Fear wasn’t foreign to Victor. He was no coward; he was a seasoned soldier who had seen combat. When people started shooting, fear was a natural reaction, though in his past it had always been suborned by his training and discipline. He had seen his way through the hot spots, and while surviving hostile action led to soul-searching later, Victor had managed to get through all those engagements with his limbs and wits intact. While the danger had been real, Victor managed to convince himself that he hadn’t been in any overwhelming jeopardy.
More burdensome was when men under his command made the ultimate sacrifice. Trying to console a fallen soldier’s family with hollow platitudes after sending that soldier directly into harm’s way was something that had never been easy. Killing enemy combatants, while not pleasant, was nothing compared to watching people you knew get killed. And Victor had seen more of that in the past months than he had witnessed during the previous twenty-five years of his career.
He had lost almost half his brigade combat team, trying to stabilize the city of Philadelphia. While the scope of his unit’s duties were narrowly defined, there hadn’t been a lot for them to do in the initial weeks of their deployment. Civilian agencies were in charge, and Victor’s brigade basically had been logistics support: providing trucks and security for humanitarian relief missions, fortifying positions, and securing the airport and major highways. Once the evacuations began, things became more complex, less controlled. The city government began to implode, even as FEMA resources made their way into the zone. The National Guard troops that had been supplementing the Philadelphia police and fire departments had to step up and get directly involved in “pacification” efforts, and Victor’s brigade supported those citizen-soldier elements directly. That was the last instance in which things were normal.
As a regular duty soldier, Victor was not unfamiliar with military operations in support of civilian organizations. But almost overnight, the scope of the mission had changed from pushing and pulling supplies to the Guard to active suppression of enemy formations. That the formations were legions of the dead emerging from not only the city of Philadelphia but the surrounding suburbs was disconcerting, to say the least. Also, the areas around Victor’s home post, Fort Campbell, were also falling to the dead. Communications with the 101st Airborne Division’s senior command elements began to fail. With that came the atypical disconnection from the strategic picture. As a colonel, Victor was on the low end of the totem pole when it came to being informed of what was happening in the big picture, but as commander of one of the divisional combat teams, he was used to getting a pulse every now and then. The long lapses in communications left him in the dark and contributed to the dissolution of morale among his troops.
For the first time that he could remember, desertion became a problem. All of his battalions reported troops abandoning their positions, not because they feared the advancing dead but because they had no idea what was happening to their families. Victor understood. The desertions galled him, but expecting a soldier to maintain his post while his family was under direct attack was a tall order. Of course, he had issued those exact orders, reminding his commanders to impress upon their troops that full penalties for desertion would be enacted in accordance to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It hadn’t helped. The world was coming to an end, and one of the first victims was fear of the UCMJ.
But when the dead finally surged forth, overwhelming the remnants of the local police and National Guard, Victor found that the desertion rate was suddenly the least of his worries. In the days before that final attack, Victor had been slowly relocating units away from the city’s center. His primary objective, in absence of guidance from higher up in the chain of command, was to maintain control over the airport and the approaches to Interstate 76. The uninfected civilian population that could still take flight would need access to both areas, and so would the brigade combat team. Victor had already determined that military air transport was out of the question, as resupply and evacuation flights, even for military medical emergencies, were becoming more and more erratic. The scope of the epidemic had exceeded the eastern half of the nation.
Victor was ostensibly on his own, which meant the brigade was his to maneuver as he saw fit. With no word from divisional or even corps command, Victor had to start making some unpleasant choices. The brigade could stay and fight, while trying to provide as much cover for the retreating civilians as possible. They would have to dig in and deny the reekers access to the airport and interstate. But from what his troops in the field told him, stopping to fight was a recipe for disaster. The lion’s share of the brigade’s units were caught between two elements of zombies, those emerging from Philadelphia and heading south toward the airport, and those roaming in from the townships to the west, which mostly ranged east and north. Both masses threatened Victor’s objectives.
Thousands of reekers had begun migrating south from the poorer neighborhoods in north Philly. By the time they made it to the more well-to-do portions of the city’s south side, they numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Thousands more were stumbling out of Collingwood, Sharon Hill, and Darby, where they were engaged by two battalions holding the line at Bartram Avenue, a boulevard that ran roughly north to south along the airport’s westernmost flank. Recon units farther into the suburbs had dropped out of the tactical picture, overwhelmed and trapped before they could retreat. Victor had sent Black Hawks out to extract them, but the helicopters couldn’t land without being overcome by the swarming dead.
After a consultation with his senior staff, Victor decided to hold the airport and highway for a week. Traffic on nearby Interstate 95 had come to a standstill due to multiple accidents and a huge fire that raged near the waterfront when a liquid natural gas tanker had exploded, incinerating a huge swath of traffic on the highway. Another inferno raged to the north, where the Sunoco fuel refinery was ablaze only a half a mile from Interstate 76. Flaming fuel poured into the Schuylkill River, turning it into a gigantic serpent of fire. Secondary detonations at the refinery threatened the possibility of the brigade using I-76 as an escape route, and poisonous gases emitted by the conflagration wound up killing even more people in the surrounding vicinity.
