“You ever run over vampires with these?” Asher hoped he hadn’t asked one of the few aforementioned questions.
“No, not yet.” Kilgore shook his head. “Get out of the way too quick. Maybe if we ever come across a big gathering of them we will, but I hope that never happens.”
“Do you have anything else to show me out here, sir?”
“Hmm… Guess not.” Kilgore removed his hand from the Stryker to take a quick look around. “I’m going to take you on a short tour of the training facilities now.” He turned back toward Asher. “Got to show you the range and the tactical training area, along with a few other things. I don’t care to act as tour guide, but I suppose it’s better than deskwork. We’ll just go through the door down here.”
The captain stepped away from the Strykers, motioning Asher to follow. They walked back in the direction from which they had come, passing through line after line of vehicles on their way to the large door at the other side.
“Here we are.”
The door automatically slid upwards to let them pass through.
They entered a long, spacious, but minimalistic hallway, the structure built of nothing but bare, polished concrete. They continued down the hallway until they reached the elevator door at the end. Kilgore pressed the up arrow and turned to Asher.
“I’ll be taking you up to the third floor to the bridge over the range and training facility,” said Kilgore as the elevator door slid open and both of them stepped inside. “Sure hope you like gun training, Blackthorn.” Kilgore reached out to press the button for the third floor. “You’ll be doing a lot of it. Powerful as the X-12 is, you’re going to need to be an expert with it if you don’t want the vamps to have you for lunch.”
“Just as I expected, sir.”
Asher heard the faint sound of gunfire now. The noise steadily became louder with their ascent.
Ding!
The elevator announced their arrival, the noise from the range nearly drowning out the sound.
“Right this way.”
Kilgore led Asher onto a metal mesh walkway hanging about 20 feet above the floor overlooking the range. On the other side of the bridge was the gallery itself, which consisted of multiple shooting lanes, each with a paper target toward one end and a soldier with a shotgun at the other. A glass wall separated the bridge from the range, placed there to muffle the noise of gunfire. Asher presumed it was shatterproof.
“As you can probably predict, we put a heavy emphasis on rate of fire, precision, and accuracy.” Kilgore proceeded over the bridge, Asher following a half step behind.
“Isn’t that pretty much everything there is to shooting, sir?”
“Exactly.” The captain chuckled. “As I said, we need you to master your weapon. The vamps don't leave us much of a chance most of the time, so you’ll need to make those first few shots count. I realize that, generally speaking, there really is no need to aim with a shotgun at close range, but that's only if the enemy is human. Whenever you're dealing with vamps you got to hit something every time without fail. If you don’t, there is a very high probability that you and all the soldiers in your assault group will die. You need to eat, sleep, and breathe that shotgun until it becomes like an extension of your body. I expect between military and police training you should already be more than proficient with a firearm.”
Asher remained quiet for a moment, not wanting to speak too quickly. He cast an eye back down on the soldiers below.
“What about long-range, sir?”
“Occasionally, we will have you do some long-range shooting, though there isn’t a lot of need for it. Most of the operations we do are in urban environments at close range, so distance isn’t usually an issue. Typically, for long-range, we’ll have you go to the outdoor gallery on the premises.” Kilgore led Asher forward, eventually coming to the door at the end of the bridge.
“Ok, that should do it for the shooting range.” The door in front of them slid upwards like the one to the garage. “The training facility is through here.”
Kilgore led Asher into yet another expansive area. This one stood laid out in a manner similar to that of the shooting gallery. Instead of shooting lanes, however, a series of walled spaces divided the expanse. All of them lacked ceilings so that Asher could see down into them. Like the range, the bullet and soundproof glass separated them from the rest of the room.
“As you can see, and probably already concluded,” Kilgore went on, “we practice a lot of room clearance drills down here. Those dang neck biters have a high preference for urban areas ‘cause that's where the people are. This is where you learn to bring it to them where they live. When you're not practicing at the range, all the rest of your time will be spent here.”
“Understood, sir.” Asher was eager to move on so he could ask the captain one of his burning questions. “The commander said that you use a lot of explosives, and I’m assuming other special weapons. You know, like maybe a grenade launcher. Where do you practice using those?”
“There’s a room back that way down the bridge where we practice with special weapons.” Kilgore pointed to a door at the far end of the bridge. “Use a lot of grenade launchers, maybe an anti-material weapon every once in a while. Suppose you would expect us to use those outside too, but it would disturb the local populace. Since you're more or less a local yourself, you know people are pretty used to gunfire, but you start firing off a bunch of grenades, and they’ll be onto us in no time.”
Kilgore led Asher further down the bridge. Four-person groups of soldiers milled about under their feet as they ran their room clearance drills.
“I think we’ll skip touring the classroom and office floor today.” The captain stopped, turning toward Asher. “It's a range day, so we got the classrooms locked up. You’ll be spending plenty of time down there anyway. You’ll get to learn all we know about the vamps, their physiology, tactics, organization, etc. As for the offices, they are always busy, no matter the time of day. I can’t think of a good reason to show you those. Lord knows I spend too much time there.” He paused, considering his next thought.
