Not that Jake blamed the people they’d spoken to in the half-day that they’d been in New York. In their eyes, the government had abandoned the city to lawlessness. They didn’t have the infected to deal with, but with limited sources of fresh food, it had quickly devolved into chaos after the first couple of weeks. He didn’t even want to imagine the hell that people must have endured over the last year, trapped in the city with no way of escape.
As they settled in for the night, Jake set a one-third/two-thirds security. At any given time, no less than one-third of the platoon was awake and on guard. He did it out of habit, something they’d done on the trip to New York when they were in the areas controlled by the infected.
It turned out to be the only thing that kept them from being completely overrun.
The thieves appeared sometime after midnight. They came from all directions, the apocalyptic version of a flash mob. The soldiers on guard duty shouted to wake the others. The men kicked out of sleeping bags, half-awake and full of fear. They brought up weapons, ready to kill anything that didn’t wear a uniform.
All along the line, Jake saw people fighting with his men. They used baseball bats, lengths of pipe, broom handles, and whatever else they could find. His men restrained themselves from firing their weapons, but there was a lot of hand-to-hand fighting. He wanted to move forward and help defend the perimeter, but Sergeant Turner’s hand on his chest restrained him.
“You need to stay here and manage the fight, sir,” the wizened NCO told him. “This is no different than a firefight. We’ll shift men where they need to go to ensure these people don’t make it through.”
The battle was over in minutes. The thieves yelled something to one another and the ones who could flee did so. Several of them did not move. Sergeant Turner’s hand knocked against his shoulder. “Looks like our SF-Ranger-Delta guy and his Iranian friend took things a little personal.”
Jake followed the platoon sergeant’s outstretched fingers to where Grady Harper and Taavi stood shoulder-to-shoulder, both crouched low, ready to fend off more attacks. In front of them lay the bulk of the unmoving attackers.
“Goddamn it,” Jake muttered and stumbled through the darkness to them. By the time he got there, both were searching the bodies. “What the hell, Harper?”
“Hey, LT,” the operator said, smiling. His teeth glowed dully in the dark night. “Just seeing if there’s any intel on these guys.”
Jake shined his flashlight on the five bodies. Dark smears of blood oozed from each of them. “What did you do?”
“We defended our position against people who would have slit our throats in the darkness, brother.”
“We aren’t here to kill civilians, Harper!”
“They’d have done the same to us.” Grady straightened up and pointed angrily toward the center of their camp. “You didn’t see what we saw in their eyes since you were back there hiding out. They would have killed every one of us and not given a shit about it.”
“I was controlling the fight, Harper.”
“Whatever, dude,” the former Green Beret muttered. “Call it what you want, but me and Taavi made a battlefield decision. And we saved lives. Probably yours.”
The grumbling of the men around them made Jake consider his next words carefully. The soldiers agreed with Harper. They’d already gone AWOL from the US Army at Fort Bliss to come on this mission. To suggest that they’d killed men in cold blood would likely send the group over the edge once more.
“As the platoon leader, I kept an eye on the lines and shifted soldiers where they were needed in case one section was going to be overrun. I’m not questioning your actions, Harper. I wouldn’t do that with any of my men. But I am trying to remind you that we need to exercise restraint—when we can. We’re down to thirty-seven men. Thirty-seven against ten million are terrible odds. If there are any bookies left in Vegas, they’ll take those all day long and twice on Sunday. We can’t turn the population against us.”
“Those guys were gonna kill us and take our shit, LT.”
“I get it—”
Sergeant Turner cut in. “What Lieutenant Murphy is trying to say, fellas, is in line with what old General Mattis told his Marines back during the early days of the Iraq War. He said, ‘Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.’ Right, Lieutenant?”
The soldiers chuckled at their platoon sergeant’s words. Most of them were probably too young to know that the old Marine had been a kick ass ground combat officer. They only knew him from his years as the Secretary of Defense—if they were even aware of that much. “Yeah. That’s exactly what I meant, Sergeant Turner. Thank you. We need to stay on the population’s good side, but you have every right to defend yourself or your brother standing beside you.”
Harper stared hard at him for a moment, then nodded, turning his back on Jake. That seemed to settle the matter as the soldiers went about looking after their gear to see if anything was missing.
“That guy’s gonna be a problem, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Turner muttered softly beside him.
“I know he is,” Jake replied. “I’m just not sure what to do about it. We came here because of him and the potential that whatever shit is running through his veins can end all of this. Without him, what the fuck are we doing here?”
“Agreed, sir. We just need to keep our finger on the pulse of the men so they don’t mutiny on us.”
A few catcalls caught Jake’s attention as his men called out to a pair of women who’d crept up to where they were. Even in the dim light, he could see that they’d pulled open their shirts to reveal the skin beneath.
“Goddammit,” Jake groaned. “What now?”
3
* * *
CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO
MARCH 3RD
The road-weary traveler observed the sandy airport from the cover of a group of scrub brush for several long minutes. She’d learned over her long journey that caution and stealth outweighed all other actions when it came to the world she found herself in. The crazies were everywhere she went. Any uncalculated move could mean instant death.
