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Message-ID: <29513asstr$985464601@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: "Al Steiner" <steiner_al@hotmail.com>
Subject: {ASSM} NEW: Aftermath by Al Steiner - Ch 16 (no sex, much violence) 1/1
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 15:10:01 -0500
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Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d

AFTERMATH
By Al Steiner
Send all comments to steiner_al@hotmail.com
Previous chapters can be found at www.storiesonline.net





CHAPTER 16



"You did WHAT?" Michelle asked her co-wife, unsure if she had heard her
correctly.

Chrissie looked shamefaced.  "I seduced Maggie last night," she repeated.
"I don't know what came over me.  We were washing up together and we were
naked and we'd been talking about... you know... how combat makes you horny
and all and... well... I kept looking at her and before I knew it..."

"Yeah?" Michelle prompted, her eyes wide.

"Before I knew what was happening, I was touching her, and kissing her, and
then... well... doing other things to her."

"Other things?"

"I ate her," she admitted, dropping her eyes to the ground.

"You... ate her?"

Chrissie nodded.  "Yes," she whispered.  "And then I made her get me off
with her fingers."

"Jesus," Michelle said, unsure what else to say.

It was 6:45 AM, just before first light, and the teams had just geared up
for the day's harassment missions.  Chrissie had pulled Michelle aside after
everyone was equipped, obstinately to talk to her about some tactical matter
but in reality wanting to confess her sin of the night before.  She had been
wracked with guilt all night over what she had done, spending most of it
tossing and turning instead of getting needed sleep.  Though she had
justified her actions in her mind when they were occurring, her
justifications had not held up very well afterward.

Michelle pondered these facts carefully for a few moments, setting her M-16
down on the locker room bench in the weapons room to free up her hands.  She
took Chrissie into her arms and hugged her comfortingly, pulling her against
her.  Chrissie, who's own weapon was already sitting down, returned the
embrace gratefully.

"I cheated on you guys," she said pitifully.  "I'm so sorry."

"Shhh," Michelle soothed, stroking her hair with her fingers.  "It's all
right.  Believe it or not, I'm not really that offended.  I'm more surprised
than anything."

"But Brett..."

"I don't think he would be that offended either," Michelle said.  "It may be
a double standard and sexist and all that, but its simple reality.  Having a
sexual encounter on the side with another woman is not the same as having
one with a man.  Not in the man's eyes and usually not in the woman's
either."

"But I betrayed the vows we made," she said.

Michelle smiled.  "We vowed to honor and respect each other," she said.  "We
vowed to be loyal to each other.  We never actually vowed not to eat out
another woman."

"What?" Chrissie said.

"Well, with Brett, that was kind of implied and with us, it was kind of
implied that we not take other men, but we did not actually vow that part.
Remember, we discussed the possibility that other women might come into the
relationship in the future?"

"Well, yes... but... I thought that... well... I mean..."

"You didn't think that you would be the one to bring them in, did you?"
Michelle asked.

"No.  But what are you saying?  Are you saying that Maggie should be part of
our... our marriage now?"

"Not necessarily," she said, "but it's something that should be considered,
isn't it?  I like Maggie well enough and I know that she's lonely.  I've
also seen Brett giving her the eye on occasion as well.  Now adding a member
to a marriage is not something that should just be leapt into, but... it's
something to think about."

Chrissie shook her head a little, overwhelmed.  "Wow," she whispered.  "This
is just too much."

"Did Maggie like what you did to her?"  Michelle asked.

"She was reluctant at first.  But she didn't stop me or even push me away."

"Did she come?"

Chrissie smiled.  "Oh yes.  You've taught me well.  She damn near beat me to
death when she came."

Michelle giggled, giving her co-wife a last pat and then releasing her.  She
gave her a quick peck on the lips, a kiss that was just a little bit more
than sisterly.  "Maybe we'll all sit down with Brett sometime soon and have
a talk about all of this.  For now, I wouldn't let it stress you.  We have
plenty of other things on the plate that should be stressing you without
adding that to the mix.  How's Maggie taking it this morning?  Will you be
able to work together out there?"

"She hasn't said much to me yet, but I haven't sensed any hostility or
anything.  I think she's confused.  The same way I was the first time that
you and I did that."

"Did what?" Michelle said, wanting her to say it.

"Made love," Chrissie said, giving her another kiss, a longer one.

"She'll work it out," Michelle said, feeling her face flush a little at the
kiss.  "In the meantime, why don't we go assemble.  We have some asses to
kick this morning, don't we?"

"Yep.  Let's go kick 'em."


+++++



The Placer County Militia soldiers were very slow stirring out of their
sleeping bags that morning to eat their meager breakfast and resume their
march.  To the very last man they were all living on less than two hours of
broken sleep, much of which had been plagued by nightmares of the events
that had befallen them.  Brett's follow-up air attack at 5:00 AM - while it
had only cost three lives - had had the desired effect of shattering the
morale once more just when they had started to think that things had slacked
off.

Bracken, with an untidy growth of stubble on his face and with dark circles
under his eyes, gathered up his platoon commanders for a conference just
before move out.

"We need to stop being so fucking predictable for them," he said, puffing on
his third cigarette of the daylight hours.  "That's why they're ravaging us
so much.  We're marching right along a corridor where they know exactly
where we are and where they have time to plant their forces in our path.
That shit needs to stop."

"How?" Colby, who was perhaps the most rattled of all the lieutenants,
wanted to know.

"We need to spread out," Bracken said.  "Instead of marching in a
single-file column, we need to expand out to the sides.  We're going to
divide into two wide columns and we're going to march on both sides of those
hills as we go and we need to keep plenty of space between men.  Don't let
one fucking burst from that M-16 they have take down a whole group."

"Navigation will be harder," Stu, puffing a cigarette of his own, said.
"Our maps of this area aren't worth a shit."

"We have compasses," Bracken said.  "And we've marched through this area in
the past.  It'll slow us down, that's true, but it'll also keep them from
picking us off as easily."

Stu nodded, seeing the wisdom of this thought.

"And there's another thing," Bracken added.  "This'll be a little harder for
the men.  Our ammunition usage needs to decrease.  At the rate we're firing
off our rounds, we're not gonna have enough bullets for the main attack when
we get there.  Tell your men that they are NOT to return fire when under
attack unless they know exactly what they're shooting at.  If they didn't
see the flashes from the attack, don't shoot.  We can't afford it."

Nobody disagreed with this statement of course - it only made sense - but
everyone knew that it was a decree that was going to be very difficult to
enforce.  Telling soldiers - especially conscripts who did not particularly
believe in what they were doing - not to shoot when they were being attacked
was akin to telling them not to breathe.

"And finally," Bracken said, "when we ARE attacked, we need to react faster
in pursuit of the attackers.  If we can kill one of these squads before they
can get away, I believe we will go a long way towards ending this thing.
Even better would be the capture or destruction of that helicopter - capture
being preferable of course.  So this is what we're going to do.  When the
attacks come, those soldiers that are immediately in the fire zone need to
hit the ground and return fire.  Everyone else needs to stay on their
fucking feet and move as quickly as possible towards the enemy position to
surround it.  If your platoon is to the rear of the attack, you fucking run
your men there.  And I mean RUN.  Run them as fast as you can and get around
on the flanks of these fuckers.  They're hitting us from two hundred yards
or so.  If we move fast enough, we can catch them.  Is everyone clear on
this?"

Everyone was clear.

"All right," Bracken said.  "Brief your men and we'll move out in twenty
minutes.  Colby, Covington, your platoons will be on the points of both
columns."


+++++


Michelle's team, slated for first attack this morning, had been atop of
their hill for well over two hours now and still there was no sign of the
approaching enemy.  Part of that long delay was that they had been placed a
little further south of the enemy than had been standard the previous day.
The reason for this was so that they could plant a few of Steve Kensington's
mines around the base of the hill and atop it, both to slow down their
pursuers and to give them a little added surprise.  But still, the
Auburnites should have shown by now.  Had they been slowed down that much by
the previous day's attacks?  Or was something else in the works?  Michelle
didn't know and her lack of knowledge made her antsy.

The other members of her team - Leanette, Hector, and Doris Campbell - were
similarly antsy with the lack of the enemy's appearance.  To help ease this
nervousness, the four members of the team made idle chitchat - their voices
kept just loud enough to hear each other - about the way things had once
been in the world.

"Remember those stupid credit card offers?" Leanette asked with a smile, her
rifle slung over her knees as her muddied face peered around a large tree
trunk to the ground below.  "Introductory rate of 5.6 percent!  Credit line
of 5000 dollars!  They used to come in the mail every damn day."

"I remember them," Doris said, shaking her head a little.  "They got your
name from those supposedly private credit reporting agencies and mailed them
off to anyone who a good rating."

"Yeah," Michelle said, peering through her binoculars to the emptiness
below.  "And after the three month introductory rate, the interest went up
to freakin 21 percent."

"That's the truth," Leanette said.  "I got into so much trouble with those
things.  I did all the finances at home and I had like six of those things
that were maxed out.  Here I was, the wife of a man who made 80 thousand a
year and I had us more than thirty thousand dollars into debt that he didn't
even know we had.  Every month I would have to shuffle everything around
just to meet the minimum payments and it was getting so that the utility
bills and the house payments were getting paid late just to cover it.  I was
a basket case worrying about when John was going to find out about it."

"I wouldn't know about any of that," Hector, the former landscaper, said.
"If I cleared a thousand dollars a month it was a good month.  My name never
seemed to get on any of those mailing lists."

"See Hecky," Leanette, one of his wives, pointed out.  "You don't know how
lucky you were.  It was hell being upper class.  Absolute hell."

"I know," he told her.  "You were late paying ME more than once, weren't
you?  Apparently the hired help was low on your list of priorities, right?"

"Sorry babe," she said.  "You did do a fabulous job of trimming my bushes
though.  Still do in fact."

Everyone had a laugh at this.

"It's funny how important all of that was back then," Doris said.  "Money I
mean.  How much you got, how much you would get next year, whether or not
you'd be able to afford that new Mercedes so that the neighbors would know
that you still had it.  All of that just went right down the toilet when
that comet came in."

"Hopefully for good," Michelle said.  "Things have been reduced to a much
more basic need now; the need to survive.  Now survival doesn't mean keeping
the bank account in the black and the kids dressed in the right clothes so
that people won't talk.  Now it means sniping at invading fascists who are
trying to enslave us.  All of this in just a few short months."

"Who would've thought," Leanette said wistfully.  "Someday, if we live
through this, we'll tell our children that we used to be able to pick up the
telephone and have a pizza at our house in thirty minutes and that we used
to worry about things like the rise and fall of the NASDAQ and how it would
affect our retirement account.  They won't have any idea what we're talking
about.  They'll be worried about whether the next year's crop is going to
feed everyone, whether or not the glacier forming on the mountain is going
to crush us, whether or not our gene pool is wide enough to continue the
species."

