As the Tahoe flashed by, Zack thought he could see other figures, coming from the cross street, descend on the shot guys. One of them was still alive, and shrieked as an attacker fell on him. Then they were past it. Zack swallowed a huge bolus of something, fear probably, in his throat. Gotta keep my cool here… gotta be cool. Even if he was sure he was going to buy it, he still had a job to do. And he had a sacred responsibility to the men he served with.
Whatever calm had descended when they went out, it had proven temporary. The gunfire was back with a vengeance, there was much more smoke in the air – and they could all now clearly see the fucked-up people, in ones, twos, and crowds, stumbling from place to place. They seemed to give chase to the Tahoe as it roared by.
Maybe they need help, Zack thought. But they’re sure as hell not getting it from us…
He was in absolutely no mood for charity at this point.
He looked across at Baxter, as a stray round cracked into the bulletproof glass, causing them both to reflexively duck. They both fell to the side and into each other, as Dugan swerved around something, or someone, in the middle of the road. And right then, for no reason he could work out, it suddenly seemed very important to Zack that he keep Baxter from dying today. The rest of them were grizzled sons of bitches, all of whom had known what they were getting into.
But Baxter was like some kid on a school trip gone wro—
As the Tahoe peeled around a corner, it ran over something with a sickening bump. Dugan didn’t even slow down. Ten seconds later, they were at the safehouse. Dugan twisted the wheel violently as he braked, then threw it in reverse and backed up to the gate with a jerk. Bob jumped out and covered the street, while Zack and Baxter got the gate open. They barely had time to jump out of the way as Dugan lurched it back in. Bob pulled the gate closed behind him, at which the analysts hefted the stretcher out of the truck.
As Bob got the side door open and they entered, Zack was second from the rear, but he stopped as he heard something behind him. His halt nearly jerked the other end of the stretcher out of Baxter’s hands. But stop Zack did, and he squatted down and peered under the Tahoe, where the noise came from.
“Oh my fucking God,” he said, literally not believing what he was seeing. Someone was actually wrapped around the undercarriage and axle. And that someone, or what was left of him, was still fucking alive.
“Go, go, go,” Bob said, picking up the rear of the stretcher and pushing them all inside. Dugan was still out there. And as they climbed the stairs, they heard a pair of .45 pistol shots behind them.
Then the door slammed shut.
* * *
Zack scrubbed his hands raw in the bathroom sink. When he’d done it three times, he looked up into the mirror in front of him. He looked whiter than usual. And he could swear his half-kinky hair had been scared straighter. Mainly what he saw was the absence of his mask. The Rushmore one, that he had worn through every crisis and clusterfuck and emergency over a long and taxing and high-stakes career. He knew it was vitally important that he get it back in place. A few deep breaths, and a minute gathering himself, and the job was done. He marched back into the TOC ready to be effective again.
Or at least look like he was.
Baxter sat at his station, evidently too freaked out to make small talk. But he still did his job, giving a sitrep, speaking dully. “I’ve checked voice, text, and dropbox messages since we went out. There’s not much – and virtually nothing local. It’s all from DC or overseas.”
“That’s weird,” Zack said, settling in to his station. “I’d expect there to be a shit-ton of chatter right about now. Okay. Let’s start by briefing the Langley desk. We’ll do a spot verbal, then we can tag-team on an initial structured report. Okay?”
Baxter nodded vigorously.
The SEALs were upstairs with the casualty again, who had been coming into and out of consciousness. Bob was doing what he could for him, but now popped his head back in the TOC.
“Zack. Hey, Plan B has got to be some kind of a medevac, or at least casevac, for this guy. It might be too late by the time they get a bird here. But we’ve got to try to get him to Lemonnier. What can you get flying?”
“Check,” Zack said. “On it.”
Bob turned to go, but then turned back. "Hey."
"Yeah?"
"What was in that room?” No answer. “In the hospital."
Zack didn’t look up. "Not even talking about that."
