Winter Kill 2 - China Invades Australia

by Gene Skellig

  “For sure. In fact, let’s do a bit now. We’ve still got a few hours before Beth heads off on her mission. It won’t take long, especially if you help me, Owen, by showing the ladies the basics with the Colt while I go over the AR15 with Ian.” Randy said, showing Owen a bit of respect.

  Hearing her plan talked of as a ‘mission’ made Beth see herself as if she were a spy, about to engage in a dangerous adventure – which was exactly the way that it was.

  Over the next hour, Randy and Owen showed the others how to load, unload, make safe, and fire both the handgun and the semi-automatic military rifle.

  “The procedure is pretty much the same with any firearm. You just have to spend a few minutes finding out where to press to release the magazine, how to load and chamber the ammunition, how to cock it – chamber a round – where the safety is, and so on. But the most important thing is to keep them clean. That takes more learning. You have to know how to break them down completely, to clean and oil the components, and to reassemble them with your eyes closed. Keep ‘em ready for action. But Owen and I can show you all of that later.”

  The look on Ian’s face when he dropped her off just outside the main gate at the Wisconsin National Guard base told Beth that her husband was extremely worried for her. But when he spoke to her he tried to sound relaxed and confident.

  “Be careful, cupcake.”

  “I will. Just have everybody else ready to go ‘cause I don’t plan to hang around long when I get out,” Beth said, with more confidence than she felt. But there was no going back. She was that committed.

  The Corporal at the main gate was tense, but still friendly to her. The CO’s secretary was one of the few civilians still coming to work. Everybody assumed that the CO was giving her boxes of Meals Ready To Eat, MRE’s, which the small base had considerable stockpiles of in the Quartermaster building. In these days, food, fuel, cigarettes and alcohol were the only real money aside from silver and gold, of course, which few people had, and even fewer were willing to part with.

  So despite her nervousness, Beth had no difficulty with the first part of her plan: Go to work as usual.

  When the CO and Ops O walked past her desk, just outside the CO’s office, they barely registered her at all. Once in the CO’s office they quickly shut the door behind them.

  Beth busied herself with administrative paperwork which she knew had no meaning whatsoever, hoping to appear absolutely normal and therefore, invisible.

  About a half-hour later the CO and Ops O exited.

  “Beth. If anybody is looking for me, I’ll be at the QM for the next hour, then the Mess.”

  “OK. Thanks, Sir,” she said, and then added: “Before you go, is there any chance I can have Friday off? I am thinking of moving in with some friends…” she lied, hoping to learn more about the CO’s state of mind and his plans for the week.

  From the expression that flashed on his face she knew that he was about to lie to her in return. She had seen this on his face whenever he had been in a situation where he had to pretend to be helping someone only to take some action behind their back; such as when the Lieutenant Colonel had promised a young Captain going through a custody battle that “I’l do all I can to help,” in the context of helping the young officer get better access to his children. But the CO did nothing to help, and focused his efforts immediately on having the Captain posted to another unit, even farther from his kids, just to get rid of the ‘administrative burden’. Through a number of such situations over the last four years, Beth had come to read Hurdman’s face like an open book.

  “Sure, Beth, you can have the entire day off on Friday. I don’t have much on my plate that day, so I won’t really need you.”

  She took this as absolute confirmation that the man would be nowhere near the base by then. That made what she was about to do that much easier.

  The moment she saw the CO and Ops O walking quickly across the parade square she flew into action. First, she took a copy of the CO’s office key from the key press and collected his car keys from the little wooden box he kept his keys in on a side table. On her first trip down the back stairs to the small garage bay the CO used in the old wooden building, the petite woman decided to carry the CO’s combat jacket. She knew it contained ceramic plate and composite layered body amour, which she figured could be useful for her group.

  Once in the garage, she unlocked the CO’s brand new Range Rover XL. As she pushed the heavy combat jacket into the back seat she realized that the expensive SUV still had that new car smell.

