Original Work The Unwelcome Sign

I dearly wanted a shower and a change of clothes. I settled for pouring a bottle of water over my head and scrubbing my face and scalp, rubbing dry with my shemaugh.
Climbing down into the gut, I carefully checked the two items that I’d placed there some days before. All seemed in order, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I tried to use them.
Checking my watch I saw that almost forty five minutes had passed since we’d left the last abates. I made my way back up to the road just in time to find Frank and Virgil, looking somewhat refreshed. I envied them. Being clean is a luxury I used to take for granted.
We talked over last minute items, then I left Frank in charge. Climbing up into the original fighting position, the two occupants made room for me. I brought my rifle up and checked my fields of fire, especially that I had lines of sight on my items in the gut.
“Blue Jay, this is Zebra. You got a copy?”
“Yeah Zebra, I copy”
“You in your nest Jay bird?”
“Yes sir.”
“You know the priorities.”
“Yes sir.”
“Cool. Zebra out.”
“Lima, this is Zebra. How copy?”
The radio broke squelch twice.
“I assume you can’t talk”
same response.
“Is it the full force?”
One click. Ugh! I was worried about that. Lavell had pulled his people back from their western OP and they were hidden, well camouflaged where they could watch the intersection of our road with the main one.
They were also close enough that Lavell couldn’t talk.
Lavell had just confirmed what I worried would happen. As the fire burned down enough to let people past, the gangbangers came through on foot. But not all of them. Sounds like some of them were hanging back until they could get the vehicles through.
Which was a problem.
How many were on foot? Would they attack, or wait for the others to catch up? I needed them all together. I couldn’t close the box until they were all inside it.
“How many? Ten?”
One click.
“Twenty?”
One click
“Thirty?”
Two clicks
“Any leaders?”
Two clicks
“Standing around waiting?”
Two clicks. Well, that was something anyway. Maybe they’d stand around and wait for the vehicles to show up.
“Zebra out”
A final two clicks.
That done, I settled back in the hole, tilted my hat over my face and closed my eyes.
I had just enough time to drop off to sleep when the radio broke squelch. Three clicks, three clicks, three clicks. Repeated.
I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs. Realizing I couldn’t just listen, I had to ask intelligent questions. What would Lavell want to tell me?
“Lima, are they on the move?”
Two clicks
“Down towards us?”
Two again
“Any sign of the vehicles?”
One click
“Anything else?”
One click
“Zebra copies and is out.”
Two final clicks.
“Look sharp! We are getting company!” The people that weren’t in their positions got in them quickly. It concerned me to see how many of them were armed with pistols only. I hoped to change that.
If we lived through the next little while.
The two people sharing the OP with me were sharing a rifle, one of the ARs that we’d recovered. There were two pump shotguns at the road block itself and I knew they had a supply of both slugs and buck, and they’d been told when to use each.
A last look around showed everyone in their place and motionless. I couldn’t see them and I knew where they were. I settled my check on the comb of my rifle’s stock, butt nestled into my shoulder and waited, watching.
A clot of half a dozen men came around the corner and into view, two hundred yards away. They stopped dead when they saw the road block, almost like they’d run right into it. They looked to each other and then scrambled back around the corner.
I let them go.
Thirty seconds went by. Then I heard yelling, followed by a gun shot. Then they came.
They rounded the corner in a rush, all at once. They seemed startled that no one shot at them. Thinking they were safe, they ran right down the road. Guess they never read Tennyson.
Or maybe they had.
I let them come. All twenty of them.
My hole mate was getting antsy. Ready to kick it off. I’m sure that feeling was prevalent. But nobody blew it. They held.
One hundred and fifty yards, one hundred. Seventy five, fifty.
I picked out a tall fellow in the front and put a round through his teeth. His head snapped back as his legs moved him forward. The two guys behind him, partially blinded by the goo that splatter them. They both tripped over his falling body and went flying, rifles pinwheeling through the air.
Part of my mind watched them and hoped they wouldn’t get damaged too badly to use.
A quarter second later, my shot opening the game, everyone opened up. I’d let them get to fifty yards to give our pistoleers some hope of hitting.
My red dot was just settling on another target when it was staggered by a hammer blow. A fraction later I felt more than heard the boom of first one then the other 12 gauge. A slug to my target at the base of the throat and went on to take most of the right arm off the fellow behind him.
I didn’t bother shooting. I’d done enough killing and I was certain I’d more opportunities ere long. I sat and watched and catalogued the carnage being wrought.
My people, while mainly armed with pistols, were pumping out close to a hundred rounds a second. The few rifles and shotguns we had were merely gravy.
Those poor bastards ran right into a meat grinder, and I watched as they were turned, quite literally to hamburger. It was like they ran into a solid wall and couldn’t move.
Some, for whatever reason, whether physics or psychology, were still standing. They did a macabre dance as they took round after round, small and sometimes not so small chunks of meat being plucked off of them.
Not a single one of them got around off at us.
The firing slacked off as fifteen shot magazines ran empty, slides locked back, the break giving my people a chance for reality to set in.
Four seconds.
That’s how long it took to turn twenty humans into so much meat.
“Weapons! GO!” I yelled, louder than I meant. Louder than I needed to. My beautiful, horrible pistoleers ran forward, scavenging rifles and magazines as fast as they could, happy to be first to get a prize, like kids at an Easter Egg Hunt.
I ignored them, best I could, watching through my sight, up the hill at the corner, covering my people while they were exposed.
It didn’t take long.
They knew they were exposed so they moved with alacrity. They thoroughly picked over the bodies. Pulling them apart and turning them over as needed to make sure they hadn’t missed anything vital.
They knew the stakes.
Watching as they finished up I pulled my radio, finger hovering over the transmit button.
The pistoleers came running back, arms full of their gory prizes, grim grins on their faces, though I doubt it was humor that animated those expressions.
The last made it back to our side, back behind the relative safety of the cars.
My finger stabbed the button. “Hold tight Jaybird. Copy?”
Two clicks was my reply. I guess no one wanted to talk to me today. I looked to the corner to see a man standing there, nervously. He looked down at us, and then looked around the corner and said something. After a moment, he was joined by a short stout, older man, and I was glad I’d got the call in to Jaybird in time.
I’d hate for Shocka to miss the rest of the party.
The pistoleers piled their plunder on the road behind the car. I was wishing Lavell was here to help them and then I watched as they systematically unloaded the rifles, checked them for function (thankfully only discarding two of the twenty), divvying up the ammo, and I realized the he was, indeed, here.
Lavell had done his job and trained these people well for just this eventuality. I watched as my pistoleers were one by one transformed into riflemen. As soon as a rifle was deemed fit, it was handed to one of the waiting people, who then got a fair share of the ammo, who would leave to go back to his position.
Less than five minutes later, we were once again waiting for the enemy’s next move.
Just a little bit better off than before.

