Broken Horizon 3

The ozone layer or cheese in a spray can. Don’t make me choose.

So many ways to die in this life. So many little booby traps and pitfalls, mistakes and wrong turns. Death comes for us in manners grand and surprising and sad. A moment’s inattention, the proverbial series of small miscalculations that add up to one giant screw-up, delusion about one’s abilities, hubris, mental imbalance, plain bad luck — that’s all it takes. But we never realize it until that last second. That final moment of life where our minds try to stretch the last seconds of living out as long as it can. How many people’s last thought was “Fuck, didn’t see that one coming”?

The new dawn brought new rules. Isn’t that just like typical military thinking? By all means, let’s don’t address the problem, but a manual with the rules and dress code would be lovely, thank you. Anyway, rule number one was the buddy system: From here on out, every soldier would be assigned a partner, and you would function as a self-contained team. You would become Siamese twins, for lack of a better word. The plan was to create smaller units to operate in a more ad-lib situation, since no one knew what the next morning would bring as far as continental developments go. It wasn’t a bad plan, in retrospect. The idea was that, eventually, you would know each other so well you could operate without speaking, and predict your partner’s moves by their body language. If one of you had to take a dump, the other stood guard while you did it. If one of you had sex, the other would know if the rug matched the drapes or not. And most importantly, what one person knew, they would teach the other. So those less knowledgeable would trim the boat, sooner or later. Sort of.

Which was how a go-nowhere wrench whacker got paired up with a dyslexic psychopath.

"Men," the Major General shouted, "I'm sorry about the delay of information but we needed time to sift through the facts. Let me apologize for the blackout of communication from the upper ranks. We must keep order if we are to preserve civilization, as you all know.”

Yeah, yeah, we know it you old fuck, We’re the ones who’ve been covered in blood every day with a dwindling clean water supply and a millennia stock of MRE’s. Tell us something we don’t know.
“Today at 1300 hours the remaining cabinet members and surviving brass put the collected armed forces on high alert, and declared a state of emergency for the entire state.”
Severs and I sniggered at this. Depending on your definition of it, we had been on “high” alert for weeks now.
“What that means for us is that as of 0400 tomorrow morning we will begin a systematic sweep of the city and root out the street gangs that have been forming in opposition of us. The usual punishment for looting is still in effect, and anyone caught out after curfew will be dealt with in the same manner.” In case you all are wondering, that meant a bullet to the brain. Just what I needed, more blood on my hands.
“Troops, we are imposing Martial Law.”
The American military, in all it’s conventional wisdom, had decided to plow straight ahead full steam without once considering that we were no longer operating under a political umbrella. Like a roach that’s had it’s head removed, the body continued living for weeks without guidance, following the set procedure for whatever menial crisis was occurring internally. Blissful in its ignorance. Our ignorance, I should say.

For the first few weeks of imposed curfew all was relatively quiet, as the few scout helicopters we had left airlifted food, medicine and ammunition to the center. Hundreds of looters traveling in packs of ten or less had been disposed of one at a time as they approached the center, and sweeper teams took care of the stragglers and lone wolves. With no room or manpower for burial teams, we gathered our kills into large piles and ignited them. There were several of these human bonfires scattered across town on a nightly basis, and the stench of cooking flesh began to sicken me. I couldn’t touch a bite at chow line, and I seldom saw Severs there either. If it wasn’t for all the beer we had confiscated and stowed early on, I truly think one or both of us would have killed ourselves by now.

We ran regular raids on the shelter as well, looking for “Traitors” as they were called for dehumanization purposes. People who had seen the dwindling might of the combined forces and decided the raiding gangs were a better way to retain breathing rights. These were easy, since the collapse of the Western World most of humanity had slipped further and further into barbarism. Each gang had a special brand or tattoo that would identify you as one of them. Gangs usually divided their time between raiding unprotected shelters in other towns and warring with each other over territorial disputes.

We were at tribal markings and inter-village warfare. I guess worshipping golden calves and drawing cave etchings would be next.

I can’t say as I blamed them, not really. It’s what I would have done.

Anyway, we imposed martial law. We shot anyone still on the street after curfew. We tortured and shot prisoners and suspected gang members, each soldier a self-contained judge, jury and executioner in black BDU’s.

