by Mark Wandrey
Belinda spent a few minutes looking over husband’s new wounds she hadn’t been able to tend to because she’d been unconscious. She looked up from preparing wound dressing.
“Is he bit?” Vance asked.
“No,” she said, “looks like fingernails.”
“They didn’t bite me,” Harry agreed, “but I need some painkillers, dear.” His face was covered in sweat and contorted in pain. Belinda opened an inner pouch on her bag and drew out a single-use syringe, a reusable one, and a small vial.
“Pain killer and antibiotic,” she said as she used an alcohol wipe before injecting him twice. It only took a second for Harry to sigh and lean back against the truck, his eyes going slightly out of focus.
“Oh, thanks,” he moaned. “Too many things hurting.” Lexus had laid down next to them. She rolled on her side and started panting. “Your dog…” Harry said, petting the animal’s side. She whined in response.
“Ann!” Vance said loudly. “Check on the other dogs.” He had a growing feeling of dread.
“They were asleep in the back seat,” she said.
“I’ll get it,” Nicole said, and she went over to open the far side rear door on the crew cab.
“Be careful,” Vance started to say.
“They’re sitting up now,” Nicole said, “they look fine.” Vance could see both dogs staring at Nicole through the back door. “Come on,” she said and took a step back, “hop out! I’m sure you two need to take a piss.” They didn’t move. Vance clearly saw both dogs cock their heads in response to her voice. It was a very non-doglike action.
“Nicole, look out!”
“No!” she screamed as both dogs soundlessly leapt at her, fangs bared.
“Rock, Dewey!” Belinda snapped in a command voice. Neither dog reacted at all. Nicole threw herself to the left. One of the dogs flew through where she’d been, then snapped at her, managing to get a muzzle full of the woman’s BDU sleeve.
“Help!” she called as she fell, kicking out at the dog. Her sleeve tore free and the dog shook the fabric like it was a rabbit.
“Ann, shoot the dogs!” Vance barked.
“No!” Belinda and Harry both cried. An M4 boomed in the confined warehouse. One of the two dogs were blown sideways in a spray of blood, skidding several feet and coming to a stop behind the truck, unmoving.
“Dear lord,” Harry wept. The other dog tried to jump on Nicole’s back, but she rolled toward the animal and it overshot, landing in front of the pickup and spinning toward Ann. Vance drew his handgun.
“I’m sorry,” he said and fired twice, killing the dog quickly. Belinda and Harry fell into each other’s arms, overtaken with grief. Ann ran over to her husband, who was still holding his gun and looking down at their own dog, Lexus. She was panting hard, long tongue lolling out onto the dirty concrete. Drool pooled under her muzzle, eyes wide.
“Oh, no,” Ann said.
“They saved us back at the gas station,” he said, his eyes misting over.
“What can we do?” she asked. “There has to be something.” Lexus let out another whine that changed to a low growl. Her eyes focused on him.
“Only one thing we can do,” he said, and reached into the back of the truck for a muzzle. Moving helped cover the tears running down his face. Memories of bringing the little mixed Doberman/Shepherd puppy home as a surprise for Ann years ago were making it hard to talk. But he had to act. “Help me,” he begged her, “quick, before it’s too late!”
Tim and Nicole ended up having to help. They got the muzzle on her just in time. She became increasingly animated as the seconds ticked by, and almost managed to bite Vance as he tightened it down. The halter was easier. The wrap-around leather harness gave him a lot of control, and the dog seemed to sense it, fighting desperately at the end. Finally, he had the harness by the handle on the back, partially lifting the 80-pound dog so its struggling paws couldn’t find traction.
“You want help?” Tim asked, trying not to stare at his openly weeping friend of so many years.
“No,” he said, “that wouldn’t be right.” He turned to Harry, sniffing and wiping snot from his nose. “Can I have the suppressed .22?” The big man nodded and pulled it from his waistband.
“One in the chamber,” he said. “Full magazine.”
“I’ll only need a couple.” He turned to his wife, working hard to keep the dog’s feet off the ground. His friend, who now wanted to kill him. “Can you…” he said, not able to finish the question.
