The still silence wouldn’t last long though. Sometime around midnight, we heard a gunshot. Bolting upright, I had to wonder if I really heard it, or if it was just my imagination. The answer came quickly in form of fusillade of gunfire. I turned on my light, keeping it cupped in my hand to prevent it from lighting up too much, and moved towards the door. Dad, Sarge and Danny were all there. Mom was in the hallway, a small Smith and Wesson pistol in her hand.
“We’re being raided again,” Dad said.
“You’ve got help this time,” Sarge replied as he picked up the Minimi.
I grabbed my pack and took out the PVS-14. Unstrapping the helmet secured to the pack, I snapped the device into its mount. “Yes, you do,” I replied as I picked up the AK and messenger-style bag with spare magazines and VOGs. I handed my AR to Dad along with several magazines.
“Where are they coming from?” Danny asked as he adjusted his night vision.
“Sounds like the shooting is up front. But I doubt the main assault will come from there. This is a diversion,” Dad replied.
Mom and Dad’s house was in the center of the small community. We walked outside and could hear gunfire towards the gate that led out of the neighborhood. Even with the night vision, we saw nothing from our location so deep in the houses.
“With the weapons you guys have, I think we should hang out here and see where the main attack comes from. Then go there,” Dad said.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Sarge replied. “Then go there and kill every fucking one of them.”
It didn’t take long to figure out this was the main attack. The raiders had an old truck they’d armored in a haphazard fashion with whatever plates of steel they could find. As the sound of the shooting near the gate grew, we ran towards it. We encountered several of the residents moving in the same direction. Before long, we were a sizeable force responding to the attack. When we got to a point we could see the gate and the defenders doing their best to hold back the assault, we split up into groups.
Sarge and Danny ran to take up positions opposite the gate where the community had built fortifications of sorts. Dad and I, along with several others, moved to a flanking position to the left of the gate. There was a lot of gunfire coming in.
“Must be a damn pile of them,” Dad said as bullets cracked in the air over our heads.
“Let’s see if we can even the odds,” I said as I snapped a grenade into the launcher. It seated with a click and I held the weapon at an angle and pulled the launcher’s trigger. It went off with a shtock sound and moments later detonated outside the gate.
As soon as the grenade exploded, the old man opened up with the Minimi. He fired in long bursts, the tracers racing out and slapping into the truck, ricocheting and arching up into the night sky like cheap fireworks that never detonated. All incoming fire ceased. I took off at a trot in the direction of the fortifications. They were opposite the gate and offered a view down the road.
Falling in beside Sarge, I had to stick a finger in my right ear. That damn Minimi was loud! I looked over the top of the sandbags to see the truck backing down the road away from the gate. The raiders were attempting to take cover, keeping the retreating truck between them and us. Snapping another grenade into the launcher, I propped the AK on top of the bags and held it at a very slight angle, shtock!
The grenade impacted on the hood of the truck and detonated; these fireworks worked! But the impact wasn’t like in the movies; most things never are. There was no enormous blinding flash or massive fireball. The raiders had armored the front of the truck and the windshield, but not the hood. The detonation ripped into the hood and blew the steel plate over the windshield off. The blast started a fire in the engine compartment, which quickly grew as a result of a ruptured fuel line. All the windows were blown out as well.
I watched the truck. Sarge made short work of anyone that tried to run from it, but I never saw the driver exit. The shooting soon died down and it was quiet, except for the fire consuming the truck, which was now fully engulfed. We came out from behind the barricade and walked towards the gate in the light of the dancing flames but didn’t go through it. People from the community began to gather at the gate and all of them wanted to know what the hell just happened. The crowd stood in silence as the truck burned. The sound of glass breaking and things popping.
A couple of people that saw me fire the grenades came over and asked how I did it. I showed them the AK with the launcher on it and more than one commented, they didn’t expect that! That’ll teach ‘em!
“I don’t think they’ll be back,” Sarge said.
“I think you’re right,” Dad said. “This was way more than they expected, considering what happened the last two times.”
An older man sidled up to me and asked, “Can I have that? Can you leave that
