The Beginning of the End
Author: R.S. Merritt
Date: 2022-01-09 05:00:00+00:00
Description: Humanity retreats as the infected continue to mutate into nightmare wielding super psychopaths. There's only so much that can be accomplished with bullets and bombs against an enemy that just keeps coming. Culling the herd doesn't eliminate all of the strong ones. The truly evil malicious beings that are shepherding their infected flocks to seek and destroy the last remnants of sanity on the continent. Against this backdrop of universal despair Yue, Drew, and LeBron struggle to navigate the currents of pandemic politics while still doing their best to help humanity survive. Assisted by the rem

Crawlerz

Book 7

“The Beginning of the End”

R S Merritt

Text Copyright © 2021 Randall Scott Merritt

All Rights Reserved

The Crawlerz series is dedicated to my beautiful wife and family.

Cover Design By:

Harry Lamb

Table of Contents

Chapter 1:  Revel in the Blood

Chapter 2:  Yue’s Yacht Club

Chapter 3:  Never Again Volunteer Yourself (“NAVY”)

Chapter 4:  A Tangled Web

Chapter 5:  Another Nose Candy Kind of Night

Chapter 6:  The Boat House Blitz

Chapter 7:  Third Times the Charm

Chapter 8:  Big Problem, Mon

Chapter 9:  Live to Fight Another Day

Chapter 10:  Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

Chapter 11:  Nut Up or Shut Up

Chapter 12:  Tastes Like Chicken

Chapter 13:  A Day at the Beach

Chapter 14:  Cool Running

Chapter 15:  Clairvoyant Cloak and Dagger Crap

Chapter 16:  Maximum Pucker Factor

Chapter 17:  Dinner Theatre

Chapter 18:  Get Out of Jail Free Card

Chapter 19:  Swimming with the Fishes

Chapter 20:  Till Death Do Us Part

Chapter 21:  The United States of Australia?

Chapter 22:  Mind Games and Machine Guns

Chapter 23:  Finishing the Job

Chapter 24:  Crawler Hunt

Chapter 25:  Stand and Deliver

Chapter 26:  Who Dares Wins

Chapter 27:  Just Another Day at the Office

Chapter 28:  After Action Report

Chapter 29:  I’m Kind of a Big Deal

Chapter 30:  Why Can’t We Just All Get Along?

Chapter 31:  Ours Not to Question Why

Chapter 32:  So Much for the Geneva Convention

Chapter 33:  Improvise, Overcome, and Adapt

Chapter 34:  Open the Gates of Hell

Chapter 35:  Until We Are Free from Fear

Author’s Note

Other Books by RS Merritt

Chapter 1:  Revel in the Blood

“I’m not biting anybody.”  Melissa said adamantly.  She shook her head side to side to emphasize the fact that she wasn’t down with eating people.

“You’re going to have to if you want to get their attention.”  Yue answered.  This conversation wasn’t going the way she’d pictured it going.  It hadn’t occurred to her that the people they found who had a psychic gift would be unwilling to use it.  Not everyone was driven by a sense of service to their fellow man.  Melissa’s motivation came more from trying to get as far away from the crawlerz as possible. Which wasn’t really going to work with what they needed her to do.

“Why would I want to get their attention?  I’m not trying to save the world.  I just want to survive.”  Melissa responded.  The conversation had been the same ever since they’d gotten back to Weathertop.  Melissa thought she was too important to be kicked out.  She thought she’d be protected no matter what thanks to her ‘gift’.  Yue was rapidly running out of patience.

“Why are you here then?  If you didn’t want to help why you’d come?”  Yue asked in frustration.  She’d envisioned sharing what she’d learned with a rapt student.  Instead, she’d ended up with a petulant pupil who wasn’t the slightest bit interested.  They might have to toss her back in the pond and keep fishing.  Unfortunately, Melissa was something of a unicorn.  Psychic talent didn’t just grow on trees.

“I came to you because those things were in my head.  I was losing my mind.  I just want out.  Can’t I be a consultant or something from inside the mountain?”  Melissa asked hopefully.  Yue looked at her disbelievingly.  A consultant?  What did she think this was?

“If you don’t think you can hack it then this isn’t going to work out.  You have to be willing to get up close and personal with the infected.  You have to put your sanity on the line.  If you can’t commit, then you’re no good to us.  Which will suck because you’re the only other person we’ve found who can do this so far.”  Yue was working overtime to keep her temper in check.  She didn’t want Melissa to feel forced to use her talent.  At least not until they’d run out of other motivational options.

Melissa was still an active-duty sailor.  They could try ordering her to use her psychic skills.  If she wanted three hot meals and a safe place to sleep, she’d have to obey.  It wasn’t like they were going to execute her if she refused to budge though.  Melissa wasn’t a coward when it came to physically fighting the infected.  She was willing to stand a post.  She just didn’t think she could handle having them in her head again.  Which actually precluded her from being able to stand a post.  Not without a whole lot of drugs anyway.

Taking a whole lot of drugs wouldn’t be an issue at least.  Melissa couldn’t dump booze and pills down her throat fast enough.  Trying to find a time to work with her when she wasn’t hungover or high was a challenge.  The team was temporarily standing down to give Yue time to train Melissa.  People were getting antsy though.  Yue was desperately needed out in the field to deal with the breakers. Shaun had stepped in and ordered everyone to back off until Yue was good to go.  The expectation was Yue would be heading out in the field with Melissa in tow.  Melissa would be in intern mode until she was trained up. Once deemed ready, she’d get assigned her very own death squad.

They weren’t all sitting around playing cards while they waited for Yue to get her sidekick up to speed.  LeBron had come up with a couple of schemes for continuing the campaign against the infected that were being put into motion.  The first was a real no brainer.  They had satellites that could track large crowds of the infected.  They had plenty of bombs sitting around in warehouses.  Add in a plethora of pilots and planes and the result was daily bombing runs killing tens of thousands of crawlerz.  It was a thousand times more efficient than setting off claymores from train cars.

The second thing LeBron had set in motion was the creation of a water bound unit out of Cape May to support Yue and Melissa in breaker hunting.  Whenever Yue decided she was ready to face the infected again he wanted to be sure she had everything she needed.  He was excited about her seeing what he’d lined up for her.  He was even more excited that the way she’d be breaker hunting this time should be slightly less dangerous.

