Stryker: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale (4 page)

The men lay with
their backs to the walls drinking from canteens. The fight had been so intense
that few of them had had the luxury of reaching for a canteen.

“Stryker,” Banner
called out.

“Yes sir,” Stryker
replied after he moved to where Banner sat.

“Get the watch
organized. I gotta talk to the colonel.”

“On it.”

Banner looked away
and began speaking into the radio. Stryker sent one man to each corner of the
roof and one to each corner of the ground floor. “Four-hour shifts,” he said,
before returning to his corner.

The following day was
much the same. The call to prayer ended and the fighting began a half hour
later. “Jesus, are these guys unionized?” Stryker muttered as he brought his
M-4 up and waited for the group to round the corner. This time they advanced
slowly, moving from one heap of rubble to the next, always under the cover of
sniper fire. One group managed to get within fifty feet of the building when
Banner yelled, “grenades!” The spotters and grenade launchers rained death on
the fighters from the fourth floor; they hastily retreated to the cover of a
building on the south side of the street, dragging their dead and wounded with
them.

There was a lull in
the fighting and then a hail of RPGs hit the building, forcing the defenders to
seek cover. Stryker was at a window that was not close to the RPG impacts and
saw the enemy again try to maneuver on the building. He glanced over and saw
that one of the SAW gunners lay dead with his weapon still intact. The other
was bent over cringing under his windowsill, his weapon lying by his side.
Stryker ran over and grabbed the man by the collar, pulled him upright, and
handed him his weapon. “Fight, or we’re all dead,” he whispered. He rolled the
dead Marine to the side, picked up his weapon, and they began laying down
suppressing fire, regaining fire superiority, and forcing the insurgents to
retreat.

When the last call
to prayer sounded, the fighting again ended, and Stryker looked around. They
now had four dead and eleven wounded, including Banner with a severe chest
wound. He was unconscious. Stryker was now in command. The men looked at him,
waiting for orders.

Stryker said,
“watch starts now: one man on each corner. Four-hour shifts. Get food and
rehydrate while we can. Everybody do an ammo check and report to me. Anybody
not on watch, get some sleep.” He walked to the wall where the dead and wounded
formed two separate lines and asked the corpsman if he needed anything.

“Running low on
everything,” he replied, turning to start an IV.

Stryker walked up
the stairs to the fourth floor, grabbed a pair of binoculars from a tabletop,
and focused on the retreating insurgents. They disappeared behind a low
building and then reappeared as they entered the mosque. He handed the
binoculars to Edwards and said, “See if they come back out or not. Keep eyes on
them.”

“Got it.”

He went downstairs
and sat in a corner, thinking. One by one, the men gave him the ammo- and
grenades-remaining report. When he added it up, he knew they would be overrun
in the next battle. “I have to find a way to get these men out of here alive.
Assess and evaluate,” he thought. That’s what they trained us to do. Later,
Reynolds, one of the spotters, reported that the insurgents had not left the
mosque by nightfall.

“Thanks,” Stryker
replied, and then he formed a plan. When the colonel called, he would be ready
to recommend a course of action that would be turned down, and then offer the
only viable option. He sat by the radio and answered it when it came to life.

“Yes sir.”

“Who am I speaking
to?”

“Corporal Stryker.
”

“Banner?”

“Badly wounded and
out of commission.”

“You’re in
command?”

“Yes sir.”

“Sit rep, please.”

Stryker took a deep
breath, then replied, “Four KIA, eleven wounded. Three wounded are able to
fight. We’re out of water and don’t have enough ammo to get through the next
assault, which will begin at 0800 tomorrow. They’ll come at us a half hour
after the call to prayer.”

“You sure about
that?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry to say
this, but I can’t promise that the tanks can get there in time. We’re having to
clear rubble as we go and it’s slowing things down.”

“We know the
insurgents are staying in the mosque that is a klick north of our position.”

“You know I can’t
bomb that.”

Stryker took
another deep breath, and then said, “I need a broken arrow at 0800 tomorrow,
sir.”

