“Is there a reason for that?” Ballantine asked. “We’re out here in the middle of deadhead country.”
“Just a quick walk up and down the line, to put eyeballs on target,” Jarmusch said. “I need to see it for myself. Don’t worry, Ballantine—Headley is still with the Humvees, so senior staff will be up and available if things go sideways.”
Ballantine nodded at that. “You gentlemen probably shouldn’t be out for too long. Inspecting the column sounds like something you might want to do as a matter of procedure, but there’s no need for it.”
“I heard you the first time, Ballantine. So noted.” If Jarmusch was irritated by the needling, he didn’t allow it to show.
“Understood, sir.” Ballantine looked at Chan, and the MP subtly cocked a brow, as if to say, Hey, man, I just work here. “I was wondering … did we get any of the UAVs?”
“We didn’t, I don’t think,” Jarmusch said. “I’m hoping to run into someone from the aviation mission planning team, but they might not be with us. That’s one of the reasons I’m going on this walkabout, to see who made it and who didn’t.”
“Then you should get to it, sir.” Ballantine stepped away a bit, giving Jarmusch his cue.
“Thanks, Ballantine. Take a minute, get your people squared away.”
“Sir.” Ballantine saluted. Jarmusch returned the gesture, then walked down the line followed by Gaylord and several of Chan’s MPs. As Chan walked by, he shook his head at Ballantine once again.
“I don’t know why he’s doing it either,” the MP captain said.
“Well. Keep an eye on him, sir.”
“I will.”
As the group moved off past the MRAPs, Ballantine turned to Guerra. “So how’s the ankle?”
“Doing much better than your face.”
Ballantine snorted, then nodded toward the MRAP. “Things holding up?”
Guerra slapped his hand on the MRAP’s hood. “Vehicle’s solid. Martin was going through some pain from his meds wearing off, which is why I requested the halt. Kenny’s been going ape shit nonstop. He can’t stand being inside the vehicle, but I’m thinking putting him on a truck isn’t going to be any better. Those things are loud enough to make me want to scream.”
“Plus he might jump off, and at least the reekers can’t hear him inside the MRAP.” As Ballantine spoke, he distantly heard Kenny wailing away inside.
Guerra heard it too and grunted. “It’s pretty unpleasant, but it’s preferable to getting eaten alive.”
“It’s only going to be for a few days,” Ballantine told him.
“I know. Here’s hoping we have an uneventful trip.” Guerra paused. “We need to deviate around the major population centers to reduce the risk. The way I see it, there are probably fewer reekers stumbling around the backwoods of God’s country. Right?”
“Agreed. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to be completely safe. Remember how we met Kenny?”
Guerra nodded. “The good thing about going up against people is that we can kill ’em pretty easily. Reekers? Not so much. How are the rest of the guys?”
“As far as I know, they’re all good.”
“Can’t hear Stilley, so that’s a plus.”
“Yeah. Listen, I’m going to check in on the fam. You probably want to mount up.”
Guerra examined the waving fronds of corn. The wind was starting to pick up a bit, and he pointed to the western horizon. “Looks like we have some weather moving in.”
Ballantine looked in the direction the swarthy staff sergeant indicated. Sure enough, there was a smudge of dark clouds in the far distance. “Figures. We’ve been pretty lucky so far, but it is summer, after all.”
There wasn’t much Ballantine was able to do to tend to Kenny other than to retreat from his previous position and have Diana pass him more melatonin. It wasn’t his first choice, but it was the only one. All the passengers in the MRAP were on edge with the young boy’s continuous, frantic meltdowns. He refused any attempt to soothe him, and allowing him to drink water laced with melatonin was the only answer. After ten minutes, he began to wind down. By that time, Jarmusch had finished his meet and greet with the rest of the column and had returned to the Humvees. Ballantine said his goodbyes to his wife and his boys, and admonished the latter to do their best by Kenny. Diana looked pretty strung out, and Ballantine recommended she take a shot of melatonin tablets as well.
