“Men, you see that sign there?” Kinnick pointed to a cherry-red-colored sign nearby. His men’s dust-covered heads looked over at it. “It says Dunluce Pass. 11,293 feet. There.” He pointed. “About a hundred feet behind us is the choke point.” He pointed at the highway that appeared to be cut straight out of the rock with dynamite over a hundred and fifty years ago. Thick white and brown lines cut horizontally across the cut rock. It gave the appearance of a layered club sandwich crushed by millions of years of pressure.
“That is the hole we must plug with our lives. Our entire mission hinges on us holding this pass. For if we fail here, the infected will roll up what’s left of the United States military, and before that’s done, the rest of the country will be destroyed by thermonuclear warfare.”
Stark’s eyes were fierce. Elwood listened intently weighing his words. Hunter spit again on the rocks.
“We are going to stagger our fire teams.” He turned to youthful Elwood. “Lieutenant Elwood, your platoon is mostly intact. Our defense is going to center on you holding our flank. I want your two best fire teams about two hundred yards down this road. Get them up on the ridge in the rocks and pines. It’s steep and the dead are slow.”
“It’s good ground,” Hunter added.
“Master Sergeant, how many rounds per soldier?”
“Rifleman about eight hundred. Each machine gunner has twenty-five boxes of ammunition.”
Kinnick nodded. “It’ll have to do.” He looked back at Elwood. “Every fifty yards, I want another one of your fire teams. As the fighting gets thick, they will fall back to the next fire team. So, as we get pressured, we will apply more concentrated firepower.”
“I will get a team together and line the roadway with claymores,” Hunter said.
“Excellent,” Kinnick said and nodded.
Stark viewed the terrain. “Plenty of ground that the infected have to cross in order to reach this point.”
“There will be plenty of them to cross it,” Kinnick said. The broad-shouldered soldier stared grimly, looking out over his surroundings.
“Lieutenant Stark,” Kinnick said. Stark faced Kinnick again. “I want 2nd Platoon on the road. Pile up rocks, trees, whatever you can get your hands on to slow them down. You are the short end of my L in the anchor. Your team will be putting rounds head-on into them. Their only path is through you. Your men have suffered some casualties. Can I count on you?”
“We are the Regulators, sir. Always ready to mount up.”
“Good. I never doubted you.”
Kinnick pointed back behind the pass. “Gentlemen, that copse of trees beyond the pass is our fallback point.”
A small circle of tall pines sat through the pass on a low hill. The dead will be able to traverse the slopes. By then it might not matter. He wondered if the famous Spartan King Leonidas felt like this when he measured and weighed the terrain for his final stand at Thermopylae.
“If we get pushed from there, we will regroup on the other side of the bend in the highway. There we will bound and cover as we make a tactical retreat.” Like Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn? He had more men and fewer enemies.
“It won’t come to that, sir,” Stark said.
“I pray it doesn’t,” he said. They stood a moment in silence, each man contemplating the death that marched for them.
“You are dismissed. Master Sergeant, a word,” Kinnick said. The men threw up salutes. With a crisp hand, Kinnick returned the salute. His officers and NCOs left to go about their pre-battle preparations.
Hunter walked with him through the pass. They stopped and Kinnick looked up the side of the rockface. He patted the sheer cut rock with his hand. It was rough and coarse on his palm.
“We can’t bring this down, can we?” he asked his Hunter.
Hunter stared up at the rock. “It crossed my mind, but I don’t have enough C-4.”
“Damn, if we had some air support that would make a world of difference,” Kinnick said. “Even a single gunship would level the odds. At least a bit.”
“We gotta face this for what it is, not what we want it to be,” Hunter said. Kinnick gazed at him a moment. The master sergeant met his eyes and his drifted out to the mountain range.
“I’ll get something rigged up. Can’t promise nothing,” Hunter said.
“Thank you, Master Sergeant. Carry on.”
