by Mark Wandrey
Cobb didn’t know why he went right, he just did. There probably wasn’t enough room to go left past the courthouse and the adjacent building anyway. The entrance to the parking garage had barely enough clearance for the Stryker. It was a miracle there was enough. The sign that whipped by said “Clearance 12’4”,” and he knew the Stryker was about ten and a half. He guessed the garage might hold county vehicles as well as court house traffic. Whatever the reason, he didn’t care; he just needed to get away from the swarm.
The enclosed space of the garage made the engine sound like the roar of a dinosaur as he shot through the bottom story. The back exit was lower. A lot lower. He immediately knew couldn’t make it through, and the entrance was probably filling with infected. The ramp was to the left. He turned, and the wheels squealed on the polished concrete, the Stryker actually drifting a little, and the engine sputtered again. Come on, he silently willed the machine, just a little more. The sign over the ramp up warned “Clearance 11 Feet!” He grimaced and drove. A second later the Stryker lurched with a bang, and he knew he’d just torn the .50 caliber machine gun from the turret. He didn’t care.
The Stryker came out of the ramp and did a little Dukes of Hazzard jump to land on the upper deck of the two-story parking garage. The entire structure shuddered from the 20-ton impact. Cobb hit the brakes and spun the wheel, bringing the Stryker around at the edge of the building. No more floors. Nowhere to go. In front of him was about 200 feet of empty parking garage deck, and a five-story building maybe 20 feet away from the edge. A lonely abandoned compact car was backed into a space facing him, the only thing that offered any shelter. He didn’t know what to do.
An infected leapt on the front of the Stryker, right before his eyes, and snarled in at him. He looked at his fate, glaring with hungry, insane eyes. Whang! A shot punched through the infected’s chest and bounced off the Stryker armor. The infected fell away and Cobb looked past to the adjacent building. Two floors higher, people were leaning out of a window, one with a rifle and tripod. They were gesturing for him to come. Seriously? Another infected jumped on the Stryker and was shot off the side.
Cobb turned and looked at the ramp he’d just come up, and into a river of bodies. “Oh, why the fuck not,” he thought, and hammered down the accelerator.
With four drive wheels engaged, the Stryker jumped ahead like a charging bull. It sputtered a couple times, then the turbo diesel found its second wind. Several more infected came around the ramp and leapt at the hurtling vehicle. He was only peripherally aware of it as the 200 feet of parking garage deck began to disappear at a frightening rate. The speedometer went from 10, to 20, to 30, and then 40 miles per hour as the engine gave every horse it had. As the machine sped, Cobb tightened his seat belt, and aimed for the compact car.
He hit at exactly 45 miles per hour, the shovel-shaped nose of the Stryker doing what he’d hoped it would, and while crushing the compact car, it also rode up it like an improvised ramp and exploded through the safety rail. In an instant he felt what no Stryker driver ever hoped to feel—air. He was airborne and sailing over open space. Cobb crossed his arms over his chest as he flew and got a brief look at the people who’d been beckoning to him. Their eyes were wide in astonishment as the massive armored vehicle cleared the 20 intervening feet.
As he was airborne, Cobb later realized he’d seen one other thing. A rope was stretched from the floors above to the parking garage deck by the people who’d been calling to him. Oh, he thought, that would have worked too. And then the Stryker hit the building.
* * *
“Soldier, can you hear me?” Cobb shook his head and instantly regretted it. Stars exploded behind his eyes. He realized he was lying down and tried to sit up. Powerful hands held him down. “Stay down, Army,” he heard a voice say. Considering how he said Army, probably a soldier. Cobb tried to open his eyes. They were sticky and slow to respond.
“You’ve got a lot of blood on your face,” a woman said. “Give me a minute to finish these stitches and I’ll clean it up.” Stitches?
“What happened?” Cobb asked. His mind was still rerunning events. Just then, he was back on the Interstate 10 overpass.
“You jumped a LAV-25 twenty feet off a parking garage into a building,” the man said, a laugh in his voice. “I knew you Army fuckers was crazy, but damn.” Cobb nodded slightly; now he remembered. The people in the window on the adjacent building. The rope.
