“Thanks,” Dan said. “For getting me out – on the first night.”
“Thanks yourself – it was you who saved me on Nebraska Ave.” They sipped their beers for a few minutes, gazing out at the figures around them who were either still eating their dinner or sorting out gear on their cramped bed-spaces.
“I really wanted to get going again tomorrow, out back into it all, because I don’t want to be stuck here, thinking,” Lance said. “Sorry if I’ve made things harder on you but I don’t think I could hold it together if I had to spend another day here without a task to consume me.” Dan took another sip and spoke while staring at the Carlsberg’s label.
“Fine by me. Worried about your family?”
“Yeah. Wife and two kids are back in Georgia. It’s eating me up, not knowing how they are. Do you have anyone you’re missing?”
Dan thought about Rebecca, but it seemed odd bringing up that he was missing someone who wasn’t even his girlfriend any more.
“Parents, brother and sister in Virginia, but I don’t think it is the same as having your own wife and kids to think about.”
“Maybe. I just can’t think of what’s going on. I’m still waiting to wake up, or at least be told that I can go home after the next mission. It’s too much to think that there isn’t any going home anymore, and that there isn’t a home to go back too, anyway.”
Dan tried to think of something reassuring to say. “The Ranger Regiment at Benning surely would have done everything to secure the families and next-of-kin, though. I know it’s not much but seeing how the 10th SF Group fared here, I couldn’t think of a better place to be in the world than when this blew up.”
“I guess you’re right, and my kid’s god-father, who is also one of my close Ranger buddies, was at Fort Benning and I know he’d move everything to get to my wife Jan and to my two little ones. It’s just, shit, it’s just the thought that I may never find out, let alone ever see them again that really destroys me.”
“Have hope. Even though we’re on the back-foot now we will recover from this and I’m sure you’ll be able to get back to Georgia. This is still America after all, and I don’t think anyone I know is willing to give up on the idea of the United States anytime soon, hacks or no hacks. We’ll fight back and we’ll reclaim our homes, so just keep the faith and hold on for that moment.” Dan paused, not sure whether to speak his last thought out-loud. He figured that if it hadn’t already occurred to Lance then it soon would.
“After we get back from this mission you could use the sat-phone to call your Regiment at Benning, if you knew or could track down any numbers for them. If anyone has secured their base and is manning their phones it will be the 75th.”
“Thanks. I’ll be fine, tomorrow, out on patrol I mean. It’s just when I get time to reflect on things I get all torn up and feel like I’m killing myself from worry.”
“That’s OK, just go with it. Don’t lose hope and don’t be too hard on yourself. If you need to talk then just sing out.”
Lance had long since stopped calling Dan by his rank, which didn’t bother him in the slightest. On reflection, he even felt like they were going to make a good team. Or, more like it, he was going to make a good supporting act to Lance who was the Ranger, after all. Both the men finished their beers and spent a few minutes staring ahead at nothing in particular before they crawled into their sleeping bags and, almost instantly, fell into a dreamless, heavy slumber.
CHAPTER SEVEN
At 0730 hours Hannah woke Dan and Lance up with a cup of coffee for each of them. Behind her was soldier with a couple of plates of food. She smiled and greeted them. While Dan felt guilty that he had both slept well past the reveille everyone around them seemed to have woken up to and felt a little uneasy that there were soldiers waiting on him – his training had always been that, if anything, officers waited on soldiers in the American army as a mark of respect – seeing Hannah when he woke up made him feel hell of a lot better.
“I feel like I’ve got a goddamned hangover,” groaned Lance from his stretcher.
“How many beers did I have last night? And I haven’t done my nightly routine of press-ups in lord knows how long. I’m going to end up booted into a freaking mechanic slot for such low standards,” he muttered, sitting up. The soldier handed both Dan and Lance the plate of food. Lance glanced at the soldier, and then suddenly looked guilty.
“Uh, hope you’re not a mechanic...” The soldier grinned back at him.
