by John Holmes
We jogged down the road for three miles, a slow steady pace, even though we were all exhausted. I spotted a two-story building on the side of the road. Around it was a ring of skeletons where a zombie wave had fought to get into the building. We slow-walked through the ground floor, clearing each room. When we got to the stairs, we found them hacked and shattered, which was a pretty standard way of keeping zombies out during the plague time. There were more skeletons clustered around the bottom. Most had neat round holes in their skulls.
“Nice shooting,” muttered Ahmed, picking up a skull and examining it. Long blonde hair still clung to it in patches. He put it back down gently. Beside the stairs was a battered aluminum extension ladder. It looked like it had fallen over instead of being placed down. Way I figured it, someone was looting, used the ladder to get to the second floor, and it fell. The noise from the ladder falling must have been like a dinner gong for the local Z population.
“Shall we?” said Doc, with a motion to the ruined stairway, and he set the ladder back up. We climbed up while Jonesy and Jacob stood guard below.
We found another skeleton lying on a couch in an upstairs office. This one was clad in expensive Gortex hunting camouflage. The latest generation night vision goggles hung around his neck and he had a full set of top-of-the-line body armor. Across his chest lay a fancy tricked-out AR-15, the civilian version of the M-16, with rails, scope, flashlight, handgrips, all the toys. The top of his skull was missing and blood stained the wall behind the couch. There were a couple of hundred brass casings and magazines on the floor of the window next to the couch, piled around the top of the broken staircase. The bolt of the weapon was locked to the rear on an empty magazine.
Saved one for himself. Better that than dying from thirst while the Zombies waited for you outside. “All that fancy-shmancy gear and you died from being stupid, Buddy. That’s what you get for working alone,” said Doc as pulled the boots off the skeleton and tried them on, after pouring alcohol all over them. “Nice fit! Just broken-in Bellevilles!” Yeah, the Army supply system sucked that bad. Our uniforms were patched, boots worn-out, gear jury rigged. The one thing that they could give us in quantity was ammo and weapons, which was good enough, I guess.
The rest of the guys came upstairs. We pulled the ladder up after us and settled down to get some rest. I logged into Facebook on my iPhone after Ahmed got the radio set up and went to our secret Scouts group. I posted a long rant about what an asswipe LTC Jackass was; then I showed the guys the picture Brit had posted. She was sitting up in a hospital bed, making a stupid duck face and flashing fake gang signs.
She was definitely going to be OK.
Chapter 44
1200 hours. I flipped on the speaker of the SINCGARS and turned the volume up to be barely audible.
“Time for the news, boys.” Each day at 1200 hours, the commo guys at Fort Orange rebroadcast the news. We ate it up like candy.
“… istening to the BBC World Broadcast. The Royal Navy today intercepted a refugee fleet from Northern Russia when the fleet tried to run the guard and avoid quarantine. HMS Sheffield was damaged by a missile fired from a Russian destroyer. Casualties are unknown at this time. The fleet was destroyed by a low-yield nuclear weapon. A statement issued by the King’s spokesman affirmed England’s commitment to safeguarding the United Kingdom from all threats.
”The Grand Committee of the House of Lords convened at Oxford again today to hear the case against the King's prerogative powers and sidelining of Parliament. In their thirteenth straight vote since the Emergency started, the Lords overwhelming supported the continued exercise of His Majesty's war powers as defined in the Constitution.
“In North America, elements of the US 82nd Airborne seized control of the Bermudez oil field in southern Mexico in an airborne assault. Heavy fighting was reported by our embedded correspondent in a three-way battle between US forces, Mexican cartels and undead.”
“YEAH, GIT SOME, AIRBORNE!” yelled Doc, a former 82nd paratrooper.
“Shut it, I’m trying to listen,” I told him.
“Shut it yourself, you dirty nasty leg.”
“… Japanese Defense Forces lost contact with their last garrison on the main island of Honshu but have declared the island of Shikoku to be cleared. Japan and Singapore remain the only parts of Asia with a functioning government.”
“This is the BBC World News.”
