The girls we had rescued had lost people in the trailer when it flipped and the nukes went flying all over the place. The nuke I’d seen tilted at an odd angle had been lying across one of the girls it had crushed on the way to its new resting spot on the ceiling. All the girls were currently taking showers, eating and trying to sleep. For obvious reasons, a lot of them were having issues trying to fall asleep so the corpsmen had gone through with sleeping pills and sedatives for anyone who requested them. Better living through pharmacology.
Walker had no clue on next moves. We did have multiple assets we could deploy. Everything from helicopters over at the air base that they had hidden inside the buildings to hummers, tanks and even an attack boat if we wanted to go toe to toe with one of the carriers the North Koreans had pulled in on. There was no huge sense of urgency. A few days this way or that would probably not make a big difference. The longer we took though, the more Koreans would be ferried over here in the carriers from whatever islands they were currently hanging out on. The more soldiers they had here the more spread out they would get the harder to kill them all in one big boom.
Once we’d picked Walkers brain to the extent that he didn’t seem to have anything else, we talked about our general health for a few minutes then Walker excused himself to go check in with the officers. Then he was going to see if they needed anything before he found himself a place to crash for the rest of the day. After he left, Ann and I took Daisy out into the underground garage to let her make use of the AstroTurf. We needed to find some Fabreeze somewhere to hose this fake grass down with or there were going to be complaints. The HOA would definitely be sending us a warning letter over this. Walker had already declared Daisy’s ass to be a WMD.
Ann and I held hands as we watched Daisy circle in her endless quest to find the exact right spot to relieve herself. It wasn’t the most romantic thing in the world to watch Daisy do her thing but I took advantage of the fact that we both had showered and used toothpaste and were alone out here for once. I stepped in and wrapped my arms around her and gave her a big kiss. Five seconds later Daisy had hopped up on us to see if she could get in on the action. I was loving the normalcy of the moment. Two lovers kissing while their big goofy dog jumped all over them.
We broke the kiss to pet Daisy and Ann looked up at me.
“What should we do? Do we run north or do we try and convince them to let us help in the attack to the south? I’m assuming they think we’ll be happy staying here.”
I thought about it. I’d still been of the frame of mind that we were going to be the ones who carried the nuke into downtown LA and set it off on the doorstep of their imperial leader. The short fat guy with the horrible haircut. I got what she was implying with the last bit of her comment though.
“Yeah, even out here in the middle of nowhere if you get a bunch of people in one place the Zombies are going to eventually come. If they don’t, then the Koreans will be up here at some point. I don’t think we should try and hang out here too long. We probably need to see what the long-term plans are for the girls too. If there are enough supplies here and they’re not going in and out a lot this place could survive for a solid year or so. You just never know.”
I paused to think about what else I wanted to say. I wanted to make sure I said it the right way.
“I’m tired. My body hurts. It takes an act of will to get up out of bed every day that should earn me some kind of medal. I love you. I don’t think we could live with ourselves if we went north and left these guys to go die in our place. I still want our vengeance for Thomas and all the others. I want to throw these assholes back into the ocean and watch them paddling their asses back towards the radiated pile of dirt that is there former country.”
I looked at Ann. She smiled and kissed me again. This time we ignored the dog.
Entry 7: Nights at the Round Table
Ignoring the snide comments when we came back from walking Daisy we split up into the two adjoining rooms that had a door we could open between them. We barricaded the doors to the hallway and with that done we all went to sleep. We went to sleep in comfortable beds that were in a giant underground bomb shelter protected by a team of Navy Seals. It was warm and didn’t smell like mold. Our bellies were full. We said screw it on setting a watch.
We all slept between ten and twelve hours. I actually would have slept longer but around the twelve-hour mark someone knocked on our door. We all were up and out of bed and armed almost before we remembered where we were. I felt super weird then finally figured out it must be that I was well rested for the first time in a very long time. I helped Ann pull the desk back from the door and Walker poked his head in. He took a look at all the crap we had shoved against the door.
“That probably violates some sort of fire code. I’m seeing why you guys are still alive this far along into it though. Wilson sent me to grab you if you’re feeling rested enough. You need a few more days of sleep or you good to come out to an all hands planning session we’re having?”
We told him to give us a second and all of us got up and got armed and went out in the hallway. He nodded in approval at the fact that all of us had strapped on our weapons to go for a walk around the base. We waited for Daisy to utilize the AstroTurf then we set out across the garage to a door that was diagonal from us. We’d seen a few people going in and out of it. Walker took us through the door and we walked into a miniature gymnasium. It was the fallout shelter workout facilities I guessed. There were mats everywhere and a basketball goal and free weights and various other cardio treadmill type machines plus a climbing wall.
Walker told us we could use it whenever we wanted. We were over here now because this is where the all hands meeting was going to be. There were already a couple of Seals shooting baskets and a few other ones hanging out by a table that was setup in the corner. I told Walker we got plenty of exercise running for our lives all the time. He pointed us towards the punch and cookies table and turned around and left out the door to go do whatever it is he did around here.
