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Message-ID: <27428asstr$974045402@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: Al Steiner <steiner_al@hotmail.com>
Subject: {ASSM} Aftermath by Al Steiner-Chapter 4 (Mf) 2/5
Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 11:10:02 -0500
Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail
Approved: <assm@asstr-mirror.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d

AFTERMATH
CHAPTER 4 PART 2/5
Send comments to steiner_al@hotmail.com
Missing pieces can be found at www.storiesonline.net


Chrissie moved fast.  If Brett had been there to see it, he would have
been quite proud of her.  In one swift motion she picked up her rifle
and sidestepped to her left, throwing herself behind a tree.  Once the
trunk was between her and the mysterious man she swung towards him,
bringing the butt of the rifle to her shoulder, her eye peering out
over the sights.  "Stop where you are!" she yelled, loudly enough for
Jason to hear back at camp.  "Don't come a step closer to me!"

"Whoa," said the man, holding his left hand up in a gesture of
appeasement.  His right hand however, stayed in the jacket.  His pace
slowed a little but did not stop.  "Nothing to get excited about.  You
don't need to go pointing a gun at me.  I'm harmless."

"I said STOP!" she said.  "Take your hand out of your pocket!"

He slowed a little more but continued to move forward.  He was now
fifteen yards away.  "Where did you find that gun anyway sweetheart?"
he asked.  "It's awfully big for such a young girl.  You really should
put it down before you hurt yourself with it."

"Stop motherfucker!" she yelled.  "I mean it!  I'll shoot you!"

"You don't want shoot anyone, do you?" he said, continuing his slow
advance. "Really now.  I'm here to help you.  I'm a good guy.  Why
don't you..."

"Don't take another step!" she warned, her finger tightening on the
trigger.

"Sweetheart," he said, "you need to put that gun down.  I know you
don't want anything bad to happen here, right?"  He took another step
forward.  He would never take another.

Chrissie squeezed the trigger twice causing the rifle to thump against
her shoulder and sending the crack of two shots echoing off the rocks.
Two holes appeared in the man's jacket, right in the center of his
chest, sending a small puff of goose feathers out into the wind.  He
screeched as the wind was driven from his lungs and there was a flash
from his right pocket as the gun he had hidden in there was fired.  The
bullet ripped a hole in the jacket and then ricocheted off the ground
about ten feet in front of her.  The man then fell to his face on the
ground, his hand still pinned beneath him.

"Chrissie!" came Jason's voice from behind her.  "What's going on?
What's happening?"

Before she could answer him, before he was even really done speaking,
three more shots suddenly rang out from the boulders where the first
man had come from.  They were pistol shots, by now she was able to tell
the difference, and she caught a brief glimpse of another bearded face
in the gap between two of the rocks.  Two of the bullets that had been
fired whizzed by on her left.  The last one struck the tree she was
hiding behind.

Before she even realized she was doing it, her finger was squeezing the
trigger again, sending a hail of rifle bullets right back at him.  The
pinged and sparked as they hit the rocks.  She fired five times and
then stopped, her sight trained on the spot where she had last seen him.

"Chrissie!" yelled Jason again, frantically this time.

"Jason," she shouted back, "stay down.  Take cover.  There's one down
and at least one behind some rocks over here."

 "Are you all right?"

"So far," she yelled.  "I'm behind cover."

She continued to watch the rocks, her body tense, her eyes dilated, her
heart going nearly one hundred and eighty beats per minute.  She saw
nothing but the rocks, heard nothing but the rain and the canyon.  Had
she hit the gunman back there?  While it was possible, it would not be
a good idea to assume that, or even to assume that there was only one
more of them back there.  What now? she wondered.  Why the hell wasn't
Brett here?  Brett would know what to do.