I’m a fucking moron, he thought. LAV-25? He thought, running the nomenclature through his head. “How bad am I?” he asked, as he felt the sting of a needle in his forehead and thread being pulled through the skin. You don’t serve for 20 years in the Army and not become familiar with that feeling.
“Nothing broken,” the woman said. He felt a damp cloth moving back and forth across his face, and his vision cleared to see a slightly overweight man kneeling next to him. He was dressed in basic camos, but the shirt was open, and his chest was covered in bandages. He looked like he’d been through the ringer himself. His head was shaved under a ball cap, which sported a big USMC logo. That explained the LAV-25 comment—former Marine. “Your head hit the controls. How’s that now?” the woman asked. She was pretty and had a professional medical demeanor about her.
“Better,” he said, and looked down at the man’s hand resting on his chest. “Mind if I sit up now, sir?”
The Marine chuckled. “Sir? I never made it past staff sergeant, Colonel.” He held his hand out and Cobb sat up. His head spun, but the pain was less. Cobb looked around at his surroundings. It looked like an office, though a large one. He was on a couch against an interior wall. A window nearby showed a view of the city skyline. It was still light, so he hadn’t been out for long, though the sun seemed to be lower.
A door opened, and a slightly overweight, middle-aged man stuck his head in. “How’s he doing?”
“Going to be okay, I think,” the Marine said.
“Vance,” the woman said to the new arrival, “can you bring me a bottle of the sport drink from my backpack?”
“Can do,” the man said and left.
“You know we threw a rope over for you?” the Marine asked.
“Yeah, spotted it about halfway across the gap.” This time, he was the one to chuckle. “I didn’t set the building on fire, did I?”
“No,” the man said. “But it’s going to take a shit load of paint to fix it up again. You know this was a county court house; you’re probably in big trouble.” All three smiled at that. “I’m Harry Ross, USMC retired.” He offered a hand, and Cobb took the firm grip. “This is my wife, Belinda. She’s a trauma nurse.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, “just wish it was under better circumstances.” Her grip was quite serious as well. The two seemed a good fit.
“Don’t we all? Colonel Cobb Pendleton, recently reactivated US Army. I guess I’m in the III Corps now, since it was General Rose that put the silver on my shoulder. I was a Ranger before I got my DD-214.”
“Combat engineer, myself. You got more of a unit around here?” Harry asked.
“No, unfortunately. I was at Ft. Hood when it fell. Ended up helping the last of the evacuation planes take off as the perimeter was overrun.” He looked down at his now dirty and torn camo pants. They’d been new only a couple days ago, drawn from the supply room at Hood. “I had three with me and lost them one at a time.”
“Where were you going?”
“The evacuation was headed for Los Angeles. Comms are all fucked up, but we had some word they were holding out there. Seemed like a longshot, but what else was there? They left with three C-17s full of soldiers and dependents, some gunships, and Ospreys and stuff. There was no way anyone could come back for us; the helos and so forth had left hours earlier.”
“That sucks,” Harry said.
“Very brave of you,” Belinda added.
Cobb shrugged. “It’s the job.” Harry nodded. The door opened, and several people came in, the first being the man Belin
da had called Vance. A younger dark-haired woman was right behind him. After that came a man probably the same age as Vance, or a bit older, then another woman with short brown hair who looked harried and beat. Harry looked back as they trooped in and began introductions.
“Everyone, this is Colonel Cobb Pendleton. Colonel, meet Vance Cartwright, the leader of our little group, and his wife Ann.” They both nodded, and Ann gave him a little smile. “That man there is Tim Price, probably one of the smartest men with a socket wrench I’ve ever met, and his wife Nicole.” More smiles and nods. “The colonel here was explaining how he ended up here.”
“Just Cobb is fine,” he said.
“Okay,” Harry said, and Cobb gave the Cliff Notes version of his story.
“How about you folks?” Cobb asked afterward. Belinda had given him a bottle of medical quality electrolyte drink and was watching him with a wary eye to be sure he drank it. Vance spoke up for them.
