Chapter 11

Yep, the XM3 lived up to all of the hype in the manual, so I just had to introduce Naomi and Jim to the two remaining weapons. They were as taken by the XM3 as I was, and they were very good shots with it after two days of practice. We concentrated on targets at 100 meters or closer because we never had occasion to fight demons farther away than that.

Dammit, I had to find a way to equip the rest of my army with XM3s, but there were no more in the warehouse. Fortunately, I did find a record that there was an armory in Huntsville, AL, and that was where these rifles had been made. That settled the question as far as we were concerned—we were headed for Huntsville.

Everybody knew the whole story as soon as the marching order was given. Not many had actually seen what the XM3 could do, but rumors abounded. The most important rumor was true: everybody would receive an XM3 as soon as we could find enough. I let the rumors ride because none of them fully lived up to the potential of what the XM3 really could do.

We left for Huntsville as soon as practical, and there were no laggards. What slowed us down were the two births that had to be attended to first, but that was such a joyous occasion that none of us minded. The mothers and infants were loaded into an “ambulance” wagon and were put in the middle of the column where they would be safest.

I thought that it was appropriate that Naomi was the first one to shoot at a demon. As usual, she was leading the column with her scouts to make sure that we were not ambushed. She reported over her radio that one of her people had spotted four Erglets and four Grampits just to the left of our line of march. She wanted to find them and try out her XM3. I told her to go ahead.

It was only a few minutes later that she reported in. “I found the demons that Hank had reported. They looked like they might be setting up an observation post along the road. Does that mean that the demons are finally learning how to fight a war? Well, they didn’t get very far. I moved in to about 30 m away from them and opened up with automatic fire. All it took was one sweep of the XM3 to kill all of the Erglets and Grampits.

“If I had been able to keep the noise down, I probably could have killed them all with semi automatic fire since the surprise was so complete. We examined the bodies of the Erglets and found nothing useful. I’ll talk to you in more detail when I report in this evening. Naomi out.”

About an hour later, Naomi showed up with all but one of her scouts. “Doug, we found about 40 Erglets and 12 Grampits gathered for what looks like an ambush. I figured that was too many for me to try to take on all of them with just the one XM3, so I came in to report and to get your orders. Hank is watching the demons to report if they move somewhere else.”

“Okay, good, you did the right thing. That’s enough to let our whole army attack. I don’t want them depending too much on just the three of us to kill all of the demons. That will frustrate their enthusiasm and play hell with morale. Use your radio to tell Hank to keep up his watch while we move into the attack.

“HEY, JIM, OVER HERE!

“Naomi has found a goodly number of demons, so it looks like a good chance for our people to get rid of a little of the battle rust. Set up an attack with the usual order of battle, except we three will stay close to the front in case the XM3s are needed.”

“Sure thing, Doug. Give me about 15 minutes to make sure that there are no screw ups.” With that, he used his combat radio to call a meeting of his squad leaders to make sure that they all knew what was expected of their units. Naomi and I just stood around making smalltalk while we waited for Jim to say that everything was ready.

Just for the hell of it, I had checked my watch when Jim left to talk to his people, and it was 12 minutes later when he was ready to start our advance toward the demons. Naomi sent out her scouts to make sure that there were no surprises, and there were none.

The Scorpions led the march with their crossbows loaded. One squad each of the Rattle Snakes were positioned to their right and left flanks. The third squad of the Rattle Snakes dropped back to provide covering security for the ambulances. The main part of the army was split in half, and each half took off at double time to cover the sides and back of the demons so that none could escape.

Jim went to join the Rattle Snakes on the left flank and Naomi went to the right flank. I stayed in the middle with the Scorpions to cover them as they reloaded the crossbows.

We wanted the demons to attack us, rather than the other way around. However, it looked like I was going to have to go over there and kick some butts to get them to react to our presence. At least, they were all out in the open so there were no surprises for us when the fighting started. Almost out of disgust as much as anything else, I signaled the start of the fight by using my XM3 to hose down the Grampits. The noise of the shooting seemed to wake everybody up and the fight finally began.

The Scorpions began to shoot as soon as they heard me fire, and they took out about half of the demons with their first volley. Their shooting was so effective that I called for the Scorpions to reload, but to stand down to let the people with the pikes have some fun. The Scorpions took the order in good grace and stepped back out of the way. The rest of the fight was a short melee that let most of the rest of the troops at least bloody their pikes, even though all of the enemy were already dead.

We had worked out a way for the Scorpions to unload their crossbows without dry-firing, so there were no accidents during the post-fight celebration. Our ban on alcohol still stood, so there were no problems there.

Our progress toward Huntsville, AL, was pretty much more of the same. We managed to find a few demons every day and disposed of them. We did find on three occasions a grouping of enough demons to let the whole army get in on the fun. The aggravating thing was that we found very few humans and got very little in the way of local information on the doings of the demons. We found only one pit, and that was one we stumbled over. We destroyed it, but it had an abandoned look about it, so we were not sure what was going on.

Oh, by the way, we discovered that the Water of Life abilities were inherited. For one thing, none of the recently delivered babies wanted to nurse, and the pressure on the mothers to nurse disappeared within 48 hours. We did save what little of the milk that was produced by the mothers to check to see if it produced the same kind of effect as the Water of Life. It did on test animals. We now had the healthiest pet dogs in the history of the world.