by Dirk Patton
Before he could pull the trigger the man disappeared around the corner into the office. Curious, Roach poked his head around in time to see him pull a vicious looking combat machete and ram it into the back of the neck of a male infected, nearly decapitating the body. He did it so effortlessly that Roach experienced a visceral thrill just from watching. Pulling his head back he lowered the pistol into a two handed, low ready position and scanned the hall to make sure there weren’t any more infected sneaking up on him. He was briefly startled when he looked back to his left and the man was standing in the hallway again, silently closing the office door. How the hell did someone so big move so quietly?
The rifles that had been firing had fallen silent as they moved down the hall. The big man cleared two more offices before closing their doors, then they were at the stairs that led up to the flight operations center. With his rifle up the man led the way, aiming up the stairwell as he climbed. At the landing he fired a burst that killed a screaming female infected who tumbled down the steps and crashed into the wall. Roach would have been knocked down by the falling body if he hadn’t jumped out of the way at the last second.
They climbed the rest of the way up, stepping over more infected bodies at the top of the stairs and nearly getting shot when some jackass fired through the double wooden doors that led into the operations center. The man shouted out that they were friendlies and after a moment he carefully pushed through the doors into the room where he was greeted by the fucking dog and the bitch that had flown in with him from Atlanta. She was Roach’s type, but not young enough. He liked them in their teens or early twenties unless he was in the mood to dispense justice. In that case, age didn’t matter, and she was another bitch that deserved it. She had mocked him the previous night when that fucking Army Colonel had intervened while Roach and his men were trying to disarm them as they got off the plane.
Roach snapped back to the current reality as the Major called the two Security Forces men over and started dressing them down over firing on full auto. When he was done, Roach took the men out to the hallway. He didn’t really have any reason to do so other than wanting to get out of the room. There were three people in there he wanted to kill, and the stress of the situation was getting to him. He was actually considering shooting the two cops, taking one of their rifles and going back in the room to kill everyone. Could he do it? He knew he was emotionally capable, but the Major scared the shit out of him. The guy was big, strong and fast and Roach was willing to bet he was damn good with a rifle or pistol. He would have to be the first to go down. But what about the dog? And the bitch that was with the Major had a rifle too. Could he kill them all without getting shot himself?
Rifle fire from within the room ended his day dream. He charged back into the room with the two cops, the Major pointing at a dead infected female on the floor that he’d just shot. Roach stood by while the man held a conversation with Masuka, seeing another opportunity when he heard there was a Globemaster about to land and pick all of them up. The Major quickly organized the people into a group, getting them ready to move. He grabbed a rifle and spare magazines from the body of a dead Security Forces airman and handed them to Roach, telling him to bring up the rear, then headed out into the hallway.
There was firing as they moved, descending the stairs and turning into the hallway that led to the steel exit door. The group paused long enough to collect a young woman from the office where the Major had killed an infected on the way in, then they were at the door and moving out into the night. A massive fire was burning at the far end of the flight line and Roach could see hundreds of infected shambling around between them and the runway.
Always one to watch for and take advantage of opportunities, Roach peeled off from the back of the group as soon as they exited the building. Wherever it was they were going on the Globemaster he had no intention of joining them. Nashville was still alive and well and there were a couple of young women that had been on his mind. He wanted to pay them a visit before he headed west. His only friend on the base worked for Air Force intelligence and had told him the location of the high security site where the Pentagon had relocated. Roach intended to bluff his way inside and ride out the apocalypse in comfort. To do that he needed the right look to try and talk his way inside, and it was lying on the ground at his feet. Grabbing General Samuels’s body he drug it around the corner of the building into the dark where he quickly stripped it and changed his clothes. Five minutes later a Brigadier General climbed into the Security Forces Humvee and roared off towards the gate closest to the highway that led into Nashville.
30
A rumble of thunder caught my attention. I paused, listening, and realized it wasn’t thunder. It was bombs, and a lot of them. The Air Force was at it again.
“Is this the package that the Colonel was talking about?” I asked Jackson.
“It’s the start. Carpet bombing the Nashville suburbs.” He looked down at his watch. “There’s a special package due in just under ten minutes.”
I forgot all about Roach. “What’s a special package?” Rachel asked, looking between me and Jackson.
“Nuclear.” I said, Jackson nodding when Rachel turned to him with a shocked expression on her face.
“Are they crazy?” She said a little too loud. Several heads around the car turned in our direction for a moment and I motioned for Rachel to keep it down.
“They probably are, and a few days ago I would have thought this was a very bad idea. Now? I don’t know. The only way to stop the infected is to kill them. If there’s a hundred and you kill ninety-nine of them, the last one will be just as dangerous and keep coming for you until you kill him too. If there’s millions that will get taken out in the blast, well that’s better odds for us.” I wasn’t sure I was at all convinced by what I was saying, but I had little doubt this was the rationale being used to make the decision to drop the bomb.
“Blasts.” Jackson said quietly.
“More than one? How many?” I asked incredulously.
