These Dead Lands (Book 2): Desolation

by Knight, Stephen

  Jarmusch leaned forward and looked down at the map. Headley pointed out the town with one thick finger, a small community called Prescott. Jarmusch considered it for a moment before nodding.

  “Roger that, Sarmajor. I think I’d like Bellara to take a team that way, and he should dismount the rest of his company for security.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “And I’d like him to pick up some of the lightfighters for the mission—they have the bigger worldview, and it might be worthwhile if they got some face time with the locals for information exchange purposes. Can you see to that, Willis? I know you’re too senior to be my messenger boy, but—”

  Headley held up a hand. “Will do, sir.”

  “Excuse me, Sergeant Ballantine?”

  Ballantine looked up to find a dark, swarthy captain with a toothy smile looking down at him from the aisle between the rows of seats. The commanding officer of the MPs Chan was with him, and his stern face was an austere counterpoint to the smaller officer’s expression. Ballantine found the train was slowly grinding to a halt. He had fallen asleep next to Kay, and he had no idea what was going on.

  “Sirs. What’s going on? We stopping? There a problem?”

  The dark-faced captain held up a hand. “No, no. We’re good—scheduled stop to check the rail conditions ahead. I’m Amar Bellara, company commander with the Pennsylvania Guard. Listen, we’re going to dismount and go on a quick local run. Colonel Jarmusch wanted me to find out if you guys are up for coming along?”

  “Uh, where to sir?”

  “Not far. There’s a town near the rail line. The colonel wants us to check it out. He thought you guys might be handy to have around, since you made it all the way here from New York and all.” Captain Bellara spread his hands and favored Ballantine with a high-wattage smile. “You know, in case the locals have questions me and my guys can’t answer.”

  Ballantine blinked. “It’s the zombie apocalypse, sir. What else does anyone really need to know?”

  “Well. That’s where you guys come in, Sergeant,” Bellara said. “Listen, it’s probably just going to be a milk run. Nothing to worry about.”

  Ballantine frowned. “Sir, I’m sorry...were you in on the fight for Indiantown Gap? Because the real shit is, there’s a lot to worry about these days.”

  Bellara’s smile faded a bit. “Yeah. I get that, Sergeant. But the colonel asked that I, uh, invite you guys along.” The intimation was clear: Ballantine and the guys were being voluntold what to do. Even in the National Guard, orders were orders no matter how they were presented.

  “And we’ll do what needs to be done, sir,” Ballantine said as his sons began to stir in their seats across from him. “But you should know better than to try and sugarcoat stuff to a lightfighter.”

  Bellara nodded slowly. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean any disrespect.”

  “Who’s going to be eyes on with the civilians, sir?”

  Chan cleared his throat. “That’s my mission, Ballantine.”

  Ballantine snorted. “No disrespect intended sir, but are you willing to die for my family?”

  Chan’s eyes narrowed as he met Ballantine’s gaze full on. “You know it, Sergeant. The only way anything gets to your people—or anyone in this rail car—is if I’m at or below room temperature.”

  Ballantine pushed himself to his feet. Kay shifted beside him—she had nodded off as well, and only became aware of the changes in circumstance when Ballantine disengaged and stood up. He had to bow down a little bit beneath the laden luggage rack overhead, but he goose-stepped his way out of the club seating arrangement his family occupied and moved into the aisle. He faced Chan directly, and at six foot four, he usually cut an imposing presence. Chan was only slightly shorter, totally crushing the usual stereotype of Asian men being small and weak. He looked up at Ballantine with an expectant gaze.

  “Be careful about what you promise, sir,” Ballantine said to him. “These are our fucking people, man. Something happens to them, things are going to be kind of tough for you.”

  “I’ll take care of them personally,” Chan said. “Count on that shit.” He looked down at the boys seated next to him. “Uh, pardon my language, guys.”

  “Gonna hold you to that, sir,” Ballantine said.

  “As you should, Sergeant.”

  Ballantine nodded, then turned back to Bellara. “Need just a few minutes to get stuff squared away, sir. But we’ll jump out with you.”

