The End Time Saga (Book 5): The Holding

by Greene, Daniel

  Tony’s voice hushed. “The Chosen have been fighting with us. You saw them.”

  Tess had seen them get gunned down by Jackson’s soldiers in droves, body parts strewn about the field. She had seen the Chosen men holding their guts in while Humvees drove over their bodies and crushed their limbs. She’d seen them crawling while Jackson’s Legion executed them where they lay. She would be a liar if she had told them it didn’t make her happy. Fewer of them made the world better. If the earth could have opened up and taken the whole lot of them, she would have danced for joy.

  She threw the rest of her coffee back. “I’ve got to go.” She handed the cup back to Tony. “Thanks. I’ll see you guys later.”

  Slipping through the bodies, she found her way through the barn doors. Curly-haired Rick walked through the camp toward the pastor’s cabins. She spit in his general direction and drifted toward the Red Stripes’ cabins. She crossed in front of the old farmhouse.

  Two men stood speaking in front of Thunder’s cabin. One was heavyset with a bandana around his gray hair; the other had a sturdy build and blond curly hair. She stopped and stared at the two men. Thunder gestured while he talked. When he saw Tess, his mouth clamped shut. The other man gazed over his shoulder. An evil smile crawled across his lips. He stuck out his hand and Thunder clasped it. Peter turned and walked away through the cabins.

  Tess approached her old ally. “Morning, Thunder.”

  “Tess.” A smile spread under his graying white beard.

  She threw a thumb at Peter’s retreating figure. “What was that about?”

  “That knucklehead?” He waved a hand. “You know them. Who’s digging the trenches? Who’s on watch? Usual bullshit.”

  Her dark eyes considered him.

  He cocked his head to the side. “Tess, my dear. Now don’t you come in here looking at me like I robbed a panty store.”

  “You know I don’t like my longtime bud getting all chummy with them.”

  Thunder placed a hand over his heart. “Scout’s honor. Nothing bad going on here.” He glanced over her shoulder. “It ain’t them I’m worried about anyway.”

  Soldiers with shovels and picks walked in a gang toward the water.

  “I still can’t believe he let them go. Those bastards killed a lot of us.”

  “So did the Chosen.”

  Thunder scratched under his red bandana with a dirty fingernail. “Chosen weren’t as good at killing.”

  “Don’t like either of them, but if I had to pick a group to fall into a black hole first, it’d be the Chosen.”

  “Tess,” came a voice from inside the cabin. A tall man ducked under the doorframe. She embraced his waist in a hug.

  “Garrett. How are you?”

  The man grinned down through a graying beard peppered with flecks of black. “I seen warmer days.”

  They released. “Want some chow?” Thunder asked.

  “Nah, I got somebody I need to check in on.”

  Thunder’s belly jiggled as he laughed. “All right. Suit yourself.”

  She cut through the cabins down a muddy beaten path. Figures formed in the distance, looking like a pack of infected. Her hand itched for her Colt 1911 .45 caliber handgun resting in its holster. She wanted to rub the rough grip and feel its coarse grains across the skin of her palm. It beckoned her with violent safety. Make sure I’m near. You can only trust me. Not them. Never them. I am your salvation, it seemed to whisper. Her hands begrudgingly stayed in her pockets though as she walked. The figures were too stationary to be infected, but they were deadly just the same.

  Over three hundred people stood in the wintery field. Yellow stacks of grass and hay peeked out from under the snow. The people stood facing one direction. Tess shouldered into the crowd, brushing past people. People stood on tiptoes trying to get a better view.

  Tess lifted her chin. A gray-haired man stood at the front, taller than the rest. She knew his long face and his lanky arms all too well. He gesticulated at the sky.

  “God hath put a scourge upon us.”

  The people shouted, “No!”

  “Yes, sadly so.” He shook his head. “Many of us are not here today because they’ve succumbed to a disease. It is not like those who’ve been marked by the beast, but it kills us all the same. Our people lie in their beds suffering while those that have the power to help sit idly by.”

