Captain David ordered his guys to give us up some ammunition for our rifles and some more clean water. “Nick, I suggest you and your team start humping it out of here before he finds his courage again and orders his crew chief to light you up with some machine gun fire for insubordination.” Then the guys and the former slaves climbed into the CH-47 and rose into the sky, silhouetted against the faint dawn.
We jogged down the road for three miles, a slow steady pace, even though we were all exhausted. I spotted a two-story building on the side of the road. Around it was a ring of skeletons where a zombie wave had fought to get into the building. We slow-walked through the ground floor, clearing each room. When we got to the stairs, we found them hacked and shattered, which was a pretty standard way of keeping zombies out during the plague time. There were more skeletons clustered around the bottom. Most had neat round holes in their skulls.
“Nice shooting,” muttered Ahmed, picking up a skull and examining it. Long blonde hair still clung to it in patches. He put it back down gently.
Beside the stairs was a battered aluminum extension ladder. It looked like it had fallen over instead of being placed down. Way I figured it, someone was looting, used the ladder to get to the second floor, and it fell. The noise from the ladder falling must have been like a dinner gong for the local Z population.
“Shall we?” said Doc, with a motion to the ruined stairway, and he set the ladder back up. We climbed up while Jonesy and Jacob stood guard below.
We found another skeleton lying on a couch in an upstairs office. This one was clad in expensive Gortex hunting camouflage. The latest generation night vision goggles hung around his neck and he had a full set of top-of-the-line body armor. Across his chest lay a fancy tricked-out AR-15, the civilian version of the M-16, with rails, scope, flashlight, handgrips, all the toys. The top of his skull was missing and blood stained the wall behind the couch. There were a couple of hundred brass casings and magazines on the floor of the window next to the couch, piled around the top of the broken staircase. The bolt of the weapon was locked to the rear on an empty magazine.
Saved one for himself. Better that than dying from thirst while the Zombies waited for you outside. “All that fancy-shmancy gear and you died from being stupid, Buddy. That’s what you get for working alone,” said Doc as pulled the boots off the skeleton and tried them on, after pouring alcohol all over them. “Nice fit! Just broken-in Bellevilles!” Yeah, the Army supply system sucked that bad. Our uniforms were patched, boots worn-out, gear jury rigged. The one thing that they could give us in quantity was ammo and weapons, which was good enough, I guess.
The rest of the guys came upstairs. We pulled the ladder up after us and settled down to get some rest. I logged into Facebook on my iPhone after Ahmed got the radio set up and went to our secret Scouts group. I posted a long rant about what an asswipe LTC Jackass was; then I showed the guys the picture Brit had posted. She was sitting up in a hospital bed, making a stupid duck face and flashing fake gang signs.
She was definitely going to be OK.
Chapter 19
1200 hours. I flipped on the speaker of the SINCGARS and turned the volume up to be barely audible.
“Time for the news, boys.” Each day at 1200 hours, the commo guys at Fort Orange rebroadcast the news. We ate it up like candy.
“…istening to the BBC World Broadcast. The Royal Navy today intercepted a refugee fleet from Northern Russia when the fleet tried to run the guard and avoid quarantine. HMS Sheffield was damaged by a missile fired from a Russian destroyer. Casualties are unknown at this time. The fleet was destroyed by a low-yield nuclear weapon. A statement issued by the King’s spokesman affirmed England’s commitment to safeguarding the United Kingdom from all threats.
”The Grand Committee of the House of Lords convened at Oxford again today to hear the case against the King's prerogative powers and sidelining of Parliament. In their thirteenth straight vote since the Emergency started, the Lords overwhelming supported the continued exercise of His Majesty's war powers as defined in the Constitution.
“In North America, elements of the US 82nd Airborne seized control of the Bermudez oil field in southern Mexico in an airborne assault. Heavy fighting was reported by our embedded correspondent in a three-way battle between US forces, Mexican cartels and undead.”
“YEAH, GIT SOME, AIRBORNE!” yelled Doc, a former 82nd paratrooper.
“Shut it, I’m trying to listen,” I told him.
“Shut it yourself, you dirty nasty leg.”
“…Japanese Defense Forces lost contact with their last garrison on the main island of Honshu but have declared the island of Shikoku to be cleared. Japan and Singapore remain the only parts of Asia with a functioning government.”
“This is the BBC World News.”
I clicked off the radio and thought about how many billions were dead, yet we still fought on. Stubborn humanity, I guess. I never thought of quitting, even at the worst of times. I guess the quitters were all dead by now.
We rested an entire day, cleaning weapons, taking care of minor wounds, getting as cleaned up as we could. My head was still a bit woozy after taking that round. And we were all starting to smell like ass after a week in the field. Captain David had dropped off several cases of ammo, both for the sniper rifle and our .22s. We had burned through more than I had wanted. Loading magazines was a pain in the ass, but it had to be done. Click, click, click.
Jacob sat down next to me later that evening. He had his pistol in his hand and I assumed he had just finished cleaning it. I could tell by the look on his face that he wanted to talk.
“Nick, that shit yesterday. In the prison cell block.”
“Yeah, what about it, Jake?” I wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but if the guy needed to talk, he needed to talk.
“I can’t get it out of my head. This is one hell of a nightmare I’m in. I wish I could wake up.”
“Well, if you want to talk about it, how about you put the pistol away first.”
He looked at it like he was seeing it for the first time. “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
Talking with Jacob was tough, because, even though he performed well in the field, he really believed that he was in a dream. I asked him once what he did before the plague and he had laughed. He told me he was an accountant. Wife, two daughters, white picket fence around his house on Long Island. I couldn’t square it with the dirty, unshaven gunslinger who sat next to me. Then again, I don’t think he could square it with himself, either.
“I keep seeing all those women and kids, the ones we didn’t get to in time. I close my eyes and there they are, right there. I can smell the gun smoke from that guards’ rifle.”
“We all have a tough time dealing with it, Jacob. It’s what makes us human.”
“What I can’t get over, Nick, is how real it seemed. I know I’m in a dream. I have to be in a dream. Otherwise, Jean and the girls are dead. Or even worse, undead.”
We were treading on dangerous ground. I’ve seen guys lose it in the field before, both in Afghanistan and here. One minute they’re fine, and then snap, they break. The toughest guys out there. Everyone has a breaking point. I think Jacob was approaching his.
He sat silently for a moment while I thought of how to answer him, but before I could, he stood up.
“One way or another, Nick, it’s not a place I want to be. Either I come out of this nightmare or the nightmare is real.”