A Time To Run

by Mark Wandrey

  “Don’t try to teach me how to suck eggs, squid, sir,” Alinsky said, then chuckled. “We’ll go ashore at Coronado and the ammo pier. Once ashore we’ll sweep and clear to the middle, while holding the narrow point of the island south at the amphib base. It’s only about 500 feet wide there, and the population to the south of it is minor. Hopefully, we’ll find some tracks, or even a tank or two, at the base we can use to interdict.” Haskins knew and approved of Alinsky’s plans. There had to be hundreds, maybe even thousands of Marines and sailors still uninfected on the base. It was the only redeeming quality to the President’s insane plan. They would gain a toehold ashore. Living on ships was only a temporary solution at best. The base provided everything from food to fuel. He was going to do his best to make lemonade.

  “Landing at the pier and pushing to hold the airbase wouldn’t work?”

  “There could be up to twenty thousand in that town,” Alinsky said, “and the perimeter fence could be breached in a dozen places. Besides, we’ve heard the infected are immune to pain. I doubt a little razor wire will stop them. The south perimeter fence is half a mile long. I have 1,800 men to put ashore. I’d have to use them all, with scant few backups.”

  “Admiral,” the pilot interrupted, “I just got a message from Reagan.”

  “Go ahead,” Tomlinson said.

  “Pearl finally fell. They got two more KC-135s in the air from Hickam, but there was an outbreak inside the perimeter last night, and they couldn’t hold.”

  “Fuck,” Tomlinson cursed. “Anyone else get out?”

  “Three Hercules with personnel and dependents. They were prepping a line of C-17s for when we took the base here, but they never made it.”

  “Understood,” Tomlinson said. He did an analysis of how long those two tankers could keep three C-130s and a 747 in the air and didn’t like the results. “Colonel, we need to begin the operation today, or we’ll lose all those survivors.” The Marine looked grim but nodded. He took his own radio and made the call.

  * * *

  The now USS Pacific Adventurer, a US Army ship, was slowly sailing north. General Rose was taking advantage of the activity in the flotilla to quietly slip away. The newly emerged POTUS had given him no orders, and the admiral in charge didn’t have the authority. Besides, Rose technically outranked the swabbie, so he could go to hell. The former cruise ship, now III Corps mobile headquarters, was going to slide northward and see how Captain Grange was doing. She should almost be to Washington state by now. Rose needed a piece of real estate to operate from. Somewhere to work and reestablish communications with other Army units.

  He’d also managed to ‘borrow’ a pair of small barges and a tug, which was following along with his remaining helicopter gunships and some other assets. All his combat personnel and dependents were crowded onto the Pacific Adventurer, and boy were they crowded.

  The ship was designed for 1,000 passengers and 300 crew. He’d packed 525 infantrymen on board and another 800 dependents. Add in another 250 odd retired Army he’d picked up from the flotilla along with their own dependents (around 650 total), and he had 2,200 souls on the ship. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting at least four people, a kid, and maybe their dog. Still, it was better than being alone. Having all the dependents helped morale. What he didn’t have was the means to keep them fed. Hopefully Grange was working on that.

  “Orders, sir?” Captain Sampson asked.

  “Just continue north, keep it under five miles per hour.”

  “Five knots, sir?”

  “Whatever,” Rose said. The bridge was wide and open, with lots of glass. Not at all like the Navy ships he’d been on. Sampson said they could fix that, given time. Pacific Adventurer would never be a warship, though they could harden her a bit.

  “Do you want to report our position to the admiral, sir?”

  “Not just yet,” Rose said. The young captain looked at him but said nothing. Rose made a mental note to have Captain Mays keep a closer eye on the good captain. You don’t rise to the rank of lieutenant general without recognizing a potential hitch in a plan. “We’ll check in when we’ve positioned ourselves north of that island.”

  “San Clemente, sir?”

  “That’s the one. We might be able to clear and set up a temporary base there.”

