Thunder and Ashes

by Z. A. Recht

  “The boot! The boot!” Krueger said, fumbling with his laces. “Help me take the boot off!”

  Sherman fired twice more, killing another shambler. Two sprinters appeared out of the darkness, roared up at the group, and began their climb. Thomas winged one in the shoulder, and it spun with the impact of the round, rolling back down to the bottom of the hill. It jumped back up to its feet, roared again in defiance, and began its climb anew.

  The second was struck in the stomach by Sherman, and it doubled over, faceplanting in the dirt. For a moment, Sherman had thought he’d killed it, but then he saw it raise its head and stare at him. It still moved forward, dragging itself up root by root, rock by rock, snarling all the way. The bullet had severed its spinal cord, disabling its legs. The rest of it still worked fine, however, and it wasn’t giving up.

  Krueger managed to unlace his boot and pull his foot free. He grabbed for his rifle. “Come on, come on! I’m out! Let’s go!”

  The four fell back, firing downhill at their pursuers, and finally burst free of the treeline at the top of the hill. Far in the distance, across several acres, were the guard towers of Abraham, Kansas.

  “Looks like a little slice of heaven,” Brewster heaved, taking a moment to appreciate the sight of salvation.

  “No time for discussion,” Thomas said, firing a shot back into the woods. “We’re still being hunted.”

  Krueger took off first, shouldering his rifle and moving with an odd limp. Sherman wondered about it a moment, then realized the soldier was only wearing one boot. He would be the slowest of them.

  “Thomas, don’t overtake Krueger,” Sherman ordered. “Keep his back covered.”

  “Yes, sir,” came the monotone reply.

  By the time the group had covered half the distance to the town’s main gates, the full force of sprinters on their tails was exposed, pouring out of the woods. By the look of it, they had stirred up enough infected to populate a crossroads village. Between the ones they had already shot and the ones running after them in the dark fields, Sherman estimated well over a hundred of them had crossed their paths tonight.

  “Last magazine!” Sherman announced, shoving in his final clip.

  Thomas had already thrown aside his own longarm, having run out of ammunition for it. He’d drawn his pistol again and was rapidly going through ammunition. Brewster had run out completely. Krueger was of little use in the firefight as the pace-setter for the group. He was busy running full-tilt.

  Sherman fired three rounds in the direction of a nearby sprinter. One of the rounds must have hit, because the infected pitched into the tall grass of the field, thrashed about a bit, and was still. Thomas took another kill of his own, a female infected that loomed just a little too close. Thomas took his time lining up the shot and dropped the woman before she reached them.

  “We’re going to run out of ammo before we run out of sprinters!” Brewster said, taking in the situation.

  “Noticed!” Thomas grumbled back.

  “Look there!” Krueger said, eyes widening as he ran toward the town. “The gates! Look there!”

  Ahead of them at the town’s gates, a commotion was stirring. In the darkness it was hard to make out who was who, but Sherman guessed the women they’d saved had made it back and now the gate guards were expecting the soldiers’ arrival. Out of nowhere, small spotlights low to the ground lit up the night, swiveled in the group’s direction, and illuminated the fields. The sounds of engines being revved up met their ears.

  “Don’t stop to think about it,” Sherman said, seeing Krueger’s stride shorten. “Keep running, keep running!”

  The lights wavered as the engines in the distance picked up speed. Reinforcements were apparently on the way.

  The infected were closing in. There were about twenty in full view of Abraham’s spotlights, and more along the treeline. Thomas and Sherman picked up their rate of fire. Sherman sent another sprinter sprawling to the ground before his pistol’s slide locked back. He had not a single bullet left.

  “I’m out!” he shouted.

  “Got you covered, sir!” Thomas said, taking over. He sent a barrage in the direction of a pair of sprinters that were coming up directly behind the retreating foursome, scoring hits on one but only grazing the other. His pistol clicked on empty and he cursed, pausing to eject the magazine and slam home his final clip.

