“They won’t bomb the mosque and it’s unlikely the armor will get here in time. We’re out of water, all but combat ineffective, and don’t have enough ammo left to hold them off. So I want us to move to another building and bomb them when they overrun what’s left of this one.” A long silence ensued as the men considered possible options.
“I don’t like moving the wounded,” the corpsman said. “But I don’t see any other option.” The rest of the men nodded their agreement.
“You’re in command,” he said to Edwards, a nice guy with a level head, but also a stone-cold killer with a ferocious side to his nature that he apparently could switch on and off at will. “You organize the move. I’m going over to clear the building and make sure it’s safe. I’ll come back and we’ll move everyone over there. If we have to make more than one trip, we will. The dead come with us.” He turned on his heel and left the building.
The next morning, Stryker and Edwards occupied the fourth floor of the building facing the one they had occupied. All the other Marines were on the ground floor on other side of the building, protected from the explosion by the interior walls. Not ideal for Stryker and Edwards, but they didn’t have a choice.
“They’re on station now,” Edwards said as he peered through the designator’s scope. “Flight time is fifty seconds to impact once we release.”
“So we wait until they actually get there.”
“Agreed.” The two men waited for the insurgents to appear. Stryker was watching for movement from the mosque. “Too bad about Banner,” Edwards stated flatly.
“Yes it is.”
“He was a good man.”
“We all are or we wouldn’t be here.”
“There’s no need for both of us to be here,” Edwards said.
“There is if one of us gets hit by a sniper. They’re probably out there now, but focused on the other building. Sooner or later they’re going to start looking around.” Stryker noticed movement coming down the road. “They’re coming.”
“Tell me when you want to drop. I have to watch the target site.”
“These men are desperate to meet their maker and I don’t want to disappoint them.”
“Just let me know when to drop.”
Stryker continued watching the insurgents move toward the building the Marines had occupied. The men stopped, peering around the corner. Sniper fire rang out and they began their assault. There were close to 150 fighters in the attack, triple the number of the first attack. They obviously smelled blood and were determined to finish the fight. When they met no resistance, the fighters accelerated toward the building and crowded around the door as they struggled to enter. Behind them, another group moved up and massed outside the door.
“Drop,” Stryker said calmly.
“On the way.”
Stryker glanced at his watch and marked the time on the second hand. He ran to the stairwell and shouted, “twenty seconds,” then ran back to the exterior wall and dropped to his belly. Edwards followed him to the ground.
“Honor serving with you,” he said, and opened his mouth wide to save his eardrums from blowing out from the pressure wave.
“Same here,” Stryker opened his mouth as well.
Two massive explosions so close together that they sounded like one, split the air, which suddenly seemed sucked out of the atmosphere, The blast knocked the wall in and covered them in brick. They both lay still, stunned. After a few moments, Stryker stood up, shedding bricks and debris off his back. He grabbed Edward’s hand that was sticking out of the rubble. He jerked him to his feet, and then turned to look at the battle damage.
The two bombs had struck within meters of each other and no hostiles were visible. The craters were smoking and debris was still falling through the air. Both men stared at the carnage below. Edwards wobbled on weak legs, turned to Stryker, and said, “Guess we didn’t disappoint them.”
“Recon is known for outstanding customer service.” Both men chuckled and headed for the stairwell. Stryker felt a pain in his lower back but ignored it.
The following morning, a column of tanks, followed by armored personnel carriers, pulled up and stopped in front of their building. They loaded the dead and wounded in the MPCs, and started back to their forward operating base outside of town. Stryker later learned that the Marines had almost 100 KIAs and 560 wounded.
CHAPTER FOUR
DIE OFF PLUS TWO YEARS
Stryker woke up the morning after the track meet feeling pain in his joints and leg muscles before he even moved. Rising with a groan, he opened the passenger’s door of his Jeep, swung his legs out and down, and stood erect. His back was on fire, the result of an old wound, the exertions of the previous day, and sleeping in a car seat that was too cramped for his frame. He limped to the back of his vehicle, opened the rear hatch, and made cowboy coffee on the camp stove. He moved the stove, sat under the open hatch, and sipped his coffee. He drank it black, and he drank it a lot. He wondered at people who desecrated perfectly good coffee with things that belonged in candy, like sugar, flavorings, and dairy products. It puzzled him.
He sat behind an old farmhouse where he had parked the Jeep the previous morning. The place was surrounded by stands of red cedar and oak trees. He couldn’t be seen from the highway that passed the structure, and it probably didn’t matter. He hadn’t seen another car and driver in close to a week.
He stared in the distance and saw heat already shimmering off a landscape so flat that he almost believed he could see the curvature of the earth where the land and sky merged. He looked east and saw the ranch house where the incident of the previous day had begun. He shook his head with a sheepish expression on his face, wondering at his miscalculation, but determined to learn from it.