“Yeah,” she said, a sob racking her like a hiccup. She took the .22 from Harry, instinctively checking the chamber.
“I’ll check that the coast is clear,” Tim said, and his wife went with them. Outside, the desert scrub landscape was in full sunlight. It seemed so foreign from the near-darkness when they’d driven into the warehouse only a quarter hour ago. “All clear,” he said. “What about the other two dogs?”
“We’ll take care of them,” Belinda said. Despite her husband’s injuries, they already had a pair of entrenching tools from the storage rack on the truck and were ready to go out as well. Vance looked and considered saying something, then didn’t. It was worth the risk. They’d suffered a loss, and all needed closure.
“I’m sorry,” he told Harry.
“You did what you had to,” he said. His eyes didn’t look focused. Despite that, he was a Marine, and his mettle showed through. “Let’s do this.”
Outside in the desert, a short distance from a tiny Texas town, two suppressed rim fire bullets made almost no sound. Afterward, if anyone were close enough to hear, all that would have been heard was the chunking of shovels in the hard desert soil, and the sobs of grief as they lay their three dear friends to rest.
* * *
The Flotilla, 150 Nautical Miles West of San Diego, CA
Andrew had managed to make a few friends among the fighter pilots on the Ford, but then most of them left. Overnight. Without saying a word. As an Air Force pilot with many years’ experience in combat, he knew what that meant. The shit was about to hit the fan. He’d seen all the activity last night and new something was up. The helicopters hadn’t stopped flying that morning. He stood by the Gerald R. Ford’s island and watched as a pair of the huge Sea Dragon MH53 helos took off with massive bundles of equipment. Three Seahawks, the Navy variant of the Blackhawk, were coming in to land.
“What’s going on?” he asked a pair of young men and a woman standing next to a cart with bombs arrayed on it. They all wore bright red vests and matching helmets. The senior among them gave Andrew’s insignia a critical eye before answering.
“Lieutenant,” he said. None of them saluted. Andrew noticed they didn’t do that on the flight deck. “We’re transferring ordinance and spares to the Reagan.”
“Any idea why?” he asked. Andrew didn’t bother to guess the man’s rank. Navy was special in that way.
“No sir, just doing my job.” The two Sea Dragons roared away, and the Seahawks touched down. “Excuse us, sir. Let’s go!” he barked and they all threw their backs into the cart. Andrew was impressed; there were six 500-pound bombs on that thing. Andrew finished his coffee and decided he wanted a refill.
“Lieutenant Tobin, what the fuck are you doing in my PriFly?”
“Just came up for some coffee, Commander Beeker.”
“Bullshit,” the Mini Boss said. He had binoculars pressed to his face and was watching the crew in red load bombs into a carry sling for the Seahawks.
“I must agree with Howard,” Beeker said. Andrew went over and helped himself to some coffee. Andrew dumped in some creamer and stirred slowly. “Tobin!” Beeker barked, and Andrew gave a little guilty jump.
“Captain?”
“I’m a goddamned commander, you fucking zoomie. What is it you want here?” He spoke the last sentence with slow deliberation. “Or do I have to ask Captain Gilchrist to come up here?”
“No,” Andrew said. He tried to take a sip of coffee to delay a little longer and
promptly burned his upper lip. “Shit,” he hissed, and Beeker laughed at him.
“Next time steal someone else’s coffee; I like mine hot enough to melt steel.” Andrew decided he might as well ask. Gilchrist wasn’t exactly happy with Andrew after the captain of the Gerald R. Ford had nearly wrecked his carrier to allow Andrew to set the C17 down on deck.
“I’d like to know what’s going on,” he said, and gestured to the retreating Sea Dragons flying toward the group of other carriers a mile or so distant. Beeker and his assistant Howard both turned a sharp eye on Andrew. He thought about taking another sip of coffee, but his lip still throbbed, and he decided not to. “Is it classified?”
“The world is burning down,” Beeker said. “We don’t have long range comms, and insanity has become the fourth horsemen.”
“Sir?”