“Three. City center, ten miles southeast and ten miles southwest.”
“So we’re going to do the goddamn Chinese’s job for them? Is that it?” Rachel asked.
This conversation wasn’t going anywhere. I could see the logic behind dropping nukes, but at the same time I agreed with Rachel. However, Jackson was just the messenger. He was so far removed from the decision makers that he didn’t deserve Rachel’s indignation. Standing up I held my hand out for her. She looked at me for a moment then grasped my forearm, giving my injured hand a break, and stood up with me.
“Where are we going?”
“Up on the roof. Other than old news reels I’ve never seen a nuke go off.” I answered softly enough to not be heard by any of the surrounding people. Telling Dog to stay I headed for the back of the car, Rachel hesitating before she followed.
A narrow ladder led up from the platform and I climbed slowly, pausing to check for infected before climbing the rest of the way up. Rachel followed and I helped her transition from the ladder to the roof before both of us sat down facing the rear of the train, legs dangling over the edge of the car. The slipstream was strong, pushing hard on our backs, but it was refreshing to be out of the stench of the car beneath us. Between the roar of the rushing wind and the clatter made by the train the only way we could talk was to lean towards each other and shout, so we sat there in silence. I warned Rachel to keep her eyes averted until after the initial flashes of the detonations. We were fifty miles away by now, but I wasn’t going to take any chances with having my eyesight burned out by the brilliant flash emitted at the first instant of a nuclear explosion.
We sat there for a few more minutes, Rachel scooted as close to me as she could get and finally leaning her head over onto my shoulder. Talk about torn. It felt good to have her close and at the same time I felt guilty as hell that it felt so good. It was like I was betraying Katie. I forgot all about my discomfort when there was a brilliant flash, like the world
’s largest camera just took a picture, which was quickly followed by two more. Rachel raised her head off my shoulder and we both looked to the east. At first it looked like the sun was coming up, shades of orange fading into purple filling the entire horizon, then three distinct mushroom clouds appeared and boiled towards the heavens.
“Are we safe? I mean from the blast and radiation?” Rachel shouted into my ear as she circled her arms around my right arm and held tightly. This didn’t bother me. It wasn’t affection. It was her reaction to the indescribable feeling of seeing an entire city wiped off the face of the earth in less than a heartbeat.
“We’re at least fifty miles away. We’d be safe at 10 miles. For a while, at least. Those three mushroom clouds are pumping debris into the upper atmosphere, and that debris is highly radioactive. The problem will be when and where it starts coming back down.” One of the things my unit had trained for was the covert penetration of the old Soviet Union with a sixty pound nuke in a back pack. The idea was a two man team could walk a bomb right into central Moscow, or any sensitive area, set a timer and get out before it detonated. The advantage was that the US could launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike without putting a single missile in the air which would trigger a Soviet response. A big part of that training had been delivered by scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory who taught us more than we ever wanted to know about blast radii, overpressure waves, radiation hot zones, fallout, and much more that I’d forgotten until now.
Sitting there watching the fiery pillars still climbing in the night sky I felt a wave of despair wash over me. I’m generally optimistic, or at least I don’t quit until it’s quite apparent there’s nothing more that can be done, but when we start nuking our own cities we’re in a world of shit. I probably would have kept sitting there, watching the fires burn, if I hadn’t been distracted by an Apache flying right over my head along the length of the train. He was so low I involuntarily ducked, turning my head to watch him flare out near the front of the train and fire two hellfire missiles.
Hellfire missiles are probably the most aptly named weapon the military has ever devised. Originally conceived to be an air launched weapon to destroy heavy armor they have become the default choice to unleash hell on any ground based target. They’re also expensive and certainly don’t exist in infinite numbers, so I knew if they were being used there was a pretty serious threat just up the tracks. Definitely serious enough that I didn’t want to be sitting out in the open on the roof of the train when we got there. Motioning Rachel down the ladder, I followed and bumped into her back when she stopped at the open door, Jackson blocking the way as he came to find me.
“What’s going on?” I asked as we sorted ourselves out, moving into the car and closing the door. The stench was worse than I remembered and I immediately started missing the fresh, outside air.
“There were a couple of trucks hauling ass for the tracks. After we took them out we spotted the herd of infected following them. There’s a lot.”
“How the hell didn’t we know the infected were there? Aren’t we watching on satellite? What about scouting patrols with helicopters?” I was amazed we’d been caught unprepared for this.
“The terrain to the south of the tracks is heavily forested all the way down into Alabama and Mississippi. Even if the herd could have been spotted when they crossed highways, we’ve got about a tenth of the number of people looking at sat imagery as we did three weeks ago. We’re short on resources, shit gets missed.” Jackson shrugged, and I knew he was right.
“How many are we dealing with?”
“We don’t know yet, but we’re speeding up to try and clear the area before they make it onto the tracks.”
“What do you mean? A few bodies can’t damage a train.” Rachel said.
“A few bodies, no. But no one has a good idea what would happen if there were thousands of bodies on the tracks and tens of thousands more pushing in against the train. We don’t want to find out.”
