Steele closed his eyes, taking in the information. He understood.
Mauser scowled. “What do you mean one hundred percent?”
“I mean,” Joseph paused … “extinction of the human race.”
Mauser brought a hand to his forehead. “That’s some heavy stuff, man.”
“This is heavy, Mauser, the heaviest thing mankind has ever faced. And that fate rests upon you getting me to Patient Zero. Even then, I don’t know.” Wrapping gauze around Steele’s head, he covered his wound. “You have to keep this clean. You are lucky the infection wasn’t worse,” he said.
Steele nodded, eye drooping a bit from the anesthetic. He looked like he belonged in a mental institute. He glanced at Mauser. “We have to, Mauser.” He looked back at Joseph, his face drooping like a bloodhound. “I don’t know how we are going to do it, but we will get you to Michigan. I will talk to the commander,” Steele said.
“I thought I was crazy, but this is ridiculous. How do you expect us to make it all the way there by ourselves?” Mauser looked away in anger. “No offense, Joseph, but my vote is to stay.”
“We will find a way,” Steele said, firm in his conviction.
“Did your brains fall out when they shot you? This is crazy,” Mauser said. He stood up, wobbling on his bad leg.
Joseph gestured to his leg. “We haven’t had a look at your leg.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Mauser waved Joseph off, hobbling out of the tent.
Steele’s eyes followed his friend until he was gone.
“The colonel won’t be reasoned with,” Joseph said.
Steele continued to stare after Mauser. Joseph’s heart sank into the pit of his gut. No one could really grasp the urgency when the only thing they could imagine was survival until tomorrow.
Steele looked back at Joseph as if he had only just noticed him for the first time. His eyes were the only thing that made him appear upset. “Let me talk to the colonel first. After all, he is providing free room and board.”
“Someone has to be thinking further out than tomorrow. Get me to Patient Zero, today.”
“Give me a few days. Let me feel everything out before we run.”
“How are you two gentleman?” a voice came from inside the tent. They both turned toward Colonel Jackson who stood nearby, hands behind his back.
How long has he been there?
“Joseph, I see you are providing some medical assistance to this civilian.”
Joseph wiped a nervous palm down his pants. He gestured with an open hand to Steele. “This is Counterterrorism Agent Mark Steele. He rescued me in Africa.”
“The Division, huh? Heard about you guys. Where is your unit, now, Agent?” The colonel stepped closer to Steele.
“The only one left is Agent Ben Mauser outside.”
“And what exactly were you and Agent Mauser planning on doing here?”
“I was thinking about taking you up on some hot meals,” Steele said with a small smile.
Colonel Jackson’s lips spread thinly over his high-browed skin-tight face. “I bet you were.”
The colonel leapt for Steele, grabbing him by the shirt and pulling him closer. Steele latched onto his wrists, stalemating the colonel. Jackson bore down on Steele from above.
“I know you two wouldn’t be planning on running away from our base, would you?” Colonel Jackson turned his eyes to Joseph. “It would be a shame to have to execute the both of you for treason.”
Joseph found himself putting his hands up. “No, no. We were only discussing Steele’s journey here,” Joseph eked out. His words sounded small and insignificant.
Colonel Jackson sneered. “That’s not what I heard. I heard you whining to be rescued, like a fucking baby.” Jackson released Steele’s shirt, letting him fall back onto the cot. He paced. Drawing his sidearm, he held it near his side.
“To think you would go behind my back, after I specifically told you about your responsibility to these American fighting men. Woe to our society when its people no longer support its troops. Are you not patriots?” Colonel Jackson raised his arms outward and back down to his sides, disgusted with them both.
“Sir, I think we can talk this out,” Steele said.
“Can we? You can’t even answer the fucking question. Are you a patriot?” Spit flew from Colonel Jackson’s mouth. Men leaned upright on their cots, watching the scene unfold. Steele’s eyes lambasted the colonel. Rage seethed from Jackson as if Steele’s very existence angered him.
“I am a patriot. I too live to serve this country, but listen to what Joseph is telling you. See the big picture,” Steele pleaded.