On the other side of the rise, near the lean-to, Jason was even
tenser.  He lay on his stomach behind a rock, his rifle trained outward
towards where Chrissie had gone, but he couldn't see anything of the
area where the shooting had come from.  He did not know exactly where
his sister was or where the gunmen were.  He was useless.  He needed to
change that.  Slowly, moving rock to rock, crawling on his belly, he
inched forward until he was against the mound of rocks and sparse
shrubs that stood between he and where he figured Chrissie had gone.
He began to climb up it, step by step, foot by foot, picking his
footholds carefully and making sure that his head stayed below the
crest.  When he reached the top he peered over, keeping his face behind
a rock.  He was able to see a body lying on the ground, face down.
After a moment's searching he was able to see his sister.  He could
not, however, tell which rocks their enemy might be behind.  There were
simply too many rocks down there.  Now what?

Meanwhile, Chrissie had an idea.  "You, with the gun," she yelled from
her position behind the tree.  "There are two of us out here with
rifles.  Come out now with your hands up and we won't kill you."  As to
what she might do if her offer was accepted, she did not quite know,
but it was a mute point. The gunman or gunmen did not come out or give
any indication that she had been heard.

"Goddamn it," she muttered to herself, not even realizing that she had
spoken aloud.

"Chrissie," hissed a voice from behind and to the right.  It was
Jason.  "Don't look up here.  Just nod if you can hear me."

Though she was desperately afraid that her brother was exposing himself
and though every big sister instinct that she had was commanding her to
at least take a look, she kept her eyes forward.  She nodded twice.

"Where are they at?" he asked her next.

"The group of rocks at my two o'clock," she said back, talking only as
loudly as she thought necessary for him to hear her.  Hopefully the
gunman wouldn't hear as well.

"The tall group with the big egg-shaped rock in the middle?" Jason
asked.

"That's right," she said.  "There's at least one back there with a
pistol.  I don't think I hit him when I shot.  Can you see anything
back there?"

"Nothing," Jason whispered after searching the formation with his eyes
for a few moments.  "What do we do now?"

Chrissie looked around her for a moment, checking the terrain.  There
was not much to the right of her as far as cover or concealment.
Trying to move that way would be a mistake unless she could verify that
her assailants were down.  But the left however, that led deeper into
the trees.  A person could find lots of things to hide behind back
there.  And even better was the fact that the tree line extended
forward.   "Hmmm," she hummed to herself, her mind spinning a thousand
miles an hour.  She risked a look over her shoulders, up to where her
brother's voice had come from.  She did not see him, but she gave him a
series of hand signals.  "Cover me," her gestures said, "I'm going to
flank him to the left."

"Are you sure Chrissie?" Jason's voice called down.

She nodded, positioning herself to run.  She took a few deep breaths
and gathered her courage and then gave Jason one more signal.  The go
signal.

Jason began firing down into the rocks, several shots a second, giving
her covering fire so she could move.  Again the sparks began to fly and
the bullets to ping and ricochet around.  Rock chips exploded upward.
As soon as she heard the first shot, Chrissie broke from behind her
tree and sprinted to the left and slightly forward, moving into the
area of thicker foliage, throwing herself down behind another group of
trees that provided a better angle of attack.  She rolled over onto her
stomach and aimed out towards the rocks just in time to see two flashes
of the gunman's pistol as it raised over the rock to return fire.  She
aimed her rifle in that direction but could see nothing but the man's
hand extending upward.  That one glance only lasted a second or two
before the hand dropped back down.  She did not fire.

Jason held his fire for a few moments, waiting to see what would happen
next.  When the man behind the rock had returned fire he, Jason, had
aimed for the arm that had poked up but he was pretty sure he hadn't
hit it.  He looked downward to where Chrissie was, searching for a
moment and finally finding her.  She was looking up towards him, unable
to see him but trying to attract his attention.  "I got you Sis," he
yelled down at her.

Chrissie, gratified that she hadn't hidden herself too well, gave him
another set of hand signals, indicating that she wanted him to cover
another advance.  Now she knew why Brett had told them so many times
that the key to a successful battle was communication and
coordination.  Without being able to signal her intentions to Jason,
she was pinned down and trapped, with being able to do that, she was
nearly invincible.

