These Dead Lands: Immolation

by Stephen Knight

  “Wait. You saw our troops, and they didn’t assist?” Victor asked as Command Sergeant Major Parker walked up and took a knee next to him.

  “I saw vehicles, sir, but no one stopped,” Hastings said.

  Victor turned to Parker. “I want some blood over this.”

  “My pleasure, sir,” Parker said, and the big senior NCO got to his feet and walked toward the front of the flatbed.

  “Sir, what’s the plan?” Hastings asked.

  Victor motioned for him to climb up. “You’re with us, Hastings. We’ll unload the vehicles at the Navy yard and convoy down to Bragg while the train continues to the west.”

  A Stryker began raking one of the fields with .50-caliber fire.

  Hastings looked over and saw several zombies being torn apart, disappearing into the tall grass as they went down. “Sir, give me just a second to make sure my people are squared away. That okay with you?”

  Victor nodded. “Sure. Join us up here when you can, but try to make it quick. I hope we’ll be rolling soon.” The diesel engines at the front of the train consist were already powered up and idling.

  “Roger that,” Hastings said.

  He hurried back to the passenger coaches. He climbed into the first one and found it full of people and their possessions. Almost all were civilians, but there were a few soldiers interspersed here and there. He saw Captain Chan, the CO of the MP company, standing near the back of the car, and he pushed his way toward the Asian man.

  “Hey, Chan.”

  “Hastings. Still with us, huh?” Chan asked. He kept the barrel of his M4 pointed toward the floor of the coach.

  “Can’t seem to get out of this place. You know where my people are?”

  “Ballantine’s getting them set up in the next car,” Chan said. He stepped aside as much as he could, and Hastings pushed past him. It was no small feat given the size of his ruck, but Hastings was able to open the door at the end of the coach and step through to the next one.

  He saw Ballantine and Guerra getting everyone squared away while Reader, Tharinger, Stilley, and Hartman stood security at the car’s rear. Hastings looked around the coach until he found Diana and Kenny. The boy was sitting against the window, looking outside as he chewed on a cracker loaded with cheese spread. Diana sat in the aisle seat, across from Kay and Curtis Ballantine. Joshua was behind them, with Everson sitting on the aisle. The old man was reclined in his seat, eyes closed behind his glasses.

  “Hey, guys, how’re you doing?” Hastings asked as he stopped beside Diana.

  Kenny looked up at him and gave him a small smile, appearing completely content to be in the train and chewing on a jalapeño-cheese-covered cracker. It was as if the horror he had just gone through had never happened, and Hastings found he admired the autistic boy’s ability to switch himself off like that.

  “We’re still kickin’ it, General,” Diana said. “Kenny’s got himself a fresh diaper and some crackers, and I just freebased five grams of coke. Like they say: no pain, no pain.”

  Hastings frowned. “You did?”

  Diana rolled her eyes. “Dude, you’re so gullible.”

  Hastings sighed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “So what now? We go to Colorado or someplace?”

  “That’s the plan. I’ll be heading south with Colonel Victor. Ballantine and the rest of the guys will be staying with you until the train reaches its final destination. I’ve been told that Fort Carson is still operational, so you’ll have an entire infantry division providing protection, along with full aviation and armored brigades. Much more secure than here, I’m told.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it, General. So you’re not coming with us, huh?”

  “No. Like I said, I’m headed south with the rest of the active duty soldiers. You’ll go with the National Guard, but Ballantine and the rest of the guys will be on hand. You don’t need to worry. You guys will be looked after.”

  “Yeah, I saw how Ballantine was jumping in there to help out back at the barracks,” Diana said. “Big thumbs-up from me.”

  “That was a freak occurrence,” Hastings said. It was a lame response but all he could come up with on the fly.

  Diana reached over and brushed the boy’s hair out of his eyes. “Kenny’s gonna miss you.”

  “Well. I don’t know if Kenny will ever miss anyone, but I’ll sure miss him.”

  Diana looked up at Hastings for a moment then got to her feet. Hastings started to step back to give her room, but she put her arms around his neck and pulled him in close, brushing his lips with hers. “I’ll miss you, too,” she said. “But unless you’re totally dumb, you probably already knew that.”

