“What’s there to talk about? The bastards were crazy,” Dave says. “They came through those trees and opened fire on everyone. Zombies, survivors…”
“And us!” Pam blurted.
“You’re right,” Ben said. “I’m just not prepared to say they went crazy. I mean, I guess it’s possible they were just a small, isolated unit that went rogue and started shooting up the place, drunk on power. Maybe they all dropped LSD at the same time and just went off like synchronized time bombs.”
“It could happen,” Dave agreed. “You hear about that kind of shit all the time. Like, group hysteria.”
“Or mob mentality,” Pam said.
“Right, Mom,” Ben said, following that course of logic. “But I counted six soldiers.”
“I didn’t have time to do an actual headcount,” she replied.
“It was six,” Dave agreed.
“So, what we’re saying is,” Ben continued. “All six of them went batshit crazy at the same time? Not likely. Not at the exact same time. One of them had to go over the edge first. I mean, one of the other five would have noticed, right? If one, or even two guys went nuts and started with that wholesale slaughter, the others could have overpowered them and put a stop to it, right?” he asked.
“I suppose it could happen,” Dave said.
“What’s your point?” Pam asked.
“I don’t think those soldiers went off the range this morning,” Ben answered. “I don’t think the six of them took off on an impromptu, crazed killing-spree. I think they were just following orders, like good soldiers. I bet they were told to flush out everything in a specified area. Herd them all to an open area like cattle and destroy them. The infected and the folks simply hiding for their lives. I’m willing to bet they had orders to shoot everyone. That’s the only thing that fits,” he concluded.
“Okay,” Dave said. “We avoid the military. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes.” Ben nodded. “But we need to know where they are. If we just keep going the way we’re headed, we’re liable to run right into them. And what do you think they’ll do when we show up? At best,” he continued, not waiting for an answer. “They round us up, confiscate our vehicles and contain us with everyone else who stumbled up there. And let’s remember, some of those others may already be infected. They might even do it, just to see what happens.”
“Well, shit,” Dave said, slumping back into his seat.
“Like an experiment?” Pam asked.
“Exactly like an experiment.” Ben nodded. “But I think the most likely thing that’ll happen is they shoot big fucking holes in all of us before we ever get out of our cars or have a chance to surrender. That’s what makes the most sense.”
“I’m feeling like we should get moving,” Joe breaks in over the CB.
“Just another minute,” Pam replies over the radio.
“I’m setting a timer,” Zack adds. Even through the tiny radio speaker, Dave picked up on the nervousness in his son’s voice.
“We can’t just sit here,” Dave tells Ben. “So, I’m all ears. What’s your suggestion?”
“The thing is, we’ve been assuming we’re in front of the leading edge of this shit-storm,” Ben said. “But I think we’re well behind the lines here. Still inside an expanding red zone.”
“And?” Pam said. She’d started getting the same, itchy feeling from sitting out in the open Joe and Zack were, and wanted Ben to get to the point.
“I suggest,” Ben began. “The first thing we do is get off the road. Find someplace. An abandoned barn or something. Someplace where we can hide the vehicles from view. Grandpa and Grandma and the boys can stay there and wait. Some of us will need to stay with them. Just in case.”
“And the rest of us?” Dave asked.
“The rest of us do a little recon. See what’s up ahead of us. We stay in the trees and underbrush, out of view, and figure out where the soldiers are. Then we can plan what to do next.”
“That’ll take a lot of time,” Pam said.
“Better than the alternative,” Ben replied. “I think the time we had to make a run for the state line was yesterday, or maybe the day before that. Before things went completely to shit. I think every step we take now, needs to be slow and calculated. I know it’ll take that much longer to get to Amy and Trav’s but like I said, it’s better than the alternative. We can race down the freeway after we get in front of this mess. If we can,” he adds.
“Okay, color teams,” Dave said into the mic after a second or two to consider. “Let’s get moving. Go slow and watch for side roads. The more unused looking, the better.”
Chapter 2
“I want those exit doors chained and secured from the outside,” Major Brooks commanded, referring to the multiple sets of glass doors on the east side of Mapfre Stadium, as she headed to her temporary office she’d be vacating within the next hour. “And I want the bay doors on the loading docks barricaded once we’re done stowing our gear. I don’t want anyone inside this stadium able to follow us when we deploy,” she added, deciding to use deploy rather than evacuate, despite the latter being a better description of the urgency she was facing.
In the few hours her troops had taken to get everything ready for the sterilization, things had gotten decidedly more dire. She’d set things in motion when she’d believed there was enough time to rig the necessary charges, pump the accelerant into all the sprinkler lines, then gather her troops and lead them to Mansfield, where Colonel Beaurite had ordered them during their last communication. On the way out, she’d order the stadium burned to the ground, with all the infected inside. When her boots touched down at the stadium, most of the detainees hadn’t even shown signs of being Stage Ones and were being held as a precaution. But that was many hours ago and what started as a precaution, had become prophetic.