"Like you said," Hector said, "we're down to basic survival now.  In a way,
maybe it's for the best for this fucked up species.  You ever think of
that?"

Before anyone had a chance to respond to this thought, Michelle spotted the
first of the Auburnites coming into view to the northeast.  "Troops coming
into view," she said calmly, though with unmistakable command in her voice.
"Everyone get ready."

Everyone immediately dropped the subject at hand and picked up their
weapons.  Rifles were trained out over the terrain and eyes peered into
scopes as more and more men came into view.  It was immediately recognized
that something was different this morning.

"They're all spread out," Michelle said, seeing that the tiny figures were
stretching all the way across her field of view from left to right instead
of marching in a loose line.  "It looks like they've learned a few things."

"Michelle," Leanette, who was on the far left side of the group, suddenly
spoke up.  "They're stretched all the way over to the far ring of hills."

She looked that way, seeing that Leanette was correct.  Instead of merely
marching in the relatively flat and featureless corridor along the edge of
the mudfall, there were now well over a hundred troops moving over the
hilly, rough ground to the west as well.  These men also were spread
considerably out as they marched, with no two men closer than twenty feet of
each other.  "Oh shit," she said, feeling a worm of dread working into her.
"If they keep coming at us this way, half of them are gonna be on our left
flank when they get into range."

"Which is probably why they're doing it," Hector said, a trace of fear in
his voice.  "They're trying to surround the hills that we've been attacking
from."

"They're heading right towards Brett as well," Doris said.  "Michelle, what
do we do?"

"We need to get Brett and Jason the hell out of there," Michelle said.  She
put down her binoculars and picked up her radio.

"But what about us?" Leanette asked.

"We hunker down," she said.  "This is just one hill out of hundreds.
They'll have no reason to climb it to check it out unless we give them one.
We stay put until they pass us."

Everyone looked at each other nervously at these words.  While the militia
was passing below, they would be completely cut off from support or
extraction.  If they were discovered up there on the hill, they would be
easy fodder.

"Hatchling two to mother bird," Michelle said into the radio.  "Do you
copy?"

"Mother bird here," came Jason's rather tired sounding voice.  "Go ahead
hatchling two."

"Wolves are in view," she said.  "They're spread out widely and they're
going to pass on both sides of us.  We're not going to feed them.  We're
going to hibernate instead."

There was an extended pause and then Brett's voice came on the radio.  "I
copy that hatchling," he said.  "Do you need emergency extraction?"

"Negative," Michelle said, unfolding her map.  "You wouldn't get to us in
time.  We'll be all right.  Their path will take them right to your nest
though.  You need to unfold your wings and go find another nest."  She put
her finger on a ring of hills to the far west.  "I would suggest going west
of the area in grid B-5, that's Bravo-five.  That will put you well west of
their position.  You can circle around from the north to pick us up after
they pass."

"Copy that," Brett, who was undoubtedly looking at a copy of the same map,
told her.  "Hatchling one is located at grid Delta-5.  Are they in the path
of the advance as well?"

Michelle consulted her map, tracing her dirty fingernail over the reference
grids and quickly locating the small collection of hills where Chrissie and
her team had been dropped.  "Yes," she said into the radio.  "If they stick
to the same manner of marching, they'll pass on both sides of that grid as
well.  You'd better get them out of there."

"Unfolding the wings now," Brett said.  "Can you give me an alternate drop
point for them?"

Michelle took a deep breath, not really wanting to make such an important
and potentially life-threatening decision on her own.  That was Brett's job
goddammit!  But she was the one looking at the troops right now, not him,
and she was the one in the best position to estimate their advance.  She
continued to run her finger over the map for a moment, taking several
glances down at the slowly approaching soldiers and comparing the terrain
with the map.   She keyed up her radio.  "They seem to be staying east of
the edge of the Charlie grid on the map.  If you put them on a hill
somewhere near B-5 and can find a LZ west of there, they should be able to
feed some of them in another hour or so.  But have them keep a sharp
lookout."

"Copy that," Brett said, his voice clearer now and the distinctive hum of
the engine noise now in the background.  "We're taking off now.  Keep
hunkered down until they pass and I'll pick you up just to the north of your
location.  Keep yourselves hidden and let me know if there's trouble."

"Will do mother bird," Michelle said evenly, knowing of course, that if
there was trouble, there would be nothing Brett or Jason would be able to do
about it.


+++++


It took the Auburnites more than fifteen minutes to pass their location once
they got close enough for detection to be a serious worry.  They moved
slowly, carefully, their weapons out in front of them at the ready, their
eyes searching the hills around them for signs of attack.  Each step they
took was a cautious one, the steps of soldiers in enemy territory - a sharp
contrast from the carefree gait of the previous day.

Atop of the hill Michelle and her team were flat on their bellies in the
mud, pine needles pulled over the top of them for camouflage, their faces
thoroughly covered in mud.  They kept their weapons flat against the ground
as well, although in easy reach in case a last stand became necessary.  At
Michelle's direction they lay facing outward in four different directions,
their feet forming the center of a wheel.  They watched anxiously as man
after man on both sides went by the bottom of their hill on their march.
Many of them looked upward towards the hidden squad, their eyes searching
for danger, many of them probably seeing the brown lumps that looked like
just another collection of mud in the trees without recognizing that it was
four people in hiding.

As they went by, Michelle had a very nasty thought.  The mines that they had
laid at the base of the hill!  What if one of the Auburnites decided to
cross from one side of the march to the other at that particular point and
blundered across the trap?  True, it would disable the soldier in question,
but it would also alert the other soldiers that there was something about
this particular hill that maybe needed a closer look.  Michelle kept this
thought to herself - although Hector and Leanette both had it independently
themselves - and simply kept watch on her sector.  No soldiers decided to
cross over.  No one went anywhere near where their mines had been set.

Finally, at long last, the last groups of widely spread Auburnites marched
by.  They checked their rear continuously, obviously fearful of an attack
from behind, but they continued on, eventually, thankfully, moving off to
the south and the tip of the mudfall three miles beyond.

"Christ Almighty," Michelle breathed when the last of them were more than
two hundred yards away.  "I don't ever want to go through that again."

"You ain't shittin'," Hector said, rolling up a bit and twisting around so
he could continue to keep an eye out on the retreating figures.

"Let's keep ourselves down," Michelle told everyone.  "They're still way too
close for comfort.  Leanette, you keep an eye out to the north, just in case
they have a rear-guard back there that we don't know about."

"Right," she said, helping herself to Michelle's binoculars and taking up
position.  She began to scan the area to the north of them.

Michelle pulled out her radio, which she had switched off when the
Auburnites had come close to prevent an unexpected transmission from giving
them away, and switched it back on.  She keyed up.  "Mother bird, this is
hatchling two.  Are you out there?"

Jason's voice was full of obvious relief to hear her voice.  "We're here
hatchling two.  What's your situation?"

"Wolves have passed by us without getting a sniff of us.  We're ready to
head on out."

"We're in the air right now, five minutes past dropping off hatchling one at
their new nest.  We're currently hanging around grid Bravo 4, maybe three
minutes from your location.  Give us a nest and we'll be there."

She unfolded her map and looked at it for a moment, quickly deciding upon
the base of a hill that was about a quarter of a mile to the north of them.
She gave Jason the coordinates and had them confirmed back to her.  Just as
everything was set, she had a sudden thought.  Why should this entire
mission be for nothing?  "Stand by for a second mother bird," she said
slowly.  She turned to her squad.  "How we looking?"

"They're still moving away," Hector, who was watching the backs of the
Auburnites, reported.

"How about to the north?" she then asked Leanette.

"Empty," she reported.  "If they have a rear-guard, they're keeping it WAY
to the rear."

Michelle looked out at the wave of troops to her south for a moment.  "How
far away do you think the closest of them are now?" she asked Hector, who
was perhaps the best of them at estimating distance.

He shrugged.  "Maybe a little more than three hundred yards.  Far enough
that they shouldn't be a bother to us."

"But close enough so that we could still be a bother to them?" she asked.

Three faces turned to her, their eyes wide.

"You're the riflemen," she challenged.  "You think you can hit moving
targets at more than 300?"

Two of them could, aided mostly by lots of shooting practice prior to
deployment and the almost complete lack of wind to throw the bullet off
course.  They made some adjustments to their scopes and sighted in on the
backs of three of the soldiers.  While they drew beads on their targets,
Michelle updated Brett and Jason as to what they were doing.  Finally, after
assuring each other that they were ready, they counted to three and squeezed
their triggers.  Leanette's shot passed within six inches of her target, who
happened to be none other than Lieutenant Roberts, who was in charge of the
reserve platoon.  At nearly the same instant that Roberts heard something go
whizzing by him, Hector's bullet smashed into the back of Sergeant Lyon's
head, carrying a good portion of his brain out through his face.  He dropped
like a rock, never having known what hit him.  Even as he was in mid-fall,
Doris' bullet performed perhaps the most dramatic feat.  Still traveling
considerably faster than the speed of sound, it entered the backpack of
Private Hensen just below his sleeping bag.  It burrowed through a box of
5.56 millimeter ammunition, exploding the gunpowder in several of the shells
before burying itself into his right kidney.  To those watching it appeared
as if a small bomb had suddenly detonated in Hensen's backpack.  He
staggered forward three more steps before falling screaming to the ground.

Those in the rear of the militia reacted quickly, throwing themselves down
and training their weapons to the rear.  Since no one had happened to be
looking back at the moment the shots had been fired, no one knew where the
attack had come from (which did not prevent five of them from blindly
returning fire anyway).  Michelle deliberately gave away their location by
firing an extended burst with her M-16 at the prone soldiers.  She WANTED
them to know what hill the fire had come from and though none of her bullets
hit anyone, the muzzleflashes from her shots served this purpose.

"Let's go," she said, scrambling for the far side of the hill just as the
return fire started to roll in.

They quickly put the hill between themselves and the Auburnites and began to
run north, towards their pickup point.  A quick circle around the next hill
and there was the helicopter, idling on the ground, the doors open.  They
climbed in, shut the doors, and a minute later they were airborne and out of
the area.

Five minutes later the entire reserve platoon of the Placer County Militia
approached the hill, weapons out and ready.  Lieutenant Roberts knew that
the attackers were long gone but he had been ordered by Bracken to check the
hill anyway, to see if there was any wounded or dead.  One by one his troops
fanned out over the base and finally, one squad began to ascend it.
Roberts, who would be responsible for giving report on what was found, stuck
to the rear and then, once they were half-way up, started following them
while the rest of the platoon fanned out towards the front.