Some of them got through, at least to a point. There was a break-in at the supply center that went awry when the infiltration team took a wrong turn and found themselves in the R&R room for Bravo Company. Twenty five civilians were captured, men, women, and one preteen girl, all bearing the tattoo markings of a local raider gang. We confined them to a separate room and locked the door. Two hours later a young Sergeant walked in with his sidearm and disposed of them. The bonfire outside continued to burn.

Then for three days, nothing. The looting had stopped. Most of the gangs had disappeared, and the few that were still around had backed off into the sewers or the surrounding rubble & stayed silent. There were no gunshot reports popping into the night, no body collections. Other checkpoints in the Colorado Springs area had reported no sightings of raider gangs at all.

We stepped up patrols, still nothing. Interrogated prisoners, nada. It was like they had all just vanished.

“Now, does it seem to you that none of this is as coincidental as the boss is making it sound?” I was always surprised at Severs’s inflection when spoken out loud. When I first met him, he seemed like another kill-happy idiot from Texas, a big tattoo covered fucker with no brains and a lotta booze.
Severs was anything but. He liked to insult my bookish nature, but truth be told, he read more than I did. He had done extensive tours in the Philippines, and lived among the jungle tribes for weeks at a time. He had studied Sufism as well as combat. And like all Texans, he knew his barbecue. Severs could kill, clean, dress and roast an iguana and you’d swear it was filet mignon. Severs and I were in a wall pocket between two buildings that had been cleared two weeks earlier. One joint between us, and we were smoking it slow. You had to find your joy in life where you could in these times.
“Coincidental, schmental, I’m really starting not to give a fuck if we make sense of anything but our lives from here on out. I don’t know how you keep your head on straight, man. It’s getting to the point where I’m starting to talk to myself.”
Severs smiled, took a long pull from the J. “Sanity control, my good friend. Sanity control.”
I snorted and looked down the street. Dead quiet.

“It ain’t right.”

“What?”

“This silence. Somethin’s wrong. Can’t you feel it? That sense that we’re missing somethin’ obvious?”

“In your case, I’d say that’s a typical Wednesday. But no, I didn’t get much ninja training, so I can’t predict the future.” I took a long drag on the fattie and passed it over to him “Far as I’m concerned, we got this fucker by the ass, y’know? Pretty soon we’ll be rebuilding the town, getting things going, bringing civilization back. Get these gangs down, hell, I might just flip and desert when the dust settles. Been in this shithole too long, that’s for sure.”

“Shee-it”

Still, I had to admit; Nothing had come up on the radar for a while now, not even the sporadic gunfire I was used to breaking out from time to time. We were hopeful as the idea began to sink in that we had actually won this fucker. The decision was made to send out a lone patrol of two tanks and two humvees to scout the surrounding areas, maybe into the next town, to access the situation. If all was well there, we may just be ready for phase two: It might be time to start rebuilding.

That night we listened in horror as they radioed back for reinforcements. Captain Tarahan screamed that there were hundreds of raiders on motorcycles living along the interstate surrounding the city. They were still here, and larger than ever! The patrol had clashed with the vanguard of bikers, and had lost big. Tarahan’s deep southern drawl came across the wire, panicked and strained. His tank had thrown its track and was immobile. They were being swarmed, for the love of Christ-!

His voice was drowned out by the intermittent sound of machine gunfire. The line went dead, and no further transmissions from the patrol were broadcast. No one from Captain Tarahan’s doomed patrol ever returned.

So the chaotic warfare of the small groups of raider gangs had somehow been marshaled, as we in the military had been. Except, unlike us, they had a plan. The city was under siege, and we could do nothing but threaten anyone within sniping distance. The invincible American military, now an impotent bag of despair. We had been set up and suckered into throwing the first punch. Now there was nothing left to fight a real war with, because we had shot our load in the small streetfights to hold our position.

Another two days of high tension full alert went by. We fought skirmishes in the streets, patrolling in rapidly shrinking paths closer to Fort Haven with fewer and fewer men. Our unit, spread too thin at the start of this conflict, had been sniped, wounded, or just plain deserted to bare bones. Some of us had gone AWOL without leaving our bunks, just staring into the distance without blinking. Carrots, we called them. Fucking vegetables.

As for Second Division, we shot anything that moved. By now we had long since stopped trying to discern between a raider and someone fleeing for their lives, we just shot anything not wearing a uniform. It was a war zone. Gangs filled the streets and fires lit the sky. Former soldiers, now freelance raiders, were looting and shooting their way across the city, and with the uniforms it was difficult to tell who was who until they were almost on top of you sharing an intimate moment.