I clicked off the radio and thought about how many billions were dead, yet we still fought on. Stubborn humanity, I guess. I never thought of quitting, even at the worst of times. I guess the quitters were all dead by now.
We rested an entire day, cleaning weapons, taking care of minor wounds, getting as cleaned up as we could. My head was still a bit woozy after taking that round. And we were all starting to smell like ass after a week in the field. Captain David had dropped off several cases of ammo, both for the sniper rifle and our .22s. We had burned through more than I had wanted. Loading magazines was a pain in the ass, but it had to be done. Click, click, click.
Jacob sat down next to me later that evening. He had his pistol in his hand and I assumed he had just finished cleaning it. I could tell by the look on his face that he wanted to talk.
“Nick, that shit yesterday. In the prison cell block.”
“Yeah, what about it, Jake?” I wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but if the guy needed to talk, he needed to talk.
“I can’t get it out of my head. This is one hell of a nightmare I’m in. I wish I could wake up.”
“Well, if you want to talk about it, how about you put the pistol away first.”
He looked at it like he was seeing it for the first time. “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
Talking with Jacob was tough, because, even though he performed well in the field, he really believed that he was in a dream. I asked him once what he did before the plague and he had laughed. He told me he was an accountant. Wife, two daughters, white picket fence around his house on Long Island. I couldn’t square it with the dirty, unshaven gunslinger who sat next to me. Then again, I don’t think he could square it with himself, either.
“I keep seeing all those women and kids, the ones we didn’t get to in time. I close my eyes and there they are, right there. I can smell the gun smoke from that guards’ rifle.”
“We all have a tough time dealing with it, Jacob. It’s what makes us human.”
“What I can’t get over, Nick, is how real it seemed. I know I’m in a dream. I have to be in a dream. Otherwise, Jean and the girls are dead. Or even worse, undead.”
We were treading on dangerous ground. I’ve seen guys lose it in the field before, both in Afghanistan and here. One minute they’re fine, and then snap, they break. The toughest guys out there. Everyone has a breaking point. I think Jacob was approaching his.
He sat silently for a moment while I thought of how to answer him, but before I could, he stood up.
“One way or another, Nick, it’s not a place I want to be. Either I come out of this nightmare or the nightmare is real.”
“Maybe you need to talk to Doc, see if he can give you something to help you sleep.” I started to get up, meaning to get Doc, but he shook his head no and walked over to the ruined stairway. Before I could stop him, Jacob had jumped down and run out the front door of the building. I called for the others. We grabbed out gear and climbed down after him, but by the time we got out the door, he was long gone. I stopped at the door and told everyone to go back to bed. We would find him in the morning, or not. Most likely not.
As we watched the sun rise at stand-to, we heard a single shot echo through the woods. We found him just down the road. Leaning with his back against a tree, a picture of his wife and kids on his lap, his pistol still in his hand. He had waited until dawn so he could see them one more time. The four of us dug him a deep grave, shouldered our packs and started walking.
“Hey Nick, you think Jacob is in a better place now?” Jonesy dropped back as Doc replaced him o
n point and walked beside me. He could tell I was in a foul mood. Three men killed, Brit wounded. This was a tough mission and it was getting to me.
“I don’t know, J. Maybe this is a nightmare, and he managed to get out of it. Lord knows I wish the old world would come back.”
“I don’t. Old world, I got shit on by the Man. Five years in a state pen like that joint we just cracked, all because I beat the crap outta some dude that raped my sister. I like this world, Nick. I am the right hand of justice, and I can serve it out like jelly on a cracker. Just not on you crackers. YEAH, I MEANT YOU, DOC, YOU CRACKER-ASS BIKER!”
Doc flipped him the finger over his shoulder, not taking his eyes from where we were going. I actually smiled a little and Jonesy dropped back to talk with Ahmed. I felt a little better.
Who knew, psychotherapy from an ex-con?
Chapter 45
We headed out down the railroad tracks, both for survey and to keep off the roads. Walking down railroad tracks were a bitch because the rail ties never seemed to land under your foot. It made for a more tiring walk, but on either side of the grade was swamp and mud. It was hard keeping on our toes with the sun beating down on us. When you hump a rucksack, you sweat. I don’t care how hardcore you are, humping a ruck is hard work, and we were soaked in sweat before we had gone a mile. I’m talking water dripping in your eyes, soaking your crotch sweat. So much for being clean.
