Apex Fallen

by C. A. Michaels

  The C130’s violent rumbling reached a crescendo as the pilots released the brakes and everyone was pushed rear-wards into seats that were nothing more than glorified cargo nets. The transport aircraft roared along the ground and then lurched into the air in a sudden rush. Dan felt the usual, slightly sickening feeling of becoming airborne hit his stomach. As soon as he registered they were flying, the pilots had already started to swing the nose of the aircraft away from the direction of take-off. Ignore that feeling. Focus on a steady point, where the horizon would be. Dan swallowed back a mouthful of warm saliva that had gathered in his mouth. He was normally OK flying, but a C130 flight was always a challenge. Herc pilots weren’t like commercial pilots – they didn’t care about passenger comfort, and they liked to do things as fast and as rough as the Herc’s ageing air-frames would allow them to do so.

  Dan looked down the row of soldiers, all perched on cargo-netting seats facing each other. The MOPP suits made them look bulky and a little alien – or at least Hollywood-like. Dan had practiced putting on and living out of the MOPP suits, but he had never worn them outside of training and seeing everyone dressed in them made the whole scene seem unreal. Better unreal than terrifying, and Dan kept his mind focused on the here and now, avoiding the thoughts of borderline desperation that hovered at the edge of his consciousness.

  Dan was far from a boot and had long since mastered the art of sleeping whenever and wherever possible. He didn’t feel like sleeping now, but he was using the same mindset that allowed him to drop-off on command to keep him calm. Focus on your surroundings, and what you need to do. Where the pisser is, if you need to go. Where water is. Where food is. What you will do in turbulence. What you will do to when you need to disembark. Dan let himself be consumed by the details around him, and his breathing stayed steady and relaxed. Despite his composure he could see that his example wasn’t rubbing off on too many of his soldiers. There were a lot of wide, open eyes and nervous hand gestures. Nothing I can do now, Dan thought. And there isn’t anything you can do, either. Just hold it together.

  A USAF air-crew member was stepping down the row of soldiers, counting those in the back. They were wearing a MOPP suit, too, but had yet to put on their mask. They were at MOPP level 2, then, with suits on and masks carried. Dan peeled his mask back off and wiped his brow. Others around him followed suit. The Herc was hot and smelt strongly of avgas, and Dan felt his stomach clench up slightly. He had no trouble flying under normal conditions but the atmosphere of a Herc’s interior, coupled with the lack of easily seen windows, always challenged his stomach.

  The counting of the passengers ended with Dan, who was at the far end of the Herc. He could now make out that the air force air-crew who had been doing the counting was a young-looking girl with her hair pulled back in a pony tail. She was wearing make-up, Dan realized, which looked completely out of place against the huge MOPP suit she seemed to disappear into. She obviously hadn’t been expecting to be flying today, let alone being locked into one of the military’s most unflattering set of MOPP fatigues. The Herc continued to lurch its way through the sky in unpredictable, sudden changes in attitude and she had to brace herself on the cargo netting above Dan’s head to speak to him.

  “Details,” she called out at Dan, speaking up to make herself heard over the volume of the Herc’s engines.

  “Captain Dan Martin,” he called back, and she made a note of the details.

  “Come up the front,” she said by reply and led the way back past the maze of soldiers towards the cockpit. Dan followed, weaving and staggering his way over the intertwined legs of the soldiers.

  As he mounted the few steps up to the small flight deck area he felt something cold being pushed against his face. He turned, and saw that one of the SOCOM guys was indicating that he should take the can of Coke. Dan nodded and called out his thanks. The operator, as Dan knew the SF guys called themselves, nodded back at him. Dan hadn’t realized how thirsty he was, and he was grateful that he now had something to sip on as he pulled himself into the cockpit.

