by J. F. Holmes
Even Zombie Killers Can Go To Hell
by
J.F. Holmes
Irregular Scout Team One
Volume 10
Dedicated to all those who go through hell to rescue the ones they love.
“But already my desire and my will
were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed,
by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars”
― Dante Alighieri
The following stories are compiled by Dr. Shannon Agostine, PhD, University of Quebec, North American Republic, Year Seventy Three, Post Apocalypse
Sources:
Field notes of Command Sergeant Major Nicholas Agostine
Mission Briefings and After Action Reports, Joint Special Operations Command
Irregular Scout Team Regimental History, Volume 1 thru 7
“The War for the Union: Fighting the Mountain Republic, 5 to 10 P.A.” General Sean Flynn, Army War College Press, 17 P.A..
“Infection and Cure” Dr. Johannes Blisten, New England Journal of Medicine, September, 13 P.A.
“Scouts Out!” Stephen Hildebrand, Albany Times Union, May 15th, 11 P.A.
Personal Diaries, Brittany O’Niell –Agostine
The author would also like to thank Lt. Colonel (Retired) Angelo Redshirt for his personal recollections on this and all stories in the histories of the Irregular Scout Teams. Thanks Uncle Red!
Prologue
It had been ten years since the world fell. Later historians would theorize that the virus was just the final straw; if it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else. Pollution, greed, overpopulation, whatever. Regardless of the cause, civilization survived – but just barely. The plague, civil wars, despotism, the second plague, all had reduced the population of the United States to a mere ten million people. That was enough, though, to reestablish the center, and the center held. A flickering light of civilization in a barbaric world.
Outside the borders of the smaller United States, now gathering strength again in the Northeast, teams of scouts, mixed civilian and military, explored what was left of the devastated world. Their job was to examine infrastructure, recover precious items of our history, and gather that most valuable of commodities, information.
These were the members of the Irregular Scout Team Regiment, men and women who were both professional soldiers and hardened civilian survivors. They went out, took the lead, accomplished their missions, and gave their lives to serve a country that had finally remembered the meaning of that sacrifice.
At first thrown together informally, the Teams lead every fight and participated in every battle in the struggle to reestablish the US. Over time, as with all armies, things became a bit formalized, and training a bit more standard. Lessons were learned, knowledge gained, and a Scout Training Program was established in Upstate New York. It was run, of course, by the best. The men and women of Irregular Scout Team One, known by their call sign, the Lost Boys.
This is the story of the first class of the new Scout Teams.
Part One
In his search to be a great leader, the young centurion sought out the Republic’s veteran warrior. Looking up from his labor, the sage spoke:
“I know not what beats beneath your tunic, but what I saw in a leader from foot soldiers to proconsul is thus:
One who makes drill bloodless combat and combat bloody drill…
One who disciplines the offense and not the offenders…
One whose heart is with the Legion and whose loyalty is to the Republic…
One who seeks the companionship of the long march and not the privilege of position…
One whose commission is assigned from above and confirmed from below…
One who knows the self and, therefore, is true to all…
One who seeks to serve and not to be served…
This is the one who leads best of all.”
~ LTC Jeffery Spara, United States Army
Chapter 294
Upstate New York is hot in the summer, but in the ten years since the great burning, it was much more hit or miss, with debris in the atmosphere making it hard to predict. This day, though, was the hottest in July so far, with heavy humidity. The sun glaring off the slow waters of the Hudson River didn’t help, either.
“Put your vest back on,” growled a young man in one of the new military anti-rip jumpsuits, the ones specifically designed to prevent bites from the undead. Though he was young, less than thirty, he had Master Sergeant’s stripes tattooed on his forearm, in a style common to the post-apocalypse military, and his name tape said CAHILL. The man he was talking to, black hair turning to grey, but with hard muscles under his dark skin, ignored him, casting a fishing line over the stern of the barge.
“Hush,” said the older man, “I’m trying to catch dinner.”
“You can’t eat fish from here, Jonas,” said the civilian woman sitting next to him. Her hair was cropped short, blonde going prematurely white, and her features were angular, having the pinched look of a starvation survivor. She too, ignored the soldier. “There’s PCB’s in all the fish, and you see that sheen on the water? That’s fuel oil from ruptured tanks.”
“Sister Mary, I couldn’t care less. I’m hungry for some bass, and everyone’s gotta die someday.”
The man they were disregarding grew red in the face. “HEY! I’m talking to you!” exclaimed Master Sergeant Cahill to the man’s back.
Jonas continued to ignore him, casting the line out again. Mary looked at her friend, glanced at the soldier, then away over the water. Cahill stomped off down the barge, causing two privates to step quickly out of the way. “Goddamned civilians,” he muttered under his breath. “Useless pieces of shit.”
“Those goddamned civilians are going to save your ass many times over, Sergeant,” said a bald headed, hard-looking man who was idly carving something on the rail. His accent was vaguely European, and his face was cruelly scarred, making it hard to tell how old he was.