“Repeat please,” he
replied after a pause.

“I need two
five-hundred pounders on my position at 0800.”

“I hope there’s
more to this plan.”

“There is. I want
to move to the building that is 100 meters to our west. It’s relatively intact and
would provide some blast protection.”

“You will still be
way too close.”

“It’s the only
option we have, sir.”

After a long pause,
the colonel replied, “I’ll have it dialed up for you.”

“Thank you.”

“Good luck, son.”
Stryker signed off and assembled the men on the first floor.

“We’ve fought well
and bravely,” Stryker said. “I’m proud of us. You should be, too.” He paused
before speaking again. “I want all your input after I tell you what the colonel
said and what I think we should do. I want to ask you to not react to it, but
think about it before speaking. Remember what they taught us: assess and
evaluate.” He looked at each face. They were exhausted, dirty, and thirsty.
Some wore expressions of concern; others gazed back with a look of grim
determination.

“They won’t bomb
the mosque and it’s unlikely the armor will get here in time. We’re out of
water, all but combat ineffective, and don’t have enough ammo left to hold them
off. So I want us to move to another building and bomb them when they overrun what’s
left of this one.” A long silence ensued as the men considered possible
options.

“I don’t like
moving the wounded,” the corpsman said. “But I don’t see any other option.” The
rest of the men nodded their agreement.

“You’re in
command,” he said to Edwards, a nice guy with a level head, but also a
stone-cold killer with a ferocious side to his nature that he apparently could
switch on and off at will. “You organize the move. I’m going over to clear the
building and make sure it’s safe. I’ll come back and we’ll move everyone over
there. If we have to make more than one trip, we will. The dead come with us.”
He turned on his heel and left the building.

The next morning,
Stryker and Edwards occupied the fourth floor of the building facing the one
they had occupied. All the other Marines were on the ground floor on other side
of the building, protected from the explosion by the interior walls. Not ideal
for Stryker and Edwards, but they didn’t have a choice.

“They’re on station
now,” Edwards said as he peered through the designator’s scope. “Flight time is
fifty seconds to impact once we release.”

“So we wait until
they actually get there.”

“Agreed.” The two
men waited for the insurgents to appear. Stryker was watching for movement from
the mosque. “Too bad about Banner,” Edwards stated flatly.

“Yes it is.”

“He was a good
man.”

“We all are or we
wouldn’t be here.”

“There’s no need
for both of us to be here,” Edwards said.

“There is if one of
us gets hit by a sniper. They’re probably out there now, but focused on the
other building. Sooner or later they’re going to start looking around.” Stryker
noticed movement coming down the road. “They’re coming.”

“Tell me when you
want to drop. I have to watch the target site.”

“These men are desperate
to meet their maker and I don’t want to disappoint them.”

“Just let me know
when to drop.”

Stryker continued
watching the insurgents move toward the building the Marines had occupied. The
men stopped, peering around the corner. Sniper fire rang out and they began
their assault. There were close to 150 fighters in the attack, triple the
number of the first attack. They obviously smelled blood and were determined to
finish the fight. When they met no resistance, the fighters accelerated toward
the building and crowded around the door as they struggled to enter. Behind
them, another group moved up and massed outside the door.

“Drop,” Stryker
said calmly.

“On the way.”

Stryker glanced at his
watch and marked the time on the second hand. He ran to the stairwell and
shouted, “twenty seconds,” then ran back to the exterior wall and dropped to
his belly. Edwards followed him to the ground.

“Honor serving with
you,” he said, and opened his mouth wide to save his eardrums from blowing out
from the pressure wave.

“Same here,”
Stryker opened his mouth as well.

Two massive
explosions so close together that they sounded like one, split the air, which
suddenly seemed sucked out of the atmosphere, The blast knocked the wall in and
covered them in brick. They both lay still, stunned. After a few moments,
Stryker stood up, shedding bricks and debris off his back. He grabbed Edward’s
hand that was sticking out of the rubble. He jerked him to his feet, and then
turned to look at the battle damage.

