“Okay, but we need to get moving,” Ben agrees after glancing at his watch. “We’re running out of time.”
“I want to go too,” Zack says, drawing a stern look from Brigette.
“I know you do,” Dave replies. “But I want you here with everyone else. There’s no need for more of us to go than needed.” Then he turned his attention to Pam. “Keep everyone else here and ready to go,” he tells her. “If this works out, and I’m not at all certain it will, I want to be on our fucking way once the coast is clear.”
“Be careful,” she tells him, giving him a kiss on the lips. “I don’t want to do this without you. Amy would never forgive me if I let anything happen to you.”
“We’re going to want to bring some water with us,” Ben says. “We might be there for a few hours.”
“Let’s hope not,” Dave replies, grabbing the small backpack that still had a few bottles of water in it and extra shells for the shotgun he was becoming accustomed to carrying.
“Hold on,” Pam says. Walking back to the jeep they were driving, she opened the rear door and began rummaging through the cargo. It only took her a few seconds to retrieve one of the full packs of Dave’s brand of smokes, still wrapped in their factory cellophane. “You’re going to want these too if you’re going to be out there for hours,” she says, tucking them into Dave’s shirt pocket.
After a few hugs and final instructions were given, the two of them were heading down the dirt road that led to Highway 114. When they reached the pavement where they’d entered the woods a few hours earlier, they stayed inside the tree line and followed the private road to the edge of the highway.
“Maybe we should go to the other side of the road,” Ben suggests, pointing to the tall, grassy field on the other side of the highway.
Dave shook his head and said, “There’s more cover here in the trees. Less likely we’ll be spotted in here.” Looking at his watch to see it was almost four in the afternoon. “Besides, if they were right on their timeline, the major should be arriving soon. It’s too risky being seen crossing the road. And remember, it’s fall. It’ll be getting dark within the next hour or so. We stay here and wait. You watch that direction,” he says, pointing to the west. “And I’ll watch this way,” pointing to the east.
Within ten minutes, they both heard the growl of a large engine, laboring closer from the direction Dave had been watching. Ben turned his attention that way and from over the nearby rise in the highway, they saw a large military vehicle crest over it and heading their way.
“Get down,” Dave whispers out of reflex as he placed a hand on Ben’s shoulder.
But his son was already hunkered down in the surrounding brush and Dave joined him. The two watched as the military transport vehicle rumbled past without slowing and continued to the west.
“I guess that settles that,” Ben says when the taillights disappeared from their view. “At least there was only one truck.”
“Right,” Dave replies, feeling the gnawing in his stomach begin to grow. “Did you see how many men were in the back?”
“The tarp was covering it so I couldn’t tell if there were any men in back.”
“Fuck. Me either,” Dave replies. “I guess now we wait.”
Chapter 9
Brooks worked the radio inside the MTV, trying to raise any other platoons or squads that had been cut off from command when their position at the stadium had been lost. Nichols continued to drive as blood seeped from the bullet-wound he’d sustained in the shoulder. It hadn’t helped when Brooks ordered him to use the hand pump to fill both tanks from an abandoned gas station after leaving the school and the late Corporal Patel behind. As he’d suspected, she’d spent most of that stop keeping her gun and eyes pointed in his general direction, rather than watching for approaching infected. He tried to focus on the road in front of him and the directions the major was giving, rather than the throbbing in his shoulder. Neither spotted the two men hiding in the trees near the turnoff onto the private road as they passed by them on their way to connect with the group of soldiers the major had been able to reach on the radio approximately two hours earlier.
Two soldiers stood near the access road leading off Highway 114. One stepped into their path and flagged them to take the turn. The other saluted as Nichols took their directions and drove past them. They drove another two hundred yards before entering a gravel-covered clearing set in the trees. It looked to Brooks like the camp was in the process of breaking down for departure, but the person in charge at the moment, a Sergeant Brubaker if Brooks recalled his name correctly, was assembling all the men for inspection as Brooks had ordered. The two that had been stationed at the highway were double-timing it back up the road to fall in line with the rest of the men. The man she guessed was Brubaker was standing in front of them, flanked by two other soldiers to each side. Both were standing at attention, as were the rest of the assembled soldiers, but the sergeant was standing easy for the moment. Brooks was pleased when she found there weren’t any officers with the company when she’d finally reached someone on the radio. She’d already been in charge of the entire operation, courtesy of the probably departed Colonel Beaurite, but this meant it would be an easy matter of assuming command of these men and avoiding any disputes about who was in charge.
