After the Roads- Sidney’s Way

by Brian Parker

  Jake’s view changed from blue to a muddy mixture of sky and earth on the far horizon, and then the wheels touched down on the roof of the building. He unbuckled his harness and followed the man in front of him, running hunched over along a gray rooftop toward the lip of the building. Behind him, he heard the big engines on several Chinook helicopters shutting down in the hopes that they fooled the infected.

  He pulled up and took in his surroundings. All six of the helicopters had landed on the roof of the Sam’s Club warehouse, spaced more or less evenly across the surface in between the air conditioning units. The first thing he noticed about his surroundings was the incredibly horrible smell. The entire building smelled like spoiled meat. It made his stomach turn and he pulled his t-shirt up over his nose.

  Around him, soldiers scrambled in every direction toward the building’s perimeter. His platoon and 2nd Platoon, led by Second Lieutenant Brian Mirman, gave him eighty-four light infantrymen to do the dirty work inside, plus he had seven sniper/spotter teams from battalion. The snipers would begin picking off any stragglers in the area with their silenced rifles while the grunts cleared the building and began loading the semi-trailers at the dock.

  Jake saw Sergeant First Class Turner in an open space, furiously gesturing toward points along the building’s perimeter and beginning the process of securing the facility. He smiled, knowing that the tough old veteran was screaming at the squad leaders to get everyone into position—he was just doing it quietly.

  He glanced behind at the edge of the building where a sniper team was already engaging targets. From where he crouched, the muffled sounds of their rifles were barely audible, lost to the sound of the wind.

  4

  * * *

  SURVIVOR CAMP #3, EL PASO, TEXAS

  SEPTEMBER 14TH

  “No, I’m—” She stopped and composed her thoughts. “Private Lopez,” she read the man’s nametape aloud. “There’s a soldier that I met earlier, a woman named Caitlyn. Blonde hair? She was supposed to meet me here at noon to help me get some clothes that fit.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t know anybody named Caitlyn,” the soldier blocking her way grunted.

  “Dammit. She’s a staff sergeant…had a little girl who died. I don’t know her last name.”

  “Wait, a female staff sergeant?” The soldier turned to his partner. “Does she mean Sergeant Wyatt? From third platoon?”

  The other kid shrugged. “I don’t know, man.” He scratched his arm vigorously. “I don’t know what her first name is.”

  Lopez shifted uneasily and Sidney immediately and took an involuntary step backward. “Why you scratchin’ so much, Thomas?”

  Thomas stopped, mid-scratch and lifted both hands. “Take it easy, Lopez. I’m just itchy from the shitty laundry detergent.”

  “Let me see your arm.”

  “Hey, man. I—”

  “Now, Thomas!” Lopez said, raising his rifle.

  Sidney stumbled backward, tripping on the gravel path surrounding the camp, and fell, hard onto her butt. The impact jarred her stomach and she clutched her abdomen in pain.

  Lopez risked a quick glance at her, giving Thomas an opening. “Look out!” she cried.

  Thomas slapped the barrel of the rifle away causing Lopez to fire a round into the gravel near Sidney’s feet and sending jagged shards of rock in all directions. She scrambled backward in an attempt to separate herself from these two.

  Thomas had stepped inside the reach of Lopez and punched upward into the other soldier’s chin. Lopez crumpled like a rock as the roar of engines flaring to life and tires crunching on gravel echoed across the afternoon. Two Stryker vehicles arrived at the sight of the altercation within seconds.

  “Is she infected?” someone yelled through the vehicle’s speaker system. “Did she bite Lopez?”

  Sidney looked around, wondering who they were talking about before realizing that they meant her. She threw up her hands, wincing as the gravel tore into her tailbone. Too late, she felt blood begin to run down her arm from a wound in her wrist. She’d been hit by a piece of rock when Lopez fired his gun.

  “Wait!” she screamed. “That’s from a piece of rock when he shot his gun.”

  “Don’t move!” a voice right behind her shouted, making her jump.

  “Please! I didn’t do anything. It was that Thompson kid—I mean Thomas. Private Thomas.”

