Even that situation stabilized, somewhat. Then the next Demon Plague fell. All those infected with Plague One were fallow fields for number Two.
Onesies were nasty, brutish but still recognizably human.
Twosies became animals, no better than apes. Worse than apes, for primates showed affection and rudimentary kindness to their own. The only cooperation the Twosies showed was to band together to kill, to eat, and to kill again. Sometimes, for the sheer lust of it.
So Vargas could expect Richmond to have killed, driven off or captured their Twosies, but there was no telling how they had dealt with their Onesies. The Federal government had airdropped vaccines and information into the city, but had often been shot at for their trouble, and the State authorities had refused to negotiate until ground forces showed up, citing empty promises and memories of FEMA failures.
So Vargas was back to delivering the Special Envoy in person.
They’d laagered that first night in the enormous parking lot of some kind of ruined motorcycle shop south of Fredericksburg, and no one had bothered them. A few stealthy figures crept about the periphery but no one challenged the unit’s right to be there or really seemed to care. Most of the shops and buildings had been looted; a few showed signs of fortification and defense.
Now the convoy moved carefully past intermittent vehicle pile-ups along the highway. Some had crashed and burned; others looked to have been blockaded and looted. Still others had simply crowded up in their own traffic-jam volume, unable to get by, and thus had been abandoned. The MRAPs with their enormous tires were usually able to make their way around these obstacles, through the fields and pastures. Sometimes they pushed cars out of the way, occasionally dismounting a double dozen troops to clear obstacles by hand.
It made for slow going.
By midday they made it some twenty miles, averaging three or four miles an hour. Vargas cursed loudly at his people. Their progress was hardly faster than the blue and gray armies that had marched up and down this green countryside so long ago.
They’d passed tiny crossroads villages like Thornburg and Cedon, Ryland Corner and Ladysmith. The remnants of buildings were broken teeth set in the green gums of pastures and peanut fields. Their first sign of occupation, or at least of a live community, was at the resort town of Lake Caroline. Vargas called a halt to the convoy as it came into view.
He lifted binoculars to his eyes and surveyed the west side of the highway. The crossroads and turnoffs were clear, but he could see that they were all blocked and barricaded about a quarter mile back. A wise precaution, if the community was still functioning and civilized. No need to contest passage along the highway, but he figured anyone that left the roadway to go in their direction would encounter well-armed citizens.
He could see a glint of sunlight at the barrier and could make out figures manning it. “Furth, tell everyone to lay their weapons on that barrier.” Go ahead, shoot at me, cabrons. Give me an excuse.
Disappointingly the townies did not fire, and he had a mission to complete, so he signaled the trucks to drive on. The MRAP lurched and he put the binoculars away, hunkering down inside the hatch, using the periscope in case of snipers. Maybe they’ll fire as we get closer. Por favor?
Vargas noticed the current stretch of road was empty of vehicles, apparently cleared by bulldozer; the cars and trucks were all off in the ditches and the lanes of pavement invited them to speed up and make some time. Smart, he thought. Encourage travelers to go by, wherever they were headed. Damn. They won’t give me a reason. He thought about telling them to open fire, make up some excuse later, but he decided against it. Not time to make a move yet.
As they passed Golansville and hummed southward at speeds approaching fifteen or twenty miles per hour – hallelujah! – his RTO came over the intercom headset. “Sir, you’d better hear this.”
-28-
A far-off chattering of small arms surged, then the deeper hammering of a .50 caliber heavy machine gun joined it from nearby. Rick let go of Jill’s hand to poke his head out of the room. Medical personnel and support staff ran hither and thither, yelling and pulling on battle gear. “What’s going on?” His questions went unanswered.
“Rick,” yelled Jill, “get your gear and your weapon and take your post.”
“Hell, no, I’m not leaving you!”
“Rick, you have to get your armor and your weapon. You have to take your place or someone will be without support! Just hand me my stuff, if they get this far we’re screwed anyway.”
