A Time To Run

by Mark Wandrey

  “What a total cockup,” he said, shaking his head. A young ensign came in and laid a dispatch next to him. It was from the communications team on the carrier. They’d confirmed that news agencies all over the country were still trying to uplink to satellites, and civilian HF band traffic continued to be intercepted. Everywhere people were cut off from help. Without the President, or a successor with the access codes, he couldn’t do anything about it.

  Another note was placed in front of him. He’d asked the Marine commander, Brigadier General Coleman, to come to the meeting. When he hadn’t shown, the admiral had instructed one of his comm people to call the Essex and find out what was holding him up. According to the note, Coleman had been killed in an altercation with an infected Marine. Colonel Tad Alinsky was now in command. The day went on.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Two

  Evening, Wednesday, April 27

  East China Sea, 200 Miles West of Japanese Waters

  USS Louisiana, SSBN 743, cruised along like a ghost in the dark East China Sea waters. She’d been diverted there as an obvious act of desperation 48 hours ago, when the USS North Dakota had failed to report in. The commander of the Louisiana knew full well that something was going on in the United States, just not exactly what that meant. That there was a disruption underway was of little doubt, since they’d been under Emergency War Orders ever since they’d been diverted from their operational area in the Bering Sea.

  “Any traffic?” the COB—Chief of the Boat—asked as he watched the monitor showing a live feed from the periscope.

  “Negative,” the comms officer replied. “Some low-band traffic from that Japanese frigate.” The COB nodded and ground his teeth, a habit that had cost him his 2nd wife a few months ago. Well, that and her inability to keep her legs closed when he was on deployment. But the teeth thing had featured prominently in their divorce case.

  He hated having his boat in these relatively tight waters. The Ohio-class was most at home skimming along in arctic waters, under a thermal layer. Safe and invisible, awaiting the call to unleash nuclear hell. They could stay there for months at a time if necessary. The Virginia-class they were looking for was a nuclear fast attack. Unlike the Ohio-class, the Virginia-class was a hunter. They hunted enemy versions of the Ohio. Though that didn’t mean the Ohio was incapable of hunting if necessary.

  “Sonar, contact!” The COB’s head came around. “Register contact Alpha,” the sonar supervisor said, and the computer board showed the approximate range and direction. “Looks like a Golf, sir.” The COB nodded; that would be their boy. The North Dakota had been here to hunt and monitor an old Soviet-era Golf boomer, Golf-27, which had been given to the North Koreans and had just reentered service. They could carry and launch Scud missiles, and the Norks were supposed to have nuclear Scuds now. The Japanese were rightfully nervous about this development.

  In the sonar section, specialists were running the sonar return through multiple computers, comparing them to old Cold War era recordings of Golf-27. It would have been Los Angeles-class fast attacks following them back then. The recording had likely been made on tape, and since converted to digital. It only took five minutes for sonar to report.

  “We show a 95% probability that it’s Golf-27.” That cut it. The COB grabbed the squawk box handset and punched the captain’s cabin.

  “COB here, sir. We got the Golf.”

  “Be right there.”

  A half-hour later the sub’s command center was bathed in blue light as they closed in on the nearly 30-year-old submarine. Sonar had continued to massage the data and reported that the sub ran quieter than it had when last in service. Likely it had been modified by the Norks, no surprise there. The old Golf-class, diesel electric instead of nuclear and with outdated everything, was no more a match for the Ohio-class than a WWII-era Gato-class would have been. Yet, a state of the art Virginia-class was still missing in action, and communications were down.

  “Sonar, con!”

  “Go sonar.”

  “She’s going shallow. I’m getting some transients from her. Sounds like liquid pressurization maybe.”

  “Jumping Jesus,” the COB said, “are they fueling the fucking Scuds?” The captain glanced at the big map. They were currently 150 miles South West of Kyushu, the southern-most Japanese main island. Well within range of a Scud.

