by D. J. Molles
“I hear that,” Jones said.
“Yessir,” Sam said, his breath shaky with motion and adrenaline.
For a few moments, the screaming had died out. Then, about halfway to the building, it started up again, clearer than before.
“Hey!” Someone—a man—was screaming. “Hey! Don’t leave me! Don’t fucking leave me! Help!”
Muted.
Coming from inside the building.
Billings’s mouth clamped shut.
Jones whispered a constant blue streak.
They hit the corner of the building.
Billings turned, saw Alpha Squad jogging up.
No more snark now. Everyone heard the screaming.
“We’ll clear the windows,” Billings said. “Alphas, watch our backs and don’t let us get eaten.”
“We got you,” Paige nodded, him and two other soldiers spreading out to provide three-sixty coverage for them.
“On me,” Billings ordered Sam and Jones, then spun around the corner of the building. He vaulted over a short brick wall that separated the lawn from the side of the building. Sam followed, thinking that the wall was just one more hurtle they’d have to get over when the primals started chasing them.
The first window was intact.
Billings gave it a once-over, but he’d already realized that the only way they’d hear the screaming is if it was coming from one of the rooms with a busted window.
In which case, why didn’t the person just jump out the window?
Were they restrained?
Or was something else going on here?
Billings moved to the next window. This one was half broken, a single corner of the glass leaving a jagged, shimmering edge. Billings went from side to side in the window, clearing the interior rapidly, and then inching closer to it, trying to see into the corners.
Sam and Jones moved to Billings, ready to pull him back if things started reaching for them through the broken window.
But then he stepped back and murmured “clear” and dashed to the next window.
Alpha Squad kept pace with them, staying outside the low brick wall, their rifles addressed out to the surrounding woods and structures.
Billings began to run as the shouting grew clearer.
They were getting close. Honing in on the source.
Then it trailed off, like the person shouting had lost hope.
“Keep yelling!” Billings shouted. “We’re coming for you! Keep yelling!”
It was like Billings had supercharged whoever it was. Their screaming came back with renewed vigor, hope giving them strength.
“I’m in here!” the person screamed. “In a room with a broken window! Right here! There’s a tree right outside the window!”
Billings immediately raised his eyes, and Sam tracked what he was looking at.
There, about halfway down the building, and three more windows down, stood a sapling tree that was crowding the frame of a broken window.
Billings broke into a dead sprint. “Check my back!” he called over his shoulder.
Alpha Squad ran to keep up, and Sam and Jones followed, pausing only long enough to scan across the broken windows that they streaked passed, making sure there weren’t beastly shapes lurking inside.
“Right here!” the voice scraped out, raw and desperate. “Right at the tree!”
We’re moving too fast! Sam thought. His heart skipped into his throat, adrenaline pumping it just as much as the running. We’re going too fast, and we’re not being careful enough!
Billings slid to a stop, about two paces off of the window next to the tree. It had a large hole in the glass, directly in the center of it, with jagged edges all around.
“I see you!” Billings called, then he shot a glance over to Sam and Jones as they hustled up. “He’s here! Right here!”
On the other side of the brick wall, Paige hollered at his men, “Keep watch! I’m gonna help!” Then he vaulted over the wall and came running up the short slope to the side of the building.
Sam and Jones nearly tumbled into Billings, who was working urgently back and forth to clear the corners of the room, edging closer and closer to what was left of the glass.
Sam’s gut turned circles inside of him, every instinct telling him that something bad was going to happen.
He saw a shape inside the window, and he heard the voice, but it was all a jumble of incomprehensible syllables to Sam. The remaining glass was too dirty to see details. Covered in four years of dust and pollen and mildew.
Paige pulled up next to them. “Is he in there?”
“He’s in there,” Billings replied. “I’m gonna break the glass, stand back.”
He used the muzzle of his rifle to punch the glass clear of the frame. Then he used the barrel to rake the frame of the window, clearing as much of the pointy bits out as possible.
