Wreck Mouth and Robot. (Part 1)

I want to start off by saying that if you think we’re using our real names in this, you are out of your mind.  I don’t want to get into all that much detail of how we left the camp either or else the policy enforcers might figure out who it is telling this story.  To make double sure of that, I’ve changed a few things.  Man, but you’ve not lived until you’ve taken to the road in this day and age.  Back before the war, it was cool but could get a little dull.  Now…oh hell…it is a totally different ball game.  I didn’t care what happened or where I ended up as long it wasn’t back in one of those damn camps.

Me and Jeff were sick of the camps.  We’d been to two in a year, right?  Both were a beat scene and nothing a couple of ramblers like us would ever, ever get used to.  I didn’t know Jeff before because he was locked up.  He got stabbed in the throat and neck in a fight so then he had to speak through a voice box.  Sometimes he didn’t even bother with it and just spoke in what had to be the faintest whisper.  When they let out all the “low risk” offenders, they turned him loose or rather put them and us in the minimum security prisons we call “the camps.”  That’s right, they have a war and we all go to prison for it.  Don’t hold your breath waiting for the state to make any sense.  They called us Wreck Mouth and Robot.  I guess since I had bad teeth and Jeff had an electronic voice, huh?  To tell the truth, his teeth were a lot worse than mine. 

They had Jeff and I working in the food storage warehouses.  We had a good thing going at first.  We used to grab little stuff we could sneak out and sell it to folks who wanted to eat between meals.  They didn’t let you have food in your dorm because they said it led to health concerns and hording.  Also they said that it interfered with rationing.  Yeah right!  They just wanted to make sure they had total control over you.  If you had to come out of your dorm to eat, you had a hard time staying out of sight.  Also, they could control you with food.  How?  Simple, if you acted up or just grumbled too much, they’d cut your rations.  Next time you scanned your card, you’d have less food credit. 

Our policy was that you had to eat the stuff in front of us to “destroy the evidence.”  If it came with a wrapper, we took it back with us to where we stashed them.  We did it this way because you know that the first one that got caught with the snacks on them would snitch us out.  Finally, somebody found one of our wrapper stashes and they started actively looking for whoever was taking food from the warehouses.  Jeff and I knew there was no way to catch us on the books because the system was full of ways to be ripped off already and to go after us meant you'd have to scoop up some big fish too.   We saw the shirts (kind of like guards but not exactly admin people) slipping a case of this and a crate of that off all the time.  They’d sell it to someone outside the wire who would in turn give them something in trade for it.  Whatever they got in trade was presumably something that couldn’t be easily stolen from inside the camp. 

My guess was most of the shirts were on meth or something like that.  I’ve been around enough tweakers to know one when I see one.  They’d talk on and on for hours to one another while the rest of us worked.  They'd yammer on 90 to nothing all day just about.  Sometimes, you’d leave the warehouse, go home and realize you forgot to scan your card or left something in your locker (or needed to steal something on short notice).  You’d go back 6 hours later and there would be the same shirt who was there 16 hours earlier, still acting sketchy.  They were all paranoid too.  I’m not talking about pot-paranoid.  I’m talking about paranoid like if a blind guy just shanked somebody and had no way or knowing who saw it go down or not.  And tempers?  All the guards had tempers but the shirts were the worst.  I heard that most became shirts because they didn’t do well enough on their psyche profile test to be regular guards.  If they had been allowed to carry sticks, they would have spent half their time just beating us.  A few guards would beat or taze someone just for fun once in a while and some stayed in a bad mood.  But the shirts were always on the edge of snapping, at least the ones working the food warehouses. 

The longer they stayed at work, the worse they got.  But the very worst you ever saw them was when the camp was on lockdown.  That meant no outside work-details, nothing coming in and nothing going out.  After about 24 hours of this, the shirts started getting edgy.  After 48 hours, they were in a walking panic.  How come?  Whatever was keeping them jacked up all the time was on the other side of the wire.  Me and Jeff joked that if we could figure out what they were on and cooked it up in some forgotten corner, we’d run the camp.  But I’ve always steered clear of hard drugs—doing them and handling them.  Jeff, I couldn’t say the same for him. 

We started planning to leave.  That is all you need to know.  Jeff said he was too close to the road and he couldn’t stand it anymore, he had to get outside those walls.  Jeff had been locked up in a state prison for two years before getting transferred to the camps. 

The shirts were getting wise to our racket.  One had OD’d (we think) and disappeared from the warehouses.  This led to the FEMA brass doing random drug test.  The shirts knew ways to beat it and in fact, one came and asked Jeff which was the best method!  The drug tests themselves weren’t their big worry, it was now the brass saw drugs as a potentially serious problem.  Oh, they always knew there was some of that going on but what did they care?  They turned a blind eye at the inventory reports always coming up terribly wrong and in return.  They got people who would run around the warehouses all day and night keeping everything more or less running on track.  Both parties had to know it wouldn’t last though.  Crankheads don’t just go on forever before they mess things up in a big way.  One finally flipped out, either from too much drugs or the lack thereof.  He beat up another shirt and broke his jaw.  If it would have been one of us, nobody would have cared but shirts were the system.  They weren’t supposed to ever suffer damage.  Soon there were guards everywhere in the warehouses.  If you stepped outside the white tape walkways on the floor, they knew and would write you up for a fine.  Our gig was over and it was time to move on.  Screw that, we said.  We put in for work on the farms.  

I think they were happy to see us go too, otherwise the request would have sat on someone’s desk for weeks.  The new shirts who were trying to run the place were wanting to get control of the inventory problems.  They figured at worst, we were causing some of it and at least we weren’t helping it get any better. 

We started hiding stuff on the outside during our trips out for aggri-work detail.  Farm work isn’t that bad with fuel but because of the lack of fuel, a lot more was done by hand, hands belonging to guys like us marked “unskilled labor.”  I’ve got skills but I haven’t ever been paid to use them!  Not yet!  So we started cashing in on favors and collecting supplies for the road.  We heard rumors but didn’t know what to expect once we got out. 

Our first time on Alpha farm was creepy.  The farm house where the farmer had once lived was burning to the ground and all the buildings nearby had bullet holes in them.  According to rumor, the farmer who owned all the land had refused to hand it over to FEMA or whoever was in charge of taking over stuff for the “emergency use.”  It had ended up in a bloody shootout between the farmer and the military or cops.  Just for kicks, Jeff asked one of the shirts about it.  How did the building get burned?  The shirt just said the Chinese had done it early in the war.  Yeah right!  There weren’t really any Chinese this far east and if there had been, why would they just burn a house down?  What about all the equipment, grain silos, the warehouses and fuel?  If they had come to destroy the farm, they would have set explosives or whatever and ran off.  There wouldn’t have been a big shootout like what we’d seen evidence of everyday when we arrived for work.    Everything they ever did to anybody got blamed on the Chinese.  If a guard knocked your teeth out, it was the Chinese-made stick which was to blame.

