by Brian Parker
“Only about ten.”
Even feathering the trigger, the best Jones could hope to get was five or six aimed shots, then he’d be empty. Ten rounds would have been devastating against the human enemies the weapon system was designed to combat, but against the infected, all it did was call more of them to the area.
As if they needed that to happen.
They’d changed their destination early in the trip after a near-disastrous run-in with an infected mob near Louisville, Kentucky. The city wasn’t even that big, but the infected were out in force and surrounded the small convoy. Only the giant engines of the Strykers and their massive tires had kept the convoy from being hopelessly trapped. Even with those, it was touch and go for a few minutes when one of them became high-centered on a mound of bodies.
Once they were out of that mess, they headed directly for New York City instead of trying to make it to Washington, DC first. There were very few infected and plenty of evidence of human survivors when they made their way into the mountains of West Virginia. Jake had considered trying to find them, but ultimately decided against it, rationalizing that if the survivors wanted to be found, they’d have made themselves known.
The mission had taken a turn for the worse when they reached the nearly continuous urban sprawl of eastern New Jersey. The snow and ice covered highways were often choked with abandoned or wrecked vehicles that had to be bypassed or sometimes moved out of the way, usually under the threat of nearby infected. They tried to go to the bridge onto Staten Island, but of course the New York governor had called for the destruction of the bridges into the city almost as soon as the outbreaks began.
They’d tried to find some type of docks with actual boats in the nearby Harbortown Port, but it had yielded little results. The area was a construction wasteland—great for fields of fire in most places, but not what they needed as far as providing transport across the Staten Island Sound. The infected had swarmed them from the surrounding city, blocking their return to the highway and forcing them southward to try to find a different way across the Sound.
Jake knew that somewhere along that godforsaken shoreline would be a marina or docks with a boat large enough for all of the soldiers to fit. His intuition had paid off when they rumbled up on the Harborside Marina a few miles south of where they’d initially tried to cross. Sergeant Turner immediately directed the Strykers to form a barrier in front of the marina’s entrance while a couple of soldiers went down to the bobbing boats to see if any were useable.
Parked nose to tail as a makeshift wall, the big trucks lost their advantage of mobility. Instead, they were like a line of bunkers, impenetrable by the infected. The occupants could have stayed inside them for as long as they had food and water—in theory. Jake knew the men and women in the platoon were already going stir crazy since they’d been sleeping inside the vehicles for so long and were only allowed out of them for refueling missions. If things didn’t change soon, he’d end up with a mass desertion on his hands—fitting, in a way, considering that he’d gone AWOL himself.
In desperation, Jake had authorized the platoon to turn on their Blue Force Trackers. That way, if there were any Army units keeping watch from New York City, they would see the trucks pop up on their screen. They were well away from Bhagat’s sphere of influence so staying dark didn’t matter anymore.
“That’s it, sir,” Jones grumbled into the mic as the gun above them went silent. “We’re black on ammo.”
Jake thumbed the comm over to the platoon frequency. “This is Red One in Truck Three.” He’d taken to calling himself by his old call sign once again. “We’re black on ammo. I need verification that no infected are crawling on the hull so I can pop the hatch to reload.”
He waited while soldiers in the adjacent vehicles checked the outside of his Stryker through their periscopes to ensure there wasn’t a nasty surprise waiting on him when he went outside. After a moment, the radio crackled to life. “Hey, L.T. This is Grady.”
“Um, what is it, Harper?” He hated the way the operator pronounced the abbreviation as ‘El Tee’ like he was some sort of goddamned Vietnam War soldier from a movie.
“I’m immune to these fuckers. Why don’t I just hop out and change your ammo for you?”
“Negative, Harper!” Jake said too loudly into the mic. “You may be immune, but you sure as hell aren’t bulletproof. Those things would rip you to shreds and then this mission would have been a waste of time.”
“Fuck that,” the CIA man laughed. “I’m not afraid of a few thousand creepy-crawlies. Truck Three, right?”