For myself, I think I lost it a little. I couldn’t come to grips with the tsunami of blood, loss, murder and overall fuckups from the last several months. Severs did his level best to keep me as toasted and dry-roasted as time would permit, but I was losing my grips on things here.

If this didn’t end soon, I might start thinking of checking out of here on my own.

Now, I know what you’re all thinking, it’s obvious: We’re no better than the raiders, the people we were coming to refer to as “skinbags”, the civilian dumbfucks who weren’t military. In fact, I can see now that we were really worse than them. But you see how it slips in? How the real world shrinking causes your world to shrink with it? It’s a subtle thing, we didn’t see it at first. When you’re following orders you can justify a lot of things, and murder isn’t the worst of them. Military logic demands rising force to equal or overwhelm the rising conflict. It’s why we made so many goddam nuclear warheads in the first place, doesn’t matter we could destroy this planet and the next three in line after it with American nukes alone. We have to keep up with the Joneses. Or the Romanovs, in this case.

You don’t want to know what I think of military logic.

Thusday morning, 7 am

One thing about military brass, they fucking love to hear themselves talk.

“Men, I won’t waste your time with idle words” Major General Cardille was exactly the kind of man to do just that, and I was willing to bet today’s briefing would be no exception.

“We are facing an invasion of a major scale. Without our support, this outpost is going to fall, and fall hard."

See what I mean?

"Now let me tell you what is happening here. At 0400 this morning we confirmed an invasion force consisting primarily of mobilized raiders, heavily armed. The numbers aren’t accurate, but we estimate a little over 1100 combatants.”

I did some quick arithmetic…that made the odds roughly 4 to1 against what was left of us. What the hell was he thinking?

“The mobile raider army has taken up attack positions on the northern end of town. However, we have this fort, and the heavily defended Olympic Center with all the civilians. Our orders are to protect them, and maintain control of the city. We also have several-“

“Sir! How can we protect a static position from a mobile attack force? Especially when our numbers are too low to mount a feasible defense?” I looked around to see who had interrupted the Major General, and was surprised to discover it had been me. Severs was staring at me with his jaw open.

He wasn’t the only one. Luckily, the Major General was too much on a roll to have me executed on the spot. “Well Lieutenant…Edwards, is it? If I may be allowed to continue,” He paused here at looked in my direction with an expression that suggested I BETTER let him continue. I pressed my jaw shut and vowed to never speak again if I got out of this damn briefing alive. “We are well protected within these walls, and the concrete barriers around the Olympic Center will be enough to protect the civilians, given a few snipers and flamethrowers placed strategically along the outside areas. All we have to do is wait them out, let them throw themselves against the unmovable might of our military, and when they’re worn out and whittled down into more manageable numbers, we’ll send patrols out to pick them off until we regain absolute control of the city. All of you are going to be fully armed and prepped before I send you out. We are the final line between chaos and order for what’s left of this nation. We ARE the new America, men. It falls to us to hold the line, to be counted among the heroes of this new Earth.” He was laying it on pretty thick, and we’d heard ever word of this speech before. It always meant some of us were going to die soon.

“Like the founders of this nation, we are the pioneers of tomorrow. Like Washington, Roosevelt, Lincoln…”

Oooohh…SHIT. That’s torn it! Whenever a military leader is about to fry your ass for God and country, they fucking always evoke Lincoln.

“Are there any questions so far?"

Every hand in the Battalion went up, including mine.

“Thank you troops, that is all.” Major General Cardille turned sharply on his heels and briskly exited the stadium. Murmurs and interjections of disbelief rumbled throughout the hall. So, we were supposed to ignore everything and jump off the cliff into the barbecue pit like a bunch of depressed lemmings. Our numbers were so low that over half our equipment and armament would have to be abandoned, and since both time and manpower was short, that meant it would simply get left behind for the invading forces.

It also meant that we didn’t have enough men to cover our own escape, let alone the skinbags. Those helpless civilians caught in the middle couldn’t do anything but run and die. When one of the last scout helicopters reported a massive conflagration heading right for us, the order was given to evacuate the people back to Fort Haven. From there we would clear the city in an armed escort and link up with some supposed convoy heading South.

We were falling back. God only knew to where. If I had a choice between this place and Hell, I’d rat this place out and live in Hell.