“I am, but no worries.”
Hannah had brought herself a coffee and sat on the floor in front of them.
“Don’t mind me,” she said, “I’ve already eaten.”
Dan and Lance got stuck into their plates of lukewarm spaghetti, reconstituted egg and something resembling-but-not-tasting like-bacon. Probably the Fort Carson special, even before Stalin hit. Every military base had one or two food types that defied description and were only ever tasted once before being left alone, only ever sampled by those who didn’t know any better. Dan also found a rather mushy pancake underneath the tomato sauce. All in all, he thought, a one-out-of-five star meal if he’d been given it a week ago but, under current conditions, he couldn’t think of getting anything better.
“I hope you like it, it’s the best we could do. Everyone else is on MRE’s but Scott sweet-talked the chefs into getting up early and putting something together for you guys. The current rationing is for two MRE’s a day and one cooked meal.” Knowing that someone had to go out of their way to prepare it for them made Dan rather guilty but it also served to make his meal taste even better, if that were possible.
Through a mouthful of pancake Lance muttered his thanks. Hannah watched as they both finished their meals and crushed up the disposable plates.
“Thanks,” Dan said, “but in future I’d prefer a plain MRE. Having special treatment makes me feel like it’s the last meal for the damned, or something.” Hannah smiled over her coffee.
“Better not be, because I plan on needing you guys to keep me in business. Once we get back from this task I’m stuck as a security detail without a helo to fly. Since you guys are important enough to be charging off under your own authority I’m hoping you’ll convince someone that you need to do an occasional flight somewhere in my Lakota.” She was only half-joking Dan thought. Pilots hate being grounded at the best of times. Without their aircraft they were nothing, just ordinary dough-boys or girls.
Lance sipped at his hot cup. “I’m not sure we will be able to justify flying anywhere but I think we could employ you productively as a barista. This is a superb example of Army instant coffee, condensed milk and, if I’m not mistaken, two spoons of sugar.”
“As per the NATO standard cup,” Hannah remarked, finishing her own. “Anyway, I’m getting escorted to the flight line early so I can pre-flight my bird. The escort will RV with you out the front in thirty minutes and will bring you out.” As she walked away Dan was thankful for the wake-up. It would have been hell slowly coming to and having the realities of the world slowly start to filter into your mind. It was a lot better to be woken suddenly to coffee and, he thought, to Hannah.
***
A civilian Ford F-150 was waiting to take them the UH-72 Lakota. Julia was with the patrol but Scott had already left with Hannah.
“The hangars are a few clicks away from us and someone in HQ must like you,” one of the two soldiers waiting for them said, “as they’ve allocated one of the few vehicles we have fuel for to chauffeur you in and out on. Feel free to chuck your gear in the back and we’ll be off as soon as you’re ready. The roads are pretty safe so long as we keep driving.”
“Morning,” Dan said to Julia as they lifted their packs into the tray and all three of them packed into the rear seats. “Enjoy breakfast?”
“No,” she said, smiling back. “Standard MRE fare. Pretty awful, to be honest.” Neither Dan nor Lance could bring themselves to mention their cooked meal and simply nodded.
The driv
e took them down the main streets of Fort Carson before they turned onto a few smaller roads. It seemed extremely quiet and peaceful, and they didn’t see any hacks in the open. The constant bodies slumped onto the ground reminded them of the realities of the situation they were now in, and they could see that the few days hadn’t been kind to the dead. Flies swarmed over the figures and, even over the vehicle’s air-con, they could smell the pungent stench of decay.
“We’re here,” the driver said as he swung in front of a row of large, grey hangars. A small bulbous helicopter had been hauled out onto the tarmac and a team of five soldiers were standing around it. Another six or so soldiers stood guard further out, acting as security. Even a simple morning flight isn’t easy any more, Dan thought, thankful that he was part of something more important than the base security detail.