“Goddammit, Harper! I said negative. Do not leave your vehicle.”
The headset was silent for a moment and he pushed his head up against the circular hatch to look out through the M-45 Periscope array. He saw the hatch of the trail vehicle pop up. Then, a heavily accented voice came over the radio.
“Ah, sir? This is Shaikh. Grady just left the vehicle.”
They’d all been shocked when they learned the Iranian could speak fluent English, making them wonder what information he’d gleaned from them when they thought he was just a foreigner who didn’t speak the language. The man professed to have no knowledge of his nation’s overall goal in the United States except to help the UN exterminate the infected—what he called the Cursed. He’d stated often enough that he was happy going wherever they could kill the most of them since he’d still be performing the mission that he was ordered to do, even if every other member of his unit was dead. The jury was out on whether Jake believed him or not, but for now, every gun counted.
“Mother fucker,” Jake cursed before hitting the transmit button. “Thank you, Shaikh. Keep up the pressure on the infected.”
He tapped his gunner’s pant leg. “I’m going up,” he said when Jones looked over at him.
“That crazy fucker is gonna change the ammo, sir,” Jones replied. “No reason you should go out there too.”
Jake shook his head violently. “I’m going.”
He disconnected his CVC helmet from the curled length of communications cord and grabbed his M-4 before depressing the lever to unlock the TC hatch. He pushed against it and surged rapidly upward, bringing his rifle up to scan the immediate area for the infected. So far, they were still held at bay at around a hundred and fifty meters by the withering fire from the six trucks—five, considering his was out of ammo.
Boots thumped onto the vehicle behind him and he turned quickly. “Whoa, Jake!” Grady laughed, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “I said I was coming over to change out your ammo, buddy.”
Jake placed his hands on the hull and jumped. He caught his weight with his arms and then shimmied his butt onto the roof. “And I said to stay in your fucking truck, Harper. If you get yourself killed, then we abandoned the Campbells back in Oklahoma for no damn reason.”
Grady knelt beside the CROWS and opened the tray on the .50 caliber, then swept away a few errant links. “Look, sir, I’m as much a part of this platoon as you are. I’m immune to those fuckers, so I’m trying to do my part to keep us all alive. You get me?”
Jake seethed inside. The man was infuriating like only special operations guys could be. They were often extremely confident, refusing to listen when people told them that they weren’t Superman, and as a result they came off as condescending, even when they didn’t mean to be.
“Listen, dammit,” Jake said. “I need you to stay safe. You may be the best—and only—chance for America’s survival. Can you please—”
Grady brought his rifle up and fired two rapid shots just to the side of Jake’s chest. The lieutenant jerked, thinking the operator was shooting at him. “What the fuck, man?”
Grady laughed like he was two steps away from being committed to a mental institution, and pointed behind Jake with one hand while continuing the reload procedure with the other. He turned to see a pair of infected lying motionless twenty feet from the Stryker.
“No can do, bro,” the operator said. “Ev
en before everything went to shit, I was only good at one thing, and in my line of work, I made sure that I had every opportunity to practice my skills.” He finished loading the .50 and racked the charging handle before patting the barrel of the gun. “You can’t dangle a blooded lamb in front of a lion and expect him to do nothing.”
“What?” Jake asked, glancing at Grady before turning his gaze toward the marina. Where are those fucking soldiers with the boats?
“I’m not gonna sit tight, all safe and sound, buttoned up inside my vehicle while guys are fighting for our survival. It’s not who I am.” To emphasize his point, he brought up his rifle and fired several rounds into the massing mob of infected.
“I’m in charge here, Harper,” Jake stated. “Without good order and discipline—”
“Save it, L.T. I don’t give a shit about your good order and discipline. That’s why I got out and became a contractor. I can contribute to this fight, and you can bet your ass that I’m gonna keep doing so.”
A head popped up between Jake’s legs. It was Jones. “Sir, the .50’s loaded. I need to get back in the fight.”
