The Holding
The End Time Saga
Book Five
Daniel Greene
Copyright © 2019 by Daniel Greene
Cover Design by Tim Barber
Formatting by Polgarus Studio
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Characters are fictional and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is completely coincidental. All names, organizations, places and entities therein are fictional or have been fictionalized, and in no way reflect reality. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.
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For all my brothers - nobody goes it alone.
Bare is the back of a brotherless man.
Table of Contents
ALVARADO
AHMED
JOSEPH
STEELE
GWEN
ALVARADO
JOSEPH
STEELE
AHMED
THE PASTOR
JOSPEH
TESS
ALVARADO
GWEN
JOSEPH
STEELE
THE PASTOR
AHMED
TESS
JOSEPH
STEELE
ALVARADO
TESS
MARGIE
JOSEPH
TESS
GWEN
AHMED
TESS
ALVARADO
TESS
STEELE
GWEN
JOSEPH
AHMED
GWEN
MARGIE
STEELE
JOSEPH
STEELE
MARGIE
AHMED
STEELE
ALVARADO
THE PASTOR
GWEN
JOSEPH
TESS
THE PASTOR
ALVARADO
AHMED
STEELE
TESS
STEELE
JOSEPH
THE PASTOR
AHMED
STEELE
ALVARADO
STEELE
MARGIE
AHMED
STEELE
JOSEPH
STEELE
GWEN
AHMED
ALVARADO
GWEN
A Message from the Author
About the Author
Books by Daniel Greene
ALVARADO
Outpost Barron, Minnesota
“God, it’s cold.”
United States Marine Corps Major Isabel Alvarado glanced up from the map she was studying.
Lieutenant Wess rubbed his gloved hands together across the table from her. The twenty-two-year-old’s face was rosy. His polar fleece watch cap was pulled down past his ears, almost shading his eyes. He gave her a smile, unsure whether or not displaying some sort of weakness was appropriate. She let her eyes put that display to rest.
The wind howled outside, buffeting the tent flaps that were sealed shut to trap in what little heat their bodies manufactured.
Captain Butler’s pale brown eyes shifted over to the young man in disdain and he snorted. He was an inch over average height and had an athletic build, but there was a reason she’d let Captain Heath travel south and command the northern portion of Iowa. Butler needed supervision, so she kept him close and let her reliable captain leave.
Her coffee-colored eyes considered Wess for a moment. “Move closer to the heater.” With a flick of her chin, she shooed him.
A small space heater had been pilfered from the RV grocery store on the island of Barron where she had set up her outpost in the middle of the Mississippi River. The RV park had provided a perfect space to set up their outpost. Easily controlled access points, latrine facilities, and a place to dock their watercraft, most of which had been loaned to Colonel Kinnick.
The lieutenant stepped to the other side of the room, crouching down next to the heater. “Oh yeah, that’s the stuff.” He turned and looked at them over his shoulder. “Can finally feel my fingers again.”
Alvarado ignored him and scrutinized her map. As winter took the upper Midwest by storm, her sorties into La Crosse had drastically decreased. This meant a significant increase of infected persons within the small city across the river. With the miserable blizzard engulfing their camp, she hadn’t had eyes on the urban area for weeks, making her effectively combat blind with no intelligence on what the infected were doing.
She had enough experience fighting them to know all about the things they were most likely doing. Eating men alive. A horde could overrun a rifle squad in a minute. She knew. She had lost plenty of Marines. Each missing face from her command stung like the biting gales, but she held on. Someone had to fight this ugly war to the bitter end, and that kind of fight made sense to a poor girl who grew up in the equivalent of a barrio in south Los Angeles.
It was a fight for every scrap of food. A fight for every inch of space. A fight to survive the neighborhood gangs. Just like the neighborhood pit bull that was on its own. No master, no owner, only surviving by its own determined will. That kind of environment built resiliency that was compounded indefinitely by the Marine Corps.
The tent flap pushed inward. Something scraped along the material searching for a way in. Before her eyes darted for the tent entrance, her hand dipped behind her to her M4A1 carbine. Her fingers wrapped around the stock, and she placed her other hand along the magazine well. Captain Butler did the same from across the table, his movements fuzzy in her peripheral vision.
The tent unzipped fast. A man in woodland camouflage and a crystalizing frozen white beard stuck his face inside.
“Well goddamn. Hell of a welcome for the sumbitch stuck out here.” The man stepped a snowy boot inside the tent. Snow fell from his pants and boots, dropping to the floor.
Wind whistled a baritone note, and the snowflakes glided past the opening at a diagonal angle, attempting to go parallel with the ground. He quickly closed the flaps, sealing them back with a zip.
Alvarado placed her M4A1 back against the tent wall, and her eyes turned to him expectantly. “Master Guns Pike, how are our Marines doing along the perimeter?”
Pike clapped his hands together and little specks of white puffed into the air. “Just about frozen stiff.”
“Too bad they don’t freeze stiff.”
He peeled off his gloves. “That would make this business a bit easier.”
