by J. F. Holmes
“What did you say to her?” I asked in amazement.
She smiled and said, “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you. Women’s secrets.”
“Cut the shit, what did you tell her?” My voice was impatient and on edge.
“I told her exactly what we were doing and who was in the bag. Like I said, sisterhood. You wouldn’t get it. She thought it was romantic.”
I shook my head and said, “Whatever. Let’s get the hell out of here. Head north on the highway until we get to an intersection and can figure out where we are.”
After five minutes to hit the latrine and scarf down some food, we drove slowly down the ramp, guided by the loadmaster, and out into the now clearing late afternoon. The humidity after the rain was heavy, with vapor rising from the ground and the heat sucking at you, even up in the mountains.
My watch beeped, and I looked at the timer I’d set. It had been thirteen hours since Brit had been bitten. “Hold on, Brit, hold on,” I whispered and said a prayer to a God I wasn’t sure I’d believed in for ten years. If she didn’t make it, it was my fault.
Chapter 322
As the summer day set into its long twilight, we drove steadily onward, no lights on. It was bad enough that the sound of engines might attract any undead; lights would draw any hostile, or even curious, local survivors.
One thing everyone had forgotten about, or that Hollywood seemed to never take into account, was that gas would get used up and/or go bad. At most six months in a tank, unless it was treated. Even then, a year, maybe two, but who besides the military and survivalist whack-jobs stored treated gas? No one. Ninety nine percent of America had had less than a weeks’ worth of food on hand, why would they have treated and stored gas? Plus fleeing the plague, most people had driven as far as the tank of gas they had, then died.
So now it was either the military, which was us, or vegetable diesel, or alcohol, and to be honest, shit was wearing out. True, there were small factories starting back up in the Northeast, we had a refinery going in Jersey, fracking in upstate NY for natural gas, and coal fields in Pennsylvania; some of the bigger refugee towns had machine shops, but things were getting old. Two trucks loaded with gear, diesel, and weapons would be quite a haul, but we could count on speed to blow past most organized opposition.
As far as my people, I was worried about Cahill. He was jumpy; I could see it. My team was used to being out on our own, either together or as individuals. Vasquez was Force Recon; they went into strange places. Sergeant Badger was a veteran of the 82nd Airborne’s long march from Mexico, so there were no surprises there. Hildebrand I didn’t give a shit about; he was a reporter and was in for a hell of story. The civilians, well they were in their element; in fact this was an upgrade to them. Cahill was a regular Army soldier, used to having immense firepower at his disposal.
“Hey, Shona, keep an eye on Cahill, will you? You know how hard it can be to switch over from the Line.” She’d done it, and done well, though she wasn’t totally recovered from being wounded last summer.
“Hey, Colonel, how about I keep an eye on you? You nearly got us all smoked back there. That was a bad call.” Her voice sounded hard, and I knew she was upset with me. Of all of us, she had the most experience with troop leading besides myself, and even more so, knew me well, guessing that I was on the edge.
“I know it was, but it’s done. I’m having a hard time being disassociated with this mission, you know?”
She paused, then said, “Do you want me to take command? You can keep your eye on Brit.”
“No, I’ve got it. Just keep on me,” I answered. It was on me to make this happen, and whatever consequences the Army dropped on my head, it would be me, not my men, who suffered them.
The storm front had passed, and the sun disappeared behind the western ridge, leaving the sky in a red glow. Since the world had burned down, sunsets had been spectacular, with all the shit still floating in the upper atmosphere. I almost turned to tell Brit to take a look, but then felt an icy wave of depression wash over me, and I couldn’t look back.
The ride was rough, the worn-out suspensions banging across the cracked pavement, occasionally hitting a pothole and making the whole truck bounce. We swerved around wrecked vehicles, and I cautioned Badger, who was driving my truck in the lead, to keep an eye open for any bridges downed ahead of us, especially over major rivers. It had been one way to stop the plague, though it had proved useless in the end, and the interstates had remained whole for the most part, with checkpoints gunning down civilians and undead alike until they were overrun.
Ahead in a valley, weak lights showed in the distance, some walled town, and I took out my map, trying to figure out where we might be. Jonas, sitting behind me, saw me struggling with my red flashlight, and figured out what I was trying to do. He tapped my shoulder and raised his voice above the growl of the engine, “That’s Harrisonburg, Virginia up there, Nick. I’ve been through here, recognized the landscape. Are we stopping?”
Crap, I thought as I measured on the map with my fingers; that put us more than a hundred miles from Frederick. Two hours in a car, four in a HUMVEE in these conditions. “No, we have no idea where their loyalties lie, and we don’t need anything. We’ve gotta keep moving.” He gripped my shoulder tight and sat back, resuming his scanning of the darkness to the right.
It would be longer and more out of the way to stay on 1-81, but there was less chance of a bridge being out, so State Route 340 was out. I was still trying to figure it out when Badger slammed on the brakes, throwing me forward. I immediately brought my rifle up to cover my sector and flipped my NODs on, batteries be damned.
