by J. W. Vohs
The truth was that Jack and his people had no way to fairly judge the previous actions of the flight crew now in their custody. With no clear answer to the problem, former Ranger Todd Evans sat in the co-pilot’s seat with a .45 auto to make sure the Blackhawk safely dropped the team at the landing zone and returned directly to Fort Wayne.
Satisfied that he had looked everything over and fully considered gear and capabilities one last time, Jack allowed himself the small luxury of accepting that this was the most deadly, powerful, and experienced group of soldiers he’d ever gone to war with. Their mission seemed almost impossible; scouting several hundred miles of the massive Ohio River, gathering intelligence on enemy movements to the south, all while destroying a number of large bridges. Such a task probably would have been assigned to an infantry battalion in the pre-outbreak world, and Jack was trying to accomplish the mission with just a handful of soldiers. Yet for some reason he felt confident that the tiny group of men sharing the chopper with him would get the job done. They would have to—failure simply wasn’t an option.
Jack’s thoughts were finally interrupted by Todd Evans’ voice coming over the headsets, “Twenty minutes out, fellas.”
Everyone but David seemed to register the news. Jack’s younger brother was lost in a world of his own, staring at the same piece of paper he’d been studying off and on since the group left Fort Wayne. Luke grinned at Jack and tried to snatch the paper from David’s hand. For a man who had appeared so oblivious to his surroundings, David’s reflexes were surprisingly quick. “Back off, boy,” he snapped as Luke managed to retrieve only a small corner of the paper before David tucked the rest into the inside pocket of his jacket.
“I know lawyers love their paperwork, but don’t you think it’s time to focus on the task at hand?” Jack cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “What’s so fascinating anyway? Christy give you some sort of love letter?”
David opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked thoughtful for a second, rubbed the back of his neck, scowled, then finally replied, “Baby names.”
Luke sounded skeptical, “You have months to figure that out.”
David sighed. “Christy wants a name now. She doesn’t want to keep calling our child ‘the baby’ until it’s finally born.” He looked from Luke to Jack and growled. “Is that okay with you two?”
“Fine by me, Mr. Sensitive.” Jack teased, “I thought the mother-to-be was supposed to be the hormonal one. You’re making me appreciate the fact that I never had any kids.”
David was uncharacteristically speechless for a minute before he shook his head and looked skyward. “Lord, give me the strength not to strangle my know-it-all brother before I figure out the best way to show him just how clueless he really is . . .”
Back in Fort Wayne, Christy was pacing back and forth in front of the conference table in a meeting room of what had been the city’s water plant. This building was now referred to as Settlement Headquarters. Hiram Anderson, Deb Wilson, and Sal Martinez were hunched over a map on one end of the table, while a small group of teenagers were whispering in a corner in the back of the room. There were still thousands of hunters just across the river, though any surviving cattle in the area had fled from their predators as fast as they could. The overall number of infected was slowly dwindling as small packs of the creatures had begun to wander southwest along the St. Mary’s River in search of food. Hiram wanted to take advantage of their proximity to so many of the infected and wage what amounted to a guerrilla war; since the settlement was effectively protected by the rivers, they had an unusual opportunity to go on the offensive and still retreat quickly to safety if necessary. Deb and Sal saw the merit of Hiram’s idea, but they were all wrestling with the practical details of implementation. With the most experienced fighters on a mission to stop Barnes, the task of confronting thousands of hunters, who would likely disperse away from the city on their own, seemed both intriguing and impractical.
While Deb, Sal, and Hiram brainstormed the pros and cons of potential strategies, Christy couldn’t stop worrying about David and the expedition heading south to try to head off some maniacal general and his allegedly massive army of flesh eaters. “Who’s on radio duty?” she asked loudly enough for the question to be addressed to everyone in the room.
Deb looked up and sighed. “It’s still Andi, just like the last time you asked. Her shift ends in a couple hours.” She took a good look at Christy, and her voice softened. “I know how you feel; Carter’s with them too. If I keep busy, I don’t worry about him every second—if I can work hard at being useful on my end, then I feel like I’m part of the same team.” She walked over to Christy, put her arm around her shoulders, and steered her to a seat. “In the spirit of being useful I have to tell you that you look like hell. You’re white as a sheet, you’ve got big circles under your eyes, your hair is a matted mess, and I can’t remember the last time I saw you eat anything. Your first priority is to take care of yourself and that baby of yours.” She motioned to the teens in the corner, “Gracie, can Jade and Tyler spare you for a while? I’d like you to take Christy to get some food—make sure she eats—then, if she can’t sleep, you two can start coding some potential message options to save us time later. If that doesn’t put her to sleep, nothing will.”
Christy started to object, but Deb interrupted her. “I swear if we hear anything from the team I will find you immediately.”
Gracie corrected her, “You’ll find us, you mean.” She turned to Christy, “It seems right that we stick together right now. David and Luke are together; they’ll have each other’s backs, so we should do the same.”
“Fine,” Christy conceded, “but they only left a little while ago and I was expecting at least a twenty-four hour reprieve from being told what to do. Do all pregnant women have to put up with well-intentioned micromanagement? David actually left me a list of ‘suggested’ foods and exercises.”
