“Here,” Kinnick pulled out a tan bandage, winding it around his skull. The master sergeant held a painful smile.
“It’s fine. We gotta get these boys back in the fight,” Hunter said.
Scared eyes looked back at Kinnick and Hunter. The soldiers were at the end of their rope. Death came for them, and it took them fast and without remorse. I should have fought for more men. Now, I have led these brave few souls to their deaths. Fool.
Hunter read the look on his face. His single eye darted back and forth. He nodded and did his due diligence, setting the men to tasks, knowing that it would be their final assignment.
“Corporal Warren, get that machine gun set up. Burbeck, lay out the 40mms. You got to hit that pass over and over when they get through the wall. Paterson, you keep Warren in the fight. We got at least five more boxes of the 7-6-2 for the 240. Remember your lineage, Bunker Hill Brigade. Always steadfast, fight like the devil, and don’t give an inch to the bastards.”
Kinnick pulled out his high-frequency radio. He stared at the dusty handset in desperation. He twisted to the corresponding channel and pressed the handset to his ear. The radio beeped at him. No point in having pride now.
“NORAD Operations,” a voice said on the line.
“This is Colonel Kinnick. Requesting air support, danger close. We’ve been overrun.”
Gunshots popped off nearby.
A new voice came on the line. “This is General Daugherty.”
Not you. “Sir, this is Kinnick. We are requesting close air support and exfiltration. Our hold has been broken.” Snow flurries continued their downward descent from the sky and through the trees.
“I’m not surprised to hear from you, Kinnick, but I’m not happy about it either.”
“Sir, we are being overrun. We need immediate assistance.”
General Daugherty paused.
I don’t have time for pauses.
“There’s nothing I can do. It’s out of my hands.”
Was that remorse in the general’s voice? No matter now, we are all dead.
“I understand, sir,” Kinnick said, eying the pass with dread. Dead hands pushed their way through the barricade with the sheer weight of numbers. The bodies stacked on the barricade were pushed all the way to the other side. The dead crawled over the bodies of the slain, foe and kindred alike.
“Thank you for your service, Colonel. Good luck.”
“Copy,” Kinnick mumbled.
Kinnick hung up his radio handset. Bastards. It was a weird feeling knowing that he would soon be dead. It was a rough feeling knowing that his military was going to abandon them in a mountain pass in their own backyard like some abused dog.
The enemy closed around them. Their heads swayed like buoys in an endless sea of flesh. The 40mm rounds thudded and exploded in the pass. He felt detached from this reality as the grenade rounds pounded the pass.
The faint moans of the dead scratched his ears like fingernails down a chalkboard. The machine gun pounded away at his skull, but it was the screeching of aircraft that caught his attention. It was something that he was accustomed to, having been a pilot in what seemed like a previous life. He ignored the march of the dead, his eyes drawn to the gray billowing clouds.
The high-frequency radio beeped. Kinnick snatched up the handset. “Colonel Kinnick, this is Raven. Heard you boys were in the thick. Permission to engage the pass, over?” a voice crackled over the radio.
“Raven. General Daugherty said we are on our own. Where’d you come from?”
“Battle-axe and I overheard your conversation with the general. We thought we would lend you boys a helping hand.” Kinnick was dumbstruck. He turned around in a circle, looking in the sky for them.
“Jesus Christ, Raven. We are on our last leg. Fire away.”
“Better hunker in real tight, Colonel, ’cause it’s going to get hot.”
“Everybody, danger close!” Kinnick screamed. Hunter shot him a confused glance with his one eye. “They’re coming in hot.”
Kinnick hopped down prone. Rocky earth ground into him. Dust puffed into the air. Seconds dragged by like the feet of the dead.
“I’m out,” Warren yelled over his shoulder. The dead still poured through the pass. The onslaught of death ever approached Kinnick’s men. Thousands of moans cried victory as their feet pounded the earth with every step.
“Keep firing,” Kinnick shouted at his men. The bullets of so few did little to thin the massive army of infected. The undead absorbed the bullets and the fallen alike, replacing their dead with even more infected. In no time, the infected were a few dozen steps away.