Victor didn’t have a week. He didn’t even have a day.
His National Guard counterparts told him that Indiantown Gap was still operational, so that was their next destination. The reekers continued to attack, walking through fields of fire and overwhelming defensive revetments, all while ignoring mortar and even artillery fire. Only heavy armor and large transport vehicles could move through the swarming dead, and Victor ordered the unit’s remaining armored personnel carriers and five-ton trucks to lead the advance. The 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, pulled out.
Pushing the brigade up Interstate 76 had been a hard slog. The retreat was one of the most emotionally arduous odysseys Victor had ever embarked upon. Even though Fort Indiantown Gap was less than a hundred miles away, the brigade had to fight almost the entire distance. When the unit—or what was left of it—finally arrived at the National Guard training center, the men were demoralized and dispirited. And when he learned that almost sixty percent of the brigade’s personnel had been lost, Victor joined their ranks. Every man had his breaking point, and losing over two thousand six hundred soldiers under his command in a single engagement was Victor’s. So upon reaching the Gap, Victor took the time to try to ensure his remaining men received rest, refit, and medical care. There were already more than twenty-five hundred National Guard troops at the Gap, and more showed up each day, falling back from their assigned positions after they were overrun. Regular Army units came in as well, though the senior-most officer to report in was a lieutenant colonel presiding over a relatively intact cavalry squadron from Fort Riley, Kansas. The 1st Squadron, 4th Infantry Division had been supporting sustainment operations outside of Baltimore. The lieutenant colonel’s report of the destruction that had occurred in the Baltimore-Washington area was st
rikingly similar to what had happened elsewhere in the nation. As far as Victor was concerned, the Gap was essentially cut off from the rest of the nation’s military, aside from occasional stragglers that would appear at the gates.
Colonel Jarmusch looked to Victor to provide security and to plan the next steps against the campaign against the dead. Normally, Victor would have jumped through a thousand hoops to meet that kind of challenge. But after losing so much of his brigade in so little time, David Victor was worn out. All drive to excel had been stripped from him like a reeker ripping flesh from a bone. The plans he made were defensive in nature, starting with felling trees and establishing checkpoints and decontamination zones—nothing too strenuous, nothing that his weakened troops couldn’t deliver. It wasn’t until the lightfighters from Fort Drum had arrived that he had been galvanized into action. When Captain Hastings offered a plan to further secure the post and grab those trains, Victor was more than happy to let him do it.
The success of the missions rallied everyone’s spirits. While Operation BOXCAR wasn’t a huge effort, it had taken up almost all of the Gap’s available manpower. The post had all the containers it could get, along with some rather interesting weaponry from the naval facility. More civilians had been brought inside the fence. Victor felt a resurging sense of vitality creeping into him, and he allowed his morale to be buoyed by the successful events. For a moment, Victor had thought that things might actually work out. Even though all they had done was secure some trains, containers, weapons, and distressed civilians, the troops at the Gap had pulled off a high-stakes operation. Their success had filled everyone with a renewed sense of faith, and even Victor had allowed himself to become entranced by it.
But the reekers were coming.
The brigade S-2, a sharp-faced major named Bonneville, pointed at the screen. “We don’t have a full count at the moment, but we’re thinking this is a pretty major element. We have the ability to repel them for a time, but any munitions we use now, we’re going to miss later. And this just could be an advance element. We should move one of the Shadows closer to the I-78 barricade and launch from there.”
“Maybe we should send out a Chinook,” Jarmusch said. “It would be faster, and we could cover more ground. It wouldn’t have the same kind of fidelity that a Shadow would provide, but we could at least get a better idea of what’s heading our way.”
“Why a Chinook?” asked Lieutenant Colonel Gavas, the commander of the Cavalry squadron from Fort Riley. “I saw there are a couple of Kiowas in one of the hangars. Can’t we just use those? They’re scout birds, after all.”
Jarmusch shook his head. “Those were in tear-down for a full phase maintenance cycle. They need spares installed that we don’t have on post. Bell Textron was supposed to be sending them to us, but they never made it because of the emergency.”
“How far past the replacement times are they?” Gavas asked. “I mean, if they’re borderline or just a little beyond, we can still use them, right? It’s not like there’s a specific tolerance we have to adhere to.”
“It’s not exactly an easy thing to do, slapping a helicopter together after it’s been pulled apart. Lots of safety checks have to be made, including test flights and substantial inspections. Believe me, Colonel, it’s going to be easier to send out a Chinook.” Jarmusch looked over at Victor. “Dave? What’s your take on this?”
Victor stared at the display. Another unmanned Shadow aerial vehicle entered the frame, flying past the one currently transmitting real-time imagery. Farther back, amidst the snarled traffic, thousands more reekers were winding their way past abandoned cars and trucks. We’re never going to win this.
“Colonel Victor?”