“I can’t give you much detail except we’ve got to start running flight operations in support of land units nearby. My cats aren’t working, or I’d have bulldozed your bus out there into the Pacific by now. As it is, I’m told they’ll be working in 48 hours, so I probably will soon. We transferred almost all our pilots to the Reagan, and now we’re sending what stores we have for their Hornets as well.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No,” Beeker snapped, then shrugged. “If there was, I’d ask, son.” Andrew shrugged. “Thanks for offering, anyway.”
“And thanks for telling me,” Andrew said. Beeker nodded and went back to his job without another word. Andrew took his coffee-flavored molten lava and headed down into the ship, feeling like a fifth wheel. His stump always hurt when going down ladders on ships. Why did they always have to be almost vertical, anyway? It wasn’t like the carrier was small or anything. He was so distracted, he took a wrong turn and found himself in an area of the ship he’d never been in, then found someone he recognized.
“You’re that reporter,” he said. The woman was good-looking, with medium-length blonde hair and wearing Navy camo (called Navcam) without insignia or a unit patch. She looked up at him from a laptop sitting on a desk. The room had space for four more people, but she was alone. There were lots of cameras and big screens. “Kathy Clifford? Not many reporters here.”
“That’s me,” she said. He’d seen her on GNN news reports several times. She’d even been in Iraq at the same time he’d been injured. Something about her face was different though. She looked preoccupied, maybe even depressed. He guessed, considering what was happening, that made sense. “There aren’t many Air Force pilots around here either.”
“I wouldn’t have been here if I hadn’t landed that plane up top.”
“You flew the C17 out of Hood?” she asked, her eyes wide in surprise. He nodded. She completely surprised him by standing and giving him a full body hug. “Thank you,” she said, “you saved our lives.” Andrew wasn’t thinking about saving anyone just then. He was thinking about how good her breasts felt pressed against his chest and not spilling his coffee all over her.
“I was just doing my job,” he said and gently pushed her away. She blushed slightly and looked at his shoulder patch.
“F15?” she said. “An Eagle driver landed that? Okay, I owe you a drink!”
“Good luck what that,” he laughed. Kathy reached into a bag, pulled out a flask of Jim Beam whiskey, and winked at him. He held his mug out without giving it a second thought. “You know United States vessels are dry,” he said as he sipped the now Irish coffee. The whiskey reduced the temperature to a more tolerable level, and he took a big sip. The last thing an Air Force fighter pilot needed was to have a naval officer walk by and catch him drinking on duty.
“Now let’s hear the story,” she said.
“What story?”
“Of how a fighter pilot ended up flying a C17 out of Ft. Hood in the middle of a pandemic.” Andrew wondered if that was allowed. Then he saw where they had her set up and figured it was, so he told her. He left out the part about being transported from Saudi Arabia under custody for violating orders. He told her about how the A-380 he’d been in had had an outbreak and he’d been forced to land it in Monterrey with almost no fuel after the city was nuked.
“So it was nuked,” she said and made a note in a little ledger. “Any idea who?”
“Nukes don’t leave signature cards,” he said. She just nodded and wrote something.
He continued on about meeting professional gamer Wade Watts and Chris Tucker, a three-gun champion shooter. They’d linked up with other survivors and found an Air Force AC-130 gunship to fly north. On the way, they’d saved some people in a house, but crashed the plane in the process.
“Holy shit!” she exclaimed. “That was you?”
“What, you were in that house?”
“Yeah, me and my…” she stopped and looked either confused or conflicted. “A friend and I were in there with a bunch of Mexican refugees. We were about dead meat when you came over.” She held out the flask. “I owe you another drink!”
“I better not,” he said, pulling back the cup. He’d been trying to hatch a plot to get back into the air, and showing up smelling of whiskey wouldn’t help his case. “Anyway, we lost most of the survivors with us in the crash. Wade, Chris, and I headed north, pursued by infected crazies the whole way until we were cornered at this tank farm. I figured we were dead, when Colonel Pendleton showed up with a couple Blackhawks and pulled our bacon out of the fire. Say, you haven’t heard where he ended up, have you? I called over to the ship the Army commandeered, but they said he wasn’t there.”
