by James Cook
“It’s not him.”
“What?”
Ethan looked up. “It’s not him.”
Justin’s face registered understanding. He kneeled down and placed a hand on the big man’s shoulder.
“Of course it’s not him. Your old man’s too tough to end up like that. He’s still out there somewhere. Maybe we’ll find him in Tennessee.”
Ethan nodded slowly, and got back to his feet. Lieutenant Jonas was striding toward the two of them, his face tight with irritation. “You two wanna tell me what the fuck you’re doing? In case you didn’t notice, the platoon is getting ready to move out.”
Ethan pointed at the corpse with his pistol. “Sorry, sir. I thought I recognized this one.”
Jonas planted his hands on his hips and glared. “I don’t give a damn if you thought it was Kate Upton with her tits hanging out. The order was weapons safe. Did you forget what that means in the last two minutes, Staff Sergeant?”
“No sir.”
“Then secure that goddamn sidearm and get your squad ready to move.” The lieutenant turned and stalked off.
Ethan unscrewed the suppressor from his Beretta M-9 and stowed it on his belt, then replaced the pistol in its holster. He turned to walk back to the bivouac, but Justin put a hand on his arm and stopped him.
“Dude, hold up a second.”
He looked down and watched as Justin shoved the gun all the way into his chest rig until it locked into place. The holster didn’t have a strap, just a thumb paddle that he depressed as he drew his weapon. It was attached to a MOLLE vest, along with spare magazines, a first aid kit, fighting knife, multi-tool, a canteen of water, and a short-handled fire axe.
“You must really be out of it, man. Get any sleep last night before you took the watch?”
Ethan sighed, and shook his head. “Not much. Too damn cold.”
“I hear you.” Justin pulled a small brown packet from his vest. “Here, you can have the coffee pack from my MRE. Might help you wake up.”
Ethan almost said no, but then thought better of it and reached out. “Thanks.”
Walking the short distance back to his two-man tent, he saw SPC Derrick Holland staring contemptuously at him. The short, compact soldier had a smirk on his narrow face, and addressed Ethan with his usual insolence. “Nice work, Sergeant. One shot, one kill. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but that’s a pistol.” He pointed at the Beretta. “And that’s a hand weapon.” He pointed at Ethan’s axe. “We’re supposed to be using blades to kill the Rot. Not guns.”
Ethan brushed past him. “Shut your face, Holland. Is your fire team ready to move out?”
“Will be in about five minutes.”
“You’ve got two. Make it happen.”
Holland chuckled, and started toward Cormier and Hicks. “Let’s go fellas. Staff Sergeant is in a mood today.”
Ethan glared after him, his right hand squeezing into a fist. Holland had been in the Army since before the Outbreak, but unlike most soldiers from that era, he hadn’t climbed very far up the ranks. His insubordinate attitude and disregard for the strictures of discipline had cost his career dearly. Ethan had gotten along well with Holland before being promoted to sergeant. Ever since then, however, Holland had been a resentful little shit. But for all that, Ethan had to admit Holland was a good soldier. He had plenty of combat experience and, despite his low rank, he knew how to keep his head in a fight. Furthermore, his skill with a rifle had earned him the distinction of being the squad’s designated marksman. He was a pain in the ass for sure, but a good man to have around when things got messy.
“You’re going to have to do something about that little bastard,” Justin said, stepping up behind him. “I’ve about had it with him giving you lip all the time.”
Ethan glanced at his friend, and not for the first time, he was taken aback at how much Justin had changed. Two years ago, he had been a gangly, awkward nineteen-year old just emerging from the scalding battlefield of adolescence. Since then, life in the Army had put twenty pounds of muscle on his frame, and long exposure to wind and sun had weathered his once boyish face. Bright, intelligent blue eyes stood out in stark contrast to his tanned skin and blond hair.
“What do you want me to do?” Ethan said. “Article 15? We’re out in the shit, it’s cold as balls, and Fort Bragg is about a hundred miles that way.” He raised a hand and pointed eastward. “I need Holland focused and motivated, same as everybody else. If giving me a hard time keeps his morale up, I’ve got thick enough skin to take it.”
“He’s just going to keep fucking with you,” Justin replied. “I know his type. I dealt with assholes like him all the time in high school. He’ll keep pushing your buttons until you do something about it. You need to put him in his place. If you don’t, then I will.”
Ethan smiled, and stepped closer to the younger man. “Listen, I appreciate your loyalty, but I don’t need you fighting my battles for me. Holland is my responsibility, not yours. If he gets out of hand, I’ll deal with it. But the absolute last thing I need is you starting a fight within the squad. We’re going into combat soon, and God only knows how long we’ll be in Tennessee. We can’t have good order and discipline breaking down less than a week into the deployment. Okay?”
Justin frowned, but nodded. “All right.”
