The End Time Saga (Book 2): The Breaking Page 9

  “Most people call me Steele.”

  The man looked at his hand like Steele had offered him a piece of garbage.

  “I used to be a Counterterrorism agent for the Division.”

  The man wiped his nose again as fresh blood replaced the old. “I will assume you don’t work there anymore,” the man sneered. “The Division. Sounds like something a guy would make up so his victims sound crazy when they call the police. Uh yeah, some shadowy secret agent robbed me and said it’s for the good of America.”

  Steele cracked a smile. “I’m not going to rob you, but I need your help,” he said, gesturing with his head at the door. The man gave him an untrusting look, but took his hand and stood up.

  “I’m Kevin.” The short-haired man was youthful looking, but the wrinkles around his eyes told Steele Kevin was in his thirties. A loose West Virginia sweatshirt hung limp on his slender frame.

  “I only have a few slugs left.”

  The door pressed in a crack as a body pushed up against it.

  “I’m open to suggestions,” Steele said.

  “I got some tools in the shed out back.” Kevin rose his eyebrows.

  Steele nodded. “After you, kind sir,” he said.

  They tiptoed to the back of the home. Kevin slid the glass door open and stepped outside, followed closely by Steele. An infected woman stood between them and the shed like a pale shade in the mountain night. The woman was completely nude and the shape of her rounded hips and hourglass figure mesmerized them for a moment.

  She noticed them and her mouth hung open, her hand raising in a slow manner. Her gait was awkward and she struggled to move her feet with purpose. She stumbled as she walked, toes catching on rocks.

  As she got closer, it was apparent she had been bitten on the neck, a single bite, as if she had been nipped by her lover. Kevin gulped. Her dead eyes looked through them, and Steele charged and shoved his knife through her eye. Her naked body slumped on the ground, still.

  “Come on,” he whispered, his voice harsh. They yanked open the shed doors.

  Steele would prefer to snipe the bastards from far away, but he didn’t have enough shells and gunfire would only draw more in.

  His hand inspected wooden shafts. They rustled as he ran his hand along the tools. He gripped a wooden haft tight. Steele hefted the axe in both hands: a common wood cutting tool.

  “Time for a nice melee,” Steele said, flipping his axe around in a circle. He never liked a fight, but he was always prepared to win one.

  “The melee used to be a part of medieval tournaments. Except we aren’t medieval knights. We don’t have armor or horses,” Kevin said.

  “Well, let’s give them an old-fashioned ass whooping anyway,” Steele replied.

  The two comrades snuck around the house. The sounds of the infected assault echoed into the forest.

  “They’re going to draw more in,” Kevin whispered.

  Steele peered around the corner. The undead were piled on the front door. Their bodies smashed against one another as they pressed in to get inside.

  “No time like now,” Steele said and charged for them. It didn’t matter if Kevin followed him or not, because the fight was on. He gave a high-pitched whistle as he closed on the first infected man.

  Steele took him down with an overhead strike. The wood axe cleaved into the man’s skull and split him open like a melon. The man collapsed, and with a foot on his chest Steele ripped his axe from the infected. Kevin ran past him a shovel held overhead, and smashed it down on an infected skull. He followed with a spear-like jab into the forehead of another. Steele raced past him and they hacked, smashed, and chopped the walking dead until they were dead, dead again.

  Steele breathed heavy through his nose and Kevin bent over hands on his knees. His cheeks were still red. A smile crawled on Steele’s lips. Kevin gave him a nod of his head. Kevin can fight.

  “You swing that shovel with some conviction,” Steele said.

  “As the Welsh saying goes, ‘anger is as good as skill in a fight,’” Kevin said with a smile. They quietly made their way to the front door. Steele turned the door knob and it opened.

  “Door’s been open the whole time, fellas,” Steele said down at the bodies. He didn’t realize how bad he was until he was back inside.

  Steele’s head swam with pain. He plopped down on Kevin’s couch and held a hand to his eyes. The pounding inside his skull was relentless.