“Guess that completes our tour of the training facilities,” said Kilgore at last. “Going to take you down to the Command Center next. Depending on how active the enemy has been and the number of leads and intel we have, Command can either be packed full of personnel or deader than a graveyard. Right this way.”
Kilgore turned around, leading Asher back in the direction they had come.
The elevator sounded, announcing their arrival on the second floor as the door slid open. Kilgore led Asher into another barren concrete hallway nearly identical to the first, continuing toward a grouping of several elongated windows.
“Well, here it is, the cerebral center of the place. We’ll just hang back here and have a look through the window. No reason to go in there and disrupt all that activity.”
Asher gazed through the window, greeted by what looked like a human beehive.
The expansive room was in a state of frenzied but controlled chaos. At least two hundred people occupied the vast space, with about half of them sitting at computers. The rest either stood around or ran between desks to deliver information to their coworkers. Despite the activity in the room, the hall remained silent, and Asher noticed the windows, these composed of soundproof glass. A giant computer screen hung on the far wall, which displayed an equally large map of the United States lit up by a scattering of red dots.
If Asher didn’t know what he was looking at he would have assumed it was a control room at NASA.
“Hmm… Usually not this busy,” Kilgore remarked. “Must be about to send out a whole company. Anyway, this is where we keep track of our drones and the vamps' known whereabouts, and both their and our activity throughout the country. The Command Center is the base’s brain, where we receive the calls and roll out in response. In addition to that, we gather information and use it to plan our offensive ops, which we run from time to time.”
&nbs
p; “I’m starting to think there are more than 1000 soldiers living down here,” Asher allowed the captain to finish.
“Obviously, Blackthorn. You can’t keep this place running with just soldiers. We have to have additional personnel down here for maintenance and intel and everything else we need.”
“Yeah, I guess I just wasn’t thinking. Now that you mention it, Greaves did say you have your own scientists. Do they work down here too?”
“We do have our own laboratory facility on the base where a few of the Legion's scientists work. We have larger labs elsewhere. If the job’s too big for our base’s lab to handle, we’ll send off to one of our larger, better-equipped labs.”
“Are we going to tour the lab?”
“You can go visit the laboratory facilities on your time.” Kilgore looked down at his watch. “Need to get down to the mess hall before they close up anyway. Trips to the lab tend to make it difficult to eat. All those dissected bodies.” Kilgore shivered in exaggeration.
“I assume you have medical facilities as well?”
“That we do. That facility is comparatively minimal to everything else. Most of that's because the dang vamps tend to straight-up kill. Well, that, and our tendency to off anyone who's been bitten. Trust me, you never want to see that place.” Kilgore’s voice quieted to a whisper, the hallway growing silent. “You got any more questions, kid?” he asked, returning to normal volume. “I can answer a few more, but after that, we’re off to the mess hall.”
“Do you guys have a gym down here?”
“We do, but it’s on the first floor back behind the barracks. Once again, something you can see later on your own time because we’re running late.” He paused. “That it, Blackthorn?”
“Yeah, that’s all, sir.”
“Good.” A satisfactory smile appeared on Kilgore’s face. “Our company should be down in the mess hall right now, about to finish up. Might be able to catch some of my company’s officers before they leave. Right this way.” He pointed back in the direction they had come.
* * *
Asher and Captain Kilgore made their way out of the meal line in the mess hall and began toward the tables. The place was reminiscent of any hospital cafeteria with white walls, white tile floors, and long, foldaway tables. Large industrial lights hung from the ceiling.
“You really lucked out, Private. Salisbury steak your first dinner at the base. All our food is gonna taste like crap after this.”
Neither the serving staff nor the soldiers shared the captain’s enthusiasm. A chorus of groans sounded every time he said the words ‘Salisbury steak.’
Asher shared in their disgust, disappointed when he found the dish consisted of a fatty beef lump sitting in a pile of instant mashed potatoes, all of it drowned in a puddle of slimy brown gravy. He had had better food in the Army.
“The table assigned to our company is over there.” Kilgore pointed toward a long table at the other side of the mess hall. “I'm going to have you sit over there by those two officers.”
He motioned toward the only two people sitting at the table, a large Hispanic man and a young Asian woman.
“Usually privates and officers don’t sit together, but we’ll make an exception today.”
Kilgore began towards the two other officers as Asher lumbered along behind him.
“Hello, Lieutenant and Sergeant,” said Kilgore
Both the man and woman looked up from their trays.
“How are yuh?” asked the captain
“We’re doing just fine, sir,” said the man. He was in his mid-thirties and heavy-set, possessing a square jaw and virtually no neck. “How was your leave?”
“Can’t complain, Lieutenant. Any break is a good break. Anyway, that’s not why I’m over here. I thought I would introduce Private Blackthorn to some of my, our, company’s officers while we got you tied up with lunch.”
The man eyed Asher with interest, while the woman was more preoccupied with her dinner, ignoring him and the captain.
“Asher, this is Lieutenant Tarango.”
The large man rose from his seat to shake Asher’s hand. A broad smile swept across his face.
“Glad to have you in our platoon, Blackthorn.” Tarango nearly crushed Asher’s hand when he shook it. “We’re always in need of new recruits.”
