LeRoy Clary - Humanaty's Blight

She let go of my hand. All eyes were on her. I said it first, “What good will that do? We don’t have any way to call in an airstrike.”

She grinned and shrugged in the way fourteen-year-olds do when dismissing others. She said, “We know that. He doesn’t. I hope he has a real bad ten minutes wait. I’d love to see a plane, any plane, flying this way.”

The laughter around me caught me by surprise. The men in the radio area were repeating the conversation to anyone listening. A boom sounded, another explosion, but it was different.

We ran outside and found a cloud of smoke near the edge of the pier. A cannon mounted on wheels sat there. Exposed, it looked like it was leftover from the Civil War over a hundred and fifty years earlier. The thing may have been sitting beside the steps of the city hall or VFW building earlier today. It had been covered with tarps and hidden from the ships, but it was at the edge of the concrete pier and pointed at the gunboats. The cloud of smoke slowly dissipated as the cannon was rolled back nearer us and three men leaped to reload.

The word came to us that it had fired ball bearings and steel nuts, like a giant shotgun. It was being reloaded and pointed to where the soldiers on the gunboats would come to take the pier from us. When I looked, the second ship was in the last stages of sinking, the stern high in the air, while the first was completely engulfed in flames. Only seventeen more to deal with.

Gunboats from those seventeen started massing together. Probably forty of them, each with twenty or more men, all heavily armed. They were determined to get a foothold so they could land more and more troops, enough to overwhelm our pathetically small force by sheer numbers and superior weapons.

I turned to look up at Everett sitting on the hill above and saw hundreds of people arriving. From where didn’t matter. They must have been hiding in the city or living with gangs, but wherever they’d been, they were now settling down in on the hillside with their rifles. More were working their way to the bottom, to join with us. At a guess, there were five hundred of our people protecting the hillside from the invaders.

While that seemed an impossible and formidable force to overcome, there were ten thousand trained and better-armed troops on the ships waiting in the harbor. Major Dundee must have had the same reaction and realization. He’d come into the tent a few moments earlier and waited for my attention.

“Major?” I asked.

“Sir, what are our plans?”

Without pause, I said, “We have perhaps five hundred people to hold off ten thousand. We’ve been lucky so far. Do you have any ideas?”

“I do,” Sue said before he could respond in the negative. She continued, “Five hundred against ten thousand isn’t fair. We need more. Dispatch the sailboats, send motorcycles and send radio messages to everyone in the northwest. Tell them whoever is in on those ships sent the blight that killed our friends and families. If they want a piece of them, get their asses here with whatever weapons they have and fight alongside us.”

Major Dundee looked from her to me. “Sort of like sending a hundred Paul Reveres to alert the citizens the British are coming. I like it.”

She smiled sweetly, but her eyes were hard. She said, “We’ll have another thousand here by dawn, and more by the end of tomorrow. In two or three days, we’ll outnumber them.”

The major turned to me. “Do I have your permission to do as she says?”

“Yes. Tell everyone to spread the word. Those who came on motorcycles should head out, stop and tell everyone they encounter. We need help. Lots of it.”

“And you think they will come?”

“I do,” I told him, as certain of that statement as any I’d ever made.

He rushed away. Ten minutes later, over the intermittent gunshots, the roar of thirty motorcycles was music to my ears.

More gunboats joined the others still on the water circling fast and sweeping in close and firing, before retreating. They broke into three smaller groups, about ten boats in each. I suspected what would happen next but couldn’t prevent it. Part of them went north of us, others south, and the last group came directly at us on the pier. While we could hold the pier, at least for a while, there were not enough of us to control the entire waterfront. They would land hundreds of troops to our left, a few hundred more to our right, and hundreds of others would attack directly at us.

I considered withdrawing.

The white-haired SEAL was striding my way. He placed a hand on my shoulder and said, “Don’t do it. If they take this pier, it’s over.”

“We don’t have enough to stop them. I can’t order all these people to stay and be killed.”

He looked out at the ships—and beyond. At the sun that was almost touching the tops of the Olympic mountains. “Can you spread the word for them to stay until midnight?”

That gave them six hours to escape before dawn. “I can do that.”

In appreciation, he pounded my shoulder with his balled fist so hard my knees almost buckled. He turned and hurried to where his group was gathered, still talking and planning and issuing orders I didn’t understand. He didn’t seem worried and the men with the kayaks were in good spirits.

Sue took me a few steps away from everyone else. We stood beside a rusted Buick as she said, “Remain calm. You have to set an example. You’re doing great.”

“I have no right to be giving orders. If these people ever find out I’m just a geek who lived in a basement, they won’t do anything I say. I don’t know what I’m doing or how this happened to put me in charge. You and Steve are doing ten times what I am.”

“Stand tall. You are the figurehead, Captain. You have us to support you. Steve, Major Dundee, the SEAL, and me. And others. Just take a few deep breaths and watch what’s going to happen.”

I turned to the setting sun but could only see seventeen ships filled with ten thousand troops between the sun and me. And of course, the gunboats they kept sending our way. “At midnight, I’m sending everyone away.”

She gave me a faint smile but didn’t argue.

The sun went downas more clouds moved in. The gunfire decreased as the targets became invisible or at least, harder to see. Hopefully, that would help the SEAL and the kayakers, too. The major found me and said that he’d heard many more people had arrived or were in transit. The motorcycles had splint up onto small groups were spreading the word.

They were riding into every part of the city and even the small towns nearby. I wondered if they had recruited the same guys on motorcycles in Marysville who had chased us. And the Indians guarding their reservation. Even those in Darrington would come if the word reached them—and if they were sober enough.

He said, “When the survivors heard about what’s happening here, they got so pissed some are running on foot to reach us before the main attack.”

“There are still ten-thousands of the those on the ships,” I said. “They are better armed and trained, so don’t get your hopes up that we’re going to win. Issue the order that unless told otherwise, we all leave here at midnight.”

He snorted, then straightened. “Sir, not to attempt to correct you, but I think you’re wrong. From what I hear, nobody has refused to help. They insist on it. And despite what you say, nobody is leaving.”

Steve, who hadn’t said anything for quite a while, leaned closer. “How are you going to feed all of them?”