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The next day they attacked.
The next night we went on a similar raid but noticed they’d deployed patrol dogs. We shot those and a few soldiers with silencers. But they doubled their searchlights and we didn’t enter the fence. The next day they attacked.
The assault began at noon. The gates flew open and a huge column of Russian tanks and men began moving north towards Boston, their ships flanking them along the coastline. Steele had re-enforced certain positions just south of town with artillery and tanks but as soon as the Russians drew near they let loose a smothering barrage of bombs from air and sea and their land units. We had to retreat. Some planes were flying in from behind our position. It wasn’t the airfield in Plymouth but some aircraft carrier offshore, which we didn’t know existed. Our forces scattered and fled down every tiny lane, back towards Manchester but even in this, many of them were hit by bombers, easy targets in broad daylight. The Russian tanks rolled into an almost deserted city, emptied of people by Steele a few days earlier, hearing our reports of the growing numbers of men and tanks in their debarkation. It was the prize of the coast, the jewel, and their obvious target, which they wanted and got, intact.
It was a tactical and demoralizing defeat and the Russians gained a supply of food and fuel which our army had no time to remove on such short notice. And the city itself was a fortress, with so many tall buildings and underground levels. We could never retake it without staggering losses.
We thought Manchester might be next, and this was our arsenal. We had a few thousand armored vehicles and a full tank division, lying in wait in the underground parking lots, along with ten thousand troops invisible to aerial bombardment, like a crouching tiger. But if this base fell the north-eastern seaboard would be theirs. Steele was holding out, waiting for news from Montreal or New York before he made any move. Those generals were in a stalemate position.
This is where we provided real help. The Russians once again took their time. They sent out small detachments everywhere, to cut off our telephone lines, but always in daylight with planes flying overhead. So we watched and rode through the trees and ambushed them wherever we could. It’s easy for a plane to nail a vehicle driving straight down a highway, with nowhere else to go. But not so a motorcycle, swerving off-road and into the bush at first sight of it. We lost a dozen good riders in the first weeks but ambushed and destroyed their vehicles with our grenade launchers. We’d machine gun those left and drive off into the woods. Our men were learning the art of war the only way there is, through combat, with casualties.
We were two opposing armies mostly in hiding, not knowing the enemy’s strength and reluctant to make the first move. A colonial militia never had time to form. Our fishing ceased and those along the coast retreated inland, taking their trucks and tractors and all the food they could carry, hundreds of miles inland, travelling by night so the Russian planes couldn’t harass them. The Russians saw this exodus and knew the coastline was now deserted. But to move inland was a big unknown. Only their planes flew on more and more exploratory missions.
Their only victory so far was Boston and they sent out convoys from there, North, up the coast, to see what they could find. We evacuated our smaller force from the camp in Portsmouth where Tom was stationed. It was within range of their navel guns. But we didn’t desert the area. Tom’s command, four hundred men, entrenched themselves in Durham, so our research facility and hospital were still in business. They were highly mobile and could retreat with our precious scientists at a moment’s notice.
The other forces from that camp removed with all their gear and munitions further up the coast, reinforcing the Portland base and posts further inland. The fisherman there were still in business, fishing by night. With all the coves and islands and jagged coastline of that region they were safe from Russian gunboats, and we gave them detachments of soldiers with weapons to accompany them, bazookas and spotlights in case the enemy sent out cruisers, an impromptu navy.
The fish they caught were a necessary part of our food supply and Tom’s men were busy delivering these catches by night to our other bases. One truck visited our location every few days, a welcome improvement to our camp rations. Tom showed up one night just to see our outfit and was quite impressed with the biker’s stories of raids, some of them admittedly a bit tall.
But by far our most important mission was intelligence. In teams of two and three we spread everywhere by night and from covered vantage points watched all their movements through binoculars by light. I sent daily reports back by courier to general Steele. We deduced they were scavenging and that their biggest weakness was food.
After two weeks I took Jack and Stalker and a few others to meet with him in his underground base in Manchester. I’d been teaching them all the military terms I used as I wrote up my reports by the campfire. And to my surprise they listened and learned. When we sat and talked we sounded professional (though we didn’t look it), and Steele and Major Hyde were also impressed. They decided that if this was the case, any stalemate would be to our advantage, the Russians running low on supplies while we had plenty.
