by John Holmes
There was only one man in the office, the Task Force Liberty Commander and acting Military Governor of the State Of New York, Colonel Anthony Scarletti. His burned face didn’t even crack a glimmer of a smile as he greeted us. He went right to business, as usual.
“First off, what you see and hear in this room is not for anyone but your team. If word of this somehow gets out, I will have an SF team detached to hunt you all down. Understood?” We both nodded. Unlike the previous commander of TF Liberty, whose skeleton Brit had spit on going over the bridge, Scarletti was no fool. The man scared the shit out of me.
He handed me a file, which I opened. The first thing that came out was a long range photo shot from overhead by some kind of UAV. It showed a heavily bearded man, face grainy in with poor resolution. He looked slightly familiar, though.
Red spoke first. “That’s Vice President Epson. I thought … I thought he was missing in the evacuation from DC.”
The Colonel stood up and paced back and forth behind his desk. I flipped to the next page, which showed a map of the Hoosick / Wallamosac River valleys. A red sharpie had circled the hamlet of Petersburgh. There were additional overhead recon shots sowing a crude palisade and defensive positions.
“Nick, how familiar are you with politics in the Federal Zone?”
“Some. We haven’t been back there in more than a year. Last I heard, there were some pretty bad riots, and an extension of the National Emergency Act.”
Scarletti stopped pacing, and leaned on his desk. “What if I were to tell you that Acting President Taylor has been quietly using his security forces to assassinate political opponents, and has no intention of allowing elections to be held?”
“I’d say that was some bad shit. But what does that have to do with us out here in the East? Resettlement seems to be going OK, the zombie population is way down.” I was drawing conclusions in my own mind, but I wanted him to say it.
“Taylor was number seventeen on the list of Presidential Succession. He was the Secretary of Homeland Security, and was only sworn in as Acting President until things sorted themselves out. Vice President Epson was number two. By all rights, he should be the President of the United States.”
“Again, how is that our problem?” Here it comes, I thought.
He tossed a data stick onto the desk. “On here are all the orders and maps you’ll need. I want your team to go into Berlin and bring him out. If you can’t bring him out willingly, then you are authorized to use force. I would prefer willingly. At final resort, to prevent him being used as a political pawn by other factions, you are authorized to terminate him.”
I stood up and said “What a goddamned minute. We’re a scout team, not a hit squad. Go get some of your other black ops jokers to do this shit.”
“I would if I could trust them, and I DON’T want him killed. I want him brought back here, alive, so he can resume his duties to his country. Your team is the best ones to do the job.”
Red sat silently next to me, watching the clash of wills. I did NOT want to get involved with this political bullshit, and Scarletti knew it. He hit a button on his laptop and turned it around to face us. A video was playing, a grainy black and white feed from an infrared camera.
“We were deleting files off our servers to make room, and someone came across this.”
As I watched, a HUMVEE pulled up to what I recognized as the gate we had just come through on the Hoosick Street Bridge. Figures got out, and carried a body over to the top of the wall. My heart sank; I knew what this was. We had missed a camera, and the recording was of my team dumping a still living Colonel MacDonald, the last TF Liberty commander, into a crowd of zombies after he had tried to kill us two years ago. As we watched, the screen flashed red with heat of a pistol shot. That had been me.
“Nick, what’s that?” asked Redshirt.
“Something you have no need to know about.” Brit and I were the only team members left alive from that time. “OK, Colonel, you got me. We’ll play your little games. But if things go bad, and I expect they will, you better make sure we’re all dead.”
Chapter 6
I walked with Red back towards the Logistics area, where I knew Brit and Ziv would be loading up on whatever supplies they could beg, borrow or steal. We could have hitched a ride, but I needed time to think. On the way out, Scarletti had warned us again of the secrecy of the mission and told us there would be no supporting assets. I had argued with him about regular supporting artillery or Close Air Support, and he denied it.
Red was quiet too as we walked. About halfway there , though, he interrupted my thoughts with a question. “Nick, you know I grew up on the Navajo Reservation. Never had much education in how the white man runs things. What’s so important about this dude?”
“Well, it’s like this. When things went to shit, it took about two weeks for everything to shake out, politically. Two people above Taylor refused to serve, and everyone else was missing, especially after that disaster with the 101st getting overrun outside Washington.”
“Yeah, I remember that. Right about the time the Elders declared the Four Corners Nation. Crazy time.”
The Navajo and other southwestern tribes had declared their independence from the US within a week of the zombie outbreak. With a low population density, they weren’t really affected by the zombie plague like the rest of the country. It lasted all of two months, when they realized they wouldn’t get through the winter without some form of support from the Feds. Too many years of being forced to live on welfare had sapped the culture. They had rejoined for good after the Army had moved into Utah and crushed the Mormon Rebellion. Now, they were one of the biggest sources of manpower in the Army, and fought with distinction in the Colorado campaign.