He walked over the same ground that his men had just trod upon but somehow
he managed to step in one place where no one else's foot had happened to
come down.  Without warning, something exploded beneath him with a sharp
crack and a bright flash of light.  It felt like someone wearing steel-toed
boots had kicked him harshly in the balls.  He felt an intense burning in
his crotch and in the inner portions of both legs.  He looked down and saw
that his entire lower body was dripping blood onto the muddy ground.  His
pants had been shredded in the crotch and he could see muscle and fat tissue
hanging by pieces of tendon and shredded veins.  While the men around him
dove to the ground at the sudden explosion, he gasped in shock as the pain
intensified.  He fell forward, his hands grasping at the bloody remains of
his reproductive organs and wished to lose consciousness.  Unfortunately,
until he was "put out of his misery" five minutes later by his first
sergeant, that did not happen.


+++++


"It's some sort of homemade mine sir," Sergeant Costigan, the new leader by
default of the reserve platoon, told Bracken when he met with him twenty
minutes later.  "It was buried just under the mud in a small hole in the
ground.  When Lieutenant Roberts stepped on it... well..."

Bracken looked at the remains of the mine that had killed his second most
senior officer.  The shotgun shell that had been fired by the mousetrap was
still wedged into the hole, empty of the powder, wadding, and birdshot
pellets.  The force of the detonation had cracked the piece of lumber quite
badly but, as evidenced by the success the weapon had had, that hadn't
really detracted from the effectiveness much.  He threw the device down,
reluctant respect for the ingenuity of those Garden Hill people worming into
his brain.  "Clever," he said.  "We're dealing with some very devious minds
here Costigan, wouldn't you agree?"

"It would seem so sir," he said, still shuddering at the image of Roberts'
shredded private parts.  It had actually been a relief to end his suffering,
to silence his screaming with a bullet to the head.

"What effect did witnessing this have on your men?"

"They're rather shaken," Costigan said, giving a rather broad
understatement.  "It would've been better if that thing would've just killed
him outright.  Seeing what it did to him... well... it was not very pretty
sir."

"No, I don't imagine it was," Bracken sighed.  "And you say there was no way
of detecting the presence of this thing before he stepped on it?"

"It left a hole in the ground after it went off," Costigan said doubtfully,
"but no one saw it before that of course.  I don't know sir.  Maybe if we
knew to look for things like that, we'd be able to find them.  I just don't
know."

"We're going to have to keep our eyes out for more of these little Garden
Hill surprises," Bracken said.  "If they planted one, they'll plant others."


+++++



The militia continued its march around the first of the mudfalls, keeping
themselves spread out and straddling the row of hills from which the
previous day's attacks had come.  The safety that this tactic gave them
lasted only as long as it took for Brett and his strike groups to recognize
and adapt to it.  Here came the advantages of mobility that the helicopter
offered.  No matter where or how the militia marched, there was always a
place to attack them from and it was only a simple matter of predicting
their advance and moving a team to a spot where they could get away safely.
The mountains were full of such places.

Chrissie's squad hit the middle of the advancing militia shortly after 11:00
AM, firing from a well-protected hill to the west of them - the same hill
that Michelle had suggested they occupy.  Two soldiers were killed outright
by the initial shots and one was badly wounded.  Chrissie's automatic fire
with the M-16 was not as effective as it had been the previous day - the
Auburnites had learned quickly to throw themselves down when people started
to drop - but she still managed to inflict one more death and one more
serious injury before her clip ran out and her squad fled their ambush site.

The militia platoon tasked with examining the site of the ambush was wary of
the mines that they now knew their enemy to possess.  They stepped gingerly
around, their eyes searching for depressions in the mud or other signs of
the devices.  They saw no such thing.  Even so, Corporal Janders' left foot
managed to find one of the devices the hard way.  Though his crotch was
spared much of the brunt of the shotgun shell blast it was only because the
inside of his left calf and thigh absorbed most of the pellets.  Though his
favorite appendage was saved from too much harm, his life was nonetheless
sacrificed because his left leg was now a bloody mess of torn flesh and
shredded muscle.  Despite his begs and pleas that he could walk, just give
him a chance, he was shot in the head by Lieutenant Powers and, after his
weapons, ammo, and food were stripped from him, left to rot there.

The next ambush took place a little more than two hours later.  Michelle's
squad was able to kill three and wound one with the initial attack.  Though
the militia rushed at them at top speed, as per Bracken's orders, they could
not catch anything but another glimpse of the helicopter departing to the
south of them.  This time Bracken did not allow a platoon to approach the
hill from which the attack had come.  He wanted to waste no further men to
mine warfare and he suspected that they would not have obeyed the order to
walk there anyway.

Before the sun set that night, bringing darkness to the land, two more
ambushes occurred, costing them five more lives.  With each attack Bracken
tried to shift formations and course of travel but they still happened with
frightening unexpectedness from a direction that no one had happened to be
looking in.  Each time his troops gave pursuit and each time they were able
to do no more than catch a glimpse of the retreating helicopter.

"It's like we're being attacked by fucking ghosts!" one sergeant, angry and
frustrated and scared, proclaimed as he stood over the dead bodies of two of
his men.  "How the hell can we fight back against this?"

"We'll get them," Bracken soothed as best he could.  "They'll slip up and
we'll get them.  This can't go on forever."

His words sounded like a lie, even to himself.

The militia bedded down at 8:00 PM that night, knowing that the nightmare
attacks out of the darkness would surely commence at some point.  They
spread themselves out widely, over an area of more than a hundred acres,
with no man putting himself any closer than thirty feet from another man.
Twice the usual number of guards were posted around the perimeter and in the
middle of the formation, all of them equipped with automatic weapons and
powerful flashlights.  They braced themselves for attack and they were not
disappointed.

The first hit came shortly before 10:00 AM, from the north of them.  There
was no warning beforehand, no sound of a helicopter engine, nothing.
Suddenly tracers were slamming down into the ground, moving from one
sleeping bagged figure to the next with devastating accuracy.  The attack
lasted less than five seconds, just long enough for the guards to begin
returning fire.  Entire clips of ammunition were blasted into the dark sky
in the general direction that the tracers had come from, but with no aiming
point and no visual reference, none of them came within twenty yards of the
helicopter.  Just as the guards were reloading and starting to take count of
the wounded, more tracers slammed in, this time from the northwest.  The
guards themselves were now the targets and two of them were mowed down by
lightning bursts of 5.56 millimeter shells.  And again, before an accurate
defense could be initiated, the attacker disappeared.

Follow up attacks took place at 12:30 AM and at 3:00 AM, each of them
killing an average of two soldiers per firing run.  It wasn't a lot, but it
was enough to keep the militia awake and trembling, to keep most of them on
edge and scared.  By the next morning the exhaustion that resulted would
start to affect judgment.

And little did the militia know that back in the town they had left behind,
other events were taking place that would have a profound effect on their
future.

+++++


Lieutenant Livingston was currently second-in-command of all the troops
remaining in the Auburn township - second only to Barnes himself.  He was a
long-standing veteran of the militia, his service in it stretching
considerably back to before the fall of the comet itself.  He had personally
led the assault on the town of Colfax and Grass Valley.  He had once served
in the United States Army as a military policeman.

At 1:45 AM, while the rest of the militia was lying awake some fifteen miles
to the southeast, trembling in fear of another air attack, he was sound
asleep and snoring in his bedroom, Mindy, the favorite of his three wives,
sleeping soundly beside him.  Mindy was naked, as was Livingston himself -
they had engaged in a lengthy session of sexual congress before retiring
four hours before.  Mindy had no idea what was about to occur - she was not
one of Jessica's inner circle.  Livingston certainly had no idea either.

The door had been left open as they slept but neither heard the stealthy
footsteps of Madeline, the junior of the three wives, and Kendall, the
senior of them, as they crept out of the bedroom down the hall and made
their way down to the kitchen.

"Are you sure," Kendall, who had never been more scared in all her life,
asked her companion quietly, "that the OTHER women are going to go through
with this too?  If they don't, we're going to be burned at the stake in the
morning."

"We're going through with it, aren't we?" Madeline, or Maddie, as she was
known, asked with cold logic.  "The others will do it too."

"But if they don't?" Kendall asked.  "What happens then?"

"Then all is lost.  It's a chance we'll have to take.  To tell you the
truth, it'll be worth it in any case.  Now let's get it done."

Kendall offered no further protests.  Slowly, carefully, Maddie opened a
kitchen drawer and removed a large butcher knife of the sort that was
usually used for chopping very large cuts of meat.  It was a knife that she
had spent a good portion of the previous day rubbing obsessively with a wet
stone and it was now nearly sharp enough to shave with.  She hefted it,
testing its weight for a moment and liking the way it felt in her hands.
"Let's do it," she said, holding it down near her side.  She opened another
drawer and pulled out a two-cell flashlight.  She handed this to Kendall,
who took it blankly, keeping it turned off.  Without waiting to see if her
companion would follow, she began tiptoeing towards the stairs.

Kendall, feeling her body surging with nervous adrenaline, feeling her very
hands trembling, started after her.  The dice had been thrown.

They made their way upstairs and then down the hallway until they were
standing outside the darkened master bedroom.  They could see nothing but
they could hear Livingston snoring lightly and both knew the interior of the
bedroom intimately.  They made their way to the side of the bed and paused.

They didn't talk, didn't make a sound until Maddie, the knife in her left
hand, gripping it by the handle, said: "do it."

Neither Livingston nor Mindy reacted to the voice.  Both however, reacted
when the flashlight was suddenly switched on, its beam spearing Livingston's
head with illumination.  Their eyes flew open at the sudden barrage of light
but neither had any time to react to what happened next.  Livingstone was
lying on his back, the covers pulled up to his shoulders, his arms beneath
them.  While he blinked in confusion and his sleep-muddled brain tried to
figure out just what the hell was going on, Maddie reached forward with her
right hand and grabbed him by the hair on the top of his head.  With a sharp
jerk, she yanked his head backward, exposing his neck.  While he tried to
free his hands from beneath the covers to fight back at this sudden attack,
Maddie chopped downward with the butcher knife, it's edge slamming into his
throat, just below the bulge of his Adam's apple.  With a vicious, powerful
stroke, she pulled it across, slicing deeply into his neck, severing his
trachea as neatly as she would have the neck of a chicken.  Blood began to
spray into the air, both from the gaping wound and from a partially severed
right carotid artery.  She finished her swipe and then stepped backward, out
of reach, her knife blade now red and dripping.

Livingston sat up in bed, his eyes wide in disbelief and fear, his hands
abandoning their attempt at defense and going to the wound on his neck.  He
tried to scream but no sound came out but a pitiful, dying gurgle.  He tried
to inhale and found it impossible.  His eyes grew wider, his hands tightened
around his throat, trying desperately to repair the irreparable damage.