During the time that had elapsed, an overwhelming majority of the innocent-looking sheep were showing signs of infection. Had Brooks thought about it more then, it would have come as little surprise. Nearly all of them had arrived with some scratches and abrasions and you couldn’t pack that many people together without some contact. Add the anxiety of being detained against their will, and a few scuffles among their prisoners had broken out. This caused more contact abrasions, and every break in the skin was another open door for the virusite. Their collective conditions shifted from being otherwise healthy to showing symptoms of the infection in a matter of hours.
Consequently, the number of Stage Twos had increased to where it was pointless to attempt to quarantine them from the others. This, however, had been manageable for a time, because the crippling effect of Stage Two kept them mostly docile. But the duration of Stages One and Two had diminished with each round of infection and now, the ability to contain the full-on Stage Threes had reached the breaking point. She’d been forced to pull her men back from the lower-level doors due to the multiplying number of Threes. All entry points to the service and mechanical levels had been barricaded and wired to blow if they failed. The freight and passenger elevators had been raised and remote detonators had been rigged to the cables, in case the industrious bastards managed to get the doors open or tried scaling the shafts. Brooks could order the elevators blown and scrape the climbers from the walls. Regardless of the precautions she’d put in place, she’d since written off the two lower floors as losses.
The situation had gone from damage control to her team evacuating the stadium before it burst at the seams in a matter of hours. Her plan now was to follow the old man’s orders and get herself and her troops to Mansfield. She figured the burning stadium would be the perfect marker for the planes when they started carpet bombing the red zone. But they needed to be out of it before the fifty-mile radius around here became a wasteland of scorched earth.
And still no sign of even one of the infected transitioning to Stage Four. She’d hoped the Threes would be progressing to the final stage of the infection and spraying cooked gray matter from their s
kulls by now. The thought occurred to the major that maybe the infected were adapting to the virusite. Like they’d adapted their tactics in the small valley during their first incursion. Then she thought it was probably more accurate that the virusite was adapting to the infected. Keeping the body temp more regulated to keep the nerve center in their craniums from becoming pressurized stew. Sort of like learning to shift a manual transmission rather than keeping the RPMs in the red. Brooks had no illusions about Stage Four being pretty, but she still had hoped, even planned on the infected minions going off like a series of flares and burning themselves out. But the image of brilliant flames extinguishing one by one, quickly changed to a field of dandelions sending their deadly spores drifting across the winds. The vision made her involuntarily shudder and she shook it from her thoughts.
Brooks navigated her way through the wave of soldiers bustling around to carry out her orders. Combined with the soldiers she’d brought with her, and the ones she’d assumed command of from Captain Walker, she had over three hundred troops at her disposal. That didn’t even include the National Guard troops that had been brought in. As their situation became more dire, the term at her disposal began to take on a new meaning. Without utilizing civilian transportation, such as some of the school busses they’d already commandeered, she had no way of transporting them all outside the red zone.
For now, there were still a few things she needed to gather, like the remainder of the hard copy files she’d been provided by the colonel, from her temporary office. She ordered the corporal assigned to her personal communications detail, to attempt contacting Fort Bolivar so she could report on their deteriorating position. But they hadn’t been able to establish a link since their last communication had been cut short. Brooks and Nichols both thought they’d heard gunfire in the background right before the secured call was terminated. It’d been radio silence from that part of the state since then and nothing from the joint chiefs. Not that she expected anything from those fat bastards safely back in Washington. She was effectively cut off from command.
“Major Brooks,” Corporal Patel says, bolting to attention as Brooks enters her office. He brings his hand up in a textbook salute and waits for her to acknowledge his presence in the room.
“What are you doing here, Patel?” she asks the young corporal, stepping past him and returning his salute, although hers was not nearly as rigid.
“Following Sergeant Nichols’ orders, Major. I’m here to escort you to the vehicles. He said you’d want to orchestrate the final evacuation steps from there.”
“We’re not evacuating, Corporal. It’s a strategic withdrawal to a secure perimeter,” Brooks corrects.
“Yes, Major,” Patel replies, keeping his eyes focused forward.
He’d learned his lesson with the major when he’d acted as her driver on the way here. What little respect she’d shown him after saving their asses during their first major incursion with the infected, hadn’t lasted as long as it had taken to finish the drive to their destination. By the time he’d gotten them safely to Mapfre Stadium, the limited accolades she’d paid him had ceased, and the major was back to business. He wanted to assure her, by his actions and following military protocols, so was he. Patel thought it better to be an unquestioning asset for the major to insure a position near her. The closer he could keep to her, the safer he’d be. Although she had led the botched cleanup sweep that had ended with her ordering the small valley, and coincidently their own position to be set ablaze. This had trapped the major and her men between a growing conflagration and a horde of the infected slipping in behind them. It was Patel’s quick thinking that had saved them. After reporting to Brooks, he’d made the decision to plow over the flesh-eating bastards and rescue the team. Unfortunately, the liberal use of napalm Brooks had ordered, was quickly fanned by a light breeze and as far as he knew, the blaze had continued to devour the sparsely populated area. Not that he’d dream of calling her out on this last detail. Not and keep his relatively safe position in her proximity. Besides, they already had one disaster raging across the state. He didn’t figure a slow-moving inferno, devouring everything in its path was first on their list of priorities. He could feel the major’s eyes settle on him, assessing his information and formulating her response.
