by Alex McHale
Dogs. Dogs were one of the things that Jake feared. Untold numbers of dogs had run loose during The Fall. Large packs of feral dogs, whose keen senses kept them clear of Z hordes, would roam the countryside. They attacked with a viciousness and sometimes in numbers that seemed unreal. The military had standing orders to waste any dog packs on sight.
Focus! Jake snapped himself back into the moment. His mind had wandered as his body had droned on mechanically and instinctively. He found himself looking at a decent sized house that was relatively intact. No broken windows, no fire damage. He slowly moved around the perimeter of the house, which was a bit overgrown, but found little in the way of activity signs. He slowly made his way back to the front door and rapped softly on the door. He then took a knee and waited, watching "outboard" while he listened for sounds from the house. If a Z had been inside, the knock would have most likely sent the Z into a flurry of activity as it tried to find a way out of the house to the sound. After a few minutes with no sound, he slid his rifle around to his back. From his left side, he swept forward a pistol-gripped Remington 870 shotgun. The barrel had been sawed off just forward of the magazine tube, which made the gun very short. The shotgun was loaded with #4 birdshot, which was heavy enough to get through skull and tissue at close range but didn't have the limited payload of heavier 00 buckshot.
With the shotgun in his right hand, he tried the door with the left. Locked. He let the shotgun dangle on the attached bungee sling and fished a small lock pick kit from his PICO. A little squirt of gun lube into the barrel of the lock and a minute of work defeated the lock. He carefully returned the kit to his vest before he pushed the door open. The door creaked uncomfortably loudly had he pushed it open as far as it would go. He covered swept the muzzle of the shotgun everywhere he could see, but failed to find any lurking Zs in sight. After a quick scan about inside, he stepped into the house. Once inside, he stopped and listened for several moments. He then pushed the door shut.
The house smelled old and dusty. It was a comforting smell that meant nothing had disturbed the house in some time. The house was dimly lit from the sunlight coming through the drapes of the various rooms. To counter the darkness, he pulled a Surefire R1 flashlight from his PICO and used it to light things up as he moved about. Four bedrooms, a large family/dining room, a kitchen, and a garage. All clear, but he stopped at the inner garage door. There was a sign posted on the door, addressed to "Sean," that specifically said not to come out into the garage. The note said to read the note on the hall closet door.
Jake moved back slowly to the closet. The note there told "Sean" that his mother loved him dearly and his step-father could not be prouder of how the little boy had grown into a man. The note said that they had decided to take their own lives in the garage than become monsters. The closet held the step-father's old seabag which had some basics, the canned food with the furthest out expiration dates, a medical kit, some maps, and two boxes of shells for the step-father's shotgun. The note encouraged Sean to head to his aunt's house in the mountains and ride out the storm there.
Jake pulled open the closet and found the seabag, closed up and intact. An over/under Browning double-barrel .12 gauge leaned up against the bag. He lifted the bag, which was fairly heavy from the canned foods it contained. The shotgun, fortunately, had a decent hunting sling on it. He carried those to the front door and set them down for a moment. His eyes tracked to the wall over and around the gas fireplace common of tract homes. Pictures. Pictures of a young single mother and her son. Pictures of a young boy and step-father on a fishing trip. Senior pictures and pictures of proud parents wearing matching college football jerseys with their son's number. Sean and his parents. Jake turned and walked to the inner garage door.
He pulled the door open, which resisted slightly due to old packing tape around the door. The step-father had obviously wanted to keep the smell of death out to the house. There was hardly any odor. A couple years of hot summers and cold winters had contributed to the decomposition and a bit of mummification to the bodies. They had their backs to the door and faced the main garage door. They were sitting in folding chairs, the kind that you would take and set up on the lawn to watch a football game. Close to each other, what appeared to be the husband had his arm around the shoulders of the wife. A large portrait of Sean, kneeling on a football field in his uniform, was set up in front of the couple on a camping table. An empty wine bottle and two empty pill bottles sat on the table. They were wearing the jerseys with their son's number. Jake closed and locked the door to the garage that had become a tomb. Jake stopped and picked up a writing tablet on the kitchen counter.
A few minutes later, Jake made his way out of the house and back to the "stop-n-rob" that his team had set up on the roof of. Toby dropped a rope down the roof access hatch and hauled the seabag to the roof. Jake wearily climbed up the roof ladder, burdened by the weight of his armor and on his soul. Once he saw that Toby had closed and secured the roof access hatch, he pulled the hunting shotgun from his back. He nodded to Toby, who quickly opened the seabag and began to inventory it. Jake began to pull off his gear.