The battalion remnants had been given their marching orders, so we split into our different divisions and headed for our assigned posts. Severs and I were hoping to stay with Alpha company, but our unit was specialized in scout recon, and that’s where they wanted us: Sneaking around the hedges.

A series of small explosion on the north end of town killed off that notion pretty quick. From our window I could see various plumes of dark smoke billowing out over the other end of the city. Moments later, the main alarm rang, and a voice commed out; “We are under attack! Defensive stations! All units to defensive stations! We are under attack!”

I grabbed my gear and ran for the door, coming to a skid as I neared it. People were running in every direction, and I managed to find my way to the support module. A coordinator was shouting orders as we geared up. “Teams Alpha and Bravo will act against the initial assault, Scout Recon will give support from a fortified position at the town center! Move it, troop!”

That figured. The assault psychos would storm the beach, we were going to feed them ammo and shit. I guess they weren’t expecting a heavy defense. We lit out for the center of town, splitting off from the main force halfway there. More explosions rattled the day, and we started double-timing it for Main Street. We were maybe half a mile from it when a younger recruit flagged me over. “How much time you think we got?”

I looked at the sun. “Dunno, man. Maybe another hour or so. Something that size has to coordinate for distance running, so I don’t think they’re going to be very close yet, still plenty of time.” I waved him back into position and started to tell Severs to send a scout unit up ahead.

Which was exactly when the main company of raiders hit us head-on.

Shit, the explosions on the other side of town had been a diversion! The fuckers knew we’d send a task force to attend to it, and they jumped us at our weakest point: Right here on Main Street, close to the base.

Severs grabbed my collar and yanked my stunned ass to the ground as bullets started tweening past us and into the remaining soldiers not smart enough to duck on their own or lucky enough to have a friend to yank their stunned asses to the ground.

“Whaaaa-SHIT!”

“Yep! Caught us napping for sure.” Small puffs of dirt shot up around us where the bullets were hitting. “That way, move!” Severs and I scrambled for cover behind a partially demolished wall nearby to get our bearings. I tried to peek-a-boo around the corner to get some idea of how things stood and was rewarded with a spray of automatic gunfire. I cringed and ducked away while being showered with concrete dust.

“Looks like they were better prepared than we thought.”

Severs scanned our position. “It doesn’t look good, butt lover. I think we lost several of the guys in that one barrage.” Most of what was left of our platoon had taken up defensive positions in the surrounding areas, and had subsequently been pinned down by the overwhelming raider force. I could see several attempts to regroup being routed, people’s heads exploding into red mist because they had stuck them out too far for too long.

I popped up from one side of the wall and unloaded a full clip in the direction the raiders had come to buy some time. Goddam, there was a whole city block filling up with human bodies. Mostly in black and grey BDU’s. The side streets overflowed with more skinbags armed to the teeth.

I dropped back down. “It’s raining the sons of bitches! “About a thousand”, my hairy white ass! This is turning into the last stand at the fucking O.K. corral!” I knew I was starting to screech, and couldn’t help it. Panic does that to a man. Severs grabbed my arm. “We need to connect with Alpha Company. If we can cut our way clear of the north alley, we’ll be able to take the city ruins around the bulk of the raiders without them catching on.”

“You don’t think they’ll chase us?” I knew he was a little thick, but this plan was ridiculous.

“Naahh, look at them: They don’t want to leave from behind their cover. I don’t blame them, they have the high ground right now. They’ll stick to the buildings, and probably not start patrols until they absolutely have to. See how nobody’s tried to charge the line? They don’t want an out-and-out facedown firefight. They don’t have that kind of training, how to groove in war footing. Not yet they don’t.”

I still didn’t buy it. “They jumped us here, Sev. Fuckers were ready for us. Common fucking sense says they’ll be ready for our flight as well.” I didn’t want to get all Captain Obvious on him, but I wasn’t going to die in some idiot plan just because he was the Green Beret here.

“That’s what YOU would do, military boy. We’ve been drilling this shit for months now. All they’ve done is snatch-and-grab living. Yeah, this was a gotcha all the way, but that’s as far as they got, they’re outta gas in the plannin’ department. We stay here, we die. Flank ‘em and run like all hell, that’s what I say.”

Well, fuck. It made sense. Fuck me for a grapefruit.

