ZNIPER: A Sniper’s Journey Through The Apocalypse.

by Ward III, C.

  “That’s ol’ Eddie Parks. I’m going hot,” Victor said, spinning his elevation turret to compensate for 550 yards of bullet drop. His rifle had been sighted in and scope zeroed out during ninety-degree weather back in July. The cold late-autumn night air would be far denser, creating additional drag on the bullet. Victor added a half minute of angle to his elevation to compensate. He checked for parallax by slightly shaking his head while looking through the scope. The sling was wrapped around the tripod, stiffening his stance and lessening the wobble zone. Calm night air with zero wind deflection. This is going to be a chip shot, Victor thought.

  “On scope, send it,” Raymond demanded.

  The reticle centered on the back of the militia leader, who was holding himself up with one arm by leaning against the hangar wall. Headshots from this far away were only for movie theatrics. Completely achievable, even off a tripod, but why risk a miss? Aiming center mass is an almost-guaranteed hit.

  Victor flicked off the safety, a cloud of fog slowly escaping his lips, and touched the trigger with a gentle squeeze. The recoil rocked him back slightly. A suppresser on a 308 rifle is nowhere near movie-quiet, but it does take the bite off the bark. Having the general’s windows open only enough for a clear trajectory trapped most of the remaining sound inside the large office space.

  He lifted the cold bolt nob and slid it back in one smooth motion, ignoring the smoking brass ejecting into the cold morning air, and then smoothly slid the bolt forward with his thumb, chambering a fresh round into the chamber. “Center mass,” Victor called his shot.

  “Good hit. He’s down, but stand by to reengage. Looks like Parks has a bathroom buddy coming out,” Raymond informed him. “Get ready; he’s strolling over to his dead partner.”

  A staccato of screeches, hisses, and growls erupted from all around them, echoing off the buildings, rippling through the still morning air. The man walking in front of the hangar stopped suddenly, just short of the corner where his dead leader lay facedown in the dirt with his manhood still in hand. Tiny shadows scurried across the flight line and out of the tall grass, rushing toward the hangar.

  The militiaman turned in a hurry toward the safety of the open hangar door but only made it halfway to the HMMWV before being overtaken by a swarm of hungry animals.

  “What the fuuuu…” Raymond watched in horror as the man was ripped apart next the military vehicle. His screams could be heard over the rhythmic course of snaps and snarls. Two of the critters tugged and pulled on the soldier’s arm until it pulled free from the torso. Three more took interest in a flailing leg. “Those things are spilling into the hangar.”

  Muffled yelling and shouts could be heard from inside the partly open metal doors. Gunfire soon followed. Victor had witnessed the brutality of war, but what entered his ear canals now were the most haunting sounds he’d ever heard. He almost felt sorry for the men being ripped apart alive.

  Two men ran out of the hangar, barefoot and shirtless, with rifles in hand, shooting wildly into the night before being taken down and feasted upon. One soldier sprinted toward the airstrip, and a glistening, blood-covered little demon caught up to him, leapt onto his back, and clawed its way up to his head before the soldier was taken down in a fury of blood, his cries of agony filling the night. Victor could barely watch the grotesque scene, but he needed better visibility of the battlefield.

  “Light the candle,” Victor ordered.

  “Roger. Remember, this will only work if it’s not completely full of fuel,” Raymond reminded him as he leveled his reticle on the fuel tanker. Even with a 50 caliber armor piercing incendiary round, diesel fuel wouldn’t ignite, but maybe the fuel vapors would. He came down a quarter way from the tanker’s top and squeezed the trigger. The recoil nearly slid the huge twenty-eight-pound rifle off the smooth desktop being used as an elevated platform. The muzzle blast turned the secretary’s office into an instantaneous whirlwind, kicking up papers and dust and knocking the dry-erase board off the wall.