"There, you motherfucker," Maddie spat, her eyes blazing.  "There's the
motherfucking God's law for your ass!"

"Maddie!" Mindy suddenly screamed, her face a terror as she saw the second
mouth that had been added to her husband, as she saw the blood spurting out
onto the linen.  "What are you doing?"

"I'm killing this piece of shit," she said.  "Now shut the fuck up unless
you want some of it too."

"But..."

"Shut up!" Maddie barked.  "You just sit there and don't say a fucking
thing!"

While Mindy trembled in place, uncomprehending at what was taking place,
Maddie and Kendall watched Livingston's desperate struggle on the bed.  He
flopped up and down, raising and lowering his head, his eyes growing wider
and wider as he slowly suffocated to death.  The only sound was the banging
of his feet on the bed and the pathetic gurgling and whistling of his
severed windpipe.  Shortly he began to seize, his body flopping up and down
as his oxygen starved brain began to send misfired signals down his spinal
column.  In less than three minutes, it was over.  Either the hypoxia or the
blood loss - which was considerable - got the better of him.  He gave one
last tremendous flop and then he lie still, his body in the middle of the
blood-soaked mattress.

"My god," Mindy cried, her hands at her face, her own eyes bugging out in
disbelief.  "What have you done!  They'll kill you!  They'll kill all of
us!"

"Keep your voice down," Maddie said, wiping her knife on a relatively clean
part of the mattress.

"But you KILLED him!  You murdered him!"

"Yes we did," she said.  "And it felt good too.  I almost came in my panties
watching that fuckhead flopping around.  I only wish it could've taken
longer."

"Maddie, Kendall, what are you doing?  Why did you do this?"

"Shhh," Kendall said, stepping forward, her trembling hand still holding the
flashlight.  "We're not the only ones."

"Whu... whu... what?"

"This is happening all over town," Kendall told her.  "At least we hope it
is."

"All over town?" she asked, trying to grasp what she was being told.

"It's a revolution," Maddie said.  "Soon, this entire town will be in our
hands."

"Our hands?" Mindy asked, still unable to keep from staring at the dead body
of her former husband.

"The women's hands," Maddie clarified.  "And it's about goddamn time.  Now
the question you have to ask yourself Mindy, is are you with us or are you
with the men?  You need to decide right here, right now."  She left unsaid
just what would happen if Mindy declared that she was against.  Mindy, one
of the tattletale variety in the past, had been left out of the conspiracy
for this reason.  But now it was all or nothing.  Maddie was fully prepared
to dispatch her in a way very similar to Livingston's own murder if she did
not agree to go along.

Mindy continued to stare at the corpse of the man who had raped her on a
nearly nightly basis, who had put himself into her ass, who had beaten her,
slapped her, kicked her, who had sprayed his semen all over her body and
face.  She was certainly not upset at the fact of his death in and of
itself, only of the possible ramifications of it.  Could what Maddie was
saying possibly be true?

"Well?" Maddie said, her hand gripping the knife a little tighter.

"I'm with you," Mindy said.  "We'll probably all die, but I'm with you."


+++++


As Maddie had said and as Kendall had hoped, the same scenario was being
repeated all over town, in every house where a man lay sleeping.  In every
case at least one women was a firm member of Jessica's clan; in most, two of
three or four wives were in on it; and in one case, ALL of the three wives
were in.  Not every attack went as smoothly or as silently as the attack
upon Livingston had, nor did every recruitment of the wives NOT in on the
plan go as easily.

In Sergeant Preston's house, the good sergeant was awakened by the sound of
his wife entering the bedroom to perform the deed.  This forced her to move
a little quicker, a little more frantically than she'd planned and Preston
managed to get his hand on her wrist just as the knife came whistling in.
Fortunately the wife that had been lying next to him was in on the scheme
and was able to temporarily disable him - by means of grabbing his testicles
and squeezing as hard as she could - long enough for her to break free and
drive the knife into his chest.  She was then forced - while the other wife
held her hand over his mouth to keep him from crying out - to worm and
squirm the blade back and forth until enough blood vessels and vital organs
were ruptured to cause unconsciousness secondary to blood loss.

In Sergeant Bristle's house, surprise was achieved but the initial knife
thrust was not deep enough to either sever the trachea or rip open a carotid
artery.  Bristle screamed and fought for the better part of ten seconds
before the tip of the sharpened knife was finally thrust directly into his
Adam's apple hard enough to lodge into the cervical spine behind it.

In Corporal Patton's house, the assassination went off without a hitch but
the entire rebellion was nearly exposed when Cindy, the senior wife, who was
NOT in on the plot, tried to run screaming into the night to find the
roaming interior patrol and alert them.  Cindy was stopped at the door by
having the knife driven into her shoulder blades and then she was choked to
death in the entryway.

In all however, despite a few close calls, every woman that had agreed to
perform their deadly task acted upon it and every man targeted, one way or
another, ended up dead.  In the space of fifteen minutes, 30 of the
remaining 45 soldiers (this count did not include Barnes himself) were dead
along with three wives that elected not to participate in the uprising.  It
pained the conspirators to have to kill their fellow women - in no case did
they enjoy doing it - but they all did it without hesitation.

Though a few screams and bangs and frantic struggles managed to sound
outside the walls of their houses, the five man patrol of men that was
wandering through the night streets, searching for potential escapees or
infiltraters, were never close enough to hear them.  They continued on their
rounds, unaware that their minority status in town had just become
considerably more minor.


+++++


Many of the women that had participated in the killings simply held in
place, awaiting the next stage of the developments.  Where it was possible,
one representative from each household in which a sleeping man had been
dispatched made their way to the rallying point just adjacent to the high
school building.  This only occurred in the households where more than one
wife had been in on the plot from the beginning.  In those houses where a
single wife had done the deed, that wife stayed put in order to keep an eye
on the recently recruited co-wives.

In other houses, houses where the men were off on the Garden Hill mission
but the women were part of Jessica's plot, those women slipped out and made
their way to the rallying point as well.  These women - sixty of them had
been chosen to participate in the next phase - came armed with knives and
clubs but no firearms.  As per Barnes' long-standing order, no firearms were
stored in houses.  All of them were either in storage in the high school
building or with the guards on post.

The women made their way carefully, stealthily through the darkened streets,
keeping well clear of the roving patrol for the time being.  This was easy
to do since the patrol used flashlights to illuminate their path.  Whenever
the bobbing of lights was seen in the distance, or the clanking of the
automatic weapons that they carried was heard, the woman would simply hunker
down somewhere and wait for them to pass or move away.  By 3:00 AM, the
agreed upon time for rally, all sixty women involved had checked in with
Jessica, who had been waiting anxiously in place since shortly after 2:00.

Jessica, though the tacit leader of the revolt and the inspiration behind
it, was not the operational leader.  She had learned enough about her own
shortcomings to delegate that to others who were more knowledgeable about
fighting and strategy.  Five of the women in her phase two group had served
in the military in their pre-comet lives.  Though, being women, none of them
had been combat soldiers, all had gone through basic training just like the
men had.  The fact that Jessica had allowed this portion of the plot to be
planned by and placed in the hands of others was perhaps a testament to how
badly she had been stung by her Garden Hill experiences.  She knew that
there was but one chance for this and one chance only.

As it happened, Madeline was the designated leader of the operational
portions.  She had served two terms in the army rising to the rank of
sergeant in charge of a supply loading operation.  Still she had qualified
as expert with her weapon consistently in training and had taken many of the
advanced leadership classes offered to her.

"Okay," Jessica whispered to her after roll call had been taken.  "We have
confirmation that 23 of the 30 are dead.  Of the other seven, we can
probably assume that most, if not all of them, are dead as well.  No alarm
has been raised and the patrol has been spotted circling normally around
town."

Maddie nodded, still gripping the knife she had used to kill Livingston
with.  "I don't like to assume things," she said.  "But in this case, I
guess we don't really have a choice.  Is Carla here?"

"She's here and ready for action," Jessica said.  "Shall we move in?"

"Let's do it," Maddie agreed.  "Put Carla out in front and the rest of us
will hang just outside the arc of the light."


+++++


Sergeants Schuyler and Dewey were standing guard in front of the main
entrance to the high school.  They had been on shift since 6:00 PM the
previous evening and were not due to be relieved until 6:00 AM.  The twelve
hour guard shifts were something new - a result of the majority of the men
being away on the Garden Hill mission.  Both of the senior sergeants, aside
from feeling extreme fatigue and boredom, thought it beneath them to be
assigned to such a lowly post for so many straight hours.  But both knew
better than to nod off or do anything but stand at attention before the
door.  Barnes was known to make unannounced visits to the posts,
particularly this one since he slept right upstairs.  The penalty for being
inattentive on duty was three days of house arrest and reduced rations.  The
penalty for sleeping on duty was death by hanging.

"Three more fucking hours," Schuyler groaned, looking at his watch.  "I
can't take it.  I'm going batshit here."

"No shit," Dewey agreed.  "I'd almost rather be on the march than pulling
guard duty."  He considered for a moment.  "Almost."

"You got any more smokes?" Schuyler wanted to know.  "I ran out an hour
ago."

"It ain't my fuckin fault you smoked up your rations.  Don't even think
you're getting any of mine."

"Hey fuck you," Schuyler said angrily.  "Don't be so stingy.  Don't you
remember when..." He stopped as Dewey suddenly hit him on the shoulder and
leveled his rifle foreword.  "What?  What is it?"

"Who goes there?" Dewey said, his finger tightening on the trigger.  The
figure approaching out of the darkness was obviously female, and females
were forbidden from being out after 10:00 PM for any reason.  "Answer up
now!"

Schuyler leveled his own weapon and reached for the radio on his belt.  It
was tuned to the frequency of the guard posts and the interior patrol and
could summon them in a matter of seconds.  Barnes also monitored the
frequency when he was awake.

"Don't shoot!" a meek, feminine voice pleaded.  "It's me, Carla."

"Carla?" Schuyler said, recognizing the voice of his junior wife.  He
lowered his rifle a little.  "What the fuck are you doing out here?  You
know that's a beating offense!"

"I'm sorry," she said, "I had to."  She walked closer, her hands empty,
nothing the least bit suspicious looking about her.  She seemed genuinely
scared.

"You had to?  What the fuck for?" Schuyler demanded.  "Get your ass over
here and start making some sense right now!"

She walked over, coming fully into the cone of light that was cast by a
security spotlight mounted on the roof.  "It's Jan and Laura," she said,
seemingly near tears.  "They're... they're..."  She stopped, apparently too
emotional to go on.

