Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Restoration

“Okay, let’s go,” Edwards said. The Team did a press check and checked their magazines. Just like the last time they did that, they had a round in the chamber and a full load out of topped off magazines.

The sun wouldn’t come up for almost four hours. It was still drizzling and cold. Darkness and nasty weather for the dark and nasty things that lay ahead.

The Team got into Mark’s truck. Everyone expected Pow to say, “This never gets old.” But he didn’t. They didn’t feel like they were kings of the world like when they patrolled around Pierce Point. Things felt different.

No one talked much during the slow drive to Watershed Park. They kept their eyes peeled for threats. Ryan and Wes stood in the back of the truck without the tarp. They could be out in the open now. No use hiding it. In fact, they wanted the civilians to see them. Help had arrived.

As they traveled down the Olympia streets toward Watershed Park, they were struck by how downhill the city had gone. They hadn’t really been noticing it when they went with Bravo Company toward the capitol right before the surrender. They had been expecting a full-on fight with regular forces, so they weren’t noticing little things.

Now they were. There was garbage blowing everywhere. Most businesses were boarded up. Graffiti was everywhere; mostly gang graffiti, but an occasional Patriot message in yellow paint. “I miss America” was everywhere.

There were a few civilians out. Ryan and Wes would cover them from the back of the truck, using the top of the cab as a platform to hold their rifles steady. The civilians were harmless, especially when they saw about a hundred regular troops behind the pickup. Regular troops with uniforms and high-tech weapons.

At one point, some civilians came up to the truck at an intersection. They were not afraid of Ryan and Wes pointing rifles at them.

“Do you have food?” a middle aged woman desperately asked. She looked like hell, so thin. “Please. Food. For my children.”

“Stand back, ma’am,” Ryan said.

“There is a limited amount of food at the brewery,” Wes said. “Do not bring any weapons. You will be searched.”

“Thank you!” she said. “Thank you,” she repeated as she started to walk toward the brewery and Bravo Company.

“Whoa!” Ryan yelled. “Don’t move, ma’am. Wait here with your hands up until the troops behind us get past you. Okay?”

She nodded and put her hands up. She kept looking toward the brewery like it contained the solutions to all her problems. Because it did. They had food there.

Scotty radioed to the troops behind him that the woman there was going to the brewery for food and would keep her hands up while they passed by.

“Roger that,” the Bravo radioman replied.

Mark’s black truck crept down the streets for another twenty minutes. The idling of the diesel engine was loud, but soothing. It meant they had transportation when no one else seemed to have any.

The Team and Bravo Company came to the intersection where they needed to turn left. Scotty called into the company what direction they’d be taking.

“Trouble!” Ryan yelled. Wes swung around to the direction Ryan was pointing. There were four men with what looked like hunting rifles or shotguns. They started to run.

“Can’t identify,” Wes yelled. Scotty was calling it in.

“Don’t shoot unless you can identify as enemy,” the radio said after the men had disappeared.

Not shooting unless you could identify the enemy made sense. It wouldn’t have made sense if they were invading a foreign country and everyone with a gun was a bad guy, but they were in America. As reassuring as it would have been to shoot anything with a gun, this was a city full of Americans. Who knew if they were civilians protecting their neighborhood from the gangs, were gray men out to whack Lima neighbors, or were plainclothes Limas. There was no way to tell. The Team didn’t mind rules of engagement that spared unnecessary civilian deaths when the civilians were their neighbors. Rules of engagement to make politicians happy or to prevent bad footage on CNN were another thing entirely.

Seeing those armed men, whoever they were, put the Team on edge. This wasn’t at all like their previous cakewalks. This was the real deal.

They crept along for another half hour or so. Even at idling speed, they had to stop periodically to let Bravo, on foot, catch up. They were in good shape but had tons of equipment and had been up for a few days. They were tired.

“Heading into the wooded area,” Scotty said into the radio. “Be ready for ambushes from the right or left flanks.” Or from the front, he thought, right at our truck.

“Should we kill the headlights?” Scotty asked Bobby and Pow.

“Nah,” Pow said, “we need them to see anyone ahead of us.”

“Plus, we’re cleaning the place out,” Bobby said. “So if they see our lights, they might go further into the forest. Concentrate themselves.” Made sense.

They spent the next half hour barely moving along. The high beams on so the headlights were lighting up their path. Nothing.

Edwards got on the radio and said they would stop here, dismount, and go into the woods. Ryan and Wes relaxed. They had been careful to stand up in the back of the truck while staying ready for a sudden lurch if Bobby had to take off. It was exhausting, but now they could relax.

“Dismount, dude,” Wes said and stood in the back of the truck.

“Boom! Boom!” Bursts of fire.

Fire was coming from everywhere. And tracers! They had a machine gun! Green tracers were like laser beams from a science fiction movie.

Bobby punched the gas and the truck flew forward. He swerved and slammed on the brakes. The truck was now sideways in the road, providing plenty of cover, just like they’d practiced.

A burst of machine gun fire blew out the windshield just as they got out of the truck. Scotty was about two feet away when he got sprayed with glass. He didn’t even feel the glass. He was moving away from the truck in slow motion.

Bravo Company, now behind the truck, lit up the right and left flanks. They, too, had machine guns. Red tracers spit out from behind the truck and into the sides of the road and bounced all around the forest.

The Team was shooting into the woods. They couldn’t see what they were shooting at, but it felt so good to shoot back, which was better than just sitting there feeling helpless.

Pretty soon, Pow yelled, “Save your ammo!” It was impossible to see what they were shooting at. Now that they’d got a half magazine out and didn’t feel helpless anymore, they could start thinking this through, which was what Ted had told them before the Collapse. He warned them to resist the urge to shoot just so they could feel like they were doing something. They’d want those rounds back if they start to run out and they will run out. That being said, Ted admitted to them that he emptied a mag the first time he got ambushed.

“Moving!”

“Move!”

“Moving rear!”

“Covering!” The Team was doing what they’d practiced, moving to the best cover behind the truck and covering each other’s movements. With live rounds coming at them this time. They felt remarkably calm, now that the initial shock was over. They could feel their training kicking in and getting them through this. And the wild volleys of green tracer fire showed them what Ted had always said, “Your enemy is probably a shitty shot.” Whoever was spraying at them wasn’t hitting crap.

After a minute or two, the fire started to die down. It was pretty obvious that neither side was hitting what they were aiming at. The Team could hear yelling and rustling bushes. The Limas were completely disorganized. It was starting to become obvious that the Limas had just started spraying poorly aimed machine gun fire, and now were getting the hell out of there.