  “Very good, sir.” Placated, the ship’s commanding officer went back to his duties. Rose ground his teeth as he considered options. He wanted to steam north soon. Especially before the fucking President got on the ground. God knows what the woman would have him doing. He really didn’t want to think about it. He’d just have to settle for getting as far away as he could, without letting Sampson know what he had up his sleeve. He needed the Navy people to run the ship, for now.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Thirteen

  Noon, Sunday, May 1

  State Road 143, West of Kendalia, TX

  Cobb had a short run of luck after losing his driver. He’d only driven three miles west of Kendalia when he’d come across an accident. Several days earlier, a car traveling at high speed rear ended a big farm tractor towing an implement. There wasn’t enough left of the car to tell what it was. Judging by the smell of rotting flesh from the wreck, no one in the vehicle survived. The tractor was abandoned, no sign of who was driving it, or even if it was being driven at the time of the collision.

  Acting on a hunch, he parked behind the wreck, left the Stryker idling, and got out to examine the tractor. The hitch was a hopeless jumble of bent metal, which explained why it was left here. It was unlikely the tractor would’ve gotten far dragging a couple tons of twisted steel behind it. He went to the tractor, which was a 200-horse power John Deere 7210R, with dual rear wheels. One of his neighbors a few miles away had had one. More importantly, it boasted a fuel tank that held more than 100 gallons. He climbed up in the cab; the keys were gone, but the tractor had a gauge check switch. He flipped it and the controls came to life. Fuel registered as a quarter of a tank.

  “Bingo!” he said and returned to the Stryker. He climbed up into the turret and took a good look all around. It was a wide-open stretch of Ranch Road 473 with nothing but fields on both sides. Since it was only May, they were largely empty, probably just planted. Still, he took his time looking. The infected had shown startling cleverness back in Kendalia. Confident he wasn’t about to be ambushed by a horde of ravening cannibals, he shut the vehicle down and went to work.

  It took a few minutes to remove the anti-siphoning device from the tractor, then he snaked the hose into the tank. It was high up on the engine compartment, and the hose barely reached the ground. That worked to his benefit as he sucked on the hose until he felt a puff of air. He put the hose over the entrance to the fuel can, and, a second later, a stream of diesel began to spurt out. He got three cans filled before he lost the siphon.

  “Damn,” he said and climbed back into the cab. It still read an eighth of a tank. The hose must not reach to the bottom. He was in the middle of trying to find a solution when he saw the truck. It was a pickup coming from the same direction he’d come from, still about a mile off. Judging by the dust it was throwing up, they were moving at a good clip.

  Cobb didn’t know what made him head back to the Stryker. He’d done convoy duty a hundred times while still active duty, and every time he’d encountered civilians, they’d been courteous and often inquisitive. This time felt different. They were the first civilians he’d seen since Ft. Hood fell. It brought back a memory of Kathy and their last night together before the evacuation. Was she even still alive? He chased the thought away.

  He quickly moved all three filled cans back to the Stryker, retrieving his fuel hose and closing the tank on the tractor, just in case, on the last trip. He had some money in his pocket and decided if the tractor belonged to whoever was in the truck, he’d offer payment to them. Somehow, he didn’t think that would be the same as before. He raised the ramp shortly before they arrived. From the direction they were approaching,
nobody in the truck would have seen him move or the gate go up.

  Cobb watched through one of the mirrored ports as the truck slowed. It was a late model Chevrolet, and there were at least a dozen men in the back. The bed bristled with guys in coveralls and all manner of long arms, from shotguns to expensive, customized AR-15s. For a second, he thought they were going to just drive by, then the truck turned sharply by the tractor and stopped.

  “Lookit’ that big gun up on top,” Cobb heard one of them say, and he silently cursed. Of course he hadn’t taken down the .50 caliber. When had he had a chance?

  “I see it Tom,” another man spoke, “but maybe we should leave well enough alone.”

  “Shut up Edwin,” the first man, Tom, replied. “Shit just lying around, it’s ours now.” Others were beginning to speak up.

  “Maybe you should listen to Edwin,” Cobb spoke loudly, bringing the conversation to an instant end. Almost every gun moved, though none were pointed at him. Yet.