LeBron was working on his laptop to finalize the preparations when someone knocked on his door.  Noticing his visitor had tried the doorknob before knocking gave him a pretty good idea of who it was.

“She just doesn’t want do it.”  Yue said throwing herself on LeBron’s bed.  The moderately OCD LeBron sighed seeing his well-made bed being destroyed.

“I assume you’re talking about your protégé?”  LeBron asked.  His sister tended to start conversations in the middle and expect everyone to catch up.

“Yep.  The other half of my mini coven.  She has zero desire to get out in the field.”  Yue said.  She noticed LeBron noticing how wrinkled she’d made his bedspread.  She tried kicking the corner of the cover to get it to straighten back out.  That just made it worse.

“Nobody wants to go out in the field.  It sucks out there.  We need her out there though.  You can’t keep doing it all by yourself.  We need to get you both on a boat, so you can start showing her how to reel in the monsters.”  LeBron responded.

“How do we get her on the boat exactly?”  Yue asked.

That shut LeBron up.  This wasn’t the kind of problem he was typically asked to solve.  The perfect person for issues like this was currently busy making sure none of the hospital corners survived her assault on his meticulously folded sheets.  Yue must still be in recovery mode.  Normally she’d have already figured out a way to convince Melissa to jump at the chance to be psychically lobotomized by the insane telepathic monsters they’d be hunting.

“You’re projecting.”  LeBron said suddenly.  The answer seemed obvious now that it’d occurred to him.

“Excuse me?”  Yue said looking over at her brother.

“You hate getting lost in the groupthink.  You’re taking how you feel about it and trying not to put that on her.  That’s why you haven’t talked her into this yet.  You’re letting her slide because you know how bad it can get.”  LeBron said.  He was proud of himself.  He normally wasn’t awesome at the touchy-feely stuff.  People assumed he was because Yue was.  Drew was so blatantly bad at it that that it made LeBron seem good at it by comparison.

“You’re right!  Thanks!  Sorry about the bed!”  Yue said rushing out the door.  Used to Yue’s sudden whims LeBron sighed and went back to his laptop.

Down the hall Yue paused to catch her breath before rapping loudly on Melissa’s door.  LeBron was right.  She’d been going about this the wrong way.  Melissa wasn’t like her.  She needed a carrot to do the right thing.  Yue now realized there was nothing wrong with just plain old making the girl step up.  They were in a war for the survival of humanity.  Melissa’s feelings weren’t going to trump that.  By the time a slightly inebriated Melissa opened the door Yue knew what she needed to say.

“Got some news for you.  You’ve been officially assigned to the Suicide Squad.  We’re flying back to Cape May in three days to get back to breaker hunting.  We’re going to do it from boats this time.  I’m going to need you to help me find the breakers.”  Yue said firmly.

“I’m not going to bite anybody.  I’m not – “ Yue cut Melissa off mid-whine.

“Three days.  I need you to help me out.  If you’re not able to handle it, we can always put you back in the field.”  Yue said dispassionately.  She turned and left an open-mouthed Melissa sitting on the edge of her bed trying to figure out what’d just happened.  She’d been hoping to be left behind in the big, safe, well provisioned fortress while everyone else went out and got themselves killed.  Sighing she poured the rest of the wine into her cup and downed it all in one long swallow.

Yue felt good as she strode down the hallway searching for the love of her life.  She wanted to let him know that she’d finally figured out how to motivate Melissa.  She just needed to be a little vague about exactly what she’d said to Melissa to change her mind. Jeff had been listening to Yue recount this drama for a good week now.  He’d told her more than once she should just tell Melissa she didn’t have a choice.  Hearing an ‘I told you so’ would totally deflate the winning sensation she had now.

Yue knew relationships weren’t supposed to be competitions.  In a healthy relationship there was no reason to keep score.  When you put two type A personalities together there’s bound to be some mental scorecard keeping though.  It’s just the nature of the beast.

Yue stuck her ID badge in the door to the room she shared with Jeff.  That sparsely furnished air-conditioned room had become her safe space.  It was where she dreamed of being when she was out in the field.  It was one of the few places left where she actually felt safe.  Not that anywhere in this crazy world was safe anymore.  Even this enormous military labyrinth buried under a mountain was only a lapse of protocol away from being overrun.  Weathertop had been the last base Yue felt safe at.  A bunch of politicians there had flexed their clout to get a picnic authorized.  That picnic had set off a series of events leading to the entire complex being infested with the infected.

Jeff wasn’t in their room.  Yue snorted in frustration.  He was probably off doing his job.  Super annoying of him when she really wanted to tell him something.  Deciding that Jeff would obviously welcome her visiting him in the middle of the workday Yue exited the room.  It occurred to her as she walked down the corridor that she might be overly proud of herself.  Here she was celebrating having figured out the right lever to apply to force a traumatized woman to go on a mission that was likely to drive her insane.  Melissa had become an alcoholic after a run in with some regular crawlerz.  A crawler was nothing compared to the breakers they’d be hunting on this mission.

Yue consciously pushed those thoughts out of her mind.  She didn’t want to fall into that projection pit again.  Surreptitiously making her way past a series of empty cubicles she made her way to Jeff’s office.  She was happy to see that he was there.  Having to hunt for him all over the gigantic base would’ve been a major pain.  They all had working smartphones, but Jeff rarely remembered to take his with him.  It wasn’t a habit anymore for the people who spent a lot of time out in the field.  Once you left the technology enabled mountain the phones became glorified cameras.

Jeff was hunched over his keyboard staring intently at the brightly glowing computer screen.  Yue walked over to stand behind him.

“The way you were staring at the screen I didn’t really expect to see a spreadsheet.”  Yue said putting her hands on his shoulders.  He was so tall that the regular sized office chair he was sitting in looked like a toy.

“I do miss the internet.”  Jeff said with a grin.  Yue raised her eyebrows but didn’t take the bait.

“What are you working on?”  She asked to be polite.  Really all she wanted to do was tell him what’d happened with Melissa.