"Got it," came Jason's voice, drifting downward at her.

"Good," she mumbled to herself, gripping her weapon and slowly raising
to her knees, preparatory to running.  She took another deep breath and
gave the go signal.  Gunfire once again exploded from Jason's position,
pattering down on the rocks.  She jumped to her feet and dashed through
the open ground to the next set of trees, moving strictly forward this
time.  She glanced at her enemy's position and still saw nothing but
rocks.  Jason continued to fire and she dashed forward again, diving
behind a fallen log and scrambling as far forward along its length as
she could go.

The gunfire from Jason's rifle halted again and there was no answering
fire from the pistol this time.  Slowly, cautiously, she raised her
head up and peeked over the log, ready to dive back down in an instant
if she saw danger.  She did not.  What she saw instead was a man
crouching behind the rocks, his body as close to the edge of them as he
could physically get it.  He was in profile to her, holding a pistol in
both hands, pointing it upward.  Even from twenty yards away Chrissie
could see that he was scared shitless and didn't know what to do.  He
was close to panic, finding himself pinned between two armed people.

Had she more time and inclination to think the situation through, she
might have felt sorry for the man, might have hesitated to shoot at him
as he cowered there.  But she didn't.  She acted as Brett had taught
her.  She took tactical advantage of the situation.  She brought her
rifle up and sighted in on him, aiming at the bulk of his body.  She
fired four times in rapid succession, seeing more goose down fly,
seeing blood splatter on the rocks, hearing the startled scream of the
gunman even over the sound of the rifle fire.  He slumped to the
ground, the pistol falling from his hand into the mud.  He did not move.

"Chrissie?" Jason's voice yelled from back at his position.

"I got him Jase!" she yelled back, her breath raggedly moving in and
out of her lungs, terrified sweat running down her face with the
rainwater.  "Move down to where I'm at.  I'll cover you from here."

As she waited for her brother to come down to her she began to tremble
with fear overload.  Her hands, which had been steady as a rock during
the battle, began to shake, making it difficult to keep the barrel of
her rifle steady.  She closed her eyes for just a second and commanded
herself to be calm.  This wasn't over yet.  There still might be others
out there.

There wasn't.  Jason came down and she signaled him to find a position
opposite of her.  He did so and, after a furious exchange of signals,
they moved in, advancing to the rise behind where the gunmen had
emerged, searching with their eyes the downhill portion of the forest
there.  They saw no signs of anyone else, nor did they receive any jigs
on their nerve endings.

"I think those were the only two," Chrissie said when they finally
stood together behind the trees.  "If nothing else, we're secure up
here."

"Jesus Sis," Jason said, trembling himself now.  "What the hell
happened?  Where did they come from?"

"They must've just been two people that were heading for the bridge
when they stumbled onto me."  She told him the story, her voice
breaking a few times as it came out.  "It's a good thing I finished my
business before he came out," she concluded, feeling the giddiness that
she remembered from her last firefight now.  "If he would've came
BEFORE, I'd be cleaning it out of my panties about now."


+++++


The thundering roar of water rushing through the canyon had masked all
sounds of the battle from Brett, Paul, and Jessica, who were standing
just in front of the SUVs on the Garden Hill side of the bridge.  All
they knew was that it was first light, the agreed upon time for the two
kids to show themselves, and they hadn't done so yet.  Brett, starting
to become seriously worried now, kept waving his hands every few
minutes towards the hill, giving them the pre-arranged signal.  They
were supposed to stand briefly and acknowledge the wave and then move
down the hill towards the road.

"I'll give them ten more minutes," he said to Paul, "and then I'm going
over there to look for them.  Something's wrong."