The two bombs had
struck within meters of each other and no hostiles were visible. The craters
were smoking and debris was still falling through the air. Both men stared at
the carnage below. Edwards wobbled on weak legs, turned to Stryker, and said,
“Guess we didn’t disappoint them.”

“Recon is known for
outstanding customer service.” Both men chuckled and headed for the stairwell.
Stryker felt a pain in his lower back but ignored it.

The following
morning, a column of tanks, followed by armored personnel carriers, pulled up
and stopped in front of their building. They loaded the dead and wounded in the
MPCs, and started back to their forward operating base outside of town. Stryker
later learned that the Marines had almost 100 KIAs and 560 wounded.

DIE OFF PLUS TWO YEARS

Stryker woke up the
morning after the track meet feeling pain in his joints and leg muscles before
he even moved. Rising with a groan, he opened the passenger’s door of his Jeep,
swung his legs out and down, and stood erect. His back was on fire, the result
of an old wound, the exertions of the previous day, and sleeping in a car seat
that was too cramped for his frame. He limped to the back of his vehicle,
opened the rear hatch, and made cowboy coffee on the camp stove. He moved the
stove, sat under the open hatch, and sipped his coffee. He drank it black, and
he drank it a lot. He wondered at people who desecrated perfectly good coffee
with things that belonged in candy, like sugar, flavorings, and dairy products.
It puzzled him.

He sat behind an
old farmhouse where he had parked the Jeep the previous morning. The place was
surrounded by stands of red cedar and oak trees. He couldn’t be seen from the
highway that passed the structure, and it probably didn’t matter. He hadn’t
seen another car and driver in close to a week.

He stared in the
distance and saw heat already shimmering off a landscape so flat that he almost
believed he could see the curvature of the earth where the land and sky merged.
He looked east and saw the ranch house where the incident of the previous day
had begun. He shook his head with a sheepish expression on his face, wondering
at his miscalculation, but determined to learn from it.

Stryker poured
another cup of coffee and then did a series of stretching exercises to limber
up before he started driving. He once went to a yoga class with his wife and
was way out of his league. The instructor, a cute little thing with a blonde
ponytail, told him that she had seen pig iron that was more flexible and he
needed to take more classes every week if he wanted to improve. Stryker took
the hint and went for coffee after waving to his wife.

An hour later, he
passed through the open gate to what had been his grandparent’s ranch. Stryker
parked in front of the house. It was one of many squat, red-bricked homes found
in rural Texas that baked under the white-hot sun. It was flanked by a barn
badly in need of paint. He didn’t bother to lock the door of the house. He
realized it was a futile gesture at best. His grandpa had a large combination
safe in the den. He opened the safe and filled it with the coins, two laptop
computers, and a handheld ham radio. After spinning the dial, he went to the
kitchen and ate a can of beef stew. He refilled his canteen from the faucet and
decided to go to town and walk around.

Stryker was
orphaned at age three and raised by his grandparents on the ranch. It was three
miles south of Eden, Texas. The town was founded in
1882 and sat at
the intersection of US Highways 87 and 83. It was also the intersection of the
Texas Hill Country and vast, rolling farmland usually filled with cotton fields
and forage crops. The town was a postage stamp on the massive landscape of the
state. Before the die off, it had a population of 2,700, with half the number
being prisoners at the Eden Detention Center, a federal prison. Stryker drove
to town and parked in front of the high school.

He walked through
his old high school, wandering through hallways and noting textbooks sitting on
desks, chalk writing still on blackboards, and the flag of the school’s mascot,
a bulldog, hanging in the main hallway. He walked outside and saw the formerly
lush field where he played six-man football was now brown and covered with weeds.
Rocks protruded from the turf and the bleachers were badly in need of paint.
The Texas sun had done its work.