  Angry shouts erupted.

  “There is medicine that could save our people. Not here. Not in Hacklebarney. But surely other places have the medicine. We needn’t suffer anymore.” He took a step closer to the crowd and raised his voice. “I will send Matthew to give us deliverance from this evil.”

  The crowd gave shouts of praise.

  “My people go in peace. I only do what God commands.”

  “Praise be to God,” howled a man.

  “Praise be to the father,” shouted another man.

  “Thank you!” said a woman overcome with emotion.

  The pastor held up a hand. “No need to thank me. A shepherd cares for his flock.”

  Tess formed her mouth into a tight line, speaking to herself amid the clamor. “Motherfucker. Gwen’s already out gathering medicine and supplies.”

  “God wills it!” They turned their heads to the sky and yelled. “God wills it.”

  ALVARADO

  La Crescent, MN

  Muted sunlight filtered through classroom windows. It was a frail light from a sun obscured by wintery white clouds. The classroom walls were covered in posters of cartoon numbers that resembled people as aids to help children learn how to do simple math. Next to the posters was a chart lined with names and gold stars. She ignored the names spelled in block letters. They were probably all dead.

  A couple of Marines stood near the windows looking out. There was an uneasy tension around them. Every minute more dead flooded by the school, and as more dead came, the chances they’d be discovered grew even greater. She estimated thousands had passed in the night, and every hour even more breached their defensive line.

  A rifle squad rested along the wall. Heavy packs lay at their sides along with their firearms. Helmets sat on the packs and polar fleece watch caps kept their heads warm inside the unheated building.

  Thickly built Sergeant Riddle stood with Major Alvarado.

  “How hard did you have to push them to be here?” she asked. The last thing she wanted was men that didn’t want to be there.

  “Ma’am, every single Marine volunteered for this mission. Would have been easier if there were only a handful of them. Lance Corporals Odom and Rasmussen are steady Marines.” She knew Odom from the night prior. Rasmussen reminded her of a young Tommy Lee Jones with bushy eyebrows and a square jaw. “It’s not a full squad, but they will do what needs to be done.” He scratched under his winter hat. “I handpicked the rest from my old platoon. O’Bannon, Finch and Foster are tireless. Johnson is practically a horse. If it can be done, they’ll find a way.”

  “I trust your judgment, Sergeant.”

  “And we trust yours, ma’am.”

  She ignored his compliment. It wouldn’t mean much if they all died in the snow or inside the school or on the river opening the northern flank to the hordes of the dead, but it made her want to smile. A smile she wrestled deep inside. This was not a time for smiles. This was a time for a gut check. Can we pull off the Hail Mary? Can we find an ounce of luck in our defeat? Find an opening and never surrender.

  Riddle motioned the Marines upright. Odom and O’Bannon were the tallest. Johnson was almost as tall but much wider. Rasmussen looked like his face had been carved from a square. Privates Harry and Adams appeared young enough to be freshman in high school. Despite months of fieldwork, only thin soft hair tickled their cheeks. They were Marines, every one of them. Black, white, brown, and yellow, they crossed the gambit of American humanity. And she trusted every Marine standing there. She trusted them even more in a scrap.

  “I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass. We’re p
robably going to die.” Her words actually generated a smile from a few of the Marines as if she were setting up a joke that only they could know the punch line of. “You volunteered to give us a shot at closing the breach, and I wouldn’t ask you to do that in my place.”

  “Oorah,” the Marines said softly. Staying quiet was essential to surviving longer. Allowing the flood of the dead to pass was step one to their desperate plan. So far, it had worked.

  “It’s imperative that every single member of this squad knows what the plan is before we depart. We don’t come back until the mission is complete. Understood?”

  They nodded their acceptance of success or death as only Marines could with grim satisfaction that every breath went into the defeat of the enemy.

