Payload (19 page)

Marv dragged a pad over and grabbed a pen. “Where is she at, exactly?”

The Gnomes gathered in the machine shop, where Brick, Addison, and Chip were comparing notes and gathering materials. “OK, we’re spending the night,” Marv announced. “Everyone outside the RV moves in pairs-there could be a couple zeds left loose in this place. Tomorrow we have an issue that everyone needs to consider: the guy who can get the RV across the river will only do it if we extract his granddaughter and her kids from a storm cellar, one Mary Beth something-I didn’t get her last name. The good news is that it’s kind of on the way, the bad news is that its zombie central. Town of a few hundred, and it’s fully involved, as the smoke-eaters like to say. It won’t be like this place-we’ll have to run and gun, and it could get very ugly. I spoke to her on the phone, she’s expecting us around zero eight hundred. Volunteer mission, guys. Could be very rough.”

“I’m in,” Dyson shrugged. “I’m not leaving kids behind.”

The rest indicated their agreement.

“OK, great. The land line is working, but anyone who makes a call: do not mention FASA, our team name, our names, where we are, or anything about our plans. I don’t know how sophisticated these guys are, but after the RV park I’m not taking any chances. Chip, what did we get?”

“Food, plenty of bottled water, and sundries. Enough food and frozen meat to keep us three or four days easy, and more if we eat a
lot
of potatoes and canned corn. We’re topped off on diesel and gas for the generator, plus a total of thirty gallons of diesel in cans.”

“Great. JD?”

“We found a lot of ammo, really topped us up, plus a stainless nine millimeter Berretta 92, another folding-stock AK, and a couple Tec-9s, which I plan to leave behind. Plus some holsters and slings, magazines, a lot of weapons cleaning gear, that sort of thing.”

“Good. Bear, the AK work for you? That’s that, then. Anyone want the Beretta? OK, then, let’s get things stowed, cleaned up, and ready for tomorrow.”

Sitting on an old barrel cleaning his weapons and keeping an eye out while Brick labored on his projects, Marv pondered their situation. They were resupplied, a little better armed, a little more experienced, a little more of a unit. The Mississippi River was a broad barrier, but it was a close barrier, and if the old man at the shipping company was telling the truth they would be across before noon tomorrow. Let him get on the west bank and FASA had better look out.

The Ranger scowled into the night. He wanted to be free of the worry of the payload, free to hunt FASA, to hit back, to teach them the meaning of terror, just like Afghanistan.

Reassembling the M-4, he drew the Colt from the new holster attached to the lower left panel of his MOLLE vest, broke the weapon down, and methodically cleaned it.

“Son of a
bitch
!” Marv snarled. Five fruitless attempts to get ahold of Colonel Nelson, when he couldn’t recall a call that took more than three rings to get answered. Sitting on the closed toilet lid, the Ranger rubbed his face. It was the right number, the phone was charged, everything seemed to be working.  For a moment he considered the land line, then dismissed the idea as too risky.

Standing, he headed back into the RV main area. It didn’t matter, he told himself: he had the mission order, he had a destination. FIDO. A Ranger adapts, improvises, and overcomes.

Chip was frying pork chops. “I called my mom-she’s safe, they got to my uncle’s ranch. Dyson talked to his girlfriend.”

“You kept it simple, no locations?”

“Yeah. Plus Addison hooked something up to the phone, said it would help. Hey, check out what Brick’s making.” He waved a greasy fork towards the settee.

The hammer was a little over two feet long, a high-carbon steel rod with a grip of paracord wrapped between two large washers welded in place to keep the hand from slipping up or off the grip. The business end was a three-inch spike welded at a right angle to the haft, a vicious-looking alloy shard shaped like a chisel. A large steel nut had been welded opposite the spike, and two inches of haft extended above the spike and had been ground into a dull point. The weapon was surprisingly well-balanced, and Marv essayed a cautious swing before returning it to the settee and examining the shield.

