I met Ken and several others on my way back to camp. Rene had finally realized that Brad was gone and had sent for me. When I turned up missing too, she told Ken. They had put two and two together and gathered another squad to come find us. I was drained by then, both emotionally and physically, and offered no resistance when they took Brad’s body from me.
“Lee? What happened, Lee?”
I turned to Ken, barely aware of what was going on at that point. “What happened?” The words rolled about in my mind for a few seconds, looking for some kind of purchase on reality. They finally registered, and I buried my face in Ken’s shirt and cried like a baby.
I eventually managed to tell them what had happened, and Ken sent spotters out to confirm my story. Word spread through the camps like wildfire.
Over three hundred dead! Just by one old man!
Ken and Jim must have immediately seen the effect of the story as they milked it for all it was worth. The people of Rejas acted like they had found a shiny new stone, a gem of determination they had forgotten even existed.
If that wasn’t enough, they reminded one another of some of the struggles through which they had all come, the fights that had made them strong.
Ironically, it was Billy who dragged me back into it, reminding everyone of the day that three of us went up against twenty looters in the early days after D-day, and further reminding them that he was the only living survivor of those looters.
Through it all, Rejas citizens wove their speculative thread into the tales. If so few of us could do this against so many, what would happen if we all quit our whining about how tough things were, and put our minds to beating Larry?
Larry didn’t know it yet, but the tide had turned against him. The number of night raids tripled and were no longer simple gathering missions. Status quo wasn’t enough. The townspeople had found their courage once more and, though I never mentioned it to anyone, I knew that the Damascus blade I carried at my side was not Brad’s finest work. His example had taken the hidden steel of his neighbors’ backbones, tempered it with determination, and forged a weapon against which our enemies had no defense.
Brad had given us back our hope.
Chapter 19
Le gros mastin de cite dechasse,
Sera fasche de l’estrange alliance,
Apres aux champs auoir le cerf chasse
Le loups amp; l’Ours se donront defiance.
The large mastiff expelled from the city
Will be vexed by the strange alliance,
After having chased the stag to the fields
The wolf and the Bear will defy each other.
A week after Brad’s death, we managed to deal the coup de grace. A combination of homemade naphtha, thermite, and a carelessly opened tank hatch had left Larry’s biggest remaining advantage a smoldering ruin. It was a fierce skirmish, and we lost five more of our own, as well as the majority of our remaining ammunition, but we managed to hold the enemy at bay while the mortar brigade lobbed dozens of incendiaries into and around the final functioning Abrams.
Two days later, we had a new problem. Larry’s men began to desert, and we had to make a quick decision: let them go, kill them as they left, or capture them and add to our slave population?
“If we kill ’em, the rest will have more reason to stay an’ fight,” Jim pointed out. “Let ‘em go and, at the rate they’re leaving, Larry’s forces’ll be down to where we can oust him in a week, at most.”
That wasn’t good enough for me. “But what happens then? We let them leave, take back the town, and a week later they decide that they had it better inside after all? Then, instead of us surrounding them, they’re surrounding us!” I shook my head. “Doesn’t sound like much of a solution to me.”
Several others argued as well, until a single voice shouted, “Hold it! Hold on a sec! Hey, listen up!”
The arguments faded as we all saw who spoke. Billy stood with his hands raised for silence, looking as nervous as I’d ever seen him. “There’s more than just the three options.” He pointed to the circled numbers on his forehead. “There’s a bunch of us that you folks gave a tattoo. You call us slaves, but most of us figure we got off easy. You could have just as easily killed us, times being what they are. Instead, you gave us a second chance.”
“We can’t keep that many slaves, Billy. We don’t have the food or the means to keep control over that many of them. We just can’t do it!”
Billy turned to face me. “Remember what the judge said would happen to me if I didn’t pass muster when my sentence was up? The date gets covered over, and I get a solid circle-life sentence. Why not use a different kind of tattoo for these folks?”
Banishment became the sentence. Over the next three days, some seven hundred deserters were marked with a black X and instructed in what would happen if they were ever seen in the area again. Those who balked at the idea of the tattoo were given the choice of death or returning to Larry’s tender mercies. One tried to escape, and we were forced to shoot him. Some refused the mark and were escorted back to Larry’s territory. We figured they would spread the word about what we were doing. By the end of the week, it looked like the enemy had lost about half their number.
It was time to take back our homes.
Thanksgiving morning was blackened by a ferocious Texas thunderstorm-deafening thunder, blinding lightning, howling wind and pounding rain. It was all we could have hoped for and more. We waited through the night as it built, praying that its fury wouldn’t fizzle. We needn’t have worried.
Under cover of the raging storm, our first group hit from the northeast. Larry’s men again exhibited the irresponsible lack of discipline that we were counting on to get us close. They appeared to be more interested in keeping out of the rain than in keeping watch. Still, there was simply no way to completely hide five hundred soaking wet attackers when lightning kept illuminating them like a giant strobe light. They got within fifty yards of the enemy barricade before they were spotted.
Then a bell rang out above the storm, and Larry’s men began to pour out of the buildings just behind the street barricades. Yelling and screaming, they actually seemed angrier at being forced into the storm than concerned about the attack.
Hearing the alarm, Team One went to ground, hiding in ditches, behind stumps, taking cover wherever they could. We knew Larry’s men were just as short of ammunition as we were, but Ken had planned our attack based on the assumption that they would break out reserves for such a major battle.