  Kevin sat down next to him and handed him a clear glass with a mahogany-colored liquid inside. Steele smelled it, his nose hovering above the glass. Whiskey. Dark brown and rich.

  “Rye?” Steele asked.

  “Ha. Yeah, man, Madam Scarlet Grey’s Whiskey. Ulysses S. Grant’s favorite. Same recipe.”

  Steele took a long drink of the rye. It was smooth and singed Steele’s throat a touch at the very end like someone held a match flame near the back of his mouth.

  Steele grimaced a bit and nodded his head. “That’s good. Lucky for us, I didn’t dump this one on my head wound,” he said with a half-laugh. They sat in silence for about ten minutes, letting the alcohol dampen the adrenaline from their slaughter.

  Kevin broke the silence by throwing a log into the wood stove furnace in the corner.

  “I see that my clothes fit you terribly.”

  Steele snorted a laugh. “Well, I started in my underwear, so be thankful that I am wearing anything at all.”

  Kevin rose a hand. “Keep them. I’d rather not imagine us wrestling with you in your underwear.” He sat back down and poured Steele another glass.

  “How’d you get here?”

  Steele took a long sip of the whiskey. It burnt his throat more this time.

  “I woke up practically naked in a ditch. My friends were gone, and I had a hole in my head.”

  “Gone? Sounds like some bad friends.”

  “They wouldn’t have left me by choice,” Steele said. They stared at the flames together.

  “Where are you from?” Kevin asked.

  “D.C. I came in on a flight from Africa where a bunch of the passengers became infected. We had a hell of a fight on our hands. We killed a lot of people.”

  “Shoot people on a plane? Where did you get guns?”

  Steele looked over in his direction. “I wasn’t kidding about being a Fed, but it got bad when they left us for dead at McCone. Me and a few of my fellow agents escaped Virginia with a doctor. I just can’t remember what happened when we got here.” Steele took a long pull of the whiskey. The alcohol numbed the pain in his head, muffling the drums.

  “So that whole ‘Division’ bullshit you fed me isn’t BS. You guys like fight terrorists or something?”

  Steele shrugged a bit. “Sometimes. Track ’em, find ’em, fight ’em, the usual.”

  “Wow, that must be a bang-up job,” Kevin said.

  “Not as glamorous as you would think. Long hours. Lots of assholes. How about yourself?”

  “I’ve been hiding out here since they closed the schools. I used to be a history teacher at Jefferson High School about ten miles up the road. Had only seen one or two of those things before you showed up. Hit them in the head and buried them out back. Is it true what they are saying? The whole East Coast is infected?”

  Steele stared at the fire through the wood furnace door. “Yes.”

  Kevin’s voice shook as he spoke. “I mean not everybody? Everybody can’t be infected.”

  “Tens of millions. Every one of us that dies joins their team. Every person bitten joins them and it happens fast. Just one of those things in a group of people could infect everyone in a matter of a minute.”

  “I’ve read plenty of world ending events in history. Shit. Open the Bible. There have been plagues. Disasters. Famines. War. Huge migrations of people. But it hasn’t been until recently that the world has been so interconnected. Never anything like this.”

  “It’s happening, and we are losing.”

  Kevin ran a hand through his hair, r
eciting his story. “They closed the school down after so many people became sick. Everyone raided the grocery stores for everything by the time the day was over. That’s why I was down the road at my neighbors. No idea where they went so I dug through their stuff and grabbed some essentials. You know, mostly food. Oh yeah, and I found some gas for my car out there.”

  Steele leaned his head back. Gas. Gas. Gas.

  “Dude, are you okay?” Kevin asked.

  “ARGHH.” Steele massaged his temples. Pain struck deep in his mind. “What did you say?” It hurt him to think.

  Kevin looked concerned. “I said, I got gas for my car. Are you alright?”

  Steele looked back at Kevin, hardly able to see him in the dim firelight of the stove. Gas. That was it. Everything crashed upon him at once.

  “We were in our mobile lounge when we came upon a woman stranded on the side of the road. She was probably twenty, pretty, showing a lot of cleavage. Me and my friend, a doctor, went to see if we could help. And someone shot me from the trees. Lucky for me they were a little off,” Steele said, closing his eyes.