 

Baby buzzards gonna eat tonight…and de eatin gonna be gud!

 

“What’s the latest from the drone?”
“Was just about to call you. We’ve got movement. The western group is heading our way.” Daniels replied to my call.
“Numbers?”
“Twenty three.”
“You copy that Lima?”
Two clicks on the radio let me know Lavell still couldn’t talk.
“Any more people show up from the east?”
Two clicks.
“Are they staging?”
Two clicks. I tried to hold my frustration at this mode of communication in check. I was tired, achy, and worried, which made it that much more difficult. Knowing that helped.
“Do you think everyone from the east is there?”
There was a pause, then I got another two clicks.
“Got it. Zebra out.”
I was expecting the first two clicks. But they were followed by another two, and two more.
“You got more for me Lima?”
The pair of clicks came almost before I’d finished my transmission. This was reminding me of playing “Animal, Vegtable, or Mineral” with my family on car trips.
“Did they bring up the vehicles?”
Two clicks.
“Anymore armored cars?”
One click. I paused to think of my next question.
“Anything unusual in the vehicles?”
Back to two clicks. What would that be?
“Hostages?”
One click. Well that was a relief. I didn’t fancy dealing with a human wall of innocents.
“Heavy weapons?”
Two clicks. Lovely.
“Machine gun?”
Two clicks.
“249?”
One click. I didn’t want to ask the next question.
“240?”
Two clicks.
“Just the one?”
Two clicks. Not good, but not my worst fear either.
“Truck mounted?”
A five second pause preceded the two answering clicks. Lavell was making a point.
“In a vehicle, but not mounted like a Technical?”
Two immediate clicks. Followed by three more.
“New development?”
Two clicks.
“People from the west show up?”
Two clicks, followed by three. Now what?
“More people from the east?”
Two clicks.
“Give me a total count. Forty?”
One click.
“Fifty?”
One click
“Sixty?”
One click. I wasn’t liking the way this was trending. Where were all these people coming from? Reinforcements from his alliance with the other housing community?
“Seventy?” I asked, hopefully?
One click dashed them.
“Eighty?”
A slight pause, then two clicks. So eighty something then. With a general purpose machine gun. My heart sank. What had I done? What had I lured into my neighborhood? You asked for it. You got it. Toyota. I shook my head at the power of Madison Avenue to pop up a commercial, unbidden, at a critical time.
But it was the distraction I needed to move past my negative thoughts.
Nothing for it but to fight. No option now.

“It’s going to be a bad fight, isn’t it sir?”
“It’s Zed. Please.” My hole mates nodded in acquiescence to my request for familiarity, but didn’t say anything further. Ball was in my court.
“Yes. But nothing we can’t handle. We’re ready for this. We’ve got this. You’ll see.”
I clapped the nearest one on the shoulder and climbed out of the hole, sliding down the hill towards the road block.
“Frank!” I yelled as I climbed back up on the car that I’d used earlier. Muscles stiff from sitting in a hole in the ground, tense, prevented as graceful a mount as the previous one.
Frank made his way towards me, but I didn’t wait.
“Listen up!” I paused half a dozen heartbeats to give people a chance to reorient.
“Y’all did good. Real good! But the big fight’s coming now. Remember your training. Remember our plan. Get some water down your throat. Get your stuff together. We may, no, we will have to move quickly. Look out for each other. Get some!”
There was no cheering, nor clapping this time. I started to work out why and gave up as I got off the car and met Frank. I filled him in quickly.
“Send somebody down to get Stan’s team up here. Then I want you off the line and pulled back just a little. You’re on your own. Watch for things I’m missing and take care of them. Cool?”
“No worries. What about Lyle and Juice?”
“Leave them. Juice has a radio if we need him quickly. But I want him and Lyle and their people fresh and in place. “
“Got it.” He looked to see if there was more. There wasn’t.
As Frank left, Denise came up. I brought her up to speed.
“It’s going to get bloody.”
She nodded. “I’ve got a real primitive aid station set up twenty yards back. There’s a finger coming off the ridge that gives it good cover. I can do a quick stabilization/triage before moving them down to the doctor.”
She looked at me and waited for a reply. I was staring into the bush, eyes unfocused.
“Zed?”
“Hmmm? Oh. Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks.”
“You OK?”
What could I, what should I say to that? How much of an answer did she want? How far back should I go? Was I, ‘OK’?
My response was too long in the making, stuck in a loop, which she recognized.
“Are you physically OK? Are you hurt? Aches? Pains?”
She’d focused my attention and I started a systems check. “I’m stiff and sore and tired. My arm is killing me. I think I might have over do it, what with the chainsaw and all. “ I gave her a lopsided grin.
“On a scale of one to ten?”
Another check of the status board in my head. “Six to eight, depending.”
Denise knelt down, setting her med pack on the ground and started opening it.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to give you something for the pain.”
“I don’t need anything.”
“I know you’re a tough old SOB, but pain is tiring and will affect you. Skew your reactions, your mood, get in your way.
“I DON”T NEED ANY DAMNED MEDECINE!” I stopped, startled. Looked around sheepishly. Denise looked at me in that way only women can, when they are waiting for you to realize they are right and you’ve just proven it.
“Sorry.”
She tilted her head to one side and nodded, raising one eyebrow.
“I don’t want to be foggy or hazy.”
“This isn’t my first rodeo, cowboy. You think you’re the first combat leader I’ve treated? I wish someone would come up with a ‘macho shield’ because you all spray it everywhere when you’re hurt.”
“You’ve probably gotten enough on you that you’ve built up an immunity.” I gave her a grin trying for clever and falling short. She’d seen that before too.
“A tolerance is more like it. And it has it’s limits.” She stood and handed me the vial she’d been filling while fencing with me.
Women and their damned multi-tasking.
I looked at the clear vial containing a several pills.
“The oblong one is hydrocodone for the pain. The round one Adderal. Take one of each”
“Adderal? Isn’t that for kids with attention problems?”
“You saying you’re not a kid?”
“Touche’”
“It’s a stimulant. To counter the depressant effects of the pain meds. Take both now, and another hydro in a few hours if you need it.”
“Isn’t this a temporary fix?”
“Sure. You’ve got eight to twelve hours and then you’re going to need to pay back the loan. I figure, one way or the other, this’ll be over by then.”
Opening the vial, I tipped the appropriate pills into my palm and then popped in my mouth. I struggled to find enough saliva to get them down my throat.
The bitter medicine taste got the better of me and I relented, pulling out my water bottle and washing them down.
Denise watched the battle.
“You’re not doing any of us any favors by becoming dehydrated.”
“Thanks mom.”
“Don’t be such a child and I won’t have to act like one. How does Sadie cope?”
“She’s a strong woman that is easily swayed by my boyish charm?”
“Yeah, well, whatever it is, I give her credit.”
“I hear you. I wouldn’t want to have to deal with me on a regular basis either.”

