“Look out!” he shouted, and the cook jerked his head in Grip’s direction, pulling a pistol from his pocket.
Grip fired his carbine and killed the cook but missed the second man, who ducked quickly back out of the kitchen.
“Move!” Lee said, ordering the men forward. “Captain, cover this doorway!”
They cleared the kitchen and had a look around, the eerie blue flame still burning beneath the frying pan, smoke beginning to fill the kitchen. Kane felt his stomach twist at the smell of what he now knew was burning human flesh, and he knocked the pan from the stove to the floor.
“Oh, fuck!” Clean said. “Look at this shit, Sarge!” He grabbed a handful of dog tags hanging from a hook over the counter and held them up for Lee to see.
“Read me the names!” Lee ordered.
“Preston, Sipe, Leskavonski—shit, Sarge, these are our men!”
“They didn’t fuckin’ desert!” Shodo said. “They got eaten by fuckin’ cannibals!”
“Ever’body chill the fuck out!” Lee ordered, peering around the corner after the man who had escaped. The hallway was about fifty feet long with a turn to the left at the far end.
Kane squatted beside the dead man and picked up the .38 revolver, kicking the body viciously in the head to be sure he wasn’t playing possum. The dead man was grimy as hell with a thick black beard, and he stunk to high heaven of sweat and shit.
“These people have definitely gone wild,” he said to Forrest.
“Sergeant, we need to get the hell out of here,” Forrest warned.
“Not before we kill these motherfuckers. We helped you get what you needed, now you help us do what we need done.”
“I advise you to go back and gather a company of men first. You’ve got no idea the size of the force you’re going up against or how well equipped they might be. There’s a pile of fresh bones in this sink over here big enough to suggest they’re feeding a lot of people.”
“And suppose they’ve still got some of our men alive in this shit hole,” Lee said. “How long you think they gonna stay that way?”
“Getting killed won’t help them.”
“We’re taking them down. You with us or not?”
Forrest and Kane exchanged glances. Again they didn’t have much choice. The six of them carefully made their way down the hall and around the corner. Someone screamed deep within the hospital in the darkness. It was a bloodcurdling cry.
“I’m on point!” Lee said, shouldering his way to the front.
They moved smartly along, clearing any open rooms they passed. There was a flurry of movement at a four-way intersection up ahead and shots were fired. Lee and Grip both returned fire and someone screamed. The six soldiers moved quickly to secure the intersection, where a man lay against the wall wailing in pain, shot through the stomach. He stunk as badly as the cook and lashed out with a knife, trying to hook Shodo behind the knee.
Shodo brought the stock of his M-16 down on the man’s head and caved it in. “Fuck you, motherfucker!”
“In here!” Clean called from a nearby room.
The others had a look inside, where one of their missing men was chained to a bed with his throat recently cut.
“Son of a bitch!” Lee swore. “See? Goddamnit!”
“They only got shotguns and revolvers,” Clean said, dumping the shells from the cannibal’s .357 and flinging the pistol back in the direction they had come. “Let’s clean these fuckers out.”
Forrest realized that these soldiers had nothing to lose by pressing forward, but he and Kane certainly did. Farther along, a cluster of people burst from a room and dashed across the hall. Lee and his men gave chase.
“Sergeant!” Forrest shouted, but it was no use. He and Kane ran after them, covering the rear as they ran across a large conference room in pursuit of the fleeing figures. The double doors at the far side slammed shut before they could reach them, and the sound of crashing vending machines could be heard on the other side, effectively barricading the doors closed.
“It’s a trap!” Kane shouted, turning on his heel to dash back to the entrance. But these doors were also slammed shut before he could reach them, and again the vending machines outside were knocked over to barricade them.
“Goddamnit!” Kane shouted, whirling on Stacker Lee. “See what the fuck you did, motherfucker!”
There were sounds of maniacal laughter in the halls outside, whooping and hollering beyond both sets of doors, and a hail of bullets came through, forcing the soldiers to the floor and up against the walls.
“Now what?” Clean griped.
“I guess this wasn’t such a good idea,” said Shodo.
“No shit!” Kane remarked.
“Hey, fuck you!” Lee said. “Goddamn green beanie motherfucker! You dudes been livin’ underground suckin’ on cold beer and eatin’ pussy for the last twelve months! Who the fuck are you to tell us jack shit?”
“Cool it!” Forrest ordered. “We have to think our way out of this.”
They heard the sound of breaking glass in the center of the room and switched on their flashlights to see a dozen mason jars come dropping through a hole in the ceiling, shattering against the floor and releasing thick clouds of white gas.
“Fuck is that?!” Grip shouted, scooting away along the wall.
“Chlorine gas!” Forrest said.
“Where the fuck they get that shit?”
“Bleach and toilet bowl cleaner,” Forrest said, gathering the shemagh from about his neck and tying it over his nose and mouth. Lee’s men followed suit by tying green triangular bandages over their faces, and more jars fell through holes scattered all across the ceiling, shattering against the floor to fill the room with the poisonous gas.
Laughter came down through the holes in the ceiling, and more shots were fired through the doors to keep their heads down.