Bob nodded and withdrew again.
Zack hailed Lemonnier. They were an inexplicably long time picking up. When they did, the guy on the other end sounded like he was panting.
After identifying himself and his station, Zack said, “We have a litter-urgent casualty, and are requesting priority dust-off for a medevac, how copy?”
“Copy that, Shotgun. Be advised that we have no medevac available at this time.”
“Okay, casevac, then. Just send us a bird of some description. He’s stable now, and we’ll just carry him on.”
“We have no rotary-wing assets available at this time, over.”
Zack’s eyebrows went north. He cleared his throat. He wanted to say, What the fuck is up with that? but limited himself to, “What is your situation there, over?”
Another pause. “We have multiple units in contact outside the wire. There’s also disorder in Djibouti town, and the civil authorities have requested troops from us to assist with that. Finally, we’ve got sick and injured personnel we’re having to casevac back in from those engagements, over.”
Zack felt something sink inside him. His face was truly blank now. He keyed his transmit bar. “That’s received, with thanks. Please advise soonest when medevac becomes available. Out.”
He sat then in silence, staring at nothing for a full minute. And he could feel it coming in on him again, like a weather front.
He was never going to get out of there alive.
A woman’s scream, from outside, tore into his dark reverie.
In the Head
He crashed into Maximum Bob and Dugan on the stairwell, him trying to run up as they ran down, rifles in hand. They won. “Make way!” Bob growled, and Zack backed all the way down to the landing and into the hall. As those two continued down, he ran up to the top floor and stuck his head out one of the opened-up window holes.
On the street below, almost directly out front, was a woman in traditional Somali garb, a long billowing dress and headscarf. She was carrying something. She was also limping, moving as quickly as she could, and looking back fearfully over her shoulder. Behind her were a half-dozen people, pretty obviously the sick ones. And there could be no doubt what they were doing – they were chasing her.
This was the best look Zack had got of any of them. The skin of their faces seemed to be covered with sores, or maybe scabs, and was an unnatural color. At least a couple had clearly been wounded in some way, with visible gashes on their arms and faces, or just blood on their clothes. Two were in hospital gowns. The main thing was how they moved: in a daze, inhuman motions, blind instinct, pursuing – in this case pursuing the terrified young woman.
Zack heard another cry, not the woman’s this time. And then the front door of the safehouse banged open, Maximum Bob and Dugan flowing out of it, walking with their rifles to their shoulders, spreading out to either side. At the noise, the woman turned toward them. And Zack could see two things now. One, the woman was very young. Two, the thing she was carrying was a baby – the source of the other cry.
Padding smoothly toward the pursuing mob, Bob shouted in that commanding, booming voice of his. He spoke in English and Somali. “Stop! Kuacha! Stop, or I will shoot you! Kuacha, au mimi risasi wewe!” At the same time, Dugan was circling around, trying to get to the woman. One of the sick people lurched at the two of them. “Back off, man!” Dugan barked, looking unamused and not all that interested in whatever this guy’s problem was. When the man kept coming, Dugan struck him in the face with the barrel of his rifle. It knocked
him back, but he straightened up immediately, unaffected, and came at them again. Dugan put his boot sole in the man’s chest and gave him a mighty kick, sending him sprawling over backward.
But he got up again and advanced.
This was all too much for Zack to watch. “Dugan!” he yelled down to the street. “Bob! Do not get close to those people! I’m fucking serious. Stay clear. Get out of there.”
As Dugan put his arm around the young woman’s shoulder, another of the infected lunged for him. Zack could sense Bob tense up before making the decision. But it only took an instant. He shot him four times between the shoulder blades, in the center of mass.
The guy didn’t fall. He jerked but kept on coming.
Up top, Zack startled at this. But he knew 5.56 rounds were tiny and high-velocity and sometimes went right through people. If somebody were hopped up, and the shots missed his vital organs, he might not even know he was shot.
