Denver Run

Chapter Twenty-One

Day four of the siege.

Dawn.

Hickok stood on the bank of the moat directly across from the opening in the west wall. He surveyed the pile of bodies lining the bank, then glanced to his right and left. Formed in a skirmish line were 25 defenders in each direction—50 fighters in all. It would have to be enough.

The rest was up to Spartacus.

“How much longer do you think it will be?” Sherry asked. She was standing to the gunman’s left. Her left shoulder was bandaged.

“Soon,” Seiko answered. He was five feet to Hickok’s right. “Very soon.”

Spartacus and Ares, as well as 138 other defenders, were absent from the line. So was Shane.

“I pray your plan works,” Seiko said to Hickok.

“You and me both, pard,” the gunman responded. He licked his lips and listened for the inevitable sound signaling the onslaught.

During the preceding evening Brutus had regrouped his forces, moving almost all of his troops into the forest on the west side of the Home. Only a handful remained to the north, east, and south, enough to serve as lookouts in case the defenders attempted to escape. The night had been moonless and tranquil, and shortly before dawn the sentries had joined their comrades in the trees.

“Don’t fire until I give the word!” Hickok reminded them.

Brutus wasn’t wasting any time. The section of the rampart above the ruined drawbridge suddenly exploded in a shower of brick and dust.

“Get ready!” Hickok shouted.

Two more rounds hit the west wall near the ruined drawbridge, widening the rift even further.

Hickok wondered what type of artillery they were using. He couldn’t hear the shattering blast of a cannon and their tank was now a home for the fish in the moat. So what was it? What could easily fire a projectile 150 yards, and with such relative silence.

Another shell smacked into the west wall.

The gunman mentally reviewed the military books in the Family library. He ticked off a list: siege artillery, howitzers, mortars, rocket laun—! Hold it! A mortar would fit the bill. The 81-millimeter mortar could fire a 12-pound shell close to 2500 yards.

More and more rounds were striking the west wall, sending large chunks crashing to the ground or into the moat.

Hickok nodded. Brutus was using all four mortars on the west wall.

Good. The bastard’s predictability would be his downfall.

The barrage lasted for half an hour. The 53 defenders on the inner bank were untouched by the zinging debris. The gap in the center of the wall widened and widened.

It took a moment for Hickok to realize the bombardment was over. His ears were ringing, and his nostrils were stinging from the dense cloud of smoke hovering above the wall, the moat, and the bank. He was thankful Brutus had limited the barrage to the walls instead of lobbing shells into the compound at the blocks. But then, what good would it have done Brutus to destroy a block or two if he couldn’t get past the outer walls?

There was a method to Brutus’s madness.

“I hear them,” Seiko announced, raising his Valmet M76 to his shoulder.

Hickok heard them too. The pounding of hundreds of feet on the hard earth beyond the west wall.

This was it.

Brutus was throwing everything he had at the breach in the west wall.

“Here they come!” Hickok barked.

“Take care, lover,” Sherry said tenderly.

The gunman glanced at her. She was staring at him lovingly, her affection reflected in her green eyes. “You take care,” he told her. He opened his mouth to say more, to let her know he loved her.

He was out of time.

The Civilized Zone soldiers surged through the breach in the west wall, a horde of green intent on the total destruction of the Home, the sunlight glinting off their M-16’s and their bayonets. A tremendous shout arose from the troops as they saw the defenders standing on the other side of the five-foot wall of bodies on the inner bank.

“Fire!” Hickok commanded.

Mayhem ensued.

Although the swirling smoke limited visibility, both sides could distinguish each other. The defenders opened up, pouring shots into the green mass in the breach, downing dozens.

For their part, the soldiers returned the fire as best they could. Some of them carried crude wooden platforms, actually small rafts. They tossed the rafts into the moat, one after the other, while others scrambled onto the platforms and frantically began lashing them together into a makeshift bridge. Their task was faciliated by the stacked wall of bodies on the inner bank; the defenders couldn’t see into the moat unless then ran up to the bodies and peered over the top, exposing their heads and shoulders.

Even as one group of soliders constructed their bridge, five platoons were scaling the west wall, using ladders to reach the parapet and scramble under the barbed wire to the rampart. The first dozen were immediately slain by the defenders, but as more and more of them reached the rampart, they spilled from the rampart onto the wooden stairs over the moat. Eight of them reached the top of the stairs and were promptly perforated with bullets. But the rest kept coming, and within minutes a steady stream of troopers was racing down the stairs to the inner bank. The wall of dead soldiers ran behind the stairs, posing another obstacle. Horrified at the sight of their deceased companions callously piled on the rough ground, the troopers hesitated, balking at the idea of touching the bodies. But the only avenue of approach to the defenders was over the wall of corpses, and after their initial hesitation the soldiers rallied and started over the bodies.