He knew there were
still people around, but they were understandably reluctant to mingle, although
the plague had come and gone. In the early days of the die off, Stryker had
listened to the Emergency Broadcast Network as well as the AM radio that
continued to operate for some time. Apparently, there were three categories of
survivors. The first were those who, through intense medical intervention,
survived the illness, albeit with some nasty side effects. The second group
survived because they were smart enough to stay put on remote farms and
ranches. The last were those who were immune, the category that included
Stryker. He knew that because he was repeatedly exposed to the virus, but never
caught the illness. On his trip to the ranch, he encountered several pairs of
survivors, all of them blood relatives, and concluded the immune survivors
possessed some hereditary gene that protected them from the plague.

The die off had
totally overwhelmed the health care system and it broke under the stress. There
was a shortage of everything from medicines to doctors. The death rate
accelerated and grew out of control. At one point, large cities could no longer
bury the dead, and started burning bodies. The first responders could not keep
up, their own ranks thinning rapidly. Bodies were left where they fell.

Eventually, the
cities were abandoned by the few survivors left as the stench grew unbearable
and water and power systems began to shut down. There were pockets of
survivors; and some smaller, more isolated towns erected roadblocks on the
roads leading to their homes. Anyone who tried to enter was warned. If they
didn’t heed the warning, they were shot and left where they fell as a warning
to others. Residents who exhibited symptoms were told to leave. If they didn’t,
they too were shot and carried out of town by first responders wearing hazmat
suits.

He wandered back
through town and stopped in front of Finn’s General Store. It had also suffered
from the sun and his mind wandered back to the time when he received his first
real lesson on right and wrong, good and evil.

“Gramps?” he said.

“Yes.”

“I saw that boy steal
candy in the store when we were shopping.”

“Why didn’t you
tell him to put it back?” he asked, looking at Caleb with wise eyes framed in a
weather-beaten face.

“I didn’t know what
to do,” he whispered.

“Sure you did. You didn’t
have the courage to do it.” Caleb looked down and away. After a moment, Gramps
continued. “God gave you this,” he said, tapping the side of his head. “You’re
a smart boy.” His voice grew gentler. “He gave you this,” he added, prodding
his right bicep. “You’re a strong boy, strongest I’ve ever seen for your age.
And, he gave you this,” he continued, gently tapping a finger over his heart.”
Caleb continued to stare at his feet.

“Look me in the
eye,” his gramps said firmly. Caleb did as ordered and looked up at him.

“What should you
have done?”

“I guess I should
have asked him to put it back,” he replied.

“Close but not
quite right. When you see something and your brain and heart tell you it’s
wrong or evil, then you have to use your strength, if needed, to make it right.
You should have
told
him to put it back, and if he refused, you should
have taken it from him.”

“I guess you’re
right,” Caleb sighed.

“There’s a saying
that goes, ‘all that is needed for evil to succeed is for good men to do
nothing.’ You need to decide what kind of man you want to be. You need to
decide what kind of world you want to live in. You don’t need a rulebook to
know what’s right. It’s a part of who you are.”

“What do you think
I should do?”

“Well, it’s too
late now. Next time, don’t wait. If you do, it just gets easier to do that
again. I know it’s not possible to always do the right thing. We are human, but
I want you to try to go through life doing the right thing 100% of the time.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I know you will.”
He put his arm around the boy’s shoulder. “Let’s go home. Grandma is making
that green chili you like so much.”

He hadn’t been in
the store in twenty years and decided to give it a look. When he entered, he
saw it hadn’t changed since the last time he was there. The store had seven
narrow aisles and the shelves were piled high with power tools, canned food,
candles, paper products, and clothes. A thick layer of dust covered everything
and the cash register stood open and empty. The place smelled stale and the
odor of solvents and paints was heavy in the air. He took one last look and
walked back to his vehicle.

Stryker returned to
the ranch and decided to make a list of what he needed from the trading post
just outside of San Angelo. He probably could have found most of it himself,
but it would save time and effort. He got a ladder and examined the solar
panels on the barn. Two were cracked and needed replacements. Then he went to
the wind turbine behind the barn that was twirling merrily in what seemed to be
a perpetual stiff breeze. He inspected the generator and the inverter and
decided they were in good condition. He turned the water pump on and it chugged
away with a healthy rhythm.

