Surviving the Dead (Book 4): Fire In Winter

by James Cook

  Justin leaned forward. “Hey Cole, you’re from Tennessee, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So isn’t this kind of like a homecoming for you?”

  Cole grinned. It was the kind of smile that made young women blush and old women laugh. Ethan had seen it in action many times, to devastating effect. “Man, you know I joined the Army to get the hell out of Tennessee, right? You ever been to Memphis?”

  Justin shook his head.

  “Well, let me tell you something ‘bout Memphis. Just ‘cause Elvis from there don’t mean it’s all sunshine and flowers and shit. There used to be some hard-ass neighborhoods up in Memphis. Places where if you showed up and you ain’t have yo’ ghetto pass, you a mu’fuckin’ dead man.”

  Ethan said, “You do realize we’re not going anywhere near Memphis. Right?”

  Cole shrugged. “Don’t matter. It’s still Tennessee. All these years I spent stayin’ the hell away from that place, and now I gotta go back. If my ass gets killed there, I’m a’ be pissed.”

  Ethan thought about asking the big gunner why he hated Tennessee so much, but there was something in Cole’s expression that stopped him. A weight of pain that was out of character for the jovial soldier. Ethan met his gaze for a moment, then nodded and looked away. Cole was quiet after that.

  The sun began to break over the horizon as the other squads straggled in and began filling up the remaining carriages. The U-trac’s engineer—a surly civilian contractor who gave only a hostile ‘Gus’ when asked for his name—took his seat in the operator’s box and began doing pre-operation checks. Ethan watched Lieutenant Jonas walk the line of cars and ask the squad leaders if all their men were present and accounted for. When the lieutenant stopped by his car, he gave the usual bored affirmative.

  Finished with his checks, Lieutenant Jonas—a former master sergeant who had been given a field commission shortly after the Outbreak—climbed into the car ahead of Ethan’s, radioed a mission update to Fort Bragg, and motioned to Gus to get the U-trac moving. Hydraulic accumulators whined, the massive motor rumbled to life, and with a blast of exhaust and a screech of brakes releasing, the engine lurched forward. Ethan and his men rocked to the side as their car jerked into motion, their expressions unmoved.

  The young NCO looked through a narrow window to the northwest. The CSX line they were following would take them another hundred miles to a series of short lines, and from there they would pick up the Norfolk Southern track toward Albemarle and Salisbury. But first, they had to get through Hamlet. Ethan had heard a lot of things about Hamlet from other soldiers who passed through there.

  None of it had been good.

  THREE

  The thing about walking places is that it takes time.

  For the average person, this is not a problem. Walking for pleasure is one of those activities that harkens back to the nomadic roots of humanity. For tens of thousands of years, we ambled along from one place to another, our feet taking us on the hunt for herds of buffalo and babbling springs. Something in us wants to move, to feel the earth turn beneath us and watch the landscape change. Many people walk for pleasure: hikers, people trying to get or stay healthy, or just folks who appreciate nature.

  I've never been one of those. When I was still alive, I only walked when I had to.

  In death, my body lacked the coordination of the healthy human form. It stumbled all over the place, weaving back and forth with the contours of the ground. Though the destination was clear in my mind, shared with me by the strange, hungry reptile brain in charge of my limbs, the path from point A to point B was less than straight. Think of it more like a wobbly arrow. Drunk people have more coordination.

  The result was that it took a long time. I spent a great deal of it trying to wrest back control of my limbs before finally giving it up as impossible. Then followed several hours of trying to rest only to discover that whatever force keeping my mind running inside my cramped skull lacked the requirements of a healthy brain, thus preventing me from sleeping. As much as I wanted to check out, I was forced to endure the endless monotony of walking. There are many possibilities you might expect after death. Funny that boredom was never on my list.

  The day didn't drag by. That descriptor leaves too much leeway. It makes the experience appear to inhabit the same universe as tolerable. It didn't. The day scraped by like a hundred pieces of jagged metal slowly pulled across broken asphalt. The slow, unchanging pace of it was maddening, nails on a chalkboard for hours without end.