Hannah Dunn crept out of the dusty desert, her feet scraping in the sand scattered across the abandoned road surrounding the airfield. She was already tired and it wasn’t even noon yet. Her energy levels were shit these days. She wasn’t sure whether it was from the lingering effects from that illness she’d contracted a few months ago that derailed her journey home, the lack of proper nutrition, or just the sheer feelings of hopelessness that threatened to overwhelm her sometimes. Regardless, it pissed her off and that anger usually carried her through each day until sundown.
She moved cautiously, each step measured and precise. Out in the open was the worst place to be if she attracted the attention of any of the crazed motherfuckers that roamed all of South and Central America. They’d been a constant threat since that day in Brazil when they came pouring from the Iranian facility that her team was observing. Everywhere she went now, they roamed the streets, searching for their next victim.
Hannah clung to the hope that the disease had been stopped at the border, that her homeland was safe somehow. She told herself that her parents were still alive in Falls Church and that they kept her little doggie, Chi-Chi, alive and well during the outbreak in South and Central America. She forced herself to believe that. Otherwise, what was the point of all of this? Why was she struggling to make it back there if it was more of the same?
The woman still carried the battered, suppressed M-4 rifle that she’d used on that mission. The ammunition was long gone, used up over the course of her journey. She kept it in case she ran across any more ammo, which she did every once in a while, but her primary weapon was a well-worn claw hammer that she’d scavenged from a garage toolbox months ago. It was fine if there were only a couple of the crazies. If there were more than that, and they’d seen her, she just ran since they were much less menacing now than they were at first. Back at the facility, the crazies were we
ll fed and full of energy, most of the ones she came across these days were starving and didn’t have the energy stores for long, sustained runs. The real problem was that they tended to stay together in groups. If she allowed herself to get surrounded, then she was done for.
During her trip northward, there’d been too many close calls. Too many narrow escapes. It was all she could do to wake each day and continue her search for a useable aircraft or helicopter that she could fly toward the US border. The belief that it was better back in the States kept her moving each day. It had to be better there.
Flying had its own risks, but she felt the good outweighed the bad. She’d only found one helicopter that was still usable in her yearlong journey, most others had little or no fuel, or were down for maintenance that would never be finished. The one she’d been able to find somewhere in Columbia had started up and she’d flown ten or fifteen miles before the warning claxons began telling her something was wrong with the bird. At that point, she’d already walked hundreds of miles through the nastiest terrain on Earth, so she decided to push it and risk a malfunction.
The engines seized up and the helicopter fell like a rock from the sky.
The crash had been spectacular. Only the heavy triple canopy jungle saved her life. Otherwise, the helicopter would have burned in to the ground and at the very least broken her back. As it was, though, she was able to walk away from the accident. Climbing from the trees had taken some work, but she’d finally made it back down.
From beat up old cars to bicycles, Hannah had used all manner of vehicles during her long journey. The lack of fuel or massive vehicle pileups on narrow roads had often forced her to abandon the vehicles. Bicycles were great for covering a lot of distance quickly, but they were impossible to fight from, so she’d given up seeking those out. Her mantra for the past year was that once she made it to the American border, then all of this would be worth it. She would be safe from the crazies that the facility in Brazil had unleashed upon the world.
Hannah walked cautiously to the fence surrounding the Chihuahua International Airport. This was the first large airport that she’d come across where the fences were still intact. She was hopeful that one of the nine hangar buildings that she could see would hold a useable aircraft, something that had been kept out of the weather and that wasn’t in fifty million pieces.
She took her pack off and set it on the ground beside the chain link to begin the arduous task of cutting the wire with the beat up old pliers she’d stolen months ago from that same workshop in Panama where she found her hammer. She’d learned long ago to avoid the main entrance to any facility as it was where the crazies tended to congregate for easy movement to and from the shade.
Her grip strength was terrible, so she had to use both hands to squeeze the handles together, twisting the pliers with each successive squeeze. She’d watched guys in training slice through a fence in five minutes, but it took her more than forty to cut through the thick wire. Once she was through, she pushed her way inside and sat heavily on the ground, pulling her pack inside with her.
Hannah cursed the mysterious illness she’d contracted once again. She pulled off her glove and looked at the gnarled scar where the crazy had bitten her on the fleshy part of her left palm. She’d fallen ill within hours of the bite. Whatever shit that guy’s mouth carried had caused her sickness. Hanna guessed it was probably bacterial in nature, but that was as far as her self-diagnosis went. She should have already been back in the States by now, but the journey was dramatically slowed by the lingering effects of being sick. The lack of strength and stamina limited her ability to travel to only four or five hours a day before she collapsed in exhaustion. That’s why she had to find a serviceable aircraft this time.
