Trackers 4: The Damned (A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series)

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  “Don’t put yourself in danger on this trip,” Charlize said. “I just want you there to make sure Captain Harris is doing his job, and to report back anything I need to know.”

  “Understood, ma’am,” he said.

  The chop of the big black bird made it difficult to hear as it descended over the airfield. Charlize waved goodbye, and they parted once again, with Albert hurrying over to the MATV and Charlize heading toward the helicopter. By the time he reached the truck, the chopper was already in the air.

  The driver’s door to the truck popped open and a friendly face emerged.

  “Corporal Van Dyke,” Albert said. “It’s real good to see you again.”

  Van Dyke stroked his mustache and grinned. “Officer Randall, you’re late. Go figure.”

  “Sorry. I was saying goodbye to Secretary Montgomery.”

  Van Dyke brought a hand to shield his eyes as he looked at the sky. “Damn, that bird has Montgomery on it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where she headed?”

  “D.C., and then New York, for meetings.”

  Van Dyke lowered his hand and gave Albert an incredulous look. “Shit man, why is she going to D.C.?”

  “I’ll tell you on the drive. Come on,” Albert said. He carried his rucksack and M4 over to the truck and placed them inside. Then he hopped in the passenger seat.

  Van Dyke put his seatbelt on with a click and looked over. “I’d much rather be driving the lawless highways than flying to Washington, to be honest. From what I hear, the radiation zone is hell on earth.”

  Albert watched the helicopter vanish over the horizon. He had heard there were no more recovery efforts inside the radiation zone, and while he was sure his family was gone, he was glad he wasn’t going out there with Charlize. He didn’t want to see the place where his family had perished.

  They were nothing but ashes and memories now.

  _____

  Charlize had dreamt of this moment, but the devastation below was nothing like her nightmares.

  It was far worse.

  “My God,” Raymond said over the comms system.

  The six Green Berets in the troop hadn’t said a word throughout the flight, but they were all looking out the portholes with awestruck expressions on their hard faces.

  Below, the fires had almost all ceased, but fingers of smoke still inched across the heavy sky hanging over the destroyed city. Charlize spotted the Potomac River in the distance, and glimpsed the epicenter of the blast. The nuclear detonation appeared to have changed the course of the river. From there, the fireball had spread in a circle, flattening everything for almost a mile. The destruction continued in all directions, and even at two miles away from the epicenter, buildings were nothing but husks.

  The original plan had been to survey the area outside of the city, where the military had constructed fences to keep civilians out of the radiation zone. But Charlize had wanted to see ground zero.

  She needed to see it.

  The chopper continued toward the crater, providing a remarkable view of the blast zone. Buildings, parks, and streets had been completely erased. Everything was charcoaled and melted from the extreme heat.

  The pilots circled the epicenter until Charlize had seen enough.

  “Okay,” she said, waving them onward.

  The bird changed course, heading away from ground zero and out toward an area she had once called home. But all the landmarks she remembered were gone. The Washington Monument, Capitol Hill, the White House…

  She squinted at what was once 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

  “Take us lower,” Charlize ordered.

  The pilots obeyed the order without trepidation, lowering the craft so Charlize could get a better view. The Green Berets continued to watch, but remained silent, not one of them discussing the horrific sight until a young man with freckles and peach fuzz for a mustache pointed and asked, “Is that what I think it is?”

  Somehow, despite all odds, the White House had survived. Although survive perhaps wasn’t the best way to describe it. The front had collapsed, and the white façade was burned black like an overcooked marshmallow. Twisted metal surrounded the perimeter, and flipped cars littered the streets. She had been pulled out of this place by a chopper the morning after the attack. The area looked very different now. The fires were out, and all she saw was an endless junkyard of roasted metal and ashes. Diego was right about one thing: anyone within the blast zone was long since dead.

  “Seen enough?” Raymond asked.

  Charlize nodded. “Take us back to the perimeter.”

  The pilots changed course again, and Charlize closed her eyes, taking in a deep breath of air that tasted like smoke. A few minutes later, her eyes flipped open at the sound of a voice over the comms channel.

  “I think I see something moving down there.”

  The pilot had forgotten to shut off the main channel. Either that, or he wanted Charlize to hear. The Green Berets scrambled across the troop hold for a look out the windows.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Thought I saw something back there,” he replied, using a jerk of his thumb behind them. Charlize turned to look out the window, but saw nothing stir in the radioactive wasteland.

  “What did you see, Captain?” she asked, curiously.

  “I...I think I saw a person.”

  The reply chilled Charlize to the core. Was that possible? Could the pilot really have seen someone alive down there?

  If there were people this far into the blast zone, then it changed everything she had heard about recovery efforts in the area.

  “Go back,” she said.

  Raymond frowned, showing a rare hint of emotion. “Ma’am, I would highly recommend‌—‌” he began to say when she cut him off.

  “We’re going back.” The pilots hesitated, and she added, “That’s an order.”

  Turning sharply, the bird curved back toward the White House. She twisted again to look out the window. The Green Berets were all looking out the windows too.

  “There,” said one of the pilots. “Three o’clock.”

