Apocalypse Crucible

by Mel Odom

  The buildings that had been set aside as hospital quarters lay only a few blocks ahead of the tank. They’d be easy prey for the T-62’s upgraded 120mm main gun, and the raw weight of the war machine’s forty-plus metric tons was a fearsome weapon as well. Goose had seen M-1 Abrams crews raze buildings simply by driving the tanks through them again and again, smashing walls and breaking supports till the structures fell.

  Knowing he wasn’t going to get hit by friendly fire helped, but Goose knew if he didn’t stop the vehicle quickly, the main gun would be within range of the makeshift hospital in seconds. Once in range, the tank crew would fire on the dozens of wounded inside. None of those wounded would have a chance.

  The exploding truck loaded with dead men had been a feint. During the immediate paralysis after that attack, gun crews had raked the barricaded areas and rooftops with surgical efficiency. The devastation had been as complete as if the Syrians had had a map.

  Goose didn’t doubt that the enemy force had just such a map. The occupying army had no control over the citizens who remained within Sanliurfa. There was every chance that the Syrians had informers planted within the city, a tactic as old as the art of war itself.

  “Phoenix Leader,” Remington called calmly over the headset. “This is Control.”

  “Go, Control,” Goose responded, moving forward across the bucking tank deck.

  “Leader,” Remington said, “you’ve got a string of bogeys on the tail of the beast you went to intercept. Copy?”

  Turning around, Goose stared back along the street. Four blocks away, he spotted the dim outlines of another tank rumbling through the area where the barricade had been.

  “Affirmative, Control,” Goose said. “I see them.”

  “They’re making an all-out run at us,” Remington said. “Going for the hospital. Probably the ammo dumps and the supplies after that.”

  Moving supplies around during the day had become an automatic effort. With spies and potential saboteurs in the city, the three armies comprising the defense force had had no choice about trying to protect their food stores, fuel, and munitions. That protection was noticeable to even an untrained eye. Rotating the hospital around hadn’t been possible.

  “I’ve got rolling stock headed your way,” Remington said. “I’ve also got two Whiskey Cobras in the air. But we need to slow those machines until help can get there.”

  “Understood, Control.”

  “Stop those tanks, Leader,” Remington said grimly. “Buy us some time.”

  Goose took a final glance back along the street. The assault on the area had been nearly complete. Buildings stood in ruins all around him. The tanks arriving in the area would have a hard time passing through the terrain before rocket launchers carried by infantrymen or on the Cobras brought them down. If he could buy some time, they might just win this thing.

  But stopping the tank he was currently standing on was critical. Disabling or destroying the juggernaut of hurtling armor and artillery might bottleneck the street and provide a momentary stopgap. He started forward, climbing over the turret.

  The dead Syrian’s body suddenly fell out of the loader’s hatch and slammed into Goose, nearly knocking him off. Before Goose could recover and bring his rifle to bear on the hatch, a man’s arm reached out and pulled the hatch closed, sealing off the opening.

  Goose started forward again, clambering quickly across the turret. The main gun fired again, and the sound was deafening. Goose kept his mouth open to equalize the pressure in his ears. Even then, he was mostly deaf from the detonation. The tank shivered beneath him.

  On the front deck now, Goose pulled a satchel explosive from his combat gear. He’d grabbed the explosive from the munitions stores as soon as he heard the tank had penetrated the defensive line. Tracks were always the weakest areas on tread-driven armored vehicles.

  Lying flat on the tank’s deck, Goose primed the satchel charge for a three-second delay, held it for a quick one-thousand count, then placed the bag on the whirring right tread, praying that the explosive wouldn’t immediately fall away. The links coming up from the street caught the satchel’s heavy cloth and carried it back along the tread.

  “Fire in the hole!” Goose yelled over the headset. He rolled to his feet and stayed low as he dove from the tank’s left side. The satchel charge exploded while he was in midair.

