by Ben Reeder
“You ready to go, then?” I asked as he shook my hand.
“Just about. I didn’t unpack my stuff,” he said with a smile. For a kid, I figured having a pack full of gear was pretty novel. “All I had to do was pack my clothes.” He turned a smug look on his mother and got a glare that I could feel the heat off of from across the room in return.
“Enough of that, young man,” she said sternly as she put the last of her gear into the pack. He nodded and gave me a knowing smile while she shouldered her pack and grabbed her purse. “Go get in the car.”
“Mom, what about my gun?” he asked plaintively. He was bordering on whining, and I would have been too at his age. I gave her a nod, and she let out a tired sigh and headed back toward the hallway. She emerged moments later with a black rectangular gun case in her hand and a stern expression on her face.
“You are not opening this until we get to Dave’s house, do you understand me young man?” she said. His face lit up as she handed him the case, and he headed for the garage door. “We’ll meet you outside,” she told me as she followed him. Porsche hit the door a heartbeat before I did, then stopped in her tracks on the welcome mat. My ears perked up as I tried to keep from running into her, and I heard the sound of metal hitting metal nearby. Before either of us could say anything, the distinctive hammering of a machine gun ripped across the night. Without thinking, I went to push Porsche forward but she was already moving toward her truck. Two steps behind her, I unslung the M4 and vaulted into the bed even as the garage door started to open. She had her truck started and in reverse before the door was halfway up, and by the time it had cleared the roof of Cassie’s grey Wrangler, we were in the street. I looked to my left to see a black Humvee barrel through the next intersection over, followed seconds later by another. The second one was the source of the gunfire, the man in the turret hosing the road behind them with a steady stream of fire.
The machine gun stopped a heartbeat or three later, and I heard the sound of men calling out to each other. For a moment, I might as well have been back in Iraq, listening to an infantry squad. There is always an urgency to combat, but the men I had heard over in the sand box had a distinctive focus to their voices in a fight, a cadence unique to American fighting men. Hearing it now, in the States, I couldn’t change how I reacted.
“Left! Left!” I called out.
“Are you nuts? There’s zombies that way!” Porsche cried.
“Don’t argue with me! Go left!” I yelled back. She cursed a blue streak, but she turned the wheel to the left and left rubber smoking in our wake as we barreled down the street.
“Which way do I turn?” she yelled back through the window as we sped toward the intersection.
“Right!” I called back as I braced myself for the turn.
“I should’ve known,” she said as she turned the wheel. The street slid into view in front of us, and I saw a Humvee turned on its side with several men crawling out of it. Two were on either end of the vehicle, and a third was crawling out of the turret. Porsche pulled up next to the Humvee and stopped. Through her windshield, I could see a group of infected coming down the street, moving too fast to be zombies. Even as I got to my feet, the soldier on the far end of the Humvee dropped one of them with a short burst to the chest. The other one pointed his gun at me. I forced myself to ignore the thick stubby barrel that was pointed at me and propped my elbows on the roof to steady my aim, then popped off a three round burst into the chest of one of the infected. The sweats-and-hoodie clad ghoul dropped, and I moved my aim to the right. Three more rounds peppered the torso of a naked ghoul, and I thanked whichever god happened to be listening for bad lighting and the fog of war as he fell.
“Get in!” I yelled between bursts.
“You heard the man, get in! Mason, talk to me!” the man who had pointed his gun at me called out. His gun hiccupped and another ghoul went down. I fired a stuttering burst from the M4, but mine spun and staggered but stayed on his feet. I squeezed off another three rounds, and he fell. Twelve rounds, I reminded myself.
“Kowalski and Hicks are dead, Renfro took a round in the right arm!” someone called from inside the Humvee. In my peripheral vision, I could see men crawling out of the Humvee.
“Jackson, get Renfro out,” the leader barked out. He put three rounds downrange, then another three. “Mason, Vasquez, pull the gear. Carter, grab the SINGCARS and get ready to pop thermite. You, in the truck…keep shooting those fuckers!”
