For Which We Stand: Ian's road (A Five Roads To Texas Novel Book 3)

by Joseph Hansen

“Nukes?” Ian pulled his head up and looked at Brendan.

  “Yep, they make nuclear bombs there.”

  “Well, the term ‘bomb’ is a little outdated when it comes to nukes. Missile manufacturing, huh? That too sounds plausible,” Ian said.

  “There is also a group of Norks coming in from the north, intent on meeting up with this group, and they suspect more are on the way,” Kinsey added.

  “Yeah, and to think that they have only begun to invade. The longer this goes, the more their force will grow, I guarantee.” Ian gestured toward the screens. “Do they just want us to sit back and enjoy the show? It sounds like a sweet deal to me, if that’s the case.” Ian slapped Toby on the back. “Time to bust out some of that fancy scotch, I’d say.”

  “Hold that thought, boss,” Kinsey said. “We have a Blackhawk landing in the back forty. We should probably send out a meet-and-greet.”

  “Tobes can handle it. I am going to finish looking at Renee’s leg, and you have to clean up his shoulder and whatever else is wrong with him,” Ian said with a smile, trying to keep everybody calm.

  “It’ll be a pleasure. Save me some ice,” Toby said as Ian lined up several glasses and pulled out a bottle of Glenfiddich then poured a little in each glass.

  “Hey, I think this is going to take a little bit more than a Band-Aide, you know,” Brendan said with a whine to his voice.

  “Yeah, and you know I’m no good with that shit,” Kinsey added.

  “Relax, Renee’s shin is just bruised really bad—possibly cracked or chipped, but there is nothing more I can do besides wrap it.” Ian handed Renee a shot, which she slammed and held out for another.

  “It’s medicinal,” she said, and Ian shrugged and filled it up.

  He moved on to Brendan and began to peel his shirt back as Kinsey refilled his glass too.

  “Hey, do you want to speak to your people?” Kinsey asked.

  Renee bobbed her head as she slammed her second shot and had one more filled to take with her as she used furniture and Kinsey’s arm to assist her passage. Whether they were to be blown up, killed, or arrested, Renee was going to have a good buzz on. It also helped her put a little more weight on her damaged leg.

  “This display is the channel equivalent to this frequency. No buttons need to be pushed; it is a command override system, so you can interrupt any conversation within range,” Kinsey explained.

  “All right, put me on nineteen. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try seven and then some ham frequencies.” Renee then named the CB radio channels they were using.

  “Give them all to me, and we will input them all at once and let the system loop through the connections,” Kinsey said, and Renee dug a list of ham operators out of her pocket.

  “Cliff, are you out there?” Renee said when prompted.

  “Live on seven,” Kinsey whispered and noted that several of the other frequencies lit up, showing that there were other listeners.

  “This is Petey, Renee. Cliff is indisposed, watching the war right now. Over.”

  “Yeah, well, get him or Gloria or Louisa. Over.”

  “Just tell me what you want, and I’ll relay it.”

  “Fuck you, Petey. Get me one of the others. Anna… are you listening? Over.”

  “I hear you, Renee. What’s going on? Over.”

  “Not sure yet, just letting you know to keep your heads down, and Brendan and I are in good hands, though a little beat up. Also, we believe that the news from Phoenix is true. Over.”

  Kinsey left so Renee could talk to her people privately. There was no way anyone who had survived this long was going to trust anyone else for a long time, and giving them free access to whatever this supply base held was one step toward getting them to relax.

  Soon crisp footsteps were heard hitting the hard floor tiles as they made their way down the hallway to the lobby outside the communications room, where Ian was downing his second shot of Scotch as he tried to catch up to Renee.

  “Ian McCollister?” A uniformed air force officer stood in the doorway. “I am Lieutenant Colonel Hoisin, United States Air Force.”

  “Yes sir,” Ian said, and as ex-military usually did, saluted the man.

