Denver Run

Chapter Sixteen

Day three of the seige.

One hour after the barrage began.

“It’s stopped!” Sherry declared.

The east wall had sustained hit after hit, and 11 of the 69 defenders had been wounded by hurtling shrapnel or chunks of brick. A wide gap had been blown out of the southern quarter of the east wall.

The three Warriors in charge of the wall stood near the gap, their anxious eyes on the cleared field beyond.

“They’ll be coming now,” Crockett remarked. He had exchanged his Remington for a Beretta AR-70, converted to fully automatic by the Family Gunsmiths. His buckskins were coated with dust.

“I never thought I would see the day where our Home was under an attack like this,” commented Samson, his camouflage outfit also caked with dirt. His Bushmaster Auto Pistols on his hips were fully loaded.

Sherry was thinking about Hickok. They had spent a few precious hours in their cabin the night before, and she had clung to him, covering every inch of his body with her lips, wishing the night would never end. She was terrified of losing him, the only man she had ever truly loved. Life without her flamboyant gunman was unthinkable. She wanted to be at his side now, instead of being on the east wall, her brown blouse and green pants as grimy as her companions, a M.A.C. 10 cradled in her tense hands.

“What are they waiting for?” Samson asked, interrupting her reverie.

“For the smoke to clear,” Crockett replied.

The tendrils of smoke were almost gone from the eastern field.

“Are the ropes all in place?” Crockett inquired, looking at the towering Samson.

“Yes,” Samson responded. “One rope every twenty feet.”

Sherry nervously licked her lips. The ropes were their only means of descending from the eastern rampart. Only the west wall had stairs leading up to the rampart; all of the other walls were manned by ascending the stairs on the west wall and following the rampart around to the appropriate post. Ropes with improvised grapling hooks had been placed along the east, north, and south walls, affording the defenders a ready avenue of escape if their positions became untenable. Unfortunately, at the inner base of each wall was the encircling moat. Defenders retreating from their posts would be extremely vulnerable as they attempted to navigate the moat to the compound beyond.

“Here they come!” Crockett suddenly exclaimed.

A great shout arose from the ranks of the 500 soldiers lined up 150

yards from the east wall. They surged forward, rushing toward the east wall, dozens of them holding assault ladders.

“They’ll try for this breach,” Samson mentioned, hefting his Bushmaster, his long hair swaying in the wind.

Crockett raised his right hand above his head. “On my command!” he shouted. Most of the defenders were crouched below the lip of the wall.

The troopers were racing full speed for the wall, some of them firing as they ran, ineffectual shots, the bullets striking the wall or missing entirely.

“Hold your fire!” Crockett yelled.

Only 40 yards separated the leading soldiers from the wall.

“Hold!” Crockett repeated.

Sherry felt a cold sweat break out all over her body. She thought of her family, safe in far-off Canada.

Then 30 yards.

“Hold!”

Then 20 yards.

“Fire!” Crockett screamed.

The defenders rose up and fired into the mass of charging men in green fatigues.

The front rows of troopers were torn to ribbons by the initial volley from the east wall. Soldiers twitched and jerked as round after round tore their bodies apart. Dozens dropped in their tracks. But the rest came on.

Crockett moved to the left, to the north, directing and goading the defenders.

The din was deafening.

Sherry saw a dense cluster of soldiers closing on the section of wall below her position. Samson was right. The troopers were concentrating on the breach in the wall. Even with the top portion gone, 15 feet of wall remained. The soldiers would have to use the ladders.

And use them they did.

Four ladders were thrown up against the wall below the breach.

Soldiers started to climb upward while their comrades provided covering fire.

Sherry took a step forward, but before she could enter the fray and rake the troopers below, Samson reached the edge of the wall.

Resembling a magnificent titan, Samson stood in the middle of the breach, ignoring the gunfire from the enemy on the ground, and cut loose with his Bushmaster, catching the troopers on the ladders in a hail of lead, blasting them from the ladders and checking the assault.