  “Takes about an hour to prep one of those Scuds,” the captain said. “Take us to periscope depth and deploy the VLF antenna. Enough of this shit, we need orders. I’m not sinking that old tub without authority.”

  “And what if they prepare to launch?” the COB asked quietly.

  “I’ll deal with that when the time comes,” the captain said. His stomach growled. “We ever going to get some chow up here?” As if on cue, a pair of crewman in white cook’s jackets carried in a rack of trays, and the smell of fish wafted through the compartment.

  The COB snickered. “Your powers are impressive, sir.”

  “Stow that shit,” the captain said with a chuckle. One of the cooks brought over a pair of trays. Nice big succulent chunks of cod in a light sauce, with broccoli and mashed potatoes. “I thought cookie said we were out of the cod,” the captain said to the cook.

  “He sends his complements, sir,” the young man said, “he got 50 pounds of fresh fillets from the tender we UNREPed from.” The captain grunted and tasted the fish. It was great. He hated to do underway replenishment in rough seas, but they’d been critically low on supplies. Now he felt a lot better about it.

  “Tell him he’s a sneaky SOB and send my regards.” The young man saluted and went off to see that the rest of the command crew was served. There were also hamburgers for those who didn’t like fish. The captain ate as his boat stealthily rose toward the surface.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Three

  Morning, Thursday, April 28

  Kansas City, MO

  “Go, go, go!” The MRAP’s engine roared as it mounted the curb and crashed against the stalled minivan. “Hit it again!” the lieutenant screamed. The driver backed up a few feet, ground the gears, and slammed his foot down on the accelerator. The howls of their pursuers were audible, even over the powerful D9 diesel engine as the mine-resistant vehicle slammed into the minivan one more time and shoved it aside at last. Early morning sun made the flying glass glint.

  The lieutenant turned in the turret to the line of big black SUVs behind his vehicle, nodding and throwing his arm forward to tell them to proceed.

  “Victor 2, we’re clear!” he called on the radio. “How much farther?”

  “About a mile,” the scout radioed, his voice hard to understand over the rattle of gunfire. Five seconds later, the gunfire echoed back after it had traveled the mile between the lieutenant and the scout. “Be advised we’re engaged.”

  “More of those things?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Negative, it’s locals.” The all too familiar whang! of small arms fire rattling off the side of Humvee armor came over the radio before the scout stopped transmitting.

  “Engage them if you must,” the lieutenant said.

  “Negative!” barked someone else over the frequency. “Evergreen has said no lethal force is to be used against civilians.” Of course Evergreen said that. Fine.

  “You heard them,” the lieutenant told his detachment, “no lethal force. Batten down and push through!” He locked the .50 caliber mount and dropped back through the hatch before securing it as well. He just prayed that none of the gun-crazy locals had their own .50 calibers.

  They rolled past two abandoned road blocks. The lieutenant kept looking back in the direction of Kansas City, the horizon a collection of smoke plumes. Helicopters circled wildly over the city.

  “Perimeter ahead, lieutenant,” the driver called over the roaring diesel engine. Up ahead about a half-a mile was the back entrance to Kansas City International Airport, one of the air freight access roads. It looked like a bunch of semi-trucks were parked, the
ir jobs interrupted by the crisis. But as they got closer, it became apparent that the trucks weren’t parked to wait; they were parked as barricades. There were thousands of people on their side of the barricade.

  “Civilians being kept back?” the lieutenant wondered aloud.

  “No,” the driver barked, “not anymore, anyway!” He brought the Humvee to a quick halt, still about 500 yards away, but it was still too close. Hundreds of heads turned toward them as the other vehicles in the convoy also came to a stop.

  “Oh shit,” the lieutenant said. The radio was screaming for his attention from the security detail behind them. Those hundreds of heads became much, much more and a lot of them began moving toward the convoy. “Turn them around,” he said.

  “Where are you going?” the security detail demanded.

  “This entrance is compromised,” the lieutenant said over the radio. “We need to find another.”

  “We can’t,” the answer came. “The perimeter at the hangar is becoming unstable.” The lieutenant ground his teeth. “Evergreen says to just…push through.”