“You’re going to need to get some rest,” he told her. “As soon as the kid winds down, check out yourself.”
“A bottle of Chivas might be the better way to go,” she snarled back.
“Or maybe a bud,” Everson threw in. He stood beside the opened driver’s door, his back toward the vehicle as he surveilled the waving fields of corn to its left.
Ballantine snorted. As far as he went, a bottle of liquor or a fat joint would probably have the diminutive Asian lady doing lap dances as opposed to mellowing her out. Yeah, let’s avoid that.
“All right, guys. Let’s get ready to get back on the road.” He kissed both of his boys goodbye then hugged Kay. She gripped him back powerfully.
“Are you safe out there?” she asked.
“Sure. I’m surrounded by a ton of infantry. Nothing to worry about.”
“We were all surrounded by a ton of infantry at the Gap,” she said, her voice low. “Look at what happened.”
“We’re going to be fine, baby. Trust me on this.”
“I always trust you,” she said. Ballantine smiled at that, and tenderly touched her cheek. She’d been a good wife, always understanding even though she was subject to the wild variances of the US Army. She’d rarely complained, even when she had people she didn’t like telling her to do things she didn’t want to do and for reasons she didn’t understand.
“I want … cheese!” Kenny declared suddenly.
“Fuck kid, here! Here!” Diana shouted. She had crackers and jalapeno cheese spread at the ready, and she practically shoved it into Kenny’s mouth. If that bothered him, he didn’t let it show. Kenny just chowed down like a piglet at a trough.
“Take it easy,” Ballantine snarled, and he was surprised at the surge of anger that coursed through his breast. “He’s still a baby.”
“Then you fucking take care of him,” Diana snapped back.
“Are we really going to have this conversation again?” Ballantine asked.
“No, we’re not.” This came from Everson, who leaned in through the opened driver’s door. “Diana. You take care of that boy like he’s a national asset. Otherwise, I’ll do to you what I did to Walker. This is a no shit declaration. Consider yourself officially warned.”
“Fuck you, old man!” Diana snarled.
“Why are you so mean?” Curtis asked.
Diana glared at him but said nothing when she saw the expressions on Ballantine’s and Kay’s faces.
“Let’s get things under control,” Ballantine said. “That means everybody. I know what’s going on isn’t pleasant, but there’s no way around it. We’re not going to leave that boy behind, so everyone should get used to it.” He looked around the MRAP’s interior, giving everyone the tough guy act, including Everson. The old Marine took it in stride and went back to scanning his lane of fire.
“It’s tough, man,” Diana said after a moment.
Ballantine nodded. “I know. Everyone needs to help where they can. Boys, I want you to keep trying to engage with Kenny, all right? Let him know he’s not alone. Help Diana feed him and help her get him to sleep.”
“We will,” Josh said. “We’ve tried, Dad. But he just doesn’t seem to like us.”
“He doesn’t want to play or anything,” Curtis added.
“Keep trying.” To Diana, he added, “You too. Just hold it together for a couple of days, then we can find someone to look after him.”
Diana rested her head against the seatback and looked at him with exhausted eyes. “Carl … who the hell is going to look after him? Wherever we wind up, it’s
going to be a shi—” She looked at Josh and Curtis across from her. “It’s going to be a crap show,” she finished.
“We’ll keep pushing on,” Ballantine told her. “For now, you just get through the moment. That’s all you have to do.”
“Even if getting through the moment means drugging up the kid?”
“Wadah please,” Kenny said.
Ballantine motioned for Josh to give Kenny water from a plastic bottle. He uncapped it and held it to Kenny’s lips. Kenny pulled off the bottle, his eyes focused on the vehicle’s overhead. It was as if Josh didn’t exist.
“Even if it means drugging up the kid,” Ballantine said after a long moment. “Just be as careful as you can, all right? We really don’t want to screw him up any more than he already is.”
Outside, a rifle cracked in the distance. Ballantine turned toward the opened driver’s door. “Everson?”
