“I think,” I said, “you better shut the fuck up before I shoot you like the dog you are, god damned traitor.” A look of astonishment came across his face, and he slowed his walk to rejoin his men. We didn’t speak for the rest of the march back to the boats.
Another mile passed, and I listened to the guys talking to try and get myself in a better mood. Soldiers will bullshit at any time and nay place, if they can. We walked down the center of the road, avoiding ditches that might hide undead, on alert for whomever ambushed us earlier. My pack was annoying me, and even though, like most soldiers, I didn’t wear any underwear, I was still starting to chafe from the sweat and heat. Let me tell you, once a hot spot starts, it’s almost impossible to make it go away.
“Hey, lepa devojka, why did Nick call you Mary Sue? That it is not your name.” Ziv was walking directly behind Shona, and had been trying to talk to her all day. She hadn’t answered him once.
Obi laughed at Ziv’s failure, but answered him when she didn’t. “A Mary Sue is a woman in a book or a movie who can kick ass all over the place in a pretty unrealistic manner. Like she did yours, Ziv.” Ryan laughed at that one, and I grinned. Ziv shot us all a dirty look.
“When we get back to New York, I will settle down with you and have good strong fighting children.”
She turned and walked backwards, giving him the finger. “I’d rather screw a pig, and I’m Jewish.” Then she turned around again and kept walking. Even the Mountain Republic prisoners laughed at that. After all, soldiers are soldiers. Ziv, unabashed, kept up a string of endearments.
“Not going to work, Sasha,” said Brit.
“I cannot help it, demon wench. My soul burns for her.”
“Oh my god, I’m going to puke,” said Brit, and she made vomiting sounds.
This continued pretty much all the way back to the beach. The dead were dead, and life went on. If Shona asked, I would tell him to knock it off, but she said to let it go, that he would get tired of it soon enough.
Somehow I doubted it.
Chapter 262
“He’s not coming with us.” Brit sat with her shotgun pointed directly at Harlan, who still ignored her.
“Brit, he’s a prisoner, and if we’re the good guys, we have to treat him decently.” I was at the point of giving up the argument; it had been going on for several hours now.
“Maybe you’re a good guy, but I’m not. Not always. Ever been waterboarded, Nick?”
No, I hadn’t, and she knew it.
“It’s like you’re dying. I thought I was never going to see you or the kids again. Over and over. This bastard laughed the whole time he did it.”
Harlan just sat there, hands ziptied behind his back. He was a bull of a man, short but extremely stocky. His face had the broken nose of a fighter, and several hair thin knife scars also. Starsser I didn’t like because he was an arrogant prick, but he believed his mission. I could respect that. This guy was like Ziv, except that Ziv had a code of loyalty and was, for all his brutality, a decent man.
“Well, Sergeant Harlan. What should we do with you?” I asked the man himself.
“Do what you want. Doesn’t really matter to me. I expect I’ll be dead soon enough. We’ll all be, one way or another.”
“Got anything to say about torturing my wife?”
He spit on the ground in front of him. “Yeah, I pretty much think she got off on it.”
Brit shouldered her 12 gauge and fired, just as I shoved the barrel upwards. The muzzle blast ruffled his hair as the pellets passed over him. “Goddamnit, Brit, that’s what he WANTS! Quick and easy!”
Her chest heaved with heavy breathing, and her usually pale face was flushed with passion. Racking the slide and keeping it pointed at his chest, she pushed me aside and walked up to him.
“Not going to be that easy, bastard. Here, hold this, Obi,” she said, and handed him the shotgun. Then she took out four pairs of zipties off her belt. She brutally tied them around his hands and legs, pulling them tight, even though he was already bound.
“There, you bastard, this is a pretty deserted stretch of beach, but I’m sure one of the undead will come along eventually. Before you die.” She shrugged off her camelback and laid it on the ground, the water inside sloshing around.