About ten minutes later we were standing around awkwardly eating cookies and drinking the punch with Daisy trying to stare us into giving her more cookies. The door opened and Abraham and Wilson walked in. All the Seals snapped to attention when one of them yelled out there was an officer on deck. Abraham was waving at them to get back to that they had been doing even as they were all busy standing up straight for him. Wilson saw us and made a bee line over to where we were standing while Abraham wandered towards the circular coffee table setup in the corner.
Wilson came over and stuck his hand out to me.
“Get enough sleep?” He asked while grinding the bones in my hand to pulp. He must have been talking to Walker because he said it with a grin.
“I could probably sleep for a week straight if everyone would let me. It’s nice being in a place that we can all just sleep instead of standing a watch.”
Wilson shook his head at that.
“Don’t get too used to the sleep. We’re low on hands around here so I wouldn’t be too surprised if you guys didn’t get drafted into the watch schedule. Anyway, just so you guys know. What we’ll be doing here today is kind of an open bull session. This is a way to get all the operators in a room and throw out ideas for moving forward. You’re all a part of the team now so don’t be shy about throwing out ideas.”
With that bit of sage advice Wilson wandered off to get some coffee. We all looked over at Ginny who was busy teasing Daisy with a cookie. She was our main hope at coming up with something smart to say during the bull session. I was feeling a bit gun shy about voicing any plans based on how well the last plan had worked out. Everyone quieted down as Abraham stood up in the middle of the basketball court and cleared his throat.
“Hello men, women, and dog. Hope you all have had a chance to rest. That last mission may have gone sideways on us but we got it done. I’d like to have a moment of silence for all our fallen shipmates.”
Everyone bowed their
heads. In the silence, I thought about all the guys who had been in the parking lot as we got ready to move in for the operation. The guys had been walking around and joking with us. I remembered everyone on the other copter had rubbed Daisy for good luck before we headed out. Now all of them were dead.
“They fell. They fell doing what Seals do. An operation to save people and destroy our enemy. An operation that netted us a very useful weapon and also lead to the rescue of around forty young girls and women. It was a noble mission to lay down their lives for and they all did it without hesitation. It is an honor beyond anything I could dream of to lead men like you. I pray to god every day to make me worthy. Every man in here humbles me. Drink to our fallen brothers.”
A couple of the Seals went around handing out plastic cups and then went around with bottles of whiskey pouring a liberal amount into each cup. When everyone had a full cup in front of them Abraham held his up in the air as did everyone else.
A loud shout of “Hooyah” echoed in the gym and everyone drained their glasses. I swallowed most of mine. The room temperature Jim Beam they’d dumped in my cup was pretty rough. I was normally more of a beer drinker. Reeves downed his. Ann took a sip and set the rest to the side. Ginny took a big swig of hers and turned green and sat down coughing and hacking. She put her jacket up and over her face to keep from being too noisy and disrespecting the memorial.
A few minutes later Abraham started speaking again.
“They may have fallen but they still made sure the job got done. We’ve got a backpack nuke now that should be able to do some serious damage if we can find a nice tight concentration of the enemy to blow up. It’s up to us to pick up the torch and keep it moving. We will run these invaders out of our land. We will retake our land and make it safe to become the USA again. We will rebuild. We just need to get a plan together to get it done. Let’s see what we can come up with before the whiskey kicks in.”
Entry 8: Praying for a Zombie to Eat Me
I woke up the morning after the meeting feeling like complete ass. My head pounded, my mouth tasted like I’d been cleaning Daisy’s AstroTurf with my tongue and my stomach was doing that swirling thing that makes you know you’re going to puke. I hate puking. I hate how powerless it makes me feel to sit there while my body takes control and hurls stuff out of my system. I hate the way it makes me feel. I’m guessing no one is a huge fan of puking but I feel like I hate it more than most people probably do.
The bull session had turned into a kegger. The Seals were back in off a mission where they had lost a lot of their friends. These operators had been a tight community for a long time so losing that many guys at once had hurt. A lot of them had been as close as family could hope to be. Like most military men, when Seals hurt they drink. Most of them were not habitual alcoholics so pretty much everyone ended up sick.
Reeves had gotten wasted. I’d drank enough that I barely remembered the walk back to the barracks. Ginny and Ann had both stopped after the first taste they had during Abrahams toast. Ann because she preferred a nice sweet red wine when she got her drink on. Ginny because she had never tried whiskey before and after one taste had sworn it off forever. Ginny, Ann and Daisy all looked nice and chipper this morning. I looked around but could not spot Reeves anywhere. I asked Ann if she knew where he was.
“Last I saw him the Captain ordered two guys to carry him into one of the barracks rooms to sleep it off. He was in serious need of sleeping it off. Do you remember how he kept asking all the Seals if they could do the trick where they bounce the ball on their noses for us?”
That sounded about like Reeves. I didn’t remember him saying anything but decided to just go along with whatever Ann said and pretend like I hadn’t drunk too much the night before. Ann looked over at me from where she was trying to feed Daisy some crackers out of an MRE without Daisy biting her hand off. I stood up to walk over to her and my stomach did a few back flips so I sat back down again. I hoped she hadn’t noticed.
