Gathering Storms
TOMORROW’S DAWN | BOOK 4
JEFF WOHLRAB
Copyright © 2019 by Jeff Wohlrab
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is for all of my fellow silent warriors.
Chapter 1
Daniel sat in a brightly lit room with Marcy and Jessica, wondering what had happened to Jensen, but also enjoying having electricity again. It was cozy. It looked like a small game room or video room. In the small town of Highlands, North Carolina, they had narrowly escaped an attack from Senator Snead’s men.
The attackers’ Canid armored vehicles and the two supporting AWESOME armored scout vehicles were smoldering wrecks thanks to some Army forces bivouacked in the town. “I think I’m becoming desensitized to death and violence,” Daniel observed. “We were literally, not figuratively, but literally, inches away from death back there. If those Apaches hadn’t shown up, we’d be dead right now.” He looked at the two women who shared the room with him, one tall and blonde, the other short and dark-haired. “And all I can think about is the fried chicken that sergeant promised us.”
From the corner of the room, Jessica responded. “In case you’re about to ask if that makes you a bad person, the answer is yes. Yes, that makes you a bad person. How can you be thinking about fried chicken when Jensen is still missing?”
Daniel mused on that thought for a moment. Was he a bad person? “Nah, Jensen is fine. He has remained alive 100% of the time. He’s alive now. He’s practically immortal. He’s also scrawny and probably not nearly as delicious as fried chicken.”
This time, Marcy was the one who answered. “Maybe Mixi will bring you some fried chicken, sweetheart,” she told him with ice dripping from her voice. She was still upset about his crush on the singer from Stitched Up Heart. “Perhaps you could sing again, and she’ll magically appear with a big plate of Jesus chicken for you.”
Daniel struggled to find some sort of adequate response. Earlier in the day, he had professed his love for the lead singer after looking across the valley running along the Georgia-North Carolina border. Since then, his girlfriend Marcy had been frosty toward him. He was saved when the door opened and a tall man in an Army uniform appeared and looked directly at him.
“You’re Daniel?”
Even though he had been away from the military for almost six months, Daniel’s sphincter still contracted just a bit. He still owed about 2.5 years on his enlistment. Was that what this was about? He looked at the Army Colonel with an expressionless face and said, “Yes sir, Daniel Benton.”
“I just spoke to your friend. He tells me you know something about this rifle?” The wide-shouldered colonel held up Aaron’s Accuracy International rifle. Daniel recognized it immediately.
Behind him, he could hear Jessica and Marcy whispering excitedly about Jensen. That had to be the friend the tall colonel was talking about. He was alive!
“Yes, sir. That was Aaron’s rifle. He had it with him when he stopped by to see us up in the mountains. I think he said it was custom-made for him from titanium.”
With an unwavering gaze which made Daniel just a tiny bit uncomfortable, the officer continued. “And when did you last see Aaron?”
Daniel was hesitant to answer. This man seemed to know Aaron; would he be blamed for his death? The question and answer flashed through his brain in milliseconds. The answer was that it didn’t matter. They were under the control of some sort of military force and this man seemed to be in some position of authority.
“The last time I saw him was at his house in Dahlonega.” It was an honest answer. They had been together during Aaron’s last few moments of life. The former special forces operator had gone home to find his wife still warm from life after losing her battle with the supervirus. He had joined her shortly after by his own hand.
The colonel walked another step into the room. It felt aggressive. Daniel could feel energy course through his body as it tensed up for a possible altercation. What the hell was going on? “Your friend tells me he died there. Would you like to confirm that for me? Tell me what happened?”
“Sir, it seems like you knew Aaron well. I didn’t. I only knew him for a few days, but he was a good man.” How could he tell this man what happened? Aside from Brent, he was the only person who had been there in the last few moments of Aaron’s life. And Brent had gone home. He might even be dead.
“We were near Currahee when I started getting sick from the bug. Aaron suspected he’d carried it with him from home and Sasha might be sick. We immediately went back to Dahlonega, but she had already passed away. Aaron gave his rifle to Brent and said he could probably make better use of it, then he shot himself. He didn’t want to live without his wife.”
The two huge men stared at each other without saying anything for a full thirty seconds. The whispering behind Daniel had stopped. None of them wanted to say anything which could cause this strange officer to suddenly go off. It was a bad position to be in.
Finally, the colonel took a deep breath and his shoulders sagged a little bit. “You could say I knew him well. I was the best man at his wedding.” He looked back at Daniel with pain in his eyes. “I still can’t believe he took his own life. That’s not the man I knew.”
He scanned the room, taking in Daniel’s rigid posture and the figures of Marcy and Jessica pressed against the wall trying to create distance between them and the angry man near the doorway. “I know he was friends with Brent. If he survives the trip and can confirm what you’ve said, you’re all free to go.”
“Brent’s alive?” The excited whisper came from Jessica.
The colonel heaved a sigh of relief. “He was alive when the pilot called me a few minutes ago, but he’s in bad shape. They found him sitting next to his wife’s grave, unconscious. It looked like he hadn’t had food or water in days and was just waiting to die.”