The dark look was back on her face, and she shook her head. “I know about your Wade,” she said, “he’s gotten in tight with the IT people on the Ford. I haven’t heard exact details, but I think they’re making progress in restoring satellite communications.”
“I figured Wade was a hacker or something,” Andrew agreed with a nod. He was beginning to think the pudgy guy might well have some answers. He’d have to look into that. “What are you up to?”
“I’m kinda working for Stars and Stripes, I guess.” He just blinked. “Ford wasn’t in service. They were just kind of…sailing it around, showing off the cool toys, testing new stuff and all. They’d just left Bremerton when the shit hit the fan.” Andrew grinned, the woman did know the military. “Most of the ships here put to sea in a hell of a hurry or were missing people from outbreaks. One thing they don’t have is any entertainment directors.” She gestured to the empty workspace. “Captain Gilchrist sort of pressed me into service. Since GNN isn’t answering the phone, and the phones really don’t even work, I figured it’d keep me from being shipped over to a cruise ship.”
“Chris is handling the ship’s arms locker and working with Navy security,” Andrew said, “he’s not very happy. They have them crammed in a little billet. Ship life. Can’t say I like it much myself.” He paused and then nodded. “Maybe that’s what they’re up to with this shore operation. Will you tell me if you hear anything?”
“Sure,” she agreed, “I have to run programming by the XO, but nobody said I couldn’t talk to Air Force officers.” She grinned, and he grinned back. She would have made a good soldier, he suspected. Hot, too. He left her to do her job while he walked and thought some more. A few minutes later, he found himself entering the rear of the cavernous hangar deck.
When the Ford entered service, it would have been crowded with fighters of all types undergoing maintenance, arming, or just stored. A crowded area of carefully-orchestrated mayhem. It was nearly deserted now. The few helicopters aboard when the ship had left on its shakedown cruise were now airborne, carrying equipment and munitions over to the Reagan, the only carrier that could presently launch fighters.
In the middle of the hangar bay was a single F-18 Super Hornet, its wings folded up and backed up against a bulkhead. Andrew was no expert on naval fighters, but it didn’t look like the fighter was combat-ready. There weren’t even any external weapons pylons. He walked over to look at the plane. A solitary tracto
r rumbled by, pulling a trailer piled high with crates.
“You’re that Air Farce pilot,” someone said. Andrew looked over and saw a pair of mechanics coming out of one of the maintenance shops.
“That’s me,” he said.
“Captain’s pissed about your plane,” the other said. Andrew chuckled.
“He’s reminded me of that several times.” Both men came over, wiping their hands on their coveralls. The older of the two had a wrench in one hand and gestured with it like a baton. Both men held out hands for Andrew, who shook each in turn.
“I’m PO1 Branden Bowers. This here is PO3 Donald Doveri. Hell of a landing.” Andrew eyed the subdued stripes on their uniforms. PO1 meant Petty Officer First Class—he knew that much—which equated to a technical sergeant in his service. PO3 was probably Petty Officer Third Class, or a senior airman, he guessed.
“It was mostly luck,” Andrew said.
“I’d believe that,” PO3 Doveri replied with a grin. Bowers shot him a glare, but Andrew waved it off.
“You guys working on that Hornet?”
“That?” Bowers asked, gesturing with the greasy wrench at the plane in question. “No sir, our bird is next door.” He pointed to the movable bulkhead separating that portion of the hangar bay from the forward hangar bay.
“What do you have back there?”
Both men beamed. “Show the man, PO3,” Bowers ordered. Doveri bobbed his head and starting walking. Andrew fell in behind him. They passed through a massive door into another cavernous hangar. Andrew was again reminded of just how big the Ford was. This hangar had two helicopters, obviously redlined. One had the engine compartment covers all removed, and the other’s tail rotor was gone. But it was the two sleek planes parked to one side that made Andrew almost stumble and fall.
“You have got to be kidding me!” he gasped, looking back at the PO1. Bowers was grinning ear-to-ear, like a parent watching his kids unwrap Christmas presents. “I didn’t think any had been deployed.”