  Kevin drank his whiskey greedily.

  “There was something about that girl though, something distinctive. I just can’t put my finger on it,” Steele said.

  Kevin shook his head. “I wouldn’t put it past anyone around here.”

  Steele patted the bandages running around his head. “It was her laugh. Her laugh was this high-pitched cackle or something. You know, like a witch’s but higher.” Steele took another sip of his drink, letting the whiskey burn just enough to know he was drinking, but not enough to hurt his throat.

  “That’s all I got. A damned laugh.”

  “Wait. Did she tell you her name?” Kevin said.

  “Umm. I can’t remember. Lindsay, Kelly, Brittany, something like that.”

  “Did she have a mole on her cheek?”

  “I just can’t remember. Ashley, maybe?”

  Kevin stood up. “Ashley O’Neill,” he uttered, his face dropping. “She’s, huh, was a student of mine a few years ago.” He fell back down to the couch. “She was always hanging around a bad crowd. A couple of guys that were known for being rough. Puck Roberts, Casey and Henry Barnum, and Chuck Connolly. They distill their hooch on Backbone Peak. Everyone knows to stay away from there. Sheriff doesn’t even mess with those guys,” he said, voice weakening at the end.

  “You know where Backbone Peak is?”

  “Yeah. I do,” Kevin said cautiously.

  “Do you have any camouflage?”

  “Uh, it’s West Virginia.”

  “You and me are going to be good friends, Kevin.” Steele leaned back, getting comfortable on the couch. He watched the fire, waves of exhaustion crashing into him.

  “I’d catch some Z’s, because tomorrow we’re going to check in on your friends.”

  Kevin gave him a weak smile and tipped his glass back.

  KINNICK

  Pentagon, Arlington, VA

  Kinnick nodded to a few Pentagon police officers who were carrying equipment to the roof. No more than sixty men and women remained of the uniformed police force. As first responders, they had been attacked and driven inside, and that was only the beginning.

  The officers were followed by some overweight defense contractors. Everyone had to pull their own weight now. No sitting. No idleness. Each day could be your last.

  Kinnick walked down the center of one of the Pentagon’s corridor rings, passing glass cases holding General MacArthur’s soft service cap and five-star uniform. Two sliding doors glided apart and he stepped into a corridor much nicer than the rest. Joint Chiefs of Staff Army wing. Fine dark wood lined the walls. Emblems of each of the branches of service were inlaid within the granite floors themselves. He stopped at a large conference room. The door was covered with fancy engravings. The greatest military in the nation is confined inside its beautiful headquarters.

  A major sat at a desk. The name tag on her light blue uniform read Holt.

  “General Travis is waiting for you,” she said.

  He gave her the best smile he could muster. “Thank you, Major.”

  Her left cheek rose a bit in return. She looked down at her desk.

  “Smiles suit you better,” he said.

  She looked up and gave him a better one. “How can you expect me to smile at a time like this?”

  “You could be on rooftop duty with me.”

  She stifled a grin. “I guess it could be worse,” she said, looking down at her desk. “We have more bad reports coming in.”

  “Outbreaks inside?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Then we’re doing better than yesterday.”

  Her lips flattened as she tried to maintain her composure.

  “We will get through this,” he said. His mind mocked him. Remember when you told Jackie everything was going to be fine? She’s rotting somewhere, now.

  “Yes, sir. We will,” Major Holt said. He nodded to her and pressed down on the flat gold door handle.

  Major General Travis brooded on the other end of the room, gazing at a digital map displayed on the wall. It was out of place in the regally decorated room, seeming more in line for a computer hacker than a military general.

  The sixty-two-year-old general’s short cropped hair was white on the sides, turning an ashy gray on top. His hands were clasped firmly behind his back. His aides, a captain and a lieutenant, raced back and forth, bringing him reports. General Travis no longer wore his dress navy blue Army service uniform, but had opted for the universal combat ACUs.