  Recovering from a near concussion, shaking the stars from his vision, Victor could see a huge fiery blaze where the fuel tanker had been. Orange dancing light and swaying shadows flooded the immediate vicinity. The hangar sidewall had been dented in and covered with burning diesel fuel, but it had not been breached. Down the flight line to the right, near the Apache helicopters, was a massive horde of ghostly apparitions racing toward the flaming hangar, guiding the Grays in like a lighthouse on a foggy night.

  Tiny, glistening, blood-covered creatures could be spotted darting back and forth like vicious sewer rats, from one half-eaten victim to another. Victor couldn’t differentiate between bodies and body parts. Even from 550 yards away, Victor could see the pool of blood seeping out from the hangar’s bay door. Muzzle flashes and gunfire blasts quickly dwindle into an eerie silence.

  “Not exactly how we planned it, but I’d say our work here is done.” Raymond looked at Victor nervously.

  “I concur. I don’t know what just happened, or what those things are out there, but I don’t want to find out,” Victor said, wide-eyed. “Tear down, pack up, and be ready to move out in five.”

  STAGE FIVE

  VISITING NEIGHBORS

  It’s never how you imagine it.

  The only words spoken while traveling away from Grayling were navigational instructions: Slow down. Sharp turn left here. Speed up. Three miles until next intersection. Shift right, debris in the road.

  Victor pushed the old red truck harder than he should have, putting distance between them and Grayling. The trip, which had taken over three hours the night prior, now only took thirty minutes. “Go back to my place before heading to town. I have more ammo and supplies to take back for the Town Defense Force,” Raymond requested.

  Victor nodded his approval, staring blankly over the steering wheel. “You remember that family near your house that didn’t want to relocate a few months back?”

  “Yeah, the Riddell family. Clayton, Sharon, and little Johnny. They’re good people. I wonder how they are holding up.” Raymond also stared absently out the passenger window at an obsolete cell antenna towering above the quickly passing landscape.

  “Let’s go visit them while we are out this way. See if they need anything or to at least pass some information along.” Victor said, hoping to distract his mind from the slaughter they had just witnessed. “We’ll stop there first since it’s on the way to your place.”

  “All right, then, turn up here at this next dirt road,” Raymond directed.

  Victor backed the truck into the driveway per standard operating procedure. Leaving the truck running, they slowly got out, and left the doors open.

  The large house was dark, with no signs of recent activity. Victor stayed near the truck, in view of the front door, as he typically did on survivor rescue missions. Raymond flanked right to get a view of the back yard.

  “Hello,” Victor yelled toward the house. “Hello. We are ambassadors from Lake City. Do you need any supplies or assistance?”

  He waited for a window curtain to flutter or door to open. Only stillness and silence followed. Raymond waved him over.

  “Tracks beat a path through the grass over here, from the tree line to the back door. Looks like bare feet,” Raymond said, raising his AR to a high-ready position. “Let’s check inside.”

  Victor nodded, tightening the grip on his shorty AR. Raymond took point, stacking on a partially opened doorway. Victor slid beside him and squeezed his shoulder.

  Raymond burst through the door, button-hooking into the room. Victor, right on his heels, crossed the threshold to the opposite side. Both had weapon lights on, sweeping back and forth, careful not to aim their muzzle at each other. Raymond looked at Victor, scrunching up his nose.

  Victor smelled it too. Grays. Victor let out a light whistle, hoping to draw the threat to them. Nothing stirred. Another whistle followed, slightly louder. Still nothing stirred.

  Raymond and Victor cleared the main level systematical
ly and then the upstairs, not finding a soul. They were making their way back down to the main level toward the kitchen, hoping to find something useful in the cabinets, when Victor caught the smell again.

  He waved at Raymond to get his attention, then pointed to his nose and at the door near an empty pantry. Raymond nodded and walked gently across the tiled kitchen floor. When he swung open the basement door, the smell was overpowering. It was a pungent combination of feces, urine, sickness, rot, and death.

  Raymond gagged, almost vomiting. Victor’s eyes watered, and he reached for a dishtowel to cover his mouth and nose. He put a foot down onto a creaking stair step, expecting to engage a Gray at any moment. His weapon light shone into the black void, offering only a small circle of the unknown.