  Bellara smiled again. “Do whatever you have to do, Sergeant.”

  Ballantine excused himself and walked down the coach’s narrow aisle, heading to where the old man Everson sat next to a young man who was entranced by whatever he saw on his laptop. Everson looked up at him, his eyes bright behind his wire-rimmed glasses.

  “What’s up, Carl?” he asked.

  “Bill, we’re being pulled off the train to step off with some of the Guard guys. There’s a town up ahead, and we’re being tasked to conduct a recon.”

  Everson nodded. “Is that why we’re stopping?”

  Ballantine shook his head. “No. Switches are down the track, they need to be looked at before we can continue. While that’s going on, a lot of troops will dismount for security, and Captain Chan”—Ballantine turned and pointed out the bulky MP officer—“is going to stand watch in our absence. Obviously, if shit goes sideways you should do what he says...but don’t follow him off a cliff. You know what I mean?”

  Everson nodded. “I get it.” He nudged the young man sitting beside him. “Getting up.”

  The man with the laptop grumbled a bit but moved aside so Everson could extract himself from his window seat. The younger man’s eyes never left the screen of his laptop, so deeply entranced by the view through the machine’s geek window. Ballantine shrugged to himself. Not everyone was a man of action.

  “Carl.”

  Ballantine looked to his left, where Diana and Kenny sat. The boy was still sleeping, but the woman was awake. Ballantine nodded to her as the young man with the laptop reclaimed his seat, muttering under his breath.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Diana,” she said.

  “Diana. Right.”

  “How long will we be stopped for?” she asked. There was no fear in her eyes, only boundless exhaustion.

  “Hopefully not for long, but at least an hour,” Ballantine said.

  “Why are you guys leaving?”

  Ballantine nodded to the head of the coach, where Amara and Chan had retreated. “Orders,” he said.

  “All the guys going with you?” she asked.

  “Uh...well, yeah.” Ballantine looked at Everson, who shrugged. “Look, Diana. You guys will be looked after. Captain Chan is going to stand watch while we’re gone.”

  “He’s not one of us,” Diana said.

  Ballantine blinked. Us? he asked himself.

  “I’ll be here,” Everson said. “Trust me—I might be older than Mount Rushmore, but this old dog still knows some tricks.” He patted his rifle for emphasis.

  “You be fine”—Ballantine caught himself before he said ma’am—“Diana. Lots of Joes here, and all of them have experience now. Trust me, you’ll be protected.”

  “Like at the Gap?”

  Ballantine didn’t have an answer for that. “Take you cues from Mr. Everson, here. He’ll keep you guys out of harm’s way.” Ballantine looked at the old man. “Bill, we’ll maintain contact over the freq we used back at the Gap. If something blows up out there, I’ll pass that back to you. And obviously if things go sideways here, you’ll let us know.”

  Everson slapped the MBITR radio clipped to his vest. “Damn straight, Sergeant. Damn straight.”

  Ballantine nodded and looked back at Diana. “So we good here?”

  Diana regarded him with a vacant expression. “I don’t know, Carl. Are we?”

  Ballantine didn’t have a pat answer for that, so he simply nodded to her and pushed away.

  ###

  The convoy continued to move along the narrow
country road of PA 34 South, passing by small hamlets made up mostly of clusters of residential homes situated alongside the road. The peaceful calm of the countryside presented itself and the convoy continued to make good time, plowing through what could have been just another sedate late summer’s day. Having barely survived the ambush himself, Slater made it a point to do a map recon of the road ahead to spot any potential chokepoints along their route. If it had happened once, a second ambush could happen again. The convoy had gotten lucky this time; had the soldiers not been buttoned up inside armored vehicles with engines running, the convoy would have suffered substantial losses. Slater wasn’t going to let that happen again if he could help it.

  He yelled up to Hastings sitting in the front of the MRAP. “Sir, I’ve eye-fucked the rest of the route in front of us and there’s nothing major coming up until Biglerville. We have to pass through the town proper to get to PA 234 to the west.”