“What about Jensen? Is he okay?”
The man, who had Simmons written on his nametape, turned to look at Jessica. “Jensen is fine. We’ll get you back together again in a minute. I just wanted to speak to Daniel before they talked to each other. I needed to confirm the story before they could discuss it.”
Suddenly, the building shook as huge explosions crashed around them. It felt like the earth was moving under their feet. The windows behind them exploded inward and showered the four of them with broken glass.
The extraordinarily loud concussions were followed by an eerie silence. It was as though the entire Earth had gone still for a moment. Daniel tried to ask the colonel what had happened, but he could barely hear himself as his brain tried to reset from the extreme noise. He was trying to ask Marcy if she was okay when the Earth surged again.
Daniel was knocked off his feet as part of the wall disappeared and the roof collapsed on them.
Chapter 2
The pilot of the Blackhawk could see the explosion of the F-35 far ahead and tried to raise communications with the base again. “Control, this is Wildcat flight with a medivac. What is your situation?”
When he didn’t get a response, he tried to gain a little altitude. He was too low to have a direct line of sight communications with their temporary base and the satellite comm had been acting a little sketchy lately. After about a minute, he tried again. “Control, this is Wildcat flight. I saw an explosion above your location. What is your situation?”
Ken Rogers, callsign ‘Kenny’ for obvious reasons,
suddenly felt exposed. A utility chopper high in the air with fighters in the area felt like splashing around in chum-filled waters off Seal Island in South Africa pretending to be a seal. It was a good way to get killed.
One way or another, a hostile action had just taken place near where he wanted to land, and it was time to get down into some cover. He switched to the aircraft comm channel. “Hold on back there, I need to lose some altitude fast. Looks like hostile action ahead of us.”
Without even asking about what the hostile action could be, the nurse in the bay of the helicopter answered, “Got it Kenny. Patient is secured.” She quickly motioned for the two men near her to grab seats with one hand and hold the gurney with the other while she maintained oxygen.
Brinkley wrapped a cord around her leg quickly. She needed to keep her hands free to take care of their patient. If things got chaotic, hopefully the rope would keep her from falling to her death. The rope was quicker than trying to slide the open doors shut. Brinkley wasn’t even sure she could slide them forward against the wind. They were flying at the bird’s top speed.
She suddenly felt almost weightless as the Blackhawk dropped quickly toward the forest below. Whatever Kenny had seen had him worried. She risked a look outside as she squeezed the oxygen back again, trying to get Brent’s oxsat up. There was a small bottle of oxygen hooked to the side of the back, allowing her to push air with more oxygen than the 21% normally found in the atmosphere.
It was especially important at altitude. He wasn’t doing well. She had the drip set as high as she was comfortable. Anymore, and she would risk doing even more harm to her patient than he had already done to himself. As it was, he appeared to be in hypovolemic shock due to the loss of fluids in his body.
Even if they managed to save him, she worried about what damage he might have done to his internal organs. They didn’t have the equipment to properly diagnose him on the helicopter, probably not even at the nearby hospital where she had been assisting until recently.
This man was important to the Colonel for some reason. They didn’t have the assets to be flying around all over the country to pick up just anyone. He had a story. Part of the reason she was trying so hard to keep him alive was so she could learn that story.
He meant something to that pretty redhead, too. She wasn’t his daughter. Niece maybe? Lover? No, that didn’t make sense. Why would he be sitting next to a grave trying to die if he was involved with someone new? She checked the needle in his femoral to make sure it was still inserted properly. She would have to secure it better at some point.
Brinkley was thrilled to discover a faint pulse in his radial artery. The treatment seemed to be working. She was worried about his fast pulse, though. It wasn’t something a shock could treat. The automated external defibrillator had checked his heart rhythm and didn’t recommend a shock.
The feeling of falling was replaced with an almost intolerable weight as Kenny leveled off their altitude just above the treetops. Flying this close to the mountain was far more dangerous than a few thousand feet higher. She risked a look out through the open doors. Some of the taller trees looked as though they could almost touch the helicopter. He must have a really good reason to be worried, or he wouldn’t put them at such risk.
At the front of the helo, she could see Kenny talking frantically over the radio. She couldn’t hear what he was saying over the roar of the wind and the rotor. He wasn’t broadcasting his transmission on the interior communications channel. He was talking to somebody out there.
Kenny had been hailed by a military jet operating above their encampment. The pilot went by the name ‘Professor’ and was urgently trying to raise someone in comms. “Wildcat Flight, please confirm your identity.” Kenny could hear the fear in his voice, which seemed strange. A Blackhawk didn’t have any real air-to-air capability; it was little more than a slow target to an Air Force jet.
“We are a U.S. Army medivac flight from Highlands with one wounded on board.” Kenny knew they weren’t really Army anymore, but when what appears to be an Air Force fighter armed with missiles asks you, you tell them you’re Army.
