by John Holmes
The Ops officer nodded. “Pretty much. You’re going to put your asses on the line to make a statement. Nothing new.”
“Better than being fed a line of bullshit. Thanks.”
“No problem. Your other objective is Camp Smith. NY Army National Guard base. We’re interested in the barracks, arms rooms, backup generators, etc. The base is a lot smaller, more easily defended than West Point. Let us know how habitable it is.”
“Isn’t that a little close to Indian Point?”
“Over flight sensors say that it’s safe.”
Brit snickered and he shot her a dirty look.
“It’s a simple in and out. No more than three days on the ground.”
“So was the last mission. Brit got shot, and we lost three team members.”
“Well then, this should be a vacation for you. See you in a week. The boat leaves at 0700.”
We broke up the meeting, and each of us went our separate ways. Scrounge ammo, eat a good meal, take care of equipment, catch up on Power Point Ranger’s cartoons, update Facebook status, call home from the Verizon Phone Tent, let the world know we’re still alive.
Chapter 56
“Sergeant Agostine! Sergeant Agostine!”
I stopped and turned around. A squeaky new 2nd LT came striding over the dirt towards me, followed by two equally new soldiers. He was dressed in brand new multicams. I felt like a dirtbag compared to him, with my leather jacket, scuffed kneepads, and three day growth of beard. In other words, he stood out like a sore thumb compared to the slightly used look of the post-Zombie Army.
“Yes Sir, um, Lieutenant Carter? What can I do for you,” I said, trying to be pleasant despite having a headache.
“Well, for one you can stand at attention when I address you, Sergeant.”
“I could, if I had a pole stuck up my ass, Bub, which I don’t.”
That brought him up short, with a look of shock on his face.
“Excuse me?”
“Sir, I’m part of the Army, but not in it. Nor do I have time to play rules and regulations. I have a boat to catch. So, how about we start off again, on the right foot?”
His face took a minute to catch up with the thought train, and then his jaw closed shut. He heard a snicker from behind him, and turned to glare at a Specialist behind him, a young female with an aid bag slung over her shoulder.
“Um, ah, OK, Sergeant. I’ve been assigned to your recon of West Point. Myself, Specialist Mya-” the medic nodded “-and PFC Redshirt will be accompanying you.”
I laughed out loud. “PFC Redshirt? You have got to be kidding me.” The male soldier, flushed under his bronze Native American skin, and the Lt. started getting angry again.
“He’s Native American and a good soldier. What is your problem, Sergeant? There is no place for racism in this Army!”
“No offense, PFC. It’s not racism, it’s Sci-fi. Grab your gear and meet me down by the river. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.”
“We’re leaving when I’m ready, Sergeant, which won’t be for another hour.”
“We’re leaving in fifteen minutes, with or without you, Sir.” And I turned and walked away.
I knew what had happened. Major Flynn had given me a babysitter because he didn’t want any other incidents happening, so he saddled me with the Son of Jackass. It never stopped. The world had gone to hell, but the bullshit survived.
They were there when we pulled out. I knew that the Captain of the Gowanus Bay , the Army Tugboat (look it up on Wikipedia) scheduled to deliver us downriver, wasn’t going to wait on a couple of stragglers. She had a schedule to keep that was influenced by the tidal nature of the river, even here, more than a hundred miles north of the ocean.
I sat on the square bow of the lead barge, boots off, relaxing, actually enjoying the day and the decent weather. We didn’t get to relax much here in Zombieland, but with a full platoon of Infantry riding shotgun, I loosened up a little. Brit sat next to me, cleaning the new M-4 we had picked up for her. Her way of relaxing, I guess. Behind us were the howitzers, one to each barge. They sat center deck with supplies in crates stacked all around. Short, ugly 105mm cannons, with a range of eleven and a half kilometers, they would be able to cover both sides of the shore to a few miles inland. I liked having them at my back, but where we were going, up in the Hudson Highlands, they wouldn’t be able to provide fire support. As far as the Infantry guys were concerned, they were going to set up an outpost to cover the mouth of the river, regulating any traffic moving on it, and providing fire support to the patrols that would start making their way down the Hudson River Valley. We were just along for the ride.