The dead looked like people now. Mouths hung open. Heads tilted atop mangled necks. Shoulders drooped, attached to bullet hole riddled bodies. Gray skin sagged over skeletal frames. Disheveled, filthy hair coated scarred faces and lipless mouths. Some of their lips had been rubbed away from all the feedings. Dead white eyes zeroed in on their next victims. The dead could smell victory and the flesh of men alike. Kinnick and his men would be dismembered as the horde passed over them. The front ranks of the dead would feed on them while the others would continue their drudge for the rest of humanity. The infected would march into Colorado and finish off the last bastion of the United States government in the Golden Triangle. And mankind would go with a whimper instead of a roar into the annals of earth’s long history. Extinct.
Kinnick flipped a switch on the lower receiver of his gun. He took aim and let his carbine fire repeated three-round bursts. It did little to the mass of humanity. It was as if he shot a concrete wall. The infected reached for him with rotting, mangled fingers on broken hands.
Shroom! Shroom! The earth shook as the jets went by. The ground began trembling beneath the assault from above. Fireballs erupted into fiery fingers that reached for the sky. A deafening roar assaulted his eardrums and an inferno rolled down the roadway, annihilating the infected.
The dead nearest them were sent off their feet. Others near the pass were incinerated into flaming dust. Kinnick covered his head with his arms as pieces of charred flesh, rocks, and wood rained down on them. An infected head plopped down within feet of Kinnick, rolling to a halt near his leg. Its mouth lay permanently open, its skin charred black. Kinnick swatted it away with his free hand and grabbed his carbine with the other. He stood up to get a better view.
“WaHoo. Get some,” shouted Burbeck, raising a fist in the air along with his M16A4.
“How about them apples?” Warren called out at the rocky terrain of smoldering infected. Bodies that hadn’t been completely incinerated were aflame in blackish heaps of gooey flesh. Paterson stood up and wrapped his arm around Warren. The dead only caught in the shockwave were getting back to their feet.
“Don’t celebrate too early,” Hunter said. “Let’s clear them out.”
His remaining men smiled as they put bullets into the crawling dead. Hope had replaced certain death. Five minutes later, Kinnick joined Hunter, looking over the pass of death.
“We did it, sir. Nothing like a little air superiority.”
Kinnick grinned as his stomach warmed with the turn of fate. “Can’t say I’ve ever been more proud.”
Hunter offered him a salute. The rest of his men did the same. Tears came to the corners of his eyes as he returned their salute. I can’t believe we held them.
“Let’s get Daugherty, that snake-bastard, on the line. Tell him we did it.”
Hunter grinned beneath his bloody brown beard. “I’d love to see the look on that prick’s face when you tell him we held.”
“We will soon enough, in person, but first, let’s give our saviors some love,” Kinnick said. He picked up his radio handset. “Raven, there are some real grateful men down here. Thank you.”
“Least we could do on our way by.”
“Way by?”
The microphone cracked and shifted to only static. Kinnick glanced at the sky wondering, what the pilot meant.
Over a minute later, he
saw the white flash and his gut sank as low as it could go in his body. He was far enough away where he could look right at it. It seemed more like a sun in pencil form leaping up from a mountain hundreds of miles away. A gray plume of smoke shot upright and curled over on itself thousands of feet in the air. Salt Lake City? Kinnick closed his eyes, opening them as he could feel the boom run across his face. Tears flowed freely down his cheeks, driving off his chin now. Roooaarrrr! The boom echoed from mountain to mountain.
Everything he had fought for and his men had died for had been in vain. Entire cities were being annihilated as thermonuclear warheads slammed into all of the population centers of the western United States. Kinnick dropped to his knees, letting his gun fall from his grasp.
“The bastard. He did it. He really did it,” he said aloud, but no one heard.
