by Mark Wandrey
He saw a tiny post office, a saloon, and a wedding chapel of all things. A dozen cars were parked in front of the latter, and he’d wonder for the rest of his life about that site. The Sisterdale Volunteer Fire Department passed on his right, but he’d had enough of fire departments to last him a lifetime. He slowed as he turned to stay on 473, leaving Sisterdale behind forever.
As he completed the turn, he saw a crowd of about thirty people in the road. He took his foot off the gas, and they turned as one to look at the Stryker. He was maybe 200 yards away. None of them moved to get off the road, wave, or do anything except cock their heads in that disconcerting reaction he’d seen many times now.
“Damn it,” he said and slowed still more. Nowhere to dodge. They all ran at him, arms held out as if to embrace the Stryker, and he had no choice but to drive right through them. The thumping and crunching of human bodies impacting on the glacis at 35 miles per hour only caused a slight shudder to pass. A second later he was speeding up again. Were they the wedding party, overcome by the infection while trying to celebrate a union? No man had put it asunder, but Strain Delta had.
Cob drove on, alone with his thoughts, trying to forget the sound a body makes when it hit armored aluminum. He was five miles out of Sisterdale when there was a loud BANG from the rear of the Stryker and he surged a couple miles per hour. Something had rear-ended him. With no mirrors or a camera, he had no idea who had done it, or why. A second later he was hit again. Whatever it was, it was fairly large to cause a 20-ton Stryker to speed up.
“Okay,” he said in the driver’s compartment, “safe to say it isn’t someone friendly, or they’d have just pulled up alongside and waved.” He checked his belt and waited. Another impact, then he came to a sharp bend in the road to the left. He slowed slightly, then accelerated into the corner. Even with eight wheels, he felt a second of jaw-clenching drift before coming out of the turn and surging forward. Now came the guessing.
Cobb hadn’t heard a crash, so he knew that whoever it was, they were still back there. He reached up and popped the driver’s hatch, unbelted, and quickly stood. He had to crane his head around the hatch, which opened rearward, to see. There was a big farm truck, a sort of dump truck for grain. Like the pickup, this one was full of men and guns. He guessed he’d really pissed someone off. It was gaining pretty quickly, now that they were on a straightaway. That truck wouldn’t have a governor, unlike the Stryker.
“Okay, we can play this your way,” he said, and took another look. He made a mental estimate and dropped back down into his seat. He didn’t bother with the belt. Speed would count. Instead he counted down. “Now,” he said to himself, and jammed the brakes hard. All eight wheels locked up with a grinding squeal of heavy rubber on asphalt. Cobb imagined he could hear the farm truck driver scream in surprise as the armored rear of the Stryker came at him at a ridiculous speed.
CARRRUNCH! With his brakes set and his weight advantage, this time the Stryker didn’t surge forward. However, it did spin it sideways. He guessed the truck had unsuccessfully tried to veer to the side at the last second and had hit him off-center. The Stryker swayed on its suspension, and Cobb thought for a second it would flip. It righted itself, spinning almost 180 degrees, before coming to a stop. Outside he heard bending metal and flying dirt.
Instantly, Cobb locked the transmission, extracted himself from the driver’s compartment, and moved rear. He shoved the turret cover aside, stood on the riser installed for the purpose, and came up into the turret. He swept the lock off with his left hand, oriented on his target, and spun the turret around just as a round went Sprang! off the gun shield. The farm truck was off the road about fifty yards away. Its hood was at least a foot shorter and was pouring prodigious amounts of fluids onto the ground.
“Quit shooting and it ends here!” Cobb yelled as loud as he could. They didn’t want it to end, and more bullets bounced off the heavily-armored shield. “Fucking idiots,” he snarled, and charged the big .50 caliber gun.
Several in the back of the farm truck realized their peril and ducked down behind the cab just as the Ma Deuce began to roar. Cobb put the first five-round burst up the truck’s engine compartment and into the cab. There was at least one person in there because the windshield was punched into a spider web, and painted bright red. Range acquired, he let fly with a sustained ten-round burst, working it across the front of the truck.