The defenders blasted them as the troopers clambered over the corpses.

For every soldier shot, two more took his place.

In the moat, the troopers had hastily finished their crude bridge. It wobbled and swayed in the stream, but by angling the platforms past the tank and securing several of them to the armored vehicle, they erected a functional bridge four feet wide.

Brutus was in the Home.

Hickok had emptied his Daewoo Max II into the attackers. He clutched the gun by the barrel and ran up to the wall of bodies.

A soldier was climbing over the stack of corpses.

Hickok swung the Daewoo, catching the trooper on the right cheek, splitting it open and knocking the soldier to the far side. He glanced in both directions.

The defenders were now fighting a containing action along the wall.

Many were embroiled in hand-to-hand combat.

One of the troopers was striving to lance a bayonet into Seiko. His Velmet empty and discarded, Seiko held a pair of sai in his hands, trident-like bladed weapons twenty inches in length. He dodged a stab of the bayonet and twisted, ramming his left sai into the soldier’s neck.

Without missing a beat, he wrenched the sai free and went after another soldier.

“Look out!” a woman screamed.

Hickok turned toward the wall of corpses, dropping the Daewoo.

A trooper was aiming his M-16 at the gunman, but he never pulled the trigger. The top of his head vanished in a burst of crimson, hair, and flesh.

Sherry reached the gunman’s side. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Hickok drew his Pythons and sent a slug crashing through the brain of a soldier almost over the wall of bodies.

The onrushing troopers were beginning to knock openings in the corpse wall. Some of the more enterprising soldiers bore to the right and the left as they crossed the moat. They realized that the wall of their fallen comrades only extended for 30 yards along the inner bank, and decided to take the path of least resistance and charge around the ends of the wall rather than take on the defenders in the middle.

Hickok saw he was being outflanked and smiled.

Perfect!

It was all going according to his plan!

Now for the hard part.

“Fall back!” he yelled, waving his arms. “Fall back!”

The defenders, with only 31 left of the original 53, sprinted to the east, abandoning the corpse wall, firing as they ran.

The soldiers, on seeing the defenders retreating, gave a great shout and rushed forward, swirling over the wall of bodies and surging around both ends.

“Hurry!” Hickok goaded his fighters.

The compound was partially obscured by the haze and gunsmoke.

Several of the defenders tripped as they ran.

One of them was Sherry.

Hickok heard her cry out and spun.

Sherry was on her knees, her left leg twisted under her, her back to the charging troopers.

One of them was almost on her. He was drawing back his M-16 for a lunge with his bayonet when Seiko appeared out of the smoke. He blocked the thrust of the bayonet and countered with his right sai, sinking it to the hilt in the soldier’s chest.

Hickok was already in motion. He reached Sherry’s side and hauled her to her feet. “Come on!” His eyes caught Seiko’s, and in that fleeting instant he conveyed the depth of his gratitude with the expression on his face and the relief in his blue eyes.

Seiko smiled and nodded… and staggered as a bullet penetrated his head from behind, exiting his cranium between the eyes.

“Seiko!” Sherry screamed.

Seiko stiffened and fell.

Hickok, his left arm supporting the woman he loved, spotted a trooper 15 yards off, an M-16 pressed to his left shoulder. The gunman fired his right Python as the M-16 cracked, and Hickok felt his right sleeve tugged by an invisible hand.

The soldier was flung backward to the unyielding turf.

“Let’s go!” Hickok hurried now, forcing his injured left thigh to cooperate with his body.

The troopers had knocked over the corpse wall, and hundreds of them were running pell-mell after the fleeing defenders, bearing due east.

How many yards more? The smoke hid the earthen breastwork from view, but Hickok knew the hastily constructed, breast-high dirt fortification couldn’t be more than ten yards ahead. Hickok had kept the defenders up all night working on the breastwork, digging in shifts, and none of them had slept a wink.

Where the blazes was it?

Bullets were buzzing by overhead.

The smoke abruptly dissipated and there it was, 80 yards in length and 4½ feet in height, covering the ground like a giant reddish-brown snake.

Hickok never slowed. He placed both arms around Sherry and jumped, reaching the top of the breastwork in one bound.

Bullets spattered into the mound of dirt.

The gunman rolled, bearing Sherry with him. They slid over the top and tumbled to the ground on the far side. Hickok rose to his knees, scanning to his right and left.

Spartacus, Ares, and the remaining 138 defenders were ready, their guns in their hands, crouched below the rim of the breastwork.

Hickok glanced over the top of the earthen mound.

Hundreds of soldiers were crammed into the open space between the breastwork and the moat, the nearest ranks only 15 yards away. There was nowhere they could hide, nothing they could use as cover. They were caught in the open, completely unprotected, utterly defenseless.

Now!

“Fire!” Hickok commanded at the top of his lungs.