Sam stood back with Jones, his rifle trained on the gaping window, seeing the dark interior of the room beyond. And the shape that was sprawled on the ground, on its stomach.
Someone in uniform.
The man didn’t seem to be able to move his arms or legs, but he raised his head.
“Holy shit,” Sam uttered.
Billings stopped raking glass and stood, shell-shocked.
“Get me out of here!” the man cried out.
“Loudermouth!” Billings gaped.
The shock immediately dissipated into urgency.
“Ryder! Jones! Cover!” Billings snapped. “Paige, help me!”
Sam took the left side of the window and Jones took the right. Billings and Paige started to negotiate themselves over the sill of the window. A bit of broken glass could open an artery just as easily as a bullet could.
Sam jerked back from the window and brought his rifle up, checking high.
He remembered how he’d seen the primals pour over a rooftop and down the side of a building, clinging to impossible handholds.
His instincts screamed at him, telling him he would see savage faces peering down at him…
But there was nothing.
Just the wall and the roof.
Inside the room, Billings and Paige charged through a series of desks and chairs, slamming them out of the way to get to Loudermouth, who still hadn’t moved.
Why wasn’t he moving?
Sam checked their six, and then whipped back to the room.
Billings and Paige each took one of Loudermouth’s arms and started to try to haul him up.
Loudermouth screamed in agony. “No-no-no!”
“What’s wrong?” Billings demanded.
“I can’t!” Loudermath gasped with the last bit of breath in his lungs, then took a big, shaky inhale. “They broke my arms and legs!”
Billings and Paige exchanged a glance.
“Okay,” Billings said. “Take him by the armor.”
Loudermouth still wore his plate carrier. Billings and Paige bent down in tandem and grabbed his back plate, using the plate carrier as a sort of carrying harness. They lifted him up off the ground. Loudermouth groaned through gritted teeth, but didn’t scream again. His arms and legs both dangled from his torso.
Sam scanned again. Back behind him. Up top.
Still nothing.
Back to the room.
Billings and Paige hauled Loudermouth’s form towards the window. “Ryder! Jones! We’re gonna pass him to you and then take up coverage!”
“Roger!” Sam replied, slinging his rifle.
The two team leaders grunted with effort, lifting Loudermouth’s form up onto the window sill so that his front plate rested on the jagged edge. Sam and Jones immediately grabbed the handholds under his plate carrier as Billings and Paige released them.
Loudermouth was heavy.
Sam strained, red in the face, his breath clenched in his torso, trying to lift the wounded man up over the broken glass. Inside the room, Billings and Paige grabbed his legs and pulled them upright so they wouldn’t drag over the glass.
Lou
dermouth let out a gasp of pain, but managed not to cry out.
Then he was through.
Billings and Paige both snatched up their rifles. Paige turned and covered the door of the classroom immediately across from them, while Billings carefully straddled the sill again.
“Clear,” Billings called. “Move!”
He took up coverage from the outside, and Paige climbed out.
“Get him to the Humvee!” Billings ordered, still addressed to the interior of the building.
Sam and Jones started hauling ass down the hill.
Loudermouth moaned, but in between ragged breaths he kept saying, “Thank you! Thank you!” He craned his neck around, and for some reason fixated on Sam. “Ryder. You saved me. You got me out of there…”
Ryder didn’t know what to say to that.
Jones answered for him, straining the words out with effort: “You’re good, brother. We got you. You’re safe now.”
“Ryder…Thank you…”
In the parking lot, dead ahead, Sam saw the other squads’ vehicles beginning to converge.
They made it to the brick wall.
“Alphas!” Sam barked, his arms already aching from hauling Loudermouth’s body even such a short distance. Christ, but full-grown men were hard to carry. “Take him! Take him!”
Two of the soldiers on the other side ran to the wall. They looked at Loudermouth in shock, but didn’t stop moving. One of them said, “Holy shit, it’s Loudermouth,” but that was it.