“Well, Taylor never stepped down after the emergency seemed to be passing. They were supposed to hold elections last year, but the National Emergency Act was extended, and nothing ever happened.”
Red thought that one over a bit. “So what’s the deal with this guy Epson? Why do we have to go get him?”
Why indeed. “Because, if he is alive, he is rightfully the successor to the elected President. The military will back a legitimate successor, but until then, it will stay on the sidelines. We have to go get him and bring him back, one way or another.”
Red pondered that for a minute, then said “What about killing him? Why would we do that?”
“Remember last year when we got into it with that General up at Grande Isle in Vermont?”
He only nodded, since he still bore the scares of that engagement. I continued on. “Say some other group like the Free Mountain Republic gets their hands on him? They then can claim to be the legitimate government of the United States.” The FMR was based out of West Virginia, Northern Georgia, and the mountain portions of the Carolinas. The Army was gearing up to put the boot to them in a few weeks, since negotiations had broken down and the pressure was finally easing in the Northeast.
“So if he won’t go, willingly or unwillingly, we have to take him out.” Red spat a stream of tobacco in the pavement and said “That Scarletti is a son of bitch.”
“He’s a soldier who is 100% dedicated to the survival of the United States, and he’ll do whatever he has to do to carry out his mission. If we DON’T get Vice President Epson, I’m sure he would have no problem dropping a tactical nuke on the place. He would regret it, but he’d do it.”
“That’s some cold shit. What happens AFTER we get this guy out and back to Fort Orange?”
I laughed and said “You know that TV show Brit likes so much? Game of Thrones? Well, we’re about to land smack dab in the middle of that. Brace yourself, Red …”
“I know, I know. Winter is coming.”
We made it back to the Logistics area just as Ziv and Bognaski finished loading some replacement ammo onto the truck. Ignoring the several boxes of heavy weapons hiding under a tarp in the back, obviously stolen, I gathered them around and explained our new mission to them.
Ziv thought for a moment, then said “How about we scout, yes, and then find this man and just shoot him, and then go home?”
He had a point. Sasha Zivkovic had been in the Serbian Special Forces during the Croatian war, and was a hard, hard man. He had taken over for Ahmed as the team sniper, and spent his days out in the wild hunting Zs down, collecting the $10 bounty for each photo of a headshot undead. I considered his suggestion for a second, then dismissed it.
“We may be way far away from the Federal District in Seattle, but the politics could reach even out to here, to us. We are pretty much the only ones who know the reason for the outbreak, and dead men don’t talk. Right now the government is busy dealing with resettlement and civil unrest, but sure as shit someone is going to look into us someday. We have to back this play, if only for our own survival.”
I gave them a minute to think about it, then said “OK, let’s pack up. Bognaski, I assume you’ve got some gear in the barracks here. We’ll swing by and get it. Brit, call Hart on the radio, tell her we’ll be back later this afternoon. Don’t say anything about the mission over the net. I want all of you to start memorizing our cover story. We’re going trading, looking to open up a supply route between our farm in Stillwater and other communities over the mountain.”
“You know” said Brit “because of that reality TV show, we’re going to be instantly recognizable.”
“I know” I said. “I’m counting on it. Instead of just some grubs showing up at the gates, they might let us in just because. If they even have TV service.”
Chapter 7
“NO. Final word. You. Are. Not. Going.”
Kelly Hart was a tall woman, made to look even taller by the fact that her husband, Angelo Redshirt, stood only five and half feet. She towered over him, holding their daughter in one arm, and my son in the other. Despite this, Red wasn’t overwhelmed.
“Hon, they need me.”
“For what?” she almost barked at him.
“I can’t tell you” he said, sheepishly.
She glowered at him, and then turned to me. “He’s not going.”
“Kelly, I’m not going to argue with you. However, he has been recalled to active duty for this mission, and if he doesn’t go, they are going to come kick down his door for desertion. Be grateful that I was able to talk them out of activating you, too. As it is, you’re going to have to look after the kid for me and Brit, too.”
“Listen, Nick, I know all about the Army’s games. I just have a bad feeling about this one. Like if any of you go, you’re not coming back.”
Brit weighed in with “As if. We always come back.”
Hart snorted. “Tell that to Doc and Ahmed.”
That hurt. Both of their graves were in a field across from the house. They had died in a confrontation with the woman who had started the whole Zombie Apocalypse.
“That was a pretty cheap shot, Kelly.”
She was angry now. “Oh yeah? Those two and how many others, Nick? How many times have you gone out on a mission and lost people?”
“Every time” I answered. “This one should be quick and easy though. We’ll be back in a week, no more than that. “
Red spoke up, saying “I think maybe you guys should leave us alone for a few minutes. I’ll meet you outside.”
In five minutes, he came out the door, carrying his ruck and rifle. He looked like hell, and the door slammed behind him. Brit walked past him and started to open the door, but I stopped her.
“Brit, we need to stay out of this.”
She said “I’m not going to talk to her about that. I’m giving her Nate and I’m going to talk to her a few minutes about the kids. Give your son a kiss goodbye.”