Sherry glanced along the wall. Everywhere, defenders and troopers were embroiled in life-or-death struggles. So far, the defenders had managed to prevent any of the troopers from reaching the top of the wall.

Samson stepped back from the breach. “Reloading!” he shouted.

Sherry took his place.

The soldiers below had regrouped and were frantically mounting the ladders again. Some of them aimed at the blonde woman on the wall, their M-16’s chattering as they fired.

Sherry could hear peculiar buzzing noises. Her left shoulder jerked backward as something slammed into her. She experienced a numbing sensation, but no pain. Undaunted, she angled the M.A.C. 10 over the wall and pointed it at the troopers milling below. She squeezed the trigger and held on tight as the gun bucked in her hands.

One of the soldiers was almost to the top of a ladder. Her burst caught him in the face, and his eyes and nose disappeared in a crimson geyser.

His arms flung outwards, he toppled backward from the ladder, landing on several of his buddies below.

Sherry swung the M.A.C. 10 in a wide arc.

Four, five, six troopers were knocked to the ground as their forms were perforated by the slugs.

“Reloaded!” Samson bellowed, and shouldered her aside, his Bushmaster belching death and destruction.

Sherry ducked behind the parapet, her left shoulder stinging. She glanced at it. The fabric of her brown blouse was torn, and a rivulet of blood was pouring from the wound. She was surprised by the absence of pain.

A horrified scream attracted her attention.

About 15 yards to the north, three troopers had reached the top of the wall. One of them was hung up in the cicular strands of barbed wire attached to the top of the wall, but the other two had circumvented the barbed wire and reached the rampart, firing their M-16’s at the defenders.

Even as Sherry watched, a woman was struck in the chest; she screeched as she was hurled from the rampart by the impact, her body tumbling end over end until it splashed into the moat 20 feet below.

Sherry rose and ran toward the soldiers. They were facing to the north and didn’t hear her approach. For a moment she hesitated pulling the trigger; she had never shot anyone in the back before. A training session with Hickok flashed through her mind. One of the Family had told her Hickok was capable of killing anyone, anytime, anywhere, and for no reason whatsoever. She had questioned him about the allegation. After he finished laughing, he told her part of the statement was true. He could kill, and would kill, anyone, anytime, and anywhere, if they posed a threat to his loved ones or himself. He denied killing for the sake of killing. But, as he took care to explain, killing to protect the ones you loved, to defend your Family and your Home, was justified. And, when it came time for the killing, he said it didn’t matter how you did it, just so you got the job done. “Get the job done,” he had advised her, “or all of those who depend on you will suffer because of your failure.” For once, he hadn’t bothered to use his phony Wild West lingo.

Get the job done.

Sherry let the two soldiers have it in the back. Her bullets smashed into them, stitching patterns across their shoulders, a string of bright red dots, and they pitched onto their stomachs on the rampart.

The one hung up in the barbed wire stilt had his M-16 in his hands. He twisted and aimed the barrel at the blonde woman.

Sherry whirled and squeezed the trigger on her M.A.C.

Nothing happened.

The gun was empty!

She saw the trooper smile as he realized her predicament, and his finger tightened on the trigger of his M-16.

Sherry tensed, expecting to be riddled by bullets.

The trooper’s smiling visage suddenly exploded as the right side of his face sprayed outwards.

Crockett ran up to her, his Beretta smoking. He gripped her right shoulder. “Are you all right? You look pale.”

“I’m fine,” she mumbled.

“What? I can’t hear you.”

“I’m fine!” she said louder.

The east wall was now a writhing mass of defenders and troopers. At least a dozen of the soldiers had reached the top and were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the defenders.

“We can’t hold the wall!” Crockett shouted to Sherry. “There are too many of them!”

Sherry hastily replaced the empty magazine in her M.A.C. 10.