Though it was unlike Bob to miss vital organs.
“Dugan…!” Bob shouted, and Dugan spun around as the shot man was almost on him. As he whirled, he pulled his .45 from its drop-leg holster and put two double-taps in the man’s chest. The force of the heavier rounds knocked him back, but he came up again. From the other side, Bob took careful aim and now fired eight rounds into his head. Finally, the man collapsed.
But the other infected were upon them.
Out of nowhere, surprising everyone, four Somali men with AKs came skidding around the corner, and opened up. Dugan pulled the young woman to the ground, shielding her and the baby with his body. Bob hit the dirt. The Somalis kept firing, until they had cut the sick people to ribbons. They lay in ungainly piles of meat, draining fluids. Bob sprang to his feet again, his rifle trained on the Somalis. The one in the lead, older and with gray hair, raised both his hands up and out, one of them pointing his AK at the sky. He approached Bob slowly, while the other three helped the girl up from under Dugan. They spoke rapidly to her, and pulled her away.
The leader got within a couple of feet of Bob, who was still aiming at him. He leaned in and said, “Una risasi yao KATIKA KICHWA.” Bob screwed up his face, and shook his head in incomprehension. His Somali was limited mainly to life-or-death commands and ordering food at restaurants. The man took a breath, and spoke slowly, in English now. “You have to shoot them in the head.” He nodded once to see if the American understood.
With that, the four Somali men, arms around the young woman and baby, retreated around the corner, and disappeared from sight.
Zack stood frozen with his head sticking out the window, keenly wanting to unsee what he had just seen.
But then he saw something else – more figures shambling down the street, but from the opposite direction. And many more of them this time.
He screamed at Dugan and Bob to get the fuck back inside.
* * *
By the time Zack hit the TOC, he could hear them clomping up the stairs. As they passed the landing, Zack said over his shoulder: “Dugan. Your gun barrel, and your boot. Disinfectant. Now.”
“Check,” Dugan said, turning down toward the bathroom.
Zack was hailing Langley to deliver a supplemental, when another line went. He answered it. It was Creech AFB. The UAV people.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Yeah, we’ve got an MQ-1 Predator we put up in your airspace about ninety mikes ago. We started having control problems – mainly delayed control response. We think it’s something with local radio traffic there, on adjacent bandwidths.”
“What’s happening with local radio traffic?” Zack looked at his bank of radios, and made a mental note to scan around, just as soon as they weren’t being overrun by rabid plague victims.
“Don’t you know? It’s going batshit. Common operational frequencies are jammed. Too much yak, not enough spectrum. Anyway, we were worried about our asset, so we transferred tactical control to Lemonnier. We figured they’re 9,500 miles closer, so the delay wouldn’t be as bad.”
“Copy that.”
“However, we just lost contact with them. For a little while, NO ONE was flying this bird. We’ve transferred control back to us – but the delay’s worse than ever. We’re operationally ineffective.”
“Then why don’t you just land it?”
“Because, by all accounts, the shit is coming down in HOE, and we’ve got about a hundred queued requests for drone coverage. So we were wondering – can you try flying this thing from there?”
Zack was thinking that he emphatically did not have time for this kind of shit, and had about a hundred other things to do, and was about to say so. But then it occurred to him that having his own drone to task would be a pretty dandy thing. For starters, he could more efficiently find out what the hell was going on in his own AO.
He moved over to the portable GCS unit, made the control connection, and tried to remember how these things worked. It had been a while. He managed to put it on a heading for their grid coords there at the safehouse. As it flew in over Hargeisa from the northwest, Zack panned and zoomed the camera to get a sense of the streets. The feed must have been dodgy, because from a distance, the streets seemed to be… wiggling.
He zoomed in tighter.
Reluctantly, he began to understand what he was actually seeing. The streets of the densely populated northeastern neighborhood of Wadada Xero were filled up like Mardi Gras. There were hundreds of bodies, maybe thousands, thronging the roads.