  Have you ever tried to put yourself to sleep? Maybe you thought about something distracting like a business proposal or a book you'd been reading? After enough mind-numbing boredom, any distraction begins to appeal and I tried as many as came to mind.

  What stood out most was the way the broad strokes of my life were plain to see—the office, the daily drive to work, the constant stress of looking busy in case the boss came by while secretly entertaining myself with video games—yet the details were absent. Some were there, if very fuzzy, but by and large, empty spaces took up what should have been important things.

  What spurred this realization was the fact that my dead body had inherited some of my living body’s mannerisms. My son—damn it, I should know his name—used to give me a hard time about the way my arms swing when I walk. Called me a gorilla. My body kept that habit, and with every step, I could see my wedding ring flash in the light. I thought about the wedding, tried to focus on it as a distraction, but it was like peering through a gauzy curtain. Which was when I began to understand how far the voids in my recollection went.

  My wife's name, my son's, the country where we spent our honeymoon … gone. So many little things evaporated from my brain like so much water on a hot summer day.

  But the emotions, Jesus. The way I felt when I kissed her at the altar for the first time, the thrill of joy when the doctor raised my firstborn in front of me and smacked him on his wee ass. Those sense-memories were still there, but somebody had cranked the saturation level up to eleven. The feelings were so strong it was as if no time had passed at all.

  Faced with nothing but the long walk ahead of me, I dove without hesitation into the wide and deep abyss of times past, wallowing in sensations untouched by the fog of experiences between. I explored everything I could think of. Not just the pleasant, but every part of the spectrum. Joy, sadness, hard laughter, and bitter tears. The birth of my children, and the death of my parents. As my body trundled on toward some unknowable but certainly terrible destination, I swam the waters of memory and basked in the highs and lows of what came before.

  In this horrific pseudo-death, however long it might last, I resolved to remember life. My body could control the physical aspects of my behavior, but even as I sobbed in remembered pain, I made a promise that none of the horrors sure to come would make me forget who I was.

  A promise like that is always an exercise in foolishness—made in earnest, and guaranteed to be broken.

  FOUR

  The trouble started, as it usually did, with the crack of a rifle.

  A high-powered one by the sound of it, Ethan thought. The bullet smashed into the operator’s compartment on the U-trac, and if not for the four inches of ballistic glass between Gus and the rest of the world, his head would have burst like a melon. As it was, the grizzled engineer barely flinched.

  “Looks like we got company.”

  Ethan looked at Cole to find him grinning broadly. The handsome man’s smile faltered, however, when more rifles fired and nearly a dozen rounds broke themselves against the armor of their passenger car. Ethan snatched up his rifle and leapt to his feet.

  “Against the wall!” he shouted.

  Delta Squad surged up from the bench and fanned out against the two-inch thick steel walls standing between them and whoever it was firing on the U-trac. Ethan peered out the narrow window and looked across the tall grass separating the tracks from the treeline less than a hundred yards away. As he watched, the branches parted
and swirled, and over a dozen horsemen broke cover and began driving their mounts hard toward the slow-moving transport. The riders stood up in their saddles, knees bent with boots locked into stirrups, leveled their rifles, and began firing.

  “Goddammit, how’d they know we were coming?” Cole shouted.

  “You see they have horses, right?” Ethan replied. “Probably a patrol spotted us and then rode back to get their friends. This shit-heap we’re riding only goes about fifteen miles an hour.”

  Cole nodded understanding just as another volley of gunfire peppered the wall.

  “Fuck,” Ethan swore. It was only a matter of time until one of those rounds found its way through a firing port, and when that happened, the ricochet would rip them to pieces. Got to make these assholes back off.

  “Cole, get that SAW up the ladder. Schmidt, Holland, Cormier, lay down cover fire until he can get the hatch open. Fuller, Page, Hicks, cover the other side. Shoot anything that fucking moves. Smith, make sure Cole doesn’t run out of ammo.”

  Private Smith stood ashen-faced against the wall, sweating bullets in spite of the cold and clutching his rifle with trembling hands. Looking at him, Ethan remembered his own first taste of combat. The lurching in his stomach, the pounding of his heart, the rasp of his own rapid, panicky breath grating in his ears. There was only one cure for that ailment, and that was to get into the fight.