“I used to have a place not far from Tarpley, Texas,” he explained. “Made a lot of money in software and retired early. Always liked to be prepared, and, as I got older, it became sort of an obsession. Preppers, they call us. I always figured it would be a super volcano, a meteor, maybe a hyperinflation or civil war.” He chuckled. “More than a few of our friends prepped for a pandemic. I never gave that one too much thought. Wish I had now.”
“No one could have prepped for this thing,” Belinda said. Vance gave her a thankful smile.
“Well, after a while, one of those infected swarms found our property. They didn’t go away. Must have realized we were inside, because they just…hung around. Well, eventually they got into the house and we were trapped in the bunker underneath.” Bunker? Cobb thought, ooh boy. “Somehow, they even got through the lid I had on it.” He shrugged. “I’d planned to be able to fight an armed group, not a thousand cannibals. We had to bug out.”
“Those pickups out by the road,” Cobb said, remembering them. Vance nodded grimly.
“Spent a lot of money on ‘em. EMP-proof, snorkels to ford a river, backup electrical controls. Had almost 500 gallons of stabilized gas.” He snorted. “We barely got out with our lives. One of the trucks was messed up. We stopped to fix it, and another group attacked us.” Cobb noticed the women all looking down. “The dogs saved us, but then we had to kill them.” Cobb looked horrified. “The disease,” Vance explained, “Strain Delta, as the CDC called it. Any mammal is vulnerable.”
“I’m sorry about your dogs,” Cobb said.
“So are we,” Vance said. “Well, we moved on, heading west. We’d heard a group on the shortwave were near Fort Stockton, and we figured we had to go somewhere. Closer to hill country; at least there could be some places to hold up. We took to I-10 for a time, then came to the bridge here in Junction and saw it was shot out. Detoured through the city.” He took a break to get a drink of water from a canteen on his belt.
“Seemed okay here, so we parked and got out to check on the repairs. A few infected ran out of the businesses.”
“I shot one,” Belinda said, looking embarrassed. “I didn’t even think about it.”
“Not your fault,” Tim said. “It would have gotten me if you hadn’t.”
“Well,” Vance continued, “in seconds, the streets were full—thousands of them—coming from every direction. We couldn’t get away, so we grabbed as much as we could carry and came in here. It’s a newer legal annex. The walls are heavy brick, glass is all bulletproof, and the inside doors downstairs are steel. We’ve been here since last night.”
“Can we get back out, you think?” Cobb asked.
“Go see for yourself,” Harry said, and gestured to the window. Cobb got up and walked over. This wasn’t the window he’d seen his new hosts gesturing to him from. This was another floor up, by the looks of it, closer to the roof. He moved up to the glass and looked down. The rear 1/3 of his Stryker was sticking obscenely out the side of the building. He looked across and was amazed he’d flown so far in the huge machine. Then he saw the upper deck of the garage, choked with infected. Then the lower deck, also full. Then the grass between the buildings, the sidewalks, the street, the square for the courthouse…everywhere, it was crowded like New Year’s Eve in Times Square. He looked the other direction and saw the same. The building was surrounded by a sea of infected. There was no way out.
* * *
North Island Naval Air Station, Coronado CA
“Blow the charges!” Captain Nick Sharps bellowed over the constant popping of gunfire. A hundred yards away, a half a mile of det-cord connecting four hundred blocks of C4 explosive went off like a line of lighting across the ground. The detonations were nearly simultaneous as the result of 2 hours’ work came to a head. Sharps felt his teeth pull back from his lips as he pushed his will toward the hulking hangar buildings. “Fall, goddamn you!” he said with a visceral snarl. With a groan of failing structural steel, the hangars fell, one after another, leaning sideways to create a near wall of crumbled steel. A second later, the dust plume blasted over where he’d hunkered behind a redlined Sea Dragon.
The pouring rain quickly beat the dust down to reveal a less than perfect obstruction. Sharps ran a practiced eye over it for obvious weak spots. “Gunny!” be barked to his senior gunnery sergeant.
“Captain?”
“Get a couple sappers and set claymores there,” he pointed, “there, and there.” The older man looked, rain pouring off his Kevlar.
“How about that spot there, sir, by the truck?”
“Outstanding, Gunny, do it.”
“Yes sir. Lee, Cooper, grab some boom and let’s move! Captain wants us to rig party favors.”