Between the cab and the bed of the truck, there was almost an inch of steel. The .50 caliber BMG armor-piercing round could punch through two inches of steel. In penetrating the bed, the rounds fragmented and caused the steel bed wall to spall, or throw off bits of shrapnel, at greater than the speed of sound. Seven of the ten rounds penetrated the cargo compartment of the farm truck’s bed, turning it into a slaughterhouse.
Cobb didn’t bother checking the results or firing anymore. Even without direct visibility, he knew all too well what the .50 caliber was capable of against light military armor. Besides, he’d seen the blood flying, and what he was pretty sure was at least one severed head. He relocked the gun, slid the turret closed, and returned to the driver’s compartment. A second later, the Stryker was roaring off to the west.
Unlike the ambush back near Sisterdale, someone survived this encounter. Twenty-five men had crowded the back of the Kerr County Coop Feed and Grain truck as they caught up with the Stryker, including a driver and a man riding shotgun. The latter two were both casualties from the initial short burst. The seven rounds from the second burst that penetrated the back of the truck had shredded the occupants. Eighteen of the twenty-five died instantly from slugs or spall. Six of the other seven would take between five minutes and eight hours to die from their wounds. The last sat on the floor of the bed in almost an inch of blood screaming over and over. There would be no more pursuit from this group.
* * *
Entrance to the Columbia River Channel, Cape Disappointment, WA
They were falling further behind schedule. Being under-crewed wasn’t helping, and neither was running into one adrift vessel after another. Not stopping to check each one was tearing at Lieutenant Grange’s soul. The mission statement of the USCG was to render maritime aid where it was needed. Sailing past a boat adrift that sent a distress signal was difficult. The risk of putting a team from her already short crew aboard a ship that might be full of infected cannibals, though, was too great.
They’d boarded three boats that’d had people on deck waving, not drooling to eat them. In those three boats, they’d brought aboard thirty survivors. Those men and women were now quarantined in unused spaces. According to the info she had, the infection took over in less than 24 hours. The first group would get out that evening. She consoled herself with the knowledge that she’d saved those people, at least. The huge pleasure yacht with a running battle on its deck was the hardest to sail by. But their firing at the Boutwell when she didn’t slow validated Grange’s decision to pass it by.
The Hamilton-class Boutwell had been slated for decommissioning soon, after nearly 50 years of distinguished service. She’d sailed more than a million nautical miles, rescued hundreds of people, participated in the Gulf War, and had seized hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of illegal drugs. Her 14,000-mile range made her an incredibly versatile vessel. Grange had been honored to have Boutwell as her first assignment as a Lieutenant Junior Grade, even if it was the ship’s last cruise. It was the ship’s age that was killing her, and the reason they were laid up where they were.
“Captain, engine room,” the squawk box sounded. Grange reached over from her commander’s chair on the left side of the bridge and flipped the transmit switch.
“Captain here, go ahead, Warrant.” Chief Warrant Officer Manning had previously been in charge of small motor maintenance for the various craft. When the death of Ensign White had left Engineering without any leadership, she’d pressed Manning into the job. He’d worked on the Midgett as an assistant engineer, a different class but with similar propulsion.
“It’s the oil pump, ma’am.” His voice was squeaky over the old PA system. “Looking at the maintenance log, Ensign White was just stringing it along. There’re no spares on board.”
“Can you get it operational?” A long moment of silence followed. Grange guessed Manning was likely talking with his overworked team and digging through the store’s lists.
“I believe so.”
“How long?” she asked the big question. The trouble light had gone off four hours ago, “Oil Under Pressure.” They’d slowed but kept steaming until reaching the entrance to the Columbia River, when it gave out entirely. She couldn’t sail up the river without both engines. No way.
