The Road to Hell- Sidney's Way

by Brian Parker

  Jim shook his head in disgust. He was starting to understand why Murphy had chosen to desert. He sighed and placed his helmet back on his head. He’d have plenty of time to think about things later. For now, he had a mission.

  “Alright, Ready First troopers,” he said as he addressed the assembled dismounts. “Let’s go and get this over with.”

  8

  * * *

  LIBERAL, KANSAS

  FEBRUARY 12TH

  Jake woke from the nap he’d taken on the bed of paper towels. It wasn’t the most comfortable place to sleep, but it beat the cold concrete floor. He glanced at his watch, it was a little past one in the afternoon. He’d been able to steal an hour of rest. He concentrated and could still hear the infected outside.

  He’d been gone from the farm for about thirty hours now. They were probably worried for him. He wished there was a way to contact them, but phones didn’t work anymore and they didn’t have any type of long-range radio, so he’d have to get over it since there was nothing he could do right now. It would stay that way until the infected found something else interesting to chase after so he and Mark could slip away.

  He heard movement on the next aisle over where the kid lounged on his bed made from bags of dog food and small pet beds. Jake had thought the kid was crazy, but the dog food was surprisingly comfortable as the pellets shifted into place and formed to your body.

  “Hey,” he whispered.

  “Yeah?” Mark replied, his voice hushed as well.

  “How long before they clear out and go looking for something else?”

  “The last time they swarmed the building like that was a month or two ago, while the trees across the parking lot still had leaves. It took them four or five days to go away, and I think that was only because something made them leave.”

  “Thanks,” he mumbled and stood, stretching his arms above his head. “I’m gonna go sneak a better look through the doors.”

  “Be careful, man. I think they forgot that we’re in here and are just too dumb to leave yet.”

  Jake nodded, but didn’t’ reply. He sure as heck didn’t want to get noticed by the infected. They’d lost interest as far as he could tell, so he didn’t want to arouse them. Most of the day before had been nerve-wracking as a couple of them pounded against the doors while others walked into the shopping carts. Several times, he’d mistaken the grating of the metal carts together as the doors opening and sprang into action to repel the intruders.

  He went to the darkest part of the store, away from the front doors and then hooked around the aisle so he was in line with them. Bringing his weapon’s scope up to his face, he scanned through the glass. There were still the same two loonies—as Mark called them—within the circle of shopping carts, but they were no longer looking through the windows into the store. Now, they faced out, positioned against the dull grey metal carts. He elevated the rifle, scanning into the parking lot. There wasn’t any sign of the other infected outside the defensive ring.

  If they were lucky, the damn things had gone chasing a squirrel or something.

  Jake considered his options about what to do with the two at the front. On the one hand, he could keep waiting and hope that they went away. It would take something mighty enticing to make them crawl over the barrier again, so he dismissed that one. He could try to sneak out the back door, but there was no way of seeing what was out there. The solid metal door was useful for keeping out the infected, but made observation of the backside of the building terrible. The same went for the sides of the building, and there were no skylights in this one to try to climb through.

  That left the front of the building and taking out the two infected. He didn’t think it would be that difficult to do, Mark had killed at least three of them through the door at varying times. His suppressed M-4 would make quick work of the infected if he shot them through the glass, but doing so would basically ensure that the store had to be abandoned and he wasn’t ready to give it up just yet, so he was going to need to open the doors.

  Jake knew that getting bitten by one of the infected lunging at him when he opened the door was a real risk if he allowed himself to become overconfident. Getting cocky about your skills is how you got dead. Easy as that.

  He crept forward, alternating his gaze between the infected outside and the floor to make sure that he didn’t accidentally kick something and make noise. It was remarkable that Mark had been able to survive alone all this time, but he’d done a shit job of keeping the garbage from used food containers cleaned up.

  When he reached the end of the aisle, he slid sideways, so he was at angle to the doors and shielded by the last of the registers. He verified that the parking lot was empty and saw movement across the street. Familiar movement.

  “Oh, what the hell?” he muttered.

  He looked through his scope again and, incredibly, saw Sidney and Sally drop into the ditch. They must have decided to come looking for him when he didn’t show up this morning at the farm. There wasn’t a way to signal them that he was fine, without—shit!

  He dove behind cover as the girls opened fire on the two infected. Glass tinkled to the ground and rounds passed overhead, slamming into the glass doors of the freezer section.

  “What’s happening?” Mark whispered loudly from the end of an aisle.

  The smell of rotten food began to permeate the store as the rancid air inside the freezers was released. It was terrible, worse, Jake thought, than the rotting corpses outside. At least the gasses from those released into the atmosphere gradually. That hadn’t happened in the freezers, it had built up into a noxious mixture that threatened to turn his stomach.

  “Ugh,” Jake groaned, swallowing the bile that had risen in the back of his throat. “My friends are shooting the infected outside.”

  “They are? Aren’t they gonna bring back more of them?”

  Another burst of gunfire peppered the freezers. “They wouldn’t if they learned to fucking aim,” he grumbled. “We have suppressed rifles, not totally silent, but good enough that the weapons themselves shouldn’t attract any attention.”