  Charlize and Raymond both unbuckled their harnesses and moved over for a better view out the windows next to Sergeant Fugate.

  “Looks like a person to me,” said the other pilot. “Two, actually.”

  Charlize couldn’t believe it when she saw the two figures trekking down the middle of the ash-covered street. They were dressed in white outfits, and for a moment she thought they must be ghosts.

  The people crouched behind the heat-warped hull of a vehicle and looked up at the chopper.

  “It looks like they are wearing hazard suits,” Raymond said.

  Charlize studied the two figures as the helicopter circled. “Are they ours? Military, maybe?”

  Raymond frowned. “I doubt it. We stopped looking for survivors here a week after the attack.”

  The figures lifted their arms. Charlize thought they might be signaling for help until one of the pilots yelled, “Hold on!”

  The flash of a muzzle came from the street as the two men in suits fired rifles at the bird. Several of the Green Berets moved over to surround Charlize and protect her with their armored bodies.

  “Get us the hell out of here!” Raymond shouted.

  The bird rolled hard to the right and then pulled back into the sky, leaving the mysterious men. Charlize tried to look out the windows, but she was surrounded by camouflage uniforms. She listened for the distant crack of gunfire, but couldn’t hear anything over the thump of rotors and the blood pulsing in her ears.

  Several agonizing seconds later, one of the pilots confirmed they were clear. The Green Berets slowly backed away from Charlize.

  “Are you okay, ma’am?” asked the boy with the peach fuzz‌—‌Staff Sergeant Thoreau, according to his nametag.

  “I’m fine, Staff Sergeant. Thank you,” she replied.

  “Who the hell were those guys, and what were they doing out
there?” Fugate asked.

  Raymond shook his head. “No idea.”

  “They could have been looters,” Thoreau said.

  “Report this to Command,” Raymond told the pilots.

  “Roger that, sir.”

  Charlize settled back into her seat and looked out her window, but there was no sign of other survivors. Only the black landscape. Two weeks after the blast, there had been stories of survivors stumbling out of the radiation zone, suffering from horrific burns and radiation poisoning. She had been one of them, but she was lucky enough to have had the medical support she’d needed to recover.

  She closed her eyes and tried to relax for the next leg of the journey. She dozed off, and was awoken sometime later by a hand on her shoulder.

  “Ma’am, we’re almost here,” Raymond said.

  Charlize looked out the window at a skyline she had loved her entire life. On the horizon, New York’s familiar buildings rose proudly into the sky. The metropolis had mostly been spared from the radioactive fallout, thanks to the winds after the blast. It was one of the few major cities in the entire country that hadn’t completely fallen into anarchy. Part of that had to do with the fact that the New York Police Department was a small army in itself with over fifty thousand men and women employees, thirty thousand of them in uniform.

  On top of that, the ports had allowed aid from foreign countries to come in and help with the recovery. She glimpsed the piers in the Hudson River and thought back to the North Korean submarine they had stopped from attacking New York. It was hard to imagine what that sub would have done if they hadn’t blown it out of the water.

  Now, two months after the bombs, New York was starting to recover. But that didn’t mean the city was safe. Far from it. Many areas were warzones. That’s why she had brought the Green Berets with her again.

  Unlike her trips to Charlotte and Fort Lauderdale, though, she wasn’t here just to work on the recovery efforts. She was here to meet with the Chinese delegation to discuss the progress of getting the power back on, to listen to a speech at the United Nations, and to help select the new seat of the federal government.

  There was a lot to accomplish in a short amount of time, and she was already late. The pilots began the descent and Charlize exhaled, ready for the challenges ahead.

  _____

  Colton rode Obsidian down the center of Main Street, watching as the line of civilians wrapped in heavy coats inched along the sidewalk. Their destination was the Italian restaurant on the river, which the owners had retrofitted into a soup kitchen. The stew there was helping to feed over ten thousand residents, but there were only so many elk and rabbits in Rocky Mountain National Park to hunt. He just hoped the game would sustain his town until the government could finally get the power back on and things started to return to normal.

  Normal, he thought. Yeah, right.

  It was only November. They still had another four months of cold, and at least six months until the power came back on, if Colton had to guess. Every night he listened to the radio about the recovery efforts, and it sounded like the Chinese were helping get the grid back up faster than originally thought.

  Until power came back in Estes Park, though, he had no choice but to rule with an iron fist. He couldn’t trust Gail Andrews or her staff anymore. Not after what happened with Don Aragon and Sam Hines.

  Thinking of the patrol sergeant made him furious, but he still couldn’t quite believe Hines had joined Don in the plot to kill Lindsey and Raven.

  Colton had thought Hines to be a good man. At one point he had thought the same of Don, but the end of the world had brought out their true natures.

  He shook his head and looked over at one of the few people he could trust‌—‌Lindsey Plymouth. Colton had just promoted her to captain, filling the role left vacant by the death of Jake Englewood. Colton had even considered making Raven a sergeant, but he wasn’t interested in titles, apparently.

  Never thought I’d trust Sam. Now I’m trying to give him a badge.

