by Justin Bell
The soldier blew out a fierce burst of air, his eyes widening as they landed roughly on the ground. But the soldier was well-trained, and he rolled left, shifting and throwing Jackson across his body, sending him scrambling over onto the sidewalk. As soon as he was free, the man started clamoring to his feet, moving toward Jackson, who lunged forward to meet him, burying a fist in his sternum, which had little effect other than crunching his knuckles against the ceramic plate armor.
“Big mistake!” The soldier barked, pushing forward, knocking Jackson off his feet, down to the sidewalk. His back twinged in pain, the backpack pinned between his spine and the unforgiving concrete sidewalk. Instantly the soldier was reaching for his hip, unsnapping his pistol, starting to bring it up. Jackson wasn’t sure what else to do and he’d run out of options, so he reached back and grabbed the first thing he could, throwing himself forward, swinging out and forward.
And buried the katana hilt deep in the man’s ribs.
The soldier halted his approach, taking one stumbling step, eyes wide and roaming, not knowing what had just happened, confused by the sudden sensation of hard, cold steel in his flesh, between his ribs, through his body. Jackson was just as aghast, pushing himself frantically to his feet, stumbling backwards snatching his hands away from the handle of the sword, looking at the enraged, confused expression on the soldier’s face as he glared down at the sword handle, then over toward the man who had stabbed him.
“I didn’t…” Jackson stammered. “It was…”
The soldier opened his mouth as if to shout one last angry retort, but no words came out, he just seemed to crumple as if he was a stuffed animal and all the stuffing inside had suddenly disintegrated. Tumbling forward and left, he gasped one long, final, rattling gasp, then lay still on the sidewalk, open hands splayed.
“I’m sorry,” Jackson whispered. “I never wanted to hurt anyone.” He could almost picture the look of disapproval from his Krav Maga instructor, the man who had trained his entire life to hurt, mostly so he’d never have to. “This was never supposed to happen,” he said, his voice even lower, more desperate as he bent down toward the fallen soldier. Slowly he clasped his hand around the sword handle and withdrew it, coming out smooth and easy, tugging lightly at the puckered fabric of the BDU’s. He methodically wiped it clean on the pants of the dead soldier, then placed it back in its sheath in his backpack, a feeling of desperate guilt stabbing at him.
Even has he battled back those feelings, he unclasped the fasteners of the man’s vest and peeled it from his motionless body, his mind starting to sort through his different emotions and compartmentalizing.
Lisa. Lisa and the others. They were the most important thing. These soldiers had been the ones who had taken them prisoner, whatever happened to them was not his fault. He felt an icy coldness settle through his body, the feeling of stepping into an ice bath, little by little, and he could almost feel the guilt being enclosed in a block of that ice, separated from the rest of his fragile emotional state, locked away and imprisoned, pushed to the back, away from where he could feel it. The world had changed and he had to change along with it, or risk not just his life, but the lives of others.
Pulling the tactical vest over his shoulders, he cinched it and fastened it, tugging it tight, fitting it snugly over his thick jacket which was doing a serviceable job keeping out the bitter cold weather.
Next he removed the pistol from the man’s slack fingers, and the belt and holster, fastening them around his own waist and leg, checking magazines, pretending like he actually knew what he was doing.
He did know. Days on the run, his life in danger, Clark had taught him a few things. More than a few things. Jackson had rarely touched a weapon in his two and a half decades of life, but in thirty-six hours, he had learned almost everything there was to know about loading, field-stripping and firing.
Knowing it and doing it were two completely different things, however, and he still was woefully inexperienced. He could tell just how inexperienced as he lifted the M4 from the sidewalk, eyes wide at the sheer weight of it. Remembering Clark’s lessons, he unlatched the magazine and popped it out, checking the ammunition load, and he was happy to see the mag was full of 5.56 millimeter. He could feel the cool bulk of extra magazines in the pouches of his vest alongside additional mags of nine-millimeter for the Sig Sauer M17 pistol in the holster.
