Turning Point (Book 3): A Time To Live

by Wandrey, Mark

  “Yes, Colonel,” the other one said. “We were trying to link up with III Corps in Texas.”

  “My unit,” Cobb said. “Everything went to hell, fast.”

  “Yes sir, it did. We were in a flight of Blackhawks. Someone went zombie on all of them, except two. We set down near Texarkana and hid out. Kept trying to reach anyone by radio or GCCS, but MILSATCOM went down just before we crashed.”

  “Someone messed up GCCS,” Cobb agreed. “Have you asked why we haven’t started looking for more units?”

  The first soldier who’d spoken looked toward the staff sergeant’s trailer. “Sir, I’d rather not say.”

  “You’ve said everything you need to, Private,” Cobb said, his jaw set. That talk is really going to happen now. “Things are about to change around here. What was left of III Corps went west, I believe, and they linked up with navy and Marine elements there.” Both men perked up and looked less hangdog at the news. “I need to get a few things straight, and then we’ll have a meeting.”

  “Looking forward to it, Colonel,” the soldier said.

  Both wore jump patches on their BDUs. How could they not be using these men for recovery operations? Jesus Christ, they were paratroopers! “We’ll talk soon. I promise.”

  Both men came to attention and saluted.

  “At ease, boys. We’re in the field.” Both smiled. These were good boys, and they were in a less-than-optimal situation.

  Cobb strode toward the trailer at the end with meaning. As he passed the last row and turned toward the end, he caught sight of his destination. The words “Arkansas National Guard Territory’ were painted on the side. He hadn’t caught Groves’ accent. It was possible her parents were from outside Arkansas or she’d been educated elsewhere. Either way, she was apparently seriously proud of her state.

  On the metal steps, two men were using knives to scratch at the trailer paint. A second later, one of them noticed him and elbowed the other in the ribs. They both watched him for a bit until they recognized him, at least by reputation, and they immediately retreated into the trailer.

  He would rather have showed up unannounced. However, things would go the way they would go. He wished he had his old command sergeant major from his lieutenant colonel days with him. He felt like he was flying without running lights. But he was committed.

  He reached the stairs and climbed up. As he did, he could see that all the wall within reach of the stairs was covered in graffiti. Some was written in marker, but a lot was scratched on with knives. A fair amount was vulgar, and he stopped when he saw the common theme. Anti-minority. Actually, openly racist would have been a better description. One of the two soldiers he’d just spoken to was black. It was all coming together now.

  Cobb entered without knocking. Inside the common area adjacent to the door was Staff Sergeant Groves, sitting behind a desk she’d obviously obtained from non-military sources. A corporal was lounging in a camp chair next to her, and the two soldiers who’d been vandalizing the barracks trailer were standing next to the staff sergeant. He closed the door behind him. None of them acknowledged his arrival or rose to their feet. Groves was messing with a laptop, and the corporal was staring at the same screen. The two privates pretended he wasn’t there.

  “Staff Sergeant,” Cobb said.

  “Yeah?” she replied without looking up from her computer.

  “We need a word.”

  “So, go ahead.”

  “Alone.” His words were pointed and commanding.

  She looked up for the first time, and he saw a hint of surprise, or maybe it was confusion, on her face. The corporal looked alarmed and leaned sideways to glance around Cobb. The two privates headed for the rear of the trailer where the bunk room was without being told. The corporal looked at Groves. She nodded, and he got up to leave.

  Cobb stood for a second to see how Groves would react. Once they were alone, she closed her computer and looked up at him, the first time she’d made intentional eye contact. He searched for any sign of contrition or guilt. All he saw was, what, annoyance? Suddenly, he felt like he was in enemy territory, and he didn’t know why.

  “I want to talk about the op,” he started.

  “You come to explain why my man didn’t make it back?” she demanded.

  “Maybe if you hadn’t taken your time bringing the M240s, he’d be alive.”

  “How dare you?” she snarled. “I brought them as fast as I could.”

  “Really? You weren’t at the pre-op briefing, so how could you have known what might be needed?”

