R. Ruggiero - Brushfire Plague

The corners of Angela’s lips turned down in thought, “True. True. I’ll work up a nurse’s bag from Lisa. Our cover story can be that I’m a private nurse going to see a patient.”

“And who are we?” Dranko asked, skeptically.

“My gallant bodyguards, of course!” she winked.

Cooper smiled, “That’s believable enough these days. I like it. Good idea.”

A few minutes later, Cooper was outside. The cold air nipped at his exposed ears and fingers. He knelt beside Elena’s grave, propping himself up with the butt of his rifle. The earth that had consumed his wife was still fresh enough that he could smell its dampened odor. He thrust a hand into the dirt and grabbed a fistful of it. He brought it to his nose and inhaled. He imagined he could smell a whiff of her perfume. The clumps of dirt slowly fell through his fingers back onto her grave.

“I need your help tonight. I’m going to save our son, I hope.” He worked hard to keep his voice steady amidst the emotion.

He listened in silence, hoping for an answer of some kind. But, the night was deathly quiet, save the bark of a dog in the distance. Suddenly, he heard the flutter of wings and looked up. A black crow had alighted on the wire above. A part of Cooper wanted to believe it was the same bird from days before, but he couldn’t be sure.

His eyes fell again to the freshly tilled earth and what lay beneath. “I miss you, love. I miss you every minute. I don’t know how I can raise our boy without…” His voice cracked and fresh tears plied their way down his face and fell onto the earth, darkening it. He stared, thinking in the silence at the ground where his wife’s body lay.

Then, from the east, the deep roar of an engine disturbed his thoughts. He’d heard that sound before. A second later, it clicked. It was the whine of a military Humvee. A chill ran down his spine and the pit of his stomach turned over.

Cooper turned, ripped open the door, and shouted inside, “Angela, watch Jake. Dranko, on me! Now!”

Seconds later, Dranko had gathered his gear and appeared at Cooper’s side. Already, the first barks and pops of gunfire from the eastern barricade were echoing off his home’s walls. The telltale rapid popping, tat-tat-tat, of automatic weapons fire greeted their ears.

“Military,” Cooper breathed to Dranko as they set out on a full sprint towards the gunfire. Dranko nodded as they ran.

Within seconds, the gunfire had grown deathly silent. The roar of the engine revving up again, drawing closer, confirmed his worst fears: the barricade had been quickly overrun.

Cooper and Dranko had run barely fifty yards when the Humvee came into view. They flung themselves to the ground and behind two small trees that were scattered about six feet apart. The Humvee raced towards them, straight towards Cooper’s house. They saw the driver, a passenger, and the gunner who stood behind the machine gun that was mounted on top of the vehicle’s roof.

“Got gunner,” Cooper whispered to his friend as he sighted his rifle on the man’s torso that lay exposed.

When the vehicle was within thirty yards, they opened fire. Caught by surprise, their volley was devastating. Cooper fired three shots in rapid succession. The first caught the man square in the chest and rocked him back against the opening. The second ripped the man’s neck wide open and a red geyser erupted. The third shot missed entirely as the machine gunner’s body slumped and banged against the vehicle.

Dranko had let loose a controlled burst of gunfire from his M16, stitching a pattern from the driver to the passenger-side. Both men were cut down in seconds. The vehicle, driverless, swerved and then flipped over. It skidded, on its side, to a stop just twenty feet from Cooper’s front lawn.

Cooper and Dranko turned toward each and exchanged smiles. A second later, Cooper saw Dranko’s face look aghast just as he heard another engine roaring up the street and the first burst of gunfire.

He felt something set his left arm on fire. He rapidly pushed himself backward, trying to find more cover behind a low retainer wall. His left arm burned where the bullet had hit him. He clenched his fingers and moved his arm to confirm it hadn’t broken any bones or destroyed any key muscles.

He popped up and shot blindly in the direction of the sound of the second Humvee. Dranko lay absurdly exposed and he hoped to give him some cover. Two of his rounds impacted on the Humvee’s body, one close to the machine gunner up top.

Within a second, Cooper was staring down the barrel of the heavy barrel machine gun. He dropped to the flat of his belly as a burst of gunfire hit the low wall he was hiding behind. Dirt showered him and rock chips bit into his arms and face. With his arm, he shielded his eyes from the stinging debris and looked up.

Dranko had swung his body around the tree to gain as much cover as it could afford—which wasn’t much. The machine gun fire was stitching across the ground, arcing in slow motion from where Cooper lay towards Dranko’s position. Dranko was firing back blindly at the Humvee as he tried to shrivel his body up enough to hide behind the all-too-skinny tree. Fear throttled Cooper’s throat as he saw his friend’s impending fate. He rose back to his knees, but rifle fire that came from behind the Humvee forced him back down. More men, dismounted.

Then, he heard the deep-throated boom, boom, boom of what could only be a heavy caliber machine gun firing from his left toward the Humvee.

Across the street, he saw the ancient BAR spitting fire! The face behind the light machine gun startled him. It belonged to Hank Hutchison. As startling was the crazed, but ecstatic, smile plastered across his face.

His fire was surprisingly accurate for someone who hadn’t fired the gun in decades. The .30-06 rounds first shattering the windshield and then tracing their way up to the machine gunner. In turn, he was swinging the machine gun toward Hank in a desperate race.

Hank won.

The machine gunner’s body was ripped apart as a half-dozen rounds shred his torso—despite the body armor and pulped the man’s head like a watermelon smashed by a sledgehammer. Hank pivoted his body to replace the magazine in the BAR, which had run dry. The passenger in the Humvee bailed out and rolled across the pavement as the Humvee careened out of control before crashing into the first Humvee that had flipped earlier.

Cooper rose once more onto his knees to get a better view of the rest of the area. He could see at least a half dozen men moving leap-frog fashion up the street toward them.

In the seconds-long lull, the passenger from the Humvee called out, “We come for Cooper Adams! No one else needs to get hurt! Send us Cooper Adams!”

Cooper’s mind reeled. Me? Damn, the Major! Defending Mitchell?

Before Cooper could finish processing what he’d just heard, Hank yelled back, “To hell with you! You come for Cooper, you come for all of us!” He punctuated his sentence by letting loose another burst of fire from the BAR, which forced the soldier lying next to the Humvee to scurry up against it for more cover. Unfortunately for him, doing so exposed him to Dranko’s line of fire. In turn, he fired a controlled three-round burst that battered the man and left him slumped over.

From further down the street, more gunfire rang out. First, Cooper saw soldiers firing in their direction. Dranko was forced once more to take cover behind the tree. Suddenly, he jumped to a half crouch and sprinted towards the crashed Humvees, bullets chasing him and tearing up chunks of asphalt. As he raised his own rifle to return fire, he also saw a few muzzle flashes farther to the east as some of the neighborhood defenders had begun shooting at the soldiers from behind. A sharp cry of pain told him one of their rounds had hit home.