  “Uh, yeah, I guess,” Hastings said. He took a second to give her a squeeze before releasing her. It didn’t feel half bad, hanging onto a woman for a moment. “We’ll see each other again. Take care of yourself. I’ve got to roll.”

  “You too,” Diana said.

  Hastings exchanged a nod with Kay then struck off toward the rear of the car. Ballantine and Guerra watched him approach, the latter with a small smirk on his face. Hastings stared at Guerra, daring him to say anything. Guerra wiped the smirk away in an instant.

  “All right, Ballantine, you’re on your own with these people,” Hastings told the tall NCO. “Get them to Colorado. They’re your responsibility now, and I expect you and Staff Sergeant Guerra to do whatever it takes to keep them safe.”

  “Yes, sir. Completely understood,” Ballantine said.

  “I mean all of them, Ballantine. Not just your dependents.”

  “Hooah, Captain. We got it,” Guerra said. He paused. “But do we have to take care of Stilley, too?”

  “Hey! Yeah, man, take care of me,” Stilley said from the vestibule separating the coaches. “I’d like some coffee and a newspaper and a nice white terrycloth bathrobe from the Beverly Hills Hotel, just like my man Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop.”

  “You’ll be lucky to get one of Kenny’s used diapers shoved down your throat, retard,” Guerra snarled.

  Stilley chuckled and started humming “More Than a Woman.”

  Guerra made a frustrated noise and turned back to Hastings. “Seriously, sir, we’re good to go on this,” he said, glancing quickly at Ballantine. “We’re not going to let anything happen to our people. Unless this train flies off the rails somewhere down the line, everyone’s going to make it to Colorado.”

  Ballantine nodded. “That’s how it’ll be, sir.”

  Hastings released his breath in a rushing sigh. “All right. I’m with Victor. You guys take care of yourselves.”

  He pushed past them and stepped into the vestibule, where he told Stilley and Hartman to keep their heads above water. He shouted the same to Tharinger, who stood on the ground outside the right boarding door. He exited to the left, said his farewells to Reader, then jogged back to the flatbed car where Victor and the others were waiting.

  The lead diesel’s horn sounded, and the throbbing engines began to rev up. The train was moving out.

  *

  The Naval facility was mostly devoid of zombies when the train arrived, but enough were there to mandate that the soldiers offload the military vehicles as rapidly as possible. Using the ramps, they rolled HEMTs, five-ton trucks, Humvee gun trucks, and MRAPS off the flat-bed cars and onto the ground. The process was tedious process and not at all speedy. It took several minutes to unchain a vehicle, guide it to the ramps, and then drive it off the rail car.

  Hastings was dismounted with a good amount of regular Army troops, while Guard provided security. He saw his own guys around the passenger coaches, but he didn’t go over and talk with them. They’d already said their good-byes.

  He did find that Diana was on his mind, and by extension, Kenny. He didn’t know what to make of that. He didn’t know if there was something to be made of it. He was still reeling from the loss of his family, so a romantic entanglement with a crazy stripper who was currently the caregiver of an autistic boy
who wasn’t even hers was a bit much for him to take on right now. Hell, even if I was single and in a good frame of mind, that would be a big-ticket item.

  Everyone was on edge. The zombie hordes weren’t very close, and it would take a few hours for them to arrive at the Naval Support Activity installation, but nearby Mechanicsburg had more than a few reekers of its own. Though the herds had apparently moved on after the operation to recover the trains had ended, there was no guarantee they wouldn’t be coming back. The trains, cranes, and vehicles were making more than enough noise to draw the dead, not to mention the occasional gunshot that rang out when one or two ghouls got too close.

  Hastings kept his rifle handy while he took the opportunity to replenish his spent magazines and fill up his CamelBak. When it appeared the train wasn’t about to get immediately overrun, he even broke down his M4 for a quick cleaning. The weapon was filthy, and he was surprised it hadn’t malfunctioned. The FireClean oil Tharinger had given him really did work wonders. He’d run thousands of rounds through it that day, and it was a wonder the barrel wasn’t worn smooth.