  At the controls were a pilot and a co-pilot, both busy at their respective stations. Behind them and slightly off to the right was another console station. The navigator’s position, Dan thought. The seat at the nav’s console was empty but a USAF woman was leaning over the display, hammering at a computer screen and next to her stood the SOCOM commander who had spoken to him prior to boarding. While everyone on the flight deck was in their MOPP suits Dan realized he was the only one in body armor and cursed himself for making it that much harder to move around in the already cramped space.

  Leaning against the left wall of the flight deck Dan cracked open the Coke. He took a deep gulp, and then coughed and spluttered as the Herc entered another sudden climb. He was still coughing as he realized he had spilt a good portion of the can down his armor, leaving his hands and kit a sticky brown mess. It made him look like a boot all over again, and brought back memories of being on basic training. Cursing himself, Dan drained the can and moved over to the nav’s station. He hoped that they wouldn’t notice the coke stains on his body armor.

  The tall SOCOM leader looked up.

  “Name’s Lance,” he said, extending his hand. His hair was lot longer than Dan’s but looked unkempt and messy, with blonde strands jutting out at all angles. Lance’s face was narrow but with a strong jaw and sharp cheek lines, and Dan thought he could make out a series of faded scars around his right ear.

  “Captain Dan Martin.” Dan couldn’t break the in-built habit of stating his rank first, even though Lance hadn’t offered his.

  The USAF navigator didn’t offer her name, but she did fill in Dan on the background to the conversation.

  “No updates on what’s going on. No news is probably bad news, but we’ve got various rumors of a nuclear accident, a super-volcano and a meteor. CNN also carried a story of a possible-terrorist WMD attack, and Fox was spouting off about Iranian and North Korean involvement. Take your pick, I guess. Seems that CENTCOM are in a frenzy due to the lack of info as the national disaster infrastructure should be passing updates back on, but the only reports came from some news agencies, and now even they are down. Chaos all round is the only certainty we’ve got to go on. There were reports of in-fighting amongst the survivors, and some other pretty panicked reports of a contagion or infection in the area.”

  “MOPP suits?” Dan asked, not fully stating his question but Lance understood him and picked up the narration.

  “Yeah. Too many rumors of NBC contagions and dirty bombs, so CENTCOM is playing it safe. Athena is the basic roll-out of a national security conplan should everything go tits-up. I don’t believe it myself, but the rumors of foreign nation involvement kind of escalate it all, too, so we’re rolling with the worst case scenario.”

  “Shit. OK, then.” Dan didn’t think his response was much, but both the nav and Lance nodded.

  “Shit indeed. Since you didn’t seem to have much else to do, and since the support platoon I was expecting to support us hadn’t shown up, I figured that I might as well bring you boys along for the ride.” Lance grinned, and although Dan thought that he should feel angry that he had been dragged onto this mission, away from his company and without proper approval, he couldn’t bring himself to feel pissed off about it. Better to be getting some information, and to be involved in something, he felt, than continuing to be part of the general mayhem he’d seen his battalion in.

  “So we’re going to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs,” Lance continued. “Our task will keep us in situ, on the base. Nothing flash or tricky, just secure an area and wait.”

  ***

  After two hours of flying time the Herc started to descend. The order came to suit up and the entire crew, from pilots right down to Dan, who was now back in his seat by the ramp but was sharing his space at the back of the plane with the SOCOM team, dragged on their helmets and gloves. It was hot and stuffy inside the masks and the fuel smell of the Herc’s interior
was replaced by a stale, plastic smell inside the respirator. With everything on it was hard to identify those around him – except for the special forces operators, who not only had properly camouflaged body armor complete with vest pouches unlike the slick, digital-patterned grey sets Dan’s group were wearing, but they had also pulled out sidearms and rifles from somewhere in the plane and were strapping them on. Lance had found a roll of reflective tape and got Dan to put two bands of it around his arm.

  “So I can find you,” Lance had yelled at Dan over the roar of the engines. Dan had in turn made a Staff Sergeant and a Lieutenant he had located in the Herc make a single band around their arms. At least he had a semi-functional command chain now. Small steps, but he’d figure the rest out as he went.

