by Lundy, W. J.
The guy in the coveralls shook his head no. “In and out, sir. We’re secure, but these fools were stuck good out there. They never would have gotten out on their own.”
“That’s debatable,” Luke said.
The man obviously in charge smiled at the comment then turned back to the front. “So, what were you ladies doing out joy riding on my road? You shook things up this afternoon, probably drew another ten thousand infected into the area with that shit show you all put on.”
Luke went to speak, but the colonel held up his hand and pointed at Gyles. “Let the sergeant talk.”
Gyles cleared his throat. “We are trying link up with what’s left of my unit back in Fort Belvoir—Sir.”
The colonel slowly shook his head side to side. “Now, what wild hair did you get on your ass to make you think it was a promising idea to go to Belvoir? Belvoir is a damned nightmare, son. Not a damn person left alive there. We been risking blood and treasure to get folks out, yet you want to go in.”
Gyles’s chin dropped, the air sucking from his chest, and he let out a long breath. “Sa…” he paused and looked down at the ground. “Sir, I—we—are trying to link up with my division, sir.”
“You were with the Third?” McDuffie softened his tone.
“I am with the Third,” Gyles corrected, his eyes still down. “My company is still there. Captain Younger is my commanding officer.”
McDuffie sighed, his face softening. “Get on your feet, soldier, and put your damn hands down.” Gyles stood and McDuffie moved closer, extending his hand. “I’m Colonel Glen McDuffie. This is what’s left of my Combat Engineer Battalion. We’ve got some Seabees held up here too.”
“You’re all Engineers?” Gyles asked.
The colonel nodded his head yes. “You got wounded in there, any infected, signs of infection?”
Gyles shook his head no. “No, sir, just what’s left of my platoon. We’re not infected.”
McDuffie turned to a man next to him. “Get those troops out of there. Get ’em fed and cleaned up. Make sure the Doc gives them all a good inspection then put them to bed.” The young Marine ran off toward the MRAP and climbed up into Gyles’s passenger door. Soon after, there was an electronic hum as the back hatch dropped down. McDuffie pointed to Luke and waved him closer. “Listen, I am going to need a full debrief from you two.” Luke began to speak and McDuffie raised his hand. “Not now. I would like to have my S2 present, if you are up for it.”
“Can do, sir,” Gyles said. Luke stood by his side, not speaking, but McDuffie caught a glimpse of his scoped, crossed-rifles tattoo with the word Scout written under it.
The colonel stopped and rubbed the stubble on his chin, staring at Luke’s neck. “You a Marine, son? Or do you just use that tattoo to chase tail?”
Luke bit at his bottom lip and nodded. “Yes, sir. A Marine. I got out of the Corps in 2003.”
“Hmm, you got out, you say. Well… we’ll see about that.” He turned back to a young officer standing behind him. “Lieutenant, get these men some chow.” He stopped and looked them over again, wrinkling his nose. “Yeah, a shower and a change of clothes too. Then bring them upstairs to the conference room.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Day of Infection Plus Twelve, 0100 Hours
Near Haymarket, Virginia.
They say that war never sleeps, and Gyles was finding that out the hard way as he was led down a long corridor. He showered and shaved, dressed in a clean uniform—a hand-me-down set of Marine Corps MARPAT (Marine Pattern) with the name tapes and patches removed. But there was no reason to bitch when the trousers and blouse weren’t covered in gore and grime, and his hair was no longer crusted with dried blood and dirt. He walked slowly, feeling the exertion of every step. He really was tired.
The hall opened to a large factory floor, where Marines and Seabees were sitting on the edges of evenly spaced cots. Some were at tables, cleaning weapons, while others just slept. There was a galley line where men with trays grabbed sandwiches from a table. In another corner was a space that looked like a medical triage center. “How many you got here?” Gyles asked the young officer escorting them.
“Over five hundred when it’s all added up. We have other buildings too. This is just the active part of the camp.” The Marine turned and pointed. At the end of the floor were stairs that led up to a mezzanine with glassed-in offices. The officer stepped ahead of them and opened a door to a conference room. Gyles felt the cool air conditioning immediately, and his body tingled at the sensation. He took two steps in and saw McDuffie standing over a large map overlay.
To his right was a blonde-haired major. Tall and lanky, his face was gaunt with dark shadows under his eyes. At the back of the room, leaning against a whiteboard, holding a coffee cup was a leathered senior enlisted man. The old man was stocky, his hair shaved down to nothing. If Gyles had to bet, he’d guess the man both cut his hair and shaved with a K-Bar. He looked like he could wrestle a bear and win. As soon as the man saw Luke and Gyles, he locked cold eyes on them.
