by John Holmes
She bit her fist, drawing blood. Around us were the survivors of four scout teams. We had helo’d into the President’s compound just an hour before, though it seemed like a lifetime. Our intent, to capture Acting President Harkness for trial, had gone disastrously wrong. Harkness had been killed, and his deadman’s signal had gone out around the world, releasing a new form of the zombie virus that had raged four years ago. My thoughts were interrupted by a sailor who tapped me on the arm. “Sergeant Major, the Captain wants to see you. Major McHale, you too.”
I groaned as I sat up. I was a lot closer to forty than thirty, and felt it. We followed him along the dimly lit passageways, stepping over the wounded, to a briefing room. Several other high ranking officers and enlisted, from all the services, were gathered there. None of us greeted each other; we were all in shock. Our world, what there was of it, had just been yanked out from under our feet. Even as we sat there, a low rumble, more felt than heard, shook the ship.
“ATTENTION ON DECK!” shouted the Chief of the Boat from where he had been standing by the doorway. In strode a Marine Corps Major General, with the name tag of YOUNG on his uniform. He was followed by a female Navy One Star, some kind of Admiral named Ferestov. I never was very good at Navy ranks.
What I did know was that MG Harkness had been in command of the overall mission to take down the illegal government of President Taylor, operating out of the USS New York as his Command and Control Ship. The man’s face was haggard and looked deathlike in the emergency lighting. He lit a cigarette, ignoring shipboard rules, and took a long draw.
“Gentlemen” he said “I don’t know what to tell you. Direct coms to the National Command Authority are down, but the Navy and Air Force have stopped dropping nukes. The mainland, from what we can see of it, is gone. Admiral, can you give us a STIREP on the direct situation outside?”
She looked even worse than the General did, probably because she knew more. “Well, we’ve managed to escape any direct radiological effects from the nukes by hauling ass through the Tacoma Narrows and going up the Hood Canal. We should be able to unbutton soon. Prevailing westerlies will push fallout towards the mountains, so we should be able to get through Puget Sound and back out to the Pacific. We have the New York, two fast attack subs, and two cruisers and four destroyers with us. Out at sea is the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Battle group. There are various other Navy units around the world, and they have an automatic recall order to go to various ports. The Marines who went onshore, well, they’re gone.”
“Thanks” said Harkness. “We’ve had scattered reports from Army units around the country. Any large Task Force, like TF Bronco outside Denver and TF Lonestar in Texas, have been hit with the mutated plague. Both are out of action. We have no coms with TF Lonestar at all.”
I spoke up, probably out of turn, but fuck it. “Sir, what about Task Force Liberty?”
“Yeah, your buddy Colonel Scarletti ordered the arrest of every Department of Homeland Security trooper the second the assault on the government kicked off. He managed to stop the plague from getting loose everywhere except two FEMA camps, Riverhead and New Haven. They have both been nuked.”
I sat down on the floor right there and wept. My son was safe, for now. Everyone ignored me.
* See the events in Zombie Killers: Civil War, available on Amazon
Chapter 2
“Sergeant Major.” I looked up. Major General Harkness was looking at me.
“Yessir” I said, standing back up and wiping snot off my face with my sleeve.
“What’s the status of your teams?”
I looked at him, dumbfounded. Status? We were all shot to shit and dead, dumbass. No offense.
“Why?” is what I actually said.
“Someone has to penetrate Joint Base Lewis McCord and see if we can get President Epson out of the HQ bunkers there.”
I threw up my hands, letting the fatalism wash over me. “Honestly, Sir, what the fuck for? It’s all gone. Shit’s dead, the country is dead, civilization is fucking dead. I just want to go home.” The room got still. There is was. I had put it out in the open, the bogeyman. The thing we had all been thinking since the nukes had started going off.
The General stood a bit taller and addressed me. “Sergeant Major, as far as I understand it, there are thousands of copies of the Constitution in existence. Maybe millions. Did you swear an oath to it?”