  “I had other duties.”

  “Staff Sergeant, we have a problem.”

  “You’ve got the problem.”

  He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Besides being insubordinate, you’re terrible at your job.”

  She bristled as if he’d called her a nasty name. Then she visibly calmed herself, which somewhat impressed him. “I don’t care what you think.”

  “Oh? Well, you should.”

  “What are you going to do, Colonel?” She spat the word ‘colonel’ at him. “You going to write me a poor fitness report? Hook me up with an article 15?”

  “No, I’m relieving you of duty.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Bet me? You are relieved, pending a review. I’ll be evaluating the existing NCOs for potential promotion. I’m also having Master Sergeant Schardt evaluate the men you came in with. They are just as disobedient as you are. We’re going to start actively looking for surviving military personnel so we can start assembling a proper force. There’s been some radio traffic from out west. General Rose, my commander, went west. With any luck, we can link up with him. With any luck, we’ll find him, and I won’t have to run this shitshow anymore.”

  He looked at her and shook his head. “I don’t know what happened to you, but you don’t stop being an NCO just because the world came to an end. I didn’t want this job, but it looks like I came along just in time.”

  “And you’re leaving just in time.”

  Cobb turned his head at the unmistakable sound of a rifle bolt closing. All seven of Groves’ men were filing in from the bunk area, and they were all armed. Her corporal was pointing his gun at Cobb.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Cobb asked, looking from the corporal to Groves.

  “Reestablishing the status quo,” she said.

  “You honestly think nobody will have a problem with you shooting a colonel?”

  “Only if they find the body,” she said, her smile savage. “It’s a long way to Amarillo, and there are a lot of hungry zombies waiting for you. Come on, Colonel, time for a reckoning.”

  * * *

  Well, this was stupid. Cobb was fighting incredulity and a strong sense of failure. In more than 20 years of being an officer in the US Army, he’d never had someone take a swing at him, and now he was a prisoner of the people he was supposedly in command of. Worse, he was at gunpoint and completely at their mercy. His sidearm and rifle were back in the sergeants’ trailer. He did have a knife in his pocket, but against eight armed soldiers, it was rather inadequate.

  He needed time. “You really want to play this game?”

  One of the men pushed him in the back none-too-gently with a rifle butt.

  “What game is that?” Groves asked.

  “Mutiny? Murder?”

  “You looked around, Mr. Officer?” one of her men asked. “End of the fuckin’ world, sir…”

  “Stupid officer,” another said, and they all chuckled.

  “It doesn’t have to go this way,” he said, his mind racing. They only laughed more. He had decided to call for help from the soldiers outside, when he realized they weren’t taking him out the front. They were moving down the center of the trailer to the back exit.

  A narrow corridor ran down a length of tiny bunkrooms. Cobb had seen dozens of variants of the trailer. This one provided more, smaller sleeping areas, an equipment room at the back, and a rear entr
ance. When they reached the back of the trailer, he found it stuffed full. Not full of weapons, ammo, and such, but full of valuables.

  The eight-by-five foot room was lined with stuffed shelves. He saw plastic bins full of gold and silver watches, plastic Ziplock bags full to bursting with gold rings and necklaces, stacks of gold bars, piles of gold and silver coins, even a massive bundle of $100 bills in one corner.

  “Are you fucking insane?” he asked, unable to control himself. “This idiot behind me just said it’s the end of the world.” He gestured futilely at the piles of wealth. “What are you planning to do with this?”

  The procession stopped as the soldiers digested this conundrum. Cobb took a chance and looked over his shoulder. He saw several of the men staring inquiringly at Groves. “Oh,” he said, “what have you been telling this motley crew? You telling them this shit is somehow still valuable and more than pretty to look at?”

  “Yeah, what’s up with that?” one of the soldiers asked.

  “Shut the fuck up, Dexter,” the corporal snarled. “You were on welfare before the plague. You wouldn’t know economics if it sat on your face.”

  The other men laughed, but Cobb could see them exchanging nervous looks, and he knew he’d hit a key point. “So, what’s up with this plan?”