I mentioned Fabius Maximus, the Roman general who finally defeated Hannibal. His other title was ‘Cunctator’, ‘the delayer’ because he knew he’d loose in any open battle so he ghosted every move that Hannibal made, from the mountains, cut off his supplies wherever he could, over ten years, till Hannibal was depleted in every way and forced to leave Italy with the skeleton of his army.
They agreed with this tactic for their position, (to hold the middle) but told us the big question was Montreal. The lines were down and they knew a battle was going on, but nothing else. Stalker immediately volunteered himself and his two men to ride north that night, and report back the next. Jack and I asked for recruits. Steele had mentioned his men were itching for a fight and it was hard to hold them back with excuses that smacked of cowardice. He agreed to lend us four hundred men in jeeps and Humvees, under our command and fully supplied. We could easily hide them in our mountain forest. We left with this long convoy after dark, Pirate Jack leading the way, feeling like he’d just been promoted to captain. At least that’s what I figured, because the next morning he told all his men to address him as ‘Captain Jack’ from now on.
With these reinforcements our ambushes stepped up. We couldn’t attack Boston or its suburbs. But we effectively stopped their sorties inland. The men Steele lent us were gung-ho. Our men led them to the best vantage points and they would blockade the roads after the Russian convoy passed, cutting off retreat while our men ahead took aim. They often bore the brunt of the battle when the Russians did turn and run, smashing some vehicles into our roadblocks, then scattering to fight our soldiers one on one. We noticed their air coverage was lighter now, which made for our success. But I wondered why, as we’d only managed to shoot down a few helicopters so far.
I found out more the night Stalker came back. He stayed in Montreal for three days because the armies had collided and every hour the contest might turn one way or the other, and without decisive news his return was pointless. He told us the battle around the city was huge, raging, unlike anything he’d ever seen, our artillery and their battleships firing non-stop, day and night.
“Squadrons of their tanks would deploy from landing craft and engage ours, north and south, with thousands of infantry clashing, in bayonet onslaughts till nightfall when both sides retreated. At first they had the advantage, their planes wreaking havoc. But on the third day the tides turned as we deployed dozens of SAMs mounted on trucks, laser guided, and their jets went down like fireworks in the sky. Our men were the tougher soldiers, more determined, and we pushed them in one huge assault all the way to their landing crafts as they tried to escape across the river. We slaughtered thousands. I raced down the hill when I saw this and shot a dozen from my bike. My men did the same. It was a turkey shoot, the best day of my life, so far.”
Then he turned to me. He'd met with general Wilde briefly the night he arrived. The general was with a woman, a scientist, and she asked if you were here with us. She told me the tides would soon turn, just like it did, and that Montreal would be ours. But that wasn’t all. She said the Russian fleet would sail south with all they had left and make another assault inland from Boston. “So get ready boys, the killin is about to begin.”
“Oh, and by the way, she said I had to take special care of you and she’d be here soon. She must be special. I never saw a woman telling a general what to do. Do you know her?”
“Ya” I replied. “She’s my partner in all this, and when she does show up, show respect. Her smarts will probably win us this war.”
That night I lay awake wondering about this news. The battle of Montreal was just like Montcalm and Wolfe, repeated. But what did the Russians have in mind if Sheila’s information was correct. We saw their planes flying inland now, for no apparent reason. That was where most of our people had fled from the coast. But this area was huge, mountainous, forested, with a million places to hide. I could only imagine that with redoubled forces, they might push inland and capture our farm belt, perhaps turning south to outflank Johnson’s army facing theirs, across the Hudson. Or maybe they’d swing by him and capture Washington, before our forces from the North could catch up.
None of it made sense. They controlled the coast with their fleets. But to move inland was pure folly. That was our turf. I knew they were hungry and there was only one reason for such a move, to feed themselves, to rape our farms of livestock and corn and burn them, starving us, just as Sheridan had done in the Civil War, the swath of destruction that destroyed the South.
My head was too full of parallels, I thought. I must look ridiculous every time I mention them. The Russian generals didn’t know any of this and their plans, whatever they were, had no connection to history. They were probably illiterate in that department, as apparatchiks generally were.
