The Last Pilgrims (25 page)

“Swords, spears, and knives.”

“Excellent.”

After reconnoitering the area, and setting
up their plan, Piggy rode into the looters’ camp, as the other
members of the posse watched from the shadows.

“Up you uncircumcised Philistines! Wake up,
you swine!” A few of the men struggled to leap to their feet as the
others slowly rolled out of their bedrolls. It took awhile, but
soon enough, they realized that they had a stranger in their midst,
and started drawing their weapons, surrounding Piggy.

“Easy there, you Philistine dogs!” Piggy
said, dismounting. “We’re going to do this Piggy’s way! I am Piggy,
and I have you right where I want you! Drop your weapons!”

Despite Phillip’s protestations, Gareth was
on the front lines when the battle began at the Penateka Dam. He
understood that he was both a friend and a valuable tool of militia
propaganda; hence, it was understandable that Phillip wanted him
out of harm’s way. Still, from the moment he saw Phillip’s plans,
he knew that he wouldn’t miss this fight for anything in the world.
Frankly, during all the years of training and schooling at the feet
of the greatest military minds of Aztlan, he had never seen a more
brilliantly devised defensive strategy. In his view, Phillip was
one of the greatest generals since Stonewall Jackson.

Gareth’s unique position and experience
allowed him to examine the military plans of both sides impartially
and objectively, as much as was possible. Thus, he had to admit
that, if he were on the side of Aztlan, he would be doing exactly
what the Aztlani general was doing. From their limited point of
view, their plans made sense.

From what he had learned from militia scouts
and out-riders, the invaders’ plans were now quite evident.

Aztlan had brilliantly skirted Bethany to
the south in the opening days of the campaign, using the
diversionary failure of the attack on Bethany as cover. The Ghost
militia didn’t even know that Aztlan had advanced that far
eastbound until it was too late and the Vallensian refugees had
already been slaughtered. Once they had reached the area of
Lampasas, the army had turned and marched northward, eventually
making a forward line west of Dublin, stretching from Deleon to
Comanche. From there, quietly and with purpose and precision, they
had marched the entire front westward, sweeping the Vallensian
refugees in front of them, and eventually enveloping and destroying
the “heretics”. Only those Vallenses who had traveled as far as
Chalk Mountain had survived. However, given that their numbers were
so small, Aztlan did not consider pursuing them to be worth the
effort.

According to the Ghost militia outriders,
Aztlan had conscripted hundreds of civilian looters, thieves, and
gangs to do the actual killing of the Vallenses, and had promised
them all the rape, plunder, and pillaging they could possibly want
if they would do the dirty work. In this way, at least to Aztlan,
their hands were clean of genocide and the slaughter of
innocents.

Gareth paused for a moment and his thoughts
rolled back to his childhood and the days spent in his father’s
expansive library. He had read hundreds of his father’s books, both
fiction and non-fiction, of the time before the collapse, and he
had been absolutely fascinated by them. He had especially enjoyed
his father’s collection of post-apocalyptic books because those had
attempted, with varying degrees of success, to look into the future
and see what life might be like after a million different collapse
scenarios. One common thread amongst them all was the omnipresence
of the inevitable and ubiquitous traveling gangs of looters and
ne’er-do-wells. In the books, the gangs of low-life misfits were
always pictured as inbred mutant-zombie-biker trash; clownish
representations of the lowest dregs of white-trash society; prison
escapees and assorted trailer dwellers that enjoyed raping anything
that moved and kicking puppies for fun.

Gareth had to smile at the irony of how
things had really turned out. For the most part, in the last 20
years, the looter gangs of pillaging gypsies had been made up of
former middle-class suburbanites. They were cubicle drones and
middle-management wannabes who had given up any moral high ground
in exchange for moral relativism long before there was even any
sign of collapse. After almost 50 years of brainwashing by the
self-esteem cult, where children—irrespective of their natural
ability— were mind-numbed by years of video games and sport into
believing that they ‘deserved’ a corner office, a regular paycheck
and a paid vacation regardless of their failure to attain even the
lower rungs of mediocrity, the die had been cast for the few of
this class that actually survived the crash.

