Fade to Grey (Book 1): Fade to Grey

by Brian Stewart

  I looked up at Walter, but his face was unreadable. Or maybe it was just me. With a sigh I stood up. “OK,” I said, “but I’ve got to find a place for Max to sleep first. And he needs fed before I do,” I added.

  Walter nodded, saying, “We’ll make it happen.”

  *click*

  And so that’s it. I’m still sitting on the deck, waiting for the news. Michelle and Max are sleeping in the bedroom I was in a few nights ago. I’ve seen several people that I remembered from the campground. Crowbar Mike is here. So is preacher Dave. His wife Rebecca is the nurse that’s been talking to me. And Amy . . . she was the first one to come up and offer to add her prayers to mine. I’ll take ‘em. I’m so tired. So emotionally drained and yet, at the same time, kind of wired. It’s like that fuzzy headed feeling you get right at the point where you know you’re catching the flu. Or maybe it’s from the blood I donated. Or lost. My uncle and I are the same type, and the first thing they did after I got a shower was hit me up for a contribution. I hope it helps. I pray it helps. It’s got to be almost 5:00 AM by now. I’m starting to hear the scattered calls of birds, and the faint predawn light is peeking up in the southeast. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, standing as I did. My ankle is still raw. I had cut off the duct tape and rewrapped it with gauze after my shower, but new stitches would have to wait. It took several stiff limps before my leg loosened up enough for me to walk without being in imminent danger of falling over. I went inside, momentarily lost in my tiredness as I tried to remember where I was heading. After another moment’s indecision, I turned down the hallway and went through the second door on the right. A lamp on the nightstand was still on, and Michelle’s eyes were open—emerald green and focusing on me as I entered. She was lying on her side in the double bed, and lifted the sheets in invitation as I shut the door. Max looked up fleetingly before resting his head back between his paws. I stripped down to my underwear and slid under the covers. Michelle and I touched our foreheads together, sharing a brief glimpse into the depths of each other’s soul as our eyes met. She smiled. It was a tired, but honest smile. Then she closed her eyes and stretched her arms out, pulling me close and burying her head in my chest. I reached around and embraced her, holding her tight as my mind started shutting down. Somewhere in the distance, the faint cry of a Red-Winged Blackbird sounded. It was the last thing I remember before I drifted off.

  Walter sat down in one of the wicker chairs that surrounded the oval breakfast table. It was 9:15 AM, and he’d just finished talking to Sam Ironfeather. As of right now, Sam was in charge of coordinating, well, almost everything. The main thing was trying to keep everybody calm until they figured out a course of action. Things had happened, and were still happening at a rate that outpaced their ability to effectively deal with them. And then there was Andy, Doc’s granddaughter, and that other girl that Eric had brought in. Doc had finished his meatball surgery just a few hours ago, and had collapsed from exhaustion shortly after that himself. Rebecca, the preacher’s wife and nurse, was somehow still on her feet and checking vitals every fifteen minutes. As if the thought of Rebecca somehow summoned her, she materialized at the door to the basement stairs. Walter looked up at the rail thin figure wearing a shower cap, dust mask and baggy nylon “one size fits most” painter’s suit. She stood there immobile as their eyes met. A deliberate, silent shake of her head told Walter the bad news.

  “Who?” he asked softly.

  …to be continued in book two, Darkness Ascending

  Read on for a glimpse at book two in the Fade to Grey series, Darkness Ascending

  Rapidly approaching boot steps distracted Estes from the bursts of distant gunfire. He leaned over the scarred and chipped rectangular conference table in the teachers’ lounge, and took another look at the map of the school. It wasn’t good. They had too few capable bodies to adequately guard too many points of ingress. With no centralized command structure in place, the situation had swiftly devolved into the semi-organized chaos of its current state. Colonel Jordan’s timely removal at the hands of, well, whoever they were, had at least allowed Estes to temporarily get a grip on the downward spiral of their circumstances here at the school. But night was also approaching as fast as the boot steps that he hoped were bringing good news. A sharp rap on the open door signaled the entry of Sergeant Alex Keene.