So we started slipping stuff into a pair of holes we had dug at the edge of a corn field.  We had all the time in the world to do it since the work team leaders really didn’t care what we did.  The biggest thing was finding plastic to wrap our supplies in before we buried it.  The irrigation system soaked the ground for a few feet and if we dug for more than a few feet, somebody would have probably noticed.  So we stashed some food packs, some extra clothes, some lighters and a couple of cut in half blankets with enough cord to sew them back together.  You had to carry the blankets out in halves so you could hide them.  Clothes smuggling was easy since you just wore two shirts out and one shirt back, like that. 

If you went missing on work detail, it was a big deal for some reason.  Our plan wasn’t to leave then.  They actually looked for you if you weren’t there during the return roll call.  They counted heads before we got back on the bus, you know.  So we just pretended to be assigned to help out some guys who were moving some food processing equipment between camps.  When they loaded up, we just got on the truck with them and they assumed we were supposed to.  Hell, they were glad to have someone help them unload what they’d picked up anyway.  But we weren’t going that far. 

When we stopped at a fuel depot, there were army guys everywhere.  Military people are very concerned about security around fuel depots.  For one reason, the fuel doesn’t care if it is in a Chinese, Cuban or American ride.  For another reason, Chinese commandos love hitting these depots since they might be able to take out some armor while it is just sitting there gassing up.  There were army people everywhere with guns but they were all looking for people to try to sneak in, not necessarily sneaking out. 

Jeff was sketchy but I told him it was our best chance since we didn’t know how good security was at the camp we were headed to.  They might card everyone who goes through the gate.  Some camps are loosely run at the gates and others aren’t.  You see, the Chinese don’t attack camps.  They like the fact that we’ve got these huge places where hardly anyone ever successfully produces anything and they always have to eat. 

We got off the truck and said we were going to find a restroom.  We then found some regular guys like us washing tanker trucks.  I just walked up to them and told them that we were to take over washing and they were to go check with their supervisor for a more important job.  One asked who sent us and I said, man, some army guy.  They gave us hoses and told us to start at the front and work our way back.  They hadn’t even got finished with one truck and there was like 8 of them.  We said we’d start at the back and come forward since the sun was setting in that direction.  Cool, they thought!  Those guys know what they are doing when it comes to hosing mud off mud flaps! 

We washed for about 2 minutes, for free, and then casually walked away.  Jeff and I had to sleep in the woods that night but that wasn’t a big deal.  The next day, we headed back to the fields to uncover our stuff.  Pretty soon the office would know we were gone.  You see, everything in the camps works on cards.  You slide your card to go anywhere.  You have to have it to eat, leave and return to your dorm, go on work detail and all of your money is on it except you can’t use it at an ATM.  You know, you aren’t even allowed to have cash in the camps anymore.  So if the office sees your card hasn’t been used for anything in 24 hours, they come looking for you.  They know the last place you were so that is where they start looking.  That is another reason we couldn’t bolt during a work detail.  Even if they somehow didn’t miss us in the head count, they’d know sooner or later that we never came back.  But if we went missing in the camp, they’d figure we were hanging out somewhere and just avoiding using our cards.  All total, we figured that gave us about two days to put between us and a search detail, if they even sent one. 

Unless you were important or worse, someone they didn’t trust, they didn’t come looking for you.  I was just what they called a drifter and Jeff was considered a non-violent repeat offender.  Neither of us were probably Chinese spies and neither of us had a very important job.  Pulling weeds and picking corn a few hours a day didn’t keep the whole camp population alive.  Leaving the camps would land you in jail but what I heard was that they often beat you to death or shot you.  They’d come back and go out again the next day.  The next day is when they’d “find” your body.  This scared a lot of people into staying put.  They’d say how it was bandits or Chinese or whatever.  Maybe they were telling the truth sometimes.    Who knows?

Once in a while, they’d open up the 50’s on something in the night and blow off a few concussion grenades.  An old Marine told me they were concussion grenades because there was no shrapnel damage anywhere.  It would scare the hell out of everybody, especially the old people.  Then guards would tell everybody that some Chinese sappers tried to throw explosives over the wall but they killed them from the guard towers.  Now that is a joke they keep telling even though it isn’t funny.  First, the Chinese must have super human strength to throw something over even the lowest part of the wall.  These are the semi-portable walls they had stacked everywhere alongside the roads right before the war.  You might could throw a grenade over one if you were in the major leagues.  Second, if they shot some Chinese with their machine guns, they must have eyes in the backs of their heads since the MG’s are almost always pointed down at us.  And how come the bombs were always “thrown over” when we were on lockdown and there was never anybody around to see it happen?  Besides, the camps were ringed with intrusion detection equipment and some people had ever heard there were land mines. 

Jeff and I figured out that a lot of people just didn’t go to the camps.  They rounded up the people who didn’t resist or were already locked up for stupid stuff.  I was staying with some friends when it all went down.  We were told on TV to go to the camp for assistance.  We heard they were giving out food and supplies.  Nope.  We showed up, got processed and locked inside.  SUPLI—Showed Up, Processed, Locked In.  You got assigned to a housing zone and that was it.

We spent about half a day walking back to the fields.  It poured down rain the whole way too.  But that was a good thing!  They never sent out an outside work detail in bad weather.  So there was nobody around when we got there.  Sweet! 

It wasn’t long before we were back on the road with our gear.  What we did was tie both bundles onto the ends of a long straight stick and take turns carrying it.  This worked fine until we found some packs.  That was a really bad scene.  The packs were empty and undamaged and I wish I could have said the same for their former owners.  Somebody had shot the three of them full of holes and took their stuff, leaving the empty packs.  The three bodies laying there rotting kind of freaked me out but Jeff said I’d get used to it.  No way, not in this lifetime.  We couldn’t even tell who was a man and who was a chick.  Whoever killed them took their socks even.  At least it wasn’t plague, radiation or chems, huh?  I don’t know, maybe that’s a better way to go out:  shot up and gone in no time. 

We were moving pretty fast then with our new packs.  I couldn’t stop thinking of where they’d come from though.  People are so un-cool to one another.  You don’t see blue birds trying to peck the eyes out of red birds, let alone one another, you know.  I knew that when I got the chance, I was going to trade for a new pack, one that didn’t belong to a robbery and murder victim. 

Everybody talked about Atlanta and how everybody there was dead except for a few.  Chemical warfare attack, they said.  It was on our way since we were headed south.  I didn’t want to stop through there even though Jeff was constantly trying to talk me into it.  What the hell did we know about chemical warfare?  Nothing except how to die in it! 

