by Dirk Patton
Rachel saw me coming and got out and popped open the rear of the vehicle and I loaded the crate in. Four more crates and we were full with 4,500 rounds. I tossed in the cleaning kit and back inside loaded my vest from one of the crates I was leaving behind. I took a few more minutes and dug through the crates and boxes in the room and almost overlooked a single wooden crate in the back corner. It was stenciled with black paint that had faded and all I could see was two numbers, 67. Moving some boxes out of the way I saw the full stencil, M67, Grenade, Fragmentation. That’s more like it! After opening the crate to make sure it really contained grenades I carried it out and placed it on the back seat. One more trip to get enough magazines to fully restock Rachel’s vest and we were ready to go.
Humvee loaded and our vests restocked we stood by the front of the vehicle looking at each other. The fires at the flight line were very visible over the tree tops and occasionally another explosion would rock the night. I felt we were OK for a few minutes. I had scanned the entire area with the NVGs and hadn’t spotted any infected. They were all probably heading for the commotion at the runway as fast as they could.
“What the hell is happening?” I asked Rachel, looking over as Dog trotted to a lone tree at the edge of the parking area.
Rachel thought for a minute before answering, “All I can come up with is it has to do with the viral component of the nerve gas release. The briefer did tell us that our researchers haven’t identified everything the virus can or will do. Either that or they were grossly wrong about how long the nerve agent remains viable once it’s released into the environment, but I doubt they’re wrong about that.”
“Why are we OK? Or are we?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we’re immune, maybe we just haven’t turned yet. It’s all maybes at this point.” Rachel let out a sigh and turned to watch the fires. “So what do we do now?”
“That’s what I’m trying to decide. If this is happening here I think it’s a safe bet it’s happening everywhere. We’ve got a very sturdy and well-armed vehicle so we can pretty much get to wherever we decide to go as long as we can find fuel.” That thought prompted me to walk around to the back of the Humvee and check for extra fuel. Four 5 gallon metal jerry cans were strapped down to a platform attached to the back of the Humvee, but they were all empty. Not surprising since they would normally only be filled in preparation for going into the field for an extended time.
Another thought crossed my mind and I dug out the main controller for my comm unit. I was pleased to find it was an upgraded unit with the capability of changing frequencies. This was a relatively low powered unit and would have no chance of reaching a ground based radio more than a couple of miles away, but that range was greatly extended if I could reach an aircraft. Not expecting there to be any civilian air traffic I changed the radio to the Military Guard Channel – reserved for aircraft emergencies – and started transmitting.
“American ground forces transmitting on Guard. Any station receiving please respond.” I listened for a few but heard nothing and repeated my transmission.
“Station transmitting this is Royal Air Force Angel Flight. Please identify yourself.” The signal was weak and static filled but the voice was distinctly British.
“Angel Flight, Major John Chase, US Army at Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee. Arnold has fallen to infected. I need to know status of other US installations. Is Fort Campbell still operational?”
“Stand by, Major. We’re a little concerned ourselves up here. Nashville went radio silent half an hour ago.” The signal was clearer. I suspected this was one of the UK aid flights that was inbound to Nashville.
After what seemed like an eternity the UK pilot came back on the radio, the signal now perfectly clear. For the hell of it I looked up and scanned the sky but couldn’t spot the aircraft.
“Major, we are still not getting a response from Nashville, and Fort Campbell is not responding either. There is some faint radio traffic we are picking up that indicates some major battles are underway, but we cannot tell where they are coming from.” By the time the pilot finished speaking the signal was already growing weaker as the plane was apparently now moving away from us. I thanked him for the information and think he wished me good luck, but it was hard to tell over the growing static.
“That’s not good,” I said to Rachel, shutting the unit off to save the battery and stowing it in my pack. A couple of screams sounded much too close and we quickly piled back into the Humvee, me behind the wheel while Rachel and Dog had a brief skirmish over the passenger seat. Starting the vehicle I spun around in the parking lot as two infected females raced around the corner of the building and charged towards us. Spraying gravel I accelerated out of the lot and onto the asphalt, quickly outdistancing them.