“You’re going to go crazy from thirst, but you’ll be afraid of drinking, because you want your life over with before the undead get to you. Eventually, though, the thirst is going to get to you. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a fresh undead, and they’ll kill you before you turn. If you’re not, if one of the slow ones comes along, they’ll bite, and before they do enough damage to kill you, you’ll turn. You’ll be tied and bound, and undead. Forever.”
At that, he showed his first sign of fear. “Major Strasser, I was just acting on your orders! You were there! Tell them!”
The Mountain Republic officer just looked at him and said, “All soldiers have an obligation to disobey immoral orders. You were a useful tool, because you’d do whatever I told you to do.”
Before he finished speaking though, I made up mind. He was an even bigger monster than his NCO. An officer has an obligation to his own men, to not put them in that situation in the first place.
“Obi, get me about thirty feet of rope,” I ordered, and the kid hopped to it. He returned in less than a minute, and I waited while Ziv fashioned a noose.
Strasser was beside himself. “Agostine, you can’t do this! I’m an officer and a prisoner! The laws of war require a trial and even exchange!” His tirade choked off when Ziv tightened the noose. Hanging a man without anything to push him off of something is hard, but we did it; Ziv, Ryan and I all grunting with the strain of hauling several hundred pounds of soon to be dead weight. His protests were choked off, and he danced crazily in the sunlight.
I sent the rest of the team back to the boats and stood over Harlan. I knew what Brit wanted, but I was torn. Condemning someone to undeath was something I had only done once before, and she deserved it. Maybe Ziv was right. Maybe I was getting soft. I pulled out my pistol and stretched out my arm. Behind him, Strasser’ s body had finally stopped twitching, and his tongue protruded from a blackened face. Around his neck, the piece of wood with the word TRAITOR carved in it moved gently in the wind.
“DO IT!” urged Harlan. “Don’t leave me lying here to scream like your redheaded bitch did!”
“My what?”
“That bitch. Your wife. She screamed and screamed, but I think she DID enjoy it. Not putting it to her enough, are you, you one legged gimp? Did they shoot your balls off too?”
Apparently, some people CAN talk themselves right out of the grave. “I was going to shoot you, but now you can rot.” I holstered my pistol and walked away, with his curses following me.
Ryan had made contact with the Georgia by radio at our set time, and the sub was waiting offshore, as close in to the surf as they could get. The boats would be dangerously overloaded, with sixteen of us crammed in, but fortunately the waves weren’t very high. We left the cache of weapons and ammunition buried on the beach, a few meters above the high tide mark. The carrier wasn’t going anywhere, and I figured the Mountain Republic, with its limited resources, wouldn’t mount a new expedition any time soon. Someone would be coming back, eventually, though, so better to have them around.
The boats hopped over the waves, rising up and down with the swell, until we were almost two kilometers out to sea. Landward, the sun was sinking towards the horizon, turning the sky blood red. Ryan drove our boat, and we all eyed the prisoners warily.
The submarine rose out of the water like some biblical Leviathan, sail breaking the water after they saw us coming. One moment, the sea was empty, and then, a hundred meters further on, a vast grey bulk shouldered its way upward in s amass of foam and waves. We drove the boats right up the hull, and hustled the prisoners out onto the deck as several sailors took control of the zodiacs.
I stood and watched the prisoner transfer; and more so watching the su
n go down. Brit stood next to me as Shona, Obi, Ziv and Ryan unloaded our equipment from the boats. Elam watched the prisoners with his pistol drawn.
“We got off easy from that one, Nick,” said Brit.
“Tell that to Scott,” I answered.
She said nothing. The waves had started picking up, along with the wind, making stowing the boats in the hangar difficult for the sailors. I turned to head for the hatch on the deck, when something caught my eye in the darkness of the land. A twinkle, something. Was there some survivors out there signaling us?