  Taking a quick look around in the garage, she saw a few things that she thought were worth taking, but decided to hold off until she was finished in the CO’s office.

  After four more round-trips between the office and the garage she had taken the man’s duffel-bag full of combat gear, ‘Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear’, CBRN, kit, and the man’s personal cache of weapons. Despite the training the previous night with Randy, Beth had no idea which end was which, nor how to use them, but she had seen the CO personally field-stripping, cleaning, oiling and re-assembling them on many occasions and had overheard him brag about the amount of fire-power he always had close-to-hand. So she knew that the nicely packed bug-out bag of weapons and ammo represented considerable firepower. Ever since the war had started, the man had been somewhat obsessed by the risk that his base would be over-run by hordes of desperate civilians. It was as if he wanted to be taking them out from his office window, shooting civilians as if they were a horde of zombies. The guy was a jerk. How he made Colonel was a mystery to Beth – and to many of his men.

  The reality of it was that the civilians had largely laid down and taken it, and certainly never mounted any protests or security threat to the base until recently. It started with a few of the smaller units, sent to guard larger grocery stores and gas stations in the community, where people expected to find what they needed, and had been forced to use live ammunition to put down protests by hungry locals. In a few cases, the soldiers had held back, unwilling to fire on their fellow Wisconsinites, and had paid the price when the mob got out of hand and overwhelmed the soldiers. Then the shooting had been fast and furious, but too little too late, with the eight or ten reservists from the 829th Engineering Company, the typical size of a section sent out to guard such a business, wound up dead, their weapons and ammo falling into the hands of the locals along with the goods from the store, warehouse or other facility that was then completely looted within a matter of hours.

  By the time follow-on forces from the Quick Reaction Team arrived to investigate, all they found was their friends’ bodies, minus kit, and a completely looted facility.

  Once word of such outcomes made it around the unit, the soldiers were more willing to open fire on civilians, and had begun to see the citizens as the enemy. But it also led to more and more sections of men deciding on their own that looting the warehouse or facility in their care, quietly at first, while guarding it, and then stripping it out and making off with as much as they could haul in their military vehicles was the way to go.

  These men had families and friends in the community, and figured that the situation was becoming so desperate that holding it together for what was left of the army, in such a global disaster, was pointless. In the end, everybody would starve. Far better to make sure your loved ones have a chance. ‘Fuck the Government’ was the sentiment of the day.

  To his credit, Lieutenant Colonel Hurdman had held the 829th together far longer than a great many other reserve units. But Beth knew that the Hurdman did not do this out of love for the rule of law, nor for the oath he had taken as an officer. He had done it out of hate. Hate for civilians, the enemy, who he would fight to the death to stop from defeating him personally.

  She thought of his mindset as that of a Nazi soldier in a bunker, knowing that his side was going to lose in the end, and yet was prepared to fight one final, desperate battle.

  But then, in the last few days, the CO had become more h
opeful, once he and his Ops O had come up with a plan to abandon their base and head for the forested areas up in Pier County. There would be far less of a threat from the urban refugees making their way from the devastation of Madison, seeking food and shelter in the smaller communities to the west, and, ultimately, overwhelming each small town in turn just as they were in the process of doing to Richland Centre. Farther north in the hills, Hurdman and his gang would have more defendable terrain, very little local population to worry about, and of course they would have a massive stockpile of ammunition to protect themselves and their horde of supplies.

  As for the ammunition, the fully-loaded mags, and the Colonel’s weapons themselves, Beth saw this as probably sufficient for the small group she was part of.

  The two steel ammo boxes which she took from the bottom of the CO’s weapons locker had been very heavy. But she was confident that the extra two trips it took to carry all of the ammo down to the Range Rover were worth the effort.

  As she departed the second-floor office for the last time, she took one last look across the parade square to see if anybody was coming. What she saw surprised her a bit, but then again, not at all.