  United States of America

  Fort Benning, Georgia

  Local Time 2129 Hours

  By the time Megan Gander arrived after getting the emergency phone call about the potential suicide, the MPs had erected a loose barricade around the Hollister home. Amber lights flickered at the tops of red-and-white sawhorses, driving shadows back from the open areas. Soldiers stood guard outside the ropes, establishing the perimeter with their presence and the assault rifles they carried, holding back the neighbors but also possibly trapping the young girl inside the home.

  One of the soldiers stepped forward and shone a flashlight into Megan’s face through the windshield as the wipers swept across, sluicing away more of the unexpected rain. Less than an hour ago, the dark sky had released a torrent.

  “Mrs. Gander?” the soldier asked. His stance bristled with challenge and authority. Three other soldiers stood nearby to back him up immediately if necessary. Fort Benning was on full alert.

  Megan pulled up the military-issued ID she wore on a chain around her neck and rolled down the rain-spattered window of her husband’s Chevrolet short-bed pickup. The truck smelled of Goose’s cologne. Even on the brief drive over from the base’s counseling center she’d missed her husband fiercely. She still did. She wanted desperately to talk to Goose face-to-face, to feel his arms around her and hear him telling her everything was going to be all right. And when she wasn’t thinking that, she wanted to be the one holding him because she’d heard his heart break when she’d told him that Chris was one of the missing children.

  “I’m Megan Gander,” she said. Rain ricocheted from the door and misted her face. Spring was often a rainy season in Georgia. It was only three days since the disappearances had rocked the world and pushed nations to the brink of nuclear disaster. Megan felt like she’d lived through years in those few days. She was sure she wasn’t alone in that feeling.

  Relief showed on the young soldier’s face as he played his flashlight over the ID and matched it against the color printout in the plastic-covered pouch sewn to his left forearm. Taken recently, the picture was a good match. She wore her dark hair short so she could easily fix it while on the go, and regular tennis and hiking with Goose while he was on base kept her fit. Except for the clothes and the circumstances, not much had changed. Right now she wore a shapeless rain slicker over jeans and a knit shirt. The clothing was hardly professional, but it was durable enough to stand up to the demands of the eighteenand twenty-hour days she was working in this crisis.

  “Good to have you here, ma’am.” The corporal put the light away. “I’m Corporal Kerby.”

  “You’re point on this, Corporal?” Megan asked. She switched off the Chevy’s engine and stepped from the vehicle. They stood in front of the residential family housing on the Ranger base.

  Lightning blazed through the dark sky. Normally the stars weren’t visible even on a clear night because of the light pollution from nearby Columbus, Georgia. But tonight wasn’t normal. Nothing had been normal for three days.

  The disappearances of some of its inhabitants had thrown the base and the city into turmoil. Not all of the power or the phones were back up. The situation was much worse in the city than it was on base. Fort Benning had fared better than Columbus because the military had backup generators.

  The base currently stood on alert. Armed soldiers turned away scared citizens seeking shelter on a daily basis. Reports from base personnel still returning from the outside world, as well as television and radio news, confirmed the continued riots and looting that were sweeping the city. Some people only took advantage of the confusion to follow thei
r baser instincts, but others reacted out of fear, trying to protect themselves and others from perceived threats and enemies. Columbus, Georgia, wasn’t a safe place to be. It was also typical of the troubles in most American towns.

  And Joey’s out there in that, Megan couldn’t help thinking. Her teenage son had gotten angry, which was nothing new in his life lately, and had left home when some of the teens Megan counseled on a regular basis showed up there. All those kids had parents or other family members who had disappeared. When word spread that Megan was still around, even more of the kids had come over to her house. She and nineteen-year-old Jenny McGrath had been busy taking care of those children for the last few days while the world tried to recover. But her only living son had run off. She needed to find him—and would as soon as the state of emergency allowed her to look. But right now she needed to deal with this emergency.