  Motion ahead showed Colton even more how much things had changed in Estes Park. A dozen militia soldiers rounded the next corner, all of them carrying rifles and shotguns. Half of these people were refugees, and all of them were working hard to protect the town.

  Colton gave Dale Jackson, the leader of the group, a wave. Dale winced as he raised a hand back. He was still recovering from an infection to his shoulder where he had been shot on the mission to find their stolen supplies.

  With Nile and Thompson dead, Estes Park had checked off two enemies from the list. But Fenix and other men like him were still out there. The war Colton feared was still a real possibility. They had been lucky the past three weeks to avoid further violence, but the reports of the chaos coming in over the radio had him concerned.

  Lindsey was talking to Colton, but he drowned her out, his mind a mess of thoughts. The storm of violence sweeping across the United States‌—‌and the presence of the Chinese soldiers‌—‌had him on edge. Even with the foreign aid, the country was bordering on collapse, and men like Fenix were doing everything they could to take advantage of the situation.

  “Have you been listening to a damn thing I’ve been saying?” Lindsey asked.

  Colton nodded like he’d heard every word.

  “Chief? What’s the last thing I said?”

  “Yup.”

  She let out a huff.

  “I’m sorry, was just thinking,” he said.

  “You been doing a lot of that lately. Ever since you got back from Fort Collins.”

  “You sound like my wife,” Colton said gruffly.

  “Anyways. I was explaining how many people I’ve got posted out there today. I doubled some of the patrols, and set up a schedule of volunteer spotters so that every point of entry to town is watched.”

  “Good. We need the additional security on our borders.”

  “You said to prepare for war.”

  He was quiet for another moment, and then said, “I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that.”

  Obsidian suddenly halted and let out a snort.

  Willow stopped too and shook her head from side to side. Lindsey patted the mare’s neck gently. “Easy, girl, easy.”

  “Something’s got them spooked,” Colton said.

  A rumble sounded in the distance, and Colton and Lindsey both twisted in their saddles to look east, toward Lake Estes.

  “What is that?” Lindsey asked.

  Colton knew right away. “A plane,” he replied.

  Everyone on the streets stopped what they were doing to look at the sky as a massive airliner zoomed through the gray clouds. It was low enough that Colton could see it wasn’t one of theirs. The white aircraft had Chinese markings on the side.

  The raucous sound made people put their hands over their ears. It passed overhead, low enough that some frightened citizens ran for cover. Colton held the reins tight just in case Obsidian tried to bolt. But, aside from pacing, the horse stayed put.

  The plane turned sharply, moving southeast toward Denver, and vanished back into the clouds. Colton watched the sky, hoping to see supply crates parachuting toward them, but nothing came.

  The rumble faded away, and the citizens all around gathered in groups to talk. Several of them shouted questions.

  “What the heck was that about, Chief?” someone asked.

  “Was that a Chinese plane?” another person said.

  “Are we really being invaded?” came another voice.

  “Everything’s fine,” Colton said.

  “What’s that?” someone yelled.

  Colton followed the woman’s finger down the street, to where sheets of white paper were fluttering over the road like oversized snowflakes. He gave Obsidian a nudge, and the horse took off. Willow and Lindsey followed. When they got to the center of the street, Colton dismounted. His boots hit the asphalt, and he plucked a piece of paper off the ground.

  To the residents of Loveland, Estes Park, Fort Collins, Greely...
the list of towns went on and on. He continued reading past the names.

  The United States military and FEMA are working hard with the Chinese government to get the power back on. We estimate that this could take anywhere from one to two years in your area. Until then, please remember to tune in to the emergency broadcast channel for updates and tips on rationing food, water, and medical supplies. Good luck.

  “Good luck,” Colton said, rolling up the paper into a ball and tossing it onto the ground.

  Lindsey stared at the sheet of paper in her own hand. “One to two years?”

  Colton kicked the balled-up flyer away and turned to look at the hundreds of people wandering away from the soup kitchen line to see what was going on. The last thing he wanted was for these people to see the timeframe.

  “Help me keep ‘em back,” he said to Lindsey.

  “Everyone back to the soup line!” she shouted.

  Colton walked toward the crowd, hands up, trying to keep his voice low. He stopped mid-stride when he saw a kid holding up one of the pieces of paper.

  “I found something!” he yelled.

  A man grabbed it from the kid’s hand.

  “Read it,” someone said.

  “What’s it say?” another person asked.

  Colton cursed as the man read it aloud. Dozens of faces suddenly looked in his direction, and then came the bombardment of questions.

  “Guess our luck’s run out,” Colton said to Lindsey. Two months already seemed like an eternity. He couldn’t imagine another two years without power, but, somehow, he would have to convince these people that things weren’t as dire as they seemed.

  12

  RAVEN KICKED AT the frozen dirt. The roar of the plane had scared off his chase‌—‌an eight-point buck he’d been tracking for the past hour. Hell, the damn thing had probably frightened every animal within a twenty-mile radius. And while he was pissed, he was also curious about the plane. The craft had vanished into the clouds before he got a good look at what model it was, but it had sounded large.

  “Just my damn luck,” he whispered.