“Finding Cap’n Tony and his team need to be our number one priority, but we have other threats out there to consider. We need to find Abu Hadi and his Pasdarans and make them pay. I think all of the time we’ve spent up here training and the small missions we’ve been on have made us ready for anything, we’re just wasting time here now. I don’t care if we have to behead these fucking super feeders to kill them, that’s why I have this,” Pualani said, reaching for her katana.
“We’re part of the resistance now. If it wasn’t for them, we’d be dead—or worse—in Florida somewhere. We’ll get this all sorted out in the morning. Get some rest, this will probably be the last peaceful night we’re gonna have for a while,” Mason said, climbing onto his bunk and closing his eyes, unable to sleep.
Mason was running dozens of possible scenarios in his head. He thought about how much the team had grown together as a family and all of the new para-military skills they’d learned in the last few years. They were all experienced killers now.
Even the meekest member of their team, Luanne, could take down a feeder at two hundred yards with her compound bow. The once fun-loving bartender, Pualani, was now a hardened soldier / samurai with her expert pistol marksmanship and her murderous precision with the katana.
Brody had recovered well from his amputated right arm and learned to use his prosthetic as a viciously effective weapon. He had taught himself how to shoot left handed expertly. His hatred of the feeders and League of Islam soldiers rivaled anyone that Mason had met since the Annihilation epidemic began.
Kalen was the weak link; most of the team had not forgiven him for his cowardice on Alamo Island. He was unpredictable and difficult to control. Instead of growing as a productive member of the team, he was turning into a loner and a serial killer type butcher with his Bowie knife. He was still young and impressionable, but if he lost his father to a violent end, like the rest of his family, he’d go over the edge and get someone killed.
Mason felt something pulling on his leg, he felt a sharp pain, almost like jagged fingernails digging into his skin drawing blood. He tried to sit up but he couldn’t move, all he could do was watch as the deformed human head turned to look at him sideways, drooling blood with those black, undead eyes.
Inertia gripped Mason as he watched in terror while the super feeder bit down on the flesh of his inner thigh, all the way to the bone. The repulsive undead monster cackled and sniggered as it continued to tear the flesh off of Mason’s legs. Mason started to feel his body quiver uncontrollably, he desperately tried to move but all he could do was tremble.
“Mason, wake up,” Kalen said, shaking him violently. “Don’t you hear the alarm? There’s been a breach. C’mon get up.”
Mason awoke, wild eyed and sweating. He immediately reached down and ran his hands over his legs and realized he was dreaming. He focused on Kalen and looked around the barracks watching everyone grab their weapons and get dressed. The alarm bells were deafening as he jumped out of his rack and hastily got dressed.
“Everyone make for the armory, stay together and watch each other’s backs, we don’t know what’s happening yet,” Mason said, opening the door to the barracks and stepping out into the tunneled bunker hallway with the team close behind.
The armory was close, the majority of their weapons and anti-bite gear were waiting for them. They were allowed to keep a sidearm or one personal defensive weapon for situations just like this. The resistance was well trained for situations like this, their job, in a breach situation, was to report to the armory and gear up and wait for orders. There was an orderly panic as men were running to their respective duty stations. Mason grabbed one of the men he recognized as a cook and asked him what was happening.
“Feeders are inside the bunker,” he said.
“Shit… How many? Are they the super feeders?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know; I don’t know the difference. I gotta go,” the cook said as he ran, fearfully, down the bunker hallway.
Mason and his group were slowly moving forward when he looked up and saw one of the guards from the main gate moving towards them. Mason yelled, to ask him what was happening, when he realized that he was infected. The guard was still wearing his anti-bite gear, with his helmet on. There was a chunk of flesh missing from his cheek and he was slamming his head against the wall of the bunker in a frenzy. He turned to stare at the group approaching him and ran at them, roaring with a bloodthirsty rage.
Mason calmly raised the 9mm from his thigh holster and waited for the infected guard to be in point blank range. He squeezed the trigger and the back of the newly formed feeder’s head exploded, painting the bunker’s wall with blood and brains.
Master Chief stuck his head out of the door to the armory and waved them in. “Hurry up and get in here, we got a problem.”
“Are we under attack? What’s going on?” Kalen asked.
“No, I don’t believe so. It looks like one of the members of last night’s perimeter patrol got scratched and turned. We got them pinned down in the east wing of the bunker. We need to arm up and clear them out,” Master Chief said.
“How did he get past the Decon inspection? You know how fast this shit will spread right?” Brody said.
“We’ll do damage control later, we need to react and eliminate the threat now,” Mason said, tossing an anti-bite PPE suit to Pualani. “Alright,, you know the drill, everyone suit up. I don’t want to see any visible skin, so wear Kevlar gloves and helmets. Kalen, take the twelve gauge and bring as many extra slugs as you can carry. Everyone else, carry at least a 9mm with three extra clips in addition to your primary weapon. We don’t know how badly this has spread out there."
Mason pulled down his folding stock MP5 with five extra clips attached to his duty belt. He double checked his Beretta and made sure it was locked and loaded before sliding it into his thigh holster. Master Chief was suiting up also when Mason put his hand on his shoulder and shook his head.