Going through the north Georgia Mountains was incredible.  Life hadn’t changed much up there for some people.  The power blinked in and out, there was less on the menu and not many cars on the roads but for a guy living on the side of a mountain in a single wide, life changed only slightly.  That was the kind of person we came across first.

Crook was a guy in his 50’s.  He was short, had long unruly brown grey-streaked hair and looked like what you’d think Willie Nelson would look like on his first day out of prison in a long time.  His place was down a back road and on a little flat stretch of land, half way up one of those bigger hills.  He was out messing around in his yard and he signaled to us when he saw us walking down the road.

We walked down to where he was and without even saying hello, he called out, “you guys want to buy some grass?” 

I know weed was illegal and I guess on the books it still is.  But to us back then, it was a good alternative to alcohol.  You could easily pack enough of it to keep you going for a long time and you never got a hangover.  But he might as well been offering to sell us a ride on the space shuttle.  We didn’t have any money and nothing good to trade. 

“That’s fine,” Crook said.  They called him “Crook” because his middle finger was crooked.  “You guys can work off some if you want to.”

He offered us a job.  You see, Crook had been on government disability for about 20 years or more.  He was one of those people who worked like a dog for about 10 years until he found a good way to get himself hurt, either by accident or on purpose.  With the right doctor and lawyer, a guy like Crook could retire at age 30, more or less.  His dad before him had done the same thing, he told us later. 

Crook really did have a bad back though.  He’d hurt it working at a big money job where they were building a nuclear plant.  There were a lot of things Crook hated doing and some things he just couldn’t do.  Most of the weed he sold to people walking down the road was trade for services he needed to keep his place going.  He told us he had about all he needed as far as material things went.

He had a young wife who actually turned out to be his girlfriend.  His original wife had run off right after the war started and the power started winking in and out.  His new “wife” was a gal he’d been slipping around with “for years”, which was scary since she couldn’t have been more than 20.  She smiled a lot, didn’t say much but didn’t seem too dumb either.  Me and Jeff both assumed she was his daughter until he told us they were married.  Another thing about her was that she didn’t wear shoes and kept her long hair pulled back all the time except for a beaded braid that hung down by her ear.  She laughed at everything and we couldn’t tell if she was happy or just high all the time.  It would make sense either way but she handled the pot growing side of Crook’s homestead. 

One thing his wife, Annie, wouldn’t do with Crook was hunt.  She wasn’t against meat or shooting an animal.  She just could be still and quiet long enough, Crook told us.  So Jeff and me spent the whole day gathering game that Crook brought down with his .22.  Leaning over to pull a weed from his garden once a day was fine, but all day bending over to pick up small game would leave Crook unable to leave his bed for days.  He later told us that Annie probably just carried on giggling and laughing just to avoid helping him in something she wasn’t interested in. 

“She’ll cook a rabbit but hates squirrel,” Crook told us.  “She didn’t like cooking deer either but we haven’t shot any in a long, long time.”

When we got back from our first half-days hunt, I came to a conclusion.  Crook wanted to get to know us a little better while he had a gun in his hand.  He was a fairly trusting soul after that.  We skinned the small game and Annie got to cooking it.  It was the most food we’d had since we started off on wanderings.  Crook cleaned his scoped .22 while we sat on the floor with Annie, listening to her read from an old paperback.  Eventually, it got too dark so Annie got up to light one of the Crisco candles and set it in between us.  The night was cool but not cold and before too long, I was stretched out on the soft shag carpet, dozing off faster than I’d like to have. 

We woke up the next morning to the sound of an electric vacuum cleaner roaring by our heads. 

“Sorry boys,” Crook shouted over the noisy machine.  “But the electricity is on for the first time in days!  It’ll fade out before you know it!” 

Annie called out something from the bedroom.  Crook called back, “put it on fast charge but watch it!  You could blow up a battery if you aren’t careful!” 

Jeff got up, found his voice box and asked Crook if there was anything we could do.  Crook shook his head so Jeff lay back down to get another couple hours sleep.  I knew Jeff couldn’t really talk but then I was wondering if he was a little deaf too.  He slept right on through the racket that was going on around him.  Finally, Crook told me to toss a load of laundry in the beat up old washing machine that was recessed into the hallway next to an equally old looking dryer.  I did and when I turned it on, the whole trailer shoot like it was in an earthquake.  Jeff slept through that too.  Annie was happy as could be since she could get a day’s work finished in a couple of hours. 

Over lunch, Crook asked us frankly if we’d escaped from one of the camps.  We said we had and that we were headed south to Florida where we heard they were closing the camps and letting people out anyway. 

Crook shook his head.  “They are but not without special ID cards.  The cards are called ‘Campus-Cleared’ or CC cards or CCC.  What it says if that you’ve been to the camps and eventually got cleared as a non-security risk.  Once they get ready to close a camp, they’ll start out-processing everybody over a few months.  If you were never in the red or orange zone, you get processed out pretty quick.  No infractions and green zoned the whole time you were interned; you’d get your card.  The CC card lets you get through check points, purchase whatever where you can find a store, whenever you can find a store and that sort of thing.   If you get caught without your CCC, you’ll go straight back to the camps and it will be a long time before you ever get out again, legally at least.”

“We didn’t leave legally this time,” I told him. 

“Yeah…escape or being AWOL is a pretty big infraction.  I’d say you wouldn’t get your cards anytime soon if you go back.”  Crook shook his head in pity as he looked at me.  “Or get caught.”

I began to have that sinking feeling we all get when we know we messed up and the consequences are coming soon.  Jeff didn’t have that problem.  He never gave the future a even minute of his time.  His criminal mind worked a lot faster than any part of my brain too. 

He lifted his voice box to his neck and said, “where do we get fake ones?” 

“Ann knows a guy not far from here,” Crook replied, lifting a spoonful of soup to his mouth.  “He is pretty sketchy and doesn’t make them for just anybody.  You have to meet certain conditions.”

“Great…” I said, knowing we had nothing to trade or offer. 

“What conditions?” Jeff asked. 

“He has to either know you, need something you’ve got or owe you already,”  Crook told him.  “He both knew and owed me so I got Ann’s for her..  Ann might have gotten hers without me though.  He’s got a thing for women that goes beyond what most consider normal.  I told Ann to wear shorts and a tank top when she went to see about her card.  I got mine legit when they were setting up the whole thing.  Believe it or not, I still had a security clearance from when I worked at the nuclear plant.” 

“It was November too!”  Annie added, laughing.  “I almost froze to death wearing that skimpy get up!”

We finished our day doing handy work for Crook.  Whenever Annie would appear, Jeff would look her up and down, especially when she was walking away.  Crook didn’t like this and every time Jeff would check out Annie, Crook would be staring right at him.  Maybe he hoped Jeff would notice that he didn’t approve without him having to say it.  I was going to talk to Jeff about it but Crook kind of beat me to the punch.