McDuffie ordered the pair into the room and sat them around a large conference table that took up the majority of the free space. On a back wall was a sofa with an olive sleeping bag laid out on it. Duffel bags of gear leaned in every corner with a pair of cots on an opposite wall. The colonel made quick introductions. The S2 officer was Major Dale Mabry. He was an intelligence officer in name only. His specialty was in Operations and Security. The other man was Master Gunnery Sergeant Allen “Gus” Gustafson, the current senior enlisted leader for the battalion.
At the end of the conference table was a tray with a coffee pot and foam cups. Parts of MREs were laid out, and someone had raided a vending machine of sweet and salty snacks. McDuffie pointed at the cups, and Gyles nodded, reaching for one and topping it off before handing the pot to Luke. “So where exactly is it you are coming from, Sergeant Gyles?” McDuffie asked.
Gyles blew on the surface of the coffee and took in a sip. “I’m with Second Platoon, India Company—”
McDuffie interrupted. “Yeah, I get all of that; you’re with the Third out of Fort Stewart. But how did you get out there, when your battalion is up at the grinder?” the colonel said, pointing toward the road.
“The grinder, sir?”
McDuffie frowned and dipped his chin. “The Meat Grinder; it’s what the battle for the Capital is being called… for obvious reasons.”
“Yes, sir. I understand,” Gyles said, looking down.
Mabry cleared his throat and reached back for the large map and slid it to their front. They had the location of the manufacturing plant they were currently in circled in red grease marker. The road they had been traveling on was marked over heavy in black.
Gyles nodded and started his story over. He told them about the mission to the laboratory in Northern Virginia, how the mission had failed and they retreated to Vines when Hunter Field waved them off from their return leg. He told them about the armory, how it was overrun and they fled with the surviving civilians into the national forest. The information they received from Colonel Erickson at the roadblock and the details on Fort Stewart. Then finally, he talked about the civilians who wandered into their camp just the night before. When Gyles finished, he looked at Luke. “Anything you want to add?”
Luke shook his head no. Mabry looked at the notes he’d been taking the entire time Gyles was speaking. “You say you had a CH-47. Where is it now?”
Gyles nodded. “Yes, sir; we had one. It departed this morning. We lost contact with it when it went to a civilian airfield, looking for fuel. They either made it and continued on to Stewart or they are still out there somewhere.”
“And you had more with you? National Guard, police and civilians? You sent them on to Fort Knox in Kentucky?”
“Yes, sir.”
McDuffie nodded. “That was a smart move. As far as we can tell, infection is lighter on that side of the Appalachians. If they stuck to it, they should have arrived okay. I d
on’t know why in the hell you boys would travel east. You should have stayed with those people and went with them.”
“I told you, we heard our company is—” Gyles looked at the map. “Our company was at Fort Belvoir, we needed to—”
The old Master Gunner Sergeant slammed a hand against the desk. “If they were at the damned Meat Grinder, those poor bastards are either dead or walking around infected. Just get them out of your head; the sooner the better.”
“Understood,” Gyles said, locking his eyes on the older man, pretending not to be intimidated.
“I don’t think you do, son. I don’t think you understand the severity of the Meat Grinder.”
Gus looked back at Gyles with a thousand-yard stare, like he was looking through him, his hard jaw set. “The President had a novel idea to send every swinging dick to defend the Capital. All we did was feed the infected army. For every ten we sent, seven would become infected. Those men turned on us, some of them back in aid centers. We didn’t have a chance. The more we lost, the more troops they sent in. On top of that, all the fighting, bombing… the fires… all of it drew everything in—every infected person for a hundred miles converged on the Capital. My scouts have killed crazies out there with Florida driver’s licenses. You know how many damn people were between here and Florida?”
Gyles looked at Luke then back to the Master Gunnery Sergeant. “I—I don’t know.”
“A fucking lot, that’s how many.” The man snarled. “A lot.”
McDuffie raised his hands. “All right, Gus, put the wagons back in the barn. These boys have seen their fair share. I think they get it.”
“So then…” Gyles paused.
“What are we doing out here?” McDuffie finished the thought.
“Yeah, this isn’t a base. It looks like an old factory.”