Brit eyed a group of Artillerymen who had stripped down to t-shirts and were moving boxes of howitzer rounds under the direction of one of the boat crew. She licked her lips.
“Didn’t getting shot take a little wind out of your vag?”
She gave me a dirty look. “I didn’t get shot in the vag. I got shot in the gut, which hurt, thank you very much.”
“Hey, we did rescue you, you know.” I could tell by the tone in her voice that she was still a little bent out of shape.
She mimicked me in a high whiny voice. “We did rescue you, you know,” then said, “Next time, not that there will be a next time, don’t stop to have little chat with the bad guy. Just fraking SHOOT him.”
“OK, I will.”
“Fine.”
“FINE.”
She assembled her rifle and slunk over to the guys on the work detail. Suckers.
“Sergeant Agostine.” Oy, here it comes again.
The new LT came over and stood before me, blocking the sun.
Here it comes, I thought.
“Sergeant, I didn’t appreciate your little game back at the base. I know, here comes the new LT, haha, let’s mess with the new guy. Well, I don’t appreciate it, and I’ll remind you who the ranking officer on this scouting expedition is.”
I waited. After a few seconds of silence, he went on. “I know that you have tons of experience, having survived out there for the last few years on your own, but maybe it’s time to let the professionals take charge.”
He glared down at me, hands on his hips. He was starting to sweat in his uniform, but I said nothing.
“So,” he continued “I think it’s best if we address the team and present a unified command, let them know that we understand each other. I will, of course, listen to your advice, but the decisions rest with me. Also,” he said, glaring at Brit as she chatted up the work detail “I will not have fraternization between my team and the other elements of this command.”
“Seriously? You know, Sir, you had me going right up until that point. No fraternization! Really? Might as well try curing the zombie plague as tell Brit to keep it in her pants. ”
He stared back down at me. “Some things are an abomination to the Lord, Sergeant.”
Oh great, another holy roller. There was a large segment of the population who thought the Zombie Apocalypse was Judgment Day, and we were living in the end times. Not so much out on the frontier, because you quickly realized that the dead were, well, the dead, and Jesus wasn’t coming, and everyday life still was a lot of hard work. I just couldn’t believe we had gotten rid of one pain in the ass to get saddled with another.
“LT, lets’ get something straight. Doc, Brit, Jonesy, Ahmed and I are a team. We have been fighting and surviving out here in Indian Country for a few years now while you’ve been sitting back in Candyland playing Chutes and Ladders. You can try to order the team around, but you’ll learn quick that trying and doing ain’t the same thing. Maybe you can earn their respect by being as good as they are, or at least trying to learn from them, but coming off all high and might isn’t going to cut it.”
I could see him getting red with anger, so I tried a different tact.
“OK, let me ask you this, LT. How many times have you been out in Zombie Country?”
“Uh, well, this is the first, except, of course,
when we go through the combat course at Officer Basic School.”
“Please, give me a break. They drop you kids off in an enclosed area, with snipers all around, and let you play in the woods for a few days, hunting barely mobile Zs. You don’t know shit, and like as not, you’re going to get yourself and someone else killed.”
“I’ve got plenty of schooling, Sergeant, and with the Lord protecting us, I’ll be able to serve my country in its hour of need.”
I snorted and started pulling my boots on. “And when the shit hits the fan, Jesus is going to come rescue you riding a T-Rex and firing an Uzi, while Ronald Reagan supplies Close Air Support with a shotgun and a bald eagle. Honestly, keep far away from me, and we’ll do just fine, LT.”
“I’ll forgive you for taking the Lord’s name in vain, but remember who is in charge, Sergeant.”
“Aye aye, Scuba Steve.”
He stomped away and I resumed carving a small dolphin for Brit, flicking the shavings into the water, but my good mood was gone.
