The War After Armageddon

“Up!” Sergeant Nash shouted. The canister round was loaded.

When Maxwell tried to turn the turret to level the gun on the attackers, it refused to move.

At least one of the missiles had done its job.

“Driver. Hold the right track. Halt,” Maxwell screamed. “On the way!”

He got lucky. The aim was imperfect, but the canister balls that missed flesh and blood punched into masonry, augmenting their effect with chips and splinters The result was red and ugly.

Something kicked the tank in the rump. The engine died. A hint of smoke rose from the vehicle’s bowels.

“This is Stallion Six. I’m a mobility kill. Anybody have me visual?”

No response.

“This is Stallion Six. Alpha is in command. Alpha, how copy?”

“Lima-Charlie. Cav’s on the way, Stallion Six.”

The smoke thickened inside the turret. It smelled of circuits, not fuel. Looking through his thermal, Maxwell saw Jihadis dodging forward in twos and threes. That probably meant there were others he couldn’t see on his six.

“Nash. Get on the loader’s machine gun. Vasquez. Fight from your hatch. I’m on the fifty. It’s happy hour.”

Maxwell hit the switch to launch his smoke grenades, but nothing happened. Howling curses, he popped his hatch and thrust up behind the heavy machine gun.

“This one’s broke-dick,” the gunner called over the intercom. Referring to the loader’s machine gun.

The turret was porcupined with small penetrators and smudged with blast effects. The bustle racks were torn away or twisted up like pipe cleaners.

“Fight with your carbine,” Maxwell said. Then the intercom died.

With the driver and gunner firing from their hatches, Maxwell opened up with the.50 cal. The bucking bronco. Rounds pinged off the tank, and a missile sizzled by.

“On the roof. Nine o’clock,” Maxwell shouted. But the warning was late, and no one heard. The Jihadi shot Vasquez, the driver. Perfect aim, just below the crewman’s helmet.

Maxwell traversed the.50 cal. and tore apart the roof pediment shielding the gunman. Then he swept the street behind the tank.

The gunner was still firing. With small-arms rounds flashing off the tank’s armor like the sparks from a welding torch. Maxwell put multiple bursts into a window where he glimpsed movement. In what seemed all too short a time, he found himself at the bottom of the ammo box.

Ma Deuce done let me down. Shit.

Black smoke wafted from the inside of the tank and rose from the grills and rear deck. Something was getting worse.

Maxwell reached down for his carbine. It wasn’t there. With the machine gun silenced, a half-dozen Jihadis charged the tank from the right rear.

He looked to the gunner.

Sergeant Nash had slumped down in his hatch. Unmistakably dead.

A thing of fucking beauty is a fucking joy forever, Maxwell told himself. It’s lonely at the top.

It struck him that the Jihadis had stopped firing their weapons. They just swarmed the tank now. Several more appeared behind the first wave.

Why not just shoot me? Maxwell wondered.

In an instant, the light came on. It enraged him to think that any man believed he’d let himself be taken prisoner.

He hauled himself out of the turret and drew his pistol. Firing point-blank into faces and chests. But the numbers were on the Jihadis’ side. They clambered onto the smoking tank. Mob rules. Searching for handholds, two Jihadis scorched their paws and leapt away. But the rest kept on coming, screaming at him. Maxwell continued firing, dropping them one after another. Until his pistol clicked empty.

Three Jihadis made it onto the deck on the far side of the turret.

Maxwell hurled the pistol into a man’s face. And he drew his great-grandfather’s sword.

“Dreadnaughts!” he shouted, and he laid into his enemy with cold steel.

* * *

Captain Brickell witnessed a remarkable thing. As his tank swung around the corner, he saw another M-1 stopped thirty meters ahead of him. Atop its smoking deck, his battalion commander was slashing away with a saber as a group of Jihadis swarmed around him.

It looked like a scene from an old pirate movie.

Brickell turned his co-ax machine gun on the Jihadis who had not yet managed to board Maxwell’s tank. The torrent of rounds swept them off their feet like heavy surf toppling children. One Jihadi bravely tried to kneel and launch an antitank rocket. Brickell cut him in half before he could shoot. Brickell’s loader was up in the adjacent hatch and firing too.

The attack on their rear distracted the Jihadis just long enough for the battalion commander to thrust his saber into one man’s torso, draw back, and smash the hilt into another’s mouth, knocking him headlong from the tank.

Suddenly alone, Maxwell looked about wildly. As if disappointed there was no one left to kill.

Behind the battalion commander, one of his crewmen slumped from the loader’s hatch. His posture said “KIA.”