"Hmmph," Jessica said from around a large wad of bubble gum that she
was chewing.  "It wouldn't surprise me if something happened to them.
I still can't believe you left a couple of children out there alone all
night.  And with GUNS.  That's criminal behavior if you ask me."

Brett glared at her, giving her such a seething look that she took a
step away from him, her mouth stopping in mid-chew.  "They're not
children," he said to her.  "They're more capable out there than anyone
I've seen in this town so far."

She said nothing, just glared back at him.

"Maybe they're having trouble getting up the hill," Paul suggested,
trying, unsuccessfully, to break the tension a little.  "You said they
have full packs to lug, not to mention your pack and your weapon as
well."

"It shouldn't have taken this long," Brett said, reaching his hand
beneath the black rain slicker he had been provided and itching at his
chest.  He had discovered that his body was so used to wearing wet
clothing that it did not know what to think of dry clothing.  The
material of the shirt, jeans, and underwear that he had been given felt
rough to his skin, almost like sandpaper.  A strange irony.

The minutes ticked by slowly, agonizingly, and finally, just before
Brett was about to begin heading for the far side on his own, he
spotted movement atop the hill.  "There," he said, pointing, his voice
full of relief.  "Do you see it?"

All three of them peered intently upward until they saw two people, so
dirty that they would not have been visible had they not been
silhouetting themselves deliberately.  They both waved their hands back
and forth for a moment.  Brett waved frantically back, giving them a
"come down" gesture.  They stopped waving and began to scramble
downward, towards the road.

"They're not going to fall, are they?" Jessica asked.  "Shouldn't they
go around the hill to the other side."

"They're a lot safer coming down that way," Brett said, keeping his
eyes on their progress. "God only knows how many lowlifes you have
camped out in the forest over there."

"But if they fall..." she started.

"You weren't very concerned about them last night," Brett said.  "You
were perfectly willing to leave them out there to the wolves.  Why are
you so worried about them now?"

"I did NOT say I was unconcerned for them last night," she barked at
him.  "I just told you that we couldn't afford to feed outsiders.  I
still feel that way.  I'm just shocked that you allow children to carry
guns and camp out in the woods by themselves.  And that you encourage
them to climb over wet hills where they could fall and hurt themselves."

Brett opened his mouth to retort, and God knows what might have come
out of it, but Paul, keeping with his role as mediator, stepped in
between them.  "That's enough you two," he said, holding up his hands
in a gesture of supplication.  "Really.  It looks like the two of them
are coming down just fine.  There's no need for anyone to worry."

Brett let his mouth close.  Jessica, after a moment's consideration,
did the same.  Silence ruled during the rest of the descent.

As soon as Chrissie and Jason put their feet on the roadway and started
walking towards the bridge, Brett began trotting towards them.  By the
time they reached the first set of barricade vehicles that guarded the
entrance, he was running and so were they, Brett's backpack held
between them.  Jessica and Paul stayed back, neither willing to venture
any further out of town then they already were (this was, in fact,
Jessica's first trip to the bridge since the impact itself).

"Brett!" Chrissie yelled, dropping her half of his backpack to the
pavement and rushing into his arms.  She hit him nearly hard enough to
knock him over, her clothing leaving a dirty smear of mud on his rain
slicker.  He didn't care.  He put his arms around her and hugged her
tightly to him, kissing her muddy face.

Jason came up right behind her - after carefully setting the pack and
Brett's rifle down - and joined the embrace, not caring if people
thought he was a fag for hugging a guy.  He could not remember ever
being so glad to see someone in his life.  Brett let one arm come off
of Chrissie and put it around his shoulders.

"You're safe," Chrissie said, her voice choked.  "You made it in!"

"Fuckin aye I did," he said, continuing to hug both of them.

"Are they gonna let us stay here?" Jason asked, fighting back tears of
his own.

"We're working on it," he told them.  "We'll know by the end of the
day, but it's looking good."

"Did you shake 'em up like you said you would?" Jason asked.