Just wearing the vest made him feel more confident as he pulled his backpack back on over his shoulders, feeling even more snug against the additional padding of the tactical vest. Lifting the M4 he looked at the narrow windows at the basement level of the Town Hall and crouched down, starting to approach.
That’s when the world exploded.
Jackson had been so consumed by appropriating the dead man’s gear that he’d neglected to notice one of the roaming patrols returning to Main Street, slowly walking toward the pickup, weapons held, their approach firm and steady. The moment he’d moved out beyond the truck, they’d seen him, and they immediately recognized that he wasn’t who he was supposed to be.
“You there!” A man shouted. “Don’t move!”
Jackson swiveled in the direction of the voice, his weapon coming around, and immediately perceiving this as a threat, the small clutch of soldiers opened up with their own automatics, chattering weapons fire, splitting the peaceful air of Aldrich downtown. It was a sound the town had likely never been witness to, but then again a lot of events happening over the past several days were firsts for their respective communities.
Lurching backwards, Jackson scrambled away as twin stitches of blasting pavement sprayed up from bullet impacts hurtling toward him from the men down the street.
“Truck! Truck! He’s behind the truck!” A voice shouted and more gunfire spat toward him, whacking against the hard sheet metal of the vehicle, throwing sparks up into the air, bullets winging and whining, slapping into the building behind him as he huddled on the sidewalk, thinking that the whole “no experience” thing just might come back to haunt him.
***
Leeza Burns looked up as she heard the soft footsteps behind her, then smiled warmly as Yolanda strode up next to her and took her place in the seat at the second communications station.
“Yo, you feel better, sweetheart?” Leeza asked warmly, keeping her eyes on her station.
“Little bit, yeah. You didn’t need to let me sleep so late, girl, you need your rest, too.”
“Trust me,” Leeza replied, “I do better when I’m busy. Sitting alone too long… it ain’t helpful.”
Yolanda glanced around to see if anyone was watching closely, then turned and leaned forward on bent knees, reaching out to clasp her hands around her fellow soldier’s.
“Girlfriend, you need to talk to me. Are you doing all right? Have you heard anything at all?”
Leeza shook her head, blinking away tears. “I don’t know anything, Yolanda. I’ve called both kids a bunch of times, they don’t pick up. I called the school, all I get is some stupid auto attendant. I’ve tried Lilly’s neighbors, they don’t pick up, nobody out there is picking up, it’s like we’re alone locked up in here.”
Yolanda glanced over her shoulder and noticed Colonel Reeves looking in their direction from across the command center as he talked with some of the lab workers. She coughed lightly and pulled her hands apart, swiveling back around to look at her console. Leeza took the hint and repeated the motion.
“So what’s the current situation?” Yolanda asked.
“Active field operation in Philadelphia,” Burns replied. “Davis took a squad of Marines to a remote hosted data center, hoping to pull some hard drives, maybe get some surveillance footage from Black Friday.”
“Black Friday?” Yolanda asked. “That feels like so long ago, just before this stuff all went crazy. What’s that all about?”
“I don’t know all the sciency stuff, but they think whoever did this used shaving cream canisters as a deployment tool. Bacteria baked into them, and w
hen they combusted, the germs spread.”
“For real?”
Burns shrugged. “I don’t know, but one thing I do know is that Brad…” she hesitated for a moment, the name catching in her throat. “Brad worked security at a shopping mall that night. Said there were a bunch of reports of combusting containers. Nobody was really hurt, so it didn’t register on anyone’s radar really, and the news didn’t even mention it.”
“Dang.”
“Yeah. Anyway, apparently there was a CH-53 kicking around, so they loaded up and took off a couple hours ago. I’ve been scanning their freqs, but so far, all has been quiet.”
“Hopefully that’s a good thing?”
As if on cue, the comms squawked loud and brash, a swift kick of static, mixed with some garbled shouting.
“Whoa!” shouted Leeza. “That’s them! That’s the King Stallion.” She reached up and adjusted the dials, trying to hone in on the incoming signal.
