by DJ Molles
“I’m up,” Lee breathed, like the fight had been punched out of him. But when you fight so much, and for so long, when it’s all you’ve ever known, then even when it’s punched out of you, you keep going by force of habit.
Lee slapped the rifle down, running on autopilot now.
What could he do?
Hammer nails. That’s all there was to do.
They had four functioning teammates inside Building Four.
Two more on a hill outside the compound.
And—rough estimate here—about thirty armed men storming the gate.
There was nothing else to do but pick targets and pull triggers, until they either killed him or he ran out of ammo.
So that’s what he started doing.
Carl tightened down his pressure dressing and immediately posted on his own rifle. Firing. And sighting. And firing. The fierceness gone out of it now, because they could feel it like the coming darkness as you’re bleeding out. They could feel the momentum had shifted, and that this was not going to end well for them.
This was just a last stand.
They were little more than a stinging bee now. Doing as much damage as it could, knowing full well that it would die.
***
Logan was crying.
Not for himself.
Julia had to keep herself pressed down on top of him, because he was trying to get up and go to Blake. He would’ve been able to if he hadn’t been shot through both legs.
Death huddled around them, seeming to darken the midday sun.
Mitch, Rudy, and Abe, pasted up against the side of the building, hunching and cringing as bullet impacts rattled all around them.
Beside Julia, Morrow held Logan by the back of the neck, telling him to chill out, telling him to calm the fuck down.
The stink of spent propellant was sharp.
Still practically laying on Logan, Julia pulled her head to the right and left, looked over her shoulder at the tall fencing, wondered if they could cut their way through, escape into the woods.
If they started cutting the fence now, they might get through before Nuevas Fronteras overran them. But then all of this was going to be for nothing.
You have to figure out a way to save your team.
Save their lives, Julia. You have to figure it out.
Then she looked out, clear across the airport.
She saw the south gate of the complex.
Could they all get into a fuel truck and ram their way out of here?
Except for Lee and Carl. They would be left behind.
Would they be able to circle back and get them?
Not if the cartel guys swarmed the woods. Which they would do.
If they ran now in the trucks, she would never see Lee alive again.
She was stuck, mentally, in an impossible mire of circumstances.
She was still trying to think of a way for all of them to live through this.
But that wasn’t going to happen, was it?
Still staring across at the south gate of the airport, she spotted something huge and tan speeding toward the gate. She looked at it in confusion, not knowing what the hell it was, until it hit the gate, and the gate appeared to simply disintegrate, and the roar and rumble of that massive dirt-colored object reached her ears.
She didn’t have military experience, but she knew what it was.
She felt her heart wither inside of her.
None of them were getting out alive.
Nuevas Fronteras was now blocking their only viable escape with a tank.
THIRTY-THREE
─▬▬▬─
REINFORCEMENTS
Lee stopped firing when Carl elbowed him.
At about the same moment, Lee heard the sound, rumbling over the gunfire.
He opened both eyes. Looked up over the scope.
Over the top of Building Four, where his eyes were immediately drawn to the movement. The south gate of the airport hung open, battered to pieces, and through it was flowing a convoy of military hardware that made Lee’s stomach turn to water.
In the lead was an M1 Abrams tank.
Lee was in shock at the sight of it, roaring across the field, flattening the bodies of the men that Lee had shot out there. His fingers moved without him thinking about it. He keyed his comms.
“They got a tank! Tank rolling in on top of you guys! Get the fuck out of there!”
Lee couldn’t believe the words, even as he said them. A tank.
Was that the price that President Briggs had paid for the cartel’s cooperation? Not to mention the three guntruck Humvees that tailed it…
“Give us cover!” Abe called over the squad comms. “Hold those boys at the gate down while we cut our way through the fence!”
So that was it. That was how this whole clusterfuck was going to end.
Lee put his cheek to his rifle stock and found the next target, splashed a round through the man’s chest, then moved to the next target, all while the sound of the rumbling tank and the roaring of its jet-like turbine engines seemed to wash out all other noise.
“Reloading!” Carl called out. “Last mag!”
Lee fired another round. Jerked the trigger in the moment of tension and sent the shot wide. His bolt locked back. Empty. Lee swept down for another magazine, and realized that he’d already used his last.
“Up!” Carl said, and started firing again.
“I’m out!” Lee shouted, anger and disbelief turning his voice to rage.
He looked over his scope, feeling hollowed out, feeling the crushing defeat of his decisions bearing down on him, decisions that had cost lives, and would not produce anything. They had lost teammates for nothing—
One of the vehicles at the gate suddenly ceased to exist.
In one heartbeat, it was there, men with rifles huddled around it, shooting over the top of it, targeting the corner of Building Four, and with the next heartbeat it was just a gout of greasy black smoke.
The sound of the explosion hit Lee in the face, followed only a half-second after by the thunderous report of the Abram’s main gun.
Lee instinctively ducked behind the pine tree. “Holy fuck!”
Then immediately looked back up.
Beside him, Carl had stopped shooting.
The two of them stared, goggle-eyed at the place where the cartel truck had been, a column of fire and smoke now guttering up from its remains. All around it, like revelers passed out around a bonfire, men lay, their bodies disassembled, wrecked, and left in a ragged circle by the blast.
