Irregular Scout Team One: The Complete Zombie Killer series

by John Holmes

  What if there were more defenders than we expected? I requested a backup QRF in boats from the Marines, and after much bitching by Scarletti, he gave in.

  What if we came under air attack? Each team was given a Stinger missile, a severely rusty skill. Fortunately Scotty Orr from Team Two had been an Air Defense guy in the 82nd, and he schooled us all pretty intensely.

  What if one of the helos went down? We developed alternate breeching and defensive plans, established alternate command and control. If we down to only one team, we would still go through with it.

  How were we going to handle casualties? The team medics would establish a casualty collection point at the breech, and then move them forward to the front of the building for evac with Team Five to the boats.

  What if there was indirect fire? Any 155 battery located on the mainland could range us, but I doubted they would with Taylor there. We decided to ignore it as something we couldn’t do anything about.

  What if there were armored units? None had shown on the satellite feeds, but just in case, we grabbed two launcher units and four Javelin missiles. We also took a couple of AT-4’s for armor or bunkers. Just in case.

  What if Acting President Taylor was wounded and / or immobile? We added a collapsible stretcher and Doc McWane drew a serious medsurge kit from stores. I winced as I saw him working, remembering my dead friend, Doc Hamilton.

  “Waldo” I said as he packed some plasma into the kit “how good are you?”

  “Well pegleg, I reckon I can raise the dead if I need to. Get it? Raise the dead?” He laughed and spit a stream of tobacco juice on the flaw. I could barely understand him between his Texas drawl and the wad of chew in his lip.

  I groaned. “Why did your parents name you Waldo, anyway?”

  “I dunno, but they had a hard as hell time trying to find me when I was in trouble!” Everybody’s a joker.

  The third day we refined our walk through. I took Brit out of the practice runs, and she freaked me out by going along quietly. I watched her walk back to the Operations Center, quietly whistling Taylor Swift’s “Shake it all” and throwing a wiggle into her hips. Most of the guys stopped what they were doing. Even Red did, until Hart smacked him upside the head.

  “OK, you sons of beaches. Do it again.” And we did.

  Each team took up positon as if we had just dropped out of the MH-60’s. We had waited for dark and this was our final rehearsal before we got on the transports to head west. At the sound of Scarletti’s whistle, we started off in a rush.

  This one was a live fire, using a shoot house that the infantry had built for us out of plywood and tires. We advanced forward, Team Two slightly behind us and angled left while we covered right. Targets popped up in the periphery, representing guards, and we dropped them, moving slowly and smoothly up to the wall.

  “Hart” I said, and she laid out a rope of plastic explosive on the plywood wall. Hopefully a smaller charge than the one she was going to use on the cinder blocks. I turned away as she counted down with her gloved fingers three, two, one and triggered it. One of the plywood panels blew inward and we charged through the opening.

  Red led the way, firing two shots into a target which had fallen to the floor, then sweeping right. I followed behind him, quartering the left side of the room and moving forward. Ziv followed, moved past me, knocking down two targets that popped up at the end of a hallway with his automatic shotgun. He was using slugs now since pellets would bounce of the tires that lined the walls. He moved forward and stopped at a doorway that appeared on the left. Bognaski came up to his shoulder and tossed a flash bang in, waited for the CRACK and blinding flash, then moved into the room. As they went in, Red and I moved forward to the end of the hallway, where a box was drawn on the plywood to simulate the stair way going up.

  “CLEAR” yelled Ski, and he and Ziv reappeared. Ziv went out and took position at the breech with Hart, watching the backyard. Doc McWane and Doc Collier hustled in.

  I keyed my MBITR Radio and called Lt. Kraus, “Two, clear to stairwell, proceed.”

  “Roger One.” In the real assault, Team Two would be right behind us, flowing up the stairwell and assaulting whatever guards were upstairs and seizing Taylor. For this exercise, they had another shoot house laid out on what we thought the upper floor would look like.

  We heard shot echoing from outside, and then a blood curdling scream that choked off.

  I started to call over the radio, but I was cut short by a panicked cry of “MEDIC” from outside, and McWane and Collier both jumped up and ran.