I did, hugging the little man tight to me for a few seconds. She took him and went in, shutting the door behind her.
“You know you don’t have to come with us, you know. You’ve been through enough.”
He gestured to my artificial leg. “So have you, and you were right. If we don’t do this, I don’t trust the government to not come knocking on the door someday. She’ll get over it.”
“I hope so” I said, “I even wish she was going with us. She’s good in a fight.”
Brit came back out and we headed over to the main house to go over maps and do some planning before we set out. In the kitchen, I put down a USGS map of the Troy area, one that covered most of Rensselaer County. I had also used it as a place to mark known zombie concentrations, safe waterholes, and good hide sites. I traced my finger across the map, across Route 67 and down the east side of the Tomhannock Reservoir.
“We’re going to have to avoid going anywhere near Troy after what just happened, so Route 40 to 7 is out. I say we drive down 67, around the east side of the lake, ground the truck before we hit Route 7 again. From there we walk.”
Ziv looked at the map, and grunted. “I have hunted all down to, what is this, Pittstown? There is a serious bandit gang operating around here, at this crossroad. They hide in woods when Army patrol comes by. I have shot and killed three of them, but there is, maybe, seven more.” He took a drag on his unfiltered cigarette and continued to study the map. Brit choked on the smoke and told him to put it out. He glared at her for a moment, then pinched it out with his bare fingers and put it on his jacket pocket. Tobacco in any form was hard to come by. The two of them had been working together for years, and Ziv’s attitude to her had gone from annoyance to grudging respect, but they still butted heads more often than not. Each owed the other their life a couple times over, and would jump through hell for each other, but you’d never know it.
I agreed. “Which is a good reason to ditch the truck. Better to sneak through than have a Molotov cocktail tossed at us.” That would make for a lot longer walk, but we had little to no intel on what was on the other side of the hills from us. The world after the Apocalypse had become a very much bigger place.
“From there, we cut down to Route 2, but I want to parallel it along back roads. We can cut through East Poestenkill, come down south of Petersburgh, through whatever is left of Berlin. Maybe we can get some intel there. Then we come up to Petersburgh from the south.”
Brit spoke up. “Why Petersburgh? Why not Hoosick Falls or Berlin? A lot more houses there.”
Bognaski, who had been silent before, spoke up. “If you look at the map, they have an easily guarded fall back and defensive position where Route 2 goes up and over the Petersburgh pass. Take a look at the recon photos again.” He pointed to the laptop open on the table. “There is a wall across the top of the pass, with a guard tower at the crest. Further down, but still above the town, is another barrier. My guess is that the whole population could hold out on that windy mountain road until a Z horde moved on, and at worst fade back into the mountains. Barriers on Route 2 and Route 22 North and South make for easy traffic control and advanced warning.”
We all looked at him in astonishment. “I thought you were some kinda fuckup!” said Brit.
He blushed, and answered “I am, Ms. O’Neil. Got a lot of teammates killed once. I just like to study strategy and tactics.”
Chapter 8
We walked slowly down the road, towards the spot where Ziv had marked the bandit group on the map. Due to the mountains, this was the only way to get to our goal in any decent amount of time. That and, well, I just don’t like bandits. If we ran into them, well, less scum in the world.
Ziv had point, since he knew the area. Behind him, Brit walked with her shotgun slung over her pack, silenced pistol at the ready to take out any zombies that might be hiding in the brush on the side of the road. She was followed by Red. Together, they formed the first team of our squad, free to maneuver as needed as one unit.
Corporal Bognaski was leading a mule that carried our extra gear, but in front of him walked Kelly Hart, with an M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon slung across her broad shoulders. She had insisted on going with us, and Joe, our farmhan
d, promised that he and his wife would take care of all of our kids. I was glad to have her along. In her former life, she had several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal expert, and she was taller than any of us, quite able to handle the small machine gun with ease. She had just climbed onto the truck, gave her husband a dirty look, and settled down amid the gear, careful not to startle the mule.
I took the rear slot both because I wanted to keep an eye on our back trail, and because my prosthetic leg slowed me down a bit. I knew the area pretty well also, but I hadn’t been there in years, and Ziv had. The three of them were about a hundred meters in front of us, out of site, but not out of radio contact. That left the three of us free to maneuver if we came in contact. It was a drill we had practiced many times before; even Bognaski fell quickly into the routine.
We walked for almost five miles before we came across any human habitation. This area had been mostly suburbs, mixed with farmlands, and was quickly going back to forest. Hordes of refugees had crowded their way out of the cities, fleeing towards imagined safety in the rural areas. There they meet either refugees coming the other way, or gunfire and starvation. Bones lay scattered over the roadway, in abandoned cars, inside deteriorating houses. When I did notice them, I thought back to that scene from The Terminator, when one of the machines ground its way over a pile of skulls in future Los Angeles. Hell, that’s probably what is did look like now, after the Air Force nuked it.