While Jackson had been speaking I’d noticed a change in the motion of the train. What had been a relatively gentle swaying back and forth as we rolled down the track was becoming sharper. Almost a jerking motion. Along with it a vibration that hadn’t been there before slowly built, everything that wasn’t securely bolted down in the car starting to rattle. I knew next to nothing about trains, but I did know that the US rail system wasn’t built or maintained to support travel at high speeds. If we’d been going fifty miles an hour we were now probably close to seventy and seemed to still be accelerating. If anything happened at this speed and a car jumped off the rails we were all screwed. This was one hell of a lot of mass we were riding in. The worst part was there wasn’t a damn thing I could do except be a passenger.
I don’t do well when I have to take a passive role. Not that I need to be in charge, though that’s usually what happens, but just sitting back and letting things happen around me drives me nuts. I started pacing as the train continued to speed up stopping and checking to make sure Roach was still secure and not causing any problems. He looked up at me like he wanted to say something, but correctly read the look on my face and kept his mouth shut. Pacing to the front of the car I nodded to a few of the civilian evacuees who looked up at me and smiled. That was when I realized I had no idea what our destination was beyond Memphis. Turning around I grabbed a seat back to steady myself as we went through a patch of rough track, or warped track, or whatever happened to train tracks, then went and found Jackson.
“What’s our final destination?”
“Oklahoma City.”
“Not Kansas City? I thought that was one of the refugee centers.”
“It is, or it was. Big herds coming out of St. Louis and Illinois heading that way. There’s more carpet bombing going on in central Missouri to slow them down and an evac is under way. They were harder hit with the second outbreak than Nashville so there’s not near as many people to get out.”
“No second outbreak in Oklahoma?” I asked, curious.
“They weren’t one of the original targets so there weren’t any infected there until the second outbreak. Has something to do with exposure to the original nerve gas versus contracting the virus. I don’t understand it. Anyway, yes there’s infection there, but they had time to get organized and have pretty ruthlessly enforced quarantines. That’s the last I heard, but that was almost a day ago. No idea what’s happening there right now.”
“How long to OKC?” I asked, looking around at all the bodies in the car with us.
“It’s around 750 miles, maybe a little less than 700 left to go. Say another ten hours at least, but probably more. I heard the engineers talking and there’s a lot of curves to get through Memphis and we’re going to have to slow way down once we get close to the city.” And Memphis was one of the original targets of the nerve agent, I reminded myself. It was probably crawling with infected. The train engineers were worried about the herd blocking the track, what was it going to be like with an entire major city of infected converging on the rail yard?
“OK. So we’ve probably got another 12 hours minimum on this train, and that’s if there’s no delays.” I waved the Sergeant from the National Guard squad over to where we were standing. For the first time I bothered to read the name tape on his uniform. “Sergeant King. We’ve got a long ride ahead of us and a lot of dead bodies riding along with us. They already smell, and it’s going to get worse when the sun comes up in a few hours. I want you and your squad to conscript some of the civilians to help you get those bodies off the train. You meet any resistance from family members I don’t want you to force the issue. Come find me and I’ll talk to them. Got it?”
“What do we do with them, sir?” Sergeants are usually pretty good at figuring things out. That’s why they’re Sergeants in the first place, but I was willing to give this guy some slack. This wasn’t exactly the type of situation you trained for or even imagined you’d ever find yourself in.
“Out the doors and off th
e platform. It’s not exactly a respectful burial, but it’s the best we can do.”
“Yes, sir.” He said, sounding less than enthusiastic before turning away and calling his squad together. I could tell by their body language that none of them were happy with the assignment, but soon they were carrying bodies down the aisle and out the back door. Some of the civilians looked disturbed by the way we were disposing of the dead, but no one spoke up or offered any resistance. There were many tearful goodbyes said, still without complaint at the disposal of loved ones, and again I had to remind myself that there had been time for people to start adjusting to the new normal of our infected world.
31
The change in motion and vibration of the train woke me. I had managed to fall asleep in one of the seats, head lolled back and probably with drool running down my chin. Rachel was in the seat next to me, legs curled up under her the way only women can and her head pillowed on my shoulder. Dog was on his back, legs splayed wide apart and snoring like an asthmatic steam engine. Looking around I saw most other people were also asleep, Jackson the only person on his feet as he stood at the windows looking south. Gently I moved Rachel off my shoulder, had to poke Dog three times to get him to roll off my feet, then stood up and visited the small toilet at the front of the car. I opened the door and closed it almost instantly. Even though it was apparently out of order people had been using it. A lot.
Walking to the back of the car I stepped out onto the platform and relieved myself into the slipstream of wind created by the train. Immediate need taken care of I went back in and stood next to Jackson. Glancing at my watch I saw it was just after 0400. The sun would be up soon, just in time for us to negotiate Memphis and the Mississippi River crossing. It was still pitch black outside and I didn’t know if Jackson was watching for something or just staring and lost in thought.