“I was just looking at what LeBron’s been putting together for that breaker breaking mission.”  Jeff answered.  Yue leaned in over his shoulder and started scanning the excel.

“Oh, there’s pictures!”  Yue pretended to be impressed by Jeff and LeBron’s computer skills.

Skimming through all of the planning LeBron had done made Yue feel a little guilty.  She’d been a part of the meetings to come up with the plan, but LeBron had really dug into it.  You could tell he’d made every effort to ensure this mission was safer than the previous ones.  In so much as anything outside the mountain could be considered safe these days.  Yue found herself looking forward to the mission.  She liked Cape May. Cruising around the bay sounded way more fun than wandering around in this dank cave of a base.  Other than the nighttime psychic fights to the death parts it actually sounded pretty fun.  Hopefully her reluctant new protégé would be willing and able to shoulder some of that burden.

Chapter 2:  Yue’s Yacht Club

“Sweet.”  Drew said looking down at the end of the long dock.  That pretty much summed it up.

Two super classy yachts were tied up at the end of the dock next to the Coast Guard motorboats.  Drew had assumed they’d be taking the Coast Guard boats or some leftover Navy SEAL attack craft.  Even Yue was impressed by the seven figure adult toys bobbing around down there.  LeBron had told her some of the headaches involved in hunting down these boats for them.  He’d had to pull some serious strings to ensure the boats made it there in time.

There weren’t many usable boats randomly floating around for the taking anymore.  Most of them had either been destroyed by storms or taken by their owners in search of someplace ‘safe’.  LeBron had dispatched a special forces unit to the warehouses these yachts had been stored in prior to delivery.  It’d taken some doing but he’d figured out how to get the boats to Cape May in time for Yue’s arrival.  LeBron was growing more formidable every day.  He’d coordinated all of this as a side gig. As if his day job of coordinating the resurrection of the country wasn’t complex enough.

There was a sub and an aircraft carrier standing by off the coast to support their mission.  The carrier was supporting dual missions.  In addition to providing support for Yue’s team, they were also running bombing missions all day every day.  The operations group spent the night parsing through satellite imagery showing where the crawlerz were moving to.  The following day the pilots were sent to drop their bombs on wherever the biggest groups of the infected had settled down to escape the sun for the day.  They were flying those operations off every carrier still afloat.  Either by having the planes on the carriers directly involved in the missions or ferrying the pilots to bigger planes at bases along the coast.  The coordination for things like replenishing bombs, places to refuel, keeping the air strips on land debris free, and keeping the planes maintained all rolled up to LeBron.  As valuable as her baby brother was becoming to the resettlement effort Yue doubted Shaun would ever let LeBron leave the mountain again.

On the other hand, Jeff had been given room to roam.  He still collaborated with LeBron, but his role had shifted from strategy to operations.  He spent his time doing things like helping Yue crush the newest crawler threat or getting random warlords to renew their allegiance to the USA. He’d successfully made the transition from bookish bureaucrat to overly tall special agent.  Leading the team down the dock he held on tightly to Yue’s hand.  The public display of affection might not be professional, but no one cared.  You took the good when you could get it when death lay around every corner.

The men and women filing down the dock were mostly members of the Suicide Squad.  A military unit made infamous over the course of the apocalypse.  It was made up of elite soldiers who all shared one trait. For one reason or another they all had a death wish.  Rather than taking a piece of short rope for a long drop they’d signed up for the squad.  They did that because the missions the squad went out on would most likely kill them.  These were men and women horrific things had happened to.  They’d lost children and spouses.  Sometimes right in front of them.  A high percentage of the troopers in the squad ended up KIA.  For the small number who’d made it this far something unexpected was happening.  Time was healing their wounds.  Most of them had started wanting to live again.

The squad was committed to the mission.  Melissa was another story altogether.  She didn’t fit in with the rough and tumble crew of professional warriors.  She didn’t want to be there.  Where everyone else was dedicated to winning this unwinnable fight, Melissa was constantly looking for a way out.  Yue had tried to convince the team that they needed Melissa as much as they needed her. Their response had been less than enthusiastic.  It was the opposite of the response Lisa displayed on seeing the interior of the fifty-foot cruiser they were going to be riding around in.

“Woah!  This is unreal.  Why the hell have we been hiding out in train cars?”  Lisa asked with an infectious eagerness.  The richly appointed interiors were chromed out expanses of mahogany and leather.  It smelled like money.  One of the Coast Guard guys laughed at Lisa’s over the top exuberance.

“This fancy tub probably goes for a few million.  You could outfit a train car pretty nice for that kind of cash.”  The young sailor said.  He was grinning a little too broadly and standing a little too close to Lisa for Drew’s liking.  Drew bit his tongue and firmly checked his jealousy.  He’d learned his lesson about jumping in on things like that.  Lisa was a big girl.  She’d handle it herself.  If he picked a fight with everybody who made eyes at his girl, he’d never have time to do anything else.

“Awesome!  Drew we’ll need to get one of these for the dock by our yellow house.”  Lisa said snaking her hand into Drews.

“Maybe they’ll let us keep this one after we kill all the breakers.”  Drew said.  He was happy he’d kept his mouth shut.  Lisa had handled that way better than he would’ve.  At no time had she given any indication that she even noticed the guy was hitting on her.

“Insurance and upkeep would kill you.  You should join one of those boat clubs instead.”  Billy said.  The skull faced leader of the Suicide Squad looked around the swanky interior and let out a wolf whistle.  A large shadow followed him down the stairs.

“Nice.  Hopefully they bought the scotch guard package.  We’re bound to get blood and guts all over this thing.”  Harley said as he made his appearance.  Drew laughed appreciatively while Lisa looked a little upset.  She wasn’t going to be happy if they messed up the interior.  At least Harley appeared to be sober though.  The fearless gypsy was an advantage in any scrape they found themselves in.  At least he was as long as he was sober enough to see straight.

Captain Kate joined them as they were exploring the boats.  The captain was now the commanding officer for most of the troops on the East Coast.  Not that a ton of bases had survived the breakers bursting on the scene.  She met up with them on the deck of the second yacht.

“These are super nice.  I thought about painting these to look like our boats and then painting our boats this color.”  Kate joked on seeing Yue emerge from the cabin below.