“So what are we doing?” Rachel asked, leaning forward to peer at the females in the side mirror.
“Unless you’ve got a better suggestion we’re heading west again. I don’t feel like fighting our way to Fort Campbell to just find that it has fallen too.”
Rachel thought about that for a few minutes as I drove across the Air Force Base. The fires at the flight line were burning brighter than ever and there was still the occasional explosion as either an aircraft or vehicle’s fuel tank detonated.
“I think that’s probably our best bet,” she finally answered, turning to look at me and rubbing Dog’s head which was firmly planted in her lap.
“OK, then,” I said. “We’ve got to avoid Memphis. It was one of the cities that was on the original list of nerve gas attacks. There’s also still the herd moving up from the gulf. I’m going to take us north. Move up into Kentucky, then across the Mississippi river into Missouri, but stay well south of St. Louis. We’ll worry about finding a safe bridge crossing when we get there.” Once again I found myself without a map, but was willing to start the journey without one and hope to loot a convenience store or truck stop along the way.
We slowly worked our way across the base. Infected were everywhere. It seemed as if almost everyone that had been fine when we arrived was now infected. I started to speculate on what could have happened, but shut down that line of thinking. I needed to focus on the task at hand, not worry about something over which I had no control. On a fairly regular basis we were running down infected males, females charging us from out of the dark and slamming into the fenders or doors of the Humvee. Once we saw a lone survivor, but he was too far away and fell under a pack of females that tore him to ribbons before we could get close enough to help. Poor bastard.
Chapter 13
After several dead ends that forced us to backtrack we finally found a gate that would allow us to exit the base. The gate was a rolling section of chain link fencing about 12 feet high and there were probably close to 100 infected pushing up against it. None were in military clothing so I suspected they were civilians from the small town next to the base. There was a good mix of males and females and as we approached the gate they all went in to a frenzy, fighting with each other to get closer to the gate.
“Now that’s new,” I commented, watching a large male club smaller infected out of his way so he could press up against the chain link.
“I wish they’d just fight each other and leave us the hell alone.” Rachel said.
“Yeah, well, I wish I was hung like John Holmes, but I don’t think either of us are going to get our wish.” I put the Humvee into park as Rachel laughed. It was the first spark of life out of her since the Globemaster and Pave Hawk had crashed at the flight line. Glancing around to make sure we were in the clear I climbed into the back of the vehicle, Dog protesting my invasion of his space with a series of grunts, and told Rachel to join me. After a moment she climbed into the back too. Standing up I unlocked and pushed open the hatch in the roof that allowed a gunner access to the machine gun.
“You need to learn how to use this,” I said, gesturing for Rachel to stand up in the gunner’s position. When she was in place I opened the rear door and s
tood on the edge of the vehicle floor to be up at her height. I gave her a quick tutorial on how to load and change ammo belts and charge the weapon. After she had removed the belt and reloaded the weapon a few times I felt she had that part of it down.
“The most important thing, other than not shooting me is to not melt your barrel,” I said. Rachel looked at me like I was speaking Martian. “Machine guns get very hot, very quickly, and under continuous firing the barrel will overheat and warp. If that happens you might as well throw the gun at them for all the good it will do you.”
“So how do I keep that from happening,” she asked with a note of trepidation in her voice.
“Short, controlled bursts. Don’t fire continuously for more than five seconds. This weapon fires 900 rounds a minute. That’s 15 rounds per second, so in a five second burst you’ve gone through 75 rounds. Get in your mind that you will fire for five seconds, not fire for 3 seconds, then fire for up to five more. There’s a red tracer every tenth round so you’ll see one tracer a second to help you direct your fire. A green tracer is at the mid-point of the belt and again three rounds from the end of the belt with two reds together as the last two rounds to let you know you’re out. The mount will absorb and control the recoil, but the gun will hammer your arms.”
