William Forstchen - One Year After

“I heard it’s like riding a bicycle,” John offered, trying to sound humorous, but given the moment, his comment fell flat.

Maury shook his head and looked over at Billy. “Do you have any idea where the starter button is?”

If not for the seriousness of the situation, John would have started to laugh, but all were interrupted by a shout from out in the compound.

“Incoming!”

A couple of seconds later, a shell impacted a couple of hundred yards to the south.

“Mortar!” a cry went up.

“Maury, stop screwing around! Find the damn starter, rev her up, and get the hell out of here!”

Maury fumbled with various switches, cursing under his breath, and then he finally found his goal, the rotor overhead beginning to turn slowly, turbine engine whining to life. It sounded rough, rumbling, Maury working what he thought was the primer, adjusting the fuel mixture, grasping a lever, the pitch of the rotors changing, cutting deeper, louder.

“I’m not sure if I got it yet!” Maury cried. “Get the hell off, John, unless you want a quick ride to Black Mountain or one helluva crash!”

John stepped back out of the chopper, ducking low and looking to the side of the road where medics were working on the wounded.

“Worse cases that won’t make it back to the hospital, load them up!” John shouted.

Six of the wounded, two of them their foes, were carried over. One of the wounded was the old marine, a close friend of Forrest’s who had nailed the Apache with the RPG. He was suffering from multiple gunshot wounds across his stomach. John doubted he had more than a few minutes left, but those carrying him did so with tenderness and respect.

John grasped his hand and squeezed it. “You won this one for us, gunny, knocking out that Apache,” John said, voice even, the man’s eyes drifting out of focus. “Semper fi.”

“Didn’t get time to fire the second one. Did it get away?”

John held his hand tightly. “You got both with that one shot, Sergeant.”

“Incoming!”

John crouched down, the gunny’s stretcher-bearers dropping him down and covering him with their own bodies.

The shell detonated fifty yards to the north. They were definitely bracketed, most likely a firing position staring down their throats atop Beaucatcher Mountain.

“Get it up, Maury! Get it up!” John shouted.

The speed of the rotors picked up, Maury working the collective to get the feel of it, sound changing to the distinctive helicopter thwump, thwump, thwump. For a brief instant, it flashed John back to Desert Storm, the fleet of helicopters passing overhead in the opening moments of the attack into Iraq.

John ducked back down, and the next mortar round blew just twenty yards away, over near where the wounded were waiting to be loaded onto trucks. More screams echoed even above the roar of the Black Hawk as it lifted half a dozen feet, dropped back down, and began to lift yet again. Then its tail swung violently, nearly crashing into John so that he dived for the pavement. As the chopper swung back the other way and started rising straight up, another mortar round exploding in the wreckage of the burning Apache.

“Come on! Get out! Get out!” John cried, and he could see that most of his personnel were ignoring the incoming, looking up at the captured Black Hawk as if willing it to get up and away. It banked slightly, nearly drifting into the roof of the mall, rotating drunkenly, nose edging over, and then it just sped off into the darkness toward Black Mountain, disappearing into the night.

Another mortar round clipped the procession of prisoners, dropping several along with one of his guards. Grace shouted for them to run down the street to where the flatbed truck waited, John crying for the ambulances to back up, as well.

A thought seized him, and he shouted for one of his troops standing nearby to run down to the prisoners and bring back their captain, and then he ordered everyone to take cover inside the mall.

There was no need for urging. John shoved Kevin Malady through a shattered doorway, his ham radio operator behind him. Lee Robinson brought up the rear, cursing out John for being in the middle of it all.

Within was a dark and haunting sight. He remembered the weekly trip here with Elizabeth and Jennifer years earlier and the ritual of having to drag Jennifer past where the Disney Store had been, negotiating with her as to whether she wanted a Beanie Baby that week or one of the Disney stuffed animals—they cost more and were equal to two Beanies—Economics 101 for a four-year-old. Though painful in a way to recall, he did smile for an instant as he gazed down the darkened corridor, as if half expecting to see his little girl alive again.

Beside her would be Elizabeth, reaching the age where she would slow at the sight of the gaudy jewelry offered at a corridor kiosk, and then they would head to the food court for a snack before going across the street for a movie, where minutes earlier he had ducked low along the roadside to avoid getting shot.

All of it was abandoned ruins, completely looted out in the first week after the Day, though there was hardly a store in the vast complex that contained a single item necessary for survival. Much of it had then been burned by looters gone wild and left to sink into moldy ruin. Once one of the iconic images of affluent American society, a shopping mall, it was now a ghost building filled with ghost memories. He turned away from the memories to examine the building they were in.

The huge Sears building had been turned into a barrack and storage area for the chopper crews and their security team. There was even an electrical generator still running, some fluorescent lights casting an eerie glow on the ruins of fire-gutted wreckage—shattered display cases, a mannequin with a broken face sporting what would have been the summer fashion of two years earlier, debris of a squatter’s camp, most likely driven out by the arrival of Fredericks’s troops. A disquieting stench of moldy, decaying clothing and waste hung over it all. The wreckage had been pushed back to make way for nearly a hundred bunks, a chow line, and storage area in what had once been the first-floor section devoted to tools and automotive supplies, which of course had been one of the first areas looted.

Several mortar shells crumped onto the ceiling high overhead, but nothing collapsed down from the upper floor.

“Malady, post security. Once the annoyance stops outside, get people into their supply trucks and move them into hiding; get others to check out what we have here.”

John took a moment to get on the radio and announce in the clear. “We have one chopper—a Black Hawk—coming back. It is definitely ours.”

If Fredericks was monitoring that, it would certainly set him off, and he could imagine the cheers erupting back in Black Mountain.

“Prepare the hospital for at least fifty more wounded coming in.”

He clicked off and looked around as his troops, many armed with flashlights, began to search about, and as they rifled the personnel bunkers, there were cries of excitement as MREs, snacks, comfortable sleeping bags, and personal items were snatched up.

“All right, people, listen up!” John shouted, his voice echoing in the cavernous room. “Personal looting stops now. Second squad to secure a perimeter around this building. They won’t take their defeat lying down and might try coming back before dawn. Set up firing positions as you were trained to do, keep back from the doors, and stay low. I want the chow area secured by first squad and what rations we can find, one only to then be distributed to each of you. Third squad to that storage area over there; I bet we’ll find one helluva stash of weapons and ammunition. Fourth squad to the vehicles outside once the shelling stops, and get them moved. Keep your ears open and ready to run if the shelling resumes. If any of the fuel bladders have not been hit, find a way to move the damn things. They’ll weigh several tons each and that is gold for us.”