There I went again, thinking of Stalin and his rewriting the history books. I was a fool. I wondered how my new companions put up with me, always trying to teach them new words and mentioning events they’d never heard before. I’m sure I looked ridiculous. I should shut-up and keep my thoughts to myself. I swore to myself I’d put this rule into practice, starting tomorrow.
But just as I was falling asleep on that cold, pine needle floor, much like the one beside my own home, one last idea flashed through my head and gave me a shiver to my core.
“What if they’re bombing our farms? Mine is one of them.”
The next morning as I rose from my tent, I took a longer walk through the trees than usual, for necessities. There was a chill and stiffness in my bones, the two blankets I slept in were not quite sufficient. I felt cold like the woods. It had dew on every leaf and branch, not yet melted with the sunrise. The sky was still a deep blue, with long streaks of thin, rosy clouds, ‘rosy fingered dawn’ as Homer described it, as if someone had scratched it and made it bleed. I felt a communion with this forest, all in the act of pissing and looking up at the sky. I felt like I was an integral part of it, as it was to my ancestors thousands and thousands of years ago.
But this feeling of harmony suddenly vanished. A vision flooded back into my consciousness, a sudden wave engulfing me. It wasn’t a waking dream, those you recall right away, but one half-buried in deeper sleep, in the middle of the night, which most often you don’t remember. Yet this one was so vivid that it resurfaced with a vengeance. It was the scene of a funeral, of a coffin being slowly lowered in the ground. I was a sad spectator standing right next to the pit, with a dozen other mourners in a circle around me. As the box touched the bottom the lid opened and a dead and shriveled woman pushed it up with her arms then sat up and looked straight at me, not the other mourners, with imploring eyes.
I had to look away and turned to those around me for some comfort, some fellowship. But they were all hooded in black and I noticed they had no faces or features, equally as frightening as the corpse. They vanished as I reached out and I was left alone. I turned back to the grave, and the corpse was still gazing at me, now with burning, threatening eyes. All the while there were the sounds of screaming coming from a nearby forest. Then it fell silent and I was in the forest, the very forest I was in. I shook my head at this vivid nightmare covered in cold sweat. Then I slowly made my way back to camp. But as I went, I was desperately trying to make sense of it, without success.
Then the last dim fears as I was falling asleep last night came back to me. In our clearing ahead I saw Jack by his campfire, chewing on one of the army ration meals, complaining out loud how rotten it tasted.
“Jack, I’ve got a bad feeling. You guys don’t need me here. I’ve got to get home right away”.
“What’s the matter”? he replied. “You look white as a ghost”.
“It’s these jets flying inland. I’ve got to check on my family. I think bombs may be falling. I’m leaving right now. I can be there in four hours and be back by tomorrow. You’re in charge”.
Stalker had just stepped out of his tent with a cup of coffee, my gift to them, and heard the whole thing.
“I feel like a ride today. I’ll go with you”.
“How’s that” Jack said to him, “there might be fighting today and you’re my second in command. We have all these troops to order around”?
Stalker knelt by Jack and spoke quietly, but I could overhear what they said.
“Look, Luke here isn’t right, and that means something’s wrong. Every time he has a notion it comes true and he’s too valuable to lose. I can’t let him go alone. You understand”?
“Ya, I guess you’re right. Take care of him. I’m startin to like the guy. And say hello to Myra for me when you see her. But don’t touch her. You don’t want that dude Tom on your back”.
So off we rode on two Harleys, screaming down deserted, rural roads. Stalker seemed to know every one of them and led the way. We stuck to them because it was broad daylight and more jets kept flying over our heads all morning. But they were too high to notice us. Just as we passed north of Barre, I heard bombs exploding, not on the city but in the countryside, and my worst fears were fast materializing.
We reached the dirt road to my mansion and I took the lead, riding faster than ever along the familiar twists and turns. A mile before we were there, I could smell smoke. Then I noticed the pines were all charred on one side, the side facing ahead. It was a swift fire that had flashed through, consuming the underbrush and dead needles, just scarring the trees, not killing them. My heart sank. Incendiary bombs. With the last turn I saw what I expected. My mansion was rubble, a large, flattened stain of blackened earth where it once stood, another black circle where the barn had been.