Stryker poured another cup of coffee and then did a series of stretching exercises to limber up before he started driving. He once went to a yoga class with his wife and was way out of his league. The instructor, a cute little thing with a blonde ponytail, told him that she had seen pig iron that was more flexible and he needed to take more classes every week if he wanted to improve. Stryker took the hint and went for coffee after waving to his wife.
An hour later, he passed through the open gate to what had been his grandparent’s ranch. Stryker parked in front of the house. It was one of many squat, red-bricked homes found in rural Texas that baked under the white-hot sun. It was flanked by a barn badly in need of paint. He didn’t bother to lock the door of the house. He realized it was a futile gesture at best. His grandpa had a large combination safe in the den. He opened the safe and filled it with the coins, two laptop computers, and a handheld ham radio. After spinning the dial, he went to the kitchen and ate a can of beef stew. He refilled his canteen from the faucet and decided to go to town and walk around.
Stryker was orphaned at age three and raised by his grandparents on the ranch. It was three miles south of Eden, Texas. The town was founded in 1882 and sat at the intersection of US Highways 87 and 83. It was also the intersection of the Texas Hill Country and vast, rolling farmland usually filled with cotton fields and forage crops. The town was a postage stamp on the massive landscape of the state. Before the die off, it had a population of 2,700, with half the number being prisoners at the Eden Detention Center, a federal prison. Stryker drove to town and parked in front of the high school.
He walked through his old high school, wandering through hallways and noting textbooks sitting on desks, chalk writing still on blackboards, and the flag of the school’s mascot, a bulldog, hanging in the main hallway. He walked outside and saw the formerly lush field where he played six-man football was now brown and covered with weeds. Rocks protruded from the turf and the bleachers were badly in need of paint. The Texas sun had done its work.
He knew there were still people around, but they were understandably reluctant to mingle, although the plague had come and gone. In the early days of the die off, Stryker had listened to the Emergency Broadcast Network as well as the AM
radio that continued to operate for some time. Apparently, there were three categories of survivors. The first were those who, through intense medical intervention, survived the illness, albeit with some nasty side effects. The second group survived because they were smart enough to stay put on remote farms and ranches. The last were those who were immune, the category that included Stryker. He knew that because he was repeatedly exposed to the virus, but never caught the illness. On his trip to the ranch, he encountered several pairs of survivors, all of them blood relatives, and concluded the immune survivors possessed some hereditary gene that protected them from the plague.
The die off had totally overwhelmed the health care system and it broke under the stress. There was a shortage of everything from medicines to doctors. The death rate accelerated and grew out of control. At one point, large cities could no longer bury the dead, and started burning bodies. The first responders could not keep up, their own ranks thinning rapidly. Bodies were left where they fell.
Eventually, the cities were abandoned by the few survivors left as the stench grew unbearable and water and power systems began to shut down. There were pockets of survivors; and some smaller, more isolated towns erected roadblocks on the roads leading to their homes. Anyone who tried to enter was warned. If they didn’t heed the warning, they were shot and left where they fell as a warning to others. Residents who exhibited symptoms were told to leave. If they didn’t, they too were shot and carried out of town by first responders wearing hazmat suits.
He wandered back through town and stopped in front of Finn’s General Store. It had also suffered from the sun and his mind wandered back to the time when he received his first real lesson on right and wrong, good and evil.
“Gramps?” he said.
“Yes.”
“I saw that boy steal candy in the store when we were shopping.”
“Why didn’t you tell him to put it back?” he asked, looking at Caleb with wise eyes framed in a weather-beaten face.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he whispered.
“Sure you did. You didn’t have the courage to do it.” Caleb looked down and away. After a moment, Gramps continued. “God gave you this,” he said, tapping the side of his head. “You’re a smart boy.” His voice grew gentler. “He gave you this,” he added, prodding his right bicep. “You’re a strong boy, strongest I’ve ever seen for your age. And, he gave you this,” he continued, gently tapping a finger over his heart.” Caleb continued to stare at his feet.
“Look me in the eye,” his gramps said firmly. Caleb did as ordered and looked up at him.
“What should you have done?”
“I guess I should have asked him to put it back,” he replied.
“Close but not quite right. When you see something and your brain and heart tell you it’s wrong or evil, then you have to use your strength, if needed, to make it right. You should have told him to put it back, and if he refused, you should have taken it from him.”
“I guess you’re right,” Caleb sighed.
“There’s a saying that goes, ‘all that is needed for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.’ You need to decide what kind of man you want to be. You need to decide what kind of world you want to live in. You don’t need a rulebook to know what’s right. It’s a part of who you are.”
“What do you think I should do?”
“Well, it’s too late now. Next time, don’t wait. If you do, it just gets easier to do that again. I know it’s not possible to always do the right thing. We are human, but I want you to try to go through life doing the right thing 100% of the time.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I know you will.” He put his arm around the boy’s shoulder. “Let’s go home. Grandma is making that green chili you like so much.”