A heavy flashlight beam shone out of the darkness, and I closed my eyes as it flashed over us, then sighted on the figure just behind the light. I knew what they were doing; few people had any kind of night vision equipment anymore, and the light was meant to blind us. There was a barricade across the road, several cars arranged in a zig-zag fashion to impede traffic.
A woman’s voice came out of a bullhorn, demanding in a thick southern accent, “Halt and pay a toll, in the name of the state of Virgin – URK!” she cut off as my shot took her in the throat. As the figure crumpled, the .50 above me opened up, Vasquez lighting up the makeshift barricade in short bursts that hammered at my eardrums, and Badger stepped on it. The half dozen people manning the roadblock fled to either side of the road, and we blew through it, weaving side to side, leaving bodies in our wake.
“That’s right, you redneck putas! DON’T FUCK WITH THE MARINES!” yelled Vasquez as we left them behind in the darkness. She reached down and slapped the offered hand Badger held up.
I almost smiled and said to Hildebrand, “Did you get that quote? It’ll look great back home. Though I don’t know if you can print the word ‘fuck’, might offend someone.”
He laughed and said, “I think all the people offended by language like that are dead, Colonel.”
Chapter 323
We passed the lights of Harrisonburg at fifty miles per hour, the fastest we could go without crashing if we hit potholes or a downed bridge. There was a town wall, with guard towers shining in the light of oil lamps. Our ambushers had probably come from there; many places kept a watch on the roads, and generally let military convoys pass by. Many places had come to resemble nothing so much as the walled city-states of Europe in the 1630s, as religious wars raged around them and devastated the countryside. My guess is that it was some overeager night watch, wanting to get some extra loot. Sucks to be them.
The people in the town had probably heard the heavy hammering of the .50 caliber, and no shots came from there, even though we passed within a couple hundred meters of the front gate. Instead, fireflies began to blink off and on in the growing darkness. It was beautiful, and it got me thinking about what a mess we’d made of the world. Maybe next time we’d learn to live in harmony with it, but for now, we still had to struggle to survive.
“Hey Sergeant Badger,” asked Hi
ldebrand over the sound of the engine, “you really walked all the way back from Mexico?”
“Well, sorta. Entire 82nd Airborne, we were stuck down in the Yucatan, trying to protect the oil fields, when the second plague hit. Our commander sees what’s happening, puts all the support troops on whatever birds we’ve got on hand, and tells the rest of us grunts to board one of the oil tankers.” He paused to avoid a pothole, then continued, “and there ain’t a single port in the East Coast that’s open enough for us to disembark. We set sail for NYC, and WHAM, tanker hits a mine laid down by the Chinese early in the war.”
“Then what happened?” asked Hildebrand, dragging out his recorder.
“Gonna make me famous, reporter guy?” asked Badger, and I could hear the grin in his voice. “Fine by me if it gets me laid.”
“Face like that, you’re going to need all the help you can get,” said Vasquez from above.
“Bite me, hormonally imbalanced hermaphrodite!” he shot back.
The reporter laughed and said, “I can see the beginning of a true romance! Readers will love it.”
“ANYWAY!’ said Badger, again swerving, but probably more than he had to, to make Vasquez hang on and shut up. “So we manage to get the tanker beached in Galveston, or what was left of it. Picture a couple thousand paratroopers trying to swim to shore with all their weapons.”
“That’s why you send the Marines to do a man’s job,” came down from above.
“Would you let me tell my story? If I wanted advice about swimming the Rio Grande, I’m sure you can help me.”
This continued for another half an hour, Badger trying to tell his story and stopping to exchange verbal insults with Vasquez. I made a mental bet that they’d be boning each other by the time we got back to the farm.
The five thousand men and women of the 82nd had, over the course of the next few months, marched, fought, and overcome by sheer force of will, a journey of over twelve hundred miles, from Galveston all the way up to Fort Bragg. Along the way they’d collected hundreds of other military who’d been fighting and surviving against the undead, and killed thousands of the same.
I’d been there when the first company of them walked into Bragg through the fortified perimeter gate. At the lead had been their Division Commander, Major General Shardin, and beside him was a standard bearer carrying the tattered colors with their red, white, and blue “AA” symbol, representing all of America. Hell yes, I’d cried.
“So you see, we didn’t march all the way from Mexico. That was some bullshit thing you reporters made up to give what was left of the country a hardon. Not that the 82nd needs any help giving people an erection,” finished Badger.
“That’s because you’re gay!” said Vasquez.
“Please, woman, the only time you get wet is when you fall out of a Navy ship.”
To be honest, this was one of the best parts of being a soldier. A lot of civilians just didn’t understand that people like Badger and Vasquez, for all their bickering, would jump on a grenade for each other.
It’s why they were with me on this insane mission to save Brit. In my mind I knew she was gone, but in my heart, well, a faint spark of hope still breathed. We all knew it, that we might lose our lives on this impossible chance, but they also knew that Brit would do the same for them.
After the moon rose, Shona called me over the squad radio and asked if we should lager for the night. I started to say no, but then I saw Badger starting to nod off as he drove, and I was finding it harder to think myself.