“Master Chief, we need you to hold down the armory. We can handle this outbreak. You are the only one that can hold this bunker together; we can’t afford to lose you at any cost.”
Master Chief paused for a moment before he reluctantly agreed. “Alright, I don’t like it, but you have a point. Stay in radio contact and sweep the east wing thoroughly, remember these were men we knew and served with, but now they are monsters. Kill them all.”
Mason and his team moved into the bunker hallway in a diamond formation. Mason took point with Pualani and Brody on his flanks, Kalen and Luanne brought up the rear and were watching their backs. “Stay together, you know the drill. We’ve done this dozens of times,” Mason said as heard the howl of hungry feeders around the corner.
Five turned men were cannibalizing a corpse when the team came around the corner. The feeders snarled wildly as they saw their new prey advancing on them. They started to bolt in the team’s direction when Mason opened fire with his MP5 in three round bursts. Four feeders fell with three rounds placed precisely through their foreheads. Brody nicked the fifth feeder in the cheek with a 9mm round, but it didn’t stop its attack. Brody brought up his prosthetic sword arm and used the bayonet blade to impale the zombie-like creature through its face. The feeder slid off of his blade and slumped, comatose, in front of him.
Kalen was firing the shotgun behind them; Mason turned to look behind him as he saw a couple slow moving feeders dropping to the ground. The force of the twelve gauge was blowing their heads completely off. After the feeders behind them were completely dispatched, the team moved forward clearing the remainder of the east wing. They counted thirty-seven mutilated bodies from the breach. These were friends, comrades and brothers-in-arms. Mason radioed in the all-clear to Master Chief and requested a team to clear and burn the bodies.
****
There was a makeshift funeral ceremony after the east wing was cleared. It took the cleaning detail of fifty men and women over four hours to clean all of the blood, brains and shredded organ
s splattered over the walls. People were angry and scared, they had thought they were safe here. There was a lot of finger pointing as to how this could have happened.
Master Chief took Mason with him to investigate the cause of this deadly mistake. After retracing the steps of the men from the last patrol—who were all dead—they came to the conclusion that the Decon station attendant didn’t fully check all the returning men for bites and scrapes. Worse yet, one of the other guards reported him to be asleep at his post earlier that evening.
His name was Diggles, and he was an overweight, black man with a full row of gold teeth and a bad attitude. Mason had seen him around the bunker a few times, he had remembered him causing trouble and being unhappy at the bunker. He was quick to voice his discontent and he didn’t have many friends to begin with. Once word spread that he was going to be tried for dereliction of duty he had even less.
“Diggles, have a seat. I want to give you a chance to explain yourself,” Master Chief said as Diggles was brought in by the interior bunker guards to the conference room.
“Explain what, mother fucker? I didn’t do shit…”
“Exactly. You fucked up and fell asleep, and thirty-seven members of the resistance are dead—all because of you,” Mason said.
“Look man… I gots to stay in the nasty ass Decon station eight hours a night, six days a week. What do you spect me to do…? I get tired sometimes.”
Mason looked at Master Chief and shook his head in disgust, “This fucking piece of shit, I’ve heard enough.”
“What you mean, fool? You ain’t shit, mother fucker. You walk around here like you better than everybody, but you ain’t. Like I said, you ain’t shit, you cracker bitch,” Diggles said, squaring up to Mason for a fight.
Mason felt the anger rising in his stomach; he clenched his fists to stop his hands from shaking as he started to walk towards Diggles. “Stop, Mason, not here and not now. Get this piece of shit out of my sight,” Master Chief said to the guards as they dragged a furious Diggles out of the room.
“Well, what are you going to do with him?” Mason asked, pulling out a chair from the conference table to sit down.
“I’m not sure yet. This isn’t a jail or a prison. We don’t have the resources here to babysit lazy unproductive men. He has to go, one way or another.”
“Banishment or death, right? I’ll take care of it either way… That mother fucker got a lot of people killed.”
“I want more time to think about it. He’ll stay under guard in the quarantine station for now. I’ve got a new directive from HQ, is your team ready to go back out yet?”
“I think we’re pretty well rested. What’s the plan?”
“Go ahead and get some food and then grab your team and we’ll brief everyone here in two hours,” Master Chief said to Mason as he pulled out one of his Cohiba Cuban cigars and lit it.
****
Mason found his team in the barracks, lounging around and cleaning themselves up from the previous fight. He related the events of the investigation to them and told about Diggles and that his fate was still up in the air.
“I hope they fry that son of a bitch,” Brody said.
“They can’t just kill him because he made a mistake. That makes us no better than Abu Hadi and those fucking Islamic radicals that we’re fighting,” Luanne said.
“It’s not our call; we’ll do what we have to when the decision has been made. There are a lot of people pissed off, that mistake was the direct cause of thirty seven deaths inside the bunker. We’re lucky that we stopped it when we did, it could have been catastrophic down here if it had spread any further. Master Chief has got a new mission for us, let’s go get some food and meet in the conference room,” Mason said.
“What’s on the menu, cat food again?” Kalen said.