  “What about all the broken glass?” Mark hissed.

  “Yeah, well…”

  “Jake!” a woman whispered loudly from outside the front doors. “Jake, are you in there?”

  He risked a quick glance over the counter and then stood when he saw the girls had reached the ring of shopping carts. “Yeah,” he replied. “Stop shooting!”

  “Okay,” Sidney said as Sally faced outward, covering the parking lot.

  Jake shuffled over to the doors and unlocked them, then stepped outside. He examined the two infected, making sure they were dead before looking up at Sidney. “What are you guys doing here?”

  “We came to get you. Is everything alright?”

  He wanted to say something sarcastic, but chose to hold his tongue. “Yeah. Thanks. I got stuck in here yesterday when a mob of them came from nowhere.”

  “Are you ready to go?” Sidney asked. “It took more bullets than we thought it would to kill those two. I think the noise might attract some more of them.”

  “No shit,” he muttered under his breath, deciding that the girls needed more marksmanship practice once they got back to the farm. “Yeah, hold on, let me grab my bag.”

  “Ok… Should we come inside?”

  “No!” Jake hissed. “Those carts are loud as hell, all rusted together. That’s how I got trapped in here yesterday.” She nodded in understanding, resting a hand on the ring of carts. “Two minutes,” he continued.

  He turned to see Mark’s silhouette nearby, seemingly transfixed by the fact that there were other people. Jake snapped his fingers. “Hey! Time to go. Get your bag that you packed yesterday. I’m gonna get mine and then we’re out of here.”

  “Oh, uh… Okay.” The kid disappeared down the pet food aisle and Jake went to the paper products aisle where he’d slept. He lifted the heavier backpack onto his back and then picked up the duffle that he�
�d stuffed with the lighter diapers. He did a quick 360 to ensure that he didn’t leave anything behind and then groaned. He’d almost left his helmet—and more importantly, his NVGs—on the shelf.

  “That would have been a costly mistake,” he mumbled, fitting the helmet onto his head. He did a second search, more thoroughly this time, conscious that he’d almost left one of the most important pieces of gear he owned, besides the suppressor for his weapon.

  When he was sure there was nothing there, he walked quickly to the front of the store. Mark already waited there for him, his backpack filled with food, water and candy. There were probably better things that the kid could have packed, but Jake didn’t check on his bag, that was his responsibility.

  “Ready?”

  Mark nodded. “I’ve been ready to leave this place for months.”

  “Okay. Let’s go introduce you to the girls.”

  9

  * * *

  NEAR TYRONE, OKLAHOMA

  FEBRUARY 12TH

  They crept through the field toward the old farmhouse as quietly as the dried cornstalks would allow. It was slow going, each move carefully calculated to produce as little sound as possible. From the moment they entered the fields, they’d been aware of infected in and amongst the corn. Every so often, a small pfft sound would announce the discharge of a suppressed rifle nearby.

  The half-mile trek, upright at first, then crawling across the frozen ground as they got closer, was excruciating for every one of the dismounted infantrymen, but none were as abused as the brigade commander. Jim Albrecht’s shoulder ached as he crawled, the movements made more miserable by the awkward position that he had to put his body into in order to move while he kept an eye out for infected.

  He wasn’t leading the formation, or commanding any of his elements. Jim’s world was reduced down to the half a foot on either side of him between the rows of dried out corn stalks and the twenty or thirty feet that he could see in front of him down the row. He had to trust that his soldiers would do as they were trained to do for the movement to the objective.

  As he crawled, Jim’s mind wandered to the conversation he’d had with Freddy Mac. The kid had sounded scared shitless, he even had to go into what sounded like a broom closet to pass along the information about the Koreans and Iranians—the so-called “United Nations troops”. What was Bhagat’s endgame? Why was the division commander keeping the information secret? Jim knew, or thought he knew, that New York City still held firm and that several smaller military installations across the US were secured against the infected, but could they withstand these invaders as well—if that’s even what they were.

  He clutched at the thought. Why did he automatically assume that the North Koreans and the Iranians, enemies of the US before the outbreak, were still enemies? Wasn’t humanity fighting for its very existence against the infected? Maybe they were genuinely trying to help.

  Yeah, right, Jim laughed to himself. Those fuckers are involved somehow. They have to be. He could suspend reality long enough to believe that the North Koreans were isolated from the rest of the world, what with few international flights and heavily-defended, relatively short international borders, but the Iranians? No way. They had major commercial travel routes through their country and lengthy land borders with other countries in the Middle East. If Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Turkey, just to name the larger countries surrounding it, had been hit hard, then without prior knowledge of the infection, there was no way the Iranians could have survived intact.

  But the real question was, were they responsible? Was the sudden worldwide outbreak an attack against the West?

  It was a sobering thought. They’d been too busy trying to survive, with too little thought as to what—or who—was the cause, let alone how to pay them back. Did that mean that Major General Bhagat was somehow involved as well, or was he following orders to hold the line at Fort Bliss and not get involved with the international fight?