"Even more," he said, pulling back from the embrace.  "Even more."

"My god," Chrissie said, looking at him closely for the first time.
"You don't even look like you.  You're clean!"

"And you shaved," Jason put in.  "I never saw you without the beard
before."

"You like it?" he asked, running his wet hand over his reddened, itchy
face.  "This is what I used to look like before."

"It's different," Chrissie said, reaching out to touch the bare skin.

"What took you guys so long?" he asked.

Their expressions darkened.  "We ran into some trouble this morning,"
Chrissie said.

"What?"

They explained what had happened, Chrissie doing most of the narration
but Jason throwing in a few comments from time to time.  As they
talked, the happiness they had shown at seeing him again turned to fear
and despair at what they had been through.

"When I got over along that log," she said, trembling a little at the
memory, "I saw him just sitting there, cowering.  He still had the gun
in his hand but he looked so scared Brett.  He looked terrified!  I
shot him anyway, four or five times, until he fell down."

"That's exactly what you should have done Chrissie," Brett told her,
sensing that she was feeling guilty for killing someone who hadn't
actually been shooting at her at that moment.  "You did everything just
right.  Perfectly.  Both of you did."

"But what if I would've just told him to leave?" she asked.  "I mean,
he looked like he just wanted to get away from there.  I could've
yelled over to him..."

"You gave him that chance once, didn't you?" Brett asked, lifting her
chin to make her look him in the eyes.  Tears were running down her
face, mixing with the rainwater.  "He didn't take you up on it, and in
fact, he fired at you again after you'd made the offer, didn't he?"

"Yes, but..."

"No buts," Brett said firmly.  "You have nothing to feel guilty about.
That man took his chances and he lost.  I would've been pissed off at
you if you'd done anything but smoke his ass once you got him in your
sights."

"Yeah Sis," Jason replied.  "You smoked his ass!  Fuck him."

"It sounds like you two performed a picture-perfect flanking maneuver.
It's like I've told you all along, you're bad-ass."

"I suppose," Chrissie said, still sniffing a little, still unable to
get the final moments out of her head.

"Come on," Brett said, going over to his pack and picking it up.
"Let's get into town.  It's about a twenty-minute walk during the day
but they have hot baths and warm food and fresh clothes there.  You
guys deserve all of that."

"Hot baths?" Chrissie said.  "Are you making that up?"

"Nope."

"Wow," she said, giving another sniff.  "I didn't think I'd ever get to
have a bath again."

"I don't usually like baths," Jason said, "but I think I can make an
exception."

They began walking across the bridge, heading towards Paul and Jessica,
who were still standing on the other side, watching the reunion.

"Look how filthy those children are," Jessica told Paul as they
approached close enough for them to see.  "It'll be a wonder if they
don't have some sort of... disease or something."

Paul looked at her in annoyance.  "Jess," he said, "it's not like they
have bathing or laundry facilities out there.  They've been living in
the wild for nearly two weeks now.  What did you expect them to look
like?"

"Children just should not be exposed to this sort of thing," she said,
giving an extra hard chomp on her gum.  "It's criminal if you ask me.
That man is a menace!"

"Christ," Paul muttered, shaking his head in wonder.  Just what world
did Jessica live in?  It certainly was not the same one that he did.

Brett made the introductions once they were close enough to talk to
each other.  "Jessica, Paul, these are Jason and Chrissie, the baddest-
ass fighting team that I have ever had the privilege of serving with.
Jason and Chrissie, this is Paul and Jessica, two of the leaders of
Garden Hill.  They are going to discuss with the other members of the
town today whether or not we will be staying with them."

The kids muttered some brief but polite "nice to meet you's" to their
hosts.

"Brett has told me what you two have been through," Paul said, shaking
each of their hands.  "Let me be the first to tell you that you sound
like a couple of troopers."

"Chrissie dear," Jessica said, looking at her, making no move to shake
either hand.  "Are you crying?"