“I think I’d rather starve to death than eat another bowl of cat food soup,” Pualani said.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got a solution,” Brody said, pulling out a bottle of Heinz 57 sauce from his bag and wiping the dust off of it.
“Ugh… Now I’m really gonna throw up,” Pualani said.
The team choked down several bowls of Chicken Vittles together in the mess hall. It wasn’t chicken by any means, it was small bits of fancy feast cat food, mixed together with a chicken broth. It had a slimy texture and smelled foul. Food was becoming very scarce and the resistance had found a pet food warehouse and brought thousands of cans of cat food down to the bunker to store it.
“Well at least it won’t kill us, I think,” Mason said, shoving his bowl of cat food gruel forward.
“I don’t know about that, I think I’d rather be infected than have to eat another bowl of this shit,” Kalen said, before letting out a momentous cat food belch.
“You can be a very gross and crude person sometimes Kalen,” Luanne said.
“Oh shut up, I hear you fart all night long on top of Brody. That poor bastard has to wear his fake arm to bed with him so he can cover his nose from your stench,” Kalen said.
Everyone at the table was snickering as Luanne started blushing from the insult. “Well, on that note, let’s go find out what Master Chief has got for us. My compliments to the chef,” Mason said, smiling, as he made his way to the conference room with his team following behind him.
Master Chief Ken Gaye was running his fingers through his fraying hair. At only forty-seven years old, he was now almost completely bald. The stress from running the bunker almost single handedly, for over two years, had taken its toll on the grizzled Navy veteran.
He had seen combat, been deployed to every shitty naval base all over the world and had been directly responsible for the day to day operations of managing thousands of sailors. But none of that had prepared him for the dire apocalyptic circumstances he found himself in now.
As the team entered and sat down at the table, Master Chief personally thanked each one of them for their courage and help in stopping the recent outbreak in the bunker. He slowly walked to the head of the table and sat down.
“I’ve got some new information and orders for you that I’m pretty sure you’ll be interested in,” Master Chief said, reaching for the map. “First off, we’ve gotten word from Cap’n Tony and Strike Force Echo. They are safe and recuperating from a string of battles with the Pasdarans.”
“Yes, thank god… I’m so glad to hear it,” Kalen interrupted.
“After I sent the information to resistance HQ in Baltimore, they’ve decided to launch another offensive to try to reclaim Florida. I’m sure you know the last few attempts were total failures and resulted in major casualties.”
“Why would we even try to attempt to take Florida again? We have no air superiority and we’re outnumbered on the ground at least a hundred to one,” Mason said, looking confused.
“That was nearly the same thing I said when I spoke to Commander Kelly. His plan is very simple, but risky. Thanks to the satellite receiver we recovered in the base of that super feeder’s skull you all brought in, we were able to figure out that Abu Hadi and his Pasdarans are controlling the super feeders from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.”
“You mean where NASA is… or was?” Brody asked.
“Yes… It’s now the facility where they are sending an electromagnetic radiation of a frequency which controls the super feeders. Resistance HQ believes that if we can get in there and destroy the entire building, the super feeders will turn on the League of Islam’s soldiers and clean them out for us.”
“Well, how the hell are we going to get in there and pull this off? That place has got to be locked down something fierce,” Pualani said.
“I never said it would be easy. This is going to be a coordinated effort of all three resistance groups. Baltimore, Norfolk and Savannah are sending everything they’ve got left to create a diversion for your team. We’ll travel overland to Norfolk and take the sub to Savannah. From there we’ll HELO you and Cap’n Tony’s team into the Florida coast, with zodiac
s attached to the helicopters, so you can move down the coast and attack the space center from the Atlantic.”
“Wait—you want us to blow up NASA?” Brody said, in disbelief.
“It’s not NASA anymore… But, yes. We’re running out of time, our Intel is reporting that Abu Hadi has been massing at the Florida wall. He’s planning to move further north up the east coast and exterminate everything in his path to finalize his plans for colonization. It’s up to us to stop him. If we fail to stop him here, everything will be lost,” Master Chief said, gravely.
Mason looked at his team one by one to make sure they understood the gravity of the situation. Once they all gave him a nod, he turned to Master Chief and said, “We’re in. When do we leave?”
“Good… I knew I could depend on you and your team. We have three days to get to Savannah. I’ll be going with you to the command post there and coordinating this mission from their outpost. We have a couple of loose ends to tie up here before we go. As you probably know, we are almost completely out of food. We also need medical supplies and water for the bunker. There have more reports of feeders getting close to the north portal of the bunker, we need to clear them out.”
“Understood. We haven’t cleaned out the Wal-Mart in Staunton yet, right?” Mason asked.
“Not to my knowledge, Staunton is only a couple of miles out. Take the Abrams, and follow it with the flatbed. How many more men will you need?” Master Chief asked.
“I should be good with about five or six more, I’ll need a tank driver.”
“Fine. Take whoever you need and handle this. I want to move out towards Norfolk tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”
“One last thing,” Mason said, walking towards Master Chief. “What’s your decision about Diggles?”
“Take him out with you tonight—and don’t bring him back.”
“Roger that… I was looking forward to this.”
Rise of Chaos 4 Page 2