  “Smith! You fucking deaf?”

  He jerked and looked at Ethan, the whites of his eyes round and bulging. “Yeah. I mean no. I mean…I hear you, Sergeant. I got it.” He shuffled over to a dull metal case mounted against the wall, flipped the latch, opened it, and took out a green box of belted 5.56mm NATO ammunition. As he did so, Cole hefted his M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon—or just SAW, as it was more commonly known—and stepped up the short ladder leading to the roof. He turned the handle to unlock it, but stayed bent beneath the hatch.

  “All right, open fire!” Ethan shouted. He leveled his rifle through the narrow firing port and began squeezing off rounds. The riders were approaching fast and firing as quickly as they could. Try as he might, Ethan couldn’t get a good shot at any of them. Behind him, he heard Justin, Cormier, and Holland open fire as well.

  “Got one!” Holland shouted.

  As Ethan watched, one of their pursuers slumped over and fell from his saddle. His boot lodged in the stirrup as his horse continued to gallop along, dragging his limp, flailing body across the ground. The riders behind the dead man saw what happened to him and began to back off. The ones in front, oblivious to their cohort’s fate, continued their pursuit. One of them came level with the wheels of the rear car, reached into a saddlebag behind him, and produced some kind of improvised explosive. A very large one.

  Where the hell did he get that? Ethan couldn’t get the man in his sights, so he shifted his aim lower and squeezed off a short burst. The man’s mount screamed as several rounds tore into its lower chest and the thick muscles of its legs. The animal pitched forward, rolling and thrashing and crushing its hapless rider. As he fell, the bomb went flying and detonated several yards behind the U-trac’s rear wheels.

  “They’ve got some kind of grenades!” Ethan shouted. “Isaac, time to earn your paycheck!”

  Cole’s teeth stood out sharp and white. “Hell to the yeah, baby.”

  He pushed the hatch open with one meaty hand, surged up through the opening, and leveled his SAW.

  “WHOOOOO YEAH MOTHERFUCKER!”

  Short, staccato bursts of fire began pouring from the heavy weapon, tearing into the approaching riders and sending them tumbling to the ground in screaming, bloody heaps. Some of the rounds went low and caught the horses, but there wasn’t much Cole could do about that. The SAW wasn’t the most accurate weapon in the world.

  At the same time, the squads riding in the other passenger cars finally got it together and began adding their rifles to the fray. Whatever the raiders had been expecting when they set out to pursue the U-trac, it hadn’t been hardened soldiers cutting them to ribbons with a withering hail of hot lead. Panicked, the ones still alive veered their mounts around and pounded away back toward the cover of the trees.

  “Aw, come on now, get back here bitches. You know you LOOOOOVE this shit!”

  The big gunner fired a final burst at the retreating marauders before stepping down and closing the hatch behind him. Cole’s face glowed with excitement. Ethan shook his head.

  “Nice work, gentlemen. You too, Smith.”

  The young private was still standing by the ladder clutching his box of ammo. “Me? I didn’t do shit.”

  Ethan stepped forward and clapped him on the arm. “Sure you did. I gave you an order and you followed it. You didn’t freeze up, or panic.” He leaned forward with a conspiratorial whisper. “You didn’t shit yourself, did you?”

  Smith let out a nervous laugh. “No.”

  Ethan stood up straight and grinned at the younger man. “Then you did just fine. Maybe next time I’ll even let you do some of the fighting.”

  Smith’s smile grew sickly, then disappeared altogether.

  The door at the far end of the car opened and Lieutenant Jonas stepped through the narrow opening, careful not to step into the short length of empty space separating the command car from Delta’s passenger carriage. “Everyone all right in here? Anybody hurt?”

  “No sir,” Ethan replied. “We’re all good.” He turned to Smith. “Check the other cars for me, Private. Find out if there are any casualties.”

  Smith nodded. “I’m on it.”

  As the private hustled to the next adjoining car, Jonas stepped closer to Ethan. “Did my eyes deceive me, or were those raiders on horseback?”