Nichols slowly rolled to a stop, the gravel crunching loudly under the multiple sets of dual tires on the rear of the MTV and set the airbrake before switching off the engine. When Major Brooks opened her door and stepped down from the running-board, the sergeant snapped her a crisp salute.
“Sergeant Ian Brubaker, ma’am,” he told her.
Brooks returned his salute, hesitating, forcing him to hold it a few seconds longer than necessary. This was another skill she’d learned from commanding male soldiers for the last number of years. Always make sure they knew she was the alpha in the group. Due to her being rather small in her physical build, she found she needed to reinforce this point at every opportunity.
“At ease, Sergeant,” she told him after releasing him from the military greeting.
“The soldiers are assembled and ready for your inspection, Major,” Brubaker says, keeping his eyes forward and focusing on the horizon.
“I see that, Sergeant,” Brooks replies. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the sergeant’s and she could see the pupils were abnormally constricted for being this close to dusk and surrounded by trees. She recognized the sign for what it was, having known several soldiers with addictions to prescription painkillers. She stored this information in the back of her mind, keeping it there for later consideration.
Nichols climbed down from the driver’s seat of the MTV, wincing in pain as he closed his door and stood next to Brooks. The two sergeants made eye contact for an instant, but no greetings were exchanged. Brubaker couldn’t help noticing the bloodstained army shirt the man was wearing or the obvious bullet hole in the shoulder but decided not to mention it until or if and when, the major brought it up.
“Is this all of them?” Brooks asks the sergeant.
“All twenty-eight of them, Major,” Brubaker replies.
“And who are these men?” Brooks asks, referring to the two flanking the sergeant.
“Corporal Johnathan Ferguson. Second in command,” the man on the left replied with a salute.
“Not anymore, Corporal,” Brooks replies, returning the salute before she focused her attention to the man on the right.
“Private Mark Merriweather. Radio operator,” he says, adding his own salute, which Brooks returned.
“This is Sergeant Nichols. He’s my second in command. If he gives you an order, consider it coming directly from my lips,” she tells them. As Brooks made the introduction, she remembered Nichols’ wounded shoulder and asked, “Where’s your medic, Sergeant?”
“K.I.A.,” Brubaker replies, without offering further explanation.
“Well do you have someone who can see to Sergeant Nichols’ shoulder?” she asks.
“We still h
ave the medic’s gear,” Merriweather says without provocation.
Brubaker resisted the temptation to shoot him a glare, having not had the chance to rummage through the medic’s gear in search of any painkillers that might be in there. He’d planned to do it before the major arrived but simply hadn’t had the time. But now, Merriweather and Nichols would be inventorying the supplies before he’d had a chance to take what he needed.
“Get that taken care of,” Brooks tells Nichols, pointing at his shoulder.
“Just follow me, Sergeant Nichols,” Merriweather says, leading him away from the others.
“And go easy on the painkillers,” she shouts to their backs, shifting her gaze to watch Brubaker’s expression. “I need you sharp. Sergeant Brubaker. Give me a status update on the camp,” she orders.
Brubaker spent the next few minutes running down the details of the camp while he thought of a fitting new assignment for Merriweather. He included the current levels of the supplies and ammo, and everything that had transpired over the last twenty-four hours in his report to Brooks. He glossed over the fact he’d personally dispatched his commanding officer after he’d been bitten, and the fact their medic hadn’t technically been killed in action but deciding that was close enough for now. If Brooks pressed him, he’d give her the unvarnished truth. But only if she insisted on the details.