Crockett shot a soldier endeavoring to clamber over the edge of the rampart. “We’ll have to fall back!” he directed her. “Get as many as you can down the ropes and across the moat to the trees. The other walls are probably in the same shape we are, so it won’t do any good to retreat along the other ramparts! Move!”

Sherry nodded and ran off, downing another trooper as she did. She found herself doubting the wisdom of Crockett’s decision. The other walls might be holding their own; to abandon this wall would put the others in jeopardy. Still, how could she presume to doubt his command? She was a novice Warrior, new to her position, and Crockett was her leader, the boss of her Triad, of Zulu Triad. And now was not the time to squabble over his strategy.

A soldier loomed in front of her, frantically struggling to eject a spent magazine from his M-16.

Sherry cut him in half with the M.A.C. 10 and reached a group of seven defenders involved with pushing ladders from the wall and shooting at the mass of troopers below the wall. “Get down!” she yelled at them. “Use the rope and get to the ground! Hurry!”

One of them, a tall man, eyed her quizically for a second, then ran toward the nearest rope. The others followed on his heels.

Sherry took their post at the wall, risked a hasty look-see over the parapet, and drew back.

The soldiers were packed all along the base of the east wall, five or six deep in some spots. Dozens of ladders were inclined against the wall.

Crockett wasn’t kidding.

They wouldn’t be able to hold the wall.

Sherry fired a few rounds at the troopers below, hoping to stall their ascent. She ran further north, telling everyone she met to climb down the ropes. The defenders had temporarily repulsed the soldiers; all of the enemy who had attained the rampart were dead.

But the ones below were eager to take their place.

Crockett approached her, skirting fallen figures as he neared. “Everyone is on their way down!” he told her. “Samson and I will hold them up here.

Get below with the rest!”

“My place is with you!” Sherry retorted.

“That’s an order!”

Sherry reluctantly turned toward the closest rope, attached by its sturdy grappling hook to the lip of the rampart. She didn’t relish deserting her fellow Warriors.

Crockett joined her at the rope. “Get everyone into the trees! Then take them to the cabins! That’s where our second line of defense will be!”

“Will do!” Sherry swung the M.A.C. 10 over her right arm by its small shoulder strap, then grabbed the rope and swung her body over the edge of the wall. She wrapped her legs around the stout rope and began descending hand over hand to the water below.

The sounds of gunfire from the outer side of the wall momentarily abated.

Sherry’s feet touched the surface of the slowly flowing moat. She was thankful she was a hardy swimmer, because the moat was 8 feet deep and 20 feet wide.

“Hurry!” Crockett shouted from up above.

She glanced upward and saw him grinning at her. She smiled and waved.

Crockett’s forehead abruptly disintegrated as a slug tore through his head from back to front. He stiffened, dropped his Beretta, and fell from the rampart.

Sherry opened her mouth to scream. For an instant, she thought he was going to land on her.

Crockett’s buckskin-clad form crashed into the moat two feet to her left, showering her with water and causing her to bounce and sway.

Sherry released the rope and eased into the moat. She sank up to her neck, then began furiously swimming toward the far bank. There was no need to check on Crockett; his brains no longer occupied his body.

Someone was splashing about, agitating the water a few feet to her left.

Sherry paused in midstroke and surveyed the moat.

Over a dozen other defenders, members of the Family and the Clan, were in the process of traversing the moat. Some of them were poor swimmers, as evidenced by their pathetic efforts to stay afloat. One black-haired woman was simply doing the dog paddle in the middle of the stream.

“Hurry!” Sherry called to them, and struck out for the wooded shoreline.

The surface of the moat, not six inches from her face, suddenly was riddled by a series of miniature geysers.

Sherry looked over her left shoulder, up at the wall.

Seven troopers had scaled the outer wall and were rapidly firing at the helpless defenders navigating the moat.

No!

She could feel an intense pain in her left shoulder, but she suppressed the torment and pressed on, her supple form cleaving the water in smooth, even strokes.

Somewhere, a man was screeching in terror.

