The Reaper Plague

by David VanDyke

  She wondered where the other LAVs were. Eight of them had taken part in the attack on the battalion, and she accounted for two – theirs and the one she had destroyed. Assume one or two were down for maintenance after the combat action, and she was waiting for the other ones to show up. If the LAV unit commander had any smarts at all – questionable, given how they had been employed in the attack – he would keep what he had as a unit and gang up on her.

  “Butler,” she called through the intercom, “Do we have anything portable to handle armor?” She hadn’t had time to check herself.

  “There’s an old AT-4 down here. The gun is the best thing we have.”

  “Unfortunately the other LAVs will have guns too. We can’t win a four to one standup fight. We have to hit and run. Butler, if we spot another LAV, try for a mobility kill. Shred their tires. It’s more of a sure thing; penetrating their armor with the twenty-five is iffy, and immobilizing them is as good as out of action as far as we are concerned.”

  She raised her head cautiously out of the hatch and directed, “Driver, back up into that old barn there.” The Old Town area was dotted with such anomalies, preserved from earlier times. “What’s your name anyway, soldier?”

  “Lockerbie, Master Sergeant. And it’s Senior Airman.”

  She skillfully backed the vehicle into the barn, tearing its wooden door off its hinges in the process but otherwise placing it perfectly.

  “Touché.” Repeth wondered where an Air Force Security Police troop learned to drive armored vehicles. “Drop the ramp.” She took off the headphones, climbed out the hatch and jumped off the side of the vehicle. From outside the ramp she looked into the interior, where four troops she didn’t recognize sat clutching captured weapons. “Hand me that AT-4. The tube there. Anyone here know how to use it?” They all shook their heads. By their expressions and uniforms she thought they were all support troops, not MPs. Dammit, I told Butler to get fighters. “Anyone here ever crew a track or armored vehicle?”

  More murmured denials.

  “Well, that kills that idea.” Just then came the hammering sound of a 25mm gun. “Hear that? That’s an enemy vehicle. We have to find and engage them, keep them away from the escapees. You four, did they tell you where the escape rendezvous is? Yes? You need to go now. I know you don’t want to get out of this nice armored ride but we are going straight toward a fight where we’re the underdogs, so you’re actually safer on foot. Keep moving, shoot at anyone you have to, but keep moving, all right? If you get lost go east until you hit the river then work your way south. Swim if you must, the river flows southward and you can drift out of enemy territory. Keep those weapons. Go now. Go!” She grabbed the nearest one and shoved her down the ramp.

  They went reluctantly and she cursed the timidity of support personnel in a combat zone. “Hurry!” She walked inside and yelled, “Raise the ramp! Let’s get going.” She climbed past Butler back into the command hatch, dragging the AT-4 with her. She wedged it down by her feet, with no fixed plan, just the germ of an inkling that it might be useful. In training, Spooky had said to always consider all your weapons and their possible application.

  Lockerbie nosed the LAV out of the barn and onto the road as Repeth put the headphones back on, then lifted the earpieces at the front, allowing her to hear and hopefully triangulate on the direction of the 25mm noise. “Take the next right, then go up one block, then I think left.”

  As they took the last left she could see an enemy LAV ahead, perhaps two hundred yards south along the road. Unfortunately it was between them and their escape route, and that meant merely immobilizing it wouldn’t help them very much, though it would keep the enemy from pursuing. No battle plan survives enemy contact, she thought, then a wry motto popped into her head: Semper Gumby. Always Flexible. DJ Markis had quoted it to them during one of the frequent times he came to train with the Free Communities Special Operations teams.

  So flex, Jill. Think.

  The obvious and safe thing to do was to hammer the thin back hatch of the enemy LAV with 25mm fire until the armor failed, but that would mean killing its whole crew. She cursed the ironic strictures of her Eden conscience. I’m like one of those stupid superheroes in comic books, I can’t kill anyone unless it’s very nearly an accident. The Eden giveth and the Eden taketh away.

  She stood up in the hatch and made a full three-sixty sweep as her LAV rolled forward. Only the one enemy armored vehicle in sight.