“They’re coming Zed!” Both Denise and I looked at the radio in its pouch. That Lavell spoke in the clear startled me.
“Go!” I told Denise “They’re coming!” to everyone else. I ran up the slope to my position once again. I’d barely slid into place when I heard the vehicles. There was a high pitched transmission whine, like a car backing up quickly.

A Ford F250 backed around the corner, it’s tailgate facing us. The muzzle of a machinegun starting belching flame as the first of its impacted the cars of the road block. The noise was frightening. Sphincter tightening. The dirt filled cars easily stood up to the impacts, but the psychological impact of a weapon several levels above anything we fielded was too much. The people behind the cars fell flat on the ground.
Someone in a position about ten yard to my left took the 240 under fire. His rounds tinked in the sheet metal of the F250, catching the gunner’s attention. He swung his muzzle in our direction spraying rounds all over the hill side.

The machine gunner worked his gun back and forth, beating the hillside. We were all safe, as we’d dropped below the lip of our holes, but what were we missing while we were being suppressed?
I snuck a look in time to see a three gangbangers run from around the corner, extending the tubes of LAW rocket launches.

A spray of blood and brain announced the death of the 240 gunner, but my relief was short lived as all three rockets popped from their tubes, the motors cutting in.
“INCOMING!”
I scrunched down in my hole, opened my mouth, covered my ears and closed my eyes.
“BOOMBOOMBOOM!” The rockets impacted, the noise doing more damage to our psyches than the rockets did to us.
Or so it seemed to me at the time.

One of the rockets hit the first blocking car, but the shaped charge didn’t do much to the packed soil it contained. The other two hit the hill side.

I sneaked a peek in time to see the loader take over for the gunner. Or try to. A deep boom from down the hill, with a sharp crack nearby told me Blue Jay was doing his job, working from his nest.
I pawed at my radio, pushing it out it’s pouch. “Blue Jay, this is Zebra. You are cleared for all targets. Copy?”
Two clicks. He didn’t want to break his cheekweld.

The racketeers had rearmed and shouldered their fresh tubes. My people were hunkered, not returning fire. Stunned to be getting such heavy attention from the enemy.
I stabbed my muzzle forward, slamming the butt into my shoulder. Cheek met stock and the red dot appeared in space near the left most racketeer. My round took him in the left shoulder just as he hit the ignition.
He spun clockwise sending his rocket harmlessly arcing out into the ocean. The backblast was a different story.
It played across the gangbanger next to him.
Unfortunatly he’d fired his LAW a second earlier and it was streaking towards us. I watched, fascinated as it grew larger, looming, to crash and explode into the rocks sheltering one of our fighting positions.
Lucky shot.
Luck or not, the result was the same and the cries grew louder and louder until they were suddenly cut off.
We still weren’t returning fire.
A group of about a dozen gangbangers came around the corner, egged on by a low level leader. They hesitated at first but he harangued them and led by example, running towards us firing from the hip as they came.
“SHOOT!” I yelled and elbowed the rifleman in the hole with me. She brought her rifle up alongside mine while her pistol armed partner stayed down.
We opened up which encouraged a few of our people to join in. We targeted the dozen advancing men, taking down one, then another.
They took hasty cover and we exchanged mostly ineffective fire. One fellow made the mistake of letting me see his knee.
When my round shattered it he howled like his soul was on fire. He gave me a better shot but I didn’t take it.
Go ahead and howl.
It was a stalemate. The squad leader tried to get them to move, but once a man takes cover, it’s hard to get him to leave. He stood to lead them on and crumpled a second latter. Chalk another one up to the Jaybird.
Movement at the corner drew my eye. A large group of men were moving perpendicularly to us. A few hunkered around the Ford, firing their rifles at us, but no one seemed interested in climbing in and manning the 240.
While half a dozen fired at us, at least thirty of them ran down off the road into the gut.
I let them go.