“Right, right. So a cop is lecturing me about big picture strategy?” Foam formed at the corner of Colonel Jackson’s lips. He ran his tongue along them. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
Steele was silent.
“I am an officer of the United States Army,” Jackson yelled in Steele’s face.
Joseph looked down at his hand. He didn’t know how it got there, but his fingers were wrapped around a thin scalpel.
A short jab into the vital area of Colonel Jackson’s neck should bring the man down quickly. It wasn’t so much different than medicine. Instead, he would make the blows to kill rather than heal. A thick vein bulged in Jackson’s neck, pulsing with the beating of his heart. Joseph’s eyes were drawn to it. Puncture through the vein. Press the scalpel into the tissue until it severed the man’s spinal column. Joseph was so intent on the man’s vein, he failed to notice the loud pitch of gunfire outside the tent.
Colonel Jackson and Steele both looked outwards, sixth senses spiking. Joseph raised the scalpel back behind his ear. His hand wavered. Can I take this man’s life? How do Mauser and Steele do it with such crude efficiency? Maybe they commit the act as an instinct and think about their actions later. He always overthought things too much.
Jackson’s red face sobered a bit. Whatever anger clouds had accumulated over the colonel had dissipated.
“Agent Steele, can you handle a firearm?”
“Yes, sir. It’s the only reason I am here,” Steele said.
“Time to prove to me your loyalty.” In two long strides, Colonel Jackson was out of Joseph’s reach and outside the tent. Steele followed him and caught the long gun the colonel threw to him.
Colonel Jackson went to a knee and, with rapid controlled bursts, slugged rounds at the threat. Steele stepped up behind the colonel. Wounded soldiers were awake and yelling at Joseph for help. Joseph dropped the scalpel.
“Help me,” screamed a soldier. The soldier held his hands over his ears as he sobbed, tears rolling down his cheeks. It was as if he was being shot himself. Gunfire rattled the entrance of the tent.
KINNICK
Mount Eden Emergency Operations Facility, VA
Inside the building was dark. Kinnick stepped over a partially consumed corpse, its mouth open in a final scream of terror. More bodies covered the floor in a ghastly array of horrible deaths, bodies rigid in death.
His men rushed their corners, looking for threats.
“Clear,” Lewis shouted, spinning from his corner outward.
“Clear,” Turmelle called back.
A lone moan sang out and was followed by the rustling of clothes and shuffling of feet. The men hadn’t realized the mess they had walked into.
Near the far end of the lobby, bloody-hued light glowed down on the huddled bodies of hundreds of infected. They pressed upon one another near the edge of the room, crowding around large steel doors. The bunker. The doors were able to withstand five hundred kilotons of an atomic blast, and they worked well enough against the undead bodies of former facility workers.
The infected turned on the soldiers, ready to welcome them to their office party. They made unstable steps for the entry team. Chewed-up faces, missing lips, and dead eyes tracked them.
“Zetas,” Esparza yelled.
“Holy shit,” Sergeant Lewis cursed. Kinnick took a step back as Sergean
t Lewis unleashed a fury of lead at eight hundred rounds per minute into the living dead with his M249 SAW. Every fourth round a tracer flared out lighting up the carnage that ensued.
Kinnick regained himself and stepped up, firing controlled three-round bursts with his M4 carbine. Master Sergeant Hunter stepped next to Kinnick as the rest of the team added their weight to the one-sided firefight. Limbs flew from bodies, heads exploded into cranial bone and brain matter, bodies were shoved backward into one another.
“Reloading,” Lewis screamed, requesting cover while he got his weapon back in the fight. The others continued their defensive shooting on the infected horde that closed in until Lewis was up and firing again. Kinnick fumbled with a magazine exchange as an infected closed to within ten feet of him. Its rotting gray face mesmerized him. Dead white eyes, no feeling. Fuck. It stumbled closer, reaching a broken-fingered hand, and then a round took it through the side of the head.
