by D. J. Molles
His hands jammed the attic access up, and out of the way.
His hands slapped down on a ceiling joist, and he grabbed it.
His body swung underneath him, hanging there like a sack of meat.
The creatures tumbled to the bottom of the stairs—more than one of them.
He heard their breathing, their snarling, the tumble of their limbs as they hauled up the stairs towards him.
They’re going to eat me
I’m going to die
He pulled with everything he had left in him.
Up, into the attic, but he had nothing for his flailing feet to purchase on.
He screamed.
Claws thrashing through carpet, sounding like they were just beneath him.
He managed to get one elbow up onto the ceiling joist, and then another. Every bit of strength went into a maneuver that Benjamin hadn’t done since he’d been a boy climbing trees, and he pulled, and rolled, his abdominal muscles cramping with the effort of muscling himself up.
Half his body in the attic, with his legs still hanging in the opening. He reached for the next ceiling joist, a mere sixteen inches away. Grabbed it and pulled.
Just beneath his exposed feet, a growl that he swore he felt in his toes.
Something caught his right foot.
He couldn’t scream. His lungs were locked down, empty of air, burning.
He thrashed and kicked. Felt his shoe fly off.
And then he rolled. Up into the attic.
His back hit a box of something left there from ages ago, and sent it clattering off of the joists where it was balanced. Benjamin crabbed backwards, thoughtless of the fact that there were only ceiling joists and no floor to support him.
His hand hit the insulation between the joists, and his weight came down on it.
The sheetrock beneath him collapsed and his hand shot through in a gout of dust.
He yanked his limb back up, but he caught a glimpse through the hole in the ceiling that he’d just created, and saw the feral eyes below him, the gnashing teeth, a horrible grin as though it knew it had him trapped.
Trapped! I’m trapped!
He caught the bare impression of at least three primals circling below him.
He started to crab backwards again, away from the hole and the attic access, because that was all he could do. He could only squirm into the far corner of this dark space. He could only extend his life by precious seconds now.
Joist by joist, he moved backward, trying not to fall through the ceiling.
A grunt of effort from below.
A pair of gnarled hands appeared in the attic access, their strangely elongated fingers latching onto the ceiling joists, the claws gripping the wood. They pulled with the effortlessness of animal strength.
The head loomed up through the access. Wild, inhuman eyes fixed on him. The wide mouth slavering, the teeth bared.
Benjamin rammed himself against the roof, and knew he couldn’t go back any farther only when he felt the roofing nails gouge his shoulder and the back of his head.
The thing squirmed further upward through the opening. Lifted one of its legs up…
A popping noise came from below.
Loud. Sharp. Rapid.
Benjamin huddled, pressing his body against nails.
Half through the attic access, the primal appeared to hesitate.
Screeching from below. Snarling. And…
Shouts.
Human shouts.
Words.
The rapid popping noise again. The clatter of projectiles smacking into flesh, and into walls. The primal hung there and seemed caught in a moment’s indecision—whether or not to continue after Benjamin, or address the threat.
There was the thunder of footsteps on stairs.
More shouts, and Benjamin heard the words but he couldn’t make sense of them.
The primal turned, apparently intent on whatever the hell was happening down below. It seemed about to drop back to the ground. It turned its head and bared its teeth at something and began to let out a horrendous howl.
Then the ceiling around it erupted. Tufts of insulation blew up all around it. Bits of drywall. Dust. And blood—chunks of its flesh tearing off of it, jerking it around, enraging it…
And then something must have passed through its brain, because Benjamin watched the moment when the lights went out in its face.
Most of its body went limp, and it wilted down, tumbling out of the attic access.
Except for one of its hands, clutching the ceiling joist, holding on for a second more, just the random firing of synapses upon death.
Then it slipped.
A second later, Benjamin heard the sound of its body hitting the floor.
Benjamin gasped for air. He smelled the smell of primals, but also of drywall dust, and blood. He only realized that he was weeping when the image of the attic access hole blurred into an impressionist glare of white light in darkness.
The popping sound, again. But this time more deliberate. Steady.
Then more human voices, except this time the words finally made sense to Benjamin’s ears.
“Clear!”
“Clear!”
“All clear,” the last voice spoke. And then it shouted up at him through the attic access. “Hey kid! Kid! You still alive up there?”
FOUR
─▬▬▬─
DIPLOMACY
“I’ve lost visual.”
Captain Perry Griffin frowned at the last radio transmission.
His operative on the ground in Fort Bragg was narrating a pretty odd chain of events, involving a lot of unknowns—an unknown male subject, an unidentified military vehicle, filled with unidentified military men.
His operative continued: “Unidentified vehicle turned onto a neighborhood street. Looked like they were hauling after something. Griffin, you got that drone up yet?”
A handful of miles north of where the operative reconnoitered the movements of the unknown entities—and tried to figure out who they were and where the hell they’d come from—Griffin stood safely ensconced in the Eastern Tactical Operations Command.
ETOC was nothing glamorous. It was a building in the northern wing of the Shughart Middle School in Spout Springs, North Carolina.