The gang bangers hadn’t tried to fire any more rockets at us. I didn’t know why, I was just glad for the break. They hadn’t done much damage physically, but they mauled our morale.
The stream of gang bangers into the gut continued. They started taking fire, which worried me, then I realized that it was the directed fire that my plan called for. The enemy took cover from the incoming rounds in the two natural forms of cover, a big boulder and an even larger rock formation.

I turned my attention to the group that had gotten the closest to us. I found a way to snake a round between a rock and a tree, tagging one. Looking for another target, I found one, only to have him get hit by the woman next to me.
I looked over the stock of my M4 at her. She felt the gaze and looked at me. I winked.
She colored prettily and then went back to her work.
The group around the truck were peppering rounds at us. I focused on them. The first hit was easy, then they got serious about cover.
Skipping rounds under the Ford netted me another hit, but it seems that I’d pissed off the survivors. They concentrated on my position.
I tried to ignore the angry bees screaming past my head and find things to put my red dot on.
I head the pumpkin dropped on to concrete from 10 feet sound right next to me. I knew what it was and didn’t want to look.
But I did.
The young woman who I just flirted with was gone, replaced by a bag of meat with the top half of its head missing.
I choked down the rising bile and grabbed her around the waist and lifted and shoved the body out of the hole.
I picked up her rifle, wiped what she’d left on the stock off with my hand, flicked on the safety and held it out to the man who’d been held in reserve.
His eyes were wide and he hesitated. I waited a moment and he took it, finally, tentatively.
He looked back up over the lip of the hole at the woman’s body and something changed in his eyes.
I wished the enemy could see them.

The flow into the gut trickled out. I figured there were probably forty gang members hiding in the gut. They exchanged fire with the rest of my people, neither side having much effect.

It was time.

I looked by the boulder and found the red, white and blue packaging. I settled the rifle for the shot.
“FIRE IN THE HOLE!” I didn’t mind that the bad guys heard it. They’d hunker down when they heard it, which is just what I wanted them to do. But I wanted my peoples’ heads down.

It was a hundred and forty three yard shot, with about ten degrees of downward angle. Not enough to worry about with the ballistics of the 5.56mm cartridge. Deep breath, let half out, my focus on breaking the trigger.

“BOOOOMMMMMM!” The homemade tannerite didn’t let me down. The explosion shattered the rocks that were packed against the device, creating lethal lithic projectiles.
A large dense plume of smoke drifted from the site, carrying the first moans with it. A few dazed survivors stood, stunned. One reached down and picked up his severed arm and clutched it to his chest.
I hit the switch for the second device. I’m not even sure I heard it go off. A quick flash of light as the amature rocket ignitor set off the pipe bomb which kicked off a enormous fireball as it blew apart the twenty five pound propane tank. My ears went dead, putting all of my attention into my vision. I watched a series of macabre vingnettes.
The stunned survivors of the first blast were caught in the rapidly expanding fireball and were incinerated. Their clothes almost vaporizing as their skin turned to charcoal.
Bodies, and parts of bodies, all in unnatural positions that struck me as wrong to the very core of my primitive beign, flew through the air, propelled and illuminated by the blast.
A headless corpse at the periphery flopped over and fell in front of its own eyes. I wondered if there was enough life in there to register what it was seeing.
The explosive expansion spent, things no longer propelled, came again under gravity’s reign, as dirt, and rocks, and meat rained down on the gut.


Happy Halloween!

 

Damn good...Now I am on the edge of my seat...

 

Zen; you da man!!! Thanks for the holloween treat!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I wish I may, I wish I might…have 10 pounds of tannerite…tonight! Awesome Zen, just awesome ;-)

 

This was waaay better than a bag of candy. Thanks Zen.

 

Tannerite is an awesome play toy...
Thanks Zen... you make it come alive... er, dead... er... wow.

Halloween shall be known henceforth as Buzzard Day. I'd lay 'em out on the road in lines, so the enemy has to drive over them with a swarm of buzzards chowing down... a twofer... slow 'em down and put the fear o' God in 'em.
Thanks again Zen...

 

When the eating is good…the good be eating…and there ain't nothing like buzzard sheet on a corpse to give it that special flavor and most delicate of smells…for miles around ;-)

The smell of a rotting dead enemy is the perfume of our universe, to be savored wherever found and upon whom the 'honorable odure' has fallen.

 

Hell of an update. But, I think 40 more (give or take) and the boss man are still around. I'll be patiently waiting to see how the die.

 

I didnt get an alert on this! Damn good zen!

 

I'm just waiting for Zed to post his first head…or two;-)

 

