Savages (4 page)

Gabriel, Captain Harlow, and a radioman I did not know stood atop the command vehicle. Gabe and the captain peered through binoculars at the battlefield. Gabe made suggestions, which Harlow passed to his radioman, who passed them on to platoon COs and squad leaders. I announced my presence by joining them on the roof of the Humvee.

“Something I can do for you, Mr. Riordan?” Harlow asked without lowering his binoculars.

“Message from the mayor,” I said. “Repair crews need about fifty minutes to move the shipping containers into place at the north gate and fill them with ballast. Think you can buy them that much time?”

“I hope so,” he replied, still not looking at me. “Depends on how many more infected show up.”

“I heard about Fuller,” Gabe said, turning to face me. “He was a good kid.”

“Yes, he was.”

“Is Allison all right?”

“Yes. She’s at the clinic right now.”

Gabe wiped the back of his neck. “Good to hear. How many casualties do you think?”

“Forty-eight, I believe.”

“Jesus. Including Fuller?”

“Yeah. Two other troops from Second Platoon as well.”

Harlow finally lowered the binoculars. “Are you sure of that?”

“I was the one who found the bodies.”

His face fell and he cursed softly. The radioman said, “Should I notify Lieutenant Chapman, sir?”

“No, Private. I’ll do it myself, later. For now, I want Chapman focused on fighting the infected.”

“Yes sir.”

I said to Harlow, “You have a plan, or are we playing by ear?”

“Oh sure, I have a plan,” he said. “You see those infected out there? I’m going to have my men shoot every one they see. Infantry will hold the middle ground while tanks and Bradleys cover their flanks. The Apache is grounded for now, so the Chinook’s going to fly back and forth making ammo drops and searching for hordes. When the crews in town get the gate patched up, we’ll retreat to Fort McCray and regroup. And come up with a better plan.”

I tried to think of something to add, but under the circumstances, there was not much else to be done. So I said, “What can I do to help?”

“I need marksmen on the line. Recon team is still out in the woods.”

“Sure. Where’s First Platoon?”

“Not with them. Over there.” Harlow pointed to a bucket lift being offloaded from a HEMTT.

I said, “Are we sure there aren’t any more snipers within striking distance?”

“No.”

“Great. Sounds like fun. What about you, Gabe? You staying here?”

“For now,” Gabe said. “Probably be in a bucket on the other flank pretty soon.”

“At least I won’t be the only one with my ass dangling in the wind.”

I climbed down from the Humvee and went toward the bucket lift. I did not run. My legs were too tired from dragging dead bodies and carrying wounded toward the clinic. Besides, it was not as if the infected would be leaving any time soon.

*****

The repair crews bulldozed the broken concrete and twisted reinforcement bar from the north gate, moved shipping containers into place with forklifts, and poured dirt into them through holes pre-cut through the top for the purpose. The dirt came from piles placed near the gate months ago. Two long human chains passed buckets from the piles to the gate and back again. The whole operation took forty-four minutes, six minutes faster than projected.

When Harlow ordered the retreat, I was on the ground taking a bandolier of loaded thirty-round magazines from a runner. The projectiles from all but a small amount of my personal loadout currently resided in the skulls of permanently dead ghouls. My rifle’s barrel was hot enough to give me a third-degree burn, my stomach grumbled angrily, and if I did not piss soon, I was going to need a new pair of pants.

As I was stuffing mags into my vest pouches, the crackling of gunfire ceased. Squad leaders shouted instructions to their men, one of them close enough for me to understand.

“The gate is secure,” he said. “We’re to fall back to Fort McCray, double-time.”

“Aren’t there ghouls between here and there?” one of his men asked.

“Yes. Armored cavalry is going ahead to clear the way. Don’t engage a revenant unless you have to. Just outrun ‘em. Everybody clear?”

I held the bandolier out to the runner. “Guess I won’t be needing this.”

He pushed it back in my direction. “Keep it. You never know.”

“True enough. Thanks.”

I fell in with the nearest squad and ran with them back to Fort McCray. They gave me a few looks, but said nothing. I was well known in Echo Company: Eric Riordan, the civilian with no prior military service who infiltrated a rogue militant group calling themselves the Free Legion. Even the vaunted Green Berets had trouble tracking them down. He was held prisoner and beaten daily for months, I sometimes heard them say. When I did, I corrected them that it was not nearly that long. He worked in the dark digging tunnels and starving, they said. That part was mostly true. He entered a tournament where men were forced to fight to the death. He won, they said, and that was how he earned the Legion’s trust. It was not to the death, I told them. Although in truth, I did accidentally kill a man. And I never actually earned the Legion’s trust, they were always suspicious of me. I just managed to play the charade long enough for Gabriel Garrett to find me and get me away from them. Without him, none of what followed would have been possible.

No one outside of Delta Squad quite knew what to make of me. He must be CIA, or what’s left of it, they said. Some kind of spook, anyway. Or maybe he is part of the Phoenix Initiative—they must have a militant wing. People trained to deal with the kinds of unconventional threats that arise in a post-apocalyptic world. I tried to dispel these rumors, but soldiers like to talk, and nothing spreads slower than the truth. The man they described was actually a lot more like Gabriel than me, but good luck convincing anyone of that.

The truth is Gabriel taught me everything I know. I learned a little hand-to-hand stuff on my own, but it was Gabe who showed me how to really make myself dangerous. To turn my body into a weapon. To shoot, to use a blade, to make and disarm explosives. He taught me combat tactics, close quarters fighting, how to employ a variety of weapons, and, most importantly, the art of the sniper. I was well renowned among Echo Company for my marksmanship. They may not have fully trusted me, but they had no qualms about letting me help them out of bad situations. If I showed up at the enlisted club on base, I could always count on someone buying my first drink. Usually someone whose life I had saved at one point or another.