McDuffie smiled and pointed to Mabry, who nodded his head and said, “We’re combat engineers. Once the task force realized what was happening, that the fighting in the Capital was more than dealing with protestors and it was just drawing in more infected, we were deployed out of Camp Lejeune. They called us up to build barriers and to create choke points to delay the enemy advance. We linked up with a bunch of Seabees out of Little Creek, Virginia, in Richmond. At first our mission was fairly basic… laying wire, building sandbag walls and towers for units defending the Capital. But once the Pentagon fell we were—”
“The Pentagon fell?” Gyles said.
“Yes, on day nine.” Mabry continued. “The Pentagon, Capital Building, the Whitehouse… it all fell together, and after that we were pushed out of the city. Our battalion was ordered to blow all the major bridges and overpasses to block the flow of infected in or out. Those orders were short-lived when the combat outposts ringing the city started getting overrun and the Airforce started dropping everything they had on the hordes. We were then instructed to find shelter and ordered to dig in and get hard.
“We took positions just outside the city where two major interstates crossed. Built walls, barriers, trenches. Hell, we planted explosives and had claymores around us on all sides. Even with all of that, we held for twenty-four hours. They came and came at us until we were buttoned up on our armored vehicles and heavy equipment. We tried to bug out, but with the highways like this and the constant attacks from the infected, we didn’t make it very far.
“Once we lost contact from command and orders for air support, we decided on the mountains. Original plan was to get to the national forest, same as you. Just didn’t have the fuel for it. Sure, there are loads of civilian gas stations and tanker trucks, but that’s some uphill sledding to recover fuel while fighting off the infected. Eventually our scouts found this spot and we could reasonably secure it, so we took up residence.
“The foundations of the buildings are poured concrete. The walls sheet steel. Best of all, the place was already equipped with some solar lighting and backup generators. All we had to do is reinforce the fencing and build that raised approach road so the infected couldn’t swamp our vehicles when we came and went. Since then it’s been nothing but making it stronger and hoping we can find survivors.”
“Have you?” Gyles asked. “Are you finding survivors?”
McDuffie spoke up. “We’ve been monitoring radio traffic, trying to run patrols when we can. We send drones up and down the interstate three times a day. We find civilians not infected, we take them in. That’s how we spotted you all out there on Route 55. Watched you put on that fireworks show and get yourselves stuck.”
“And you are sure D.C. is a loss?” Gyles asked.
McDuffie turned to his operations officer. Mabry nodded. “I have drone footage of the last troops bailing out of Belvoir and Quantico. Solid information that most of the units rolled north, civilians and officers being flown out as the Capital fell. We lost communications with everyone just a couple days ago. Drones are only spotting infected on the ground. There is nothing there worth going to, and nobody is talking.”
“We think someone is jamming the airwaves,” Luke said, speaking for the first time.
Mabry nodded. “Yes, our communications people suspect the same thing. I’ve seen it done personally in Syria during air raids, so it’s not out of the question that they wouldn’t be doing it now. Radios are behaving the same way as what I remember. The gear is working, but outside of a few hundred yards, we just get buzzing. The buzzing started right after the Airforce kicked off Operation Hecatomb.”
“Hecatomb—that’s the bombing,” Gyles said. “They killed a lot of innocent people.”
Mabry set his jaw and shook his head. “So did the infected; they did what they had to. It’s not easy to keep your hands clean in this fight, Sergeant.”
“Fuck that,” Luke said. He shook his head and looked back down at the map. “I never put on a uniform to kill civilians.”
Gus laughed from the other side of the table. The two looked at each other until finally Luke said, “So, what’s next? What exactly do we have going on here?”
Gus laughed again, more maniacal than the last time. He leaned in and locked eyes with Luke. “We keep digging in and stay alive. We send out patrols when we can and bring people back when we find them. We have two hundred Marines and almost as many Seabees in this compound. In a building next door there are almost seven hundred civilians. Of those civilians, a third can carry a rifle. As soon as we have enough gear, ammo, and men, we are going to bring them the fight.”
“The fight?” Gyles asked
“This war isn’t over, and if you think it is, then you better wipe yourself off and harden up, soldier. What you are looking at here is the Alamo, and we are about to change history—this Alamo isn’t going to fall.” Gus raised his voice and slammed his hand on the table again. “We are at war. And this ain’t over until we kill every damn one of them!”
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About WJ Lundy
W. J. Lundy is a still serving Veteran of the U.S. Military with service in Afghanistan. He has over 16 years of combined service with the Army and Navy in Europe, the Balkans and Southwest Asia. W.J. is an avid athlete, writer, backpacker and shooting enthusiast. He currently resides with his wife and daughter in Central Michigan.
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