It was like God hit the pause button. Nothing moved, nothing happened. Silence turned to buzzing, then to ringing, as my ears tried to recover from the assault they’d just endured.
I shook my head as much to clear my brain as my hearing. I surveyed the affected area. I watched while a body got to its hands and knees and tried to crawl off. It jerked several times and then subsided back down to the ground. The lowest bass tones of the gunshots barely registering on my consciousness.
I knew I needed to do something, but I couldn’t make out what that should be. Moving would be a good start. I pulled myself out of the hole in the ground and stood on its lip.
Stretching was sweet agony as blood was allowed access to areas it had been denied. A minute had passed and still nothing moved. On either side.
That had to change.
“Shocka!” My voice sounded far away. I waited a handful of seconds.
“SHOCKA!” I repeated, louder. Nothing from up the road, but my voice was stirring my people, some of whom looked at me like I was crazy.
At least I had their attention. I started to see systems checks being performed, people getting some water down their throats, checking on each other.
“SSHHAAAAAAA! . . . KKAAAAAAAA!” I bellowed from the bottom of my soul. A moment later the man himself made an appearance. He stepped from around the curve that hid him and I assumed the rest of his men.
He took a tentative step and seeing that he was unmolested, he took another. He looked at me, standing on the hillside, plain to see, and then down to the gut where moments ago, forty of his men were blown to bits.
He looked back at me. I didn’t give him a chance to say anything. I grabbed my crotch and made exaggerated gyrations with my hips.
“When I’m done killing your men, I’m going to make you my bitch!”
You could see the unreasoning anger take him, even at this distance. His hands scrabbled for the pistol at his belt. He fumbled it and it clattered on the road surface.
I hoped his men, at least enough to tell the others, saw it. Scooping it up he pointed it in my general direction and shot it empty. He pushed the pistol forward with each shot, though whether that was for emphasis or to add some extra power to the bullet, I’m not sure.
While I was exposed, I felt fairly confident that I was safe standing there. It was worth the slight risk. My people needed this. I saw several of them bring their rifles to bear, but I waved them off.
Shocka shot his wad, yet persisted thrusting his now empty pistol towards me. A few seconds later he realize what he was doing and stopped, looking at the slide locked pistol, he shoved it in his waistband.
He glared at me a final time and turned and moved back towards his people.
He’d barely made it around the corner when several of his men appeared and fired down at us. I jumped back down in my hole. An angry man with a pistol was one thing. A handful of men with rifles was another. Shots rang out from four or five of our positions.
Two of the enemy fell, obviously dead. Another had his leg swept out from under him. He crab walked to cover on two hands and a foot. Or tried to. He didn’t make it far before he was hit again. Two of them looked like they were going to run for the gut. They were probably wondering if there were any more surprises in there.
Can’t says I blamed them.
They headed that way so I shot the leader. The other did an about face and ran back to his lines.
I let him.
There was a pause that dragged on for a minute, then another.
“Lima, this is Zebra. You have any action from the gangbangers that came down here? See any of them heading back up hill?”
“Negative Zebra. There’s a shot caller at the top. He’s shot a couple of people trying to come up the hill. No one else has tried.”
“Roger that.”
“Sounds like our guests found the party favors”
“They did. It was a big hit. But were down to about forty party goers now.”
“It’s the diehards that stay to the end that really make the party”
“You know it! Gotta run. Zebra out.”
The wind shifted and it brought with it a wisp of black smoke and an unmistakable smell. Gangbangers appeared briefly; just long enough to send their presents on the way.
I watched as ten flaming tires rolled down the hill toward us streaming flame and black, acrid smoke behind them.
A couple wobbled and rolled off the road, down into the gut, flopping onto their sides which allowed the flames to really take hold.
Luckily it had rained heavily recently, so we were in no danger of the fire taking off. Although some of the brush smoked and smoldered, adding to the smoke of the tires.
The rest of the tires came on, picking up speed. Some hitting dips or bumps, or rocks, started bouncing, each contact with the road resulting in an incrementally larger bounce.
Most of the tires hit the blocking cars and stopped, falling on their sides and really starting to burn. A couple went wide and ended up on the side of the road, in the bush.
One of them had built up momentum on its bounces and sailed right over our chicane, landing behind the people manning that position. The acrid smoke had them bent over, choking, tears flowing from their eyes.
One of my people, as yet unaffected, ran from his hole, grabbed a nearby shovel and with his face buried in his support side elbow, pushed and prodded the tire off the road, and started throwing shovelfuls of dirt on it.
I could see he had it in hand so I turned my attention back to the road. Which had disappeared.
The good news was the uphill wind swept the toxic smoke away from us.
The bad news was it totally blocked our view of the road and thus any enemy movement.
“Put one round a second, actually count it out, up towards the curve.” My hole mate shouldered his rifle. The instructor part of my brain noticed that his movements were smooth and natural.
“One thousand and” “Boom” “One thousand and” “Boom” He took me literally. Others took the cue and picked up the cadence. The wind would waft from a different direction for a moment, exposing figures running toward us, then, just as quickly hide them again.
The slap of projectiles on meat and cries of pain told me that some of our shots were finding targets. But not enough.
A dozen gangbangers made it as far as the chicane. Some jumped up on the cars and leapt down the far side. Others squeezed around the ends.
A thug made use of the high ground being on the car provided him to pour fire down on my people. I tried to swing my rifle around but my hole mate was in the way.
I watched helplessly as he shot two of my people. Before he could get a third, he folded in the middle like he’d be gut punched by Mike Tyson. One of the defenders racked the slide of the Remington 870 and hit him again, this load of 00 buck taking him in the head. He toppled back off the car that had been his perch.
My shotgunner swung as he pumped in time to catch one of the bangers coming around the side. The load turned him into so much meat. Indexing on the next ones coming through the gap, he started backpeddling, creating distance. He pumped and shot and pumped and shot. He had a moment and remembered to top off the tube. He’d gotten two rounds in the mag when another gang member stood on the car, bringing his rifle to bear on my man. I could see that he wouldn’t make it, and I mourned the loss of a fighter such as that.
A third eye appeared on his face and his expression changed as the muscles relaxed. Without the proper signals being fed to them, all the muscles went flaccid and the gangbanger fell forward, a handful of paces from my shotgunner.
I looked for his savior and saw Frank and Virgil had moved up to fill the gap. The wave of gang bangers had been stopped, momentarily. Denise and a couple of her helpers ran up to the roadblock with stretchers and collected two of the wounded. My heart sank when she covered the face of the third body lying on the road behind the cars.
We were keeping up a slow but steady covering fire. Not that it did us any good. I stabbed the button on the wooden plank set up in the hole, twice. The car horn was startling to me, yet I watched as a third of our people left their positions and started running down the hill. As they caught up to Denise and her crew, they helped, each grabbing a corner, four people on a stretcher.
I felt my bolt carrier lock back and my body swapped in a fresh mag. Thumb found paddle and the carrier jumped forward. I fired a few more rounds. I caught a glimpse of movement through the smoke and snapped off a shot at it. I was rewarded by a sharp cry of pain.
Judging that they had enough time, I pressed the horn button three times. The second third of our defenders melted away, proof that Lavell’s training and drilling had been effective.
We seemed to be holding, but it wouldn’t last long. I held the horn button down, one long, loud, noise which brought with it an increase of fire from our enemy. I waited for my hole mate to scramble out of our fighting position. I followed, taking a last look at the body of the woman who had given her life to defend her community. Sadie met me on the road. She wanted to stay, but didn’t argue with me. I gave her a look to let her know I wasn’t going to budge. She nodded, more to herself than me, gave me a peck on the lips and turned to follow the others.
Frank lowered his muzzle to let me past then brought it back up and threw a couple of rounds at a target I couldn’t see. I knelt down between him and Virgil.
“Time to move?” Virgil asked
“Yes! But we have to keep some pressure on them so they don’t move too quickly.”
The three of us alternated between us, running and gunning. We kept the pressure on, hard enough to keep the most curious or ambitious gangbangers from following too closely. They knew we were on the run and it was only a matter of time. They’d pushed us for miles and we were finally trapped, with our backs against the ocean.
We came to the first, lower chicane and weaved through the opening between the two cars. I’d barely gotten through when a plate was shoved in my hands. I looked at the woman who handed it to me. She let a smile wipe away the worry lines for a moment when I took a bite of the hot sandwich and smiled in approval.
A quick look around let me know that everyone had a chance to eat. I immediately felt better. I hadn’t realized how much I needed some food. Taking the sandwich in one hand, I gave the woman back the plate.
“Thank you. This is just what I needed.” She blushed at the praise. “Now I need you to round up all the non-combatants and get them to safety.”
“Yes Zed, I will.” One last shy smile and she was gone on her mission.
Taking a bite of my sandwich I used my free hand to fish my radio out of its pouch.
“Lima, this is Zebra, copy?”
‘Five by, Zebra.”
“We’ve fallen back to the lower chicane. Are our brothers from the east here yet?”
“Affirmative Zebra. Golf is here with two dozen of his closest friends.”
“Understood. It’s time to close the door Lima.”
“Roger that, Zebra. Lima out”
I stuffed the radio back in the pouch and the sandwich in my mouth. I saw Sadie was already in a fighting position and headed her way. I looked all about me as I jogged. There was very little talking. You could tell the fresh faces that had been waiting down here for us, from the ones that had fought at the upper chicane.
The former were cleaner and wide-eyed and unsure of themselves. The later were dirty, faces smudged black, clothes smeared in mud. While they faced uphill toward the enemy, their focus was beyond that, at something their unblooded comrades couldn’t see. They handled their weapons with a nonchalant ease.
I made it up the hillside and slid into the fighting position next to Sadie. I crammed the last of my sandwich in my mouth, doing my best chipmunk impression, my jaws aching with heavy work I was subjecting them too. I looked around one last time. The chicane was out anchor, down on the road, at the end of a straight stretch a short rifle shot in length. Stan’s team held it, supplemented with half a dozen of the people from the upper road block. Looking up the road from the chicane, on the left, a ridge rose above and along the road. We had eleven fighting positions dug in with a view of the road below and the gut beyond it.
Juice’s team and the rest of the upper chicane veterans manned them.
I looked in the bottom of our hole and saw loaded magazines and some bottles of water in a small box. That let me know that the group tasked with stocking the positions this morning had done their job. I lifted the box and divided the AR mags between Sadie and me. We laid them on the shelves that had been dug into the sides of the hole.
To the right of the road block, the ground dropped off into the same gut as ran next to the upper chicane. Boulder-strewn it was rough terrain, but offered some cover. We’d cut down all the bush, but there were plenty of rocks to hide behind. Frank and Virgil, along with Lyle’s team were in the gut, in their own positions. Built up using the available rocks, they offered great protection and a different angle from those of us on the hillside.
I sucked down a half a bottle of water, screwed the top back on and placed it next to the mags. I let out a long deep belch, a product of hastily wolfing down my food and dumping a bunch of water on top of it. It was easily heard up and down the little valley and I was rewarded by a bunch of laughter.
Sadie just scowled in disapproval. “What are you? Seven?”
I couldn’t suppress a giggle that confirmed her assessment of my age.
Then it was time to get back to work.
The bangers were finally here.