"They're what?" Dewey, impatient said, staring at her.  "Tell us what the
fuck is going on or I'll beat you myself!"

"They're gone," she said.  "I woke up to go to the bathroom and they weren't
there!  I think they're trying to escape."

"Oh Jesus," Schuyler said, shaking his head.  Several of the militia members
had been afraid something like that would happen while the bulk of the
forces were gone.  The temptation to make a run for it would be just too
great.  He reached for his radio to alert the interior patrol, not knowing
that he had already fallen for the ruse that his wife had set for him.
Carla was simply a distraction, something to detract the attention of the
two guards during a critical minute.  That critical minute had passed.

Before he could get his hand on the radio, before either of the men could
swing their weapons upward or even comprehend what was going on, more than
fifty women suddenly rushed at them from just beyond the edge of the lighted
area.  They were on them in a second, knocking them flat to the ground.
Hands pinned their legs while other hands forcibly pulled their arms out to
the sides, slapping them to the cold cement.  Before either man could cry
out, still other hands put knives against their throats.

"Don't say a fuckin word, either of you," Carla, standing over the top of
them, her voice no longer meek and mild, ordered.

"That's right," said Jessica, coming up behind her.  "If so much as a squeak
passes those lips, your throat will be cut so fast you won't know what hit
you."

Both men looked up into the hostile sea of female faces in fear.  Both
wondered what the hell was going on here.  How could something like this
happen?  What were these women doing?  This was impossible!

It was more than possible as they both quickly figured out.  The women moved
quickly, rolling them over onto their stomachs and pulling their rifles free
of them.  Maddie and one of the other women with military experience were
given possession of the weapons.  Their sidearms were stripped next and
these were given to two other women, Jessica being one of them.  She held a
gun in her hand for the first time since she'd tried to kill Brett back in
Garden Hill.  Ironically, or perhaps not, it was the exact same type of
weapon.  Her hand shook a little and then she put it in her waistband,
making sure the safety was on.

"Get them inside," Jessica said.  "Search them thoroughly and then tie them
up.  Keep them under guard downstairs and kill them if they so much as
twitch."

"Gladly," Carla said, stepping up to Schuyler, who was being jerked to his
feet by four women.  She walked up to him and spat in his face.  "Just give
me a reason fuckface," she told him.  "I'd love to be the one to cut your
fuckin throat."


+++++


While Schuyler and Dewey were being tied and gagged and hauled off to a
downstairs storage area, Maddie and Janice, the other automatic weapon
bearer, took up position where the guards had been.  They were both wearing
bulky clothing that was quite similar to what had been worn by the two
guards.  They had taken possession of the guards' baseball caps and rain
slickers and had tucked their hair underneath.  They stood at attention, one
of the portable radios in their possession, and waited.  From a distance,
they looked exactly like Schuyler and Dewey.

Meanwhile Jessica was leading a group of five women up the stairs towards
the sleeping quarters of Barnes himself.  She had her gun out now and the
safety off.  Walking next to her, holding the other gun, was Alice, the
women who had been recently "donated" to Bracken to replace his lost wives.
They had flashlights but they kept them turned off, finding their way by
means of the ambient lighting leaking in from the spotlights outside.  Soon
they were outside the closed door.

"You ready?" Jessica whispered to her team.

They agreed that they were.

"Then let's do it."

Alice went first.  She opened the door and immediately reached for the light
switch on the wall - knowing where it was because she was the woman
responsible for cleaning this room.  She flicked it up and the overhead
fluorescents - powered by the generator outside - flared to life,
illuminating the former vice principal's office that had been converted to a
luxury bedroom.

Barnes was lying in a large oak bed with a canopy over the top of it.  Silk
sheets and a down comforter covered his body as well as the bodies of two of
his four wives (the other two wives were in a separate bedroom at the
moment - there wasn't room for ALL of them in the bed).  All three of them
blinked in confusion at the sudden change in lighting.  Barnes attempted to
sit up.

"Don't you fucking move asshole," Alice told him, leveling her gun at him.

The two wives both screamed at the sight of firearms being pointed at them.

"You two stay where you are," Jessica said.  "Nobody moves!"

"What the hell is the meaning of this?" Barnes said, glaring at them, as of
yet more outraged than scared.

"This is what's known as a hostile takeover," Alice said, stepping closer.
"If you move, you're dead."

"Are you out of your fucking minds?" Barnes asked toughly.  "You'll burn for
this!"

"Someone's gonna burn," Jessica said.  "But I don't think it's gonna be us."
She directed her gaze at the two wives.  "Get out of that bed.  Keep your
hands up in the air."

"What are you doing?" Tiffany, the buxom blonde that was Barnes' favorite
wife asked tearfully.  "You can't do this."

"We ARE doing this," Jessica told her.  "We'll have the entire town by
sunrise.  Now get out of the bed and lie down on the floor."

One by one the two women, both of whom were naked, were proned out on the
floor on either side of the bed.  Barnes watched all this without
expression, his eyes looking for any advantage that he could take.  He said
nothing.

"Now you Barnes," Jessica told him.  "Keep your hands up and come to the
foot of the bed.  I know you have a gun hidden in here somewhere, but don't
even think about going for it."

"You're making a very bad mistake," Barnes said, emerging naked from his
bed, his hands up, his wilted penis shrunken between his legs.

"It wouldn't be the first time," Jessica said.  "Now move."



+++++


Barnes was tied and gagged (still naked - his captures saw no need to allow
him to dress) and placed in the same room with Schuyler and Dewey.  Alice
and her pistol stood guard outside of the room with the assistance of two
other women.  They kept the portable radio that had been found in Barnes'
room with them to monitor any developments with the guard force.

Tiffany and Candice, the two naked wives, were allowed to put clothes on and
they were led to a separate storage room where they too were locked up and
guarded.  They would be dealt with later.

Meanwhile Jessica and the rest of the women made their way to the weapons
storage room on the bottom floor of the administrative building.  This room
had once been the teacher's cafeteria.  It had two entrances, both of which
had been installed with steel security doors to which Barnes had the only
key.  A quick search of his desk in the principal's office revealed the ring
to which it was attached.  Less than five minutes of trying different keys
in the lock was required before the mechanism clicked and the door swung
open.

Though most of the storage racks in the room were currently empty, not all
of them were.  The vast majority of the town's weapons were either out on
the march with the attack team or in the hands of the various guards in
town.  But of the weapons that WERE left in there, many of them were fully
automatic M-16s, AK-47, or other, more exotic varieties.  Barnes had held
these weapons in reserve in case of an attack on the town while the troops
were away.  In all, there were more than thirty available right here in the
room for the use and enjoyment by the rebellious women.  Nor was that all.
Though all of the semi-automatic weapons and most of the hunting rifles were
gone, there were still more than twenty shotguns and nearly a hundred
pistols.  The ammunition supply was also in pretty good shape.  Thanks to
reloading equipment and a dedicated team of loaders, nearly half of these
shelves were full of every needed variety.

"Get everyone who knows how to use a gun armed up," ordered Gail Haxton, one
of the other women with military experience.

As it happened, most of the women in the group of sixty knew how to shoot.
They were foothill and mountain women in their previous lives and had been
taught to shoot by their fathers, husbands, brothers, or boyfriends.  They
filed in one by one and armed themselves up, most of them taking the
automatic rifles (even though most had never fired one before), the rest
taking shotguns or the few remaining hunting rifles.  They found backpacks
and loaded up with extra ammunition.  They loaded shells into magazines and
internal chambers.  Everyone grabbed a pistol as well.

In addition to the weapons and the ammunition, there were fifteen of the
portable radios that the guards used and more than enough fresh batteries to
power them.  Gail distributed these as well, dividing her women into several
groups.

"Okay," Gail said, once everyone was armed, divided up, and a chain of
command was established.  "I think we're ready to rock."


+++++



Schuyler, the senior guard that had been on duty at the front of the high
school, had his gag removed by Alice and a pistol placed against the side of
his head.

"All right," she said, before he had a chance to say anything.  "This is the
deal.  At 4:00 AM and 5:00 AM, the interior guard positions and the
perimeter guards are all going to check in with you to make sure everything
is okay."

Schuyler's eyes widened a little as she told him this.  She had not been
asking it as a question, she had been stating it as a fact.  How the hell
had she known that?  Women were not supposed to know what the operating
procedures of the guard positions were.

"When they do," Alice continued, "you're going to answer that all is well.
Those will be your exact words - all is well - you will NOT say the trouble
phrase.  In case you forgot, that phrase is: everything is in order.  Do you
understand me?"

Schuyler actually gasped.  She knew the trouble phase as well!  How?  How
did they know so much?  Had the men really been that careless around these
women?  Had they?

"If you do not do exactly as I say and say the proper phrase in the proper
tone of voice, I will kill you.  Do not think for a moment that I don't have
it in me.  On the contrary, it would give me immense pleasure to do so.  If,
on the other hand, you do do as I say, you will live.  You will remain a
prisoner until the revolt is over with, but you will live.  Do you
understand?"

"You won't get away with this," Schuyler said.  "You CAN'T."

"I'm not interested in you predictions of our success," Alice told him.
"What I am interested in, is whether or not you understood what I said.
Answer me or I'll kill you right now and then have this conversation with
Dewey over there."

"I understand," he said immediately.

"And what will say when the routine check occurs?"

"All is well."

"Very good."  She smiled a little, borrowing a term that was popular among
the men of Auburn when talking to one of the "bitches".  "You're a smart
little piece.  Keep it up, and you'll go far around here.  Maybe we'll even
let you clean up the high school someday."


+++++


The 4:00 AM and the 5:00 AM radio checks went as they normally did.
Sergeant Poole, who was in charge of the interior patrol, called in at the
top of these hours and heard that all was well from all four of the manned
guard positions as well as the high school guards.  At 5:45 AM, he and his
troops were just a quarter mile from the high school, still without the
slightest idea that things had taken a drastic change in their town.

"Interior to admin," said Poole wearily into his radio.  "We're heading in."

There was a longer than usual pause, almost long enough that Poole was about
to retransmit his message, thinking that it hadn't been received.  But
finally, Schuyler's voice replied to him.  "10-4 interior.  All is well."

As the group of five headed towards their base of operations, Poole looked
at his men.  "Did Schuyler sound a little strange to you guys?" he asked.

"He always sounds strange to me," Corporal Winters said grumpily.

"Yeah," Sergeant Frank agreed, shifting his rifle on his back a little.
"He's been standing out there for twelve hours.  I'd sound strange too."

They continued their short walk, no one else mentioning the strange lilt to
Schuyler's voice.  He had given the proper code phrase after all.  What
could be wrong?

