by Lee Ragans
They sat for a minute and then Hanson said, "Wait… there has to be somewhere closer we can hold up."
Doug responded, "Okay. If we don’t make a decision soon, it will be made for us. And we lose. "
Hanson looked out of the windows and said, “I remember apartments and shops across the way. I saw them when we were flying in.” He pointed toward the main entrance. “Over there.”
The squad waited as they talked it out. They went back and forth and then, Hanson and Jones said at once, "Agreed."
Doug looked at the whole squad using his command voice that indicated that his words were orders and not the start of a discussion, “We are going to break out of here and move carefully and quickly toward the apartments outside of the CDC entrance. The building looks to be secured, and there are some shops and restaurants. Good chances to scavenge. If we get separated, Emory Pointe is our final destination. If it turns out to be a shitstorm, we will reevaluate and move on.”
A scattering of, “Got it, Sarge,” and “Yes Sergeant,” Let Dough know the orders were heard.
“Check your gear.” He snapped. Dutifully everyone did the 10-point check down to seeing if their boots were still tied. If was amazing how something like an untied boot could get you killed. Not knowing which pouch had your ammo was obvious, but tied boots and clipped belts would keep you alive.
“Hanson set the diversion.” Was the next order.
“Roger.” The reply.
“Begin moving by 2’s on the diversion.” The unit began to move.
Firing 4 grenades in succession. Firing and then reloading. The small cluster of the living and the dead fighting over the entrance were distracted. The squad went the other way. Out a side door and jumped down a now severed staircase. In the early days of fortification, they cut the staircase from the building using a cement saw that was still on the ground next to the destroyed stairs.
They moved through the cool Fall air in the early evening. Stepping over corpses left from the first days of the outbreak they walked right through a breach in the fence. Without firing a shot after the initial diversion, the squad moved by 2’s across the road and up to the high-end apartments and retails shops.
No one followed. Not dead or alive. The living were too busy fighting the dead to get in the door of the now empty building.
Moving between the buildings they were looking for the entrances to the apartments. After 5 minutes of searching, they found the entrance stairs to the parking deck. Where the door should be, they found a welded gate with a chain lock.
Though the staircase echoed, “Halafucking loo ya. The Goddamn Army is here!”
Everyone was silent. Doug broke it, “Just a squad, I am afraid.”
“Well, it will have to do. Sending someone down to open the gate.” The voice said.
“Thank you.”
They squad slipped in the now open gate past the small-statured Chinese girl who opened it and up the rest of the stairs.
“Buddy, Buddy Handel. I am so glad to see you.” Buddy identified Doug as the leader, not by his rank but by the fact that the soldiers were looking at him and waiting. Doug never looked at the soldiers. He extended a hand.
Doug shook it and said, “Thank you for letting us in.”
“No need to thank me. I would rather let you in than have you break my gate.”
“Well…”
“No need to stand on old social norms. You would have broken in if you needed. And let me go ahead and get it out of the way. We don’t have so much as an airsoft gun between us. We have bats, knives, and scalpels. Seriously, I have 10 med school students here. They are fucking dangerous with sharp objects.”
“Good to know.” Doug smiled
“Are you just passing through?”
“We are not sure.”
“Did you come in on those helicopters?”
“We did.”
“Why not go out on them?”
“They carried out the researchers that were needed elsewhere.”
“Oh, shit. That blows. You come in, keep them safe and get left behind.”
“It happens.” Doug shrugged.
“Will they come back?”
Doug thought for a moment, “Could happen but there will be nothing there. The crowd turned. One or two dead in the middle of it. Now they are all dead or soon will be.”
“I hate to hear that. I knew some of them.” Buddy looked at the ground.
“So, you know how we got here. How did you get here, Buddy?”
“Oh, mine is a simple tale. I am… I guess was now… a student at the B school at Emory.”
“You lived here?”
“Oh… no. 18 hundred a month rent. I am dirt poor. I am one of those they let in on scholarship so they rich liberals feel good about themselves. No. I lived in the dorms. When it went to shit, the dorms were not a good place to be. I thought why not come to the nice places to see what I could find.”
“So, what did you find?”
“A few Chinese nationals cut off from home. These students are the children of billionaires and millionaires. Smart, wealthy and completely cut off from everyone they know but each other. Fortunately, I am a master organizer. So, their brilliance, my organization skills. We are all alive and frankly getting a little fat.” He patted his stomach.
Doug looked the smart-mouthed college kid in the eyes and said, “Okay. We need some rooms on the top floor.”
“Ummm...”
“So why the reluctance?”