  They couldn’t see anything from their position inside the Herc but they did hear the mechanical grinding noise and feel the jolt as the wheels descended and locked down, and then they all felt the buckling and bouncing through their seats as the flaps on the C130’s wings were lowered. The engine pitch changed and the Herc swung into its final descent, banking and rapidly losing altitude. A violent and slightly unexpected shudder let them know they were on the ground, and within twenty seconds the braking and rough deceleration as the pilots slowed the Herc had come to an end. As the aircraft turned off the runway and onto a taxiing lane the ramp was lowered and the SOCOM squad adopted positions at the rear of the C130, facing out. Behind them the pony-tailed USAF girl had a head-set linked via a long cable to the top of the Herc, allowing her to speak to the flight deck and pass messages onto Lance.

  Dan wasn’t sure what was going to happen and, in the absence of orders and any weapons, he couldn’t think of much to do but wait to follow Lance’s squad. Seemingly in the middle of the taxiway the Herc came to a halt and, after a brief message was relayed from the USAF girl to Lance, the SOCOM squad had dismounted and fanned out around the back of the aircraft. The USAF girl waved Dan forward and, after a brief fumble with their seat belts, he led his platoon down the ramp in their cumbersome MOPP suits. Two buses were fifty meters off the side of the taxiway, with drivers and a security detail in attendance. None were in MOPP suits, so the helmets came off as Lance and Dan’s groups moved over to them. No-one wanted to spend more time than they absolutely had to breathing in the stale, plastic oxygen and feeling the sweat pool around the rubber masks. As their eyes adjusted to the direct sunlight they could make out the hangars and buildings that made up Peterson Air Force Base.

  As they neared the group it became apparent that all was not well. The security contingent were clearly on edge. M4 rifles were being pointed all around the area – including at them. A brief conversation occurred between Lance and the security detail and, with minimal words, they were all waved on board the buses. The guards, USAF military police, Dan gathered from their shoulder patches, kept their distance but were clearly stressed and alarmed, facing out and not making eye contact with the soldiers. Lance pulled Dan alongside him and they stepped onto the second bus together. Two more of Lance’s men were standing at the front of the bus, awaiting his briefing.

  “The base is in lock-down. Something is going seriously wrong out there. While we were airborne they reckon half the base personnel with a sudden nausea, laying ‘em out flat. Everything ground to a halt from there as they tried to get to grips with it and figure out what was going on. They think it was airborne. No one has come down since the initial outbreak, so for what it’s worth it’s clear now, unless you want to stay holed up in that mask ensemble. I know I sure as hell don’t.”

  Some of the USAF police were boarding the bus and one of them, who must have heard Lance’s initial brief, interrupted. He was a short and slightly rotund man but his voice was high pitched and fast, and he sounded out-of-breath and somewhat shell-shocked. Dan recognized the mannerisms of someone who was getting hit by the symptoms of delayed shock. It had hit this man pretty hard by the looks of it. Dan had once helped secure the sight of an IED attack on a convoy in Afghanistan, and those survivors had exactly the same speech and body language patterns that the air force guard in front of him was demonstrating.

  Dan put a hand on the man’s arm and stood him along-side the group. Putting him on the spot, having him face into an unknown group was only going to keep his stress levels high as his brain registered outsiders and potential adversaries. Better to get him in close, reassure him and let his mind start to wind down. Dan kept his hand on his elbow and he could feel the man relax a little. He was now staring outwards, away from the group. It was a subtle change but it made a difference. The guard no longer looked at them like they were going to pounce and smash his skull in, and the way they stood together he was able to feel that they were allies, standing together. The man’s subconscious was slowing down, now, and his thought process was stabilizing. His voice was high-pitched, his words ran together and he smashed through his sentences at a rapid pace, but at least he was thinking and speaking clearly.