  Kerby looked her in the eye. “Yes, ma’am. I’m taking point on this for the moment.” Unconsciously, he glanced over his shoulder at the small house that occupied the MPs’ attention. “But I’m not trained to take care of something like this.” The young man was rawboned and looked tired.

  “I’m sure you did fine, Corporal.” Megan felt the instinctive need to reassure him. She was thirty-six, almost old enough to be his mom. She’d spent a lot more years as an adult than he had.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’d like to think so.” Corporal Kerby pointed his chin at the house and looked bleak. “But that’s one scared little girl in there.”

  Megan guessed that Kerby was twenty-one or twenty-two. Leslie Hollister, the girl inside the house, was seventeen. He talked like there was a generation between them instead of a handful of years.

  “You’ve confirmed she has a weapon?” Megan asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. First thing. A member of one of our families, we’re going to handle this one by the book. Private Collins, he was first man on the scene after we got the report.”

  Megan sorted out the details of the frantic phone call she’d received only moments ago. “Leslie had a friend with her.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The corporal referred to his notes, but Megan got the impression the quick look Kerby took was purely for her benefit. Securing information ranked high in standard operating procedures. “Victoria McKean. She’s a member of another of the base families.”

  Megan remembered Tori from counseling sessions. She, like Leslie, had a history of not fitting in well with on-base military life and showing her rebellion on a regular basis. Tori had continued her sessions, though, even when Leslie had largely stepped away from them. Sergeant Benjamin Hollister was a career non-com like Goose and was currently serving over in Turkey.

  If Sergeant Hollister is still there, Megan reminded herself. A consolidated list of the Rangers still in Turkey, living or dead, hadn’t been compiled yet. Even when it was put together, Megan felt certain that the lists would be held as confidential and only base scuttlebutt would get the news out about who had lived, who had died, and who was among the missing. She’d felt blessed to learn that Goose was still alive, but most of that relief had fled quickly when she learned that he didn’t know so many children had gone missing during the unexplained phenomenon.

  “Tori’s clear?” Megan asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. Private Collins sequestered her in one of the MP vehicles.”

  “Which one?”

  Corporal Kerby tapped the radio mike clipped to his left shoulder, talked briefly, then pointed at a Jeep that flashed its lights on and off twice. The lights dimmed. “There.”

  “I’ll need to talk to her.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Kerby took the lead.

  “Tori’s parents have been notified?” Megan matched his stride.

  “Yes, ma’am. Her dad is over in Turkey with the 75th. Tori’s mother is at the base hospital. She’s on her way over; should be here anytime. Once she found out you were involved, she said to let you talk to her daughter if you wanted to.”

  “I do,” Megan said. “Do you know if Leslie Hollister is still alive?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We’ve got her locked on thermographic display. She’s in her bedroom.”

  Megan knew that thermographic capabilities enabled a soldier to track body heat through solid walls and darkness but didn’t allow a clear view of the environment someone was in. “How do you know it’s Leslie’s room?”

  “The other girl confirmed the location.”

  Megan folded her arms over her chest against the chilly rain sweeping in out of the night. Beyond the perimeter of the lights and the MPs, neighbors stood under eaves, porches, and umbrellas. Few of them talked to each other. Even the curiosity that normally would have filled them was lacking. It was as if the world was still holding its breath after the disappearances, waiting for the next even more horrible thing to happen.

  But it’s already happened, Megan thought. They don’t know it, or don’t want to acknowledge it yet, but God has called His people home, and evil has been given reign over the earth. She shivered again, but not because of the cold rain falling around her.

  “Where did Leslie get the weapon?” Megan forced her mind to the present task. A girl’s life hung in the balance, and she didn’t know if she was physically or emotionally up to the task of trying to talk her down. Her hectic schedule during the days since the disappearances—since Chris’s abduction, and God help me for feeling that way—weighed on her heavily, exhausted her. Almost overcome from worrying about the teen charges still left to her, she felt like a zombie, except for the sharp pain of her youngest son’s absence and the uncertainty about Joey’s whereabouts.