  “Colonel Tisdale spoke very highly of you,” the colonel said as he came and sat down, eyeing up the scotch that was portioned out in front of him. Ian indicated with a nod that he should take one, and he did, which Ian immediately refilled. One thing he found lots of in this new world was high-end liquor, and he planned to share it as often as he could.

  “Quite a pickle you have come home to, isn’t it? Where are you out of?” Ian said, breaking the ice.

  “We’re at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. Yeah, we’re none too happy about it. We assumed that the Norks might have had something to do with it when they invaded South Korea shortly after the infection spread throughout the States, but the information and lists you provided remove any doubts we may have had. The Ungs didn’t have much money, but Iran… well, they shit oil, so they were wealthy enough for the both of them. When they allied, it only meant very bad things for the West.”

  “Do you know how far-spread the infection is?” Kinsey asked.

  “The EU is saturated, as is Canada, the US, and most of Mexico. It hasn’t slipped into Russia or China yet, and Japan is still safe due to its proximity to the Ungs, but they are staying out of it even though Camp Hansen on Okinawa was bombed.”

  “Camp Hansen… I spent some time there on my tour. Any survivors?” Ian asked.

  “Unknown. We left Japan on a fishing charter and were then picked up at sea by a Russian freighter until we finally made it to the coast, where we were ferried in on lifeboats. Everybody is being very careful with their allies, enemies, and whomever might be watching right now. However, let’s get to the matter at hand. I need your help.”

  “You need our help?”

  “Well, you and anyone else we can bring in on this. Are there any local survivors?”

  “Yeah, more than we expected. Renee and Brendan are with a group, and they know of others. What’s going on, Lieutenant Colonel?”

  “Please, call me LT or LTC. Formalities are kind of foolish these days. We have survivors in Kirtland, but they have been overwhelmed. We understand that you used noise to distract the infected and led them away with quite some success in Phoenix.”

  “I don’t know how successful it was, but the infected did seem to follow it for a time.”

  “Good, so we can create a distraction and lead them away from the external buildings. What is your procedure for emptying the buildings?”

  “Buildings? Well… you might be able to draw some out, but at some point, you have to go in and kill them.” Ian was suddenly wary as to where this conversation had been leading all along.

  “Ah… you see, that is precisely where I need your assistance.”

  “But, you’re the military. Isn’t that your job?” Kinsey asked, not really having a desire to go crawling through buildings and rooting out infected.

  “I am aware of that, ma’am, however my people are pilots and mechanics. There are five from the National Guard who have come with us that will help, but they seem to think you guys know a lot more about this than they do.”

  “Tops? Is Team Leader Tops with you?”

  “He is.”

  “Send him in. I owe him a drink or two,” Ian said, somewhat blowing off the idea that he would willingly go into a building filled with infected.

  “I would like to have your answer, if you don’t mind, sir. There are some very important people in there who could help with our efforts.”

  “LT, I will make no decisions without talking to my team first and seeing how many locals we can round up to help us. There really can’t be too many insane people left here, I would think.”

  “Well, we have surmised that one to three percent of the population in any given city could have survived. There were over five hundred thousand souls here in Albuquerque, so on the low sid
e, that means there could be five thousand people scattered here and there.”

  Ian whistled his amazement as he poured rubbing alcohol on the wound in Brendan’s shoulder. The bullet had gone through completely, so he wasn’t going to go digging around in it.

  Renee, who had returned after finishing her radio conversation, laughed. “There ain’t no five thousand people surviving around here. You can trust me on that. We have seen maybe a hundred or a hundred and fifty, total.” She limped back to a couch while holding out her glass for another bump. “We have a group of riders that just hooked up with Cliff and are enjoying the show of your fly boys mopping up out there.”

  “Riders?” the lieutenant colonel asked.

  “Yeah, a few of the local chapters hooked up and holed out on a ranch south of here a ways. They have lots of guns, and from what Cliff says, a few are ex-military.”

  “Could you ask your people to lead them in here when the fighting is done? If you don’t mind, Mister McCollister.”