There was only a jagged remnant of the curved stone entrance to show that a house once existed there, like the prow of some unfortunate wooden ship sunk long ago on a reef, the only thing left, still a few feet above the remorseless waves.
We parked our bikes beside it and stood in silence surveying the ruins, looking at a graveyard. The fields of corn were green and undamaged, swaying in the breeze.
“Stupid plants” I thought, “while all my loved ones, my whole life, are dead”.
The solar array to my left was intact. And the old garage, Bill’s loft, still stood as it always had, a few hundred yards away, tucked close to the forest, as verdant as ever.
The wind must have been blowing south when the firebombs fell, and east, where the graves were, because that’s where the trees were scorched. Then I looked down at the rubble and sadness engulfed me.
It littered the ground with pieces of brick and white plaster and charred wood, the beams and walls of my house. But there were also tatters of colored cloth, pieces of smoother wood that must have been furniture, blasted out of the house with the first impact, escaping the fire. Glass sometimes crunched under our boots as we walked towards the barn. I started to explore this desolation, not with that one purpose in mind, at least not consciously, but looking for something familiar or for traces of bodies. Stalker followed silently behind. It was all he could do.
The barn must not have been directly hit. But it burned to the ground. There were the recognizable shapes of charred cows in the outlines of stalls and the structure itself. And between two was the blackened corpse of a body. I saw a human skull and a torso face down.
I knelt and lifted an almost skeleton arm from a bed of burnt hay, half covered in ash and the fragments of shingles and wood, the roof of the barn that had fallen upon it. But as I gently raised this remnant of a hand, there it was, my mother’s ring, still with a gleam and I knew it was Nancy.
I laid it back, stood up and told Greg. But I spoke without emotion. I knew it all before it happened and was expecting just this sight. I had digested the grief. I spoke to him with a strangely rational mind that wasn’t my own.
“This blast must have knocked her down and killed her, or perhaps the tidal wave of fire that followed. The bombs hit the house with deadly accuracy, and this was in their range of destruction. But it didn’t happen this morning. The dust is settled and there’s no smoke. This happened yesterday or the day before”.
Then it struck me. “We have to check on the other houses, Joe’s and Myra’s, right away”.
We ran back to our bikes. As we sped up the dirt road that bordered the fields, I could see Joe’s home and barn had also been hit, levelled, a huge, black semicircle of destruction tucked against the woods, also scorched by the firestorm. We raced right past it to the break in the woods, the narrow path that led to Myra’s. As we raced along this short trail, I noticed no signs of fire and hoped for the best, not like the last two harbingers of doom.
We drove up to the old farmhouse intact, with the sounds of cows mooing in the barn. This house was nestled in the trees, and the planes must have overlooked it. Or it might have been the condition of the place, run down, and they thought it abandoned. Tom never repaired it. The roof shingles were peeling, like the paint, and the grass around the yard a foot tall. The barn too looked derelict, leaning to one side. Tom was always busy helping Joe farm. And Myra had her children to mind, cooking, the chickens and milking their four cows. But they were happy in this rustic shack of a house and left it that way. I never imagined that negligence might save the day.
We jumped off our bikes and ran through the back door. There was no sign of life in the front room or kitchen. Stalker went upstairs while I yelled out Myra’s name. I heard a faint sound from below, then a hatch from under the small rug on the kitchen floor opened and they came out. Myra emerged first holding her youngest, then Jeff, Joe’s son, appeared with her four-year-old in hand, all of them blinking and half-blinded by the daylight in the kitchen.
She set her child on the floor and threw her arms around me.
“Oh, thank God, thank God you came back. We’ve been hiding in the basement. We thought you might be Russians. But I recognized your voice, thank God”.
Stalker came downstairs and Myra, recognizing him, gave him a similar hug.
“How long have you been down there”? I asked.
“Two days. The planes came right after dawn and the bombs dropped. Jeff was here when it happened, helping me milk the cows. They didn’t see us. But we heard the bombs explode on his parent’s house and yours. We ran into the woods with the children, thinking my house would be next. But the planes just circled and left. I had our secret basement, so I took the children there. Jeff ran through the woods and found his parents’ house destroyed, still on fire and the woods on fire. He burned his hands trying to get in but knew his parents were dead. Then he ran to your mansion through the cornfields and saw it was even more destroyed and there were no signs of life. He came back here and cried in my arms for hours, with his red, burnt, hands, in the dark basement, with just candles for light”.