  Normally that would mean it was the rearmost of a platoon of four, but it wasn’t behaving like the rearmost of anything. It was sitting there on the right side of the Parkway firing southeast, presumably at escaping friendlies, or possibly just at phantoms. She could barely see the enemy commander in the hatch silhouetted against the slight sky-glow, his back to her.

  Abruptly a plan clicked in her head.

  “Lockerbie, creep up on them at a steady twenty miles per hour or so, and hug the right side of the road. Be careful, there’s a four-foot drainage ditch just off the shoulder. Butler, when I give the word, open up on their right side wheels. I want all those tires shredded to make them sag to the right. Keep firing as long as you can hit that side. Lockerbie, when I say so, swing to the far left of the road then turn right and ram them hard enough to knock them into the ditch. Don’t immobilize us. Got it?”

  “Roger.” The driver eased the LAV over, and at one hundred yards, Repeth spoke quietly.

  “Fire.”

  Butler hammered a long burst into the bottom of the right rear wheel, each 25mm round bouncing off the pavement and continuing through all four right side tires, tearing enormous holes out of the run-flats, spewing chunks of rubber. The enemy LAV settled heavily to its right, and Lockerbie slewed left and accelerated without being told. Repeth dropped down into the interior and braced her back against a forward bulkhead, screaming to Butler, “Hang on!”

  Repeth felt the LAV actually slow down and wondered what Lockerbie was doing. Dropping the nose? Of course, just like ramming a blockade with an armored SUV. Dip the nose with the brakes, hit the gas at the moment of impact.

  Right before the crash Lockerbie jammed the accelerator forward and the front of the LAV lifted, catching the left underside of the enemy LAV with twenty tons of upward force multiplied by momentum. Since it was down by its right side already, the enemy vehicle flipped over into the ditch and onto its side like a child’s toy.

  Lockerbie jammed on the brakes as her vehicle climbed up the enemy hull with its fat forward tires. She broke them loose by the simple expedient of flooring the LAV in reverse, shaking the crew like mice in a coffee can as they jounced free.

  “Fine job, Lockerbie,” Repeth said. “If we live through this, you’ll all get medals if I have anything to say. One down, several more to go. Turn onto Tidewater south and keep a sharp lookout.” As the vehicle stabilized, she climbed back into the command hatch so she could survey the battlefield.

  The road was empty in front of her as they raced southward. A mile away she could see the faint line of the outer defenses, the abatis and ditches and fences. Astride the roadway she could see the piled up vehicles where she’d tried to parlay less than two days ago. “Butler, put a couple single shots into the barricade.” She put on her headphones and rose up out of the commander’s hatch, bracing herself for the noise of the 25mm gun firing.

  She thought she saw figures here and there running across the fields and sneaking near the treelines to her left – east toward the river. The gun spoke three times then was silent, and she realized Butler was awaiting orders. There were a few answering small-arms discharges but obviously they had nothing heavy there.

  “Lockerbie, turn us around. We need to keep doing them damage.” The LAV swung around in a tight circle and drove back on the road, headed north toward old Fredericksburg, then west, retracing their route. They passed the wrecked enemy LAV. A man crawled away from the wreckage and Repeth put a shot into his leg and he lay still. One more Eden, one less Onesie.
<
br />   To the west, now on their left, loomed higher ground, behind a few buildings. They raced northward toward the confusion and scattered fires of the remains of Old Town.

  Suddenly her plan didn’t seem so sensible anymore. She saw Humvees racing around and it wouldn’t be long before the enemy figured out that her LAV wasn’t one of theirs. She had no intelligence about where the enemy headquarters might be, or where Rick might be, or where the rest of the missing women might be. In fact, for a rescue attempt she’d be better off on foot, just one figure in the dark. Her duty to command warred with her personal desires. Finally she made a decision.

  Maybe the wrong one.

  “Butler, I’ve changed my mind. You and Lockerbie here take this thing and haul ass back south. Shoot your way through the roadblock if you have to and link up with the Colonel. The Battalion can use the armored vehicle. I have to stay here and try to find the rest of our people.”