Three hours passed and Stark’s men had erected a barricade that looked more like it belonged in the Civil War than in the modern era. Rocks were thrown about the road, anything to provide an obstacle. M240s were set on the fallen tree logs, each manned by a gunner and an assistant gunner.
Kinnick sat in the fallback point of the trees. His men had thrown up a high-frequency radio tripod with a long-wire antenna. It attached to a satchel-like pack containing the radio itself. It looked more like a large handset connected to a battery pack. It allowed him far-reaching access to other radios but limited reliability dependent on a host of factors.
Turning the knob on the brick, he skipped over to his desired frequency.
“General Daugherty. This is Colonel Kinnick, over.”
Static burst through the radio phone. He clicked over another channel.
“Lieutenant Wyman, this is Colonel Kinnick. Status update, over.”
More static groaned from his earpiece. Kinnick eyed the puffy gray-clouded sky. A layer of depressing cotton candy blanketed overhead. I wonder if it’s the cloud cover or some sort of solar flare that is keeping us offline. He set the radio down.
A faint voice cut through the static. A ghost in the airways. Long-distance echoes. He had heard men talk about it in the past. Were they picking up somebody else out there? Or were they picking up radio transmissions from the past? Or were they bouncing transmissions of a faraway planetary body?
“Sir,” the voice breathed. Static cut in. Kinnick could hear someone talking, but it was faint as if the man were under water.
“Lieutenant Wyman? How are you holding? Over.”
“…thousands…we must,” Wyman said, his voice cutting in and out.
“Lieutenant, you must hold the pass. I repeat. Hold the pass at all costs,” Kinnick said into the phone.
Gunfire grated from the radio, sounding like a firework display. “…repeat, over?”
“Hold the pass,” he said in the phone. He held the phone next to his forehead while he listened to the static.
“These fucking radios.”
Hunter sat nearby, back against a tree.
“It’s all we got,” he said.
Kinnick wanted to chuck the piece-of-shit phone and smash it into the rocks. Of course, my phone wouldn’t work when we need it. He settled for squeezing the hell out of it.
“I know that, Master Sergeant. Doesn’t mean it’s not a pain in my ass.” The air had chilled as the sun dipped a yellowish-white orb behind the clouds.
His high-frequency beeped and sputtered. He clicked the dial back a frequency.
“Colonel Kinnick,” he answered.
“…General Daugherty.”
“Sir, I didn’t expect…”
“No time…need…out.”
“Sir, my mission is to hold the passes, over.”
“Hundred…thousand…coming.”
“We can handle it, sir. The men are ready.”
“…death awaits,” the general’s voice cracked on the other end and the call ended.
Hunter perked up as he listened to the conversation. “What’s got him in a tizzy?”
“I’m not sure. I couldn’t piece it all together, but it sounded like he wants us to bug out.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. Send us out here. Get us all chewed up. Give back the ground we just took.”
“I know this ain’t your first rodeo.”
Gunfire rippled in the distance, the thud-thud of machine guns firing. The sound traveled along the mountains. Hunter looked down the highway. Kinnick’s two-way radio buzzed. “Sir, we got contact,” a frantic Elwo
od said on the other side.
“How many, Lieutenant?”
Claymores burst in the distance followed by the sound of an M240 machine gun, carbines, and rifles.
“They are supposed to wait for the claymores until it gets thick,” Hunter said. He stood and angrily stared down the roadway.
“Lieutenant?” Kinnick said into his mic. Hunter stood, staring at him with the eyes of a wolf.
“Lieutenant?” Kinnick shouted.
“Come on, Colonel,” Hunter said, hoisting his SCAR. They ran for the pass.
STEELE
Little Sable Point, MI
“I will not leave you,” Steele repeated. It was the tenth time he had assured them he wouldn’t flee. The scared faces of about eighty people stared back at him. He stood head and shoulders above those that remained, looking down at them. Anyone that had a working vehicle was already gone. The camp had disintegrated around them in the night. After the Red Stripes had fled, most of Little Sable Point had followed.