"You took long enough." Megan grumbled as she looked him over.
"Yeah, but I brought you a gift." Jake handed her the shotgun, to which her eyes lit up. She had wanted a shotgun for building clearing for some time, but had yet to get her hands on her own. She quickly scurried over to Chris, who had been standing watch. In exchange for taking part of his watch, Chris went to work cutting the hunting shotgun down to something a bit more tactical. Meg chirped happily about the weapon the entire time. In the meantime, Toby had discarded about half of the load of canned food, which was past its’ expiration dates. They were left with some soup, some canned chicken and canned tuna, and a variety of canned veggies. The big score was a bottle of Tabasco sauce in the bag.
Meg, who now had a shortened over/under slung across her back, picked through the cans. She quickly went to work cooking a stew for the team. When she brought Jake his bowl of stew, she could tell that he was troubled, but had learned not to question her team leader. He was solid, but the weight of the world sometimes bore heavy on his shoulders. She sat next to him silently as he ate and fished her iPod from her BDU pants. She popped one ear bud into her right ear and one into Jake's left before she started a playlist of music she knew he liked. He smiled modestly and tipped his spoon to her, silently thanking her for the meal. Once he finished, he settled back onto his makeshift bed of gear and covered his eyes with his hat, listening to the music and the quietly snoring woman beside him.
The new day normally would clear Jake's mind. Normally.
* * *
Sean,
I hope that in finding this letter, you have not seen the troubles I have known in these dire days. Please, as they asked, do not go into the garage. Take my word that your parents passed peacefully with you in their hearts. Read their words and know that you were their world. I have not found many that have loved as unconditionally as they did.
I have taken the shotgun and supplies they left you. With hope, I am not leaving you unprepared. My team is tired, hungry, and sparsely equipped. We must forage for a good amount of our supplies, so with regret I must take yours. If you have made it this far, you ARE the strong and resourceful man your parents loved. In exchange for your supplies, I give you another task: Make it to Medford, Oregon. I will see that the debt is repaid.
Sincerely,
Painter, Jacob D.
Joint Special Operations Command - Irregular Scout Team -11, Fort Medford
* * *
The Grunts
by
Specialist George Roy
Contributing Author
Corporal Phineas Thog
It was hot in the cockpit, despite the air streaming past at almost a hundred miles per hour. Flying up and behind the other UH-60 in the flight, the pilot could see the hot engine exhaust of the lead Blackhawk being blown downward by the rotor wash. The turbulence shook the bird
, and he ignored the warning lights on the dashboard.
“Goddamned missing spare parts” he said into the headset when the copilot tapped the lights. “Can’t get a replacement until we get back to the Fort Orange, and there isn’t any at FOB Castle. We should be OK this flight.” He went back to concentrating on following the path of the Hudson River as it passed beneath them.
In the back, Staff Sergeant Mowers ripped off another piece of green hundred mile per hour tape and wrapped it around a hydraulic line that was leaking purplish orange fluid. He grinned at the trooper who sat on the canvas seat next to him, who looked like he was ready to puke. “Kid can’t be more than seventeen years old” he thought to himself.
The trooper, Private Henry Boudreaux, gripped the stock of his M-4, pointed down on the floor, and prayed a silent prayer with his eyes open. The crew chief held up his hand with one finger. One minute out, oh Jesus Christ save us. The helo tilted to the right, and the crewman on the other side opened up with his 240B machine gun as they circle the landing zone. With a flare they came down on the cracked pavement of the parking lot, and his squad leader, Sergeant Ramirez, punched him hard on the shoulder and yelled “GO GO GO!” in his ear. He unsnapped the crossed seat belts and grabbed the rucksack full of extra magazines for their rifles, then jumped to the ground, turned left, ran 5 paces and down, scanning for targets.
Sergeant Ramirez fell to the ground next to him as the Blackhawk increased power and lifted off, nose pointing back up river. Ramirez was yelling into his headset, giving a situation report to the company commander back in the TOC at FOB Castle. He glanced around, counting off the squad. One, two, three, six total plus him. They had hit the ground short of a full squad, as usual. He stood and pumped his fist towards the target building, then fell into the middle of the column as they rushed the front doors of the four story apartment building.
