The advantage disappeared fairly quickly with that sort of mismatched training and weaponry, especially since Ferris could attack the town from any direction or even multiple directions. Not even hundreds of men would be enough to properly defend the borders if that happened.
“We don’t know how well supplied Ferris is,” Matt said quietly. “If he’s got more food than us he could go in for an extended siege, try to wear us down and pick us off until he can roll over us. But he doesn’t want that.”
“What do you mean?” Catherine asked.
“It’s possible he might have some personal grudge against the town, but this attack isn’t personal,” Matt clarified. “He’s a raider. He’s not here to take over the town again or even destroy it, he just wants our stuff. A siege would use up his supplies as much as ours, and the longer he holds off on a committed attack the less attractive the town is as we use up everything he’s here to steal while defending against him. Not to mention we might hit back as hard as he hits us. That’s why he tricked his way into Helper, snatched their supplies, and left. That’s why he tried to do the same here, and might’ve succeeded if we didn’t have advance warning.”
The Mayor nodded slowly. “So you’re saying if he does attack he won’t waste any time doing it?”
“Probably in the next few days,” Matt confirmed. “Or even immediately. He didn’t catch us by surprise with his arrival, but he might still try for a shock and awe attack before we can properly organize our defenses.”
“You’re sounding like a soldier,” Catherine said with a smile.
Matt couldn’t smile back. “I wish. A trained soldier would know what to do in this situation. You know things have to be pretty bad if even I can guess at how much trouble we’re in.”
“We can’t defend the town.”
Every eye turned to Lewis, many looking angry. “Are you saying we should give up?” Chauncey demanded.
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Lewis replied calmly. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t fight, I’m saying the town is too big to defend. With his vehicles he could attack us from any side faster than we can respond, and you know what happens once he’s among the houses. We have to focus on defending a smaller area, maybe Main Street itself, and accept the rest as lost.”
“He’s got machine guns and grenades!” Matt protested. “If we pack into a smaller area he’ll be able to butcher us even easier.”
Lewis nodded grimly. “You’re right, but I didn’t say pack in. We have to treat this like urban combat. Any military knows how difficult it is rolling into a hostile town. Well we have to be that hostile town. We need to use our knowledge of Aspen Hill to our advantage, be able to attack from all sides, have escape routes planned, and give him no targets he can strike at to weaken us, such as the storehouse or any place where civilians are kept.”
“So we should evacuate the civilians to Aspen Hill Canyon and turn this town into a maze of sniper’s nests and ambushes?” Trev asked.
“Hold on a moment,” Catherine interrupted. “The point is to defend the town, not kill Ferris’s men. These are our homes, all our possessions. We have our gardens here. Every house he destroys hurts us, and if he burns the entire place down it doesn’t matter if we win.”
“We have to accept some losses, and houses can be rebuilt,” Lewis replied. “Ferris is a threat to the town and it doesn’t look like he plans to leave. So ultimately the goal is to kill him and anyone else who threatens us.”
“Can we get back to the subject of why his deadline is at sundown?” Chauncey asked. “If he’s got night vision then defending the town’s going to be a whole lot harder. We’ve got a few flashlights, but not nearly enough.”
“I think I can help us there,” Lewis said with a smile. “And give us a bit of firepower too.”
Matt couldn’t help but smile back. “What, something else you’ve got prepared?”
“You could say that. And you know exactly what it is since you helped me move it just a few hours ago.” Lewis turned to the rest of the group. “I’ve got 25 gallons of gasoline.” He ignored the shouts of surprise at that. “It won’t run vehicles but it should be great for molotov cocktails.”
The Mayor smiled. “You really are a lifesaver, Lewis.” She straightened and raised her voice. “All right then. We evacuate the civilians to Aspen Hill Canyon and turn Main Street into a shooting gallery. As for the rest of the town, just in case they try a side street or backroad instead of going through the roadblocks we’ll prepare ambush positions to keep them too busy to do much damage to our houses, and when we fall back it’ll be towards Main Street. Hopefully we can lure them in that direction to where we can really hit at them.”
Matt nodded. “Ferris knows the storehouse is where we keep everything, so that’ll probably be his target. We can finish emptying it out and set up a nasty surprise for him there.” He turned to the cousins. “Can you get started on those molotov cocktails?”
Trev started to nod, but Lewis spoke up quickly. “I’d like to do some recon on wherever Ferris has his convoy parked, see where they’ve set up and maybe try to figure out what they’re planning from their behavior.”
“Good idea. Trev?”
“Got it.” Trev said. “Maybe I can borrow some of the people who were going to be heading up the canyon? Also we’re going to need those canning jars everyone’s been gathering.” There were some protests at that and he nodded. “I know we need them for harvest, but we need them for this more.”
A sudden thought occurred to Matt, and he took his friend aside a short ways. “You were about to leave.”
Trev looked at him like he was crazy. “I’m not leaving while the town’s under attack! I have as much to defend here as anyone.” His friend clapped him on the shoulder and started past him. “I’ll go get started on the cocktails.”
Matt nodded, turning to everyone. “All right then. Let’s get ready to defend our home.”
Chapter Eighteen
Rash Action
They could probably have mounted the gasoline tank on a wagon and pulled it into town to make the cocktails, but since they already had the bottles and wagons they needed there was no reason not to do it at the shelter, with a radio handy to warn of any approaching danger.
Trev had April, in the process of packing up her family and as many belongings as they could manage in their wagon, pause for a moment to run in and grab one of the sheets. In the meantime he got to work pouring gasoline into one jar after another from the nozzle at the base of the tank, which was stood up about two feet off the ground on four sturdy interconnected legs for just that purpose. They were using pickle, peanut butter, and other assorted lower quality jars in lieu of the precious canning jars, although it had been difficult to find as many as they needed.
As he worked he passed the jars to the few volunteers who’d come with him, mostly the more halfhearted people who’d manned the roadblocks. The people who considered themselves defenders of the town and wanted to help out, but weren’t very good with weapons or eager to join the fighting. Alice was with them, looking sad and subdued but much healthier than she had when he first saw her weeks ago.
He wasn’t sure exactly how to make a molotov, but he figured cutting a hole in the lid of each jar and stuffing a cut off strip of cloth from the sheet down into it would do the job. It wasn’t exactly rocket science.
It took them a bit of time to get over a hundred of the firebombs made with the gas they had, and longer still to get them loaded into the wagons safely wrapped in cloth cut from more sheets out of the shelter. Trev hoped there’d be replacements or Lewis and the Larson clan were going to be pretty irritated at him. Between all that, how long it took them to get everything organized and get out to the shelter in the first place, and the even longer time to cart the cocktails back to town moving slowly to avoid even the chance of breaking the jars, he figured they’d been gone about four hours.