The End Time Saga (Book 2): The Breaking

by Daniel Greene

  He squeezed the trigger. Danger close. The gun recoiled and he rotated his hips facing the next infected, already attacking before the last body hit the ground. With every shot, he prepped his trigger in anticipation of the next shot. It was a small maneuver to expedite the firing process leading to quicker and more accurate firing. If your trigger game was off, so was your accuracy.

  The nearest dead lie headless on the ground. Steele performed a tactical reload. Holding his firearm in the high ready, he turned it slightly on its side, while his other hand reached along his hip for a new magazine. He had done this thousands of times and the movement was second nature. Ripping loose the magazine with his forefinger and thumb, he brought his hand close to the weapon. He ejected the magazine from the gun and gripped the magazine between his middle and ring fingers, the metal cool on his skin. He slid the fresh magazine into the gun, making sure to slam his palm hard on the base plate of the mag. He swung his hand back down to his hip, putting the partially loaded magazine into his last mag pouch. He made a mental reminder that his last mag was not full. Just over a second had passed and he was fully loaded and back in the fight.

  He grabbed around Ahmed’s waist and locked his fingers through his belt. They stumbled for the small water craft bobbing on the river. Barnes followed close behind them, cheeks puffing with multiple packs on his back. Easiest day was yesterday.

  JOSEPH

  Fort Penn Bridge, Pittsburgh, PA

  A slimy hot stench hung in the air of the people mover. Too many people, too close together, who hadn’t bathed in too long, mixed with the heavy smell of gun smoke. It was filled to capacity, holding over sixty National Guardsmen and all their gear. Lying in the aisles were more wounded men. They moaned in pain with every bump in the road.

  Joseph sat crammed between two hulking soldiers, Stinkin’ Lincoln and Rancid Manson. Their shoulders practically touched even with Joseph in the middle. Joseph tried to lean back. The coolness of the outside air teased him every time the mover turned, swinging the steel-armor-plated shades outward.

  “Sarge, had this thing outfitted as soon as he got his hands on it,” said Stinkin’ Lincoln. He talked over Joseph’s head like he was his big brother.

  “Fuckers, could have brought in some APCs instead of this piece of shart,” said Rancid Manson. “Where the hell did we get this thing?”

  “Those civilians came in on it. There ain’t any APCs nearby. Wilson overheard the 59th Stryker got wiped out in Philly,” said Stinkin’ Lincoln.

  “Damn. Would have been nice to get a pickup,” said Rancid Manson.

  “I guess it’s better than open air,” said Stinkin’ Lincoln. Lincoln rapped his knuckles on the metal shades.

  “Yeah, so those Jodies can’t take pot shots at us,” said Rancid Manson.

  They both readjusted, using what little space Joseph had to spread out. Joseph pushed on the metal shades.

  “Keep those flaps closed,” Sergeant Yates yelled from the front. Joseph removed his elbow from the former window.

  This must be what Purgatory was like. Stuck inside a dark, smelly, and overcrowded airport people mover with no way out. Destined to drive forever in misery never reaching your final destination.

  Joseph tried to turn the other way and found himself in Manson’s armpit. He twisted and settled for staring at Mauser, who sat on the bench across from him. His leg was propped up on a bag, and he was in obvious pain.

  “Try to keep it elevated and take the pain meds, I gave you. Unfortunately, we can’t get you any ice until we get to the next base,” Joseph said, trying to sound optimistic. Mauser nodded, clenching his jaw.

  “When can I get mobile again?” he said. Joseph glanced at the swelling. His ankle looked like it belonged to a purple elephant.

  “You probably shouldn’t have been so active on it.”

  “I would love to take a break. You think you can handle this thing?” he said, showing Joseph his long gun.

  “No. I’d rather let you keep that skill set. But about a week and you should be up and running,” he said.

  Mauser smiled. “I can live with that.”

  Joseph hoped that he could.

  Gwen sat on Mauser’s other side, piercing Joseph with an icy stare.

  “I hear we will be through Pittsburgh quickly,” he said to her. “Only a short cut through the edge of downtown.”