“They are blocked off. More than a few dead wandering up there.”
“Not a problem. We will clear it and keep it. Any problem with that?”
“None, none at all.” Buddy smiled. The dead wandering around upstairs worried him and knew that he was going to have to do something about it one day. Now with the professionals, it was no longer a problem. The med students would let him stay so long as he was useful. Taking care of problems and keeping things in order made him useful to them.
“Though the immigrant community has some strong feelings about killing the dead.”
“I think you need to explain.” Doug got close. Close enough to smell the Slim Jim Buddy had just eaten.
Buddy stared and then said, “A couple of the doc wannabes are very religious. They believe that stopping the walking corpses is the same as defiling graves. The rest are going along with it. Like how the Baptist vote to ban beer, but 90% go drinking the next county over.”
“So… what are you saying?”
“If it is a Chinese corpse don’t kill it.”
“I have no idea how to deal with this…”
“Yeah, you are more of an action guy. I get that. I am more of a negotiation guy.”
“Let me spell this out for you, Buddy. I am not going to do anything that will put my people at risk. So if something is walking up there that is not alive, it gets a new hole in its head.”
Buddy leaned in closer, “I hear you, but these guys are literally going to lose their shit. And they know how to use knives.”
Doug leaned in closer, “So do my people. And we have guns. If anyone objects they can go out the door or off the roof. I really don’t care.”
“Shit, I knew the Army was just going take over. Like every movie.”
Doug listened and thought about it. They were civilians and not under his command. He could not just do what he wanted.
“Let’s have a talk with those that care.”
The squad spread out and checked the first two floors. The top floor was blocked off with furniture. They held back as ordered.
Doug took off his helmet and sat down at the table with a young woman and young man. They looked so much alike that they had to be related.
Buddy broke the silence, “I was telling the sergeant here not to hurt any of your Chinese ancestors.”
Doug looked back and forth from one to the other. No reaction.
The girl broke into a laugh first. Then she said, “Oh my god that fucking racist bo
ught it.”
They were all laughing.
The girl followed up, “We are fucking medical students, not farmers. And my brother and I are from Pasadena, not China. The other students here are from China, but frankly, they are just the kids of the super wealthy. They are expecting private security to show up any minute.”
The girl looked down and then back to Doug’s eyes. “We were fucking with Buddy here. He kept speaking English to us slowly. I am extremely sorry Sergeant that our joke caused you any concern. Please forgive us.”
Doug looked at Buddy who was now glowing red, “I think you may not be as in charge here as you think.”
“No. Indeed. I am some manner of an idiot.”
Hitting Buddy on the back as he passed Doug said, “You might just make a good leader one day. Not many people can fuck up that bad and learn from it right away.” The Sergeant could not turn off the coach and teacher in him.
The girl poked Buddy on his arm, “Now we are even, asshole.”
“I need to go clear our new home,” Doug said on the way out of the room
“One second, sir.” The Brother called out.
“Yes.”
“I have an idea that may help.”
“I am listening.”
“In the ER we lost most people to bites after the initial infection. So we started gagging the terminally ill and the dead.”
“Makes sense.”
“Most of the bites were on people’s forearms. It is a natural reaction to raise your arm to protect yourself. The Dead just bite and rip. You need padding, on your forearms but it must be pliant. Not like shin guards. Leather would be best.”
“Why pliant?”
“If it is too hard like a shell they will just slip off and keep biting. If they can bite into something, you can hold them there and hit them with a hammer or knife in the head.”
“That is a damn good idea for close quarters. We have only had to shoot them from a distance. Help me gather some materials and let’s get my people up-armored.”
The young man smiled.
“What is your name, son?”
“Charles, sir.”
“Well Charles, you may have just saved lives. And I appreciate the respect, but I am uncomfortable with the sir. I am an NCO, we are usually called by our rank or the nickname Sarge.”
“I was ignorant. I will not make that mistake again, Sergeant.”
“How about you just call me Doug. You are not in the Army.”
It took an hour of hunting to find enough leather boots, padding and then cut it to make straps to hold it tight. Not wanting to risk their lives on an idea that may not work the soldiers took turns testing their new armored forearms by biting each other’s armor. All passed on the first try, except one. It turned out the leather boots were not all that much leather. Just a thin layer of leather over the cloth. They started over with another pair of boots, and in a few minutes, the squad was ready.
The plan was simple. They would go to one end of the floor, clear an apartment facing the CDC, move the furniture, and open the doors to the balcony. If they got overwhelmed, they could force the dead into the one apartment and then push them over the edge. The hope was they could use their knives and just stab the dead and then carry them to the balconies and toss them.
