Reader only nodded.
*
A cooked dinner was served at six o’clock, and the troops dug in with gusto. It wasn’t the most exciting chow they’d ever had, but it was warm and didn’t come out of a bunch of plastic pouches, so it was automatically categorized as one of the best meals they’d had over the past month. They ate with the civilians, and Hastings found himself paying more attention to Diana and the boy sitting next to her. In her presence and under less stressful conditions, Kenny was actually quite compliant. He didn’t drink juice or milk, just water, and he eschewed most of the food, save the french fries and hot dogs. He ate two of the latter and pretty much all of the former. Hastings handed over his share of fries, as did Ballantine and Guerra. Kenny smiled, and for once, he looked like a happy kid, even though he didn’t interact with anyone in a meaningful way. When Josh or Curtis tried to talk to him, Kenny only gazed at them blankly, then looked at his right hand for a moment before going back to his meal.
“Why won’t he talk to us?” Curtis asked. He had his father’s dark hair and his mother’s petite nose.
“He’s autistic, honey,” Kay responded. “He doesn’t act like we do.”
“What’s autistic?” Josh asked. He more closely resembled his father, with broad shoulders and oversized hands. The boy exhibited an easy confidence his younger brother seemed to lack. Probably a real scrapper, but at the same time, he didn’t appear to be the kind of kid to push around his younger brother. Hastings wondered whether that was truly the case, or if it was a recent development brought on by the zombie apocalypse.
“His mind isn’t as developed as yours,” Ballantine said between bites of chicken. “He’s in there, though. He just can’t communicate with us.”
“So will he get better?” Curtis asked.
“We’ll have to see,” Kay said.
Diana snorted. “Don’t count on it. The kid’s a retard.”
Everyone stopped eating, even Stilley, who had been going at the food nonstop.
Reader glared at Diana. “Lady, you’ve got some nerve. The kid’s defenseless. He needs help. Show some mercy.”
“I don’t do mercy,” Diana said. Her eyes shone hard and bright.
“You might want to reconsider that,” Ballantine said. “The kid’s latched onto you something fierce. I don’t know why, though. Maybe he sees something in you the rest of us can’t.”
Diana smirked. “Not a chance.”
Kay started to say something, but Hastings beat her to it. “Let’s not start this again,” he said. “Let’s just eat. Things are going to be different tomorrow, so let’s just keep things cool. All right?”
The soldiers murmured their assent. Kay glared at Diana, who only smirked again. The older woman shook her head and went back to her meal. Kenny just continued eating his french fries, oblivious to the entire conversation. Hastings envied the boy to a degree. Like him, Kenny had lost everything. Unlike Hastings, though, Kenny didn’t seem to mind it.
Hastings would give anything to be able to shelter his heart from the constant pain he felt, from the staggering loss that numbed him to everything else. Other than the fact that he wasn’t running around eating people, Hastings didn’t feel much different from a zombie.
*
At six thirty the next morning, they were rousted from sleep by a military police captain named Chan. After the introductions had been made, he handed three booklets to Hastings.
Hastings read the titles and snorted. “You’re kidding me, right?” They were copies of TC 25-20, A Leader’s Guide to After-Action Reviews, a training circular created to help soldiers and commanders standardize their after-action reports.
“Nope,” Chan said. “Every new unit that comes into the post has to write up their AAR. We’re trying to get a handle on what’s going on in the world, and AARs help us get the big picture. You guys have an hour. After that, you and your senior NCO are coming with me.”
“What about the rest of us, sir?” Guerra asked.
Chan cut his eyes over to the stocky Hispanic soldier. “You’ll stay here and wait for orders.”
Ballantine crossed his arms. “What about the civilians?”
“What about them?”
“Three of the civilians are Sergeant Ballantine’s dependents,” Hastings said.
“Oh. What about the others?”
“They’re mine,” Hastings blurted. From the corner of his eye, he saw Ballantine give him a sidelong look.
Chan frowned and raised an eyebrow.
“In a manner of speaking,” Hastings added. “I want to keep tabs on them.”
