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National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland.
Inside the female head – what the Army would call a latrine – Jill pulled her eight-point cap from her cargo pocket and her neck wallet from her panties. Looping the packet of ID, money and cards back over her head, she then shrugged on the utility tunic she’d swiped from a wounded fellow Marine’s ruck. “Raznowski” read the name tag, with a corporal’s insignia. A little big, but it would have to do.
That was probably the worst thing about this whole exercise – to steal, even if she thought it necessary. She consoled herself with the belief that it should be reported lost or damaged in transit and replaced by the Corps.
After strapping her prostheses up tight again, she stepped out of the stall and washed her face and hands, checking her appearance. Good enough for a cursory glance, and one more Marine in a military hospital was likely to go unnoticed. Sliding out into the hallway, she turned and walked quickly for the stairs.
Eight floors later she wobbled to the bottom on her false legs. She’d done the last four flights parallel-bars style, with her hands on the rails, pausing as others walked by, nodding and smiling and hoping they did not inquire too closely.
After tightening the bindings up again, Jill opened the door to the lobby. It bustled with people, with the smells of the coffee kiosk in the corner and fresh bread from the sub sandwich franchise along the wall. It was all she could do to ignore her increasing hunger and not get in the line for a foot-long, but there was no telling how soon they might start looking for her. After an internal struggle, she simply walked out.
The first and most important order of business was to get lost, so she stumped carefully over to a waiting base shuttle bus and got on, not caring where it went. There had to be something to eat somewhere.
The bus made several stops on the base, then drove out the gate. She could see Humvees with M2 .50 calibers mounted, guarding the entrances, and long lines of vehicles waiting to get in. Fortunately, they did not seem to be checking the outgoing vehicles – yet. Though martial law and a state of national emergency had been declared just days ago, the national capital region was still sorting itself out.
Traffic felt light outside the installation, even in the middle of a weekday, and there seemed to be a cop or an MP vehicle parked at every intersection. Jill wondered what they thought they were securing against – more “terrorism,” presumably.
Given that she had witnessed the deliberate murder of three thousand people on the cruise ship, she wondered about the nukes in West Virginia and Los Angeles, and the lengths people in her own government would go to control secrets.
Thinking of LA brought another wave of grief and fear for her family. She’d grown up on some tough streets, been part of a gang until she’d joined the Corps. With her mixed-Latina looks, she’d never quite fit anywhere – until the Marines taught her what it meant to be a warrior, and serve something greater than herself.
Though there were at least fifteen million people in the greater Los Angeles area, and perhaps only – only! – half a million casualties from the nuclear detonation, she couldn’t shake the terror that almost everyone she loved in this world might be dead.
Maybe they are all right. She kept telling herself that.
Jill resolved to try to call them as soon as possible, then discarded the notion. From what she’d heard, on the television in the ward and the radio on the bus, anyone showing “unusual medical symptoms” was being detained and quarantined. A call to her family might lead back to her or, more importantly, throw suspicion onto them. As a military police member, she knew the security mentality well; anyone associated with a suspect was automatically under suspicion.
No, she’d not make that call. Better to have them believe she’d died on the cruise ship. Maybe Gaona’s inquiry and the records associated with it would get buried under an avalanche of more important things for the overstretched military to do.
The bus she rode pulled up with a squeal of air brakes and she looked up from her musings to see a Metro station. Getting off, she settled her cap on her head and looked around, searching for any sign of something to eat.
A burger place beckoned at the end of the block, but her stumps were already screaming inside her badly fitted prostheses. She looked longingly toward the fast food, then thought about the long ride home to Quantico. Her healing body wanted food every hour, needed it really – with this thing that was going on inside her.
“Can I help you, Corporal?” a voice at her elbow asked. Jill turned to see a tall, staggeringly handsome Army captain, in neat utility uniform with a holstered sidearm. He glanced at her chest, but she was used to that in uniform – that’s where her military name tag resided. His read “Muzik.”
It certainly isn’t my huge rack, she chuckled to herself, not with a triathlete’s low body fat. She saluted sharply, and he returned it automatically, raising his eyebrows expectantly. God, he’s gorgeous.
“Thank you, sir,” she said. Have to take a chance here. She reached down to thump on her artificial right leg, then the left. “Just got released and haven’t totally got the hang of them yet.”
His brow furrowed with sympathy. “That sucks. IED?”
“Mortar round. Iraq.”
“I thought we were pretty much out of there?”
“I’m an MP, and we’re still helping with their police. ‘Troop withdrawal’ doesn’t include trainers. Those poor local schmucks get it from all sides. Glad to be home.” The truth came much more easily than any lies, and Jill found herself glad to talk with someone.