“We’d have probably never noticed ma’am.  As long as it floats, I’m normally pretty happy with whatever I get handed.”  Wyland said.  Yue kind of doubted Wyland.  The man had been an operator with Delta Force before signing on with the Suicide Squad.  You didn’t become a member of Delta without being significantly more observant than the next guy.

“Well, we still need to do a little work. These decks look like they can handle having some armament bolted on.  I have a couple of 240s coming.  We’re hooking you up with some artillery too.  I’ve got all kinds of toys on the way.  I think we managed to get everything on LeBron’s list.  It helped that he told us where we could find most of it.  Your brother’s seriously gifted.  I wish we could steal him.”  Kate responded looking over at Yue.

“How come no one ever calls me gifted?”  Drew asked.  Yue reached over and patronizingly patted him on the head until he good naturedly knocked her hand aside.  Lisa and Harley both came up with too many comebacks to be able to choose the best one before the window of opportunity passed.  LeBron was an acknowledged logistical savant.  Another good reason for Shaun not to let LeBron out of his sight was that people like Kate would shanghai him in a second if given half a chance.

The rest of the day was spent familiarizing everyone with the vessels.  There was plenty of time for discussing the best approach to finding and destroying the breakers while they waited for their weapons to be mounted.  Anyone willing to learn was given a crash course in using the fancy gear aboard the yachts.  They had Coast Guard Boatswains Mates assigned to them to pilot the boats.  The crew was going to be led by the same Chief Boatswains Mate who’d piloted them through multiple engagements the last time they were in Cape May.  The only people needed to get the whole band back together would be the Black Hawk crew who supported them the last time.  LeBron was working behind the scenes to get them for air support.

All in all, Yue was feeling a little bit better about their odds after seeing how smoothly everything was going.  It seemed crazy that with everything else going on LeBron had managed to pull together pretty much everything on their wish list.  Even Melissa seemed impressed by the boats and the armament being added to them.  Hopefully it’d give the reluctant psychic the courage to stand up against the breakers alongside Yue.  They’d find out soon enough.  A trial run was planned for that evening.

The team was invited to a meal in the base dining room while the last bit of work was being completed on the boats.  The Chief stayed behind to supervise and make sure everything was installed to his liking.  There was a barge being brought down with extra reserves of diesel.  They were going to need lots of fuel for the breaker killing marathon they had in mind.

The walk back to the boat was much more somber than the walk to dinner had been.  As the light slowly faded from the sky the reality of what they were about to do set in.  It was too late in the day for them to go ashore and set mines up, so they were at least being spared that stress.  There had been some discussion about whether or not that was going to work anyway.  The effectiveness of that technique was going to depend on how they ended up luring the breakers in for the kill.

If they were able to setup off the shore and hang out until a breaker showed up, then setting out mines was going to be effective.  If they had to cruise up and down the coast until they ran into a breaker then the mine idea was out the window.  Yue wasn’t sure which way it was going to end up working out.  None of this was an exact science.  There were going to be different breeds of breakers as well.  Maybe some would show up if they just sat off the coast while others may need to be hunted down.  Once they started attacking them the breakers may go into hiding.

The breakers had already shown an unsettling ability to adapt to the tactics being used to track and terminate them.  The monsters had come close to wiping out Cape May. They’d attacked after a breaker was killed by Yue and her team on the outskirts of the Cape.  It’d taken a million dollars’ worth of bombs and missiles, not to mention some serious luck, for the denizens of the Cape to have survived that night.

Yue listened attentively as the Chief briefed them. They’d be sailing into Delaware Bay towards Wilmington for the hunt that evening.  Once Yue and Melissa confirmed the location of a breaker then a missile would be launched from the sub supporting them from out on the coast.  That should take care of the main threat and any other infected within a hundred yards of the target.  I’d all seemed pretty straightforward in the PowerPoint presentation Jeff had put together.  He’d even had a little animated missile wipe a clip art looking zombie right off the slide.  It wasn’t seeming so cute in retrospect.

Cruising through the last bit of sunlight their task seemed anything but straightforward.  Yue found herself envying the pilots flying the bombing missions.  That job was getting to be very wash-rinse-repeat.  On a good day the estimates were easily in the six figures as to how many of the infected they were wiping out.  Thanks to the corporate war machine churning out armaments for poorly negotiated defense department contracts there were warehouses overflowing with the crawler busting bombs they needed for those sorties.

There wasn’t any sort of extra armament for what Yue was being tasked with.  All she had going for her was having Melissa to back her up.  Neither one of them really knew if that was going to help or not.  Melissa was horrified of the idea of letting the infected get inside her head.  Yue understood her reluctance completely.  Unfortunately for Melissa, she was going to have to get over it.  The psychic battles with the breakers were inevitably going to lead to them getting into her head.

Salt laced wind on her face Yue turned to see how her reluctant intern was doing.  Melissa had her arms crossed and was staring off into the distance.  It was taking her so long to acknowledge Yue staring at her that Yue finally coughed to get her attention.  That broke Melissa out of her trance.  She looked up guiltily at Yue.

“How are you feeling?”  Yue asked.  She had to raise her voice to be heard over the wind.  They were standing out on the bow of the boat by where the 240 had been bolted to the deck.  Evidently the deck had proven strong enough to handle bolting it down.  They’d find out soon enough if the pricey topcoat could still handle it when the big gun was going off.

“Scared out of my mind.  I’ve never even been close to a breaker.  The regular infected are bad enough for me.”  Melissa answered.  This conversation was similar to a ton of other talks Melissa and Yue had engaged in.  The difference this time was that the questions weren’t academic.  Melissa could see the darker blob of darkness on the horizon indicating where the bay stopped, and the land began.  That land was packed with blood thirsty demons that wanted to sink their teeth into them.  Those monsters also happened to be able to force their way into your mind as well.  Tonight’s venture had nothing to do with hunting crawlerz.  Before the night was over Yue was hoping to bag multiple breakers.

There was no easy way for Yue to respond.  It was going to be hell.  Melissa would either survive it with her sanity intact or she wouldn’t.  They were both going to be opening themselves up to psychic attacks that could take any form.  Attacks that the breaker could ratchet up if you gave them any feedback.  There wasn’t any great way not to give feedback.  It wasn’t like you could hide the fact that the feeling of bugs squirming inside your body was freaking you out.