  “Captain.”

  The internal smile at his new pseudo-rank had quickly worn off with the exponential increase in the demands and responsibilities required of him. And it had been less than thirty hours since his “promotion.”

  Keene was a career NCO; a short, wiry Arizona to New York transplant with a prematurely leathery face adorned by the standard issue TBUG’s—thick, black, ugly glasses that the military saw fit to provide at no cost. Well, no cost besides your pride.

  “Sergeant, what did you find out?”

  Keene shook his head as he withdrew from his pocket a partially crumpled, but as of yet untouched by flame, cigar. “You mind?”

  Estes grinned. “I think most schools have some kind of no smoking policy, don’t they?”

  “When you hear my news, I think you’ll agree that it ain’t going to be cancer that either of us is going to die from.”

  His grin slowly modifying to a sigh, Estes replied, “In that case, I hope you brought two.”

  A broad smile was accompanied by a second trip to the pocket, and a few moments later a wispy, translucent haze began to rise towards the ceiling panels. An upward glance from Estes revealed the presence of a smoke detector above the door frame. Sergeant Keene followed his glance, and then slightly shook his head. “Smoke alarms are all cut off. It was one of the first things I had my guys do.”

  Estes understood, and acknowledged with a nod. Most smoke alarm systems are tied together, and when one went off, they all did. That was unacceptable in their current situation, especially considering the extreme likelihood that they may have to fire their weapons inside the school buildings. And weapon fire creates a lot of smoke. The last thing they needed was an additional source of noise like an insanely loud fire alarm to draw in the . . . things.

  Turning back to the map, Estes took another drag from the surprisingly mellow stogie before asking, “What have you got for me?”

  “The school’s main generator is down. It ain’t likely going to come back up either. It took a couple hits in the control panel from some screwball who wasn’t watching his field of fire this afternoon. Some of the guys have managed to scrounge a few portable generators from somewhere, and right now they’re running cords into the end of the northwest wing by medical.” Keene tapped the end of a hallway displayed on the map they were looking at.

  “How much power is that going to give us?”

  The sergeant shook his head in a wide, slow arc as he replied, “Not near enough. Even with the big diesel generator running, we still had to cut a lot of nonessential systems out of the loop. What’s really going to suck is that we’re not going to be able to power the athletic field lights. You’re going to have a lot of kids shooting in the dark, Captain.”

  The portable radio clipped to Estes’s belt chatted in stereo with the one coiling across the sergeant’s shoulder. Three different squads were reporting in as all clear after the last incursion. No casualties to friendly forces.

  “Well at least there’s some good news today,” Estes noted. Turning back to the map, he pointed to the northwest hallway and said, “Sergeant, check my logic on this. Here’s what I’m thinking. This school,” he indicated with a sweep of his hand over the map, “is basically in the shape of a giant letter ‘H’. You’ve got two hallways heading north off the main building, and two hallways heading south. The northwest side is also where the athletic fields are, and coincidentally, most of our vehicles and supplies. I think we need to get all of the civilians, hell, everybody that we can, into the northwest wing. There are fire doors that connect each wing to the main building, and we can secure those somehow. That is going to greatly r
educe the area we’ll have to cover, as well as giving us quick access to medical and resupply. I also want every transport vehicle we have gassed up and ready to go in case we have to bug out. We can put a squad up on the roof at the end of every wing, and that should give us full circle coverage. How many pairs of night vision goggles do we have?”

  “We had seven, but four of them went down—mechanical issues, accidents, or just bad luck—I don’t know. Anyhow, that leaves us three.”

  “Double check them for function, make sure they’ve got extra batteries, and then give them to the squads on the roof of every wing except where we’ll be.”

  Keene squinted slightly as he replied, “You don’t want any for the fire team on the roof of the northwest wing?”