“I need to dismount it, which means draining the engine. We don’t have a lot of spare oil, so we need to save it.”
“How long, Warrant?”
“Twenty-four hours, ma’am.”
“Do the best you can,” she ordered and turned off the box.
“Anchor set, Captain,” the watch commander said. It was a job she used to do; now it was being done by a chief.
“Understood. Watch her swing to leeward, we don’t want to run up on the chain.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
There was a small Coast Guard station on the other side of Point Disappointment. They were tasked with river patrol, but they didn’t have any boats over 10 meters. Still, it might have surviving personnel or equipment. Nobody answered the radio, but someone might still be alive there. Maybe she’d send a boat over to check while repairs were under way.
A loud Spang! sound echoed onto the bridge from down the companionway. Grange’s head spun around and she looked down the corridor. It sounded like something metal failing. She opened her mouth to ask the watch commander to check when another one, louder, came from the deck below.
“Bridge, mess hall!” the squawk box sounded. “We’re taking fire! A round just came through the bulkhead.”
“General quarters!” Grange snapped. A second later the alarm began to wail. “Watch, find who’s shooting!” Another hit, this one off the superstructure above the bridge. She grabbed the PA. “This is the captain. We’re under fire, all personnel clear the starboard side.” The watch commander held up her body armor, and she put her arms up and slipped into it, then grabbed her helmet from its peg. In seconds, everyone on the bridge was armored up. “Drop the bridge shields.” The heavy steel shutters were lowered and latched. A second later, one of the starboard shields rang, deforming from a massive impact.
“Shooter in the lighthouse,” the watch called, “bearing 175.” The monitor in the bridge, fed from a high definition FLIR on the mast behind them, spun to show the lighthouse. Several people were there with rifles. They even had some sand bags.
“What the hell is that all about?” Grange wondered as one of them fired. A second later a round hit her ship.
“Looks like .50 caliber rounds,” one of her few damage control people reported. “That hit was just below the water line, starboard crew birthing. It’s plugged.”
“That’s enough,” Grange said. “Fire control, wake Oto up!” The main gun in its forward mount suddenly aimed up at the sky then back with the horizon. “HE, target the top of the lighthouse.” The turret spun incredibly fast, barrel elevating. The shooting stopped, and the figures in the lighthouse started to move. “Three-round burst. Fire.”
Boom, Boom, Boom! The gun fired with a half second between each round. On the FLIR the first figure had just picked up something long and glowing hot when the top of the lighthouse exploded. The 76mm high explosive rounds fired by the Oto Melara cannon each carried a kilogram-sized charge. More than enough to turn a small house into kindling. The three-round burst opened up the top of the lighthouse and rained concrete and brick for a hundred yards in every direction.
“Good hits,” fire control announced.
“Movement at the base of the lighthouse,” the camera operator said. A pair of black Humvees were spinning around in the gravel and racing along the trail away from the lighthouse.
“Starboard Bushmaster,” Grange said, “Engage both targets. Fire at will.”
“Fire at will, aye, aye!” the fire control officer said. The M242 Bushmaster was the same gun the Bradley fighting vehicles mounted. The Boutwell sported two, one on either side, rearward, near the helicopter deck. The gun was alive and moving almost instantly. A TV monitor showed the weapon’s crosshairs, the gunner expertly leading the front vehicle. As soon as he was satisfied, the weapon fired. At eight rounds per second, the 25mm cannon was devastating. The effect wasn’t as impressive as Oto, but the lead Humvee was torn to shreds from several impacts. The gunner switched his aim and fired on the second one, with similar results. He must have hit the fuel tank because flame flew in a cone.
“Cease fire,” Grange said. The admiral had informed her she was under war-time footing when they’d headed north. Despite that, she’d not expected to have to use the ship’s main armament. This was an unpleasant surprise.