After a few more days of light work around their property, Crook told us it was time for us to go see the guy about some fake CCC.  This was his nice way of saying “get lost.”  I don’t think he minded me much but he was definitely starting to dislike Jeff. 

So we got up one morning and packed our gear.  Annie was nice enough to fix us breakfast but Crook didn’t get up to see us off.  Annie said his back was giving him trouble and he was just going to stay in bed all day probably.  It was a good thing he did since Jeff tried to kiss Annie on the mouth once we were outside but she smiled, turning to offer him her cheek.  Oddly, she touched her lips to mind after I only held out my hand to shake hers goodbye. 

This little gesture caused Jeff to stare at me as we made our way back to the main road.  Jeff, you see, didn’t talk unless he had to since his voice box ran on batteries.  He kept four or five with him and they must have lasted forever since I never saw him change them.  But he still said he was always afraid of running out.  So instead of making small talk about Annie’s kiss, he just looked at me like I was supposed to explain something.  It was the first time I’d ever touched Annie in my life but maybe he didn’t think so.  So that led to him thinking that I was the reason Annie never paid any positive attention to him.  Jeff was that type of person.  No, it wasn’t that he was a bit of criminal with ugly tattoos and scars all over.  And no, it wasn’t because he didn’t know how to talk to women, with or without his voice box.  I guess he would have done fine if he could find a girl who fantasized about being seduced by a robot.  No, it wasn’t that Jeff treated almost every woman like a prostitute.  Annie didn’t like Jeff for the soul reason that I was there and somehow I’d done something to woe her first.  And naturally, I did this just to piss Jeff off.  I wanted to point out to him that most people didn’t like him.  Only about half the people I met liked me but that was about triple the amount that seemed to take to Jeff.  We just walked down the road not saying a word to one another. 

Our directions were simple which wasn’t really a good thing.  I asked Crook to draw us a map and he did but told us to memorize it before we left since he wasn’t going to risk us getting caught with it.  We both thought he was being a little over-cautious until the second day we’d been walking. 

I knew what a drone was but wasn’t 100% sure I was looking at one until it turned around and came back over us for another pass.  Once in a while, one would circle the camp.  If it hadn’t been late in the evening, I wouldn’t have seen it at all.  This one had two blinking lights on the wings and on the second pass, I knew what I was seeing for sure.  There is no mistaking the profile of that particular model.  It was the most common, I guess.   I always wonder why they didn’t make them look like regular planes then people wouldn’t have gotten so freaked out by them. 

I pointed it out to Jeff who started to freak out a little.  “What if it attacks us?” he asked.  “We need to get the hell out of here!” 

“If we run, they’ll know we are up to no good,” I urged him.  “Just walk normal but stop and look at it.  We want them to know that we see it.” 

“What if it is one of those kind that just go killing anybody they can’t identify?”  Jeff asked.  His face registered fear but naturally his electronic voice didn’t. 

“There is no such thing…” I told him.  “Guards tell people stuff like that to keep them from leaving.”

The drone made a third and final pass, this time even lower.  That is when Jeff did something I could have totally predicted but couldn’t have stopped.  He raised his finger and shot a bird at the drone.  I glared at him and shook my head. 

“What was the point in that?”  I demanded.  “Just a minute ago you were worried about the thing attacking us!” 

“I don’t like people who don’t mind their own business,” he said before making an exaggerated gesture of turning his voice box off. 

So we kept on going until dark.  We camped off the road a few hundred yards and didn’t make a fire.  The drone, maybe two of them, kept flying over.  They didn’t make much noise but as silent as the world was those days, you could hear a lot of things you couldn’t normally hear.  You also got used to relying on your ears more since a car, truck or bus wasn’t going by every minute.  As I lay there in my homemade sleeping bag (two wool blankets stuffed with old paper and stitched together), I figured out what they were doing.  They knew we had left the road but at what point?  One side was mostly a mountain that the road had been cut into.  We wouldn’t have climbed up it.  They had to know we climbed down the hill on the other side but where?  We had been sure to leave the road when we didn’t see a drone overheard and that had to create a little confusion. 

What if they found us and just killed us rather than dragging us back?  That thought hung in my mind and caused me to have nightmares.  Twice I woke up thinking I heard someone coming through the woods. 

Neither of us spoke until daybreak.  “It was nothing,” Jeff said in his robot-duck voice.  “They don’t have time to waste on guys like us.  We’re a couple of bums.” 

Wrong, wrong, wrong…

We heard the white SUV a long time before we saw it.  They were riding slowly down the road about ten miles per hour, shouting through a PA.  The loudspeaker was hard to understand because the echo coming off the hills.  Also the guy on the other end of it had a heavy Mexican accent.

“Come out peacefully with your hands raised.  If you have any weapons, drop them at once.  This is not a game.  You are in a restricted area,” the voice called out. At least that was what we thought he was saying once we were able to figure out the gist of what was being said. 

“Screw them,” Jeff scowled as he spoke through his voice box.  “Let them come and get us.” 

We started to bolt for the valley below us.  The woods weren’t very thick and I knew that was a problem if the drones started looking for us again.  I figured they’d give up though.  Didn’t they have a huge problem with the Chinese invading our country?  Why bother with a couple of zeros like us? 

This was the second time I was wrong that day. 

More on the Saiga .223

The more I shoot this rifle, the better of an idea it seems to be.  First, let me tell you where I've gone with it.  I painted it and threw on a huge 12x BSA scope I'd had lying around.  The rifle got to be a depot for all my spare accessories.  I picked up a Streamlight tactical light in the CZ (Veckol Valley) and fixed it to the UTG scope mount that I used to mount the BSA Cat's Eye.  I guess either militia or smugglers dropped it near what we all call "the slaughter house." 

I'm not a big BSA guy but the scope did what it was supposed to do down at the gun range.  So I started thinking.  What if I started making this my go-anywhere gun?  Fine, but it needed to be camoed for the CZ since out there concealment was such an issue.  Black rifles could be spotted from a long ways away out there.  So I went to town on a paint job to match the colors of the countryside out there. 

With all that done, I decided to totally serious about the rifle.  I started taking it to the range a lot and running a lot of ammo through it.  With my cheap scope on it, I could hit the bottom of a shaving cream can all day at more than 100 yards.  I'm no big fan of .223/5.56 but I'm starting to come around. 

So far, I haven't seen an AK this accurate.  My Saiga .308 is even behind this one.  My Ak-74 might come close if it had optics but I don't see that ever happening.  Sure, the huge scope is a little tough to get used to but I'm not the first guy to sacrifice a little comfort for accuracy.  I did get my hands on a Nikon P-223 scope through a trade and I'm considering putting it on the Saiga instead.  This will happen quickly if I go to the range and find that the BSA hasn't held its zero.  What do you guys think? 