“So…again, can I help you?” The sun returned to his face.
“Sir, I hate to be coddled, but what I really need right now is food, and the end of the block looks a long damn ways away.” She pointed at the burger place.
Captain Muzik laughed. “Well, Corporal Raznowski, I can’t leave my post, but we got MREs in the Humvee.” He gestured at a nearby armored utility vehicle with double whip antennas and a 40mm grenade launcher in a cupola, manned by a nervous-looking private.
Jill smiled with relief. “Deal. Mind if I sit down in it while I eat?”
“Of course. You make it?”
“I made it fifty yards to cover crawling with my feet blown off. I reckon I can make it ten on these pins.” She stepped over to the Humvee and pulled one back door open, resting her butt on the seat without swinging her legs in. Soon she chowed down on twelve hundred calories of Uncle Sam’s finest field food – Meals, Ready to Eat, also known as Meals Rejected by Ethiopians. She found they really weren’t that bad when the body believed it was starving.
“So Captain,” Jill asked between bites, “tell me the latest.” That seemed a safe enough question.
“Hmm well, nobody really knows anything. The two nukes got everyone spooked and there’s a lot of people getting detained. It’s a good time to be in uniform; at least we’re more or less above suspicion.” Muzik peered at her from under his cap with a mock-severe expression. “You’re not a Sicko, are you?”
“A what?”
“You know. Infected. Someone with the Plague.”
“Oh, is that what they’re calling the bastards now?” Jill tried to convey the right sense of black humor. “Do I look sick? You wanna see my stumps?”
“No, that’s okay. To tell you the truth, I don’t know I could even tell if someone was. Hear a lotta rumors about what it is, like…like people turning into hippie peaceniks or pod people. Doesn’t sound like any Marine I ever knew.”
“Right.” Jill casually plucked another MRE out of the box on the Humvee floor and slid it into her cargo pocket, the door hiding her motion from Muzik. It won’t be long before this hunger will be a symptom they’re looking for, she thought. Best not to be too obvious. “Well sir, thanks very much but I gotta be going.” Standing up, she saluted once more.
Captain Muzik returned the courtesy, saying, “Good luck, Corporal.”
“Cap’n,”
the 40mm gunner abruptly broke in from above, “something’s up.”
Muzik and Repeth turned to look in the direction the private pointed. Around a corner two blocks away came a procession of hundreds of people, perhaps thousands, yelling something and waving signs with anti-government, anti-martial-law slogans. Some pumped fists, and some carried sticks with no signs attached. More kept coming toward them, and some outliers, mostly young men, jumped on cars or kicked over garbage cans.
All the uniforms nearby, whether military or cops, nervously checked their weapons, and moved instinctively out of the mob’s path. “Everyone keep calm,” Captain Muzik called to his troops in a ringing voice. “As long as they are peaceful, do not fire.”
“They don’t look peaceful, sir,” Repeth said as several youths smashed a parked car’s windshield.
“I’m not going to shoot people for a little property damage, Corporal,” Muzik said in a cold voice. “You’d better get inside the Humvee. Lock the doors.”
It stuck in her craw to have to be protected, but she knew he was right. With her legs the way they were, and no weapon, there wasn’t much she could do. She wasn’t sure she could shoot American civilians anyway, unless they were trying to kill someone.
They’re just scared, she told herself. Like me.
“Get on the radio,” Muzik said to her when she had climbed in. “The CEOI is right there with callsigns and frequencies. Tell Battalion what’s happening and we need riot control squads.”
“Roger,” Repeth responded flatly, reaching for the radio handset.
“What?” Captain Muzik shot her an annoyed glance.
“Yes, sir, I got it.” But what’s got him? she wondered.
Repeth saw Muzik shut the armored door and move to the other side of the vehicle, putting it between himself and the mob that had overturned a pick-up truck and now chanted rhythmically, “Kill-the-cops. Kill-the-cops.”
Uh-oh. She tried to reach the next higher headquarters on the frequency listed, but all she could hear was chaos on the nets. She got a brief response, she thought, before someone else stepped on her transmission.
She popped the door on the safer side open enough to yell, “I can’t reach anyone, and it sounds like there are riots breaking out all over. Battalion is swamped.”
“Crap,” Muzik responded, then said louder, “Dammit!” The mob had turned toward them. He drew his sidearm. “Lock the vehicle!”
Repeth immediately did so, checking all the doors and looking up at the private standing in the 40mm cupola. “Better unbuckle, kid. You don’t want to be lashed into position if they roll this vehicle.”