  “What are we looking at, Slater?”

  “My guess is mostly residential houses and small businesses along the road until the four-way intersection with PA 234 and York Street. Once we make the turn west and head out of town, we should be back to mostly countryside until, uh, Arendstville. It’s mostly a straight shot through there and then back to countryside roads until we hit Site R.”

  “How do you want to handle going through Biglerville?”

  “Probably better than I handled the last one, sir. I’m thinking we can halt the convoy right outside and send a few vehicles ahead to do a route recon before we send the main body down. We’ve got cavalry with us—might be time for them to saddle up and actually conduct the mission they were trained for.”

  Jones spoke up at that moment. “Sir, I have a drone we can send up when we do that halt, if you want.”

  Slater didn’t believe he’d heard the driver correctly. He was about twelve feet away and sitting right behind a howling diesel engine. “Did you say you have a drone?”

  “That’s right, Sergeant. It’s, uh, my personal device. Just a little DJI Mavic, maybe a little bit bigger than your hand folded up.”

  Slater swore to himself and moved forward, picking his way past the rest of the soldiers in the MRAP. They all looked up at him in consternation; he was interrupting their beauty sleep.

  “You know, son, you might’ve mentioned this earlier,” Slater snarled when he knelt on the gunner’s platform between the front seats. A drone pass over the last ambush site could have saved three soldiers’ lives.

  Hastings held up his hand. “Dial it back below ten, Slater. Jones, how long does it take to set up?”

  “Nothing to it, sir—I just have to pull it out of my backpack and start it up. I’d guess five to ten minutes before we’d have live video of the town.”

  Hastings looked out the windshield. There was a decent pockmark in the glass right in front of him, where a bullet had caromed off the impact-resistant glass. “A drone … what do you think, Slater?”

  “How much flight time does it have, soldier?” Slater asked Jones.

  “I can get about twenty minutes out of a battery. Less if there’s a lot of wind to work against.” As he drove, Jones kept his eyes on the road before the MRAP. “Sorry, Sergeant. I guess maybe that might’ve come in handy at that last barricade.”

  Slater sighed and let his own irritation at Jones’s tardy reveal pass through him like water through a strainer. “It’s all right.” He turned to Hastings. “That should be plenty of time, sir. We just need to see the route going in and out of town to make sure there aren’t any surprises or roadblocks like last time. I say we give it a go—if we still aren’t sure, we go with my plan and activate the cavalry, sir.”

  Hastings took it all in and mulled it over for a few moments. Slater watched him as the captain continued surveying the road ahead. He finally nodded.

  “All right, we’ll give it a go. Same as before, everyone stays buttoned up, engines running while Jones is flying the drone. Let’s get another face behind the wheel while Jones is flying the drone. Jones, you’ll need to be outside the vehicle while you fly this thing, right?”

  “Probably better to do it that way, sir. Too much metal on this thing, it’ll degrade the signal,” Jones said.

  Hastings nodded again. “I’d figured as much. All right. Slater and me will be right outside the vehicle while you fly. If things get ugly, we jump back in the MRAP and button up.” He turned to Slater. “Pass all this back to War Eagle and find out if they have any additional instructions. Suggest to Victor that Colonel Gavas designate a team to pull out of the formation and to stand ready.”

  “Good deal, sir. I’ll let you know if War Eagle has anything else for us.”

  With that, Slater moved to the back of the vehicle. He sat down and pulled out a small notebook from his cargo pocket. He flipped through the pages and jotted down his notes, getting his thoughts organized so he could pass on the information he had to convey as expeditiously as possible. After a few minutes he picked up the radio handset, keyed the mic and started issuing instructions.

  The convoy came to a slow halt in the middle of the road, just past Sandoe’s Fruit Market on the outskirts of Biglerville. The road cut through a large, wide-open agricultural area. Aside from a couple of residential houses along the road, the column had 360 degrees of clear view. It was the best they were going to get. Once the MRAP came to a halt, Jones switched out with the new driver and picked his way to the rear of the vehicle. He pulled his drone out of his backpack while Slater listened for any last-minute instructions from the convoy’s command group. The small Mavic AIR drone was just a little bit bigger and thicker than a smart phone, and Slater watched as Jones unfolded the drone’s four arms from the body. The young soldier then opened the remote controller to insert his smart phone, which would serve as the screen. Once he had everything powered up, he moved to Slater.