When 90% of the population dies—most within
the first year, due to their unpreparedness and their inability to
think for themselves, adapt, and overcome the new challenges—some
interesting statistical realities emerge. Of those who survived, in
general, most were intelligent and engaged individuals who
possessed an ability to process information in real-time. Survivors
almost universally had the ability to innovate while under
pressure, without panicking or giving up. However, there were a
small percentage of survivors who—having already succumbed to moral
relativism and the wicked philosophies found in video games and
movies—fell rather naturally into the survival ethics of crime and
the utilitarian pack mentality.

Sure, there were inner-city gangs and
thuggish looters in the first days after the collapse, but those
people perished pretty quickly—especially in Texas, where everyone
had guns. The new class of criminals came from the upper and
middle-class of disaffected urban know-it-alls and even rural
ranchers and cattlemen, who believed that whatever you did to
survive was good and right, even if it wasn’t moral or just. Murder
is easy when you have lived your whole life as an entitled
brat.

The looter gangs of the last two decades
didn’t come roaring up on motorcycles, blowing up bunnies with
hand-grenades. They looked like the poor and disheveled homeless of
the early 21
^st
century, and they might approach your
ranch or community with women and small children out front, aiming
to appear as poor, helpless people, just looking for a handout.
They knew that someone was bound to feel sorry for them and would
let them in. The rape and the pillage happened later, but when it
did, the victims never expected it or saw it coming.

Such was the reality of what Aztlan
unleashed on the Vallenses. Groups of looters followed large armies
like sea birds would follow a shrimp boat, and these groups had a
particular hatred for the Vallenses, because the Vallensian
countryside—some of the most productive areas of Texas—had been
patrolled ruthlessly by the Ghost militia for the last 20 years.
The sweet and delicious heart of the Vallensian lands was now ripe
for the picking, and the looters wanted all of it.

Hence, Aztlan had turned the looters loose
on several thousand helpless and unarmed Vallensian refugees.
Satisfied that their deed would be done, they had continued their
slow and deliberate march westward, burning and destroying farms
and villages as they went—the looter gangs killing the Vallenses
before them, and devouring the land like locusts in their wake.
Sherman’s March was being revisited as Aztlan moved westward
towards Bethany.

As the enemy approached Lake Penateka, their
options diminished. While the decision to move all the way to the
east and attack from there in order to avoid the Bethany Pass, the
Thicket and all of the other natural hindrances to the south and
west was a brilliant move, the Aztlani forces now had some
difficult choices to make. If they were to swing south again, far
below Penateka, they would be back to square one—they’d still have
to deal with The Thicket and the Bethany Pass. To move northward
was an even worse choice. North of the lake was extremely difficult
country. In most of that area, county roads did not exist even
before the collapse. The region was thickly forested, and the roads
that did exist were extremely narrow. The trees came right up to
touch the sides of the roads. An army marching westward down those
roads for days would be picked apart by an enemy they would never
even see.

The militia had put a Ghost unit to the
north to make it look as if the militia expected Aztlan to move
that way, but for Aztlan to go north would have been a real suicide
on their part.

In effect, Phillip’s plan had made Aztlan’s
decision for them. They would squeeze through the insignificant
opening just below the Penateka Dam. They would think that it was a
masterstroke, and that the militia wouldn’t be expecting them
there. Phillip had reinforced this idea by keeping all of his
movements in the Penateka area completely shielded and invisible to
the enemy. Even now, the hundreds of militia soldiers in place at
the south and west sides of the lake and the dam were completely
hidden from Aztlan. Thus, to keep the northern militia units from
sweeping in behind them, Aztlan intended to blow up the dam behind
them.

