by R W Krpoun
They had pulled the FASA command structure together in the face of violent counter-actions by the world’s best counter-terror and intelligence agencies and were still fighting, for without their aid the 618 virus would be destroyed without eliminating the traditions, values, and mindsets that had made the modern world what it was.
In the wake of the reorganization Cyrus had been promoted to command Directorate A, which controlled all covert operations in North America, a substantial elevation: there were only two heads of Directorates of rank equal to his, and two executives who were higher in rank north of the Panama Canal.
In this capacity he was making Project Lantern Directorate A’s chief priority; Lantern was a dedicated effort to destroy the masses’ confidence in their governments’ ability to establish and maintain safe zones. FASA had assumed that the release and aggressive dissemination of the virus would be sufficient to break society beyond the point of repair, but the nuclear strikes on their key facilities had crippled their initial attack, and in the post-9/11 world governmental reactions, particularly in Europe and the USA, had been much more aggressive than anticipated. Worse, because the nuclear attacks FASA had been denied access to the pure biowar virus after the initial release; the 618 virus was actually a strain that was the result of the bioweapon’s interaction with a Human body. The bioweapon had not been fully finished at the time of the outbreak, and was not completely stable, but had they delayed its deployment the virus would have died with its creators.
Nevertheless FASA was not defeated: breeder teams kidnapped subjects at gunpoint, used a tethered infected subject to turn them, and packed trucks with the resulting zombies to create viral assaults. Crude methods, but they worked.
His approach, via Project Lantern, would be more subtle; if it succeeded, the uninfected populaces would avoid the safe zones, making them much easier to target.
Despite being a man of few uncertainties he was very uncertain now. Something was not right, and he could not put his finger on the specific point. As part of Operation Lantern he had gathered in the surviving records of the bioweapon’s development and was reviewing them. It had been of tremendous help with Lantern, but it had also spawned these very same uncertainties.
Doctor Davenport’s formal education was in political and social science, but he had pursued both academic and practical proficiency in the areas of management, accounting, and data processing. Coupled with extensive life experience in organizing, administering, and leading, it gave him a broad spectrum of skills and perspectives to bring to bear on an issue.
Examining the biowar effort, code-named Project Static Overview, he ignored the science and instead examined the administrative side, and it was there that the uncertainty arose. He conceded that the project had been conducted under tremendous secrecy and security, which included the use of duplicate cells working on the same or extremely similar approaches, but even taking that into account and adding in the inevitable wastage and theft that occurred in what was essentially a criminal undertaking it was clear that Static Overview’s books’ rang like a plastic bell. Something was not right.
He tapped a button on his desk phone, and moments later the office door behind him opened.
“Yes, sir?” asked Guy Weatherford, his chief of staff.
“Mr. Weatherford, please obtain the dossiers on every person assigned to the administrative support of Static Overview, and of any researcher in any field who was associated with the program but who did not work on-site.”
“Yes, sir.”
Doctor Davenport reluctantly put the files aside as the door closed behind him. He needed more data, more viewpoints, and as always, more time.
Brenda Jean ‘Bambi’ Anderson sat cross-legged on the hood of a long-dead gray ’79 Mercury Marquis and watched the train approach. “The engine looks like a GenSet N-series ViroMotive prime mover,” she observed to Sylvia Santiago, her Arkansas twang very reassuring to the shorter girl.
Sylvia had grown up in Miami’s Little Cuba and was sensitive about her accent, so Bambi’s twang made her feel a little less gawky. The fact that Bambi stood five-ten was another reason she was good company: Sylvia had been uncomfortable with her height since fifth grade when she was taller than most of the boys in her class, and while she had finally topped out at five-seven it was still enough to put off a lot of guys and forever consigned her to flats. Hanging with Bambi made her feel normal-sized. It was one of the things she liked about Chip: he was both tall and wide, and standing next to him, even in heels, she looked small. It was silly, but it was a thing for her.
“How can you tell?” Sylvia was pretty in a long and lean fashion, with thick, slightly curly hair and deep, expressive eyes. She was a bit jealous that the loose desert uniform didn’t do anything for her while the more robust Bambi rocked them.