“Hell with that,” he muttered, sweat streaming down his bone-white face. “Hell with that!” he repeated, and without orders, opened fire with his grenade launcher.
“Shit!” Repeth yelled as the weapon’s loud stuttering filled the compartment. “Cease fire, cease fire,” she ordered, hammering with her fist on the man’s leg. He paid no attention, but continued to rake the mob with 40mm grenades.
The first shells did not detonate. Launcher grenades require approximately thirty meters of flight before arming, and the soldier was firing at people closer than that. The heavy cylinders slammed into people, breaking bones and knocking them down, but none exploded.
At first.
Then one lucky shot missed hitting anything or anyone, striking the street sixty meters away, right in the center of the crowd. To Repeth’s surprise, it burst into a cloud of white mist, and the rioters nearby coughed and covered their mouths and noses, eyes and sinuses streaming.
Tear gas. Thank God. I thought he was firing explosive rounds. Other grenades popped, and soon the entire area filled with acrid fumes. Her eyes stung, and she grabbed a protective mask on the seat next to her, putting it on in well under the requisite nine seconds.
It did not matter that the shots were not lethal. Like a living being with one angry mind, the mob gave an inarticulate scream and turned from rioting to killing rage.
Men surrounded the Humvee, and climbed up to beat the struggling, screaming soldier on his perch behind the grenade launcher. Blood spattered into the interior. Repeth could see sticks, rocks and even a machete chopping, chopping.
Grabbing the gunner’s assault rifle racked below, she aimed and fired upward, shooting for arms and legs, trying to drive the mob off the soldier before they killed him. Only when his severed head fell into the interior did she stop. They couldn’t get past his harnessed body to reach her, and the three or four she shot deterred the others for a moment.
Instead she felt the Humvee rocking as the mob sought to overturn it, but the squat, heavy vehicle resisted their efforts at first. If they got coordinated and all on one side, though, they would succeed.
Shots rang out from the direction of the metro station where Muzik and his troops had fallen back, but she heard none of the full automatic that would indicate anyone had blown it like the gunner. From what she could see, the cops and soldiers had taken cover, only firing if the mob threatened them directly. She felt a brief flash of pride at their discipline, amazed that only one young troop had lost his head.
That had been enough, though. The Humvee now bounced like a low-rider on hydraulics, and she knew that if it went over, they would drag her out and butcher her. She would be forced to shoot to kill to try to save her own life, and the thought nauseated her.
That’s odd: killing those trying to kill me never bothered me before.
Then Repeth had no more time to think as she scrambled into the driver’s seat and punched the starter. Given options among death, shooting to kill, or driving, she chose the last. Putting the truck into four-wheel-drive, she goosed the diesel engine, lurching a foot or two forward. Then she did it again, trying to give the mob a chance to back off.
Instead, this seemed to increase their rage. A miasma of blood and death and cordite rode the air, and faces and fists plastered themselves against the bulletproof windshield. Hate-filled screaming washed over her, causing terror to shoot through her different from any fear she had felt in war.
There seemed to be no choice. She floored it.
Bodies crunched and cries turned from rage to fright as she powered across a carpet of human flesh. It lasted only a moment, then she was clear of the press, trying to avoid running down any more civilians.
She saw a uniformed cop being dragged from her shattered vehicle and changed her mind, deliberately slamming the two rioters aside by opening the driver’s side door as she drove into them. “Get in!” she screamed hoarsely at the policewoman through the mask, then cursed as she forgot she had locked the other doors tight against the mob. “Crawl across me!”
The cop did just that, throwing herself in and clawing across Repeth’s lap with reckless abandon. As soon as she could, the Marine clamped the door shut and floored it again, racing between burning vehicles and groups of rioters.
“Holy shit, is that someone’s head?” the woman squeaked, looking down at the floorboards where the thing had fallen.
“Yes, and that’s what these people will do to us if we don’t get out of here,” Repeth replied.
“Turn right at this next intersection. There’s a fire station…there.”
Repeth turned, powering across the corner lawn to pull up next to the front door of the firehouse. Off the main drag there seemed fewer people, though smoke and a sense of impending doom filled the air. The door opened and two burly firemen with axes and helmets stepped warily out.
Repeth pulled off the mask. “Go on, I have to get back to my unit,” she lied, and the cop nodded.
“Thanks, Miss, you saved my life,” she replied.
“Just one cop to another, officer.”