Brick had welded lightweight steel rods into a box shape about two feet across, the frame two rods deep, then added two rods across the center about five inches apart. At the right-hand side he had welded a simple U-shaped handle, and riveted the ends of a canvas strap near the opposite side. Metal cut from what Marv guessed was the body of a 50s era car covered the framework of the shield, and the entirety was spray-painted a flat gray. Sliding his left arm through the loop, he gripped the handle and discovered that the shield was light and comfortable to handle.

“Pretty fine workmanship,” he told the hefty Gnome. “I’m surprised he was driving a truck instead of welding for a living.”

“You need certification for insurance purposes,” Chip shrugged. “He learned in Poland.” He flipped chops. “After supper me and Addison are going to work on the roof. I’ll shoot on a different color of paint, and then we’ll attach a dummy skylight. From the air it should look like…I don’t remember the brand, but it’s a completely different make. We can’t do much about ground-level, but a chopper looking for an Entegra Coach Aspire will have a helluva time recognizing us, dude.”

“Good work. So are you the self-appointed cook now, too?”

“I’m a good cook, and I like to stay busy,” the young man shrugged good-naturedly. “When you’re as big as I am, pulling your weight in a group takes a lot of effort.”

The data flowing in was not good; Doctor Davenport studied the figures and pursed his lips. District 13, the American southwest, was in turmoil as its command structure had completely collapsed, and there were reports of some cells in open conflict with other FASA assets. Simpletons.

District 12 was holding up in terms of command structure, but his assets were suffering greater attrition than predicted by even the least optimistic projections. Feeder cells, those groups tasked with the creation of infected subjects, had exceeded a ninety per cent loss rate, and he had just issued the order to disband the few that remained and re-assign the personnel. The breeder cells, those tasked with spreading truckloads of infected subjects, had taken crippling losses, and had been decimated further by desertion from amongst the ranks of the criminal hirelings.

He wished, not for the first time, that he had gotten the Northeast. The South, with its militant stubbornness, its gun culture, and its dispersed populations was proving a very tough nut to crack. He had warned General Nawaz that until the peasants had been disarmed, especially in the south and southwest where the dreary business of national patriotism was still widely practiced, the US would be a tough fight, but the General had not taken the message to heart. 

Still, District 12 wasn’t finished yet-there were still assets alive and loyal to the Cause at his disposal, and he intended to expend them until nothing remained in his region of the social order or the herds of the mediocre.

A soft knock at the door was followed by the entrance of Sophia Travis, the staffer assigned to the Fastbox operation. “Ah, Ms. Travis. What news?”

“Very little, sir. The team has not crossed the Mississippi. We did intercept a call from one member to his family-we had a trace in place just an hour before the call. Unfortunately, they had a blocker unit on the line, but we were able to ascertain that the caller was using a landline phone from the state of Mississippi. The communication was guarded, but we established that they went to ground at around four this afternoon.”

“The soldier lost contact with his superiors and is hiding, waiting for instructions,” Cyrus nodded, pleased. “Typical-no initiative, no ability, just a brute suited only for violence and reproduction. He is nothing more than a virus upon a modern, enlightened society. Which one made the call?”

“Chip Wilson, sir. One of the two new recruits. I looked into getting a District 13 team to seize his family for leverage, but it is impracticable. They are ensconced in a rural home, a ranch I suppose it is called, and there aren’t any assets in the area.”

The Doctor looked over the file on Wilson. “A bloated game-playing slacker.” He waved a dismissive hand. “No leverage there-he is a pointless follower. He would never have the capacity to challenge the alpha male of the group.” He pulled up the map. “Keep aircraft searching for them, and an assault team on standby. The key is to locate where they have gone to ground before they receive further orders.”

“Yes, sir.” Sophia nodded thoughtfully, a short, chunky woman with her hair worn short and styled. “I’ll stay on it.”

She closed the door quietly behind her as Cyrus returned to the difficulties of ensuring the broadest possible application of the virus.