 

Great story @Zengunfighter

 

Hot damn…the ride be on…blame it all on climate change and all dat sheet;-)

 

An doan you fret none Mistah Gilbert, sah, dat fat ol' toad...well we haint seen de las' o'him. No sah, no way!

 

He,he,he,heeeeeeeehe!

Dad burned Zeds be wearing out the pockets on dese ol 'ticking' trousers and still no 'scrotum purse' to keep them in…pockets be a female dog to replace an all dat sheet.

 

It's a rolling on now...

 

Awesome zen just great if you publish this let us know i want a copy. But why did i get on here i was searching for a thread about somthing when i seen alerts lol

 

I guess they liked how well the tires worked for them, because they started out with those first this time. We opened up on the enemy that exposed themselves to get the tires rolling. One gang member slightly uphill from another, lit the diesel in the tire and then was hit several times. He crumpled and let go of the tire which rolled into another banger. Some of the diesel sloshed out and onto his sagging and bagging pants, and tire ignited it.
His attention suddenly diverted, he forgot about his unlit tire and ran around, flapping at the flames. The fanning seemed to hurt more than help and the flames spread up his body.
Panic had him firmly in her grasp and he tried to run faster than his low riding pants would allow. He tripped and fell. Being on a slope, he started rolling, something he should have done from the start.
A quarter of the way down the hill the flames were finally out. His homeboys stopped rolling tires so they wouldn’t hit him. He stopped rolling and stood up, amazed and relieved that the fire demon had been exorcised.
I shot him in the leg, shattering his knee. He fell, screaming. His buddies halted their tire activities and our fire drove them back out of sight. He started scooting his way up the hill on his ass, alternating between sobbing and crying out when his messed up leg got jostled the wrong way.
Shocka showed up, coming around the corner to where he could see fireboy. This time he was armed with a rifle.
Which he used to shoot the wounded and burned man. He then turned the rifle on us and, shooting from the hip, started laying down some ineffective cover fire. The tire crew came back out and sent their payloads back down towards us.
Shocka shot his AR empty and he tossed it to one of the men as they jogged back around the corner.
One of the tires ran over fireboy, re-igniting his pants. Great. I couldn’t wait to smell that. As if everything else wasn’t bad enough.

