Inside the city, the Believers were frantically radioing for a.s.sistance, all the while knowing there was no escape for them and no help coming. Their pleas were met with a cold and uncaring silence from their comrades to the south. Every group living outside the city that had been aligned with them had fled south, setting up skirmish lines to slow the Rebel advance once the city by the Bay was finished and that d.a.m.nable Ben Raines turned his army southward.
"All right," Ben said. "Let"s do it." And the Rebels opened fire with small arms, mortars, cannon, and rockets.
From the Pacific eastward to the San Francis...o...b..y the land exploded in flames and smoke and death as the Rebel gunners laid down a field of rolling artillery fire. Ben and his forward contingent moved north another burning block. They ignored the cries from wounded creeps. It was not difficult for them to do. All had seen firsthand the savagery and brutality of the cannibalistic tribes called Believers. The wounded creeps had very quickly learned to still their cries for help. Their pleas for mercy got them quick and cold compa.s.sion from the muzzle of a Rebel weapon.
Everything in the Rebels" path was put to the torch as soon as it was cleared of enemy troops. Only the roads were left intact. The smoking rubble left no place for the creeps to hide. When they tried to run, they were cut down; if they remained where they were, hoping to avoid Rebel detection, they were either crushed to death under the treads of tanks or burned alive.
The Believers practiced a barbaric and savage way of life, and the Rebels gave them exactly that on their way to death. Many of the creeps had heard how ruthless Ben Raines was. Most did not believe it. Most expected to be taken prisoner and housed and fed and their wounds attended to. Then, when the Rebels had left, the creeps could resume their hideous way of life.
The creeps soon learned, very quickly and quite painfully, that Ben Raines had absolutely no intention of allowing their way of life to continue. Many of the creeps began to curse their leaders for getting them into this predicament. But their leaders did not do it.
Just as with the criminal who tries to blame society for his misfortune, that worn-out excuse was not acceptable. They were forced to face the fact that as individuals they were solely to blame.
Two more blocks were taken, and Ben and his battalion linked up with Tina and West at Wood-side. Behind them, what was left of Menlo Park was obscured from view by the flames and the smoke that soared into the skies.
"All artillery up to this position," Ben told Corrie. "All planes capable of carrying payloads resume dropping napalm on the city.
Group all my people on 101. We"re moving towardthe airport right now."
Corrie relayed the orders and Ike came on the horn. "Lots of creepies over that way, Ben."
"There won"t be in about two hours," Ben told him. "Let"s go, people. My next CP will be on the tarmac of the San Carlos airport."
Chapter Seven.
Heavy machine-gun fire stopped the advance of Ben"s team in Redwood City.
"Forward observers out," Ben ordered. "And tell them to get it right the first time. We"re too close for mistakes."
They were so close that the ground beneath their feet began to tremble as the 105"s and 155"s pounded the target area just ahead of them. With a range of twelve miles, the huge 155mm self-propelled howitzers dropped in high explosives with deadly accuracy. The 90mm cannon that some Piranhas were equipped with began barking and biting as the 81mm mortars rained in death. The air over the heads of the Rebels began howling and fluttering and screaming as the deadly mail started arriving in the city.
With one long block turned to b.l.o.o.d.y rubble, the FO"S called in corrections and the Rebels moved forward as the gunners corrected elevation and began a new onslaught. The creeps were shoved back, back toward the burning city north of them.
"We"re going to shove them all the way back into the city proper," Ben told those around him. "Then we"re going to seal it off, west to east, and start tossing incendiaries in on them. But we"ve got about twenty miles of hard slogging to go before we can do that."
Beth was doing some fast figuring with a hand calculator. "The city is about eight miles wide and about that deep, if we plan to push all the way up to Daly City. Our artillery will handle that easily."
Ben studied an old map of the region. "Let"s take another block, gang."
The Rebels clawed their way through the rubble that littered the streets. Ben and his contingent stayed along 101 while General Striganov and his people crossed over and started up 280. Rebet and Danjou and their battalions began punching up the area between the two main highways.