“My father worked the rails, engineer. Loved those damn things, dragged me to more rail yards than I can count. It stuck with me, looking at them. Plus growing up in a house with a john that was always full of train magazines; you gotta read something, after all. He wasn’t around all that much, always off driving trains.”
“My father worked fishing boats, had his own.”
“Yeah? How was that?”
“So-so. Kinda neat sometimes, but he was gone a lot and smelled like old fish when he did come home.”
“Yeah, my dad always smelled like fried diesel. He died at the switch, engine fire, when I was fifteen. I think he wouldn’t have minded.
“My parents went in a car accident.”
“Mom hung on for a few years, but I think she just quit. She had the perfect marriage: a husband that was only there a little while a week. She could decorate the house like it was out of a 1950s Better Homes and Gardens and carry on like she was a cross between the Queen of England and Mother Theresa.”
“You didn’t get along?”
Bambi grinned crookedly, a big, pretty girl with tough green eyes. “Who sends their daughter into the public school system with the initials ‘BJ’? Ah, I guess she was OK. We didn’t really fight, but we didn’t see eye-to-eye, either. She didn’t like having a daughter who was a center on the basketball team, and she didn’t like blue jeans and letter jackets on girls, which was all I wore.”
“They tried to get me to play basketball, but I hate being tall,” Sylvia confessed.
“I played basketball, softball, and volleyball. If you go through school as BJ Anderson, you have to be tough. You were a beautician, right? That’s cool.”
“I was studying to get my teacher’s certificate.”
“I would have liked to have gone into coaching, but my grades were just high enough to keep my athletic eligibility, and when you’re a star center a lot of teachers help you along. My dear old mom warned me, and she turned out to be right.”
“How did you end up…”
“Pole-dancing? Friend of a friend kind of thing. I was making gas money winning wet tee shirt contests, so it wasn’t a big shock. I just did pole and table dances, no lap dances or VIP room stuff. Still, I was socking money away like crazy. I was taking courses on line and afternoons at the community college, business and stuff. I was hoping to open up a fitness center someday.”
“So you were a stripper working your way through school?” Sylvia chortled.
“Yeah,” Bambi nodded ruefully. “A blonde stripper BJ ‘Bambi’ Anderson’,” she made air quotes with her fingers. “Working my way through school. My life sounded like a porn movie character; you can’t make this stuff up.”
“Well, you had an exit plan, that’s something,” Sylvia said loyally.
“Ah,” Bambi shrugged. “Who knows. Still, I avoided drugs, commercialized sex, and loser exploitive and/or abusive boyfriends, so that put me amongst the intellectual elite of the trade. Lotta dumb girls and bimbos in the business, you might be shocked to learn.”
“I’m more shocked to meet one who wasn’t,” the Cuban girl admitted.
“It’s the lure of easy mo
ney for one thing. But there’s a core of, let’s use the word professional, girls who steer a careful path. The thing is, there’s so many dumb or greedy girls out there that the few smart ones can slide through without a lot of trouble if they keep a level head. The one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind sort of thing.”
“Huh.” Sylvia watched the braking train roll past. “That makes sense.”
“Anyway, that’s all in the past. Now we are gun molls at best, paramilitary contract gun-women if things don’t go all that well.”
“I would rather fix hair.” Sylvia had the compact Beretta Px4 Storm they had given her in Arkansas in a thigh holster, and yesterday Chip had given her a Colt AR6951, which looked like something a commando would use, and showed her how to shoot and load it. She also had been issued a roofing hammer, which she did not like thinking about. “All these guns…and the hammer.”
“Yeah, I’m OK with the idea of shooting ‘em, but whacking a zombie on the noggin isn’t on my wish list,” Bambi nodded. She had swapped handguns several times since Arkansas, finally settling on a Ruger GP100 revolver. Yesterday she had turned down an AR 6951 in favor of a Marlin 1894C chambered in .357 Magnum; like Sylvia she used one caliber between both weapons.
“Did you get Bear to cut his ponytail?” Sylvia was glad to change the subject.
