“You should check in with your people, Sergeant. We’re going to have to haul some serious ass. Hopefully, that horde isn’t wide enough to fill up the entire horizon, otherwise we’re going to find ourselves seriously dicked over.”
“We’ll be fine, sir,” Ballantine said. “Every mile we roll, we get closer to where we’re headed. That’s all that matters.”
Bellara sighed. “From your lips to God’s ears, Ballantine.” He looked at his watch. “All right, do what you have to do. We kick off in fourteen now.”
Ballantine nodded and turned back into the darkness. It took him a few moments to find the MRAP that contained his family, but when he found it he saw it was undamaged. Guerra had dismounted with Everson, and they had already completed checking the rig when Ballantine hurried up to them.
“What’s up?” Guerra asked. “Definitely a fur ball back there, huh?”
“Not something I want to go through again, so we need to be a bit more careful,” Ballantine said. “They’ll be issuing instructions for the next road movement. We’ll be heading north up to Highway 20, then cutting back down to 175. It’ll take us closer to Sioux City, so that means the probability for enemy contact could be higher than we’d like.”
“We got sloppy,” Guerra said. “We need to keep our shit tighter than that.”
“Agreed.”
Everson walked past the two men and reached for the driver’s door. “Well, it could have been worse,” he said. “Kenny slept through the entire thing.”
Ballantine and Guerra chuckled at that. “Did he really?” Ballantine asked.
Everson nodded and shrugged. “Kids. They can get used to everything.” He pulled open the door and nodded toward the interior. “Go on, Ballantine. Visit with your family for a couple of minutes. Let them know you’re good to go.”
Ballantine smiled and hoisted himself into the idling MRAP. “Hey guys,” he said to his sons and wife, and Diana and Kenny. He raised his goggles on their mount and gave them a wide grin. “So about this trip to Colorado Springs...? Gonna take a little longer than we thought.”
“Hot cheese,” Kenny said in response. “Waddah.”
“Carl, are you all right?” Kay asked.
“Dad, what happened?” Josh said at the same time.
“Kenny pooped,” Curtis added.
“I’m fine, and we obviously had a run in with our pal Mr. Reeker,” Ballantine said. “And uh, is Kenny squared away?” He looked at Diana. Her return gaze wasn’t nearly as inviting as a king cobra’s.
“Just great. Mind tossing this outside for me?” She leaned forward and held a full diaper toward him.
“Gross!” Curtis squealed. Kenny made a mewling sound and shrank away from Curtis’s outburst.
“Curtis, take it easy,” Ballantine warned. “And I’ll ... take this.” He reached out and took the warm, sagging diaper from Diana. He wrinkled his nose at the smell.
Jesus, dude. You just shot up a bunch of zombies, and a diaper’s gonna take you out?
He stepped out of the MRAP and looked around, trying to figure out where to put the diaper where someone wouldn’t step on it. They were parked on the road leading to the darkened town on Sac City, and there were no trash cans around. He just tossed it under the vehicle. No one would be walking around under there.
“Litterbug,” Everson said as he stood near the idling truck’s front bumper. Guerra was at the rear, looking out into the night through his NVGs. Ballantine climbed back into the MRAP again.
“Listen, everyone. We have to deviate to the north for a few miles, then cut down to get back on our original route,” Ballantine told the people inside the armored vehicle. “There’s a good-sized horde we can’t fight our way through, so we have to zig-zag around them. You may hear more combat because we don’t know how big the horde is. We might graze the edge of their formation. So everyone stay belted in, and do whatever Sergeant Guerra, Sergeant Martin, and Mr. Everson tell you. Josh, I want you and Curtis to do whatever you can to help Diana keep Kenny calm. I understand he was actually okay during the fight?” He looked at Diana for confirmation.
“He was catatonic,” she replied. “Unlike the rest of us.”
Ballantine tilted his head. “Why was he like that?”
“I don’t know. He was asleep, then woke up. After that, all he did was hold onto me so hard he bruised my fucking arm.” She glanced at Kay and the kids. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry, potty mouth and all that.”
“I’m sure you’ve done worse,” Kay said.
Diana chuckled, but the mirth didn’t reach his eyes.
