Chapter 4

The fishing villages along the Louisiana coast were locked down. Every fisherman with a boat was landlocked, and all of their vessels commandeered by the Coalition. The salt-crusted faces trudged sullenly around their shacks, glaring at the self-appointed sentries who held them captive.

An elderly man, far beyond the age of usefulness, wobbled in the muddy dirt as a unit of sentries led by Dean Grout almost trampled him on their way to the control station where the gates to the community were still being assembled.

“How many?” Dean asked.

“The report said it was the Atlantic fleet, Chief. It didn’t provide any other details besides that,” the Class 2 sentry answered.

The fact that there wasn’t a Naval presence in the Gulf was what made the coast so appealing in the first place, but now that they had caught the attention of the Navy’s entire Atlantic fleet, their strategic situation was about to change.

“They won’t be able to flank us from the north, so I want every available sentry stationed along the coastal perimeter. And make sure you radio every other community on the coast to disperse their sentries within the community’s population. The Navy won’t risk using their bombs if they know we’re right next to civilians. Make them come to us.”

“Yes, sir!”

A rare ocean breeze cooled the sweat collecting on Dean’s face as he tried to adjust his uniform to allow some of the sweltering heat to escape. He didn’t like the swamps and bayous. He wanted to get back to Topeka as quickly as possible, but until the Navy left or pushed them out, he was stuck here.

Dean found himself glancing out into the water’s horizon, waiting to see the iron ships make landfall, but each time there was nothing but the bayou’s calm waters. Still, beyond what he couldn’t see was a threat that could kill him. His way of life would grow extinct, and he would be either forced into the ground or into a cell. At that moment, he wasn’t sure which he’d prefer.

Strength had always come easily for Dean. Ever since grade school, he’d been the biggest kid in his class. And whenever he wanted something, all he had to do was take it. The only repercussions back then were a trip to the principal’s office or a stay in time-out.

But as he grew older, the consequences for his behavior morphed from time-out to juvy bars, and it was then he realized that even with all of his strength, he couldn’t bend steel. No matter how hard he punched, he couldn’t escape the concrete walls that enclosed him. His strength was a tool that, when wielded, only landed him in confinement.

All those years skipping class, homework, and tests had left him with no high school diploma, no job, and no life. Before the Coalition and before Gordon, he did nothing but enforcer jobs that paid next to shit. But when the soil crisis hit, it was like the second coming of the Dark Age. A time where brute force was the only authority recognized, and whoever could hit the hardest won. And there wasn’t anyone who hit harder than Dean Grout.

If the Soil Coalition lost this fight to the United States, then all of that would be over. The level of involvement he’d had with the Coalition over the past three years would have him tried, and convicted, of whatever crimes-against-humanity bullshit the courts could throw at him.

“Chief!”

Dean turned around from the coast and was met with a panicked look from his Class 2. “What is it?”

“One of the scouts on patrol radioed a confirmation of a unit of soldiers making landfall a mile west of here.”

“How many?”

“The transmission cut out before we could get an answer.”

“I want every gun, missile, bomb, and truck stationed to the west. Anyone else still out on patrol, tell them to get their asses back here before I run out and kill them myself!”

“Yes, sir.”

One hundred sentries had gathered at their makeshift wall to the west, shielded behind armor-plated trucks. Eyes searched the dense bayou in organized patterns of fear and adrenaline. Dean marched along the back row, watching his men, watching beyond the wall, and feeling the waves of the ocean to his left bringing a sense of overwhelming finality. The slow moving of thick muscle and steel, wielded by equally dense minds, only added to the calamity held in their incompetent hands.

After an hour of squatting, waiting for the soldiers to show up, the minds of Dean and his men had finally matched the inactivity of their own bodies. Dean leaned to the left, triggering a wave of cracks along his back.

“Sir, they could have moved farther west. We did occupy more villages in that direction.”

“Have the communities there sent us any word?” Dean asked.

“No, sir.”

It could have just been a simple recon mission, setting the Navy’s men up for a bigger play, but the fact that his men were killed before they had a chance to report how many soldiers they’d come across caused the smallest of wheels to turn in Dean’s mind.