  Butler’s protest died in his throat as he saw her determined expression. “All right, Master Sergeant. Good hunting.”

  “Don’t worry, Butler. I’ve been in far tighter spots. Remind me to tell you about them sometime.”

  “All right, but you’re buying,” the Midwesterner joked.

  “No problem, on my generous paycheck.” She dropped the headphones through the hatch, grabbed the AT-4 and levered herself out the top and down the side. “Get moving!” she ordered. The vehicle, grown enormous now that she was outside it, roared off into the night.

  Now what to do? She jogged northward, waving at vehicles and silently shooting the odd straggler. In the dark no one could see who was who and anyone heading deeper into Fredericksburg territory, alone and unafraid, they must think friendly.

  She picked up a boonie hat from a fallen Fredericksburger and jammed it onto her head. Her braided and pinned hair stayed well hidden. There were apparently no female combatants among the Fredericksburgers so she had to masquerade as a man.

  She spotted some lights on a hill off to the northwest. It was as likely a place as any to try to find the nerve center of this dysfunctional bandit kingdom, so she worked her way up the streets toward the heights. Eventually she came to the edge of the campus of the University of Mary Washington, proudly proclaimed by signs here and there. She could hear the hum of generators in the distance and could see some electric lights in the still-intact windows of campus buildings.

  Must be a separate system. This is where I’d put my headquarters if I was a warlord – the heights command the town and give a view to all sides, and they probably can fall back to the better defenses of the hill. And lots of nice well-built buildings, not these wooden things of Old Town. She vaguely recalled Colonel Muzik pointing to this hill on the map and telling her that the Confederates under Longstreet had held it against all comers in the eponymous battle, inflicting horrendous casualties on the assaulting Union troops.

  Climbing over an old stone wall alongside a sunken road, she ghosted through the trees up the slope northwestward toward the buildings and lights. Ahead of her she saw a faint glow spring to life, then fade.

  Cigarette. Stupid. Good for me. She watched the silhouette until it turned away, then slipped forward and shot the sentry in the buttocks. A shout came from her right and she whirled, stitching his partner across the abdomen with her silenced Needleshock. Then she bolted away in the direction of the buildings, sticking to the shadows.

  Feet pounded behind her and she ducked into a low mass of decorative juniper. Guards, already jumpy from the night’s events in the town below, ran hither and thither, calling to one another in excited tones. They grouped up when they found their fallen comrades, and she took the opportunity to sneak into the nearest darkened building.

  The women’s restroom beckoned her and she made a quick pit stop, sucking down as much water as she could hold from the sink tap. She had not realized how dehydrated she had become. Downing a ration bar, she reconnoitered through darkened hallways festooned with incongruous campus pride posters and announcements of student activities from before the Demon-Plaguefall. Soldiers looked in the outer doors but didn’t search deeper. She couldn’t blame them – given the quality of troops she had seen so far, these probably didn’t really want to risk finding her.

  One interior office was lit. Sidling up, she put an eye to the window inset into the door. A woman with glasses, obese and in her sixties, sat tapping on a computer.

  Perfect.

  Repeth turned the handle and slid smoothly into the room. “Quiet,” she hissed at the surprised woman. “I won’t hurt you if you don’t cause trouble.”

  The woman froze and her mouth worked silently, then she nodded.

  Repeth turned off the light, leaving the office in darkness lit only by the glow of the old desktop computer screen. “Who are you and what do you do here,” she asked quietly.

  “I’m Margie Finley. I’m…I was a professor here. English Literature. They have me keep track of salvage in the warehouses now.”

  “All alone?”

  “I refused to move out of my office, and I’m too old and ugly to be interesting to the Professor and his Associates.” She spat this last word and her hands trembled. “Who are you?”

  “Not your enemy, that’s who. Master Sergeant Jill Repeth, United States Marine Corps.”

  “Oh, thank God. Are you taking over?”

  Jill’s mouth twisted. “Actually it’s just me right now, until my Colonel can rebuild the battalion and come back. They hit us pretty hard yesterday. I need to find our women. Will you help?”