Two of my people leapt out of their fighting hole and ran into the road, knocking the tires over as the past them. A firefight broke out, some gangbangers seeing people in the open took them under fire. My folks fired back, providing cover.
The shooting was furious. The tire tippers stopped all but two of the rolling smoke bombs midway up the road. Those slipped past them and continued until they hit the cars at the chicane.

One of the tippers grabbed at his arm suddenly, letting out a yelp. His partner grabbed his good arm and dragged him back to their hole. Bullets chased them, kicking up clods of dirt or spanging off of rocks to go keening wickedly, the ricochet sending them in a new, unsteady, trajectory.

They dove head first into their hole, avoiding being overtaken by the converging rounds. Despite their efforts, the tire fires took hold and smoke billowed upwards, blown up the road toward the enemy position.

First one, then another, shadowy shape ran hunched over, barely seen through the thick smoke. More and more followed. About half headed for the gut, and the rest headed down the road, taking turns taking cover.

We shot at them as best we could, given the fleeting targets we were presented. Out of the corner of my eye and the corner of my consciousness I noticed Sadie’s AR go to bolt lock. I leaned my leg against her and slowed my fire while she reloaded smoothly. When I felt her come back up I moved away and picked the pace back up.
Tracking a runner, my first shot missed. I wouldn’t get a second as my bolt locked back. I put in my third magazine of this fight, but he’d made it to cover before I could catch him.
The noise was stunning as several hundred rounds a second were being fired in a space a hundred a fifty yards long by fifty wide. Then it got worse.
The bangers brought the 240 with them and managed to set it up in the gut. It chattered relentlessly. Taking it under fire just earned you its attention. Sadie and I barely had time to duck as the small berm in front of our position was chewed up and spit in our faces.
The sound of the enemy guns grew louder as they grew closer. We slowly eased up and put some rounds on the closest of the enemy, which were now directly under some of our positions on the hillside. There was firing in the gut too, and it looked like Lyle and company were in the same position as us.
We didn’t see if we’d done any good as we got suppressed by the machine gun. We waited until its attention moved to other targets and tried again. The bangers had made another ten yards in the seconds we’d hidden from the rapidly winking eye of the belt fed gun.
“Jaybird! Why is that machine gun still running?”
“I don’t have a shot, Zebra! You want me to move?”
“Negative” I shot my reply from the hip, not having time, inclination, nor ability to puzzle out better orders.

We were the moles in this game and while the belt fed hammer was whacking a different critter uphill from us, Sadie and I popped back up and worked some targets. We came under fire again but this time the bullets came into the hole with us. I pushed her into the one corner that provided some cover and squashed on top of her.
We were out of the game for the moment. Someone had flanked us from above us on the finger we were on. They had us pinned and reminded us of it every few seconds. We could here scrabbling through the bush as they made their way down towards us.
I detected a distinct change in the tone of the battle. Our outgoing fire was slacking off to a small percentage of what it had been just moments age. The incoming fire was louder, closer, and heavier.
I wouldn’t let Sadie up. I poked the muzzle of my rifle up over the lip of hole and did something I never thought I would; fired blindly in the general direction of the enemy. I couldn’t raise my head up, the incoming rounds wouldn’t let me.
Keeping the rifle parallel with the slope I worked the muzzle back and forth, firing single shots at where I imagined the gangbangers coming down slope, advancing on us, would be.
My AR was ripped out of my grip and my left hand felt like it had been set on an anvil and smacked with a sledge. I pulled it instinctively to my chest, protectively, afraid to look.
Look I must though. I detached myself and checked it out. Everything was still there, but a stream of dark blood poured from along my middle finger. I pulled my shemaugh from my neck, wrapped the finger then the hand until it was all used up.
Right hand found my Glock and indexed it toward the lip of the hole in time to see a grinning visage clearing the angle where we both had a shot. Mindlessly I broke the shot, the bullet taking him at the junction of throat and jam, angling up through the palate and into the brain.
He dropped at the lip of the hole, revealing two more bangers who were now clear to shoot at me. They opened up just as I dropped back in the hole making myself as small as possible. Still I felt round tug at my clothes and gear, burning a gouge in my hide.
This was it. I’d blown it. Miscalculated. Maybe Frank could pull it together, but I doubted it. We were pressed too hard.
I looked up to meet my fate. The bangers smiled at each other. One brought his gun up, but the other stepped in front of him, wanting the shot for himself.

That’s what Blue Jay’d been waiting for. A puff of dust on the dirty tee shirt and a meaty smack barely preceded the crack of the supersonic round. The .30-06 projectile punched through the very base of his throat, right at the suprasternal notch. It had plenty of energy to perforate the front man and go on to ram through the second banger, smashing his sternum and pulping his heart.