  “Hey, Captain, your shit running right?”

  Hastings looked up and found Slater standing next to him. “Hey, Sergeant Slater, what brings you here?”

  “I’ve been ordered to stick close to Victor. I guess he wants a Green Beret for a valet or something.”

  Hastings snorted. “Well, you have all those special snake-eater skills, Slater. Of course he’d want you where he could find you.”

  “Yeah, well, in my experience, sitting in the ring seats where the decisions are being made is a combination of boring and enraging. Hopefully, I’ll be able to contain myself.” Slater brightened. “Hey, you catch that shit between Everson and Walker?”

  “Well, yeah. I was in the same truck you were.”

  “Old man still has some piss and vinegar in him, huh? I was just gonna shoot the guy with the fifty and call it a day, but the world’s most ancient Marine apparently has a flare for the dramatic. Glad he’s on our side.”

  Hastings nodded and went back to servicing his rifle. He didn’t think Everson had done something commendable, any more than he thought the former Marine had done something horrible. The world had changed, and people like Walker were going to fuck it up for everyone with their “Looking Out for Number One” style. Hastings was neither happy nor sad the guy was dead, nor did he feel strongly about the manner of his death. Walker wasn’t someone very useful to have around, and Everson had just taken care of it for them.

  “Well, I guess I’d better go check in with the colonel,” Slater said. “I’m sure he’s going to be keeping you close, too, Captain. He seems to lean on you pretty heavily. Thank God you actually know what you’re doing.”

  “Why, Slater, was that a compliment?”

  Slater shrugged. “I don’t know. Let me think about it. Later, sir.”

  “Later.” Hastings watched Slater walk away then turned back to his rifle. That is one odd guy.

  When the vehicles were offloaded, the senior officers began rounding up all the Army troops. Hastings was assigned to the front right seat of an MRAP, which suited him just fine. The MRAP was the perfect vehicle for the zombie apocalypse.

  The column formed up and began rolling for the gate. Hastings had enough time to introduce himself to the rest of the soldiers in the vehicle before he checked the new radio frequency list. He wanted to dial in on the open net and monitor it for a while, just to get a sense of the unit’s rhythm. As the soldier behind the wheel took his foot off the brake and set the heavy armored vehicle into motion, Hastings heard the train engine blat out one short blast. He leaned forward in his seat so he could look back and watch the train pull away, rolling down the track to the west.

  He thought of everyone he knew on that train: Kenny and Diana; Ballantine, Kay, and their boys; Tharinger and Reader, the two buddies who were on their way back home; Hartman and Guerra; and even Stilley, who had miraculously managed to survive. He hoped they all made it to Colorado and that the 4th Infantry had really managed to secure more than just a tenuous foothold at the base of the Rocky Mountains.

  And he thought of Terri and Scotty and wondered when God would see fit to let him join them. He thought it would be soon, but to a man who was slowly rotting away on the inside, soon could never come quickly enough. He would have to tough it out.

  There was no other way. Perhaps, if he was lucky, he would get his wish when he got to Fort Bragg—unless God was merciful and struck him dead along the way.

  Always something to look forward to.

  Stephen Knight is the author of the zombie apocalypse best seller The Gathering Dead and the science fiction adventure novel Earthfall. His next standalone novel, Charges, will be released in Summer 2015. He can be found on the web at:

  http://knightlanding.wordpress.com

  https://www.facebook.com/stephen.knight.376695

  Find more of his fiction at:

  http://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Knight/e/B004SVKJH6/

  Scott Wolf is a 20 year Army Special Forces and Special Mission Unit veteran who loves to take long walks in post-apocalyptic landscapes. Wolf continues to serve and support the US government in other endeavors around the globe when he isn’t teaching others how to shoot, move, and communicate during the zombie apocalypse.

  Glossary Of Terms

  10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry): A division of the United States Army based at Fort Drum, New York. Originally constituted as a unique mountain warfare unit, the division was the only unit of its size in the U.S. Army to specialize in fighting in mountainous and arctic conditions, thus earning the division the “MOUNTAIN” tab. Today, the division retains its “mountain” designation for historical purposes and is organized as a light infantry division. The entire 10th Mountain Division was assigned to Task Force Manhattan.