“Nah, he’s caught up in all the commando man of action stuff. Most guys are one country song from running off to be a hero in any case. But I like the new look because I don’t like bikers.”
“Bear is nicer than I thought a biker would be.”
“He wasn’t really a biker, he just liked riding big motorcycles and selling stolen stuff to morons. You catch him with his shirt off, count tattoos. Not many at all, and none that are outlaw. Don’t get me wrong, the guy can walk the walk, but he’s not dumb or dirtbag enough to go old-school on it. Funny thing it, I think he sees Marv as a role model.”
“Yeah, Chip pretty much worships him. I can’t say Marv is a nice guy, but he’s…a good man. All of them are good men.”
“That’s an easy sell to a girl who won on the oral-sex-at-gunpoint coin toss. Just our luck we had to be the two prettiest girls who weren’t already half-dead. I know he rescued you and all, but Chip isn’t the one I thought you would land with.”
“The rescue was a great ice-breaker,” Sylvia admitted. “And he wasn’t my type before, but he’s really sweet and funny.”
“Bear’s the only one of the group that looked me in the eyes,” Bambi checked that her hair was still in its bun. “Marv did, too, first time, but he had just killed a guy with a blunt object and I expect his mind was elsewhere.”
The train came to a halt on the siding, the cars rattling to a stop. “One engine, a fuel car, water tanker, two boxcars, a sandbagged flatbed fighting platform, four boxcars, a sandbagged flatbed fighting platform, four boxcars, a sandbagged flatbed fighting platform, two Amtrak passenger coaches, and four flatbeds. The last four have the long sides sandbagged and faced in tin like the others, but with flexible ramps between each car, and the first and last have vehicle ramps like drawbridges, ” Dyson checked his notes against the train itself.
“The launch deck, as it were,” JD observed. “The last two are ours. We live there, too, note the porta-johns on the flatbeds? The State Guard guys will be doing the same.”
“Why have a ramp on the end of the first carrier car? Its hooked to an Amtrak car,” Chip wondered.
“The train disconnects, pulls forward, and the Hard Eight vehicles deploy or recover. It backs up, the brakemen attach cables or whatever, and off we go,” Dyson explained.
“Hard Eight has hard-top military HUMVEES, six of ‘em,” Bear noted. “Can’t haul much salvage or rescued people that way.”
“But they look cool,” Marv shook his head. “C’mon, JD, time to meet our counterparts.”
Bear, Chip, and Dyson trailed along after the pair as the Hard Eight operators climbed down from the train. Anton Grase, now dressed in a pressed work shirt and knife-crease jeans, was with them.
“Marvin Burleson, James Walters,” the DSR rep made a noncommittal gesture with the introductions.
“Colonel James Walters, Hard Eight Rescue, at your service,” Walters gave Marv’s hand a single firm shake and stepped back, a handsome man in his late forties with carefully-styled blond hair and a exactingly-trimmed 70s porn star mustache. Like his men, the Colonel wore a tailored tiger-stripe camouflage uniform, and in defiance of regulations he wore his eagle and branch insignia on his collar, along with his Special Forces and Ranger tabs on his left sleeve, and various other school patches and wings, both foreign and US.
“Marvin. You go by James or Jim?”
“That’s a Colonel you’re talking to, mac,” a hulking black man with a shaved head standing slightly behind and to Walter’s left snarled. “End it in ‘sir’.”
“Not anymore. We all handed in our rank when we mustered out,” Marv shrugged.
“You served in Afghanistan, didn’t you, Sergeant?” Walters ignored his companion’s comment.
“Four tours, James. Although I mustered out a First Lieutenant, promoted by Presidential Order not long before they pinned the Distinguished Service Cross on me. Can we quit sniffing each others’ asses and get down to business now?”
“No doubt,” the Colonel make a half bow. “Mister Grase, what are your orders?”
“Feel free to take a break. Marvin, if you would load your trucks?”
“Yeah. Chip, load ’em.”
“Yeah, boss,” Chip, who had been annoyed by the ‘mac’ comment, deliberately shambled as he headed back to the trucks.
“This is Captain Alfred Spencer, who will be commanding the State Guard security detail on the train.”