“So, there was no warning”?
“No. It happened all in a minute. We spent the last two days in the cellar, worrying Russians were on their way to kill us, or worse. It was horrible. You must take us back with you to safety, to Tom. I just want to get away from here with my children. They might still be coming. Is Tom okay? Do you know”?
I sat at her table and buried my head in my arms to ponder this apocalypse, the destruction of everyone I loved, my children, my future, everything I owned. The others sat and looked at me in silence.
After a minute I felt their presence. I didn’t cry, but raised my head and said: “Myra, I need a drink”.
“We don’t have any here” she replied meekly.
“I know where there is some. Let’s go. Myra, you get behind me with your youngest. Greg, you can handle Jeff and the boy. We’re just going across the field to Bill’s. They didn’t hit it”.
A few minutes later we were in Bill’s loft, much more comfortable. The boys were happy. The eldest was screaming with joy during the motorcycle ride. I suppose Armageddon doesn’t add up to more than a few minutes of sadness in the mind of a four-year-old. With the first distraction it’s completely forgotten. A bag of popcorn cures it. And oddly enough, the power was still on, unlike Myra’s house. We set the kids on the sofa in front of the big screen and turned on ‘Toy Story,’ still in the VCR from Sheila’s visit. They were giggling away in minutes.
Us adults, of course, with far higher intellects, needed a more potent medicine. I opened the shelf above the fridge and sure enough, there was one full bottle of bourbon left, just as I remembered. Stalker was amazed, not having tasted a drop in years. We just sat Jeff at the table, putting our hands on his shoulders and forcing him down on a chair between us, three glasses already laid out on the table. He was twenty now, a man. He didn’t know he needed a drink. He’d never had more than a beer. But he did now, for all the trauma he’d just been through.
Myra never drank, too many cautionary tales in her past. But she was easy. Once she saw the kids were happy, I simply mentioned: “Myra, since the power’s on that means the water’s hot. Why don’t you take a shower while you can? I think Sheila left some clothes here that would fit you fine”. She vanished into the bedroom in an instant.
Stalker glanced around at the high-beamed ceiling, the furnishings of the loft, the big screen TV and working refrigerator, as he took his first sip of fine whiskey, on the rocks.
“Wow Luke, you really know how to live it up. I haven’t enjoyed this luxury in years”.
“You should have seen my mansion”. I replied. But that immediately brought back a flood of memories, and we both realized the mistake.
I poured another round and another, all of us pounding them back to forget our griefs, finishing off four each before Myra stepped back into the room, feeling fresh and looking happy and beautiful in one of the red, flowery dresses that Sheila had left, inappropriate for warfare and meetings with generals.
She asked if there was any food. The children could use a cooked meal after two days of cold rations. I told her there might not be much but there was a garden patch behind this place, a legacy of Joe’s tenure, and all the corn you could eat, slightly slurring my words.
“Consider this place your own. I don’t think we’re going anywhere soon”.
Jeff was visibly drunk and leaning his head in his sore hands, one elbow on the table, watching ‘Toy Story’ from the distance. But Stalker and I were just getting started, me to forget my past, and he to remember what a good drunk was. Myra went out into the garden, trying to ignore us.
“Stalker” I said, “I know where there’s plenty more of this, just a short walk away. Let’s put Jeff here on the couch with the kids before he keels over. Then come with me”.
We did just that.
As we were walking towards the bunker, the thought struck me: “Why didn’t I think of it earlier”. I remembered Jane and Miranda from the first battle, four years ago, hiding there. And Myra coming up from her basement today, her own bunker. I began walking faster, then started running as fast as I could, as fast as these thoughts occurred. Stalker had no idea what I was doing but ran after me.
The woods were all singed and the pine needle floor mostly burnt away. The metal door was partly exposed and the lock on the outside latch missing as I ran towards it. I grabbed the handle, but it wouldn’t open so I banged on it repeatedly, shouting my name. Stalker must have thought me crazy.