“And who the hell are you?” Cahill asked belligerently, in a doubly bad mood now that another person out of uniform had run afoul of him. “Never mind that, I couldn’t give a shit. While you civvies were living like a bunch of pussies in your damn FEMA camps, I’ve been risking my life on the Line, fighting undead and Mountain Republic rebels. Don’t fucking tell me what they are or aren’t going to do!” he exclaimed and stormed off.
Sasha Zivcovic, former Major in the Serbian 72nd Special Reconnaissance – Commando Battalion, sighed and continued to carve on the rail, “S.Z. & B.O.” He hoped his own team leader would find it, and grinned slightly to himself. Yes, it would be good to see Brit again, and the rest of his teammates, and it would piss Agostine off.
The tug pushing the barge thrummed its way upstream, driving against the polluted current, creating a bow wave that washed over the occasional skeleton littering the shoreline. After passing through Champlain Canal Lock Five, the tug pushed it up to a dock that stretched out into the water, and a line of soldiers and civilians disembarked. The barge crew quickly used a crane to offload a conex full of supplies, and swung another one on board, full of produce from the farms on the upper river. From there back to Albany, then to the new Federal Capital in Syracuse.
“Master Sergeant, form the men up and move them over to those GP mediums over there,” said a female soldier with a Major’s gold oak leaf. “Chow will be at 16:00 outside that farm house.” He could see that the dragon tattooed on her face coved a pretty nasty scar, common for combat veterans, but there was a quiet confidence behind her placid tone.
Finally, thought Cahill, some military discipline. “Yes Ma’am, FALL IN!” he barked, and the two doz
en soldiers did so, in three disciplined ranks. They shouldered their bags and weapons and double-timed over to where the large green tents were set up, calling a dirty cadence as they did so.
Next, the officer approached the group of civilians standing around in the shade of a maple tree. She introduced herself and asked them all to grab a seat. “My name is Major Shona Lowenstein, and I’d like to thank you all for volunteering for the Scouts,” she said, then paused, looking them over. They were a motley group, clad in the left-over clothes of a civilization almost vanished, but she knew that in front of her was a very hard group of people, survivors of the plague and everything that happened thereafter. It would be her job, as training officer, to bring them under the military discipline so vital to the Teams, without breaking their independence.
“Chow is at 17:00, or five o’clock, over by the farm house,” she said. “Your quarters, for now, are in the tent at the north side of the field. Men and women bunk together; if you have a problem with that, the barge leaves in thirty minutes. Be on it.”
The former infantry line officer let that sink in for a moment, glad that no one took her up on the offer. “As of thirty minutes from now, when that barge leaves, you are subject to UCMJ, up to and including the death penalty. The Scout School commander has the authority to administer punishment as he sees fit, up to and including execution.”
That caused some muttering, and three people, two men and a woman, picked up their bags and walked toward the barge. “Anyone else?” asked the officer and, as she expected, she got no further complaint. They’d been living with death for a decade now.
Zivcovic walked by with a slight grin on his face, headed for the soldiers, and Lowenstein nodded to him. “Try not to enjoy yourself too much, Ziv.”
The Serb almost smiled. “I am going to kick the ass of the man who thinks he is the toughest,” he replied, and smiled a chilling smile. “If I do not beat him, then Bozelli will finish it. But I am not worried. They are, how you say, too conventional in their thinking?”
“Yeah, well, try not to kill anyone by accident,” answered Lowenstein, not joking.
“I will try, but, you know how it is,” he said and walked off.
Chapter 295
Major (Retired) Sasha Zivcovic wasn’t a bad man. In fact, there were many places in his heart where certain people were very dear to him. His problem – if it was a problem – was that, well, he didn’t give a shit about the average person, and he loved the thrill of battle. A fight, any fight, was what he lived for.
The last ten years had been brutal, far more so than what he’d gone through as a young man in the Yugoslavian civil war. Then, the warfare had been intermittent, his Special Forces unit directed to target leading Bosnian and Croat commanders. After the plague, though, it had been a non-stop struggle for survival for years. In that time, he’d come and gone from the Scout Teams, mostly when he was bored, and always drawn back by his attraction to Brit O’Neill. He knew she’d never love him, and begrudged her husband nothing, even if he didn’t often respect him. Too soft at times, with his bleeding heart, and his obsession with his duty to his country.
In this new world it was pretty much every man for himself, which suited the Serb just fine. He knew that someday his luck would run out, or his skill wouldn’t be enough. There was only one man he was not exactly afraid of, but respectful of. Sergeant Major Mike Bozelli, who ran the teams’ armory, almost scared him, but the man had become the closest thing to a friend Zivcovic had left in the world.
As Ziv walked to the tent where the American soldiers were quartered, Boz joined him. The former Green Beret was ten years older than Zivcovic but, despite the grey in his long beard, the cutoff shorts, and habitual grin, he’d soundly handed Zivcovic his ass every time they’d sparred.
Neither said anything to each other, just walked along until they were close enough to be noticed by the soldiers, several of whom were cleaning weapons. Then they both sat down on crates and started smoking, Zivcovic a hand rolled cigarette, and Boz a cigar.
“Can we help you?” asked one of the soldiers.