She gave him a terse nod with respect. “Nothing’s ever easy.”
Grunting his agreement, he said, “If it was easy, they would have sent the Army.” He walked over to the space heater and draped his gloves over the top. “We got the boys rotating in and out every thirty minutes.”
“Captain Butler and I were discussing how to keep tabs on La Crosse without the SURCs.” She didn’t want to risk damaging her precious few small unit riverine craft in a temperamental river with chunks of floating ice cascading downstream.
Wrinkles creased around Pike’s gray eyes. “Not much we can do without them and the bridge gone.”
“I agree, but I’m not putting the SURCs into a river filled with chunks of floating ice.”
A small smile touched Pike’s face. “I wouldn’t either.”
“I need intelligence though.”
Melting ice dripped off Pike’s beard onto the map. He wiped the thawing hair with a hand, and the white-bearded senior non-commissioned officer grew
younger before their eyes.
Pike reached out and touched the map. “I could lead a couple platoons north to the railroad tracks crossing the river, cut through French Island. It’s only a hundred meters there. I’ll have to see it for myself, but I’m sure we can improvise a way across. We can scale across with rope lines. That’d put us on the edge of the La Crosse.”
The railroad had been blown by Lieutenant Colonel Eldridge months prior as part of the initial lockdown of Barron Island.
Alvarado didn’t smile but grinned on the inside. She never let her men see her smile and didn’t care if they thought she was a mad devil with a resting bitch face. Early on, she knew that’s what it took to survive this debacle of a war. If anyone was going to make it out of this mess, it would be her Marines. “Improvise, adapt, overcome.”
Pike lifted stiff eyebrows. “That is what we do.”
Butler placed his fists on the table still considering the plan. “Create a link to the mainland that only men can cross. Then we don’t have to risk our remaining SURCs. Excellent idea.”
Alvarado hid another inward grin and thanked the Lord for Pike. Marines like Pike were instrumental in their success. Solid. Dependable. Cool under fire. A stellar Marine all around.
A weathered smile settled on Pike’s features still thawing from the blizzard. “Can’t imagine there’d be too many takers for that mission. Lieutenant, you want to join?”
The rosy cheeked lieutenant looked their way. His face said he wasn’t exactly sure of his abilities, but his voice came out strong. “I can lead the recon.”
Pike’s gray eyes met hers. There was no doubt who the men would be looking to in the field. His eyes reassured her of success. “I’ll make sure nothing happens.”
She regarded Pike for a moment. “Good. Come morning, hopefully this storm will die down and Lieutenant Wess and Master Guns will lead a recon mission north.” She was acutely aware that her command was only shrinking. Between the ongoing conflict and the forces she’d sent south with Kinnick she had one-hundred-and-thirty-six Marines under her command. Dependable experienced Marines weren’t to be squandered.
A deep moan crawled over the outside of the tent, probing for a way inside. It melded with the swirl of restless snow and the howls of winter.
The outline of Pike’s mouth tightened. The seasoned Marine had an ear for when the wind didn’t sound right.
Butler followed his gaze, tilting his head to the side and narrowing his brow line at the tent entrance.
The green flap fluttered as bitter air beat the command tent. The moan grew louder now.
“Master Guns,” Alvarado said, giving the entrance a stone-faced look.
Pike scooped up his carbine, warily stepping for the entrance. As he reached the flap, he crouched and unzipped the zipper with one hand while the other held his M4 pointed outward. The tent door flipped open, and the bitter cold invaded the tent.
Dropping to one knee, he twisted. He peered one way outside and then the other. “Can’t see shit out there.” He lowered his weapon and turned back to her. “What can we do to get those spotlights on?”
“We only have enough generator power for the ones by the interstate. Otherwise we freeze,” Alvarado said, turning back to the map. How do we fight this and win?
Something blurred near his head.
“Ah, what the fuck?” he said. His M4 reported with resounding booms.
Pike turned around glaring at her. Blood trickled down the side of his face. He lifted his hand from a hole where his ear used to be, staring at the blood on his hands as if unsure of whose blood it was. Shoeless feet lay in front of the tent, bluish-gray from the elements.
“That sumbitch.” He raised a hand to his ear feeling for the piece of him that had disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Her carbine pressed harder into her shoulder pocket.
Pike’s jaw widened. “Don’t . . . point those.” Words stopped eking from his mouth. It worked open and closed, but now only low gurgles seeped out. He opened his mouth again as if he tried to catch his breath and then his jaw snapped closed like they’d beaten him in an argument. His head dipped forward. Tilting his head to the side, he stared at them in confusion. “Bastard . . . took . . . my ear.”
“Pike, how about you prone out for me,” Alvarado commanded. She removed her hand from the magazine well and pointed down at the ground with her finger. He’s gonna turn. He’s gonna turn, her mind screamed at her. They always turn.
Pike’s face shook and his eyes blinked in rapid succession. His mouth worked as he tried to say something, but only a guttural moan came forth. “Iooooo.” His eyes had shifted to the color of the snowdrift that piled higher by the second around their tent.