Rachel was looking at me like I was crazy to be trusting her with this, but she was also paying attention.
“OK, ready?” I asked.
“For what?”
“Clear those infected out so we can open the gate and get out of here,” I replied, pointing at the mass of bodies fifty yards to our front. Stepping back down into the Humvee I closed the door and sat in the rear seat next to Rachel’s right leg. After a moment I heard her click the safety off then the gun hammered out a short two second burst.
Watching out of the windshield I saw a few infected drop then the second tracer round flew over their heads as Rachel let the gun climb off target. A couple of seconds later the hammering started again, lasting almost five full seconds and mowing down a dozen infected before a tracer flew high. Three seconds later she cut loose again, this time keeping all the rounds on target, shredding infected and also doing a number on the gate. Soon she was controlling the weapon and walking the stream of bullets across the ranks of bodies which were rapidly thinning. Two more bursts and there were only half a dozen infected still standing and I tapped Rachel’s leg to let her know I would clean up the rest with my rifle.
Checking the area I saw a large group of infected males approaching from the rear, most certainly attracted by the horrendous noise the machine gun makes. I pointed them out to Rachel and she swung the gun around and cut them down with two quick bursts. Damn, she caught on quick. Popping the door open I walked to the gate, raising my rifle, and in short order dispatched the remaining infected with head shots. The stench from the unwashed bodies, blood, bowels and bladders was almost overpowering and even though it was night flies were already descending on the nauseating banquet. Breathing through my mouth I found the latch for the gate near the guard shack, released it and forced the gate open on its track.
Back in the Humvee I checked to make sure Rachel had locked the access hatch to the roof, shifted into drive and slowly made our crunching and squishing way over the shattered bodies. Rachel held her hand over her nose and mouth when the smell hit her, trying to roll down her window when we were clear. She quickly discovered the tradeoff for having an up-armored vehicle with ballistic glass. The windows are fixed in place and don’t roll down. She settled for cracking the door open a few inches and holding it there while we drove, the smell quickly venting out of the vehicle.
The small town outside the gate, I never learned its name, wasn’t much more than one long street that looked like streets near every military base I’ve ever been on. Bars, tattoo parlors, liquor stores, strip clubs and a couple of low rent motels that advertised hourly rates. Brought back memories. The power was still on and every building had some sort of gaudy neon sign, almost all of them in red that washed the whole street with light that made the place look like one of Dante’s levels of hell. More infected were moving, coming out of the businesses, out of alleys and side streets, all drawn by the machine gun fire and the sound of the Humvee.
Accelerating slightly I pushed our speed to over 30. The long street resembled a gauntlet and the infected were quickly spilling onto the asphalt and closing ranks ahead of us. Moments later I slowed back to 20 as we started smashing through the bodies. The herd thickened and I slowed to just over 10 MPH for fear of damaging the vehicle – you can only ram 150 to 200 pound bodies for so long before something gives – but we finally reached the far end of the street which was clear of infected. Ahead the road disappeared around a curve as the heavy forest in the area closed in.
Rounding the curve found us in a dark tunnel, trees pressing right to the edge of the pavement on both sides as their upper branches tried to meet in the middle. The Humvee’s headlights were not very bright but it had been outfitted with a set of high intensity off road lights that I switched on after groping around the dash for the switch. The night turned to day inside the tree canopy but we couldn’t see anything to the side beyond the first row of trees. I momentarily thought about cutting all the lights and using the NVGs but discarded the idea. Infected would find us from sound, not light, so we really had little to gain by running dark.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Rachel asked.
“That way,” I answered, pointing at the windshield.
“Funny. I’m serious. What are we heading into?”
“Right now the idea is to get north into Kentucky a ways then cut to the west. I want to stay well clear of any population centers. Whatever is going on with more people suddenly becoming infected can’t be isolated.” Rachel fell silent, not particularly satisfied with my answer but it was the best I could do at the moment. We had a very capable vehicle, were well armed and reasonably well provisioned with a week’s worth of MREs in our packs. Things could be worse.