  101st Airborne Division: A division of the United States Army base at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The 101st is a U.S. Army modular light infantry division trained for air assault operations. The 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division was assigned to Task Force Philadelphia.

  82nd Airborne Division: The 82nd Airborne Division is an active duty airborne infantry division of the United States Army, specializing in parachute assault operations into denied areas. Based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the 82nd Airborne Division is part of the XVIII Airborne Corps. Comprised the majority of the Army’s contribution to Task Force Washington.

  Big Voice: On military bases, loudspeakers broadcast urgent messages. When incoming rocket or mortar fire is detected by radar systems, the Big Voice automatically broadcasts a siren and instructions to take cover. The Big Voice will also warn of scheduled explosions, usually to destroy captured weapons.

  Bird: Helicopter. “Chopper” is rarely used, except in movies, where it is always used. A chopper is a kind of motorcycle, not an aircraft.

  Black (on ammo, fuel, water, etc.): Almost out.

  CH-47F Chinook: Large transport helicopter developed for the US Army’s medium lift mission. Has two large, three-bladed rotors and is powered by two Honeywell T55-714A turboshaft engines. Capable of speeds of almost 200 miles per hour, and can carry up to 55 troops or slingload 28,000 pounds of cargo.

  Claymore: The M18A1 Claymore is a directional anti-personnel mine used by the U.S. military. Its inventor, Norman MacLeod, named the mine after a large Scottish medieval sword. Unlike a conventional land mine, the Claymore is command-detonated and directional, meaning it is fired by remote-control and shoots a pattern of metal balls into the kill zone like a shotgun. The Claymore fires steel balls, out to about 100 meters (110 yards) within a 60° arc in front of the device. It is used primarily in ambushes and as an anti-infiltration device against enemy infantry. It is also used against unarmored vehicles.

  COP: Combat Outpost. A small base, usually housing between 40 and 150 soldiers, often in a particularly hostile area. Life at a COP is often austere and demanding, with every soldier responsible
for both guard duty and patrolling.

  DFAC: (pronounced dee-fack) Dining Facility, aka Chow Hall. Where soldiers eat. At larger bases the meals are served by contracted employees, often from Bangladesh or India. These employees are called TCNs, or Third-Country Nationals.

  Dustoff: Medical evacuation by helicopter. For example, “dustoff inbound” means that a medevac helicopter is on the way.

  Fitty: The M2 .50 caliber machine gun.

  FOB: Forward Operating Base. Bigger than a COP, smaller than a superbase. A FOB can be austere and dangerous but is more commonly provisioned with hot, varied meals, hot water for showers and laundry, as well as recreational facilities.

  Fobbit: Combination of FOB and Hobbit. Derogatory term for soldiers who do not patrol outside the FOB.

  Geardo: (rhymes with weirdo) A soldier who spends an inordinate amount of their personal money to buy fancy military gear, such as weapon lights, GPS watches, custom rucksacks, etc. Generally refers to a soldier with little tactical need for such equipment. See: Fobbit.

  Groundhog Day: From the Bill Murray movie, the phrase is used to describe deployments where every day proceeds the same way, no matter how the individual tries to change it.

  Gun: A mortar tube or artillery piece. Never used to refer to a rifle or pistol. Military-issued pistols are usually called 9-mils.

  Humvee: The High Mobility Multi-Wheeled Vehicle, the general purpose utility vehicle of the United States Military. Replaced the trusty Jeep in the late 1970s.

  IDF: Indirect Fire, or simply Indirect. Mortars, rockets and artillery. Term generally used to describe enemy action.

  Inside/Outside The Wire: Describes whether you are on or off a base.

  ISR: Intelligence, Security, and Reconnaissance.

  JDAM: (pronounced jay-damn) A bomb dropped from a U.S. aircraft, ranging from 500 to 2,000 pounds.

  Joe: Soldier. Replacement term for GI.

  KIA: Killed in Action, when a soldier is killed in combat.