The day after: An apocalyptic morning (115 page)

              "And Bracken is the man that used to... that you were..." Christine said, unable to think of a delicate way to put their former situation into words.

              Jean had no problem. "The man who used to rape us," she said bitterly. "He of the small dick and the big head."

              "Uh... right," Christine said.

              "So anyway," Skip said, steering the interview back on track, "this Bracken was camped out on one of the hills?"

              "Right," Anna said, nodding. "He found that your defenses were pretty uh... weak I guess you would say. He was impressed by the way you handled the attack once it started but he was disgusted by the fact that it happened in the first place."

              "Thank you, Jessica," Paul said sourly.

              "That's kind of what we found out once she was brought back to town," Jean said.

              "So what happened," Anna went on, "is that Bracken came back and made plans to take your town. Barnes gave him command of an entire company of one hundred and sixty men and off they marched."

              "One hundred and sixty men?" Skip said with a shudder.

              "But that was before he knew about your new defenses or your helicopter," Anna said. "They ran into Jessica about three quarters of the way to town and were able to get that information from her. She told them about your bunkers on the hills and about your training programs and about your helicopter. Bracken decided that he needed more men to make the attack and turned everyone around."

              "He aborted the mission?" Skip asked in disbelief.

              "He said that your defenses would've murdered them if they had walked in without knowing about them," Jean said.

              "And even once he did know about them he still decided not to press the attack?"

              "Right," said Anna. "He thought that he probably would've taken the town..."

              "Goddamn right he would've," Skip said, envisioning trying to fight off that many men.

              "But he also thought that he would've taken too many casualties doing it. The helicopter seemed to be the deciding factor. He was afraid that you would use it to direct the battle from the air and to harass the troops on the ground."

              "Which I would have," Skip said. "But I still don't understand why he didn't press onward. Sure, casualties would've been a little higher on their side, but they would've won. No doubt about it."

              "That's the thing," Anna said. "The doctrine of the militia is not to take casualties. That will probably change in the future as more people are added to it, but Barnes knows that he doesn't have an unlimited supply of men right now. Since there is no one to replace the dead and wounded, they rely instead on overwhelming force to win their battles."

              "Hmmmm," Skip said, thinking that this made quite a bit of sense, and was something that could also be potentially exploited. "So what happened once he got back?"

              "Once he got back," she said, "he managed to talk Barnes into authorizing a new attack. This was an attack that they were still planning and exercising for when we got away."

              "How many men?" Skip asked, afraid to hear the answer.

              "Four hundred," Anna said almost apologetically.

              There was a stunned silence around the table as this number worked its way into everyone's brain.

              "Four hundred?" Skip said incredulously. "But that's almost the entire male population of Auburn!"

              "It will leave only forty-five men in town," Anna confirmed. "Barnes stipulated that those left would be the most experienced and that most of the automatic weapons would stay with them. Bracken agreed to this since it went along with the brute force doctrine."

              "Holy Jesus," Paul said, actually trembling at the thought.

              "Skip," Christine said fearfully, "we can't fight off that many people!"

              "This is bad," Skip was forced to agree. "But let's sift through this all the way before we start coming to any rash decisions, shall we?"

              "But..." Christine started.

              "We still have some time," he said before she could go any further. "Like I said, let's sift through this." He turned back to Anna. "Do you know when they were planning to make this attack? Are they already on their way here now?"

              "They were planning to leave January 7," she said. "There's a good chance that our escape might've delayed that for a few days however. They would've used a good chunk of the troops to look for us."

              "January 7?" Paul said, his eyes widening. "That's tomorrow! How long will it take them to get here once they head off?"

              "About ten days," Anna said, "maybe a little more. We got here in only seven days but we were moving as fast as we could physically go. They'll just be ambling along to conserve their energy."

              "So we're going to have four hundred armed men coming down on us in less than two weeks?" Paul said, approaching the point of panic.

              "Calm down," Skip said, his voice soft and soothing.

              "Calm down? How can I calm down when we're two weeks away from having our..."

              "You're looking at it the wrong way," Skip interrupted.

              "What?"

              "You're being a glass half-empty kind of guy," Skip told him. "Let's try to be glass half-full people instead. Instead of saying that we only have two weeks, let's say that we've been blessed with two weeks of warning."

              "What the hell difference does that make?"

              "Maybe none," Skip admitted. "But maybe everything. If not for these two young ladies here, we would've been hit pretty much by surprise. Now we have enough time to sit and calmly decide what, if anything, there is to be done about this."

              "What can be done?" Paul asked. "You're not telling me that you think we can fight off four hundred men, are you?"

              "I'm not telling you anything just yet," he said. "All of the information is not in at this time. Why don't we finish the debriefing and then we'll start discussing what is to be done?"

              This served to calm Paul down a little bit. "All right," he said, taking a few deep breaths. "Why don't we do that?"

              Skip turned back towards Anna and Jean. "What do you know about their attack plans?" he asked them. "Did they discuss that in front of you as well?"

