“What the hell is going on? Are you people with the government?”
The old lady touched his arm and patted the logo on her shirt. “They are, sugar. I’m just a Red Cross volunteer from the local chapter. Oh my word! You folks don’t look so good. Whiter than my shirt. Are you dehydrated? Here…”
Dixon froze as she opened a cooler and packed several Dixie cups with ice. She filled each cup with sweet tea from a gallon-sized pitcher on her desk and topped them off with a fresh lemon wedge.
“Drink up, please. I’ve got water and Coke too, if you prefer. Now do you folks need a berthing assignment? Just sign in. Photo ID would be great, but not required.” She pushed a clipboard forward, with surprising eagerness. Miguel snatched the forms and scribbled something fast.
The old lady smiled. She gave him a set of keys and a brochure. “Tent 3-20. Third row and on your right. The mess hall is open—”
Dixon took the clipboard and thumbed past the handful of pages already filled in. “You have this giant place and hardly any occupants? Where is everyone?”
“I don’t rightly know. I suppose FEMA just hasn’t gotten the word out, since there ain’t any radio or television working anymore. Or, Lord willing, maybe whatever’s happening isn’t as bad as we’ve been told.” She folded her hands in her lap as Miguel’s family scurried off and Rachel slid close to Dixon. “Either way, you’re both safe here.”
Rachel didn’t smile. “Yeah, a little too safe and comfortable. How’d you people set all this up in a day? It’s been barely 24 hours since the attacks. Makes you wonder how long the government knew something was going down?”
Dixon’s mind snapped back and he stopped salivating over the barbecue. “Son of a… You’re right, but this sure isn’t.”
His hand slipped unconsciously to the rifle strap on his shoulder. A paunchy man in a blue t-shirt with a Department of Homeland Security emblem on his breast stepped out of a nearby trailer. He wore a .45 caliber pistol in a shoulder holster, a FOB bra as they used to call it in Dixon’s Army days, but the stranger’s walky-talky seemed to be his preferred weapon. He stormed off in self-righteous importance in another direction, pausing only long enough to point the antennae straight at Dixon’s head.
“You! No private firearms allowed in my camp. If you want in, you’ll have to surrender them. Don’t worry; we have our own security contractors.”
Dixon ignored him and took a step towards the chow hall. The other man stopped and yelled from about ten yards away.
“Hey pal! Do you think I’m joking?” Before he even raised his radio, two blue-shirted men jogged over from the main gate. Both unslung their M4 rifles.
The older woman at the kiosk rose and stepped in front of Rachel. She disarmed Dixon with a laugh. “Will you boys calm down? I’m sorry, Mr. Heinrich. I haven’t had a moment to explain the rules. I’ll take care of them. Everyone please settle down.”
Heinrich muttered something, but soon strutted off while barking at his radio and checking things off in a thick binder. The lady handed Dixon a brochure while the guards eyed him with sudden interest.
“I’m sorry about that. Heinrich’s the head administrator. Poor guy was always high strung. Even before all this new stress. Please just check your weapons and you’ll be on your way.”
Dixon met Rachel’s eye. She nodded in firm agreement. “If that’s how it is, then thanks, but no thanks. If the Feds want to confiscate my weapon, they’ll have to pry it out of my cold, dead—”
The Red Cross volunteer guffawed and slapped his shoulder. “Oh, dear. Don’t be so paranoid. Check them, like a valet.” She pulled out a receipt pad and winked. “Pretend you’re in an old-timey saloon and gotta leave your irons with the bartender. Just let me write down the serial numbers real quick…” The woman glanced up from his National Guard rifle and squinted at the blue nametag taped on the buttstock.
“Or maybe you wouldn’t like a paper trail, Mister… Chow?”
“We found them after a battle.”
The old lady just kept smiling politely and twirled her pen.
“Ok, fine. You can hold on to the rifles, but answer Rachel’s question first. How did you people get squared away so quickly? Even the military was caught off guard, yet FEMA can toss up well-stocked tent-cities outside of every major city on a moment’s notice? This doesn’t make any sense.”