As I walked slowly along the tracks, scanning my sector for movement, my mind wandered. Half paid attention to what was going on around me. It had to, or we would be dead. The other half thought back, remembered, dragged up conversations with people long dead, replayed events in my mind. I tried not to think about before the plague. Some things are too painful. Instead, my glance crossing over Jonesy’s pack as I did a slow turn to walk backwards for a few meters, checking our six, I thought of how the team had come together. It had been at the FEMA camp on Grand Island, just west of Buffalo. The Feds and the Army were just gearing up for Task Force Empire, and Doc and I had reported into the base, reactivated under Presidential Executive Order to our old ranks. Everyone who ever served, up to age 65, was reactivated and automatically made part of their old branch of service. In theory, anyway. I had made contact with a small “clear and hold” unit that had airdropped into the high ground just west of Schenectady. They had flown me, along with a dozen others, to the Seneca Army Depot in the Finger Lakes. While waiting for assignment, and starting to chafe under the usual Army chickenshit rules, I had run into Doc, whom I knew from way back. Together we came up with the idea for the scouts and pitched it to a Major we knew in the Infantry. We were assigned the next day to Irregular Scout Team One. Next thing we knew, we were on a UH-60, flying over the ruins of Buffalo on our way to the camp on Grand Isle.
I stood in front of the ragged group of civilians and looked them over. A sadistic-looking little man wearing a drill sergeant hat was barking at them, trying to get them to stand in ranks, doing the usual “YOU’RE IN THE ARMY NOW, MAGGOT” crap. Most of them looked at him with contempt. These people were the survivors. They had lived through the plague and everything after, volunteered to serve. Maybe some were there for three hots and a cot, but I doubted it. They had carried the other ninety percent milling around the FEMA camp who sat in their tents, relieved the government had finally gotten there so they could kick back. Deadweight. I had seen them as I walked through the camp, the vacant looks on their faces. The ones who had been carried through the plague by the fighters. The same fighters who stood before me in this group. I stood for a minute, then whispered to Doc “Watch the big black dude.” The sergeant had gotten in his face, or more like his chest, and was yelling obscenities up at him, ending with “DO YOU HEAR ME, BOY?” At which point, the black guy punched him as hard as he could in the face. The sergeant went down for the count, flat on his back. The other around them laughed, until they heard the rattle of bolts being drawn back and rounds being chambered in the rifles of the Military Police team nearby. “HOLD IT!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, and walked forward to address the crowd. Doc knelt down and checked out the sergeant, who was trying to sit up, holding his face. I told the Military Police team to stand down, which they did, staring angrily at the group.
“My name, for those who care, is Sergeant First Class Nicholas Agostine. Just so you know, the Army you just volunteered for isn’t the kinder, gentler Army anymore. You, black guy, what’s your name?”
He stepped forward. “Jones. LeShaun Jones.”
“Well, Jonesy, you aren’t back on the block anymore. Those guys” and I motioned to the three soldiers who were helping the Drill Sergeant sit down on a bench, “will shoot you for something like that. Matter of fact, they probably are going to shoot you, just as soon as I leave here, to make an example out of you. I don’t have to explain to you how cheap life is nowadays.”
Most of them acknowledged what I had said. Jones just stood there and glared at me.
“Can you run? Or is that all just muscle?” I asked him, poking him in the chest. Holy crap, this dude was big.
“Yeah, I can run. Bet yer ass.”
“Good, because I’m taking you with me.” I turned my back to him and faced the crowd again.
“Like I said before, my name is Sergeant First Class Agostine. This is SFC Hamilton, my team medic. I’m recruiting a few volunteers to serve on my scout team. Our job is to go out and be the eyes and ears of Task Force Empire, the Army’s push back into New York State. It’s going to be dangerous as hell, but we will be on our own, detached from the regular army bullshit, not even part of the command. Our actual overhead is Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC. If you’re interested, Doc and I will be over here for the next few minutes. Think about it.” I pointed at Jones. “You, come with me if you want to live.”