Victor cleared his throat and tore his eyes away from the screen. Jarmusch was looking at him with a quizzical expression. Victor could see the desperation lurking in the taller man’s eyes. Victor knew Jarmusch was no stranger to combat; the National Guardsman had been deployed to Iraq, twice. But the zombie force was an enemy he had yet to fight, whereas Victor had gotten his fill of fighting off the deadheads. Jarmusch obviously wanted him to take the lead.
“Let’s send out a Chinook,” Victor said. “Maybe two, just in case one goes down. But let’s also have one of the Shadow teams jump out and join Vogler’s element on I-78. We’ll want some local coverage initiated from that area, so we can keep an eye on what’s going on. How long until the reekers make it to the barricade?”
“Tomorrow sometime, sir,” the female AMP said. “They’re walking at around three miles an hour, and they’ll have another traffic jam a mile ahead that will slow them down. It’s funny, but they really seem to want to stay on the roadway. Some of them are in the trees and brush, but most seem to prefer flat terrain.”
“It’s because it’s easier for them,” Victor said. “And because they know roads lead them to prey.” He nodded toward Gavas. “Colonel Gavas, pick a team to jump out on the Chinooks. This is basically a reconnaissance mission, and that’s your area of expertise. I’ll leave it to you to decide how many troops to assign. If three miles per hour is all they’re doing, then this doesn’t have to be a long-distance task. Make it out to Allentown then turn back to the airfield. There were ten or fifteen thousand reekers holding station in Allentown. These bastards could be from there.”
“Roger that, sir,” Gavas said, bobbing his head.
Victor turned to Jarmusch. “Can you spare some troops to head up to Vogler’s position to give them a hand? It looks like they’re first up for contact, so I’d like to get that barricade straightened out right away. We’ll also need to get a secondary line of containers established and secured, so if the troops need to fall back, they’ll have another defensive line to retrograde to.”
“We’ll call up another company,” Jarmusch said. “I’ll also work with the aviators on getting the air slice dialed in. Colonel Gavas, you might want to be in on that.”
“Yes, sir,” Gavas said with another bob of his head.
Hastings entered the room.
“Captain,” Victor said, “welcome back to the war. Sorry, no day off for you.”
Hastings didn’t look to be in great shape, but his eyes were sharp as he zeroed in on the video. “How many, sir?”
“Between fifty and seventy-five thousand. We’re going to jump out a Chinook to take a deeper look then follow on with a forward-deployed Shadow.”
Hastings shook his head. “There’s going to be a lot more than that, sir. A lot more. This is the leading edge of the wave inbound from the East Coast.”
“How do you know that, Captain?” Gavas asked. “They could be coming in from anywhere.”
“Seventy-Eight’s a straight shot from Jersey and the New York City metro area,” Hastings said. “Reekers from Philly or Harrisburg would be meeting the road to our west, and it looks like either we were wrong about the dead population in Allentown, or they’re pushing out because another wave of dead is rolling in.”
“You could be right, Captain,” Jarmusch said. “But we’ll know that soon enough.”
Hastings turned to Victor. “Sir, I’d like to go forward and join the team setting up the barricades on I-78. Have there been any requests for more material from them?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Jarmusch said. “Not from Vogler’s unit but from the secondary defenses being set up on Swattie along Route Seventy-Two. They asked for claymores and fifty-caliber anti-material weapons.”
Hastings nodded. “I’d say that’s a good start, sir. Those munitions should definitely be surged forward to all sites.”
“You want to take over the mission to set up the defense-in-depth, Hastings?” Victor asked.
“It might be a good idea, sir, since I’m the guy who came up with the initial plans,” Hastings answered.
Victor agreed. “Then have at it, Captain. Colonel Jarmusch is getting ready to send out another company of Guardsmen to assist. You can ride along with them. We’ll try to get the munitions ready
so they can go along with you.”
“Thank you, sir. Colonel Jarmusch, how long until the company leaves?”
“We were just discussing it, Captain. No orders have been given, yet. Call it thirty minutes to muster the troops, brief them, and get them ready to move out.”
“Thanks, sir. Where do you anticipate they’ll leave from?”
Jarmusch looked over at Major Glennon. “Dale?”
“Uh, the motor pool at Clement and Utility,” Glennon said.
“I’ll be there, sir.” Hastings turned back to Victor. “I have some business to take care of before we jump out. Am I good to go, sir?”
“You are. Thanks for all your help, Captain.”
*
By speeding through the reservation in one of the battered Humvees his team had brought with them all the way from New York, Hastings made it back to the barracks in record time. He parked on the gravel road and practically leaped out of the vehicle. Several civilians were seated outside, lounging around the cement stoop. They gave him concerned looks as he bolted past.
Someone had set up a television and gaming console at the front of the floor, and Ballantine’s sons were engrossed in a game of Super Mario Brothers. They didn’t even look up as Hastings stormed in. The rest of the adults stirred uneasily as he continued at a fast clip, heading to the rear of the building where Kay sat with Diana, who was drying Kenny’s hair with a towel.
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