It was grim, slow work. Artillery would soften up a block, then the Rebels would move forward, working building to building, house to house, oftentimes engaging in very close combat. Since the creepies were so highly infectious, and Ben did not want his people needlessly exposed to some dreadful, incurable disease, he soon called a halt to the advance, along all fronts.
Ike and Cecil were across the Bay, slowly burning their way south, destroying everything in their path.
"Get Georgi on the horn for me, Corrie,"
Ben said. "Something"s got to give here and it isn"t going to be us."
The Russian who had once been a mortal enemyof the Rebels came on the radio. Years back Ben and Georgi had fought each other from the Mississippi River to the northern California coast.
"We"re going to have to hold up, Georgi. We just can"t risk infection. Some of our people are getting blood-splattered from close-in fighting. Hold what you"ve got until we can get flame-t.o.s.s.e.rs up here for the troops and give those tanks with the capability time to fuel up."
"I am in complete agreement, Ben. I"ll stand my people down immediately."
The Rebels broke for a well-deserved rest while trucks ran the burning and rubbled streets bringing in backpack flamethrowers for the troops and mix for the tanks.
"Still plan on making the San Carlos airport by this afternoon, General?" Cooper asked.
"You bet, Coop." A dozen main battle tanks rumbled up, hatches closed. Ben used the outside phone on the lead tank. "You flame-equipped?"
"That"s ten-four, sir."
"Spearhead us." He hung up and turned to Cooper. "You bring the wagon up, Coop. I"m going ahead on foot. Let"s go!"
His team spread out behind the tanks and followed them in. The bodyguards a.s.signed to protect Ben could do nothing to stop him. How do you tell the commanding general he can"t do something? They fell in with him and surged forward.
The rattle of machine-gun fire came from a building with a faded sign, SPORTING GOODS, painted on the front of the bricks. The slugs howled off the armor of the MBT and the tank clanked around, lowering its cannon. The muzzle spewed liquid fire, engulfing those inside in flames. The screaming of the torched lasted only a moment as their brains cooked and their heads exploded from the buildup of steam inside the skulls.
"Mop up!" Ben shouted, and a team lanced the smoking interior of the old building with automatic-weapons fire.
"Ben!" Linda yelled. "Up the street. North.
They"re charging us."
Several hundred yards away, the street was clogged with running, screaming creepies, howling their fury as they came in a suicide charge.
A dozen .50-caliber machine guns, a dozen 7.62 machine guns, a hundred M-16"s, one shotgun, and one old Thunder Lizard-caliber .308, in the hands of Ben Raines combbgan yammering. The Believers came in waves of rage and perversion and died in b.l.o.o.d.y piles of stinking filth.
"Up on the tanks," Ben shouted, jumping up and crouching behind the commander"s cupola. "Let"s go!"
The tanks all had bags of sand and dirt piled and secured around the turrets, the Rebels jumped onand crouched down as the tanks lumbered forward. They all tried not to listen as the steel treads of the fifty-plus-ton tanks crushed any life left out of the piles of creeps in the street.
They crossed another street and came to a halt.
Steel railroad tracks had been welded in sections, completely blocking the street.
The tank commander opened the hatch and poked his head out.
"Go around it, General?"
"Negative. It appears that"s what they want us to do. The other streets seem clear, so they"ve probably got them mined. Use HE and punch through."
The commander clanked his hatch shut and Ben hollered, "Get down, people-down!"
From a half a dozen tanks 90mm and 105mm cannon roared and the barricade was ripped apart. Ben cut his eyes upward and then slid off the tank and grabbed up the phone. "Elevate your cannon. The creeps are waiting for us on the rooftops with satchel charges."
Ben stepped out of the way, his team with him, and ducked into the storefront of an old building. The tanks swiveled into position and the street was filled with a deafening roar as the cannons howled. Several Big Thumpers were brought up. The 40mm fully automatic Thumpers began spitting out antipersonnel high-explosive rounds at an astonishing rate of fire. Bodies of creepies began falling off the rooftops and crashing screaming down to the rubbled streets.