  One creaking step at a time took him deeper and deeper into the darkness until finally he spotted a familiar human shape lying facedown on the cold basement floor. Except it wasn’t human at all, a pale hairless scalp, its body covered in dark thick scaly scabs in a painfully contorted form.

  Victor hesitated, then squatted halfway down the stairs, shining his light back and forth, exposing several twisted lifeless forms. Victor whistled again, but nothing stirred before him. He took the rest of the stairs one creaky step at a time.

  The cold, damp room was swept, checking each of the dozen motionless mangled bodies for life. Shining his weapon light over the spiderweb-filled room, they tried to make sense of it all.

  “This place is a tomb,” Raymond whispered in a raspy voice, trying to overcome the stench.

  Victor shook his head slowly. “Nah, man, it’s worse than a tomb. It’s a den,” he said, studying the Gray corpses before him.

  The floor and walls were smeared with dried black, infected blood. The abdomen had been ripped apart on all of them, their dried and decomposing internal organs piled beside their corpses. Some of the Grays were half-eaten. Skeletons—either Gray or human, it couldn’t be determined—were all that remained of a few.

  “Animals?” Raymond questioned, knowing he had never seen an animal hungry enough to eat a diseased human.

  Victor only shrugged, not able to answer the question. “I don’t think your neighbors are home,” he said, hoping the Riddell family was not among the den of the dead. He tilted his head toward the stairs, and they both tiptoed out carefully, trying not to step in the contaminant.

  COMMAND AND CONTROL

  Who’s in charge here?

  Victor drove to Raymond’s house to grab the supplies he had mentioned. The task took longer than expected, since they had to take several trips down the hidden stairs into a secret basement storage room to fill the entire truck bed with more weapons, ammo, MRE boxes, and other miscellaneous survival gear. While there, they both cleaned themselves up and changed their clothes, knowing they wouldn’t be given a chance when they returned to Lake City.

  Moments later, they drove through the northern vehicle gate into town. Victor parked the truck in front of the TDF building and let the guards unload. Grabbing his pack, he headed straight home to see his family. He knew the council would be eagerly waiting for them at the pavilion for a thorough report.

  He had just climbed the steps to his front porch when the door flew open, and Curtis, Michael, and Zavier piled, out attacking him with strong hugs before he could finish the climb.

  “We missed you, Dad. We were so worried.” Curtis said sincerely.

  “‘Worried?’ For what? You know I am unstoppable!” Victor teased his kids, tousling their long, matted hair. “Have you boys ever had a lemon pound cake?”

  He tossed them each a green package that he had picked out of an MRE box. The kids ran inside hysterically, almost knocking over Erica, who was standing in the doorway with a big smile and open arms. They met on the porch and embraced until she noticed a group forming near the park.

  “I missed you so much. I was worried. I don’t want to let you go, but you still have work to do, my love,” she said, nodding toward the beach.

  Victor let out a moan and rolled his eyes. “I don’t wanna. Can’t we just curl up on the couch together and stare into each other’s eyes?” he said with a wink.

  “Afterward, we can get in our PJs and snuggle all night by the fireplace. Come on, I’ll walk you there. We can’t wait to hear what happened.”

  They lazily walked hand in hand toward the pavilion, where the entire council was already waiting. Evidence of Stanly’s attack could be seen in black stains on the surrounding groomed lawn, but the bodies had been removed. He didn’t ask about the cleanup details.

  They were nearly to the picnic table when Victor spotted a familiar couple standing across the street. He stopped in his tracks and pointed at them with a knife-hand. “Can someone please explain to me why they are not in a holding cell?”

  “Quarantine time was up, and they demanded to be released,” the mayor informed him, countering Victor’s irritated tone.

  “And?” Victor questioned. “We were just attacked, and you let two spies walk through town freely? Who’s in charge here, you or them?”

  “And they requested to speak to you about some sort of important information,” Sheriff Bohner spoke, defending the mayor’s actions. He waved the male and female over, each of them carrying their oversize backpacks and military-issued weapons that Victor had seen them use during his last rescue mission.

