Authors: L. Douglas Hogan
“Inside,” she said.
All three of them tucked back into Denny’s trailer.
“We can’t stay in here,” Nathan said.
About that time, the machine gunner turned to Denny’s trailer and began shooting a torrent of ammunition through the soft walls.
“Get down,” Nathan called out.
The three of them low-crawled toward the back door. Rounds were entering the trailer and scattering in a patternless volley. As Nathan low-crawled, narrowly missing bullets, he happened to look toward Zig’s body and noticed it was being hit with multiple rounds. The sounds they were making upon impact and the sight of it would affect Nathan for the rest of his life. He hesitated and stared for just a moment before Denny pushed him.
Nathan, Denny, and Jess arrived at the back door, ran out of it, and took cover behind some trees in the backyard. Then they ran about a block, taking cover behind a fence, and Denny took a shot at the machine gunner and killed him. They ran around the block and noticed some Posse members shooting from the old firehouse. By then, another raider had jumped on the machine gun and took up shooting at the Posse, who were taking cover. Denny took another shot at the gunman and dropped him, too. He made a run for the tower, knowing the risk of the proverbial “fish in a barrel,” but his mind was fixated on locating his sister.
Nathan was standing at the base of the tower as Denny climbed the ladder. Nathan shot several aggressors as Denny climbed ever higher.
Denny was about halfway up the ladder when he spotted a bus in the distance. Men with rifles were dragging women onto the bus. There were several raiders involved in securing the bus’s perimeter. To approach it would be suicide.
Denny climbed down the ladder and met back up with Nathan. “There’s a bus over that way filled with women that are being taken by the raiders,” Denny explained.
They started walking in that direction when Nathan suddenly grabbed Denny’s arm and said, “Where’d Jess go?”
They both looked around quickly and didn’t see her.
“I’ve got to find Jess,” Nathan said.
Denny grabbed Nathan’s arm and said, “Boss, Jess can handle herself; my sister can’t. Now, I need you on this.”
Nathan, realizing Denny was right, nodded his head, and the two of them headed in the direction Denny had seen the bus. By the time they arrived where the bus was parked, it was no longer there.
Denny grabbed his head with both arms and started to lose it. He was pacing back and forth and started yelling for her again.
“Heather!” he yelled over and over.
In the distance, Nathan saw a convoy heading out of town.
“Look,” Nathan said. “Is that the bus?” he asked as he pointed to the convoy.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Denny replied as he took off in a sprint.
As he and Nathan ran towards the convoy, they saw the Weapons Company Marines headed in. They ran to meet them. Running up to the Marine convoy, Denny asked, “Can we catch a ride?”
“Hop in,” Buchanan said. “Are those our tangos?” he asked as the Marine convoy sped away after the Southside Raiders.
“Yes, but the bus is full of our women.”
“We’ll see if we can head them off before they get too far ahead of us,” Buchanan said.
“Can you hit the lead vehicles and maybe jam them up?” Nathan requested.
“So long as you don’t blame me for stray rounds,” Buchanan said.
Nathan looked at Denny, both of them knowing full well that not every round would find its intended target.
“Do it,” Denny said. “I think my sister’s on that bus, sir. Whatever we can do to bring it to a stop before it reaches Murphy would be appreciated.”
The Marines chased the convoy north on Route 3 to a back road just south of where Nathan and Denny thought they’d turn. The raiding party’s sudden turn closed the gap between the Marines and the raiders. The country road they took headed northeast and provided an opportunity for the TOW gunners to take a shot.
“Bravo One, Bravo One, rear TOW requesting permission to fire on lead truck. Over.”
“Rear TOW from Bravo One, take the shot. Over.”
The driver of the rear TOW HMMWV came to a stop and the gunner steadied his tracker as he located his target and placed the crosshairs center mass on the moving vehicle. Normally a vehicle traveling at high speed would have been more difficult to hit, but the angle which the road turned off from Route 3 provided ample targeting.
“Preparing to fire,” the gunner shouted.
