by J. F. Holmes
Area Patrol base secure, we moved out, three of us. Ahmed and Rabbi stayed behind in an overwatch, Ahmed with his sniper rifle looking ahead. The man was good; this I knew from fighting him in Afghanistan. He would watch us, then move forward to our position, and we would advance again. I wasn’t sure that a Jew and a Muslim could work together, but the two seemed to hit it off instantly, and I didn’t want to break up a good team.
“Nick, if I see a liberal, can I shoot him?” asked Doc, “since, you know, they have less brains than the average zombie?”
“No, Doc, we can’t shoot the Liberals. I suspect they’re an endangered species anyway.” That got a good laugh from everyone, and we walked with our footsteps a little easier.
The first house we came to was not really a house, but a mansion. Large gates swung wide, and I called Ahmed and Rabbi forward. They took position by the gate, and we advanced cautiously down the driveway. Ahead of us lay a field of bones.
Chapter 22
“Yo, Doc! Can you tell anything about how all these mofos died?” asked Jonesy, idly kicking a skull. It had been bleached white by the strong California sun, but some skin and hair still clung to it.
“Lot of headshots,” he answered, bending down to examine one. “But a lot of center mass hits too. Looks like a mob came in here, trying to get in, and then the undead came in mixed in the back. Must have been a madhouse.”
“Nick, movement behind us, random undead,” came Ahmed’s voice over the radio.
I queried back, “Any chance of compromise?”
“Not yet, but I think we should move onto the grounds and close these gates behind us.”
I gave them the go ahead, and heard the rusty gates swing shut. They came up at a slow jog, and fell in line with us.
“Nick,” said Doc, “looks like a serious running gunfight here.” He pointed to hundreds of spent brass casings littering the driveway. Then he pointed again. “Last stand at the doorway.”
“How can you tell?” asked Rabbi, and Doc merely nodded his head. Three skeletons lay in various poses against the doorway, wearing the remains of urban pattern camo. Four rifles and an automatic shotgun were scattered about, all with bolts locked back on empty.
“Looks like they locked the doors on them,” said Ahmed.
I thought about that, but I was interrupted by Jones. “Hey!” he exclaimed, “Do you know whose house this is?”
“Not a clue,” I answered.
“It’s frigging Violet Johansson’s! I saw it on TV! Hot Starz Cribs!”
All four of us looked at him, and he shrugged. “Don’t judge, bro. You watch a LOT of TV in prison.”
Well, that was interesting. The actress had always been a favorite of mine; hell, she had been a favorite of every red blooded American male, and quite a few women too. If the doors were locked, that might mean someone might still be alive inside, even after more than four months.
“So, do we kick it in?” asked Rabbi.
“This is still America, we knock.” Which I did, but got no answer, so yes, we kicked it in, first moving the skeletons aside.
“Sorry,” said Jonesy, “you were good, but not good enough. You should have grown up in my hood, you wouldn’t be lying here all dead and shit.”
Inside, the place was huge. It was going to take a long time to clear. We moved from room to room, starting with the downstairs and moving slowly upwards, three floors. Each one was empty, but in the back, looking out over the LA basin, there were several huge ceiling to floor windows that had been shattered by gunfire, and another empty rifle. Several rotting corpses were lying both inside and outside the shattered glass, but none had headshots.
“Security has been compromised,” said Rabbi, and I agreed. The front door may have been locked, but the back was wide open. On the second floor, though, we found a barricade, and evidence that someone had moved through it recently. There were footprints, booted, size small, in the dust and ash that had blown in the city. They headed up and down the stairs, several times.
“OK, heads up. There may be a civilian here. We go in quiet, until we see someone, and then identify ourselves. I’ll go first,” I said, meaning I’d take the most risk.
“Oh hell no!” said Rabbi. “If that’s Violet Johannson up there, I’M going to be the one to rescue her! Think of how grateful she’ll be.”