“This is Sergeant Ito,” said Kilgore.
The young woman remained seated as she leaned forward to offer Asher her hand. She was near his own age and possessed a complexion like that of porcelain.
“Hello, Private,” said Sergeant Ito with an air of dismissal. Her grip was firm despite her size.
Asher found her attitude unsettling and was unable to determine if she was rude or just shy.
Finished with her introduction, Sergeant Ito turned her attention back to her meal.
“Here is where we part ways, Blackthorn,” said Kilgore. “I’ll be taking my dinner in the office. I imagine there are quite a few things I need to take care of now that I’m back from leave. I’ll leave you here with Lieutenant Tarango and Sergeant Ito. See you all around.” He cast a final look toward Tarango and Ito and then turned to walk away.
Asher placed his lunch tray on the table and sat down.
“So, how was your tour with the captain, Blackthorn?” asked Tarango as soon as Kilgore was out of earshot.
“Ah, it was an experience.” Asher took a moment to think about it. “You’ve got quite a large operation down here.” He cut off a piece of steak and took a bite. It was much better than it looked.
“Yeah, it’s a big place, though I don’t think it’s as big as some of our other bases. I was wondering what you thought of the captain. He tends to leave an impression, as do most of the top brass.”
“He’s kind of a character…” Asher trailed off, unsure of what to say.
“Yeah, most people think he is kind of a nut at first. He's a great leader, despite his many… um… quirks, I guess you could call them. We’re lucky to be serving under him, even taking all that into account.”
“I guess I can kind of see that.”
“You’ll just have to see for yourself,” Tarango chuckled, catching Asher’s tone.
“Commander Greaves and our captain act a lot alike,” Asher noted.
“You know,” said Lieutenant Tarango, thinking. “You could say that about nearly all of the high-ranking officers. Well, I mean, you could say there are a lot of officers like Greaves. For my sake, I hope it isn't contagious, or I’m in real trouble. There's a lot of promotion within the Legion, so it's highly likely I will be a captain eventually.”
“It’s like the Legion just attracts a certain kind of person.” Tarango took a bite of his steak and chewed it up before continuing. “I suppose since what we do is a grim business, only a certain kind of person can survive. I think you could divide us into two kinds of people—well, two kinds of people who make it: Those of us who are already adapted to the violence and mental stress and those who have to adapt after they are recruited. Greaves and Kilgore are the latter, though it seems in both their cases the cost of coping is the loss of sanity. At least that might explain why they act the way they do. It probably is better to come in here already somewhat adapted to this environment, though no one is completely ready for it at the start. Some are just more prepared than others. If you come in here with some experience with violence, death, and loss, it’s less shocking later on. It really is survival of the fittest out there, both physically and mentally.”
“You trying to be some kind of psychiatrist, sir?” Asher made an attempt at humor, only realizing he might be stepping out of line.
“No, not at all. I just have my theories.” Tarango took no offense.
“So I’ve heard you have a military background, Blackthorn,” Sergeant Ito cut in. “Is that correct?”
Asher was slow to answer, taking a moment to swallow.
“Well, is it?” she asked again.
“Yes, I have, but only for a year and a half
,” he replied at last.
“That's good,” said Ito. “Most of the time, those with military experience make the best Legion soldiers. I bet survival will be easy for you.” She smiled at last, though it looked less than friendly given what she had said.
“All this talk of death and loss has me kind of concerned.” Asher was sure the Legion suffered considerable losses from time to time. He wouldn't have been interested in enlisting if he didn't think he was ready to deal with that, but he was starting to wonder just how bad it could get. “So what are we talking about, statistically speaking, loss-wise?” He made sure he didn’t sound scared. “It sounds like over 50%.”
“Would you try not to scare the recruits, Ito?” Tarango scolded ber before turning back to Asher. “It's way better than 50%,” he said reassuringly. “Not sure exactly how high it is, but most people make it just fine. Granted, our stats are worse than the military’s, but still not bad considering our enemy.”
“I suppose I’ll be leaving now.” Ito abruptly rose from her seat. “It’s been great to speak to you, Asher, but I really must go. I need to get back to the office as well. See both of you around.” She gave Tarango a final look of acknowledgment before leaving to return her tray.
Tarango grew silent with Ito’s exit, and the conversation ended.
It’s just as well, thought Asher.
He was hungry anyway, this being the first meal he had since leaving his apartment. It was taking nearly all of his self-control not to stick his face in his lunch tray and wolf down his meal like some animal, all the while ignoring Lieutenant Tarango.
Several minutes later, Tarango said, “Since I’m the only officer from our company still down here, I’ll be the one to show you to our barracks. If you’ll hurry up and finish your dinner, we’ll head down there.”
“Just a moment, sir,” said Asher, quickly scarfing down the rest of his meal, so unwilling to leave it that he didn’t care if he looked like a pig.
“Well, if you're done,” said the lieutenant, not expecting an answer from Asher. “I’ll show you to your quarters in the barracks now. I’m not sure who your assigned bunkmate is, though you’ll figure it out as soon as you get in there.”
Fall Prey: The Hunt Page 11