We both fell silent as I drove, the hum of the hard rubber all terrain tires on the pavement almost hypnotizing. I kept our speed down, never getting over 45. Too many times I had seen infected suddenly lurch in front of us and I wanted to be going slow enough to not damage the Humvee in a collision, or worse try to avoid the collision and wind up crashing. The vehicle was our life boat and I didn’t want to have to find out how long we’d last without it.
After an hour we rounded a curve and I slowed to a stop as we reached an intersection. This was the first real side road we had encountered since leaving Arnold. There had been several muddy tracks cut into the forest, but even though this road wasn’t marked it headed west and would hopefully stay south of Nashville. There were no other signs and I had no idea what or where the next town was going to be. Tossing a mental coin I decided to take the new road and start heading west, turning the wheel and slowly accelerating.
Rachel had fallen asleep in the dark and Dog was snoring like a saw mill in the back seat. I was tired, reminding myself that I had already flown to Atlanta, fought infected, flown back to Arnold and fought some more since the last time I slept. We were in the middle of nowhere, or at least seemed to be, and I was considering pulling into the next muddy track I saw and getting some sleep myself when I saw the first stake. Gawking at it as we drove past I took my foot off the accelerator and let the vehicle slow as several more came into view.
The stakes were thick wooden poles driven into the ground and atop each one a severed human head had been impaled, facing the direction we were coming from. Idling past I could see a small forest of them in the reach of the lights before the road disappeared over a small rise. I couldn’t tell if the heads had come from infected or survivors when they were driven onto the stakes. It didn’t matter. Someone was one sick fucking puppy and was using them to warn away travelers, or mark their territory, or something else I couldn’t even comprehend. It didn’t matter, I wasn’t about to go any further and find
out what the deal was. Reaching over I shook Rachel awake as I braked the Humvee to a stop on the top of the rise.
“Oh, fucking hell,” she said, waking up and looking out the windshield at the couple of dozen staked heads I pointed to in front of us.
“Fucking hell is right,” I said, shifting into reverse and turning us sideways in the road to turn and head back where we’d come from.
I hadn’t completed the turn when bright lights from my left, the direction we had come from, suddenly lit up the night and pinned us like a spotlighted coyote. Shit, shit, shit. The good news was we were in a military vehicle that could withstand any civilian weapons they might have. The bad news came a second later when more light came on to my right, neatly boxing us in. We’d driven right into a trap.
“Get ready to drive,” I barked, scrambling over the seat and unlatching the gunner’s port in the roof.
Standing up in the position I swung the machine gun to my left and didn’t hesitate to open fire, walking the bullets across the spotlights and knocking all of them out. I could hear shouts from the men who had been behind the lights but I ignored them and swung to my right, pumping a few hundred rounds into the lights and vehicles they were mounted on. More shouts and bullets started pinging off the armored side of the Humvee.
“Drive!” I shouted at Rachel as I swung the gun back to the group I’d fired on first. Bracing against the motion as Rachel floored the vehicle I lined up as best I could and started hammering away.
I thought we’d make it. Felt confident that with the armored Humvee and machine gun we could fight our way clear of the ambush. And we might have if not for their sniper. I saw the muzzle flash before I heard the boom and half a second later the Humvee’s diesel engine went quiet and we rolled to a stop. The report of the rifle was distinctive and I knew someone had a .50 caliber sniper rifle, probably with API - armor piercing incendiary - ammo since they had disabled our engine with one shot. The .50 cal rifle fires one hell of a slug, about the size of your thumb, and it fires it with tremendous velocity. I’ve personally seen experienced snipers take out targets at 1,500 yards with a .50. I’ve read of accounts of targets being effectively engaged as far out as nearly two miles. At 100 yards that slug penetrated our armored grill and shattered the engine block without much effort.
