Kaufman laughed bitterly, “Does get old, doesn’t it? I never really liked this place,” she said, her voice becoming distant. “I always felt like it was a tomb waiting to happen.”
“Let’s just hope that’s one prophecy that doesn’t get fulfilled Doc,” Hardigan said, leaning forward and stretching. He didn’t remember being this tired when he was 19 and doing a tour of duty in Iraq. “I’m getting old,” Hardigan said softly.
“We all are,” Kaufman agreed. “And let’s hope that we can get a little bit older, shall we?”
Hardigan nodded, “Sounds like a good plan to me.” He looked at his watch again, “Tell me what the hell is going on.” He finally said, meeting Kaufman’s gaze and holding it.
Kaufman sighed and twisted a loose strand of hair, which had fallen out from under her hat, curling it around her finger. “I don’t know all of it,” she cautioned.
“You know enough,” Hardigan said. He twisted his watch on his wrist, feeling the metal dig in. The minor jolt of pain helped him to focus. “About time you filled me in on a few more of the missing pieces, don’t you think?”
Kaufman nodded and tilted her hat back on her head, “I don’t think the Germans came here intending to cause us any harm.”
“You said something escaped, from whatever they were working on,” Hardigan said.
Kaufman nodded, “Apparently your friend Greer’s father is tied up with Dr. Lang and his bunch. I’m not sure, but I don’t think he and Lang were getting along anymore. Lang was trying something, it had to do with the reavers and it got out of hand. That’s what got loose.”
“If there’s only one thing loose in here, that doesn’t explain what’s going on topside,” Hardigan said, pointing towards the static on the CCTV monitor.
Kaufman snorted, “I don’t know that Lang had a complete explanation to that, but he had a theory that those things were going to start converging. It had to do with the solar cycle, as well as their mutation rate. Frankly a lot of his ‘proofs’ for his theories are beyond me.”
“Solar cycle, you mean all the sun spot activity?” Hardigan asked.
“That’s part of it, but Lang thought that the Revenants were related to the reavers and that it wasn’t disparate phenomena.”
“How? Revenants are dead people come back to life, and reavers are those God knows what that rip you and put an ovipositor in you.”
“I don’t know all the details,” Kaufman said, raising a hand to still Hardigan’s objections. “I just know that these things have been converging, apparently it happened in Europe, and now it’s happening here too.”
“So what does that mean for us, for any of us?”
“It means that there seems to be an intelligence behind it, and revenants aren’t just dead people coming back to life, that’s too simplistic. They’re…. Enthralled might be the word,” Kaufman said, becoming animated.
“Enthralled?” Hardigan asked dubiously.
“It means enslaved –“
“I know what it means Doctor,” Hardigan said, cutting her off, “But how does it explain what’s going on here? You know what, forget about that for a moment, what did Lang up to accomplish here?”
“I think, and I stress think, that he wanted to find a way to lead the Revenants to one place independent of whatever cycle he feels is controlling them. He felt they were on a natural cycle, almost like Cicadas, and that we could find a way to use that.”
“Use that how? And what about the dogs and even other animals I’ve seen –“
“Use that group them in one place and destroy them,” Kaufman said. “Think about it, we’re one of the few bunkers in the Midwest, maybe the only one, a nice central location…”
“A nice central location for what?”
“For firing off a nuclear missile from that submarine the Germans originally came in on Jack,” Kaufman said, her face draining of color.
“That’s just twisted enough to be right,” Hardigan said, “Only they wouldn’t even need the submarine.”
Steiner reached up and felt the launch keys still around his neck with his left hand. His right side was number, and he couldn’t move his arm at all. His first thought had been that that bitch Greer in the running shorts had shot him. But then he’d looked up from the floor and saw that it had been the other one, the one in scrubs who’d pulled the trigger. Steiner knew enough to play dead after that, but he reflected, he hadn’t had to play very hard. Doctor Kaufman’s bitch of a nurse had hit him dead center. He wasn’t a doctor, but Steiner figured that being partially paralyzed wasn’t a good sign. So he’d lain there and watched to see what would happen next, half expecting Greer to come and finish him off.
Instead, she’d kicked his pistol away, and rushed towards her father. Steiner really wished he’d had the time to put the coup de grace to that man. Then he could have finished off Lang and been done with all those scientists and their theories. The one thing they’d been right about had been the nukes…
Greer had rushed over to her father and taken him in her arms. Steiner remembered seeing a froth of blood on the man’s lips. Nellie had knelt down as well, trying to apply a bandage, but the old man had pushed them away. Steiner didn’t blame him, he’d put three .45 slugs into that son of a bitch’s chest. He ought to have been bleeding out.
From where he was lying on the floor, Steiner had found himself fading in and out of conscious, but he’d caught bits and pieces of a hushed conversation between Greer and her father. He thought it was a bunch of puerile bullshit. Something about how the old man had wanted to tell his daughter something sooner, but had to protect her, and then didn’t know she was alive. It was enough to make Steiner wish that he could get his pistol and finish them all off.