  “Who’s in there?” the man named Tom called. “Whatcha got in that tank? There’s fuckin crazy cannibals everywhere, y’all should be sharin’!”

  “None of your business,” he called back, “you just mind your own.” He decided he wasn’t going to show them his face unless he had too. Right now, the bunch of rednecks couldn’t know whether they were dealing with one guy, or a dozen. “You don’t cause no trouble, and we won’t finish it.” Cobb let his own Texas accent slip through on purpose, along with saying ‘we.’ With a hand, he reached up and unlatched the turret hatch. “Go on now, git.”

  He watched through the vision port as they talked it over. Tom was a huge dude riding in the back with a fully accessorized AR-15 cradled lovingly in his arms. Cobb knew the type. That floating barrel, skeletonized forward grip, and EOTech scope had probably cost him a couple months pay, but it gave him street cred at the local range. The cheap 40-round knockoff magazine spoke volumes to Cobb about any real ability this character had. Or rather, the lack there of.

  Clearly Tom wanted to make a go of it, while his friends figured to leave well enough alone. Eventually brains won over brawn, and the Chevy started up, spun its oversized tires, and raced off to the west, continuing in the direction they’d been heading. Cobb got a last, clear look at the expression on Tom’s face and guessed it wasn’t over yet.

  He waited in the Stryker until the truck was lost in the distant heat shimmers of the road before dropping the rear ramp and dumping all three cans of diesel into the main tank. He stowed the cans in their rack on the rear of the vehicle and buttoned back up. With a roar the Stryker’s engine came back to life, and he followed the truck’s route.

  He set a speed of 45 mph, well below what the truck had been doing, and checked his fuel level. The computer said he had 17 gallons of fuel, 30% of the Stryker’s 53-gallon capacity. The computer instantly analyzed the fuel running into the power plant and adjusted performance. It was designed to use JP8 aircraft fuel, like most military vehicles; however, it also had the ability to use standard diesel, though that resulted in a 5% performance degradation.

  “A hundred nineteen miles,” he said, reading the display. It was a hell of a lot better than the 15-mile range he’d started off with. He checked the road ahead through the periscope, all clear, then glanced at the radio. He’d left it on since leaving the Texas Guard unit behind. “No Signal” was displayed in unending flashing LEDs.

  He alternated between watching the road ahead and fiddling with the GPS navigation system. He couldn’t get any kind of long-range comms, but at least the GPS was still working. Whatever had FUBAR’d comms had mercifully left GPS alone. He didn’t want to think about trying to maneuver the 20-ton, 8-wheeled behemoth around Texas using local road maps. That would’ve been hard enough before the rest of his team bought it. The other thing he was missing, without his team, was anyone to watch the rear of the vehicle. The Stryker didn’t have a rear camera.

  The seemingly chance encounter had him on his guard, and he kept the speed way down, allowing him to see the roadblock in time. He applied the brakes and the Stryker came to a quick stop. The low hill to his left that’d shielded the ambush point from his view until he turned the corner was too high to easily mount, and the drop off to the right was around 10 feet. Challenging, even for the Stryker.

  Five hundred yards down the road, just short of the tiny town of Sisterdale, a semi-truck was sideways across the road. It was a flatbed with a stack of steel oil well casings on the back. Cobb used the FLIR camera on the front of the APC to zoom in and saw the heat signatures of more than ten people hiding behind the pipes. On the other side of the truck was a familiar Chevy pickup.

  “Son of a bitch,” Cobb said, shaking his head. He didn’t want to kill any of these rednecks. He really, really didn’t. He sighed. As a soldier, his job was to protect Americans, not shoot them. Protect the United States of America from all threats, foreign and domestic. Edwin might be a threat to local commerce, but he was not one to the United States. Then he considered how many infected he’d shot. Were they a threat? Any more than Edwin? He looked over the terrain again and decided. “Fine,” he said and accelerated.

  The Stryker was quiet for a 20-ton armored troop transport, but it wasn’t small. The ambush crew saw it the second Cobb came around the corner. They were proud of themselves for picking this location. The road was narrow; it would be hard for the tank to turn around. With high ground to one side and a steep drop-off to the other, their target had nowhere to go. Edwin was sitting in the driver’s seat of the pickup smoking a joint and ginning.