  “These are the times that try a man’s soul,” General Travis muttered. He took a deep breath, staring at the map displayed in front of him. “I wonder what Thomas Paine would have said about this mess.”

  “He would have said that this was no place for the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot,” Kinnick said. He clenched his jaw at his words. Am I a winter soldier?

  General Travis continued to weigh the dismal map before him. “I am sure he would. Any headway in the roof operations?” The general never lifted his eyes from the map.

  Kinnick had the urge to stand at attention but knew that it was not necessary. He settled for holding his hands in front of his body.

  “We’re tossing anything heavy enough to put a hole in someone’s head. It seems to be working to a certain extent, but the infected are never-ending.”

  Travis looked over his shoulder at Kinnick. His eyes beat his brow ridge for space. “Any helicopters from Mount Eden? Langley?”

  Kinnick frowned. “No sir. None in sight.”

  Travis turned back to the map.

  Large red X’s sat over military bases in the region including Andrews Air Force Base, the next most likely place to acquire aid. Further west a circle sat around Mount Eden.

  General Travis turned around and began flipping papers over on the table. “As you already know, the Pentagon is a large contingency facility with stores of food to last people months, especially as our numbers decrease. This place is not a fortress, but a giant contained city.”

  Kinnick nodded. He was no novice.

  “The Mount Eden facility was vital to our survival,” Travis said.

  Kinnick interrupted. “I know that sir, but those doors down there are built to withstand nuclear bomb blasts. Fifty thousand people couldn’t push their way in here. We—.”

  General Travis cut him off looking up at him. “I do not mean our survival here, Colonel. I mean our survival as a species. This epidemic is global. Our forces have been eradicated abroad. We’ve lost all communications with General Benner at CENTCOM. And General Walters in Stuttgart. Europe has gone dark, Africa is dark, Asia is dark, Australia has been overrun with refugees, South America is overrun, only the furthest outposts of Northern Canada remain untouched by this plague. You get the picture right. We may only have one shot at beating this thing. That is why we have fought so hard to hold here. We are quickly becoming it,” he emphasized the w
ord. His steel-colored eyes traced a line on the map.

  “If we lose, mankind loses. America has always been the bastion of hope for the future. Now it is time for it to fulfill its promise. Others will hold, but it’s only a matter of time. Look at the map.”

  General Travis moved to the side to allow Kinnick a full view. The general tapped the corner of the map, and it zoomed out into a much larger map of the United States. He jabbed at key points on the map, dragging his finger to scroll over the terrain. He slid the map low to the distinguishable outline of Texas.

  “We have portions of the 1st Armor Division operating out of Fort Bliss, Texas.” He scrolled his fingers to the top right. “The 76th and 63rd armor regiments are moving west. I am guessing to Colorado. We could request assistance from the 59th Stryker Brigade Combat Team under Colonel Hartman. Stellar soldier. But General Dunbar can’t spare them. Traveling overland, they may not exist by the time they get here. We could try and hold an airport down and fly them up, but I can’t risk leaving the safety of this building. I do not have the vehicles to make a run for it. I’ve got National Guard units running failing quarantine operations at every major city in the U.S.” He widened the map, dragging two fingers apart.

  “I do not see these as feasible options at our current rate of attrition. Peterson Air Force Base is operating in Colorado, but, let’s just put it this way. We aren’t getting much feedback.”

  The map was a grim realization of the dire predicament they were in.

  “Can we pull a National Guard unit south from Philly? Or east from Pittsburgh? Bring down some troop transports?” Kinnick asked. Pittsburgh still had a circle around it. The quarantine of both D.C., Baltimore, and every eastern seaboard city had X’s through them.

  General Travis coughed onto his hand, looking even older than his age.

  “Sending units east would be suicide at this point. I’m pretty sure the President would veto any moves like that. It looks like the Commander in Chief wants his forces west. It doesn’t surprise me. I would have done the same thing, but it doesn’t help us much either. We are deep inside enemy territory now.”

  “No one can relieve us?” Kinnick asked. He stole a glance at the map. A question mark hung over Mount Eden to the West.