Then it opened and I was staring dumbfounded at the most beautiful sight in the world, the face of Miranda.
She was as astonished as I was. We were face to face and speechless. I threw the hatch open and lifted her up through the opening and set her on the ground, on her feet. She appeared to be unhurt and gave me a tight hug, sobbing with joy.
Then I heard another cry from inside. It was Jane.
Miranda spoke: “She’s really hurt. You’ve got to help her”.
I hurried down the ladder. In the far corner of the main room was a single bed and there she was, lying face down, her head turned to see by the single, dim light in the ceiling. Beside her, on the floor, sat two children, Louie and Sophie, frightened at first but as they recognized me and I rushed to embrace them they held out their small arms and yelled: “Daddy”.
I knelt by Jane and she smiled, too weak to speak. But I could see she was in deep pain. Much of her hair had been cut away. She had no clothes on except her underwear. A sheet covered her middle. It was folded down revealing her back and up from her legs and thighs. They were a bright red on each side, with blisters. Small pieces of gauze and white cream had been spread over most of them. The skin on her back looked fine, but on each side, it was a lobster red, with more blisters, second or third degree burns for sure.
Greg and Miranda followed me in. Miranda told us the ghastly details.
“We had just finished getting dressed when we heard planes. We knew the drill. Nancy had gone to the barn, so there were just the two of us. I picked up Sophie and began running to the back door. But Jane had to carry two children, and they were crying and kicking. Just as I came outside, I saw the bomb drop on Joe’s home. My mother was behind me and told me to run with Sophie as fast as I could and not look back.
“I made it here and was opening the hatch when the bomb hit our house. But my mother was behind me. She had Louie in one arm in front of her and Helen on her back, clinging with both arms around her neck. Helen always was the strongest. But this slowed her down. She was just inside the edge of the trees when the blast knocked them down. I put Sophie inside and ran back and the trees were on fire. My mother had fallen forward and somehow Louie wasn’t hurt. She told me to take him quickly to the shelter, which I did.
“By the time I ran back to her she had crawled part-way here. But she was burned and poor Helen was badly burned, all over her back, her hair and clothes all on fire. She was in her pajamas. I dragged them inside, but little Helen died a few minutes later. You can see the outline on my mother’s back right where she was hanging on. She saved my mother’s life with her own body. Poor Helen. I buried her next to Bill, but there’s no cross. There’s nothing to make one with now”.
She poured into tears. I stood up and gave her a long, silent hug.
“You did well my love. You were brave and you saved Sophie’s life, and Jane’s and Louie’s too. I can’t thank you enough. I’ll always take care of you as my own daughter and I promise, I promise, I’ll never leave you again”.
All this while Greg was kneeling beside the bed, listening to the story but also examining Jane’s wounds. He looked up at me and said she was likely to live, that they were second degree burns and she needed medical attention to prevent infection and couldn’t stay here, in this pit.
I turned to Miranda and told her I had some good news. Myra was safe and her children too and so was Jeff. They were in Bill’s loft. I told her to run and bring Myra here and the fold-up cot that was to be Louie’s bed when Sheila was here. We had to get Jane back there and to the hospital tomorrow. She ran like the wind.
Greg and I gathered all the creams and gauze scattered around Jane’s bed, along with a laptop on the floor, Miranda’s work, and emptied the medical kit itself, a large metal case, along with a dozen bottles of whiskey into a duffel bag. He carried it to daylight, while I lifted the children up to him. Then we managed to move Jane on her mattress through the portal, just as Myra and Miranda arrived, running with the cot between them.
Back at the loft, once again ‘déjà vu’ after a battle, it was crowded but cozy. We carried Jane up last. But she smiled as she saw the four children sitting on the couch, close and happy, watching the cartoons, and Jeff next to them, now passed out. He’d probably been awake the last two days.
As I looked at him, I realized that’s exactly what Jane needed. I went through our duffel bag and found what I was looking for, Valiums and Demerol. I went to Jane’s bed, half-closed the door to dim the light and asked her to take one of each, with a swig of whiskey to wash them down. She complied, but she was fully lucid, so I sat and talked with her a bit.
“I know you must be in deep pain, and these will help you sleep, which is what you need to heal. We’ll take you to a hospital tomorrow, somewhere. But why isn’t Jim here”?
