When the Devil Dances

CHAPTER 40 Near Balsam Gap, NC, United States, Sol III 2017 EDT Sunday September 27, 2009 ad

Thomas Redman was one pissed Injun.

It wasn’t bad enough that the war had forced the shut-down of the casino that had been his place of employment for over fourteen years. It wasn’t bad enough that his younger brother had been killed on fucking Barwhon by these Posleen sons-of-bitches. Now they’d went and overrun Dillsboro where his “certified Indian Made Posleen Scalpers” store had been.

Well, admittedly, that damn SheVa gun had run it over first, but it wasn’t like they had much of a choice.

Whoever had wiped out his store, it was the fault of them Posleen and they was, by God, gonna pay. His family had been in continuous residence in these mountains since they’d run the Creeks out about the time when Columbus was conniving Isabella out of her jewels. And he wasn’t going to be the last Redman to screw the white man out of money in them.

Up to this moment his resistance to the Posleen had consisted of telling the babe in the SheVa gun where they were. When they’d first gotten word the Posleen were coming up the pass he’d sent the wife — he only called her “squaw” when he wanted to get her really mad — up the road towards Knoxville. Then he’d gotten out his militia radio, his four wheeler and his rifle and headed up onto the ridges.

Now, though, it was looking touch and go. He hadn’t been able to see much of what was happening in the Gap, but the columns of smoke made most of it pretty obvious. He knew a spot where he could get a bead on the Posleen. But that was going to involve a technical violation of the laws of man.

In the rush to enact legislation at the beginning of the crisis, one of the big debates was over formation of militias. Finally the Congress had passed laws that effectively repealed most of the anti-weapons regulations that had grown up, substituting a series of laws to “regulate the several militias.” One of the laws had to do with militia boundaries, in that no member of a militia “formed in one territorial area should pass for militia purposes into another territorial area without the clear wishes of the government of the second territorial area.” What they meant was that if a group of, say, Virginia militiamen were practicing, they shouldn’t go into Maryland.

Unfortunately, the bureaucrats of the Bureau of Indian Affairs correctly interpreted that to mean that there would have to be a “Reservation” militia and the militia of the rest of North Carolina. And, technically, the only area that one Thomas Redman, sergeant in good standing of the North Carolina Cherokee Tribal Milita, could make war on the Posleen in was reservation territory. And he was just about to clear the reservation line.

A series of not particularly funny John Wayne movie jokes went through his head as the four wheeler crested the last bit of rock and rumbled onto the Blue Ridge Parkway headed to cut the Posleen off at the pass.

“Y’all better WATCH out!” he yelled to the night. “This Redman is off the reservation!”

“Sir, I’m in contact with Eastern Command,” Kitteket said, tapping rapidly for a moment then stopping.

“And what’s the word?” the colonel asked.

“I’m still giving them our situation, sir,” she continued, tapping again. “I have to set up the words three letters at a time, then wait for them to transmit then set up the next set of three letters. It’s a real pain.”

“We’ll get that fixed in the next upgrade,” Pruitt said, scrolling his tactical map around. “Assuming we’re here for the next upgrade.” Things were not looking so hot.

“Okay, what about the Posleen around Dillsboro?” Mitchell asked.

“That’s looking pretty bad. They’re having some trouble with the torn up road and about half of them headed up 441, but the rest are headed this way. There’s also a huge buildup across the river. The scouts can’t get a good estimate on the numbers in there, or they don’t want to believe their math. Either way, it’s a lot.”

“ETA?” Pruitt asked.

“About an hour, the way Posleen travel,” Kitteket said. “I’m telling Eastern that, too.”

“Oh, the hell with this,” Mitchell cursed. “No more Mister Nice-Bunny. There is no reason we should have to worry about getting overrun with Posleen. Pruitt, we’ve got three more rounds of area denial, right?”

“Yes, sir,” the gunner said. He tapped a control and the turret began to track smoothly to the rear. “And there ain’t no humans to worry about back there. Up on three one-hundred kiloton nukes, at your command… Sir!”

“Kitteket, find out where the main concentrations are and an estimate of where the leading forces will be in… oh, ten minutes,” Mitchell said. “And find out why it seems we’re the only ones fighting for this pass!”

The Blue Ridge Parkway is one of those American icons, like Route 66 or the Appalachian Trail. It runs along the crest of the Blue Ridge, which is really a series of smaller mountain ranges, from the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Along the way it passes through some of the prettiest, and most rugged, country in Eastern North America. Running, as it does, along the spine of various ridges, it is not easily accessed. Nor is it usually the quickest way to get from Point A to Point B.

But it was as good as it got for Thomas.

He’d gotten up on the parkway near Woodfin Creek, using a little known track that connected to the old parkway, and then up the hill onto the new one, and now was closing in on the Gap. But his target wasn’t actually in the Gap. From what the babe in the SheVa was saying, half the overpass was up. While it sounded sort of fun to climb out on it and fire down on the horses, it made more sense for him to get where he could fire under the overpass. There was a ridge running out from the parkway, the one that made the last bend in 23 necessary, that could be accessed from the road. From the end of it, if he could find a good hide, he thought he would be able to fire right under the bridge and take some of the pressure off the troops caught in the Gap.