Master Sergeant Hunter gave Kinnick a wicked smile from beneath his beard. “Get your weapon up, sir,” he chided.
Kinnick got the magazine locked into place and squeezed the trigger, thudding bullets into an infected’s face. Soon after, the last body hit the floor and the firefight was over. The carnage was complete. No time to ask questions, no time for mercy, only time for total war. The infected dead lay amongst their victims with no way to tell the decimated by bullets from the mangled by the undead. Not much a difference, Kinnick thought.
“Man, I wish I had a portable mini-gun instead of this,” Lewis said. “You know, a backpack filled with thousands rounds. Fight would have been over in seconds.” His SAW looked like an uzi submachine gun in his hands.
“Lewis and Fannin, check the entrance hatch. Bowman, check comms to comms with below. Pollard, Turmelle, Esparza, watch our backs. Hunter, you’re with me,” Kinnick called out.
Master Sergeant Hunter walked forward with a slight grin on his face. Is he enjoying this? Kinnick narrowed his eyes at the man. Has he seen too much? Is he beginning to crack? Or is the man some sort of sociopath? Feeding everyone cake until it is time to kill again. The human race was being extinguished by a virus that raised up the dead, and this man seemed happy about it.
“Something funny about having to slaughter hundreds of Americans?” Kinnick said.
Master Sergeant Hunter’s smile curved straight upright. “No sir, just happy to take the fight to the savages. It’s hard to sit by while these people kill innocent Americans,” he said.
“I understand, Master Sergeant, just try not to look so damn happy about it. These are people’s family members we are gunning down.”
“Copy that. Do not enjoy taking it to the enemy,” Master Sergeant Hunter said.
“Sir, hatch has been sealed,” Lewis called over, knocking his knuckles on the metal with a deadened drumming noise.
Kinnick rushed over.
“Sir, we are getting some sort of feedback from below,” Bowman called out, holding a headset near his ear.
Kinnick took the headset and pushed it to his ear. The earpiece was wet and he pulled it away. “Thanks for heads up,” he said. He wiped his ear off and listened with the headset away from his head.
“Sorry, sir.”
He couldn’t help but feel like the man wasn’t.
Could there still be people left alive in the underground bunker? A faint rasp of voices trickled in the background.
“This is Colonel Kinnick, United States Air Force, do you copy? Over.”
No response.
“I think I know why they aren’t responding,” Master Sergeant Hunter said.
“Why’s that?” Kinnick said, rushed.
“Because you said Air Force. The only reason anyone from the Air Force would be here is to take refuge, not rescue them.”
“Very funny, Master Sergeant. Bowman, where’d you get this headset?” Kinnick said.
Bowman pointed to the remains of a half-eaten soldier in the corner. His abdomen was exposed and his guts had been split onto the floor.
“Search him for access cards. If there are people alive down there, I want to talk to them,” Kinnick said. He held the headset back up, trying not to get bodily fluids from the last wearer on his ear. There was some static, but he could hear voices in the background. A glimmer of hope.
Bowman crouched next to the body of the guard. “Sir, got an access card here,” he said.
“I want these blast doors open,” Kinnick said.
It took about five minutes for the men to figure out that the door system needed two keycards and fingerprints from a sanctioned employee.
They began the begrudging search of the massacred bodies for someone who might have worked there. His soldiers rolled bodies over with their feet, looking for name tags of somebody off the guard roster. Kinnick pushed a body over, and the man’s punctured intestines slithered out of his stomach cavity. Kinnick covered his mouth with a free hand. The smell rocked his insides. No one was supposed to see this kind of depravity up close.
Giving up on digging through the dead, he relieved Turmelle at sentry duty. The Beret snorted a laugh and pulled his kukri from its sheath behind his back. He used it to flick guts away from decimated bodies. Time slogged by. The men talked loudly to one another, digesting the death with humor.
“Oh damn, I bet she was hot before she turned,” Turmelle said.
Sergeant Lewis laughed, holding up a severed hand. “Looks like this guy here wants to lend a hand.”