“He was, until a few days before it happened. He drove into Barry one morning to check on the hospital, before any of this bombing began and some captain told him a battle was raging in Montreal, that they needed him there. He called from town, saying he had to leave, and I’m glad he did. He would have been killed if he stayed here”.
“How’s that”? I had to ask.
“Look at me” Jane said. “I sprinted as fast as I could and barely made it. He would have been behind me. I know he would have. He would never run ahead of me, out of love, even carrying a child. And he couldn’t run half as fast as I could. My legs were like steel that morning, what’s left of them”.
I had to kiss her for that, such consideration. And she was right. I pictured the scenario in vivid detail.
“I’m pretty sure he’s still alive”. I told her, “And I’ll pull all the strings I can to reunite you. We won in Montreal and the Russian fleet sailed south in retreat. That’s why they began bombing here, in retaliation”.
I saw her eyelids straining to stay open. She started to say she didn’t want him to see her like this.
I brushed my hand through what was left of her hair, a few inches long. Miranda had cut off what was burnt.
“No” I said. “He’ll want to see you and help you get better. You’re the prettiest sight he’ll ever see”.
With that she fell asleep.
Myra had cooked a large pot of vegetable soup, which we all enjoyed. The kids fell asleep. The women made a bed for them with all the cushions from the couch and chairs. Jeff was passed out and could sleep on the couch springs without cushions. He’d never know the difference. Miranda would watch over them from the cot while Myra laid down to sleep beside Jane.
Greg and I had our bedrolls from our bikes and went outside. We even made a campfire because we wanted to talk and make plans. Besides that, we had all that medicinal whiskey.
Our first concern was getting Jane the help she needed. We both agreed the nearest hospital in Barry might either be bombed already or in danger. I mentioned the best thing for her would be for us to find Jim, and the thought occurred that we could head in that direction, north, with all the women and kids. The war was won there, at least for a while, making Montreal the safest place.
We’d ride tandem into town first thing and find a long-bed truck. Jeff could drive it with Jane on her mattress and Myra in the back. We’d lead the way each sporting one of the little ones on our cycles. Greg knew the way. We could be there before dark.
We did just that. The women packed while we found a truck. I still had plenty of gas in the woods. The town was deserted and trucks lined the streets, some with keys in them. We were back in an hour and set off. Jane was feeling rested, smiling, just happy to be in the fresh air and sunshine again. She looked better than Jeff in fact, who followed our slow pace with a hangover but managed Miranda with two kids in her lap and her constant talk keeping him fixed on the winding, forest lanes.
We saw no planes in the sky and rode slowly, with frequent stops to see how Jane was faring on the country roads. Then we switched the children around and Miranda took a turn holding onto my back with Sophie between us, loving the wind in her hair. Near the city we stopped the first soldiers we met on directions to a hospital. There was only one, but it was huge, the central hospital with the yard around it crowded with the cots of wounded soldiers, hundreds in the open air, and dozens of nurses rushing between them. Inside were more serious cases and even more pandemonium.
But there we found Jim through a window, busy with surgery, the nurse saying we couldn’t enter but she’d pass on a message.
“Just say the word ‘Jane’, that she’s here and badly burned, in the back of our truck at the front entrance”.
As the nurse did this, he handed his forceps to another doctor and rushed out to us. In a few minutes Jane was being wheeled in on a gurney, Jim and two nurses examining her wounds, still on her stomach, face down, the only position she could tolerate.
The rest of us stood in the hallway, relieved that she was getting such VIP attention. Jim came out and thanked us profusely, saying that she was out of danger. We had nowhere to stay so he scribbled an address not far away and would meet us there in a few hours.
It was a large Victorian House, and an older woman greeted us at the door, took one look at his note and ushered us in. But I had to see the general. Greg knew the way and we sped off on our bikes to his headquarters. I’d been thinking about the planes, and now, even more important to my mind, the absence of them the whole ride here. I knew this was critical information to share.
Soon we were sitting in an empty office. A few minutes later General Wilde burst in.
“Glad to see you alive and back so soon” he said, shaking Greg’s hand. “And you Luke, what a pleasure. I’ve heard what you’ve been up to and thanks to you, in part, things are turning our way”.