“No way, buddy. RHIP, me first,” I answered. “Besides, you’ve got a wife.”
“Wife, Schmife,” he grumbled, to everyone’s amusement. I headed up the stairs, rifle at the ready. Jones and Doc stayed at the base of the stairs, to keep anything from sneaking up on us from behind.
I switched on my tac light; though the sun was up, there were plenty of shadowed areas, and advanced cautiously. Step by step, until my head was level with the floor. I looked, but saw nothing down the hallway, and took the last steps.
The hallway stretched down about fifty meters, mirrors on all sides. Doors to half a dozen rooms opened out into it, and I motioned the rest of the guys to follow me. We advanced down the hall, clearing it room by room.
“You Americans,” said Ahmed, who had his rifle slung on his back, and pistol up. “Your wealth disgusts me.”
“It ain’t my wealth,” I said, looking for signs of habitation. It actually did look like someone had been living there. Various boxes of food and other items were strewn about.
I slowly opened the door to the third room, which looked like another kitchen. Why there was another kitchen on the second floor, I had no idea. Rich people. A woman stood there, back to me, leaning up against the counter.
Yeah, it was her. I had seen that body in the Defenders wearing a skin tight suit many a time. No mistaking that ass.
“US ARMY, WE’RE HERE TO HELP!” I said, and I put all of my passion for my mission into it.
Chapter 23
She turned, and I shot her. Right in that beautiful face. The horror of it overwhelmed me, and I yelled when I did. The red light went out of her eyes and her brains exploded out of the back of her head.
An accompanying scream sounded behind me, and I turned to see Rabbi struggling with another undead in more urban camo. What was left of the man grabbed at him and bit down hard on his hand. Rabinowitz yelled again in agony and Jones grabbed the thing by the head with both hands, twisting hard, and actually ripped the thing’s head off.
“DOC!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, “GET UP HERE!”
Rob came running, as I pulled Rabbi’s tourniquet from his harness and slipped it up his arm. I got it above the elbow and pulled down on the strap, not knowing if it would work; none of us knew.
“Jones, you know what to do,” I grunted, and he drew his pistol, placing it next to the sweating man’s head.
Doc opened up his kit, and I stood back. “Ahmed, you and me, security.” He nodded and followed me in clearing the rest of the room; nothing. Then we moved back to the door. Behind us I heard Doc’s power saw, and a blood curdling shriek from Rabbi, but no gunshot.
After a few minutes, the SF medic came up to me and said, “I think he might make it. That infection spreads really fast, but being low down on his hand and the tourney you got on there, I think we stopped it in time. Stitched up the major vessels and cauterized the rest. Doesn’t seem to be turning, and he won’t, in my experience. Of course, he could die from regular old infection.”
“Well, I guess the mission is a scrub then, at least for today. If we had lost him, we could carry on, but we’ve got to get him a chopper back out of here. If they come, we can resume patrolling tomorrow.”
Ahmed wasn’t actually in the Chain of Command, but I valued his advice, like I did everyone’s on the team. “After what we saw today,” he said, “do you really think we’re going to find anything?”
I thought of the insane red light in the movie star’s eyes, and her head splattering all over the wall. “Honestly,” I answered, “no, not really. But we’re here to try out the Scout Team concept, so we have to carry through.
”
Then Jonesy chimed in with, “US Army, we’re here to help!” and then burst out in his deep bass laugh. Doc joined in as my face went red; even Ahmed let a grin break on his bearded face. “Maybe we should get team t-shirts made up with that slogan,” continued Jones, and I gave him the finger.
Getting back to the bus garage was tough work, with Sergeant Rabinowitz lying on a collapsible stretcher. We left his pack, but distributed all his ammo amongst us, making our loads even heavier. Taking turns hauling the stretcher, we slowly advanced back up Mulholland Street towards the bus garage. Along the way, we started to see increased signs of undead, shadows moving around amid the trees and far below us. Doc called in a nine-line MEDEVAC request as we walked, but we were told that there would be no transport for at least three hours. The Marines had been taking heavy casualties after running into a horde out in the desert, and they couldn’t spare a bird for a non-critical casualty.