Their main command center was a large classroom. Chairs and desks sized for middle-schoolers had been ejected and piled up around a few of the barricaded entrances to add a little extra defensibility should they come under attack from the infected or anyone else.
The whiteboard in the room was now covered with notes and maps and satellite pictures. Folding tables had been appropriated from various places around the school and erected here in the classroom. These tables were crowded with computers and communications equipment, and soldiers from Greeley Colorado now sat at them, using adult-sized office chairs taken from teacher’s desks and the staff break rooms.
Griffin stood behind one of these soldiers, looking over his shoulder as he operated their small reconnaissance drone.
Griffin keyed his radio handset. “Griffin to Rollins, hold your position. Don’t put yourself in harm’s way. Drone will have eyeballs in just a few.” He released the PTT and addressed the drone pilot. “How long?”
The pilot eyed a map that showed the location of his drone as a dot creeping southward across the grid of streets. “One mike. Maybe less. Standby.”
Griffin raised his eyes to another soldier down the table, this one with a satphone pressed to his ear. “Edwards, what’s the ETA on the Predator?”
Edwards relayed the question through the satphone, speaking directly to Greeley. Then he looked to Griffin. “It’s on site in three mikes.”
Griffin nodded.
The drone they had over Fort Bragg was merely a glorified camera on a quad-copter base. It was battery operated, and not big enough to carry any sort of munitions payload.
Until Griffin could secure Pope Air Base, which was attached to Fort Bragg (which was currently ov
errun by infected), then Griffin had no direct control of the Predator drones that did carry munitions. Greeley had two of them, but they had to launch and be operated out of Colorado.
Griffin crossed his arms over his chest and waited in silence for his reconnaissance drone to get overhead of the unidentified Humvee and perhaps figure out who the hell they were.
These must be some of Angela and Harden’s goons, he thought. The infected kicked them out of Fort Bragg for us, but naturally, they’re going to come sniffing around again.
Griffin had no intention of letting Angela or any of her quasi-military insurgents get a foothold here again. As far as Griffin was concerned, he owned Fort Bragg now.
He just had to get the infected out of it before he could move in.
Once they moved in, they could get the power back on, secure the high voltage fences that had kept it safe, and then Greeley would have a base of operations right in the UES’s backyard.
At that point in time, the UES would be finished. It was already on its deathbed since the fall of Fort Bragg. When Greeley moved troops into the vacuum they’d created, that would be the official end of Angela and Lee Harden’s little mutiny.
With a local force of troops at his disposal, Griffin would easily snuff out the remaining so-called Safe Zones of the United Eastern States, and bring the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida back into the fold.
“Alright,” his drone pilot said, leaning forward in his seat. “I’m there. Have Rollins confirm that street for me again.”
“Griffin to Rollins, confirm the street where that Humvee was last seen.”
A pause over the airwaves.
Rollins came back: “Pretty sure it’s Volturno Street.”
The drone pilot nodded. “I’m on it. Standby…there we go.” He kept one hand on the drone controls and with the other pointed to the screen.
Griffin leaned over the man’s shoulder again and frowned at the screen.
There in the middle of Volturno Street was indeed a Humvee. It was little more than a tiny tan square in the middle of the street, lined on both sides by duplex military housing.
“Zoom in,” Griffin ordered.
The pilot did as requested. The image magnified.
Griffin keyed his radio again. “Rollins, I see our mystery Humvee. It’s stopped in the middle of Volturno. I’m seeing two males, military uniforms, full battle rattle. Looks like they’re waiting for…Hold on…”
From the duplex they were parked in front of, a cluster of new figures emerged. They weren’t running, but it was obvious they were in a hurry.
“Got three more coming out of one of the houses,” Griffin continued. “Two more uniformed military. And another person, possibly a civilian. Unarmed. It looks like they’re escorting the civilian. They’re all piling into the Humvee now. Shit. Standby again.” Griffin released the airwaves. “What about that Predator?” he shot over his shoulder.
“Coming on site now,” the soldier with the satphone called.
Griffin pointed to the screen. “There’s something on that Humvee. Flag or banner or something.” Griffin turned to the soldier on the satphone. “See if that Predator can come in a little lower and get a visual on that flag. I can’t ID it with our drone right overhead.”
The soldier began mumbling back and forth, communicating with whoever operated the Predator, all the way over in Greeley.
The pilot of the recon drone shifted in his seat. “Let me see if I can drop altitude here.”
Griffin watched the screen, and narrated what he saw for Rollins. “They’re moving now. Looks like they’re hauling ass—yup, they have infected moving in on them. Rollins, be advised that’s not too far from you, if you can shift to be downwind of that pack.”
“Roger.”
“They’re leaving the infected behind, heading towards Normandy Drive.”
The image on the screen changed its angle. The recon drone dropping in altitude, and shifting eastward, towards where Volturno Street intersected with Normandy Drive.
The bird’s eye view of the Humvee became a sidelong view.