“Isn’t this where you insert a pep talk?  Tell me everything is going to be, ok?”  Melissa asked after the silence dragged along a little too long.  This time it was Yue who’d been caught off guard.  She realized she’d been staring off into the distance.

“It’s going to be a million times worse than you think it’s going to be.  You’re going to have to keep your focus and work with me to crush them before they figure out who you are. If you can’t do that, then I wouldn’t be surprised if they drive you crazy or even kill you.”  Yue answered matter of factly.  It was time for Melissa to put on her big girl panties.

Melissa started to respond.  She closed her mouth when she realized she had nothing to say.  Her lips slowly collapsed back together.  Her hands automatically went to her pockets to try and find her pills.  Everyone had been stripped of medication for this venture.  Jeff was going to be in charge of doling it out as he saw fit.  He had the pills under lock and key precisely so that Melissa wouldn’t be able to hide from the breakers when the battle started.  Everyone else had already been handed their first dose.  They’d be getting another one in four hours to help keep their minds crawler proofed.

Melissa looked up at the stars wondering how the hell she was going to get herself out of this mess.  She should’ve never copped to being psychic in the first place.  Everyone knew what NAVY stood for after all.  Shivering she stepped away from Yue to watch as the city rose up out of the horizon.  It was dark enough that the only way to tell they were getting close was that the stars were blotted out by the ruins of the tall buildings along the shoreline.

Chapter 3:  Never Again Volunteer Yourself (“NAVY”)

Yue caught Melissa staring jealously at Drew.  The dangerously sober Melissa was envying the goofy looking Valium grin Drew was sporting.  A little bit of drool was forming at the corners of her mouth.  It’d been deemed necessary to collect all the drugs in one place to be handed out by Jeff.  Otherwise, Melissa would be high as a kite by now.  Knowing Jeff everyone was a little less buzzed than usual.  Yue’s nerdly narc actually read the recommended dosages.  No matter how many times everyone tried telling him the warning label didn’t really apply when there were mind raping demons stalking you.

Harley walked over and put his arm around Yue’s shoulders.  If anyone had managed to take more than the recommended dosage, she was sure it was him.  Unless they performed a full body cavity search, Harley would have figured out how to keep his pharmaceutical stash handy.

“You ready?”  Harley asked Yue.  It was a fair question.

“Nope.  Let’s do it anyway.”  Yue answered.

“How about you?”  Harley asked Melissa.

“I’m not.  I wish everybody would stop asking me that.  How the hell am I supposed to get ready for something like this?”  Melissa snapped back.

“Sounds good.  I’ll let the Chief know to start working the shoreline.”  Harley said.  He patted Yue a few times on the back as he turned to walk back to the bridge.

The plan was pretty simple.  The 240s were their noise makers.  They’d get close to the shore and shoot off a few bursts.  Then they’d wait for the infected to show up.  Then they’d shoot them.  Hopefully all of the noise would cause even more of the infected to gather on the shoreline.  Once enough of them showed up, they were hoping a breaker would get a psychic invite to the party.  That would be when Melissa and Yue would work their magic to divine the location of the breaker.  Then it was a quick radio transmission followed by a massive fireworks display.

It worked exactly as planned.  For about the first twenty minutes anyway.  The Chief carefully maneuvered them close to the shore where they fired a few bursts off.  They then idled for a little while to see if the land sharks would come for the chum.  Their back up boat was standing off about a hundred yards away from them.  The powerful searchlights they’d mounted on the yacht sent tight beams of light raking across the seawall as they searched for any sign of the infected.

On the shore the infected began popping out from alleyways to gather on the docks and the seawall. Melissa let out a surprised shriek when the spotlights first revealed the pale faced ghouls staring silently back at them.  None of the infected showed any reaction when the big machine gun started mowing them down.  Yue was thinking something was wrong with their approach.  She let her mind wander trying to pick up on the groupthink from the infected on the shore.  That was proving difficult due to the high caliber bullets from the 240 turning the silent stalkers into piles of bloody beef jerky.

“This isn’t going to work.”  Yue barked out.  She was struggling to be heard over the machine gun going off.  Melissa looked at her blankly then pointed at her ears.

“This isn’t going to work!”  Yue shouted as loudly as she could.  She happened to shout it right when Wyland had finished peppering the shore with rounds.  He looked over at her curiously.  When he saw she had something to say he pulled out the little orange foam hearing protection pieces from his ears.  Yue’s first instinct was to ask how come no one had bothered offering her or Melissa any sort of hearing protection.  Shoving that thought into her memory bank to bring up some other time she ordered Wyland to cease fire and walked quickly back to the bridge.

A light bit of jazz music was coming out of the sound system.  Jeff was sipping on some sort of cappuccino.  Drew was checking out the results of Wyland’s wet work through an expensive looking pair of binoculars.  Noticing Yue coming in Lisa grabbed a thermos full of water mixed with Crystal Light and handed it to her.  Jeff was watching her expectantly.  Everyone had that slightly off expression they got after taking their nightly dose of mind melting medicine.

“We can’t shoot the infected who show up.  If we do, then any breaker that shows up will just have the infected step away from the water.  The same as they did for the claymores.  Shooting them isn’t going to work.  We’re going to need to just make some noise and wait for them to show up.  Once there’s a nice big crowd out there, then hopefully we’ll be able to pick up clues on any local breakers in the groupthink.”  Yue explained.

“That makes sense.”  Jeff said slowly.  He was never at his best when they had to be dosed up.  Everyone knew that none of this really made much sense.  They just kind of went with whatever Yue said.  She’d been right more times than not.

“Do we stay here or try somewhere new?”  The Chief asked.

“Let’s stay here and see what happens.  Can we get a little closer?  I’m not picking up anything this far out.  I need to be close enough to be part of the groupthink.”  Yue said.

“We just need to stay out of their long jump range.  Which is pretty damned impressive.”  The Chief said.  The salty older sailor was struggling with Yue tossing out terms like ‘groupthink’.  To his credit he was going with the flow though.

