“Yeah, haha, very funny.” He looked like he wasn’t a day over sixteen, freckles under the dirt on his face and a wispy fail of a mustache, but he had a Combat Infantry Badge and jump wings with a skull on them, meaning he had survived an airborne insertion into an infested area and fought his way out. The Airborne did that sometimes. Jumped into the remains of a city to secure something important, historical items or critical infrastructure, secured it for later pickup if they couldn’t carry it out, and then had a running battle to the nearest safe Evac zone. The world was a hard, hard place. A few years ago, he would have been trying to save up for a car, mayve figuring out what college to go to, trying to bang his girlfriend. Now he sat here counting headshots to Zombies, cleaning his rifle and digging into an MRE. Girls were a pipe dream.
I sat down and ate my tapioca pudding while they continued to shoot. We were passing a small rise on the left bank, topped by an old stone church. There didn’t seem to be any Zs, but Ahmed and the soldier continued to scan the shore.
“I got movement up on that there church. Cain’t really see whut…”
The soldier keeping score grabbed at his throat just before we heard the shot. A spray of blood misted from his neck and then started to spurt as I rolled over backwards, behind the sandbags. I crawled over to the kid while the rifles cracked out rapidly. A figure jumped over me and racked the bolt on the .50, then started pumping rounds downrange, THUMP THUMP THUMP, the discharges from the half-inch shells pounding my ears. The deck tilted as the tug’s diesels cranked up, and time changed. I saw brass cartridges fall in slow motion on the deck around me and I pressed my hand to his neck, and started pulling at the bandage pouch on his vest. I felt like I had all the time in the world as blood spurted out between my fingers, and his feet drummed on the deck. I ripped at the plastic cover of the bandage, but by the time I got it out and shook the wrapping free, he had fallen still, and the blood no longer pulsed under my hand. “GODDAMMIT!” I yelled, and pounded my hand on the deck. The new medic pushed me aside and started compressing his chest but stopped when she saw the exit hole on the back of his neck.
We turned around a bend and the guns fell silent. I stood up, covered in blood, and looked down at the pale, lifeless body. Survived the Zombie Apocalypse, fought who knows how many battles, and he was popped by some nut job Mad Max scumbag. Joking one minute, dead the next.
The medics zipped him up in the body bag. Next time we pulled into shore, he would be buried with honors in a deep grave to keep the Zs from digging him up, and we would fire three volleys over him. Tonight, the guys in his squad would divvy up his stuff and auction it off. If his family were still alive, someone would call them. Not enough people anymore in the Army to do casualty notification in person. In a few days, once they got the satellite coms up and running, someone would post on his Facebook wall that he was gone, and messages would be posted all over the Internet. Six months from now, only his family and friends would remember him. I hated war. I hated death. So tired of it.
The medic leaned over the edge of the barge, trying to reach the water to wash her hands clean of the blood, then vomited.
“Well, Ah got him.”
“No, I think I got him.”
“Bullshit, both of you, I lit him up with the Ma Deuce.”
We sailed on downriver.
Chapter 33
Overhead, a battered old Huey helo thopped its way downriver. As it passed, the Doppler-distorted message boomed from loudspeakers, repeated over and over:
“THERE IS HELP IN ALBANY. GO UPRIVER. THERE IS HELP IN ALBANY. GO UPRIVER. THERE IS HELP IN ALBANY.”
I was reminded of the scene from that old sci-fi movie Blade Runner where an airship droned over Los Angeles, telling people to “move off world, to a new life in the colonies”. I laughed at the irony. Here we were, thirty years after Blade Runner, and instead of exploring new worlds, we were fighting over the scraps of the old. I understood what Brit felt, about the stars.
The chopper droned away southward, down the valley. This had started last night, several trips up and down the valley by a blacked-out Army helo. Today several boats had passed us on their way north; ragged, battered pleasure boats packed, overloaded with people. They were a sorry lot, emaciated, in ragged clothing and armed with a variety of rifles, shotguns and clubs, and when they pulled up to the tug, they made as if to swarm the boat. They were met with a burst of machine gun fire into the water in front of them, and a loudspeaker from the tug, telling them to stay back fifty feet.
On the lead boat, a man yelled across to us. “Let us aboard! We have women and children, and we’re almost out of gas!”
The Infantry Platoon Commander wasn’t having any of it. Another burst of fire hit the water, and the boats backed off. He wasn’t taking any chances of these people infecting his soldiers with tuberculosis, cholera or some other communicable disease. Unlike the farmers that Doc had visited yesterday, these people looked dirty and desperate, at the end of their rope, and who knew what they were carrying.
“There is a food and medical care in Albany, at the port. We can leave you gas.”
We threw them a couple of cases of MREs and left twenty gallons of gas tied to a float. They took it without a word of thanks and motored off upriver. We hadn’t seen anyone else, and night soon arrived, so we dropped anchor in the middle of the river, just north of the ruins of Poughkeepsie. Tomorrow we would arrive at Bannerman Island and start setting up the Firebase.
I stood and picked up my rifle. “OK, let’s do it again.” Muttered groans sounded from some of the team, especially the new medic, Specialist Mya. She wasn’t used to the kind of repetitive, muscle memory training that we were doing.
“Sergeant Agostine, I think the Specialist has had enough. It’s not really her job, after all.”
I turned to where the Lieutenant stood in the darkness.
“With all due respect, Sir, you’re wrong. This is exactly what she needs to be doing. We’re going to be going through buildings in West Point. She and Redshirt need to be part of the team. Redshirt is doing good, but I need to know she isn’t going to shoot one of us in the back.”
“She’s a medic, Sergeant. She will be treating any wounded, not engaging in any gunfights.”
God, this guy was being a stupid git.
“She’s a solder first, Sir. We all fight. Including you, so I wish you would participate in these exercises.”
“I’m perfectly qualified in Close Quarters Combat.”
“That may very well be, but you need to become part of the team. We all know how the other is going to act. I don’t know how you are going to act.”
“I’ll be fine, Sergeant. You just do what NCOs do, carry out my plans and train the men.”
Before I could butt-stroke him in the face, Jonesy grabbed my arm.
“Don’t do it, man. Ain’t worth it!”
I spit on the deck as the LT walked away back forward.
We had set up a shoot house on the back deck of the barge made out of crates. We were using .22 blanks in our modified M-4s, and had set up some targets, cut-outs with infrared and red chem lights where zombie eyes would be. Some of the Infantry guys moved them around, raised and lowered them randomly. Earlier that night, we had done the same for them.
I stood back and let Ahmed lead the stack through the door, followed by Redshirt, Jonesy and Mya. Several shots cracked out, then a yell from inside. I stepped inside to a scene of chaos, and yelled “STOP!” just after watching Mya fire a burst directly into Redshirt and the department store dummy I had gone ashore and looted today. Ahmed and Jonesy had cleared the room and advanced into the next corridor, and then one of the Infantry dropped the mannequin directly on Redshirt, simulating a Zombie attacking from above.