“I’ve only got a couple more magazines!” I called back over the ringing in my ears. I switched the selector to single fire.
“Use ‘em!” he yelled back as soldiers crawled out of the vehicle. Porsche’s door opened and I saw her prop her arm against the frame. The pop of her pistol was a slow counter beat to the ping of my M4. I spared a glance at the leader, and saw him struggling with the turret as I felt the bed of the truck vibrate under my feet. Then a soldier was beside me, and my gun went silent. As I fished a magazine from my pocket, he opened up with his submachine gun, three round bursts coughing from the end of the barrel. Ghouls dropped as I rammed the magazine home and pulled the charging handle. Porsche’s gun went silent and I heard her curse.
“Get in!” I yelled to her, taking aim at a ghoul in a business skirt that was sprinting along the sidewalk on my left. I let the sight go past her slightly before I pulled the trigger, but she kept going. Another aimed shot missed her, so I brought the scope back onto her and started pulling the trigger as I slowly walked it ahead of her. The fifth round dropped her, and I turned back to the advancing horde. Seven more rounds dropped four infected ghouls, and then the leader stepped out in front of the truck with a boxy gun in hand. The guy beside me slapped my shoulder with the back of his left hand.
“Hold your fire!” he yelled. I raised the barrel of my gun and nodded as he called out again. “Put ‘em down, Captain!” In front of the truck, the captain raised the bulkier gun to his shoulder and unleashed a brand of hell on Earth on the ghouls that I was glad I was on the back side of. The sound of it alone hammered my ears, a deeper pounding than the M4’s sharp reports, and I saw the top half of one of the ghouls jerk uncontrollably before its head disintegrated. The captain lowered the barrel and slowly walked a line of destruction across the advancing line, sending body parts flying, including at least one arm and a head. A few seconds later, the gun clicked as the last round cycled through it, and very few of the ghouls were left standing. The man beside me let out a whoop as the captain turned and walked back to the truck.
“Fuck yeah!” one of the other soldiers called out.
“Stow that shit, Jackson,” the captain said as he climbed into the bed of the truck and laid the big gun down. He nodded to one of the other soldiers, a young black man who still stood by the truck. The soldier ran to the Humvee and pulled the pin on a grenade, laid it on the upper side of the vehicle then bolted for the truck again. Porsche didn’t need to be told to gun the engine, and we sped past the damaged vehicle as the thermite ignited. Cassie sped along behind us, and I heard the diesel catch as we turned the corner. I leaned down by the open driver’s side window.
“Head back to where we split up,” I told Porsche. She nodded, her face slowly losing a slight green cast in the fitful light.
“Thanks for the ride!” the captain said to me as Porsche made her way back toward the railroad tracks. He stuck out one gloved hand. “Name’s Adams.”
“Stewart,” I said. “Dave Stewart. What the hell happened back there?” Adams gave a glance to one of his men before he turned back to me.
“Fuckin’ Homeland pukes rammed us when we hit that big bunch of infected,” he said. Even over the ringing in my ears and the wind, I could hear the scorn in his voice. “Opened fire with my team down range, too. Killed two of my men. Did you say your name was Dave Stewart?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You the guy who wrote The Frankenstein Code?” the guy beside me asked.
“Yeah, and Ope
ration Terror.” He gave a nod to Adams.
“I read your stuff, man. Not bad. Kinda out there, but hey, it’s just a horror story, right?”
“Not anymore,” I said.
Chapter 9
A Little Knowledge
Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
~Napoleon Hill ~
“Garland, this is Karma,” Adams said into his radio as we bounced along the right of way beside the tracks. One earphone was held to his ear, the other swinging from the curved headset to bounce against his shoulder. “Tertiary objective sighted. Preparing to secure. We are down two KIA, one wounded.” He listened to the response on his headphones, then looked over his shoulder at Cassie’s Jeep. “Negative on secondary objective. Homeland rabbited on us before we could verify that intel. Roger that.” He kept the headphone to his ear and looked back toward the front of the truck with the impatient expression of a man on hold.