  Rough hands grabbed her and pain exploded in her wrist as the soldier pressed against the injury. The barrel of a weapon pressed roughly against her temple as another soldier ensured she didn’t try anything foolish. Her hands were wrenched behind her and she could feel herself being flipped over. “Please! I’m pregnant!” she pleaded.

  The soldier didn’t listen, instead, he continued to lift her wrists toward the middle of her back and press her shoulders down. In a moment, pure momentum would fling her onto her stomach.

  “Stop it!” a strong female voice bellowed. “What the fuck are you doing to that refugee?”

  Sidney looked up and saw her new friend storming up from the Fort Bliss side of the Safe Zone. “Caitlyn! Caitlyn, help me,” she pleaded. “They’re going to push me onto the baby.”

  “Sidney?” she asked in surprise. “Let her go right now, Specialist.”

  “She might be infected, Sergeant,” the man holding her wrists replied. “She attacked Lopez.”

  Sidney glanced over to where the private was being lifted into a sitting position by a few of the other soldiers. “No. The other guy was scratching and Lopez asked him about it,” she said quickly. “He attacked Lopez and he shot his rifle. Some of the rocks hit me in the wrist, that’s why I’m bleeding.”

  Caitlyn looked between Sidney and Lopez before saying, “Let her go.”

  Sidney’s hands were released and the soldier holding the rifle pulled it away from her face, but kept it pointed at her from about twelve inches away. Caitlyn crouched in front of Sidney while she touched her injured wrist lightly. “Who was the soldier, Sidney? Did you happen to get—”

  “Thomas,” Sidney answered immediately. “Private Thomas.”

  “Where’s Thomas?” Caitlyn asked, standing quickly.

  “He was just—” The specialist who’d waylaid her looked around. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “Find him, you idiot.” Caitlyn’s boots tromped across the gravel. “Sergeant Kline. Where’s— There you are. Where’s Thomas? This refugee said he was scratching and then attacked Lopez.”

  “He, uh—”

  “Call it up. Now,” Caitlyn ordered.

  “Yes, Sergeant,” the other noncommissioned officer replied and disappeared behind the Stryker.

  The base alarms began to peal almost immediately.

  “ALERT! ALERT! THERE HAS BEEN A POSSIBLE INFECTION INSIDE THE WALLS. ALL PERSONNEL ARE TO REPORT TO THEIR DUTY STATIONS IMMEDIATELY. REFUGEES ARE ORDERED TO YOUR MUSTER LOCATIONS. I REPEAT—”

  The message repeated itself and Sidney was already tuning it out.

  “Come on, Sidney,” Caitlyn said as she helped her to her feet. “You’ve got to report to your muster location and I’ve got to go find my squad.”

  Sidney nodded in disbelief. How had one of the soldiers gotten infected? It was her worst fear, something that had almost caused her to leave before she became trapped behind the walls of Fort Bliss. “What do I do if it starts to spread?” she mumbled.

  “It won’t. We’ll get him,” Caitlyn assured her.

  “He was just right here,” Sidney stated. “It’s only been a minute or two.”

  “If he really is infected, then—”

  Several shots rang out from nearby in rapid succession, interrupting her. Five seconds later, one final report told the story as plainly as if someone had told her exactly what was happening.

  “We got him!” one of the soldiers shouted. “We got him.”

  “Hold on,” Caitlyn said, stepping away from Sidney, who probed the wound on her wrist gingerly, trying to asc
ertain if anything was broken or if there was any rock stuck inside.

  Everything seemed fine, so she examined the cut. It wasn’t bad enough that she’d need stiches, but it hurt like a sonofabitch. Everything had happened so fast. So incredibly fast. From the time Lopez asked him about his itching to the time she was surrounded by Strykers was less than two minutes. They were lucky the trucks were so close.

  That’s all it was: pure, dumb luck. If Thomas hadn’t been noticed for a few hours and then turned… Sidney shuddered, remembering the stories she’d overheard refugees from the FEMA camps tell as she sat in her little tent between the larger army tents. The infected had swept through those places quickly, tens of thousands of people died in those Safe Zone camps.

  “Okay, let’s get you cleaned up, huh?” Caitlyn said, interrupting her thoughts.