  Her eyes bore into him like he was a ghost.

  Joseph worried about her. Her mental health seemed to be in distress. She had not smiled in days as far as he could tell. Something had broken in her. He tried to give her a friendly smile, but it shied away under her gaze. He adjusted his glasses and pushed the steel flap outward so he could peek a bit outside.

  A long line of Humvees trailed behind the mobile lounge. From the air they must have looked like a long serpent slithering down Mount Washington to wreak havoc on the city. Dark storm clouds raced over the skyscrapers in downtown Pittsburgh, casting deep shadows across the remaining glass of the buildings.

  “Close that up,” Lincoln said, looking down on him from his side. “We don’t need anyone sneaking a sniper round through you or me on our ride through the Steel City.”

  Joseph let the flap clank back into place. He bent his head back down like so many of the soldiers around him were doing. They looked like they had already been through hell and back. A ragged band of men. The mover took a sharp turn.

  “Fort Penn Bridge,” someone said under their breath. The intelligence passed up and down the mobile lounge. This meant they were closing in on downtown Pittsburgh. The tension rose throughout the cabin every second they got closer to the downtown area. An area they had spent weeks bombing.

  He thought the mobile lounge was in the middle of the convoy, but there were just too many people between him and the front to see. Rain started to splatter the airport mobile lounge, small fingertips tapping on the roof and sides. The lounge zigged and zagged as it weaved across the bridge.

  The mover slowly meandered through the path that had cleared the mass of cars on the bridge. The rain came quiet at first, sounding like the tinkling of water on an old tin roof. It was almost pleasant and Joseph dozed off for a few minutes. He had hardly slept the night before because of the camp breach. Many of the men around him dipped their heads as they were overcome with exhaustion. The press of bodies around him almost made him feel safe. A safe can of sardines. He let sleep take him away to happier times.

  He awoke abruptly to shouting within the people mover. His glasses almost fell off his face, but he managed to keep them on. He felt out of place as if there was something wrong with his seat. The whole mobile lounge slouched to one side like an overburdened picnic table. Gunfire rattled outside the vehicle.

  Soldiers stood, pushing open the steel flaps to see what was happening. He made eye contact with Mauser. Worry spread over his features.

  “Feels like a flat,” Mauser said. “And it doesn’t sound good out there,” he added.

  “Where are we?” he asked Mauser. Mauser shrugged.

  “We had to take a detour because of a collapsed building covering the entire street. We’re somewhere in the middle of the city,” Mauser said. A couple of the bigger guns from atop of the Humvees started shooting.

  Exactly where we don’t want to be, Joseph thought. He tried to get a view out the opened steel shutters, but he couldn’t see past the men. The sound of panic was rising rapidly, but it was snuffed out by a gruff voice from the front. Sergeant Yates, with red hair to match his temper.

  “We are in the middle of fucking downtown Pittsburgh. We need to establish perimeter security around the lounge. The Humvees are moving up for support, but only so many can fit on the block. Let’s make this quick, you Nasty Girls. Move,” he shouted.

  Hands were put on Joseph’s back and he was pushed ahead to the door. He climbed hand over hand down the rope ladder or risked being shoved out the door onto the road. He stepped onto the pavement and walked hesitantly down the st
reet as soldiers ran past him.

  A street sign said Liberty Avenue, and a giant building that looked like a castle loomed over them nearby. It had an omnibus yet elegant presence. Broken glass from its windows crackled beneath his feet as he walked.

  “I’m not supposed to be out here,” he shouted at the men as they took up firing positions. They ignored his feeble call as if he didn’t even exist. Wait until you need someone to patch you up, then you will listen to me. Ungrateful wretches.

  Mechanics dug out a spare from underneath the mobile lounge.

  The mover looked like a wounded elephant that could only walk on its good three legs. Humvees screeched to a halt around the people mover. Gunfire burst from the fifty-caliber machine guns. Headlights from the Humvees shone down empty streets. Pale bodies emerged from buildings. Dead stood up from gutters. Other infected walked down the middle of the streets. They knew the soldiers were there, and the infected were coming for them.