“Hey, Stewart,” the man beside me asked. His name tape read Vasquez. He pointed to the carbine in my hand before he went on. “Where’d you pick up the M4?”
“Ran across a couple of National Guard trucks outside Kickapoo,” I said as I reached into my right front pocket. “Grabbed what I needed to stay alive, and pulled their tags. I figured someone should know what happened to them.” I handed him the three sets of tags.
“What did happen to them?” he said, and I heard a little hostility creep into his voice.
“Near as I can figure, they tried to clear a bunch of infected from the high school and got overrun.” I watched his face, and saw the look change from hostile to skeptical as he looked down at the tags in his hand.
“They turned?” he asked.
“Yeah. I took care of them, and we led as many infected away as we could,” I told him. He gave me a nod, then turned to Adams. In their gear and helmets, they had that lean uniformity that I’d seen in so many front-line soldiers. They wore smaller helmets but their other gear was not much different from most I’d seen: tactical vests and holsters, elbow and knee pads and heavy gloves over digital camo fatigues. Their shoulder patches bore the Special Forces tab, most of them having a Ranger tab above the obligatory Airborne tab. All of them bore the subdued version of the Special Forces shoulder patches, an upright sword crossed by three lightning bolts in black against the olive drab arrowhead. I reassessed my situation as I realized that I was sitting among a team of Green Berets, men who had earned the term ‘bad-ass’ several times over before they’d even made the grade for the Special Forces. If there was a place that could be called safe in the newly fucked up world, I was as close to it as humanly possible.
“Negative,” Adams said suddenly. “I repeat, negative sir. Infected are one thing, but that is an order I will not follow. Yes, sir, I understand who it comes from, and that does not make it a lawful order. No, sir. Understood sir.” He threw the headphones down and spat something I couldn’t hear, but suspected it was something unpleasant. The graveled roadway rose to meet the concrete bed of Bennett St., and Porsche turned the truck’s nose east. Cassie pulled up behind her, her Jeep idling easily.
“What’s the plan Captain?” Carter asked from his place next to the tailgate.
“We secure the secondary and tertiary objectives, then head back to base.” The soldier across from me looked back toward Cassie’s truck, nothing more than a shifting of his eyes, and his face seemed to cloud. “Maximum discretion, people.” Without another word, all but Vasquez and Adams grabbed gear before they got out of the bed of the truck and spread out a little, two on each side, one facing forward, the other to the rear. In the dim light, I could barely make out Adams’ expression as he turned toward me, putting his face in shadow. Something in my gut tightened, an instinct that I’d learned to listen to in the past few hours.
“Mister Stewart, thank you for the ride,” Adams said as Vasquez turned toward me but made no move to get out of the truck. “We certainly owe you our lives.” In the instant before he moved, his stance changed, something I probably would have missed if I wasn’t already expecting something to go wrong. Without a second thought, I grabbed his vest and pushed myself backward, pushing Vasquez out of the bed of the truck along with me. I landed on Vasquez, and Adams landed on me.
“Porsche! Go!” I yelled. I heard Cassie gun the engine on her Jeep, and Porsche hit the gas, sending her truck forward in a screech of burning rubber. Cassie’s Jeep shot past a split second later, and I could hear the pounding of boots and cursing around us. The dwindling red dots of their tail-lights down Bennett was almost as rewarding as being with them. Cassie knew the way to my house, and Porsche was smart enough to follow her lead. I had kept my end of the bargain, and Nate would keep his. Maya and Amy had a shot at surviving.
Adams pulled me to my feet with a curse. “You son of a bitch!” he snarled in my face.
