Deadfall

by L. Douglas Hogan

  “I won’t be sleeping here tonight. I need to keep moving.”

  The man collected himself and continued on in the direction of the killers.

  Two

  ALONE

  August 18th

  A ditch on the side of the road

  Somewhere west of Raleigh, NC

  Tommie Dean Ross’s eyes opened. He wasn’t sure how he pulled it off, but he did. He’d survived the night. It was a long one, too. He was a bit beat up, bruised and sore, but the main thing was that he’d managed to survive.

  Adjusting to the new world was a challenge for Tommie. It hadn’t always been difficult for him. He was raised with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. In his younger days, his mom and dad worked lots of overtime to afford his college. He had three squares a day and was never left wanting. His job in New York was accounting. It was a far cry from what he needed now, which was prepper skills. He spent his waking hours wishing he would have prepared for life more realistically. Accounting had seemed practical the way things were. Those days were gone. There was a new way now, and Tommie hadn’t seen this coming. Who did? Survival requires a specific skillset. Studying things like bushcraft and marksmanship was what he wished he would have done. Too late for that now.

  Tommie was flat on his back. He sat up and let out a groan. He had taken quite a beating the night before. He couldn’t think of a single spot on his body that wasn’t sensitive to touch.

  The East Coast was under foreign occupation, and the Russians weren’t particularly nice to Americans. The Pulse had knocked out everything electrical. A year later, BTRs, tanks, personnel carriers, and armor-reinforced busses landed. Nobody was sure why they came in from the east. Some believed it had something to do with South America and quick staging grounds. Whatever the reason, they were here, and they were the source of Tommie’s condition.

  He went to stand up and felt a sharp pain in his ribs when he pushed himself up and off the ground. It took him by surprise and made him wince. It was agonizing.

  I’m broken.

  Tommie felt all busted up on the inside – like nothing was holding him together but skin and sinew.

  He recalled the previous day’s events and how he’d barely survived.

  Raleigh, NC

  The night before

  “Shut your face, you dirty Americans,” a Russian soldier shouted from his position. It was his show of force over the fifty American civilians who were lined up heel to toe with their hands interlocked on the back of their heads. “For every peep I hear, I will shoot two of you,” he threatened. The soldier’s voice was strongly accented. Every soldier who communicated to the Americans seemed to know English and could speak it pretty well. One thing that couldn’t be denied was that Russian drawl.

  Tommie was the seventh man back from the front of the line. He didn’t know for certain, but it appeared the line of prisoners was waiting for a prisoner transport. Raleigh was full of Russians. Tommie couldn’t help but wonder if he would have just avoided the larger communities like his mom said, he might not be in his current predicament. His legs were trembling.

  He was lucky to have made it all the way to North Carolina in the time he did. He’d met some people who had stolen a Ural Typhoon, a Russian ambush-resistant truck, and reluctantly gave him a ride. The people didn’t trust him, so they made him ride in the back of the truck. The armored vehicle had made it as far as Raleigh when they saw a Russian checkpoint ahead. Instead of dumping the vehicle and fleeing on foot, they hesitated. Before they knew it, they were all at gunpoint. The driver of the Typhoon was shot and killed instantly. His body was left draped over the steering wheel as blood pooled beneath him. The rest of them were pulled violently from the trucks and thrown onto the pavement. After several minutes of beatings, they were summarily executed.

  Tommie could hear everything taking place from where he sat in the back of the truck. He was terrified. His safe zone, or so he thought, was a tall enclosed module that was heavily armored. It could seat sixteen people, but Tommie was alone. After hearing the three gunshots that killed his couriers, he remained especially silent. He waited for the dreadful moment the module would be opened, revealing him to his would-be Russian killers.

  Just then, the module opened. A squad of Russian soldiers had their Val assault rifles pointed at him. When they saw his ragged clothes and that he was unarmed, they lowered their weapons and began to laugh at him, thinking him to be some pauper without a home. Perhaps out of nervousness or fear, Tommie joined them with a chuckle of his own. They didn’t think he was funny and immediately began to bark orders at him to come down out of the Typhoon. The laughing was over and the fear that his life was about to end suddenly dawned on him.