Unfortunately, that bitch Nellie had been standing outside the room, probably to give the others privacy. She’d also picked up Steiner’s pistol. He’d had to remain extra still when she’d pulled the spare mags from his belt pouch. Steiner knew that one twitch from him, and she’d see that he wasn’t quite dead.
After that, he’d started to fade out of consciousness again, but he’d heard something about them trying to get to the motor pool. Good luck there, he’d thought, all those doors are sealed and you pukes haven’t got the codes. Then things had faded to black for a bit.
Now though, now everyone was gone. Steiner fought through a wave of pain and pulled himself upright into a sitting position, where he could see the monitors in the C&C room. Vaguely, he wondered where everyone else was. Either run off or dead, he surmised. Well it was the fault of all the quitters that they were in this Goddamn mess anyway. He gritted his teeth together, fighting through a wave of pain. Yes, he reflected, that damn nurse had shot him through, dead center. Lousy dyke bitch, what a way to be laid low. Slowly, he was able to rise to a sitting position, finding that if he willed it, he could get his right leg to work through the pain.
Steiner cast another quick glance at the CCTV panels in the C&C room. A number of the cameras were down now, showing nothing but static. He could see that the topside was pretty well overrun; only one or two of the gun towers were still firing. Out the airstrip, they didn’t look to have been hit very hard yet. He could see the few men assigned to it still milling about, pointing towards the smoke and sounds of battle they were likely hearing coming from the complex. Another monitor showed a group of people, there must have been fifty, heading down towards the motor pool. Lousy deserters and cowards, Steiner thought. Let them get eaten, or become egg sacks. Then in a bit, they’d all get theirs anyway. Steiner laughed and then tasted blood in the back of his throat. “Shit,” he coughed.
A first aid kit was mounted on a panel alongside the entry door. Steiner toggled the door shut, locking and sealing it, and then tore the kit loose from the wall. Its contents spilt as he tore it open, but it did contain what he’d hoped for. Steiner tore the metallic foil wrapper off the morphine ampoule with his teeth and jabbed it into his arm. “That’s the stuff,” he whispered, feeling the pain begin to deaden.
He felt a bulge along his back as he looked for the exit wound. It seemed to have drilled clean through his shoulder. Just like a 9mm to do that, he thought, grimacing with the pain. They tended to simply make neat and clean holes through a person. Not like a .45, that was like having the blunt end of a spear rammed through you… Using his good arm, Steiner freed a scalpel from its over wrap and cut his shirt off, and then slit his OD Green t-shirt as well.
“Fuck me, this hurts,” he grunted as he cut at a bulge on his back, slitting the skin. Then he squeezed it like an over ripe pimple, gasping and releasing a feral moan as the bullet popped out and pinged on the floor. Hastily, Steiner packed his wound with cause. “Must have been pressing on something,” he muttered, as he felt able to move his right arm again, though it still hurt like hell to do so.
Steiner squirted his wound with disinfectant from a bottle, which also stung like hell. “Lousy bitches,” he muttered. Again using his teeth, he tore open a pair of field dressings and wrapped them over his wounds. He still tasted blood in his mouth, but feeling around with his tongue, it felt as though he’d bit the inside of his cheek when he fell.
Steiner cast a glace at one of the corpses lying near him on the floor. Its eyes were shut and the hands neatly folded across its chest. “Your fault this happened,” he muttered, and then he coughed and spit out a mixture of saliva and blood onto the corpse. “Fucker,” he muttered, taking satisfaction with seeing his blood and saliva drip off the dead body’s face. “That’s what you get, you hear me?”
Steiner turned to the monitors again and watched as a shuffling mass of revenants began to work their way down one of the corridors, barely being opposed now. Turning his eyes slightly, he saw some sort of hideously malformed and burnt looking shape shuffle past one of the cameras near the old auxiliary garage before it snapped out into white noise static. “Compromised, this position is COMPROMISED!” Steiner yelled.
With great effort, he rose again to his feet and then dropped with little ceremony into a command counsel chair. Reaching with his good left hand, Steiner began to pull down a series of binders from a nearby shelf, finally stopping and selecting a small orange one. The cover was labeled “Authorized Commander’s Guide to Release of Nuclear Weapons in Absence of Presidential Authority.”
Steiner flipped it open and pulled the key off of his neck, “Fuck them all,” he muttered through blood-smeared lips.
“I think we’re fucked,” Whitey mumbled as he yanked an empty magazine from his M14 and thrust it into an empty side pocket. Immediately, he tore a fresh one from his chest pouch and began to lock it into place. “That hallway is crawling with them!”
“Quit your bitching and keep shooting,” Jenny said, her shotgun bucking into her shoulder.
“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this,” Frenchy muttered, shoving fresh .30-30 cartridges in through the side gate of his Winchester Trapper.
“What’s that Frenchy?” Whitey yelled, obtaining a quick sight picture and aiming his M14 down the corridor. He squeezed the trigger twice in rapid succession and watched as two revenants had their heads explode.