“Back blast area is clear,” the assistant gunner shouted back.
“Firing,” the gunner said as he hit the switch on his TOW system, launching a TOW missile at the lead truck in the raiding party’s convoy. He slowly followed the lead truck, making sure not to jerk, blink, or flinch until the missile hit the deuce and half truck full of Southside Raiders. It seemed like an eternity, but the missile finally hit its intended target and sent bits and pieces, of both men and truck, flying in all directions.
“Yeah!” they all shouted.
“Nice shot,” the assistant gunner said, patting the gunner on the back.
Just then a volley of gunfire came in from the rear of the sitting HMMWV. Another party to the Southside Raiders had apparently been left behind and was trying to catch up to their convoy. The M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) that they were using was a sound and weapon the sitting Marines knew all too well. They jumped out of the HMMWV and took up positions in the roadside ditch and returned fire with their M4s. The gunner of the incoming jeep was shot and killed, but another took his place behind the mounted M249. He attempted to fire at the Marines, but the weapon had jammed and he wasn’t sure how to clear it.
The Marines stood up and took aim on the jeep driver and passengers, killing all of them.
“Fetch the SAW,” one of the Marines barked.
The driver of the HMMWV removed the SAW and seized all the belt ammo that came with it.
They situated it in their HMMWV and continued down the road in an attempt to catch up with their company.
The Southside Raiders had jammed on their brakes at the sight of the lead vehicle being blown to smithereens. The vehicles closest behind the deuce and half, went into a ditch. Others ran headlong into the wreckage and crashed. As for the bus, it tried to swerve around the explosion, but overturned and slid into a ditch.
Nathan and Denny ran up to the bus, along with the Marines, and shot every member of the raiding party that was trying to escape. Even the wounded found no refuge from the rage these two men were experiencing. For Nathan, he was killing the men that had killed his sister. For Denny, he was killing the men that had taken his sister and caused so many other problems in their little safe community.
Denny and Nathan ran up to the bus and shot the window out. The driver was pleading for his life, but Denny wouldn’t hear it. He killed the driver and turned his attention toward the passengers that were all lying on the windows side of the bus.
“Heather?” Denny shouted, but received no answer. He went all the way through the bus, asking everybody if they had seen Heather. Some were unconscious, and others told him they hadn’t seen her. One person, in particular, noticed Denny and said his name. He ran over to her and helped her up.
“Have you seen my sister, Heather?”
“She never boarded this bus, Denny.”
Denny didn’t know how to take the message. He just crumpled up and fell backwards onto his rear. He was leaning against a seat with his feet on the floor, his knees in the air, and his arms resting on them. His rifle was lying in his lap, crossways, his pistol in his hand.
Nathan didn’t have the words, and attempting to console him would be in vain. He let Denny deal with his grief in his own way.
Murphysboro
Cade was concealing himself in an old storefront. He was peering over a counter and looking through the window to the outside world. A company of UN troops had invaded the area where Cade had set up his group and range of control. All his firepower and men were gone and he was left with naught but his own pistol.
All the ambushes he had orchestrated against the United Nations’ platoon-sized units had caught the attention of General Abdul Muhaimin.
The UN soldiers were standing in formations and receiving orders to search and secure every one of the buildings in a two-mile radius. Cade Walker heard what he needed to hear before he headed out the back door of the store and ran directly to his apartment. He removed a false floor in his bedroom closet and secured all his guns and ammo in that location. He kept no weapons except a four-inch knife. He left the apartment and walked out into the greater Murphysboro area, vanishing into the urban environment.
Just outside, a residual number of Cade’s men were still actively resisting the UN invaders. Several men had taken up cover inside the storefronts and began shooting at the formation of UN soldiers.
Like Cade, Donald stayed back from the recent attack on Gorham. He was a skinny black-haired kid, ambitious like Cade, but not militarily trained. He wanted to be like Cade or at least noticed by him. He now found himself hunkered down behind an antique hotdog stand just outside of what used to be a reputable antique store, now just a broken building being used as cover from the fast-approaching units of UN soldiers.
