He was right. Though we hadn’t heard the sound in several days, the sudden eruption of sporadic gunfire was deafening, even over the fury of the storm. Of our first five hundred attackers, only half had any kind of firearm to accompany their bows and arrows. Of those with firearms, most had less than twenty rounds each. Even with half his troops gone, Larry still had a serious advantage in the area of firepower.

The momentum of Team One’s charge faltered, then stopped altogether. Larry’s thugs laughed aloud when they saw our people apparently trapped. But Ken had planned well.

He personally led the charge of Team Two from the southeast. While the enemy’s attention was engaged with trying to pick off hiding targets, Ken’s wing made it within firing range for the air cannons and cut loose with a salvo of Molotov cocktails. The actual physical damage was minimal, but the psychological effect was devastating. Their laughter turned to screams as the naphtha burst among them, blinding against the black of the storm. Plastic and wooden barricades quickly added dense, black smoke to the confusion. Worse yet were the unfortunate souls splashed with the liquid fire. Their screams and stench fed the enemy’s fear and sent them into a retreat.

There was no order to their withdrawal, nothing but blind hysteria. And that, finally, was my signal to attack with the final force from the west. Team Three had crawled into town as the fighting began, and lay in wait a few blocks behind. Once they began their retreat, we poured out of the side streets to wash over them in a wave of fury. We lost more than fifty men and women in that charge, for those of us attacking from the west bore nothing but blades and spears against their rifles. But we were relentless. It was our final battle, and we knew it. We waded in, screaming our hatred and terror, and before they had a chance to regroup, we were on them, hacking and slashing, so close that their firearms became more hindrance than help.

I fought once more with a blade in either hand-machete in the right, Brad’s dagger in the left. Both acquitted themselves well as I freed my anger and frustration into the fight. The blades came alive, parrying and thrusting of their own accord as I led my team in.

Hoping to find him in the middle of his men, I looked for Larry, scanning the faces of my enemies as they fell, but each time disappointed. My personal nemesis was evidently engaged elsewhere.

To my left, Eric Petry, katana in hand, danced with the enemy, so graceful as he whirled, leaving death in his wake. I saw him slice completely through an upraised rifle to cleave the skull of the man behind it. Amazed, I allowed myself to become distracted and very nearly died as I was smashed in the ribs with the butt of a rifle and knocked off balance. I rolled away but found myself out of range as my assailant reversed his weapon to shoot me.

But Megan stepped in from behind him and, with deadly precision, used her machete to relieve my attacker of his weapon. It took the poor soul less than a second to realize that she had relieved him of his hands as well. Before he could open his mouth to scream, she further relieved him of his final burden.

Glancing back to make sure I was all right, she waded deeper into the fray, counting her deadly coup against those who had killed her fiance.

In such close quarters, the advantage was decidedly ours. I saw several of the enemy attempting to block an overhead strike from a stick or machete, only to open themselves up to an underhand slice to the belly. It was a basic technique I had drilled into my students, and I was at once proud and horrified to see how effectively it was being used.

Mercy was neither asked for, nor offered, by anyone, and in less than twenty minutes, the last of Larry’s men in our area lay dead. My blades, arms, legs, and face were splattered with blood and rain. I looked around, panting, sickened at the gruesome carnage I had helped to create, yet elated to be alive.

But it wasn’t over, for deeper within the town I could hear the sounds of machine guns firing. Someone still had an ample supply of ammo, or had decided to use everything they had in a last-ditch effort to escape. It didn’t take much thought to guess who that someone was.

Determined to put an end to the bloodbath, I sprinted toward the sound. No matter how many hundreds, or even thousands, of people were involved in the slaughter, I knew in my gut that it all boiled down to Larry and me. He was as determined to get me as I was him and, whichever way the battle went, the war would not end until one of us was dead.

Ken was already there when I found the fight. It was in the underground parking garage of the Nation’s Bank building, where a pair of mounted machine guns protected the only entrance. I recognized the sound of the fifty calibers.

It was a clever idea, getting the huge guns off of the otherwise useless Abrams tanks. There was no way anyone was going to rush them.

“Any ideas?” Ken shouted to be heard above the storm.

“Me? You’re joking, right?”

Ken grinned briefly. “A man’s gotta have hope.”

“You think he’d surrender if we asked real nice?” I peeked around the corner. I barely ducked back in time, as the guns chewed up the side of the building we hid behind.

“Doesn’t seem too likely,” was Ken’s dry reply.

“Can we get behind them?”

Again, he shook his head. “Already tried. The back is natural stonework with a couple of louvered glass windows. Perfect little sniper holes. We lost five people trying. All we got out of it was a report that there are at least twenty people holed up inside, and they’re working on something in the garage.”

That sounded ominous. My first fear was that if they could rig the fifty calibers from the tanks, maybe they could rig the cannons, too. A moment’s thought nixed that idea, though. We had managed to destroy the cannons on all of the tanks, with the exception of the one buried under twenty feet of water at the reservoir bridge. I didn’t think it likely that they could salvage that one. So what were they up to?

“What about the air cannons?”

Ken shook his head. “Out of naphtha. I doubt if we could get close enough, anyway. If we had any incendiaries left, I’d try bringing in the slingshots and lobbing in from behind other buildings. Might as well wish for them to surrender.”

Several engines sputtered to life, and suddenly we knew what they had been working on. Ten Humvees and a personnel truck skidded out of the garage, each one overburdened with men. All of the vehicles appeared to have been fitted with at least one of the machine guns from the tanks.

I quickly did the math. Six tanks, minus the one in the reservoir, each with one fifty caliber and two of the smaller 7.62mm meant fifteen machine guns.

A few of our people rushed from hiding to fire the last of their precious ammunition at the fleeing enemy and half a dozen soldiers crashed to the pavement. But the machine guns took their deadly payment, and we lost ten more of our own.

Helpless, I could only stare as Larry sped away.

There was both celebration and mourning as people reunited with loved ones, or found their bodies. We’d had a questionable victory at best, and almost half our number would never know we had won. There were more casualties than we’d had during the entire month after D-day. It was the cost of using sheer numbers to overrun superior firepower, but only after the fighting was over did this really hit home.

According to the signs at the edge of town, Rejas had once been a community of 9,893 “smiling neighbors.” We were less than a third of that now, and not a smile in the town.

We knew there were still several supply caches around town that Larry’s boys had missed, but only in those areas where they hadn’t spent much time. They had demolished just about everything they had occupied. The fighting had ruined even more. We wouldn’t know for some time but, from what I had seen, I wouldn’t be surprised if we had lost more than half the buildings.

Even worse was the realization that it wasn’t that great a loss, because that would still be plenty of room for our reduced numbers. Entire neighborhoods had been destroyed, and still we had room.

Of the survivors, over a hundred were seriously wounded, and many more were in shock. Mostly, everyone was just tired. Tired of running. Tired of hiding. Tired of fighting.

Still, it didn’t feel over.

That night, Jim convened an emergency meeting of what was left of the town council. Eric Petry and I, along

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