She didn’t blink when she fired her weapon into his head. She looked him in the eyes; the man deserved that much for his service. He deserved that and a hell of a lot more he would never see. Boom. Pike’s head shot backward and he fell to his knees and face-planted into the floor. Peering over her sights, she scanned past his body to outside the tent.
Snowflakes continued to fall, unfazed by her deadly form of mercy. Blood poured from Pike’s skull, spilling on the tent floor, puddling with nowhere to go.
Her steps were soft and her mind focused as she walked forward, her carbine ready to engage any additional threats. Sidestepping Pike’s body, she took an angle on the entrance.
A deep darkness blanketed the night, making it almost impossible to see. The snow had settled like an ivory mantle on the land. The wind bit at her face like it was infected. She stepped through the flaps and into the storm. The infected man Pike had shot was naked and bluish-gray, his body convulsing in its second death.
In the distance, a spotlight beamed down Interstate 14. Flurries hindered her vision as she tried to penetrate the speckled white fog. She brought a hand up to her face, trying to block icy gusts. Dark shapes sat behind the perimeter sandbags and barriers.
She glanced over her shoulder to the large warehouse that served as a barracks for a host of her Marines. Everything appeared quiet. The door burst open. Marines ran into the night. One screamed as another Marine brought him down. More Marines emerged from their insulated tents.
“How the hell did it get in? Perimeters up,” Butler said behind her.
“I don’t know.”
Gunshots rippled from the warehouse. Marines sprinted through the snow in nothing but their undergarments, vests, and guns.
“Get formed up! We got a breach!” Butler shouted.
Calls for help rode the winds to her, distant voices, individual locations unknown. Her men fought and grappled with hostiles near the barricade.
“How are they getting in?” she said into the darkness. She spun on Lieutenant Wess.
“Get your platoon from the warehouse over to the barricade, and I want the perimeter lights on now.”
The wide-eyed lieutenant nodded and ran toward the warehouse.
The report of gunfire overcame the shrill blowing air.
“Come on, Butler,” Alvarado snarled.
She sprinted into the frigid landscape. It crunched as she sank almost a foot into the breakable icy crust absorbing her feet.
Headwind pummeled her and she ignored her body begging to be covered with more and more layers of thermal. Her hands had it the worst, she could almost feel the cold cracking her skin. Even with her gloves on, they were no match for extended time in the cold.
Crystals started to form inside her nose. Every inhale hardened her nostrils both inside and out. Sucking in the cold air only accelerated the process.
She neared the roofed metal barricade encased with sandbags and concrete barriers between the outpost and Interstate 14. It was slightly more effective than being in the open, keeping the elements from the Marines. She scanned the barricade. A dead body lay in a drift. The lack of uniform labeled it as a Zulu and not one of hers. Black blood soaked the snow around its head.
The sounds of men struggling caught her ea
r, and she ran to the machine gun emplacement. Two infected had one of her Marines pinned with his back against the concrete. The Marine held the dead away from him by their necks. She growled, her lips rising as she shot. Clap-clap. Any variable in her aim and she could have hit her Marine. As she let her weapon lower, the African-American Marine tossed the bodies to the ground.
He scooped his M27 automatic rifle and hugged it to his chest. His eyes were wide as he fled the barricade. “Thank you,” he said, his breath fogging in rhythm.
“Where are they coming from?” she said up at him.
“I don’t know, Major. They came from inside the camp.”
“How’s that possible, Lance Corporal?” Butler yelled at him.
“They grabbed Robinson and Hewitt. We were watching the perimeter, not the camp.”
Alvarado scanned past the interstate along the naked winter trees of the island. She thought they were trees at first. Trees swaying and bending against the might of the wind, but if you stared long enough, they were there. They were short shadows stumbling in the darkness, moving painstakingly slow, but they came anyway, a flood of frozen water in dead human form.
The spotlights hummed as they warmed, shedding only a fraction of their illuminating potential.
A squad of Marines jogged up, breathing hard. Gunfire accelerated from the other end of the outpost.
“Barracks is clear, ma’am,” Wess said.
She ignored her subordinate, continuing to eye the dead on her island. Wess followed her gaze, squinting. His voice eked out a quiet, “Ma’am?”
Spotlights around the base went hot, piercing the darkness and trees with light. Hundreds of the dead marched through the trees. “Jesus Christ.”
She ran forward. “Help me turn this thing.” Marines joined her, grunting as they turned the giant spotlight. Its base groaned over the frozen ground.
Thousands of lumens beamed off the road and ahead on the Mississippi River. The river had gone from chocolate milk to a sea of black with bits and pieces of white underneath.
The river cracked and rippled as they trod over the frozen water but held its solid state. The cold air closed her lungs, inflaming them, but it wasn’t the bitterness that took her breath. It wasn’t the loss of one of her best Marines although that stung like a barbed arrow to the chest. It was the thousands of dead that marched over the frozen Mississippi River.
The End Time Saga (Book 5): The Holding Page 1