“Just saying how happy I am to be here Boss!” Frenchy yelled back as he threw his rifle up to his shoulder and fired it, hitting an obese revenant in its distended belly. The stomach burst open and a mess of intestinal loops along with half digested hunks of flesh hit the floor. Frenchy levered a fresh round in and tapped the same revenant in the head before adding “So very happy to be here!”
“That’s the spirit!” Whitey yelled back, he had his pipe cocked to an angle so as not to interfere with his cheek weld on the stock of his rifle. He pulled the trigger again, putting the round through the eye socket of a corpse wearing a Burger King Polo shirt and hat. “That was a whopper of a good shot,” he laughed.
“You’re a crazy sick SOB,” Jenny said, sharing his grin as she cycled a fresh round into her shotgun.
“Someone has to do it,” Whitey said, firing three more rounds in rapid succession.
“I hate my life,” Frenchy muttered again, but he kept shooting Whitey noted with approval.
“We’re almost to the security office, just keep plugging away!” Jenny said, shoving two fresh rounds into the magazine tube of her shotgun.
They were now close enough to hear shots coming from the office, as well as from another intersection of the T corridor nearest them. “Fuck, now which way?” Whitey exclaimed. “They could be down there still, or maybe up that way,” he said, nodding towards the sound of additional shooting.
“Think fast,” Jenny said, firing again and hitting a shirtless teen boy still wearing a baseball helmet.
The shooting coming form the security office flared up again, and the corridor was briefly clear. Jenny swung her shotgun towards movement and almost shot what she realized was a fedora being held out on the end of a chair leg. “Hey in the security office, three coming forward!” she yelled.
“Don’t come to us, we’ll come to you!” a voice that was immediately recognizable as Hardigan’s yelled back
“Come on out Lefty, we’ve got the hall covered for now, but I don’t know long that will last!” Whitey yelled.
Jenny exhaled an audible sigh of relief as she saw Hardigan and Kaufman emerge from the security office. Hardigan had his .45 still in his hand and was eyeing the corridor carefully. Jenny noticed that he had the PRC-77 they’d left behind strapped to his back. Kaufman had her fedora back on and was thumbing fresh 9mm rounds into a pistol magazine. She had a backpack on and had another bag slung over her shoulder. “You two all packed and ready to leave?” she asked.
“And how,” Hardigan affirmed. “Who’s the new guy?” he asked looking at Frenchy, who was still wearing his beret in puzzlement.
“I’m Ronald-“ Frenchy started to say.
“That’s Frenchy,” White cut in, blowing a smoke ring from his pipe. “We drafted him, now let’s hurry up and get the hell out of here.”
“I’m all for that,” Frenchy admitted after sparing a moment to glower at Whitey.
“Where’s Greer?” Hardigan asked, concern plain in his voice.
“I don’t know, I thought she was with you,” Whitey said.
“Fuck, you mean she isn’t at the motor pool?” Hardigan asked.
“I don’t know, she wasn’t with us when we left,” Whitey admitted.
“We sent Stavros and Finley down with some of the civs, what we could round up anyway, to head there. Maybe they linked up with her,” Jenny said hopefully.
“We need to get to medical and find out!” Hardigan said, starting forward.
Whitey and Kaufman both grabbed for his shoulders, “Don’t be a fool!” Kaufman said harshly, “I’m a worried about Nellie as you are about Greer, but getting yourself killed won’t do anyone any good.”
Hardigan glared at her for a moment, but then Whitey interjected “She’s right Lefty, this place is crawling with those things, we’ve got to get the hell out of Dodge and now, or none of us are going to get away!”
They heard more shots coming from down the corridor near them. Hardigan turned towards them, “Someone else is still alive, and they’re close. Let’s get them out of here,” he said, clicking the safety off on his Kimber.
Kaufman slammed the now replenished magazine home into her Sig Sauer. “You know, that could be Steiner and his goons shooting their way clear down there.”
“I know, but I don’t care. Right now we need all the help we can get,” Hardigan said, he thrust his head forward and started towards the sound of the shots.
As Jenny moved to follow she whispered to Kaufman, “He gets stubborn like this sometimes.”
“I can tell, you’ll have to let me help you break him later,” Kaufman whispered conspiratorially as she fell in.
“Will do,” Jenny said with a sly smile.
“What are you two whispering?” Whitey asked, his ears still ringing from the muzzle blast of the powerful .308 rounds his M14 fired.
“Nothing,” Jenny and Kaufman both purred innocently.
“They’re going to get me killed, I just know it, I’m going to die,” Frenchy muttered.
“What’s that kid?” Whitey asked, almost being drowned out by fresh pistol shots coming from in front of them.
“I was just admiring your stalwart leadership Boss,” Frenchy muttered back.
Whitey grinned and gave him a thumbs up, then snapped his rifle to his shoulder, “We’re almost there,” he said, getting ready to turn the corner.
“Just a little farther,” Greer said, dumping the empty magazine from the Mk23 and slamming a fresh one home.
Nellie was crying as she bought the Beretta up again and fired at one of the Revenants pursuing them. Her aim was off, but she did manage to hit in the knee, shattering the kneecap and sending it sprawling, where it promptly began to crawl after them. “Laura is going to be so pissed, she’s not going to give me any lube first, “ Nellie muttered.
