by John Holmes
Ziv broke the silence. “In Serbia, we call this a clusterfuck.”
Specialist Redshirt chimed in. “Sir, with all due respect, but that’s it?”
“Right now, that’s all we have. I wish I could give you more, but that’s it.”
I sat and waited for the team to get it out, and Brit spoke up the loudest.
“So, let me get this straight. You want us to do your government dirty work, killing enemies of regime and all that? And you can’t tell us who, or what. What, exactly, does this have to do with killing zombies?”
“Nothing, Miss O’Neil, and I remind you, you’re a volunteer. You can walk away from this at any time.”
“No, sweet cheeks” she said, making me inwardly groan “I got this. Can’t let Doc here babysit old pegleg by himself.”
I looked around the room at the Team. We were a mix of soldiers and civilians, though we were a bit short on civilians right now. Brit O’Neil and Sasha Zivkovic, or Ziv for short. She was a former college student, and he used to be a Serbian Special Forces Soldier. Next to them sat Ahmed Yasir, our sniper. On the military side, there was myself, my second in command and team medic, Sergeant First Class “Doc” Hamilton, and our two junior enlisted guys, SPC Redshirt and SPC Esposito.
Well, time to go all in. “Are you asking us to do this mission, or telling us?”
“Telling.”
“Well that settles that, then. We’ll need access to your intelligence sources inside the camp, civilian clothes, etc.”
He seemed to have this already covered. “We pulled your records, all the appropriate clothing sizes will be available at the Central Issuing Facility. New ID cards, cover stories, pistols, communications equipment. We don’t think that you’ll need more than that, because the camps are weapons free zones.”
Brit laughed. “Hey sucker, I got a bridge back in New York I want to sell you. Weapons free, my ass.”
“What’s our cover story?” said Doc.
“You’re a salvage group, bringing in surplus from the San Francisco ruins. Your truck got impounded for use by the Army, and you got put in the FEMA camp till something opens up. This way, you can stick together as a group, and maybe develop some contacts.”
I nodded. “We can use that.” In my head, though, I figured things would go a different way.
Chapter 2
The FEMA camp sat miles south of Tacoma, which was itself overflowing with refugees. There were still large burnt out areas of the city, but things had attained some sort of order over the last year. Now, unrest was rising again. People were getting tired of the permanent “state of emergency”, and there had been riots the last time we were here, a few months ago.
Now the Army patrolled the streets in force, and travel between the camps was severely limited. Every few days a new round of riots would break out, spread by some accident or by design. Rumors were flying about armed groups that were plotting against the government, and sniper fire occasionally hit Army convoys travelling on I-5. The day before, an Improvised Explosive Device had been detonated south of Olympia, and two trucks had been destroyed. The Predator drone on overwatch had left the attackers a smoking hole in the ground.
This was the situation that we were being dumped into, none of us trusted the Army, even JSOC, to have a good plan. We needed to come up with our own.
“Anyone got any ideas?”
Redshirt spoke up first. “How about, we, you know, contact the guys providing the intel, and see what they say?”
Doc answered “Yeah, well, kid, times like this you learn to trust your gut, and things are too unsettled for us to just go walking in there and associating with known rats. They’ll make us in a second.”
He was right along with my thinking. “Doc, I know you used to run with some of the Motorcycle Gangs.”
“Clubs” he corrected me.
“OK, Clubs. I know you were an East Coast guy, but you might know some of them in the camps. No bikes anymore, but I’m sure they stick together. I need you to get in touch with them, see what you can find out.”
“Not a problem. I know three guys who made it back alive from upstate, been in touch with them through e-mail before. They were thinking of going back east, now that we cleared out the Mohawk Valley. I’ll see what info I can get from them in return for a way out of the camps.”
Brit chimed in. “Oh, wait, I know, you want me to be a stripper! See what info I can wheedle out of some Johns, maybe make some New Dollars!” Sarcasm dripped from every pore.
“Um, no. I know deep down in your heart you want to be taking your clothes off for fat sweaty men, but, too bad too sad. You’re going to stay wherever we set up our base of operations.”