The soldiers started choking and their eyes burned.
“What the fuck are we gonna do?” Lee said. “We don’t have much time.”
“I have a suggestion,” said Kane.
“I’m all ears, man.”
“Turn command of this little goat fuck over to my captain so he can get us the fuck outta here!”
“What about it?” Lee said tersely. “You want command of the coal train?”
“Sure,” Forrest said, grinning beneath the shemagh. “Why not?”
“What you got in mind?”
“First,” Forrest said, “we need a fresh air supply. Stick a grenade in that fire extinguisher encasement and blow it outta there. There’ll be fresh air inside the wall we can take turns at.”
Grip wasted no time sliding over to the empty fire extinguisher box and sticking a grenade inside. “Fire in the hole!”
The grenade exploded and blew the metal encasement open wide enough for them to take turns sticking their heads inside the cinder-block wall for gulps of fresh air.
“Now we blow a hole in that far wall so we can flank these motherfuckers.”
“Fuck you gonna use for explosives?” Lee demanded. “Grenades won’t do shit to a brick wall!”
“O ye of little faith, Sergeant. Everybody fork over a concussion grenade. Hurry it up! Marcus, tape them together.”
Kane took a roll of electrical tape from his cargo pocket and began taping the six grenades together.
“Sergeant, get that jacket off and ball it up,” Forrest ordered as he removed the lanyard from his .45.
Lee stripped his combat harness and shrugged quickly out of his body armor. He then took off his jacket and gave it to Forrest, who used his electrical tape to wad the jacket into a ball as Lee shrugged back into his armor and harness.
“Now we’ll go knock the cover off that air vent in the far wall.”
The two each took a gulp of fresh air from the hole and moved quickly th
rough the cloud of gas across to the wall Forrest had indicated. Lee used the butt of his carbine to bash the cover from the vent.
“Jam your jacket down inside the wall as far as you can!” Forrest said, choking against the fumes. He then ran the lanyard through the pins of the concussion grenades, lowering them down into the shaft to rest upon the jacket. “Take cover behind that table!”
Lee ran to where the other men had overturned a table and jumped behind it as Forrest jerked the lanyard, pulling all six pins from the grenades at virtually the same time and running for cover.
Four seconds later the grenades exploded in a massive thunderclap, blasting a four-foot hole in the double layered cinder-block wall.
“Move!” Forrest shouted, leaping over the table and sprinting toward the opening with Kane hot on his heels. The two Green Berets reached the opening a full two strides ahead of the others and ran down the hall to the far corner, catching six cannibals stunned and unprepared, machine-gunning them on the move and trampling their bodies underfoot. They continued making their way through the hospital at flank speed by flashlight.
Lee’s men caught up and together they fought a running battle back toward the emergency ward.
“Hold up!” Shodo said. “I hear somethin’.”
The men stopped and everyone stood listening. They heard the hushed tones of crying children somewhere behind them and around the corner and made their way to a private room where they found fifteen or so ragged women and children huddled together. They were as filthy and sickly looking as the men they had seen, and one of the women took a shot at them with a 9mm pistol, hitting Lee in the chest on his breastplate.
They ducked back out of the doorway and stood looking at one another.
“They sure as shit ain’t lookin’ to be rescued!” Grip said.
“Fuck you!” a woman screamed from inside. “Bastards!”
Down the far hall they could hear the cannibal men gathering, realizing that a group of their women and children had been found.
Lee took a concussion grenade from his harness.
“No!” Kane said.
“Fuck ’em! You think those motherfuckers see you as anything more than food?”
“We can keep moving,” Forrest said. “You gave me command, remember?”
“Tactical command, Captain.” Lee pulled the pin on the grenade, tossing it into the room, and they all ducked away covering their ears. The concussion from the blast blew out the windows of the room, and a great pressure wave blasted past them down the hall like rolling thunder. No one in the room could have lived.
“Goddamnit!” Kane screamed. “You didn’t have to fuckin’ do that!”
“It’s done!” Lee retorted. “Now what are your orders, Captain?”
“We get the fuck downstairs and find an exit! Shodo, you got point!”
On their way across the lower lobby a shower of Molotov cocktails rained down around them and Shodo was completely consumed by fire, screaming and flailing in a futile attempt to beat out the flames. Forrest shouldered his carbine and shot him dead before any of Lee’s men could react, whirling about to spray the balcony above them and driving back the firebombers.
“Forget the emergency ward!” he ordered. “The Humvee’s fucked anyhow.”
They burst out the main entrance onto the sidewalk to see that the Humvee was indeed burning fifty yards away.
“Looks like we hoof it,” Forrest said. “I trust you remember the way, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir! Grip, on point! I’ll bring up the rear!”
Using their night vision, they ran the two miles all the way back to the checkpoint, where they were nearly machine-gunned by their own troops before they could identify themselves.
“Check fire!” Lee screamed from behind a truck. “Check fire!”
“Identify yourselves!”
“Stacker Lee, you dumb motherfuckers! Stacker-fuckin’-Lee!”