Gracie giggled. “What did you do when he gave you the list?”
“I totally lied and told him I thought it was sweet to put so much thought into taking care of me.” Christy started to tear up. “He just better not let that hero complex get him into trouble on this trip. I could tell there was something weighing on his mind when they left, and I hope he isn’t planning something stupid.”
“Luke will keep a close eye on David,” Gracie reassured her. “Ever since we lost Jerry, David has been like a father to him.”
Christy smiled, “I think David might prefer ‘concerned older brother,’ though he might claim bragging rights for fathering a child in middle school.”
“Guys can really be disgusting,” Gracie observed.
“Hey . . .” Tyler objected from the back of the room.
Jade ran her hand up Tyler’s back, grasped his shoulder, and pulled herself close enough that he could feel her breath on his neck. “Don’t worry Tyler,” she whispered seductively in his ear, “you guys can be awfully cute too.”
No one else could hear what Jade said, but they got the general idea from the dark red flush that bloomed on Tyler’s face.
Gracie stifled a laugh. “Come on, Christy, let’s go eat. I don’t think we’re needed here.”
Christy nodded as she stood, “Yeah, it looks like—” Her sentence cut off as she swooned and reached out to catch her balance before everything went black.
Todd Evans’ voice boomed over the headset once again, “Five minutes out, fellas.”
Jack turned to David, “You got any more prayers for us? We’re about to implement your clueless brother’s Plan A.”
“Well, you’re not totally clueless,” David observed. “I think you’ve got this war business down well enough; it’s women you’ve always had trouble figuring out.”
“I must disagree, little brother. I figured out a long time ago that I wasn’t gonna let anybody boss me around.” He winked at Luke. “When Christy says jump, all he can think about is ‘how high’ . . .”
“I just don’t k
now what happened to the fearless warrior I followed to Indiana,” Luke mockingly added with a mournful face.
“Hey, you’re the one all cuddled up with your love-bunny every night,” David retorted. “And Jack’s the same way with Andi. Both of you act like lost little puppies when your women are around.”
Carter jumped into the fray over the headsets, “Don’t worry, David, they’ll be gettin’ the cure to all that snugglin’ and smoochin’ soon enough. If we can keep ‘em alive long enough, that is.”
David actually guffawed into his mike, “That’s right! When are you two lover-boys gonna marry your lovely, deadly ladies?”
Jack waited for the laughter to subside before cracking, “At least I made it into my thirties before settling down. You latched on to Christy in college when she was too young and naïve to know what she was in for—at least she was smart enough to put off marrying you until you’d proved what an obedient lap-dog you could be.”
David smiled before replying, “Keep talking smack; it’ll just be that much funnier when I see you and Luke living as husbands instead of rootless Vikings. You’re gonna learn that it’s a lot harder for two people to make a decision than one.”
Luke puffed out his chest. “Gracie’s Jewish; she knows that the woman submits to her husband. Even she can’t resist four thousand years of tradition.”
Jack again waited for Carter and David to finish laughing, pretty sure that he heard the old pilot chuckling along with the two younger men. “Andi’s not Jewish, but I’m gonna convert so I’ll be the boss of my house too. One henpecked husband in our family is more than enough.”
As they all felt the chopper begin its descent, the laughter subsided and the mood turned serious as the men contemplated the drop-off and the next phase of the plan.
CHAPTER 3
The landing site was an uninhabited flood plain on the Indiana bank of the Ohio just west of Louisville. Jack and the rest of the people involved with planning the defense against Barnes’ attack had agreed that the main advance north through Kentucky would lie west of the Cincinnati area. With the Appalachian foothills to the east and heavily populated metro areas to the north, Barnes would probably want to veer to the more open ground of central Kentucky as he moved toward Indiana.
Jack had earned his Ph.D. in medieval warfare, but he loved American history as well. After looking over the U.S. atlas for a while he’d realized that this had all taken place before, in the maneuvers and battles of the Civil War. Barnes was moving a massive infantry force by foot through Tennessee and Kentucky. The same geographical features that had dictated the movements of the armies of the Union and Confederacy would almost certainly affect the host of infected heading north from Georgia.
Jack believed that Barnes would lead his army over the Tennessee River by way of the I-24 bridges in Chattanooga. If the Hoosiers were lucky, some group of survivors would be based in that area, because the hunters would be funneled into very tight spaces in the city where a strong resistance might be able to slow or stop their advance. If that didn’t happen, which it almost certainly wouldn’t, the ghastly army would be free to head toward Nashville. Once past the Music City, Barnes could allow his forces to spread out and advance through northern Tennessee on a wide front.
The logical target at that point would be Fort Campbell, Kentucky, former home of the Army’s 101st Air Assault Division. The helicopter facilities on that base were extensive, and in spite of the fact that the military had spent all of its troops and munitions in the war against the infected, a conflict that ended in the annihilation of those human forces, fuel and parts should still be available. Jack just couldn’t believe that Fort Campbell wasn’t part of Barnes’ long-term plans to conquer North America. Nevertheless, the psychopath could leave that objective to his subordinates and push through the Bluegrass State as quickly as possible in order to move into Indiana where he could get at Jack and his people.