Lee became aware of Abe’s voice: “Are they firing on us? Where was that impact?”
Six hundred yards away, what remained of the cartel convoy became utter bedlam. The trucks at the gate were throwing themselves into reverse, squealing tires, ramming into each other, ramming into their own men, in a panic to get away. Inside the gate, the remaining two vehicles were trying to cut a tight turn, while their comrades flung themselves into the doors, and into the truck beds.
The Abrams tank pulled to a violent stop, right between the two sets of buildings, torn earth and concrete rolling out in front of its bulk like a wave. It rocked to a halt. The turret turned and this time Lee watched, unable to tear his eyes away.
The main gun sprouted a mushroom of flame.
One of the cartel trucks that was broadside to the tank shattered in fire and smoke. The truck’s smoking shell tumbled, skidded to a stop, half-blocking the gate. Another truck hit it, then tried to back up and go around it.
The tank’s M240 coaxial machine gun puffed smoke, and rattled in a long, devastating string of fire that lanced the truck trying to escape, shredding it and everything inside of it. Men tried to break cover and run through the woods, and the coaxial gun tracked them, ripped them apart before they could get to safety.
Four trucks managed to make the road and when they got their tires on pavement, the drivers inside weren’t waiting for anybody. Their engines revved, their tires chirped, and they got the fuck
out of there, trailing a gaggle of desperate men that knew there was no place they could go.
Lee watched a few of them throw down their weapons and try to surrender, but whoever was manning the coaxial gun didn’t care. They went down like the rest. And in another time, in another life, this might have twisted in Lee’s gut, but all he felt now was joy.
“Lee! You there?” Abe demanded. “What the fuck’s going on?”
“Hold what you got!” Lee answered. “Just standby a minute. That tank is not cartel. Repeat, the tank is not cartel.”
Beside Lee, Carl reached over and grabbed a hold of his arm, gave him a stern look. “That doesn’t mean it’s friendly.”
Lee nodded back, tempering any enthusiasm before it could really take hold and make him feel hopeful.
The tank sat deathly still now. Like a giant predator that’s gorged itself and now basks in the sun.
The three Humvees took positions, fanning out behind the tank, filling in gaps. But no one came out of the trucks. The gunners hunched behind their armored .50 caliber M2s and scanned the premises for any more threats, but there was only dead bodies for them now.
“Well,” Lee mumbled. “What the fuck do we do now?”
An amplified voice shattered the ear-ringing silence. “This is Captain Lehy. Is there a Captain Lee Harden, or any other Coordinator from Project Hometown present?”
Lee felt a jolt go through him. He must have twitched, because Carl raised an eyebrow. “Friend of yours?”
“Maybe,” was Lee’s only answer. Then he remembered that Abe was down there, too. He touched his PTT. “Abe, don’t you fucking move. You guys maintain cover until we figure this out. You copy?”
Abe responded that he did, but didn’t sound pleased about it. With an Abrams breathing down their neck, “cover” didn’t really exist.
Lee rose up onto his feet and looked at Carl. “How many rounds you got left?”
Carl shrugged. “Two or three.”
Lee nodded. “Well. If shit goes sideways, make ‘em count.”
***
Lee walked along a road strewn with human wreckage.
Deuce trotted along beside him, sniffing at the dead as they passed their mangled corpses.
Smoke wafted across the roadway like swift-moving fog, occasionally obscuring the Abrams tank ahead of him. Fire licked from the inside of a vehicle that had caught one of Mitch’s 40mm rounds—a panel van with charred limbs hanging out of its open doors.
Lee walked with his rifle slung, his hands loose at his sides.
The blood of the man he’d knifed felt stiff on his face. He wiped what he could off with his sleeve, but he could still feel it crusting around his hairline and his ears.
This is who I am, he thought, as he picked his way steadily through the colossal wreck of warfare that he’d orchestrated. And the sizzling fires around him seemed to whisper back, this is what you do.
And he felt no recrimination in it this time.
It was simply truth.
It was destiny.
The river had carried him here.
Would always carry him here.
His lungs felt wheezy and ragged, but he didn’t feel sick. The hole in his shoulder was stiff and painful, and it leaked, but he thought he could still manage it for a while. The round he’d taken to his back, surprisingly enough, ached the worst. Like it had misaligned a few of his vertebrae when it hit.
At the gate, he stepped around the burning remains of the truck that had taken a tank round there. He thought he saw a fleshless skull in the driver’s seat.
The wind was coming towards him, so that when he passed through the gate, he stepped through the pall of smoke like a curtain.
He stopped there, between the gate and the tank, and he stared at it.
One of the gunners atop a Humvee swiveled his M2 to point in Lee’s direction.
Lee expected Captain Lehy to come out of the tank. But when Lee raised his hands to show they were empty and that he was compliant, it was the Humvee with the M2 pointed at him that opened its doors, and out stepped a man that Lee didn’t think he’d ever see again in his lifetime.
