“Yeah. My people are all down south, in the Carolinas.”
“Well, that’s Third Infantry territory. Hard chargers, those bastards. I’m sure your relations are good to go, LT.”
“We’ll see about that,” Robinson replied. “I don’t mean nothing by this. I just wanted to tell you, I get what it is seeing your people so danger close. It’s gotta be tough.”
“It is. But again … it is what it is.” Ballantine raised his field glasses to his eyes again. “I look at it this way. I do my job now, they’ll be good.”
“So you’re telling me to stop gabbing with you?”
“Not at all, LT. You’re in charge here.”
Robinson fell silent for a moment as she considered that. Then: “You notice anything peculiar about the reekers that attacked us out of Chicago?”
Ballantine considered that for a minute as he continued to surveil the field. “Um … they were all dead?”
“They were mostly all white,” Robinson said.
Ballantine considered what she’d said for a moment. “Not sure what to make of that, LT. You have a point you’re trying to make?”
“White people in Chicago depended on the local government to protect them. You know, urbanites in the city. Not so many guns to go around, right? But in the south side, where the blacks were? They had weapons. Maybe not entirely legal or anything, but they had the means. The means to defend themselves.”
“Okay,” Ballantine said. He didn’t know what the woman beside him was getting at. So the reekers were white? They were still dead as doornails.
“Taking away firearms is one of the things that’s going to count against us moving forward,” Robinson said. “It’s uncomfortable for us to have armed civilians in the column, but they need to be able to defend themselves.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” Ballantine replied.
“But what if the guy or girl holding a rifle was a gangbanger or a drug distributor?” Robinson asked. “To be more direct, black folks generally occupy a lower rung on the ladder of society … so they have to keep weapons illegally, while the white folks up in Chicago itself depended on the police to protect them. They got the wrong end of the deal. You agree?”
“LT, is this an important discussion to have right now?”
“Maybe not. But in the future? Yeah, it’s going to deserve some merit. Right?”
“Right on that,” Ballantine said. “Everyone needs to be able to defend themselves, no matter what. Like they said, when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”
“A lot of the civilians with us aren’t armed. I’m going to make the case to Captain Bellara that that needs to change. If I need you, are you with me?”
“All of my people are armed,” Ballantine said. “Anyone who’s an adult has a weapon. I’d imagine that should be the same all up and down the line. What if someone gets separated from the column? They’ll need to be able to fight their way back to us. Right?”
“Right,” Robinson said, but there was surprise in her voice. “You don’t have any issues with, say, a black man being issued a rifle?”
Ballantine snorted. “Ma’am, in the very same MRAP where my wife and kids sit, a crazy Asian stripper’s slinging a short-barreled rifle. Trust me, I have no problem with saner people gaining access to firearms.” He pointed down the column’s length quickly. “And about a hundred meters downrange, one of the stupidest soldiers I’ve ever known has access to a SAW. He’s black, but that’s not the consideration here. The fact that the rest of the troops in my unit consider him to be mentally challenged at best is the real concern—I mean, we gave a mentally deficient soldier control of a weapon that can cut down around twenty people per second. That has to mean something. Right?”
“I’m not sure what, though. Can your guy at least handle the weapon?”
Ballantine grunted. “Oh, yeah. He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but trust me … he knows how to kill reekers. And at the end of the day, he’s not bad at it.” He paused for a moment. “Back at the Gap, we had an old Marine train up our folks on M4s and some other weapons. He ensured everyone had a baseline proficiency. We could source him again to do the same thing, but honestly? I don’t think we’re going to have the time. We need to keep moving. The sooner we get our asses to Carson, the better off we’ll be.”
“Agreed. But if things”—Robinson paused momentarily before continuing—“if things fly off the rails? What then?”
“‘Fly off the rails?’ LT, that was bad. Plus, we appear to have practical experience with that already.”
“Yeah, yeah. But what if?”