Chapter 57
We cruised down the Hudson, passing the ruins of small towns. Burnt-out shells of buildings traced their way down to the waterfronts and ragged figures stumbled through the rubble. Zombies attracted by the rumbling of the diesel engines as the tug towed our two barges through the water. We passed one fortified farm with the stars and stripes flying over the house. The tug captain blew a long blast on the air horn and a group of people came down to the waters’ edge and waved. Maybe a dozen survivors, living on a walled farm. Tilled fields stretched off toward the woods. The tug’s zodiac boat went over the side, and a squad of Infantry, with Doc along for the ride, went cruising over to them. They would spend an hour or so with them, assess their needs and try to convince them to relocate to the FEMA camp upriver. I doubted they would go, though. We would meet back up with the team further downstream, after Doc had done what he could for them with medical treatment.
“Hearts and minds, Brother!” I yelled after Doc as they sped away. He stood up in the boat and thumped his chest in reply.
A lazy half hour passed. I dug out some lunch and headed back toward the barges. At the end of the first barge, a sandbagged .50 caliber machine gun position was hosting a curious competition. Ahmed, with his Draganov, and an Infantry Corporal with a Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle, were going shot for shot, plugging at the figures on the shoreline. The flat CRACK of Ahmed’s .30 caliber rifle was followed by the big BOOM of the Barrett, alternating with each other. Behind them, another soldier kept score.
“What’s going on?” I asked when they had stopped to reload their weapons.
The Infantry sniper, a big redneck, spoke first.
“Ah gots a bet with yer A-rab buddy fifty dollars who’s the better shot.” He spat a big wad of chew out of his mouth and put another chunk in his cheek. Ahmed looked at me with a faint grin, then they both rested their rifles back on the sandbags again, pressing their cheeks to the stocks of their rifles and scanning past the scope to get a broad view of the shore.
“What’s the score?” I asked the soldier behind them.
“Dead even. Seventeen each. Haha, get it? DEAD EVEN!” The kid cracked up laughing.
“Yeah, haha, very funny.” He looked like he wasn’t a day over sixteen, freckles under the dirt on his face and a wispy fail of a mustache, but he had a Combat Infantry Badge and jump wings with a skull on them, meaning he had survived an airborne insertion into an infested area and fought his way out. The Airborne did that sometimes. Jumped into the remains of a city to secure something important, historical items or critical infrastructure, secured it for later pickup if they couldn’t carry it out, and then had a running battle to the nearest safe Evac zone. The world was a hard, hard place. A few years ago, he would have been trying to save up for a car, maybe figuring out what college to go to, trying to bang his girlfriend. Now he sat here counting headshots to Zombies, cleaning his rifle and digging into an MRE. Girls were a pipe dream.
I sat down and ate my tapioca pudding while they continued to shoot. We were passing a small rise on the left bank, topped by an old stone church. There didn’t seem to be any Zs, but Ahmed and the soldier continued to scan the shore.
“I got movement up on that there church. Cain’t really see whut...”
The soldier keeping score grabbed at his throat just before we heard the shot. A spray of blood misted from his neck and then started to spurt as I rolled over backwards, behind the sandbags. I crawled over to the kid while the rifles cracked out rapidly. A figure jumped over me and racked the bolt on the .50, then started pumping rounds downrange, THUMP THUMP THUMP, the discharges from the half-inch shells pounding my ears. The deck tilted as the tug’s diesels cranked up, and time changed. I saw brass cartridges fall in slow motion on the deck around me and I pressed my hand to his neck, and started pulling at the bandage pouch on his vest. I felt like I had all the time in the world as blood spurted out between my fingers, and his feet drummed on the deck. I ripped at the plastic cover of the bandage, but by the time I got it out and shook the wrapping free, he had fallen still, and the blood no longer pulsed under my hand.
“GODDAMMIT!” I yelled, and pounded my hand on the deck. The new medic pushed me aside and started compressing his chest, but she stopped when she saw the exit hole on the back of his neck.