Sharps looked up as an Osprey banked in and made a non-standard landing. You weren’t supposed to hot-land the V-22 like that. Several had been lost in exercises flying the tricky craft in such a manner. Frankly, he currently had zero fucks to give. The rear door was already half lowered, and as soon as the wheels were down, Marines were coming out dragging, pushing and shoving ammo crates. At least several cases of M16 rifles were there too, as well as a couple M240s. That was good, because they’d lost some weapons. Nothing was made for continuous fire like that.
Two hundred meters down the taxiway, another Osprey was setting down; this one held the rest of Company C as well as four desperately-needed M2 .50 caliber machine guns. Sharps gave a savage smile and nodded. Can’t bomb the fuckers, Madam President? No problem, we’ll just machine gun the fuck out of them. They had to have killed a couple thousand already. How many more could there be on the island? The copilot of the Osprey that’d brought the ammo was waving to him. Sharps ran over so he could be heard.
“Navy just called, the Reagan is out of it.”
“The fuck you say, Lieutenant?!”
“I am not kidding, sir. Something happened, an outbreak. Reagan is adrift and not responding to comms. Their airborne elements are in deep shit. One of their Hornet squadron COs told me to tell you, sir, that you need to be prepared to receive his birds on the deck in five minutes. They have nowhere to land.”
“These fucked-up comms are about to give me a case of the red ass,” Sharps said as he jogged away from the Osprey. The twin-engine tilt-rotor revved up and rolled away to do a signature short-takeoff, returning to the Essex for more gear. Small arms and ammo they had plenty of; more men was another matter. He went about continuing to secure the end of the island and set up fortified positions until he got a radio call from his comms specialist in the command LAV-25.
“Captain, I just got a garbled signal from a Navy Seahawk. LCAC 20 is aground on the San Diego side of the waterway.”
“Well what the fuck does the Navy expect us to do about it?”
“Nothing, sir. But the pilot said that bridge across the bay has thousands of infected on it. Tens of thousands. They’re coming this way.”
Nick saw the map of the island clearly in his mind’s eye from the hurried mission brief aboard Essex, just minutes before the first LCAC had
slid from her well deck. The bridge came in between the amphibious base and the airfield. Son of a bitch.
“Ted!” he called for his XO, Lt. Ted Hirt.
“Sir?” Nick gestured for the younger man to come over into the partial cover from the rain inside the door of an LAV. He pulled a map from his sealed thigh pocket and opened it for Ted to see. “Assign a squad to take the assault LAV, haul ass down Ocean Blvd. here,” he pointed again. “Colonel Alinsky is setting up demo here,” he pointed again. “He must be told that he’s about to be cut off from us, and the carrier is down, so we’re losing Navy CAS. Have you got that?” The lieutenant’s eyes were wide.
“Yes sir,” he said. “Hell of a way to run a war.”
“Got that right, now move it!” As soon as the lieutenant was moving, Sharps called to the commanders of the other LAVs. “Reposition, we’re expecting heavy inbound.” Now he had to get the company resupplied before the wave hit. They’d been constantly engaged now for more than four hours.
* * *
Columbia River Channel, Cape Disappointment, WA
Against the recommendation of CWO Manning and the Manual of Operations, Captain Grange weighed anchor and got Boutwell back underway. The repair was well underway, but still hours from completion. The last thing she wanted was to get caught at anchor again and have someone start shooting at them. Manning assured her the other engine was running well, so she made the call.
Boutwell made a steady 10 knots up the Columbia. Grange kept them at General Quarters, considering the earlier attack. The current was slow, so most of their speed was headway.
The river quickly narrowed to 1,000 feet at several points, and they passed several of the small- and medium-sized islands characteristic of the Columbia River. It was those islands that’d brought her there, based on General Rose’s orders. A base of operations in a strategic location. The general had given her two locations to scout out. The first was a pair of islands—Hayden Island and Governor Island—in the river between Washington and Oregon. Potentially defendable, with infrastructure, power generation, and facilities to allow them to expand. The other was the chain of islands in the Harrow Straight, north of Seattle. Both were only hours away from the flotilla for relocation. Though Portland was generally less desirable, it was closer, so they were stopping there first.