We caught the attention of a couple more groups and signed for them to simply back off and head in a northerly direction. I’m sorry to say that most of them, lacking leadership, simply didn’t get it. Others ignored us. I think someone finally figured out what we were doing when Severs tossed a grenade into the middle of the square and started rocking the front of the building as I sprinted full-out towards the other end, Severs hot on my ass. I reached the opposite sector first and spun at the mouth of the north alley to cover the retard as he barreled past me. Maybe 20 or so others tried the same thing, but they didn’t time it right and several of them were shot to blood soup before they cleared their hidey-holes. 12 members of our company made it to us, everyone else was either dead or too scared to move.

For a second there, I thought about trying for them. Severs knew it, and gently pulled me along behind the alley. “We got no time, boy. Yer on point, I’ll cover our six. Get moving, cockbreath.” I was too numb to give a retort…Only twenty minutes ago we had been joking about beer. Now every nerve in my body felt like it had electricity running through it

We gathered into a small platoon, me taking point. Severs flew satellite, scanning the perimeter for hostiles…Or anyone still living. Keeping low and sticking to the rubble, we managed to backtrack our way to Fort Haven.

Which was currently under siege from about 800 to 900 raiders.

Carnage was everywhere, and both sides looked to have taken heavy losses. A barrier had been erected from disabled tanks, cars and equipment, various debris. Looked like we were making a stand there, so that’s where our band of fools headed, sticking to the buildings and alleys along the way. We didn’t get far, there was about 200 yards of wide open no man’s land between us and the barricade. Nobody wanted to try that bastard on foot.

3 Helicopters and a few buses had come in to remove all the citizens of the besieged Olympic Center we had been assigned to cover. We were running low on warm bodies loyal to the flag, and we knew it. I watched as a squad of soldiers laying down suppressing fire across the street were surrounded and overwhelmed by several united street gangs armed with grenade launchers and fully automatic weapons, no doubt plucked from the hands of dead soldiers. Then they went after the unlucky fuckers who couldn’t make it to the chopper before it lifted, half full. Their screams could be heard over the spinning rotor blades.

The screams of the people we had forcibly disarmed not four weeks ago. Now we couldn’t keep them from being chopped into peopleburger.

A delivery truck, of all things, came lumbering around the corner, away from the firefight. Looked like a raider group trying to flee the scene. Severs jumped out from his cover and quickly pop-popped the driver side of the cab as I emptied half a clip into the passenger side as the truck rolled past me. Without a driver, the rig moseyed over to the opposite side of the street and lazily drifted into the side of a building, taking a few feet of wall with it.

“Go, go, go!” We scrambled for the vehicle and piled in, pulling the dead raiders out as we went. I jumped behind the wheel as a couple of men climbed to the top of the bed and took up firing positions.

“Make for the East end of that barricade!”

I ground the gear into first and floored the pedal. Bullets twanged off the chassis the closer I got, and our guys returned fire in all directions. I jinked the truck left, then right in a random pattern to help evade snipers. A few bodies fell off here and there, victims of stray gunfire. I kept my head as close to the goddamed dashboard as I could, and still be able to see where I was going. We grazed walls, hit small vehicles and plowed over stray raiders with bullets flying from the truck and smoke billowing out of our ass. There was no time to slow down as we approached the barricade, so I shouted for everyone to hang on and rammed the truck straight into it to stop. Soldiers flying ass-over-teakettle, and then complete stillness. I took a second to check for broken bones and newly acquired holes, then staggered out of the truck. Severs was wiping blood from his forehead and trying to focus his eyes. He saw me approaching and grinned. “Nice landing, Chewie!”

“Oh lovely, you survived. For a second there, I was starting to believe in God.”

A Sergeant came running up to us, with a look of utter disbelief. “What in the pus-fucking hell do you idiots think you’re doing? Why the fuck didn’t you stop?”

“Sorry Sarge, the brakes gave out.” Not exactly a lie, my willingness to apply them was certainly absent.

The Sargent scowled at me for a second, the started barking orders at his men to secure the truck. The survivors of my hellride took up positions along the line, and Severs and I followed suit. If it was last stand time, I supposed this was as good a place as any.

Might as well die with your friends.

“Hey man?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m starting to have doubts about the validity of this conflict. We may face a war crimes tribunal back in Washington when it’s over.”

“Dude, there is no Washington anymore.”

“Oh, that’s right! We’re our own moral task force now! Completely covered!”

“Fuck ‘em all then. Let’s burn these sonsobitches.”