Hannah and Scott were waiting for them in front of the Lakota. They had lost their flight overalls and instead put on multicam uniforms of their own, over which they wore a small plate carrier and a separate tactical vest with an array of pouches and a knife each. Their pistols were prominently attached on their vest – ease of access when sitting in a cockpit, Dan reasoned.
The helicopter behind them looked like someone had grabbed a civilian touring helicopter and painted it olive drab. Dan hadn’t seen the Lakota before but he knew it was a new acquisition for the Army. It had sliding doors opened revealing a row of seats above a pair of skids. The tail was the only think that made it look even remotely menacing, with an angular boom jutting out of it.
They stowed their bags in the back next to two pilot’s foliage-green Camelbak packs that were quickly dwarfed by the size of their Eberlestocks. One of the ground-crew showed them how to connect their helmet-mikes into the aircraft so they could talk with the pilots and then they were clipped in. There were eight seats in the back, four of which were taken up by their packs but it was far from crowded. Dan and Lance took up seats by each door so they could observe and fire from the Lakota if they needed to. Things were occurring pretty quickly as there was obviously no point in waiting. Everyone connected their headsets into the helicopter and they could hear Scott and Hannah going through their pre-flight routine. The engine turned over and then the rotor kicked in above them. When the doors were closed both Dan and Lance made sure they were able to open them again when they needed to and then sat back in their seats, their HK416’s resting between their knees.
“Is everyone ready?” a female voice crackled into life in their head-sets. Hannah, they all realized, even though they couldn’t immediately recognize her over the static and the muffled roar of the engines. Both the pilots were craning back in their seats to check their passengers, visually checking everything was securely stowed and their seat-belts were clipped up. Instead of replying they all raised their hands in a thumbs up and, almost immediately, the Lakota started to rise.
***
The ground swept by underneath them as they skirted around the Western side of Denver. Dan was glad that they were flying at what he guessed was over five thousand feet, making the scene of urban desolation below them appear small, minute and surreal. It was obvious that something terrible had befallen the city. Cars lay motionless, often concentrated together in pile-ups and a few columns of smoke could be seen rising lazily into the air from various parts of the city. Some sheets had been laid out on roof-tops. Dan couldn’t tell for sure but he was certain some had ‘SOS’ marked on them. He couldn’t imagine what it would have felt like being part of the 10th Special Forces Group flying into Denver the day that Stalin hit. The city seemed so massive and expansive, and a single helicopter would have been swallowed by the urban sprawl as it dropped off the operators. Getting off a helicopter into the chaos, carnage and horrors below them without any feasible exfil route would have required some serious reservoirs of courage. While he’d tried to sound optimistic when talking to Lance last night he was filled with dread and pessimism seeing the scale in which Stalin could sweep a previously thriving city off its ledge and plunge it into the dark ages. The metropolises such as New York and Los Angeles must be immense oceans of incomprehensible humanitarian suffering and turmoil. The imagery of imagining Denver’s pain amplified and concentrated by an order of magnitude was immensely unsettling and Dan deliberately busied his mind with details of the mission at hand.
As they started to near Boulder Julia leaned forward and craned her neck out the window.
“Ten o’clock to us, slightly higher than we are,” she said, her voice transmitted into everyone’s headsets. There was a small white shape reflecting the sun. As they got closer they could make it out as a small private aircraft, winging its way East. Both Scott and Hannah took turns trying to raise it on various channels but got no response.
“No idea where they are coming from or where they are going,” Scott said, after he gave up changing frequencies. “But I can’t imagine they have anywhere better to head to.”
The full night’s rest had picked Dan up and, unlike on the vehicle rides the day before, he had to no trouble staying awake. The UH-72 had an impressive cruising speed, sweeping through the air at speeds that felt more like they were on-board a jet rather than a helicopter. After just over thirty minutes of flying time they begun their descent in a slight bank towards the objective.
“We’re coming up on the factory now,” Hannah’s crackling voice told them through their head-sets. “We’ll swing in from the west and do a low and slow fly-past before I come around and land.”