We turned around a bend and the guns fell silent. I stood up, covered in blood, and looked down at the pale, lifeless body. Survived the Zombie Apocalypse, fought who knows how many battles, and he was popped by some nut job Mad Max scumbag. Joking one minute, dead the next.
The medics zipped him up in the body bag. Next time we pulled into shore, he would be buried with honors in a deep grave to keep the Zs from digging him up, and we would fire three volleys over him. Tonight, the guys in his squad would divvy up his stuff and auction it off. If his family were still alive, someone would call them. Not enough people anymore in the Army to do casualty notification in person. In a few days, once they got the satellite coms up and running, someone would post on his Facebook wall that he was gone, and messages would be posted all over the Internet. Six months from now, only his family and friends would remember him. I hated war. I hated death. So tired of it.
The medic leaned over the edge of the barge, trying to reach the water to wash her hands clean of the blood, then vomited.
“Well, Ah got him.”
“No, I think I got him.”
“Bullshit, both of you, I lit him up with the Ma Deuce.”
We sailed on downriver.
Chapter 58
Overhead, a battered old Huey helo thopped its way downriver. As it passed, the Doppler-distorted message boomed from loudspeakers, repeated over and over:
“THERE IS HELP IN ALBANY. GO UPRIVER. THERE IS HELP IN ALBANY. GO UPRIVER. THERE IS HELP IN ALBANY.”
I was reminded of the scene from that old sci-fi movie Blade Runner where an airship droned over Los Angeles, telling people to “move off world, to a new life in the colonies”. I laughed at the irony. Here we were, thirty years after Blade Runner, and instead of exploring new worlds, we were fighting over the scraps of the old. I understood what Brit felt, about the stars.
The chopper droned away southward, down the valley. This had started last night, several trips up and down the valley by a blacked-out Army helo. Today several boats had passed us on their way north; ragged, battered pleasure boats packed, overloaded with people. They were a sorry lot, emaciated, in ragged clothing and armed with a variety of rifles, shotguns and clubs, and when they pulled up to the tug, they made as if to swarm the boat. They were met with a burst of machine gun fire into the water in front of them, and a loudspeaker from the tug, telling them to stay back fifty feet.
On the lead boat, a man yelled across to us. “Let us aboard! We have women and children, and we’re almost out of gas!”
The Infantry Platoon Commander wasn’t having any of it. Another burst of fire hit the water, and the boats backed off. He wasn’t ta
king any chances of these people infecting his soldiers with tuberculosis, cholera or some other communicable disease. Unlike the farmers that Doc had visited yesterday, these people looked dirty and desperate, at the end of their rope, and who knew what they were carrying.
“There is a food and medical care in Albany, at the port. We can leave you gas.”
We threw them a couple of cases of MREs and left twenty gallons of gas tied to a float. They took it without a word of thanks and motored off upriver. We hadn’t seen anyone else, and night soon arrived, so we dropped anchor in the middle of the river, just north of the ruins of Poughkeepsie. Tomorrow we would arrive at Bannerman Island and start setting up the Firebase.
I stood and picked up my rifle. “OK, let’s do it again.” Muttered groans sounded from some of the team, especially the new medic, Specialist Mya. She wasn’t used to the kind of repetitive, muscle memory training that we were doing.
“Sergeant Agostine, I think the Specialist has had enough. It’s not really her job, after all.”
I turned to where the Lieutenant stood in the darkness.
“With all due respect, Sir, you’re wrong. This is exactly what she needs to be doing. We’re going to be going through buildings in West Point. She and Redshirt need to be part of the team. Redshirt is doing good, but I need to know she isn’t going to shoot one of us in the back.”
“She’s a medic, Sergeant. She will be treating any wounded, not engaging in any gunfights.”
God, this guy was being a stupid git.
“She’s a solder first, Sir. We all fight. Including you, so I wish you would participate in these exercises.”
“I’m perfectly qualified in Close Quarters Combat.”
“That may very well be, but you need to become part of the team. We all know how the other is going to act. I don’t know how you are going to act.”
“I’ll be fine, Sergeant. You just do what NCOs do, carry out my plans and train the men.”