Chapter 40

Silver tapped her foot impatiently on the floor, watching as Derek choreographed the entire battle like some sort of sadistic composer. The radio chatter indicated that the enemy had split into three groups and that the middle group had been pinned down before being convinced over the radio that they should surrender.

Even more amazing was that Meredith had managed to come through with the freed townspeople and had more than doubled the available firepower. She had also plugged the Militia's primary route of escape and placed them in a deadly crossfire.

Still the battle was not without casualties. Reports trickled in of men and women killed or wounded in the firefight. During these reports Silver gnawed furiously on her fingernails, her stress and worry over Bryan being in perceived danger had driven her nearly to the point of madness.

A sporadic stream of stretchers had been coming up the hill since the battle had begun, sometimes carried by someone, sometimes hauled on the ATV. Silver had watched each one obsessively out the window, watching fearfully until she was sure that the casualty was not Bryan.

For the fifteenth time she paced the floor, her pulse visibly displacing the skin at her temples. Her face was flushed, her breathing was a bit fast, and she wrung her knuckles and tugged at her hair absent-mindedly.

Derek looked at her for a moment, wondering if he should have Andrew look at her and sedate her. Her blood pressure looked to be visibly high. Her emotional state seemed to be close to out of control.

Silver caught his eyes, and her hands dropped to her sides. The scared look left her eyes in less than a heartbeat and she scowled at him. "What," she demanded. " ... are you staring at?"

Derek shook his head, muttering under his breath as he orchestrated the troops through the multiple streams of information as they came in.

Clearly Silver had an ability to pull herself together if needed, but tended to break down during the idle time such as what was at hand. She was a woman of action, not of inaction, and feeling powerless to change any outcomes was very definitely weighing heavily on her shoulders. However, her fretting and stressing was mostly harmless ... So long as nothing happened to Bryan that was.

Bryan at that very moment was ducking below the onslaught of fire from the central core company which despite being in a crossfire, was sending a lot of lead flying toward their positions. Radios had verified that Meredith had come through with freed prisoners and was digging in on the ridgeline behind the hapless Militia. It was a fool's game however, as the dwindling numbers of Militia were beginning to drop off one by one. Their numbers had to be less than fifty by that point.

Bryan stuck his head up and fired another volley of shots in their direction. His eyes caught sight of a prone man trying to wave a white flag. His eyes widened as he was struck in the shoulder. The man's face collapsed into the mud and he did not move any further.

"Derek," Bryan called into his radio, ignoring the call signs and protocols. "They're trying to surrender!"

Bryan had sent three men to escort the twenty-two prisoners back to the prisoner stockade, and then he and Meredith met up along the central trench where company C had surrendered. Meredith moved South, Bryan moved north, bearing down on the two separately pinned down units.

To the south Meredith's forces attacked with a blood-lust which would have made Attila the Hun proud. The men stuck in the narrow drainage ditch were surprised and appalled when women and men came roaring at them with the ferocity of a squadron of Kamikaze pilots. Many men failed to even raise their guns, they were so stunned by the suicidal tactic. With one fell swoop the remaining twenty seven men of company B were swarmed. Some were shot, some were stabbed, but many were simply ripped limb from limb by their former prisoners. Silence fell along the Southern fence line.

As Bryan worked his way along the trench toward the north and the remaining sound of gunfire, the remaining resistance from company A had seemed to pull up into a hard line. The men had found good cover at the base of the right-of way and had dug in, further improving their protection from enemy fire. The trees above them along the embankment were so thick that bullets from above seemed to get lost among the foliage, not hitting anything but wood.

"Make them waste their ammo!" Derek's voice came over the radio. "We've got them pinned down!"

Gunfire still emanated from the makeshift trench in a meager attempt at withering fire, but it was clear that the Militia men were running low on ammunition.

From the ranks of the newly freed prisoners there was a swift motion and something small and dark went flying into the trench.

Audibly there was a scream of "GRENADE!!" and three men jumped out of the trench, only to be cut down by gunfire. There was a flash of light and fire as the grenade exploded, bringing with it the remains of two men and a great deal of soil.

Bryan sat tight, waiting on the assessments to come in.

From above, about one hundred fifty yards to the west on the right-of-way a sniper team was setting up. They looked down the old roadbed and a brief hole in the vegetation was giving them quick glimpses into a narrow slice of the trench. The sniper, whose real name was a mystery, went by the name of Alf. His features were veiled by the mass of beard and long hair. He wore a baseball cap, put on backwards and was adorned in overalls. He carried a Remington model 700 which had likely cost a month's salary in the years before the collapse.

Alf settled down onto the hard ground on a blanket that his spotter had carried. The spotter, a clean-cut kid named Jared already had his spotting scope in place and was assisting the aging Viet Nam veteran into getting in position.

Alf twisted his head back and forth and cracked his neck. He settled into position and pulled the rifle into place in front of him. Without preamble or ceremony, he lined up on the hole in the foliage and squeezed the trigger.

Seven times, Alf squeezed the trigger. And seven times the intended target dropped dead as a result. But the evidence of their actions was making a good case for the trapped men to stay away from that particular section of the trench. And while the sniper team was in little danger from return fire, no more targets presented themselves.

Inside the trench, the remaining sixteen men were beginning to lose all unit cohesion. Many of them were on the verge of losing mental cohesion with their own sanity. Only A, captain of the company was holding onto anything that resembled sanity and a will to fight. He popped up every few seconds and sprayed the enemy with a few rounds, all the while screaming "Is that all you've got?!"

The private next to him looked at the man, looking for some sign of reason within his superior officer's eyes. He found none, only resolve to fight glinted back at him.

Then the call came over the radio for surrender. The Captain snarled an unintelligible response under his breath and resumed firing. The private, who was new to the unit and new to the Militia as a whole, calmly drew his sidearm and jammed it into the side of the captain's neck, pulling the trigger in one swift motion.

He grasped the radio which had fallen from the Captain's belt a few moments before and keyed the microphone.

"We surrender! Please God we surrender!"

He looked around the trench at the other shell shocked men, who were looking at him with a mixture of hatred and respect. "Identify yourself!" demanded the radio. The gunfire had not yet stopped.

"This is Private Brad Jenkins. I have taken control of what remains of this unit and we are prepared to lay down arms in surrender."

Brad waved the old Colt pistol toward the remaining fourteen men with whom he shared the trench. "Any objections?!" he demanded.

No one moved.

Around them the sound of gunfire slowed and then stopped, the sound of silence enveloping the air around them.