And that spot was only about a mile and a half away from them.
Alamo
Zack put the UAV into a wide racetrack pattern overhead, and was still staring disbelieving at the screen, his face slack, when he realized Dugan was sitting behind him. The SEAL was backward in a chair, his arms on its back, waiting for Zack to notice him. SEALs definitely had the ability to sneak up on you, and they still sometimes did.
“You look like a dog staring at a ceiling fan,” Dugan said.
“Sorry,” Zack said, snapping back to the room. “Look at this.”
He showed Dugan the heaving throngs of the diseased on the streets exactly one district over.
Dugan whistled. “How close is that?”
“About 2,400 meters.” Zack paused. “What’s your recommendation?”
Dugan looked thoughtful. “You mean stay or go, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, let’s review our status. The whole town’s in chaos. There are sick people roaming the streets, attacking healthy people, and presumably infecting them. Everybody who’s not sick and delirious has got a gun – and is shooting the place to shit. Sound about right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. You should start by getting on the blower and trying to line us up some support – either immediately, or at least on call. And we definitely need to get that State guy out of here and to a medical facility. But, otherwise, for now, I say we stay put. Our defenses, the physical structure, are sound. I don’t think the sick will be able to get inside. They’re too fucked up. And, as for the armed survivors, unless they’re looking for shelter or resources, and are bent on taking them by force, I don’t think they can either.”
“Okay. If that’s your call.”
“The safest place for us right now is here. That may change. But we’ve got supplies for two months. We just Alamo up.”
With this, all the lights in the TOC blacked out for one second, then slowly came up again. The sound of an engine started in the background.
“And there goes the power,” Zack said.
“And here comes the diesel generator,” Dugan said. “That’s exactly why we’ve got it.” This was not their first blackout or brownout.
None of the computers or other electronics went down, as they were all on a local uninterruptible power supply with two hours’ capacity. That would now be recharged by the rumbling generator. Depending on how much they ran it, they had fuel for weeks.
Dugan shrugged. “Anyway, this might end up being what they call a self-cl
eaning oven. Go away for a few days, or hide out, and the sick people and the armed people might kill each other off. And, if they don’t, it’s still the problem of the Somali police and army. Failing that, the UN.”
Zack tapped a stylus on the UAV control console. He pinned Dugan with his eye. He said, “I don’t think this is your standard-issue civil unrest. Or your run-of-the-mill epidemic.”
Dugan held his gaze. “You think this is really the shit coming down, don’t you? The big one.”
Zack didn’t answer. He just nudged the joystick on the PlayStation controller, zooming the camera view. The heaving mob in the street was heading their way. He looked back up at Dugan. And he paused again before he spoke.
“What the hell was that out there?”
Dugan’s handsome, angular face didn’t betray any emotion. “What? You mean the guys outside we shot who didn’t die?”
“Yeah.”
“I suppose that is a cause of some concern.”
Zack slit his eyes, and parted his lips. “I heard what that Somali man said. He said you have to shoot them in the head. What the fuck does that mean?”
Dugan paused fractionally. “That we’re fighting zombies?”
“Not funny, man.”
But then he noticed that Dugan wasn’t laughing.
* * *
After a brief staring contest, Dugan went back upstairs, and Zack got on the horn. And that’s when he understood this was really happening. He spent a half an hour trying to drum up a medevac bird for the State guy, or any other kind of bird, just to fly him the hell out of there. There was nothing going.
Then he started looking for a QRF to come in and help defend the safehouse – maybe a platoon of FAST marines, a squad of 75th Rangers, helo extraction for his team, armed drones to cover them, Apaches, SAD shooters, security contractors, anything. He called Langley, State, JSOC, USSOCOM. Everyone with assets in the region was already engaged, or not even answering the goddamned phone. The shit was clearly, totally coming down everywhere. All across HOA. And, on top of it, the drone jockeys were right – comms were starting to get seriously overloaded.
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