Fade to Grey (Book 1): Fade to Grey

by Brian Stewart

  Thompson stopped, took another swallow from his beer and said, “And then that cold-hearted bastard drew a gun from a shoulder holster, walked up and put a bullet in the back of the captain’s head. The prick doesn’t even waste another second, he just turns to the group of civies, his face still flecked with bits of brain, blood and skull and points his gun at them. ‘Is there any question about who’s in charge here?’ he says. Nobody answered . . . they were just all standing there with their mouths open . . . shocked I guess. Then the suit says it again, real loud. ‘IS THERE ANY QUESTION ABOUT WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE?’ I felt CC tense up, but he managed to keep it in check. The cop and the mayor weren’t so lucky. The mayor started saying ‘You can’t do that . . .’ and at the same time the cop lunged forward and knocked the gun out of the suit’s hand before he got jumped by the two lieutenants and the other captain. They put a pretty good beating to him. The mayor too. So, I hear Colonel Jordan say, ‘Take them to the cage.’ And they hauled them off down the hallway. The colonel looks over like he’s noticing us for the first time and says, ‘0600 comes early men, better get some more rack time.’ And then his whole little entourage heads back towards their command room, dragging the body of Captain Walker with them."

  "Holy shit,” Andy said.

  "Yeah," Thompson responded," but I ain't done yet. So at 0545, both of the guard units are out at the Bradleys. I figured the colonel hadn't found out about Captain Walker's ‘strategic repositioning of the M2s’ yet. Anyhow, we get on board and they drive us down into Fort Hammer. Or what's left of it. It looked like a war zone down there, a bunch of buildings on fire, cars wrecked . . . one of the big buses was on its side smoldering. And the bodies, man, the bodies were everywhere. But it was eerie. Nothing was moving. It was like those pictures you see of a city after some bomb went off. Nothing alive, just rubble and bodies. And smoke. We did a quick sweep of the immediate area for hostiles, then Rollins—one of the other guys in my unit—notices the bank and says, ‘Why don't we use the bank as our forward position, it ought to give us some pretty good security.’ It wasn't burning, so we hoofed it over and went inside. Man, where I come from banks are made out of cement. Most of ‘em don't even have windows.” Thompson turned to face Michelle and said, "I guess things are little more relaxed up here in the sticks."

  She nodded her understanding. Michelle was a customer of Fort Hammer Savings and Trust Bank, and their building was a throwback to friendlier, more trusting days.

  He continued, "So we go inside this bank, and the first thing we notice is that the back wall has a huge hole in it, like somebody drove a car partway through. Everything's all smashed up inside, money blowing everywhere, it was trashed. Then somebody—I don't know who—yells, ‘Contact.’ I turned around and some guy was coming through the hole in the back of the bank. Dude was all messed up . . . burned. But he’s coming for us. We started yelling, trying to get him to stop, but he just keeps coming. I was the closest, and really the only one with a clear shot, so I put a round through the guy’s face and dropped him.”

  Thompson kept pacing. “And like the true bad-ass that I am, I puked my guts out immediately after. I don’t care how many times you’ve seen Scarface, or Rambo, Platoon or any other high body count movie, the first time you intentionally draw your weapon, aligned the sights, squeeze the trigger, and drop the hammer on another human being will change you forever. It doesn’t matter that something was wrong with them, or even that you did it in self defense, it will change you.”

  Both Andy and Michelle nodded—they’d already been there.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any more beer squirreled away in the house . . .?” Thompson asked.

  “No,” Michelle replied, “but there’s about two inches left in the bottle of Rock and Rye that I keep for . . . ahem, ‘medical emergencies’ like the flu. I’d be happy to get it for you.”

  It took Thompson all of three seconds to express an interest in the whiskey that Michelle kept in the bedroom closet upstairs, so she grabbed the Maglite and went up. She hadn’t touched the stuff for probably two years—partially because it tasted good to her, and partially because she had her doubts on its supposedly medicinal qualities. In any event, it was in a shoebox that had made the move from her old apartment, mixed in and unnoticed with all of her other crap. After grabbing the bottle, Michelle walked over to the single window in the bedroom. It faced the road, and one of her favorite things to do was to get her old wooden chair and sit in front of that window watching the stars. The storm outside made that impossible now. She could see Andy’s truck in the driveway, but that was about it. The wind and rain were really hammering the house now, and Michelle hoped that the storm would shift away from where Eric was. She doubted it though. Bottle in hand, she turned to walk back downstairs—paused for a second—trying to grasp whatever thread of thought had caused her to halt, but lost it again. What was it? Something was . . . different maybe? She couldn’t think, and the more she tried the more elusive it became. Rubbing her temples in exasperation, Michelle headed downstairs.