Ballantine considered that for a long moment. “We fight for as long as we can, of course. My people have their instructions—they don’t stick around, they make tracks whether me and the guys are with them or not.”
Robinson looked at him in the deepening gloom. Ballantine heard the tankers shifting position as they pulled forward to top off another set of fuel tanks. “And what about the rest of them? The civilians?”
Ballantine pointed at the subdued patch on his shoulder that bore a pair of crossed swords. It was the insignia of the Tenth Mountain Division. “This makes me a lightfighter, not Superman. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep people safe, even if it means I’m not going to walk away from it.” As he said that, Ballantine recalled he had been half-willing to let Kenny and Diana be torn apart by the hordes attacking their barracks at the Gap. It wasn’t that he was too frightened to get involved, though fear was a constant companion these days. He’d been stuck by a bolt of worry about what would happen to his family if he went down. Who would take care of them if the zombies killed him during an attempt to save the others?
“So long as your family is safe,” Robinson said.
“Yeah. Is that such a big thing to ask?”
She cocked her head to one side as she regarded him, her eyes barely visible in the shadow cast by the brim of her helmet. “I guess not,” she said. “I understand it, certainly.”
“You can’t ask a man to die for nothing,” Ballantine told her. “Not anymore. Too much is on the line. This isn’t Afghanistan, or Iraq, or China. This is right here, where all of us live. If you’re going to count on someone tabling his or her family for the greater good, then you’re going to be in for some major disappointment.”
“I wouldn’t ask that. Of anyone.”
“Smart girl.”
Bellara emerged from the gloom, accompanied by his first shirt. The older NCO looked at Ballantine with expressionless eyes, but Ballantine felt the vibe anyway. The old dog was still a bit pissed with him for the exchange they’d had outside the ratty walls surrounding Mayor Mags’s town.
“Hey, Ballantine,” Bellara said. “Good work getting those vehicles off the train. I take it all your guys are good to go? We passed a few of them on the way forward.”
“All good to go, sir,” Ballantine said. “Something up?”
“We have to go meet with the command group for a bit. I’ll need you to ride herd on things here, because Robinson’s coming with us. All right?”
“Sure. Not a problem, sir.”
Bellara looked at Robinson and saw something in her face. “Everything cool, Brenda?”
Robinson nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“It’s just a meet and greet. You’ll be back,” Bellara told her.
“Yes, sir,” Robinson repeated.
“Captain, if things go tits up, are we to fight in place and wait for your return, or what?” Ballantine asked.
“Hold the line for as long as you can. I mean, we seem to be all right for the moment …” Bellara turned and looked across the field behind him. “But you can never be too sure, right? So if the shit starts to blow up, I want you to take charge of protecting the civilians. If that means you need to roll, you roll. But I’d ask that you slow down just long enough for my lazy ass to climb up onto your ride as you pull past, okay?”
Ballantine snorted. “I’ll kee
p that in mind, sir.”
“You should,” the blocky first sergeant said. “I passed on to the captain your threat about leaving me behind. Seems like maybe we oughtta keep an eye on you, Ballantine.”
“Hopefully not while I’m in the shower, First Sergeant. That might be weird.”
Bellara laughed at that, and even Robinson cracked a smile. The first sergeant scowled and his eyes narrowed.
“Do not test me, Ballantine.”
“I won’t”—Ballantine got a look at the man’s nametape—“First Sergeant Weider. I’m a tough grader.”
“All right, break it up!” Bellara said. He threw a knife hand toward the front of the column. “Weider, Robinson—move out.”
Weider grunted and walked on. Robinson fell in with him. Bellara hung back for a moment before following.
“You really call Weider slow and fat?” he asked Ballantine.
“I might have, sir. Can’t really recall at the moment.”
Bellara flashed his customary wide smile. “That must’ve been priceless, man … because Weider is really fixated on his weight.”
Ballantine looked at the retreating first sergeant’s wide back. “Well. He’s sure doing a good job putting it on.”