  “No,” Estes replied, “one of the Hummers out there has a thermal imaging camera that we can use.”

  “It doesn’t work, sir.”

  “Specialist Perkins, one of the guys in my squad, is a whiz with all of that tech stuff. As of about twenty minutes ago, he had it operational, at least when the Hummer is running. For some reason it’s not working on battery power. And, there seems to be an issue with it continuing to function for longer than a few minutes before it shuts off again.”

  “If we can get that into play, it would just be the shit. As hot as those gray bastards are, they should positively glow in the thermal scope,” Keene replied.

  “That’s what I’m thinking. What other good news do you have for me sergeant?”

  “Ammo’s running low. We’re not out, but we need to watch our usage.”

  Estes nodded as he replied, “Noted. All right then, rest time is over . . . let’s get everybody moved to the northwest wing.” With a final puff, he ground out the glowing ember of his cigar tip on the corner of the conference table.

  It was almost midnight when Estes finally had a moment to sit down. The consolidation of civilians and military personnel had gone fairly smoothly. There were a few speed bumps, of course, like when they moved Colonel Jordan and his goon squad from the athletic cage into an empty science lab close to medical. Weaver had tried to incite a rebellion with anybody who would listen, at least until the guys on the transport team had threatened to all piss on a dirty sock and stuff it into his mouth if he didn’t shut up. For a few moments Estes closed his eyes, rubbing his temples as he did. His brief respite was disturbed when the requested attendees to the midnight meeting arrived. The room they had chosen was set up for high school geology, and various samples of rocks and minerals were scattered on almost every horizontal surface. Sergeant Keene was first through the door, followed immediately by Corporal Henry. Major Jeffery Sullivan, the soft-spoken doctor in charge of the medical unit brought up the rear. Estes stood and saluted as the major entered the room.

  “Captain, I wish you wouldn’t do that. Twenty-seven days ago I was comfortably lounging in my civilian practice making six figures, high six figures, every year. My biggest worries were my golf handicap and my wife’s infidelities with whatever boy-toy she hired that week to mow the lawn. Then Uncle Sam decides to enact a classified recall for previously serving military physicians, and my rosy world came tumbling down. I never much cared for the military attitude when I was in, and that hasn’t changed in the seventeen years since I’ve been out. With all due respect, stop saluting me and acting like I’m in charge, because I’m not. Until this Major Larrabee gets here, as far as I’m concerned, you’re the man with the plan.”

  “Yes, sir,” Estes stifled a yawn before continuing, “I think we all need to get some sleep, but before that happens, there’s a couple things we need to go over. Just so we’re all on the same page, OK?”

  Nods of agreement accompanied the weary expressions of the other three men. Estes turned towards Corporal Henry first. “Where are we at with numbers, Bones?”

  Bones stood and stretched before answering. “Good news and bad news there. Like you ordered, we gave all of the civilians an option to exit the school if they wanted. Most of them took us up on the offer, and we were able to transport them in the APC’s to their houses. It took us most of the afternoon to make enough trips, and we had several encounters with hostiles, but it’s done and they’re now in charge of their own fate. I think most of them were just happy to be out of here. Anyhow, we’re down to thirty-one civilians. Check that, that’s thirty-one locals. We’ve got other civilian contractors who have been assigned to various units, mostly medical, but I’ll get to them in a minute. Anyhow, that’s the good news; that our civilian numbers are down from almost two hundred to thirty-one. Now, the bad news part one. The civilians that chose to stay are mostly elderly or infirm, or both. And now, the bad news part two. As best as I can figure, including us, we’ve got forty-nine fieldable swinging dicks, although eleven of those don’t have . . . um, dicks.”

  Estes suppressed a grin at the remark, but Sergeant Keene and Major Sullivan both rolled their eyes skyward.

  “Bones, those eleven women, I know at least some of them have served in a combat role, and all of them have gone through the same basic training you have, so don’t differentiate them.”