The most brilliant part of the plan was that
Phillip had no intention of winning the battle at the dam. He
intended
to lose. He had to put up just enough resistance to
make it look as if an inferior militia force had been overwhelmed
by a superior army. Phillip intended to win by losing, and Aztlan
had to be drawn into the trap because they would think that they
were winning. The militia needed to kill so many of the Aztlan
soldiers that by any accounting it would have to be considered a
resounding loss, while at the same time convincing the Aztlani
generals and soldiers that they were engaged in a great victory.
Gareth was staggered by the genius of it all. He was never gladder
not to be Phillip’s enemy.

Aztlan, indeed, just as Phillip had
predicted, swept in quickly and intently towards the dam. Gareth
held his breath when, for a moment, it looked as if the invader
would actually cross on the top of the dam, across the dam road,
instead of continuing towards the easier and wider crossing below
the dam. This wouldn’t have been a tragedy, but it would have made
the militia’s position exponentially more difficult. Gareth
himself, and all of the warriors hidden to the south and west,
would have had to fight uphill to plug the dam road in time to keep
up with the plan.

The Aztlani vanguard paused at the entrance
to the dam road, and for some time actually considered crossing
that way, before some officers rode up and ordered them to keep
moving down the hill to cross just south of there where the lake
overflow waters trickled southward as a shallow creek.

He heard a noise and looked behind him as
David Wall rode up and joined him in the woods overlooking the
battlefield. Their orders were for the militia cavalry to launch a
surprise attack downhill, just as Aztlan began the uphill climb on
the west side of the creek. They were to engage only briefly,
before fleeing back up the hill in full retreat, hopefully drawing
the ‘victorious’ Aztlanis along behind them.

Because the Ghost militia, as a policy,
never, ever engaged in frontal assaults, anyone who was fully
learned in their tactics might well smell a trap at this point.
Indeed, this was one weakness in the plan, which could not have
been avoided. Time would tell if the Aztlani leadership was adept
enough to sense that they were being led into a slaughter.

At some invisible and silent signal, the
militia cavalry appeared mystically from the tree line, and Gareth
could see the surprise and shock on the faces of the Aztlani troops
as the Ghost militia appeared out of nowhere and was suddenly upon
them. Some of those troops were able to take up their weapons and
fire a few shots. Consequently, several militia riders were killed
within the first seconds of the attack.

Regardless of the plans and contrivances of
men, riding into enemy fire is very disturbing. Prior to this, he
had only ridden into battle at Bethany, and in that instance, they
had attacked from the rear, relying on the element of surprise.
During the first few moments—moments that seemed to last an
eternity—Gareth found himself unsettled, for he could actually hear
bullets flying by his head. He felt the ‘thump’ of one as it
pierced his coat as he rode forward, swinging his sword.

David was still on his right and Gareth
heard the pastor’s son shouting encouragement as they rode onward.
He wondered if David was actually yelling at himself.

Within seconds, they crashed into the
Aztlani troops, slashing their way into the throng of surprised
men. Their job was to kill as many enemy soldiers as possible
within just a few minutes, while listening for the signal to
retreat. The slaughter was great, and he lost count after he
personally had killed twelve Aztlani soldiers.

Fully half of the militia—those who had
volunteered to do so—then killed their own horses with shots from
hidden pistols, and proceeded to scream ‘Retreat!’ and, ‘All is
lost! Run for your lives!” The mayhem and confusion truly made it
look like the militia cavalry had been routed, even though only a
handful of the Ghostmen had been lost.

The Crown Prince and David, upon hearing the
call to retreat, turned and began to ride back up the hill when
David’s horse was shot out from under him, tossing him violently to
the ground. Gareth reached down and hauled David onto the back of
his horse and, albeit with some difficulty, continued the retreat
up the hill.

Aztlan’s leaders, having watched the
engagement from the distance on the east side of the creek, and
seeing all the horses and dead men writhing on the ground, sensed
an immediate and overwhelming victory and ordered a full assault.
Aztlani soldiers poured down the hill and across the creek, and the
militia let them come without firing, except for some token
resistance fired by snipers up on the dam, and back to the west in
the trees.