Angrily he shoved her PW10 and web gear at her. “I’m no soldier! I’d just get in the way out there.”
She grabbed his sleeve, shook it hard. “Look, those doctors and lawyers aren’t fighters either. Go where you’re assigned and do what they tell you, and don’t be afraid to shoot. It’s Needleshock. But whoever is attacking has lethal weapons, so get your Kevlar on and keep the enemy out of this building. That’s how to keep me safe.”
Agony in his eyes, he kissed her one more time then ran from the room.
Jill gritted her teeth and dragged herself upward in the bed, using the headboard. Pain shot through her lower back, and her thighs tingled above the numbness near her knees. She slapped at her legs, but it was useless. It felt like they were asleep but they weren’t waking up. That bullet was lodged in there good and deep.
She locked and loaded her weapon, set her magazines within easy reach. Planned her actions if someone did try to get in the room. Sipped some water. Loosened her knife in its sheath. Looked at the IV but decided to leave it where it was. The more nutrient solution she had in her, the better.
Heavier explosions manifested, each coming closer. It sounded like some form of antitank weapon. Then a boom and a crash, and she cursed under her breath, then muttered a prayer for forgiveness. Tanks! Who the hell is attacking us with tanks? We don’t have the equipment to deal with armored vehicles for long. I hope we can get some air support in here fast.
She shrugged into her web gear, switched on her radio. The command net was full of sound and fury, all bad news. It sounded like at least four tanks, eight or ten light armored vehicles and over a thousand troops were attacking from the north. Fredericksburg. We got overconfident. They’re paranoid and they saw us as a threat. My fault. I walked up and told them we were here. I thought they’d respond to a little patriotic flag-waving and it might cost us our lives.
Lord, a little help right now would be welcome.
***
Thank God they’re using the tanks as a platoon rather than as infantry support, Swede thought. If they’d split them up and kept infantry deployed around each of them, backed up with those Strykers we could never mousetrap them like this.
“Stand by,” he said over the Recon squad’s net. Invisible in their Ghillie suits, the team waited in ambush in a sunken clump of trees, knee-deep in boggy ground. Gunderson’s men had snatched up all the antitank weapons they could carry and sprinted out here just in time.
The tank platoon, four older M1A1 Abrams with the insignia of the Virginia Army National Guard’s 11th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Stonewall Jackson) painted on them, advanced slowly in tight diamond formation toward the clubhouse and the tents pitched near it. Too tight. Two hundred yards range to the Civil Affairs tents and the clubhouse was point-blank for their heavy main guns. Swede surmised that whoever was commanding the tank platoon was either stupid, overconfident, or under orders to ensure the infantry felt supported. They should have stood off at a thousand yards and shot the hell out of us. He hoped it would be their undoing.
The tanks did nearly the stupidest thing, which was the best thing from the Recon team’s point of view.
The very best thing would have been to split and go around the copse of trees. Next best was to skirt it closely, with no supporting infantry to clear the nearby terrain, and fortunately that’s what they did.
The sixty-five-ton vehicles clanked forward at a crawl, firing their main guns slowly, deliberately. Walls sh
attered and fires burned. The Recon team endured one final concussion wave from a 105mm cannon at less than fifty yards, then Swede yelled “Ready One.” This gave the three men with the antitank rockets time to come to their kneeling, firing positions.
“Fire!”
Three Armorshock rockets flashed out too fast to see, a ripple of explosions as the booster charges and the heavier blasts of the warheads blended into a cacophony of point-blank slamming hell. Subdued flame blossomed at the left rear of the three nearest tanks, the most vulnerable spot, and an enormous discharge of eye-searing blue lightning accompanied the impact. Cyan sparks crawled across the turrets, shorting out systems, burning out servo motors and fusing traverse mechanisms. The discharges also set off all of the defensive smoke grenades in each tank’s fixed launcher set. A moment later the scene disappeared in overlapping circles of thick artificial fog, with a strange clear space in the middle.