Captain Terrance Lehy, Coordinator for Texas, was a tall man with sandy hair. He wore no cover, no helmet. Just a chest rig and a rifle. Multicam pants and shirt. The sleeves rolled up to reveal two arms coated in tattoos. A battered pair of Oakley M-frames shielded his eyes.
The two men surveyed each other at a distance.
Captain Lehy pulled the sunglasses from his eyes, pushed them up onto his head. He eyed Lee up and down, walking slowly towards him. Lee decided to meet him halfway. They stopped when they were about three paces from each other.
“Jesus, Lee,” was Captain Lehy’s greeting. He looked…concerned.
“Tex,” Lee replied, his voice hoarse and quiet. Amid the crust of smoke and dirt and blood that coated his face, his eyes scanned off to the right. To where Blake’s body lay on the concrete. Then back to the man in front of him. “What are you doing here?”
Terrance “Tex” Lehy’s mouth twitched. Made a clucking noise. “Well…it’s complicated.”
“It always is, huh?” Lee worked his tongue. Realized he was parched. He looked at the military hardware arrayed before him. “How’d you know I was here?”
“I know you’re suspicious. I would be too.” Tex nodded. “I’ll explain everything I can. But, first off, we’re on the same side. Second, you and I both have a friend in Greeley. And third, you’ve got a leak at Fort Bragg that you need to plug, A-S-A-fucking-P.”
Then Tex extended his hand to Lee.
Lee stared at it for a moment, like he didn’t know what it was for. Like he wasn’t sure about the point of civil gestures. But just as the moment started to grow taut, Lee stepped forward and took Tex’s offered hand. Gave it one firm shake.
Tex smiled grimly. “We got a lot to talk about.”
It was at that moment that Deuce turned his nose northward, back the way they’d come, and he let out a low growl that very suddenly built, and built, and ended with a snarling bark.
Tex twitched a bit when Deuce did this. Retracted his hand from Lee’s. “What’s he doing?”
Deuce was now backpedaling away from the burning, destroyed gates. Gates that would no longer be useful to keep anything out. His tail was low, not quite between his legs, but almost. He let out another bark, and this time looked at Lee as though to say, You’re fucking hearing me bark right?
Lee looked out, and down the road where the destruction of war lay littered, the air shimmering from the heat of multiple fires. Was it just the air shimmering there, or had a shadow briefly flitted across the road?
“Means there’s infected coming,” Lee said to Tex. What he didn’t say was the thought that skittered through his head: After a thirty minute firefight like that, we’ve attracted every goddamn primal within five miles of us.
Lee keyed his comms. “Carl, if you’re not already on the way, you need to get a move on, brother. Primals are comin’.”
“Roger that,” Carl came back, sounding out of breath. “Already on the move.”
He must have been closer than Lee thought, because he emerged from the woods a moment later, hobbling along on his wounded leg, toting his big sniper rifle with him. Almost to the smoking gates already.
Lee started moving towards Carl, but turned to look at Tex over his shoulder. “You need to get everyone inside and batten down the hatches.”
“Now?” Tex asked, already beginning to step backwards towards his Humvee.
Between Deuce’s own panicked barks, Lee thought he heard a scream, out beyond the fences, somewhere in the woods.
Lee called over his shoulder, “Cover us first.”
He reached Carl and threw an arm around the other man’s shoulder, and for once, Carl didn’t hesitate to be helped. He leaned heavily on Lee as they jogged through the wreckage of the burning vehicles, back towards Building Four.
Behind them, no more screams came.
And Lee knew what that meant.
THIRTY-FOUR
─▬▬▬─
SKELETONS
Colonel Staley finally located Angela in the Emergency Room of the Medical Center.
He was back in his Desert Digital Uniform. He entered the Emergency Room, which had become a madhouse since the lockdown had been lifted. There were only a few legitimate injuries, but the scare of infection seemed to be making people crazy. People were demanding to have their blood checked for infection, even though they hadn’t come into contact with the primals.
There was a virulent rumor floating around that the primals that had attacked them had been one of the families from Fort Bragg. That they’d somehow been infected by something—food and water were two differing opinions—and that they’d been holed up in their house until they’d gone fully mad and went on a rampage.
It showed a shocking lack of understanding about how the FURY bacterium worked.
You would think that people who had survived this far would have more knowledge about what exactly they had survived.
But fear was potent, and it poisoned people’s reason.
All they could do at this point was try to educate the people, and continue to calmly deny the ridiculous rumors. Though denial seemed only to incite more conspiracy theories. But what else could they do to stem people’s panic?
Staley barged through the crowded emergency room, ignoring questions that were randomly lobbed at him. He found the room where Angela was holed up with Abby, Sam, Marie, and Kurt. Then he shut the door behind them.
The door quieted the rumble of the idiots on the other side.
Angela was sitting next to Abby’s bed, looking like she was about to fall asleep. Her groggy eyes opened when he closed the door, and she stood up, as though attempting to look like she hadn’t been falling asleep.
“Colonel,” she said, exhaustion thick in her voice. “What’s the word?”
“Just got my Marines out the gate,” Staley answered. “They’re hauling ass towards Alabama as we speak.”
“Any word from Lee yet?”
Staley shook his head. “No, ma’am.”