  “Yes sir,” Bones replied. “So we’ve got those forty-nine who are basically combat ready. We’ve got fifteen non-combatant civilian contractors, again, most of those in some way connected to the medical team. In addition to that, we’ve got another baker’s dozen of support and logistic personnel. I can’t give you an accurate number without pulling everybody from everywhere into a central location and physically checking them off of a list. Most of those support people are going to be like the good doctor here; people that have been called up out of the blue or pressed into service somehow—medical, mechanical, maintenance—that sort of thing. On top of that, we’ve got four people that I’ve lumped into the ‘specialist’ category. Two of them are the pilots for that Black Hawk outside, and one of them is an aviation maintenance crew chief, also with the Black Hawk.”

  Keene said, “That’s three, who’s the last one?”

  “I can’t say for sure. I found him handcuffed to a pipe down in the boiler room about an hour ago. Specialist Oakley from the 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum. He looks like a staff weenie to me, but all he’ll say is that he’s waiting for Major Larrabee.”

  Keene frowned as he replied, “Great, another mystery we don’t have time for.”

  Estes raised his eyebrows in question toward Keene. “What do you mean ‘another’ mystery?”

  Sergeant Keene looked up at the still standing Corporal Henry, who shrugged his shoulders as he sat down. “That’s all I’ve got.”

  Estes nodded and then looked toward the sergeant, who removed his thick, black framed glasses, rubbed his leathery face with calloused hands and sighed before speaking.

  “The Bradley APC’s that we used to move the civilians out of the school and back to their houses, well, after the last trip they didn’t come back.”

  “What?”

  “They never came back after dropping off the last load of civilians. Remember though, at least one of the crews were those guys that fired on the guardsmen, and I’m guessing both of the crews were in the colonel’s circle. So yeah, we’ve lost a lot of firepower and protection, but maybe in the process we got rid of a few snakes. We still have the old M113 APC out there, but my guys say something is wrong with the engine. It’ll start and idle, but won’t go over five miles per hour.”

  “Anything else?”

  Keene nodded as he answered, “We’ve got exactly five of the M35A3’s fueled up, lined up and ready to go if needed. Each one has a small load-out of ammo and supplies. In a perfect world we could have everybody at the school on those trucks and heading out of the fence in about eight to ten minutes. It would be crowded, but we could do it. With that said, we had to park them pretty close to one another to fit them all inside the fence with all of our other crap, so our actual ‘get and go’ time is going to be more. On the bright side, we’ve found enough ammo to provide full combat loa
ds to everybody, plus another three reloads for most of them. Still, that’s not very much.”

  Estes looked toward the slightly balding physician. “Major?”

  Electing to stay seated, Major Sullivan yawned, and then cracked his knuckles before speaking. “I imagine this conversation is way overdue. How much do you know, do you really know, about what’s been going on?”

  Estes and Keene briefly exchanged glances before shaking their heads.

  “Not a lot . . . and what we do know primarily comes from looking through the ACOG on the M4,” Estes replied.

  Major Sullivan’s tired eyes blinked slowly as he answered. “My area of expertise is Neuroimmunology, which basically means that I specialize in infectious disorders of the central nervous system. Multiple sclerosis, transverse myelitis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, chronic demyelinating polyneuropathy, myasthenia gravis and other immune mediated disorders of the peripheral nervous system. That’s what I did. That’s why I was called in.”

  “Are you saying that these people are getting multiple sclerosis?”

  With a scoff and shake of his head, Major Sullivan replied, “Not hardly. There are other highly advanced pathogens at work here. The main culprit being . . .”

  “Southwest tower to base command, do you copy?”

  Estes pulled the radio off his belt and keyed it. “Base command, go.”

  “We’ve got movement, possibly substantial movement about half a click away where the highway off-ramp dumps into downtown. NVG’s are acting up and giving us a grainy image, can you confirm with thermal?”