  Thomas brought his weapon back up just in time to get off a shot that impacted the carrier’s solar plexus, knocking it backward to slam hard on the ground as if punched by a giant, invisible fist.

  A moment later, the revving of the engines reached a fever pitch and a pair of Jeeps pulled up alongside the winded survivors, outfitted with off-roading tires and spotlights along their tops.

  Sheriff Keaton leaned out one of the driver’s side windows.

  “Come on, come in, get in already! You’ve got half the damn state behind you! We have to get behind the fences!”

  The survivors didn’t argue. They jumped and clambered into and on the vehicles as fast as they could manage. Deputies that had ridden out with the Sheriff fired parting shots with the sprinters as the Jeeps turned tail and gunned it back to the gates of the town.

  They roared onto the road, scattering gravel and debris behind them, and squealed to a stop just past the guard towers. The deputies swiveled the spotlights to face the fields and guards in the towers raised their rifles.

  “Defend!” Sheriff Keaton yelled up. Though no verbal response was given, the men seemed to understand. Sherman guessed they had done this before over the course of the preceding months.

  The carriers that had been following grew closer and closer until the group of men and women near the town’s gates could hear their labored breathing. Only then did the men in the guard towers and along the edge of the fence open fire. Carriers dropped left and right as bullets tore through them.

  It took less than five minutes for the citizens of Abraham, Kansas to kill the carriers that had been pursuing Sherman and the rest. When the last infected had died, silence fell over the little town. It was the first time in hours that Sherman, Thomas, Krueger, or Brewster had heard true silence. Their ears were ringing from the dozens of gunshots they’d fired and their lungs and legs burned from the long run. They met the silence as a leper meets a cure, whole-heartedly and with warm thoughts.

  The battle was over.

  The looked around at one another, nodding thanks or appreciation.

  “All right,” Sherman said after they had caught their breath. “Now maybe it’s time you told me about the mission.”

  Before Thomas could respond, an exultant cheer swept the silence away. Dozens of voices raised in praise and admiration. The four soldiers stood upright and looked around. Half the town, it seemed, had turned out to greet them upon their return. Off on one side, sitting on a sidewalk, were the rescued women, being tended to by townsfolk and Rebecca, who had quickly found her way to them with her medical kit.

  Sherman recognized Jose Arctura as one of the men gathered around the women. He was embracing one of them with tears in his eyes, and Sherman could only guess that it was his daughter. He felt a surge of relief at the sight. There were few enough reasons to feel good in the brave new world, and he was more than happy to have provided one.

  Such was the reason the town had turned out to greet the saviors of the women. Young, old, male, female, it seemed the citizenry would never stop cheering. They pressed around Sherman and his small group, patting them on the back and expressing their thanks or offering them homemade dinners from home-grown ingredients. By the fence near the guard towers, aloof from the group, stood Sheriff Keaton, shotgun over his shoulder and a small smile on his lips.

  Keaton let the throng lead the soldiers down the street, then turned to one of his deputies, his smile fading.

  “You saw the explosion?” he asked, nodding in the direction of the raiders’ complex.

  “Sure did, Sheriff,” the deputy said. “They really d
id a number on that place.”

  Keaton sighed heavily and gritted his teeth. The strangers from the west had done Abraham a great service in returning their captive women and dealing a blow to the raiders that had plagued them for so long, but the very same action may have doomed more lives.

  “Double the guard along the fences,” Keaton said askance to the deputy, staring out into the darkened fields. “Twenty-four hours a day. Call in the reserves and have Grimes do an inventory and cleaning on our weapons.”

  “Sheriff?” asked the deputy. “Problem?”

  “Maybe,” Keaton said. “Maybe not. But let’s be prepared either way.”

  They sure stirred up a hornet’s nest, Keaton thought. Let’s just hope these hornets have the good sense to stay and rebuild . . . and not come looking for vengeance.