  Tall buildings loomed over the convoy, casting no shadows in the rain. They were dark dead shells of their former selves. A city of ghosts.

  The rain grew heavy, pounding the living and dead alike. Big droplets slammed into Joseph’s head and clothes like he was being pummeled with water balloons thrown from above. The rain was cold and saturated his clothes with ease.

  “Hurry up, now. You want to be Zulu food?” Sergeant Yates shouted at the mechanics. They worked a giant jack that took two men to racket it up. They made slow progress in the war to elevate the mover into a position to change its tire.

  Joseph wiped his glasses off on his shirt, but it was of no use. The water had drenched everything. He put his glasses back on his face, settling for a hazy fogged-up vision.

  A man stood on the back of a Humvee near the front of the convoy, exposed and erect. Is he infected? No. A blurry Colonel Jackson looked through binoculars down Liberty Avenue.

  He turned back to the men beneath him, pointing wildly down the avenue. His men rushed to back him. A cannonade kicked off around Jackson. That’s when Sergeant Yates found Joseph.

  “Nerd boy. Cover this way,” Yates said. He waved his hand like an air traffic controller down a side road.

  “With what?” Joseph asked.

  The burly sergeant smiled at him. “With Betty here.” He pressed a M4 into Joseph’s shaking hands. “You see those things walking toward you? You better shoot them before they get to you. ’Cause if you don’t kill them, I will, and then I will kill you, again. Do you read, egghead?” Sergeant Yates screamed at him.

  Was that spit or rain? Joseph hugged his rifle close to his body. What can I possibly do?

  STEELE

  Monongahela River, Pittsburgh, PA

  The motor eked along the muddy brown waters of the Monongahela River. Rain pelted Steele and his small team as they rode in a small gray inflatable boat. It had a small outboard motor that struggled at best under their weight. It uncomfortably fit the three men and their hundreds of pounds of gear.

  “We’re riding a bit low,” Steele said. The water edged up on the sides of the boat inches away from flowing over and into it.

  “Not to worry, boy. Soon enough we will offload plenty of ordinance. Just, huh, don’t let any of that water touch your skin.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it.” Steele eyed the filthy-looking water.

  “Fishing was just getting better around here. Now, the only thing you can catch are bodies.” Barnes laughed.

  “Look at all of them,” Ahmed said. He pointed out with his good arm, keeping his injured shoulder in tight with his makeshift sling. Steele had reset his shoulder by yanking it back into place until it popped back in. It had helped restore some of its functionality.

  Bodies floated facedown in the water. They were human buoys bobbing up and down. Some wore clothes that wavered underneath the surface, and others were only pale formless things comprised of water-logged flesh.

  “We’re going to have to go slow so they don’t get caught up in our propeller. Then we would really be up shit creek without a paddle.”

  Steele and Ahmed shared a nervous laugh with Barnes. Steele knew exactly who would be doing most of the paddling in the shit creek.

  “You two will have to push them off the sides,” Barnes said. Hundreds of bodies floated around them.

  “I’m ready for them,” Steele said, gripping his oar tight. They drifted closer to the bodies.

  The dead were bloated and swollen like filled up helium balloons. Their flesh had been gnawed upon, and at this point the men couldn’t tell if it was by fish or the dead. Steele dipped his oar in the water, and Barnes cut the engine to a mere idle, using their momentum to glide in the water.

  “Better get that oar under them just right, or the bastards will burst, and trust me we don’t want that,” Barnes hollered.

  “You could pick up an oar and help us,” Steele answered.

  “Uh yeah, someone has to steer this thing,” Barnes said. The EOD specialist laughed at the other men as they performed their grunt work.

  Steele waved an oar at a couple of seagulls perched atop a body. They flapped lazily around the corpse, reluctant to give up their feast. With red beaks and blood-stained bodies, they were no longer gray and white, but various shades of pink and red.

  “Get out of here, you,” Steele hollered at them. After a couple of close encounters with Steele’s oar, the birds surrendered their prize, gliding, albeit low gliding, to their next floating buffet.