  “He’s comin’ this way!” Tom yelled from the top of the trailer. Edwin took a toke and grinned bigger. “He’s speedin’ up!”

  “He’ll slow down,” Edwin said. A few seconds later, the sound of the Stryker’s racing engine reached his ears inside the truck. It didn’t sound like it was slowing. In fact, it’d increased in pitch!

  “It’s not going to stop!” one of the men yelled on the back of the truck. Edwin thought it was Tom’s second cousin. He saw the man leap down and run. Edwin popped the door, a small cloud of smoke wafting out into the air.

  “Ain’t no way that little tank can crash through a semi-truck!” he yelled at the running figure’s back. Startled yells of fear made him look up at the men still holding position. Tom was looking down at Edwin, his eyes wide in terror. Edwin heard engine noise, the Doppler Effect making it sound surreal as it approached. The eight tires were almost louder than the engine. Edwin leaned over, looking under the trailer to see how close the tank was. He had a fraction of a second for his THC-fuzzed mind to comprehend that the Stryker was only yards away, before it hit.

  Cobb shifted his angle slightly toward the rear of the trailer. There was almost five feet between the end of the trailer and the overhang on the left side of the road. He maneuvered so the wheels of the Stryker were almost brushing the edge of the overhang. He’d floored the power when he was within a hundred yards, accelerating the 20-ton vehicle to its top speed of 60 miles per hour.

  The rednecks had had a good idea, blocking the road with a loaded semi-trailer, they’d just failed to execute it very well. The truck and trailer were jackknifed in the center of the road, with the truck part to Cobb’s right. The trailer was angled way from him. If it had been the opposite way, he might have been in trouble. In Iraq he’d seen Stryker drivers use the transports almost like tanks, crashing through buildings and ramming trucks off the road. They did those things at 10–20 miles per hour. At its top speed of 60, the Stryker possessed a devastating amount of inertial energy.

  It slammed into the rear of the trailer like a train. The truck’s left tires were pushed down by the impact, then the trailer rebounded upward, even though the outer two tires exploded from the impact. Restraining poly-straps holding the 16,000 pounds of steel casings were ripped away, sending the pipes flying in a scattered jumble. The trailer itself was propelled away from the hurtling APC, and into Edwin. His brain was unable to reg
ister the pain in the fraction of a second it took the trailer to smash him into his pickup truck.

  “Fuck!” Cobb yelled as the Stryker collided with the trailer. The steel, Kevlar, and aluminum-armored glacis plate of the APC collided with the aluminum-alloy chassis of the truck’s trailer, and the Stryker won. Still, the armor was severely deformed on the nose, and the armor overlay on the right front quarter was sheared away, leaving the gleaming white aluminum chassis visible.

  The Stryker tried to skid left into the embankment, but Cobb was able to control it. The front four tires, the steering axles, swung to compensate, and he brought it under control. The semi-trailer spun away, slamming against the cab of the tractor and sending both careening off the right side of the road. Pipes and men cartwheeled through the air. When the pipes hit the road, they rebounded with almost musical notes. When they hit men, they left red smears and body parts.

  Cobb had a second’s view of the once-beautiful Chevy pickup, catapulted into the air by the impact, as it pin wheeled off to the right. He let the Stryker pick up speed again, not wanting to take any fire if he could avoid it. Another corner was 200 yards further, and he took it at speed, the 8 wheels easily maintaining traction. He needn’t have worried. None of the ambushers were able to fire at the retreating Stryker; they were all dead.

  He didn’t stop in Sisterdale. It didn’t look like much of a town anyway, just one of those places where two roads came together that someone had given a name. Ranch Road 473 veered north and joined with Ranch Road 1376, and he followed it. He passed a vineyard and a small country auto mechanic on the left while doing 50mph. The mechanic’s building was smoldering, having burned sometime in the last few days. He didn’t have time to look too closely because the few buildings of Sisterdale were racing by.