But outside a small circle of close friends, the soldiers did not consider me as one of their own. I was an interloper, a sometimes useful outsider who had a tendency to show up when needed and then go away. Mostly, they knew me for my business interests. G&R Transport and Salvage was one of the most successful ventures in Tennessee. Or anywhere, for that matter. Almost every soldier in Echo Company had an account with us. I ran the company’s operations, for the most part, while my best friend and business partner, Gabriel, supervised the Hollow Rock General Store, the customer-facing part of G&R.

Retail was only part of our business. Most of our money—or trade, as it had come to be known when money disappeared—came from wholesale and business-to-business transactions. And the military, specifically Echo Company, was our biggest customer. As a result, I was privy to knowledge of secret operations most civilians never knew about. And because of my martial skills, I participated in some of these missions on a contract basis.

It was illegal for soldiers to scavenge for salvage—not that this rule stopped them—but the prohibition against scavenging did not extend to informing civilian salvage companies as to the location of trade goods spotted in the field. Nor did it prohibit salvagers from buying fuel from the military at discount prices, reserving municipal transport vehicles, and bartering found goods to the Army. If a soldier’s information turned out to be significantly profitable, there were no rules against paying them a finder’s fee. And even when I traded what I found at a steep bargain compared to value, it was still profitable because the salvage business has very low overhead. A good arrangement all around.

As I thought of this, running on weary legs, the tall brown grass gave way to a gravel path leading from Hollow Rock to the main gate at Fort McCray. I trotted along, keeping pace with the soldiers ahead of me, boots crunching over half-buried rocks. Near a grove of trees, a small ghoul emerged from the treeline and moved quickly toward me.

A little one
, I had time to think, and then it was nearly on me. I stopped and aimed a steel-toed boot at its chest. The kick sent it rolling backward, but it was on its feet in a flash. Without thought, my rifle came up, canted so I could look through the iron sights mounted forty-five degrees from my scope, and fired twice. The dead kid had enough speed that when it fell, it skidded several feet over the rocks. I kicked it over. No older than five when it died the first time. The little ones are much faster than the adults, and much harder to look at. I dragged it by its feet away from the path and wished I had a blanket or something to drape over it.

Even after over three years of killing revenants, some things just never got any easier.

I killed two others along the way. One was an older Hispanic woman, recently dead, most of her left arm and the left side of her face eaten away. When she opened her mouth to howl at me, I saw she had no teeth. I shot her in the head anyway. Even toothless, the infected are still dangerous. The last ghoul I killed was a gray, one of the long-dead with no skin. My first shot grooved a furrow around its skull and exited without causing significant brain damage. A rare occurrence, but not unheard of. I let the ghoul come closer and fired twice more at point blank range. This time, it went down.

Finally, I reached the gate to Fort McCray. The soldiers ahead of me kept going, headed for their revenant-proof barracks. Overhead on the catwalk, I heard gunfire rattling. Sharpshooters were keeping the undead away from the gate, allowing their brothers in arms to get through safely. I heaved my way up a set of stairs and asked the officer in charge where he needed me. He glanced at my rifle and the bandolier of magazines across my chest, recognized me, and said to take position on the left flank near the eastern guard tower.

Once settled, I went to work. There is a rhythm to the letting out of breath, steadying of the rifle, gentle squeeze of the trigger until the crack and the recoil and waiting to see if the target goes down. It has a hypnotic quality. Looking through the scope creates a feeling of separation, of detachment. I am here, but I am not here. The me who thinks, loves, laughs, and worries is somewhere else. Somewhere quiet. What remains is a creature of function, of necessity.

These are not people in my sights. They are things. They hunger, are dangerous, and have to be put down. One cannot scare them. Cannot intimidate them. Their morale cannot be damaged because it does not exist. They do not have to be fed, bred, or led like living people do. They recruit from their victims. They hunt because it is all they know how to do. And they will never, ever stop. They are legion. They destroyed the world. The fact that I, or anyone else, have lasted so long against them is nothing short of miraculous.

I did not hear the call to cease fire. A hand swatted me firmly on the shoulder, breaking me from my trance.

“Hey, dickhead, cease fire!” It was the officer in charge. His nametag read Ramirez. His eyes were dark and angry.

“Sorry.” I flipped the selector switch to safe, stood up, and nearly sat right back down from dizziness. Ramirez gripped my arm to steady me.

“You all right? You hurt?”

“No, just tired. Been a long morning.”

The dark eyes narrowed. “You bit?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“I think I would have noticed.”

Ramirez called two of his men over and had them watch me while he checked me for bites. He started with my hands and forearms, and then looked at my lower legs. Not finding anything, he searched the rest of me. His men looked on silently, hands loose on their carbines. They did not point their weapons at me, but could have very quickly if they wanted to. I gave them no reason to do so.

“He’s clean,” Ramirez said. The soldiers relaxed and began walking away.

“Can I go now?”

“Yeah. Sorry ‘bout that. Can’t be too careful these days.”

“No harm done. See you around, Lieutenant.”

Before I started down the stairs, Ramirez called out, “Hey, Riordan’s the name, right?”

“Last I checked.”

“That was good shooting. I heard you were a sniper, but I didn’t believe it.”

“And now?”

“You got the goods, that’s for sure. Thanks for the help.”

I made my way slowly back to ground level. The rail was made of galvanized steel and held my weight without complaint as I leaned heavily on it. At the bottom, I stood and stared at the bustling, agitated men going about the small forward operating base. I needed to use the latrine badly, and after that, I would figure out what to do next.