  “This isn’t my place, LT. I am a visitor here just like the rest of you,” Ian said feeling a little loose from the scotch.

  “Very well then, I will work up a proposal to offer all of you when they have made it inside. If you don’t mind, I will take a seat over there and work up a plan.”

  “Be my guest, Lieutenant Colonel. My sanctuary is your sanctuary.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Albuquerque New Mexico, May 8th

  Ian wasn’t quite sure how it happened, but by morning he and his crew were committed to clearing out the buildings at the nearby base. Well, to say he didn’t know how was a bit of a misnomer, as empty bottles of several varieties of mash were a dead giveaway.

  Either way, he found himself looking over a cup of coffee at a huge biker twice his size and covered in hair from top to bottom and looking as if he had finished off a bottle by himself.

  “So, you’re our new leader?” the giant named Joe mumbled.

  “Me? Fuck no. I am just going along for the ride,” Ian said, and then put his head in his hands. “God dammit, my head hurts.”

  “Perk up, big boy. We gotta go kill zombies.” The big man spoke as if they were drinking buddies—and after last night, they probably were.

  “They’re not zombies.”

  “If one more asshole tells me that, I am going to pop their head like a grape.” His bloodshot eyes stared at Ian over his mug of coffee.

  “Zombies it is then. After breakfast,” Ian said as he held out some of his egg biscuit to Jasper.

  “Now you’re singing my song. What’s going to happen to your doggie if you don’t come back?” Joe asked as he admired the skinny German shepherd.

  “Oh, I don’t fight infected without Jasper anymore. No way. We got caught in the convention center in Phoenix and signed a pact in blood, if you know what I mean,” Ian said, feeling great pride in his beast.

  “That’s awesome. I’ll watch his back as if it were your own.” Joe held out his hand to Jasper, who moved closer so he could get a rub in too.

  “I appreciate that, Joe. I’ll do my best to see you have all your T’s crossed, and I’s dotted too.”

  “Hey, I always cover the boss’s ass. It’s how you survive in any world,” Joe said with a chuckle, his barrel chest rolling with every laugh.

  “I’m not your boss, Joe. The military is here; they will have total control of things. Probably Team Leader Tops will lead, or possibly the LTC himself,” Ian said, putting down the man’s theories. “Ima gonna be a grunt jus like you,” Ian finished with a laugh.

  “Okay, fair enough.” Joe slammed the last of his coffee and stowed his cup in a bag that looked as if it even held a Thermos of some sort. Ian hoped it was more coffee but in this day age you could never tell.

  It was only a minute, maybe two, before Tops came into the room and signaled for everyone’s attention.

  He looked over the crowd of thirty or so volunteers and saw dirty bodies wearing rags stitched together by a couple of frayed strands of Frankenstein stitching. All were wearing some sort of head gear, be it a cap or a headband. A couple even wore batters’ helmets as well as riot gear with full shields covering their faces. They carried clubs and machetes, and many had pikes fashioned from whatever they could find on the run, and they held them as if they were their personal lifeline to the future. As bleak as it may seem, all of them wanted some sort of future.

  Tops saw all of this and, in a way, it made him think of a parody of every apocalyptic film he had ever seen, but this wasn’t a parody. This wasn’t a comedy. This was real. After all they had survived, they volunteered to do it some more. Not because there were people who needed to be rescued or because they wanted revenge. They did it for society. They did it because the military, as scattered and disarrayed as it was, offered them just a taste of what used to be… not even a taste, just a hint or a smidgen, and they wanted more.

  By volunteering, they became a part of what could be much greater than they could be on their own. It nourished them more than food, and Tops knew it. Tops respected it. Tops didn’t laugh at the view of mismatched individuals, but he did smile.

  “I want to thank you all for coming here today. I am grateful that there are so many who have survived this crisis, and I am grateful that it is I who is here to meet you. The pleasure is all mine… thank you for your survival. We need you,” Tops said in no bullshit tone. His lack of emotion and stoic resolve displayed a type of conviction that could weather any storm. The crowd returned his thank you, and he continued.

