Half Past Midnight (40 page)

“Thanks. It’s yours. But I need another favor from you first.”

I winced as I saw how much blood bubbled out of his mouth and chest. “Whatever you want, Brad.”

“I love that knife, Lee. I was an accountant before D-day. I ever tell you that?” I nodded, wondering if his thoughts were beginning to wander.

“All I ever did my whole life was punch keys on a computer. Try to make the right numbers show up for the right people. Not something to give a man much of a feeling of accomplishment.”

He coughed, then spasmed as the arrow tore more tissue deep within. “God, that hurts,” he gasped. “I gotta finish this. Wasn’t until you showed me how to work the forge that I ever actually
made
anything. Later still before I made anything I actually took pride in. You taught me that, Lee. Pride.” He nodded toward the knife I held. “That knife’s the best I’m ever going to get to make, so I want you to keep it. Think of me every now and then when you use it.”

I cleared my throat. “Sure, Brad. I’d be honored.” He peered at me strangely.

“What?”

The old man shook his head and laid it back against the tree again.

“What?” I asked again.

More blood bubbled from his lips as he gasped in pain. When the spasm passed, I could barely hear him. “It’s a lot to ask. More than anyone has a right to ask of another person, so I’ll understand if you can’t do it.” He paused. “I don’t want to die this way, bleedin’ inside, chokin’ on my own blood.”

Helpless, I cried in earnest now. “I’m sorry, Brad. I wish I could stop it. I wish I could.”

“You can.” His eyes were staring into me again. “This hurts like hell, Lee. I want to die clean. Help me. Please?”

I was shocked. I knew what he was asking, but it took his hand on mine to make me accept that I’d understood correctly. I stared down at the knife still clenched in my fist. Brad pulled my unresisting hand to his throat and placed the needle sharp point of the blade beneath his chin. Then he let go. “Please.”

I stared unbelievingly, but he turned away and closed his eyes. He began to talk. “I remember about thirty years ago, when Brenda and I went to the Grand Canyon. We drove from Houston through New Mexico, and on to Arizona. We must have stopped at every Indian reservation we came to. Brenda loved Indian jewelry.

“I remember we got caught in a sandstorm in the Painted Desert one day, and I was scared that we’d get lost and drive off the road, so we stopped right where we were and watched the sand blow across the windshield. It would change colors as it went, and Brenda joked about how it looked like Walt Disney had thrown up on our car.

“She died a few months before D-day, sort of a blessing in disguise, because she really wasn’t a strong woman. I don’t think she would have lasted long after it all fell apart.

“I miss that woman.” He sighed, and a tear rolled down his cheek. “I miss you so much, Brenda.”

Sobbing uncontrollably, I shoved upward with all my might, hoping I was swift enough that he didn’t feel anything.

Hoping he was reunited with Brenda.

***

I met Ken and several others on my way back to camp. René had finally realized that Brad was gone and had sent for me. When I turned up missing too, she told Ken. They had put two and two together and gathered another squad to come find us. I was drained by then, both emotionally and physically, and offered no resistance when they took Brad’s body from me.

“Lee? What happened, Lee?”

I turned to Ken, barely aware of what was going on at that point. “What happened?” The words rolled about in my mind for a few seconds, looking for some kind of purchase on reality. They finally registered, and I buried my face in Ken’s shirt and cried like a baby.

***

I eventually managed to tell them what had happened, and Ken sent spotters out to confirm my story. Word spread through the camps like wildfire.

Over three hundred dead! Just by one old man!

Ken and Jim must have immediately seen the effect of the story as they milked it for all it was worth. The people of Rejas acted like they had found a shiny new stone, a gem of determination they had forgotten even existed.

If that wasn’t enough, they reminded one another of some of the struggles through which they had all come, the fights that had made them strong.

We went against them to break our people out of the stadium. A hundred men against three thousand! Thirty to one! And they had tanks! Not as many when we got finished with them, of course.

And what happened at the fertilizer plant? Sure, we had to leave, but not until after we kicked their butts again!