  “We are going to cross north of La Crosse where there should be fewer Zulus. Then we’re going to follow the river south, planting charges and blowing the ice. We will go as far as we can. This will give us some breathing room. Then we will regroup and clear the river south to Captain Heath’s command.”

  “What if the ice refreezes?”

  She shook her head. “We need to open our moat back up. It will take regular maintenance until the river can do the job for us again. Right now, we focus on regaining the initiative.” She paused, eyeing her boys. “There is no shame in backing out now. We will hold no ill will toward you. This is going to be an ugly fight.” She knew that peer pressure reinforced bravery, but if any single one of these men was still debating whether or not they had it in them to lay it on the line, she wasn’t going to take them with her. She didn’t want them if there was an ounce of hesitation in their resolve.

  “Are you all in?”

  The Marines wanted to yell but kept their voices at a meaningful whisper. “Oorah, Major.”

  She nodded. “Oorah, Marines.”

  She shouldered her pack and left the room. The soft tread of Marine boots on the school tile floor sounded like music to her ears. Marines never laid down. They fought off their backs and kicked and crawled their way to victory.

  They passed through a lightless cafeteria full of round tables and empty blue plastic chairs for young students. Chairs and tables long left vacant by the outbreak.

  Gently, she opened a wooden swinging door to the kitchen. Marines stood in the back storage room that used to hold canned goods. The Marines here were dressed warmly but not as bundled as the Marines at her back. They had rigged together metal sleds for hauling the explosives, ammunition, and supplies not carried on their person. A metal push-bar door loomed near them, danger seeping through the cracks.

  Using his hand, Captain Butler silently goaded her over.

  “Major, we have two big sleds here. They will need to be pulled by at least two Marines each. Maybe one once they lighten up.”

  “Got it.” Rope was knotted in a loose sling that could be thrown over one shoulder and across the chest effectively making them sled dogs.

  Butler bent down and picked up more equipment. “Lance Corporal Murphy had the foresight to acquire these snowshoes from the locals a couple weeks ago. They will keep you atop the snow and ice. They should allow you to move faster than the Zulus.”

  She took the two-foot-long snowshoes. She’d expected them to be braided. They were made of a lightweight alloy frame filled with a high-density polyethylene deck. A ratcheting system allowed them to be quickly put on and taken off. The fronts of the shoes curved upright to assist the wearer in natural movement whether it was walking or running. The dispersion of weight would help keep them atop the heavy snow even while weighted down by their packs. “These should make it a hell of a lot easier than getting here.”

  “It should, ma’am.”

  Butler and two other Marines handed them out to the rest of her depleted rifle squad. Nine men and herself. No, ten Marines.

  “Wait until we get a bit up the road. Then you can commence.”

  Captain Butler’s nose flared a fraction. His part of the plan had its own set of dangers, and while hers would certainly lead to death, his would be a slower kind of holdout until he was overrun. The main difference was she would probably die in the freezing cold while he would get cut down surrounded by a company of the finest Marines he’d ever met. It was a psychological difference: fighting from an elevated platform and holding out versus running and gunning in the field with zero advantages in zero-degree weather.

  “We’ll do it.”

  Her eyes read his for a moment, and she cleared her throat. “Once we get the river cleared between us and La Crosse, you can begin the cleanup of the area but focus on retaking our comms from Barron. The colonel must know what’s happened here.”

  She purposely left out the last part about the movement south. Butler knew what the odds were that she would succeed. Almost zero, but there was a chance they could reopen their protective river moat, and if there was a shot, by God, she would take it.

  The reality of the situation was that Captain Butler would have to decide when to break free of their impromptu base and make a dire run south to Captain Heath’s command. She had ordered him to give her time, but once she pushed the barred door open, he was effectively in charge. He would do what he was told, but when push came to shove, he would operate as if she were already dead. He was a good Marine, albeit a bit unsteady on his own, but he would attempt to fall back and regroup.

  Butler stuck out his hand and brought it sharply to his forehead.