  When he was close to the edge of the module, one of the soldiers shouldered his rifle and grabbed Tommie by the shirt and pulled him down to the pavement. First, the pain of the landing. No comfortable placement on the road was afforded to him. Second, Tommie’s eyes were shut from the impact of the fall. When he opened them, he saw the three American civilians who graciously gave him a ride. Their scalps were blown upward from the back of their heads, and the exit wounds were toward the ground. Nothing much was left of their faces. At least nothing recognizable.

  His study of the gruesome scene was interrupted by a Russian-accented voice saying, “Take a good look, beggar. You will be looking the same.” The Russian who spoke the life-threatening words stood over him. He was a giant of a man. Even without the Val rifle he was carrying, he would have looked intimidating. But no, this man was huge. Well-fed and huge. He had a loaded weapon capable of shooting nine hundred rounds per minute. Tommie’s heart raced as the Russian pointed his rifle down at Tommie’s head.

  “Wait,” another Russian said, stopping the giant of a man.

  The larger Russian said, “You would stop me from having my prey?”

  The smaller Russian, obviously intimidated by the larger one, explained himself. “We want our fun too, Vlad.”

  Tommie pondered in fear and trepidation what was to befall him. It wasn’t long before he was kicked in the ribs by the smaller Russian. It hurt Tommie. He felt the pain course through his entire body. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the man broke a couple of ribs. He winced in pain. The larger Russian, known only as Vlad, withdrew his aim and smirked at Tommie as he lay in a fetal position. A volley of kicks and strikes from the butt end of the Russians’ rifles hammered him relentlessly. This went on until he was numb and unresponsive. The hard kick to his face was the last thing he remembered before waking up in the back of a HMMWV next to a young man clad in battle fatigues. His left breast pocket had a name tape on it that was embroidered “MARINES.” The man couldn’t have been much older than Tommie. He had a corporal rank on his collar that was painted a nonreflective matte black.

  “Good morning, sweetheart,” the Marine said when he saw Tommie awaken from his sleep.

  Tommie gave him a good once-over with his only open eye.

  The Marine glared back at him. “You look like hell warmed over,” he said to his passenger. “You’ve got the whole Popeye thing going on,” he bantered, making fun of Tommie’s swollen eye.

  Tommie, realizing that he was safe from the fate he had already accepted, let out a huge sigh of relief and dropped his head on the window to his left. It was then he realized he was in an American-controlled and American-operated military vehicle. Once the fact registered, he perked up in his seat and studied his environment. There were three more Marines in the Humvee. One driving, one in the front passenger seat, and one in the turret behind what appeared to be a .50-caliber machine gun. A million questions flooded his aching head. Without taking the time to prioritize them, he shot out the first one that came to him. “How am I not dead?”

  The Marine sitting to his right answered by pointing upward to the man in the turret. That’s Deano, the man who ID’d the Typhoon; later found out you guys stole it. Good thing you did. Had you not, doubt we woulda
found ya. I’m Sommers, by the way.”

  “Hi, Sommers. Thanks for the assist.”

  “No problem, man. So, are you stupid or something?”

  Tommie gave a look at Sommers that couldn’t be misconstrued. He didn’t like the insult. At all. “Why do you say that?”

  “I mean, you stole a Russian troop carrier and go galivanting around the countryside like you’re not highly visible. So, let me ask again, are you stupid or something?”

  “I didn’t steal it. I was picked up on the road after weeks of making my way west.”

  “West? Why west?”

  “All that’s left of my family is in Tennessee.”

  “You said you’ve been on the road for weeks. Where are you coming from?”

  “New York, New York,” Tommie answered with another sigh before resting his head back on the window.