After a hearty meal of pork chops, home-made French fries, and canned fruit Chip and Addison added their disguise to the RV and Brick finished up his work, completing ten sets of hammer and shield. Marv stood guard while the rest cleaned the RV, and then the entire team adjourned for a movie on HBO before knocking off for the night.

Despite the short day he had had Marv found no difficulty in sleeping. In his dreams he was in Bragg attending the Advanced IED Course, and arguing with Deb over the phone. She was breaking her agreement about going climbing, and they were having words. It wasn’t just the climbing that was upsetting Marv, but also the fact that she and her climbing partner, Doug, always seemed a bit too chummy for Marv’s comfort zone. He had never mentioned it to her, but it always had bothered him. The dream was extremely vivid, complete with ‘
Who else is listening
’ in red stencil above the phone.

The dream was still on his mind when JD woke him for last watch. It had been very vivid, almost a memory, except that Deb hadn’t been alive when he attended that course in Bragg, and the red stencil was from the phone stations he had used in Afghanistan, not Stateside.

Sitting in the passenger seat, the privacy curtain behind him closing off the rest of the RV, Marv checked the view as he opened the road atlas. A couple of zombies had showed up during the night, drawn by the soft noises of the generator and air conditioner, and were wandering around the RV. Marv ignored them-they could deal with them in the morning before leaving.

Their shields were hanging on the wall of the shed-Chip had scanned a picture of Moogie and had printed up ten copies, laminating one to each shield’s front. They were hanging outside because the thick layer of clear-coat laminate was curing, and would stink up the RV’s interior.

The dream nagged at him, and he wondered about Deb and Doug, the rock-climbing partners. That was an uneasy question that had never been fully resolved: had there been anything there? He had no doubt that Doug was up for it, he could see it in the way Doug looked at Deb when he thought he was unobserved, and the look he got when Deb was hanging on Marv. But would Deb cheat? He had never seen anything to suggest it, and he had even gone so far as to befriend one of the guys on the climbing team so as to have a back-channel pair of eyes on the situation.

Doug hadn’t been with her on her fatal outing, at least. Marv had banned him from visitation and the funeral, and the slimy bastard had taken that hard, very hard indeed. Marv grinned sourly at the memory of Doug, red-faced and weeping, taking a swing at him, the clumsy, awkward swing of a guy who hadn’t been in a real fight in his life. Marv had blocked it easily and given him thee good jabs to the belly and a solid right to the kidney which he was sure had ole’ Doug pissing red for at least two days, before bystanders ended the altercation.

He sighed and pushed the memories away. Deb was long gone, and best not dwelled upon.

Chip made bacon, pancakes, and artificial scrambled eggs for breakfast. “You’re gonna make someone a damn fine wife,” JD advised the young man, who responded with a single digit.

“We need to drop the lookee-loos,” Marv gestured to the trio of zombies who were batting at the side of the RV and moaning. “Top off the generator, and roll. It will be dawn soon.”

“I hate getting up this early,” Bear moaned, pouring more coffee. “I ain’t no damn farmer.”

“It’s good for you, builds character,” Dyson advised the biker as he rolled up bacon inside a pancake, which he ate like a burrito.

“Once we’re across the river I plan to drive using night vision gear after dark,” Marv slapped Bear on the shoulder. “Arkansas is only about two-fifty, two-sixty by back roads, so I plan to try for a straight shot to our destination. You can get back to normal soon.” He sounded more confident than he was-there had been no answer to the sat phone this morning. But sitting here in the air conditioning, surrounded by good men and enveloped in the smells of bacon and coffee it was hard to feel too depressed.

Brick turned on the TV and found the weather station. “No rain today. Cloudy.”

“High is eight-one, not bad,” Dyson observed, finishing his breakfast and standing. “I’ll go deal with the zeds.”

“I will,” Brick stood. “Show my weapons. Bang on that wall so I can get shield.”

With the zombies distracted Brick hopped out the door and grabbed a shield. Hammer ready, he rushed the three zombies coming around the front of the RV. The burly Pole used the shield to push the first infected subject’s arms aside and planted the hammer-spike into its skull, shutting it down instantly.