  “Two, report.” I tried repeatedly as I moved out of the building, headed for the other building. “Safe your weapons” I reminded the team as they fell in behind me.

  They had dragged Lt. Kraus out of the plywood structure, and McWane was bending over him with a headlamp switched on, shining powerfully on the still body. The young officer, who had come to Team Two straight out of OCS, was covered in blood. SFC Ball sat by the doorway, holding his head in his hands.

  Collier stood up and shook his head. Seeing me, he came over. “Took a round though the carotid artery. Bled out.”

  Godfuckingdamnit.I walked over to Ball and hunched down next to him. He was sobbing quietly, tears streaming down his face. “Balls, what happened?” I asked, as gently as I could. I had a feeling that I already knew.

  “Stupid fucking kid charged right past me just as I fired at a pop up. No signal, no hand on my shoulder, NOTHING! Just charged right fucking past me and into the barrel of my gun. You know what it’s like coming up a stairs? Waiting to get shot in the head?”

  I did know. The pucker factor so high because you couldn’t see what was up above, and whoever was waiting knew you were coming.

  “I couldn’t see shit through these fucking NODS, no peripheral vision. Just the target popping up and then a flash just as I shoot, then he grabbed his neck and his blood was shooting all over the place, and he chokes off. I tried to stop it, but …”

  I looked at him. In the backwash of the medics’ lights, I could see that he was covered in blood.

  “Hey. Hey Balls. Billy.”

  He looked up at me with dead eyes. “Billy, if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine and Ziv’s. Not yours. We should have had us do some dry runs with Night Vision. I trusted too much to all of us being experienced, and that kid was too eager. Lost his cool when live rounds were going off. He got caught up in the moment.”

  He sighed and got up as the thud of rotor blades started to echo from Fort Orange. “What a fucking waste.”

  Chapter 24 Last Stand of the Red Bulls.

  The C-130J plowed on through the summer night air. I had quit being terrified after the first hour of the flight, a hair raising roller coaster ride through a rain front, and every single bump of turbulence set my heart pounding. Now we were in smoother air, and well, you can only be terrified so long before boredom sets in. I had even started to doze a little bit, even though the fold out canvas seats were as uncomfortable as hell.

  Brit lay stretched out, her head in my lap, cushioned by a rolled up gortex jacket. As soon as we had passed through the weather front, she had unbuckled and stretched out to grab some rest. She was snoring gently and a puddle of drool had formed on the gortex. The rest of the guys were sleeping, cleaning weapons, or reading. We were scheduled to touch down just after dawn and go in early tomorrow morning.

  My mind was occupied by the Big Picture, the politics, and thinking about Scarletti. Just before we left, he had handed me a data stick and said simply “Good Luck. That’s the only copy.” Ruthless bastard, but I trusted his word. He might come after us some other way, but we had done what he asked, and once we had

  boarded the plane for this last part, he had come through.

  I was also trying hard to think of this as any other raid on a High Value Target, but the weight of forces against us made me very nervous. These weren’t some Iraqi tribesmen wearing track suits and carrying rusty AK’s. The Department of Hom
eland Security troops were mostly guys who got a kick out of being an asshole, going on a power trip, and they had excellent weapons, good body armor, and good training. They were also going to have their backs to the wall once they realized the Regular Military had turned against them, and Sun Tzu had warned of fighting troops with no way out. To that effect, I had convinced Captain H to take a tripod mounted MK-19 automatic grenade launcher and a couple hundred rounds. It was bitch to carry, but it could reach out 1500 meters and penetrate light skinned vehicles. We would disable it and leave it on the retreat back to the boats. He also had two M-240B machine guns and a pair of SAW’s. I wanted him to have enough firepower to stop any counter attack in its tracks.

  Did I forget anything? I found myself gliding down that dark, twisted path again, and I shoved those thoughts aside. In order to survive, if I even wanted to, I had to put all thoughts of the future in a deep lockbox and concentrate on the here and now.