Donald figured he was about to be discovered. He could not hold his current position if they were approaching his location. He stuck his gun hand out around the hotdog stand and started pulling the trigger; all the while, his head was tucked and his eyes were closed. He was wildly firing bullets in the vicinity of the soldiers, none of them hitting a target.
The last thing Donald heard was the thumping sound of something landing at his feet. The last thing he saw was a Russian F1 frag grenade.
Gorham
Jess was walking around the community with all that was left of the Southern Illinois Home Guard. She had found Ash, Morgan, Jack, Adam, Andy, and Blake. Of those fallen from the Posse, she found the bodies of Max, Jordan, Gil, Steve, Warren, Freddy, Byron, and Ian. Zig’s wife, Karen, had also passed in the attack.
She was joined by Rory, who showed no sign of weakness or lack of courage during the invasion. His wife and daughters remained safe in the bus and everybody had respect for Rory’s commitment to the group. He was now combing the community, looking for any survivors.
Ash found Thor lying alongside his fallen sibling, Odin. Thor was fine, other than apparent mourning for Odin, who had been stabbed defending Zig.
Jess walked by Denny’s trailer and was amazed they had escaped it alive, let alone not being shot at all. It didn’t even look like it used to be a home, only a giant piece of scrap metal with insulation protruding from virtually every inch of surface space.
“Keep searching, guys,” Jess said. “Denny and Nathan have to be around here somewhere.”
Jess had become separated from Denny and Nathan in the chaos of the invasion. She feared the worst, since she could not find them and knew for certain that they would not have been taken alive. None of them were situated where they could have seen the Marines coming through. For them, it was an open-ended story, so they continued their search, and eventually, Jess found what was left of Heather’s body. She was with three children in a random house, tucked in a pantry closet. They had most likely died of smoke inhalation and then burned in the proceeding fire.
Springfield, Illinois
Word came to General Abdul Muhaimin that US President Adalyn Baker had committed suicide in the Oval Office, in the wake of the news that her husband and children were dead. For General Muhaimin, it was the word he had been expectantly waiting for. His plan was like a game of chess on a global scale, with the United States being in checkmate to the most powerful piece remaining on the board: General Abdul Muhaimin, Executive of the United States and commander of the global armies.
There were no quarrels about it, and nobody challenged his authority. He was the commander of the United Nations army and a high-ranking member of the Federal Emergency Management Act. Per standing executive order, FEMA answered only to the President of the United States. With Congress missing, no Vice Executive, no House Speaker, and no Secretary of State, there was no other person to take charge, except the highest ranking military commander. Since he was evenly ranked amongst the regional czars, his military status put him head and shoulders above the rest. He was undoubtedly the most likely candidate, and the United Nations had no choice but to recognize his position of power and authority as a standing commander, having the resources of the United States at his disposal.
Little did the world know the true status of the United States. It was broken and leaderless. Executive Order 11000 and 11490 had brought all American citizens under the control of, and were made to work under the direct supervision of, the federal government. The United States had no law enforcement and no working class outside of that which was strictly controlled and supervised. Most of that did not matter for the purposes of Agenda 21, but the world did not need to know any of that.
General Muhaimin sent his military reports back to the Council of the United Nations on a daily basis, taking careful precautions to make sure they were of proper positive report. According to all the information the UN was receiving, the US was clearing rurally developed areas of invasive species, which was a politically correct term for “humans”; Americans were cooperating with the changes; resistance was minimal; and the US military was cooperating and working in unison with the general.
In reality, rural America was proving hard to eradicate, Americans were resisting at every corner of property, and the US military was splintered and leaderless. General Muhaimin had successfully manipulated his way into the dominant power on the face of the earth, and he loved the news of the president’s timely demise.
The general had personal matters in Illinois that he wanted to oversee before he went back to the White House to redecorate. In the meantime, he picked up the phone and dialed the District.