All three tanks had lost their engines and main power. They squatted on their broken treads, apparently lifeless. Better than I expected with these experimentals. Like most veterans, he hated brand-new weapons technology. Now it’s time to pay the piper. Swede saw the last tank slew toward them to present its glacis and lower its main gun toward the group of trees where they sheltered.
“Down!” he yelled and the team hugged the earth like a lover.
His lover bucked, a bronco throwing him skyward mixed with pieces of tree and chunks of mud. He fell broken onto his side, slamming his head into his shoulder and outstretched left arm. The grinding of splintered bones stabbed his ribcage. It hurt to breathe.
Swede reached up with his good arm to key his radio. “This is Gunderson. I’m down,” he gasped. “Anyone still up, engage that last heavy. Remember your final option.” And it’s about time for mine, he thought, reaching. The hard plastic case in his cargo pocket was undamaged, and he painfully dragged it out to pull off the top with his teeth. “Oh well,” he said aloud. “Better than dying.”
He jammed the Eden Plague injector into his thigh.
-29-
His RTO switched his channels and chaos filled Vargas’ earphones. It sounded like the Battalion net but several people were chattering, stepping on each other without discipline so he couldn’t make it out. The best he could tell they were in the midst of some kind of firefight. He snapped, “Furth, leave me on that channel and tell the convoy to halt, close-in deployment, no dismount, stay sharp. Tell the other RTOs to monitor the other company pushes, Guard freq, the Navy, everyone you can think of. Use runners to coordinate if you have to. I want everyone’s ears on signals and I want to know what’s going on, now.”
The convoy quickly halted and soon Vargas had his answers. He looked at his section leaders gathered around, then focused on the young, confident-looking civilian he’d been charged with escorting. He summarized what they had found out. “Sir, Battalion just got hit. Tanks and armored fighting vehicles, maybe a thousand infantry, they can’t tell. They’re getting overrun. It would take at least eight hours, six at best, to get back and help them. There’s no point in that. We have to go on with our mission. If they can fight them off, or some of them can withdraw, the best thing we can do for them is to get Richmond on our side.”
He didn’t ask the civilian’s opinion, but waited for it anyway. Men like this one always had to put their two cents in. What was worse, rumors said he held an Army Reserve Major’s commission and was the son of a well-known General. People like that always meddled.
Vargas waited for the stupid to flow.
Instead, the man just nodded. “Thank you, Major. I agree. Carry on.”
“My pleasure, sir.” Will wonders never cease. Don’t let on, Denny. Yes sir, three bags full, sir. Vargas turned aside. “Furth, try to get through to the Navy, maybe they can send Battalion some air support, they might have lost their long-range transmitter. And keep the RTOs listening on their alternate channels. The rest of you, give everyone ten minutes to stretch and whiz, standard security.”
Back up on top of the tall armored truck, Vargas scanned the surroundings while sucking down a precious red-box Marlboro. He should have thought to try to loot a few cartons along the way, but he hadn’t wanted to waste time. Now he wished they had been delayed six hours, so they could have rushed back to help, play the Cavalry arriving in the nick of time.
That would have been glorious, and maybe the Envoy could have died bravely and heroically. Too bad.
The convoy chugged southward not yet halfway to their destination. Vargas had hoped to make the journey in one day, but at this rate it might be sundown before they reached the outskirts of Richmond – and that was without Murphy’s intervention. No one had challenged them yet. No one had as much as taken a potshot at them, but he expected something eventually. Perhaps it would come at Ashland, the first decent-sized town on the route. Perhaps at Hanover Airport.
They passed the dozenth brown sign directing travelers to yet another Civil War battlefield. Once again he thought of the irony. They were walking – all right, driving – in the bloody footsteps of Lee’s and Grant’s armies.
***
Inside the command vehicle, the Special Envoy sat, his back braced against the padded wall of the troop space, thinking. He ran his hand over his smooth face, through his thick hair. I could pass for twenty-five now. Absolutely amazing. And what do I get for it? Promotion – if you can call it that – from commanding armies to being carted around like a piece of meat without even an aide. And masquerading as my own dead son, to boot.