  As the pair walked across Main Street toward the pavilion with a confident swagger, they paused at the distorted sound of a faint helicopter, which grew louder and louder. As the sound drew closer, Victor deciphered a dual set of heavy rotor blades, thumping through the air.

  Victor brandished his pistol, pointing it at the ground between him and the couple. “Yours?” he yelled at them, pointing a finger toward the sound of helicopters in the sky.

  “Yes,” the taller, broad-shouldered man in a flannel shirt said flatly.

  “Are you with the Grayling bunch?” Victor demanded.

  “Negative,” the woman said quickly.

  “Then who?” Victor was getting annoyed with having to play the twenty questions game.

  “Friends. You’ll know soon enough,” she said again, putting her hand to her forehead and shielding the sunlight, looking for the inbound helicopters.

  The beating sound quickly grew louder until a UH-1 Huey and an escort Cobra attack helicopter flew over them at treetop level, startling everyone. The pair of helos flew out over the lake, banked sharply, circling back around, and then landed softly on the beach, kicking up a windstorm of sand and water mist, forcing everyone to shield their faces and turn away.

  Victor watched the questionable couple he remembered as Stacy and Pete as they walked over to the Huey, then helped out an older gray-haired man wearing inspection-ready US Army multicam fatigues. Next, was a civilian in a suit and sunglasses, who Victor thought to be an intelligence spook. Finally, a casually but respectably dressed male and female stepped out of the helicopter with a helpful hand from big-man Pete.

  The group strolled toward the pavilion as the rotor blades of the helos behind them slowly came to a stop. Stacy and Pete flanked the group in a protective posture.

  No one at the picnic table spoke. They all stared in disbelief as if an alien UFO had just landed—except for Victor and Raymond, who clutched their holstered pistols.

  “Hello, I am General Lyons,” the older man established.

  Victor cut him off before he could continue. “Is this about Camp Grayling? Do you know General Carter?”

  General Lyons looked at Victor, confused. “I’m sorry, I don’t know a General Carter. What of Camp Grayling?”

  “Disregard. Grayling is no longer important to us.” Victor looked at his peers with a hardened face, confirming their suspicions. That was the extent of his debrief to the council. “Why are you here, General?”

  “May we sit?” the general asked in a polite manner, implying he had much to discuss.

  “Of course,” the mayor said, offering him his seat
at the head of the table.

  General Lyons took the seat and clasped his hands, resting them on the long picnic table. He began, “No doubt you all want to know why I’m here. But first, let me bring you up to speed on the current state of the world. The perpetual political chess game of influence and power took a major turn. An eastern alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South America, also known as BRICS, has nearly put the western nations in checkmate.”

  “But we heard on the radio that the Persians were behind this,” the mayor inquired.

  “On July fourth, the United States of America was attacked by several high-altitude electromagnetic-pulse weapons that completely crippled our nation and most of Canada. It was being reported that the Persians were responsible, because that is what Russian intelligence is feeding MI5 and NATO. I am almost certain that was part of the chess game: to let one enemy fight another. That being Europe against the Persians.

  “To help persuade NATO into their chess game, Russian CCO clandestine operatives staged massive terror attacks across the EU, which manipulatively convinced Europe to plunge into World War Three. With help the of BRICS, NATO nearly conquered the entire Persian Gulf and surrounding regions. When the League of Arabs were about to submit, another wave of fake terror attacks hit Europe. NATO was so angry and desperate to end this war, they sent every single deployable unit surging back into battle.”

  Jessica couldn’t comprehend the drastic differences in stories. “But the news said… How can you be so certain?”

  “When was the last BBN news report you heard?” General Lyons paused to look around the table. “BRICS moved their final chess piece two days ago. Europe is now dark, just like the United States. BRICS hit them with EMPs after they mobilized the remaining military forces out of Europe. I’m afraid there will be no more BBN news reports. After the dust settles, Russia and China will be the economic, technologic, and military world superpower, with no means to dispute it. BRICS will have total control Europe by springtime.”