  “That isn’t possible,” the lieutenant said. Five hundred yards away they were now running toward the convoy. He felt his pulse start to race. “There isn’t another way in that your vehicles can navigate.” With the Humvees, his team could get onto the airport property in any of a dozen places, but the SUVs and vans behind him didn’t have that kind of off-road capability. “And we can’t just push through a crowd that size.” Now 400 yards away. “They’ll overwhelm us.”

  “Evergreen is ordering you to continue as instruct—”

  “Fuck that,” the lieutenant said, smacking the driver on the shoulder. “We’re going hot,” he said and keyed his team chat. “Go hot, I repeat, go hot.”

  “Hooah!” the driver exclaimed and revved his engine.

  “Lieutenant!” a voice yelled from the radio. He ignored it and popped the top hatch. He unlocked the M2 machine gun and yanked the heavy bolt back, then let it fly forward, charging the gun. The same thing happened in the other six Humvees behind him. Two hundred yards away, several hundred figures stormed toward them, arms outstretched, faces snarling. The lieutenant tried to ignore the howl that came from them, or how they looked so…normal. Other than the fact they wanted to tear him apart and eat him, of course.

  “Number Four, come up alongside,” the lieutenant ordered. As it rolled up next to him, the crowd was just 100 yards away. The screaming over the radio was shrill. He knew how to drown it out. “FIRE!” he yelled and pressed the butterfly switch on his gun. Twin .50 caliber machine guns roared, their 700-gram bullets hitting with more than 10,000 foot-pounds of energy, blowing the enemy to pieces as they scythed through the crowd. The protective detail might still be screaming at the lieutenant, but he couldn’t hear it over the hammering machine guns.

  There were far too many for even the .50 caliber machine guns to kill them all, but it was enough to punch a hole through to the line of semi-trucks. At that point they were out of luck.

  “Dismount!” the lieutenant barked, and his team bailed out, instantly spreading out to create a skirmish line as the protective detail came roaring up in their big black SUVs and vans. He could see the leader of the detail jump out, yelling orders into his sleeve-mounted microphone as he ran to the lieutenant.

  “You were ordered not to use deadly force!” The hundreds of yards of people chewed to bloody meat behind the agent created a stark contrast.

  “Yeah, well fuck those orders.”

  “Clear the damned road,” the man growled, the muscles standing out on his neck.

  “We can’t move trucks that big; get her over on foot.”

  The man quickly looked over to the roadblock before nodding; that, at least, was fact. He spoke into his wrist mic again. “Get Evergreen out!”

  The security detail added to the Army perimeter, though they still refused to fire their weapons, and stayed behind in case the first line fell. The lieutenant’s men fired on single shot, carefully picking their targets and firing with deadly accuracy. The lieutenant could hear Evergreen screaming as she was bodily carried through the barricade by her detail.

  “She’s clear!” the detail head yelled. “We’re falling back.” This was the hard part, the lieutenant knew, the moments it took to try and disengage from the enemy. This enemy was far worse than any they’d trained to fight. “Got it,” he said and then yelled to his men, “Slow fall back, hold the line!”

  Even with single shots, they were going through ammo at a furious rate. The enemy doggedly refused to go down from single hits, or even respond to them for that matter. The human body was surprisingly hard to stop with a single shot from a 5.56 NATO round. They’d been trained for center mass shots, and those usually weren’t instantly lethal. Especially to these people. People, he thought, they were once people.

  A woman came at him in a headlong rush, the remains of a nightgown all she wore. He noticed her blonde hair and wildly flying breasts as he put a round into her upper abdomen. The round punched through, spraying bright red blood, but she only staggered slightly. Her lips pulled back in a snarled scream, and he shot her again. This round punched through her sternum. She still took several more steps before realizing she was dead and crashing face-first to slide to within feet of him. He switched targets and his M4 trigger didn’t fire. Empty mag.