Jake grunted and brought up his hand, pointing at the far off Truck Six. “You get your ass back to your truck, Harper. My men know how to utilize all of the equipment that they have to stay in the fight as long as possible. You can die for all I care. I really don’t give a shit anymore. But don’t you dare endanger any one of them, or I’ll shoot you myself.”
Grady grinned widely. “Aww yeah! Now you’re starting to sound like an officer that I’d actually take orders from instead of some pussy Academy fuckwad.”
“Fuck you, Harper. The sooner we can get you onto a boat and into the city, the better.”
“Then we finally see eye-to-eye, boss.”
The operator stood, fired a few more rounds, and then hopped over to Truck Four’s hull. Jake watched him jog across the roof, mindful to stay behind the truck’s CROWS as it rained fire down on the infected toward the west. When he leapt over to Truck Five, Jake dropped down and closed the hatch.
“Light ’em up, gunner,” he said with a raised thumb.
The machine gun began to rock overhead and Jake turned his attention back to the water. The men he’d sent were still not visible through the periscopes. He grabbed the handset for the radio that was set to the dismounts’ frequency. “Boat Team, this is Red One, what’s your status, over?”
There was silence and then, “Sir, this is Sergeant Turner. We raided the manager’s office and got a whole mess of keys. So far, we’ve got two boats running that can hold about thirty guys, max. Give me a few more minutes to find another boat with fuel. Over.”
“Roger,” Jake replied. “We need to have room for rucks and ammo. There’s no telling what we’ll find in the city. Over.”
“Acknowledged, sir.”
Jake nodded absentmindedly, knowing that the man on the other end of the radio couldn’t see him. “Red One, out.”
New York City had been isolated for almost a year. There was likely mass starvation and lawlessness, probably worse than anything that he’d seen back at Fort Bliss. Hell, going into the city might be more risky than being outside with the infected.
He turned back around and peered through the periscopes at the thousands of infected streaming toward the sound of gunfire from the surrounding city. They ran as best as their malnourished bodies could handle into the steel wall that the Stryker gunners laid between them and the rest of the platoon.
Jake hoped the boat team would get enough transports for everyone before the Strykers ran out of ammo. If they didn’t, the best case was that everyone would be trapped inside the impenetrable vehicles until the infected grew bored and wandered off in search of new and interesting prey. Worst case, the pressure of all those bodies against the sides of the vehicles would push them into the water where everyone would drown.
“Come on, Sergeant Turner,” he mumbled quietly. “Get those boats up and running or else we’re gonna be in some serious shit.”
He glanced back at the harbor and his eyes drifted toward the city, imposing and daunting, beyond the narrow Sound. “Get those boats up so then we can really get into some serious shit,” he amended.
23
* * *
FORT BLISS MAIN CANTONEMENT AREA
MARCH 1ST
Major General Bhagat skimmed the morning report. He’d had two electronic warfare teams go missing from their hide sites overnight, each about a hundred miles or so from the base. They could have gone off the net for any number of reasons, from the mundane excuse that the batteries for their comms equipment had died, to being overrun by the infected still wandering around the desert somehow, all the way to the very real possibility that they’d gotten rolled up by an Iranian or North Korean patrol.
There’d been no overt signs that the UN troops were operating in the desert. They were keeping well away from the base. But Bhagat had been able to get updated satellite feeds showing a camp near Carlsbad, New Mexico. It was set up near the intersecting lines of two hundred and sixty mile bubbles around both Fort Bliss and Holloman Air Force Base. His intel officer said the distance from each was significant in that they were beyond any standard type of flight distance from either base, hence, undetectable if the inhabitants weren’t specifically looking for them.
Fort Bliss had been unable to talk reliably with the Air Force jockeys at Holloman for several weeks. Bhagat had increasingly begun to believe the Division Signal Officer when he said their radios were being jammed, so he’d sent out three teams to try to reach Holloman, along with two electronic warfare counter-jamming teams. They’d lost contact with the last of the recon teams yesterday.