He hadn’t been in the store in twenty years and decided to give it a look. When he entered, he saw it hadn’t changed since the last time he was there. The store had seven narrow aisles and the shelves were piled high with power tools, canned food, candles, paper products, and clothes. A thick layer of dust covered everything and the cash register stood open and empty. The place smelled stale and the odor of solvents and paints was heavy in the air. He took one last look and walked back to his vehicle.
Stryker returned to the ranch and decided to make a list of what he needed from the trading post just outside of San Angelo. He probably could have found most of it himself, but it would save time and effort. He got a ladder and examined the solar panels on the barn. Two were cracked and needed replacements. Then he went to the wind turbine behind the barn that was twirling merrily in what seemed to be a perpetual stiff breeze. He inspected the generator and the inverter and decided they were in good condition. He turned the water pump on and it chugged away with a healthy rhythm.
He walked around the water tank and the suspended 300-gallon gas drum, saw no leaks in either, and went into the barn to examine the battery array. The indicator showed they were fully charged, so he shrugged and went back to the house. The solar and wind power were enough to run the pumps and provide lighting to the house, but he wanted to place panels on the house as well. He did not have enough power to run the air conditioning, even for short periods of time, and the summers were brutal. If he could get the house cooled down in the morning, he thought it would remain livable until evening, when he could open the windows and let the breeze provide some comfort.
After eating a dinner of pasta and canned meat sauce, he turned on his AM radio and searched in vain for a signal. He switched to FM, but got the same result. He turned the radio off and went to bed.
After breakfast, he loaded the Jeep and turned north on Highway 87. It was close to a two-hour trip, 150 miles to the northwest; but with no traffic or worries about speed limits, it was an easy drive. Stryker had the window down with one elbow poking out as he drove. The terrain around him was the same as before: flat and featureless, totally barren with the exception of the occasional mesquite or live oak that gathered on the banks of streams and arroyos. The air was cool and the only sound was the humming of the engine. He slowed to get around the occasional stalled car and stopped once to chat with an elderly man as he passed through the tiny burg of Wall, Texas. The man sat on sofa on his dilapidated porch, a Mossberg shotgun lying across his lap. As Stryker approached, his hand shifted the shotgun so it pointed away from his visitor.
“Welcome to Wall,” the old-timer said with a large, toothless grin.
“You’re the welcoming committee?”
“What’s left of it.”
“You mind if I sit a spell?”
“Be my guest.” He motioned with his free hand to an ancient, creaky chair. Stryker climbed the three steps that groaned from his weight and sat down.
“You know if anyone’s left in the town?”
“Beside me?”
“Yes.”
“Annie Smith is still here, I think. I saw her about a week ago in the grocery store. She was looking for food, just like I was.”
“You have enough food?”
“Hell, yes. Only two of us around and we can eat out of that store for at least another year.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea to sit out here in the open?”
“Why not?” The man looked confused.
“Well, someone could shoot you.”
“Why would they want to do that? I ain’t got nothing anybody would want, and if you want something nowadays, you just take it. No need to steal. Plus, I’ve been sitting out here every day for over a year and you’re the fourth person I’ve seen. The other three just asked for directions.”
Stryker thought it over for a moment, remembering that he only had two violent encounters since the die off, and both had been the result of fighting over salvage. “Maybe you’re right,” he agreed. “Anything you need me to do while I’m here?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Better get going then.”
“Have a safe trip. Where you going?�
��
“San Angelo. I’m heading to the trading post.” When the man didn’t reply, Stryker stood and added, “See you later.” He went back to the Jeep and headed north again, clearing the town limits in a few minutes.
The road was straight and all but deserted and the blacktop made a whining noise as the tires passed over the roadbed. There was the occasional solitary billboard sign for fast food restaurants that lay miles ahead. The land opened up again, still the same dingy brown color, flat and unremarkable. He kicked the speed up and didn’t slow down until he crossed the muddy Concho River and entered town after passing Goodfellow Air Force Base. The base looked forlorn and empty. He drove by a Walgreens that had smashed windows and then was surrounded by vacant fast food joints. Stryker passed an abandoned hospital and entered another commercial area of town.
He turned west, continued to the main parking lot of San Angelo University, and got out of the Jeep with his M-4 dangling from his shoulder in a two-point sling. His XD was in his holster. He hoisted the pack that contained his salvage and started walking toward a group of eighty or so men and women milling around the west side of the lot. As he approached, Tom, the trading post organizer, approached him. He had an AR hanging from a sling. The two men shook hands. Tom kept a cut of all the trades that were made, and that’s what made him go to the trouble of organizing the weekly event.
“How you been?” he asked.
“It don’t suck being me, I guess. How about you?”
“Same.” He shrugged once. “What do you have today?”
“Notebooks, gold, and a handheld ham radio.”
“What’re you looking for?”
“Solar panels.”
“Come with me,” he said, after looking thoughtful for a while. They moved to the last foldable table, where a woman sat with a boy that he guessed was her son. “This is Sara.” They shook hands.
Stryker: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale Page 4