“Well, no one’s going anywhere for the time being,” Chan said. “But if they get moved, you’ll be notified.”
“Might be better if I get notified before they get sent anywhere, sir,” Ballantine said.
“Relax, Sergeant. No one’s getting shipped off without you being in the loop.” Chan looked back at Hastings. “You good to get your AAR together, Hastings?”
“Yeah, Chan. Not the first one I’ve done. Anything else?”
Chan shook his head. “See you in an hour.” He spun on his heel and left the barracks.
Hastings waved the troops toward a nearby table and handed the booklets, paper, and pens to Hartman. “You’ve got the neatest handwriting,” he told the soldier.
Hartman wasn’t thrilled. “Gee, thanks. Good to finally be recognized for something.”
*
Exactly one hour later, Chan returned to collect Hastings and Ballantine. They had finished drafting their after-action report, but since there hadn’t been enough time to go into substantial detail, the document was brief and to the point. One of the things left out was the killing of the civilian. It seemed pointless to include it, and Hastings didn’t want anything untoward to happen to Reader, who was still reeling from the incident. Hastings was at a loss when it came to recommending corrective actions. How did one unravel the zombie apocalypse, without going out and killing all the zombies and then figuring out how it had started? The scope of the circumstances was simply beyond him.
“It’s brief,” Hastings said as he held out the document, “but we got everything in there, starting with our deployment to New York until we got here.”
Chan waved it away. “You keep it. If you’re ready, why don’t you guys follow me?” Without waiting for an answer, the Asian officer turned and headed for the door.
Hastings looked at Ballantine and shrugged. The senior NCO didn’t look happy, but orders were orders.
“Come on, Carl,” Hastings said. “Your family’s going to be okay. They’ll be here when we get back.”
“If they’re not, there’s going to be hell to pay,” Ballantine said.
“Keep cool,” Hastings said. “Let’s go.”
It was still early in the morning, but the sun was up, along with the humidity. Hastings’s undershirt immediately grew sticky across his chest and shoulders as he and Ballantine followed Chan across the parking lot. Several soldiers were milling around two Strykers parked on either side of the building. Chan led them to a Humvee. The driver was leaning against the front fender, smoking a cigarette. He tossed it to the asphalt and ground it out as they approached, then pulled open the door, and climbed behind the wheel. Chan claimed the shotgun seat, so Hastings and Ballantine piled into the back.
“Where we headed?” Hastings asked as the driver pulled the Humvee out of the parking lot.
“Colonel Victor wants to talk with you,” Chan said.
“Who’s he?”
“One of the brigade commanders out of Campbell, with the 101st. He pulled almost two battalions out of Philly when the net went dark after New York and DC fell. I guess he wasn’t going to hang around and let his entire brigade go down. Still lost almost half of it, from what I hear.”
“He’s got two battalions here?” Ballantine asked.
Chan nodded. “More than that. Two understrength battalions from his combat brigade, plus several u
nits from Campbell and Riley. None of them are full strength. Even a few stragglers from Drum.” Chan turned and looked into the backseat. “I hear your post went down fighting.”
Hastings had been looking out the window while Chan spoke. Fort Indiantown Gap didn’t seem unusually prepared. There were fortifications being erected and plenty of troops. But it was as if they were preparing to fight a human enemy, one that could be deterred by triple layers of concertina wire and HESCO barriers arranged to produce choke points. All good, but the 10th had tried the same in New York, and none of that had worked. In the end, even an entire light infantry division hadn’t been enough to hold back millions of cannibalistic ghouls.
He suddenly realized Chan was expecting a response of some kind. “Sorry?”
“I said, I hear your post went down fighting.”
“What? Task Force Manhattan?”
Chan faced forward again. “Fort Drum. You with us in the here and now, Captain?”
The MP’s attitude bugged Hastings a bit. “You fight the dead, Chan?”
Chan hesitated before answering. “No. Not directly.”
“Then you have no fucking idea just how big the hammer is that’s swinging for your head.”