The key factor in predicting where Barnes would attempt to cross the Ohio River was the movement of the cattle herds he was using to feed the flesh-eaters as they advanced northward. If the hunters were his only concern, the general should head directly toward Louisville and cross into Indiana there, but moving cattle through the city would be difficult and time-consuming. With that in mind, Jack believed that Barnes would avoid Louisville and head for the bridge just west of Brandenburg, Kentucky. The livestock could avoid any urban area by crossing at that point.
Another problem Barnes would face in his attack on Jack’s settlement was the geography of southern Indiana. Much of the area between Louisville and Evansville was full of high hills and woods that stretched almost to Indianapolis. National and state forests were dotted with lakes and road-less stretches that would hamper the movements of any pre-modern military force. The best choice for the hunter-army, once across the Ohio, would be to head northeast into the flatlands of eastern Indiana. Once the flesh-eaters made it to that point, there would be nothing but a few small rivers between them and Fort Wayne.
And Fort Wayne wasn’t the only concern—back in Noble County, farmers from Utah and Indiana were finishing up the harvest, now focusing on the hard seed corn needed for animal feed. Building up supplies of horses and livestock was also a priority out in the county. They were attempting to accomplish all of this with a minimal labor force, guarded by an even smaller security contingent, covering a substantial rural expanse. Still, thanks to the Battle of the Castle, and the mass routing of the infected at nearby Chain O’Lakes State Park, Noble County was relatively infected-free. That would certainly change if Barnes could find a way to march his massive hunter army into Northern Indiana; Fort Wayne would be his first target, but it wouldn’t be his last.
Jack realized that he was building prediction upon presumption several times as he tried to determine Barnes’ march to the north, but with absolutely no information coming out of Tennessee and Kentucky, he had to form some type of response to the threat. The safe play was the destruction of all the bridges over the Ohio River, and even though that was the plan, resources were extremely limited, and it would take time to wreck them all. He had to pick the most likely places where Barnes would move and act on his best guess; there was no other choice.
With two choppers still running from the three captured at the airport during the Battle of Fort Wayne, there was transportation for a second mission. John and Tina Shea were leading a team of explosives experts and a structural engineer from the Mormon contingent in a second Blackhawk. John had been Jack’s platoon leader in Afghanistan, and his wife had been an Army MP who had already demonstrated her combat and leadership abilities since the outbreak began. Their mission was to fly directly onto the I-64 bridge east of Jack’s landing zone, and render every span over the Ohio between Louisville and Cincinnati unusable. Everyone had agreed that they were better off safe than sorry when it came to preventing Barnes from crossing the river with his hunter-army. Nobody believed that the general would lead his host of infected in any direction other than Indiana, but they were determined to prepare for the possibility.
Bridge-blowing was going to be a difficult job for both teams since the river was spanned in more than thirty locations in Ohio and Indiana. There were fewer bridges leading from Kentucky into Illinois, but Jack strongly suspected that they would have to be destroyed as well. Some of the people at the settlement had claimed that blowing the bridges would hurt future economic growth once the war was won, but ultimately they’d accepted the opinion of Jack and the others who argued that victory on a continental, or even state-sized scale, seemed unlikely at this point in the conflict.
A million Mormons and other citizens of Utah had managed to secure the Salt Lake Valley through a fortunate combination of great leadership, favorable geography, and a fierce will to resist the hordes of infected in the weeks following the outbreak. Their leaders believed that several hundred thousand more Americans were surviving in the Rockies, but ultimately such a large group of people was going to
have food-supply problems in the mountainous region. They would need the agriculturally blessed Midwest if they were to survive in the long term.
The main problem was that the folks living in the American heartland, urban and rural, had likely been close to wiped out in the first few weeks of the outbreak. Jack’s group had survived because he and Carter had prepared for the possibility that the nightmare disease they witnessed in Afghanistan would begin to spread around the world. They’d spent substantial time and money building a huge castle-like home surrounded by a massive earthen berm. They successfully defended the fortress against thousands of infected, but eventually decided to relocate to the river-banks of Fort Wayne where they had more space to grow and better transportation options. They only knew of one other group of survivors in the region—that settlement was spread across a few islands in Lake Erie—though Jack and his followers were hopeful that other settlements were out there still undetected by Barnes and his phony government forces. The forbidding north woods of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota almost certainly held many other survivors, but their numbers would be small, and until hunger drove them south they were on their own.
The virus had arrived on U.S. shores in late May, and within a few weeks spread throughout North America. Millions of acres of corn, beans, and wheat had already been planted by the time the nation was overrun, and one of the first questions the Utah leaders had for Jack after radio contact was established in late August was if the Indiana settlement needed help with the harvest. The reality was that nobody in Indiana had given the harvest much thought, seeing as how they only had a few hundred survivors in their group and packs of hunters were still roaming the countryside at will. But after hearing the Mormons’ suggestion of opening the old Union Pacific rail route to Chicago if Jack’s people could clear the CSX line into the Windy City, everyone was determined to make it happen.