It took forty minutes to refuel all the vehicles, and by the time the tankers had finished topping off the Humvees, full-on night had fallen. The fields remained devoid of any advancing dead during the entire time the column stood motionless. Ballantine found that comforting, since the racket of so many idling engines should have attracted any reekers to the area like a dinner bell. Just the same, he kept his NVG-assisted eyes on the field to the right of the column. Lack of vigilance would just get someone killed.
Bellara, Robinson, and Weider drifted back through the night. “Anything shaking, Ballantine?” the captain asked.
“All quiet on this front, sir,” Ballantine replied. “What about for you guys?”
“The colonel’s been in contact with another infantry unit from the Kansas Army National Guard. They’re rolling over to Colorado as well. Posted out of Leavenworth, but the fort was overrun—surprise, surprise. They have about four hundred or so shooters and a train of civilians, just like we do. They report that the majority of the territory ahead is relatively clear, but we need to avoid all population centers—even the small towns are infested, or will be shortly. Apparently, there’s talk of a big band of the dead stretching from Omaha all the way down to Kansas City. The guys from Leavenworth are ahead of their advance, but we’re behind the dead’s lines. Jarmusch doesn’t want to catch up to them, so we’re going to have to deviate.”
“Okay. Catching up to them would be bad, I agree. But deviate by how much?”
Bellara pointed to the horizon. “About sixty-five miles north are Iowa City and beyond that, Cedar Rapids. We don’t want to head up that way, so we’re going to tool on for another hundred klicks or so then turn north. No real information about the threat north of Omaha City, but it seems like it might be passable—no major population centers along that route, so long as we stay well clear of Des Moines. Minneapolis belongs to the dead now too, but there’s not much of a chance they’ll have made it this far south, even if they were to take the highway.”
“We have enough endurance for that kind of deviation?”
Bellara shook his head. “Ha. Not a chance. We’ll have to start scrounging.”
“That’s … that’s just beautiful, sir,” Ballantine said.
“It is what it is, Ballantine. Anyway, let’s mount up. We’re rolling as soon as everyone’s squared away. Robinson’s back with you, so kiss that easy guard duty good bye.”
“Roger that, sir.”
“We checked in on your family, Ballantine,” Robinson said. “They’re all good. Your wife told us to tell you Kenny is sleeping.”
Ballantine nodded slowly. “Good. That’s better for everyone. Was Sergeant Guerra also sleeping, ma’am?”
Robinson snorted. “He was not. He was manning the vehicle’s fifty.”
Ballantine grunted. “Yeah, well. He can sleep with his eyes open.”
“All right, Ballantine. I’ll catch up with you and Robinson later. Go ahead and mount up,” Bellara said. “Let’s roll, First Sergeant.”
“Right behind you, sir,” Weider said. Ballantine couldn’t see the man’s eyes, courtesy of his deployed NVGs, but he hadn’t seemed overly interested in the conversation. Now that night had fallen, the older NCO kept his M4 close and his head on a swivel as he scanned the field. He walked after Bellara as the Indian captain strolled off.
“Okay, guys, mount up,” Ballantine said to the rest of the soldiers in the field with him. “Bring everybody in.” He waited while the rest of the team hauled themselves into the idling five-ton truck, and climbed up into it himself. He crossed over the crowded bed to ensure that the soldiers guarding the vehicle on the left side had made it aboard, then slapped his hand on the cab.
“Good to go when ready!” he declared.
The column moved through the night without lights. The drivers and the soldiers pulling security relied on their night vision goggles to provide the edge over the reekers. The countryside was mostly silent, and entirely dark. There was no light generated anywhere. The power grids had failed fully, and those who might have survived didn’t run their generators. Silence was now one of the keys to survival, and those who had made it this far were apparently unwilling to give up the last advantage they had. As the column wended its way down country roads and two lane highways, Ballantine saw numerous farm houses that had been converted into veritable fortresses. The people of the Midwest weren’t going anywhere, even if it meant their eventual deaths. They must have heard the convoy’s passage, but no one came out and begged to be saved. These people were the salt of the earth itself, and they would attend to their own affairs. Ballantine wasn’t surprised by that, though he wondered if these hardy few were making things even more difficult for themselves.
