Run (Book 2): The Crossing

by Rich Restucci

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Seyfert said into his headset.

  “Ain’t those your friends?”

  “That’s the LAV yeah, but I don’t see Stark or Andy.”

  “So shouldn’t we go down there and see where they are?”

  “Negative. They would have come back to us if they could have, so somebody stopped them. One of the things that could stop an LAV is a tank, and they just happen to have one,” he pointed to the checkpoint. “We return to the depot and come back with guns.”

  Calvin spun the helicopter southwest. “What are guns going to do to that tank?”

  “Not a damn thing. We still need to get my friends though, so I’ll think of something.”

  20

  The rotors hadn’t stopped spinning when Seyfert jumped from the helicopter and made his way to the roof stairs. He gathered his people and some of the inhabitants of the depot and told them what had happened.

  “But they’re the damned army,” Dallas drawled. “Ain’t they on our side?”

  “I don’t know. There’s no law anymore, so who knows what their intentions are. We saw heavy armor and men in black camo. They could be anybody.”

  Chris looked at Seyfert. “We can’t just leave them. They’d come for us.”

  Anna nodded in agreement, and ejected the magazine from her pistol, checking her ammo. She slammed the magazine home and made sure the safety was on before she holstered it. “Let’s get them.”

  “We can get them as long as it doesn’t compromise the mission. If nobody is left alive to get to our destination, then the mission fails. That can’t happen.”

  Teems raised a bushy eyebrow. “What mission?”

  “Top secret, ya dumb hick,” Dallas said and punched Teems in the arm. They had become fast friends. “Which is why you can’t come with us, Hoss.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” demanded Rick.

  Seyfert looked at Rick sympathetically, “He’s right, Rick, you can’t go. You have vital information that can’t be lost or the mission could fail.” Everyone was looking at Rick now. “Commander McInerney would have my balls, but Boone might actually kill me if anything happened to you.”

  The bikers weren’t brought in on the details of the Boston mission, but there was a discussion about the detained LAV in which Rick got a little heated. In the end, he acquiesced to the fact that he knew exactly which buildings in Boston they would need to visit, and in the case of MIT, the layout of those buildings. He had been a police officer in the New England city, and as such had been to the university on numerous occasions for various reasons. An explosion in one of the labs, two murders, and frequent parties that needed to be rousted when he was a younger patrolman. In addition, his ex-wife had worked in the specific laboratory facility that they would need to gain access to, and he knew how to do it. That building was a fortress in itself, and the lower administration levels were a maze of cubicles and offices that nobody would want to negotiate without a plague of living dead let alone with one.

  Seyfert, Dallas, Ed, and three of the other bikers would attempt to gain some intelligence on what had happened to their friends in the LAV. Teems had demanded to go, citing he wanted to help, but his son had come down with something, and had asked his father to stay with him.

  Ed, and two bikers named Crackers and Smitty, now looked down from a giant white water tower, positioned under giant red letters reading GARSVILLE. They watched as Dallas and Seyfert drove a beat up blue Chevy Cavalier toward the checkpoint. Two sniper rifles and a scoped hunting rifle were following the Chevy.

  “Check, check,” came Seyfert’s voice through the radio.

  “We’ve got you,” Ed replied. “We’ll stick to the plan.”

  Seyfert stopped fifty feet shy of the checkpoint, and four men in black camouflage approached. There was an emblem on each of their left breast pockets: a simple III embroidered in gold. It was unfamiliar to Seyfert. The turret on the tank swiveled toward the car. “Sirs, would you exit the vehicle please?” asked a young man. He was very polite. Seyfert had doffed his tactical gear for farmer’s clothing, and was in jeans and a white tee shirt with boots traded from one of the bikers. No tactical clothing had fit Dallas at the outset, so he was garbed as always, but had left his webbing with Rick.