Her grandmotherly pleasantness evaporated. “We had the good luck to be running a full-scale exercise here in case Hurricane Bush made landfall next week. Do you think all this is normal? From what I heard, we have the only FEMA camp operating within a hundred miles.”
She handed the weapons to a DHS security contractor and frowned at the dark horizon. “Could you imagine if all those millions of desperate people knew we were here?”
US Army Camp Arifjan
Southern Kuwait
“This is crazy. We need to pick another place to land.” Kat shouted at the ramp gunner as she peered over his shoulder at the deserted base below.
“It’s not like we have a choice. We’re running on fumes.” The gunner’s finger twitched on his Gatling gun, just begging for a target. As the Osprey banked for another pass around the landing strip, Kat hunted for something as well. Friend, foe, any living creature, but not a soul stirred in the sprawling camp below them.
Captain Dore’s taut voice cut through the squad radio as the chopper dropped like a stone. “We’re coming in fast. Treat it like a hot Landing Zone! Chalk one: clear the north-end buildings. Chalk two: take the south.”
Both Ospreys tilted up at the last second and touched down with surprising ease. Kat charged out with the rest of her chalk. Using nothing but hand signals, her team peeled off into two squads, each assaulting a different building around the tarmac. Kat chucked a smoke grenade for cover at the same time she took a knee behind some shipping container. Flicking her safety off, she scanned around the corner for anything to kill.
All she found were a trio of birds. Someone had beaten her to the punch. They were already dead.
She pried her eyes off the quail bodies and covered Michaels as he bounded towards the next piece of cover. He crouched behind a truck trailer, steadied his rifle outward and tapped his helmet with one hand. Kat dashed to his position and slapped his shoulder as soon as she was ready to replace him. Michaels bounded the last few yards and stacked against the target building edging the tarmac. He waved her forward.
Kat fell into the stack next to him as the other four operators, moving in separate pairs, merged on the structure at the same time. One soldier covered each far corner and the others lined up with Michaels and Kat on the door. Not one word had yet been spoken by the entire team. As often as they’d run this drill, talking would just slow them down. At the head of the stack, Sergeant Atkins stepped away and kicked the door in after a short running start. He spun to the side, took a knee and raised his weapon to cover their rear. As the breach man, he’d be the last person in.
Which made Kat, third in line, the second through the door. She flipped her selector switch to 3-round burst mode and charged inside. Sliding along the interior wall, she moved to the far left corner. She shined her blinding, barrel-mounted Maglite in a tight slice between nine and two, using her peripheral vision to make sure her teammates stayed out of her firing lane.
“Three, clear.” Kat added her call as the rest announced their sectors were free of threats. Not that the large central room was empty, by no means. The spec ops team just ignored the four corpses on the floor. Now wasn’t the time. There were still two interior doors to breach. Executing their scissors room-clearing drill on pure muscle memory, she paired off with Michaels right next to her and advanced to the nearest doorway.
The door was slightly ajar and swung inwards. Kat barreled at an angle into the room, slamming the door with her right shoulder hard enough to break the nose of anyone hiding behind. She kept her weapon up, sweeping the office, and didn’t stop until she reached the far corner. The who
le breaching operation, from first stacking outside the building to sweeping all three rooms, lasted eight seconds. Kat scowled. They were slowing down. Must be the exhaustion.
Michaels, on the opposite corner to her left, brought his weapon down to the low ready. “Clear, I guess.”
Kat kept her weapon aimed at the only person left in the small office. She came around the edge of the desk and studied the older gentleman in blue, digital US Air Force fatigues. His face rested on a calendar planner. His ashen hand still clutched a telephone. Kat pried up his collar from the pile of blood-streaked vomit on the desk. The shining star of a brigadier general’s insignia glinted back at her. Except for the guts spewed out of his mouth, there wasn’t a mark on his body.
Her squad radio beeped. “The field is secure. Everyone rally on the choppers.”
Kat shot Michaels a worried look. “The captain must be scared. I’ve never heard him sound so calm before.”