In just 2 hours they cleared the 20 apartments with no injuries other than a private that twisted an ankle wrestling a corpse over the ledge.
Standing in the hallway, sweating Doug held an impromptu meeting, “Great job people. No one got dead. No ammo used and now we have a place to live with a view of the CDC. Good job. We have enough rooms here for everyone to have a place to yourselves, but I want you to stay paired up. No one needs to be alone right now.”
One of the fireteam leads spoke up, “Uh Sarge, we have 3 females. That means someone is going to have to buddy up cross-gender.”
Doug knew it was going to come up. This was a good way to deal with it, “People, you have to use common sense here. The UCMJ is still in effect, but we may have to bend some small rules. I have no idea how long we are going to be here, and I am not going to enforce the rules on fraternization of you can act like adults. If I don’t know what is going on, I don’t care.”
“What about scavenging, Sarge?” One of the privates asked.
“At dawn, we are going to send out teams of 4 to gather from the restaurants and stores below. They look to have been looted, but looters never take everything.”
Then the question came the Doug hoped they would wait to ask, “Are we ever going home?”
“At this point, I am just trying to make sure we can stay alive for the rest of the week. Let’s work on that and then we will work out the whole getting back to Fort Bragg thing.”
“Okay, pair up and find your spot. Remember, don’t drink the water without boiling, but please… please… shower and wash those nasty asses with soap.”
Everyone laughed as they spread out. The cross-gender pair found an apartment with two bedrooms. It let them pair up without losing privacy.
Everyone settled in, the leaders met and discussed that plan. There was none. The evacuation of the CDC was so rushed that only the company's chain of command even knows they are there. They are not going to send an evac for a squad.
As soon as the door was closed, Jones said, “I know there is no plan, but we have to act like there is one.”
Hanson jumped in, “Sarge, did they even say anything in the briefing before we took off?”
“No. It was so rushed. The Captain just pulled me in and said that we were to go secure the CDC while they extracted the scientists. When we got to the birds, I knew this was a one-way trip. They had 5 aircraft. And it takes 4 to move our squad. The list had 30 people and crates of equipment.”
She normally did question her squad leader, but this was an exception, “Why the fuck did you let us take off if you knew it was a one-way trip?”
“Would you have refused the order?”
She knew that she would not, but she said, “Maybe. I would have insisted on clarification.”
“Clarification? After the executions for desertion? Fuck that. I honestly thought we had a better chance of survival getting away from Fort Bragg.”
In the first days after the outbreak, several soldiers had deserted and were caught and returned by the base Military Police. The summary executions on the front lawn of the base commanders home sent a shock wave through the base. The Army had not executed anyone since World War 2. The fact that it was done by the General’s own hand with his own sidearm. That meant they were at war and this was a war zone now.
Hanson spoke softly, “You’re right.”
“I know I am, and frankly it does not matter. We are all in a world of shit now.”
They laughed.
Jones was not to be deterred, “So what is the plan now?”
“Best plan have now is to hunker down, keep everyone alive and stay where we can see the helipad.” Doug pointed out the window. The Apartments were facing the CDC, and if someone tried to land on the small tarmac at the CDC, they would hear it. Doug continued, “We need to mark the roof with our unit so anyone flying over knows where we went.”
Hanson asked, “Is that safe? I mean we might not want to reveal we are here.”
“Who are we hiding from?”
“Fair enough.”
Doug indulged them a few more minutes and then said, “You guys need to leave. I need a shower, and we are close but let’s not go to showering together just yet.”
Jones laughed and smiled, “So much for fraternizing with you. I may go find me a nice doctor.”
Hanson replied, “Good luck. They seem to be paired up.”
“Just because you tried and failed with the ladies does not mean there is not a young doctor down there that don’t wanna piece chocolate.” Jones smiled slyly.
Doug could hear them still talking shit to each other as they went down the hallway. He sat alone and just took one deep brea
th after another. He never married, his girlfriend disappeared in the opening days of the outbreak. He hoped she was alive, but the chances of that were small. He knew he would never see her again. His entire squad was all single. He knew that is why they were sent. They were marked expendable on the org chart.
Showering in the cold water, he slept for a few hours in the bed that was now his. His watch showed it was midnight. He slipped on his uniform and took a walk. The watch was set without him having to spell it out. The fire-teams would split the watch an alternate. Four soldiers each set watch alternating days. It would become routine in two weeks, and people would share. The corporals and the sergeant would never take a watch unless it was an emergency. The enlisted would be insulted if their NCOs had to do their jobs.