  This part of the road didn’t have any cornstalks for a few hundred yards, just a crossroads with the tank, tent, buses, and a hastily built wooden guard tower. Men in the tower scanned in all directions with scoped rifles. As Seyfert and Dallas opened their doors, they noticed that the buses were full of people. They were also somewhat armored, with bars on the windows and steel plate covering the back escape door. The SEAL was certain the forward door was also armored, although he couldn’t see it. The bars made the buses look more like prison transports than armored personnel carriers.

  Chain-link fence laced with concertina wire had been strung up to surround the area off to the side of the road. The tower overlooked the area, and the tank was manned. There was an anti-vehicle spike mat across the road.

  The young man who had spoken before piped up again. “I’m sorry, but we will have to confiscate your weapons.”

  “You ain’t takin’ my gun, boy.”

  The men raised their rifles slightly but still didn’t point them at the two friends.

  “Sir, please, I would rather not have to shoot you. It’s been a good day and I haven’t killed anyone living today. If you resist, you’ll be shot. It is against the law in Nebraska for anyone to carry firearms without the express written permission of the governing body.”

  That line sounded rehearsed and was probably used quite frequently. “What body?” asked the SEAL.

  “Until such time as the United States is re-formed, all executive and judicial decisions will be carried out by the Triumvirate or a designee of their choosing.”

  More rehearsed bullshit, thought Seyfert. Three more men began to walk forward from the camp. The soldiers in black were getting antsy, and the speaker had started getting loud, when the three other men showed up. “Sir, I will not ask again, please—”

  “That’s okay, Corporal, I’ll take it from here.” The younger man seemed startled, and immediately answered with a Yes, sir.

  “Gentlemen, I am Captain Brady of the Triumvirate,” said the newcomer. “This is a military checkpoint, and you must surrender your weapons, for the time being, and be subjected to a search.” A rifle shot sounded and Dallas raised his shotgun slightly. “Please do not be alarmed, the tower will be firing on the Fallen throughout the day. Now will you surrender your weapons or do we need to take this to the next level?”

  “The next level?” demanded the big man.

  “Yes, that’s the point in time where we shoot you in the head and burn your bodies with the Fallen.”

  “Dallas, give up your gun. They’ll give it back to us.”

  The Texan put his weapon on the hood of the car and put his hands on his hips. Seyfert followed suit with his pistol. He had left his MP5SD3 with Rick at the depot.

  “Search them,” the Captain said.

  A quick search yielded Dallas’s rebar and two combat knives on Seyfert. The weapons and Dallas’s belt were put in long plastic bins and labeled. The young corporal approached with two white zip ties.

  “I’m sorry, sir, standard procedure until you’re cleared.”

  “I got a bum shoulder boy, could you tie me up in the front?”

  The corporal looked at the captain, who nodded that it was okay. It was then that the corporal noticed the small bulge in Seyfert’s tee shirt. He reached in and pulled out the small throat mic, which came away with the earpiece that had been draped down his back. He held it up for the captain to see.

  The captain’s eyes narrowed. “What’s this?”

  “It’s so’s we can talk to each other if we get separated.”

  “I was speaking to him,” the captain nodded at Seyfert.

  “It’s so we can talk to each other
if we get separated. Sir.”

  “Sir?”

  “My father always told me to respect the military.”

  “Did he? Corporal, bring them to the tent please.” The officer spun on his heel and the other two followed him.

  “Yes, sir!” Dallas and the SEAL were hurried forward and moved into the tent. It was an army medical tent with gurneys and stretchers. Some medical supplies, food, and water were readily available as well. It was good to get out of the heat of the Nebraska sun, and Seyfert thought that the men in the black camo must be dying out there.

  They were seated in metal folding chairs and offered bottled water. Seyfert declined, but Dallas accepted, and a man put a straw in a bottle for him.

  The captain leaned against a gurney and folded his arms. “Normally I would sit across from you at a desk for this procedure, but desks are hard to come by nowadays. I have only one question for you.” He leaned forward slightly. “What is your mission?”

  For the second time in two days, Seyfert absolutely knew he was fucked.