“Detrick, this is SS-1,” came the choppy voice on the other end. “… received reports… enemy fire… casualties reported, moving in to south—”
“Holy—” Yolanda said in a hushed whisper.
“Colonel Reeves!” shouted Lieutenant Burns. “We’ve got SS-1 on the line! Reporting hostile engagement at the facility in Philadelphia!”
Reeve’s eyes narrowed and he whirled from his conversation, striding swiftly across the metal floor of the command center.
“Lieutenant, did you say hostile engagement?”
“Yes, sir,” she replied, once again trying to catch the incoming signal. “The 53 pilot called in, reported enemy fire and casualties reported. They’re moving to the south side of the facility for evac by the sounds of it.”
“For the love of…”
“I’m trying to get them back on comms,” said Burns, hopping frequencies, trying to sort through the incoming static. Reeves snatched a headset from a hook under the comm panel and pulled it on over his mussed hair, adjusting the microphone to fit his narrow face.
“King Stallion, this is Colonel Reeves at Detrick, please respond.”
Crackling static came back out of the speakers, both within the headset and the console itself.
“SS-1 if you can hear me,” Reeves said. “Do whatever you can! Grab the team and get out! Evac by any means necessary, do you understand me?”
There was no response but the monotonous drone of buzzing nothing.
“How many more do we have to lose?” Colonel Reeves asked as he stared at the comm console, and neither Lieutenant Burns nor Hayes had an appropriate answer for his question.
***
“Move, Marines, move move move!” Gunnery Sergeant Haskell screamed at the men, gesturing toward the rear door of the facility. Back the way they’d come, muffled machine gun fire echoed as the soldiers drove forward, pushing through the back door and out onto a vast, grass covered area near the rear of the data center facility. Haskell glanced out, his eyes darting from one exposed corner to the other, shaking his head slightly. It was a wide expanse of bare lawn, a few hundred yards from the back door to the security fence perimeter that ran around it. He’d remembered looking at the aerial view and seeing an access road encircling that fence, the same road the King Stallion transport had landed near on the north side of the facility. Now they were existing through the south, and though they’d sent a burst communication to the transport, he wasn’t sure they’d actually received it.
King charged out first, followed closely by Rickard, Tanner, then Sellers, with Holbrook and Davis bringing up the rear, still shouldering their M27’s and covering their retreat.
“Keep it moving!” Davis shouted, swiveling slightly and pumping the trigger twice, letting fly two short bursts. He tucked the weapon close to him and turned, running after the group while Holbrook rattled off a few more scattered shots to cover their escape.
“Me and Holbrook are almost dry,” Davis said to Haskell as he caught up to him, keeping his voice low.
“Hopefully SS-1 will be here shortly,” Haskell replied. Holbrook lunged through the doorway and Haskell slammed the metal panel shut hard, then ran out into the yard, following the rest of the Marines, who had fanned out, looking vaguely around the wide, open space, weapons drawn and ready.
“I don’t like this,” barked Tanner. “These are wide open spaces, man.”
“We left those jokers inside,” replied Rickard. “They gotta come through that skinny, metal door so we just wait out here with our full auto and pick ‘em off as they come out!”
Haskell held up a hand, signaling the others to be quiet as he listened, tilting his head to the sky to see if he could hear the helicopter rotors approaching. He did hear something, a low, rattling roar, but it didn’t sound precisely like helicopter rotors, it was a lower, more guttural noise, dry, mechanical rattling, echoing from the ground.
“Eyes peeled, men!” Haskell shouted, but didn’t get a chance to finish. As he was speaking, two pickup trucks came screaming around the far corner of the facility, turning so tight they nearly tipped up on two wheels, charging forward over the grass and ground, tires thumping.
“Who the—?” Tanner shouted, swiveling to face the approaching trucks.
“Are they hostiles?” screamed Holbrook, turning toward the incoming trucks, his M27 lifted. He only had one magazine left and as the vehicles surged toward them, his chest tightened at the thought that they might be more enemies. They were all running low on ammunition, low on energy and low on manpower, and there looked to be at least a dozen men in the two trucks, slamming their way.
