To the north, the mesa dropped off at a near-vertical angle. The western and southern approaches were long and open—a killing ground. Behind them heading east, the mesa was flat and went on for twenty miles of dry prairie.
The attack lines were clear and predictable. They’d come at a creep or a rush from the tree line. But there was always a chance they’d slip a party up the vertical slope. There was no reason to think the skinnies couldn’t climb like goats. They’d seen them scramble up the cliff face above their hometown fast enough.
For that contingency, they set up Caroline in a mini-bunker made of piled totes to keep an eye on the section of the mesa that dropped sharply to the valley below. Dwayne spent twenty minutes showing her how the M4 operated and let her run through a magazine for practice.
“You don’t need to hit anything,” he assured her. “Just make some noise if you see anyone coming over that ledge. This is a potential blind spot, and we need it covered.”
When it got darker, he fitted a NOD set to her head. Dusk turned to noon through the lenses, and the dying sunlight made the face of every rock a mirror. She blinked as she turned her head to look at Dwayne.
“Weird,” she said and swallowed.
“They take getting used to. Don’t turn your head too fast at first or you’ll get nauseous. There’s no depth perception. And they’re set for 5x.”
“Objects will appear closer, right?”
“The opposite of the side view mirrors on your car.”
She adjusted the goggles so they sat better on her head and her eyes lined up better with the lenses.
“What you want to watch for is movement,” he said. “The trick is not to stare. Just relax your eyes and scan back and forth, but slowly. If anything enters your field of vision, you won’t miss it. Movement is the key.”
“Like a cat watching a mouse hole,” she said and looked at his face, glowing white.
“That’s it,” Dwayne said and touched her shoulder. “Shoot if you even think you see something. False alarms are forgiven in a free-fire zone.”
“Is that what this is? A free-fire zone?”
“Biggest one I’ve ever been in.” He smiled.
“Every unfriendly here is already dead.”
The Winchester boomed and Dwayne moved away to his position, leaving Caroline alone in her hide.
Small knots of skinnies moved out from points all along the tree line. They split up and entered the waving grass in a broad, shallow skirmish line. This was the kind of screening line they used to herd game before them. When those hunters were twenty paces clear more skinnies emerged behind them. The process continued until four ranks of hunters were making their way up the gentle slope to the mesa in a more or less organized line of march.
“Jesus,” Dwayne breathed. “There’s thousands of the fuckers.”
“It’s the Little Big Horn,” Chaz said, “and we’re Custer.”
“Not too late to switch sides, Jimbo,” Hammond said.
“Go to Hell, white man,” Jimbo hissed and picked out another skinny in the NOD’s scope.
A hunting chief in a tall headdress of long feathers collapsed backward with half his head gone. The rest pressed forward.
“Light it up!” Renzi called from the .50.
Two flares lit the sky and the ranks crossing the open ground hesitated for just a beat and then rushed forward at a run.
The Ma Deuce roared to violent life and tracers streaked down to meet the first rank in long looping arcs that looked like strings of pearls. Heavy slugs tore a bloody gap in the front wave and created a haze of dust and chopped grass. The second wave raced through waving their clubs and shaking their spears overhead. Renzi walked the rounds down the rank dropping dozens of skinnies with each burst. He was covering the broad path from the open slope to the mesa top and quickly ran through the first 500-round can.
“Feed me!” he called over the cacophony of horns and war shrieks growing louder as the skinnies rushed up the grassy slope. Chaz jumped from his position behind some piled rocks and tore open a fresh can and placed the first round from the belt in the Browning’s action. Renzi let the lever go, pressed his thumbs to the trigger plate, and began hammering away again.
The rest worked their rifles with controlled fire. Jimbo used the Winchester to clear the tree line, finding more skinnies moving into the open for a reserve wave.
Dwayne was on semi-auto and picking out individual targets closing on the mesa edge. As quickly as he could pull the trigger, he swung the ring sights to find another skinny and drop them center mass. The ranks were breaking, becoming less organized and the skinnies began to knot together as they sprinted for the rocks just beneath the Rangers for the final short climb. Their discipline was falling apart, but they were still moving forward.
Hammond dropped the SAW and hopped over the rocks with the shotgun in his fists. He leaned out and pumped round after round of buckshot and flechette into a dense crowd of skinnies gathered to clamber up the rocks to the mesa. He couldn’t miss if he tried. They fell back screaming in a greasy heap.
“Shoulda brought claymores!” he shouted and thumbed more rounds into the smoking shotgun breach. But you go to war with what you have not with what you wish you had.
Jimbo fired another flare off into the sky and laid the scope on skinnies running low along to their right. He nailed three, but lots more made it out of sight to cover around the north face. He swung back to drop a horn blower. More skinnies leaped the twitching
