Chapter 7

It was early in the morning the very next day before the sun had actually come up over the foothills to the east when Mike heard the unmistakable sound of a pair of choppers moving fast and low. He made sure that they had no light showing and ventured outside the cave to see the blurry shadows passing from the direction of the coast inland in the direction of the foothills. They were black helicopters with absolutely no markings on them so he was certain they were from the government or at least what passed for the government these days.

Maria came out and molded her body into his looking up at the sky just now starting to show signs of the dawn. She pressed her delicate bottom into his groin and sighed like a naughty child without supervision in a candy store. His wife was almost always the last to get up in the mornings and the first one in bed at night so he knew there was no danger of her catching him fondling the pretty girl's splendid figure. Besides, he knew that Ginnie was visibly relieved that Maria was taking the brunt of his desperate passion in the depths of the darkened cave at night. Poor Maria tried unsuccessfully to muffle her groans of erotic pleasure whenever he stroked into her vaginal paradise.

Off in the distance they saw the red glow of the morning sun beyond the ridgeline. Mike was getting ready to remark on it when he saw that there were actually two glows very close to each other. It was at that moment he realized the red glow was the signature of bomb or missile blasts and not the rising of the sun. Maria legs were shaking as she too realized it was not the dawn but an explosion of some magnitude. The sound of the falling ordinance came across the still darkened valley with a distinctive Whoomph ... Whoomph ... informing Mike that some target was obliterated in the early morning hours. Judging from the length of time delay between the red glows and the sound, he estimated the ground zero to be at least 10 miles distant not far from the highway to Nevada.

It didn't seem likely to Mike that any enemy soldiers had landed in such an inland location making the likelihood that the government soldiers were tending to internal disruptive forces the most probable scenario. He considered the facts as he knew them and determined there were three main threats to his little band of survivors. The first was the external enemy comprised of North Korean forces and missiles, the Venezuelan forces with missile submarines and Spanish speaking infiltrators from the South and other as yet unknown indigenous anti-American forces added to the mix of conventional threat. Then, there were the Looters and the bandits, the thieves and rapists from the urban areas who preyed on the survivors stealing food, valuables and using the females for their own perverted purposes. Last, but not least, was the various governmental agencies attempting to restore a stable environment to the besieged regions. Mike knew that their orders must be fairly detailed to cause such a violent reaction to the truckload of survivors from the inland region hit by the "dirty" bomb.

Their band was so small and so weak that he knew instinctively they would be unlikely to survive any contact with either the external threat or the government forces. They did stand a chance against the Looters and the bandits providing they did not allow themselves to get cornered by a superior force. It seemed to Mike that the Looters were more interested in finding females and food. Everything else took a back seat. The four females in his group were a prime target for them and needed to be hidden with careful planning.

His supplies were adequate for light contact but limited ammo and lack of heavy firepower made them vulnerable to even the smallest of Looter bands.

It was Wesley who brought the young girl dressed in a National Guard uniform from a unit outside of Las Vegas through the booby traps and up the rocky slope to the cave entrance. She was dirty, tired, and totally disoriented. It was obvious the girl thought she had fallen in with a group of Looters and expected to be treated accordingly. Mike saw she had been hit in one leg by some shrapnel which had not been attended to and marveled how she ignored it knowing it must be causing her considerable pain.

"She won't give me anything, dad, except her litany of "Name, Rank and Serial Number". I think she is some kind of shock."

Mike looked at her dog tag indicating she was "Rebecca Jones, PFC, 17122597, her blood type was listed as "B pos", her religion as "None Stated" born on February 14, 1989". The girl kept her mouth shut which was not any problem in his viewpoint.

After a hot meal and a chance to wash up at the water basin in the back of the cave, the girl seemed to loosen up and relaxed to a point that led her to close her eyes and fall into a troubled sleep.

It looked like a bit of trouble was brewing between Wesley and Heather. The girl was upset with her bed partner bringing home a sweet little dish who was prettier than her and who seemed to be attached to the unsuspecting Wesley. Mike saw the humor in it but was not going to touch it with a ten foot pole.

When Rebecca woke up and looked around, she had a different attitude and told them pretty much everything she knew. It was not top secret intelligence but it was a lot more than they were aware of.

Apparently, the National Guard was activated even before the attack and she was sent to a holding area well outside the city and was not subject to the dirty bomb attack. She told us that the city was a shambles with dead bodies and some kind of germs that attacked the immune system leaving the host as a helpless immobile drain on resources. The transient visitor population saw an opportunity to make their vacation into a win by sacking the sparkling casinos of anything not nailed down. Showgirls and prostitutes were being taken by force on every street corner and decent women hid inside their houses.

Rebecca was assigned to a motor pool unit and given a mission along with three other young female Guard members to transport four Humvees to the response center near Bakersfield. They had two armed escort vehicles and carried enough gas and provisions to go straight through without stopping.

They didn't have any problems until they reached the town where Mike had seen the travelers mugged and assaulted. She told them that the town seemed real quiet and that the lead vehicle stopped because a woman with a baby stroller was sitting on the ground in the middle of the street with her head in her hands. No sooner had the two men in the lead vehicle dismounted when pincer fire took them out in a matter of seconds. The girl in front of her started to make a U-turn to go back the way they came but she stalled the Humvee going up on the curb. A group of men ran out from an alley and pulled her into the shadows. The rear escort vehicle started to shoot indiscriminately into the buildings on both sides of the street until a well-placed RPG took it out with a single shot. She said,

"They came at us from all sides and took me and the other two girls to a cage in the high school. I could hear the Sergeant getting beaten up pretty bad but she wouldn't tell them anything. Then they just cut her throat and she died right in the middle of the basketball floor without another word. The other girl told them everything they wanted to know and they played with her for a long time because she was really beautiful. Before they could get to me, I slipped my ropes and made it out the little window behind the stands and I hurt my ankle on the cement walkway when I landed."