The light is incredible.  Of all the loot I've brought back from the CZ, this is the best find yet.  A coyote was coming after some cats in my parents' yard the other night and I happened to be there with it.  My dad told me unless I had nightvision not to bother going after the coyote.  I cranked up the streamlight and he was impressed.  The light was perfect and didn't create a glare in the scope.  In fact, I haven't used the lit reticule in the scope in a long time because the Streamlight performs so well. 

I decided to dump all the cheap mags for it too.  Don't buy cheap magazines for this rifle.  I had a few and they just jammed or outright broke.  So I ordered a single SGM magazine from Midway USA.  First, it got here three days earlier than expected.  Second, Midway had an excellent price on it.  Third, shipping was $5.  Fourth?  It turned out to be a damn solid magazine.  It fit into the rifle like a glove ought to fit your hand.  That was it for me.  This was soon going to be my carry gun.  Maybe it wouldn't replace my AK-74 but it would for sure be a great backup.  So now I'm planning to purchase a new SGM magazine every month until I have enough for a combat load out.  As with my AK-74, I plan to carry at least six to eight mags. 

I'll let you guys know more about this rifle later on.

Crashed!

The first step was taking an inventory of everything that might be worth saving from what was left of Hunter Army Airbase.  Sure, we know that anything that could fly, most likely took off a long, long time ago, never to return.  Anything else there was still hot with radiation...or so people thought.  We'd been there.  It was still warm, not hot.  The nuke that had narrowly missed Savannah and hit near Georgetown hadn't been a big one luckily.  If the Chinese had meant to take out Hunter, they'd done just that, even without a direct hit.  People avoided the area.  I say "people." 

The Moldi, as we call them around Savannah, somewhat occupied that area.  Atom Bomb Eaters, they called themselves.  It was a reference to their resistance to radiation, one can assume.  I guess their name somewhat described their most unique trait aside from being very, very ugly.  Some folks have said that the Moldi would carry out radioactive metal from inside the nearby bomb crater and place it where they didn't want normal people going.  It was their fault so many areas around Fort Stewart and the outskirts of Savannah were still hot. 

We talked about the Moldi and we talked about the riches of the lightly guarded holdings at the nearby Army airfield.  We'd sit at the Pirate House, drinking lemonade spiked with moonshine or beer that wasn't flat half the time.  The local folk band of the night would play a song and we'd all stop our conversation, regroup our thoughts and start planning all over again when their song was finished. This went on for several evenings.

When I say "we", I mean "us" as in the Broadstreet Bastards.  We more or less ran Broadstreet and East Bay Street.  We controlled the booze, hemp, tobacco and (deleted--street reference to female anatomy) mostly but we dabbled in other things too.  Savannah was a happening place because of us and what passed for the local government loved us.  We kicked a little their way for work on roads, sewage, communications and such.  A long time ago it was called "taxes" but taxes were something you had to pay to a higher power.  We were the higher power in our area and everybody knew we didn't have to pay squat.  But we did.  We loved the place and wanted to make sure it stayed lovely.  It was a jewel in a junkyard. 

But the problem with “some” is more.  You get "some" and you won't "more."  Some call it greed, we called it progress. 

Security was always the problem.  We had fresh water, plenty of food and even plumbing in most areas.  But half the people in Savannah at any given time were just passing through.  You had pirates to the north, Cubans to the south and a growing population of Moldi to the west.  BB had about 50 soldiers, who were nothing but soldiers.  The Marsh Men, another crew, had around 75 but not much gear.  The Salties were mostly fisher folk but they added around 20 well armed troops to the mix.  The local city militia numbered under 100 boots and weren't worth the worn out wool socks our guys threw away.  In all, there might have been around 200-250 boots to defend Savannah at any given time.  This was a problem for business.

The Moldi would raid us about once a month during the winter months and that would trail off in the summer to start up again around late fall.  At first it was 10 or 20 of the diseased mutants would rush in and try to carry off whatever they could.  We'd drop one or two and they'd get a couple of us in return.  Then they slowly started stepping it up five here and ten there.  Pretty soon, we were dealing with 50 or more at a time, often with light military vehicles and remakes (rebuilt civilian cars and trucks).  They had .50 cal weapons and hit us with the occasional rocket launcher, no doubt all salvaged from Fort Stewart.  Now that they were sending their big stuff into the mix and more troops (cheaper and more available than heavy weaponry), it was obvious that their confidence was building.  People were getting scared and some talked about moving.

We came up with all kinds of ideas during our planning sessions.  The best one was a doozy.  The best looking aircraft at Hunter Army Airfield was one of two CH-47 Chinook helicopters.  No, it wouldn't fly but we had people who had worked on them before and was sure it could be made flight-worthy again.  We had plenty of guys who claimed to know how to fly it too.  We could slowly rebuild it where it sat inside a hanger, then when the time was right, fly it back to Savannah.  It wasn't like a jet or a prop-plane that needed a runway.  We'd land it right in Forsyth park! 

Then we'd make it a bomber of sorts.  We'd then burn and blast the Moldi to a scattered gang of ugliness that a small farm work crew could wipe out.  With our chopper-bomber, they'd never come back either.  Then we could work on cleaning up their radioactive mess and expanding some too. 

Work began in the spring.  First, a few of us with a couple of mechanics slipped out to the air field.  It took two trips but the grease monkies figured out all the parts we needed to get the thing airborne.  All we had to do was get it to fly a few miles into the city.  No problem. 

It came time to make the final move.  The crew of tech had sneaked into the airfield for the last time and made their final touches.  They radioed in and said that they'd seen a few Moldi poking around the tower that stood near the hangers.  I remember the radio being filled with static, often a sign of radiation. 

This wasn’t the first time we’d seen a small patrol like that.  They were always small and infrequent, apparently never detecting us or noticing our work inside the hanger. 

Everything was set.  The aircraft was fueled and all it needed was a pilot. 

We went in during the early morning hours, just before dawn.  Since we weren’t carrying any tools, parts or fuel on this run, we entered at the far end of the airstrip.  It was heavily cratered from the war and fast movement was difficult.  It was the cautious man’s path though.  You could move from one crater to another, sure to have plenty of cover if you took fire.  I was carrying my Mossberg MVP in 5.56.  It was a bolt action rifle with a fluted barrel but what was special about it was that it took standard NATO 5.56 magazines.  I had a small Nikon scope mounted on it which wasn’t the most fancy example of optics but worked well for me.  The rifle’s wooden stock had someone’s name carved into it in Chinese.  It wasn’t uncommon for the Chinese to use American weapons and it wasn’t that uncommon for us to recover them at some point.  The rifle had most likely been snatched from a sporting goods store showcase and carried around by some Chinese soldier or brigand.  I’d found it wrapped in an oil cloth in a deserted cabin cruiser that was drifting down the Savannah river one day. 