“Pass that on to the colonel,” Chan said. “He knows you’ve got some time against the reekers. That’s why we’re taking you to him.”
*
They parked in front of a two-story brick building near the airfield. There were a few CH-47 Chinooks on the ramp, and inside one open hangar, Hastings could see what appeared to be a pair of older OH-58 Kiowas. Those were the only aircraft on the entire field, and that made him frown. He’d actually been hoping there would be a bigger aviation footprint available.
The building wasn’t tightly guarded, but there were armed soldiers. Hastings didn’t know whether they were regular Army or National Guard, but seeing them in relatively close proximity reminded him that he was unarmed, something he wanted to rectify in the short order.
They followed Chan into the building, which turned out to be a tactical operations center, where missions were planned and monitored. Even though he was a company-grade officer who had spent more time in the field than in the rear, Hastings immediately felt at home. The organization, the orderly chaos, and the hustle and bustle of the operations center spoke of all things Army. For a split second, he had a feeling that everything was going to work out in the end. Big Army was there, and it had all the tools to bring the fight to a successful close.
Except the enemy wasn’t the Soviets or the Iraqis or the mujis in Afghanistan. The enemy was the living dead, and nothing would end until all the reekers had been returned to the earth. There just wasn’t enough firepower in the nation to see to that. Hastings had witnessed more than one attempt.
Chan led them down a hallway and into a conference room. He pushed open the door, checked inside, then jerked his chin toward the room. “Have a seat. Colonel Victor will be with you in a few minutes.”
“How long can we expect to stay here, sir?” Ballantine asked, regarding the room beyond with a slightly suspicious expression.
“Until you’re either dismissed or given other duties, Sergeant,” Chan said.
“Hey, Chan. What gives?” Hastings asked. “It’s a fair question.”
Chan looked at Hastings. “I don’t know how long you’ll be here, Hastings. It’s not up to me.”
“You should have an idea,” Hastings pressed. “I mean, you’ve taken in other units before, right?”
“None from Task Force Manhattan,” Chan said. “I’m just guessing, but I’m going to presume the colonel’s going to want to talk to you guys for a bit longer than anyone else.”
Hastings stepped into the conference room. “Swell.” He beckoned Ballantine to follow, and the big NCO stepped inside.
Chan closed the door, leaving the two men alone. Hastings pulled one of the padded conference room chairs away from the long table and slipped inside its embrace. Other than a blank screen on the far wall, an easel with a huge pad of paper attached to it, and a Polycom teleconference system in the middle of the table, there was nothing more to be seen.
“Might as well take a load off, Carl,” he told Ballantine. “Let’s see where this goes.”
Ballantine stayed on his feet. “I’m a little anxious about my family, sir.”
“I know. But this is where we are.”
“Captain, we’re not safe here. I haven’t seen any kind of preparations that indicate these guys know what they’re up against. I mean, this is the National Guard—”
Hastings held up a hand. “Ballantine, I get it. I feel the same way. But we have no weapons, no vehicles, and no supplies—they confiscated everything. So I think we have to suck it up and wait it out. We need gear, and who knows? Maybe they’re going to actually listen to what we have to say.”
“And what do we have to say, sir?”
Hastings snorted. “That unless these guys start leaning forward in the foxhole something serious, then they’re next on the menu.”
*
Ten minutes later, the door opened. Chan and the shortest colonel Hastings had ever seen stepped into the room. His nametape read VICTOR, and when Hastings got to his feet, he practically towered over the man. At just a hair under six feet, Hastings wasn’t exactly a giant in the Army, but compared to Colonel Victor, he was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Ballantine was Yao Ming. Hastings wondered idly if Victor had originally been a taller man before one parachute jump went bad, and a hard landing cost him a foot or so.
“As you were, gentlemen,” Victor said. He offered his hand first to Hastings and then to Ballantine. “I’m Colonel Victor, ground component commander here at Indiantown Gap. I understand you two lightfighters are probably all that’s left from TF Manhattan. Am I right?”
“I don’t know about that, sir,” Hastings said, “but we’re the only ones we know about, with the exception of the other troops who are with us.”