  Thompson mixed half of the Rock and Rye with a can of Pepsi from Bernice’s cooler before continuing. “So, after I get done blowing chunks, I hear the radio blast to life . . . it was Colonel Jordan ordering the Bradleys back to the school. The pricks took off and left our dicks in the dirt. CC started rounding everybody up and organizing them into a defensive position in the bank just as the shit hits the fan. Man, I don’t know where they came from, but all a sudden there were like dozens of people outside the front of the bank. Live people—not infected . . . at least not that we could tell. I guess they must have been the people they turned away from the school the night before. Maybe they heard my gunshot, I don’t know. Anyhow, they show up and the lieutenant is trying to get them calmed down and safe in the bank with us. That took about ten minutes. We were on the radio calling for a transport for the civies . . . then the other ones started showing up. The sick ones. At first it was just one or two, and you could pretty much tell they were messed up. CC gave the order to fire on anybody obviously sick—you know like walking around with half their face gone—that kind of stuff. For the first fifteen minutes or so it went pretty smooth, nothing we couldn’t handle, but we were burning through a lot of ammo. And no one would answer us on the radio. Well, the people we stashed in the bank with us, they were starting to catch on about the radio. And they start panicking. Flipping out. Demanding to be taken to safety. That’s when CC orders Nash—he was a guy from the other guard unit, I didn’t know him very well—to take half the guys and escort the civilians up to the school. So now get this. Nash is getting the guys together, getting ready to evac the civilians when Sanderson, one of our guys, says, ‘Check this shit out.’ We look out the front door and here comes that big black Suburban the suits had showed up in. It parks across the highway and the two suits exit the vehicle and go into one of the stores in that strip mall, just down from where your office was ma’am. Right about then five or six infected people tried to come through the hole in the back wall. We managed to put them down, but one of the civilians must have panicked, because she ran into our field of fire and got killed. Nash started screaming for everybody else to move out and we managed to clear the way for them. It wasn’t like there were thousands, but I think our gunfire was bringing them in. Anyhow, Nash’s unit started humping up the road, keeping the townspeople inside their little mobile perimeter. And it’s working. We could hear Nash calling over the radio to the school telling them to get ready to receive civilians. Then that asshole Colonel Jordan comes over the radio and orders Nash to hold position, saying something like ‘all civilian residents of Fort Hammer had been declared battlefield casualties and will not be allowed into the command post.’ Well Nash, he ain’t stopping for nobody. Especially now that a couple dozen more infected had made their way onto the street. I think a bunch of them came out of one of the buses. He started screaming into the radio about how his men and their escorts are not infected,
but the colonel just repeats that crap about battlefield casualties. I grabbed my binoculars to get a better look while CC was calling out to Nash on the radio, trying to get him to return to the bank. He was already over halfway to the school by then. That’s when one of the Bradleys came down the hill towards Nash. About a hundred feet away it stops, and we hear over the radio, ‘Disburse or you will be fired upon.’ Both the lieutenant and Nash are calling out on the radio, trying to get them to listen . . . telling them that they weren’t infected. CC grabbed my binoculars and told me to keep trying the radio . . . to try and get Nash back to the bank. I hadn’t even keyed the microphone when the 240 on the Bradley opened up. They took out most of the civilians and half of Nash’s men in the first minute. Things went to shit from there. We were running out of ammo, only had half our guys, and it seemed like every time we killed one of those infected, two more would come to the funeral. That’s when CC says ‘Those son-of-a-bitches.’ I turned around and saw him looking through the binoculars. Then he just drops them and shakes his head, still swearing under his breath. We had a little break in the action—I guess maybe we had cleared out the immediate area—so I ask him what was up.

  The lieutenant looks around at all of us and says, ‘I just saw Nash. He was on the other side of the highway helping one of his guys hop along. It looked like the guy had been shot in the leg . . . lotta’ blood. They made it to the sidewalk by the strip mall and were trying to get in one of the offices, when one of those suit bastards came out and shot them from behind.’

  ‘Asshole cowards,’ Rollins says.

  ‘Yeah,’ the lieutenant says. Then he's all quiet for a few seconds. Finally he looks up and us and says, ‘Men, it's been an honor to serve with you. I strongly suggest you do not return to the high school. I doubt you will have a warm reception. Stay together if you can, watch each other's back, and get the hell out of dodge. I firmly believe that the military we serve is not represented by the actions of Colonel Jordon and these DHS flunkies, and in keeping with my oath I am going to defend this country from all enemies, both foreign and domestic.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’ Sanderson asked.

  ‘I'm going suit hunting,’ CC replied.’

  "So then a few more people came down the road, I don't know if they were sick or not. I think something else was starting to catch on fire because the smoke was really getting thick. Anyhow, we all decided that CC wasn't going hunting alone. At the very least he could use our help keeping him in the clear. So that's what we did. We waited for a break in the action, then fanned out of the building and worked our way around the buses and cars into a position where the lieutenant would have a clear line of sight towards the office the suits went in. It probably would've worked like we planned, if it hadn't been for that station wagon." Thompson paused, shaking his head and obviously reliving that memory. He refilled his glass with the last of the whiskey and not much Pepsi before continuing. "We were taking position behind some pickup trucks that were parked in the middle of the street when we heard the sound of an engine gunning. I looked down the road and saw this station wagon barreling towards us. I'm pretty sure the driver was being attacked by one of the infected. Anyhow, we scattered maybe a half second before the car rammed into the side of the first pickup truck, then flipped over and rolled a couple times. Somehow I ended up next to the lieutenant. Some of our guys started firing then. We looked around and saw at least ten or twelve of those walkers heading our way. But then CC says ‘There you are you rat bastards.’ I turned around and saw him raise his M4 and fire. From forty yards away he couldn't miss and drilled one of the suits in the forehead. The other suit looks over at us, and I swear he had this confused expression on his face, like he couldn't possibly even fathom why somebody would want to take a shot at him. And it was the same prick who waxed Captain Walker. Lieutenant Calhoun double tapped him in the chest. And that's about it, you know the rest. Me and CC ended up in your office and I don't know where the rest of our guys got to. I hope they took the lieutenants advice and stayed away from the school."