  The dried cornstalks beside his body shook and rattled, then spread wide as an infected staggered into view. Jim rolled away from it as the thing began to scream, lunging toward him. He had just enough time to bring his rifle up to block the infected from falling on top of him.

  The skeletal weight of the thing, which must have been a man at one time, pressed down on Jim. Only the rifle across his chest held the creature at bay. Ropes of sinewy muscle, shrunken due to starvation, strained against his hasty barrier. It clawed at him as it snapped its jaws and bellowed its hatred. Its teeth clattered against one another and the unmistakable smell of body odor and feces assaulted Jim’s nostrils.

  He couldn’t let it—

  The infected vomited a pink, bubbly froth directly onto him, coating his face and chest. The taste of copper filled his mouth as the fluid bypassed his gritted teeth, causing him to retch. The rifle gave way slightly with his involuntary reaction and he had to focus on the fight or risk getting bitten as well.

  Jim winced as the fluid stung his eyes. The viscous liquid sought every pathway into his body, to spread the pathogens of the infection. He struggled against the creature. It shouldn’t have been that difficult, it was nothing but skin and bones, but the singlemindedness of its attack made it more than enough of a match for Jim. He kicked ineffectually with his knee, trying a move he’d done several times during the mandatory Army combatives courses that he’d had to attend. It did nothing to the infected except to temporarily interrupt its screams as air was forced from its lungs.

  “Hold on, sir,” someone whispered harshly.

  He pushed with his rifle against the thing’s mass. Suddenly the pressure let up as an arm wrapped around the infected’s neck and began to pull it off of him. Through blurred eyes, he saw his gunner’s face appear around the back of the infected. Corporal Jones grimaced as he strained against the creature, attempting to choke the life out of it.

  Jim sat up, pulling his combat knife from its sheath as he did so. He thrust the knife into the thing’s distended abdomen. Noxious gases escaped through the jagged hole and the colonel pulled his knife away, then stabbed again and again. Intestines fell from the creature and still it struggled against Jones, trying to reach him.

  Blood and gore flowed down Jim’s arm, sliding into his uniform sleeve, then continuing down to his armpit. Half-digested corn spilled from its stomach and fell all around the soldier. Gradually, the infected stopped struggling. The combination of choking and blood loss was finally enough to stop it.

  Jim’s stomach lurched and he leaned to the side, throwing up. The contents of his stomach ran dry and he began to spit up yellow bile. He was dimly aware of weapons fire around him, but he was powerless to stop the vomiting.

  “Sir, what’s your—” Sergeant Turner stopped and Jim looked up to see him kneeling over him. Turner looked him up and down, then called softly, “Medic!”

  Jim wiped at his mouth with a bloody sleeve. He knew he was a goner. He’d swallowed the infected fucker’s vomit and it had gotten into his eyes. That was how the infection passed rapidly without the need to bite.

  “I don’t need a medic. I’m done.”

  “Uh, sir, you know what they say. Like one in a couple hundred people are immune—”

  Jim laughed bitterly. “More like one in a couple of thousand, Sergeant.” He sighed and sat forward, intending to push himself to his feet. Sergeant Turner shuffled backward and started to bring his rifle up. “Calm your tits. I ain’t turned yet. Still got a few hours—more than enough time to raid that house and apprehend Lieutenant Murphy.”

  “You sure that’s a good idea, sir?”

  Jim continued his movement to ease up onto his knees. “Yeah. I’m not going to die in vain. I’m going to—” He paused to spit out the bile in his mouth. “I’m going to finish my mission before I go out.”

  Two more muffled shots sounded, reminding Jim that they were not out of the woods. “We’re continuing mission, Sergeant Turner. You keep a close eye on me, if I start showing the signs… Well,
you know what to do. Until then, we’re gonna stick to the plan.”

  Turner regarded him for a moment before nodding curtly. “Yes, sir. We should only be about a hundred meters, maybe a hundred-fifty meters from the edge of this cornfield.”

  Jim wiped at his face, clearing away the putrid mixture of the infected’s vomit and his own. Would his family even know what happened to him or would he be written off as just another nameless casualty in this endless war? When he’d agreed to go on this mission, the thought of becoming infected had never crossed his mind. He was a colonel in the United States Army. He was supposed to have been several echelons removed from the front line; all of that running and gunning was reserved for the younger soldiers. Well, here he was, cold, battered, exhausted, and handed a death sentence.

  Life was shit. Feeling sorry for himself wouldn’t change any of the facts. The only thing he could control was how he went out and the legacy that he left for his family and his soldiers.

  “Hey, Sergeant Turner,” he croaked.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I never wrote one of those letters to my family that I know a lot of you guys carry around with you. I never thought I’d need one.” The NCO nodded in understanding, but didn’t say anything. “So I… When it’s time for me to go, give me a couple of minutes if you can. I want to write it and send it back to them with you.”

  “I can do that, sir.”

  “There’s also something else.”

  “We need to get moving, sir,” the NCO said, obviously wanting to skip the colonel’s melodramatics. “More infected are gonna be headed our way after that one was yelling its head off.”