"Every other tank use fire," Ben ordered. Torch the buildings from the ground up and give the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds a hotfoot. Troops stay behind the tanks. Give me a report, Corrie."
The woman spoke calmly into her headset as the Rebels remained behind the protective bulk of the huge tanks. One creepie charged and Linda gave him some double-ought buckshot in the guts. The creepie folded up and hit the street, howling his life away.
Ben watched her. Linda"s face was pale beneath the grime of battle, but she was hanging in as she pumped another round into the sawed-off shotgun.
Ben shouted over the din of battle. "Corrie, tell the troops to seek cover and have the TC"S back up their tanks. Let"s let artillery bring it down."
Once Ben and his contingent were secure, or at least behind cover, the tanks backed up and added their cannon to the incoming sh.e.l.ls. Row after row of buildings began coming apart in explosive flames. Teams working Big Thumpers moved into position and began lobbing rounds into the area that Ben suspected was mined. The 40mm rounds proved him correct as the concussion of the exploding grenades touched off the mines that were to have killed the Rebels.
Ben walked from the storefront into the building itself.
Long ago it had been a drugstore. Thepharmaceutical section of the store had, of course, long since been looted. Poking around in the rat-and-mouse-chewed remnants of the vials and bottles, Ben found hundreds of pills, precious antibiotics, years out of date. The stupid and greedy people who had looted the store had taken only that which would make them high, or low, depending upon what perverted kick they had been seeking. Uppers and downers -Ben recalled the old slang terms for them. The looters had taken nothing that would have fought infection. So much for the mentality of looters. Ben had always held the belief that once a curfew had been established in an area, looters should be shot on sight. This just reinforced his opinion.
Ben squatted down in the rubble as Linda and Thermopolis and Corrie joined him.
"They took everything to get themselves high," Therm said, poking around the mess with the toe of his boot. "But nothing to help maintain their health. Not even vitamins."
"They weren"t concerned about their health when we had a more or less civilized and productive society,"
Ben said, standing up. "I never understood why law-abiding citizens ever put up with them."
An amused look pa.s.sed over Thermopolis"
face. "Would you have put them up against a wall and shot them, Ben?"
"The pushers, yes," Ben responded quickly. "But not the addicts. Not unless they committed a serious enough crime to feed their habit." He stared at Thermopolis. "The Rebel philosophy is still to shoot those engaged in illicit drug manufacturing."
"Yes, I know. Ben, did you ever stop to consider why people take drugs?"
"Oh, yes," Ben said, as the battle raged outside the trashed store. He smiled. "Like you, Therm, I have an opinion on nearly everything.
Whether it is correct or incorrect is yet another story." Ben looked away as a very slight sound came from behind a closed door to his right. The others seemed not to notice it. He shifted his M-14. "Escapism. Unable to face reality. Wanting everything their neighbors had but knowing they would never have it for one reason or another.
Laziness. Greed. In many cases the same applied for those who drank to excess. The only difference was, alcohol was legal. For a brief period in my life, I drank to excess. That was just before the Great War. But I didn"t do it because I was afraid of reality. I did it because I liked the taste -I still do. It helped me sleep comx still does. And it was legal. It still is. When I can afford the luxury, I still enjoy a drink or two before dinner. Dinner being what it is in the field,"
he added with a smile, "it helps to hide the taste."
The closed door suddenly burst open and a creepie with a pistol in each hand screamed out. Ben gave the Believer a burst of .308 slugs. The leadknocked the stinking cannibal backward and dumped him in a b.l.o.o.d.y, torn pile on the floor. He looked up at Ben and with his last breaths, cursed him.
Ben kicked the pistols away from the man"s reach.
"But after I grew out of my adolescence,"
Ben said, resuming the conversation as if nothing of any importance had happened, "I never got behind the wheel of a car after I"d been drinking excessively, or in any way endangered the lives of others." The creepie died. "As you have no doubt observed, Therm, during your months with us, any Rebel who drinks to excess and then attempts to drive is punished. The first offense is a mandatory six months in the stockade. It gets progressively harsher. Killing someone while driving drunk is murder, not manslaughter."