  “Quiet,” she ordered him.

  “Or what, you’re going to shoot me?”

  She pulled a pistol out of her pocket and pointed it at him.

  “Go ahead, pull the trigger so everyone comes running.” She frowned a little. “Thinking stuff through isn’t your strong point, is it?”

  “This is bullshit,” the corporal said and shoved something into Cobb’s back. He heard a buzzing sound, and suddenly, the floor hit him in the face.

  “God the fucker is heavy.”

  Cobb blinked and tried to clear his mind. The taser in the small of his back had packed a punch. He hadn’t expected an intelligent move. Someone grabbed him under his arms and dragged him along the tops of the containers serving as the floor of Shangri-La. He lifted his head and saw that the edge was only a short distance away. A series of LED floodlights lit the perimeter of the floating city, possibly as a security measure so nobody walked off in the night. He knew people generally stayed away from the edge so they weren’t the target of a random gunshot from the scared people below.

  “I can walk, assholes,” he spat. The men almost dropped him in surprise.

  “Want I should taze him again?”

  “Don’t bother; I’ll walk,” Cobb said.

  “Is the big colonel giving up?” The corporal laughed. “And here I figured you were some kind of wasteland badass or something.”

  Cobb ignored the mutinous prick. He’d taken advantage of being dragged and was ready for the endgame of their gambit. They reached the edge of Shangri-La in a few seconds. The rest of Shangri-La was relatively quiet. It was late, and most of the operations to salvage what they could from Amarillo had wrapped up. Nobody would see his body fall and probably be eaten by the ravenous infected.

  “Any last-minute, pithy statements?” Groves asked as the two who held him turned him around, back toward the edge.

  “Yeah,” he said. “What happened to you?”

  “To me?” she asked. He nodded. “Someone like you happened to me. I worked at the ANG USPFO in Littlerock. It was a sweet job, and I was good at it. I had a good crew too.” She looked around at her men who nodded and looked satisfied with themselves.

  USPFO was the postal and fiscal office, in charge of assets and paying bills. The stash made sense now. “How much did you steal?” Cobb asked.

  Groves snorted. “Government wastes more than we stole.”

  “Did the officer in charge get wise?”

  “The old major who was the USPFO office commander retired. The new one was a real smartass.”

  “Nosy bastard,” the corporal agreed.

  “He started getting too curious,” Groves said.

  “Meaning he did his job?” Cobb asked.

  Groves ignored his question. “I figured he wasn’t smart enough to figure things out, which was a mistake. When I realized he had found out what was happening, we pulled the plug and played it cool. He didn’t have any evidence. Fucker was outta luck. He knew it was me, had to be me. But what could he do about it?

  “So, he started making my life miserable. Wasn’t enough that he stopped our side business, he started riding my ass. I showed up five minutes late, he wrote me up. Uniform not perfect? Same. Called in sick because I was sick of his shit? More of the same fucking attitude.”

  Cobb began to smile. Of course, the new major had changed his tactic. He couldn’t get her for what she’d been doing, which could have gotten her arrested, but he needed her gone. So, he pushed her in every way he could.

  “The day after I called in sick, the bitch major demanded a medical report. I didn’t have one and told him to stuff it. The next day he filed an Article 15 on me.”

  “Let me guess,” Cobb said, “malingering, insubordination, disrespect?”

  “You fucking officers are all the same,” she said and spit on the metal floor. “He wanted me out. But I had a friend, an old acquaintance in higher command. She’d gotten her star the year before, and she kept them from throwing me out. But I lost my stripes.” Her face held nothing but rage, even though she’d been entirely responsible for what happened to her. “I was an E-4 with only two years to go, and the son of a bitch busted me down to buck private.”

  One of the men behind her smirked. Some of the others found it amusing as well. Cobb doubted any of them would ever let her see their amusement, though. “You weren’t even a staff sergeant?”