  Coast of Oregon

  March 09, 2007

  0956 hrs_

  A MONSTER LURKED OFFSHORE. It wasn’t a monster of flesh and blood. Instead, it was a monster of steel and wiring, a hulking shape in the early morning fog. It approached the rocky shoreline slowly, carefully. As it approached, it began a slow, ponderous turn to port, giving the men onboard a clear view of the coastline. As the ship came out of the fog, the words upon its bow, at first wispy and enshrouded, stood out bold and clear:

  DDG-61

  U.S.S. RAMAGE

  On the bridge, Captain Prescott Franklin stood with folded arms, staring out the windows at the shore, a distant look in his eyes. All around him, the crew went about their normal business of making certain the ship was in a safe position, then proceeded to drop anchor.

  “Ship’s secure, Captain,” reported Franklin’s second in command, a slightly built man with a receding hairline named Harris.

  Franklin nodded to himself and sighed heavily. This was a day he had hoped would never come.

  “It’s time, then,” he said out loud, hanging his head. “Give me the comm.”

  Commander Harris picked up a radio handset, dialed out so the captain could speak to the entire ship, and handed the transmitter to Franklin. Franklin accepted it and slowly brought it up to his lips. He hesitated a moment, shoulders sagging, then clicked the handset.

  “Crew of the U.S.S Ramage, this is the captain speaking,” he began. He let a moment pass before clicking the handset again and continuing. “I know we’ve been through a lot together these past few months. We’ve seen and done things we all prayed we would never have to do. We’ve seen things come about that we all prayed never would. And now I’m going to give the one order I prayed I would never have to. There’s nowhere left for us to go, sailors. We’re low on rations, low on fuel, and there’s not a friendly port that can accomodate us left in the world. Therefore, I’ve brought us back home.”

  Franklin let go of the handset and sighed again. Harris stood closely behind him, hands clasped behind his back.

  “Give the order, sir,” he quietly said.

  Franklin nodded slightly, held the handset back up to his lips, and clicked the transmit button.

  “All hands, prepare to abandon ship. I say again, abandon ship. This is the captain.”

  Franklin let the handset drop to the surface of the console next to him, turning away from the bridge to stare out the windows once more. Around him, the crew responded to the order, taking off headsets and leaving the bridge. Harris remained behind, supervising the exodus. Franklin barely moved at all as his men prepared to leave their floating home behind. Duffels had been packed days before. The crew had known the order was coming.

  Things moved swiftly. Within minutes, the remaining sailors of the Ramage as well as one civilian stood on the deck of the ship, waiting to be offloaded and ferried to shore.

  On deck, the sailors were both excited and nervous about what lay ahead of them. The decision to leave the ship behind had not been an easy one, and it hadn’t been made overnight. Since leaving Sherman and his group of survivors behind on this very same rocky stretch of land, the crew had been through a lot. They hadn’t merely been sailing the oceans, safe from the infection.

  The U.S.S. Ramage had been waging war.

  After Sherman and his crew had disembarked months earlier, the naval destroyer turned southward, toward San Francisco harbor. Their orders had been to assist the Army in securing the city. By the time they had arrived, the city had been overrun. There was no Army commander to report to. He had been infected. The Ramage and the other four Naval ships in the bay loitered around for several days, occasionally picking up an uninfected survivor that had made it out of the city, but otherwise doing a lot of nothing.

  Then an outbreak had occurred on one of the other destroyers in the bay, and the sailors hadn’t been able to contain it. The vessel was overrun within a day. When all radio contact had been cut off for five hours, the sailors presumed her lost. Seeing one of their ships effectively destroyed by the virus, the remaining four captains held a meeting.

  They concluded, after nearly twelve hours of argument, that they were the sole remaining effective force in the area. That gave them operational command of the efforts to control the Morningstar strain in San Francisco. Therefore, they decided, they would carry out their orders to the best of their ability, and may God have mercy on their souls.

  Within moments of the meeting’s adjournment, the four remaining destroyers turned their weapons on the city of San Francisco.

  Missiles rained down on the metropolis. Skyscrapers came crashing down. The suburbs burned like a wildfire, consuming everything. The ships laid waste to San Francisco as might an angry Olympian god, and left behind only smoldering craters when they sailed out of the bay the next morning. The sailors could stand on the deck of their ship and watch the smoke rising up into the sky for hours afterward, long after the city itself had vanished over the horizon.