“What?” Greer asked, looking over at Nellie and quickly swinging the Mk23 to bear past the other woman. The SOCOM Mk23 was a large pistol, and Greer had only average size hands for a woman. Still, she held it as steady as possible in a two handed grip. Even with a polymer grip frame, the weapon was still a bit heavy for her, but this same weight also soaked up the recoil of the .45 cartridges that the pistol held 13 to a magazine. Greer didn’t know it, but the pistol she was using, the one that was Nellie had recovered from Steiner, was loaded with 185 grain +P+ jacketed hollow point ammunition. It was loaded to pressure levels far in excess of what normal commercial ammunition would have been loaded to in order to increase the weapon’s long range punch. Not that Greer needed long range ammo, as the closest of the revenants, which she now shot twice in the chest, was only about twelve feet away.
“Oh, I’ve been so bad,” Nellie gasped, pausing and firing the Beretta one handed, hitting another of the Revenants and succeeding in making the headshot this time. “I should have just taken you to the –“ her next words were drowned out by her firing another round “- or else waited with you. Now we’re going to get eaten and Laura will be so pissed!” Nellie continued to sob.
Greer wondered what sort of relationship the two women had, but decided better than to pry into the details. Instead she concentrated on running and shooting and very much deliberately tried not to think about the feeling of her father dying in her arms. Greer half thought that she was probably in a prolonged state of shock and wondered if somehow it all might be a bad dream. Her headache, which was being aggravated by the constant gunfire, told her that she was probably awake however.
“Come on, just around this corner, then we’re almost home free,” Greer said turning the corner at a run.
“Here they come,” she heard someone say, as she threw herself to the side, just in time to avoid a gunshot. Scraps of masonry stung her cheek, and she could feel blood.
“Jesus Christ Frenchy,” a voice Greer knew as Jenny’s yelled, “You almost shot Greer!”
Nellie rounded the corner and ran into Greer, and they almost fell over. Before Greer could even register joy at seeing Hardigan there, relief at seeing Jenny, curiosity at seeing Kaufman and wondering what she’d do to Nellie, or even wonder who French was and if he was the one in the beret… Before she could do any of that, Whitey reached out and yanked them both the rest of the way around the corner. He leveled his M14 from his hip and started firing into the revenants just behind them.
“Don’t just stand there! Run!” he yelled, pushing them forward.
Greer started forward again, being carried by sheer momentum. She found herself standing next to Jenny, whom she noticed was wearing a set of scrub like Nellie’s. “Nice clothes,” Greer panted.
“Thanks, you too,” Jenny grunted back, looking at Greer’s running shorts and the way she too was bouncing under her shirt. “Next time we have to run, I don’t know about you,” Jenny said, “But I want a sports bra.”
Despite herself Greer laughed. As the paused at another intersection, Jenny slid off the Mini-14 she still had slung and handed it to Greer, accepting the Mk23 in trade. “This might come in just as handy though,” Jenny said.
Greer nodded and chambered a round, seeing that that there was a thirty round magazine in place. Now that Jenny had mentioned it, her breasts did hurt, and she would have liked a sports bra. She wondered if Jenny had any duct tape in her pack. Before she could think of anything else, she saw that that revenants were still closing the gap, so she threw her Ruger up to her shoulder and started shooting.
“You can’t shoot them all.”
Mac turned around and looked at Molly, pausing for only a moment as he continued to drop fresh cartridges into the tubular magazine of his Marlin squirrel gun. “Maybe not, but no harm in trying,” he grunted back. Over a hundred empty .22 shell casings now littered the floor around his feet. Mac raised the rifle to his should and squeezed off another round. .22 ammunition had been cheap and come in 500 round bricks. The previous occupants of the apartment had left behind four bricks and the Marlin. Mac had had two more bricks with him when he’d arrived, having carried them as trade goods. Molly might be right about it being pointless in the long run to shoot the revenants, but in the present short term, he found that it was making him feel quite a bit better.
Molly’s eyes were still puffy was crying, after their argument, and her finally admitting to the real reasons she had wanted to leave, Mac hadn’t said much to her. He’d eventually grabbed a couple of beers, some shells, his sombrero and the Marlin. Then he’d headed up the roof. Now, he noticed that Molly seemed to want to say something. Finally she croaked out, “Please don’t be mad at me any more Mac, you’re all I’ve got.”
Mac bit more deeply into the butt of his sole remaining Nicaraguan cigar, he hadn’t lit it yet, having forgotten to bring matches up to the roof with him. “I’m not mad,” he said, grimacing around the cigar. “I don’t know what I am,” Mac admitted, “I’m not exactly thrilled with you right now, but I’m not made any more either.” He threw the rifle up to his shoulder with a viciousness that surprised even him and lined the cross hairs up on a nude female revenant. The hair on her head reminded him of Molly for some reason. Mac squeezed the trigger and sent a .22 caliber bullet rattling around in her skull. Smiling softly again, he turned over his should to Molly, and finally his voice softened as well, “Look, it’s cool, you have the kid to think of too.”