I had carried a single grenade of local manufacture and a road flare.  If things went bad, we’d stick the flare into the fuel tank and make a run for it.  Once we started that bird up, the Moldi would know exactly what we were doing. 

We had no idea after we’d wenched the aircraft out that so much racket was to ensue.  The thing is, there is only so much you can do to get one of these birds ready to fly without cranking it up.  You’ve don’t want the first time you crank it up to be the first time you try to fly it too.

I was strapped into one of the fold-down passenger seats in the back.  The pilot tried the first start, which made a lot of racket and blew thick white smoke everywhere.  Cursing and coughing, he tried again.  The second time was the same result but with less smoke.  Again and on the third try, he got it.  The engine began to torque up and soon the blades were spinning.  That was when something thumped on the wall opposite from where I was sitting.  Then a window shattered.  I pulled my pipe gun out of its holster as soon as I was out of my safety belt.  I easily kicked the rest of the safety glass window out as another bullet hit the chopper near where the first had struck. 

A pair of Moldi was shooting from behind a low brick wall in front of a one story administration building.  One had some sort of long gun, maybe homemade and the other had a pistol of some sort.  They weren’t doing much damage but at the time, nobody knew what the chopper could take.  My pipe gun was a break-open single shot pistol that fired a 20 gauge round.  It was made from a small door hinge, a piece of pipe and a crude action but it worked.  Up close, it was a murderous bastard but at the range between us and the Moldi, it was a grouchy old man hurling insults.  I fired it anyway, at least to let them know that we were shooting at them. 

The pilot was a quick thinker.  He lifted into the air just a bit and swung the old girl around 45 degrees.  This put our aft section and our M60 facing them.  BUMP BUMP BUMP BUMP BUMP!  It began taking apart the brick wall the Moldi were hiding behind.  Cover became concealment and not even adequate concealment.  Brick flew everywhere around a cloud of reddish dust.  Magically, our gunner didn’t hit either one of them and they were able to take off running before he fired another short burst after them.  Both had gotten away. 

This encounter is what I think doomed the whole operation.  The pilot and crew were all spooked a little bit and rightfully so.  We had to get out of there and fast.  The pilot took us up about like being on a rocket powered express elevator.  I swear to you all that I heard something metallic snap towards the rear of the chopper.  Nobody else seemed to notice as we began to head towards the city. 

Suddenly the chopper jerked hard to one side and back again.  My head slammed up against the seat so hard that it felt like I’d hit against bare steel instead of cushion.  I cursed and before I could ask what was going on, we were spinning out of control.  The world was a sickening blur of motion.  The pilot was good and fought the craft hard but it wasn’t enough.  The hand of almighty himself was all that could help us at that point.  I don’t know how high we were or how fast we were going but I remember it crossing my mind that everything would be fine if I just held on, even though strapped in. 

I don’t remember the crash.  We can all assume that I was knocked out when we hit.  The chopper was nearly broken in half and there wasn’t a soul anywhere as I glanced around.  I painfully undid the straps and struggled to keep my balance on the tilted deck.  My head was killing me.  I just wanted to shut my eyes and stay perfectly still.  But I couldn’t.  There was a horrible itching sensation all over me. 

That was when I stepped out of the wreckage and found out where I was.  I was just on the edge of “THE” crater.  It was a good place to land since it was mostly water and mud with no vegetation.  It wasn’t a good place to stick around in though, since the radiation levels were still high.  That was why I’d been left behind.  I wiped the blood from my nose and mouth and realized that the others must have assumed I was dead when they did an evac.  There was a blood trail leading out of the crater and I knew I’d gotten lucky in the middle of an angry mob of bad luck. 

The first thing to do was leave.  You don’t mess around with radiation, friends.  The M60 was still on its mount along with half a belt of ammo.  I left it, just grabbing my rifle and praying that the scope wasn’t knocked off zero or broken completely.   My grenade and flare were both missing too.  I assume the survivors had apparently had time to grab those items on their way out but not make sure I was really dead.

The mud wasn’t as bad a tidal sludge but wasn’t easily navigated through either.  Struggling through it zapped all my energy.  Before long, I found myself completely out of breath and with my head pounding worse than before, laying in some tall swamp grass.  It was safe to assume that the grass wouldn’t have grown where it did if the radiation levels had been dangerously high.  The way my head felt, death would have been a release anyway.  But just when one might think it couldn’t hurt any worse, it did. 

As I got up from my resting, I tried not to cry out in pain.  It was so awful that I fell to my knees and puked.  Noise discipline was not a great concern anymore.  Where were the other guys, I wondered as I re-collected myself. 

In the distance, there was a snapping of rifles and the familiar pop of pistols being fired.  Trouble.  The Moldi must have come to investigate the crash and ran into our guys.  Then a firefight was on just to the north east of me.  Our guys didn’t stand a chance, I figured.  Besides, I wouldn’t have been much help in a fight since it hurt to walk, much less run.  The best path to take, I figured, was straight north.  West would take me right back into the frying pan. 

For as long as I could, I’d walk with my eyes closed.  The idea was to just open them long enough to check the path for obstructions.  I frequently stopped to rest.  After about an hour, my head was feeling better.  Not great but it was better enough that movement wasn’t a problem.  Sleep was on my mind now.  Every few minutes, I’d ask myself, “are you nuts?  If you sleep here, you’ll be found and killed!  Just another 500 yards and you can lie down.” 

This went on for at least a mile or two.  Coming across a stream was great luck and a long drink of water made me feel a lot better.  Just when I was contemplating walking the rest of the way to Savannah, I noticed a small overturned wooden boat.  It looked like it had been there for year, just a few yards from the stream’s bank.  After a quick check for snakes sleeping under it, I crawled beneath and passed out.  My dreams were replays of the crash, over and over again.  Sometimes a detail would be added or omitted, such as landing in a lake of fire or hitting an oak tree to explode. 

Something thumped hard on the side of the boat.  I woke up and blinked, trying to remember where I was.  Again, something landed hard against the old wooden john boat.  That was it, I thought.  I was caught.  I could risk a shot at my captors or do myself a favor and put one through my own head.  Decision time was coming fast.

“Come out of there!” a hoarse voice shouted. 

I held my breath.  Maybe it was just one of them.  I could shoot him and make a break for it. 

“Get up, you lazy bum!” called the voice again.  “Help us with the net!  The rain is coming!” 

Saved by assumption.  The Moldis were working a net in the stream and thought I was a worker sleeping in an apparently popular hiding place. 