Yeah, because we can offer them so much more protection. The thought was an exhausting one. All his life as a professional soldier, Ballantine had believed that institutions like the US Army would be able to rise up and counter any threat on the planet. That belief had been slowly choked out over the past several months, starting with the death of New York City and the bloodletting that had befallen Fort Indiantown Gap. These farmers and landowners who had fortified their homes had just as good a chance at survival as Ballantine and his men did. Maybe even better, if the truth was told. While the dead were stupid, they were smart enough to know that moving vehicles could essentially become meals on wheels if they were lucky enough. To that end, the column had to keep moving. As certainly as a shark would die if it were to stop swimming, the column would be smothered by the reekers if it came to a halt for any longer than necessary.
The activity over the past several days continued taking its harsh toll on everyone, but the soldiers paid the highest price. They had been locked in combat at the Gap, then offered a brief respite on the train before it had met its end. To Ballantine, his entire existence seemed to consist of nothing but evading the dead. It was a singularly soul-sucking experience, and knowing his family was along for the fun increased the dread factor by ten. Through his NVGs, he saw the rest of the soldiers in the truck felt the same way. Be they male or female, young or old, they all had that distant wild-eyed look. Those who managed to rest did so fitfully, stirring often and ensuring their weapons were close at hand. Recuperative sleep was a thing of the past. The best the soldiers could do was catch a nap here and there, just enough to charge themselves up for the next round of battle and evasion. There was no escape from it, and the only chance to break the cycle was to make it all the way to Colorado.
So the column drove on through the darkness, wending its way down country roads that were mostly deserted. On occasion, it would roll past an abandoned vehicle or a scene of outright slaughter, where fleeing citizens had met their end at the hands of roving groups of grotesqu
eries. There were no livestock in any of the fields, which told Ballantine they had either run off or been killed by reekers in another location. As the column drove past a small town, figures emerged from shattered buildings and shambled toward the vehicles. Arms outstretched, they lumbered after the convoy, their moans lost amidst the rumble of diesel engines and the whir of knobbed tires rolling across pavement. There were never very many ghouls, which Ballantine found encouraging.
He thrashed his own spirits a moment later. Because that just means all the zombies are somewhere else. Maybe behind us ... but probably ahead of us.
A hand landed on his shoulder, and Ballantine fairly jumped. He turned to find Robinson standing beside him, peering up at him through her NVGs.
“Hey LT,” he said over the five-ton’s engine noise.
“Ballantine, get some rest,” Robinson told him.
“I’m good to go here, ma’am.”
“Like hell. Get some rest. We’ve got a truckload of shooters here. Knock off for a while.”
Ballantine looked up and down the truck’s bed. Some soldiers were still up, one in each corner with rifles tucked in. The rest of them were trying their best to get some shut-eye, which was no small feat given the vehicle’s bumping transit.
“What about you?” he asked.
Robinson shook her head. “Don’t worry about me, Sergeant. Worry about following orders.”
Ballantine took another scan of the area. The column was moving through some terrain that was fairly well forested; there could be hundreds of threats out there, lingering just out of sight—hundreds, thousands more than the column could repel. Just the same, he was dog ass tired.
“You’re no good to your fam if you’re dead on your feet,” Robinson insisted.
“Okay, LT. Okay.”
Ballantine awoke to the five-ton truck coming to a sudden halt. As he slid down the vehicle’s bed, he grabbed onto its side and steadied himself as the rest of the supplies and shit in the bed’s center shifted forward, hurtling toward the truck’s cab. Up ahead, weapon fire filled the air, and he had no problem hearing several GAU-19s chattering away at their full cyclic rate. Clearly, something was amiss.
These Dead Lands (Book 2): Desolation Page 29