“Mac… you know Larry thinks the world of you, he looks at you…” Molly paused “… like a father Mac. He didn’t want to lie to you, it was my idea. I just didn’t know how you’d take it.”
“Am I taking it about like you’d expect me to?” Mac asked, chuckling softly and firing again.
“Sadly, yes,” Molly admitted. She sighed, “I do love you Mac, and if you still want me after all of this is done with, I will marry you Mac.” Her voice broke. “Hit me or something Mac, please, just don’t shut me out, you’re all I’ve got.” She started to sob again.
Mac set his rifle aside for a moment and took her in his arms. He wiped her tears away with his palm and leaned in, kissing her hard. “Enough with the tears,” he whispered. “Okay?” When she nodded, he released her with a pat on the butt and straightened himself back up. He picked up the rifle again and worked the bolt, drawing slow and careful aim on a revenant that reminded him of his ex-wife. Hell he thought, maybe it was her, hard to tell with both her breasts chewed away, her abdomen ripped open and half her face gone. He pulled the trigger again. “Sometimes you just have to make your own therapy,” he muttered.
“What?” Molly asked, looking up at him, tears still staining her eyes.
“Don’t worry about it,” Mac said. “Look, I’ll admit I was half-assing it with copter, I doubt that bird will ever fly. I was mostly going through the motions to make you happy.”
Molly nodded numbly, “How do we get out of here Mac?”
“Maybe we don’t,” Mac said, shrugging. He opened the tube of his rifle again and began dropping in fresh cartridges. “One thing I did want to get from the copter, if it is still there, is we had a box of thermate charges.”
“You mean thermite, like in the monster movies?” Molly asked, looking up again, some hope glimmering in her eyes now.
“Yeah, it burns stuff. Only it’s called thermate now, it replaced thermite. Same basic shit, just burns hotter and better. Towards the end we had a shitload of it dropped off, I guess the theory was that we were supposed to use it to destroy equipment rather than letting it fall into the wrong hands. Makes a certain sort of logic in a way,” Mac admitted, “Only I haven’t seen any of those damn things flying a helicopter or driving a tank, have you?”
Molly chuckled and let herself smile slightly, “No, I haven’t.” Then she paused and quietly added, “Not to say they can’t…”
“Don’t even start,” Mac warned half sincerely. “Anyway,” he went on, “we had about fifty thermate charges on the helicopter. I don’t even know why, we should have dumped them, or maybe tried bombing those things from the air with them, but we didn’t. So there still should be there, assuming nothing has happened.”
“But all those things are between us and the helicopter Mac, you saw them all, we couldn’t shoot our way past.”
“If what you heard on the radio about these things converging at places and overrunning bunkers is true-“
“It’s what they said Mac,” Molly said defensively
“I’m not doubting you love,” Mac said soothingly, “But the radio has been wrong before, hasn’t it?”
Molly nodded, chewing her lip. They both knew all too well how true that was, Mac thought. “Yes, lots of time, but I believe it this time, I mean look at those things.”
“Well then,” Mac said, “the way I see it, that changes things to a whole new ball game in a couple different ways. You got a light by the way?” He held out his cigar.
“I was hoping you’d ask, I was going to use that as an excuse for coming up here,” Molly said, flicking a lighter to light and holding it out to Mac.
“Thanks,” Mac said, leaning in and lighting his cigar. “Where was I?” he asked, puffing it to light.
“Whole new ball game,” Molly said, smiling hopefully again.
“Yeah, that,” Mac said, looking serious, “The way I see it, that means those things down there aren’t just dead bags of skin. That means they’re either smart or some other thing is smart and controlling them. At least smart enough or controlled enough to swarm.”
“But bugs will swarm too Mac,” Molly said.
“I know, and bugs aren’t all that dumb sometimes,” Mac said. “Cockroaches are still around even through all this shit, aren’t they?”
Molly cocked an eyebrow, and then nodded, “I see your point, or part of it I suppose.”
“Consider this too, if they’re swarming, it doesn’t seem to be at us. You said the radio said they did it to take out bunkers, but that some still held out, right?”
Molly nodded, “In Switzerland, there’s all kinds of bunkers, but they were saying something about evacuating them all the same.”
Mac inhaled from his cigar, “If the folks who make cuckoo clocks can pull through, maybe we can too. Guess those little knives of theirs must help too, huh?” He chuckled trying to cut the tension.
It seemed to work, as Molly laughed as well, her body and posture relaxing noticeably. “What do you expect when there’s a spoon and fork on there along with a knife?” She smiled easily now.
“We’ll have to see if we can find a KFC and scrounge up a spork, kick all their asses then with American know how,” Mac opined, then he continued, “But what I was getting at, maybe we can sneak around, loop behind them and get to the chopper. Then we get those charges and either torch them if they rush this place, or even try to scrounge up a vehicle and head for new digs. Either way we’ll have a powerful distraction. They don’t seem to swarming at us, so there must be a bunker nearby. Either they’ll hold their own and send these things packing, for a bit anyway, of they’ll get scragged. Either way it will keep these bastards busy and buy us some time.” Even as he said it, Mac had an image of what the poor bastards in the bunker must be going through. God, I’m glad I’m not them he thought.