She was pissed. “What the hell, Nick? Should I just sit back in the kitchen and make sandwiches? Maybe shine your frigging boots?”
Ziv laughed his low rumble. “Watch out, Nick, she is, how you say, catching fire? Don’t get burned.” He was right, her pale face was almost as red as her hair, and her eyes were blazing.
I sighed. “No, Brit, it’s not like that. Once we get settled, they are going to come to us. The good Major might think that we can go I all incognito, but I’m sure they’ll figure us out soon enough. These camps have been in existence for two years. It will be like walking into a small town, where everyone knows everyone else, and there are powers that be.”
I looked at the team. We were hard. Two years of living out in the wild, marching hundreds of miles, dozens of firefights and hundreds of encounters with the undead. Ziv with his cruel, scarred face. Doc with his bald head, huge arms covered with biker tattoos. Red with his thousand meter stare. Brit with her gunshot wounds. Esposito’s lean, lethal frame. Ahmed’s calm, neutral sniper eyes.
Yeah, we were going to fit in with these FEMA camp sheep like a bunch of wolves. I’m sure the other wolves would sniff us out pretty damn quickly.
“OK, then, let’s roll out.”
Chapter 3
I have served in some pretty nasty places, all over the world before the Zombie Apocalypse, but I never thought I would see things like this back home in America.
The camp was a disaster. A riot had gone through it the day before, and armed guards stood just outside the perimeter, but not inside the camp. As we stood at the in-processing center, an infantry squad climbed into two HUMVEES and started through the gate. There was a long queue waiting in the rain for food rations, and as we watched, a fight broke out down the line.
We had seen the camps as we drove down I-5 last time we were here, before I lost my leg outside Denver. Each one held about ten thousand people, the size of a large town. Some were well organized, others were a seething mess. It wasn’t rare to see one of the plywood and canvas tent structures to blaze up, either from an accident or arson. Political unrest, unhappiness with the government, lack of movement on the resettlement; all made for a tinderbox. Travel between the camps was limited and you had to apply for a pass, which was rarely given.
The Powers That Be had given us a briefing on the current situation on this camp, Bravo Two Zero. It was located just outside Tacoma, in between JBLM and the city proper. Buses left each day to shuttle workers between the camps and the armament factories in Tacoma and Seattle, but this particular camp had been on lockdown since yesterdays’ riot. Rations had also been cut in half, as punishment. The S-2 suspected that the riot had been organized by a group calling themselves “Free Americans”. It was a group dedicated to overthrowing the current emergency powers government, but had a lot of ties to white supremacist gangs. They had been fighting to control the drugs that were smuggled into the camp from Tacoma. Marijuana had been legalized; it kept the population sedated, but there was an outfit up in the mountains that had been growing poppies and cocoa plants in hot houses and selling heroin and crack for gold. Meth was making a new appearance too, as looters smuggled industrial supplies back from the ruined cities and set up labs back in the woods.
There was an ongoing race war inside th
is camp, too, apparently. The “Free Americans” were battling it out with the remains of the black gangs from Tacoma, and apparently they were winning. Throw in there all the different tensions that come from having thousands of shell shocked civilians, many of whom had lost their families in the zombie attacks, and you had a recipe for disaster. Most of the fighting age males were out on the front line, serving with the Army in the Midwest or with the Marines on the East Coast, or down in Mexico securing the oil fields. That left policing the camps to older men and women. Their opponents were felons who had too much of a record to serve in the army, and that had to be pretty damn bad. As a result, some of the camps were running wild, including this one.
The patrol rolled past, manned by guys with lined faces. On top of the trucks, instead of machine guns, there was a mounted Area Active Denial System. Someone messing with them was going to get a serious sunburn and slightly cooked. Brit blew them a kiss as they drove past.
We carried our duffle bags down through the rows of tents. The gravel crunched under our boots, and the ever present rain started to run off the front of my Gortex hood. Sullen faces stared out at us from under rolled up sides of the tents. Even the kids, usually curious about strangers, hung back. This place had some very bad juju.