Sam and Jones passed the man’s body over the wall, and the two soldiers from Alpha took him, dragging his limbs over the bricks, causing Loudermouth more pain, but he seemed too overwhelmed to scream now.
“Get him to our Humvee,” Sam said, then grabbed his rifle up in arms already filling with lactic acid and held coverage for Billings and Paige, who were right behind them.
Working in pairs, they cleared the stone wall, and then started heading for their vehicles.
Paige stayed with Billings as he headed for Squad Four’s Humvee. The two Alphas carrying Loudermouth posted up at the backend of the vehicle and Billings popped the fastback. They spilled Loudermouth’s limp body into the back. He flopped over, now on his back, his chest heaving, his useless limbs jumbled at odd angles. His face was pale and sweaty and drawn with pain.
“Loudermouth,” Billings huffed. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah,” Loudermouth managed, his eyes clamped shut.
“Are there any more survivors?”
Loudermouth’s face suddenly changed from suffering to abject terror. His eyes opened wide. Found Billings’s face. He shook his head. “No one else.”
Billings stared at him for a moment, and Sam thought he knew what Billings was thinking.
Was Loudermouth just saying that because he was desperate to get the hell out of this place?
Paige seemed to perceive this as well, and bent close to Billings. He lowered his voice, but Sam could still hear him.
“I don’t hear any other screaming. If there are others, they’re not alive.”
“Or they’re in places where we can’t hear them,” Billings returned.
Paige grimaced. “I say we pull back and figure it out from a safe distance.”
Billings considered it, then made a rapid decision. He keyed his comms. “All units, pull back and rendezvous at Checkpoint Scarecrow. We’ve got a situation.”
SIXTEEN
─▬▬▬─
ENVOY
Benjamin Sullivan would forever be grateful that he hadn’t been eaten alive.
However, as time dragged by, and the soldiers that had snatched him out of that house still hadn’t said much to him, he started to get worried.
He wasn’t sure what to worry about—only sure that he should worry. But his concerns were as indistinct as they were numerous. Who were these people? Did they intend to hurt him? They didn’t seem like it, or at least they hadn’t hurt him yet. But they had put a bag over his head, and he was not a fan of that at all. That made him feel distinctly like a prisoner.
No restraints though. Which was odd, he thought.
Apparently they didn’t want him knowing where they were taking him.
They’d piled him into their truck, and then taken off, zipping through the streets of Fort Bragg. They’d got onto one of the main drags that headed out of Fort Bragg, but then they’d put the hood over his head, and one of the guys told him it was for their safety, and not to take it off.
His actual words were: “You take this off, I’ll knock you unconscious.”
So, again, Benjamin felt that his footing was tenuous.
The darkness inside the hood wasn’t that disorienting to Benjamin. He’d been living in darkness. It felt…normal.
They’d driven for what he guessed was about twenty minutes. Then they’d hustled him into a building. Up some stairs. They passed some commands back and forth, but didn’t speak much to him except to tell him to watch his footing on the stairs.
Then they’d parked his ass in a chair and taken the hood off.
He was in what looked like an office of some sort. It had a modern-looking desk made out of glass and metal tubing. The only chair in the room was the one in which Benjamin now sat. There was a single, black bookcase that contained rows upon rows of white, three-ring binders with inscrutable numbering on the spines.
Benjamin decided this had been some sort of tech company.
It was a random guess based on the desk and the numbers on the binders. But it made him feel a little more secure telling himself he knew what type of building he was in, even if he had no clue where it was.
Twenty minutes outside Fort Bragg is where it is, Benjamin noted.
A tall soldier that looked to be in his mid-twenties gave Benjamin a large bottle of water. When Benjamin opened the cap, he marveled at the fact that it was sealed. This was a brand-new bottle of water—not something that had been refilled.
The soldier watched Benjamin as he gulped down half a liter of water at one go. Benjamin watched him back as he drank. The man’s blond crew cut was matted down in little squares—from the pads on the inside of a helmet.