  What was unusual was to see so many vehicles driving around on the far side of the square, in front of the QM building. During normal times it was absolutely against the Base Standing Orders for anybody to operate a vehicle on the parade square. So as she looked at the assembled trucks, HMVWs and a few armored reconnaissance vehicles, she thought that the Master Sergeant would be going absolutely ape. But then she saw Master Sergeant Sampson out there, directing traffic, as the convoy was assembled into line.

  She knew that she still had a little time, but decided to get moving just in case. As she passed her desk, she looked at her workstation for the last time and smiled at the sense of freedom she felt.

  After throwing a dozen boxes of MREs into the back of the Range Rover she suddenly thought about fuel.

  Looking around the garage, she saw a few useful things, like cleaning supplies, quarts of oil, a large first aid kit and a few other things – these she threw into the vehicle. But no gas.

  As Beth thought about it, she looked at the little door to the Rang Rover’s fuel-filler cap. “DIESEL FUEL ONLY” she read, in small lettering on the portal.

  “Diesel!” she said, out loud, and then rushed through a connecting corridor to the vestibule that connected the garage to a large steel shipping container that had been installed a few years before, as part of an upgrade to the facility which had been funded by FEMA.

  The heavy steel door was unlocked, and the interior was lit with a deep red glow from the indicator lights that were always on in the back-up generator room.

  On the floor next to the massive fuel tank, next to the control panel, were eight military-standard five gallon cans labeled “DIESEL FUEL”.

  She tried to lift one of them but found it too heavy. She looked around and found a two-wheel dolly. She had used a similar dolly a few times up in the office, and understood how to use it. She simply tipped the first fuel can over slightly, and slid the flat steel base of the dolly under the can, and then tipped the can back fully onto the dolly’s rails. Then she wheeled the can down the hallway and into the garage. Once there, she lowered the dolly’s handles onto the tailgate, and slid the jerry can along the rails and into the vehicle’s trunk. Who needs a man. OK, a man would really help about now! she thought. As she strained to repeat the process two more times, her strength failed, and the third fuel-can fell off the dolly and onto the floor. She knew that she would not be able to pick it up, so she gave up. “Two cans will have to be enough!” she said out loud, and then slammed the tail-gate up.

  Just before activating the garage door opener clipped to the vehicle’s sun-visor, she had an inspiration.

  After starting the vehicle and moving it as close to the automatic garage door as she could, she turned the engine off and got out and went back to the rear of the garage and the abandoned fuel can.

  She opened the fuel can cap of the overturned fuel can, letting diesel fuel pour out onto the concrete. Then she headed to the side wall, where there were a few rolls of paper-towel. She feared that the increasing smell of fuel in the air meant that it would ignite the moment she lit the paper-towel, so she pressed the garage door opener and watched the door begin to rise.

  Beth peeked under the door as it rose past eye-height, and saw nobody around at the back-side of the CO’s office building, she felt relief and sucked in a breath of fresh outside air.

  Using her cigarette lighter from her purse, she lit a roll of paper towel which she had first dipped into the growing pool of diesel. Once it was burning nicely, she dropped it onto the floor in the middle of the garage, a ways ahead of the growing pool, and then climbed into the vehicle and closed the door.

  She half-expected a massive explosion, but she knew something about how much more difficult it was to ignite diesel fuel. So when there was no ‘kaboom’ behind her as she drove out of the garage she was not surprised. In fact, she worried that maybe it would not be hot enough to ignite the fuel, and stopped to look back.

  The paper towel was still burning nicely, like a torch, with a few steady licks of flame. Then she saw that the expanding puddle of diesel fuel had almost reached the paper-towel, near the front of the garage. She decided to trust that it would eventually ignite, and continued to drive away without waiting any longer.