As they came back to the main room, Atkins was scurrying about and checking the pulses of the dead airmen scattered around. It didn’t take him long. He shook his head at Kat. “Shit. No shell casings, no puncture wounds, not even the slightest sign of a struggle. What do you think happened? Nerve gas?”
Kat bent down and covered the eyes of some junior enlisted kid. He lay in front of a coffee maker, fresh filter still in his hand. “I don’t know. Seems too quick to be gas.”
Michaels dipped a finger in the nearest coffee mug.
“Still warm. I say let’s get the hell out of here.”
As they dashed outside, Captain Dore whistled and circled a finger over his head. Kat and her squad took off at a trot towards the choppers. Halfway back to the helicopters a car horn blared from behind them.
“Contact, 6 O’clock!”
Kat dropped to the ground and trained her M4 on a lone Humvee heading their way. The old desert-tan truck veered left and right, struggling to approach straight on.
Kat rose to a knee. “This is the first time I’ve seen a drunk suicide bomber.”
Twenty yards short of them, the Humvee plowed over a mobile floodlight generator. The truck bounced up and wedged the trailer under the front axle. The odd driver kept gunning the gas and spinning the wheels dangling in the air.
“Cover me!” Kat ran over in a crouch and swung open the passenger-side canvas door.
A hideous monster hissed at her from the front seat and reached a shaky hand towards her rifle muzzle.
“Help…God…Take me with you!”
Fighting down her gut reaction, Kat slung the rifle over her back and ran around to the driver’s door.
“Medic!”
Kat popped the door open and stretched the man out. She glanced back and forth between the handsome photo on his civilian contractor badge and his blistered, pus-filled face. Only a few loose tufts of hair were all that was left of the ponytail from the badge. He moaned something about God again. His eyes were open, but those pupils were all over the place.
Roland, their only medic, ran up and flopped down beside him. “What do we have here? Ah, it’s just a burn.” He flashed his pinhole light in the victim’s eyes while checking his pulse.
“Blind too, but no problem. Sure it’s temporary. Happens all the time. Hey buddy, take steady breaths. You’re going to be fine. We’ll take care of you. Just relax.”
Kat raised her eyebrow and mouthed, “Really?” Roland just gritted his teeth and started running an IV line. The civilian clawed at his belly and gulped around his swelling tongue. “It burns. Inside out. Give me… something!”
Captain Dore scooted up to their huddle and recoiled at the grim sight. He put a steady hand on Roland’s shoulder. “Nothing too strong. We need intel.” Roland sniffed at the captain and stuck the contractor with a double-dose of Morphine anyway.
Roland leaned in close and hissed at his commander. Even a foot away, Kat could scarcely hear him.
“This guy’s dead any minute no matter what. That’s no burn. This is acute radiation poisoning. Without immediate blood transfusions and extensive bone marrow transplants, there’s nothing I can do for him. If this was me dying like that, I’d be praying for some pain relief too.”
The contractor stopped shivering as the Morphine kicked in. He looked in their general direction. “I was underground in the ammo bunker when it happened. Thought I was… ugh… lucky. At least until I went blind.”
Kat glanced around at the enormous base. The only signs of life were the dozens of buzzards squawking above, but there wasn’t a single strand of smoke on the skyline. “Makes no sense. There couldn’t have been a nuclear blast here.”
“Neutron…” he hooked a finger towards the truck’s cab, “bomb.” Kat peered inside the Humvee and found a digital dosimeter on the dashboard. The reading was green until she leaned over the contractor. She sat it on his barely rising chest. The display beeped fast and blinked 999.
It wasn’t designed to measure such high doses of radiation.
Kat snagged Roland by the rear handle on his vest and yanked him back hard. He didn’t protest.
Captain Dore took his eyes off the contractor and studied the rows of military vehicles stretching for acres around them. They weren’t so neatly organized when viewed from the ground. Quite a few were missing. He leaned as close to the contractor as he dared and patted his ankle.
“You can’t be the only survivor. Someone drove off with a ton of vehicles, maybe a few hundred. Where did they all go?”