“Nick. I got a bad feeling about this.” Brit eyed a tent that was burned down to the ground, only blackened concrete pilings still standing. The tent next to it had been shredded by heavy machine gun fire. I was sure that the rounds had continued through whoever had been inside, out the other side, and through a few more tents and anyone who got in the way of their immutable laws of physics. Rivulets of blood had stained the bottom of the tent.
Ziv barked out a short laugh. “This is nothing. You are not pussing out on us now, you silly woman.”
“I ain’t pussing out on shit, you communist prick. Maybe there will be some Muslims for you to slaughter here.”
He laughed again and fingered the hilt of his big combat knife “I hope so. My trophy ears are starting to rot in this rain.”
I ignored them, looking at tents on the left side of the street. Doc checked the ones on the right, looking at the chalk marks showing what was what.
“This isn’t right” said Doc. “Backup.”
We turned back. Through the shreds of the shot up tent I could see the numbers given to us by the JSOC Major.
“Bullshit” said Red, and I agreed. “What do we do now?”
I turned to the tent behind us. A couple of biker looking guys sat on a makeshift porch, eyeing us.
“Well, we’re supposed to be some hard ass crew. Let’s go be hard ass.”
Chapter 4
“I got this.”
“Be my guest.” Brit walked past me and walked up to the closest, a big bellied guy with a long beard. He eyed her suspiciously, and scratched at his beard.
“What the hell do you want, little girl? Need your diaper changed? Maybe your bottom spanked?” His friends found this uproariously funny.
“I’m here to steal your soul, Duck Dynasty.” He had one second to let out a quizzical “Huh?” then Brit hit him right behind the jaw with an extendable graphite baton. He fell like an ox that had been poleaxed.
The others, four of them in all, jumped up and started to rush her. I stood still as the rest of the team rushed past me. Brit kicked the fat man hard in the head, and a general melee erupted. I couldn’t move very fast on the still healing stump of my leg, so I waited for what I knew would happen.
Out of the doorway came a guy with a sawn off double barrel shotgun. I drew and fired in one smooth motion, just like I had learned reading Shane. Aim like you’re pointing your finger. The .45 round caught him in the right hip and spun him around. The shotgun fired into the next guy coming out of the door and punched through his gut. Everything stopped and the fighting figures came to a halt.
“Out! All of you!” The gut shot man was staring wide eyed, trying to stuff his intestines back into his abdomen. “Take your trash with you.” I walked past the two wounded, picked up the shotgun, and headed into the tent. The bikers picked up their wounded friends and carried them off, cursing us.
Inside was a pigsty. In the corner was a still, dripping out moonshine from copper coils. Filth was piled high, empty MRE bags, water bottles full of piss. It never pays to underestimate the opposition, but if this was the local thugs, well then, I’d take it.
“Nice” said Esposito. “I’ve seen zombies take better care of their places. What’s next, Nick?”
“Well, we clean up. And we wait. I’m sure whoever is creating the mayhem, and whoever is behind this supposed terrorist plot, will show up sooner or later.”
We settled down to wait. There was power run to the tent, so Red got to work hooking up a SINCGARS, a medium short range FM radio, with a communications security device to scramble our calls. He made a quick radio check with higher, then shut back down. Outside the base, a Quick Reaction Force sat waiting to back us up if we needed help, or to extract us if things went really bad. A UH-60 with a squad of Army Rangers was kept five minute alert, but I hoped we wouldn’t need them. The firepower that a Ranger squad could bring would lead to massacre of the civilian population. All the world had gone to hell, but this was still America, and I didn’t want that to happen.
Chapter 5
We waited until dark, but nothing happened. The lights of the camp came on, but shadows sprung up around the tents, lending a sinister gloom to the whole surroundings.
I stood up, and walked back into the tent. Time for some action, time to stir the hornet’s nest. If they wouldn’t come to us, time for us to go to them.
“Ziv, Doc, time for a little entertainment. Somewhere, there has got to be something going on in this camp.”