“You remember throwing up on my pants and shoes in the hallway last night?”
So much for me trying to act like I hadn’t been overdoing it the night before. When you’re a guy and you’re surrounded by a bunch of other guys and everyone’s drinking and toasting dead buddies it’s pretty hard to stay sober. Ann and Ginny were both good to go this morning and I was not. I decided it would be dumb to try to make up excuses.
“I don’t remember that. Gonna have to plead the fifth. I fully and heartily would like to apologize to both of you and possibly Daisy for whatever I may have done last night to offend or otherwise piss you guys off.”
Ginny was laughing at me and Ann was now ignoring me. My apology must have come out all wrong. It happens. Ann ignored me for a few minutes then came over and gave me a hug. She called me a few choice names and told me she didn’t expect to have to deal with that kind of bullshit from me very often. I agreed and acquiesced and basically did what men have been doing since the invention of alcohol. Like most promises people make when hungover I doubted it would last an overly long time. I was pretty serious about it right now though.
Ann and I decided to go on a walk to try and find Reeves and make sure he was alive. Ginny and Daisy were staying back in the room as Ginny had found a book she wanted to read. Something about glittery vampires. Ann wanted to see if she could find some medical books to look over as well. Not a lot to do in an underground bunker when you’re busy hiding out from all kinds of things that want to kill you. I felt kind of like that gopher in caddy shack.
We left Ginny and Daisy curled up on the same cot and walked down the hallway into the parking garage. There was a familiar aroma coming from the large square of AstroTurf. Daisy had marked her territory and the entire garage should be aware of it by now. I was starting to worry they might not let us keep her. Ann asked if I had any thoughts on next steps.
“Last night didn’t provide a whole lot of planning time. Sorry again about your shoes.” I tried a weak apology smile out on her and she just kept staring at me. Oh well. “We’ve got that little nuke. I don’t know how much damage we can do it with though. It’s not a city killer. According to Reeves it’s more like a city block killer with a bunch of long term effects all around it but we’re not going to be able to go all Hiroshima on their asses. We’d need to pick out a high-level target for it to have a big impact on the Koreans and I don’t see how we get that close to a high-level target. At least not with any hope of surviving the attack.”
Ann, still with the very serious face, looked at me with sad eyes. “I don’t think the plan is going to involve whoever sets off the nuke actually surviving. While you were all enjoying the frat party last night I had a lot of time to think. It’s probably going to take someone driving a car into the middle of Koreatown and blowing up the nuke for this to work and have any impact. It’s going to be a suicide mission. I don’t want anyone else to die.”
We stopped in the corner of the garage and she hugged me and cried into my shoulder. I thought about what she had said. It made sense. We couldn’t really sneak the bomb into place and leave it laying around and just hope no one found it. The area we’d want to put it in was going to be heavily guarded. We’d want to use it to weaken their leadership chain as much as we could. We needed to break them and send them running. I agreed with Ann, there were way too few of us left to be sacrificing anyone on a suicide mission. I was cool with probably dying but I wasn’t going to go on a definitely dying mission if I could help it. We only had the one bomb though.
“We need the other bomb.” I told Ann when she had finished crying and was just standing there holding me. I knew that wouldn’t last long. She wasn’t much of a hugger. “If we have the other bomb then we can risk just leaving them with a timer or whatever to go off while we escape because we’ve doubled our chances of it working. Plus, I’m no expert, but based on the two or three movies I’ve seen the Seals are pretty good about sneaking in explosives and blowing shit up. That’s basically what they ex
ist to do.”
Ann broke out of our embrace. She did that a lot. Even when I hadn’t puked on her shoes within the last eight hours. She started walking again. I sped up to catch up with her and fell in beside her. I asked her what she thought about talking to the Captain to go try and get the other bomb and bring it back to use.
“I’m so tired. I’m exhausted. When Thomas died I had a clear vision. It burned through everything and it drove me. I was going to kill everyone who stood on the side that had killed Thomas, my sister, Frank, all of our friends and my family. That vision burned bright for a long time but lately it’s been flickering. I don’t know how much longer I can hold on to the hate. How much longer it is going to make sense for us to fight so hard for something that is already dead. Half the country is a freaking nuclear wasteland and the other half is still covered in Zombies. What difference is it going to make if we kill the Koreans or make them leave? The USA isn’t coming back anytime soon. We’re not going to suddenly be stocked up with supplies and ready to survive the rest of our lives.”
Great. She was finally saying out loud what I had been thinking for a long time but afraid to say. The problem was the only way forward I saw at this point was hurting the Koreans bad enough so they would leave us alone while we tried to rebuild our lives. We needed to hurt them so bad they either left the country or at least didn’t have the wherewithal to strike back or continue to expand. We were going to have to deal with Zombies for a long time and that was fine. We could deal with them. We just couldn’t deal with them plus the threat of the Koreans. That was too much.
Zournal (Book 6): The Final Countdown Page 4