  Andy asked. "What do you suppose would happen to them if they went back to the school?"

  Thompson thought about it for a second before answering. "Probably a bullet in the head. At the very least they'd probably get the shit kicked out of them like Tonto.”

  "Who?” Andy asked.

  “That cop . . . dark haired guy that stood up with the mayor."

  Michelle knew both of the cops in Fort Hammer. They were twins—Alex and Emmett Hughes—and they were both blond. She started to get a sinking feeling in her gut. "Did you get his name?" she asked cautiously.

  "Yeah . . . I think it was Ironfeather . . . Yeah, that was it, Sam Ironfeather.

  Chapter 25

  April 24th, Eric part 4

  Twenty minutes into our trek I knew I was not backtracking along the same route I had followed in to the clearing. I was well aware that even a clearly marked trail can look totally different if you hike it in the opposite direction that you normally do, but this wasn’t a clearly marked trail. It wasn’t a trail at all. The storm had soaked everything to the core, and at times we were forced to find a way around areas of standing water. Either that or go through. Emily chugged along as best she could, and to my immense satisfaction she didn’t complain at all. Not once. On the other hand she wasn’t very talkative. If I wasn’t so busy trying to keep us on a straight course I might have asked her what was wrong. About 10:00 AM I stopped us for a quick break in a small clearing. One side of the clearing was dominated by a moss covered fallen tree which Emily promptly sat on, then swiveled and reclined to stretch out. Almost like she was trying to get a tan . . . if that were possible through so many layers of clothing.

  “Tea or water?” I asked.

  She didn’t reply so I repeated the question.

  “I’m OK for now,” she finally said in a tone of deep thought or worry.

  I let the silence drag on for a few more seconds. From personal experience I know that I, like most guys, am a “fixer” who will chomp at the bit wanting to correct some wrong. Let me clarify that. Somebody else’s wrong. My own personal errors and problems seem to follow me all the days of the week. In any event I could sense that Emily was most definitely not “OK.”

  I took off my backpack, removed the gun and said, “Wait here, OK, I’m going to do a small circle around the clearing to see if I can get Max some breakfast. I won’t be gone longer than fifteen minutes. If you change your mind about water, it’s in my pack. OK?”

  I saw her nod, so I whistled for Max and he bounded out of the forest. He noticed the gun in my hand and went straight into excited-intense-hunting mode. He’s never been a tail wagging, tongue lolling, happy-go-lucky type of hunter. With him it was all business. I glanced again at Emily . . . hesitated . . . then made a decision. “Max, wait,” I commanded. He stood there as I walked over toward the fallen tree. I thought I knew why her mood had shifted abruptly, having been through it several times before with other girls. Well, maybe more than several. The problem for me was that, in addition to her, I was also feeling a bit edgy. Like my short little improvised search and rescue “vacation” was coming to an end and every step I took brought me closer to the reality, or more accurately the unreality of what was happening in the world. And I couldn’t shake a growing sensation in the back of my head. Something was coming down the pike. Something bad. I could feel it.

  I sat on the log next to Emily—her hands were withdrawn for warmth up into the long sleeves she was wearing. I lifted up one of the sleeve ends to create an opening, and gently snaked my hand inside. I took hold of her hand, squeezed it a little and said, “Hey, it’s OK. No worries, remember?” I scanned her reclining form. Covered in baggy clothes from head to toe she looked like a large cocoon. I told her that. I meant it as an icebreaker, but she didn’t take it that way.

  She looked at me and said, “So you think I’m a slug . . . that’s great Eric . . . Thanks.”

&
nbsp; Do you remember the old science fiction series “Lost in Space?” Well it was before my time, at least the originals, but I remember watching reruns with my mom and Uncle Andy. Anytime something nasty was about to appear, the big ol’ fish bowl headed robot would wave his pincher-ended arms and say, “Danger . . . danger!” It was genetically imprinted into everybody’s head who watched that show. As soon as the words left Emily’s mouth, I had a vision of the robot waving his arms accompanied by his famous quote. I knew hunting was going to have to wait for a bit.

  “Emily . . . Emily, look at me. First off . . .” She turned to look away so I squeezed her hand and said her name again. She looked back at me; I could see the moisture in her eyes. I let go of her hand for a second, set the gun against some limbs and straddled the log like I was mounting a horse. I grabbed both ends of the sleeves and pulled her up toward me, wrapping her in a big hug and just staying like that for several minutes. Not saying anything, just contact. I could feel her body quivering as she fought to withhold the tears. Time for a biology lesson.