“Do a final check with the communities to the west. If they’re still clear within the next hour, then go ahead and––”

The explosion sent both molten pieces of metal and human limbs into the air around them, cutting a hole in the flesh-infused steel wall.

Dean wobbled on all fours, his palms sinking into the thick mud squishing between his fingers. The gunshots echoing at the front line only added to Dean’s concussed state of mind as he managed to get his feet under him.

“Chief!” the Class 2 said. “What do we do?”

“Fire back!”

Dean charged to the front line and positioned himself in the thick of the fight. Sentries fired blindly into the swamp, propelled by fear and their own sheer will to stay alive no matter what the cost. While the others wasted bullets, Dean took his time, looking for any sign of where the blast may have come from, but saw nothing.

“Hold your fire!” Dean said.

Dean’s orders were echoed down the line, and the sporadic thumping of gunshots slowly petered out. Smoke from the lingering fires drifted in and out of Dean’s view as the gunshots were replaced by the moaning cries of the injured sentries from the previous blast. Their pained voices pleading for a divinity to come and save them, which Dean knew would never come.

Then, between two puffs of smoke, Dean could make out the whites of eyes, buried deep under the thick cover of swamp.

“To the right!” Dean shouted.

Thousands of rounds of ammunition were exchanged as Dean and his sentries entrenched themselves, and the United States soldiers continued their push forward. The smell of lead and copper blended with the humid stench of the swamp.

While the majority of Dean’s focus was on the advancing soldiers in front of him, he couldn’t help but let his eyes wander to the peripheral, where his wounded sentries were being carried away. Streaks of blood smeared into the mud, only adding to the dark textures of the earth. Sentries clutched their wounds, trying to hold whatever organs and fluids escaped. One of the bodies he saw was blown in half, completely lifeless, and he ceased his firing when he saw two other sentries picking up the pieces of their fallen comrade.

“Hey!” Dean said. “He’s already dead, so unless you want to join him, I suggest you drop the body, grab your gun, and fight, goddammit!”

The sentries complied, and Dean aimed the crosshairs of his scope over as many enemy limbs as he could find, squeezing the trigger with a negligent purpose until one of the shells that ejected burnt the exposed flesh on his forearm.

Each violent pull propelled a two-inch piece of hot lead at 1700 miles per hour. Dean could feel every ounce of force in those shots, and a fulfilling pleasure when the deadly projectile disabled and maimed its victim. The successive click of the firing pin signaled for a replacement magazine, but before Dean could reload, he heard the strained, throaty scream, “RPG!”

Dean flattened himself on the ground as the explosion disfigured the resolve of what was left of the sentry’s line in the sand. A blast of flesh-melting heat washed over Dean’s back as he buried himself deeper into the mud to avoid the scorching. Once the ground had ceased its quaking, he wiped the muck from his eyes. The mangled flesh and twisted metal had doubled. Whoever wasn’t already dead in the mud was retreating back to the villages behind them. 

Clumps of mud fell from the front of Dean’s uniform and splashed back into the earth as he joined the unauthorized retreat. The roaring stampede of boots against the Louisiana mud was only matched by the sporadic gunfire growing louder behind them. Dean bulldozed his way past anyone slower than him until his fingers reached the door handle for one of the vehicles parked by one of the small huts of tin and twigs. Dean cranked the engine to life and locked the truck’s doors just as another one of his men came rushing toward him. The sentry pounded on the window, streaking the glass with mud and blood.

“Hey! Let me in! Let me in!

The shouts were muffled through the truck’s thick glass, and Dean could see the first wave of United States soldiers entering the village’s muddy streets.

“You hold this village, sentry!” Dean yelled.

But the sentry’s only response was another flurry of smacks against the windshield and a stream of insubordinate curses that fell on deaf ears. Dean shifted the truck into reverse then sharply turned a one-eighty, which sent up a fishtail of mud behind him.

The sentries Dean passed were caught up in an animalistic panic that had reduced their minds to savagery. Sentries threw bodies of women and children in front of them as human shields, each piece of fleshy Kevlar screaming and crying to be let go, and anyone who tried to save them was met with a 5.56-caliber bullet to the head. But even with the atrocities occurring around him, all Dean could concentrate on was the story he was going to tell Gordon when he made it back to Topeka.