by J. W. Vohs
Jack hesitated for a long moment before quietly stating, “Give me two days to think it over.”
Barnes quickly replied, “I’ll give you one. Tomorrow at this time I’ll expect an answer from you, and if it isn’t surrender, I will unleash the monsters against your little settlement.”
He’d hung up before Jack could say anything else.
CHAPTER 2
Jack closed his eyes, hoping for a quick power-nap, but instead his conversation with Barnes replayed over and over in his mind. His thoughts raced against the background noise of the Blackhawk’s rotors slashing through the evening air. After about twenty minutes, Jack realized that he’d gotten more information from his little chat with Barnes than he’d hoped for. He’d been able to guesstimate the general’s location based on a quick study of topographical maps of the United States and questioning the captive pilots his men had taken during a raid on the Fort Wayne airport. He’d narrowed down the geographic options for where Barnes and his hunter-army were currently located to somewhere between northern Georgia and the Ohio River. Now, based on a few details in Barnes’ bravado, Jack knew that the best he could hope for was that the enemy force was still mainly in Tennessee, though the mad general and his zombie army could already be moving through Kentucky towards southern Indiana.
Jack had no doubt that Barnes could put together an army of infected that numbered in the hundreds of thousands, but some aspects of troop movements never changed. The flesh-eaters needed to be fed as they marched, and there simply weren’t enough humans available along their axis of advance to provide the necessary protein for such a massive host. The army of twenty thousand that had been gathered near Fort Wayne before Jack’s forces took the peninsulas there had been accompanied by nearly as many cattle to keep the hunters concentrated in the area. If Barnes planned to advance a huge army to attack Jack’s people, he’d need to organize a massive herd of flesh on the hoof for his hunters. That was a weakness in the general’s plans that Jack’s highly-trained fighters might be able to exploit.
The second huge advantage lay in the topography of North America. The hunters hated water. They couldn’t swim, and nothing would lure them into any stream or lake deeper than their knees. The stupid ones had drowned early, and the process of natural selection had ensured that the survivors would avoid the threat in the future. Tennessee and Kentucky were full of rivers and lakes. Barnes’ army of hunters couldn’t easily cross mountains, and that was what had forced them to travel south as they pacified the east coast until they could finally traverse the foothills of the Appalachians in northern Georgia. Now they had to travel north in their quest to destroy Jack and his people, and the mighty Ohio River would have to be crossed if they were to advance into Indiana.
As soon as the call from Barnes had ended, Jack had begun organizing an expedition south. Hopefully, by the time Barnes called him back the next morning, Jack and his team would already be scouting the Ohio. If they were really lucky, the general might actually believe Maddy when she told him that Jack hadn’t returned from a patrol the previous evening. If Barnes then waited for Jack to call him back, he might end up delaying his march north for an extra day or two. In the meantime, Jack planned to move along the massive river and do his best to make sure no hunter-army would be crossing any bridges leading into Indiana.
Two inflatable SOAR watercraft had been liberated from an abandoned outfitter on the north bank of the St. Mary’s River in Fort Wayne, and they were powered by large electrical motors his scouts had scavenged from fishing boats found stored in garages in the neighborhoods within their fortifications. The hunters’ greatest sense was hearing, and silent propulsion was a must while the men travelled the river. The current would also be on Jack’s side, so he was confident that his men could make good time in their search and destroy mission.
Choosing the soldiers to accompany him to the river had proven more difficult than he’d thought it would be. The nearly continuous combat since the outbreak began had led to the formation of countless partnerships, and larger organizations of fighters who didn’t like the idea of heading into danger without their buddies at their sides. Unfortunately, Jack needed individuals with unique skill sets for this mission, and no one group had everything he was looking for. In the end, he’d assembled a specialized team of people who were clearly the best fit for a preemptive strike against Barnes.
Bobby Crane and Marcus Goodwin were former Rangers and experts with modified explosives. Jack had no doubt that they could use materials they had on hand, as well as substances easily acquired in farm country, to render bridges unusable without massive rebuilding efforts. Construction of new bridges would be next to impossible without heavy machinery, plenty of fuel, and technical know-how that he hoped Barnes didn’t have available. Carter Wilson had been Jack’s best friend since they’d saved one another from the infected villagers in Afghanistan over a decade earlier, and he was one of the most capable soldiers still alive in the world against either hunters or humans. Jack’s brother, David, had successfully led a small band of refugees on a daring escape up the Maumee River two months earlier, and his understanding of travelling on the water was more important than his fighting skills, which were formidable in their own right.
There was one more person Jack had deemed necessary to the success of the mission, even though he wasn’t completely comfortable with his own choice. Luke Seifert, a key member of David’s group of refugees from Cleveland, had just turned seventeen. His age was what led to Jack’s discomfort in choosing him, but the youth was uncannily deadly with a longbow or trench axe, and he was as good with a combat-knife as any soldier Jack had ever seen in action. Though it was hard for Jack to believe that someone so young could be such an experienced and capable soldier, he knew that Luke possessed a maturity far beyond his chronological age. Still, the main reason he needed Luke on this mission was impossible to rationally explain. The teen had a sixth sense concerning the infected: he always seemed to know where they were and in what numbers. This ability alone was good enough reason to include him on the team, but the choice was based on more than that.