  “I hate to be the one to tell you this, Popeye, but there’s nothing much left west of here. If you’re not in a military-controlled safe zone, you ain’t eating – and there’s no safe zones west of here, to my knowledge. The Pulse shut down the water-distribution facilities and food-production plants. Unless you’re checked in with FEMA, you’re not eating.”

  “You don’t know my sister. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

  “In that case, you’re in luck. We’re headed west. There’s a FEMA camp there west of Ashville, in the Cherokee National Forest. That’s where you’ll be getting off.”

  “I’m not going to no FEMA camp, Sommers. I heard about them.”

  Sommers laughed and hit Deano in the leg, catching his attention. He bent down out of the turret. “Yeah?” he said, looking at Thomson.

  “We got another Tango Foxtrot.”

  Deano laughed and returned to his turret.

  Tommie had no idea what a Tango Foxtrot was. He wanted to let it go, but the curiosity was driving a wedge into his mind. It was especially unnerving that after he was called a Tango Foxtrot, Sommers stopped talking to him.

  Swallowing his pride, he went forward with his question. “So, what’s a Tango Foxtrot?”

  “No worry about it. I thought only them country bumpkins were paranoid about FEMA. You said you were from New York. I didn’t expect that response. Like I said, don’t worry about it.”

  Tommie knew the Marine was dodging his question. Maybe a more direct approach was needed.

  “I might be from New York, and I don’t know a lot about this military stuff, but I do have family bumpkins who have shared with me their disapproval of FEMA operations. I’m not entirely sure, but it seems your attempt at insulting me is unfruitful if I don’t know what you’re talking about. While I do appreciate your candor, I would like to what you’re referencing so I can be a fair contributor to the conversation at hand.”

  Sommers looked at Tommie, thinking, Where did this guy come from? Instead of saying those thoughts aloud, he entertained his passenger. “A Tango Foxtrot is our take on a tinfoil-hat wearer. Are you a tinfoil-hat wearer, mister, uh?”

  “Tommie. My name’s Tommie, and I’m not a conspiracy theorist, if that’s your question.”

  “That was, in fact, my question,” Sommers said, surprised that the mystery man seemed to be educated, at least in his use of words. “If you’re not a tinfoil-hat wearer, then why the paranoia?”

  “I read some stuff–” Tommie started to say, when Sommers cut him off. “I said don’t worry about it. There’s food, water, shelter, and a security force.” Sommers wasn’t going to repeat himself on the Tango Foxtrot issue. Sommers knew that civilians were indoctrinated with conspiracy theories. It had happened a lot before the Pulse, but was even more so an issue after the fact. At least informing his passenger made him feel a little better, despite Sommers’s longtime annoying and cynical attitude.

  Tommie sat quietly and watched out the window. He would have liked to eavesdrop on the conversation between the two Marines in the front seats, but the engine was abnormally loud. Almost deafening.

  This was Tommie’s first experience with an active-duty military man. It was especially unique because he got to ride in an HMMWV. These particular Highly Mobile Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles had no electronic engine controls, no electronic braking or circuitry. They were EMP proof. Tommie had only previously assumed this. The Jurassic-sounding engine was a good enough indicator that there was nothing too sophisticated about them.

  “How long until we reach this FEMA place?” Tommie asked, breaking the awkward silence.

  “It’ll be a while. These things aren’t the fastest rides in the apocalypse.”

  Tommie turned to look back out the window when he was suddenly taken by surprise by the rat-tat-tat sounds of the .50-caliber machine gun. “TANGOS!” he heard Deano shout. The vehicle came to a stop as the machine-gun operator went to work on the trigger system. Hot brass was being ejected at roughly five hundred rounds per minute. Most of it was harmlessly bouncing off the top of the hard back of the Humvee; the rest was falling down through the turret and landing on Tommie’s lap.

