“Just following your lead.”
O’Neil gave him a playful punch. “I’m not giving out points for ass-kissing.”
He turned back toward the side door as the crew chief closed it. He almost wished the crew chief had left it open. The odor of rot and blood hung thick off their uniforms. Half the smell was probably coming from the research team they had rescued. Those people had been living in their own filth for far too long.
And for that, O’Neil had to give them some credit.
Eggheads or not, these people had been working in far from optimal conditions trying to help stop the engineered disease raging across America. Despite the campus’s decaying infrastructure and the constant threat of Skull attacks, they had been doing their part.
Tate, for a young guy, was astute. Everybody’s role in this war looked a little different, and not everyone was cut from the same cloth as a DEVGRU operator. For that matter, most people shouldn’t be. Then there might not be as many people to staff the labs at the end of the world trying to find with a cure.
After all, bullets might be effective at stopping individual Skulls, but they wouldn’t stop the microbiological crap that created the beasts.
If O’Neil was going to keep his team alive for the duration of this war, however long it lasted, then he needed these geeks with the advanced degrees, whether they could hold their own in the shit or not.
Out the window in the side door, he could see Delta and Charlie’s bird shadowing theirs.
Loeb leaned in toward O’Neil. “We survived another night. One more mission done.”
“And everyone made it,” O’Neil said.
“Thank God,” Van said.
“Thank us,” Loeb said.
Tate bobbed his head. “I didn’t see God down there tonight. Plenty of the devil.”
Van shook his head, thumbing the cross he’d pulled out from his shirt again. “He’s looking out for us.”
“That’s called the drone pilot, bro,” Loeb said, tapping the side of his helmet. “Get that through your thick skull. We’ve been operating with those things since the sandbox.”
Tate laughed, but then his expression grew serious. “Only problem tonight was we couldn’t help those two other targets.”
“Win some, you lose some,” Loeb said.
“We did everything we could,” O’Neil said. “We didn’t lose a soul tonight. Not so much as a scratch, because we did what we were supposed to. We cut it close tonight, but you guys did well.”
Loeb whirled his finger in the air. “And tomorrow night, we do it all over again.”
“We got a mission already?” Tate asked. “I didn’t hear anything about that.”
“Not yet, we don’t,” Loeb said. “But we’re in the business of eliminating Skulls, and business is booming.”
Tate cracked his fingers. “Fair enough if that’s how it’s been working on Team Six. Call me crazy, but I can’t wait ‘til we can sit on our asses and share a drink after a mission.”
“Sitting on my ass is my least favorite part,” Loeb said. “The waiting. The knowledge that at any time the brass is going to make the call to spin us up on our next op… no, I’d rather know I’m going to be out there where I’m useful, because when I’m back at base or home or wherever and I’m not cracking Skulls, then what good am I?”
“You’re good at talking yourself up,” Van said, a slight grin breaking through his face paint.
“I’ll tell you what,” O’Neil said. “We aren’t going to rest until the last Skull on Earth is nothing but decaying rot six feet under. Then, and only then, I’ll make you all a deal.”
“What’s that, man?” Tate asked.
“I’ll crack open that Macallan Twenty-Five I’ve been saving.”
“That sounds delicious,” Loeb said.
“He didn’t say he was sharing it with you,” Van said. “Just that he’s cracking it open.”
O’Neil shot Van a smile. “Listen to our boy Van. Smarter than he looks. But I will share it with the three of you. Loeb, this isn’t the type of shit you mix with coke, either, got that?”
Loeb held his hands up in a defensive gesture. “I wouldn’t dare.”
“Might even give you two full fingers’ worth if I think you three deserve it.”
“If we deserve it?” Loeb asked. “You already know the answer to that.”
Of course O’Neil did. Even amid the thump of the chopper engines on their journey back to Maryland, they kept shooting the shit, sharing in the excitement that came with every successful mission. It was a phenomenon the people who sat behind desks or in the hundred-story buildings counting beans before the outbreak couldn’t understand.
They seemed to like thinking that O’Neil and his fellow operators were darkly serious every damn second they were breathing.
Their humor, their shit-talking was something that only his brothers and sisters who looked death in the face, told him to screw off, then returned home alive could understand.
They might seem a little crazy to the outside observer. But what that outside observer didn’t see was the flagging adrenaline leaving O’Neil. Didn’t see the sting of nausea as it wore off. The way his fingers shook if he didn’t clench them or clap his swim buddies on the shoulder, congratulating them for pulling off the impossible once again.
That outside observer wouldn’t see the hundreds of times O’Neil had been crouched behind a wall, taking fire, or looked a fighter in the face as he’d had to pull the trigger with the knowledge that if he didn’t end that man’s life, the guy would end his or his brother’s. And now, every time he stepped foot outside the fortifications surrounding Fort Detrick, he came face-to-face with monsters that had once been fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons, and daughters. Americans who had been corrupted by a biologically engineered marvel that had been abused, turned into a weapon.
Even in the oily black smoke rising from the scattered towns and cities, he could still hear the cries of people being torn apart by the beasts. He could still see the monsters with crimson beards dripping down their faces, their hands wrist-deep in someone’s gut. Someone he might’ve been only a minute too late to save.
So, yeah, if his team didn’t share in the wins when they did win, it was just one quick step over the edge into oblivion. One foot from falling into a pit of despair and depression so deep, he didn’t think any sane human could find their way out.
His job wasn’t just to get his brothers’ bodies to the finish line of this war. It was to get their minds there, too.
And as each day got harder, that was the one skill they hadn’t taught him in BUD/S.
Like everyone else in this war, they were figuring it out on the fly.
“All right, ladies,” Reynolds said over the troops’ comms. “I just got word from the commander. Soon as we get back, throw your gear into your cage, then report to our AAR immediately.”
“So quick?” Tate asked, looking between Bravo team. “We’re hardly even getting a piss break.”
“Told you,” Loeb said. “Business is booming.”
-7-
The sun was just beginning to climb from the tree-filled horizon as the Black Hawk made its final approach to Frederick, Maryland. Crumbled and charcoaled buildings lined most of the city’s streets, strewn with picked-over corpses of normal humans and littered with just as many dead Skulls.
The army grunts based out of Detrick spent most of their time manning the walls that had been constructed from Hesco barriers and razor wire along the base’s perimeter. When it looked like too many Skulls were accumulating in the nearby parks or city, those guys were often sent out to cull the numbers to prevent a stampede of monsters into the base.