When Luke fought the hunters there were no wasted movements—he was a perfect killing machine. He seemed to have no fear for his own well-being, convinced that God had a purpose for him in this apocalyptic wasteland. Luke insisted that he was ready to go when his time came; both his mother, whom he’d lost to cancer, and his adoptive-father were dead, and he knew with a certainty that they were waiting for him on the other side. But the boy wasn’t really a zealot with visions of martyrdom—he was simply a young man with a warrior’s heart who had lost too much in his short life. He’d discovered an innate aptitude for killing the infected, and it had saved the lives of people he cared for on numerous occasions. Unfortunately it hadn’t been enough to save the man who raised him. Sometimes Luke dreamt of the day Jerry fell to the flesh eaters, and when he woke up the loss would be a fresh wound all over again, but then Gracie would smile and the hole in his heart would be filled.
Luke was head over heels in love. He’d asked Gracie to marry him, and she’d said yes. The only hesitation he’d had when Jack asked him to join the expedition concerned his desire to stay close to Gracie. Father O’Brien had agreed to marry them once the battle for Fort Wayne was won, and he’d promised the couple a wedding “worthy of legend and song.” Jack had unashamedly used Luke’s concern for the people he considered his new family, Jack’s brother, David, and the rest of the Cleveland group, to convince the teen to come along on the mission to stop Barnes’ advance into Indiana. Fort Wayne truly wouldn’t be safe as long as it was the main target of a massive army of hunters advancing northward to exact revenge on Jack Smith’s community.
Of all the soldiers gathered together in the small space on the Blackhawk, Luke was the most enigmatic, and maybe, Jack mused, the most important of them all. He was as tall as David, who was the tallest of the Smith brothers, and muscle was rapidly padding his lean, broad-shoul
dered frame as he practiced and fought with medieval weapons nearly every day. The teen’s handsome face was framed by high cheekbones, with dark hair and eyes, resulting in a look that caused several people to assume he was somehow related to the Smith family. Indeed, David treated the boy like a son, and Jack had felt an almost visceral affection for the young man from the first time they met. Luke was quiet and unassuming by nature, but he was learning to open up to people ever since David pointed out that his community looked to him for inspiration and leadership. People felt safe around the young warrior, and he accepted the responsibility for their survival as a holy mission.
As the Blackhawk continued its flight south over the dark, Indiana countryside, Jack found his eyes and thoughts turned from the abilities of his team members to what they were wearing and carrying. Every fighters’ primary concern was the packs of hunters roaming the fields, forests, and cities of North America. All of the soldiers had experienced extensive combat against the flesh-eaters, as well as having their lives saved on multiple occasions by the modern armor they wore into battle. The quandary they faced on this mission was that they had to be concerned about hostile humans as well as the hunters, so their gear had been modified in an attempt to meet the dual-threat enemy they expected to encounter along the Ohio River.
The men wore ballistic vests over their Kevlar-laced leather jackets, and motorcycle helmets had been replaced with those from a local National Guard armory. The military headgear offered some defense against bullets, while strong Plexiglas visors fitted over football facemasks attached to the sides of the helmets provided additional protection against hunter attacks. The rest of the “uniform” worn by the soldiers chosen for this mission consisted of motorcycle-racing gloves and pants, supported by snake-proof hunting boots that experience had proven to be excellent deterrents to human teeth.
Perhaps even more unusual than the protective gear being worn by the men was the odd assortment of weapons they were carrying. All of the soldiers in the Blackhawk had been fighting flesh-eaters for over four months now, and they wouldn’t abandon the implements of skull-destruction that had saved their lives multiple times over the long summer. They all carried halberds that could be broken down into three pieces and attached to their web-gear. After that it became a personal choice as to what weapons to add to their individual arsenals. Luke carried his longbow and trench axe. Jack carried a mace, while most of the others packed some type of war-hammer or battle-axe. Everyone carried a short sword and his combat knife of preference.
What set the weaponry choices apart from those of previous missions was that this time they had to be very concerned about the possibility of encountering Barnes’ human collaborators. Of course, these poor souls could be killed by small pieces of fast-moving lead entering their bodies at literally dozens of locations, so the obvious choice of weapon for dealing with these Quislings was the AR-15. It was accurate at long distances and used relatively light ammo, so a lot of rounds could be brought along on this trip. The four Rangers considered the weapon an extension of their bodies after carrying the AR’s military brother, the M4, through the wars of the Middle East during countless deployments there.
Every soldier wore high quality night vision goggles (NVGs), and carried small radios with which they could contact any other participant in the mission up to thirty kilometers away. A larger radio that could reach Fort Wayne was packed in one of the water-proof cases they were using to transport hundreds of pounds of explosives, ammo, food, first-aid kits, and back-up weapons. Since they would be travelling by water-craft, the weight of their gear and supplies really wasn’t an issue; the experienced soldiers brought along everything but the kitchen sink, which wasn’t needed since they carried several large water filters to keep their canteens full as they travelled.