“Team one, GO!” he yelled, and the first team crashed through the yawning front door, clearing the lobby. One shot rang out as the second man in fired into a zombie that came down the stairway. The remains of the obese woman crashed to the floor.
“Up the stairs, to the roof!” They knew what to do, but his command reinforced the urgency. Boots pounded up the stairwell. As he passed the bloated corpse, Private Boudreaux vomited onto the boots of the man in front of him. Team One stayed behind, watching out of the doorway.
“Thanks, you asshole noob!” yelled Specialist Schride, glaring back at him over his shoulder as they hit the second flight of stairs. By the third landing, they were all out of breath. 75 pounds of ammo, water and food on their backs, plus a survival kit around their waist, weapon, and the extra ammo many of them carried in bags. That combined with the short rations everyone in America had been living on for two years combined to make them more tired than they should be. When they got to the top, one of them collapsed on the tarred blacktop, chest heaving, face red with exertion. PFC Johnson, the only woman on their squad.
“GET THE F UP!” yelled Ramirez, kicking the prone soldier until she rose to her feet. The others were already scanning their sectors, looking out over the tops of their ACOG sites.
“I GOT MOVEMENT. IT’S THEM!” PFC Johnson, on her second mission with the squad, was as keyed up as Boudreaux, and her voice cracked as she yelled it.
Ramirez barked at them “Make sure you ID your target! Remember what we came for!” He leaned over the parapet of the roof, and yelled into a bullhorn.
“CIVILIANS, MAKE FOR THE FRONT DOOR. RUN!”
A group of a half dozen civilians, dressed in ragged clothes and armed with a variety of makeshift weapons, ran toward the front of the building as fast as they could. Behind them, rotting figures started lurching quickly towards them.
Johnson open fire without orders from Ramirez, and her first shot hit one of the lagging civilians in the hip, sending him sprawling to the ground. He fell with a screech, and before he could rise, the zombies ripped him apart.
“God you stupid puta!” yelled Ramirez, and he smacked Johnson hard across the helmet, yelled “RUN” over the edge of the parapet, then started firing at the zombies. Downstairs, as the refugees cleared the door, Team One , the more experienced, disciplined fire squad, opened up, a rolling crackle of shots that started dropping zombies. More appeared at the edge of the woods, and the team rolled back from the doorway to follow the civilians up the stairway. They left a tiki bomb on a trip wire in the looby, set to spread a thousand steel pellets at head height. It detonated with a muffled BOOM as they rounded the second landing.
The civilians huddled on the roof as second team fired at a measured pace into the horde crossing the parking lot. POP POP POP.
First team took up a position over the stairwell, shooting downward into the zombies that were climbing the stairs. In a minute, the pile had grown so great that it blocked the stairway.
Ramirez popped orange smoke into the center of the roof, and the first Blackhawk thundered down, sucking the smoke into the updraft. It hovered over the roof and the crew chief hopped out and started hustling the civilians onto the bird. The last one in, a tough looking bastard with a crooked leg and scars on his face, looked around to make sure his group was all in, then hopped on himself, riding the edge like he had done it before.
The second helo dropped down onto the roof as the first circled around, firing into the horde. First squad piled into the open doors then turned and kept firing at the zombies that burst through the doorway of the stairs. Second squad fell back from the roof top to board the other side of the helo.
Boudreaux reached over and grabbed Specialist Schride by the carry strap on his body armor as he tried to clamber onto the UH-60. Rotting arms grabbed at him, and he howled in pain as jagged, rotten teeth tore through his leg. “Let me go you stupid fuck!” he yelled at Boudreaux and threw his weight back against the strap, breaking it free from Boudreaux’s grasp. The helo rose above Schride as he fell to the roof, and started swinging his rifle at the Zs clutching at him.
Ramirez grabbed the gunner and yelled in his ear, pointing at the roof as they spiraled away. The gunner nodded and opened up with a long burst of fire that shredded Schride as he stood.
When they touched down at FOB Castle twenty minutes later, a medical team had already moved the refugees off the landing pad. Ramirez jumped out of the helo, and walked across the pad, then slammed his helmet on the ground, screaming curses in Spanish. Johnson grounded her gear and slumped off towards the tents.
Corporal Snow, First Fire Team Leader, lit a cigarette and put it in Boudreaux ‘s shaking hands. “Welcome to the Wild Wild East, noob. You did OK. Not great, but OK. You’ll get better, but it’s gonna get worse.”
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All work copyrighted 2013 Think On Productions and contributing authors.