  He wanted to yell at them, “Have a little respect for the dead.” But he didn’t. They couldn’t afford to draw any more attention to themselves than they already were.

  He pushed at a pale white man with long dark hair. Or is it a woman? He stuck his oar in the crux of the person’s armpit. The body dipped and rolled in the water and he shoved off on it. The momentum of the push took the body away. He covered his nose with his arm, trying not to gag.

  “Does the river usually smell this bad?” Ahmed complained, wielding an oar with one hand.

  “Can’t say I remember, but it sure stings the nostrils, huh?” Barnes replied. He revved the motor for a second and angled them away from a pack of dead bodies clustered in the water.

  “Ahmed, at your eleven o’clock,” Barnes called out.

  “I got it.” Ahmed one-handedly swung his oar at a bobber. The oar slapped the water and the body sprang to life. Its arms flailed wildly, splashing water as it grasped for anything to get to them.

  “Get him away from the sides,” Barnes screamed.

  Ahmed swung his oar in an awkward manner. The one-handed swings dinged off the infected, which only seemed to antagonize the creature. The infected grabbed ahold of the watercraft and submerged one side. Water surged aboard, eager for the new space to invade. Steele leaned backward, trying to counterbalance the small craft. He drew his sidearm and the water exploded behind the infected. It was silent again. The gunshot echoed across the water and traveled up the river. The men sat in the partially submerged craft breathing hard. Steele holstered his sidearm.

  Other bodies around them flapped noisily in the water.

  “Note to self, seagulls mean they are dead-dead. All the other ones be careful around,” Steele said.

  Ahmed leaned over the side and got sick. They spent the next ten minutes relieving the raft of most of the unwanted water. They repeated their thankless task down the river, and a nameless bridge grew larger and larger as they navigated the watery human minefield.

  Thick stone pillars supporting the bridge disappeared under the water. Long T-shaped steel girders lined the bridge, keeping it upright. Curved yellow metal rounded each arch spanning the double-decker bridge.

  Barnes let out a whistle. “The Fort Penn Bridge is gonna be a tough one,” he said softly, staring at a map.

  “What do you mean a tough one? This is our first bridge, Barnes,” Steele said, looking back at Barnes.

  Barnes pointed up at the bridge. “You see all those reinforced crisscrossing ste
el beams? That’s a lot of extra support because it’s a double decker.”

  They drifted near the base concrete pillars.

  “Each of those arches have to be at least three feet thick,” Ahmed said, pointing at them.

  “It has an upper and lower highway, and reinforced beams, so what?” Steele said.

  “In this case, we are goin’ to have to get up there and blow each highway at the same time. It may be structurally sound enough to withstand the collapse of either highway. You see there and there,” Barnes said, pointing at the pillars holding the bridge up.

  “Why can’t we just take out one of the pillars and call it a day?” Steele asked.

  “Haha, clever, kid, but look at how close those are to land. If the bridge falls the wrong way, then it’s just like a ramp. The only way to be sure is to blow the bridge right down the middle,” Barnes said. They continued to drift closer and closer to the bridge.

  “How are we going to get up there?” Steele asked.

  Barnes began rummaging through his pack until he found what he was searching for. He held up a harness and rope.

  “With these,” he said.

  Steele’s stomach tightened. Heights were not a pleasant topic for him. “Great,” Steele muttered.

  “I wonder how many infected are on the bridge?” Ahmed said, gazing upward. “Heads up!” Ahmed shouted.

  The water erupted next to the boat, sending it rocking up and down in the suddenly volatile river. Water exploded on the other side of the boat. Bodies splashed around them followed by another … and another.

  Steele hefted his M4 carbine, looking to the sky. “They’re jumping off the bridge,” he shouted. Infected launched themselves off the bridge and reached blindly for the boat before clipping the water in terrible poses.

  “Hot damn,” Barnes shouted, looking fearfully upward. He pulled wildly on the engine throttle. The engine sputtered out. Another body blurred past them and flopped into the water nearby. A hand reached the rope lining the craft and wrapped a hand around it. Another reached onboard, grasping for Steele. Steele point-blanked the fiend in the face.