With a THUMP, the metal grill on the front of the truck hit a red-eyed figure that loomed up in front of us, and it went under the wheels. “Whoops!” said Badger. That was the third one in the last fifteen minutes; they’d been coming with more frequency and the windshield was getting a little bloody.
“Roger, the map says there’s an overlook about a mile ahead. We’ll break there, three hours.”
Both trucks pulled into the overlook, sitting on the crest of a small ridge. There was one rusted minivan, and as we pulled up, it started rocking on its springs. We stopped, and I hopped out, being careful of my leg. I pulled my pistol and walked over to it, and two sets of red, glowing eyes, both children, stared back at me.
They hurled themselves at the dirty glass again and again, their howling muffled. I raised the barrel, placing the suppressor against the hard surface. One muffled shot, the glass splaying outward from the high velocity round, and then another, both sets of eyes dimming, then fading out. I leaned up against the rusted metal, and saw them for what they had been, not what they’d become.
Chapter 324
We rested for four anxious hours, or at least the team rested. I sat in the bed of the truck, feeling Brit squirm at my feet. Above me, for the first shift, Elam slowly swiveled in the turret ring, watching for threats.
“You should get some sleep, Colonel,” he said, not taking his eyes from his scanning.
I shook my head, reviewing the plans in my mind. Get to the lab, get whatever equipment was there up and running, establish coms with the research geeks in Halifax, and cure Brit. It ran over and over, like a mantra.
“You’re not going to do anyone any good if you can’t think, you know.” He was right, and I knew it, but I’d sleep later, or never.
“Elam, your father used to tell me that every undead he killed was a soul released from hell. Do you believe that?” I asked him.
“My father was an ignorant tribesman from a backwards ass village high in the mountains. What did he know of souls or hell? He could barely read. But yes, I agree with him. He was far wiser than most I have met, intuitively.”
“Do you think Brit’s soul is still there? It must be, because there’re words and thought.”
“Probably,” he answered.
“Am I wrong for dragging you all into this?”
“Probably,” he said again. “But we all make our choices.”
“I thought,” I said tiredly, “that we didn’t have choices, it’s all ‘Allah wills it’.”
He laughed softly, still scanning. “That’s the conundrum, isn’t it? Almost makes you think it’s all bullshit.”
I was a bit shocked; Elam Yasser was as devout a Muslim as any I’d met. “Crisis of faith, Elam?”
“No,” he answered. “The ways of Allah are far beyond my compensation.”
“Your Allah is a shit-stain on the ass of Jesus Christ,” said Ziv from the darkness.
“Well, we’ll find out sooner or later, won’t we?” answered Elam, light-heartedly. “Though I think you’ll go to hell, Sasha Zivcovic.”
“I am already in hell, Elam,” he laughed back, a cruel sound. Having known both for years, I knew they were just busting each other’s balls.
I got up off the truck, first putting my hand on the body bag, feeling Brit squirm underneath. “Today’s the day, beautiful.”
Banging on the other truck where everyone was sleeping, I yelled, “Rise and shine, cupcakes! Rolling in ten!” Muttered groans and curses greeted me, including one muttered “Fuck off” in what I was sure was Mary’s voice. I guess she was human after all.
“Order of march,” I said as they brushed teeth and did a quick bitch bath with wipes. “Jonas drives Truck One, I’m TC, Ziv and Sergeant Yasser in the back, reporter on the gun, Doc in the cargo with Brit. Truck Two, Mary drives, Major Lowenstein TC, Sergeant Badger and Sergeant Major Bozelli in the back, Cahill in overall command in the bed, Sergeant Vasquez on the gun.”
“But I’m a noncombatant!” said Hildebrand. “And I don’t know how to shoot a .50 caliber!”
“I’m not giving it to you to shoot,” I said, “I’m giving it to you to hold onto.”
We hit the road again at zero three, the other vehicle taking the lead now. I eventually took my turn on the gun, the grips a comfort in my hand, and let the cool night air wash over me. It smelled different, cleaner than the world had ten years ago. We saw no more lights, just the moon overhead showing the way and occasional
reflections off waterways.
The sun rose when we were about twenty miles west of Frederick and Fort Detrick, having detoured around Hagerstown, slowly picking a way through the stalled cars and traffic jams. Small eddies of mist swirled around us as we drove over one of the intervening ridgelines and down into a valley. When we reached the bottom, we saw what seemed to be a cloud sitting on the valley bottom. Calling a halt, we discussed how to proceed. I mostly sat and let them talk it out, though the final decision was mine.
“I don’t like it,” said Jonas. “There could be anything down there; we should wait until the sun burns it off.”
“We don’t have the time,” said Doc. “We have no idea how long it’s going to take us to get everything at the lab up and running, much less get anything done.”
Cahill spoke up, saying, “I may be new to this scouting shit, but common sense says we don’t just charge into the unknown.” There was a murmur of agreement, then everyone looked at me.
“I’m going down there if I have to drive myself. We don’t have time to wait. Barring any wrecks, the highway should go straight through and up to the next ridge, then a long downhill to Frederick. We’ll take it at speed, go through anything we can’t go around, and shoot the shit out of everything that moves.”
