“God this place is just as bad as England; rain every day, and not a single zombie to kill,” I said to no one in particular.
It was just as well, I didn’t know anyone around here anyway. Everyone living who I cared about was still back in the wild wild east trying to survive.
I decided to walk into the first bar I saw. “Why couldn’t the Army give me a car or something, I’m supposed to be genuine war hero aren’t I?”
Then I thought maybe this bar has pretzels; before this whole apocalypse thing started bars used to have pretzels.
I walked in and surveyed the room. No pretzels were in evidence, but as I peered into the shadowy far corner I saw something even better, and more unexpected, people I knew!
They sat behind a table talking to each other; each had their back up against a different corner wall, talking in hushed tones. Neither one had their back to an entrance, good defensive thinking, they couldn’t be attacked from behind, but they were so engrossed in conversation that they did not notice when I came in.
“Nick Agostine! Brit O’Neill! I can’t believe you’re here! I thought you were somewhere in New York,” I said excitedly as I walked towards them with my arms open, as if to embrace them. As I got closer they looked up at me and we were able to make each other out a little better.
I stopped and asked “Brit, what’s with the sunglasses, indoors at night? You didn’t get bit by a vampire did you, because there’s no way I’ll ever take you out to dinner if you’re a vampire.”
She just sat there, surprised to see me, and apparently speechless, so I filled the awkward silence. “The only reason I ever wear sunglasses indoors is when I’m checking out the ladies. Are you eyeing me up?”
She took off her glasses, revealing a very surprising sight; one of her eyes was just as green as ever, only it was glaring at me angrily, the other was a lifeless, milky white color. She stood up, punched me hard in the arm, and just spat out “pig” as she got up and walked purposefully towards the exit.
I started to follow, rubbing my arm, trying to apologize for my poor choice of words. “Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t know. What happened?”
Before I could catch up with her a beat up Slavic looking guy I didn’t recognize who had been sitting at the bar shouldered past me, glaring, and went after her. He was followed by a Native American looking kid, and Ahmed, who I recognized as being on IST-1. These first teamers never go anywhere alone, good survival strategy. I wish I had my team with me.
I turned around to look at Nick, questioningly, as Doc Hamilton came over from the bar with three glasses and sat down at Brit’s place at the table. Nick just said “Don’t worry about her, a little not so friendly fire, don’t ask. Have a seat; it’s good to see you, Szymanski. What are you doing here?”
I sat down and Doc passed me a glass. I asked, “Do you know if they have any pretzels here?” he shook his head negative, and dejectedly I turned to face Nick again “It’s a long story, what are you doing here, and its Szimanski, sa-man-ski, not siz-man-ski, that was a guy on your team. They are completely different; one is Polish for son of Simon, the other means Simon’s son, I forget which is which.”
They both laughed at that. “Jeez, you’re a little defensive all of a sudden; people must mispronounce your name a lot. Either way, it doesn’t matter, I doubt anyone is left who speaks Polish, they were one of the hardest hit places in Europe.”
“We’re on vacation, stop being so morbid.” Doc reprimanded Nick, and then he turned to me “We are here to train army instructors. We just finished a scout of Staten Island, what’s your excuse for being here?”
“Oh I heard about that, glad you found usable facilities, Baltimore was a bust more or less. I also heard about your recent heroics at West Point, I’m sorry to hear about Jonsey. Now who will I play Call of Duty with? Oh by the way, how is Rocket taking his loss?”
They glanced at each other, and then back at me and in unison asked, “Who is Rocket?”
“He was your team dog. Oh never mind. Do you wanna waste an hour listening to my story or not?”
“Yea sure, we have nothing better to do,” Nick said.
“Try not to sound so excited.” I said sarcastically. “So you know how Team 5 has been working with Mid-Atlantic Command? About the same time you were going into New York, Team 3 was going into Philadelphia, Team 6 was checking out Jacksonville, and we were sent into Baltimore, same purpose as you, to find a new port for the anchor heads to dock their toys. We had recently finished a real tough mission scouting out Fort Dietrick. Another bust, the brass thought that might be where this whole thing started, you know that used to be the base of the army’s biological weapons program or something like that. Anyway the place was burned down; they thought we could find a way to access the lower levels of one of the research buildings or something. No joy. We took some losses, including our CO. That one I’m not upset about.”
“I thought Captain Anderson was a highly qualified leader, what happened?” Nick asked.
“Well he certainly gave that impression, Special Forces, couple of combat tours, years in the service. Imagine my surprise when I realized he couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag. Turns out he lied about all his qualifications. Apparently no one back at HQ ever bothered to check and see if he had any credentials. Things started to turn sour and all of a sudden he starts blabbering about how he was only some kind of Tech Sergeant in the Maryland Air National Guard. Turns out that’s why he insisted on calling out team the Warthogs, because that’s what he used to work on, the A-10’s based at Martin’s AFB. I wanted us to be the Wolverines, so much cooler, I mean how the hell am I supposed to impress women if I tell them my team is the warthogs, nobody gets that, Wolverines is a movie reference…”
“We know, you need all the help you can get with the ladies, get back to the story, what was wrong with Captain Anderson, how did your missions go, and what are you doing here.” Interrupted Doc, somewhat impatiently.
“Cap’n Crunch died under mysterious circumstances, may have had something to do with the gunshot wound to his head he sustained shortly after telling us he was a fraud. We couldn’t access the lower levels, the access point was completely blocked by tons of rubble, and we had to fight a running battle back towards a LZ. The plague could very well have originated there, it would explain where it comes from, and why the East Coast fell so fast. We may never know for sure. After that debacle, somehow I ended up as team leader, we boated into Baltimore, and now the brass wants me to…”
“Wait, you got to boat into Baltimore? We had to jump in because there isn’t enough boat fuel; we lost a man because of that,” said Nick agitatedly.
“Sorry to hear about that, but my team rides in style with me at the helm, we may not have been around as long as you first teamers, but we get the job done… sort of. The boat, I should stop calling it that, the destroyer that took us in runs on jet fuel, that’s how they managed it, crazy stuff, two jet engines makes for a smooth ride. Anyway, I digress, the reason I’m hear while my team is still back east is because the brass wants me to go on tour and talk about our mission to Baltimore. They’re going to try and pass me off as a genuine war hero.” I leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “Wanna know why?” They nodded, slightly annoyed that I was drawing it out so I quickly continued, “To sell war bonds. Can you believe that shit! The reason I’m not with my team is because some old fogy thinks its 1944 and wants to raise money for the war effort by parading me around and having me tell my war stories. Do you know why they chose me? Not because I’m a real war hero, because I used to be a tour guide at a museum. They think I will have dynamic public speaking skills. Can you believe that shit?”