Grange decided against standing down from GQ. She ordered a review of the ship’s condition and heightened observation of the shore. They were more than a mile from the southern mouth of the Columbia River. While it wasn’t out of range for the type of .50 caliber rounds recently fired at them, it was a much longer shot, especially at a ship rolling in the river’s outflow. Thirty minutes later she had the damage report. No essential systems damaged, nobody injured.
For now, they were stuck here while repairs on the engine were made. She needed to go up the Columbia to complete the admiral’s last request. If it weren’t for the crew the admiral had sent with her, she would’ve bypassed it. Going up the Columbia was a risk. Now that mysterious people were shooting at her ship, it was more risk than she liked. While Boutwell wasn’t a long ship at 378 feet, it also wasn’t short enough to be playing games in tight river channels. There were answers ashore, and she had time.
“Prepare a RHIB,” she ordered, “and a team. I’m going ashore.”
* * *
It ended up being two teams in two boats. Senior Chief Howell insisted, as she’d left him in command. “An E-8 in command of a cutter,” he’d said, shaking his head. “I’ll be dammed if anyone calls me captain!”
“Steady as she goes, coxswain,” Grange said as they approached the shore. Ten of them were armed with Remington shotguns, herself included. The final two had the ship’s only M16s. Neither were qualified with the rifles. Everyone who had been was dead.
“Got it, Captain,” the coxswain said. A few seconds later, the two RHIBs slid onto the rocky shore. The lighthouse was above them, smoke curling from its destroyed top. She’d agreed to the larger team because the Coast Guard station was only a short walk beyond.
Four of the team, two from each boat, leapt off as soon as the boats came to a stop. They moved up the beach a few yards and went to their knees, weapons facing outward in a semi-circle. The next four followed a second later, running even further up the beach before kneeling, and the first group then moved. Bounding overwatch had luckily been part of the crew’s basic training. Grange and the last three of her crew climbed out. The two men with the M16s had them shouldered and sweeping side to side. No one came running out of the trees or from behind the boulders to attack them.
“Clear,” the lead up the beach called, and they moved toward the lighthouse.
During Grange’s career, she’d participated in several live-fire exercises. Plywood targets, painted red and suspended from floats, were towed by remote control for Oto to punch holes in. The first time it was exciting; after that, it was just paperwork for the expended ammo. She looked up at the shattered remnants of the lighthouse, the piles of shattered masonry, and a bloody chunk of meat a few feet away. Oh fuck, she thought, swallowing her rising bile and putting on her command face. The remains of the Humvees were a short distance further.
The people in the trucks had fared no better against the 25mm slugs than the ones in the lighthouse had against
the 76mm. The second one was shredded and burned. The first was torn in half. Her lead team members reached that one and stopped. A young seaman backed away, bent, and became violently sick. Grange got closer and saw one of the occupants had been cut in half by a 25mm round. Judging by the claw marks in the dirt, he’d lived for a few second at least. She might have joined the seaman in emptying her stomach if not for his dress. Black BDU style clothing, weapons harness, and a black baseball cap to top it all off.
“Two more in this half of the Humvee,” the coxswain yelled. She went over to see. These two had died from shrapnel created when the rounds tore their vehicle in half. They were both missing parts of their legs, so they wouldn’t have likely survived regardless. Both had holstered pistols, compact little foreign-looking machine guns on slings, and lots of magazines.
“Search them,” she ordered. “Anything at all, see what they have on them.” Not everyone proved able to rifle through the mangled corpses, so it took a couple minutes.
“Nothing,” the coxswain said, “not so much as a library card.”
“Found this,” a young PO3 said and held out a radio. Grange took it, examining the design. A low whistle followed.
“This is impressive,” she said, “last time I saw one of these it was some SEALs over in the sandbox.” The men and women of her command all looked at her for orders. She pointed to a pair who’d handled the gore best. “Collect all the weapons and ammo,” she ordered. “Go through the Humvee that didn’t burn for any other clues. Take anything, even if it’s a business card or a gas receipt. Understand?”
“Yes, Captain,” the older of the two said.