Then, climbing high into the sky, something caught the last rays of the setting sun. What the hell…
“RPG!” yelled Ziv at the top of his lungs, and with a start, I knew what he meant. It wasn’t a rocket propelled grenade, something heavier, but that yell was the quickest way to get a trained soldier to hit the deck. I threw Brit down and covered her with my body. Everyone else except for Shona and Ziv, the only other trained soldiers who had dealt with this stuff before, stood stupefied, ignorant to what the call meant. Ziv had started moving even before he yelled, diving for the hatch, and Shona grabbed Elam by his tactical gear and dragged him down.
The Javelin Anti-Tank missile, for that was what it must have been, rocketed down from us in top attack mode, and crashed into the sail, detonating in a thunderous CRACK – BANG! that was too loud to hear. I was thrown clear of the deck and towards the water, sliding down the hull, trying desperately to hold onto Brit in the coming darkness. Her hand was torn from mine as the the hull shuddered and started to move under maximum power, turning east as it did so. I hit the water with a splash, and was instantly drawn down the side by my body armor and equipment. Desperate to get away from the propellers, I kicked off and swam with all my might down and away, struggling out of the gear.
When finally my head broke the surface, what seemed an eternity later, the sub was drawing away from me, a roaring jet of flame and smoke pouring out of the conning tower. Each rise of a wave showed it further and further away.
“BRIT!” I yelled as loud as I could, but my voice was carried away by the rising wind. Floating as best I could on my back, I unlaced my boots and let them fall away, then took off my pants, remembering my water survival training. I tied off the legs and scooped air into them, fashioning a crude life preserver to put around my neck. Then I set off in a strength saving back stroke towards the shore, trying to stay in the shelter of the waves to avoid the land breeze. Every time I crested a wave, I looked into the darkness and yelled for Brit. I thought I heard a faint cry off to my left, but only once.
Epilogue
I woke when the sun hit me, my mouth screaming for water as I lay on the beach, on an unrecognizable shore. I rolled over and looked down at my leg; my prosthetic was barely hanging by its nylon straps. Saying a short prayer of thanks I tightened it, then struggled back into my pants, which had twisted around my neck. My boots were gone, but I still had a sock on my good foot. It would have to do for now. My camelback had gone the same way as my boots, but I didn’t think water in Florida would be that much of a problem.
Glancing around quickly, I saw no immediate threat, so I did the second rule of scouts. Inventory. My .22 pistol was still secure in its leg holster, but the spare mags were gone, and somehow, I hadn’t ditched my survival buttpack. Maybe the air in it had helped keep me afloat, I didn’t remember. In it were a stripped down MRE, a box of fifty .22 LR shells, Gerber multi-tool, a small five shot .22 revolver, water purification tablets, a collapsible cup, one hundred feet of parachute cord, compass, a disposable Bic lighter, and a small, lightweight hammock. And a spoon, thank God. I quickly thumbed out the rounds from the automatic’s magazine, unchambered it, and feverishly disassembled and reassembled the pistol, trying to dry all the parts. It would work for now, but salt water was extremely corrosive. Gun oil would have to be found somewhere. I reloaded from the box of spare ammo, glancing around with my back to the sea. Then I did the same for the revolver, even though it had seemed dry wrapped in the pack.
My next order of business was, where the hell was I, and was there anyone else around me? I looked out to sea, and saw nothing in the distance but the sun just over the horizon. In front of me, drifting in the waves, was the body of a Mountain Republic soldier, recognizable by his green BDU uniform. Even as I looked, it was pulled under by either a shark or barracuda.
To my left, the beach stretched away southward, empty except for the usual garbage of civilization. To my right, a hundred meters off, another body was washed up, lower down in the water, being tossed to and fro by the gentle surf. I staggered to it, hoping it was a sailor or one of the Mountain Republic prisoners, and not anyone I knew. As I got closer, the mutlicam uniform betrayed my fears, and my heart began to pound. I ran, tears blinding me, and rolled the body over.
The pale, swollen face of Obi looked up at me with dead, accusing eyes.
To Be Continued.
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