Former Staff Sergeant John Cathey hoped his impending death wouldn’t hurt too much. Bullets in the head seemed preferable to bullets in the belly. He wished he had body armor.
Fire from the windows over his head relieved the pressure, the attackers’ bullets redirected toward more lethal shooters. The halt in their advance meant that their improving angle on John and the others pinned with him was temporarily stopped.
Hooray for loyalty. The soldiers in the upper stories of the building could have just hunkered down and hoped for the best. Instead they now fired out of windows and from balconies, down on their attackers. Someone threw a grenade and John ducked into the little cover he had, protecting the other two with him.
Just when hope reared its ugly head, the volume of fire from the attackers increased and John could do little but cower in the alcove with two of his soldiers.
They were just civilians, boyfriend and girlfriend he thought, and were not doing anything other than dying and crying over the dying. The girl’s wails made John wonder if the boy was still alive. He gently asked for the AK-47 and whatever ammo there was.
There was no movement behind him. Only sobbing.
“If we’re ever going to get out of here, we need all the firepower we can get,” he hissed over his shoulder.
“It’s too late,” the girl cried and John risked a glance back at her. She lay hunched over the boy, her body racked with convulsions, her face buried on the boy’s chest.
The boy, no more than eighteen or nineteen, stared glassily at the sky.
Five dead now.
For the moment, the firefight had become a standoff. Their attackers expended tremendous volumes of ammunition to keep John and his folks pinned in place. In turn, they replied with less firepower to keep the attackers from advancing. Nothing was going to break the stalemate until one side or the other ran out of ammunition. If it was the attackers, they would simply melt away. John and his men and women would not give chase. If his group ran out of ammo first, the results would be less pleasant.
John conserved his ammo.
He had the AK-47 now, an ancient but effective weapon, and he watched for movement, firing single shots when he saw any. His shots were always answered by hundreds of rounds tearing up the building around him and the girl who survived. She lay motionless on her boyfriend, only her occasional hiccups and moans letting John know she still lived.
His attackers apparently didn’t have explosive ammunition or any form of grenades, simply lots of lots of rounds, and they continued to pour them on his position.
John wished he knew to what end. Was it a grudge? Had his group inadvertently done something to offend a gang or a war lord? Was it simply turf warfare? John could envision much better uses for all the ammunition being wasted shooting at him and his group, but he wasn’t in charge of the other team, didn’t know what reward had been promised them by John’s Judas, didn’t know what they thought they could gain fighting other humans instead of the aliens.
Then, as if someone had heard his arguments and concurred, everything changed.
The tank they’d seen earlier returned.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” a loudspeaker on the tank commanded. “Cease fire!”
Shots rang out against the armor plating of the fighting vehicle and the turret turned in the direction of the shots. A coaxial machine gun opened up fire, raking a position John knew was occupied by his attackers. The return fire stopped.
“Cease fire!”
The main armament of the tank, a huge barrel at least a hundred and fifty-five millimeters in caliber, tracked on the location where the shots had come from. That would ruin someone’s day.
John was grateful that the people with him obeyed the tank. They probably had little choice. He doubted many had any ammunition left.
“Cease fire!”
The turret rotated slowly, taking in all the combatants, as if the tank dared anyone to defy it. When the turret rotated so that it pointed almost directly at John, and thus at the point farthest from both groups of his attackers, they melted away.
“Imbeciles!” the tank loudspeaker screamed. “Delinquents!”
When John felt comfortable the unknown assailants had fled, he set the AK-47 down and raised his arms in the air, coming out slowly toward the tank, like one would approach an angry dog.
“Pick your weapon up, soldier,” the tank commanded.
John nodded and obeyed, keeping the barrel of his rifle pointed straight up in the air as he did so. This tank had just saved his life and the lives of most of his unit. He didn’t want to make any enemies now.
The rest of John’s platoon came out of the building, slowly. He thought of it as his platoon now that their leader had deserted, a treacherous man John would feel no guilt in shooting if he ever saw him again. Those coming out of the building looked to him for direction.
“We’re just gonna head back,” John yelled, not knowing if the crew of the tank could hear him.
“Do you want an escort back to the UN?” the loudspeaker blared.
“You know where we’re from?” John yelled back.
“I know everything,” the tank replied.
John laughed and lowered the rifle. “We have wounded and several KIA. We’ll accept an escort.”
There were seven KIAs, or killed in action, total. The original four that had lain in the street, the boy in John’s alcove, and two in the next alcove over. Everyone who had gone into the building was unharmed, although their timely intervention had temporarily saved John and the others trapped on the street.
If the tank hadn’t come along, though, it would have ended much worse.
They loaded the bodies on the back of the vehicle and three injured hitched a ride. The rest of the group moved out behind the lumbering machine.
When they reached the safety of the UN compound, dozens of soldiers protecting them, dozens more helping the injured and carrying their dead, the tank hatch opened up. A grizzled man with white hair popped out.
“You can stay with us,” John yelled up to him over the engine noise.
“No thank you,” the man yelled back. “It’s getting hot out there. I don’t think you have more than a month, if that long.”
“How can we thank you?” a woman called up to him.
He winked at her. “Stay alive.”
He ducked back inside his tank and closed the hatch. Some quick thinkers opened the compound gates and the tank rumbled out of them, heading back the way it had come.
“We’ll be okay as long as he’s protecting us,” the woman who had spoken to the tank guy commented.
“As soon as his fuel runs out, he’s a sitting duck,” someone else replied, a man who’d spent some time in the National Guard.
“We got lucky he showed up this time,” John said. “We might not be so lucky next time.” A few protested, a few murmured agreement.
A month, John thought. He wondered if they even had a week. That attack was way too coordinated, way too well armed, and way too close to home. Maybe they were going to have to seek the Mormon’s Zion after all.
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