  21

  Danny was watching a DVD of Shrek 2 with Joe the puppy and the little kids. They were only five and five and five and four. He was eight, and way bigger, but he wasn’t bossy or mean. They were scared all the time, but he only got scared when the rotters came.

  They were ugly, the rotters. They walked funny, and they didn’t talk, they growled. The worst part of the rotters wasn’t their looks or the way they walked or even that they growled. It was that they ate people. They didn’t use stoves or even a campfire to cook people either, they just ate them. Ate them alive. Danny had seen it happen a few times and it was horrible and gross. There was screaming and lots of blood. Those things didn’t even need to kill you for you to die either. All they had to do was get in a bite, or even a scratch and you would die. He had seen that even more.

  What with travelling and the rotters, there wasn’t much time for Danny to play with his dad anymore. Dad was always busy. Always helping people, or fighting the rotters, or planning. So when Dad came to see him and said that there was a game of catch going on down in the service bay, Danny jumped at the chance. He told the kids that they should all play, but little Stevie wanted to watch Shrek. Stevie didn’t have anybody, his mom and dad got eaten, and he was shy.

  Danny, Robbie, Rosie, and little Savanna wanted to play though, so they all followed Dad and one of the new people down the stairs and into the garage. The garage was big! It had three things that could lift up a whole truck, and right now Calvin was under one of the trucks and black stuff was coming out of the bottom into a bucket. Danny thought it was oil, but he wasn’t sure.

  Rosie had told Danny that the new guy was a policeman. Rosie said she knew a bunch of cops, but Danny didn’t know any. The policeman threw the ball to Danny (underhanded) and Danny whipped it at his dad, who caught it and threw it to Robbie, (underhanded, lame). Robbie dropped it and it went rolling so he ran after it. He picked it up and threw it to Rosie, and they went around in a circle for a while, throwing it back and forth. Robbie only caught one ball. Danny thought it was funny to see Robbie laugh when he chased the ball after he dropped it. If it was Danny who kept dropping it, he would have gotten mad, but Robbie laughed and so did everyone else.

  Danny threw the ball extra hard to Robbie so he would drop it again, but this time he caught it and threw it back to Danny, who wasn’t expecting it. The ball sailed over his head and went rolling against the wall. Thinking that maybe it was kind of fun to chase the ball, Danny ran for it. It rolled under a metal shelf-thing with all sorts of car parts on it. “I’ll get it,” he yelled and crawled under the table next to the shelves. He couldn’t reach it, so he had to crawl behind the storage system. He got the ball, but when he stood up he bumped his head on something. It was a doorknob. He came out from behind the shelf and under the table rubbing his head. The bump had hurt but it wasn’t terrible, and he was done crying. Danny would never cry again.

  “You okay, kiddo?” his dad asked.

  “Yeah, I bumped my head on the doorknob.”

  “Doorknob? There’s a door back there?”

  “Yeah, it’s metal.”

  Teems looked at Rick with raised eyebrows.

  “Can we play now?” asked Danny.

  “In a minute. Rick, gimme a hand?”

  Rick and Teems strode to the shelving system and pulled on it. It wouldn’t budge. Rick put his hand through the shelves and felt smooth concrete on the back. The table was bolted down so Rick got on one knee and was about to crawl under when he noticed a slight semi-circular wear-mark on the floor. “Look at this. This shelf must swing out, look at that mark.”

  “I told you, nobody calls me Mark.”

  “No, the dig in the floor!”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  It took a few minutes, but Teems found a small catch on the inside of one of the shelf brackets, and pushed it. The unit unlocked from the wall behind it, and they swung it out. There was indeed a door behind it. There wasn’t a knob, but a metal handle. It was locked. “Calvin! Calvin come here!”

  Calvin showed up quickly, “Why is it every time I’m working you gotta bug me?” He saw the door and pointed at it. “What’s that?”

  “A locked door, can you open it?”

  “Uh…what if there are three hundred rotters on the other side?”

  “Dammit, Calvin, the wall is only six feet thick, there can’t be. All the same, let’s get the kids upstairs and bust out the poles and guns.”