I nodded. That damned oath again, the thing that made me keep going back, over and over.
“Just like I did. As long as there is a copy of that Constitution, and a single American left alive, then I’ll keep my oath. Just like I expect all the rest of you to do. Is that understood? Sergeant Major?”
“Fuck my life. My wife is going to kill me, but sure, I guess.”
The General looked at me for a second, asked me again “What’s the status of your teams?”
“I have, let me see” I said, taking my green notepad out of my sleeve pocket “a total of seven effectives. Counting me. Most of us are wounded, and we’re out of ammo and exhausted.”
“Can’t be helped. You can draw ammo. How long will you need to refit?” Man, this guy was a hard assed prick. I took a number and doubled it.
“Two hours.”
He nodded, said “You have one” and then turned to McHale.
“Major, all of our pilots were lost. We have one Osprey that was down for maintenance. Can you fly it?”
McHale puffed up his chest. “General, I can fly anything with a rotor on it!”
“Don’t bullshit me, Major. Can you fly an Osprey or not?”
McHale deflated, ego obviously punctured, but said “I think so, General. I did a check ride in one, once.”
“Well, you’ll have to be it, then. We’ve been short pilots for four years. Sergeant Major, we don’t have any Marines left to send with you except for support personnel. They’re Marines, but …”
“..they’ll get in our way, because we’re the famous goddamned Zombie Killers. I got it, Sir.”
I sat down for a minute as the rest of the briefing washed over me. Arguments over what to do next, updates on status of military units, all of it passing me by. Brit was going to kill me. There was no way I was letting her go on this one, as much as I WANTED her there, watching my back. That shrapnel she had taken in her arm had torn her up pretty good. It wasn’t her shooting hand, but it would slow her down, way down, and what we were going to need was speed. I pricked up my ears and paid attention as I heard someone mention “infection.”
“… so in conclusion, from the initial reports we received before the ground forces went off the air, is that the new version of the plague was initially airborne.” The woman speaking wore the insignia of a CBRN officer, one who was in charge of defending troops from Chemical, Nuclear and Biological attacks.
I raised my hand, and she nodded to me. “So what you’re saying is that we’re going to get infected if we go outside the ship? How the hell are we going to LIVE?”
“No, Sergeant Major. What I’m saying is that the areas that were covered by whatever delivery system will be highly infectious. It’s not just a bite anymore. However, a Chem team reported, before they were overwhelmed, that it was contained in a crushed, dust like powder similar to Anthrax. Wearing respirators, you should be OK, provided you decon when you get back to the ship. Areas outside the immediate dispersal area should be safe enough.”
“But the base itself was hit.”
She nodded. “Yes, there was a detonation at several different points on the base. Probably from prepositioned explosive packages near likely troop concentration areas.”
“So we can’t actually bring the Osprey back to the ship, since the rotors will have kicked this stuff up.”
General Harkness waved that consideration aside. “We’ll figure something out while you’re on your way. The priority is getting President Epson and as many of the senior staff as you can out of the HQ building, assuming they’re still alive. The bunker
has an air over pressure system, so they should be OK, but we don’t know right now. You have forty nine minutes, SGM. I suggest you get moving.”
I threw him a sloppy salute and headed back down to the compartment the team was holed up in, followed by Major McHale. We only got lost twice.
Chapter 3
The Team room smelled like a slaughter house. The heavily wounded were in the ships’ hospital, but the lack of air circulation had turned the smell of dried blood and torn meat into something noxious. It made me want to gag, even though I knew I didn’t smell any better. My leg ached where some shrapnel had buried itself, but I ignored that.
“Balls, I want you to get me six whole bodies. We have to go into JBLM and rescue the President.”
The look on SFC Billy Ball’s face told it all. It was one of resignation and determination. “I knew some stupid shit would come up. OK, where and when?”