He also gave her a rundown on their encounter with the three men who’d possibly been the assaulting force from the night before. Brubaker had little to add about the momentary lapse in the cell phone jamming equipment. Most of the soldiers’ cell phones had all gone off at the same time with a glut of text messages from family members and system notifications. The gap in the information blackout only lasted a minute or two and the jamming signal was quickly restored. Regardless of the duration, Brubaker was confident it had been enough time for the rest of the country to get a glimpse of what was happening in Ohio. That short peek into the nightmare unfolding here would be enough to cause a mass panic across the country and probably the world. He knew how people reacted to things like this. There might be an insignificant outcry about rights being violated or protection from looters. But the overwhelming response would be fear. Unthinking, instinctual fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of their neighbors. Fear of not having enough supplies to weather the storm that was inevitably coming to engulf their towns. With that one little burp of technology failure, he was sure a chain reaction had been set off that would tear this country apart. These opinions he kept to himself and stuck to the facts in his report to Major Brooks.
Brubaker finished off with having intercepted a low-frequency radio transmission about twenty minutes after the altercation with the three men and before the breakdown in the communication blackout. He suspected they might all have been related but again, he’d let the major make the assumptions and he’d stick to the facts. Unfortunately, Merriweather had been too slow when the transmission started and failed to record the exchange or triangulate their locations. He repeated what Merriweather had heard, but most of it was meaningless, other than there were more survivors hiding out there, possibly close by. Since then, other than a few communications from Brooks, there’d been nothing but dead air. Nothing from Fort Bolivar or any other command. This fact put Major Brooks in total command of him and the rest of the soldiers. He finished off with the orders he’d given to be ready to move out when the major arrived.
“Should I assume the major doesn’t have any reinforcements in the back of that MTV?” Brubaker asks when he was finished.
“You can assume whatever you’d like,” Brooks replies, offering no other information to the sergeant. Least of all that she’d unleashed a team of rabidly infected soldiers on a group of children and the local PTA who thought they were there to save them. That was a detail only she and Nichols would share. At least for now.
“The last thing we heard from Bolivar, was that troops may be directed to Mansfield. We were just waiting for official orders. Is that where we’re heading?” Brubaker asks as Brooks walked down one line of soldiers and up the other, inspecting them as she did.
“I’ll let you know where we’re going, once these soldiers are ready to move and you need to know,” she replies. “Until then, I want you and Corporal Ferguson to oversee the camp’s disassembly and travel readiness. I want everyone and everything locked down and ready to roll within the hour. I’m going to check on Nichols. I want you to report to me when everything’s secure and the engines are running. Understood?”
“Understood, Major,” Brubaker replies, whipping up a salute he hoped would appease the ball-breaking bitch for a few minutes. As soon as he had a chance, he promised himself a bitter-tasting reward for not sending her the same way as Lieutenant McDonald and that fucking medic. Maybe two, if one didn’t take the edge off.
“That bitch is hardcore,” Ferguson says when he was certain the major was too far away to hear him say it.
“Yes, she is,” Brubaker agrees.
He was momentarily mesmerized by the sight of Brooks walking away. Even though she was in command, that obviously didn’t prevent her from swinging her well-sculpted ass, and he bet she was doing it on purpose. He wondered how she’d look with her cammies pulled to her ankles and bent over his cot. She might be a ball-breaking bitch, but he thought he wouldn’t mind if she broke his with that ass. He shook the errant thought off. Realizing Ferguson and the rest of the soldiers were waiting to be dismissed to carry out their orders, Brubaker shook the image from his thoughts.
“Fall out and get moving!” he shouted to the soldiers. His hand raised by its own will to furiously rub his nose. It was an urge he’d been restraining since the major arrived because he knew it was brought on by his addiction. He also knew as a major, she’d been trained to identify that sort of thing among her troops. Drug addiction was something the military frowned on and were less supportive of that than say, slapping the missus around. That they would tolerate and even cover up to some degree. But not drug abuse, and he didn’t need to give Brooks any more evidence to his. Especially after she made it intentionally obvious, she was checking out his eyes. And then the comment to Nichols about taking it easy on the painkillers. She had to suspect. Why else would she say that? Brubaker decided he needed to keep an eye on her, for more reasons than protecting his commission.