In unison, the defenders rose up from behind the breastwork and fired.

Their firearms, a mixture of automatics, lever and bolt actions, and shotguns, belched death and thundered annihilation upon the soldiers.

The troopers reacted as if, en masse, they had slammed into an invisible barrier. Many were arrested in mid stride, their green uniforms dotted with bright red holes. The soldiers in the rear, unaware of the devastation in front, pushed forward, preventing the forward ranks from escaping.

The defenders fired and fired and fired.

Their ranks ravaged by the fusillade, the troopers wavered, then broke, fleeing back toward safety, toward the moat and the makeshift bridge.

Hickok tensed, waiting for the coup de grace. If Shane was in position, and if none of the soldiers had spotted him, and if he had emptied the gas cans into the moat as instructed…

The soldiers were clustered on the inner bank, climbing the stairs, and darting across the bridge when the moat went up. A veritable inferno of flame fried them to a crisp, burning the bridge and setting the overhead stairs afire. Cries of suffering and torment filled the air.

Hickok swept the defenders with his gaze. “Charge!” he ordered, and vaulted the breastwork. He closed on the hapless troopers, his Pythons booming, downing two, three, four in swift succession.

Spartacus was at his side every step of the way.

Caught between the flaming moat and the onrushing defenders, the troopers were ruthlessly butchered, game to the last man, resisting with their dying breath. Their bodies were piled in heaps.

The gunfire gradually tapered off as fewer and fewer of the soldiers were able to oppose the defenders.

Hickok stopped, endeavoring to see through the acrid smoke.

Fatigue-covered forms overspread the ground.

“Hickok!” someone roared to his right.

The gunman whirled, his Pythons held at waist level, his fingers on the triggers.

It was Brutus.

The hulking brute was seven yards away, his left hand holding a stout branch and using it as a crutch, while his right held an automatic pistol.

Brutus grinned, knowing he had the gunman, knowing the best the gunfighter could hope was to tie him and even then Hickok was dead.

With a resounding, deafening detonation, the nearby tank exploded, its ammunition and shells ignited by the blaze in the moat.

The concussion knocked both Hickok and Brutus to the earth, a gust of hot air spurting past them.

Hickok rose to his knees first, and he fired both Pythons as Brutus heaved erect, he fired again as Brutus lurched backward, and again as Brutus attempted to lift his pistol.

And then Spartacus was there, appearing beside Brutus out of the smoke, his broadsword grasped in both hands. He swung the blade with all of his might, putting his entire body into a gleaming arc as the broadsword cleaved the air and connected with Brutus’s neck.

Hickok saw Brutus’s head leave his body, soaring upward end over end, trailing a crimson plume. The head seemed to move in slow motion as it attained the apex of its flight and plummeted to the earth, bouncing twice and finally coming to a rest at the gunman’s feet.

“Are you okay?” Sherry asked from the gunman’s right.

Hickok nodded. The gunfire had ended. He stared at the grisly trophy of his victory, fascinated.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Sherry persisted.

Hickok abruptly felt as if every muscle, every bone in his whole body, ached, had been stretched to its limit and far beyond. “I’m fine,” he mumbled.

Ares joined them, exulting in their triumph. “We did it!” he gloated.

“We beat them! We saved the Home!”

Hickok absently gazed at the hundreds of bodies around him, many of them near the moat charred beyond recognition. “Yeah,” he said dryly.

“We did it.”

Ares glanced at Sherry and Spartacus, puzzled. “I don’t get it. What’s the matter with you?” he asked the gunman.

Hickok wearily bolstered his Pythons and looped his left arm under Sherry’s right shoulder. “Nothing,” he replied, leading her off.

“Hey!” Ares called after them. “What do you want us to do? Where are you going?”

Hickok paused and looked back. “I want you to form a detail and clean up this mess. Scout the forest and make sure none of them are left. Allow some of our people to rest. Work them in shifts.”

“But what about you?” Ares inquired.

“I’m going to have the Healers tend to my wife,” Hickok responded, “and then we’re going to enjoy some heavy kissy-wissy in our cabin.”

“Are you serious?” Ares queried.

“I promise I’ll shoot the first son of a bitch who interrupts us,” Hickok vowed. “Is that serious enough for you?”

“Sounds pretty serious to me,” Ares admitted.

Hickok and Sherry strolled off, arm in arm.

Ares glanced at Spartacus. “Now what was that all about?”

“I think Hickok just told you something,” Spartacus said, wiping his bloody broadsword on his left pant leg.

“Like what?”

“Like,” Spartacus stated thoughtfully, “maybe, instead of flapping your gums over our great win, you should be giving thanks you’re still alive.”

Ares surveyed the battlefield, the dead and the dying, the pools of blood, and the charred and ruptured bodies. “Oh,” was all he could think of to say. Then once more, very softly, “Oh.”