  Alvarado was surprised by this. They did not salute in the field for many reasons, and the situation did not call for such formalities. The other Marines in the room did the same. Equipment creaked in their silent salute.

  Her voice lowered. “Captain, no need.”

  The captain shook his head no. “Every need, ma’am. Thank you. It’s been an honor.” His lips tightened as if he were controlling his emotions. She could have easily ordered himself or Wess or anyone else to go on this mission, but that wasn’t her style. Her style was to do the dirty work herself and show them that at the end of the day, she was no different. A motivated leader who would fight and get the job done. No questions asked. But her captain and the other Marines saluting meant that she had earned something that so many men and women strived for but never got, and that was respect. Respect of these men was worth more than their weight in gold. More than that, it was priceless.

  She placed a hand to her forehead in return. “I trust you Marines will give the enemy hell. We will return when the mission is complete.”

  “Oorah, Major!” Their voices echoed in the kitchen. Didn’t matter if they were loud now. A desperate fight was coming no matter what their actions were.

  “Oorah, Marines.” She let her hand fall crisply to her side and rested back down on her weapon. She pulled her balaclava up over her nose and mouth and secured her hat over top. One could leak all their heat from their head and die before they knew they were freezing to death.

  She put a gloved hand on the push-bar door. Softly she depressed the bar and the metal doorjamb clacked. She didn’t need to signal the Marines; she knew they would follow right behind her.

  The door opened just a crack, no more than an inch. White light poured inside the lightless kitchen. Wind whipped up flurries that snuck through the opening. Weight pressed back from the other side. She stuck a foot into the door and placed her shoulder into it.

  Twelve inches of snow weighed in from the outside. The door ground as both snow and ice resisted her. She hefted her M4A1 to her shoulder and stepped out into a drift. Her feet sank deep into the cold whiteness step after step. She covered their way but going hot so close to the school would put them in a dire spot early.

  A mound of snow-covered dumpsters lay unmolested nearby. She scanned the alley entrance while her men set up sleds and secured their snowshoes with their hardened metal crampons that would give them traction on the icy terrain.

  A Zulu wailed as it slowly marched by. She felt her gut tighten and kept her sights trained on it. All her Marines stood
silent, stopping everything they were doing. The grayish almost black-skinned creature swayed as it trudged past the alley opening behind the school.

  Her breath came out in a forceful push. Marines bounded past her and covered her while she put on her snowshoes. She tossed the shoes atop the snow and ratcheted her boot into the center of the shoe. Unsteadily, she did the same with her other foot.

  She took a step and was able to stay atop the white winter quicksand. The snowshoes were awkward at first, but it was infinitely easier than sinking into the drifts, your energy being zapped with every step. Crunch. Crunch. She joined the rearmost Marine.

  She patted the Marine in front of her, skipping by them one by one until she took her place near Sergeant Riddle. She rested a quick hand on his shoulder. He gave her a terse nod.

  They moved on the double from the alley to the street. Looking east, she saw hundreds if not thousands of dead marching in their direction and she shuddered. She felt fear, by God, how could anyone not feel fear? But she kept moving north. Step by step they advanced despite the fear. There was no time for fear.

  GWEN

  Near Shimek State Forest, IA

  The dampened clops of horse hooves echoed off the snow-covered road surface complemented by the jingle of the hayrack’s harnesses. They had made a quick stopover in the town of Donnellson, Sheriff Donnellson’s ancestral contribution to the local region. The thought of that man sharing lineage with the founders of a town made Gwen shake her head. They knew the medical center had been stripped down already. But they did a quick search of it anyway, unable to find anything. They carried on mile by mile toward Farmington.

  The group closed in on dense naked timber. Jake pulled his horse to a halt in front of a brown wooden sign in the shape of Iowa. Yellow engraved writing on it read Shimek State Forest. He drew his heavy denim overcoat tighter around his body, his shotgun barrel sticking out the side. He wore a heavy felt cowboy hat and a thick scarf over his face and neck making him look like a bandit.