“Toward the rear of the column,” Everson said. “Not near us, but not a great sign. You’d better get back to work, big guy.”
“Roger that.” He nodded to his family, then to Diana and Kenny. “I’ll see you guys later. Hang tough.” With that, he crawled around Guerra, who sat on the gunner platform. Martin was sprawled out in the passenger seat, his rifle propped against the door beside him.
“Martin, you take your meds?” he asked.
Martin looked at him with sleepy eyes. “What, you can’t tell?”
Ballantine snorted as he hauled himself past Guerra and over the driver’s seat. “Do whatever you need to do, soldier. You’re no good to me dead, you know?”
“Guess this old cavalryman is moving up the ladder, if a lightfighter is worried about him living or dying,” Martin replied.
Ballantine lowered himself to the pavement outside. “Hey, man, if not for the zombie apocalypse? Dead would always be my first choice, you know?”
“You hopeless romantic,” Martin said.
“Yeah,” Ballantine said, “that’s so me.” He clapped Everson on the shoulder. “Okay, Marine. Mount up and button up this vehicle.”
Everson unslung his REPR and pushed it into the cabin. “We’re good, Ballantine. Don’t worry about us, we’ve got this shit under control.”
“Your lips, God’s ear, etcetera,” Ballantine replied.
Everson hauled himself behind the wheel. “God always listens to Marines,” he said. “We’re His angels, you know.”
The column got back on the road a few minutes later. Ballantine resumed his position beside the gunner manning the M249 as the five-ton truck pulled away. Robinson passed on to him that a single reeker had emerged from the cornstalks in plain view of the soldiers in the rear truck, and they’d taken it out with one shot. Even the presence of one zombie was enough to get the column underway once again. Ballantine didn’t disagree with the tactic. Where there was one, there would be about a thousand more if you gave them the time.
The column moved through the afternoon, engines bellowing. They stuck to the country, navigating around even small towns wherever possible. Twice they even went off road, which was a huge risk—one vehicle stuck in the mud or otherwise disabled would be a total pain in the ass. But the ground was mostly dry, and the Humvees ranged ahead, scouting out the best terrain for the heavier trucks and tankers to follow. It must’ve been quite the sight, if there’d been a casual observer to take it in, all those armored vehicles and trucks rolling across verdant fields and down dusty pathways. But there was no one out here, not even the dead. While the column moved past farmhouses and ranches, there was no sign of human life. Either everyone had bugged out, or they were lying low, hanging their very survival on remaining undetected. Ballantine knew there were people about. That they chose not to expose themselves, even to a military convoy, was probably wise. At this point in the emergency that gripped the nation, they likely understood that soldiers couldn’t offer any protection whatsoever. They were on their own, and the people of the Midwestern United States were probably better at surviving the zombie apocalypse than the US Army, anyway. They didn’t have armored vehicles and attack helicopters and automatic weapons that presented a false sense of security. They only had wood and brick and steel and glass to hide behind, and the less attention they drew, the more successful they would be. Ballantine got it, and by now, all the soldiers in the truck with him had figured it out. There was no more discussion about stopping to try and make contact with any survivors. The column just kept moving on.
It was the only sane thing to do. Stopping meant potential death, and as long as that was the set of circumstances they faced, then Ballantine was more than happy to keep wheels turning.
At dusk, the column came to another halt so the tankers could commence refuel operations. Jarmusch had picked a singularly flat expanse in which to stop, one that offered fantastic sightlines for a full three hundred sixty degrees. It was still too bright for night vision goggles, but that worked to their advantage in that there was enough light to see without being constrained to a field of view that was plus or minus forty degrees. The rural highway the convoy traveled down was essentially deserted, save for an abandoned vehicle here or there. He took a good look around from his elevated position on the truck, but there wasn’t a hell of a lot to see. Fields of grass that were maybe two feet tall dotted here and there by copses of trees. No structures, but the field to the left of the column was fenced with barbed wire. Ballantine presumed these were originally grazing fields for livestock that had returned to the wild.