“Yeah,” I replied back in a rough voice, trying to sound like a Moldi.  “Be right there.  Got to put some clothes on.”

The voice became a little more aggravated.  “What do you need clothes for in the water?  Come on before a storm hits.” 

Good, I thought.  They were working the stream in water deeper than what you needed to roll your pants up to collect a net from.  I supposed they were using a barricade net.  But there is one thing to know about a Moldi.  Don’t think just because the ugly mongrel is barefoot that he won’t chase you.  Their hide is tougher and a good portion of them don’t bother with shoes. 

As soon as the fisherman walked away cursing at me, I slipped out from under the boat and headed off in the opposite direction.  Maybe I’d gone fifty yards when I ran into, literally ran into, a young Moldi about my same height and build.  He had been coming down the trail when I’d ran smack into him.  He sat there flat on his ass, palms flat on the ground, staring at me in shock.  I leapt to my feet as I bought the butt of my rifle up into his chin.  He fell backwards, his head striking a small tree’s trunk. 

I pulled out my trench dagger.  It was a piece of rebar sharpened into a point with the other end bent around into a knuckle-duster type grip.  I started to sink the dagger into his chest but noticed that he was totally unconscious.  Now, I’m not a humanitarian and if I was, it wouldn’t have mattered since I don’t consider Moldi to be human.  But it was a matter of time and noise.  I let him slide, that is, if my blow from the stock of my rifle didn’t kill him.  I doubt it did.  They are a tough breed and anyone knows not to try one in a bare knuckle boxing match. 

For a moment, my headache was gone.  I ran like the devil himself was on my heels.  Tree limps and brush hit me in the face but I didn’t care.  I just ran down the little game trail, hoping I was still going in the right direction.  I finally fell to the ground, out of breath and seeing spots. 

I’d bought myself a little time but not much.  Quickly, I recollected myself and got back moving.  Was I being followed?  Maybe.  Who was following me?  Fishermen?  I knew enough about the Moldi to know that warriors seldom engaged in menial labor.  Aside from hunting, they spent most of their time preparing for the next raid.  That didn’t mean that a few fishermen didn’t have a rifle or a shotgun between them.  I had to be close to Savannah territory and they had to know their chances of a violent encounter increased for every foot they got closer to our land. 

I found a clearing or what was close enough to be a clearing in the thick swamp.  If someone was after me, they’d have to pass through it.  Snatching down a few branches, I made a hide and waited.  Thinking better of it, I removed my 10 round magazine and replaced it with a 30 round NATO magazine I carried as a spare.  A thick pine tree was my brace and I held my scope on the trail.  Hopefully, the scope was undamaged in the crash.  At that close range, it shouldn’t have mattered that much if it was off a little. 

I didn’t see the whole Moldi but I saw the color of his shirt:  brown.  It was a dirty looking homespun wool shirt.  I didn’t think, just pulled the trigger.  I saw a spot of red appear on the shirt and a scared hand reach up to grab it.  Looking back, it would have been a better idea to wait and shoot the second or third man in line.  But nerves were worn thin and common sense was only lingering on the porch. 

Curses came from across the narrow clearing and shots rang out.  I didn’t move.  Bits of tree limps and leaves fell around me from the return fire.  I didn’t budge.  The scope was on its lowest power but I still had to look around it to see if I could detect movement.  I did.

BAM clack-clack BAM! I put two into the bush that had shaken.  A Moldi fell dead and rolled out a little ways into the clearing.  I worked the bolt and swung my rifle to where I’d heard noise.  A hot pain flashed across my jaw, just about the jaw line.  Damn I was hit…

It wasn’t that bad but enough to make me take my eyes off the targets.  A buckshot pellet had cut the side of my face.  But I had been lucky.  Another inch and I would have got hit in the mouth or the neck.  It bled like crazy, turning my collar red. 

You join a gang because you think you are tough.  You stay in a gang because you turn out to be.  I was tough. 

I brought my rifle back up and aimed at where I thought the shot had game from.  A raspy voice shouted an insult my way and I pumped three more rounds in the area it came from, though I doubt I hit the foul mouthed fiend that I had wanted to.  Just then I heard screaming and shouting as 4 Moldi burst from cover and charged.  What happened next was like watching a slow motion video. 

I hit the first one in the leg, a terrible place to hit a Moldi since most will drag along after you.  This one did just that, pipe gun in hand.  The second one took a round in the mid section but didn’t seem to realize he was hit.  He just buckled over, nearly falling and continued to run towards me, screaming.  The third I missed completely.  I don’t know how but I did.  The fourth took a round center-mass and fell flat on his face, sliding through the grass for about a foot.  That left me with two to deal with who were immediate threats.  By now they were too close for my scope so I just sighted down the barrel and fired.  I hit the wounded one a second time, this time in the chest.  He stopped his charge, holding his left breast and looking at the ground.  Hit but not down. 

I’d just chambered another round when the uninjured one was on top of me.  He was flailing fists but doing no real damage since most of the blows were landing on the top of my head.  The rifle was knocked out of my hands before it could be used as a club.  I got to my trench dagger and swung it up at the Moldi.  I got him across the arm, making him jump back.  Blood ran down over his deformed skin, across his fingers and dripped onto the ground. 

He cursed and shouted for his comrade, who was coming up behind him slowly, a pained expression on his face.  “Use your pistol,” he urged, pointing at me. 

“Use your knife,” the wounded Moldi replied, pointing to a machete handing in a homemade scabbard on the other’s rubber belt.  “Not a very big one.  Not a very good blade either.” 

The wounded Moldi still held his pistol ready.  I wondered if I could make it for my rifle just a few feet away.  The uninjured Moldi just stared at me from behind wild eyes. 

“Give up,” he grunted.  “Give up and put down your blade.  We might trade you back for goods.”

I knew that never happened.  Moldi were never bargained with, not in a situation like the one they wanted to put me in.  Besides, I had enough sense to know that any deal made in the field by lightly armed underlings wouldn’t be honored back in their settlement.  They frequently burned people to death and anyone would choose bleeding out on the forest floor to that. 

“Come on, bitch,” I said, beckoning with my left hand.

The wounded Moldi laughed and then coughed.  “Kill him, tough man.” 

Always bet on the guy who is fighting for his life if the odds are anywhere near even.  Never bet on the guy who is fighting to save face.  The Moldi took a step towards me, machete in hand.  I threw my trench dagger right at his face.  It didn’t stab into him but cut him open badly.  It was better than it flipping and hitting him with just the handle and knuckle guard though.  Blood poured from his forehead and over his face as he swung wildly with his machete.  I jumped to one side to put him between me and the one with the pistol, who already had it up aiming it. 