  The four destroyers had parted ways soon afterward, each bound for a separate target. Two captains decided to go and see what was left of Los Angeles. Another plotted a course for Seattle. Franklin went to Portland.

  Franklin and the captain of the destroyer bound for Seattle lost radio contact with the two L.A.-bound ships three days later, and they were presumed lost.

  The Ramage had approached Portland slowly, scanning radio frequencies for any contacts. There were none to be found. The ship pulled in as close as it could and visually surveyed the city from on deck. Gangs of infected roamed the streets, and small fires were burning throughout the city. Franklin tried for two more days to raise someone in the city by radio, and then gave the order to drop what remained of the ship’s ordnance onto Portland.

  Franklin and his sailors stood on the deck that night and watched Portland burn. It was one of the quietest nights of Franklin’s life. None of the sailors spoke to one another. Only the gentle sound of waves lapping against the hull of the ship broke the silence. All of the men simply stood and stared.

  The next morning, Franklin tried to raise the captain of the destroyer bound for Seattle and got nothing. The ship had simply vanished. Franklin left the Ramage sitting just offshore of Portland for an entire day, repeating calls over the radio in vain. Not a soul responded. Franklin and his crew felt as if they were the only people remaining on the planet.

  A pervasive sense of loneliness and emptiness washed over the sailors. Morale was at an all-time low. Fights were breaking out, and even the chief petty officers were having a hard time keeping the seamen in line.

  Finally Franklin decided that what the men needed was a purpose. He turned the ship westward, and headed back out across the great Pacific Ocean. His destination was a speck of an island that they had visited once before, when Sherman had still been onboard. They’d received repairs and supplies in return for trade items from a man on the island named Hal Dorne. Franklin had remembered how much the men had enjoyed the tropical atmosphere and was banking on being allowed a return visit.

  He was doomed to disappointment.

  Hal Dorne himself was quite welcoming when the Ramage showed
up once more off the shore of the little island he’d come to call home. The native islanders, on the other hand, were not. They had one radio that they used to get news and updates from around the world, and when they had stopped receiving transmissions altogether, they had decided that the best way to protect themselves was to continue doing what they had always done: mind their own business and keep any outsiders away.

  Hal had argued on behalf of Franklin and his crew, trying to convince the locals to allow them sanctuary. When the argument turned into a shouting match, Hal suddenly found himself evicted. He’d stood on the deck of the Ramage making rude gestures at the locals until the ship had moved far enough away from the tropical paradise that the people on the shoreline were out of sight.

  At first, Hal was the most irate, unbearable guest Franklin could have ever wished for. He cursed the crew of the ship up and down for “ruining his retirement” and kept going on and on about how he could be “laying in a hammock drinking rum” instead of being “trapped on this goddamn rustbucket.”

  As time went on, however, Hal calmed down and accepted his fate as a new member of the crew. During an outbreak onboard months earlier, the ship’s mechanic had been killed, and Hal had done his time in the Army as a tank mechanic, so it seemed only fair for him to don the title of chief engineer. Franklin didn’t doubt the man’s ability. The ship had been damaged during that same outbreak, and Hal had been the one to come onboard and fix the problem. In a matter of hours, no less. The captain of the Ramage had every confidence in his new crewmember.

  Then morale began to sink again. There were murmurs floating around the ship. Some of the sailors thought that they would be onboard until they died. Others thought they would drift aimlessly from port to port until the ship rusted out from underneath them. Still others claimed that they wanted off, to take their chances at surviving on solid ground and maybe having a future.

  As the days and weeks passed, those few who claimed they wanted to leave grew in number until most of the crew stood behind the idea. Even Franklin considered it reasonable. As far as he knew, he was all that remained of the U.S. Navy. They wouldn’t be able to last forever onboard a destroyer. The men, he had to admit, were right. They had to leave the ship behind and find someplace more permanent, a place where they might have a future.