“What unit were you with, Hastings?”
“Company commander, Alpha Company, First Battalion, Eighty-Seventh Infantry, First Combat Team, sir.” He nodded toward Ballantine. “Sergeant First Class Ballantine was one of the senior NCOs in the headquarters element.”
“Okay. Let’s have a seat.” Victor slid into the chair at the head of the table, while Chan stayed by the door. The colonel opened the binder he had brought with him, and Hastings saw the AARs he and his men had filled out. Victor tapped the forms. “I went over them quickly before I came over. Haven’t done anything more than just scan for highlights, but it seems like you guys had a hell of a fight. You managed to make it all the way to Fort Drum?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But too late, I see,” Victor said. “Or, maybe, just late enough. You guys realize you probably would have run out of luck up there if things had still been in full swing, right?”
“The thought had crossed our minds, sir,” Ballantine answered. He gave Hastings a sidelong look, but Hastings ignored it.
Victor didn’t. “Sorry about your family, Hastings. If it’s been in question at all, we did not recover any dependents from Drum.”
Hastings didn’t say anything.
Victor drummed his fingers on the tabletop, as if wondering whether to pursue that line of conversation. He apparently elected to drop it. “All right, here’s the overall situation. Whatever happened, it started in the Middle East. Some variant of the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, or at least something that looked very similar. The CDC and USAMRIID were working on a cure, but it never panned out, as we can see. By the time we started fielding task forces to major metropolitan centers, it was already too late. I think echelons above reality could have been wiser about that, but it is what it is.
“We have about six thousand troops here, two brigades worth of manpower. Not everyone’s a shooter, but everyone’s getting trained to be the best infantryman they can be. We have some good post services folks who are working on fortifying the place as
much as it can be. Indiantown Gap isn’t small, but we’re out in the middle of nowhere, so we have a little bit of time. We don’t know how many reekers are out there, but there are definitely more of them than there are of us, so we have to get our shit squared away.”
“How many reekers are we talking about, sir?” Hastings asked.
“From Allentown, about fifteen thousand. From Philly, about forty-five thousand. From New York… well, that one’s going to hurt. Over a million.”
“Jesus,” Ballantine said. “No offense, sir, but we have to get out of here.”
Victor cut his eyes over to the big NCO. “We’re not inexperienced here, Sergeant. We know what we’re up against, and we’re moving to counter the threat. Right now, we have attack helicopters hitting the reeker formations, breaking them up and holding them back.”
“You can’t kill them using helicopters, sir,” Hastings said. “You might be able to slow them down, but that’s about it. There’s only one thing that takes out a reeker.” He tapped his forehead. “A shot to the brain.”
“We know, Hastings. I was part of Task Force Philly, so I’ve had some experience with them. We know what has to be done, but we’re out in the middle of Pennsylvania with finite resources. We can only do so much. We know we can’t stop them, but we can slow them down long enough to finish our preparations. We can survive against the dead, if we’re quick about it.”
“And how far along are you in your preparations, sir?” Hastings asked.
Victor smiled humorlessly. “Not far enough, but we’re working around the clock on establishing a hardened perimeter. We’re also sending out hunter-killer teams to mop up the reekers in the area and to make contact with the remaining locals. We’re going to need every able-bodied person we can get, and since the military resources are pretty much tapped out, we’ll need to recruit the local citizenry.”
“Do you know anything about the rest of the country, sir?”
Victor sighed. “We’ve had intermittent contact with Fort Bragg. They were in a mother of a fight down there, but they’re still giving us irregular updates. No word from any other major commands, either civilian or military. Several communities and cities in the mountain states are doing the same thing we are, converting their towns and cities into fortresses. At the moment, there’s not much in the way of centralized command and control. The president hasn’t been heard from in over two weeks now, nor have we heard anything from his senior staff. Bragg is planning out a continuity of government scenario, and we actually have a role in that. It’s one reason why we can’t just abandon Indiantown Gap.”
These Dead Lands: Immolation Page 14