Master Sergeant Hunter stepped over a corpse, holding up a blood-splattered list of names.
“Wait, where did you get that hand? From Connors or Matthew?”
“Hard to tell. It was closer to Connors,” Sergeant Lewis said. “But Matthew is missing both his arms.”
“Hand it over,” Master Sergeant Hunter said, snatching the hand from Lewis. The men snickered.
Kinnick tiptoed back to the underground facility doors.
“God lends a helping hand to those who need it,” Esparza offered. Kinnick shook his head at the irony.
“Here you go, Colonel.” Master Sergeant Hunter slapped a gooey access key card into his hand.
Kinnick grimaced, rubbing the bloody card between his fingers. He went to the opposite side of the door from Master Sergeant Hunter. Hunter held both an access card and Connors’s severed hand.
The readers beeped and the red lights over the door dinged. The lights continued to glow red.
“Ideas?” Kinnick said.
Master Sergeant Hunter chewed the ends of his mustache. He whipped the hand up and down trying to get the blood off. He slammed it back down on the biometric reader and wiggled the hand around. The lights dinged and turned green. Success.
The steel doors parted and revealed the interior of a stainless steel elevator covered in human remains. A man in a once-nice business suit crouched there, emitting a low moan. In a blur, Master Sergeant Hunter leapt, spiking him in the brain before he could stand. With a boot, he shoved the suited man’s body out of the elevator.
“I think I know that guy. Wasn’t that Representative Johnson? You know the guy from California who had that scandal with migrant workers?” Fannin asked.
Lewis grinned, a grizzly full of honey. “You should have let Esparza do the honors,” he joked.
Master Sergeant Hunter snorted, bent down, and wiped his big Bowie knife off on the body of the dead Congressional representative. “If Esparza wants to get some over me, he’s going to have to get faster off the draw,” he said.
“The only thing you are faster at than me is in the sack,” Esparza hollered over.
“I thought little Miguel looked a bit like me,” Hunter retorted. All the soldiers laughed at Esparza.
“Fuck you, Hunter. That ain’t cool.” Esparza shook his head. The laughter died down, turning to quiet as reality set in. No one knew if Eglin was still in existence. Most likely, Esparza’s entire family was dead, including little Miguel.
“Hey man, no offense.”
“It’s alright. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Turmelle, man the comms up here. Let us know of any changes in status,” Kinnick ordered.
“Copy that,” Turmelle said. He rolled his knife over his hand and slipped it back into its sheath.
The men hurried into the desecrated space and the metal doors closed silently behind them.
“What, no music? Cheap government pricks can’t even play a shitty jazz CD,” Esparza said.
“Do-do-da-da-do—do-do-do-do,” Sergeant Lewis muttered under his breath. Master Sergeant Hunter picked up the tune, and soon all the men were humming along.
Kinnick found himself nervously tapping his fingers on his gun along with the men.
The elevator rattled as it sank deep into the depths of the earth, cables clanging and banging as it went.
“You guys are a twisted bunch,” Kinnick said. He was met by a round of smiles from the operators and soldiers. The elevator jostled its contents as it settled in on the bottom floor.
Bowman looked up, hand on his earpiece, “Comms with Turmelle are out.”
The elevator doors rolled open, drowning all conversation.
Game time.
MAUSER
Quarantine Base Rattlesnake, Pittsburgh, PA
Mauser crawled into a comfy sleeping bag in a snug warm tent. He rested his head back on some rolled up loaner clothes. The thin layer of the sleeping bag felt glorious as if he were in a king-sized bed made entirely of goose down feathers. He closed his eyes relaxing his body after weeks of torment.
“Exactly what the doctor ordered,” he said to himself.
He ignored the pop-pop of gunfire and let his body begin to sleep. The gunshots sped up and sounding like someone unloaded an entire magazine. His eyes crept open, they fought him the entire way after finally finding their happy place. More gunshots kicked off. He rolled over. The military can figure out their own shit. He only wanted some hot food and a safe place to sleep for about two weeks.
The End Time Saga (Book 2): The Breaking Page 20