The Reaper Plague

by David VanDyke

  She mused on the bombs, forcing herself to think about it. Each miniature sun had created a circle of destruction, a dead zone. Each ground zero marked the heart of a city, or a military base, sometimes a piece of both. About half of the bombs had fallen on the great population centers and bases of the Eastern Seaboard. The oval encompassing Washington, DC and Baltimore had hosted a dozen fireballs as far south as Quantico and as far north as Charm City itself. The Capitol and the White House, the Pentagon, Langley, Andrews, Fort Belvoir, Fort Meade, Dulles and Reagan and BWI airports, all were irradiated, vaporized, sterilized.

  Even that might have been a horrible but manageable crisis, with the states of Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia mobilizing to reestablish order and provide relief, had the alien Demon Plagues not been cast like a deathly blanket upon the fragile surviving societies and institutions, crushing them under the weight of chaos and tragedy. As far as anyone could tell, nothing functioned in the death zones more organized than a volunteer fire department.

  She and her troops faced enough work for a hundred battalions for a hundred years, helping the medics to get the survivors inoculated. The priority airlift was a tribute to the importance of their mission, to begin reclaiming the national capital region. They could have started anywhere, but the symbolism, President McKenna felt, was important.

  It just wasn’t the United States without the city that bore George Washington’s name.

  When times are tough, people need symbols. God knows I do, and right now it’s Old Glory flying above the Battle Color. We’ll raise them on the banks of the Potomac yet. She squeezed and surreptitiously wiped her eyes.

  Repeth walked among her people, greeting most by name. She walked over to the other platoons of First MP Company, saluting their officers, conferring with their senior NCOs, taking the pulse of the whole unit. In her estimation, morale was high and the troops were eager to get on with it.

  The faint and far-off tones of the aircraft down the runway changed as they fired up the first of their jet engines. Battery power had already started the Auxiliary Power Units, tiny turbines that generated electricity for the aircraft. Now the power from the APUs drove electric motors to turn the huge turbofan engines that would lift their enormous loads into the sky. First one started, then another, each in turn supplying more juice to the system until all four house-sized propulsion units on each bird sang their songs of power.

  “All right, Fourth Platoon, on your feet! Ruck up, ladies and gentlemen, those birds aren’t coming to us! ‘Platoon, tench-hun! Right, hace! For-ward, harch! At ease, harch!” In four files the platoon marched easy down the edge of the tarmac, Third Platoon dimly visible in front of them as a mass of bobbing heads, shoulders and rucks. She looked behind at the company of Homies gaggling after them. She knew that in back of them, the clerks and lawyers and doctors and nurses and morticians and engineers and many other experts, the professionals that were the heart of Civil Affairs, were loading buses. Rick would be back there, probably embarrassed to be with the pogues, but he was no soldier, and it would send the wrong message for him to be here at her side.

  She had laughed when Transportation had asked her when she wanted the platoon to be picked up. “It’s less than a mile from the barracks to the airfield,” she told them. “Don’t waste the nation’s gasoline.” When the other MP platoons had heard, they cancelled their rides too. I guess the Homies couldn’t let us show them up. Good for them. At least they have some pride.

  The mass briefing the night before had finally given them some details on the landing zone. Fort AP Hill, south of Fredericksburg, Virginia, possessed the airfield closest to DC that could take the C-17s on the south side. Other units would work the west and north.

  The landing zone was also well outside the direct blast zone, though not outside the radiation plume or the reach of the Demon Plagues. As a US Army installation not open to the general public, it might have retained some semblance of law and order. Or at least be safely deserted.

  Unfortunately, no one had been able to contact any units stationed there. Reconnaissance drones had shown some human activity but no vehicles moving, and the base power plant revealed no heat signature. As far as they could tell the place was dead, as were most of its people. However, there did appear to be some organization in the city of Fredericksburg immediately to the north.