  “She has a government-issued Colt .45 that belongs to her father,” Kerby answered. “Sergeant Hollister registered the weapon with the Provost Marshal’s office.”

  “You haven’t seen the weapon?”

  “Private Collins did, but he didn’t get a good look. The Hollister girl screamed at him to leave or she would shoot him; he left. He thought it was probably the .45.”

  “Did Tori see the weapon?”

  Kerby shook his head. Rain dripped from his helmet brim. “She saw it, but she doesn’t know what it is. No familiarity with firearms. She’s never taken any of the weapons classes offered on base. Not like the Hollister girl.”

  “Leslie Hollister has taken firearms training?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Top of the class.”

  So Leslie knows how to use her father’s pistol. That thought was as ugly and brutish as a hunk of pig iron. She knew just how ugly that was. Megan’s father had blacksmithed as a hobby.

  “Does Private Collins think she’d have shot him if he hadn’t left the house?”

  Kerby hesitated.

  “There’s no foul here, Corporal,” Megan said. “I could ask Private Collins, but that would take time we might not have. I just want to get a feel for things before I proceed. Leslie’s a juvenile. Let’s worry about taking care of her first, then what impact your reports might have on her and her family.”

  The military was all about paperwork, Megan knew. In her job as a family counselor, she stayed enmeshed in files, forms, and followups. All of those reports remained with career military men and women throughout their service. And with their kids.

  Kerby glanced at Megan. “Private Collins was convinced she would have shot him, ma’am.”

  “What about Tori McKean?”

  “She was glad to get out of the house.”

  An MP opened the door of the Jeep that had switched its lights on and off. He touched the brim of his helmet with the barrel of his assault rifle in an abbreviated salute and shone his light into the vehicle. “Mrs. Gander.”

  “Private,” Megan replied. She glanced inside the jeep.

  Tori McKean huddled in the passenger seat under a man’s leather jacket. Her blonde hair, normally fussed over for hours, hung in disarray. Black mascara tracked her cheeks in thin trails from bloodshot blue eyes.

  She was about the most frightened seventeen-year-o
ld Megan had ever seen. In the last five minutes, she amended. Terrified kids had filled her office for the last two days.

  “Tori,” Megan said in a normal tone.

  The girl squinted against the bright light, raising a hand to shield her streaked face. “Mrs. Gander?”

  Megan closed her hand over the private’s flashlight and gently pushed the light away. Getting the message, the private shut the beam off.

  “That’s right, Tori,” Megan said. “I’m here to help.” If I can. Lord, help me help. Help me stay calm and help me think.

  “I’m afraid Leslie’s going to hurt herself, Mrs. Gander.”

  “No.” Megan kept her voice calm and firm. “We’re not going to let her do that.”

  “I don’t think you can stop her. She’s not herself.”

  “I’m going to try.” Megan reached out and took Tori’s hands into her own. They were cold as ice.

  “She’s not herself.” Tori sniffled. “It’s all this … this … ” She shook her head helplessly. “Nobody knows what’s going on. Leslie’s mom disappeared, and she doesn’t know if her dad is alive or dead.”

  “I know. I’ve been talking to her privately and in group.” During the last two days, there had been little opportunity for private counseling sessions. The disappearances, the outbreak of war in Turkey, and the chaos that seemed to consume the world had affected all of them. Megan had started to schedule private sessions again, but there simply weren’t enough hours in the day. On top of that, half the base’s counselors had gone missing.

  “She’s going to kill herself, Mrs. Gander.” Tori clutched Megan’s arms. The girl’s hands knotted into white-knuckled fists. The whirling amber lights atop the sawhorses striped her face, flickering into and out of existence.

  “Why?” Megan asked.

  “She’s confused. She’s all mixed up.” Tori cried and hiccupped at the same time.

  With the heaviness of the rain, Megan hadn’t caught the smoke stink that clung to Tori’s blonde tresses. “Why is Leslie confused?”