  “Oh, it’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not,” her new friend replied, gripping Sidney’s hand lightly and lifting it up to examine the wound on her wrist. “They won’t let you in the PX for one thing. For the other, I don’t want to have to explain to everyone we see about what happened. We’ll just put a small bandage on your hand and clean up the blood.”

  “ATTENTION ON THE BASE,” the Giant Voice system blared from speakers mounted on telephone poles throughout the base. “THE THREAT HAS BEEN NEUTRALIZED. RETURN TO YOUR NORMAL ACTIVITIES.”

  “Neutralized,” Sidney grunted. “Is that Army-speak for ‘killed’?”

  Caitlyn squeezed Sidney’s hand gently. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. They took care of the threat.”

  Sidney shook her head. “Thomas said he was having an allergic reaction to the cheap laundry detergent. What if he just freaked out at being accused of being an infected?”

  “Then he was stupid.”

  “He was just a kid,” Sidney countered. “We all do dumb shit when we get scared. Hell, I was just begging like a leper in Karachi when I thought they were gonna hurt my baby.”

  “That’s understandable, Sidney. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  She waved off the effort to comfort her. “That kid was just shot and killed with no evidence that anything was wrong with him.”

  “If he wasn’t infected, then he shouldn’t have run off,” Caitlyn replied. “I’m sorry that it’s a shock to you, Sidney, but that’s just the way things are now.”

  She nodded glumly, wondering if she’d inadvertently been the cause of Thomas’ death since she’d told everyone what happened, sending them off to hunt the kid. It was another example of how serious everyday life was in this place. Nothing could be taken for granted.

  Then again, he could have been infected and she’d saved the camp. She’d never know.

  “Okay, now that it’s over, we had an appointment to try to get you some new clothes.”

  “Yeah, um… Okay,” she replied, glancing away.

  Caitlyn stepped in front of her. “I’ve asked around about you, Sidney. Talked to a bunch of soldiers and some people in the camp. They—”

  Sidney’s eyes snapped up to look the soldier in the face. “You did? Why?”

  “I just like to know who I’m dealing with. Old habits die hard. People here say that you’re a hard-nosed bitch. That true?”

  It was Sidney’s turn to shrug as she repeated, “Old habits die hard.”

  “I like it,” Caitlyn said with a broad smile that showed her whitened teeth. “Come on. I don’t have a vehicle, so we’ll have to walk, but it’s only about two miles from here.”

  As Sidney stepped off to catch up to her new friend, she purposefully forced the thoughts from her head that she may have been responsible for an innocent man’s death. Caitlyn was right; the stupid kid shouldn’t have run.

  That, and I’m a hard-nosed bitch.

  5

  * * *

  MIDLAND-ODESSA, TEXAS

  SEPTEMBER 14TH

  “Alright, how do we get inside?” Jake asked his platoon sergeant.

  “Shit, sir,” Sergeant First Class Turner said after he spat a glob of chewing tobacco saliva onto the Sam’s Club roof. “What we thought were doors into the warehouse from the satellite photo just led to a large HVAC unit.”

  Jake looked around at the men on the roof standing beside the helicopters. They’d come all this way, thinking that getting inside the building would be the easy part. They hadn’t expected any real risks until after they’d filled the trailers and had to go outside to ground level to sling load them. “Do we have enough rope to rappel into the building through the skylights?”

  The old NCO thought about it for a moment before answering. “Yes, sir. We should have plenty, but to be honest, I’m not sure how many of the guys know what the fuck they’re doing. Somebody’ll probably fall and get fucked up.”

  “Hmmm…” Jake mumbled, thinking through the problem. “Wait. This is fucking Sam’s Club. They sell those big-ass ladders in there. We just have to have one or two soldiers rappel inside and then bring over a few ladders.”

  Turner slapped him hard on the back of his tactical vest. “Whoo wee! See, that’s why you get paid the big bucks, sir.”

  Jake chuckled. “I haven’t been paid in more than five months, Sergeant.” He affected a hurt look and continued, “Are you telling me the Army’s holding out on me?”