  “I’m powered up, we just need to get down and let it get a GPS lock. Then we’re good to go, Sergeant.”

  Slater nodded his head in acknowledgement, then faced forward. “Ready back here, sir.”

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  As Hastings exited the MRAP’s cab, Slater lowered the rear ramp. Once it was down, he and Jones descended the stairs. The MRAP in the trail position idled nearby, its weapon station manned. The rest of the convoy stood in a staggered formation, weapons at ready. Slater took a good look around. Nothing stood out for miles in the agricultural fields aside from the thin screen of trees lining the road.

  A good start.

  Jones set the drone down on the ground and began working the controls on the remote while the little aircraft acquired a GPS lock. Slater tucked in his rifle as he peered over Jones’s shoulder. The screen on his smart phone saw everything the drone camera picked up in real time, and to Slater it looked a lot like a video game controller. Hastings joined them, and he looked at the screen as well.

  “Nice,” he said.

  The drone’s four rotors spun up and buzzed. Jones looked up at Hastings and nodded.

  “We’re good to go here, sir.”

  “Let’s get the show on the road then, Specialist. Fly it straight down the road to the four-way intersection of York, then turn right, to the west. Follow York until the edge of town, then bring it back.”

  “No problem, I’m on it. If you guys want to watch, just look over my shoulders.”

  “Oh hell yeah,” Slater said.

  Jones lifted the drone off of the ground and flew it down the road toward the borough of Biglerville. Slater looked away from the screen long enough to do a slow security scan, then focused on the smart phone’s screen to see what lay ahead. The drone’s camera was capable of seeing quite a lot, and the fidelity was good—he could make out the telephone lines along both sides of the road.

  “You see those phone poles, Jones?”

  “Roger, I got ’em.”

  “How do you avoid that stuff?” Slater asked.

  “Just gotten pretty good at fly
ing this thing. And the drone has a built-in obstacle avoidance system that keeps it from hitting things I might miss. It’s not perfect, but it works pretty good. If it gets too tight, I can always go higher and get a bird’s-eye view. And the higher I take it, the harder it is for anyone on the ground to hear it.”

  Jones flew the drone down the street at treetop level, stopping every once in a while to do a 360-degree scan of the houses lining the road. As he brought the drone to a hover, Slater saw he could read a couple of signs on the left side of the road. The first read Upper Adams School District; across the street, another sign read Centenary United Methodist Church.

  “So that’s the local high school off to the left. The parking lot is mostly empty, just a few cars. No movement. You want me to continue, Captain?”

  “Absolutely, Jones. Keep it going nice and steady until it gets to York Street, then hook that right.”

  Jones resumed flying the drone down Main Street until it arrived at the intersection with York Street and PA 234. To the right was a PNC Bank building. On the left was an antique store. The local terrain was starting to get higher now with buildings reaching a few stories into the air.

  “The wires are starting to get pretty heavy here. I’m going to go higher above the buildings to avoid them and the poles,” Jones said. He brought the drone up above the buildings and hovered as he executed another 360-degree turn. To the east lay the high school track and what appeared to be tennis courts. To the west, York Street was lined with more small businesses and residences.

  “What was that?” Jones said suddenly.

  “Whatcha got?” Slater looked at the screen intently, and Hastings leaned in closer.

  “Not sure, but I thought I caught some movement by one of the stores as I was rotating the drone. I’m going to take a closer look.”

  “Do it. I want to know if we have any more surprises waiting for us,” Hastings said.

  Jones maintained the drone’s altitude and moved west on York to the building where he thought he saw movement.

  “Okay, right around here. That building with the sign that says Adams Country Surplus and Building Supply. I thought I saw something moving in the building.”