“I don’t know, Sergeant…Badger,” answered Boz, reading the man’s name tag. “Can you?”
The NCO looked a bit uncomfortable, glancing at another soldier. The other man shrugged his shoulders and thumbed in the direction of the tent opening. Badger stuck his head inside and yelled for Master Sergeant Cahill, who appeared, proceeded by some curses. Apparently they’d interrupted him shaving.
“Is there something you all need, Gentlemen?” he asked, then scowled when he recognized the bald-headed man from the barge. “Let me guess, you’re going to be the civilian side of our Irregular Scout Teams, right? Going to save my ass?” he asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Something like that, yes,” answered Zivcovic. Bozelli remained silent, assessing the soldiers, all of whom seemed to have suddenly appeared as if by magic from inside or around the tent. Though they were all volunteers from different units, they’d quickly fallen in together under Cahill’s leadership and their mutual disregard for civilians.
“Well, you go tell whoever is running this shit show,” growled Cahill, wiping shaving cream from his face, “that I’m going to need some young bucks that can keep up with us, not a bunch of old bastards.”
Boz eyed the military bling on the Master Sergeant’s uniform. He was young, under thirty, with a Combat Infantry Badge and the Parachutist Badge, its distinctive skull and stars under the CIB. Bozelli noted, though, the lack of a Pathfinder Badge, Ranger, or Special Forces tabs. Nothing that indicated that Cahill had spent any time doing anything but clear and hold operations against undead or conventional fighting against rebels. Both he and Ziv had read Cahill’s 2-1 file the week before in Albany as part of the selection process. He sighed, knowing what was going to happen next.
“I love American movies, Cahill,” said Ziv, deliberately ignoring the man’s rank. “It might be before your time, but did you ever see one called Heartbreak Ridge?”
Face reddening, the infantryman’s eyes narrowed, and he asked, “No, why?”
Behind him, one of the soldiers said, “Oh, shit, here it comes!” and when Cahill turned his head to bark something at him, Ziv stood up, crossed the few feet between them, and hit the NCO behind the jaw with the hilt of his fighting knife. The younger man fell to his knees, legs rubbery, and Ziv kicked him in the balls as hard as he could. Cahill fell over on the ground, clutching himself and making small grunting noises.
Zivcovic stepped back and put his knife back in its sheath before the stunned soldiers could react. One of them actually reached for his rifle but stopped when Bozelli aimed a heavy revolver at him and thumbed back the hammer.
“My name is Sasha Zivcovic, also known as the Warlord of Kansas. Some of you may have heard of me,” said the Serb, with a slight note of pride in his voice. “I am going to be your training instructor, and I am going to break you of your stupid habits learned as line soldiers. IF you make it through selection,” he continued, with an emphasis on the word ‘if’, “you might have the privilege of watching my back. I don’t care if any of you make it.”
With that, he turned and walked away. Boz got up and holstered his gun, then knelt down, addressing the Master Sergeant, who was trying to wipe puke from his mouth while still holding his groin. “Get this straight, son. You’re all here as volunteers, and you’re not in charge of anything anymore. Maybe, just maybe, if you can pull your conventional head out of your conventional ass, you might make a team leader, but you never will if you turn your back on an unknown.”
He got back up, gave a big grin to the soldiers through his tobacco-stained beard, turned, and ambled off.
“Well,” said Sergeant Badger, helping Cahill to his feet, “at least we don’t have to guess what T-shirt to wear every day.”
Chapter 296
As Major Lowenstein walked away from them, the civilian volunteers milled around uncertainly, not sure what to do between t
hen and dinner. Their individual weapons had been taken from them in Albany; they’d had plenty eat for the first time in a very long time, and they weren’t in any imminent danger. They just had no idea what to do.
“I guess maybe we should try to relax,” said Jonas.
The woman who’d been sitting next to him on the boat frowned and said, “I’m not sure how to do that. I think I’m going to go pray, if you don’t mind.”
“No problem, Sister,” he answered, and she walked into the tent.
Mary Calloway was, as far as he knew, an actual nun, or so she claimed to be. Sure acted like it, thought Jonas. They were both in their late forties, and both from down south; he a middle aged black man from North Carolina and her from Alabama. They’d met at a FEMA camp in Tennessee, driven there by fighting between the Mountain Republic and Federal Army troops, and though there was nothing romantic between them, they’d become partners. He didn’t question it, just stood by her side like she stood by his. For a nun, she was pretty handy with a firearm. Saved his life more than once on the way the camp, and he hers.
Jonas got up and walked out into the field, reveling in the corn that was growing in neat, straight rows that followed the contour of the hill. An alcohol-powered tractor slowly pulled a bailer through an adjacent field, picking up dried midsummer hay. He stood and watched, enjoying the sight; he’d been a farmer himself, before.
“Afternoon!” said the tractor driver as he pulled up and shut down. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes, indeed it is!” answered Jonas.
The man climbed down a bit stiffly, seeming to favor one leg over the other. Imperceptible almost, but there if you looked. He wiped off his hands on a rag and held out one in greeting.