  “Nah, sir. Just sayin’. How many men do you want me to send down?”

  “Let’s break out one of the skylights first, see if there are any infected down in there, and then once the coast is clear, like, four guys?”

  “Sounds good, sir.”

  The NCO stood up and started giving hand and arm signals to bring the squad leaders to him. As he did so, Brian Mirman, the 2nd Platoon’s platoon leader, stepped over to him. “Hey, Jake. What’s the plan?”

  He outlined what he planned and Brian smiled. “You know, I’m a climber.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, man. I did all fifty-eight of the 14ers while I was in college—well, I did three of them in high school, but I still count it.”

  Jake looked at him dumbly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Brian.”

  “The 14ers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh! I guess if you’re not from Colorado or—”

  “Just spill it, man.”

  “There are fifty-eight mountain peaks over 14,000 feet in the state of Colorado. Collectively, they’re called the 14ers and I’ve climbed ’em all.”

  “Does that mean you’re good at rock climbing or something?”

  “Yeah,” Brian replied. “And, rappelling. I’m a certified rappel master—I’m the guy you need on this mission, bro!”

  “Okay. So there’s one. I need three more volunteers.”

  “I know one guy, Corporal Gaspar from my platoon. He’s been to the Army Mountain Warfare Course out in Vermont. He’ll probably be all over it.”

  “Okay. Go talk to him and come back here when you’re done.”

  Within ten minutes, Jake had his insertion team standing by. Brian and Corporal Gaspar had helped the other two with tying Swiss seat harnesses from a single piece of rope. It was pretty standard stuff for people who’d gone through the Army Air Assault course or Ranger School, but neither of the other two volunteers had done so; they were just willing to try to go through the hole and potentially be dangling from a rope over the grasping hands of hundreds of infected.

  Or, the building could be completely abandoned, they didn’t know yet.

  “Alright, sir. I’m breaking the skylight,” Sergeant Turner said.

  “Go for it.”

  The platoon sergeant slammed a large wrench into the plastic skylight. If there wasn’t the potential for some of his men to get hurt, Jake would have laughed at the comically oversized tool that Sergeant Turner had gotten from one of the Chinook crew chiefs.

  The clear plastic resisted against the first hit. After the third, a thin crack appeared. “Fuck this. Stand back, fellas,” Sergeant Turner said, sl
iding his rifle around to the front.

  He stood and fired four rounds, stitching a line of holes in the material.

  “Goddammit, Sergeant!” Jake hissed. “We’re trying to be quiet.”

  “Those fucking helicopters made enough noise to wake the dead, sir. I—”

  “Poor choice of words, man,” Lieutenant Mirman mumbled.

  “Fuck it, sir,” Turner said, slamming the wrench against the plastic. It broke through and stuck. He wiggled it back and forth a few times, pulling hard until it came free. Another two well-placed hits and most of the plastic fell away.

  “There you go, gentlemen,” Turner said, holding his arms wide. “Ask and ye shall receive.”

  Jake looked through the opening. “Seems clear,” he said.

  “Hold on, sir.” Sergeant Turner pointed to the nearest helicopter. “Specialist, go get a flare from the crew chief.”

  The nearest soldier jogged off and returned with a flare moments later. Sergeant Turner lit it and dropped it through the opening. He peered inside for several minutes, waiting for something to be drawn toward the red light. Nothing came and he gave the group waiting around the hole a thumbs up.

  “Alright, I’ll take the lead,” Lieutenant Mirman said enthusiastically, wrapping the rope around the carabiner.

  “Go for it, buddy. Check your six,” Jake said.

  Mirman smiled and pulled on the rope, ensuring it was secured to a tie down anchor set into the floor of the nearest bird. “Here goes nothing.”

  He leaned out over the hole, his upper body and legs formed an “L” before he pushed off and disappeared from sight. Jake looked over the edge, his friend was about halfway to the ground already. It wasn’t long before he was on the ground and looking up.

  “I’m down,” Mirman called, pulling the rope through the carabiner quickly.

  “How’s it look?”

  “Good. There doesn’t seem to be anything down here.” Mirman turned around quickly with his rifle up. “I think we’re cl—”