“Identify yourselves!” screamed Haskell as he lifted his own M16. “Identify yourselves or we will fire on you!”
He needn’t have bothered. Weapons fire exploded from the beds of the trucks, rattling white-hot muzzle flashes roaring from just above the roofs of the trucks.
Rickard scrambled backwards, then jerked and slammed down to the ground as clumps of dirt and grass blew up around him in stuttering fountains.
“Hostiles inbound, we have hostiles inbound!” Haskell shouted, dropping to a knee and opening up with his M16. He focused his burst on the front left corner of the lead truck, sending sparks rocketing across the grill, shattering headlights, punching through rubber tires, stripping layers of whitewall in ragged ribbons. The truck dipped right, then lurched left as the driver tried to maintain control, swinging the back end around, the truck tipping and plunging toward the grass. Bodies from the flat bed flew from the tumbling vehicle, somersaulting and scrambling to the ground and Davis thought he saw one of them caught under the tires of the second truck, spun and tangled like a doll underneath the vehicle. Shadowed figures scrambled from the wreck, climbing to their feet as the second truck swung to a halt, tires gouging dirt, men jumping from the rear of that vehicle, firing upon the Marines.
“Those aren’t AK’s!” Davis shouted as he ducked away and ran toward Haskell. The weapons fire was a rapid popping, not the old school metal-on-metal clacking from the commandos inside.
Haskell glared at the approaching men, more commandos clad in black, faces more or less obscured as they approached.
“T86, I think!” he yelled to Davis. “Maybe some T91’s.”
“Are you sure about that?” Davis asked, shuffling left and emptying the rest of his M27 mag on a trio of approaching soldiers, all of which scattered away. He couldn’t tell if he’d actually hit any of them.
“We’ve got nowhere to go!” shouted Holbrook, rattling his automatic and throwing an enemy down to the dirt. Craig moved sideways, crossing foot over foot, his pistol lifted and firing. Davis had to give him credit, he was looking the beast in the eyes and shooting back with a nine-millimeter Sig. Bullets punched the ground in front of him, then he shouted and lunged backwards, clutching at his stomach and chest. Davis ducked and ran toward him, tossing the empty M27 aside and getting to his knees next to Rickard who was sprawled on the ground, unmoving. Sweeping his M16A2 up into a firing grasp, Davis turne
d and roared gunfire, dropping another approaching soldier, but there were still so many left. Behind him he heard the metal on brick sounds of the back door flinging open, releasing the commandos who had been pursuing them within the data center facility.
“This ain’t good,” Haskell hissed. “This ain’t good by ten!”
“Hey, good news is, we’re not outnumbered two to one!” barked Tanner. “Bad news is, we’re outnumbered three to one!” He spun and unleashed his M16 back toward the rear door, chewing apart brick walls and sending 5.56 dancing across the metal panel door, flashing sparks, throwing two of the men roughly to the ground.
“They’re converging on us!” shouted Haskell. “Pull back, hold it together, aimed fire, you guys know the drill!”
Davis made his way to Agent Craig, who was already crawling back upright.
“You five by five?” he shouted to him. Craig nodded softly.
“Plate stopped it,” he breathed. “Think a rib’s busted, though.”
“As long as you still have those hard drives! We didn’t come all the way out here and lose five guys for nothing!”
“Not yet, anyway,” Craig replied, checking the magazine of his pistol, then retrieving a fresh one and locking it in place. Commandos in black approached, weapons raised and firing, moving as one swarm of insects, angling toward them, consuming everything in their wake. Davis looked over his shoulder at the looming perimeter fence. They truly were running out of room to run.
Machine gun fire roared in the confines of the rear section of grass, the noise deafening, the hurtling bullets screaming back and forth, smashing brick, punching chunks out of the ground, chaos swirled the entire universe into a bullet-riddled black hole.
He never even heard the helicopter approach. The rotors had been lost in the endless din of the gunfire, and it wasn’t until the window mounted fifty-caliber opened up, shattering the world with thunder and exploding the trucks with jagged lightning that Davis realized salvation might be at hand.