The fact was that neither Jack nor the rest of his team knew quite what to expect during this mission. The Blackhawk they were flying in had belonged to Barnes’ forces until captured during the Battle of Fort Wayne, and it had definitely been used to round up hunters and send them into the city to attack Jack and his people. Even the pilots now in their custody weren’t exactly sure how the choppers were controlling the flesh-eaters, though a USAMRIID officer taken during the raid on the airport confirmed that it had to do with whatever emanated from the specialized transmitters and modified crop dusters found on board all of the general’s customized Blackhawks. As a precautionary measure, engineers in the settlement cut the power to the retrofitted equipment and trusted that the chopper wouldn’t be gathering any unwanted followers on its trip south.
Hours of interrogation had left Jack believing that the captured pilots and crew-chiefs had only been following USAMRIID’s orders because their families were being held hostage at Fort Dietrick. Carter and the rest of the leaders at the settlement were determined to see the USAMRIID officer taken along with the Blackhawk crews eventually charged with war crimes and executed, but nobody could agree about what to do with the other prisoners. The “just following orders” defense had failed to protect the perpetrators of the Holocaust after World War II, but Jack wasn’t sure if that circumstance established sufficient precedent to insure that the pilots and mechanics shared the USAMRIID officer’s fate.
The pilot now flying Jack’s team south was a grizzled old Warrant Officer who appeared to have been caught up in events way beyond his control when the virus struck American shores. He had an ex-wife who’d dumped him during his first tour in Iraq, and two daughters who’d been attending Washington State University at the time of the outbreak. He had been wrapping up his final assignment before retirement with the 10th Mountain Division based out of Fort Drum, New York, when his unit had been ordered to Fort Dietrick as all hell began to break loose in D.C.
The most important factor concerning the pilot was that Barnes held no real leverage over the veteran flyer, since the Warrant Officer had no family under USAMRIID’s control. He also appeared to have nothing but contempt for USAMRIID and his commanding officer, though Jack could not dismiss the fact that the man had been captured as an active member of the illegitimate government’s military force. Still, the old soldier had been able to answer one of the most important questions during the interrogations—the reason why Barnes couldn’t just round up a new army of infected wherever he went. There were certainly plenty of potential “recruits” everywhere previously populated by people.
The old pilot had carefully explained, “All armies aren’t the same, son. Yeah, Barnes can round up thousands of the infected and direct them to a populated area, where, of course, they’ll attack the humans in their path. But as I’m sure you’ve learned by now, these monsters aren’t all equal in their abilities. If we just fly over a previously undisturbed area and start gathering flesh-eaters, we get ‘em in all stages of development. They’re also confused, instinctively responding to the signals Barnes designed to attract them, but still wanting to follow the leadership of the alphas of their packs.
“I don’t think the general planned on that problem. The infected are evolving in ways Barnes and his cronies didn’t expect, and the creatures are smarter than anyone thought they’d be, too. The bottom line is that the army General Barnes built along the east coast and brought into Georgia is easily over a hundred thousand strong, and the weak critters are long-gone. The flesh-eaters following USAMRIID’s helicopters are as strong and fast as the human body can be. That virus changed their DNA. They don’t seem to be affected by the weather, and they can run forever on a little bit of fresh, raw meat. There aren’t any packs now; the creatures follow the signals from the choppers with no hesitation. Every one of the bastards has attacked walls and fortifications; they know food’s on the other side and they know how to get to it.
“I suspect it would take Barnes a few months to whip another army of infected into the condition this one is in, and he isn’t exactly the patient type. He’s got a massive killing-machine following his orders without question. They are vicious soldiers who
never give up an attack until they’re dead. They can operate at peak efficiency on a few pounds of flesh every few days, with absolutely no other supply needs that I’m aware of. Now that the world’s militaries have spent all of their ordnance fighting the infected in losing battles, Barnes’ force is the most deadly army on the planet.”
Jack had instinctively trusted the old soldier’s explanation, certain that the veteran pilot hated Barnes almost as much as he and Carter did. The clincher came when the video recorders Christy had carefully placed above the prisoners’ holding cell had shown the USAMRIID officer captured with the pilots working to find out what the Warrant Officer had told Jack, and trying to intimidate him into future silence by threats of what Barnes’ people would do to him when they eventually captured this place.
Many of Jack’s people just wanted to string the captives up, and after all they’d been through since the virus appeared he really couldn’t blame them. He also couldn’t deny that one of his own personal goals in this war was the destruction of Barnes and his rogue Army units. But he suspected that many, if not all, of the helicopter pilots had been ordered to support USAMRIID by the highest levels of authority in the U.S. government, especially since Barnes had been at the president’s side as the crisis developed.
Jack understood that individual pilots could have chosen to refuse the orders to fly once they began to understand what role their helicopters were playing in the war. He himself had often argued that everyone always has a choice before they act, but in this situation there were many factors to consider before judging the pilots’ actions. Some of them might have genuinely believed that Barnes was enforcing orders given by a legal chain of command to bring “rebel” settlements and forces under government control. Others may have flown the missions because they knew their families would be tortured and killed if they didn’t.