When they were within sight of the main entrance, close enough to see the
two figures that they presumed where Schuyler and Dewey standing in front, a
sudden noise to their right made all of them jump.  It was the sound of
footsteps, many of them, moving over the wet pavement from the deep shadows.
They swung their flashlights instinctively in that direction and illuminated
a group of ten women, all of them pointing assault weapons or shotguns at
them.  The men began to reach for their weapons as adrenaline flooded
through them.

"Don't do it," said Jessica, the bitch from Garden Hill.  She was in the
front of the line of women.  "If you try to bring those weapons down, you'll
be shot to pieces."

While they digested this piece of information, flashlights suddenly lit them
up from the other side, revealing yet another group of women armed with
guns.  And that was not all.  From behind them, another group lit them up.

"You're surrounded completely," Jessica told them.  "Now drop those weapons
to the ground and move away from them."

The five man group looked helplessly at the two guards in front of the high
school.  They were now trotting towards the scene of the ambush, flashlights
and weapons in their own hands.  The women surrounding them did not seem to
be paying any attention to this.  The reason why became clear a moment later
when they came closer.  They were not the guards at all but two more women
dressed to look like the guards.

"Put the guns down slowly," Jessica repeated.  "Don't reach for your radios
or anything else.  You do as we say, and you'll live."

Left without anything else to do - and all of them figuring that this was
some ill-planned rebellion that would quickly be quelled - they dropped
their weapons to the pavement.

"Now the sidearms," Maddie, coming close enough to take over the situation,
told them.  "Do it real carefully.  Believe me, we'd love to smoke some of
you.  We're just itching for a reason."

They dropped their sidearms as well.

"Now start walking towards the high school," Maddie ordered, keeping her
weapon trained on them.  "Walk slowly and don't make any sudden moves."

"You won't get away with this," Poole told her, repeating the most
often-heard sentiment muttered by the surviving men that day.

"We already have," Maddie told her.  "Now march."


+++++


Once the interior patrol was tied and gagged inside the storage room with
the rest of the surviving men, the only free people with penises were those
that were manning the external guard posts.  There were eight of them on
duty, spread throughout four different positions in teams of two - about
half of what was normal when the full militia was in town.  Each team was
equipped with a radio and each man was equipped with an automatic weapon.
In addition, considerable stocks of ammunition were stored at each post.
And the guards would be expecting their relief to arrive in less than ten
minutes.

"All right girls," Maddie, taking charge again, told her group of forty.
"You know the drill.  You're divided into four teams.  All of you have a
radio, right?"

The leaders of each group held the radio up for her perusal.

"Let's do it.  Remember, you need to be in position before six o'clock.  So
let's hurry, shall we?"

They hurried.  By 5:58 AM each guard position had a group of women in the
shadows below it.  Barnes had set up his guard posts well as far as keeping
people from attacking them from the outside went.  Each one was atop a hill
on the outskirts of the town (with the exception of the bridge position - it
had been moved into a building on the Auburn side of the canyon for the
duration of the march and the manpower shortage that had resulted).  But
Barnes had never counted on his positions coming under attack from the
inside.  As a result, the women were able to easily position themselves at
the main egress points for each place.

When 6:00 AM came and went without any sign of relief showing up, the guards
manning these positions began to get a little antsy.  They did not think
that a revolt had occurred in town of course, the very thought was beyond
absurd, but they did wonder what the hold-up was.  Each team was under the
impression that their position was the only one not relieved.  All had been
on duty for twelve hours and were more than ready to go home and get some
sleep.  Showing up late for guard duty was not a common occurrence in Auburn
since the penalty for such a thing was three days of house arrest.  None of
them however, considered leaving their posts.  The penalty for that was
hanging.

It was Sergeant Pillows at guard post number three, which guarded the west
side of town, that finally broke the silence.  He keyed up his radio.  "Post
three to admin," he said, fighting to keep annoyance out of his voice.
"We're still in position here.  Is there a holdup with our relief?"

There was no answer.  "Well what the fuck?" Pillows said.  He was about to
key up again when another voice came on the radio.  It was Sergeant
Strickland at post one, which guarded the east side of town and the entrance
maze.

"Post one to post three," he said, "we haven't been relieved either.  No
sign of them in fact."

That was when Pillows started to feel a little worm of dread in his stomach.
"10-4 post three," he said into the radio.  "Let's try and figure out what's
going on.  Admin, are you there?"

Nothing.

"Post one and post three," said another voice.  "This is post two.
Something must be up.  We haven't been relieved either."

"This is post four," said yet another voice.  "We're in the same boat out
here.  I think maybe there's a problem of some sort down there."

"You are correct gentlemen," a female voice, one that a few of the guards
monitoring the radios recognized as belonging to Maddie Livingston, said
rather cockily.  "Something IS up in the town."

Pillows and his partner looked at each other in disbelief for a moment.
"What the fuck?" Strickland said.  He keyed up the radio.  "Whoever the
bitch on our frequency is," he demanded, "identify yourself immediately.
And you'd better have a damn good reason."

"This is Madeline Crandall," Maddie said, using her previous name, the name
that had been banished with the comet and the Auburn way of life.  "I am
speaking on behalf of the women of this town.  We have taken control and you
are now our prisoners."

Pillows' jaw dropped, as did the jaw of the other seven men listening in.
"Now listen up," Pillows said after composing himself.  "I don't know what
kind of game you're playing down there, but you've already earned yourself a
severe beating from your husband for talking on the radio.  Now tell me what
you are doing down there."

"That piece of shit that used to rape me is dead," Maddie's voice replied
calmly.  "So is every other man that was off-duty last night.  We cut their
fucking throats in their beds and they're all rotting there now.  In
addition, we have taken Barnes, the interior patrol, and both of the admin
guards into custody.  You eight men are the only ones left."

"You did no such thing," Pillows said, refusing to believe it.

"Then how do you explain the lack of relief?" Maddie asked him.  "But that
is neither here nor there.  The reason I am talking to you all now is to
inform you that you have a group of women below each of your positions that
are armed with automatic weapons and the odd rifle.  You will drop your
weapons immediately and surrender to them or you will die."

Pillows stared at his radio for a long time, long enough so that someone
else picked up the thread of the conversation for him.

"You're out of your fucking mind," said Strickland.  "You'll hang for even
saying such a thing.  I don't know how you got your little bitch hands on a
radio or how you managed to keep our relief from showing up, but you'd
better get our relief out here within the next two minutes or you're gonna
burn."

"Perhaps," Maddie's voice said, "a little extra proof is needed.  Stand by
for that."

The radio link clicked off and then, a moment later, it clicked back on.
"This is Sergeant Schuyler," said a male voice, obviously strained, but
obviously Schuyler's.  "I'm inside of the high school building right now.
The women have seized the building and they are in possession of the weapons
in the supply room.  They have taken myself, Dewey, Barnes, and the entire
interior patrol into custody and we are currently tied up to chairs.  She
is..." his voice broke a little "is telling the truth."

"Holy shit," Pillows, listening said.  He keyed up his microphone.  "You
won't get away with this," he told Maddie.  "I would suggest you surrender
now before things go too far."

Maddie was laughing when the link opened from her end.  "Tough talk doesn't
work any more dickwad," she said.  "Now listen up, all of you on this
frequency.  We have you pinned down and covered.  You can stay up there if
you want, but eventually you're going to have to come down for food, aren't
you?  There aren't many provisions up there and we're prepared to stand
guard below you for as long as is necessary.  You can try to fight your way
down if you think you can take out our teams, but let me warn you, they're
well hidden and they're well-led.  Apparently many of you have forgotten
that women were allowed in the army as well and that most of us in the
foothills here knew how to shoot.  Don't force us to remind you.  Do the
smart thing and come down right now.  You'll be held prisoner until this
revolt is settled one way or the other."

"Give this up NOW!" Pillows warned them.  "Don't you know what's going to
happen when the militia returns from Garden Hill?  They'll massacre you!"

"That's for us to worry about, not you," Maddie told them.  "Now make up
your minds.  Are you coming down, or are you going to go the hard way?"



+++++

Two of the teams chose the easy way.  Post one and post four both dropped
their weapons into their bunkers and made their way down to the waiting
women, their hands high in the air.  All four of these men figured that the
militia would easily take the town back when they returned and that their
best chance for living to see that was to cooperate for now.  They were
taken into custody and quickly spirited off to the high school where they
joined their comrades under guard.

Post one elected to call what they thought was a bluff.  They began marching
down the hill, their weapons out in front of them, prepared to blow away any
bitch that dared fired upon them.  They were cut to pieces before they made
it halfway down, the women below waiting until they were just into view in
the darkness and then illuminating them with powerful battery-operated
flashlights.  The two men managed to fire a total of ten rounds back at
their attackers before they fell dead to the ground.  None of the women were
hit.

"What was that firing?" Pillows, at post three, demanded as the sound of
automatic weapons fire reached him.

"That was Law and Weatherly being blown to shit," Maddie's voice replied.
"Are you ready to go next Pillows?"

In the end, Pillows and his partner stayed up there until nearly one o'clock
in the afternoon.  By that time, the complete recruitment of all of the
remaining women in town was in full swing.  Finally, conceding defeat - at
least until the rest of the militia returned from Garden Hill - he formally
surrendered and was taken into custody along with his partner.

The town of Auburn was now completely in the hands of the women.


+++++



It was one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time,
particularly to sleep-deprived, adrenaline charged minds that were trying to
come to grips with a worsening military situation.  Stu was the one to
suggest it but Bracken, after hearing the proposal, quickly adapted it on an
experimental basis without stopping to completely examine the ramifications.

"Let's send a squad out in front of us," Stu told him at breakfast that
morning.  "We'll lighten them up by taking their packs away from them, arm
them up with five of the automatic weapons and five of the semi-autos, and
then have them try to ferret out these ambush teams before the main group
gets to them."

"Ferret them out?" Bracken, whose face was gaunt and worried, asked.  He was
living on less than two hours of broken sleep in the last forty-eight.

"Right," Stu said.  "They'll move faster than the rest of the group.  They
can circle around and up on some of those hills before we get there.
They'll be a scouting squad able to locate attack zones in advance of the
main group."

"A scouting squad," Bracken said, rolling those words around on his tongue.
He liked the sound of it.  With a minimum of discussion, such a squad was
quickly formed, equipped, and enlisted with their new mission.

Nor did the squad, which consisted of ten of the most experienced troops
below the rank of officer, pause to consider the wisdom of what they were
being ordered to do.  They knew it was marginally dangerous of course, but
then simply walking to their destination or sleeping in their sleeping bags
was dangerous these days.  They felt like they were DOING something to
strike back at the ghosts that had been tormenting them.  And they would be
armed with the very best weapons available.  The mission gave them a sense
of elitism, of special privilege.  The fact that they would be more than a
half a mile in front of the main group and the support that it offered just
didn't enter into their calculations.