"I'm okay," Chrissie said, giving a very teenager-like shrug.  "We've
just had kind of a rough morning."

"I can imagine," Jessica said.  "Being left all alone out there all
night long."

"They had a little encounter with a few men this morning," Brett said.
"That was why they were late for the meeting on the hill."

"Men?" Jessica said.

Brett let Chrissie tell the story, thinking it might be therapeutic for
her.  In a way it was.  By the time she was done with the second
narration, her tears had dried up and her voice was a little more like
itself.  Jessica however, did not seem to be terribly impressed with
what she was hearing.

"That all sounds rather fantastic," she said, making no attempt to hide
her skepticism.

"Fantastic?" Jason said, anger showing on his face.  "What is that
supposed to mean?"

"Yes," Chrissie said, giving a rather evil glare of her own.  "What IS
that supposed to mean?  Are you trying to say I made that up?"

"Well you must admit," Jessica said, "that it seems highly coincidental
that such a thing would happen right before we start considering
whether to take you in.  And the fact that two children could come out
the better in a gun battle with two grown men, well that IS very
difficult to swallow."

Brett took an angry step toward her.  "I don't give a shit WHO you are
lady," he said.  "You WILL not call Chrissie and Jason liars.  Not
while I'm around.  How dare you belittle what they have just been
through!"

Jessica, alarmed by Brett's tone and his advance towards her, then made
a mistake.  She let her hand drop down to the butt of the gun on her
waist.  Before her fingers could even close around it, before Paul or
Brett could intervene, there was the simultaneous clanking of two
rifles swinging towards her as Jason and Chrissie instinctively moved
to protect their leader.

Jessica squealed as she found herself facing two automatic weapons and
took another step backward.  Her feet tangled together, overbalancing
her.  She fell to her butt on a puddle of standing water, sending up a
little spray.

"Holy shit," Paul said, keeping his own hand well clear of his weapon.

"Stand down," Brett barked at them.  "It's okay.  She was just
posturing."

Slowly they lowered their rifles.  "She was gonna pull a gun on you
Brett," Jason said.  "Didn't you see it?"

"Don't worry about it," he told them.  "Everything's cool."

"They pointed GUNS at me!" Jessica yelled, still sitting in the water.
"At ME!"

"And you were about the point a gun at Brett," Paul said, extending a
hand to help her up.  "It's okay.  Nobody got hurt."

"What if they would've shot me?" Jessica, seemingly near hysterics,
asked.  "I can't believe these CHILDREN are carrying loaded guns and
that think they can just go pointing them at people who have invited
them into their town!"

"Brett," Chrissie said, fighting back tears again, "I don't need a bath
this bad.  Let's get out of here.  How can we stay in a town with
someone like that?"

"Shhh Chrissie," he said, glaring at Jessica.  "It's okay.  They're not
all like her."

"Get those guns away from them," Jessica yelled at Paul.  "Why aren't
you doing something about this?"

"Shut up," Paul said to her.

"What did you say to me?"

"I said shut up," he repeated.  "Everything that's happened here, you
brought on yourself.  First you call them liars right to their faces
after they relate a traumatic experience that they went through this
morning to you and then you try to draw a gun on their leader."

"Did you hear the way he talked to me?" she asked.

"He talked to you just like you deserved Jess," Paul said.  "And I will
not take those guns away from those kids.  It is quite obvious that
they know how to use them properly.  I don't think they'd give them to
me anyway.  Now, can we start heading back to town or would you like to
stand out here in the rain and piss off a few more people first?"

"You're forgetting your place," she said, pointing an angry finger at
him.

"And that line is getting old fast," he replied.  "Now, let's move out,
shall we?  We have a lot to do today."

"I won't stand for this Paul.  You're mocking my authority."

"That's only because you're abusing it.  Now let's go."

She muttered a few more things under her breath but said nothing else
aloud.  She turned and began heading across the bridge, her feet
splashing through the puddles.

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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