“Okay, let’s get some dismounts on the deck,” Robinson ordered. “Ballantine, you good to take charge?”
“Roger that,” he replied. “I want eight pairs of boots on the deck, four on each side.” He turned to the machine-gun operator behind him. “I want you in a refused right pos. There’s a fence to our left.”
“Got it, Sergeant,” the gunner said, and she slewed her weapon to cover the field to the right of the truck.
Ballantine headed for the rear of the truck. “LT, you and the rest of the females—if you need a latrine break, there’s no cover out here. I think you guys should get together and grab some blankets so you can do your business without a bunch of meatheads watching.”
“Will get that under control in a moment, Sergeant,” Robinson replied. “Thanks for the suggestion.”
Ballantine grunted and picked his troops. He didn’t discriminate. Whether they were white, black, brown, yellow or red, he assigned them to one side of the truck or the other. Females pulled duty just as males did—he didn’t have an overwhelming surfeit of potential to choose from, so he used what he had as well as he was able. He advised those on the left side of the truck to be alert for the tankers as they moved up the line before he crawled over the truck’s side and climbed to the ground. The five-tons were as huge as they were noisy, so there was no jumping unless you wanted a couple of broken legs. He ranged out into the field to the right of the truck and pulled his field glasses from the pack at his side. Using the traditional Army knife hand, he indicated to the troops dismounting behind him where they should establish their formation.
He scanned the field through his binoculars. He detected no extraneous movement that could be defined as reekers heading their way. Just the breeze ruffling through the grass, birds tweeting, and flies buzzing. Another day in paradise. Something flitted across his view then, obscuring it. Startled, Ballantine stepped back and dropped the field glasses from his eyes so he could seize up his rifle. Some of the troops behind him cackled. A butterfly had flown over one of the lenses. Still no zombies. Just a butterfly, winging its way through the warm evening.
One of the Guardsmen jeered, “That butterfly was tougher than Stone Cold Steve Austin. Looks like you need an injection of that old warrior ethic, Sergeant!”
“Maybe so. How do you want to administer it? Your little dick up a real man’s ass?” Ballantine shot back. He was momentarily embarrassed, then dismissed the emotion. After what he’d been through, getting jumpy over a passing butterf
ly was nothing. If the Nasty Girls standing security behind him got a charge out of it, more power to him.
All that told him was they still didn’t know what they were in for.
The refueling operation went off without a hitch, despite the din of rumbling vehicles as they idled away in the fading day. The HEMT tankers moved up the line, dispensing enough fuel to keep the column on the move. Ballantine figured they had two days of endurance left to them before the column began to run dry, and then they’d have to forage for fuel themselves. That was the big breaking point. As soon as they had to deviate toward truck stops or into towns and cities to find consumables, that was when Mr. Reeker would have at them. He already knew how it would happen. The gun trucks would range ahead and scout out objectives to plunder, as they were faster than the rest of the vehicles in the formation. Once they found what they needed, the tankers would be called forward so they could load up with the gun trucks providing security. They’d have to spend a couple of hours on station, trying to figure out how to pump fuel from tanks with no electricity available. While he didn’t know from personal experience, Ballantine figured that no one was going to be able to siphon several thousand gallons of fuel from an underground tank. Which meant the operation would take quite some time.
“Hey, Ballantine.”
He turned and found Lieutenant Robinson walking up on his position. Ballantine lowered his field glasses and faced her with a salute that she perfunctorily returned.
“What’s happening, LT?” he asked.
“Nothing. Which is all good by me. What do you think?”
“Hey, the less shooting we have to do, the better.”
Robinson nodded toward the head of the column. “Your fam. They all right?”
“Last I checked, everyone was good to go.”
Robinson looked out across the field. “Gotta be some shit, right? Your family right here, in the middle of all of this?”
Ballantine nodded. “Yeah, well. It is what it is. I’m grateful they’re where I can check on them.”
These Dead Lands (Book 2): Desolation Page 28
