Turning Point (Book 3): A Time To Live

by Wandrey, Mark

  The men were selected using a rotational spreadsheet created by Master Sergeant Schardt. They were drawn from all the combat-trained personnel, with an eye toward hours on duty and specialty. It also seemed to consider who was with what unit, and this made Cobb wonder how it was generated.

  The Marines all knew each other. Most of the Devil Dogs had arrived in intact squads. The army folks were much more scattered. Cobb hadn’t seen two of the same unit patch. One man had an Arkansas National Guard patch on his shoulder. The man looked surly at the idea of being on this mission.

  “This thing safe?” Cobb asked the men who were checking their mags and verifying that their gear was in place. He’d met them while gearing up and noted the huge amount of ammo and knives they carried. Considering what he’d experienced since everything went south, he did the same. His web gear was stuffed full of mags, and he had picked up a pair of extra knives.

  “Fairly,” Tango said and winked. “You army guys get nervous when you’re more than a hundred feet off the ground.”

  “More than twenty,” Zim said. Everyone chuckled, even the Marines. The Arkansas guardsman flipped Zim the bird behind his back, and Cobb’s eyes narrowed.

  “You funny boys ready?” the crane operator asked, leaning out of the glass-enclosed cab, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

  “Sure thing,” Cobb said and grabbed one of the railings. There were metal plates on all four sides of the framework, like railings, and more on the floor. The welds looked fresh. He also thought he saw some residual blood spots in one corner. “Lower us down.”

  The operator nodded and worked the controls. The platform jerked, lifting off the deck, then slowly swung out over the side. Cobb swallowed as the distance below them loomed. Almost instantly, a round bounced off the side armor.

  “Goddamn civvies!” the guardsman snarled as everyone kneeled.

  Cobb took note of the side hit as well as their orientation to the ground. The shot had come from the same direction as the previous fire. He bristled as he considered having the tall, thin Marine to his right use the accurized M4 he was carrying to return fire. We’re supposed to help civilians, not kill them. Only, weren’t the civilians the ones trying to kill them?

  Instead of worrying about it, Cobb leaned over the small hole in the center of the platform’s floor to look down and gauge how far they had to go. The sun was touching the horizon and would be down in just a few minutes. They needed to act fast.

  “About 100 feet to go,” Zim said over the radio that was being monitored by the crane operator.

  “I’ll take it slow,” the man replied.

  “Negative,” Cobb said. Zim looked at him. “We need to get on the deck ASAP.”

  “Roger that,” Zim said and clicked the radio. “No, keep the descent steady.”

  “Gonna be a good jolt when you hit,” the operator replied.

  “Acknowledged,” Zim told him.

  “Everyone brace,” Cobb said. The ground came up pretty quickly, then the platform slammed onto the concrete road deck with a Bang! Metal on concrete resounded like the tone on a cello. A couple of the men hunched even lower. Nobody was hurt, though. He made a mental note to see if they could add rubber bumpers or something to the bottom. Immediately, they all vaulted the platform’s metallic shield and jogged to the road’s railing.

  “Down and clear,” Zim transmitted, and the platform instantly lifted off and headed back up, much quicker than it had descended. Above them, Master Sergeant Schardt had two more squads geared up and ready. They were the backup. The only problem was Shangri-La only had two platforms for lowering men. They were using one, the recovery team was using the other.

  Cobb took in the scene. They’d been set down on Interstate 40, maybe 200 yards from where Interstate 27 passed underneath. The section of interstate they stood on was 50 or so feet above the rail yard below them. He brought up his carbine and looked through the Acog sight. The three bright yellow Caterpillar generator sets were clearly within view, as he’d planned. The scope rated the closest at 210 yards. Moving his view up, he saw the dangling recovery crew, weaving back and forth in the light breeze.

  He was about to transmit over his radio handset when he looked up. He swallowed at the sight. How many thousands of tons of steel were just…hovering…up there? It was astounding. He didn’t appreciate the locals popping off rounds at them, however, standing under the massive structure which was hovering in the gloom of near nighttime, he understood a little more of their mentality. The vista was otherworldly. The gondola was also clearly visible, the armored glass catching the setting sun. Yeah, it was a visible target.