“He said he’d meet you there,” Patel added after an uncomfortable moment of silence.
“Has there been any contact with command?” Brooks asks as she begins collecting and organizing the printed intel on her desk.
“Not since I arrived, ma’am.”
“At ease, Corporal,” Brooks tells him after noticing he was still at attention. “I’ll be a few minutes.”
Grabbing her personal pack, she went into the private bathroom connected to her office and closed the door behind her. There was no bathtub in there, although the room might have been large enough for a small shower stall in the corner. It did have a large counter running the length of the wall on the left. The position of the basin and the water fixtures to one end afforded her plenty of room to spread out her limited array of personal grooming items. A mirror covered the wall above the counter and a paper towel dispenser was mounted to a connecting back wall near the sink. A functional and more importantly clean, commercial toilet was built into the wall on the opposite side of the room. Its placement forced Brooks to look at herself in the mirror every time she used the convenient facility. She’d hated this overlooked detail and would usually either close her eyes or look away, refusing to see herself when she was at her most vulnerable. Regardless of this oversight, the connecting bathroom was one of the reasons she picked this office as hers.
She began tossing her personals into her pack, taking a moment to apply another layer of underarm deodorant. She tried recalling when she’d last eaten, but the memory eluded her. To affirm it had been far too long, her stomach grumbled loudly in protest of the self-induced starvation.
Brooks stared at herself in the mirror, unable to overlook the dark circles under her eyes. Her facial features looked sunken and haggard. She tried to remember the last time she’d slept more than a few minutes, but that was easy enough. It was before the outbreak had started, and Colonel Beaurite had assigned her to this mission. She wondered if the Colonel had known from the start how fucked they all were and sending her here was just for show. A plausible attempt at containing a plague that would refuse to be stopped. She had no reason to believe Beaurite would intentionally send her on an impossible mission, risking her life and placing the rest of her troops directly in harm’s way. The nagging thought that continued to surface was, the military did that sort of thing all the time. Why would she think he’d do anything other than follow the orders that may have been handed down to him? The unsettling truth was, he could have made those decisions on his own. After all, hadn’t she made similar decisions with the soldiers under her command during this mission? She’d told herself taking her troops back down into the narrow valley during the first incursion had been to destroy the trap set by the infected. But she also knew it had been to test the intelligence and tactics of the horde. To determine what they were capable of. She hadn’t lost any men during their sterilization sweep of the small area, but that was due in large part to Patel’s quick thinking. The Colonel hadn’t even commented on losing eight of her charges within a few hours of touching down, and even that could have been avoided had she acted quicker. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to think Beaurite had sent her and her men into this meat grinder on the same sort of fact-finding mission. The true reason he’d ordered her here may have been less about attempting containment and more about knowing the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses. Beaurite may have deemed Brooks and her men expendable if the intel their presence on the ground gave justified the loss. This ignited a flare of distrust and anger inside her and Brooks struggled to force it from her thoughts, for now.
She carefully placed a few more of her belongings into her bag. Brooks took another look into the mirror and scowled,
making a mental note to try to get some shuteye during the drive to Mansfield. She’d considered the choice of the rallying point ever since the Colonel had given her the order to regroup there. The only thing the town appeared to have going for it was an old prison they gave tours of because it had been used to film some movie at one time. The powers that be had built a brand-new prison right next to the old one. Probably to remind the inmates of how bad things could be for them if it had been sixty years ago. The only other thing the town had going for it was a limited population. Even if the entire population revolted against the military presence, which they’d be fools to do, the rebellion could be easily quashed. Thinking about the ramifications of Operation Washout, Mansfield might be the best choice, given their limited options. She knew they’d be moving again once the red zone was farther widened. Brooks half-expected to be given the orders for the operation from somewhere in Montana by the time everything was done, if the virusite could be contained at all.
Carolyn took another look at her reflection. She brushed her hand across the wrinkles creasing the front of her military blouse and was considering changing into a fresh one, when the claxons sounded. She’d given orders the sirens were only to be used in case of a breach. Mingled with the shrill alarm, Brooks could hear the occasional shot being fired. The walls of the bathroom and the surrounding office made it impossible to tell where the gunfire was coming from, but the sound was there. This was quickly followed by a loud knock on the door.
“Major Brooks,” Patel shouts from the other side of the door. “We need to go.”
Sweeping the few remaining items off the counter and into her bag, Brooks quickly secured the small pack and pulled open the bathroom door. The blaring siren and the echo of more bullets being fired assaulted her ears as an anxious-looking Patel greeted her at the door.
“We need to get to the trucks, Major,” Patel tells her as he edges toward the closed door to her office. More shots are fired from somewhere down the hall and he’s pretty sure they’re getting closer.
The F*cked Series (Book 4): Hard Page 2