I got my hands on the rifle and fired, hitting the attacking Moldi in the chest.  He fell to his knees, dropping his blade.  The Moldi held up his arm, like he was about to call a “time out” and then fell backwards, dead.  I had another round in the chamber in seconds. 

The wounded Moldi held his pistol on me but I had a good chance of hitting him too.  Time froze for a moment.  Slowly, I took a step backwards.  The Moldi didn’t move but stared at me with soulless eyes.  Every step I took put me further from him and improved my chances.  I heard distant shouts behind him and knew that there were more on the way, undoubtedly fresh and well armed.

I don’t remember making the decision to start into a run but I did.  A shot cracked behind me and a bullet whizzed by my head.  Later, it was easy to figure out that the Moldi who I’d wounded was as close to a private citizen as Moldis got.  His ammo was his own stash and he was reluctant to use it unless he really had to.  No burst of 5 or 6 rounds came but I still ran like a mad man.  The odds of me holding them off a second time were slim, even though I still had half a magazine in my rifle and another 30 rounds in my pocket, plus my 10 round magazine. 

After running another exhausting mile or so, I didn’t hear the sounds of pursuit anymore.  I kept up a brisk pace for another mile and found a FASCAM shell right where the trees started to thin out.  FASCAM shells scattered small land mines everywhere and after 10 years or more, they could be covered over well by brush.  That was bad but what made it worse was that I knew I was near the entrance to a more recently planted minefield.  The only good news was that it meant I was almost home.  I knew a few of the minefields near the south-west of Savannah but was familiar with the one in front of me.  The best thing to do, I thought, was crawl…slowly.  I crawled through the wet grass, feeling ahead of me with the butt of my rifle.  I finally saw one mine, a large anti-tank mine, partially unearthed by erosion caused by a tiny stream.  Anti-personnel mines were what I was afraid of though.  Those were hard to detect and even a bump from my rifle could set one off. 

I looked up to see if I was still being followed.  Nobody was behind me, yet.  But I saw something that caught my attention.  A white tailed deer grazed just 50 yards from me.  I’d been so quiet and slow that it hadn’t seen me.  There were a lot more deer now than there used to be.  One reason was less people and another reason was that people saved ammo for killing other humans, generally only hunting deer as a last resort.  This one perked its head up and tested the air.  It must have smelled me.  I watched as it slowly figured out where I was and took to a bounding run, right back towards Savannah. 

It wasn’t perfect but it was better than nothing.  This deer hadn’t stepped on a mine with his four legs; maybe if I followed him, I’d do fine with two.  I got into a high crawl and followed where the deer had run.  This was a better idea than you might think since most AP mines I knew of in the area were bounding-mines or generically called “bouncing betties.”  Your chances of surviving one improved if you were lower to the ground, or so I’d been told. 

Stealing a glance behind me, I saw a horrifying sight.  At least 30 or more Moldi were all standing here and there along the tree line.  They all looked well armed and most wore camouflage clothing.  They didn’t shout or curse, much less shoot at me.  Apparently, they knew full well about the mine field.  They all stood like hungry dogs watching a cat from behind a glass window.

Why weren’t they shooting?  The must have been worried about the rusty old guard tower, barely visible in the distance and the bunker at its base.  No doubt it had a machine gun or two but from behind cover, could have done little to the group at that range.  They could have all dropped down after killing me and any return fire (if any) would have only nailed one or two by accident. 

The problem I had besides the Moldi standing at the edge of the minefield was one of animal mechanics.  The deer covered a lot of ground quickly when it ran and normally left several feet between each time its hooves hit the ground.  There was a good chance that it had leaped right over a mine that I would be sure to crawl over. 

I was almost through the minefield when I lost track of where the deer had ran before.  Cursing, I looked around to see distant shapes, slowly retracing my path behind me, keeping low as well.  The Moldi had been waiting for me to get through the minefield so they could follow safely. 

A hatch flung open on top of the round concrete bunker and a person wave out to me.  A long rust stain ran down from the hatch to nearly the bottom of the weather-worn bunker. 

“Come on!” he called.  “Just run straight ahead and you’ll be ok!” 

I got up to my feet and ran.  The light snap of a .22 rifle sounded from the tower, first one or two shots then a rapid burst.  Why such a light rifle, I wondered?  The Moldi were now running as well.  I got to the barbed wire and carefully tried to get through it without being badly cut.  No luck.  I got cut several times but after a minute, got through it.  Fortunately the wire was lighter near the bunker, the idea being that in front of the bunker was the worst place to be anyway. 

Bleeding again and with my clothes torn, I ran for the bunker.  A knotted rope was thrown over the side and I began to climb it.  A rifle round smacked the concrete near me and the .22 on the tower began to snap away again.  There was no way they could hit the Moldi who were a good 250 yards behind me. 

I got to the open hatch and someone helped me inside.  The hatch slammed behind me as I dropped a few feet to the top of a wooden staircase.  “Come on and bring your rifle,” said someone who had just dogged the hatch and came down a latter behind me. 

The person was a man in his 30’s wearing a brown garrison cap and old Marine digital camo.  He had an M14 in his hand and wore a black armored vest.  I ran behind him down a dimly lit hallway that led towards the front of the bunker.  At the end of the hall was another round hatch, which the soldier rapidly turned a crank to open.  Daylight came through wire-mesh partially covered gun ports.  Two more soldiers were aiming rifles next to a fake machine gun made from PVC pipe and plywood. 

“Don’t shoot until you know you’ve got a shot,” the soldier said to me.  “If we can’t keep ‘em back with the .22’s then we wait until they get within 50 meters before we let them have it.”

I didn’t brace my rifle out of the gun ports like the soldiers did but took aim from further back in the room, bracing from some stacked wooden crates.  Nobody there seemed to have much experience.  I waited until I had a clear shot and fired first.  I hit the Moldi right in the spine, dropping him cold.  The others in the bunker began firing too and we had three Moldi down in no time.  They paused to return fire and one of the soldiers hit the floor of the bunker, holding his bloody neck.  They tried to move forward again but we killed two more of them.  It wasn’t worth it to them and the rest turned back, retreating same way they’d came in.  A light mortar barked from behind the tree line but its shells fell harmlessly around the bunker but did manage to break a window out of the tower.  Ironically, I don’t think a single Moldi stepped on a single mine.  I was starting to doubt there were that many still out there.  I knew that the militia occasionally moved mines from one field to another, depending on the threat and depending on how easily the particular mine was to move. 

The soldier on the floor died while we were waiting for a quad to ride out from the nearest outpost to do a medivac.  I was taken back to Savannah were I was treated for mild radiation poisoning.   

Nobody else survived the operation but me.  As a result, the Moldi occupied the airfield instead of just patrolling it occasionally.  Apparently, they’ve started working on one of the old aircrafts, having our same idea.