  “Yes sir, they were.”

  The lieutenant ran a hand over the back of his neck, his mouth forming a thin, hard line. “Well, ain’t that just fucking wonderful. How much you want to bet those sons of bitches are from Hamlet?”

  “I’m not a betting man, but I’d say your odds are pretty good, sir.”

  “And now they have bombs.” Jonas shuffled over to a window and planted a hand against the wall as he stared out. “We’re the first U-trac to come out this way, Thompson. And now they’ve seen us. I guaran-damn-tee you that by tomorrow these tracks are going to be lousy with IEDs. Fucking Hamlet. Place is a goddamn den of thieves, and slavers, and insurgent scum. I’ve got half a mind to radio for permission to go root those fuckers out.”

  Ethan watched the older man move to the bench and sit down, back straight. He looked incongruous with just a single bar on his collar. Most of the officers his age had oak leaves or silver eagles with wings spread wide. It was easy to forget that Jonas had spent most of his career in the Army as an enlisted man, working his way up the through the ranks the hard way. He’d seen more than his share of combat, and wasn’t afraid to take up arms and get in the thick of things when the situation required it. Because of this, and his deep understanding of the needs and concerns of his soldiers, Ethan trusted and respected him, as did the other men. Nevertheless, the idea of walking blindly into hostile territory—and going off mission to do it—struck Ethan as not being the best of ideas.

  “What about Pope? Maybe they could send out a drone to recon the place, find out what we’re up against. I’m not afraid of a fight, sir, but I don’t like going in blind. Not if we can help it, at least. There’s no sense in getting ourselves killed needlessly.”

  A less experienced officer may have bristled at Ethan’s suggestion, if not his tone. Jonas, however, nodded calmly. He knew good advice when he heard it, and he wasn’t arrogant enough to think his experience precluded him from making mistakes. The Army had NCOs for a reason, after all.

  “You’re right, Sergeant, as usual. Still, knowing those fuckers are out there…”

  Holland spoke up, “If you want LT, I can take a couple of guys and go scout it out. See what I can find. Maybe make some trouble for ‘em.”

  Jonas thought about it for a moment, but shook h
is head. “No. I appreciate your courage, Holland, but I can’t spare you. Besides, we’re behind schedule as it is. We can’t afford the delay.”

  The door to the car opened, and Private Smith stepped back through. “No casualties, sir. Everybody’s okay.”

  Jonas stood up. “Good, good. Any fight you survive is a good one, right men?”

  Delta Squad nodded in agreement, their faces grim as they remembered fights that not all of them had walked away from. Fights where they had lost friends, men who were so familiar, who had shared so much terror and hardship, that they were like family. Brothers, all of them. Private Smith shuffled his feet and remained silent. He had been assigned to Delta after his predecessor was killed in the line of duty. No one had told him the circumstances of the man’s death, but he knew the other soldiers of First Platoon had taken the loss hard. And none harder than the men around him.

  “You all did well,” Jonas said. “That was a good, fast response. Especially you, Cole, you’re a goddamn nightmare with that SAW.”

  The gunner grinned. “You know what they say, sir. Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

  Jonas barked a short laugh. “Damn right. All right then, looks like we’re squared away.” He gestured at Ethan. “Staff Sergeant, round up the other squad leaders and get reports from them. Command is going to want to know what we just expended valuable ammunition on.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “The rest of you keep your eyes peeled for trouble. Holland, put that scope of yours to use and watch our back trail. Those raiders might find their spines and decide to pay us another visit. If they do, I want warning well ahead of time.”

  Holland nodded. “Want me to get the other DMs to do the same, sir?”

  “No, just you and Sergeant Kelly for now. Rotate out with the other two in a couple of hours.”

  “Will do.”

  Ethan watched the lieutenant open the door and step back into the command car. He caught a glimpse of the cot along the wall, and the chair bolted to the floor in front of a small desk. It would have been mean accommodations under other circumstances, but standing there in the bare passenger car, he felt like a character in a Dickens novel staring through a window at Christmas dinner. The door shut, and the room was lost to view. He sighed, shoulders slumping.