              Anna smiled. "They talked about everything in front of us," she said. "Barnes is the mastermind of the attack plan. He intends to divide the four hundred men into three companies of one hundred and twenty men apiece and one reserve platoon of forty. He will be overall commander and will direct the three main companies to attack from three different directions simultaneously. The reserve platoon will be used to fill any holes that develop. The plan is to quickly overwhelm your defenses and get inside the perimeter before you have a chance to rally. He has high hopes that he can get to your community center before the helicopter even has a chance to lift-off."

              Skip stared slack-jawed at her for a moment, stunned at the quality of detail she was providing. He had been expecting, at best, an inexpert summary of the plans. Instead, she was giving him an overview that General Patton would have been proud of.

              Paul wasn't so impressed. The information did nothing but scare him worse than he already had been. "I sure feel better," he said, "knowing how they're going to massacre us. I think I'll be able to sleep at night now."

              Christine wasn't too keen on this either. "Skip," she said nervously, "I don't think we can counter something like that. Our guards are pretty good but... well... four hundred people attacking at once? We're not that good."

              "And we're critically short on ammunition as well," Paul felt compelled to add.

              "All of that is true," Skip agreed, still speaking calmly, as if he were addressing the subject of dinner that night. "There is no way we can fight off four hundred men attacking from three different directions. And we are somewhat short on ammunition."

              "So what are you saying?" asked Anna, who had been patiently listening to this exchange.

              "I'm not saying anything just yet. I still don't have all of the information. Let's finish talking about this attack plan for the moment. I want you to give me every detail that you can think of. I want to hear about the people that are leading these companies, what kind of weapons and ammo they'll be in possession of, what kind of food they eat on their marches, what kind of morale they typically show. I want everything."

              And so Anna and Jean took turns telling all they knew about the attack. It was considerable and it took nearly an hour but Skip was able to get a well-rounded view of just what he was facing.

              "So now that you know everything," Paul said. "What do you think? Should we start making plans to evacuate the town to somewhere else?"

              "That's a possibility," Skip said doubtfully. "And we'll keep that high on our list of considerations of course, but you should realize that it is not quite as simple as you seem to think."

              "Why not?"

              "In the first place, where would we go? El Dorado Hills is maybe a possibility but we don't know that for sure. And even if they did agree to take us in, moving everyone and everything there in a short period of time is not as easy as it sounds."

              "What do you mean?" Paul asked.

              "We have more than two hundred people in this town," Skip said. "We can only fly four, maybe five out at a time. That represents more than fifty round trips in the helicopter. That will almost exhaust our fuel supply and will cause horrible wear and tear on the chopper itself. I cannot even guarantee that we would be able to make that many trips without losing some vital component that I can't replace with the supplies I have. And then there's our food, weapon, and ammunition supplies. How many more trips would it take to move them over? Another twenty? Another thirty?"

              "So you're saying that we can't evacuate?" Christine asked.

              "No," he replied, "I'm saying that it's not a simple Micker of just loading everything and everyone up and flying off into the sunset. If we try to go that route, we're talking about an eight to ten day operation at best and with a good possibility we won't be able to get everything and everyone safely there."

              "If we lose the chopper we could go on foot," Paul said. "It's a long march, sure, but..."

              "A long march of about two weeks," Skip said. "And we would be forced to leave most of our food supplies here. And if we don't have extra food or this helicopter, why would El Dorado Hills take us in?"

              Paul became extremely frustrated at this point. "So are you saying that we should stay here and try to fight off four hundred men?" he yelled. "Because it sure the hell sounds to me like that's what you're suggesting! Do you want to fight these people?"

              "I don't want to do anything," Skip told him. "And I'm not suggesting anything either. I'm only telling you the realities of the situation. And the realities are that evacuation will be costly and may very well cost us our food and our bargaining power with other communities."

              "Shit," Paul muttered, running his hands through his hair nervously. "We have a community meeting scheduled for tonight. Tongues have been wagging ever since these two arrived here. What am I going to tell everyone?"

              "Tell them the truth," Skip said. "They have a right to know that trouble is on the way and what our options are."

              "And if they panic and decide to flee town?"

              "I don't think they'll do that," Skip said. "Just tell them what we know and we'll work from there."

              "Remember the days," Skip asked Jack at 10:00 PM that night, "when community meetings used to be quick little affairs that took about twenty minutes? We used to gather, have a quick discussion on the Micker and hand, have a vote, and then it was all over. Do you remember that?"

              "I remember," Jack said wearily from his seat in the observer's chair of the helicopter. "It looks like those days are over."

              "Yep," Skip said, applying power and getting the rotor turning. "Lifting off. Is the FLIR up and on line?"

              "Ready for action," Jack confirmed.

              The meeting in question had ended only twenty minutes before after raging for more than three solid hours. In the course of those hours nearly every adult in town, including those on guard detail, had had their say on the Micker of the coming attack. The emotions of the meeting had run even higher than they had during the recent El Dorado Hills contact debate. This time however, nothing was ultimately decided. Skip, following Paul's previous lead, had described the ramifications of the information in a dispassionate and non-biased manner, advocating no particular course of action. He had explained that fighting off so many armed men attacking at once was impossible - it simply could not be done. He had also explained that evacuating the entire town and its contents - even assuming El Dorado Hills agreed to take them - was a risky venture at best without much chance of succeeding.