"People should be allowed one mistake, Ben."
"Not when they take the life of an innocent person, Therm."
Thermopolis grunted and shook his head. "I would say that you are a hard man, Ben. But you"d just reply that it"s a hard time."
"And you"d be right, Therm."
The Rebels hammered and clawed and scratched their way block after block through the small city. Dan, now reinforced, had bulled his way up Highway 1 to just outside of Pacifica. Georgi had slammed his way to just north of Palomar Park on I-280.
Tina and her Scouts and West and his mercenaries had advanced up to the junction of Highways 35 and 92.
"Dan is up there all by his lonesome," Ben radioed. "Tina, you and West beef him up.
Rebet, pull your people up and reoccupy the area Tina and West are leaving. Danjou, hold what you"ve got and advance as we do."
As the Rebel troops were shuffled around, plugging up holes and advancing as they did, Ben"s people stood down for a well-deserved rest. Beth guesstimated they were about five miles from the San Carlos airport.
Ben gave his people fifteen minutes to resupply, go to the bathroom wherever they could find a private place, grab a smoke, catch their breath, and then he ordered his people back up and pushing north toward their objective.
Tina and West got to Dan"s position just in time.
A human wave of creepies tried a bust-out down Cabrillo Highway and the Rebels proceeded to stack them up like broken, b.l.o.o.d.y sticks of firewood on the Interstate spur.
Cursing and screaming and howling their hatred for Ben Raines and anyone a.s.sociated with him, a mob of Believers charged Georgi"s position on the Junipero Serra Freeway. The Russian asked for no quarter and he and his people sure as h.e.l.l weren"t going to give any. The charge was thrown backand broken, leaving the Interstate and the streets around it littered with bodies and slick with blood.
Working with backpack flamethrowers, his people torched the infectious bodies and burned them crisp, removing all danger of airborne infections. The odor of charred human death clung close to the ground.
Other creepies left the freeway and tried a bust-out through Rebet"s position. They didn"t make it.
Those Believers on the east side of the embattled area had given up any thoughts of attempting to bust through Ben"s territory.
Across the ever-narrowing Bay, Newark and Fremont were now smoking, with huge fireb.a.l.l.s leaping into the skies, darkening them with thick smoke, as Ike and Cecil continued to put the area to the torch, working south.
Ben called his son, Buddy, to his position.
"Take your Rat Team and the bikers, son. Take four Dusters and spearhead us to the airport."
With a grin and a nod of his handsome head, the young man ran shouting for his people to mount up. With the quick little Dusters leading the way, driving four abreast up the Interstate, twin-mounted 40mm cannon capable of spewing out 240 rounds per minute yowling at full auto and .50-caliber machine guns yammering, the Dusters cleared the way, leaving behind them torn and crushed bodies.
A mile from the airport exit, the speadheaders. .h.i.t a tangle of trucks and cars that blocked the Interstate. Buddy radioed back to his father.
"Exit the highway and get a toehold on the airport, son. I"m right behind you. MBT"S will crash the blockade after seeing whether or not it"s wired to blow." Ben waved down a Piranha, jumped in, and told the startled driver to get the h.e.l.l moving toward the airport. Cooper and the others of Ben"s personal team piled into vehicles and fell in behind the Piranha.
Several more Piranhas joined Ben"s little convoy.
Some of these were equipped with 90mm Mecar cannon, while others were equipped with twin-mounted 30mm Gatling guns. The Piranhas pulled in front of the one carrying Ben and began spearheading the drive. The creepies had nothing that would compare with the twin-mounted Gatling guns. They had light mortars, but the convoy was traveling so fast the mortar crews could not make adjustments fast enough to fire with any accuracy. They tried leading the convoy, but the drivers would just exit the roadway, dodging the rounds, then swing back on at the next ramp.