  When the children were safely staring at the group through a window on the second floor, and there were eight rifles six pistols and nine T-poles pointed at the door, Calvin looked at the lock. He scratched his head.

  “Can you open it?” demanded Teems.

  “Yup, gimme a sec.” He ran off and came back with a giant sledge hammer. Before anybody could say anything, he swung the hammer and smashed the handle off the door in one blow. The handle went flying and the door stood ajar about two inches.

  “Jesus, did you have to break it?”

  “Do you have a key?”

  Weapons were raised as Rick cautiously moved to the door and pulled it wide. A six-by-six-foot room was behind the door, empty save for an open hatch in the floor. Standing at the edge of the hole, he peered down with his tac-light. A ladder that descended fifteen or so feet down into another room.

  He circled around to the back of the hatch cover and shone the light at it. There was nothing printed to indicate what was down the ladder.

  After some discussion, Teems decided he needed to know what was down there, especially since they had broken the lock off of the door. He took a flashlight and a pistol and climbed halfway down the ladder. There was a larger room below with a military style heavy door on massive hinges. The door was slightly ajar and had a box of something in front of it. Teems climbed the rest of the way down and found an old push-button light switch which he pressed. With the room bathed in light, they couldn’t discern anything spectacular about it. The box contained old magazines as far as he could tell. He called for Rick and Calvin to come down, and soon there were six people in the small room.

  Rick wiped dirt off of the heavy door, and there was printing under a dusty aluminum American flag.

  It read simply, LF 66.

  22

  “What mission? What are you talking about?”

  “Your friends in the LAV were tight-lipped about the mission as well,” replied the Captain. “All I could get out of them was that there is a mission.”

  Dallas also knew that there was trouble here. “What in the hell is an LAV?”

  “It takes a soldier to know a soldier, sir, and you aren’t one. I was speaking to him,” he looked at Seyfert. “The United States is in peril, son, and I have been given leave by the current government to save it by any means necessary.” The captain stood and walked to a privacy curtain. He whipped it back so Seyfert and Dallas could see what was on the other side. At first Seyfert couldn’t recog
nize the man in the chair, but as he studied him further, he could tell it was Stark. Zip tied to a metal chair, he had been beaten to a bloody pulp, and was unconscious, his swollen face lolling backward slightly.

  Dallas looked at their captor. “You son of a bitch.”

  “Sergeant, if this man opens his mouth again, close it for him,” He looked back at the SEAL and pointed to Stark. “This man and his lieutenant came through here yesterday in the armored vehicle you see out front. The proximity of time in which you came here today is indicative to me that you are together. In addition, your sniper team on the water tower was another dead giveaway. They are in custody now and will be questioned later.” The man walked up to Seyfert and pulled the SEAL’s left T-shirt sleeve up. The tattoo that was there gave him away completely. “Navy. Figures. Now are you going to tell me what I want to know, or do you want to join him?” Again, he pointed to Stark. “He has proven himself an enemy of the Triumvirate, and of the United States.”

  “I noticed you put the Triumvirate first. Sir.”

  “We are in charge. This is going nowhere. Sergeant, bind him,” he pointed at Dallas, “to one of the chairs. We’ll see how long it takes the SEAL to give in while his friend is questioned.” The sergeant stepped forward, and snipped Dallas’s zip tie with a cutter and moved him to another seat with arms. He was in the process of trussing the burly southerner up when another man came in and whispered something in the Captain’s ear.

  The captain looked unperturbed. “ETA?”

  “Three minutes.”

  “Very well, prepare to receive him. Dismissed.”

  The man hurried out after issuing a Yes, sir, and the captain began a new tactic, “You are very lucky. One of the elite will be here shortly. One of The Three. He’s coming to question you personally, but I wouldn’t want to give him the impression we weren’t trying.” He slipped a black glove on and moved to Dallas. Looking over his shoulder, he asked with an air of finality, “Last chance, SEAL.”