The man who’d grabbed Trev at first immediately jumped in. “Smith threw the first punch.”
The sergeant waited a few seconds, his temper not improving by the looks of it. “That’s exactly what happened from start to finish, eh?” Vernon’s man started to answer and he cut him off with a curt gesture and turned to Matt. “Let’s hear it.”
Matt took a deep breath. “Trev threw the first punch,” he agreed, “to defend himself. Vernon’s guy blocked our path, insulted Trev, grabbed his arm when he tried to walk past, then pulled his fist back to sucker punch him. The guy started the trouble from start to finish, and short of letting himself get hit there wasn’t much Trev could do.”
“At which point you decided all bets were off and you might as well make it a real brawl?” Davis demanded. He turned to Trev. “Is that how it went?”
“Why’re you only asking them?” the guy who’d attacked Matt asked angrily. He was still wiping at his bloody nose. “Just interested in their side of things?”
The sergeant turned his attention back to Vernon’s men. “What are you doing in camp?”
The men abruptly looked a bit shifty. “Getting some dinner,” their leader answered.
“You’ve got your own food back at the canyon you’re supposed to be guarding,” Davis shot back. None of them replied, and his tone hardened. “You know, back when I first got promoted sergeant, the lieutenant I was serving under gave me some good advice. He told me that if I wanted to find out who was in the wrong, one of the first questions I should ask is “Who isn’t where they’re supposed to be?”
Their leader scowled. “So we get the blame because we got hungry?”
“No, you get the blame because you’re in the middle of a camp and dozens of people saw what happened.” Davis motioned towards the crowd in front of the mess tent. “I could get the story from them, but I’d say I’m a decent judge of character and I already have a pretty good idea of what happened here.”
The sergeant turned to the Marines watching the three men. “Sit them down somewhere and keep an eye on them.” He turned to Matt and Trev. “You two, head back to your camp. And do a better job about avoiding trouble next time.”
That wasn’t exactly fair, but Matt wasn’t in the mood to argue. Unfortunately Trev was. “What about them?”
“That’s between me and Vernon,” Davis barked. “You worry about your own duties. Speaking of which, I’ll need to talk to you later about how things will change with training starting tomorrow. Larson may’ve already told you, but I’d like to mash over some specifics.”
Trev nodded, and together he and Matt started for their camp. “You okay?” his friend whispered when they were out of earshot of the Marines.
Matt nodded and rubbed at the side of his head. “A bit dazed. Guy got me with a good shot right there at the end.”
“Sorry to drag you into that.” Trev glanced over his shoulder and shook his head. “If it makes you feel better, at least tomorrow you and your squad will be that much farther from Vernon and his thugs.”
“So much better.” Matt clapped his friend on the shoulder and quickened his pace. “Speaking of which, we’ve got plenty of things to do before now and then.”
Trev hustled to catch up. “Yeah, I should probably start drawing up a list of volunteers who are competent enough to help with the training once you guys leave.”
The Aspen Hill mountain refuge had a different energy than the town, although in many cases the circumstances weren’t all that different.
People were still tightly packed together, in whatever crude shelters the town could build for them or they could raise for themselves. Part of that was to escape the elements, but a bigger part was to share warmth in the cooler air of the higher elevations, where the temperature dropped sharply at night.
The biggest difference, though, was how people tended to gather to do chores in a more camping atmosphere. For some things communal chores had been common in the town, like defense, but here people cooked, washed clothes and dishes, gathered firewood, and built shelters in large groups rather than going out on their own.
Although the group from Lewis’s shelter had built their camp in with the rest of the refuge, if at the outskirts, in many ways it felt like a smaller camp within a camp. Some of that was the animals, the rabbits and chickens and sheep, which were among the few livestock in camp. They stood out in their cages and in the small fenced-in area where the small herd grazed, in the middle of the group’s smaller camp.
More of it was the fact that, aside from the town itself and a few of the better off families, the group was one of the only ones with a stockpile of supplies worth protecting. Near the animals the tarp-covered carts and wagons rested beside a pile of more food and other valuables, sitting on a tarp and covered by another.
There was always at least one person from the group on duty, watching over the animals and belongings. In spite of the sense of community the town had developed during the attack by Turner and his raiders, it would be stupid not to take that precaution.
Lewis only hoped there wouldn’t be a problem while four of the group’s best shooters were gone for the night. Catherine Tillman, Aspen Hill’s Mayor, had promised to look out for everyone during that time, but he still worried.
Over the last few days he, his wife Jane, and everyone they’d convinced to at least consider the possibility of attacking the blockheads occupying the town of Aspen Hill below, had spent hours debating the best way to go about it. The ideas had varied from roaring in on their truck and repeating Lewis’s earlier maneuver in the canyon with the M2 Browning, to copying Turner’s tactic of hitting the town with missiles from an extreme range, to luring the enemy into an ambush, and everything in between.
Even the most farfetched and risky of the ideas had their merits, if for no other reason than because they helped better cement in people’s minds just what the enemy could be capable of, and what precautions they’d need to take. But ultimately Lewis’s first suggested target, the one even those unwilling to fully commit to joining the attack themselves agreed on, was a lot closer to home.
Or more specifically, home itself.
Like he’d feared from the beginning, the enemy had eventually discovered the buried shelter. Once they did they must’ve immediately seen its benefits as a secure staging post, which they could use to coordinate scouting the town along the north and west sides.
To accomplish that task they’d moved several squads into the buried shed, the shipping container, and the two roughly built houses. Those squads had access to eight vehicles, at least two of which were always out on patrol while the others were parked between the two hills ready to roll out at a moment’s notice.
Unsurprisingly, even though the shelter-turned-outpost was within the enemy’s patrol boundaries it was still heavily guarded, which would make it a challenge. But at the same time Lewis, Jane, and several of the others considering the attack knew that area like the backs of their hands, and had plenty of experience moving unseen through the terrain.
It also helped that the shelter had the secret escape tunnel. Lewis seriously doubted the blockheads knew about it, and it provided an exploitable route past the perimeter. With a bit of guile and a lot of daring, it might let them pull off an attack that would be as good for them as it was bad for the enemy.
He and his wife had carefully observed the routine of the scout patrols and lookouts at the shelter for the last two days, ever since the blockheads set up their outpost. They were confident they had the timing about as good as possible, and luckily the Gold Bloc soldiers seemed to have a reliable way of keeping time and held to a disciplined schedule, which helped.