“Flight deck, thirty minutes. Bognaski, go down to supply, wherever the hell that is, and get us, say, twenty promasks and forty filter cartridges. NOW!” I yelled at him as he sat there. I knew he was tired, but we had to get going.
“What about ammo, Chief?” asked Staff Sergeant Collier, who was busy cleaning his rifle.
“As much as you can carry, and put more on the bird” I answered, wishing for our modified M-4s that we used for Zombie killing. There was going to be a LOT of that.
“Where is Brit?” I asked Hart, who was attaching cans of linked 5.56 ammo to her load bearing vest. The big woman jumped up and down to settle everything on her, then grunted in satisfaction. She must have had close to two thousand rounds in various cargo pockets and pouches.
“She went to sick bay to get her arm looked at and to hide from you. She said you were going to get talked into doing something stupid and she didn’t want her last moments with you to be filled with anger. “
I sighed, but I was inwardly relieved. I didn’t want a fight with her. I ran my finger down the list. “Orr, go get a Combat Lifesaver Bag filled. You’re our medic on this one.” He scowled, but left to secure the things he would need. “Don’t forget a cap gun!” I yelled after him. Medics carried what had become known as a “cap gun”, usually a .38 revolver, for mercy killing those who had been bitten. I expected to lose, well, everyone, on this mission, but just in case. We didn’t need one of our own turning on us.
Ball, Bognaski, Orr, maybe Hart for firepower. That left four more to round out the team. I wanted guys that were used to working with each other, and most of Team Two was still alive. Ball was their Team Leader anyway, so we could roll with that. Collier, Williams, Sullivan, Kisner. All decent guys from what I remember, but I hadn’t really worked with them before. Fine, I would make them the security while Nasty, Orr and I went after the President. I could give a shit about the rest of the staffers, although we would try to get them out alive. My main concern was getting the President out.
I found the four of them at the back of the room. They had all served on the same team for years now, and were a tough bunch of guys. I didn’t know all their backgrounds, but they wouldn’t have made it this far without being good shooters. They stood up as I approached.
“Jeez, Nick, you look like shit” said Kisner. I probably did, but no worse than the four of them. We were all battered and torn from the fighting earlier in the day. Williams had duct tape holding his pants together, those shitty ACU fatigues that the Army had way too much of still.
“I assume that Billy gave you all the lowdown?”
Sullivan, the ranking man as a Staff Sergeant, answered for them. “Sure did. We were just cross loading. We’ve all got double basic loads of 5.56 and .22 for our pistols. Straight up Z hunt.”
“Good, then I don’t have to give you some rah rah bullshit speech. We go in, get whoever we can out of the bunker, get them up on the roof for pickup and jet back here. Easy as pie.”
All four of them burst out laughing to the point of having to sit down. “Fuck you all, dipshits” I said, feeling the ghost of my first smile in days trying to break through.
Going back to where I had grounded my equipment, I sat and mindlessly cleaned my rifle, something I could do, and had done, in pitch black darkness. Hell, I could probably even do it in my sleep. Of my team, Ziv and Red were in the infirmary, and Hart was there also with her husband while they operated on his foot. I had some time to myself, so I took my weapons and started breaking them down. While I cleaned, I thought about what General Harkness had said.
The United States, as we knew it, was dead, but maybe, just maybe, with the right leadership, something better could come of it. Certainly the dictatorship that had just ended less than three hours ago had been horrible enough, and the people around me, those who were left, were a tough, dedicated bunch of survivors. The undead would take care of themselves, eventually. Even the newest, though our numbers would be pretty small compared to them. We knew how to fight them, how to fort up, how to clear areas, how to pioneer and survive. Even now, four years after the original plague had burned like wildfire through the world, those original undead were rotting away. Maybe it had been God’s way of fixing things on the planet. I didn’t know, but, if He was willing to give us a chance, well, that’s all a fighting soldier ever asks for.