  “Relief team, on the ground,” he transmitted. “Recovery team ready?”

  “Yeah,” someone from the dangling crew responded. “Hope you got an idea; we’re starting to feel like a worm on the hook with the world’s biggest catfish below us.”

  Cobb chuckled and keyed the mic again. “No worries. Wait one.” He clipped the mic to his tactical harness and addressed the men. “Marines, up.”

  “Oorah,” the nine men barked and flicked off their safeties.

  “Let ‘em fly!”

  All nine Marines fired their M203 grenade launchers at the same time. They’d been part of a unit which still used the older launchers. They’d been a favorite back in the day, but the military, in its infinite wisdom, was taking them out of service in favor of the M320 and the MK19. He would have loved to have a Mk19, which was basically a grenade machinegun, even considering how difficult it would have been to bring it down and deploy it. Its sustained rate of ass kicking was spectacular to behold. The M320 would have been nice too, because unlike the M203, you could dismount an M320 and shoulder fire it, just like the old, Vietnam era bloop-tube.

  They didn’t have a shit ton of grenades. Each Marine carried 10, which was just under half of their total supply. Cobb watched the dim flashes of the grenades arcing out and striking the mass of infected.

  “Looks like a fucking pyramid covered in ants,” an army private said.

  The first nine grenades detonated in a staccato series of explosions. Cobb watched through his scope as dozens of former human beings were blown to bloody chunks. The insane, upward clawing to reach the dangling humans paused as the blasts echoed in the dead city.

  “Give them another salvo,” Cobb ordered, and nine more grenades popped out. This time, the explosion seemed to knock the base out of the infected pyramid, which collapsed toward the soldiers. “That’s got their attention. They just need a target. Zim?”

  “On it, Colonel.” Zim and an army corporal took metallic cylinders out of their packs, pulled off the end covers, and struck them, igniting the phosphorous flares. As each flare was lit, they dropped it over the side. In seconds, hundreds of infected were running toward them.

  “Why do they respond so fast?” a Marine asked.

  “They’re like a flock of birds,” another Marine responded.

  “Yeah,” Corporal Tango said. “Only birds don’t try to eat you alive.”

  “Let’s thin them out,” Cobb said. “Semi-auto, men.” He raised his rifle, and a second later, all 20 men began firing quick, well-placed rounds. The infected fell, and in seconds, the pyramid had completely collapsed. A wave of infected rushed toward the bridge.

  “Maybe we should have kept the platform down here.” Zim thought.

  “They can lower it faster than before,” Cobb said, then paused. “Right?”

  The wave of infected turned into a tsunami. “Switch to burst,” Cobb yelled over the screeches of the infected. The soldiers blazed at the leading edge, dropping dozens who then tripped up others. The wave faltered under a growing wall of their own dead. Some slowed to tear at the injured, feeding on them. Cobb’s stomach turned. But it was working.

  “Generators are clear!” the recovery team yelled. “We’re starting.”

  “Okay men, lets hold the line!” Below them, the infected roared with rage and advanced.

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nbsp; * * *

  The Flotilla

  50 Nautical Miles West of San Diego, CA

  PO1 Anna Niles steered her bird toward the south and adjusted one of the three flat screen monitors which was showing her a 360-degree view of her flight path. She’d been excited when she trained in the operation of the new MQ-8B UAV, also known as the Fire Scout. How often did a 29-year-old woman get to operate a $14 million piece of hardware, especially when they weren’t an academy graduate?

  One of the strange things about the way the navy operated UAVs, or drones, was how they divided piloting responsibilities. One pilot handled takeoff and landing, the other operated the drone away from the ship. However, like the service loved to do, when the Fire Scout came online, they invented new specialties. She was an NEC8368, a Fire Scout UAV pilot. She got to take off, land, and fly. Sweet!