Yue gave Jeff a hug and turned to walk back out on deck.  Jeff stopped her and asked two troopers to make sure they accompanied Yue whenever she was outside the bridge.  The image of a long jumping crawler ripping his future fiancé’s head off had worked its way into Jeff’s head after the Chief’s comment.  In the world they lived in sudden violent death was the norm.  Jeff had seen it a million times.  He was going to do everything in his power to protect Yue.

The powerful twin diesel engines hummed as the Chief deftly maneuvered them closer to the seawall.  His face tightened with worry as he guessed at the minimum safe distance.  In the dark they’d never see the infected coming until they dropped out of the sky on top of them.  Assuming they didn’t just slam face first into the side of the boat, break their own necks, and tumble lifelessly into the bay anyway.  The idea of a bunch of zombified supermen leaping across the water in stealth mode to attack them in the darkness was terrifying.

Another reason for worry was because the bay was no longer being maintained.  There wasn’t an Army Corp of Engineers making sure the inlet was properly dredged.  There wasn’t a harbor master making sure that any hazards were cleaned up.  Hazards were all over the place now.  Boats that’d sunk, floating docks that’d gotten loose, and even buildings that’d crumbled into the waterways all added to the complexity of navigating the bay.  That complexity increased exponentially the closer you got to shore.

Kate had attempted to maintain accurate charts for a while. Eventually she’d been forced to give up as the storms shifted the seabed and wrecks around haphazardly.  They still logged everything they saw that was a navigational hazard, but they were only seeing maybe ten percent of what was out there.  Yue wasn’t a sailor.  She had no idea of the added risk of navigating the large motorboat closer to the shore.  Closer to where the rusting hulks of sunken boats could snag them at any time.

If Yue had known she’d have still made the request.  They were fighting a new kind of enemy.  Their tactics needed to be fearless.  They were going to have to make mistakes and learn from them quickly.  If they couldn’t learn to fluidly adapt to these insane situations, then they were going to lose the war.  If they lost the war, humanity was doomed.

Yue grabbed Melissa by the shoulder and led her back out to the bow of the big boat.  The two troopers assigned to guard them tagged along a few feet behind them.  Both of the troopers kept a wary eye out for any crawlerz flying through the air.  The buildings loomed larger as they drew closer.  The illumination from the search lights dully reflected in the scores of dead eyed crawlerz staring back at them.

“You need to relax your mind.  Once you can see the groupthink start looking for who might be controlling the ones out there.  If you can figure out where they’re at let us know right away.  The sooner we kill all of these things the sooner we can find somewhere quiet to curl up and relax.  I can’t wait to drown my memories in hundred-dollar bottles of wine.  Now relax your mind and own it.”  Yue told Melissa.

Liking the idea of coming up with a way to get this all over with Melissa closed her eyes and tried her best to relax.  Yue must have been working on her pep talk skills.  She’d done a much better job this time.  Inside the bridge the Chief had his eyes glued to the depth finder looking for any blips that would indicate something they could get stuck on.  Drew was using the search light to count the piles of the dead by the seawall.  Wyland was wondering if he was going to be allowed to waste the small crowd of crawlerz who’d shown up to take the dead’s place.

Images exploded in her head.  One second Melissa was mindlessly mumbling her version of the chanting Yue was doing then the next she could clearly see their boat sitting in the water.  The view of the boat jumped around as it was seen from other sets of eyes.  The crawlerz standing along the seawall were all feeding into it.  When the search light blinded them the visions of the other crawlerz rose to the top.

The mentally televised views of their boat weren’t what made Melissa gasp and step backwards with her hands held up defensively.  It was the flood of vitriol accompanying those images.  The massively violent desires of the infected observers to rip apart everyone on the boat.  The taste of flesh and blood was strong and coppery in Melissa’s mouth.  She reached up and wiped her chin. Her mouth was wide open with drool pouring out of it.  Wiping away the drool in disgust she struggled to regain mastery of her thoughts.

Yue was much more acclimated to the sudden onslaught of hatred.  She flipped through the groupthink like she was changing channels.  Ancient animal desires rose up in her to bite and rend flesh to satisfy the never-ending hunger.  She let the animalistic urges wash right over her.  Her chanting picked up in tempo.  She methodically sought some link to the breaker responsible for producing this freakshow.

Yue saw herself.  Then she saw Wyland on the 240 followed by the bright beam of light sweeping the shore.  There was a panoramic view of the boat as something in the groupthink made Yue spin in a slow circle.  Beside her Melissa was echoing her motions.  The troopers guarding them shuffled around uncomfortably watching the psychotic looking pirouettes of the two dancing witches.  Only Yue was still chanting.  Melissa was completely lost in the groupthink.  Melissa’s face was white.  Blood ran down her chin from where she was chewing her own lip.

On the bridge the mood had flipped from a watchful wariness to a confused fear.  They could all feel the deviant thoughts knocking up against their narcotic shielded minds.  Coming in range of the groupthink had been like stepping to the edge of a canyon and feeling the ground give way underneath you.  Lightly medicated as they were everyone was being exposed to the horrific images being broadcast.  Jeff frantically opened a pill bottle and started passing out Xanax and Valium.  He made sure to hit up the most critical posts first.  The Chief, Wyland, and the troopers he’d assigned to guard Yue and Melissa.  Everyone he handed a pill immediately dry swallowed it.

The nauseating fear-filled feeling of dropping off the precipice induced by the sudden onslaught of the groupthink had struck everyone.  Between the drugs and the thinly cloaked terrors dancing around in their heads they were all distracted and disoriented.  The expensive yacht drifted closer to the shoreline than the Chief had intended.  No one noticed at first.  A swirling series of images hinted that they were still far away from the seawall.  Visions of rotting sea monsters oozing from the bay made them want to jump onto the seawall and run inland.

The extra pills kicking in on top of what they’d already taken shielded the crew from the brunt of the psychic onslaught.  Melissa and Yue took it directly on the chin.  Melissa watched in disbelief as black spiders the size of puppies began popping out of the water.  Screaming she turned to run into the bridge only to see the spiders had already filled it up.  They were crawling all over the Chief.  The troopers assigned to Yue were barely able to hold on to Melissa as her panic powered mania propelled her to attempt to jump overboard.