The left behind had gathered in a mob. Fear rippled through their ranks like an angry ocean. Steele stood on the back of Big Bessie’s mostly empty semi-trailer. A few boxes remained that hadn’t been stolen by Thunder and his gang. Big Bessie stood to the side, big arms folded across her chest.
“We don’t have enough fuel to get everyone out of here,” he said, his voice booming. “The pastor and his men are coming.” People in the crowd moaned in misery. “We will tighten our ranks and fight. It’s the only chance we have.” We will die for it.
“What are we going to do without the Red Stripes?” Scott shouted. He wore glasses and a dirty untucked button-down shirt. He seemed out of place with a 12-gauge shotgun in his hands that Steele thought he would be better suited for a keyboard and a monitor.
“What about my children? What will happen to them?” Harriet hollered. She cuddled two young kids in front of her.
“I have trained some fighters. The pastor and his men are not trained soldiers. They are regular people.” He cringed at the word regular. Nothing about those people was regular. “We only need to hold them off, put up enough of a resistance for them to decide we aren’t worth it.”
A man waved his hand at Steele in dismissal. “You’re crazy to think you can stand against all of them. I’ll be in my camper spending time with my family. You should all do the same.” The man gathered his wife and kids, walking away.
“You would rather sit by and watch the slaughter than fight for your family?” Steele screamed at the man.
The man turned back, looking over his shoulder. “What did you say?”
“I asked if you would sit by while your friends and family are murdered?”
The man turned all the way around. “I’d rather be with them when it happens than fighting some battle we can never win.” He put a reassuring hand on his young son’s shoulder and walked away.
Steele watched him go along with the others. “We can win. We only need to survive.” The crowd murmured a dull moan. People walked back to their shelters and vehicles. They needn’t go far as the circle of vehicles had shrunk over the last few hours. Steele had made them pull the remaining fueled vehicles in tight, leaving very little common ground around the lighthouse. “Be ready to fight,” he shouted after them. In minutes, he was alone with only his volunteers and a few others. Max watched his every move. Gregor nodded, determined. Jason held his gun tightly in his hands.
“We ain’t going to last long without food,” Big Bessie said, her voice more like a frog’s than a woman’s.
Steele hopped down from the back of Bessie’s trailer.
“I’m not worried about that,” he said.
“Why’s that?” Big Bessie said, cocking her head.
“You can’t eat if you’re dead.”
The heavyset woman breathed hard, staring at him. “Do what you gotta do then and make sure we survive. ’Cause I’m planning on finding that asshole Thunder and getting all my food back.” She held up her tire iron threateningly. “To think that bastard was sweet-talking to me. Said I had pretty eyes.”
Steele wanted to avoid that lover’s quarrel. “If only it was that easy.” He turned toward his small group. They stood piecemeal before him, spread out as if they didn’t trust what was about to happen, feet stuck in the places they had stood amongst the crowd. His small group of confidants—Kevin, Gwen, and Tess—stood waiting for him.
“Not the most inspiring speech I’ve heard,” Kevin said with a hiccup. He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his ACUs like a drunk ROTC student.
“They all left, so I would say they agree with you.”
“I’ve got an idea for the next one,” Kevin said.
“Great. You got until the pastor shows up. Not sure how many more speeches I’ll get after that.”
The slender man visibly gulped, his Adam’s apple jiggling in his throat.
“Take Jason and Gregor and go check on Ahmed and Larry while I talk to Gwen for a minute.”
Kevin nodded and the men disappeared. “The rest of you, man the barricade.”
Gwen looked at him, her eyes watery in the moonlight. He stepped up and took her hand in his. The lighthouse loomed like an ancient tower. Tess hovered a few feet away, watching them. He ignored her dark eyes.
“You’re planning on making a stand here?” Gwen said.
“Yes. I’ll make a stand here.”
“No, we’ll make a stand.”