  The briefing officer had said, “We’ve got a pair of Super Hornets off the Harry Truman that will give you some air cover and surface suppression as you land, and there’s a Force Recon team from the Somerset that is supposed to be moving in right now on foot. They’ll give the planes the final call via UHF about conditions on the ground, then they’ll attach themselves to the battalion after you land. The MP company debarks first in platoon order to set up dismounted security, then Homeland, then Civil Affairs and Medical. The aircraft will offload hot and extract immediately. After that you’ll be pretty much on your own for one to three weeks, until the ground forces pushing in from the west link up.”

  On your own. Her people hadn’t liked that much, and she had to remind herself they weren’t special operators like she was, used to the idea of being alone and unafraid deep in enemy territory. They were security forces, not commandos, not even infantry. Well, I’ve gotten them as ready as I can.

  The roar of the engines drowned out her thoughts as the formation marched into the staging area in front of the hangars. Ground crew with glowing flashlights and bulky headphones directed them to their bird. Its tail ramp gaped open, providing easy access to the enormous interior space. Pallets squatted on the spine of the plane, fastened down to hardpoints in the floor, and her people walked along the left and right to take their places on the red-orange fabric jump seats.

  Her heart beat faster despite herself as she boarded. To her, jet fuel smelled like action. Half an hour later they roared into the sky, powering upward like an express elevator to Heaven.

  -20-

  It had been two days since Raphaela reversed the spacecraft and started it decelerating. Except for the brief period of weightlessness while the shuttle traded end for end, nothing really changed. One gravity of deceleration felt the same as one G of acceleration.

  They’d kept their conversations on safer ground. Skull told her of the days when the whole Eden Plague thing started, with Zeke and Markis and the Watts Island raid.

  She listened, fascinated, but reserved her judgments; she knew he wasn’t in the mood for critique or commentary. In return, she told him the story of Raphael’s “childhood.” She watched Skull’s eyes watch her; they revealed nothing of his thoughts as she recited. She almost despaired of finding that spark of humanity in him again, but she resolved not to give up.

  A dirty snowball now filled the viewscreen, rotating slowly against the black-velvet backdrop, a faint mist streaming off antisunward. “Where’s your base?” Skull asked as he studied it. “Is that maximum magnification?”

  “Yes it is, and the base is only a hundred yards across so you won’t be able to see it until we get closer. The comet is over a mile in diameter.”

  “And you – they – put the base on a comet because?”

  “Because water was the most important resource. When it’s close to the sun, the biomachines use photosynthesis to make food and solar electricity to crack the water into hydrogen and oxygen. They store everything they make for the part of the orbit when it’s far from the sun. That’s when it uses hydrogen and oxygen in the fuel cells. It recycles everything. Nothing needed but periodic inputs of solar energy.”

  “Very efficient.”

  “Yes, the Meme are nothing if not efficient.” There was an undertone of irony in her words. “The most efficient way to colonize a planet and spread the race is to use its own biology against it. But that presupposes the targets don’t have the technology to fight back.”

  Skull sighed, “And we did. Barely. Without the Eden Plague and the way it drove biotech and nanotech in the last decade…”


  “We’d have nearly all been reduced to animals. Maybe a few thousand people living in isolated places would have escaped…but without the vaccines, we’d have been meat for the Meme.”

  “So we owe everything to Markis. That’s irony for you.” He coughed, a harsh chuckle.

  “Really? That’s what you think?”

  “What else is there to think?”

  Raphaela shook her head and grimaced, as if spitting out a bad taste. “Alan, causality is lost in chaos. What if that IED hadn’t wounded Markis? What if he’d never retired, never met Elise, never gotten the Eden Plague, never called Zeke for help? What if you hadn’t gone to help Zeke? What if you hadn’t rescued Elise from the island, or Markis from that Company prison? There are a thousand what-ifs.”

  “Almost makes you believe someone’s watching out for us.” He thought about what the nuns had taught back in grade school, then pushed the thought away again.