  With no alarm sounding by the time she reached the main gates, she had largely forgotten about her attempt to start a fire and was more focused on the sentry who seemed to be preparing to seal off the exit side of the gate. When Beth approached, he paused, recognizing the CO’s secretary driving the CO’s car. He assumed that she was on an errand for him, and waived her through before returning to his task of sealing closed the main gate, as per the orders he had just received from Base Ops. She’ll just have to come in through the north gate when she gets back, he thought.

  It took another thirty seconds for the paper-towel roll to ignite the diesel pool on the floor. Having reached the flash-over temperature, flames accelerated across the floor and expanded hungrily throughout the garage, looking for more combustible material.

  Beth had already turned onto Highway 14 and driven the half-mile to the edge of town before smoke became visible coming out of the old wooden headquarters building. By the time anybody from the base had actually reacted, and sounded the alarm, Beth was well on her way out of town, heading northeast on Ithaca Road for her rendezvous with her husband Ian and the others. Take this job and shove it! she sang softly to herself.

  Colonel Hurdman saw the fire coming from his office, and immediately worried that his combat gear was still inside, and his expensive new vehicle was probably already on fire, but he did not even think about his civilian secretary who for all he knew could be in danger inside the building.

  I guess I should have sent Corporal Porter to collect the Range Rover sooner, and not left it in the garage, he thought to himself, regretting that he would not have his brand new vehicle with him up at the bastion at Cunningham Lake. He’d have to settle for the HMVWs and other standard military pattern vehicles in the column of his now company-sized formation. But then he had a hopeful thought. Soon enough, we’ll have road-blocks across Highway 80, so we’ll be seizing all sorts of fully-loaded SUVs. I may not get another Range Rover, but I’ll probably have my choice of Suburbans and Escalades, he thought hopefully to himself.

  “Quartermaster!” he shouted at the Master Sergeant who was conferring with some supply techs as the last of the trucks was being loaded.

  “Sir!”

  “Get me a fresh set of kit – web-vest, rucksack, CBRN – the works. Looks like my kit’s going up in smoke!”

  “Yes, Sir. I’ll have it here in ten minutes,” replied the Master Sergeant.

  “And draw me a new rifle and nine-mil, and a Kevlar helmet.”

  “Understood, Sir. We’ll get you a full replacement of your
combat kit. We know your size.” The QM replied, nodding his orders to the supply techs who literally ran into the QM building to draw the replacement kit for the CO.

  “Sir, what do you want to do about the fire?” asked the base Senior NCO.

  “What can we do? The fire-fighters stopped coming to work weeks ago. Just let it burn.”

  “But sir, what about Mrs. Morgan? Shouldn’t we try to see if she needs help?”

  “She’ll be fine. If not, then she’s a casualty, and we’re in a combat situation. We are no longer in the business of helping the civilians – that would put our mission in jeopardy. She’ll have to fend for herself,” the CO said, and then climbed into the lead HMVW, and looked across at his radio operator.

  “I want the column ready to be Oscar Mike within fifteen minutes. Pass the word.”

  He did not look at the Master Sergeant again, and did not see the look of disgust on the soldier’s face. The senior NCO knew full well that the only mission the CO was interested in was his own well-being. He no longer considered what they were doing to be military, ethical, nor in any way patriotic. But he went along with it, out of the hope that he would be able to collect his wife, son, and daughter-in law and bring them up to the CO’s personal bastion up in Pier County in time for he and his family to hunker down for the coming cold of the nuclear winter. Then, maybe somewhere down the road if the opportunity presented itself, he could conveniently ‘frag’ that Colonel.

  That it was human nature to abandon concepts of humanity, generosity and good-will in favor of personal survival was something the Master Sergeant well understood, but that did not make it easier on his conscience as he imagined the nice young lady, Beth Morgan, suffering with nobody coming to her rescue.

  As the column of vehicles pulled out of the north exit of the base he was still troubled with his choice. Had he known that Beth was safe and sound and at that precise moment embracing her husband at their rendezvous point, he would have been proud of what the young lady had done.