  Tommie didn’t know what was going on. He started to hear pinging sounds mixed with the thuds of the hot brass as they landed on top of their vehicle. They were under fire. From where? What was going on? The adrenaline was really pumping. So many questions and not a second to ask them. It had to be the Russians. Were they shooting at them? Who else would Marines be shooting at? More urgent questions entered Tommie’s mind as he struggled with the realization that he was in a firefight. Questions like, “Where is the support?” “Where is the rest of the Marines’ unit?”

  The machine gunner went silent. Tommie looked up at Deano and saw he was dead. Sommers reached up and grabbed Deano by the MOLLE gear he was wearing and pulled him down out of the turret. The driver stepped on the gas as Sommers replaced his comrade behind the .50 cal. They did a U-turn and Sommers took over on the trigger of the heavy machine gun. Rat-tat-tat, the weapon fired off. Five- to ten-round bursts were what Sommers was sending downrange.

  “What’s going on?” Tommie yelled up to the gunner, but Sommers didn’t answer. Perhaps it was the fog of war or perhaps a matter of priorities. Sommers stayed on that .50-caliber machine gun, and did so until he screamed, “INCOMING!”

  Sommers ducked down out of the turret, but it didn’t matter. A missile caught the Humvee. The explosion was loud and the percussion was both deafening and brain rattling. Everything went black.

  Tommie woke up in a ditch. He had no idea where he was. All the information he had was what he’d managed to gather from his small chat with Sommers. He was somewhere west of Raleigh. In search of his last living relative – his sister, Tonya Deanne Mitchell.

  Three

  BETTER WATCH YOUR BACK

  “How long are you going to carry on like this?” Marcus asked Darrick.

  Darrick was busy knocking over old trees and kicking around dead branches that lay on the forest floor. “Not now,” Darrick answered, being interrupted from his task. “I’m not up to talking it out,” he added, alluding to the old way they used to share their issues when they were in the Marines together.

  Marcus was frustrated with Darrick and the way he was dealing with his issues. The way he saw it, Darrick was a combat-hardened Marine and should be able to cope with just about any situation. Marcus wasn’t the man who had to take his own father’s life, so what was it about Marcus’s judgment that made him feel the way he did? Marcus didn’t take the time to figure it out. All he wanted was for Darrick to snap out of it. He was tired of Darrick’s lack of alertness. He had grown sloppy and careless living the life of a civilian. He needed to wake up – to recall the way he was trained, and to live up to the challenge. Darrick was behaving like a man who had never been trained and schooled in the art of situational awareness. He used to be a tactician, but now? Now he was like a noncombatant, an untidy has-been. That type of irresponsibility was something that could get a small group killed.

  Darrick’s reply upset Marcus, so he replied in kin
d. “It doesn’t really matter if you’re up to talking it out. You have a wife and a son who need you to be alert.” Marcus watched Darrick as he continued to pick up wood, seemingly ignoring his comments. “Fine. You go ahead and sulk in your own self-pity while I go take care of your family.”

  The comment caught Darrick’s attention. He snapped out of his mindset and entered another mental state altogether. His eyes widened and he glared at Marcus for maybe a second before he threw the small pile of wood that he had in his arms onto the ground.

  Darrick charged Marcus. Marcus had plenty of time to prepare for the impending attack. He parried Darrick’s first swing by sidestepping him at the last second. It was an old Marine Corps tactical technique that both of them were familiar with, but Darrick was out of it. He caught his balance and swung a second time, making contact with Marcus’s jaw. Marcus lost his balance, being jarred by the impact, and stumbled backward, falling over a fallen tree.

  Darrick ran up on Marcus and mounted him. It only lasted a moment before Marcus managed to roll Darrick over and take the control position on top of him. When Marcus went to throw a punch at Darrick, he caught his arm and locked it. Darrick maneuvered his position from beneath Marcus by pulling his leg up over Marcus’s neck and switching to a cross armlock. He ratcheted the arm and hyperextended Marcus’s elbow, causing excruciating pain. Marcus winced and tapped out. Darrick released his lock on Marcus and fell next to him on the ground. Each of them were faceup, staring into the canopy.