  Raphaela dropped her chin to her chest, pensive. “The Meme have a religion. They believe their god watches out for them. That it’s on their side. That it’s their manifest destiny to take the planets away from useless savages who are too primitive to develop them properly. That only the Meme are truly worthy.”

  “Huh. My Apache grandfather would have recognized that thinking. But this time the injuns got some surprises for the white-eyes.”

  She nodded, solemn. “Let’s hope they do better than the last bunch.”

  -21-

  The empty Globemasters left a ringing silence in their wake, and Repeth felt the oppression of isolation as she stood on the roof of the Humvee, binoculars out and scanning. She was certain her troops felt it too. Forty-seven people and two Humvees to cover three hundred yards of frontage spread them dangerously thin.

  “Keep your eyes on the treeline!” she yelled as some looked at their rides, now receding dots in the western sky. Others glanced inward at the Civil Affairs company rapidly setting up the Tactical Operations Center in the space between the four airfield buildings. They would barely have enough time to get concertina wire strung and some patrols out by dusk.

  Tonight would be dangerous. There had been no time for any recon.

  Repeth had protested the arrival time. They should have landed just after dawn, to have a full day to secure the area. “The airplanes are fully scheduled. Deal with it,” had been the response from the Air Liaison Officer. She’d been tempted to deal with him, and had to remind herself that no one was going to overlook an NCO clocking an officer, no matter how much of a jerk he was. Sometimes she longed to be back in FC spec-ops, where expertise counted for more than rank.

  Maybe I should have accepted that commission after all.

  She wondered where the Homies were. They should have been either securing a piece of the perimeter or helping set up the TOC but she didn’t see their distinctive dark navy blue uniforms anywhere.

  A pair of Super Hornets roared low overhead just sub-Mach, unseen until they were almost past. The noise barely preceded their arrival but it lingered with their climbing departure, showing their hot twin tails. “WHAT’S THAT SOUND?” Repeth bellowed when she could be heard again.

  A couple of her people knew the right answer. “THAT’S THE SOUND OF FREEDOM, MASTER SERGEANT!”

  “You damn right,” she responded cheerfully. “Now get your eyes back on the treeline!” With guilty smiles they returned to their sectors. She nodded in satisfaction. Not too bad. Unless we get assaulted by a real combat unit, we should be able to handle anything.

  It took two hours, twice as long as it should have, to get all the pallets broken down and loaded onto the vehicles. Once that was done, they began a tense road march. This was the most worrisome part of the whole operation, the movement from the airfield to the bivouac site near Fredericksburg.

  There’d been debate about the wisdom of moving closer. AP Hill Army Airfield was about twenty miles from Fredericksburg, though, and they didn’t have enough wheeled transport to operate from that distance. Their mission was to assist the Fredericksburg population – like it or not – to become a functioning town again, the northernmost outpost of civilization on the south side of Washington DC. They couldn’t do that with twenty-mile supply lines.

  So they marched. Fast. More like jogged.

  It wasn’t quite Ranger standard, she thought, but it was a damn fine effort. Fifteen miles in a little over three hours. They used the back roads through the base, as the aerial photos showed the civilian highways clogged. When they ran out of back roads they picked up the Fredericksburg Turnpike and bivouacked on an abandoned golf course just south of town. Two months of neglect and it already looked like some pretty good pastureland. Might be some good deer hunting. At least we got here before the sun went down.

  She spread her platoon out to recon and guard their sector as the Civil Affairs troops began hastily unloading at the abandoned clubhouse complex. She’d normally have been happy to send some MPs to help with the tent setup but she needed every one of her people to stretch along the perimeter. She ran her eyes over the terrain, then looked back and touched her push-to-talk. “Charlie One Alpha this is Papa Four Alpha. How long are we going to be static?” She meant, how long until she could send out recon patrols.

  Captain LeBrun responded. “Just until the Fox team shows up and gives us their report. I don’t want any fratricide.”

  “Yes, sir. Friendly fire – isn’t. Why haven’t they called?”

