James Tarr - Dogsoldiers

They crossed Greenfield in pairs. The first two—Quentin and Ed—darted across, and spent five minutes checking the large building and the area around the parking lot, making sure it was clear. Then Ed cupped his hand around his flashlight and hit the button briefly. At the signal, two more figures broke from the fence line on the far side and dashed across the road. They were hard to see in the charcoal light of late dusk.

George dashed across last on his own. Then they closed up, arranged themselves in two columns, and slowly began working their way west through the neighborhood there. Backyards were more hidden from view, but climbing over fences in the dark was a great way to get a stupid injury, and maybe meet up with a pet dog, so they stalked along the front of the houses on either side of a side street, making good time. They stepped through tall lawn grass and hugged the overgrown bushes that decorated the front of most houses, but still felt very exposed even in the dark.

It was not late, and in the fresh dark they heard voices from time to time and saw twice the glow of fires in backyards reflecting off aluminum siding. The smell of cooking meat made all their mouths water.

The men moved quietly through the humid night air, working their way through one neighborhood into another. The houses grew larger, two story colonials, aluminum siding above brick, most with attached two car garages. There were very few cars visible on the street or in the driveways, and Mark, bringing up the rear with the SAW, his feet inside his battered boots hurting (as usual), wondered how many drivable cars were in the garages, and if any of them had gasoline.

After three quarters of a mile Ed brought the group to a halt, briefly consulted with George, and then turned the group dead south on the next street. Ed figured they were far enough removed from the Growlers positioned on Leprechaun, and the crash site now nearly two miles distant, to begin heading south once more. But, aside from all that, the main issue was Slash. Unlike the Ditch, Slash was still in use, one of the approved travel corridors through the city. It ran from the suburbs to the northwest all the way down to the center of the city and the riverfront. Not that it saw a lot of traffic, but its lanes were kept clear of debris. There weren’t a whole lot of bridges across it, and all of them would put the squad out in the open in the time it took to cross.

The residential street dead-ended at a cross-street, and directly across from them was the long narrow parking lot of a former elementary school. The school was long since abandoned, every window broken, the parking lot empty. To the west the lot bordered a small residential subdivision. George took the lead and the men, in single file, followed him along the grass verge between the parking lot on the east and the back yards of the houses to the west. Most of the yards had chain link fences separating their property from the school, but bushes growing out of control and untended for the better part of a decade had swallowed the fence line. Where the chain link was visible it had been distended by the wild foliage into a twisting coil resembling a DNA strand.

The parking lot ran for over five hundred feet, and beyond that was waist-high grass covering several flat acres, the site of an adjacent school that had never been built. The men hugged the overgrown fence line, their legs swishing through the grass, walking slowly, looking in every direction, listening intently.

As they made their way toward the end of the fence line the moon came out from behind the clouds. It was still a slender crescent but bathed the open field around them with cool light.

Just beyond where the fence ended, south of the small neighborhood, a small rise blocked their view southward. The rise was a man-made ridge, about fifteen feet tall, and ran east to west.

Ed planned to leave the squad in the shadows of the overgrown bushes and trees behind the houses to head up the slope for a peek south. Then he heard the gunfire. One gunshot, then a second, then several. Then a brief burst of automatic weapons fire. All of it quite distant. He cocked his head, then looked at George. George looked back at him and shrugged.

Using hand signals Ed had the squad spread out, then advance into the grass and up the slope. Going prone wasn’t an option, the grass was too tall, but Ed took a knee just below the top of the rise and peered over, George on one side of him, Mark on the other.

The ridge they were on ran along the northern edge of a sea of grass. The patch was nearly square and a quarter mile long on each side. At the very southern end of the square was a large building, formerly the home of a TV station before the government shut most of them down. There was a massive, thousand-foot antenna on the northwest corner of the building in front of them, and sabotage early in the war had brought that down. It lay crumpled on the ground like the accusing finger of a witch, pointing west. When the resistance started posting home addresses of politicians online, and several were murdered, a few in front of their families, the government mostly abandoned the concept of free speech. The only local media source still in operation was a combined TV and radio center located inside the Blue Zone and it only broadcast government-approved news.

North of the building was a drainage pond over one hundred feet wide. Presumably to hide the unsightly station from the residents (as the station didn’t generate any noise that needed to be blocked) there were man-made ridges running along the west, north, and east sides of the property, with clumps of trees here and there. Thanks to the bright moon and their elevated position the men of the squad could see across the vast expanse of grass, the drainage pond, and beyond.

“Where…?” Ed murmured.

After a brief pause, George pointed. Ed looked down the man’s arm, then grabbed his Czech-made Meopta binoculars.

Even though it was dark his binoculars collected light and he could see better through their eight-power magnified lenses than his own eyes in the dark. The TV station sat on the north side of a major east-west road, codenamed Felix. On the far side of Felix was another vacant field and past that some parking lots. Standing proud and isolated past that flat earth were what everyone called The Twins, but was officially The Sapphire. Two matching 18-story apartment buildings with a connecting ground-floor café/convenience store. There was another single and even larger apartment building a quarter mile to the northeast, but that building had burned early on in the war. Many people had died in the vicious fire. The Twins, on the other hand, even at this late date, were still full of residents. Just a handful compared to how many had lived there before the war, but those who had remained had forged a cooperative existence. There were gardens on the balconies and roofs.

From where they crouched on the grassy slope The Twins were half a mile away and clearly visible in the crisp moonlight. The Growlers Ed had spotted earlier at the intersection of Felix and Leprechaun were in the parking lot below the towers, and the gunfire they’d heard was rising in volume. Through the binoculars Ed could see muzzle flashes. Isolated shots out of windows halfway up the western tower, presumably down at the Army vehicles. Heavy return fire, some of it on full automatic. In the otherwise quiet night the gunfire reports rolled over the dark suburbs like thunder.

“The hell’s going on over there?” Mark said quietly, squinting to make out details.

“Why does it sound wrong?” Jason asked Early. He was staring at the scene half a mile away, and his young eyes allowed him to clearly see the details of the Growlers, and the muzzle flashes, but the sound of the gunfire didn’t match up.