Code Red

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After telling Mike over the OP radio to stall the intruders, I picked up the set we actually used.

Code Red. The defensive plan we had built and drilled after beating back the first raiders.

Raven and Sarah were written into it as shooters. Dave's mother and the teenagers had been trained to fall back to the trailer under Chloe's lead.

I turned to Mike.

"Keep those bastards tied up at the OP for a bit."

"Got it."

I grabbed my weapons and climbed the water tower, the one place that commanded the whole farm. Down below, Gunner rolled an old pickup across the entrance for a barricade, then ducked behind cover at the crop warehouse with the M249 in his hands.

While his voice came through, every soul on the farm moved to their assigned positions. The reports started stacking up over the radio.

When every firing lane was manned, Gunner's low voice came last.

Clacker. Military slang for the M18 Claymore's firing device. It meant he had finished arming the remote shotgun-trap system.

This fight, too, would start when Gunner squeezed that switch. I confirmed our side was set, and keyed the radio.

A moment later, far down at the mouth of the access road, the pickup Mike had been talking to rolled into view. One beat-up truck started crawling toward us, and the rest of the column followed it in, nose to tail.

The lead pickup stopped in front of Gunner's barricade truck. The driver must have felt something off — he waved frantically at the vehicles behind him — but it was already too late. The ones that had followed him in without a clue stacked up behind the stopped lead, one after another.

Through the farm binoculars, the men inside the cabs came in sharp and close, rifles in their hands. I mashed the PTT in a frantic staccato.

And then—

An earth-shaking blast tore out of the farm-gate barricade. It was no ordinary shotgun report. Fifteen shotgun tubes hidden under the barricade truck, and forty more buried in the berms on both sides of the road, all fired at once, pouring hundreds of steel balls forward and to the flanks. A homemade Claymore from hell, the scatter angles calculated down to the degree.

As the driveway dissolved into pandemonium, I pulled the M32 grenade launcher out from behind the water tower's cover and dumped six 40mm grenades in rapid succession at the rear of their column, sealing the way out.

Thump— thump— thump— thump— thump— thump—.

With that distinctive launch sound, the trailing vehicles went up in a chain of detonations — bang, bang, ka-ka-BOOM — and burst into flame. At the same time, from the third floor of the mansion, Mike's M110 A2 cracked in sharp, clean reports, picking the panicked ones off one by one.

Almost in the same breath Gunner's M249 roared to life, and through Dave and Frank's AR fire came the hard, bright stutter of Raven and Sarah's MP5s, until the whole stretch of driveway was a sea of fire. I kept the trigger mashed toward the rear of the column until the magazine ran dry.

The raiders never even got a chance to open their doors. They burned where they sat, or the blasts threw them down. The few who managed to crawl out were dropped by Mike's razor-edged shooting. The ones who shoved rifles out the windows and tried desperately to shoot back became the concentrated target of our entire line, and in seconds they were hanging slack, riddled through.

Looking down on that brutal stretch of road, I thought it through without heat.

Even if they really had been decent travelers looking for a place to rest, it wouldn't have mattered.

In this changed world, a lie that threatened our survival was simply the fastest road to the grave.

The one-sided ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fire went on for a while, until at last there was no more movement from the enemy. I called Jake.

I went down the ladder behind the water tower fast. Gunner came up beside me with the heavy M249 in his hands. I picked up the Saiga-12 I had staged at the base of the tower and waited on Jake.

"Let's go."

Gunner nodded, and the two of us walked toward the column slowly, and carefully. We did not rush it. We put enough clearing fire into every closed door before we eased them open.

I blew the Dodge Ram's driver-side door off with a load of buckshot, and the man groaning inside crumpled where he sat. Gunner put a short burst from the M249 into the minivan's side door, and after that there was no more sound from inside.

Some of them still had a pulse. We asked no questions and left no room for anything else. We finished them. It was an act as old as a conviction of mine. Even if we learned something, we would have no way to verify it, and we could not have chosen differently anyway. Whatever story we heard would only tangle the heart.

The only mercy in this hell was to kill the dying as quickly as you could.

When the last shot faded, the access road was thick with powder smoke, the stink of blood, and the acrid reek of burning rubber. I keyed the radio again.

Last of them, Jed — who had been providing sniper support from the farmhouse third floor — reported on himself and his sons, Luke and Owen. Not a single casualty. I let the breath go, went back to the living room, and traded a look with the people gathered there.

Gunner, still holding the M249, said it with a satisfied face.

"I like this gun."

Mike added his piece.

"The OP cameras did a lot of the work. We knew they were lying before they even got here."

I looked around at all of them.

"Good. Let's clean up."