“This sucks, big time Pee Wee Herman circus tent sucks,” Dale said as the rain began to land on them.
“True enough, bro,” Tanner said, scrunching lower under the tree they were sheltering behind. They had decided to wait for morning and a full day of daylight before making their way down into the subdivision. For now they had climbed into one of the rather spacious limbs of an oak tree and belted themselves in. “Just imagine how Whitey and them folks are doing in the complex, they’re probably living it up, bro.”
“Yeah,” Dale muttered, sneezing, “And here we are sleeping in a tree, and I haven’t even got new pants yet.” He added, reaching down and scratching at his buttocks.
“How come we don’t go live inside then bro?” Tanner asked, pulling out a cigarette from behind his ear and flaring it to life with the six-inch flame of his Bic. He then pulled his trusty Game Boy out from his pocket and switched it on, deciding to try to run up a new high score on Galaga.
“I don’t know dawg, all them rules and stuff, like maybe they’d draft us and put us on a search team, then we’d have to go out and stuff,” Dale said, scratching his crotch now.
“Man, what’s that stink, did you pee and poo yourself?” Tanner asked, pausing his game.
“Shaddup, I got scared okay,” Dale muttered.
“Filth pig,” Tanner insisted.
“You’re the filth pig,” Dale retorted.
Tanner merely grunted and idly scratched at his own stained trousers. He reflected that that was nice thing about Real Tree camouflage; it hid a man well and hid his stains when he soiled himself. “Anyway, back to what we was talking about bro, we have to go out anyway. Like we are now.”
“But we get paid now,” Dale insisted.
“Whitey must get paid too, he’s the one paying us, and he gets store, which means he gets cigarettes and candy,” Tanner said. “Hey, maybe they even got Butterfinger bars down in that joint man,” he licked his lips. “I ain’t had one of them in like forever dawg.”
Dale scratched his goatee and seemed to ponder it, “Yeah, but they said we’d have to be deloused and all. Not to mention we’d have to follow their rules, like no more weed man.”
Tanner paused over his game, but then nodded sagely, accepting his brother’s wisdom. “Can’t be doing that then, wouldn’t be righteous,” he agreed.
“Exactly,” Dale said. He pulled out a small plastic bag and a scrap of paper and began to roll something up. “Speaking of which, I found us a bit more in my pocket. It’s got some stems and such, but beats when this shit all first started and we couldn’t get no weed no how.”
“Shit dawg, I remember those days,” Tanner said, repressing a shudder. “When those reaver things first showed up out in Kansas and all them folks turned up dead and what, with shit growing out their chests and bellies and out their ass dawg and all that evil shit…” Tanner mumbled, making gestures with his Game Boy hand to simulate things flying out of various bodily parts and orifices. “Suddenly no body claimed to have nothing man, and them folks what did wouldn’t even want to take good U.S. Dollars no more.”
“Scandalous dawg,” Dale said, licking the gummed edge of one of the last of their Zig Zags. “Dude, we couldn’t get a damn thing, I remember smoking the resin in my pipe for a month.”
“Shit fire yeah,” Tanner said, repressing a shudder. “Then we tried to smoke them pine needles cause you said they might get us high. All that shit did was burn my lungs dawg.”
“But you got sort of dizzy from all that smoke you inhaled, that was sort of like getting high no weren’t it?” Dale said. He stuck his joint in his mouth. Despite his protestations about it being from the dregs of his pocket, it was still as long as thick as his pinky. He removed his own modified Bic from his pocket and flared it to life.
“Damn boy, you done rolled yourself a Marley-sized spliff there,” Tanner said approvingly.
“Oooo yeah,” Dale said, coughing. “Damn, even with stems, this is still some killer shit.”
“Dude, you were right, growing stuff using the outhouse dregs did work,” Tanner admitted.
“Told you I had a green thumb,” Dale said, passing the spliff to Tanner. “Still tastes a little funny though. Hey, you hear that?”
“Yeah, what the fuck?” Tanner asked. He still took time to reach out and stick the dooby in his mouth, but now he looked down. It sounded like engines and a lot of them. It was too dark to see, but looked like they might have company.
“Wonder who that is?” Dale asked, peering into the darkness.
“Dunno,” Tanner said, “Highway’s up that way, sounds like it might be coming from up there. Whoever it is will probably hit them SOBs we ran into.” He inhaled deeply off the spliff and then coughed. He wondered for a moment if drug use would rub him of his night vision, then he inhaled again and realized that he just didn’t care. He coughed again as he passed the joint back to Dale, “You was right though, that does taste funny,” he said.
Steiner coughed and paged through the book, taking a sip of coffee from an abandoned mug. He wrinkled his nose, as the brackish and cold liquid tasted funny. He looked down into the cup and realized that someone had put a cigarette out into it. He gagged momentarily and then spit it out, tossing the cup to the side where it shattered.