  I closed the book I was trying to read, some preposterous pre-apocalypse Zombie thriller written by a popular military Sci-fi author. A thirteen year old girl as a one woman killing machine? Most thirteen year girls I knew (Not many, I admit), had the coordination of giraffe, and needed twenty hours of sleep a day. Please. Brit was the most competent female fighter I knew, and she had been shot twice. Every time I read more of it, my missing leg reminded me that it was just a book, and real combat fucks you up.

  Seeing I was awake, a crewman came by and gestured to me, pointing to her ears and handing me a headset. I pulled out my ear plugs and stuffed them in my pocket, then put the headphones on. The constant roar of the turboprops that made conversation almost impossible in a Herc was replaced by the hiss of the intercom system.

  “Hey, Sergeant Major, check it out.” She motioned to the small porthole like window next to my head. Turning carefully so I didn’t wake up Brit, I craned my neck to look out. Below us, the upper Midwest stretched dark and brooding, illuminated by a full moon high overhead. Two rivers were in sight, one of them the Missouri or Mississippi by its size, glittered in the moonlight, and barge traffic showed steady lights in a string on the larger one. Away in the distance, the ruins of a large city, Chicago or Detroit maybe, shone dead in the moonlight. A few isolated lights gleamed on the horizon, maybe shipping on the Great Lakes.

  “Seen it before. What, exactly am I looking for?”

  She popped some gum in her mouth and chewing to relieve some pressure in her ears. “Ever hear of the last stand of the Red Bulls? The Battle of Two Rivers?”

  I shook my head, though I knew she must have been referring to the Army’s 34th Infantry Division, the famous “Red Bulls”, a National Guard unit spread around the Midwest.

  “Well, take a look down below.”

  I craned my neck around to peer further out the small porthole shaped window. I could see a dark line gouged between the two rivers, some sort of canal or water filled ditch. North of the line were what looked like acres and acres of white, petering off into the distance. From this altitude, it looked like some weird snow field. Scattered amid the white were round, water filled lakes that I recognized as craters from, probably, bombs weighing at least two thousand pounds. Looking closer, I could see black dots that were probably wrecked cars and other vehicles, hundreds of them.

  “What is that?” It was mid-summer, so I knew it couldn't be snow.

  “That, Sarge, WAS a big chunk of the population of the upper Midwest. People from Detroit and Chicago, other big cities. The National Guard set up an evac point for shipping people upriver to Omaha, and then back to the Northwest. Word got out, and the population swarmed here. More than three MILLION people, trying to get on to the barges. Engineers dug a ditch and the Thirty Fourth Infantry Division, with a mixed bag of other units, stood their ground while wave after wave or refugees tried to push through to the water front. Rogue army units, too, gangbangers with automatic weapons and every farmer with a rifle who wanted to save his family.”

  “You were there?”

  “Yep. We shuttled back and forth between Offutt Air Force Base and a dirt strip right alongside the river. See that?” she said and motioned to a rough patch of sheet metal, then to its twin on the opposite of the aircraft. “Twenty five millimeter round, through and through. A foot lower, and we would have never got off the runway.”

  I kept looking out the window. “So the army just mowed them down?”

  “No” she said “mostly they did it to themselves. Of course, the Air Force gave them some help when it looked like the lines WOULD break. Then some infected got in there, and it turned into a real mad house. THAT’S when we started dropping Fuel Air Explosives on them.”

  “But the blast radius…”

  “Yep. Commanding General of the Red Bulls called it right down on their own positions as they evacuated the last women and children onto the barges.”

  I sat back and looked at her. Kid couldn’t have been more than eighteen when the shit hit the fan, and here she was calmly talking about dropping bombs on millions of people. The scars we all hid.

  “That must have been something, flying around with thousands of gallons of gas strapped to explosives.”

  She made a gesture to the back of the plane and laughed. “What do you think is in that pallet there? Someone set up a loudspeaker outside St. Louis a few days ago, and there’s a couple hundred thousand Zs crowded around it right not. It’s PEANUT BUTTER JELLY time!” She started making moves like the fat kid in that old commercial, and I laughed.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Concussion turns their brains to jelly, and the muscles too. They’re still alive, maybe, but ain’t going anywhere, and a lot of them get toasted anyway. Gotta get back to work, ten minutes from the drop. “

  She left me and started going around to the guys, shaking them away and yelling for everyone to strap in. I wanted to watch, so I got up and stood on the opposite side of the ramp from the controls, and tethered myself in.