“Ladies, please try not to mix it up in the vehicle,” Martin said. He was sprawled in the front passenger seat, his injured leg elevated on the gunnery platform.
“Trevor, you hanging in?” Ballantine asked him.
Martin shot him a thumbs up. “Good to go, Sergeant.”
“When are you due for more meds?”
“Not anytime soon. I’ll be ready if things get weird.” He patted his rifle, and Ballantine saw its barrel was already inserted in the door firing port.
“I appreciate that,” Ballantine said. “Sorry if you’re in discomfort.”
“I think I’ll be in even greater discomfort if something”—he inclined his head toward the rear of the MRAP—“happens to these fine folks.”
“Excuse me?” This came from one of the injured people from the train wreck, sitting in the back of the vehicle. An older man with a thin, sallow face. His hair was almost white, and his right arm was in a sling. “How much longer?”
“To Colorado? At least two days,” Ballantine said. “Could be sooner than that, but I think two days is about right.”
“Jesus, can’t we like drive faster?” Diana snapped. Kenny made a distressed noise, and she sighed and put her arm around his narrow shoulders. He calmed quickly at the contact.
“It’s not like we can just hop on an interstate and go directly there,” Ballantine said. “We have to be careful.”
“Like what we just went through? That kind of careful?”
“Hot cheese,” Kenny said, his voice small and barely audible above the rumble of the diesel. “Waddah.”
Diana’s face hardened at the request, and Ballantine thought she was going to lose her shit right then and there. But Josh leaned forward then, having a cracker and Jalapeño cheese spread at the ready.
“Here, Kenny.” Josh handed it over, and Kenny took it and devoured it almost instantly.
“Waddah,” he said immediately after swallowing.
“Got that too,” Josh said. He reached down to the floor and pulled up a plastic water bottle.
“Hope that’s water, and not one of our relief vessels,” Martin said with a smile.
“Yeah, it is,” Josh confirmed. He held the bottle to Kenny’s lips, and the smaller boy drank from it.
“Thanks, kid,” Diana said.
“Sure thing,” Josh replied.
“Carl?”
Ballantine turned to Kay. “What’s that?”
“Can we make it to Carson?” she asked. “Fuel, water?”
Ballantine nodded. “We might have to scrounge a bit, but we’ll make it. All of us.”
Rifle fire cracked in the near distance. A volley of shots, nothing too intense. But the reports came over his headset a moment later: troops in contact at the rear.
“Okay, time to go. Everyone make sure you’re strapped in, okay?” Without waiting for an answer, he climbed down from the MRAP. Guerra was already falling back toward him, and Everson stood right by the door, his REPR in his hands.
“Hector? Ankle?” Ballantine asked.
“Operational,” Guerra said.
Ballantine jerked his helmeted head toward the MRAP. “Stay buttoned up. We’ll be kicking off soon.”
More rifles spoke, and both Ballantine and Guerra turned toward the rear of the convoy. A Humvee with an M2 in its cupola trundled toward the commotion, moving into position to back up the soldiers in that
area with the .50-cal.
“Get in, guys,” Ballantine said. “Talk to you men later.”
Guerra climbed in first, followed by Everson. Ballantine helped him close the heavy door, then pulled in his rifle. A .50-cal roared then, followed by more intense rifle fire. Troops began returning to their trucks, and Ballantine followed suit. A triplet of explosion wracked the night, sending a coruscating explosion of sparks flying through the nighttime air. The reekers were coming, and sooner than anyone had thought.
They’ll never give up, Ballantine thought as he jogged toward the truck. Robinson leaned over the railing, waving him forward as the machinegunner in the ring rotated the M240 to the right. She ripped off a burst into the night. Even if we make it to Carson, they’ll still come...
Well never be safe. Never.
He climbed aboard the truck and hauled himself into the bed. The injured were gone, having been moved to another vehicle. More soldiers had taken their place, unfamiliar Guardsmen, all armed and operational. Professionals. They weren’t his men and women, at least not formally, but they would fight hard just the same.
The convoy began to move then, and Ballantine took a knee with his rifle pointed over the railing. Colorado Springs was a long way off. He had to be ready, no matter what. The soldiers, the civilians, his family all depended on it.
These I’ll defend.
These Dead Lands (Book 2): Desolation Page 31
