A soldier loomed in front of her, frantically struggling to eject a spent magazine from his M-16.
Sherry cut him in half with the M.A.C. 10 and reached a group of seven defenders involved with pushing ladders from the wall and shooting at the mass of troopers below the wall. “Get down!” she yelled at them. “Use the rope and get to the ground! Hurry!”
One of them, a tall man, eyed her quizically for a second, then ran toward the nearest rope. The others followed on his heels.
Sherry took their post at the wall, risked a hasty look-see over the parapet, and drew back.
The soldiers were packed all along the base of the east wall, five or six deep in some spots. Dozens of ladders were inclined against the wall.
Crockett wasn’t kidding.
They wouldn’t be able to hold the wall.
Sherry fired a few rounds at the troopers below, hoping to stall their ascent. She ran further north, telling everyone she met to climb down the ropes. The defenders had temporarily repulsed the soldiers; all of the enemy who had attained the rampart were dead.
But the ones below were eager to take their place.
Crockett approached her, skirting fallen figures as he neared. “Everyone is on their way down!” he told her. “Samson and I will hold them up here.
Get below with the rest!”
“My place is with you!” Sherry retorted.
“That’s an order!”
Sherry reluctantly turned toward the closest rope, attached by its sturdy grappling hook to the lip of the rampart. She didn’t relish deserting her fellow Warriors.
Crockett joined her at the rope. “Get everyone into the trees! Then take them to the cabins! That’s where our second line of defense will be!”
“Will do!” Sherry swung the M.A.C. 10 over her right arm by its small shoulder strap, then grabbed the rope and swung her body over the edge of the wall. She wrapped her legs around the stout rope and began descending hand over hand to the water below.
The sounds of gunfire from the outer side of the wall momentarily abated.
Sherry’s feet touched the surface of the slowly flowing moat. She was thankful she was a hardy swimmer, because the moat was 8 feet deep and 20 feet wide.
“Hurry!” Crockett shouted from up above.
She glanced upward and saw him grinning at her. She smiled and waved.
Crockett’s forehead abruptly disintegrated as a slug tore through his head from back to front. He stiffened, dropped his Beretta, and fell from the rampart.
Sherry opened her mouth to scream. For an instant, she thought he was going to land on her.
Crockett’s buckskin-clad form crashed into the moat two feet to her left, showering her with water and causing her to bounce and sway.
Sherry released the rope and eased into the moat. She sank up to her neck, then began furiously swimming toward the far bank. There was no need to check on Crockett; his brains no longer occupied his body.
Someone was splashing about, agitating the water a few feet to her left.
Sherry paused in midstroke and surveyed the moat.
Over a dozen other defenders, members of the Family and the Clan, were in the process of traversing the moat. Some of them were poor swimmers, as evidenced by their pathetic efforts to stay afloat. One black-haired woman was simply doing the dog paddle in the middle of the stream.
“Hurry!” Sherry called to them, and struck out for the wooded shoreline.
The surface of the moat, not six inches from her face, suddenly was riddled by a series of miniature geysers.
Sherry looked over her left shoulder, up at the wall.
Seven troopers had scaled the outer wall and were rapidly firing at the helpless defenders navigating the moat.
No!
She could feel an intense pain in her left shoulder, but she suppressed the torment and pressed on, her supple form cleaving the water in smooth, even strokes.
Somewhere, a man was screeching in terror.
A woman chimed in, her plaintive cry terminating in a loud, protracted gurgling noise.
The bank loomed ahead. The top of the inner bank was three inches above the surface of the moat. Tiny wavelets, created by the commotion in the stream, washed over the top of the bank.
She was almost there!
Someone else was screaming in anguish as the soldiers on the wall maintained their withering fusillade.
Sherry’s fingers touched the hard ground forming the inner bank, and she clutched at the weeds and grass lining the bank with all of her strength.
A section of earth near her right hand exploded in a fine spray of dirt and grass as a trooper on the wall tried to gun her down.
Move! she told herself.
Sherry scrambled from the moat, keeping low, crawling forward on her hands and knees, expecting at any second to feel the brutal impact of a bullet in her back. Incredibly, she reached a tangle of brush and trees and dodged behind a wide trunk.
Several slugs smacked into the tree.
She paused, gathering her breath, and gazed around the trunk at the east wall and the moat.
Bodies of men and women were bobbing in the moat, while others wildly tried to reach the bank. On the wall above, 15 to 20 soldiers were pouring lead at the swimmers. Bodies were heaped on the rampart, troopers and defenders alike. Resistance on the rampart itself had ceased.
With one notable exception.
Fascinated, astounded, and emotionally moved to her core, Sherry saw one defender still up on the wall, a stirring, solitary figure fighting with the force of ten.
Samson.
He was still striving to hold the breach. Soldiers were surging over the parapet to his right and left, but not one of them was getting through the breach. His Bushmaster Auto Rifle apparently empty, he was using it as a club, swinging it by the barrel, the stock smashing into any trooper foolhardy enough to come within range of his muscular arms.
Even as Sherry watched, Samson clipped a soldier in the jaw and sent him plunging from the ladder. He dropped the Auto Rifle and drew his Bushmaster Auto Pistols, one in each hand, and spun, firing a blast into the soldiers approaching from the north. In a twinkling, he whirled and blasted a group of troopers closing on him from the south.
Sherry pressed the knuckles of her right hand against her mouth, inwardly praying he would prevail over his foes, but knowing the odds were too steep.
Samson turned, shooting at soldiers to his north again, and at that moment, when his attention was distracted from the breach, a pair of troopers stormed over the lip of the wall, squeezing under the barbed wire, and pounced, not bothering to use their M-16’s. They leaped onto Samson, one on each arm, and tried to wrestle him to the rampart. They were like chipmunks attempting to subdue a mighty grizzly. With a shrug of his broad shoulders, Samson threw the soldiers from him. He shot one of them in the face; the other he kicked in the chest, knocking him into the moat.
Sherry became conscious of other defenders crouching near her, their attention likewise riveted on the tableau on the east wall.
Samson downed four more troopers, and then the inevitable happened.
He was hit.
A soldier rose up over the top of the wall, his M-16 pressed to his right shoulder, and fired at point-blank range.
Samson was struck in the chest. The force of the bullets striking his body caused him to stumble backward. His arms waving in an effort to retain his balance, he hovered on the brink of the wall for a second, and then fell from the rampart into the moat.
He didn’t come up.
Sherry, dumbstruck, backed away from the vicinity of the moat. Dear Spirit, no! Not Samson!
“What should we do?” whispered someone to her immediate right.
Sherry rapidly blinked her eyes, trying to focus, to collect her wits.
There was 10 to 15 defenders in the woods around her, all of them eagerly awaiting her instructions.