his Mini-14 tactical rifle to bear, sight to his eye. The front sight’s red blade led his vision toward his target: the flash suppressor poking over the lip of the roof immediately above where he believed the enemy was.

“God dammit,” said the man below him.

The red blade covered first his foot, stuck out at an odd angle, then his leg, and then the top of the man’s head. He was feeling around the bloody clump of cartilage that used to be his ear lobe. Buck had struck pay dirt.

He had the gun trained right on him, barely a shake. He announced, somewhat triumphantly, “You’re beat—put your hands—”

The man dropped his hand from his bloody ear, looked up to see John, and swiftly rolled, bringing his rifle up.

John’s finger pulled hard on the trigger. Nothing happened. Shit, the safety! his brain shouted. A split second later, he moved his finger forward, pushing the safety to the fire position, and then his finger traveled the long distance from front of trigger guard to trigger, and squeezed off several shots almost instantaneously. He was shocked at the deafening noise of his gun and a small explosion below. He was knocked back, he thought from his own gun’s report, but then realized that something was wrong. He knew he hit the man at least a couple of times, but he felt a sharp pain in his chest and arm. He had been shot.

He grabbed his chest, attempting, at least in his mind, to stem the bleeding. Based on the blood pouring out of his chest, he knew he would lose consciousness soon, he willed himself to stay alert, just long enough to finish the job. Moving his blood-soaked hand from his chest to his rifle, he could hear the bubbling sounds of his life oozing from the wound. Pushing, he moved fast, swinging himself over the roof line, where he sprayed the remainder of his rounds into the man below. He was already dead. Mission accomplished. Curiously, John noticed as the haze of death surrounded him like a smoky fire, the man’s face was partially gone and blackened by burns, and his gun barrel was shredded outward like an umbrella.

~~~

After Buck’s signal and the three shots from his twenty-two long rifle, there was a quick burst and counter burst between the semi-automatic and the automatic weapons that fired almost simultaneously, capped off with a small explosion. Wilber knew the sound of his .223 Mini-14 and the antagonist’s similarly chambered automatic weapon; he was certain John engaged first.