“Sorry I screwed up your snatch and grab,” I said as a strange sort of elation bubbled up inside me. Even if they killed me right there, I’d already won. My girls were safe, my friend was safe and so was Nate’s family. Somehow, though, I didn’t think Adams was likely to do that. He was a Green Beret, a consummate professional. His trade might have been war, but somehow, I knew that he wouldn’t kill me in cold blood. He shook me once, then pushed me away. I staggered back, barely keeping my feet. Then he was turning back toward me, and I barely registered his fist moving before it slammed into my jaw. So, I thought as my face plummeted toward the concrete, I guess hitting me is still an option.
I came to with a headache and a throbbing in my jaw that made dropping back into oblivion pretty damn inviting. My shoulders ached and something was digging into my wrists, probably the same something that was holding them behind my back. I opened my eyes to find myself in a cage, stripped down to my boxers. Around me I could see bleachers and scoreboards, as my senses slowly told me I was in a basketball court. To my left I could see a set of tables covered with boxes and cables, and in front of me stood black clad men with assault rifles held at the ready, barrels down and fingers outside the trigger guards. They didn’t have the look of soldiers, and a couple had goatees and hair longer than military regs allowed sticking out from under their ball caps. A dry, rasping laugh came from my right, and I turned to see a man strapped to an angled table that held him almost upright in the cell next to mine. Only bars separated us, and some part of me didn’t think that was enough. As my eyes focused on him, I changed my guess. He might have been a man once, but whatever he was now, ‘man’ wasn’t the right word for it. His eyes were milky white, and his skin had the gray pallor of death. His face was gaunt, exposing every line of the skull beneath it, and the few clumps of hair on his scalp looked like they had faded to a dull gray. I admit it, I stared at him, and some part of my brain sort of locked up as it tried to force what I was seeing to make sense. Then it turned its head and looked straight at me.
Oh yeah, my brain suddenly told itself, zombies.
“What the hell are you lookin’ at, asshole?” the thing asked. Its voice was a raspy parody of human speech, but it was at least understandable. “You eyeballin’ me?”
“Kinda hard not to,” I said with an instinctive animosity. The urge to kill this thing was growing in the back of my thoughts, and I had no idea why. Even if I did know why, I didn’t care. All that mattered was that this thing ended up dead. The world would be a better place without the thing in the next cell in it, of that I was certain.
“I’m gonna fuck you up when I get out of here,” the thing said to me. That pissed me off even more, and I felt my lips curl back from my teeth. My heart started pounding as I gave him a cold glare.
“That’s something I’d like to see you pull off,” another voice intruded. I turned to the front of my cage to see Captain Adams standing next to a man in black fatigues and a baseball cap. His clothes were unmarred by any insignia, and he wore a massive handgun in a tactical holster on his right thigh. The chrome slide contra
sted with the black grips, and by the shape of the slde, I guessed he was carrying a Desert Eagle of some caliber or another. “You know, I was surprised that this little shit stain of a city rated three targets. And here we have two of them.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“The man asking the questions, Mr. Stewart. That’s all you need to know. You can call me ‘Sir’ if you need to address me by some kind of name.”
“Sure thing asshole,” I said. Adams suppressed a laugh, but a snort still got through.
“Let’s start with the basics. How long have you been colluding with Nathan Reid?” he asked. Adams face went blank at that, and I decided to test a theory.
“Captain Reid helped me with a couple of my books. That’s common knowledge to anyone who read them,” I answered casually. Blackshirt’s eyes narrowed and I could see his jaw clench, while Adams’ mouth quirked a little, like he was trying to hide a smile. His eyes flicked to Blackshirt for a moment, and the grin started to form.
“Don’t try to bullshit me, Stewart. You attacked the men sent to retrieve you, you knew we were after you, and because of you, a pair of fugitives are running loose in this city. Now, stop playing games with me. Where is Reid?”
“A mother and her kid are fugitives? What did they do? Skip a PTA meeting or something?”
“Where is he?”
“No idea,” I answered.
“We know you were in contact with him today. We have your phone. Tell me what I want to know, or I’ll have you stripped naked and thrown outside the wall.”
