Chapter 3
I sat in the tent, cleaning my rifle, feeling vaguely depressed and incredibly bored. Doc lay on the cot next to me, leafing through an old Maxim magazine he had found in the ruins. On the cover was some actress who looked vaguely familiar. He reached the centerfold and flipped her open, then held her out for me to see.
“Does this look familiar?”
“Somewhat. One of those reality TV show or something.”
He laughed, pulled out a red marker and quickly scribbled on the picture, then held it back to me. He had reddened her eyes and put blood around her mouth.
“Holy crap!”
Doc burst out laughing. “Thought you might recognize her that way. Now if I could just find a yellow highlighter to draw in where you puked all over her. Ha ha ha!”
Redshirt sat up in his cot and Mya leaned forward.
“Come on, Doc, tell us the story.”
“Yeah, let’s hear it!”
I shot him a dirty look but he gave me the finger.
“So some bonehead gets the idea that we should scout out Malibu. Why, I don’t know. Reports of some civilian survivors holed up in one of those mansions or something. So we parachute on the grounds of this mansion, me, Nick, Brit, Simmons, and, um…” he trailed off.
“Rabinowitz.” I prompted him.
“Oh yesh, the Rabbi. I wonder how he’s doing?”
“I heard he’s getting around good on his new leg.”
“Cool.”
“Get back to the story, old timers!”
“Shut it, Kids. So anyway, we are scouting this mansion, everything is cool, no signs of life til we get into the kitchen. There, sitting at a table, is a woman with her back to us. Nick puts his hand on her shoulder, and says, “US Army, we’re here to help!”And this zombie jumps up, turns around and launches herself at him! I haven’t ever seen Nick move backward so fast. Just before she gets to him, he pops off a shot that catches her through the jaw and blows off the back of her head. She falls on him, spraying him with her blood and brains, and he throws up all down her back.”
“Screw you, Doc!”
Red and Mya were laughing. “Wait, it gets better. Every time, for quite a long while, whenever we shot a Z, someone on the team would yell, US ARMY, WE’RE HERE TO HELP!”
I was laughing too. It’s funny how things that were so terrifying at the time turn into funny stories down the road.
The tent flap was drawn aside and a sergeant from Operations came in.
“Nick, the Battalion S-3 is on the horn. They’ve got a new mission for your team.”
“OK, be there in a few minutes. Doc, start doing Pre-Combat Checks and Inspections. Red, you up for this?”
“I’m OK, Chief.”
“Alright. I’ll see if Brit can get away from the medics yet on my way back.”
I headed out into the bright June sunlight, feeling a little better.
Chapter 4
Inside the Ops tent, the computers were driving the temperature higher. Blue Force Tracker, Intel source trackers, artillery, plasma screen for briefings and more than a dozen radios to stay in touch with the various patrols on the shore and boats transiting the river. They all combined to generate a heat that the floor fan did little to dissipate.
I walked past a table where the liaisons from the other services had set up shop. We had one each from the Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard, and I made a note to get with each of them after I found out what this mission was.
At the Current Ops section, I took the microphone from the Ops Sergeant and called Task Force Liberty Ops.
“Liberty Main, this is Lost Boys, over.”
“Lost Boys, this is Liberty Main, wait one, over.”
After a minute, Major Flynn came on the line. After asking me how the team was doing, and getting my assurances that we were OK, he expressed condolences over us losing Jonesy. Then we got down to business.
“Nick, how do you guys feel about an airborne insertion? Over.”
“Friggin hate the idea, over”
I could almost hear him laughing.
“Well, tough crap. We need you to drop on a target, over.”
“I could say no, over.”
“You could, and I could draft you back into the Army again, over.”
He had me by the balls. I knew that Doc and I could disappear back into the woods, and Brit would go with us, but dammit, I liked what we were doing. We were, in our small way, making a difference.
“OK, send me a target with an OPORDER, over.”
“It will be in your inbox. The Navy wants back into New York, and we are going to do a hold and clear as soon as they identify a target facility. You guys will be jumping in first, giving a report, then waiting for the Airborne to drop. You will get relieved by the Navy. Over.”
“Understood. I’m going to need ammo and other refit, over.”
“Draw what you can from the Infantry. We’re tight up here. Liberty Main, out.”
I let out a deep breath. We were going to need a palette of ammunition, water and construction materials. Replacements for some of the weapons we had lost. Maybe another trooper, perhaps that big redneck sniper from the Infantry company. I headed over to the liaison table to talk to the other branches and see what support we could get from them.
Chapter 5
It’s funny how you can hate a job and love it at the same time. Part of me wished we were back in Stillwater, rebuilding the house and growing some food. Another part wouldn’t have missed this for anything in the world.
I had just stepped outside the Ops tent, back into the bright sunlight, when an old-school air raid siren started to wind up. Soldiers started scrambling for their fighting positions, manning machine guns and other heavy weapons set up around the island. As I passed the howitzers, I saw their crews franticly spinning the elevation wheel, lowering the barrel so it pointed out over the river. Three of them were levering the hand spike at the rear up in the air, getting ready to spin the cannon left or right. One had been set up on each side of the island, dragged there by the lone Humvee that had been brought down on the barge. Barricades made of empty ammunition boxes filled with dirt had been piled high in a circle around them, leaving just enough clearance for the barrel to direct fire on targets in the river.
I jumped down into the firing position next to our tent, joining Ahmed and Doc in the trench. We had an MK-19 40mm automatic grenade launcher. Normally useless against zombies, it would be great against anything coming across the river at us.
“What’s up?” I yelled over the sound of the siren, which was winding down.
“No idea!” answered Doc. We sat patiently, doing the old soldier thing of hurry up and wait. Not for too long, though. From around the back of the island came one of our assault boats. At the same time, I caught glimpse of a long, low shape cruising up the river, a couple of hundred meters away, about halfway between us and the far shore.
“ATTENTION, UNIDENTIFIED CRAFT. THIS IS THE UNITED STATES ARMY. STOP AND PREPARE TO BE BOARDED.” The words boomed out of a loudspeaker mounted on one of the turrets of the old castle and echoed across the water.
The boat, or ship, or whatever you want to call it, didn’t stop but turned toward us. It was about forty feet long and looked like someone had taken an old fishing boat and welded steel across the deck to make a primitive armored ship. On the front, a slit had been cut to make room for the barrel of some kind of automatic weapon. Probably a light machine gun looted from some National Guard armory. Through my binoculars, I could see a line of skulls strung across the bow.