Yue sensed the rising craziness around her. She assumed they’d found themselves a breaker.  This was way more fun than they’d be having with just the handful of crawlerz staring over at them.  Chanting with conviction Yue dove into her work.  Jeff watched from the bridge as the troopers held down a struggling Melissa.  Lisa was working one of the searchlights in conjunction with Drew.  He had the door to the bridge open so he could direct her.  The 240 was silent while Wyland waited to hear when he could get back to dealing out death.

Jeff was so caught up in watching Yue that he didn’t realize at first why Wyland was yelling and pointing at the seawall.  The seawall that was now entirely too close.  Jeff started to shout out a warning when his mouth filled up with a wad of goo that started dripping down his chin.  Disgusted by the feeling he tried spitting it out.  Unsure how he could still breathe he finally realized it was just an illusion.  He noticed Wyland and Drew were both hacking as well.  Looking up he saw they were now even closer to the wall.

“We’re way too close to the wall!”  Harley shouted pouring himself through the door to the bridge.  He’d gone down below to do a few lines.  The evidence locker at the Cape May Coast Guard Station was a treasure trove.  He’d barely even felt it when they’d gotten close enough to be immersed in the groupthink.

The Chief immediately realized what’d happened and reached for the throttle.  A crawler smashed through the window next to him.  The crawler was blown right back out the window by a slug from Harley’s tactical shotgun.  Jeff ran out intent on making sure Yue was ok.  One of the troopers holding Melissa down got knocked to the side by a lithe young crawler who came out of nowhere.  Spinning around on the deck the trooper struggled to bring his weapon to bear before the crawler could get at him.  Jeff put a few bullets into the crawler and stepped over the body frantically searching for Yue.

The deck was turning into a chaotic blood-soaked mess.  It was raining zombies.  Jeff had to fight back the mad urge to tell everyone that they’d run into a ‘zombnado’.  Despite the influence of the Valium his concern for Yue overrode his need to share that warped bit of humor.  Up in front of him Drew and Lisa were firing into the night air as fast as they could reload and hold the trigger down.  Wyland had decided the time to cease firing had passed.  He was rocking and rolling on the big gun.

Jeff had almost made it to where Yue was when the boat unexpectedly rocketed forward.  Everyone was thrown off balance.  The Chief had decided enough was enough.  It was time to get the hell out of Dodge.  Falling backwards Jeff struggled to turn his body in the air before he slammed into the deck.  He immediately regretted having pulled off the mid-air turn when he faceplanted into the blood covered corpse of the crawler he’d shot earlier.  Doing his best to avoid swallowing any of the sticky stuff he pushed himself back to his feet.  He made it up just in time to be thrown forward when the boat slammed into some underwater obstacle.

All around him people were struggling to their feet.  He’d heard splashes as the infected were thrown overboard.  There were still crawlerz leaping onto the deck of the boat.  Wyland was doing a bang-up job of mowing the creatures down the second they popped up on the seawall.  There was just a lot of them.  Jeff watched one of their troopers go overboard with a crawler sinking its teeth into the man’s neck.  Melissa was struggling with a pint-sized crawler on the ground.  Jeff hesitated to help her as he looked around for Yue.  He spotted Yue bouncing on Harley’s shoulders as he ran back to the shelter of the bridge with a couple of guys covering him.  Seeing that Billy was among the warriors protecting the love of his life Jeff flipped his gaze back down to Melissa.

He was just in time to see the tiny terror attacking Melissa shove it’s fingers into her eyes and rip outwards.  Jeff watched in revulsion as the little monster popped an eyeball into its mouth and crunched down.  Melissa wasn’t even screaming.  She was locked in whatever version of hell the breaker was broadcasting.  She did have one hand wrapped tightly around the infected tweens throat to keep its mouth away from her.  Careful not to shoot her fingers off Jeff put a few rounds through the diminutive demon’s head.  Melissa did nothing to indicate she had any idea of what was going on.

More crawlerz were crashing down onto the deck.  The diesel engines were screaming as the Chief tried to get them off whatever they were stuck on.  Everyone still alive retreated back into the bridge.  Jeff dragged Melissa with him while Drew and Lisa provided cover fire.  The windshield was completely blown out as everyone did their best to light up the horde coming for them.  At some point they were going to run out of ammunition and then they were going to die.  Their main weapon had been abandoned when Wyland was forced to beat a quick retreat.

“What do we do!”  Lisa yelled out.  Jeff was at a loss for words.  His planning hadn’t included a mob of the crawlerz somehow boarding their vessel.  He didn’t have a contingency for this insanity.

The boat picked that moment to finally break away from the sunken trawler they’d been stuck on.  Surging forward they broadsided a dock that should’ve been packed with crawlerz.  Luckily, their back up boat had come in and cleared off the dock with their 240.  They still hit the dock so hard it was a miracle they didn’t capsize.  The surge forward followed by smashing into the dock helped fling the rest of the crawlerz on the bow into the bay.  No one was escaping this joy ride without at least few sprained body parts.

One of the Coasties emerged from the engine room to let them know they were taking on water.  The bloody faced Chief acknowledged that with a quick nod. Thinking fast he directed them to all make ready to switch boats.  With Wyland pumping rounds into the darkness behind them they approached their backup.  Jeff was feeling good about his firm belief in never going out into the field without having some kind of vehicular redundancy.  It was paying off in spades.  He was surprised to see Yue pop into the bridge a minute later.

“I know where the breaker is.  We need to send out the coordinates now!”  Yue exclaimed.  She’d said it before she fully took in the scene in front of her.  Everyone was running around getting ready to abandon ship.  Two men were working on wrapping bandages around Melissa’s bloody, crawler abused face.

Jeff walked over and took Yue by the hands.  He thought he was going to have to talk her into providing the information they needed.  The shock of seeing Melissa like that was enough to knock anybody off their game.  His girl merely shook her head and gave the Chief the info needed for him to call in an airstrike.  Accuracy wasn’t super important when you were firing weapons that could easily take out a city block.