He noticed the tops of trees gone as he rounded a curve then slowed down when he saw some of them in the road. Towards the end of the curve the parkway was littered with them and many of them were already beginning to wither and yellow from intense heat.

All things considered, it was good that those harbingers were present because as he rounded the curve, still doing nearly twenty miles per hour, he slammed into the first of thousands of fallen poplars blocking the road.

“Oh, shit!”

“Sir, I’ve got a message from Eastern Command,” Kittekut said. “More good news.”

“Go ahead,” Colonel Mitchell said, pointing to a spot on the map for Pruitt.

“There’s a reason we’re the only ones fighting for the pass, sir: Our nuke caused a rockslide on the road up to the pass on the Asheville side. The brigade that was supposed to be up there by now is blocked off. They’re clearing the road, but it will take at least another hour. There’s some light infantry trying to climb past it, but they’re going to be a while too.”

“Fine,” Mitchell replied, tapping in his secondary release codes. “Tell them we’re just about to clear the Scott Creek Valley of Posleen.”

Pruitt finished setting the firing commands and turned to look at the SheVa commander. “All three rounds, sir?”

“You were perhaps saving them for a more festive occasion, Pruitt?” the colonel asked. “All three rounds. One on the crossroads, one on the head of the Posleen and one on the mass backed up on the other side of the river. If that doesn’t slow them down, nothing will.”

“Yes, sir,” the gunner said, keying in the last command and hitting the firing sequence.

Between them, the BIA and the United States Congress may have come up with some really silly regulations, one of which Thomas was now limpingly in violation of, but they did spring for the militia’s equipment. Especially once it was pointed out that with the casino closed “for the duration,” the Nation didn’t have much in the way of income. And, being a government agency, they didn’t stint. Which was why he used to have a nice, camoflage painted Honda ATV.

But he’d survived the wreck and so had his rifle in its case, and his binoculars and his ammunition. So he was ahead of the game. Sort of. Getting to the ridge where he could fire down on the Posleen was going to be tougher than he’d expected; that nuke had really torn the place up.

The whole area around the intersection was a tangled mass of fallen timber. It looked like some of the pictures from Mount St. Helens. He’d done a paper on that disaster back when he was in the eighth grade and he still remembered the pictures of the elk picking their way through the fallen trees. Well, now he knew how they felt: pissed.

He pulled his right leg over another log and swore. He’d wrenched his knee in the wreck and clambering over this pile of twisted sticks wasn’t helping one bit. Especially in this nearly pitch black dark; the sun was fully down and the moon was running in and out among the clouds. But he was pretty sure he knew where he was: the gully down below should be one of the headwaters of Scotts Creek and that meant the ridge he was on should overlook the intersection.

Just down from the ridge, along what one of the sniper instructors had termed the “military crest,” there was a line where some of the trees had stayed up, sheltered from the blast. It wasn’t exactly a “path,” but it was better than what he’d been crossing and it gave him a chance to angle up the ridge out of sight of the Posleen.

Finally, finally he limped up to the top of the ridge and got down on his stomach. The blast had dropped many of the trees more or less parallel to each other and for a change it was the direction he was going. So he was able to belly up through the gaps in between until he could see first the overpass, then the Posleen positions under it.

He also could see the burning tracks on the road; the infantry guys had really gotten the shit kicked out of them from the looks of it. But he could see two of them low-crawling towards the Posleen position.

Time to give them some covering fire.

The last time Joe Buckley could remember low-crawling was the last time he took an EIB test. That would have been in the dawn of man when the only thing he had to worry about was breaking his leg on a jump or wrecking his bike or getting into a fight over some fat chick on Bragg Boulevard.

Man, those were the days. No Posleen. No skyscrapers falling on you. No ships exploding. Just the occasional pissed-off sergeant and watching Pinky and the Brain while waiting for afternoon formation. It just didn’t get any better.

He tucked his butt lower as a round skittered off the pavement and whistled by overhead. Frankly, it was lots better then than now.

One of the two privates had gotten a little too high and was toasted by a plasma gun for his mistake. The other one had frozen halfway and was now belly down and shivering in the median. Buckley wasn’t sure why he was still going. It might have been sheer stubbornness; these Posleen had started to really piss him off. Or it might have been that he knew if they didn’t clear the pass, they were going to get royally corn-cobbed anyway.

He snuggled even closer to the ground as the first artillery shell plunged out of the sky. If all went well, his approach would be covered by the fire.

On the other hand, if the gunners or FDC screwed up, it was just as likely to land on him.

It didn’t, though; it hit on top of the overpass. He waited impatiently as the RTO walked it down off the overpass and onto the ground. Falling as it was now, the majority of the fragmentation from the round should be thrown under the overpass and onto the Posleen. It didn’t mean it stopped them, but it should keep their heads down a bit, making it a tad easier for him to move. As he moved out, a round from the next gun came screaming in.

