Jeff Brackett - Half Past Midnight

Ken was already there when I found the fight. It was in the underground parking garage of the Nation’s Bank building, where a pair of mounted machine guns protected the only entrance. I recognized the sound of the fifty calibers.

It was a clever idea, getting the huge guns off of the otherwise useless Abrams tanks. There was no way anyone was going to rush them.

“Any ideas?” Ken shouted to be heard above the storm.

“Me? You’re joking, right?”

Ken grinned briefly. “A man’s gotta have hope.”

“You think he’d surrender if we asked real nice?” I peeked around the corner. I barely ducked back in time, as the guns chewed up the side of the building we hid behind.

“Doesn’t seem too likely,” was Ken’s dry reply.

“Can we get behind them?”

Again, he shook his head. “Already tried. The back is natural stonework with a couple of louvered glass windows. Perfect little sniper holes. We lost five people trying. All we got out of it was a report that there are at least twenty people holed up inside, and they’re working on something in the garage.”

That sounded ominous. My first fear was that if they could rig the fifty calibers from the tanks, maybe they could rig the cannons, too. A moment’s thought nixed that idea, though. We had managed to destroy the cannons on all of the tanks, with the exception of the one buried under twenty feet of water at the reservoir bridge. I didn’t think it likely that they could salvage that one. So what were they up to?

“What about the air cannons?”

Ken shook his head. “Out of naphtha. I doubt if we could get close enough, anyway. If we had any incendiaries left, I’d try bringing in the slingshots and lobbing in from behind other buildings. Might as well wish for them to surrender.”

Several engines sputtered to life, and suddenly we knew what they had been working on. Ten Humvees and a personnel truck skidded out of the garage, each one overburdened with men. All of the vehicles appeared to have been fitted with at least one of the machine guns from the tanks.

I quickly did the math. Six tanks, minus the one in the reservoir, each with one fifty caliber and two of the smaller 7.62mm meant fifteen machine guns.

A few of our people rushed from hiding to fire the last of their precious ammunition at the fleeing enemy and half a dozen soldiers crashed to the pavement. But the machine guns took their deadly payment, and we lost ten more of our own.

Helpless, I could only stare as Larry sped away.

There was both celebration and mourning as people reunited with loved ones, or found their bodies. We’d had a questionable victory at best, and almost half our number would never know we had won. There were more casualties than we’d had during the entire month after D-day. It was the cost of using sheer numbers to overrun superior firepower, but only after the fighting was over did this really hit home.

According to the signs at the edge of town, Rejas had once been a community of 9,893 “smiling neighbors.” We were less than a third of that now, and not a smile in the town.

We knew there were still several supply caches around town that Larry’s boys had missed, but only in those areas where they hadn’t spent much time. They had demolished just about everything they had occupied. The fighting had ruined even more. We wouldn’t know for some time but, from what I had seen, I wouldn’t be surprised if we had lost more than half the buildings.

Even worse was the realization that it wasn’t that great a loss, because that would still be plenty of room for our reduced numbers. Entire neighborhoods had been destroyed, and still we had room.

Of the survivors, over a hundred were seriously wounded, and many more were in shock. Mostly, everyone was just tired. Tired of running. Tired of hiding. Tired of fighting.

Still, it didn’t feel over.

That night, Jim convened an emergency meeting of what was left of the town council. Eric Petry and I, along with a handful of others, appealed to them to put one last band together to track Larry down.

“You saw them! There’s maybe sixty or seventy of them left. We can put together a group to go after them and leave tonight!”

“And then what?” Jim shook his head wearily. “What would you do once you find him? Throw another hundred bodies at them? Two hundred? Three?”

“Yes!” Eric blurted before I could try reason. “Yes, we would! If that’s what it takes, then we do it. The man killed hundreds of our neighbors, our wives and children.” Tears ran freely down his cheeks. “He killed my son! He destroyed our homes and our families.” Eric turned and faced the crowd. “Who the hell here hasn’t lost a friend or relative? Did we do anything to him? Did we?

“Troutman started his killing on D-day. The first opportunity he got, he killed a bunch of innocent folks. Tried to kill Leeland. Larry Troutman had four men with him then. Two years later, he had three thousand! From four to three thousand in less than two years! This time, he’ll be starting with more than fifty! We can’t let him do it again, or next time he’ll come in with three times as many people, and there won’t be any stopping him.”

No matter how much we reasoned or pleaded, it did no good. Then Eric made things worse when he lost his temper, calling them “a bunch of ball-less fucking cowards” before he stormed out.

The vote was unanimous. I couldn’t blame them, since I was as weary as anyone else. But neither could I believe that Larry was going to simply leave and let us get on with our lives. His ego wouldn’t allow it. He had hunted me for nearly two years for having dared deny him our supplies. The latest defeat would, in his eyes, be infinitely more insulting. It would gnaw at him, festering until he found a way to exact his revenge.

But Jim summed up the town’s weariness later when I appealed to him in private. “Let it go, Lee,” he told me with a sigh. “We won. It’s over.”

Our war had simply been too costly, and Rejas’s soul had been damaged, perhaps beyond repair.

Exhausted beyond belief, I walked through streets as dark as my mood. The more I dwelt on the evening, the darker my mood became, working me into a foul depression that made me want to strike out at someone, anyone.

When Eric found me, he was evidently just as angry. “Leeland!”

Swallowing a curse, I scowled back at him. “What do you want, Eric?”

“I want to know why you let them get away with that goddamned ruling. I want to know why you didn’t fight with me to get a group together and go after that son of a bitch!” His belligerent tone grated, and it was just what I needed to put me over the edge.

Without thinking, I shoved him. “You’ve already pissed off what’s left of the council, Eric. You don’t want to piss me off, too!”

His balance was off for a second, and I think it shocked him that I had actually shoved him. I saw the emotions on his face go from confusion to fury in less than a second. Then, he swung at me.

It wasn’t the wild punch of a drunken brawler, telegraphed and uncontrolled. It was a linear missile thrown by a man who had trained his body for striking efficiency for most of his adult life. I barely had time to see it coming before I felt the impact on my left cheek.

I staggered, but managed to stay on my feet as Eric screamed, “He fucking killed my son! You don’t know what that’s like.” His tears flowed freely. “He killed Andrew.”

As abruptly as that, his anger was spent, and he raised his hands to cover his face. His sobbing robbed me of my anger as well, and I approached him cautiously. “Eric? I’m sorry, man.” I didn’t know what else to say and laid an awkward hand on the man’s shoulder.