And so it came to pass that ten of Bracken's best soldiers trotted off in
front at 7:00 AM, moving at a near jog, where they began traipsing up and
down and all around the hilly terrain southeast of the first mudfall,
searching for hidden ambush teams.

It wasn't long before they found one.


+++++


Chrissie's team was up for the first mission that morning.  Brett and Jason
had dropped them off just after sunrise near a group of hills a mile and a
half from where the militia had spent its restless, often interrupted night.
It had been almost taken as a given that Chrissie and her squad would do
nothing more than recon for this mission.  They figured that the militia
would either split into two groups, surrounding the hills as they had done
at the beginning of the previous day, or that they would tighten up and move
along another corridor to the east, therefore putting them out of range.
The job of the first group would be to pinpoint the direction of their march
so that the second group, Michelle's squad, would be able to set up a better
ambush point.

It was therefore a great surprise for Chrissie and her team to see a group
of ten men, moving quickly in a wedge formation, coming towards them by
means of darting in and out of the hills.

"What the hell are they doing?" Mike Monahan, looking at them through the
scope of his rifle, enquired.

Chrissie was watching them through her binoculars.  They were still nearly a
mile in the distance.  "They're checking the hills," she said in wonder.
"They sent a squad out in front of them to check the hills."

"Where are the rest?" Maggie asked.  "They wouldn't send them out there all
by themselves, would they?"

"You wouldn't think they would," she replied.  "I'm not a great military
genius or anything, but even I am not dumb enough for that.  Those guys are
completely cut off from support."

"What do we do?" Maria asked, taking her eyes of her own telescopic sight to
look at her leader.

"Let's let them get closer," Chrissie said.  "Just keep an eye on them and
keep a watch behind them.  This might be some sort of trap."

The group of ten men continued to get closer and closer to the hill where
Chrissie and her team were hidden among fallen logs and boulders.  When they
got within a half a mile it became apparent that they were all packing
assault rifles, probably the automatics, and that they were traveling
without packs.  It also became apparent that the rest of the militia was far
behind them.  Only when the advance team closed to within 500 yards did
other members of the militia begin to appear in the distance.  Chrissie
reported all of these developments to Brett and Jason, who were parked two
miles to the east, near the rim of the canyon.

"Are you SURE?" Brett asked her.

"We're sure mother bird," she said.  "They're heading right our way.  The
main formation is nearly three-quarters of a mile back."

"I copy," Brett said.  "What are your intentions?"

She told him.  Though he was worried for her safety, he did not disagree
with her.  It was simply too good of an oppurtunity to pass up.

"All right guys," Chrissie said as she watched them close even further.
They were now two hills over, checking around the perimeter, their guns at
ready.  "Are you all up for this?"

"Hell yeah," Mike said with a grin.  "I'm actually going to enjoy this."
The others all echoed this sentiment.

"Remember," Chrissie said, digging in her backpack and pulling out two more
banana clips full of ammunition, "we let them close to within sixty yards,
until they get into that bare patch where there's nothing for them to hide
behind.  Stay under your cover and use your scopes once they hit the mud.
Now let's assign first targets AND second targets."

Once it started, it was all over in less than a minute.  Just as the militia
recon team began to approach the base of the hill where Chrissie and her
team were sequestered, three rifle shots rang out and three of the men
dropped lifelessly to the mud, drilled through with devastating body shots.
No sooner had those bullets left the barrel than Chrissie was raining 5.56
mm shells down upon the survivors with her M-16.  Though the militia members
were quick about hitting the dirt once the shooting started, it didn't
really matter in this case.  They were far too close to where the fire was
coming from and there was absolutely nothing for them to use to hide behind.
Even before they began to return fire, Chrissie had taken out two more of
them.

Bullets began to slam into the logs they were hiding behind and to plunk
into the mud and trees around them but they ignored them, having picked
their own positions well.  Instead of retreating as they usually did, the
three riflemen jacked new rounds into their chambers and took aim at the
heads of the crouching soldiers below.  From this distance it was almost
impossible to miss.  Three more rifle shots rang out and three heads
exploded into blood and brain down below.  This left only two of the
original ten alive.

Chrissie ejected her empty magazine and quickly shoved in a fresh one.  She
jacked in the first round and aimed back down below.  One of the two men had
stood up and was attempting to flee.  She sighted on him and squeezed off
two quick bursts, sending six rounds into his back and dropping him
lifelessly back to the ground.  The other man, still lying on his stomach,
was desperately trying to reload his own weapon.  Before he could even get
the empty magazine out, Chrissie turned her sights to him and began to fire.
Simultaneously Mike and Maria both scoped in on him and fired as well.  He
jerked and rolled as he was struck from several different angles and then it
was over.  The sound of the final shots rolled off into the distance and
then all was quiet.

"Goddamn," Mike said, his body trembling with adrenaline.  "That was some
shit."

Chrissie, also quite jazzed by her adrenal glands, looked off to where the
rest of the militia was advancing.  The closest of them were still nothing
but tiny figures rushing in their direction, well out of firing range.

"Shall we boogie?" Maria, anxious for the safety of the helicopter asked.

"Not yet," Chrissie said.  "We have a few minutes.  Let's go get those
weapons they had."

"What?" Maria asked, as if Chrissie was mad.

"They had four or five automatic weapons down there," Chrissie said.  "Let's
get them."

And so they rushed down the hill, their own weapons out before them, and
stripped the bloody, dead or dying men of their rifles and ammunition.  They
considered taking their sidearms as well but there was not quite that much
time.

"Lets go," Chrissie said when the deed was done.  Her hands were bloody and
she was carting three rifles in addition to her own.

Her team did not need to be persuaded.  Their own bloody arms full of stolen
rifles, they made a run for their pick-up point where Brett was already
touching down.


+++++


The sight of their ten best soldiers lying dead in the mud, their bodies
stripped of their weapons, had a powerful effect on the members of the
militia who saw it.  The glaring mistake that had been made in sending them
out in front of the main group became painfully obvious in retrospect, even
among those men who'd thought it a good idea initially.

"What the fuck was Bracken thinking?" asked one sergeant to Lieutenant
Colby.  "He sent those men out to slaughter."

"I don't know," Colby said, shaking his head a little and wondering if it
was really worth it to keep going on.  "I just don't fucking know."

Bracken himself took this mistake especially hard since he was the one who
had ordered it.  Why had he done it?  Why hadn't the thought that he was
cutting off and isolating a group of his men occurred to him until AFTER the
disastrous results?  Was he that tired, that shell-shocked?  It was only the
third day of the march.  There were at least eight more to go.  What other
mistakes would he make?  How many other men would die?

He found himself walking next to Stu about an hour after leaving the sight
of the massacre.  Though it was against their current doctrine for two
people to walk close enough to each other to be taken down in one burst,
experience had taught him that they had another hour at least until the next
attack.  Stu, though rough and unrefined, was a competent soldier and one of
the men that he confided in.

"What do you think?" he asked him, shifting his rifle from one side to the
other.

"About what?" Stu said, spitting a stream of tobacco juice into the mud.

"About this mission," Bracken said.  "We've already taken twice as many
casualties as my very worst case estimation.  Twice as many and we're still
at least eight days out, maybe more at the pace we've been slowed to.  We're
starting to make mistakes because of fatigue.  That little recon group is a
prime example.  We've lost five of our automatic weapons.  The men are
grumbling and scared and discipline is starting to slip."

"What are you saying?" Stu asked.

"I'm saying that maybe we should abort," he said, putting it into words for
the first time.

Stu shook his head vehemently.  "Allow me to speak freely," he said.

"By all means," Bracken told him.

"We've gone too far to stop now.  Sure, we've taken losses and we'll
probably take more if they keep hitting us like that, but we have to push
on."

"Why?  What's the point?  There's only two hundred or so women in that town
and a helicopter.  They don't have a very big food supply for us to take.
What's so damn important?"

"It's gone beyond what's in that town," Stu told him.  "If we go slinking
back in defeat, we'll have a discipline problem that will make what we have
now seem like a West Point senior class in comparison.  We're talking about
the fucking honor of the militia here man.  Sure, the men are grumbling now.
But no matter how many sneak attacks those fuckers make on us on the way,
they can't kill us all.  They can't.  There'll still be enough of us to take
that fucking town when we get there and when we do, when we kill every last
one of those fuckers that have done this to us, when we cut off their
fucking dicks and shove them up their asses, when we rape every fucking one
of those cunts in that town, then the men will have their honor back.  We
have to do this.  We HAVE to.  If we don't, we'll fall apart."

Bracken took this thought under consideration.  He mulled it over until the
next attack came two hours later, killing another four men.


+++++


Despite the violence and suddenness of the Auburn takeover, Jessica insisted
that the change in government, as it were, be democratically approved.  At
5:00 that evening, just as the militia was preparing to bed down for another
night of attacks, all of the women in town gathered in the bleachers of the
high school.  By that time every one of them knew what had happened in the
town and the talk that day had been of nothing else.

Jessica and her military leaders, Maddie chief among them, mounted the
podium where Barnes had once ordered the hanging of women and addressed the
crowd.

"As you are aware," she told them, "we have taken control of the town of
Auburn from the men that had been running it and, as of this moment, we are
in command."

The cheer that erupted with this statement served to convince Jessica that
she would have no problem with what she was about to suggest.

When it quieted down, she continued.  "Now most of you were not in on the
planning or execution of this takeover," she said.  "Most of you did not
even realize it was going on until you woke up this morning for your normal
duties - duties assigned by those vermin that used to rule us.  I apologize
for leaving you out of this but it was simply not possible to include
everyone in the plot we were hatching both for security and for logistical
reasons.  But now that it has taken place, we must have your approval to
continue upon this path."

Another round of cheers erupted, this one louder than the first.

"So what I propose now is a vote," she said.  "The question we must decide
is whether or not to retain control of this town by any means necessary in
the future.  If we do this, we will have to fight when the rest of the men
return.  We will have to prepare for this fight and execute it despite
losses.  We will have to defeat that very army that marched out of here to
attack our neighbors in Garden Hill.  If you vote aye on this proposal, we
will do this.  If you vote nay..." she trailed off, letting those words sink
in, "then we will release the men that we have captured and turn control of
the town back over to them.  Those of us in on the plot will undoubtedly be
punished harshly if we remain, so I will ask that if you vote against us,
that we be allowed to leave the township before the others are released.
Now for a vote of this magnitude and with these far-reaching implications, I
must insist that a two-thirds majority be reached.  This may require paper
ballets, but let's at least see where we stand at this moment, shall we?"
She paused, already knowing what the result was going to be.  "Those in
favor of retaining control of the town and fighting to maintain it, please
say aye."