The ditch he was crawling in, which had really shallowed out for a while, had started to deepen. Enough that he felt he could raise up just a tad and move a little faster.

He got partially up on his elbows and knees. Not a high crawl, not enough cover for that. But not a low crawl either. Call it a really fucked up medium crawl. He started to shimmy forward, spread out like a crab, when there was a racket from the Posleen lines and all of a sudden his butt felt like it was on fire.

Dropping onto his stomach again he felt behind him and swore as his hand came away wet. Either he had the worst case of hemorrhoids in the world or some Posleen son of a bitch had just shot him in the ass.

Thomas shook his head at the poor brave son of a bitch down in that ditch. It was pretty clear in the thermal imaging scope that he’d just got shot in the ass — there was a noticeable blood splatter giving off residual heat — but he was still crawling forward. Another one was down on his stomach, not dead by the temperature, probably just too scared to move. And there was another bright white, headless body in the ditch. That one was so hot, and obviously dead, that it must have eaten a plasma round. Other than that, it looked like most of them had been killed in the first few moments.

He swung his scope around to the Posleen position and shook his head. All the fire from their plasma guns had left noticeable trails on the road and heated up the air under the bridge. And every time an artillery shell hit, the flare of light from it shut down the scope for just an instant. But he could still pick the horses out; they were slightly cooler than humans, but much warmer than the increasing chill of the evening and the cold ground under the overpass. And there weren’t many of them, fourteen it looked like, maybe fifteen; there was one who was down on the bottom of the trench not moving.

Now to figure out which ones were the God Kings.

He noticed a haze around the head of one for a moment and switched off the thermal scan for visible light. In the green haze he could just barely see that that one had a crest; it must have lifted it for just a moment and created that thermal halo around its head.

He nodded to himself and switched back to thermal. Taking a breath he flipped the Barrett off of “safe,” placed his finger on the trigger and began to gently squeeze.

Sergeant Buckley ducked as Posleen fire began to rave out of the trench, but it didn’t seem to be directed at his position. Risking a quick look, it was clear they were firing everything they had at the ridge behind him and to his left.

Taking another risk, he got up on his hands and knees and shimmied towards a chunk of concrete that would make for good cover. It was probably a piece of the south span that had been blasted free by the nuke, but it looked like heaven and a womb to Buckley; he might even be able to sit up behind it.

He rolled into the shelter of the chunk as the fire died down and considered his position. He was within tweny yards of the Posleen trench, but the fire that had come out of it was from more guns than he had thought were there. And the artillery wasn’t taking them out, only keeping their heads down. A bit.

It seemed like there was somebody else out there, maybe a sniper up on the ridge. If he had survived the counter-fire. That would be nice, it would be good to feel that he wasn’t completely alone.

He rolled over to the south side of the chunk and thought about his options. There was another chunk, this one most definitely a piece of the bridge with a big hunk of steel sticking out, about five meters closer to the bridge. And it was lying against the center pylons. If he could make it to the cover of that chunk, he could work his way to where he would be on the flank of the Posleen, in a position to rake their trench from end to end. And with the way the south portion had fallen, he would be in “good rubble.”

Good rubble was a special term for infantry. Rubble was the infantry’s friend; armor couldn’t negotiate it, it shed most artillery and Posleen hated it. Good rubble was rubble like the bridge, fallen and twisted with holes a person could worm into for protection and concealment. The south span looked like great rubble.

There were two problems with making it to that rubble, though.

The first was the artillery. The rounds were falling dead on target — they actually seemed to be digging holes in the concrete of the road — but they were also falling just a few meters from the route he would have to take to reach shelter. If he had a radio, he would have them switch to smoke. But he didn’t and the RTO was way too far behind him to yell to. Even if yelling wouldn’t give away his position, which it would.

He had heard that it was possible to move within a yard or two of artillery like this, if it was falling “away” from you, which this was. There was a solid “thump” of concussion from each shell, but what killed you with artillery was the shrapnel. Most of that was being thrown towards the Posleen positions. Technically, very little of it should be coming back towards where he was going to be crossing.

Technically. Very little.

The second problem, assuming that the artillery didn’t get him, was that there was no cover or concealment between his current position and the next block. None. It was flat, level ground, stripped of any vegetation that might once have been there, directly in sight of the Posleen position and less than twenty meters away.

He could try to run it. Just get up and dart across. The problem with that was that Posleen tended to react much better to something like that than humans; it would be the equivalent of trying to dodge past a professional skeet shooter. They were sticking their heads up, bobbing up and down, even with the artillery. He’d have the chance of a snowball in hell of making it across.

The only other alternative was to try to sneak past.

The lighting was… confused. There was the sudden flair of the artillery, the moon scudding in and out among the clouds, but other than that not much. A few fires that had probably been started by the artillery gave a bit of flickering light, but none of them were nearby.

Posleen had good night vision, but not perfect. And they were taking fire from the ridge; their attention would be centered there.

All in all, it was worth a shot. But best to prepare.

He reached into his butt-pack and pulled out something he hadn’t used in a long time.