I looked up to see Brit sitting on a duffle bag straight across from me. In the harsh glare of the ships lighting, she looked more beautiful than anything I had ever seen. Her red hair shone blood black, and she had scrubbed her face so that her pale skin was white as parchment under the fluorescents. Her blue eye blazed out at me, the other one still hidden behind the patch.
“What?” I asked. I had no idea what she was thinking. Anger, fear, who knows what.
She said nothing and came over to sit next to me on the hard deck. Being careful not to touch her bandaged arm in its sling, I leaned against her. We sat like that for a minute, saying nothing, and I thought about the girl I had met, what seemed a lifetime ago, in the snows of Syracuse.
“Come home” she whispered in my ear, then got up and walked away.
“I will” I promised her, but she didn’t hear me. A few weeks ago, I had tried to eat my pistol and she had stopped me. I had been in a black, black depression at the uselessness of it all, one that had only lifted when I had decided to say screw it, and let the chips fall where they may. I really didn’t care anymore what happened to me, but for Brit and our son Nate I would go through hell and back.
Chapter 4
Away to the east, over the intervening hills, clouds glowed red and angry, the aftermath of nuclear fires. The detonations had stopped; apparently someone with enough sense had decided the outbreak was uncontainable and ordered the Navy and Air Force to stop launching nukes. As we assembled on the flight deck, doing pre-combat checks and inspections, the normally cloudy Pacific Northwest skies were being mixed with soot and ash from fires on shore. Those weren’t from the nukes, not in the west, but from people looting and burning.
As we went over our mission and did a brief rehearsal of actions on the objective, reviewing the building plans and assigning roles, a sleek grey ship, probably a destroyer, pulled up beside the New York. I stood up to look over the rail and watched as it interposed itself between our hull and what looked like a fleet of small craft. The gun on the front end of the ship spun left and fired directly at the closest boat, a large cabin cruiser with a deck full of people. The round impacted slightly off to one side, and I figured it was a warning shot. Apparently not, because the gun moved a little and fired into the boat, blowing the thin fiberglass hull to pieces and sending bodies flying into the air.
The rest of the guys had stood behind me to watch. When the boat exploded and settled into the water to burn, I expected some kind of protest from someone, but we all just sat there and watched the scene unfold. A contingent of sailors on the destroyer came out and manned .50 caliber machine guns on the deck. We all waited in silence to see what the refugees would do, each of us thinking “turn back, you dumbasses”
in our minds. They did hesitate for a few seconds, some in the rear even turning around, but then some idiot in a speedboat opened his throttles and almost leapt out of the water, directly towards the ship that somehow represented safety from the undead.
I’m not sure what they hoped to accomplish. They could never have gotten up the sides of the destroyer. Maybe it was just suicide by cop. In any case, the sailors opened up and spouts of water ripped open in a trail until they intercepted the lead boat, which quickly came apart under the heavy rounds. They poured it on, lighting up any boat that came within five hundred meters.
As we watched, slightly higher than the destroyers’ fantail and able to see everything, one sailor stood up from her place on a .50 and started to argue with what I assumed was a Chief or Officer standing behind her. We could hear the argument, but not the words. It was stopped abruptly when the older sailor pulled out a pistol and shot her through the chest. She fell heavily to the deck and started crawling, leaving a trail of blood. Her body twitched and then fell still, b blonde hair soaking up the pool of blood as soon as it spread. The rest of the sailors on the guns had stopped firing, but one look at her body and a command from the Officer and they returned to engaging the boats. We turned back to what we were doing as crew members from the New York wheeled an MV-22 Osprey out of the hangar onto the flight deck.
It was going to be a hard, hard world for a while. We had been getting used to some return to normality, but it looked like we were about to return to the bad old days of right after the infection got loose. I looked at each of the guys, and they looked right back at me. Each of them had survived for years through horrific combat situations; there were no noobs with us now. The guys all had beards, dirt and scars covering their faces, and looked like a bunch of ragged tribesmen. I gathered them around for a quick talk before we boarded the Osprey, which was even now spinning up its rotors.