Steiner moved his fingers along a paragraph that he’d highlighted. It began with the words; “In the absence of competent national command authority, an authorized commander or his designee may detonate nuclear weapons in cases of extreme emergency. These cases include situations in which the President, Vice-President, or other members of the executive branch are presumed to have been either destroyed or are unable to communicate orders… The authorized commander may deploy nuclear weapons of his own authority only in cases of direct and extreme peril to the United States of America…” Steiner paused in his reading and watched as a group of revenants tore the armor off a soldier and ripped his stomach open, leaning their gaping maws in to feast. Looking at other monitors, only one gun tower seemed to be firing still, and it was surrounded outside.
Steiner removed an envelope from the back of the binder and tore it open. Inside was a sealed red plastic wafer. He snapped this open and removed a sheet. It was labeled “Operator Activation Codes. Requires secondary Authorization codes.” Then he carefully used his good hand and removed another envelope from his pants pocket. It was sealed on the back in way, with the seal of the President of the United States. Steiner tore it open. A letter on Presidential stationary fell to the floor, it named him as designated commander. He ignored it and instead removed another sealed plastic wafer, this one green. He snapped it open and removed a sheet of paper. At the top it read “Primary Activation Codes.” Steiner smiled and looked again at the monitors, “Won’t be long now you fuckers,” he smiled with blood staining his teeth.
“Won’t be long now, and they’ll be on us,” Finley said, looking back worried at the corridor leading to the motor pool.
“At least we’re all together again,” Stavros said, looking over her shoulder at the other vehicles. They’d found three deuce and a half trucks, four armored Humvees, and a Chevy Blazer sitting gassed up and ready. They’d also found one truly surprising prize, an M113 armored personnel carrier. They’d the forty odd civilians they’d accumulated loaded on the vehicles, along with some of the food and ammunition they’d found stacked around the motor pool. The 2-½ ton trucks had originally had open rear beds, but had since had sheet metal covers with gun slits welded in place. The two soldiers who had been assigned to guard the motor pool had also joined them. The trucks comfortably seated a dozen each other civilians, with the remainder being distributed among the Humvees.
“Now if they can just get the door open,” Frenchy called from the topside gunner’s position. He’d volunteered for gunner rather than having to be drafted again. Under his breath he’d said something about it being superior to sharing a cab with “that white haired asshole.” When pressed he’d corrected himself, stating that he just couldn’t wait to do his part.
“They’ll get it open,” Baldwin said. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, his radio and back now stashed in the crew compartment of the number two Humvee, along with the personal effects of the others and the shopping cart full of MREs.
The woman wearing the business suit was now sitting next to Tom. She’d introduced herself as Alice, and she had been a lawyer once. “If I’m going to die, might as well wear my best clothes,” she’d said philosophically. She was now armed with an M1 carbine which they’d found sitting in one of the trucks. She claimed to know how to use it. “They’d better do it soon, “ Alice said, “I’m still not sure if I’ve got the sights set right on this thing.”
“You’ve shot a gun before, right?” Stavros asked, concerned.
“If I hadn’t, I’d never have lived to make it here,” Alice said, smiling with a lot of teeth showing.
Stravros grinned back and elbowed Finley, “I like the new people, they fit right in,” she said.
“Yeah, now stop hitting me,” Finley said. He was armed with an M4 carbine to match Stavros. “Nothing gives you that right,” he added solemnly.
“I give me that right,” Stavros said, sticking her tongue out.
“Are they always like this?” Alice whispered to Baldwin, narrowing her gaze at them.
“I wouldn’t know,” he whispered back, “I just met them today, but I think so, they’re in love I think.”
Alice smiled, “Must be nice. I think. Though she does keep hitting him.”
“They’re crazy, all of them,” Frenchy put in from the turret.
“Who are you again?” Alice asked.
“I’m Ronald-“ Frenchy started to say, but then he paused and said, “Hell with it, I’m Frenchy. I’m the gunner, and I’m happy to be here.”
“That’s the spirit,” Baldwin said, patting Frenchy’s leg.
“Don’t you start too,” Frenchy grumbled.
“I feel like I’m missing something,” Alice said, laughing all the same.
“Don’t worry about, you’ll be up to speed soon,” Finley put in from the back.
“Welcome to the pirate crew,” Stavros said, followed by a comment in Serbo-Croatian.
“What did she say?” Alice asked.
“Beats me,” Finley said, and Baldwin shrugged as well.
“She said that if Doc Baldwin and you didn’t get together, she might want you for herself,” Frenchy said from the turret.
Everyone paused and stared at his legs, as it became a toss up whether Baldwin, Alice, or Stavros was blushing more deeply.
“You, you can speak-“ Stavros started to stammer.
“You can actually understand her?” Finley asked.
“What did I get myself into?” Alice said, as all their comments overlapped.
“I did my stint in supply corps, running beans and bullets to the Marines in Yugoslavia. Of course I can speak a little Serbo-Croatian,” Frenchy said indignantly.
Stavros started to mutter something else, but then caught herself.
Alice found herself studying Baldwin and then whispered, “So, a doctor huh?”
“Guilty as charged,” the man in the driver’s seat of the M113 said through the intercom. The nametape on his Nomex anti blast coveralls read “Abernathy”.