  She’d started her career as an RQ-2 UAV pilot. She’d wanted to fly fighters. What kid didn’t? Only, she didn’t have the scores. She was a product of the video game generation. Operating a drone was second nature in many ways. When they started retiring the RQ-2s, she got promoted and moved to the Fire Scout project.

  The team at Northrop Grumman who developed the Fire Scout had started with a traditional helicopter, the Schweizer 330SP. If you squinted, the Fire Scout still looked a little like one. It was the largest VTOL UAV, or Vertical Takeoff and Landing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, in US Naval inventory—at least until the MQ-9 came out—and she got to play with one of the 30 in service. Anna was thrilled.

  Then her team of three was assigned to the MQ-8B, tail number N22, and they found out they were taking their bird to the USS Freedom. She’d known the Fire Scouts were primarily deployed to littoral combat ships, but she’d hoped for the Zumwalt or something new and cool. The Freedom was neither new nor cool. Still, she got to be stationed in beautiful San Diego! And then Strain Delta hit.

  The Freedom, along with her sister ship, the Jackson (a tri-hull Independence-class, unlike Freedom’s single hull), happened to be out on exercises, having left a month earlier. They’d been just a day’s sail away when everything fell apart. Admiral Hoskins had swept them into the task force, and they’d been doing what they could ever since.

  The problem was, the LCS—the littoral combat ships—were small. Many in the US blue-water Navy snickered and called them little crappy ships. They were little, and as the Freedom was the first of her class, she was as problem riddled as you could imagine. Even seven years after her launch, things kept going wrong. A few of the older crew who’d been on board when Anna came over said they wouldn’t have been surprised if the plague was just another malfunction on their ship.

  Still, the ship’s food lockers were nearly full of food that predated the warnings. Unlike those on many navy vessels, they weren’t going hungry. However, three crewmembers had committed suicide since landside comms had gone down or upon hearing the areas their families were from had gone dark. It appeared to be the end of the world.

  “What do you have, Niles?”

  “Not much, Chief,” Anna responded to the chief petty officer in charge of her division. They were near the hangar in the rear of the Freedom. Bigger ships had drone flight ops in the CIC. The Freedom didn’t have room there, so she got to hang out aft, away from the officers. Suited her fine. “Looks like a zombie rave to me.”

  The monitor showed the darkening landing fields of NAS Coronado. Some fires still burned in places. Despite the rogue fighter blowing up the bridge, it looked like a million zombies were still roaming around. At least a thousand encircled the remains of the president’s jet which continued to burn brightly. Reminds me of Burning Man.

  “No signs of life?”

  “Lots of signs of life, just none of it thinking,” she said and banked the Fire Scout north to go along the eastern edge of the island. She’d located two small groups of Marines in the six hours since the drone had launched. Both times, they’d been rescued by a helicopter. She guessed 20 men rescued, tops. The casualties were over a thousand. All for a president. Sure, she’d voted for her, but was she worth a thousand lives when they seemed to be teetering on the brink of extinction?

  “Marines got their asses handed to them,” the CPO said.

  Anna merely nodded, then thought of something. “What happens to us when we have to go ashore?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Our food won’t last forever.”

  The CPO stared at the monitors for a long time before responding. “Just keep your eyes open for survivors,” he said and left.

  “He didn’t want to hear the truth.”

  Anna glanced at the voice. It was one of the Seahawk helicopter mechanics walking by the UAV bay with an armload of parts.

  “Nobody does,” Anna replied.

  They’d been lucky to have only one instance of a man turning to a zombie, even if it was never figured out why he’d turned. The man was a young seaman on his first patrol. Most figured he’d gotten the infection from some snack from home he’d gotten a short time ago. Nothing else made sense.

  Anna checked the endurance on her bird. Down to under two hours. Time to head for base. The Fire Scout responded smoothly to instructions and picked up altitude as it turned west. She could operate the UAV out to its operational range, or about 100 nautical miles. Further through satellites, though those were down. The captain had taken them closer to shore to facilitate the search sweeps. Once she landed her bird, another from the Jackson would take over. The other UAV would use thermal imaging since it would be dark by the time it was on station.