The civilian took several tortured breaths before he could wheeze out anything coherent. “There was some talk… ah… about rallying in Baghdad, right before it happened. I don’t know, oh God… how many made it out. More drugs… please… more!”
Roland reached into his rucksack and pulled out the entire box of painkillers. Dore growled as the medic popped off ten injector caps at once. “Are you sure?”
Roland pealed back the contractor’s sleeve and found a vein. “It’s all we can do. At least it’s more dignified than a bullet to the head. I can always restock the drugs from the infirmary here.”
Dore pulled Kat and his other sergeants aside while Roland muttered a prayer and gave the contractor a final dose of painkillers.
“Okay, we need to get moving. Let’s not tempt the lightning to strike twice. We’ll take 30 minutes to strip this place for supplies and then we’re mounting up and heading north. I’m sure we’ll bump into some type of friendly force before we reach Baghdad. Questions?”
The lead Osprey pilot was the only one to speak up. “Uh, sir, these birds have been in continuous operation for more than 24 hours without maintenance. I wouldn’t risk another long-haul flight until a ground crew can look them over.”
“Don’t worry. We’re driving this time. You and your crews can take a load off; you’re just along for the ride.”
“Right… Sir, Baghdad is almost five hundred miles away and we won’t exactly be passing through the best neighborhoods. Just what are we supposed to be driving?”
Dore waved at a line of Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles on the far side of the field. Each of the $4 million, 32-ton mini tanks could haul nine soldiers in relative comfort, and packed enough armor and firepower to keep them out of all but the deepest shit. Kat clapped the pilot on the back.
“Aren’t they the perfect ride for Judgment Day?”
FEMA Emergency Sustainment Center
2 miles northeast of Gainesville, Florida
After 12 solid hours of the most blissful sleep in his life, Dixon was jerked back to reality. Not by the frantic yelling outside or Rachel’s nervous fidgeting around the tent, but thanks to the sweat beading down his brow. The ash-loaded skies might dampen the sun’s rays, but it did little to combat central Florida’s near 100% summer humidity.
“Morning, Rach. Lord, it’s getting hot in here. How long’s the AC been out?”
He swung his legs over the cot’s side and stretched. Rachel just glared out the plastic tent window with her back to
him.
“Hey, where’d the Romero’s go?” Dixon waved his dirty, but at least dry socks at the other end of the tent. Except for some knocked over cots, there wasn’t a trace of the other family remaining.
Rachel tilted her head, but didn’t turn around. “They left a couple hours ago. As soon as the generators stopped running, they started running. Didn’t say a word. I went out and asked around, but… it’s bad. Lot of rumors that something hit downtown Gainesville and Jacksonville. Sounds just like what Miguel said happened to Orlando.”
“Really? Why didn’t you wake me? Oh well. Is the chow hall still open for breakfast?” He squinted at the high sun struggling to peek out of the clouds. “Or is it lunchtime already?”
She spun around. “Don’t you think we have bigger problems?”
The fear in Rachel’s eyes stripped the last of his grogginess away. Dixon ran to her side and whistled.
“My, my. Isn’t this suddenly a popular place? Must be thousands of folks out there.”
The small refugee throng from yesterday had grown to rock concert levels. He couldn’t even begin to count them all, but a quick glance at the overflowing parking lot told the story.
“Or maybe tens of thousands. Worse than Disney World on a weekend.”
“I’ve never seen people so angry and scared at Disney.”
“Well, we can’t stay here all day. The mess hall line is only getting longer.”
Dixon shoved the meager supply kit they had salvaged from the National Guard truck into a footlocker. He double-checked his pockets for their weapons claim tickets. “Let’s rustle up a bite to eat and then figure out our next move.”
“Peter, you can’t possibly be hungry at a time like this.”
He pointed at the smoky sky. “Look, we’re either going to stay here or leave, but either way, it’s stupid to pass on a free meal. Besides, I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to do the end of the world on an empty stomach.”
The Caliphate Invasion Page 7