“Thanks to your fine victory here” I replied. “Greg told me all about it”.
Just as I said this Sheila came in and threw her arms around me. After that warm embrace I asked if we could all sit down.
“Look, I’m not here to bandy congratulations. I think I know exactly what’s going on with the Russians, and if I’m right, we can win this war decisively with a trap”. That got everyone’s attention.
“First of all, I need to know how you’ve been communicating with General Steele”.
“We were using short waves after the lines went down a few weeks ago. But we kept hearing Russians on the same bandwidths and knew they were listening in, so we switched to couriers with written dispatches. They have the advantage in that department. They’re still talking away in a dialect no one understands. It’s some form of Azerbaijani we think, some variant incomprehensible to the few Russians we have here”.
“We’re still working on it” Sheila added.
“This is good news. My plan depends on complete secrecy. Keep to your couriers, like Greg here. And motorcycles are best. The Russians don’t have any and could never disguise themselves to look like one of our bikers. Greg, no offence, but how long did it take for you to grow that fine length of hair and mustache”?
“I’ve been workin on it for years, and your right. No Russian is gonna steal one of our bikes, put on our colors and pretend they’re one of us, riding into camp with some fake message. They just don’t look like us. And besides, I don’t think they can ride”.
“Exactly” I said, “let the bikers be our Navajo and carry all our communications between you and Steele and Johnson. They ride day and night, in relays if need be. My plan is simple. The Russians are planning to invade, to make a big incursion from Boston with their combined forces. They’ll move inland and rape our farmlands. They need food. I think they’ll turn south through Connecticut and hit Johnson from behind, or else bypass him and capture the Delaware and Washington, demoralize us and draw his forces south.
“But here’s their big mistake. I could see it from the way they bombed. I was at my farm this morning, what little is left, and they dropped two incendiary bombs on my home and one on my neighbor’s farmhouse. But they flew over and ignored Tom’s run-down place. They’re running out of bombs. They didn’t hit the fields. They want them intact. They bypass towns and cities, which would require massive bombardment to do any damage. They plan on taking those with their land forces, stripping them and moving on, leaving a swath of destruction, fattening themselves on our supplies and starving your forces moving south. Then they’ll hit Johnson. He’ll be outnumbered and face a battle on two sides. Or, if they’re more cautious, they’ll bypass him and cut off his supply lines and any reinforcements from the south. Our richest farm belt will be smoldering in ruins, and all our crops in their hands, a war of attrition, until we surrender.
“But here’s the flaw. They think Steele moved north weeks ago to reinforce you. We let them take Boston with minimal resistance, not one-tenth of Steel’s army, like some outpost left behind. You know he’s underground in Manchester with a full armored division, and whether he planned it or not, he made that move wisely, leaving his camp like some deserted village. The Russians are going to sweep right through there and think he’s gone. If you hook up with him with what you’ve got left and we hit them from behind, they’ll be cut off from the coast and outnumbered, and on our turf. We know the land and they don’t.
“These bombing raids were the preliminaries to soften us up. But the fact that it was so limited reveals their weakness. They’re low on bombs. They’ve used up what they brought. We need to get word to Steele right away, to lie low, with your signature on it. The bombing has stopped. I didn’t see a single plane today. That means their assault is about to begin. If they bypass him, I think we’ll win”.
Wilde saw my reasoning and liked the plan. He shook my hand and asked me to be back in his office with Sheila first thing in the morning. Then he asked Greg to take the message to Steele right away. Whatever move the Russians made, it was our advantage to keep Steele and his army a hidden asset, our trump card to win the game. He wrote out the orders and handed them to Greg.
“Done” said Greg, as he put on his jacket.
“You’re going to get a big medal for this when the war’s won” Wilde promised.
“I’ve already got the one I like” he replied, pointing to his eagle badge.
Sheila grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the hallway.
“What happened back there, your home, destroyed? Was anyone hurt? Louie, our child, where is he?”
Her voice was trembling, her whole body quivered as she said this. Her fingernails were digging into my arm, begging for a response and not about to let go, her eyes full of tears before I could say anything.
“Come with me now where I’m staying tonight. Louie’s alive. Nancy’s dead.
To read from the beginning click:
Chapter One ...