Steele shook his head and squeezed her hands. “No, you’ll leave here and won’t look back,” he said more flatly than he wanted. That did not come out right.
Her face twisted in the shadows. “Excuse me?” she snapped.
“He’s right. We shouldn’t risk the baby,” Tess said from the side.
Steele gave her an angry look.
“Nobody asked you,” Gwen said over her shoulder.
“Can you give us a minute?” he said to Tess.
Tess sighed and disappeared.
When she was out of earshot, Gwen spoke up. “I understand she is concerned about the baby, but that’s none of her business. You’re mine. I would rather die than let you fight this battle on your own.”
“Don’t worry about her,” he said, glancing in the direction she went.
“I’m not worried about her,” Gwen said. Venom oozed from her lips. “She told me all about your kiss.”
He felt his cheeks redden as bloody embarrassment raced to his face and anger bubbled inside him. “I don’t have time for this right now. You have to leave.”
“Like hell I do. She said that you were an unwilling participant and I believe her. But you should have told me.”
“I’m sorry, but it doesn’t matter now. You can’t stay. People are going to die tomorrow. Knowing the pastor,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “he will kill all of us if he wins.”
Her eyes widened. “What about all that brave, we-only-need-to-hold-them-off talk?”
“It’s just that. Thunder’s gone. I only have nine barely trained fighters plus anyone else who gives a shit about their families. I can’t let it end here. Our story doesn’t end here.” He glanced down at her belly. “My story won’t end if you live on. My blood will run through our child’s veins. It gives me peace with what is to come.”
Her eyes looked down at his chest and back up to his eyes.
“I cannot leave you, even if it means that we all perish,” she said.
“Did you see all these people holding their families in terror? They won’t fight with their families on the firing line. I need you to take the children and the elderly away from here. As far away as you can get. We can’t fit everyone, so you need to take the most vulnerable.”
She shook her head furiously against his wishes. “No. This is my fight too. I can fight better than most of them.”
He squeezed her hands. “It’s our fight. You said you want to make a difference. You’re more than a gun on the line. Your task is so much more important. It is to run and make sure
these families survive. I will deal with the rest and when it’s over, I will find you.” He looked over his shoulder into the night.
Her lips drew downward, her eyebrows closing down and in. “There has to be another way,” she uttered. Her voice was almost as small as a child’s. “I don’t want to leave you again.”
“There isn’t another way. I will find you when this is done.” Silence divided them. Time trickled by. The moon covered them in its own spotlight. They were frozen criminals in the night.
“We have a responsibility to protect the children from this madness.” She grabbed the collar of his ACU jacket and pulled him close, his face only inches away from hers. “But you find me, Mark Steele.” She pulled him closer and planted a kiss on his lips. Their lips locked in something so real and organic; it was the love they felt inside and out.
She loosened her hold on him for a moment, looking him in the eyes. “You find me.” She looked around him. “I’ll gather the elderly and the children. Speaking of which, I think you have a volunteer you need to speak with.” She straightened his collar and gave his chest a pat with her hand. She turned around and walked away into the night, and he exhaled.
Goddamnit, this sucks. He watched her swaying hips disappear into the darkness to Tess’s camper.
A timid shadow approached Steele. Max had been standing there watching them the entire time. Steele had known it, but Gwen had needed his full attention.
“I will fight with you, Captain,” Max said. The boy looked scared but seemingly older. He gripped his gun in his hands. He is still too young for this world. If I could spare you these things, I would.
Steele waved him closer. “You’re a good kid, Max.” He put an arm around the scrawny teenager. “Come with me, I have a special mission for you.”
Max’s eyes lit up, staring up at his hero. “Wha—t k-k-ind of mission?”
“Follow me,” he said. He patted the teenager on the shoulder, releasing him.
They walked in silence. Reaching Tess’s camper, they stopped.
“I’m going to be honest with you. This is the most important mission. This isn’t guard duty or watching the road.”
Max’s eyes grew large.
The End Time Saga Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 105