Ironically, it was Billy who dragged me back into it, reminding everyone of the day that three of us went up against twenty looters in the early days after D-day, and further reminding them that he was the only living survivor of those looters.

Through it all, Rejas citizens wove their speculative thread into the tales. If so few of us could do this against so many, what would happen if we all quit our whining about how tough things were, and put our minds to beating Larry?

Larry didn’t know it yet, but the tide had turned against him. The number of night raids tripled and were no longer simple gathering missions. Status quo wasn’t enough. The townspeople had found their courage once more and, though I never mentioned it to anyone, I knew that the Damascus blade I carried at my side was not Brad’s finest work. His example had taken the hidden steel of his neighbors’ backbones, tempered it with determination, and forged a weapon against which our enemies had no defense.

Brad had given us back our hope.

Chapter 19
* * November 15 * *

Le gros mastin de cité dechassé,
Sera fasché de l’estrange alliance,
Apres aux champs auoir le cerf chassé
Le loups & l’Ours se donront defiance.

The large mastiff expelled from the city
Will be vexed by the strange alliance,
After having chased the stag to the fields
The wolf and the Bear will defy each other.

Nostradamus –
Century 5, Quatrain 4

A week after Brad’s death, we managed to deal the coup de grâce. A combination of homemade naphtha, thermite, and a carelessly opened tank hatch had left Larry’s biggest remaining advantage a smoldering ruin. It was a fierce skirmish, and we lost five more of our own, as well as the majority of our remaining ammunition, but we managed to hold the enemy at bay while the mortar brigade lobbed dozens of incendiaries into and around the final functioning Abrams.

Two days later, we had a new problem. Larry’s men began to desert, and we had to make a quick decision: let them go, kill them as they left, or capture them and add to our slave population?

“If we kill ’em, the rest will have more reason to stay an’ fight,” Jim pointed out. “Let ‘em go and, at the rate they’re leaving, Larry’s forces’ll be down to where we can oust him in a week, at most.”

That wasn’t good enough for me. “But what happens then? We let them leave, take back the town, and a week later they decide that they had it better inside after all? Then, instead of us surrounding them, they’re surrounding us!” I shook my head. “Doesn’t sound like much of a solution to me.”

Several others argued as well, until a single voice shouted, “Hold it! Hold on a sec! Hey, listen up!”

The arguments faded as we all saw who spoke. Billy stood with his hands raised for silence, looking as nervous as I’d ever seen him. “There’s more than just the three options.” He pointed to the circled numbers on his forehead. “There’s a bunch of us that you folks gave a tattoo. You call us slaves, but most of us figure we got off easy. You could have just as easily killed us, times being what they are. Instead, you gave us a second chance.”

“We can’t keep that many slaves, Billy. We don’t have the food or the means to keep control over that many of them. We just can’t do it!”

Billy turned to face me. “Remember what the judge said would happen to me if I didn’t pass muster when my sentence was up? The date gets covered over, and I get a solid circle—life sentence. Why not use a different kind of tattoo for these folks?”

Banishment became the sentence. Over the next three days, some seven hundred deserters were marked with a black X and instructed in what would happen if they were ever seen in the area again. Those who balked at the idea of the tattoo were given the choice of death or returning to Larry’s tender mercies. One tried to escape, and we were forced to shoot him. Some refused the mark and were escorted back to Larry’s territory. We figured they would spread the word about what we were doing. By the end of the week, it looked like the enemy had lost about half their number.

It was time to take back our homes.

***

Thanksgiving morning was blackened by a ferocious Texas thunderstorm—deafening thunder, blinding lightning, howling wind and pounding rain. It was all we could have hoped for and more. We waited through the night as it built, praying that its fury wouldn’t fizzle. We needn’t have worried.

Under cover of the raging storm, our first group hit from the northeast. Larry’s men again exhibited the irresponsible lack of discipline that we were counting on to get us close. They appeared to be more interested in keeping out of the rain than in keeping watch. Still, there was simply no way to completely hide five hundred soaking wet attackers when lightning kept illuminating them like a giant strobe light. They got within fifty yards of the enemy barricade before they were spotted.