The ayes were loud enough to be heard in the farthest reaches of the town.
There was not even a need to ask for those saying nay.

That done, Jessica moved on to the next portion of her plan, the portion she
was not so sure about.  "Now that we've decided to govern ourselves," she
said, "we must have a leader."

It took less than ten minutes of coy talk and innuendo about leadership
qualities before someone nominated Jessica to that post.  The nomination was
quickly seconded.  No one stepped up to run against her.  Five minutes later
she was overwhelmingly approved as the leader of the new Auburn.

"Thank you," she said, gushing at the crowd, acting as if overwhelmed.  "I
really want to thank all of you for your support and trust in me.  I promise
I'll do my best to lead you.  Now, for my first act as leader, I would like
to put a proposal before you.  All of you have suffered greatly over these
past few months at the hands of the men in town.  Now most of these men are
not here right now and most of the ones that WERE here are dead.  Of the
rest, we have captured them and are holding them in the high school building
for the moment.  Now it is not my suggestion that we harm these men - after
all, they DO serve a few purposes, don't they?  But there is one man in
there that is directly responsible for much of the suffering that we have
been under.  There is a man in there that ordered the deaths of many of our
friends.  That man is Barnes."

Cries of outrage met his very name.

"It is my proposal that we deal with the crimes this man has committed
against us right now, this very night!  That way, if - God forbid - we
should lose our battle to retain control of this township when the full
militia returns, we will have at least enacted SOME justice for our
struggle."  She gave another pregnant pause.  "I suggest that we try Barnes
tonight, right now, for crimes against womankind, murder, rape, and human
rights violations."

The approval that this suggestion garnered from the crowd made a vote
unnecessary.

"Of course," Jessica said, once the noise died down, "the punishment that he
receives if found guilty should be both appropriate, and severe enough so
that those who come after will think twice about such things.  Hanging is
simply not good enough for him.  I think that they very thing that he
threatened us with so many times should be his sentence."

Again, no vote was needed.  The approval was obvious.


++++++


Earlier in the day the rest of the men in the supply room had been moved
out, leaving Barnes by himself.  He was still as naked as he had been when
he'd been forced from his bed early that morning and still fastened to the
same wooden chair, although the ropes had been replaced with a set of
handcuffs at some point.  Unable to make his way to a bathroom, Barnes had
both urinated and defecated upon himself for lack of any other option.  He
smelled horrible and looked worse.

How had this happened? he kept asking himself.  How had the ignorant bitches
in town managed to outsmart the highly trained and equipped militia teams
left to police them?  Granted, the women had the overwhelming strength in
numbers, but the men had had the GUNS.  How had unarmed women taken men with
GUNS?

It was bewildering to him, completely unfathomable, as if a law of physics
had been broken somehow.  Like the rest of the men in town, he had complete
confidence in the fact that the returning militia would easily re-capture
the town and put things back to the way they were SUPPOSED to be.  But what
would happen in the meantime?  What would become of the men - particularly
himself - that had been left behind?

He would never find out the fates of the other men, but he soon found out
his own fate.

At 5:30 that afternoon, just as the light was fading from the sky, the door
to his storage room was opened and four women, all of them armed with
automatic weapons, came in.  The leader of the group was Maddie Livingston,
whose husband had been in charge of all of the security details.

"Jesus Christ, you stink," Maddie told him, leveling her weapon at him.
"And you have a small dick too.  No surprise there."

"Are you ready to give this up?" Barnes asked toughly, although he could
plainly see that they weren't.

"Here's how ready we are Barnes," she said.  She stepped forward towards him
and swung the butt end of her rifle at his head.  It struck him in the left
temple hard enough to break open a cut and send a spray of blood out into
the air.  While fireworks exploded in his vision, his chair was knocked
over, landing him in the puddle of his own urine.  Blood poured from his
head out onto the floor.

"Goddamn, that felt good," Maddie smiled.  She looked at her three
companions.  "Uncuff him from the chair and then cuff his hands back behind
his back again."

"What are you going to do?" Barnes, still trying to clear his head from the
blow, asked weakly.

"We're going to court baby," she said, aiming her rifle at his lower body.
"Now don't try anything funny or I'll blow that little dick right off of
you."

He didn't try anything funny.  He was uncuffed from the back of the chair
and then quickly re-cuffed police fashion, hands behind his back, the steel
bracelets wrenched brutally tight.  Two of the women, their rifles now over
their shoulders, their hands wearing latex gloves to keep from touching his
filth, roughly jerked him to his feet.

"Come on," Maddie said.  "It's show time."

He was dragged out of the high school building into the dark, rainy night.
He tried to talk once, to tell them that they wouldn't get away with this,
but before the first syllable left his mouth, Maddie's rifle butt swung
again, this time striking him squarely in the testicles.  He emitted an
almost bovine scream of pain and doubled over.  Vomit, which mostly
consisted of stomach acid, sprayed from his mouth.

"Walk asshole, or you'll get another one," Maddie told him.

He walked, assisted by the gloved hands pulling him along by his biceps.  He
was led out onto the football field where all of the lights had been turned
on and all of the seats were filled with the women in town.  His feet
squelched wetly through the mud that the field had become.  Cries of hatred
and death threats immediately began to come from the crowd once he was
visible to them.  He saw that Jessica, the Garden Hill bitch that he had
once debriefed at length, was standing behind the podium; HIS podium.

"Put him in the chair," she said, looking at him in a cocky, arrogant
manner.

Maddie's women set him down - not terribly gently - in a card-table chair
next to the podium.

What followed was a trial of sorts, about as fair an impartial of a trial
as... well... as he used to give women accused of trying to escape.  He was
given no defense council of any kind.  He was not allowed to speak on his
own behalf.  The entire thing consisted of Jessica and two of his wives
describing every crime that he had ever committed in their presence.  His
wives - whom he had always assumed to be loyal to him (after all, they had
special privileges) seemed to take particular pleasure in describing
everything from statements he'd made in their presence about controlling the
women to his actual sexual shortcomings.

"Did you ever CONSENT to sexual relations with this man?" Jessica, serving
as judge and prosecuting attorney all in one, enquired at one point.

Gloria, the wife in question, actually scoffed at this.  She was a beautiful
redhead who had once been Miss Placer County.  "As if I would every let this
little wimpy piece of shit into me by choice," she said.  "Not that he ever
hurt me that bad.  As you can see, his dick looks a little like a golf
pencil."

Derisive laughter met this comment and Barnes began to sense that he was in
serious trouble.

The trial (for lack of a better term) went on for less than twenty minutes.
In the end, Barnes was found guilty of all charges.

"The town has spoken Barnes," Jessica said, giving a signal to a few women
that were hovering just out of sight.  "Now punishment will be passed."

"Don't I get to speak on my behalf?"  Barnes asked, not even wanting to
contemplate what these women had in mind.

The answer to this question was not verbal.  It consisted of another blow to
the forehead by Maddie's M-16, a blow that opened a fresh cut and sent him
thunking to the ground.

Two women picked him up and dragged him over to the scaffold where women had
been hanged in the past.  Barnes actually felt a sense of relief that they
had chosen this method of execution for him.  After all, it was apparent
that he was about to die and hanging was actually one of the quickest
methods.

But when the noose was looped around the chain of his handcuffs instead of
his neck, he realized that he was not going to get off so easy.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"We're passing sentence," said Maddie, who was in charge of such a thing.
"But we have a few things to do first."

"What?" he said, near hysteria now.

No one answered him.

"It has been suggested," Jessica, speaking through the public address
microphone once again said, "that we should help ourselves to a small
memento of this occasion before the sentence is carried out.  This will be
something that we can put in a future museum as a sacred object, as a
reminder of this troubled time.  I, as your newly elected leader, agree
wholeheartedly both with this notion and with the object in question.  I
will leave the collection of this object to the woman that suffered the most
under this monster, Gloria Steinham."

"Thank you," Gloria said, a wicked smile upon her face.  She raised up a
butcher knife and showed it to the crowd, eliciting cheers of approval.

"What are you going to do with that?"  Barnes screamed, already having a
pretty good idea.

"Not much," Gloria said, stepping towards him.

While four other women held him in place, Gloria grasped his wilted penis
and testicles in one of her hands.

"No!" he screamed, trying desperately to struggle.

"Yes," Gloria said, bringing the knife down.

It took nearly a minute, a minute that seemed to go on for an hour to
Barnes.  The pain as she sawed through his penis and scrotum was incredible,
easily the most horrid thing that he'd ever experienced.  He felt blood
running down his legs, felt waves of agony shooting up and down them.  He
could not bring himself to look at his demasculination.

Finally, with a final few sweeps of the knife, the deed was done.  Gloria
held his bloody penis and testicles aloft in her left hand, the dripping
knife in the right.  The crowd scream in orgasmic ecstasy.

"Let this pitiful objection live forever as a symbol of male infamy!" Gloria
screamed, not using the loudspeaker but with her voice loud enough for
everyone to hear anyway.

Barnes was now panting in pain and fear, feeling the emptiness below,
feeling the blood pattering onto his feet.  He now wanted to die, wanted it
to be over.

"And now," Jessica said, "the rest of the sentence will be carried out.
"Release the scaffold!"

A woman pulled the lever that released the trap door, dropping Barnes down
three feet before the rope jerked him to a halt.  His arms were forced
upward by the weight of him, instantly dislocating both arms from the
shoulder joint.  He screamed again as fresh pain went shooting through his
body.  Slowly, he swung back and forth, his feet five feet off the ground.

"Douse him," Jessica said next.

A bucket full of liquid was poured over his body, running down his chest,
his back, trailing down to his legs.  None of it, not a single drop, landed
on his face or his head.  The sharp, rich smell of it told him instantly
what it was.  It was gasoline.

"No!" he pleaded.  "No no no nooooooo!"

"Yes," said Maddie, who held a red freeway flare in her hands.  She pulled
the cap off of it and used it to strike the end against.  It flared to life
with a bright red glow and a whiff of burning.  She handed it to Gloria.
"Would you care to do the honors?" she asked her.

"Gladly," Gloria said, taking the hissing flare.

Gloria had a flare (as it were) for the dramatic.  She held it aloft for a
moment, causing the cheers of the crowd and further screams from Barnes.
Finally, winding up like a pitcher, she tossed it at her former husband,
striking him directly in the chest.

Barnes felt it strike and then suddenly he was burning as the gasoline
flared to life, moving both upward and downward.  Intense, barely imaginable
pain seared through every nerve ending as the fire engulfed him from
shoulders to feet, blackening his skin, making it tighten and contract.  The
pain lasted forever, for an eternity before the hot gasses entering his
lungs finally, blessedly brought him to the final unconsciousness.



Al Steiner
3-23-01
Chapter 17 to follow

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