The man gave Benjamin a nod, and then retreated to the door. Before closing it behind him, he said, “Sit tight. Don’t make me come back in here.”
Benjamin thought this was the soldier that had told him he’d knock him unconscious, and Benjamin believed him. So he sat tight.
And so it was with a measure of alarm, wondering if he’d done something to earn that threatened beating, that the blond soldier came back into the room, nearly three hours later.
“I didn’t do anything,” Benjamin blurted. “I’ve been sitting here the whole time.”
The soldier raised an eyebrow, then smirked, and closed the door behind him. “Relax, kid. No one’s gonna hurt you.”
“You said you’d knock me unconscious.”
The soldier nodded and approached. He held what Benjamin recognized as an MRE, the outer packaging cut open, but otherwise brand-new. “I told you I’d knock you unconscious if you took the hood off. And you didn’t. So we’re good. Right?”
Benjamin nodded. Sure. They were good. His attention was on the food now.
The soldier noted his hungry gaze. He held the package out to Benjamin, and Benjamin didn’t hesitate. He grabbed it, and immediately went for the entree, ripping it open with his teeth and squeezing the contents into his mouth, foregoing the packaged utensils.
“When’s the last time you ate a full meal?” the soldier asked, a note of pity clouding his curiosity.
Benjamin chewed his mouthful just enough to swallow it. “Full meal? It’s been a while.” He squeezed more of the contents up—chicken and rice. Before devouring his next mouthful, he glanced up at the soldier. “Who are you guys? Are you from Butler? Did Angela send you?”
The soldier frowned.
Is he Greeley, then?
“I’m Captain Marlin,” the soldier eventually said. He reach
ed up and indicated a patch on his shoulder. “Canadian Armed Forces.”
Benjamin stopped chewing for a moment, eyeing the man and his earth-tone Canadian flag.
Canada?
Captain Marlin appeared to be waiting for something, and when he didn’t get it, he prompted, “And you are…?”
Benjamin chewed, slower now, taking time to think.
Was this a good time to be honest or a good time to lie?
But he wasn’t sure what would be gained by lying.
“Benjamin Sullivan,” he said, the words muffled around a mouthful of food.
“And how did you come to be in Fort Bragg alone?”
“Not alone.”
“No?”
“My mother’s still there.” Benjamin frowned, a new slew of worries invading his mind. He stopped eating. Guilt ripped his appetite away from him.
“Captain, I have to go back and get my mother.”
Marlin held up a staying hand. “Alright. Slow your roll. One thing at a time.”
Benjamin felt heat rising up his neck. “But I have to. I can’t leave her there.” Benjamin found his voice rising into a panic. “She’s my mother! I can’t leave her there!”
“Stop,” Marlin commanded.
Benjamin stopped, his breathing a little quicker than before. His lips trembling.
“Listen to me,” the captain said. “I’ll help you. But you have to help me first.”
“Fine,” Benjamin decided. “Whatever. What do you want?”
“I want to know what happened to Fort Bragg.”
“It fell,” Benjamin answered. “It got overrun.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Marlin sighed. “Let’s try to be a bit more specific. We had intel that Fort Bragg was the seat of government for something called the United Eastern States. I was sent down to make contact with whoever was in charge. I’d like to know if the United Eastern States even still exists at this point, where I can find whoever is in charge of it, and how the so-called capital is now abandoned.”
Benjamin blinked a few times, trying to figure out how to condense months of rapid developments into something Captain Marlin would understand. Finally, in a fit of frustration, Benjamin whined, “It’s a long story!”
Captain Marlin looked irritated. He brought a hand up and scratched at his forehead. “Start at the top, Benjamin. Let’s start with what happened to Fort Bragg, and we’ll go from there. It was supposed to be a safe zone, wasn’t it? I reconned it. I saw the high voltage wires you guys had all around the perimeter. What happened? How did it fall?”