  “Not sure, Master Sergeant. You’re the Marine, you tell me.”

  “I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.”

  “Oh?”

  “They’re going to try to sneak in and show us up.”

  LeBrun’s voice was incredulous. “With live ammo? Cocked and locked like we are? And I assume they’re not even Edens. Somebody could get killed.”

  “You don’t know Force Recon, sir. They’ll take the risk, if they’re anything like they used to be. In fact…stand by, sir. I need to check on something.” She hopped off the Humvee, seating her PW10 into her shoulder, trigger finger extended and ready, and walked through the knee-high grass toward the treeline. Grasshoppers fled her feet, clicking and buzzing in flight. She stopped near some bushes, calling to the troops that had recently walked past and beyond them. “Smith, Martin, turn around. Look my direction. What do you see here inside our lines?”

  The two men in question did as they were told, scanning. Smith shrugged. “What are we supposed to see?”

  Repeth pointed at the bushes, low scrubby things, six of them in a rough ring.

  “What? Bushes?” asked Martin.

  Repeth said nothing, but took three long strides forward, turned to her left and kicked the nearest scrubby plant. Instead of a swish and a rustle her boot connected with something solid, eliciting a grunt.

  Suddenly the bushes rolled onto their knees and revealed themselves as camo-painted Marines wearing Ghillie suits, coverings made of cloth strips, twine, burlap and foliage. Near-perfect camouflage. Their stubby assault rifles pointed out in a ring, and all except one had his weapon trained on a nearby MP.

  The exception had Repeth’s PW10 at his throat, her hand locked on the barrel of the man’s assault rifle, forcing it skyward. She raised her voice. “Very impressive, gentlemen. But I made you from fifty yards. If I’d wanted to do a little recon by fire with that .50 cal on the Humvee you’d all be dead. So let’s stand down. We’re all friendlies here, right?”

  Jill’s man made a hand signal and rose to his feet, as did the rest of his team, lowering their weapons. “Made by a split-tail,” he said in disgust.

  Resisting the urge to punch him, she just chuckled, loud and for effect. “That’s Master Sergeant split-tail to you, Gunny. Next time stick to your TTPs and move at night. Less ‘Force’ and more ‘Recon’.”

  The troops around laughed, some of the Recon team joining in. The team leader let his weapon retract on its sling, then pulled out a can of dip and stuck some behind his lip. It smelled
like Pepto. He held her eyes, challenging. “They’re making Master Sergeants pretty young these days,” he observed neutrally.

  The question lurking beneath that observation irked her. “Never ask a woman her age, Gunny. But I earned my stripes; I’ve got almost fourteen years in service. Welcome to the new Corps. You’ll just have to get used to us Sickos.” It occurred to her how right they were about owning your own epithet. She felt the insult lose power every time she turned it around on someone.

  Surprisingly, he didn’t flinch, but he did grin sourly under his face paint. His voice was resigned, ironic. “Eden, huh? Oo-rah, Master Sergeant.”

  Still watching him, Repeth touched her radio. “Charlie One Alpha this is Papa Four Alpha, I have your Fox Romeos, bringing them in.” She gestured to the team. “Follow me, gentlemen, you can make your report to the battalion commander.” She started walking toward the buildings. Without looking she called, “Grusky, get their eyes back on those sectors.”

  Turning to the Recon team leader walking beside her, she stuck out a hand. “Repeth. They call me Reaper sometimes, though with this new Plague inbound I’m not sure that’s the best handle I could have.”

  “Gunderson.” He shook her hand with a leather paw.

  “They call you ‘Swede’?”

  “Inevitably. Though I’m Danish.”

  “I could have a lot of fun with that line. Ich Bin Ein Gunderson!”

  Dryly, “Oh, a comedian.”

  She snorted. “I’ll keep my day job.”

  “The world thanks you.”

  “Do they select Force Recon for your smart mouths, Gunny?”

  “No, just our outstanding good looks.”

  “I thought that was SEALs.”