Glock jammed in holster, I leapt up far enough to grab the closest fallen rifle, luckily another AR. I landed on one of Sadie’s feet and she cussed me till a fly wouldn’t land on me. I think there was more going on than her just mad at a stepped on toe.
I gave her a silly grin, kissed her hard on the lips and let her up. She glared at me in a way that let me know just how much she loved me.
She went back to work on the targets below us. The vanguard of the gangbangers had made it to the chicane and were using it as cover, exchanging fire with my people on the other side. We on the hill had shots at them, but were being effectively suppressed by the machine gun, the people leap frogging up the smoke filled road, and the flankers up the hill.
It was the latter I concentrated on. I saw another pair advancing on another one of our positions, the occupants unable to do anything about it.
I popped one and before I could take his partner, the .30-06 on the knoll spoke again and he toppled.
Realizing the pressure was off, the two fighters in the hole stuck their heads up and looked for targets. They engaged some bangers directly below them on the road.
I noticed the track of the machine gun’s bullets making its way towards them. My thumb found the selector and pushed it one more click, to its stop. I hosed the rest of the magazine at the 240’s position, riding the recoil, left hand clumsily with its wrap, fighting to keep the stuttering muzzle on target. Suddenly I fell forward as the mag ran empty and I didn’t have the recoil to ride anymore.
“DOWN!” I let my fall continue and tugged on Sadie’s arm to get her to move. She did, and then the 240 let me know how displeased it was with me. It kept chewing at the edges of our hole. We were getting covered in dirt and we hunched over our rifles, sparing them the worst of it.
I took the opportunity to reload my new rifle. Having a moment I picked up mine from the floor of the hole. A round had entered the front of the magazine well, through the mag, and then out again, between the mag release and the dust cover.
Poor girl was out of service. Good news was the upper looked untouched.

The erosion and excavation of our fighting position ended abruptly. The 240 was silent. Changing the barrel? A stoppage?
Sadie looked at me. She noticed it first. Yet another change in the tone of the battle. Heavy fire from further up the road, from around the corner.
We snuck a peak. The bangers had noticed it too and were not firing as much and were looking over their shoulders, up the hill.

We had shots, so we took them. Starting on the road below us. My shoulders were up around my ears, as I waited for the medium machine gun to start up again, but the pause went longer and longer.
Being on the right, I serviced targets downhill towards the chicane. Some gangbangers had made it through the road block and were fighting at close range with the defenders who had fallen back.
There was shooting going on in the gut. It seemed pretty evenly matched. Before I could figure out how that part of the fight was going I heard yelling and the pounding of feet. Shooting got louder and closer. I started seeing bangers running head long downhill towards us. They were firing back up the hill.

While they were distracted, Sadie and I went to work. We were soon joined by the defenders in the other positions that were now free to run their guns, the threat of the machine gun no longer an issue.

We chewed up the people below us. Lavell had been told to hold at the corner so we didn’t have any friendly fire. With this smoke I was glad we’d made that arrangement. Anyone in front of us was fair game.

In less than a minute we’d cleared the area in front of us, as had all the other positions. No tires had made it into the gut, so visibility was pretty good. Now that I could spare the attention, I could pick out targets. They huddled behind rocks, safe from Lyle’s team, but exposed to us.
We started lighting them up. The few we didn’t hit, shifted position to get away from our deadly fire, forgetting momentarily about the original threat. The firing dropped off to a single shot here and there, and then tapered off to nothing.

We sat, waiting, to see if anyone else would show themselves. To see if anyone was alive to show themselves.
“Lima, this is Zebra, copy?”
“Copy Zebra.”
“What’s your 20?”
“As discussed.”
“Roger that. Everything taken care of on your end?”
“Affirmative. We took out the 240 gunner. Took the rest under fire. They ran from us. Assume you took care of them.”
“Correct. Seems clear. Need a party to mop up.”
“Want us to handle it?”
“Negative. Stay put. Don’t want blue on blue. Will handle. Standby”
“Roger that. Standing by.”

“You coming with?” Eyes in the upper corner of her face was my answer. I reached back down into the hole and gave her my hand, helping her out. We slid down the hill and started checking bodies. Our rifles were slung, we used our pistols to put a round in the head of each body. Save on ammo and our ear drums.
Sadie’d popped two bodies in a pile of three. The pile heaved and a banger jumped at her, wrapping his arms around her knees and driving her backwards until she fell. I watched as her forearm hit a rock, sending her pistol flying.
I didn’t have a shot. I ran in towards her to get one.
Falling on her slung rifle drove the wind out of her. The banger climbed all the way on top of her. He saw me coming and rolled over, her on top, blocking me.
He’d found her pistol and whipped off a couple shots in my direction. I back peddled furiously, trying to avoid the muzzle of the pistol.

Sadie was coming back around and she struggled against her captor. All her head butt to his nose earned was a grunt and a fist against the side of her head. I’d had enough and was ready to get shot.
Moving forward I saw her snake an arm down and get a hand on her knife. It snapped out of the sheath and she plunged it into his groin. Repeatedly.

He screamed bloody murder and then remembered his pistol. He brought it around to her side, stuck the muzzle against her and pulled the trigger. Her cloths puffed up from the muzzle blast.
Sadie screamed in anger and in pain and kept working the knife into the junction of his groin and his leg.
He was thrashing and kicking, trying to get away from the blade, but couldn’t give away his only cover.
I got both hands on the pistol one wrapped around the slide the other his hand, pinning them together. I pulled the gun away from Sadie’s side before he could shoot her again.
He let me.
He pulled the trigger and round punched me in high in the gut, just below the ribs, I exhaled to take the hit as best I could. He pulled the trigger again, but nothing happened. I’d held the slide to keep it from cycling. I twisted the pistol away from his palm, one hand ripping his thumb off the grip. I kept up the twisting, out board of his hand. The trigger guard caught his index finger. I continued twisting until the finger popped. He screamed again at the sudden pain of the broken bone.
The fight was leaking out of him and his motions lost their urgency and power. Sadie was able to struggle free of him and flop on the ground. Pin pricks of light dancing in my vision let me know what was coming next. I laid down next to her, found one of her hands, and managed to intertwine our fingers before the blackness took me.