  “Just when you think the bacon is done, they go and kill another pig… That was my daddy’s way of saying that when you think you couldn’t be any more fucked than you already are, something worse comes and slaps you down. That’s where we are at right now, ladies and gentlemen. We are… in the process of being invaded by a foreign government. These people do not want to own you, they do not want to enslave you… they want you gone. Because when you are gone, they can start with a blank slate and turn this country into whatever they want it to be.” Tops paused to see if there were any questions before continuing. There weren’t.

  “We believe that they are targeting Kirtland Air Force Base due to the specific nature of the facility and what it produces. We cannot let that base fall into the North Koreans’ or the Iranians’ hands. We are going to equip you with new weapons, if you want. We will test you on those weapons. In our current mission, however, melee weapons will work best. For most of you that would be preferable, and we have many here to choose from. When you are done in the armory, come back here and meet with me or Ian McCollister. I will be leading the team to get us there, and Ian will be leading the house cleaning. Okay, everybody, get to it,” Tops finished while looking at Ian with a grin.

  Ian in turn was staring back at him, wide-eyed. He truly had not expected to be in charge of anything.

  Tops walked over to him. “Sorry, bro, it’s how the LTC wanted it.”

  “But why? My military career was less than stellar. I have never even been class president.”

  “Yeah, me neither. You do, however, run your own business and you also seem to inspire loyalty. The colonel back in Phoenix seems to think you have a knack for getting out of tight spots and keeping all your people alive in the process. Besides, you would just countermand anyone else who was in charge, and we can’t have that, so you’re it,” Tops said and slapped him on the back.

  “Listen up!” Tops shouted across the crowd after the men and women were outfitted with standard-grade military weapons—or at least most of them were. Many decided to stick with their melee weapons, as they were better for clearing buildings. Those who chose rifles also retained some sort of handheld club or baton strapped to their bodies.

  “As we enter the base from the north on Wyoming Avenue, we will be having Apache gun ships and Black Hawk helicopters blasting sound to guide the infected surrounding the buildings and in the lot toward the airport. We will temporarily drop the fence there,
so we can get them onto the strip, where our Warthogs can clean up the bulk as rotary wings clean up the outskirts.

  “I will tell you this once, so pay heed. If you get separated from the main group, do not—I repeat—do not run toward the west, or you will be considered infected and will more than likely be mowed down with those we are herding there.” Tops paused to make sure everybody understood him.

  We will move at night, using night vision on a predetermined route that will be cleared via distraction as we go. Do not stray from the caravan, or you risk the potential of being swarmed. We have specific objectives here so stick to the plans and everyone should get there safely. I will turn this over to Ian, who will lay out his plans for the building assault,” Tops said and nodded to Ian to take over.

  “Sorry, but I don’t know anything about Kirtland and don’t know the building layout other than a few schematics that I have been provided, so we will have to plan our assault as we watch the infected being herded off the site. Joe will be driving our Suburban, which will lead the group, and we will pick a planning crew when we arrive and know what we are dealing with, but the basics to any infested building is to open the doors. Make noise to draw as many out as we can and go in for the rest. Simple and basic is best, so just keep cool and we’ll deal.”

  It took the troop of ten vehicles, which were mainly raided from the compound, just over six hours to reach the base, and the beginnings of a sunrise was just behind the mountains. Some vehicles were what the locals had become used to using, and they had their own advantages with open truck beds and higher speeds, much like the Suburban Ian had chosen as the lead truck. Brendan, who had been wounded, as well as Renee, stayed behind with others to operate the communications and to secure the facility, which was getting an influx of locals showing up every hour.

  Ian gathered the group outside the gate as the rotary wings started their herding procedures. The different groups who had survived so long on their own, only to come together for this endeavor, had their own leaders, and Ian asked for them to come forward as he scanned the buildings below.