  Two more crewmen came over and unstrapped the rear pallet, and rolled it forward a bit till it touched the ramp. With a loud whirring sound and a rush of air, the ramp started to come down. When it reached level, the plane slowed and then tipped sharply upwards, squashing us all downward with G forces and sending the pallet skidding out the back. It disappeared into the darkness followed by loose change, used MRE bags, whatever garbage had collected during our flight, an M-14 rifle, and Corporal Bognaski.

  I reached out snagged his leg as he flew past, a startled look on his face. Just as the cheap flimsy ACU pants started to rip, the plane tiled back level and we were weightless for a second, then both of us slammed back down on the decking. The ramp started to rise and I let go of Bognaski, but held onto the plane. We both stood up once we had regained level flight, and his face looked sickly in the green lighting.

  “Damn” he said to no one in particular, looking down at the rip “I think I need new pants.”

  Ziv, angry at having been woken up, said “Just sew it, Nancy.”

  “No” yelled the Corporal over the engine noise “I need new pants right now. I shit myself.”

  The entire gang burst into laughter. Ziv came up and put his arm around the smaller man’s shoulders. “Now, Ski, now you are part of team, yes!” and laughed uproariously.

  Chapter 25

  We touched down at JBLM just as the sun rose behind Mount Rainier. As we circled in for landing, the whole place looked like someone had kicked an anthill. We shifted back south, and as we did, I got a look at the entrance to the base. A long column of armored vehicles stretched out to the gate, and even as I watched, the still shadowed ground was lit by bright flashes. These were followed by explosions as M1 tanks blasted their way through a group of armor that had been blocking the entrances to Interstate 5.

  The C-130 plummeted down towards the ground as a flash of light shot past the tail of the plane. We banged down hard on the runway, hopped back up in the air, and then came down again with a final lurch.
The pilot stood on the brakes and we came to a seatbelt straining stop. As the engines shut down, we could hear the crackle of small arms fire way off in the distance, punctuated by cracks and booms as tanks duked it out. As we exited the ramp, a stray 120 millimeter tank round skipped overhead with a fluttering sound.

  “Damn” said Red “this is some bad shit you white people got going down, Nick.” He was right, and even Ziv and I had never been mixed up in anything like this. Thankfully we weren’t going straight into that fight. As if to punctuate that thought, a battery of M-109 Paladins trundled up to the side of the runway, dropped their spades, unlocked their guns, elevated, and sent three rounds each into the sky, then hauled ass away from their firing point.

  “RUN!” I yelled, and I took the team and ran as fast as we could away from the plane. Just as we dove into a ditch on the side of the runway, a volley of counterbattery rounds came crashing in to where the howitzers had fired. The C-130 caught some shrapnel and burst into flame. Aviation fuel caught fire and the entire plane went up with a WHOOMP. I felt the heat wash over us, and a mushroom cloud of smoke rose above us. We all sat up, stunned. The young woman whom I had been talking to on the flight had disappeared, incinerated.

  Fire trucks quickly rolled up and started spraying the wreckage, but the plane was a total loss. We stood watching as an enormous bulldozer rolled up and, despite the flames, shoved the plane to the side of the runway opposite us. As soon as it was clear, a pair of F-16’s rocketed down the runway, followed by a pair of A-10. All four planes were armed to the teeth, the Falcons with air to air missiles and the Warthogs with rocket pods and bombs on external hard points.

  “HELL YEAH, GET SOME OF THOSE BASTARDS!” yelled one of the guys from team two, and he shook his fist in the air as they shot past, quickly spreading out and reaching from the sky. What could only be a Patriot missile zig zagged its way across the sunrise and exploded behind the trailing A-10, even as the first one turned over and unleashed its 30mm cannon at what I assumed were defending Homeland Security vehicles on I-5. The second plane fell to earth with no chute.