Robert Adams - The Memories of Milo Morai

The captain went as far as the constraints of his superiors and the pressing needs of his own base would let him . . . and that was not far: five thousand-round cases of 5.56mm (just about enough to issue eleven more rounds to each man rifle-armed), eight five-hundred-round boxes of 7.62mm ammo to be divided among six machine guns, one hundred fragmentation hand grenades and twenty-five CN gas grenades, plus twenty-five hundred rounds of 9mm ball and less than half that much of .45 ACP ball. Colonel Crippen thanked the man sincerely for everything, for all that he realized that if push really should come to shove where he was going, such piddling amounts would probably only prolong the survival of his unit for bare minutes.

Beyond Four Corners, which had been incorporated into Edwards AFB, the only signs of life along Route 58 were small animals, snakes and the occasional abandoned car or truck. At Barstow, they found out what had happened to the Reservists who had been originally scheduled to meet them at Bakersfield. The men were helping civilians to man the network of entrenchments and hastily erected bunker strong-points completely surrounding most of the town.

The senior officer of the Reservists, a slender, feisty brigadier general with short-cropped snow-white hair, was curtly apologetic for his heterogeneous unit’s fail-ure to rendezvous as planned.

“The NGs met us at San Bernardino, Colonel Crippen, some of the units, both mine and theirs, having had to fight their way there through mobs trying to get their weapons. San Bernardino, when we finally got there, was a plump chicken just waiting to be plucked, most of the law-enforcement types having either been killed or seriously hurt or gone to ground in quite justifiable fear for themselves and their immediate families.

“After a conference of the combined staffs, I decided to leave the NGs down there to harden up the area, establish a perimeter and guard it. Not a few of their people had failed to show up for the muster and so they were radically understrength, and their transport and arms were but little better than are yours. I brought my own force on toward Bakersfield, although on the advice of refugees, I kept off the free-ways and made it up 15 and 247 almost without incident until we got to the outskirts of Barstow here.

“The surviving citizens had been forced into the center of town and were there fighting a losing battle against a horde of looters, lunatic refugees, assorted scum and a pack of well-armed outlaw bikers. Well, I sustained a few completely unnecessary casualties trying to do it according to the book on putting down civil disturbances—I even got nicked myself in that fracas.

“That was when one of my subcommanders took over, a Marine Corps Reserve colonel, Mac Rayford. He and his jarheads went through those buggers like shit through a goose. They killed all of the bikers and one hell of a lot of the others and they took no prisoners, wounded or otherwise, on his orders. I think it safe to say that the few who got away from him and his gyrenes are still running and will until they drop, then they’ll likely crawl.

“But the sad part of it is, no sooner was the town secured than poor old Mac dropped dead of a heart attack. However, he’d shown all the rest of us, especially me, the proper way, the only way that this business can be fought—no kidgloves, only iron fists. Extend no quarter, shoot first, if you intend to live, forget about the civil rights of your enemies and consider everyone an enemy who cannot immediately prove himself a friend.

“I am indeed sorry that I did not have you contacted to let you know that neither I nor the NGs were going to meet you, but I just never thought to radio you, not with all that was going on here in making this place defensible.”

Crippen barked a short, unhumorous laugh. “Even if you had, you couldn’t’ve raised us, general. That radio they issued us up in the capital is a piece of pure antique shit, for which they don’t even make parts anymore. But you should’ve let Sacramento know, at least.

“All that aside, sir, my orders read, in part, to subordinate myself and my command to you at our rendezvous.” He saluted and added, “I do so, now, General Brunelle. What are your orders, sir?”

After squinting at the westering sun, General James Brunelle sighed and shook his head. “Do your men have rations? Good. Have the column drive on into town. They’ll be directed to a place they can bivouac for the night, take turns showering and eat. You stay with me, colonel—we need to talk about a lot of things.”

“The upshot of it, Colonel Moray,” said ragged, dirty Crippen as he devoured with his hungry eyes the rabbit slowly browning on its green-wood spit over a bed of hardwood coals, “was that General Brunelle had more than enough men, already, to defend his perimeter. He and the people he had elected to defend were, however, running low on food and fuel; so low were they, in fact, that he already had cleared it with the commander at Twenty-nine Palms to take in his contingent of Marine Corps Reservists, proven-effective combat troops. So, you see, me and mine, we were the very last thing he needed to try and absorb.

“He did give us a few newer, better trucks and jeeps, but we had to siphon the gas for them out of the old ones; he refused to spare us a single drop of his, though he gave us all the lubricants and water we could carry. He gave us spare tires and some tools, too, but no weapons and no ammo, either, not until I agreed to trade him two of my medium machine guns and the CN grenades we’d gotten from the Air Force. Even then, all we got was a few more light automatics, 9mm submachine guns and a few very old .45 grease guns, M3 Als with a single magazine for each one.

“Before he sent us on our way the next morning, he suggested that I find myself an endangered town some-where and fortify it, then just hunker down until things got back to normal. He also advised me to stay well clear of the Los Angeles and San Diego central areas, for no one knew just what they had been hit with and they could well be virtually glowing with radioactivity.

“For all of the fact that his mechanics and driver, mine and some civilians had worked through the entire night, we were there on those automotive night-mares we had been equipped with in Sacramento, my column lost one truck after another as we drove along on 40 West. All else having failed, with only enough rations for one or maybe two more days, if we stretched it, and not enough ammo for any serious kind of a fight, nor enough gas to keep us all mounted for much longer, I’d just about decided to see if the Twenty-nine Palms Marine Base would take us all in for a while. My thinking was that they had a damned big base with a long perimeter and so might be in need of more bodies to keep it secure.

“We needn’t, it developed, have bothered. Like back at Edwards, they wanted only their own kind, Regular or Reserve, but in any case, Marines only, please. Moreover, they not only would not give us any supplies or gas or ammo, they took from us—at the points of heavy weapons!—our last four medium machine guns, the ammo for them and even the jeeps they were mounted on, saying that it was better for them to be in their hands than in the hands of whoever got around to killing us for them. They took most of our grenades, too, noting in passing that they were far too dangerous to be allowed to remain in the hands of state reserves, war-gamers or Boy Scouts. Then they escorted us back to 40 and advised us to go to hell, if we wished, but to stay away from Twenty-nine Palms.

“It was a little later that we lucked onto a gas plaza that had been neither drained dry nor torched. Not only were we able to fill all of the remaining vehicles and the jerry cans, we found that the place boasted a five-bay shop, an outdoor grease pit, an artesian well, its own electrical generator, an air compressor and a whole mess of tools, parts, fluids and what have you. Even the coffee and soft-drink machines still worked, and we found some cases of beer, juices, candy bars, smoked sausages, jerky, chips and salted nuts. So we just set up camp in and around the place and went to work on our transport . . . after we’d buried the seven bodies we found. Five men and a woman and a child, dead, without a mark on them.