A woman chimed in, her plaintive cry terminating in a loud, protracted gurgling noise.

The bank loomed ahead. The top of the inner bank was three inches above the surface of the moat. Tiny wavelets, created by the commotion in the stream, washed over the top of the bank.

She was almost there!

Someone else was screaming in anguish as the soldiers on the wall maintained their withering fusillade.

Sherry’s fingers touched the hard ground forming the inner bank, and she clutched at the weeds and grass lining the bank with all of her strength.

A section of earth near her right hand exploded in a fine spray of dirt and grass as a trooper on the wall tried to gun her down.

Move! she told herself.

Sherry scrambled from the moat, keeping low, crawling forward on her hands and knees, expecting at any second to feel the brutal impact of a bullet in her back. Incredibly, she reached a tangle of brush and trees and dodged behind a wide trunk.

Several slugs smacked into the tree.

She paused, gathering her breath, and gazed around the trunk at the east wall and the moat.

Bodies of men and women were bobbing in the moat, while others wildly tried to reach the bank. On the wall above, 15 to 20 soldiers were pouring lead at the swimmers. Bodies were heaped on the rampart, troopers and defenders alike. Resistance on the rampart itself had ceased.

With one notable exception.

Fascinated, astounded, and emotionally moved to her core, Sherry saw one defender still up on the wall, a stirring, solitary figure fighting with the force of ten.

Samson.

He was still striving to hold the breach. Soldiers were surging over the parapet to his right and left, but not one of them was getting through the breach. His Bushmaster Auto Rifle apparently empty, he was using it as a club, swinging it by the barrel, the stock smashing into any trooper foolhardy enough to come within range of his muscular arms.

Even as Sherry watched, Samson clipped a soldier in the jaw and sent him plunging from the ladder. He dropped the Auto Rifle and drew his Bushmaster Auto Pistols, one in each hand, and spun, firing a blast into the soldiers approaching from the north. In a twinkling, he whirled and blasted a group of troopers closing on him from the south.

Sherry pressed the knuckles of her right hand against her mouth, inwardly praying he would prevail over his foes, but knowing the odds were too steep.

Samson turned, shooting at soldiers to his north again, and at that moment, when his attention was distracted from the breach, a pair of troopers stormed over the lip of the wall, squeezing under the barbed wire, and pounced, not bothering to use their M-16’s. They leaped onto Samson, one on each arm, and tried to wrestle him to the rampart. They were like chipmunks attempting to subdue a mighty grizzly. With a shrug of his broad shoulders, Samson threw the soldiers from him. He shot one of them in the face; the other he kicked in the chest, knocking him into the moat.

Sherry became conscious of other defenders crouching near her, their attention likewise riveted on the tableau on the east wall.

Samson downed four more troopers, and then the inevitable happened.

He was hit.

A soldier rose up over the top of the wall, his M-16 pressed to his right shoulder, and fired at point-blank range.

Samson was struck in the chest. The force of the bullets striking his body caused him to stumble backward. His arms waving in an effort to retain his balance, he hovered on the brink of the wall for a second, and then fell from the rampart into the moat.

He didn’t come up.

Sherry, dumbstruck, backed away from the vicinity of the moat. Dear Spirit, no! Not Samson!

“What should we do?” whispered someone to her immediate right.

Sherry rapidly blinked her eyes, trying to focus, to collect her wits.

There was 10 to 15 defenders in the woods around her, all of them eagerly awaiting her instructions.

“Head for the cabins in the center of the Home,” she advised them.

“We’re going to make a stand there.”

They started to move off.

“Wait!” she commanded them.

They stopped, staring at her.

Sherry glanced over her right shoulder at the east wall, the enormity of their situation, the gravity of their danger, fully sinking home.

The east wall had fallen!

The Home was vulnerable! The soldiers could spread out, via the rampart, to the other walls.

No!

She couldn’t allow that!

“Listen,” she said to the defenders surrounding her, “here’s what we’re going to do…”