He snorted to himself. Now I don’t even have the gravitas of my years. And what if Governor Allaine doesn’t believe me when I tell him who I am? Would I believe me? Everything depends on the residual loyalty of a man who was a Unionist party member. Hopefully a reluctant one. Will he remember and rejoin the real, constitutional United States of America? Will he cling to the now-defunct United Governments, may it rot in hell? Or will he simply think himself a bigger and more successful warlord, King of Richmond with some neofeudal vision of Virginia? I have to get him cooperating, vaccinating his people.
Travis Tyler, General, United States Army (Retired), mused and dozed to the jouncing and rocking of the MRAP. Infantrymen learn to sleep anywhere. He found he hadn’t forgotten how.
-30-
Jill’s ears rang and the building shook, raining ceiling tiles, shards of glass and pieces of light fixture onto her. She rolled out of bed and slid underneath, the IV ripping painfully out of her arm. Right now the threat of the second storey coming down on top of her was greater than that of enemy fire. She was just about to slide out from under the bed when a stronger shock and a blast of debris swept the room. Two inner walls collapsed, and pieces of the ceiling and floor above rained down. The outer wall leaned drunkenly, sunlight pouring in.
She heard weapons fire, frantic and close. Screams and cries of triumph mingled with the smells of blood and the stink of death, smoke and cordite. We’re being overrun. She racked her brain for a way out, pleaded with God for a miracle that would fix her broken spine and free her legs to move. Christine said God always answers prayer but don’t sit around on your ass and wait for Him. Good advice in my book.
She looked around, then upward to the hole in the ceiling. Maybe… She slung her PW10, pulled on her gloves and started climbing. Five hundred pull-ups a day paid off.
Up a slanted wooden beam she dragged herself, slithering along its inclined plane like a snake to emerge into the room above. It was some kind of office, disused and dusty. Bracing herself awkwardly she shoved the desk over to the window so she could climb up on it using only her upper body strength. Lying on the flat surface, she knocked the jagged remnants of the window glass out and took stock.
She could see three immobile tanks out by a clump of trees, and another halfway to the clubhouse. Its main gun spoke again, pointing to her right, and the flimsy steel groundskeeping barn disintegrated. If he aims at this building, I’m dead. Have to stop that damn tank somehow.
She started trying radio nets – her platoon, her company, then Battalion. All she heard was confusion and transmissions stepping on each other. Discipline had crumbled. The Battalion might as well be a kicked-over anthill for all the organized resistance it was putting up.
She tried the Force Recon freq. “Swede here,” she heard him rasp. “That you Repeth?”
“Roger that. Any chance someone can get that last tank? We got nothing to stop it back here.”
“I’m looking for an intact weapon right now. This Eden Plague is some shit, by the way. Got me back on my feet in no time.”
“Glad you like it.” The tank gun roared again, this time aiming at the row of golf carts. It appeared the tank gunner was just blowing things up for the fun of it. “But you better do something soon.”
“I’m your huckleberry, Top. Here I come.”
Repeth reminded herself how glad she was that Larry Nightingale had gotten the bugs worked out of the Armorshock rounds he came up with. Not only were they less lethal, they were actually more effective in knocking out heavy tanks. They packed a penetrating but relatively low-power kinetic shock to stun the crew, then an enormous high-voltage discharge designed to burn out electronic systems.
She watched as a lone figure, ragged in mangled Ghillie, broke from the copse of trees behind the tank and ran, antitank missile launcher in one hand, assault rifle in the other. Swede.
He sprayed short bursts of full-auto fire at the nearest enemy infantry, some of whom were crowding close to the sixty-five-ton monster. She saw him let go of his rifle as he went to his knees. He sat back on his heels and lined up the rocket. Nearby grass whipped and shredded as the enemy infantry sprayed fire in his direction, then the launcher spoke. A cloud of smoke wreathed the Recon Marine and the rear of the tank exploded, destroying its turbine engine.
The Reaper Plague Page 13