  “No,” she admitted, then shrugged. “When the shit hit the fan, they mobilized all of us. Some dumb fucker put us in trucks and sent us to depots and armories. We were heading for the armory in Mena when a bunch of idiots went zombie. They’d brought food from home. Sucked to be them. During the craziness, the lieutenant in charge of our convoy had a little accident.”

  “ADed himself in the back of the head,” a private said. Several others laughed, apparently enjoying the memory. Kind of hard to accidentally discharge your weapon into the back of your own head.

  “Here, only my crew knows me. A staff sergeant from another unit had his face eaten off. So, I took his stripes.” She shrugged again. “I knew the walk and could talk the talk. It was easy. The only officer left was a butter bar, gung-ho fucker. He didn’t make it to the next day. I slipped some fresh chicken in his MRE.”

  “The rest was survival. We split off from the ones who wanted to go to the armory and get eaten. We moved around, grabbing up shit when we found it. Lots of good stuff.

  “How much belonged to people?” Cobb asked.

  “The dead and infected didn’t care. The others? The strong survive. Anyway, we made a mistake. Broke into a big bank building. It was full of infected. Had to run for it. Ended up on the roof. We were running out of food when this fucking city floated over. We decided to move up.”

  “You know Schardt is on to you, right?” he asked.

  “The old fart doesn’t know shit. But you might be right. He’s next. We’ll give it a few days, and he’ll have himself an accident. Whoops! Down he goes.” Laughter all around. “Then, Zim. I’ll be in charge. Maybe I’ll put a bar on, make it all legitimate.”

  “You’ll never be an officer,” Cobb said.

  She came back out of her reverie and stared at him. Cobb was standing up straight, chest out. Her face shifted into a look of loathing. “Boy scout, huh? Well, about time to fly, Boy Scout.”

  “Not so fast, Private.”

  Groves spun around. Master Sergeant Schardt was standing by the corner of the nearest trailer, 20 feet away, where he’d obviously been watching and listening. He stood casually, both hands behind his back, as if he were at parade rest.

  Three of Groves’ crew were still pointing their weapons at Cobb. None of them moved to aim them at the
new arrival. Maybe they thought it was too much to hold a gun on a master sergeant while it wasn’t too much to hold a gun on a colonel. Cobb would have laughed out loud if the situation hadn’t been life and death.

  “Why don’t you take a walk?” Groves suggested.

  “Why don’t you stand down, while you still can?” Schardt replied. “I figured you might do something really stupid, so after Colonel Pendleton left to visit you, we followed him. Oh, and if you’re wondering, I heard it all, especially how you’re only a private.”

  Groves’ face turned hard, and red crept up her neck. Cobb weighed the odds of an outcome that wasn’t bad, and they didn’t look good.

  “The rank I was before doesn’t mean shit,” she said. Some of her followers nodded. The situation was fluid. “This motherfucker is not going to get anymore of my people killed.”

  “Your people?” Schardt demanded. “You mean the soldiers of the Arkansas National Guard who were ordered into active service in the United States Army by the US President a week ago? As the senior officer, Colonel Pendleton is in charge. These are his men, you idiot.” Schardt cast his eyes around, making brief contact with each of the men who would meet his gaze. “You are contriving to commit treason with these men.”

  Several of the men shuffled their feet, and one lowered his weapon. Groves must have felt she was losing control because she aimed her pistol at Master Sergeant Schardt. His expression went from serious to dead calm. Instantly, Corporal Tango and Sergeant Zim rotated around from two of the trailers next to the one Schardt had been standing behind. They both held M4 carbines to their shoulders, were in a slight crouch, and had their cheeks welded to the butt stocks of their guns.

  Schardt slowly moved his hands from behind his back. He held an M4 in his right hand, barrel down. His grip, like him, was calm and practiced. “You thought I missed the part where you said I’d have an accident? Whoops, there I go?” He cocked his head slightly, and a small smile played across his lips.

  “Groves,” Cobb said, but all her followers were raising weapons. They were trying to cover all three men at the same time. The two men with Schardt showed none of the same signs of indecision. If anything, they looked as calm as if they’d just picked up pizza for the kids on Friday night. “Groves!” Cobb said, louder.