“Christ, six of them though?” Whitey said through the intercom as he stood in the open hatch, manning the fifty caliber. He looked down into the troop compartment to see the six young women Abernathy had managed to fit inside along with their belongings. “Isn’t that a bit much even for you Tripod?” he asked, whistling in admiration.
“Hey, a man can be ambitious, can’t he?” Tripod replied, chuckling.
Whitey looked into the troop compartment again and had to admit that Tripod might have a point, as all the women were attractive. They were also armed he noticed. Counting four M16A2s, an elderly M3 grease gun, and an M249 Squad Automatic weapon, they might well be the best-armed bunch present. And was that an M79 grenade launcher lying on the bench? “Starting a well armed harem?”
“Hey, them goils needed saving,” Tripod said, still chuckling.
“Did you know them before this or was this a spur of the moment thing?” Whitey asked again into the intercom, curious.
“We’ve all sort of know each other before,” Tripod admitted. “Melinda down there, she thinks you’re cute though.”
“Which one is Melinda?” Whitey asked
“The red head,” Tripod replied.
“Which redhead, there were two.”
“The one with the D cups,” Tripod replied.
“Oh, that one,” Whitey said. He put his pipe in his mouth and lit it. And then pulled back the charging handle of the .50 caliber, readying it for action. “What did she say about me?”
“Just that you’re cute, she thinks white hair looks good on a man, and that you hide your age well,” Tripod said. Whitey could almost hear him smirking through the intercom.
Whitey bit back the comments he was about to make and settled for grumbling instead. “You ready for when Lefty gives the word?” he asked instead.
“Ready as we’ll ever be, and he’d better give it soon, otherwise we’ll die of carbon monoxide poisoning down here. Assuming those fuckers don’t come find us first,” he intoned.
“Hardigan knows what he’s doing,” Whitey said. Then he peaked down at Melinda, and noticed her smiling back. He also noticed that her Nomex coveralls weren’t quite zipped all the way and that it made for an interesting sight. “You’d better know what you’re doing Lefty,” he muttered.
“You sure this will work, Sarge,” one of the two soldiers assigned to guard the motor pool had asked. Hardigan seemed to recall that his name was Jerry.
“Pretty damn sure,” Hardigan said.
“I hope so,” Jerry said. His partner, who went by the name of Ike, was already in the number one Humvee along with several of the civilians. Greer, Nellie, and Jenny were in the number three Humvee along with the last of the civilians. The more competent looking among them had already been given guns and placed in the three trucks which were to tail the Humvees, which would in turn tail the M113. Which left Hardigan, Jerry, and Kaufman, who had simply said “I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” in the Blazer.
“Being sure is his business,” Kaufman said, blowing smoke out the open window and tucking a replacement cigarette into the band of her hat.
“I hope so,” Jerry said, not sounding overly convinced.
Hardigan reflected that Steiner probably had not assigned his two best men to guard the motor pool while the base was being overrun. It also occurred to him that perhaps Jerry and Ike ought have resisted when they had shown up to commandeer the vehicles. But whatever else was going on rather superceded those worries in Hardigan’s mind.
It had been Jerry after all who had shown him the field telephone that still had them in contact with the single remaining gun tower. Apparently the two remaining occupants of that tower were still holding out, but anxious to get out as well. Steiner, being paranoid, had the wire fenced rigged with claymores, these had already been detonated to slow the attacking way of revenants. But he also – and Hardigan knew this because Whitey had helped set it up it – had the wire rigged with explosives to blow clear secondary escape routes from the complex.
Thus the main body of revenants had the primary road out clogged, but they also had control of the detonator triggers to blow another path out. Now the only problem was that they had to get the damn door open. Once they did that, they’d ram and shoot their way out, stopping just long enough to pick up the two hold outs (someone named Eric and a woman named Nikki) out of the gun tower and aboard the number one Humvee. Then the lot of them would head out towards the airport and hope that they could find a plane still there. Which plane either Kaufman or Baldwin would fly. Hence the two were in separate Humvees.
The one rough spot was that Steiner had put all the doors in lock down. The motor pool door was part of an annex, and it could be opened manually. A simple counter weight system was holding it in place. The plan now was that when he gave the word, the gun tower would direct their .50 caliber to fire and destroy the exterior mechanism from the outside. Then, they’d use the winch on the Blazer to get the door open from their end. Even then though the Humvees also had winches, the Blazer would be faster and accelerate better, making it more likely to catch up.
“You ready?” Kaufman asked, pulling her hat down. She had Hardigan’s Remington Carbine resting in her lap and had strapped on his gas mask bag full of ammo.
He gave the winch one last look and then checked his watch, he’d given the gun tower an exact time to open fire before abandoning the field phone. “Right about… now!” Hardigan said. He looked up as they could hear the sounds of heavy caliber machine gun fire hitting the door outside. “Gun the winch!” Hardigan ordered.
He turned to look and saw the door begging to creep open. “Now let’s hope I knew what I was talking about,” he said as he watched the door pulling slowly upward.
Recent Comments