Then a bell rang out above the storm, and Larry’s men began to pour out of the buildings just behind the street barricades. Yelling and screaming, they actually seemed angrier at being forced into the storm than concerned about the attack.

Hearing the alarm, Team One went to ground, hiding in ditches, behind stumps, taking cover wherever they could. We knew Larry’s men were just as short of ammunition as we were, but Ken had planned our attack based on the assumption that they would break out reserves for such a major battle.

He was right. Though we hadn’t heard the sound in several days, the sudden eruption of sporadic gunfire was deafening, even over the fury of the storm. Of our first five hundred attackers, only half had any kind of firearm to accompany their bows and arrows. Of those with firearms, most had less than twenty rounds each. Even with half his troops gone, Larry still had a serious advantage in the area of firepower.

The momentum of Team One’s charge faltered, then stopped altogether. Larry’s thugs laughed aloud when they saw our people apparently trapped. But Ken had planned well.

He personally led the charge of Team Two from the southeast. While the enemy’s attention was engaged with trying to pick off hiding targets, Ken’s wing made it within firing range for the air cannons and cut loose with a salvo of Molotov cocktails. The actual physical damage was minimal, but the psychological effect was devastating. Their laughter turned to screams as the naphtha burst among them, blinding against the black of the storm. Plastic and wooden barricades quickly added dense, black smoke to the confusion. Worse yet were the unfortunate souls splashed with the liquid fire. Their screams and stench fed the enemy’s fear and sent them into a retreat.

There was no order to their withdrawal, nothing but blind hysteria. And that, finally, was my signal to attack with the final force from the west. Team Three had crawled into town as the fighting began, and lay in wait a few blocks behind. Once they began their retreat, we poured out of the side streets to wash over them in a wave of fury. We lost more than fifty men and women in that charge, for those of us attacking from the west bore nothing but blades and spears against their rifles. But we were relentless. It was our final battle, and we knew it. We waded in, screaming our hatred and terror, and before they had a chance to regroup, we were on them, hacking and slashing, so close that their firearms became more hindrance than help.

I fought once more with a blade in either hand—machete in the right, Brad’s dagger in the left. Both acquitted themselves well as I freed my anger and frustration into the fight. The blades came alive, parrying and thrusting of their own accord as I led my team in.

Hoping to find him in the middle of his men, I looked for Larry, scanning the faces of my enemies as they fell, but each time disappointed. My personal nemesis was evidently engaged elsewhere.

To my left, Eric Petry, katana in hand, danced with the enemy, so graceful as he whirled, leaving death in his wake. I saw him slice completely through an upraised rifle to cleave the skull of the man behind it. Amazed, I allowed myself to become distracted and very nearly died as I was smashed in the ribs with the butt of a rifle and knocked off balance. I rolled away but found myself out of range as my assailant reversed his weapon to shoot me.

But Megan stepped in from behind him and, with deadly precision, used her machete to relieve my attacker of his weapon. It took the poor soul less than a second to realize that she had relieved him of his hands as well. Before he could open his mouth to scream, she further relieved him of his final burden.

Glancing back to make sure I was all right, she waded deeper into the fray, counting her deadly coup against those who had killed her fiancé.

In such close quarters, the advantage was decidedly ours. I saw several of the enemy attempting to block an overhead strike from a stick or machete, only to open themselves up to an underhand slice to the belly. It was a basic technique I had drilled into my students, and I was at once proud and horrified to see how effectively it was being used.

Mercy was neither asked for, nor offered, by anyone, and in less than twenty minutes, the last of Larry’s men in our area lay dead. My blades, arms, legs, and face were splattered with blood and rain. I looked around, panting, sickened at the gruesome carnage I had helped to create, yet elated to be alive.

But it wasn’t over, for deeper within the town I could hear the sounds of machine guns firing. Someone still had an ample supply of ammo, or had decided to use everything they had in a last-ditch effort to escape. It didn’t take much thought to guess who that someone was.