We walked away, Jones following, and sat down on the steps of ruined library building. A dozen people walked over to us and we formed them in a line, interviewing each one. We had picked out six of them, all tough, competent survivors, when a vaguely familiar, dusky-skinned man stepped up to me.
“Name?”
“Ahmed.”
“Last name.”
“If I told you, will you torture me again, Nick Agostine?”
I looked up from the laptop where I had been punching in people’s names and shielded the sun from my eyes. I recognized him at once. He had been on our capture list for months in Afghanistan, leading a band of independent tribesmen who fought us and the Taliban with equal ferocity whenever anyone trespassed into his valley. At one time, he had been a member of the Taliban but had gone off on his own, disgusted by their attacks on children. He had hated America with equal vehemence for an airstrike which had killed two of his own children. We had him in custody once, but the last I heard, he was in Guantanamo Bay Prison.
“Ahmed Yasser. What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I am signing up for your team.”
I closed my eyes for a minute. Doc stood next to me, his pistol in hand. Ahmed stood calmly, arms folded. I opened my eyes and took the man in. He was dressed in ragged street clothes, three days growth of beard. Trying to blend in with the crowd. There were more than enough assholes who had let the plague be an excuse to take out their racial prejudice against whatever group they hated.
“I meant, what are you doing in America?”
“As for what I was doing in America, well, I was guest of your prison system. The great Satan has fallen far lower than anything I could have hoped to have done, and I actually like it here. I am here, my country is gone, and Allah has given me an opportunity to slay demons. I will never be able to go back to Afghanistan. There are plenty of demons to slay here.”
I thought for a minute. Ahmed Yasser was one bad-ass mofo and my company had spent months chasing him. I hadn’t really tortured him, just beat the crap out of him when we finally caught him. Payback for the men I had lost. Still, I had a lot of respect for the bastard. He fought fair, as fair a
s anyone could fight in that dirty little war.
I held out my hand. “Welcome to the Zombie Killers, Ahmed. Screw me or any of us over and we’ll cut your balls off.” He looked me in the eye, nodded, and shook my hand.
That was more than two years ago, and at last count, we had had something like five hundred percent casualties, dead, zombied or wounded. Now, excepting Brit, we were down to the four of us who made the core of the team and she was out of action for a while. I kinda laughed to myself as I walked, thinking of an old pop culture reference.
Jonesy heard me and asked what I was laughing at. “Time for some more Redshirts, Jonesy.” I told him. Yeah, I felt every injury and death my team had suffered but sometimes, screw it, you just gotta laugh at death. Civilians, they never understood.
Chapter 46
The Z jumped me out of a doorway. I was walking point as we made our way into Whitehall. I had done a quick peek around the corner, seen that it was clear down the street and moved forward. The doorway was on the edge of the building that I had just looked around, and the Z had been huddling in the doorway. It sprang up on me, immediately going for my throat and knocking my rifle out of my hands. I hunched my neck up in my collar, jammed my forearm into its mouth, and swept the legs out from under it. I landed with a nasty, bone snapping crash on top of it and started hammering the things’ head into the pavement. It bit down even harder on the woven Kevlar sleeve of my uniform jacket, pushing the steel strip sewn into the sleeve into the flesh of my arm with a bite like a steel trap. All that kept running through my head was don’t tear, don’t tear, don’t tear. My right hand was trying to reach for the hammer I wore slung on my belt and the weight of my pack was threatening to tip me over. I hunched down even further in my collar and turned my face away from the clawed fingers. One scratch and I was screwed. It might take a minute for the infection to get me, but Doc would have put a bullet in my head long before that. I gave up on the hammer and started scrabbling around for a rock or something on the street. I came up with a piece of broken asphalt and hammered it into the thing’s head over and over. It finally stopped moving but its jaws stayed locked on my arm. I pulled out my K-bar knife and worked it into the jaw, cutting away, careful not to get any of the body fluids on my exposed skin. It finally let go when I cut the tendons to the jaw and I rolled away, onto my pack, shaking like a frigging leaf.