“What the hell?” Griffin mumbled over the radio. “Rollins, I’m seeing a Canadian flag.” Griffin straightened up and looked at the soldier on the satphone. “That Humvee is displaying a Canadian flag.”
The soldier nodded. “Predator pilot is reporting the same thing.”
Griffin blinked a few times, trying to adjust to this new load of information. “Well, what does Greeley want us to do?”
“Just because they’re flying the flag doesn’t mean they’re CAF,” the recon drone pilot pointed out.
Griffin swore and reached over to where his own satphone lay on the table. Yet another shit sandwich to feast upon. But there was no way in hell he was going to eat this one all by himself. He was going to go direct with Daniels or Lineberger—whoever was available—and let them make the call.
The soldier on the satphone swiveled in his seat. “Captain, the Predator’s being told to stand down.”
Griffin glanced up from dialing the number to Greeley command. “On whose orders?”
“Mr. Daniels, sir. He says not to engage anyone displaying Canadian Armed Forces markings.”
Griffin stared at the other soldier, his expression blank.
This didn’t seem like a sudden decision. This seemed like there were things going on already, that they just hadn’t told Griffin about. And while he appreciated the old adage of soldiers being like mushrooms—kept in the dark and fed shit—he considered his position to be one that required a good deal of intel.
He resented when that was withheld.
He turned back to the phone, and continued dialing Greeley.
***
The line between military contracting and actual military had become officially nonexistent.
Daniels was aware of this shift. He’d seen it coming for quite a while. He’d even nudged things in that direction, using his influence as a friend and former colleague of President Briggs to make it happen.
But that didn’t make the actual practice any less complicated.
He stepped out of the Box—the dim room where the single on-duty Predator drone pilot sat in front of his glowing screens and controls—and into harsh daylight.
It would’ve been easier to have these control rooms inside FOB Hampton, the Hampton Inn and Suites that had become the main hub of military operations and government control in Greeley, Colorado. But the equipment would have been impossible to squeeze into the conference rooms where the rest of the command operations were hosted. They’d’ve had to take out a few walls to accomplish it.
So now Daniels had to sit and stew in his irritable juices, while one of his Cornerstone operatives drove him back to FOB Hampton.
He clambered up into the black Tahoe and slammed the door with a huff. “Command center,” he grunted, and the driver sped off the flight line of the Greeley Airport where their single working Box was situated.
Another irritating complexity: He held no official military rank. And yet he was, for all intents and purposes, on equal footing with Colonel Lineberger. In fact, he’d recently been given control of Project Hometown, for the simple fact that Briggs had started to lack a certain necessary trust in his military, fearing that a misplaced sense of patriotism might cause them to betray him.
Which was not paranoia.
It’d happened several times already.
Daniels held two technical titles: CEO of Cornerstone, the military contracting company that now worked alongside what remained of the American military; and Military Consultant to Command. The former being something that Daniels felt was rather made-up.
He wasn’t just consulting or advising.
The fact was, he was commanding.
And yet, without rank, no amount of inventive titles was going to smooth out the friction between him and the military forces that were under his control. There was still the distinct sense that he was the outsider. The merc. The somewhat-seedy
pitbull that Briggs had called in to straighten things out.
Another line that had been blurred: the line between soldier, and mercenary.
Because the fact of the matter was, whether you were Cornerstone, or Army, or Marines, or Air Force, you worked for the same damn thing: Food, and a safe place to sleep.
It all felt so ad-hoc sometimes, that Daniels was forced to question whether this type of arrangement could really hold the fractured United States together for as long as it would take to rebuild itself. And he wondered how it would fly if he demanded an official officer’s commission.
Colonel would do nicely.
The drive to FOB Hampton was quick. The red triangle emblazoned on the side and hood of the black Tahoe got them through the checkpoints with no questions asked. They didn’t even have to stop—the crossing arms were already raised by the time they got there, and they sped through.
He arrived, somewhat calmer, but no less irritable.
What was being played at here? What did the Canucks think they were doing?
And the Brits, for that matter.
Daniels stalked through the re-purposed conference rooms of the former hotel. The smell of lumber smacked him in the face, as it always did. Cubicle walls, filled with administrative positions. Plywood offices built onto the walls for higher ranking officers.
He made his way through it all, to a larger office built into the corner of the main conference room. He stopped. Took a breath. Knocked on the door.
“What.” A grizzled bark, about as irritable as Daniels felt.
“It’s Daniels.”
A grumble, unintelligible through the door. Then: “Come on.”
Daniels pushed through the door and into Colonel Lineberger’s office.
Lineberger, lean and hatchet-faced and gray, lurked over his desk like a vulture over a bit of roadkill. “Close the door,” he ordered.
Daniels did so, then turned to the colonel. “Where are the envoys?”
Lineberger hiked a thumb towards the ceiling. “Penthouse. With the president.”
Daniels strode to the desk, his hands on his hips. “We got a Predator over North Carolina, supporting Griffin.”
“Uh-huh,” Lineberger mumbled, as though to question what this had to do with him.