The words were barely out of my mouth before everyone started moving on their own, without being told. Jake and Cody fired up the heavy equipment and dragged the wreckage off the driveway. Gunner and Dave sorted the captured gear. Frank and Jed got ready to handle the bodies. That seamless, wordless coordination looked like a well-drilled army.

Then Wolf came bursting out of the trailer and ran straight into my arms. But there was none of the old fear in his eyes. Only the pure joy of a dog seeing his person again after too long. As I scratched his head, I thought Wolf had finally started to believe I was not going to get myself killed.

Once the battlefield was cleared, we gathered in the farmhouse dining room late in the afternoon for a delayed lunch. Except for Jed and his sons, who had just been through their first real fight, we ate as if nothing had happened. Dave and Frank told Jed the stories of the fights we had already survived, spinning them like war tales.

"The first bunch our Polar Bear ran into in Montana were just amateur neighborhood thugs. But those Coyotes we met in Nevada? Those were the real deal."

"That's right! I thought we were done for that time. If it hadn't been for Chan, we'd all be dead already."

After the meal, the talk turned naturally to the loot.

"Not a single usable vehicle this time. All scrap."

Frank picked up where Dave left off.

"Still, we should be able to salvage a decent amount of parts — batteries, filters, that kind of thing. I'll go through it later."

Dave took that and spread both hands as if he were measuring something in the air.

"And we pulled a fair amount of canned emergency rations and booze. Plus something unusual. About this big."

"What?"

"A hundred-watt megaphone. Five-core. Better than the ones we used on the Nisku job sites."

"It work?"

"Yeah. It was under the back seat of a wrecked pickup, so it came through fine."

"Could be useful."

"Right? That thing'll throw sound over two thousand yards."

"Good. Park it in Gunner's F-550 for now."

"Got it. Oh, and a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠few boxes of ramen turned up."

"Ramen?"

"Yeah. The same stuff you used to cook up in Yellowknife now and then."

"Shin Ramyun, Neoguri, that kind of thing?"

"That's the one. The red packets. Some of them got shot up, but more than half are intact. Let's salvage the busted ones first and boil them up. Hahaha."

"Sounds good. Midnight snack. Perfect weather for it. Haha."

My mouth watered on the spot. And this was while the gunpowder smell from the fight had not even faded yet. While I was picturing the smell of ramen, Gunner reported on the captured weapons.

"Haven't checked everything yet, but rifles alone — twenty-six plus. And the ammo they left behind, ballpark, nine thousand, no, easily ten thousand rounds."

"Oh."

"And twenty-four ballistic plates still in the packaging, sitting in a cargo bed. They basically showed up to restock us."

"Haha. Yeah."

"But here's the weird part."

"Yeah?"

"Seventeen shotguns in the truck beds. Mix of types, mix of conditions."

"Signs of looting?"

"That's what I figure. Guns that belonged to the people they hit."

"Hmm. Those '13' tattoos we saw before. Any this time?"

"One or two guys. That's it. Most of them were just a ragtag bunch."

"So not the same crew that hit the farm the first time."

"Doesn't look like it. And even if that first bunch is still out there, they won't be coming back."

"Why not?"

"Think about it. They sent dozens of people and not a single one came back. Not even a trace. You going back into a place like that? Gangs don't have that kind of loyalty left. They'll just forget it and find an easier mark."

Mike spoke up at that.

"That's right. In a world like this, even a big outfit like MS-13 would already have fallen apart. The survivors are running small raiding crews in their own patches."

He set down his fork and went on.

"People are going to start figuring out the raider's rules now."

"What do you mean?"

"Recognizing the strong, and steering clear of them."

Frank cut in with a cynical toss of the voice.

"It's economics."

"..."

"Hit someone in your own weight class and you might come out behind. The ones who died today were the kind who went looking for weak marks at isolated farmhouses."

Mike picked it up.

"That's right. But what kind of people hit us this time doesn't matter anymore. What matters is... that this kind of raid might become our everyday life."

He looked out the window at the vast plains as he continued.

"This Central Valley is now the southern limit of the Great Winter, and the northern limit of the war that's coming. And it sits between two major cities — L.A. and Las Vegas. If the city people can't make it to Mexico, they'll have no choice but to pour this way."

"..."

"And anyone moving to get away from the fighting in Arizona is more likely to pick the Central Valley than a big city where they might get conscripted."

Dave heard him out and let a long breath go.

"Hoo—."

"We're standing right in the middle of a giant funnel where all the chaos is collecting."

I saw the unease catch in the others, and I spoke.

"That's true. But paradoxically, it also means the land we're sitting on is good enough that everyone wants it."

"..."

"And this ground is a natural fortress. The farmland sits lower than the roads — it works like a moat, stopping vehicles from coming in. The access road functions as a barbican, protecting the walls."

"..."

"As long as we don't get thousands — tens of thousands — of zombies hitting us in a single wave, we can hold it."