“We’ll go for Plan Two. Jommy, go turn off the fence and don’t turn it on until you hear me or Mom shout. Everybody else get down behind the bunkers and don’t fire till I tell you.” To Jeff he explained, “I’ll pick off one or two with the starlight scope, and then we’ll just let them waste ammunition for a while.” He peered through the scope, aiming the rifle in a slow arc from east to west and back again. “If they come at all. They might just take the Uzi and go.”
“Don’t even think that,” Marsha said. She sat relaxed against the sandbags, her skin still glistening from sex.
“It would be a good prize.”
“They’ll try,” she said confidently. “There’s plenty of them.”
“Sounded like,” Tad said. “Damn, I wish Larry hadn’t opened up on them.”
“Plan One always works,” Marsha said. “The road sentry lets ‘em go by and warns us. Then he follows ‘em up and hides in a bunker over to the west there, at the tree line. When the shooting starts we’ve got ‘em in a crossfire.”
“Most of ‘em get it from the Uzi,” Tad said. “Damn that Larry.”
There was a sound like a rock hitting the ground, not far away, and then a bright flash and simultaneous blast. Bright particles spewed all around them. Tad had ducked behind the sandbags; now he popped back up and squeezed off five or six rounds, muffled taps behind a silencer.
“Got one.” He crouched down again, and they waited. No return fire; no sound at all.
“Healer,” Tad said, “give them a couple of bursts. See if we can get them started.” Jeff cautiously peeked around the sandbags. He heard a faint command, and suddenly thirty or forty people rose up out of the weeds and began moving toward them, silently and quickly. He fired two quick blasts in their general direction and rolled back. “Here they come,” he said. Still no return fire.
“They’ve got ladders,” Marsha said, peering over the top. “This is gonna be target practice.”
“Hold your fire until they have the ladders in place,” Tad said.
The Uzi howled at them in a long burst, raking all of the bunkers in front of the house. The sandbags above Jeff and Marsha tore open, spraying dirt. Tad said “Aw, shit,” rather calmly, and fell down, holding his face.
Jeff dashed over to him and saw that a flechette had ripped open the man’s cheek. A ragged flap of torn flesh dangled over his beard, exposing back teeth shiny with blood in the moonlight.
“Here.” Jeff held the flap in place and guided Tad’s left hand up to it. “Hold it tight until this is over. Then I’ll stitch it up.” He wasn’t really sure he could.
“Okay,” Tad said through clenched teeth. “Switch weapons. Can’t shoot the rifle one-handed.”
Jeff handed him the scattergun and hefted the unfamiliar rifle. “That’s got eight, maybe ten bursts left. Any more ammo for this thing?”
“In the stock. Tell Marsha to get the fence on.” Marsha heard, and yelled to Jommy. Jeff sighted through the scope, looking for the one with the Uzi, and saw the first casualty of the fence: a girl who was evidently holding on to it when Jommy threw the switch. She stood up rigidly, back arching, sparks, curiously, shooting from her elbows, and then she fell limp.
Through the starlight scope the world was mono-chromatic and bright. It had some sort of radar gadget, the cross hairs automatically moving downward for more distant targets. A number in the corner told him he had twenty-three shots left. With a sense of detachment, he lay the cross hairs on the first figure he saw, and pulled the trigger. The target spun around but stayed upright, staggering. The rifle had no recoil at all. He turned the eyepiece to increase the magnification, aimed carefully for the center of the chest, and fired again. This time the figure pitched forward and was still.
Jeff started walking dreamily back to Marsha’s bunker, then came to his senses and ran crouching. She admonished him to be careful and for Charlie’s sake find the bastard with the Uzi.
He heard the Uzi then and pointed toward the sound. The man, or boy, who had it was standing in the road, firing at the lock on the gate. Jeff shot him three times. He staggered forward and fell on the gate; there was a bright blue flash and it swung open.
“The gate!” Marsha shouted. “Kill the bastards!” With a steady rattle of gunfire mounting around him, Jeff again fell into an oddly calm state. Marianne had complained about that once, when they were trying to make it to the Cape and stumbled into an ambush, that nothing seemed to get to him; he had said no, not while it was happening. He kept the cross hairs fixed on the Uzi, lying in the dust, only firing when somebody stopped to pick it up, ignoring all the other targets as they streamed by. After six or seven he missed. A girl dove for the weapon, rolled, and began firing from a prone position. Jeff shifted his point of aim and then something smashed into the side of his head and he was falling, bright sparks flying around. He felt himself hit the ground and lay there for a few seconds, watching the sparks die.
He woke up to the sound of children laughing. The sky was pale blue, just about dawn. He tried to sit up and black spots danced in the sky. He choked back vomit and lay still for a minute, and then rolled over so he could see.
The children were playing in the garden. The cyclopean girl with the pretty golden curls was dressed in a party frock, holding a bloody hatchet. Giggling, she stood over the writhing body of a girl she had just decapitated. Other children were engaged in similar tasks.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on his monumental headache. How bad a concussion, he wondered. Carefully probing, he found a large bandage on the side of his head. It bent his ear over rather painfully.
“Are you all right?” Marsha’s voice.
He got up on one elbow and looked at her through the cloud of black spots. He couldn’t think of anything clever to say. “You got dressed.”
“It’s been over a long time. You only missed a few minutes, really. The kids are cleaning up now.”
He closed his eyes again. “Saves ammunition, I guess.”
“Yeah, and it gets them used to it. Can I do something?”
“Oh…bring down my saddlebags, I guess. Many wounded?”
“Just a few. All we lost was Larry and Deborah. Here.” He heard her set the bags down next to him. “I’ve been usin’ your stuff, just the bandages. Is that okay?”
“Sure.” But he’d have to take off the bandages and make things sterile, and then redress them. There might not be enough.
He sorted slowly through the bag and, on a hunch, gave himself a shot of amphetamine. It made the pain worse, but the spots went away and he could sit up. He fingered the morphine ampoules longingly but decided to settle for aspirin. “Bring me some water. And have all the wounded come over, most serious ones first. Get some water boiling.”
He looked at himself in a hand mirror. The left side of his beard was solid with caked blood. He gingerly removed the bandage, glad she had used the plastic kind that didn’t stick, and saw how lucky he’d been. The wound was long but not deep; he had been grazed by a bullet or flechette. It would have to be stitched up but the skull obviously wasn’t fractured.
Two of the grownups brought Jommy over and laid him down. He was pale as death and crying quietly. His right hand was a bundle of bright red bandage. Jeff unwrapped it carefully.
“Please don’t, Healer. Just let ‘em kill me. Don’t chop it off.” The thumb was blown off completely and the fingers were shattered, bone splinters sticking out of the gore. Without speaking he gave him a shot of general anesthetic. When the boy’s eyes closed he said to. the grownups, “Someone build a fire. Bring me a hacksaw.”