Lance leaned forward and opened his passenger door, locking it open. Dan followed suit and both men clipped their rifles onto their slings and then raised them to their shoulder, their barrels pointing outwards.
“OK, we’re a few hundred meters off now, and the factory will be one of the buildings ahead of us at our two o’clock.”
The area was a lot more built-up and developed than Dan had anticipated, even after looking at the map and the aerial imagery. Suburbs seemed to straddle the industrial area and the sun could be seen glinting off thousands of stationary cars beneath them.
“Got it, the objective is pretty easy to make out. Coming up on it now, and it’s passing over to our right and is along-side us...now.”
All of their eyes studied the large grey warehouse connected to a two-storied commercial block by a tall corridor. Just as well we aren’t trying to land on the factory itself Dan saw, as it had a substantial slope as Julia had indicated and also had an array of solar panels mounted along one side.
There was little movement to be seen around the buildings. Bodies were strewn throughout the area and pools of hardened, congealed blood were clearly visible on the tarmac and on the ground.
“No signs of life visible,” Lance reported on the intercom. The fly-by had occurred in an instance and Hannah had swung the helicopter in a sweeping right bank, losing air-speed at a rapid rate as she swung the nose back towards the factory.
“And the factory roof is clear,” Lance confirmed. Dan remembered that they’d planned to get down as quickly as possible and switch the helo off to avoid making unnecessary noise, but he was surprised at how quickly Hannah was achieving this. She really must have been one of Scott’s top Lakota pilots. Lance was unclipping his belt as they neared the ground and Dan struggled to do likewise, aiming for speed but getting his fingers caught in the clip. Instead of flaring the nose of the helicopter Hannah was skidding the UH-72 through the air, losing speed in a final side-ways slip while she lined up the point she wanted to land on through her right window. The factory roof was almost underneath them when Lance pulled his head-set cord out of the helicopter’s intercom, plugged it back into his own radio and moved out of his seat, dropping the final meter onto the roof. As soon as he hit the ground he was moving away from the helicopter, weapon raised to his shoulder as he scanned the roof-top. Dan had forgotten about his head-set and took a few seconds longer disconnecting himself before he dismounted.
The helicopter had touched down befor
e Dan stepped out, so he only had the normal half-meter drop onto the concrete surface and, ducking low to avoid the rotor blades, he moved in the opposite direction to Lance, clearing the area around him with his muzzle raised. Already he could hear the helicopter engines switching off behind him and the rotor blades beginning to slow. That had been quick. Within a minute of first seeing the objective area on the horizon and they were on the ground. Hopefully it was fast enough to avoid attracting every hack from the immediate area, Dan thought, as his gaze swept over the sea of suburban roofs before him.
“OK, we’re clear here,” Lance said into his head-set.
“Clear this side, too,” Dan replied. As the rest of the team were still in the helicopter and not listening into their dismounted radio net Dan made a point of turning, waving and giving a prominent thumbs up to Scott, Hannah and Julia.
“Shit, man, can you see them all?” Dan stopped scanning the horizon and focused on the streets below.
“Fuck. Dozens of them.” Dan didn’t need to use ACOG to make out the ghoulish shapes on the street. Their crouching, predatory movement made his skin crawl with a loathing of what nature had allowed. On the two hundred meter stretch of road he could see underneath him, at least ten to fifteen of the creatures rocked on their rear haunches while they looked up at him. Even at two stories up their permanent snarl and blood-stained faces and chests stood out. There was no mistaking any survivors for a hack – the last few days had made them look even more evil and depraved.
“Car park looks bad, infested with aggro looking things. They don’t seem as retiring as they were on the first few nights, either.”
“Lance, scan the bodies with your scope. It looks like there has been a bit of cannibalization going on out there.”
“So the streets don’t look too good?” Scott’s voice could be heard over the final sounds of the helicopter winding down.
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