“And now the EW teams,” Neel mumbled under his breath. He took a sip of black coffee and grimaced. He preferred cream or milk in his coffee, but the base was out of both, so he had to make do with black coffee. It was a very small sacrifice to make considering what people outside the walls must have endured over the last year.
He skimmed the one-pager until he got to the paragraph one up from the bottom. He set his coffee down when he read it. The BFTs on Lieutenant Murphy’s stolen Stryker and on five of the six Strykers that Jim Albrecht had taken northward to find the little traitor had been turned on. Except the location pings from the vehicles that the signal personnel scanned for hourly didn’t make any sense. All six of the vehicles were in New Jersey.
“Freddy, get in here,” the general bellowed through his open door.
“Moving, sir,” came the aide’s response. Within seconds, the tall, lanky lieutenant’s head popped into the doorway. “Yes, sir?”
“Get me the Three, the Six…and the Two. I don’t care what they’re doing, get them up here now.”
“Yes, sir.”
While Lieutenant MacArthur set about calling the three staff officers he’d requested, Neel reread the paragraph about the Strykers.
Update to 1LT Murphy arrest: At 0734 MST, 6 BFT systems were powered on almost simultaneously in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. The city is adjacent to Staten Island, New York. The Stryker IFV that 1LT Murphy stole in October is among the vehicles, including 5 of 6 Strykers that COL Albrecht took to Oklahoma to apprehend the lieutenant. Previously, last BFT ping was on 12FEB near a small local airport in Liberal, Kansas. Unknown whereabouts of 6th Stryker. All attempts to communicate via BFT have been ignored.
“What in the hell is Jim doing up near New York?” Bhagat grumbled aloud, sipping his coffee as he read the paragraph a third time.
“Ah, sir?” Lieutenant MacArthur reappeared at his door. “The Two and the Six are on their way up. I spoke to the G-3 Sergeant Major, and he said the Three is showering after this morning’s PT.”
Neel looked up from the paper with murder in his eyes. “Then go down and get him.”
“Yes, sir.”
Was Jim Albrecht still in command of the unit? The fact that one of his brigade commanders had gone AWOL was concerning. Jim had been a trusted agent, res
ponsible for directly overseeing the combat operations of 3,900 men and women until the revolt reduced his command down to a few dozen—something even the infected hadn’t managed to do. He’d shown unwillingness to go after Lieutenant Murphy, but Bhagat was able to convince him that he needed to go after the traitor. There was a lot of information missing from the story that he needed answers for.
A knock at his door indicated the arrival of one of the staff officers. He looked up to see the Division Signal Officer. “Ah, sir… Lieutenant MacArthur said you, uh, wanted to see me?” Major Calamante said in his characteristic halting pattern of speech.
“Yeah. Come on in and have a seat, Juan. The others will be here in a few minutes.”
He waited until the intelligence officer came in before he moved to the conference table. “The Three is on his way, but I’m not gonna hold you two up.” He dropped the morning update sheet onto the table and sat down. Jabbing his finger onto the paragraph at the bottom of the page, the general said, “What are my Strykers doing in New Jersey?”
Bhagat watched their reactions. The intelligence officer’s face showed genuine surprise, meaning he didn’t know about the latest change in events. The signal officer, on the other hand, blanched. The man was likely realizing that he should have come upstairs to brief the general immediately, as directed several weeks ago, instead of putting it in a report.
“Well, ah, sir,” Calamante began.
“Cut the crap, Juan,” Bhagat said, cutting him short. “I want answers. Don’t give me some made up garbage.”
“Yeah, um… Well, sir, we monitor the net for the BFT signals around the clock, even though it’s pretty manpower intensive.”
“I don’t care that one of your signaleers didn’t get a few extra hours of sleep,” Bhagat said. “We’re not doing any type of large scale combat operations that require staying in contact during movement. We just send guys up to the wall and shoot the fish in the barrel below. Don’t make excuses.”