Brit stood up, and Ziv put his hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down. She collapsed down with an “ooff” and shot daggers with her eyes at him. “What the hell, you jerk!”
He laughed. “This is mans’ work, little girl.”
“Nick, what the hell!”
“He’s right, Brit. We’re going to some rough places tonight, and you would be more of a distraction than a help.”
She was pissed, but there was nothing I could do about it. I knew I would pay for it later, but honestly, I didn’t want to have to worry about her shooting her mouth off at the wrong time. That, or get sexually assaulted and stick or shoot one of her attackers.
“Fine! I’ll just stay here and sweep, do some dishes, make you some sammiches.” Oh yes, she was pissed.
I went outside and walked out into the darkness. Doc and Ziv were waiting for me. We walked down the muddy street, heading into the middle of the camp. Like a spider web, that was where the action would be.
When we got there, there was an open area, and on one side, a large, low tent. Sounds of a crowd were coming out as a muted rumble, punctuated every now and then with a cheer. As we approached, a shaft of light flashed out as a flap was opened, and a body was thrown out, to land heavily in the mud.
“I think we found the place, Nick” said Doc.
“You up for this, Ziv?” He didn’t answered, just pulled his knife out a half inch, then pushed it back in and grunted.
We went inside, and pushed our way through the crowd to we reached an open space. A wooden ring went around the dirt floor, about twenty feet in diameter. On the far side of the ring sat a man on a camp stool, dressed in black jeans, work boots, and a black jacket. The action swirled around him, but didn’t seem to touch him. He was the center of the tent, no doubt, and he confirmed it by raising his hand. The noise immediately stopped.
“Well, what have we here? More challengers for our entertainment!” The crowd broke into a cheer. He let them go for a minute, then waved his hand for quiet again. He stood up and strode across the ring to us, holding out his hand.
“Welcome to the Thunderdome! Here for a challenge?”
I ignored his outstretched hand. “You gotta be shitting me. The Thunderdome
? Really?”
He dropped his hand and a big grin spread across his face. “Well, I do admit, it’s a bit cheesey, but we don’t get satellite TV in the camps. Gotta keep the masses entertained somehow. “
“Uh, OK. We’re here looking for work, really.”
“Work? Well, we’ll see about work. But first, well, first comes entertainment. Randall Flag, at your service” and he bowed low.
This guy was a loon, but he was holding all the cards. Behind us, the crowd had closed in, and three guys with baseball bats closed the gap behind us. In for the penny, in for the pound.
“Nick.” I nodded to my left and right “Rob and Ziv.”
“Pleased to meet you. Though, I think ,,,” and he stared hard at Ziv “I think I know this man. Yes, yes, I do. A long way from home, are we not?”
Ziv cursed low under his breath, then spoke up. “Yes, I know you. You were the butcher of Srebrenica.”
“What’s that expression? One death is a murder, a million is a statistic? I fell somewhat short, but oh my, it doesn’t matter now, does it? With the whole world in runs?” and he laughed uproariously.
I waited for the laughter to die out, then asked. “So what’s the deal?”
I knew what he would say even before he opened his mouth to say it.
“The deal? Well, it’s easy. Two men enter, one man leaves.”
Chapter 6
Well, if that was the in, that that was the in. I started to step forward, but Doc put his hand on my shoulder, and Ziv stepped past me. “Nick, as your doctor, I say no frigging way. Besides, he’s better than you ever were.”
I stepped back, grumbling, and sat down at a low bench, one hand inside my jacket on the butt of my pistol. I didn’t care, if it looked like Ziv was going to lose, I would drop his opponent and we would shoot our way out.
Ziv handed Doc his jacket, then his shirt. He was muscled like a bear, and old scars zigzagged across his torso. Low down, just under his ribcage, a horrific line of stitches showed on his back. In front was the angry red pucker of a large caliber bullet entry wound. Old white scars from shrapnel and knife wounds told of a lifetime of fighting, and there was a harsh burn mark on one shoulder.