STEELE
Pentwater, MI
He awoke before he opened his eyes. He listened briefly, wondering if he had passed on. No heavenly trumpets awaited him. No din from a Valhalla battle. Not even the darkness of nothing. Only pain met him. Pain that pounded through his arm and leg assured him he still remained in the world of the living. He peeped his eyes open. A woman’s heart-shaped face looked back. He knew in an instant it was her. Until the day he died, he would recognize it. Gwen’s nose sniffled and she ran a hand across it. She half-laughed, half-cried.
“You’re awake,” she whispered. Her voice was genuinely happy.
Steele groaned, feeling the full extent of his injuries. His arm burned and his leg throbbed like someone was pushing on his small pellet wounds.
“I suppose you’re going to tell me I’m lucky to be alive,” he whispered, his voice crackling in dehydration.
She placed a bottle of water to his lips, and the dryness of his throat scratched as the water went down. After a gulp, it wouldn’t go down and he spit up some of the liquid onto himself. He brought his arm that wasn’t agonizingly filled with pain across his mouth.
“How long have I been out?” he asked, twisting his head to get a good look at his other arm. It rested on his chest in a sling, and white bandages wrapped all the way around it. The bandages were tight and his arm was hot underneath them, screaming in pain for air. “Let me swell,” his wound seemed to whisper.
“You’ve been in and out for two days. One of the War Machines is a retired corpsman. He did the best he could, but the arm is,” she stopped mid-sentence. She gave him a sad smile that made his heart drop. “Time will tell.”
Steele lifted his head off his pillow. He wiggled his fingers a fraction in defiance at her claims.
“Fingers still work,” he grunted. After putting his head back on his pillow, he lay silent for a minute, exhausted by the small effort.
He took in his surroundings, not recognizing the dorm-like room he lay in.
“Where are we?”
“Pentwater Fire Department. That’s where the bikers dropped us off after the attack.”
“What attack?” Steele’s heart jumped. Instinctually his eyes darted around the room for a weapon. “Pastor?”
She shook her head. “Hundreds of infected on the road. We were trapped, but Max, he helped save us.”
Steele smiled and coughed a bit, bringing a fist to his mouth. “There’s no way you needed saving. Where is that young buck? I want to tell him I’m proud of him.” He stared at her, awaiting her reply. He blinked. “That stupid kid. Bring him in. Let me see him. I’ll give him a noogie or something. “
Gwen glanced nervously at her hands. She clasped them tightly in front of her. Tears filled her eyes. “He didn’t make it.”
Steele let his head rest back on the pillow and squeezed his eyes shut. Goddamnit. You weren’t supposed to go on the list, kid. He took in a deep breath and let out a sorrowful sigh.
“How many of us made it?” he asked, fearing the answer and keeping his eyes closed.
“Many,” she said. He cracked his eyes open and eyed her suspiciously, knowing that it wasn’t beyond her to withhold some part of the truth.
“I don’t believe you.”
She raised an eyebrow in defense. “You don’t?”
“I want to see everyone. Help me up,” he ordered. He waited a moment when she didn’t help. “Please?”
She stared back, her hands clasped in her lap. Her eyebrows raised up a bit, the mother coming out in her.
“Don’t you practice your mother face on me,” he said, raising his eyebrows back at her. He knew one eyebrow wasn’t going up as high as the other due to the scar tissue covering his scalp.
“No. You need rest.” Her eyes dared him to say otherwise.
“I can rest when I’m dead.”
Her eyes narrowed. “If you don’t rest, you will be dead.” Her face took on a defiant demeanor. The two were like a pair of mules pushing over an inch of ground.
“You at least have to let me take a piss.”
“Fine,” she said. She handed him a crutch and wrapped her arm around his body, helping him sit up. Pain shot through his arm, taking his breath away. He gave her a wince-filled grin.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Yes. Give me a hand.” She placed a gentle hand on his back, helping him upright.
They stood and he wedged the crutch in the crook of his undamaged armpit. Hobbling, he marched for the bathroom door. After relieving himself, he made good on his promise and went for the dorm room door. She let him go but stayed glued to his side. He wasn’t sure if she was sympathetic to his plea or simply letting it go. Because if she didn’t want him to go, he would have been easily led back to his bed.