“Non-critical,” grunted Doc. “Expendable, you mean. Just because we’re not jarheads.”
“I’m sure that has nothing to do with it,” I answered. “After all, we’re one big happy military family.”
Up ahead, a single dog appeared, and I wondered if he was the outlier for a pack. That could be some bad news, but, if they were around, it meant no undead. Dogs hated them.
“Do we shoot him?” asked Ahmed.
“No,” I answered. I loved dogs, and it hurt me to see how low they had fallen. “They can provide good warning of undead. Let me try something.”
I reached into my pocket and drew out a Slim Jim, and held it out. The dog, a sort of German Shepard or Husky mutt, came cautiously forward when I held it out. “Here, boy,” I said, and he just walked right up to me and took it out of my hand. I reached down and scratched under his chin, getting a handful of fleas, I’m sure. There was a collar, and a tag that said “ROCKET[TR8]”.
“You were just lonely, weren’t you?” I asked him, and the dog barked. I fed him another snack, and he barked again. It looked like he was starving. Then his back stiffened, and he started growling, looking back the way he had come. The road curved out of view up ahead, and, although it had been empty an hour earlier when we had come down, that meant nothing.
Maybe they had smelled us with a change in the wind, maybe they heard Rabbi’s yelling as Doc cut into his arm. Either way, there were easily three dozen of them, between us and our objective. Their red eyes blazed even in the California sun, and that insane, teeth grinding howl sounded.
I almost froze, thinking back to how we were overrun at the bridges, and my months of hiding, in constant fear of being caught out in the open. Then I looked to my right and left. The guys were on line with me, weapons raised. Four of us, each with plenty of ammo, good training and good weapons. We dropped our packs, and Ahmed took a sitting position, his Soviet era Dragunov resting on a monopod swung down and extended from the barrel.
“OK,” I said, drawing a deep breath, and then letting it out. “Let’s do this, Scouts!”
And we opened fire.
Epilogue
January, Post Apocalypse Year 1
Syracuse, New York
The powdery lake effect snow was whipped up by the rotor blades, creating the effect of a snow globe, and whipping it off the headstones of Oakwood Cemetery. We jumped off, landing up to our knees in snow, and the helo applied power, lifting higher and turning to head west. Silence fell, and we moved out, step by step, in a line, breaking trail for each other.
We moved onto the actual Syracuse University campus, and I reviewed our mission in my head. Look for survivors, recover a list of unique items from the campus library, including two priceless pages from an original Guttenberg Bible. Ahmed took the lead, scanning the ground in front of us, looking for tracks.
The snow crunched under our boots, fell off branches, worked its way down through my Gore-Tex parka. I pulled my balaclava up across my face, but couldn’t keep it there. My breath formed a mask of ice inside if I kept it up too long.
“Ahmed, what the hell do you know about tracking in the snow? You from the desert, man.”
Jonesy stood with his rifle at the low ready, scanning the buildings around us, looking for movement.
“Now,” I said to Brit, kissing her sleeping forehead, “you know how it all started for me.”
Make sure you check out all the adventures of Irregular Scout Team One and my other books!
and join the guys in the Team Room!
* * *
[TR1]Decide between Britney and Brittany.
[TR2]Or “the beginning. You”
[TR3]No sleep after all?
[TR4]First what? First civilian he’d killed in all this mess? No, that was the guy in the car that drew on him. First infected? No indication of infection that I saw.
[TR5]Are you trying to minimize the profanity? I’d think “shit” would be more natural.
[TR6]It’s usually the vowels that are stretched out, not the consonants.
[HJ7]
[TR8]ROCKET! YAY!