He walked around
the water tank and the suspended 300-gallon gas drum, saw no leaks in either,
and went into the barn to examine the battery array. The indicator showed they
were fully charged, so he shrugged and went back to the house. The solar and
wind power were enough to run the pumps and provide lighting to the house, but
he wanted to place panels on the house as well. He did not have enough power to
run the air conditioning, even for short periods of time, and the summers were
brutal. If he could get the house cooled down in the morning, he thought it
would remain livable until evening, when he could open the windows and let the
breeze provide some comfort.

After eating a
dinner of pasta and canned meat sauce, he turned on his AM radio and searched
in vain for a signal. He switched to FM, but got the same result. He turned the
radio off and went to bed.

After breakfast, he
loaded the Jeep and turned north on Highway 87. It was close to a two-hour
trip, 150 miles to the northwest; but with no traffic or worries about speed
limits, it was an easy drive. Stryker had the window down with one elbow poking
out as he drove. The terrain around him was the same as before: flat and
featureless, totally barren with the exception of the occasional mesquite or
live oak that gathered on the banks of streams and arroyos. The air was cool
and the only sound was the humming of the engine. He slowed to get around the
occasional stalled car and stopped once to chat with an elderly man as he
passed through the tiny burg of Wall, Texas. The man sat on sofa on his
dilapidated porch, a Mossberg shotgun lying across his lap. As Stryker
approached, his hand shifted the shotgun so it pointed away from his visitor.

“Welcome to Wall,”
the old-timer said with a large, toothless grin.

“You’re the
welcoming committee?”

“What’s left of
it.”

“You mind if I sit
a spell?”

“Be my guest.” He
motioned with his free hand to an ancient, creaky chair. Stryker climbed the
three steps that groaned from his weight and sat down.

“You know if
anyone’s left in the town?”

“Beside me?”

“Yes.”

“Annie Smith is still
here, I think. I saw her about a week ago in the grocery store. She was looking
for food, just like I was.”

“You have enough
food?”

“Hell, yes. Only
two of us around and we can eat out of that store for at least another year.”

“Do you think it’s
a good idea to sit out here in the open?”

“Why not?” The man
looked confused.

“Well, someone
could shoot you.”

“Why would they
want to do that? I ain’t got nothing anybody would want, and if you want
something nowadays, you just take it. No need to steal. Plus, I’ve been sitting
out here every day for over a year and you’re the fourth person I’ve seen. The
other three just asked for directions.”

Stryker thought it
over for a moment, remembering that he only had two violent encounters since
the die off, and both had been the result of fighting over salvage. “Maybe
you’re right,” he agreed. “Anything you need me to do while I’m here?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Better get going
then.”

“Have a safe trip.
Where you going?”

“San Angelo. I’m
heading to the trading post.” When the man didn’t reply, Stryker stood and
added, “See you later.” He went back to the Jeep and headed north again,
clearing the town limits in a few minutes.

The road was
straight and all but deserted and the blacktop made a whining noise as the
tires passed over the roadbed. There was the occasional solitary billboard sign
for fast food restaurants that lay miles ahead. The land opened up again, still
the same dingy brown color, flat and unremarkable. He kicked the speed up and
didn’t slow down until he crossed the muddy Concho River and entered town after
passing Goodfellow Air Force Base. The base looked forlorn and empty. He drove
by a Walgreens that had smashed windows and then was surrounded by vacant fast
food joints. Stryker passed an abandoned hospital and entered another
commercial area of town.

He turned west,
continued to the main parking lot of San Angelo University, and got out of the
Jeep with his M-4 dangling from his shoulder in a two-point sling. His XD was
in his holster. He hoisted the pack that contained his salvage and started
walking toward a group of eighty or so men and women milling around the west
side of the lot. As he approached, Tom, the trading post organizer, approached
him. He had an AR hanging from a sling. The two men shook hands. Tom kept a cut
of all the trades that were made, and that’s what made him go to the trouble of
organizing the weekly event.