He stepped into the hall and limped down the whitewashed corridor, wishing he had stayed in bed with every damaged step.
“One step at a time,” he said to himself. His pace was painfully slow. Literally anything moved faster than him. Turtles. Sloths. A snail. But he moved with determination. He didn’t know why, but he felt like he had to.
A familiar face emerged from a small dorm room just like the one he had been in. The middle-aged woman smiled at him as he hobbled past.
“Margie,” he said with a smile. She was all right. “Good shooting out there.” She reached up and touched his face. Her lips curved like a proud mother, her eyes wrinkling in the corners.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “He’s up,” she shouted. Others came to the doors. Bald Larry gave him a grin and gripped his good arm tight.
“You did us proud,” Larry said with a nod. “You did us proud.”
Hank and Gregor were there.
“You guys did well out there,” Steele said to them. They both nodded.
“Thank you, Captain,” Gregor said. He wiped a strand of hair out of his face and put a large hand on Steele’s shoulder. Steele was too tired to fight them on it.
“Alex?” Steele asked. The two men shook their heads no. Another name for the list. He wrapped his fingers around the worn metal hammer dangling from the chain around his neck. Jarl. Wheeler. Andrea. Barnes. Lewis. Max. Alex. Bengy. My mother. The last one stung the most. He wasn’t there when she needed him the most. And all these others from Little Sable I couldn’t save.
“Kevin and Ahmed?” he said urgently to Gwen.
She smiled. “They’re here. In the kitchen,” she said. He hobbled down the hall a fraction of a step faster.
He found the pair eating soup from cans at a long table that once served the squad of firefighters when they were on call at the firehouse.
“Yay, the big guy’s up,” Kevin exclaimed, throwing his arms in the air.
Ahmed grinned. His stubble seemed to have turned into a jet black beard overnight, the same with his shaved head. “It’s good to see you, my friend.”
Steele looked at the ground and back at Ahmed. “We need to find you a set of clippers. Your hair looks terrible. I’m going to start calling you my chia pet,” Steele laughed. Ahmed felt his bristly scalp.
“You survived all this to come in here and tell me I need a hair
cut?”
Steele laughed. Pain went through both his leg and arm. “Ow. Don’t make me laugh.”
“When we’re done with my hair, I’m taking it to that squirrel’s nest on your face.”
Steele ran a hand through his beard. “Not until the playoffs are over.” Steele stopped smiling after a moment.
A certain sadness washed over them. They would never watch hockey again, but they were alive.
Steele glanced at Kevin. “Good to see you in one piece.”
“So you really took that Víktov Hill strategy to heart? Battle wagons, militia, ambush. Like a true commander.”
“History will always play a role in the present. It’s only a matter of seeing where it applies, but I’m hardly a commander.”
“Call it what you want, but you won a great battle out there.”
“Thunder won the battle. We held the ground long enough. More stupid stubbornness than anything else.”
Kevin gave him a knowing smile. “Jan Žižka would have been proud.”
Laughing, Steele shook his head at the former history teacher. We fought because we didn’t have a choice. “Lofty comparison.”
He left the men and crutched for the stairs. He traversed the stairs one at a time using his crutch and Gwen, jumping on his good leg one at a time. As he hopped to the bottom, ten bikers hung around drinking beer and talking. They gave him curious looks. Food was stacked throughout the firehouse.
Down the way, short-haired Tess sat talking with Thunder. His nose was puffy and swollen, making the biker look more like Santa than a rough motorcycle gang leader.
“You’re awake,” Thunder boomed, his belly jiggling. A broad smile stretched across his gray-bearded face.
Tess stood and put her arms around Steele gingerly. He could feel Gwen tense up on his other side. Gwen’s grip tightened around his body.
“I was worried,” Tess said. She ignored Gwen and hugged him tighter.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said softly down to her.
She pushed him away. “A lot better than the likes of you. Not sure I’ll ever get the stink of gasoline off me,” she said with a smile. She gazed up at him, her dark eyes sparkling. “We did it, Steele. We defeated those whack jobs.”
The End Time Saga Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 113