He found her fifty-five minutes later, after the sun had completely fallen below the horizon and the air was turning chilly with nightfall. He’d actually had the troops ready to go ten minutes earlier, but he didn’t want to give the major the satisfaction of thinking he’d rushed to follow her orders. He’d brought Private Gracey with him while Ferguson finished the final details of securing the rest of the vehicles. Other than the MTV Brooks and Nichols had arrived in, they had three others in the camp. Two were already loaded with their gear and a few of the soldiers. The other was designated specifically for troop transport. Most of the soldiers had already loaded in that one and were waiting for further orders.
The camp also had two combat-ready jeeps in their inventory. Each of those had a fifty-millimeter gun mounted on a tripod in the back and three cans of chain fed ammo in the holds, and a fourth loaded and ready. Brubaker and Ferguson would be driving one of those. The other would be left for Gracey, Merriweather, and the small array of comms equipment. This left the MTV Brooks and Nichols would be riding in as empty as it had arrived. The only remaining thing to do was to secure the small assembly of radio equipment Brooks and Nichols were hovering over with Merriweather operating the controls.
“This is Blue Dog team calling any other squad that’s receiving this transmission. Please respond, over,” Merriweather says into the mic. They listened to nothing but static for a few seconds before Merriweather switched the frequency and repeated the message.
“Where the hell is everybody?” Brooks asks to no one in particular. She was bent slightly at the waist with her hands pressing down onto the table holding the radio equipment. Lascivious images l
urched back into Brubaker’s head, but he pushed them aside and cleared his throat.
“Begging the Major’s pardon,” he began. “We’re ready to move, other than the comms equipment.”
Brooks stood and glared at him, as if noticing his presence for the first time and being deeply annoyed by it. Her expression quickly changed and became unreadable, but Brubaker could see her studying his eyes again before checking her watch.
“Get it done, Sergeant. We’re running behind schedule,” Brooks orders. Without a word, she and Nichols walked away, heading in the direction of where the rest of the camp was waiting.
“You’ve got five,” Brubaker tells Gracey, holding up one hand with the fingers splayed.
“Roger that,” Gracey replies. “Let’s get this shit ready to roll, Mark,” he says to Merriweather before he began jerking cords and cables from the backs of metal boxes that made up the sensitive radio and signal tracking equipment
“Holy shit, Gracey! Be careful! They’re not going to work for shit if you ruin the connections,” Merriweather tells Gracey, after watching his comrade yank out the cable leading to the collapsible dish. Because the dish needed to be aimed to the northwest to pick up a decent satellite signal, Merriweather had been forced to set up many yards away due to surrounding trees. It was only by luck they’d brought enough of the cables to span the distance. He didn’t want to consider what Brubaker would do if they were damaged. Not after seeing him shoot their medic in the face when he’d failed to find the bite on that little girl.
“You heard the sergeant,” Gracey replies, dropping the cable onto the ground and snatching up the three electrical boxes. “Now grab the rest of this shit and move your ass!” he says over his shoulder as he headed for their jeep.
Merriweather scrambled to collapse the table he was using for a comms station. He flipped it over, released the rings holding the leg-hinges in place and pushed them inward, and shoved the legs down and securing them with the built-in clips. Then he quickly folded the table in half and flipped the clasps shut, reducing the table to the size of an electric guitar case with matching handles in the center of each side for equal weight distribution. He gathered all the connecting cables Gracey had hastily dropped in the dirt, taking the time to blow on each end to clear the dust from the connectors. Merriweather stuffed those into his equipment bag, grabbed the table and trotted after Gracey. When he got to the jeep, Gracey had already stowed the comms boxes and was sitting in the driver seat with the engine idling, looking impatient. The rest of the troops were doing the same and Brubaker watched angrily as Merriweather struggled to get the table strapped down and the bag of cables stuffed under his seat. The second Merriweather’s ass was in his seat, Brubaker’s voice came over their radio, telling the major they were ready to move out and asking about their destination.
The F*cked Series (Book 4): Hard Page 10