She squeezed her eyes shut, focusing on the end state. There had to be aircraft inside those hangars. She knew from experience that the ones sitting outside, rotting on the tarmac, would be next to useless. They’d endured too much from the yearlong weather cycle. But this airport was plenty big enough to have light planes or helicopters inside of the hangars.
After a healthy swig of water, she pushed herself to her feet. She’d gotten lucky a few days ago, finding an empty roadside store that still had packaged food and bottled water. It was heavy in her pack, but crossing the arid Mexican desert—even in the spring—was dangerous without plenty of water, so she endured the added weight. She consoled herself with the belief that she’d be flying soon.
No more walking.
Hannah let the hammer hang comfortably in her hand as she moved slowly across the open space between the fence and airport’s buildings. She angled toward the farthest hangar away from the passenger terminal. If there were any of the crazies in the airport, the terminal was likely where they’d be. Hopefully, if there were any of them in there, they were trapped and not able to get outside to her.
It was a slow and arduous trek across the runways until she reached the large, open concrete pad outside the first hangar. Two small turboprop airplanes sat in the sun. The wheels on both aircraft were deflated and one had the double access doors open. She glanced inside for anything useful. Whatever useful items that may have been in there were long gone now, so she continued to the hangar.
The big hangar doors were closed. That could be a blessing for her if there was an aircraft inside that hadn’t been exposed to the weather. However, the loud noises of the opening the doors could also be a curse. It would be like ringing the bell for Pavlov’s dog.
She made her way to the side door and tried the handle. It was unlocked and opened silently outward. The smell of rotted flesh and the putrid odor of hot piss and shit immediately assaulted Hannah’s nose. She fought back the urge to gag as she closed the door quickly to take a gulp of fresh outside air. She’d seen a lot of death in the past year, had even been on its doorstep herself, but the smells still got to her. It was a visceral reaction that she couldn’t overcome, no matter how prepared she thought she was for it.
Hannah wished she had a jar of Vick’s VapoRub to rub onto her upper lip to mask the smell. That’s what she’d seen soldiers in Iraq do during mass casualty events. Unfortunately, she didn’t have anything like that. The best she could do was to pull the spare shirt she’d wrapped around her neck to block the desert sun up over her nose. She cinched it tight, then readjusted it once again, ensuring there was no way that the stench would have unimpeded access to her nose. She took a few more deep breaths of outside air, then opened the door once more.
Inside, less than five feet from the door, a corpse lay against the wall. Flies lifted away in a massive swarm at the disturbance of their meal, revealing a writhing mass of maggots along and under the worker’s skin as they slowly consumed the body. Hannah turned away from that corpse and stared hard into the dimly lit hangar.
There was no electricity. Light filtering in from windows high above provided the only illumination. Even in the poor lighting, she knew that she’d hit the jackpot. There were two Mexican Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters sitting in the hangar. Although Hanna had learned to fly all sorts of different aircraft during her assignment to the 160th, the Blackhawk helicopter had been her primary aircraft when she was in the Army.
Several flies landed on her bare arm and on the exposed skin at her forehead, bringing her back to the reality of the situation and causing her to suppress her elation at the find. The first thing she needed to do was clear the building to ensure there weren’t any of the crazies lurking around. The body nearby, where the damned flies had come from, was not that old, maybe a few weeks at most. That meant it had been alive in here for a long time.
Hannah crept along the wall, careful to avoid the dried, crusted blood that covered the concrete from shoulder height down to the floor. It was a pattern she’d seen elsewhere when the things were trapped. They circled the perimeter, trying to find a way out, leaving their foul excretions behind. She glanced at the floor and then quickly looked away. Dried feces littered the concrete underfoot. The cr
azies shit themselves as they walked, and it looked like this guy had been pacing the perimeter for a long time, waiting for his opportunity to escape the prison.
As she made her way around the hangar, she kept her eyes moving between her path and the interior of the building. Thankfully, the space was not that large and she was able to clear the perimeter in less than ten minutes, even with being abundantly cautious. When she was done on the outside wall, she made her way toward the helicopters. She would need to check both thoroughly to ensure there were no surprises.
She reached the one on the left first and discovered how the guy by the door had stayed alive so long trapped inside the hangar. Another body lay near the tail boom. It was little more than a pile of bones, stripped of flesh by the other one. He’d systematically eaten his partner. Water bottles lay strewn about the area, holes chewed through their side. That answered a question that Hannah had long wondered: How had the crazies managed to stay alive so long? They still had to have food and water to survive; it looked like they’d become cannibals if there wasn’t any other option.
Lovely, she thought as she pushed on toward clearing the outside of the second bird. Once she was satisfied that it was clear, she moved up to examine the inside of the helicopters. The lead helicopter was empty of any threats, as was the second. That meant she had the entire hangar to herself to work without needing to worry about the crazies.
She was intimately familiar with the Blackhawk. Between the two of them, Hannah was sure she could get one airborne and then…home.
4
* * *
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
MARCH 3RD
Five Roads To Texas | Book 11 | Reciprocity [Sidney's Way 3] Page 3