  Margie licked her lips and her eyes widened with fear. “Just you? Oh, they’ll catch you and put you in the Dormitory. With the others. And you don’t want to be in there.”

  Jill sympathized with the terror Margie put into that word “Dormitory” but there was no time for sentiment. “Look, Margie, I need information. I need it from you. We already broke the men out of the work camp below, that’s what all the shooting was. Please tell me where the women are. Are they in this Dormitory place? There should be almost a hundred of them somewhere.”

  The large woman quivered and began to cry. “If I tell you they’ll do things to me. They don’t use me in the Dormitory because I’m old and fat but that doesn’t mean they won’t hurt me…”

  She’s broken, thought Jill. “Look, Margie, I’m sorry but there’s no time for this.” Repeth reached over and grabbed the woman’s pudgy hand, drawing it to her mouth and biting it suddenly. She clapped her other hand over the woman’s inevitable howl until she quieted down.

  “Listen,” Repeth hissed, “I am an Eden Plague carrier. Now you are too. I just passed you the virus. You will live to be a thousand, you will heal any wound, and you will slim down like magic over the next few weeks. Soon you’ll look like you’re twenty-five, better than you ever did. So now you owe me – and if you don’t help me, soon you will be young and pretty and they will want to take you for their Dormitory. So now you have no choice. Help me and I’ll help you get away.”

  Margie sucked on her wounded hand, sobbing softly, but soon enough she took it out of her mouth. “Hey…it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  “You’ll soon say that about everything else – your fallen arches, your sore back – but like I said, right now I need information.”

  “All right.” Margie took a deep breath. “Most of women are held in the Dormitory – one of the old residence halls. They have to rotate through the brothel downtown, but up here they are reserved for…services. It’s a benefit of being an Associate.” Loathing dripped from that word. “That’s what the Professor calls his bullies.”

  “This Professor, he’s the boss? Did he teach here?”

  “Yes. He has a doctorate in Phys Ed, if you can believe that. Physical fitness nut, martial artist, pro wrestler…the TV kind, not the real kind, but he’s big and dangerous all the same. He was some kind of local bigwig in the National Guard, too. His real name is Stone, Scott Stone.”

  “I’ll try to ke
ep out of his way. Or maybe I’ll just shoot him.” Jill put on her best shark-smile, then softened it. Not the best ploy to try to out-terrify Margie’s terrifier. “Then you’ll have to show me where the women are, and I have to try to bust them out. One more question – there’s a man named Rick Johnstone. He wasn’t with the men in the work camp. Do you have any idea of where he was taken?”

  Margie shook her head. “No, but sometimes if a prisoner has a special skill, like a doctor, they put him to work somewhere else.”

  “He’s a computer expert.”

  “Then he might be in the Professor’s headquarters. They are always having trouble keeping their computers running.”

  “Okay…do you have a campus map? Show me where the Dormitory is, and the headquarters. I’ll go break them out and then I’ll come back for you. If I don’t, you’ll have to try to sneak away southward to the golf course on Route Two. That’s where my people are. I know that seems beyond your ability right now but your body will start getting stronger right away. Pretty soon you’ll be able to run ten miles without stopping. You’re an Eden now.” Jill stepped back, put her hand on the doorknob. “Welcome back to the human race.”

  Then she was gone.

  ---

  As soon as Margie was sure the scary soldier-woman had left, she picked up the landline on her desk and began to dial. Stopping midway through the number, she stared at her bitten hand, now healed. She rubbed thoughtfully at it in continuing amazement.

  Maybe she’ll do it. Be brave, Margie. You can’t live in fear forever.

  Slowly she put down the handset. It might have been the hardest thing she’d ever done.

  ---

  Repeth clutched the cheap paper campus map, orienting herself and identifying each building or hall as she went from bush to bush, tree to tree. It was slow going as her brush with the sentries had stirred up a hornets’ nest of activity. There was less than she expected, though. She figured some of these Associates must have been drawn away to the general confusion in the town below, or were chasing her escaping comrades.