  Once the UAV was on course, she keyed the mic on her headset. “Prager, the bird’s on the way back.”

  “Roger that, Niles. How’s she flying?”

  “No problems. The actuator isn’t sticking anymore.” Prager was the mechanic on their team, and he’d replaced an actuator on the forward, high-resolution camera after the last flight. The bird needed maintenance and would have gotten it if they’d made port. Strain Delta had had other plans.

  “When I fix something, it stays fixed,” he said, and she smiled. PO3 Dan Prager was a competent flight mechanic. Along with PO2 Eva Perone and herself, they were a good team. She sighed as the UAV flew. She had no sense of future anymore. She’d been dating a man in San Diego. Alan was a nice boy. Was he running around Coronado looking for human flesh now? She started to think about her family in Omaha, but quickly squashed the thought. I’m not going there again.

  At 10 miles out, she slowly descended. Fuel 10%, all systems normal. Well within the safety margin. The Freedom’s beacon appeared on the radar, and she nodded. In another couple minutes, she’d initiate the automatic landing protocol. Of course, she could have landed it manually, but it was better to let the robots do their job. She yawned and checked the clock, which was why she missed the first flash.

  “What was that?” she asked the empty room. A flash had caught her eye on the lower facing camera. She stared at it for long seconds, but nothing recurred. She grabbed the recording controls and rewound the footage. It took another minute to find it. A boat and brilliant flashes of light. Other things in the water. What the hell?

  She looked at the UAV’s fuel reserves and did a mental calculation. “There’s enough,” she decided. She took control back from the autopilot and executed a quick turn only a helicopter could accomplish. Staying under 1,000 feet, the Fire Scout swept back along its course. Eventually, she could see an RHIB of the type the Marines used. It was floating, alone and unmanned.

  “What caused the flashes?” She descended another 500 feet, the hard deck for a patrol such as the one she was executing. The fuel light came on. She gritted her teeth and went into a hover. It was definitely an RHIB, but without the big gun often mounted on a Marine version. She focused as best she could. It was almost dark, and the Fire Scout didn’t have a spotlight.

  The gunnels of the boat were discolored. She flicked to infrared. The motor glowed, so it had been running recently. There were s
pots on the metal decking, and a wash of heat on one side. What could the heat be from? She went back to visual and recorded another minute of video as she rotated around the boat. The fuel alarm blazed again. Under 5% fuel. With a curse, she spun and raced for the ship.

  She turned the UAV over to the computer which set it down with the display reading ‘zero fuel.’ She grimaced and sighed. The captain would have thrown her overboard if she had lost the UAV. Doing it in normal time would have been bad, but now? She got up and headed out to the flight deck.

  Prager was attaching the little dolly which allowed a single person to maneuver the Fire Scout. The sea was calm and dark. A thin red line on the western horizon was all the light Anna could see. There were no stars yet, and the moon wouldn’t rise until close to dawn.

  Perone looked up from her work station when Niles came out and shook her head. “Crazy pilot,” she said. “There’s not enough gas in the tanks to make a martini.”

  “I hate martinis,” Anna said. “I saw something weird. An abandoned boat.”

  “There must be a thousand abandoned boats in the area. One of the chiefs said there are hundreds of PLBs all around us.” A personal location beacon was cheap and common, even on small craft. Nobody had time to check them. Bigger ships were equipped with EPIRBs, emergency position indicating radio beacons. The navy and a few other ships were checking those out, when they could. Not a lot was getting done; damn zombies!

  “Yeah, I know,” Anna said. “This is a Marine RHIB.”

  “From the assault?” Perone wondered.

  “Don’t know,” Anna admitted.

  “Help me get this bird indoors and tied down, and we’ll look at the footage.”

  “Sure,” she said and helped her move it inside. Their other hand, Prager, showed up just in time to help, and Anna told him about what she’d seen. In a short time, they were back in the operating cubicle, and she was pulling up the footage. Prager spotted something Anna missed.