The woman hopped out and was quickly whisked into the safety of the station. Repeth roared away, then pulled over on a side street. Taking a deep breath, she ran her hands through her hair and rubbed her eyes, feeling the residual sting of the tear gas. What the hell am I going to do? The world is
going mad, and this is just going to cause them to clamp down more. If they know I’m a “sicko”…what will they do?
Trying to think, she glanced around and noticed the head again, and realized she had to get rid of the body. She wasn’t ready to give up her transportation yet, even if she would probably have to abandon it eventually. A Marine with a false nametag alone driving an Army Humvee was uncertain enough without adding a corpse.
Struggling with the harness, she eventually pulled the headless body down from the cupola and inside, placing it and the head into the seat directly behind her. Looking around, she saw a boy of about ten in dirty jeans and not much else watching her from his perch on a tree limb. Solemnly, he waved.
Repeth waved back as she drove off, wondering what he thought of what she was doing. She tried to think where she could dump a body.
The urge was strong in her to go back and find Captain Muzik, to return his man’s corpse and his vehicle. It tore at her sense of honor to be running off, leaving the officer in the lurch, but to do so would be to rejoin a system that had become her enemy. At best, she would be cast loose on her own again with legs that hardly worked and no transportation. At worst…no, she did not want to be locked up.
Checking the fuel gauge, she saw that it showed full, so she decided to just drive, for now. Using the GPS mounted on the dash, she programmed it for Los Angeles and hit GO.
It’ll be a miracle if I get that far, she thought with a dark laugh, then began giggling almost uncontrollably as she started to come down from the stress high. At that moment, driving a stolen Humvee with a decapitated body in the back seat toward a nuked city three thousand miles away just seemed hysterically funny.
Noticing a sign, she detoured toward the Potomac and found an access road leading down between high earthen walls. In a wooded declivity, she quickly rolled the body out, consoling herself with the fact that she did not murder the kid – it was his own panic and the mob’s reaction that did it.
Her rationalization didn’t help much.
The GPS took her west on I-66. Checkpoints stopped civilians but waved her Humvee on through without a second glance. Eventually she reached I-81 south, running through the heart of the Shenandoah Valley. Its beauty wavered surreal in her eyes, with light traffic except for military convoys of five to fifty vehicles. Stopping only for take-out food, she drove steadily for several hours. Somewhere around Wytheville, where I-77 crossed, she ran low on fuel and pulled over at a truck stop.
After using the restroom and buying two much-needed burger meals to go, she climbed back into the driver’s seat and ate while she thought about her options.
Use her credit card for a fill-up – if it was not blocked – and she could make it another 300 miles or so. Otherwise, ditch the vehicle and start hitchhiking, perhaps on semi trucks. Truckers were usually a patriotic lot, and would probably have no problem with giving a servicewoman a lift.
Unless they thought she was running.
They wouldn’t even have to think she was a Sicko. One of them might report her as a potential AWOL, running from her duty. Life had turned crazy enough right now that such things must be happening.
A few always ran when the shit hit the fan.
She decided to try to fill up.
Repeth’s heart pounded as she swiped the card in the reader. “Come on, come on,” she chanted as it processed, and then the words came: Dispense Fuel. She gasped with relief, grabbing the hose and jamming it into the tank, then realized how stupid she’d been as she looked toward the rear of the vehicle. A row of six five-gallon cans sat strapped to the back, resting on the bumper.
Nothing for it now, she thought, then checked the canisters. Each can was full, so she went back to filling the tank, looking around nervously. No one seemed to be paying her any attention, so she took another risk and walked over to the ATM on the wall and took out as much cash as it would let her, four hundred dollars. She wondered what paper money would be worth in the coming months.
Back on the road, she drove with one hand and ate with the other. Night threatened to fall, and quickly, as the Appalachians loomed to the west. Fumbling, she eventually found the lights, but just after crossing the Tennessee border, the Humvee began to make ugly noises underneath.
It didn’t sound like the engine, but Repeth was no mechanic, so she slowed down and pulled in to the next truck stop.
Like most such places, it had a repair shop, and after taking a look, the good ol’ boy there with the nametag that said “Willet” shook his head and his attached NASCAR cap. “Ma’am, you done messed up the transmission. It 'pears you been drivin’ locked in four wheel drive for I dunno how long on a paved road. Ain't made for that.”
“Crap. Can you fix it?” she asked.
“Two, mebbe three days to get the parts, with things as they are now. I could call Bristol to the National Guard there. They could come tow ya. Mebbe you could beg another Hummer off them in trade.” The man spat a stream of tobacco juice off to the side, managing to look sympathetic doing it.
“Yeah, give me the number and I’ll do that. Will it go a little farther?”