“Nice to meet you, Mister Burleson.” Captain Spencer looked like an accountant: short, pale, and pudgy with glasses that kept slipping down on his nose, wearing rumbled woodland BDUs with subdued red State Guard rank insignia.
“Call me Marv, sir.”
“Once your group in on the train we’ll introduce you to Mister Chambers,” Anton told Marv. “I would like to depart as soon as possible.”
“We’re packed and ready to roll,” Marv assured him.
“You use the old M-35 trucks, I see,” Walters observed.
“Yeah, they’re tough, reliable, and have decent off-road capability for their size. You can move a lot of salvage or people with them, and they sit high enough to deter a zombie close assault.”
“Interesting,” Walters pursed his lips in the manner of an adult listening to a backward child. “Somewhat less maneuverable than one might like.”
“We fight as infantry by preference,” Marv grinned. “Vehicles in tight quarters are a bad idea in my experience.”
“You fight with hammers, and, well, is that a shield?”
“They’re zombies. No point in wasting ammunition on small groups.”
“No doubt.” The Colonel’s face had a smirk that suggested that Marv also believed in Santa Claus. “We’ll see you aboard the train.”
JD watched the Hard Eight troops return to the train with many a backward look and snicker. “These guys are going to be a real pain to be around,” he said when only Gnomes were in earshot.
“It’s just for a few days, and the money is good,” Marv clapped the promoter on the back. “But keep Moogie under lock and key; these kind of guys have a college freshman sense of humor. I’ve seen the kind of losers like those Walters has before.”
“Not the best?”
“Oh, I’m sure they’ve all got Ranger or Special Forces tabs, but they’re the sort of guys who excel at school and training exercises, but when you get to places where the targets shoot back they end up in the B or C detachments or Battalion Headquarters. They’re best at looking sharp, pumping iron, and talking trash to every supply clerk or POL guy they come across. Prancers, not soldiers. I would rather have a guy who pukes on his own boots but keeps fighting than any th
ree of them.”
They were chaining down the trucks, expertly backed up the drawbridge-like ramp by Chip and Brick, when Addison showed up. “Herc get his moment?” JD asked.
“Yeah. Kinda like he met the Pope; it made his year.”
“Good work.”
“Chamber’s staff were annoyed.”
“Tough.”
Dirk Chambers had a passing resemblance to Norman Schwarzkopf at the time of Desert Storm, a big, blunt object of a man with a burr haircut not much above stubble length dressed in a safari jacket and black 411 pants with a huge Smith & Wesson Model 500 in a thigh holster. He was standing in the center of the Amtrak car with a polished canteen cup in one hand holding forth to a small gathering which included Colonel Walters.
“Dirk Chambers, Marvin Burleson,” Anton Grase made another of his minimalistic introductions.
“Good to meet you, sir.”
“Marv the Maniac! How the hell are you, son?” Marv found his hand engulfed in a massive paw and pumped like Chambers expected to bring up oil while the other hand clapped him on the shoulder. “Heard about you pulling that mad run across the South! A classified op resulting in the Distinguished Service Cross, you certainly started this war off on the right foot. Too bad about the Army, but hell, we need good contractors, too. Saw your record in Afghanistan, damned impressive. I’m surprised Delta didn’t tap you-helluva warrior. I was in the Marines myself, Force Recon.”
A bit awed by the greeting and the verbal assault, Marv managed a weak grin and a mumbled thanks.
Dirk didn’t seem to notice. “When I heard your crew was along on this run I told my chief of staff that we’re travelling with the best, hands down. Listen,” he grabbed a tee shirt and thrust it at the bemused Ranger. “I want your troops to have these. Little ego thing for me, maybe a souvenir for them, or at least a free tee shirt. Tell ‘em that Dirk Chambers really appreciates what they are doing for the US of A; I know they’re soldiering for pay, but it’s the deeds that count, and I hear your crew writes their log large and red. Damn good to meet you, Marv. Brent! How about a picture of me with a genuine American Hero? Chop-chop, dammit. I wouldn’t mind you signing it for me if you’ve got the time, Marv.”