He listened intently as Professor spoke again. Then he shifted direction toward a thin wisp of smoke among the trees. His medivac had just become a search and rescue mission as well. Professor had shot down the second ship in the formation after it had dropped bombs on what the Professor believed to be friendly units.
Kenny didn’t expect it to take long. His passenger wasn’t getting any worse and there hadn’t been a chute.
Chapter 3
Daniel groaned and pushed what appeared to be most of a loveseat off of his chest. The explosion had knocked him against one of the interior walls. From where he was lying on the ground, he could see broken drywall above him. Roughly Daniel shaped. His first thought was, I thought I was bigger than that.
His second thought was verbalized. “I was wrong. I’m not desensitized. That really sucked.” He pushed himself to his elbows and tried to look around the loveseat. “Is everyone okay?” When he didn’t hear anything immediately, the big man grew concerned. The explosion had been powerful enough to partially collapse the building.
If he flew into the wall at almost 250 pounds, what might have happened to the much lighter women who had been even closer to that outside wall? With sudden urgency, he staggered to his feet and looked around the room.
Before him, he could see the sun shining through a haze of dust. Behind it, he could see the sun shining on the impossibly green trees and grass. They were so bright, they looked wet. Off in the distance, he could hear shouting as men tried to save their dying brothers.
A small noise from the corner to his right caused him to whip his head around. He hurried through fallen 2x4s and insulation to help Jessica up from the ground. “How badly are you hurt, Jess?” His eyes scanned Jessica’s form from top to bottom, searching for blood or anything out of the ordinary. Other than insulation in her hair, she appeared intact.
“I’ve been better. Where’s Marcy? What happened?”
Daniel looked around again before he confirmed his earlier thought, “Bomb.”
The Colonel, who was once again standing in the open door, agreed. “It was a bombing run. Someone attacked us.” He indicated a spot right behind him, invisible through the drywall. “And Marcy is just fine. I cushioned her impact.” The tall man rubbed a spot on his left side. “And she’s heavier than she looks. I think I’ve got a couple broken ribs.” Then he stared closely at Daniel. “What’s happening?”
Daniel looked through the haze again and judged the damage to the structure. “I think a small diameter air to ground. If it had been a mark 82, this house would have been destroyed.”
The Colonel appeared surprised. “U.S. military? Why?”
After another look around the room, Daniel sighed heavily. “Sir, mind if we move to a place a little less collapsed and talk about this? Like with Jensen?” He looked carefully at the military man. “I think you’ve just been tagged as the enemy. We have a lot to talk about.”
The Colonel started to ask, “Whose enemy...” when a loud creak sounded from the ceiling. He rethought his comment. “Let’s go see Jensen.” He grabbed Aaron’s rifle and headed out through the gaping hole in the outer wall. They hadn’t gone more than thirty feet when the sounds increased and another section of ceiling collapsed on the place they’d been standing only moments before.
Unlike the others, who turned to look, Daniel simply gazed across the landscape at the destruction. He stopped for a moment at the second crater and looked down into it, then moved on. He was so intent on the signs of damage that he almost missed it when Marcy called to him, “Over here!”
He looked up toward where his three friends, Jensen among them, stood in front of an open door with the Colonel and one other military man, then he looked back toward the ruined building in front of him and murmured to himself, “We were very lucky.”
Daniel walked even further away as the gir
ls chatted excitedly with Jensen. The Colonel had turned to stare at Daniel as he meandered across the pitted landscape. Daniel didn’t seem to notice. This was different for him. For many years he had done bomb damage assessments from a computer screen in an air conditioned office.
This was the first time he’d been on the ground.
He blocked out the shouting as men called to one another to see if they were okay. Others were asking if anyone had any idea who could have done this. Instead, he calculated the damage to buildings, the depth and diameter of the craters, and looked for bomb casing fragments embedded in walls or on the ground.
It wasn’t just the physical evidence. He tried going through his memory to remember how many blasts there had been, but couldn’t. The impacts had sort of rolled together in his mind. Instead of hearing each bomb exploding, he just had a memory of one giant, rolling explosion.
It was like the sound and feel of an earthquake, but with the sharp crack of thunder from a lightning bolt.
Daniel plucked a piece of metal from the wall of one destroyed home, wiggling it free from where it had become embedded in the mortar between two red bricks. He was still holding it in his hand when he felt a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?” He turned to find himself almost at eye level with the Colonel.
“Senator Snead, sir. That’s who did this.” He looked off to his right and indicated the road they’d come in on and where they had been attacked by the PMC mercs in Canids. “The armor, too. That was him.” Then he waved his hands toward the Georgia mountains. “And the nukes.
“The Senator is trying to kill us because we know he started the virus.” He looked deep into the Colonel’s eyes, searching for any signs of disbelief. “And now it looks like he may want to kill you.”
He handed the small fragment of metal to the officer. “Small diameter bombs. U.S. For some reason they tried to use small precision bombs instead of larger ones. I don’t know why. Maybe that was what was loaded onto the jets already. I’m not sure.
Tomorrow's Dawn (Book 4): Gathering Storms Page 1