  “It was pretty bad, with the affected types unable to move and semi-conscious, if not completely out to the world, for around half an hour. Base was in uproar; all we could do was provide first aid. Some had bleeding out of their nose and ears and we thought a nerve agent had hit. You know, like what we were trained in before going into Iraq back in ‘03. Those who got hit the worst were voiding themselves; vomit and shitting themselves, too. It was bad, messy. After 40 minutes signs of life increased and consciousness returned, but all those who had gone down were in a semi-stoned state, no speech and no recognition of what they had been through. Like they had overdosed on some pretty potent drugs. They could see and respond...”

  “Wait, so they all came to, everyone?” Lance asked.

  “I think so. I didn’t see anyone stay down, at any rate. But they didn’t come to, exactly. Like, they were different – not everything was intact, inside their heads, I mean. Most fled and hid and wouldn’t respond to us trying to help them, like something had wiped their memories and left them scared, like an animal. And others...”

  Another USAF guard, a large black man wearing the rank of a senior NCO and appearing a bit more collected, had shouldered his way in as the bus door closed. As the driver edged towards the collection of buildings in the distance he turned his attention to their discussion and used the opportunity to take over narrating the version of events.

  “This is where it gets fucking weird and fucking rough, guys. Some of those... when they awoke... those ones that had been in convulsions and had bled the most when they were all out to everything...well, they were pretty animalistic and wild. They didn’t attack us at first, but we observed them launching onto the others who were hiding and going all-out, like wild fucking beasts. I’ve never seen anything like it, just fucking insane. We intervened a few times but it was out of control. We’re from the Military Police Battalion here and we – those of us who were unaffected, at any rate – were facing call-outs and emergencies everywhere.”

  “Call-outs? Cell’s working here?” one of Lance’s men asked.

  “No, the base RT system,” the guard responded, tapping the black radio mike clipped to his chest. “We all tried to work where-ever we found ourselves but it was too much and some of our guys were getting attacked.”

  “Attacked?” Lance asked. “By whom?”

  “The aggressive ones, the psychos, whatever you want to call them. When cornered or confronted in a room or corridor they would go all out on us. Just... all out fucking crazy. We dropped a few and then the flood gates came down and it was all on. Everywhere we went we came across assaults and pretty violent batteries. Homicides in progress, man, and they weren’t stopping. Any aggressive ones we decided to drop on sight with our side-arms, figured that we need to keep as many of us survivors, and of the meek ones as safe as possible. It’s pretty monstrous when you see...” the NCO stammered to a stop and looked out the bus. “Pretty monstrous,” he concluded.

  “Any plans?” queried Lance.

  “Af
ter a few attacks on our guys we fell back to our lines, restocked and got in touch with Base Command. They’ve secured themselves but it doesn’t sound pretty on their end. They wanted us to secure the flight line and shuttle you guys in. You’re the first to arrive, and everything is based on us holding out for you – you’re pretty much the cavalry we were waiting on to start regaining control of the situation.”

  Lance turned and started talking to the wall of the bus. Dan realized that both he and his men had slim boom mikes linked into radios slipped onto their armored vests, and Lance was in the process of giving his men a heads-up. While the SF guys were preoccupied he took the opportunity to ask his own question.

  “Do you have any rifles, anywhere?” The guard looked at him blankly, uncomprehending.

  “There will be an armory – you guys are Military Police, right? You must have access to an MP armory somewhere on base?”

  “Yeah, by McGuire Street, on the intersection. It’s not near Base Command, which...”

  Lance was back in the conversation and didn’t miss a beat. “That’s fine,” he said authoritatively.

  “We’ll get to Base Command when we get there. Priority now is to kit everyone up with some small arms. If we need to shoot shit then we need to able to shoot shit, and we need guns for that. Swing us by your armory and then we’ll be able to report in, but right now I’ve only got 12 shooters and I don’t like uncertainty when I’m unarmed, OK?”