It took a minute but they were eventually permitted to advance, and Lee wasted no time telling the men at the checkpoint what had taken place at the hospital. A great fury swept through the men upon hearing that twenty of their comrades had been abducted and eaten. Two full companies of men were quickly assembled.
“At first light we go back there and clean those motherfuckers out,” Lee said, gathering a fresh supply of grenades. “Care to lead us, Captain?”
Forrest looked at Kane. “We should be on our way.”
Kane agreed.
“In that case, I’ll drive you to the barricade,” Lee said.
At the barricade he told them to keep their helmets, NVDs, and body armor, and complied with Kane’s request for three more sets of NVDs.
Forrest reached into the back of their Humvee and grabbed a bottle of Tequila from a barracks bag, offering it to Stacker Lee. “For that final circle jerk, Sergeant.”
Lee smiled a white, toothy smile and accepted the bottle with relish. “And this time I’ll save it.”
The soldiers all saluted one another, and Forrest and Kane mounted up.
“My guys took the liberty of gassing it up for you,” Lee said, shutting Forrest’s door for him. They shook hands through the window. “Godspeed, Captain. Sorry I was such a prick.”
“Live forever, Sergeant.”
Kane started the engine and wheeled the Humvee around, roaring through the gate, headed north.
Both men were so exhausted from the fight that neither of them remembered to be alert at the eighty-four-mile marker—until a Molotov cocktail flew out of the darkness and exploded in flames against the windshield.
“Son of a bitch!” Kane shouted, cutting the wheel hard to the left and narrowly missing a car that had been rolled onto the center of the highway. He could barely see where he was going through the flames and ended up swerving into the center median and up a concrete highway barrier, perfectly high-centering the vehicle. “Cocksucker!” he swore, realizing they were stuck fast.
“Dismount!” Forrest said, grabbing his carbine and helmet.
They took cover behind the barrier as shots rang out and bullets began pinging off the Humvee. Forrest could see a number of men across the highway in his night vision and opened fire, killing four with four quick shots. The firing from across the road stopped and the attackers disappeared from their view.
“Guess you saw a flashlight after all,” he said.
They could hear hushed voices on three sides.
“They’re moving to outflank us.”
“We’re already outflanked,” Forrest remarked. “Soon to be surrounded.”
As if to verify that fact, a shotgun slug struck Forrest dead-center in the back panel of his boron carbide body armor, knocking him into the concrete barrier as if he’d been mule-kicked.
Kane whipped around and returned fire, driving the shooter back under cover. “Jack!”
Forrest got to his knees and grabbed his carbine, blinking his eyes to clear his vision. “I’m okay,” he groaned. “Christ, that hurt.”
“We need to get out of the light of the headlights,” Kane said, and they both moved farther down the barrier.
More shots rang out.
Kane grabbed his lower leg. “Shit, I took one!” He and Forrest backed in tight between the barrier and the large steel shovel of a backhoe.
Forrest lifted his head for a look around, switching to infrared. Men were scurrying about in the dark, but there were too many abandoned vehicles to get a shot. They were protected on three sides now from direct fire, but that protection worked both ways, potentially allowing their attackers to creep up unseen and lob a Molotov cocktail directly onto their position. “How many you think we’re up against?”
“Feels like about twenty,” Kane said. “Give or take.”
“Well, let’s pick a direction and break out before they tighten the noose.”<
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Another shot rang out, but it was far away and nothing hit near their position. Then they heard another shot from the opposite side of the highway, equally far off, and this time one of the attackers screamed.
“Fuck is that?” Kane said.
“Got me.”
They took the chance to raise their heads for a look around, seeing that some of their assailants were now entirely exposed, having taken cover from whoever else was firing. Forrest and Kane fired and killed five more men.
Their attackers began to fire wildly into the night, panicking in the darkness and shouting to one another that they were surrounded. Their firing subsided after a minute, and Forrest could now see that someone was picking their attackers off with apparent impunity, probably from a hundred or more yards away and likely from an elevated position.
“That’s gotta be the Forty-fifth!” he said.
The five or six remaining attackers suddenly broke from cover and ran south through the cars in attempt to escape, but the snipers didn’t seem inclined to let them go, continuing to fire until they had killed every one of them.
Forrest and Kane kept low as they crept back toward the Humvee, using their infrared to scan the low bluffs east and west of the highway.
“Got one to the west,” Kane said. “Moving carefully this way. It’s a GI.”
“Got one to the east too,” Forrest replied. “Has to be the Forty-fifth.”
The two men stood near the Humvee and waited for the troopers to approach from opposite sides of the highway.
“It’s probably Lee and one of his men,” Kane said. “What if they want to join us?”
Forrest took a moment to slap a fresh mag into his weapon. “I’d say they’ve earned it, wouldn’t you?”
Forty-Four
Emory slowed her pace, waiting for Marty to approach the troopers first, prepared to gun them both down if they gave him any shit. Sullivan was not with them. He had a concussion from being shot in the head and was too sick to be tromping around the countryside, so he lay sleeping in the back of the SUV parked half a mile north of their present position.
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