“I want to join up with you,” she said.
Trev wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He’d seen the trouble Pete had caused Matt before running off, and although he liked Deb he wasn’t certain of her mental state. Not to mention that when it came to firing Rick’s pistol she’d been enthusiastic rather than competent, and that was putting it as nicely as he could.
“That’s a possibility, once you’ve received some training with the others who volunteer,” he hedged. “Davis will want to make sure you’re ready before you go out and fight.”
The brown-haired woman met his eyes stubbornly. “I was talking to Alice, and she said just about everyone in your squad started out as inexperienced as me. They all learned as they went, and I can too.”
Trev shook his head, fighting irritation at his squad mate. What kind of stories was she telling? “That’s not exactly how it works. We spent a long time training together before we were ready to go out and fight, and now we are going out and fighting. Things will probably end badly for you if I let you just jump in unprepared.”
Deb didn’t look happy about it, but she nodded reluctantly. “I guess I’ll train, then. As long as you promise me that once I’m ready there’s a place for me in your squad.”
That wasn’t a promise he wanted to make, but he felt he should at least offer something. “If I decide you are. And if Davis doesn’t have some other duty for you and the rest of the new volunteers.”
The brown-haired woman’s lips pulled up hesitantly, the first smile he’d seen from her since discovering her in the barn. Even seen with night vision it made her look decades younger. Or, he supposed, closer to her actual age after everything she’d been through.
“Thanks.” Deb hesitated. “And thank you again for saving us. You have no idea what you took us away from.” She leaned in to give him a quick hug, careful not to jostle the stretcher. Then, after a slightly awkward pause, she turned and headed back down the trail to rejoin Alice, who was with a few of their less muscular squad mates carrying equipment.
Chapter Sixteen
Ups and Downs
Trev wasn’t sure if it was because of their raid on the depot, but over the next two weeks the blockheads started stepping up their attacks.
They never committed to anything major, but instead tried for the same types of harassment techniques Lewis had used up near Aspen Hill, sending out probes of one or two squads. The probes were careful, obviously intended to draw out Davis’s fighters into a more vulnerable position without exposing the blockheads to too much risk. Unfortunately those lures also came with consequences for not taking the bait, so they couldn’t just be ignored.
Specifically, the enemy was finally putting their tanks to work. The probes would mark the positions of emplacements up on the mountain. Then, if they couldn’t draw the fighters out of those emplacements for an ambush, the tanks would roll in and shell them. Depending on the situation, the probes would then be there to attack the fighters scrambling to escape the shelling.
That was pretty bad, but after the first couple times the solution was obvious; abandon the emplacements, scatter across the slopes in individual foxholes, and hunker down when the shelling started, popping up between shots to fire at the blockhead squads.
It got a bit more hairy when the blockheads began using that same strategy, except with snipers instead of tanks. Or even worse switching up between the two. The more scattered foxholes were vulnerable to getting picked off by sniper teams, and any time the fighters grouped up or sent in reinforcements the tanks rolled in. The blockheads also started using rocket-propelled grenades more often, with a similar result to the tank shelling but with much less warning.
All that started to take its toll, especially since the enemy was relentless in their attacks. All along every front, completely surrounding the territory held by the military, the enemy gave them no breathing room, no chance to rest and recover. Gunfire and the sound of explosions became a common backdrop to Trev’s routine; just from Davis’s stretch of territory, between Highway 31 and Aspen Hill, casualty reports of wounded and dead were called in practically every day.
Few attacks came along the highway itself, but the southern slope received its fair share. Luckily they weren’t one of the first to be shelled, and Lewis was able to change their strategy before the tanks rolled in. In doing so he prevented any deaths from shelling, although they still lost their emplacements. And over time a few of their people fell to sniper attacks.
But in spite of frequent pressure by the blockheads, the Aspen Hill volunteers were one of the few groups that still managed to send attacks of their own into the valley. Led by Lewis, and nothing anywhere near as ambitious as blowing up the armory or rescuing the depot’s prisoners, the attacks mostly involved carefully moving fighters into position to snipe enemy emplacements, then coming home.
They did stage one major attack, aided by Davis. Word reached them from Lassiter’s forces along I-70 that a lone truck carrying prisoners was headed their way. With the sergeant’s help they were able to ambush the truck, kill the soldiers riding in the cab, and free twenty-two US citizens.
While the ambushing party retreated to the safety of the foothills due west, towards a team of Aspen Hill volunteers waiting to cover them there, Trev and Jane drove the truck full of prisoners as close to those foothills as they could along side roads. Then they unloaded the shaken and disheveled men and women and led them to freedom.
The rest of the rescuers, coming behind on foot, stopped at the truck just long enough to strip it of anything useful, then permanently disabled the vehicle. There was no road available nearby to bring it up into the mountains, and even if there had been the blockheads would’ve been guarding it too closely to attempt breaking through. Not to mention the risk of driving any distance through enemy territory to reach that road.
Even without capturing the truck the rescue was still a massive success, and there wasn’t a person involved who didn’t feel pride at saving the prisoners from the fate that awaited them.
Bringing those people to safety, their ordeal finally over, would’ve been Trev’s high point for the two weeks. It still probably was, although a close second came when Harmon radioed everyone with good news on the afternoon of the last day of July, the eighth day since the attack on the depot.
“I normally prefer to keep the airwaves clear,” the sergeant admitted. “But this is worth an exception. Word has reached us that Canada is in open revolt against their Gold Bloc occupiers.”
For a moment Trev, on patrol along the southern slope, just stared ahead in shock, taking in the news. Then he whooped. The rest of his team quickly followed, and he heard more cheers from the direction of their camp.
Lewis’s voice cut into the silence on the airwaves following that bombshell. “How did it happen?”
“I was getting to that.” Harmon sounded cheerful rather than annoyed. “It started when the Canadians began looking into large numbers of American prisoners being brought across their borders, to the Gold Bloc civilian camps. The blockheads were supposed to be moving people out of those camps, not into them, since that’s where their settlers wait to be relocated to conquered territories.
“It didn’t take long for the Canadians to discover that the prisoners were being used as slave labor. That plus horrific details about how they were being mistreated, including overwork, beatings, starvation, and rape and forced prostitution, were enough to make the Canadians cut off all supplies and military support to the Gold Bloc.”