The women in the lead transport began to notice a dim glow illuminating the street ahead of them.
“What’s that light?” someone in the lead vehicle said as they rounded a corner.
“What light?” Forrest answered, reaching to lift his night vision device so he could see what they were talking about.
A Molotov cocktail exploded on the roof of the snowcat. Another exploded on the hood of the vehicle behind them, momentarily engulfing both cats in bright orange balls of flame.
Laddie started barking furiously, and the women and children screamed in horror as both Forrest and Ulrich applied full throttle in an attempt to get clear of what was obviously an ambush.
Ulrich shouted for everyone aboard his cat to get down, even as Sullivan, Emory, and Marty were shooting out the windows and pouring fire into the three-story apartment building on the left side of the street.
“How are they seeing us?” Marty shouted, spotting a man step from a doorway and taking careful aim at the lead snowcat before pulling the trigger on a hunting rifle.
Sullivan flipped up his NVD and looked around, now seeing that every building along the both sides of the street had been painted with a fluorescent green paint, which even late into the night was casting a dim glow over the entire street.
“Wayne, back up!” he shouted, realizing that to continue down the street would spell certain death. “The street’s illuminated!”
“What?” Ulrich flipped up his own NVD, immediately seeing the paint. “Jesus Christ!”
He got on the radio and told Forrest what was going on, but it was too late. Grenades went off beneath the engines of both snowcats and knocked them out.
“Everybody out!” Ulrich shouted, seeing their worst nightmare unfolding before his eyes. Bullets struck him in the center of his back, impacting against his armor, but none of the women or children were hit as they jumped from the vehicle. “Sullivan, they’re targeting the men!”
The fire was coming from the left side of the street, so they were momentarily shielded in the lee of the snowcat. Ulrich could hear Laddie barking down the street as he took a quick head count and saw that he was missing two civilians. Ducking quickly back aboard, he found that both Liddy and Natalie had bitten into their cyanide capsules.
“Goddamnit!” he muttered, scrambling back to the sidewalk.
“We gotta get under better cover,” Sullivan said, scanning the darkened street around the corner with the NVD. “Wayne, there’s a pharmacy around the block. It looks deserted.”
“Get the women and children to cover,” Ulrich ordered. “I’m going to try to link up with Jack’s group.”
“Sir!”
Sullivan, Emory, and Marty began to herd Erin, Taylor, Lynette, Tonya, Maria two, Jenny, Michelle, West, Price, and all of the children around the corner toward the pharmacy.
Ulrich didn’t make it more than a step down the street before taking a round in the gut just below his armor. He dove behind a stack of trash cans and began crawling down the sidewalk toward Forrest’s group, where Laddie was still barking wildly. They were all still trying to work their way back to the corner, moving from parked car to parked car, but then they came to a gap far too wide for them to cross.
“You’re cut off, Jack,” Ulrich told him over the radio.
“Any suggestions?”
“Take cover in one of the buildings on this side of the street and escape out the back. We’ll try to link up with you on the next street over.”
“Roger that,” Forrest said, signaling for Kane to break into one of the buildings. “Watch your ass, Stumpy. They’re only shooting at the men.”
“I know,” Ulrich said before getting painfully to his feet and scrambling back to the corner and down the block to the pharmacy where Sullivan and the others had taken cover.
“We won’t last here,” Sullivan said. “They’re already taking up positions across the street.”
“We need to get out the back and link up with Jack’s group on the next street over,” Ulrich said. “Otherwise we’re looking at a complete goat fuck here.”
The women and children were in the dark again, so the soldiers gave them a couple of red lights, telling them not to shine them unless they were moving and needed to see where they were going.
Ulrich and Sullivan went to the back door and opened it to a hail of bullets.
“Fuck!” Sullivan said, reeling away from the door. “Got my fuckin’ arm!”
“Well, I’m already gut shot,” Ulrich said.
“You’re shitting me!”
“Jack,” Ulrich said over the net. “We’re cut off. Stuck inside the pharmacy.”
“Don’t feel bad,” Forrest replied. “We’re stuck inside a goddamn porn shop. Never seen so many dildos in my goddamn life.”
Everyone on the net chuckled in spite of the tense situation.
“Listen, Stumpy,” Forrest said. “You have to get out of there on your own somehow. Work your way to the beach and declare Rotten Dog.”
“Why me?” Ulrich said. “You’re half a block closer and I’m missing a fucking foot.”
“The three of us are already shot up too bad down here,” Forrest said. “And Mike just isn’t the man for the job.”
“Listen, Jack, I’m gut shot. I’ll never make the beach. I’ll have to send Sullivan.”
Forrest was silent for a moment, asking finally, “How bad, Stumpy?”
“Bad enough. The Navy’s our only chance now, Jack. We’ll never fight our way to the beach with all these women and children.”
One of the women screamed from the front of the store.
“Gotta go, Jack.”
Ulrich and Sullivan moved to the front of the store to find West and Price kneeling behind the counter beside the bodies of Tonya and her son Steven.
“Everyone needs to move into the back now,” Sullivan said quickly, herding the others into the storeroom.
The baby was crying in Erin’s arms, and Taylor was hovering close by her, keeping her own two children close. Marty and Emory covered the front of the store from behind a makeshift barricade of overturned shelving.
“What the fuck happened, Sean?” Ulrich asked, painfully taking a knee beside West in the red glow of two flashlights.
“She used the cyanide,” West said quietly.
“Goddamnit,” Ulrich swore. “Liddy and Natalie did the same fucking thing. I’m taking it away from the others.”
“No,” West said, grabbing his arm. “It’s their right, Wayne. We all agreed.”
“But goddamnit!”
“What’s going on with Jack’s group?”
“We’re all cut off from the beach. And we’re cut off from each other. Sullivan’s going to make a run for the beach.”
“No, I’m not,” Sullivan said, standing in the doorway. “I just lost the use of my right hand.”
West examined his wounded arm to find that the bullet had shattered his ulna.
“I guess that leaves Marty,” Ulrich said. “Unless you want the job, Sean.”
“I can’t leave Taylor or the kids,” West said. “I promised them. Besides, Marty’s better with a weapon than I am.”
“We have to send Shannon with him,” Sullivan said. “Marty won’t make it alone. His instincts aren’t good enough. But he listens to Shannon.”
“All right, then,” Ulrich said. “You and Sean replace them up front and send them back here.”
“Just how bad are you, Wayne?” West asked, pissed that Ulrich hadn’t told him he’d been shot.