Chapter 7

Joshua began training the first class for our new army. He is training the clan leaders and the clan mates to be a general staff for the troops he will be training later. He and the other sergeants call us sir and ma'am but they treat us like dirt right now. We are getting an accelerated training course to make us aware of what the clansmen would be going through during their six weeks of training. While they are going through basic and then advanced training we will be going through an abbreviated form of command and staff school given by a Sands' clansman, George, who was a retired Army staff officer before the dying.

Our ability to 'taste' keeps increasing and we have been speculating that the dying didn't cause the ability to emerge but let it emerge. All of us who have been able to strongly 'taste' emotions from other people were isolated for periods of between 2 weeks to longer from almost everyone else. I was the only survivor around here for about 50 miles with the exception of Rita for several months. Rita and the others also were isolated away from other people by long distances. We had already learned that a strong taste would cover weaker ones. Laura told us to think of mankind as transmitters and people who could 'taste' as receivers. The sheer number of transmitters would cause anyone who could 'taste' to be overwhelmed by static from the transmissions they would be receiving. The dying removed this static and we learned to identify the 'taste' without the static interfering with it. This would explain people who always seemed to be able to pick applicants who worked out for an organization. They were unconsciously 'tasting' the applicants and had the associated gestalt ability to be aware of how they would fit in a an organization. No one knew if this was correct but we argued about it and I thought it was as good an explanation as any unless you picked a Lamarckism theory that the disease caused the change.

The ability to 'taste' affected the way we learned basic military formations and training. We 'tasted' the sergeants and were quickly able to tell when they were really annoyed and just pretending to be. Our 'tasting ' of each other led us to be able tell when a file leader began to march or was going to stop by 'tasting' his intention to do something. This didn't mean that we learned instantly. Our ability depended on the emotional 'taste' since we had no ability to read minds. We were able to 'taste' the uncertainty in each other and I was able to match my clan mates together to create groups that were able to help each other learn things rapidly.

This extended though our entire training. Our ability to 'taste' let us combine the groups as needed to match the circumstances. The sergeants we had working with us soon learned to rely on Joshua and us to team them up with the group of trainees that best matched their skills and personalities. As the clan numbers grew and training continued we began promoting people who had the ability to 'taste' to positions of authority in the teams. Their ability to 'taste' and the associated ability to tell who would work together well made them perfectly suited for a military organization. As we promoted people we let them take over assigning people to the various training units. The clan leaders and clan mates had begun to go through officer basic training followed shortly afterward by the other members of the clans who could 'taste'.

George and we had agreed that we would concentrate on small unit leadership, with the clan leaders and clan mates getting specialized training to act as a general staff. We learned how to control small squads and how the operations of companies were conducted. We were tasked to write operation orders when we were given an operational order and had to conduct the training required to meet these orders and keep the company fed, supplied and clothed while doing so. Our preponderance of women led us to discard any idea of non-combatants. Everyone trained and everyone fought. Support staff in the company operated in their field only in the garrison. In combat it was the responsibility of the general staff to provide logistical support when we were notified of a need by a company. We ended up with a small logistical unit attached to the general staff who handled these requests and made sure they were fulfilled. Instead of the old Army ratio of seven support troops to every line soldier we had closer to two per line soldier.

Our ability to 'taste' each other during operations led us to be able to know what the others were feeling about a situation. When we asked a question about something we knew exactly how the speaker felt about the answer. This allowed us to make plans based on the best possible information available to us. Joshua mentioned that it was spooky sometimes to see how we acted with such unanimity when we were involved with an exercise. This didn't mean that we never made a mistake, in fact, during the early part of training, George often handed us our heads when he acted as the opposing forces commander. Gradually we learned how to use our ability to assess a situation and use our gestalt ability to pick the right unit to best match it. George and Joshua both agreed that if we managed to keep MS13 off balance until spring that we would have an army able to defeat any group of reasonably comparable size. During this time we noticed that we were becoming uncomfortable around the normal clansmen. Our 'taste' was becoming more accute every day and we began to be able to 'taste' emotions at an ever greater distance.

During this period the assembling of food and materials never ceased. I had decided to copy Wellington's tactics in Spain during the Napoleonic wars. I sent out groups to gather supplies from the paths that could be taken by any invading force and strip the area of all supplies we could find. Any shelter that remained was destroyed and if people were found they were brought to the Taggert stronghold. We left nothing that could be used to provide food or support to an invading army. We found several spies from MS13 in the groups we brought in to no ones' surprise. We separated them from the groups and after questioning them and learning as much as they knew they were executed. What I really hated was murdering those people we couldn't trust because of their fear of MS13, the fact MS13 had a hostage under their control or simply because they had a very bad taste when we interviewed them. Laura and Joshua tried to tell me we didn't murder them, we killed them for security purposes. I could 'taste' their doubt about this statement when they told me this but I knew we didn't dare let any information get back to MS13 about our actions. We offered as many people as we could membership into the clans, but we still ended up with people who no one wanted for one reason or another. We gave these people a choice, either enlist with our army for the duration of the war, following which they would be given enough supplies and seed to survive until they harvested their first crop, or an immediate escort to the Arizona border. We knew these troops would not be as dependable as clan members but they were not going to be thrown into battle as the spearhead of any offensive either. Unless combat reached the stronghold and everyone was fully engaged they would be acting as rear area support for the front line troops.

We had run trucks to several large buildings in the clan areas to 'store' gathered supplies for the winter. In fact these trucks were used to bring noncombatants to the Taggert stronghold while bringing booby traps to be used around the buildings with incendiaries and a nerve agent shell as the final defense. All the buildings were chosen to allow a helicopter to land on and numerous troops to enter before they reached the nerve agent booby traps. We had stopped scouting parties from MS13 who were attempting to enter the clan areas and had expelled them after we allowed them to hear disinformation about the clans being at loggerheads with each other. One of the clan mates who was present when one of the parties was turned away told us of the sour 'taste' she felt when they were around and the 'taste' of their belief when they heard about the the clans feuding with each other.

We figured that with this disinformation and the booby traps we were setting we would kill or incapacitate at lest 300 to 500 of the MS13 troops before they stopped trying to seize the storeroom buildings. Each building was at least 10 stories and had the nerve gas shell surrounded with high explosives set to blow if a door or several windows were forced open on an upper floor. In the basement of the buildings we had placed incendiary booby traps to keep any raiders inside from getting out. We thought this would unnerve the remaining raiders and they would be slow advancing until they got over their shock of losing so many of the raiders.

We had blown all the roads leading into the mountains except Interstate 5 and Interstate 101. If the MS13 raiders wanted to take 101 we were glad to let them. Connecting roads between IH 101 and IH 5 had been blown until the only way to get through was by foot or by horseback. Booby traps and dead falls had been set along these routes and we had scouts watching to make sure any attempts would cost them dearly. We had set up ambush points along IH 5 all the way from Marysville on up to Dunsmuir. Our plan was to never attack them in force but to slow them down until they were unable to reach us until the snows started to fall. We figured that people who had lived most of their life in Southern California wouldn't have the knowledge of how to move in snow that Northern Californians did.