  “Reloading!” he yelled and did a rapid magazine swap. The new mag found the well as if it had a will of its own and slid in with a perceptible ‘click.’ He jerked back down to be sure it was seated, released it, and brought the heel of that palm smacking into the slide release. It slammed forward, reloading the gun. It had taken about two seconds, and in that two seconds a man had closed to within a foot. He raised the rifle barrel and pulled the trigger once, twice, again, and slid to the side. The runner jerked and fell past him. The lieutenant backed, checking his magazine pouch and finding two left.

  “Move, move, move,” he ordered, and they all fell back. The firing got more and more rapid despite the soldiers being as meticulous as possible. The enemy came faster and faster, and with unrelenting ferocity. His first man went down under the enemies’ clawing hands as the last of the protective detail cleared the barricade. Two more fell as they finally reached the semi-trucks, and three more as they scrambled over them.

  “Grenades!” The lieutenant ordered, and the remaining seven men all pulled pins and threw before dropping over the other side and running. The explosives went off in a rapid string of krumps! Debris and gore flew as they raced after the protective detail in a semi-circle, all facing outward. The last pair through the gate pulled it closed and pulled heavy zip-cuffs to lock it closed.

  “Won’t hold for long,” the corporal called as he jerked it taut.

  “Good enough,” the lieutenant said. The hangar was in view. “Let’s go.”

  Five minutes later they were jogging up to the hangar; the sound of big turbojet engines spinning up was easily audible from inside as the ground crew prepared it for takeoff. The head of the protective detail was waiting for the lieutenant by the side entrance.

  “You got us here,” he said.

  “We said we would,” the lieutenant said, wiping sweat from his face with his sleeve. “We’ll hold the perimeter and board last.”

  “Yes,” the agent said, “you’ll hold the perimeter, and keep holding it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The President orders you to hold the hangar. After we leave, as well.” The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed, and the agent nodded. “Yeah, you heard me. Think you can keep this order?” The soldier came to crisp attention and saluted in perfect form.

  “We do our duty, sir!”

  “You do that,” the agent said and walked back into the hangar.

  “Lieutenant, bogies coming across the field!”

  “Sir, what do we do?”

  The jet engines spun up and the huge blue and white E-4B taxied out and turned onto the runway.
>
  “Our duty,” the lieutenant said and raised his rifle, shooting one of the infected as it ran toward the plane. As waves of infected raced toward the few surviving soldiers, the E-4B roared into the early evening sky and banked west, leaving the burning ruins of Kansas City behind.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Four

  Afternoon, Thursday, April 28

  North of Austin, TX

  “We keep getting pushed south,” PFC Colbert bitched from the driver’s compartment. It was hard to hear over the roar and growling of the Caterpillar C7 diesel, yet Colbert always seemed to make himself heard.

  “You think I don’t know that, private?” Colonel Cobb Pendleton yelled back. He was in the open top hatch as they moved along highway 195 at just over 30 mph. Ever since they’d tore out of Fort Hood Army Airfield after the last C-17 had flown off, they’d wanted to head west. The fucking universe seemed to have other plans for them. First a police roadblock on Hwy 190. Cobb hadn’t wanted to risk hurting the cops; they were just doing their jobs. Then a huge pileup on Hwy 183 after they’d spent two hours cutting across fields. Dry cuts to either side made further cross-country impossible, so they’d cut back. Now they were only 25 miles north of Georgetown, a major suburb of Austin. A few days ago, he’d been enjoying his retirement on a south Texas ranch. Now he’d been reactivated as a Colonel and given this mess.

  “We have to get west, Colonel,” Sgt. McDaniels agreed, just below and to his right in the controller’s position. He was a comms guy, and he was manning the radio, searching for a unit to link up with. All he’d found was chaos. The plague, Delta, was spreading like wildfire now, with vast swarms of infected breaking over the remnants of society like a tsunami. They were drawn to anywhere that people were still hanging on. Cobb was trying to get them west to link up again with General Rose and his new girlfriend, Kathy Clifford.