Ethan patted him on the arm before getting to work breaking down his tent. A short time later, his nine-man squad was packed up and ready to move out. As usual, they were the first ones finished.
“Get a move on ladies,” Jonas shouted, striding through the encampment. “Delta’s already got their shit together. What’s taking the rest of you so long?”
Jonas stopped beside Sergeant First Class Damian Ashman and glared pointedly at the tall, powerfully built man. “Maybe I should make Thompson platoon sergeant. At least he can get his people up and moving in a timely manner.”
Ashman took the rebuke in stride, and turned to his men. “Last man on the rails gets the mid-watch and latrine duty for the next five days.”
Lieutenant Jonas stared on in mute satisfaction at the ensuing scramble.
Ethan watched them with a thin smile, and then turned to look at the railroad tracks a short distance away. There, straddling the rails, was a vehicle the likes of which the young soldier had never seen before, at least until a few weeks ago.
The people who arrived with it had called themselves Facilitators. Forty men and twenty-four women, all wearing the same dark coveralls with the words PHOENIX INITIATIVE stenciled on the back. With them came a myriad of blocky, utilitarian machinery. Small generators that could run on almost any kind of fuel, even whiskey. Larger generators filled with water and steam pipes that turned biomass into electricity. Vehicles powered by the same technology that looked more like farm tractors than transport vehicles. And of course, the U-trac. Not a train, mind you. An abbreviation of MK 850 Railway Utility Tractor. U-trac.
The one down the hill from Ethan was squat, square, and roughly the size of a minivan. A small operator’s compartment sat on top, and behind it, a convoy of scaled-down train cars covered close to forty yards of track. The first few cars coupled behind the engine were simple boxes designed to carry ammunition, equipment, and fuel. Behind these sat the passenger carriages, which were smaller than those found on standard trains, and designed with function in mind rather than comfort. Arrow-slit windows lined the armored walls while hatches allowed access to the roof, and there were even trap doors installed in the floor in case something blocked the other exits. Ethan concluded that whoever had built the things had put a great deal of thought into their design.
“Let’s go, gentlemen,” Ethan said, gesturing at his subordinates. “Stow your gear and take a seat.”
The troops in his squad grumbled under their breath, none of them looking forward to another uncomfortable, monotonous day riding the rails. Nevertheless, they did as they were told. It was always this way with soldiers, Ethan had learned. They might bitch and moa
n, but they did their jobs.
The nine men of Delta Squad lifted their worldly possessions onto their backs and walked down the hill to the U-trac. They stowed their large, modular MOLLE packs in the cargo hold, but held on to their rifles and their smaller, cylindrical assault packs. Go-bags, they called them. If something happened to the engine and the soldiers had to bug out in a hurry, the go-bags were supposed to hold the minimum of equipment they would need to survive. The Army even provided a list of everything they were supposed to have in them, and it was Ethan’s job to make sure they abided by it.
That was the rule, anyway.
Whoever had written the book on how to stock a go-bag had clearly never spent any time out in the shit. Which meant that Ethan flagrantly and unapologetically disregarded that particular set of regulations, as did the other squad leaders. Mostly, their go-bags were full of batteries, toilet paper, a couple of days’ worth of food, and most importantly, ammo. Like all survivors of the Outbreak, they had learned that being armed was far more important than being fed. A soldier could live for a month without food. But without a weapon, it was unlikely any of them would last more than a day.
Once their equipment was secured, the soldiers filed into the first passenger carriage directly behind the command car. They chose this car over the others for two reasons. First, it was in the middle. If any insurgents had set up IED’s along the railway, they would most likely try to blow the engine and the last car in order to trap the U-trac in place. If that happened, being in the middle gave them the best chance of survival. Second, it was far enough away from the engine’s exhaust that they wouldn’t have to breathe in suffocating JP8 fumes. Ethan had once remarked to his men that jet-fuel exhaust smelled like hot vinegar and sorrow. No one had disagreed.
The U-trac, much like an Abrams tank, had multi-fuel capability, giving it the ability to run on a variety of combustible fluids. JP8 jet-fuel was in plentiful supply at Pope AFB—shipped in from vast strategic reserves in Kansas—so that was what they used.
Inside the passenger car, a single, wide bench sat welded to the middle of the floor. Delta Squad filed in and sat down on either side, back to back. There was enough room for twelve people if they packed in, but since First Platoon only consisted of four squads, they each got a carriage to themselves. Ethan took a seat in the middle with Justin on one side, and Sergeant Isaac Cole on the other. Cole—all six-foot-four, two-hundred seventy pounds of him—was the squad’s heavy gunner.
“Man, I’ll be glad when we done with this shit,” Cole said, turning his head Ethan’s way. “I’d rather be fighting the Rot than sittin’ here freezin’ my black ass off.”
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 th
at 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.