“Five or ten mile, prob’ly. After that…” He shrugged.
“Thanks, ah, Willet. That a first name or last name?”
Willet laughed. “You ain’t fum aroun’ heah, is you? That’s mah first name. Last name of Hunt. Pleased ta meetcha.”
“Get me that number, Willet?”
“Yes ma’am.” He rustled around in the office for a moment, found an actual paper phone book under a pile of actual newspapers, and scribbled down a number. “Here ya go.”
“Thanks, Willet. You’re a true gentleman.”
He spat again. “Aw, shucks, ma’am,” he said, and winked. “You in Tennessee now. We’s all gentlemen till we get riled.”
Repeth tipped her hat to him, leaving the mechanic rubbing his greasy hands with an equally greasy rag and chuckling. She hopped into the Humvee and tossed the phone number onto the seat next to her, and then drove around the back side of the massive truck plaza and parked as far from the garage as she could. By the time the vehicle was found, she hoped to be long gone.
Slinging the dead soldier’s assault rifle, she emptied his rucksack and stuffed it full of ammo and MREs. She wished she had a pistol, but the only one she had seen had been on Captain Muzik’s hip. Looking at the blood-splashed interior of the Humvee, another wave of guilt washed over her. Desertion, theft, desecration, mishandling of firearms and ammo, misappropriation of government property…the list went on and on in her mind. Now she was about to abandon a deadly weapon – the grenade launcher – and several hundred rounds of ammo.
Picking up the slip with the phone number, she sighed. Can’t let some civilian get ahold of this stuff, she thought, and trudged back to the well-lit central building to buy a new prepaid phone. A quick call to the National Guard number to report the abandoned Humvee eased her mind. Then she went looking for a ride.
With no idea how to do this, Jill looked around and spotted a scantily clad woman looking an old thirty and smoking in the half-darkness near a line of idling semis. “Hey,” she said to the working girl.
“Looking for a date, honey?” the woman asked, cocking her hip.
“No, I’m not…I mean, I like men. No, I just would like to talk to you a minute.”
“Time is money, honey.” She raised a skeptical eyebrow.
Jill pulled an ATM-fresh twenty out of her wallet and passed it to the woman. “Look, I need a ride on a truck going south, but I’ve never hitchhiked before. Just tell me the system.”
The woman ground out her cigarette on the pavement and made the money disappear. “Okay, honey, it’s simple.” She pointed. “Over there is mostly northbound, over there is mostly southbound. If they’re idling with the curtains shut or the lights in the cab are off, don’t bug them. If the curtains are open or they’re sittin’ in the driver’s seat, they’re fair game. Just knock on the door and talk to ‘em.”
>
Jill nodded. “How do I make sure they don’t think…I mean, that I’m not going to…”
“Pay your way in trade?” She laughed tiredly. “Don’t worry about that, honey. Dressed like that, with a gun, nobody will think you’re working. Why don’t you just wait until a convoy comes through? Or over there,” she pointed, “there’s some Army guys in a truck.”
“Um, no.” Jill stepped deeper into the shadows.
“Ah…” The woman held out a pack of cigarettes, then lit one when Jill declined. “AWOL, huh?”
“I’m not deserting, if that’s what you think,” Jill retorted angrily. “My family was in LA and they won’t tell me anything. I just want to find out what happened.”
“Yeah. You and a million other people. So I guess you don’t know anything either.”
“Not really. I was on a ship until a couple of days ago.” Suddenly Jill realized she was talking too much, out of loneliness or fear perhaps. “Hey, thanks, I gotta go. Take care.”
“Yeah, honey. You too."
The third trucker Jill talked to agreed to give her a lift, eyeing her uniform and weapon. She offered him a twenty. He sniffed and took it, saying, “Get in.” Big, bearded, burly, about forty-five, and he smelled of cigarettes and, strangely, lemons.
Inside the roomy cab she settled into the big passenger seat with her feet stretched out. She massaged her upper legs, then as the rig got moving she lifted her trousers at the bottom to scratch where the stumps met the prostheses.
“Woah,” the trucker said in surprise. “How come you didn’t get out when you lost your legs?”
“The Corps is my home,” she answered. “And what’s the point of getting out, trying to find another job? We take care of our own.”
“You don’t look like you’re bein’ taken care of, darlin’.”
“Sometimes you gotta take care of yourself.” Jill turned away from him and rummaged in her ruck for an MRE to eat. Afterward she stared out the window at the night rushing by. Eventually her eyes closed and she slept.
Reaper's Run - Plague Wars Series Book 1 Page 6