Coordinates given Yue wanted time to sit down and process.  What she got was time to throw on a lifejacket before trying to scramble onto another boat in the middle of the night.  She didn’t complain about any of it though.  All it took was a glance over at Melissa to realize how much worse her night could’ve been.  Melissa chose that moment to emerge from whatever nightmare world that she’d been lost in. The unwilling witch began screaming as she scratched at the bandages on her aching face trying to figure out why she couldn’t see.

Chapter 4:  A Tangled Web

On board the backup boat the wounded were carried into the cabin.  Melissa was the most seriously hurt.  The other injuries ranged from a missing finger to sprains and breaks.  Without an x-ray machine it was difficult to tell the difference unless a bone was sticking out.  Melissa had been given painkillers but for once she wasn’t taking them.  She was too busy screaming like a banshee.  Not that anyone could blame her.

Yue became more concerned when Melissa stopped screaming her head off.  The Chief had taken the helm and was full speed ahead to get them back to the base.  Wyland had called in the description of where Yue had ‘seen’ the breaker who’d been responsible for attacking them.  Based on her description a salvo of missiles had been launched.  The breaker should now be nothing more than a grease stain buried beneath tons of rubble.

Yue struggled with the guilt of what’d happened to Melissa.  She was having difficulty concentrating on the other thing that’d just happened.  In the midst of all this chaos she’d been able to locate a breaker from over fifteen miles away.  The infected between them and the breaker had acted like mobile relay stations.  The standard spacing between the infected hinted at something more sinister.  The breaker was the big fat spider in the middle of a web made up of the other infected.

They were the bug caught in the web.  The spider could feel them as they struggled against its minions.  Yue was able to feel the vibrations the spider made as well though.  Once she knew where the spider was, they could turn the tables and swat the spider right out of the web.  The main problem was that the spider was better at this game than they were.  There was also a thousand times more spiders than there were people like Yue.  The smart money was on the spiders.  One thing this had confirmed was that the breakers needed a conduit of crawlerz to be able to sense and control the groupthink from miles away.  Yue felt like that was an important revelation.  Why it was important was eluding her for the moment though.

Yue sat miserably on the marble tiled floor of the tastefully decorated cabin holding Melissa’s hand.  She kept checking to verify there was still a pulse.  Melissa had gone from hysterical to comatose in a frighteningly short amount of time.  It was the blood loss and shock putting her under this time.  Yue didn’t know if that was much of an improvement from being hypnotized by the breaker.

The crewmen moved Yue to the side as they worked to save Melissa’s life.  It was a long bumpy ride back to the base.  They had the base medical staff on the radio instructing them on what to do.  The trooper whose finger had been shot off had been handed a band aid and told to stop whining.  Seeing everyone was working feverishly to save Melissa the trooper was ok with that treatment.  Especially when a few Oxy were produced to help him with the pain.  Thankfully the guy in charge of the drugs on this leg of their cruise was more like Harley than Jeff when it came to dispensing the little white pills.

The sun was coming up by the time they’d gotten Melissa and the other wounded moved into the sick bay back on base.  Yue had insisted on having a couch dragged into Melissa’s room so that she could spend the night watching over her.  She wanted to be there if Melissa woke up struggling with the aftereffects of the breaker’s psychic mind scramble.  Not that PTSD from the psychic battle was going to be a bigger issue than waking up to find out one of her eyes was missing. She still had one eye, but it was so torn up it might as well have been ripped out as well. The doctor wasn’t very optimistic about her ever being able to see again.

Jeff, Drew, Wyland, and Billy were in the galley drinking coffee.  Everyone else had gone to bed with the exception of Harley and Tiff. The two of them were setup outside the room that Melissa was in.  The two of them had volunteered to guard the two witches for a few hours.  Harley was still way too buzzed to fall asleep anyway.  Billy had his suspicions on why Tiff had volunteered to stay with him.  He was beginning to suspect their hard-hitting warrior woman might have a bit of a crush on the dashing gypsy warrior.  He’d kind of hoped she had a thing for guys with large facial tattoos.  Harley and Tiff were both like family to him though.  He wished them nothing but happiness.

Jeff was up because he was worried about Yue.  Drew was worried about Yue and also buzzing like crazy.  He was wondering if someone had given him speed instead of Valium by accident.  He’d told Lisa to go ahead and crash while he walked off his unexpected high.  She’d been beyond exhausted and hadn’t even made the slightest attempt to argue.  Wyland had come with them because Billy had.  The former Delta operator considered intel more valuable than sleep.

“Well, we got our asses handed to us.”  Billy finally said after they’d all been sitting around in silence nursing mugs of chicory flavored black coffee for an awkwardly long time.

“Big time.  There’s got to be a better way.”  Drew said.

“At this point I’m starting to wonder why we don’t just load everybody up on the ships and go take over an island somewhere.”  Jeff said.

That was something they’d all thought about.  Retaking North America when they had barely enough people to populate a mid-sized city seemed overly ambitious.  The more people died in the effort the more foolish it was to keep going.  They were bombing the hell out of the crawlerz every day, but they still weren’t going to be able to get them all.  They didn’t have enough hours in the day for the pilots to fly enough missions to knock out all of the infected anytime this decade.  Compounding that problem was the fact that the bombing runs were attracting infected immigrants from South America.  An entire other continent of crawlerz was wandering up to see them.  The bombing runs to destroy the infected were attracting additional infected.

“It’d need to be a decent sized island or maybe even a chain of islands.”  Wyland said.  He’d been thinking along the same lines for a while now.  The restoration of the United States was looking more and more like a pipe dream.  Continuing to pursue that doomed dream was going to end with them all dead.  Despite wanting to end up dead when he’d initially joined the Suicide Squad he’d gradually come to enjoy living again.  He missed his family every day, but the gut-wrenching pain of losing them had faded with time.

“You’d rather eat coconuts on a beach than spend the rest of your life fighting man eating demons?”  Billy asked Wyland sarcastically.

“It’s going to be a few lifetimes before we wipe these things off the planet.  Assuming they don’t end up winning.”  Wyland answered amidst a huge yawn.

“It might all be a moot point anyway.  I may or may not be working with Drew’s much smarter brother to explore the world and see if there’s places that we could go.”  Jeff answered.  He was holding back a yawn as well.

“Might as well put all those nuclear subs to work instead of just having them cut holes in the water, right?”  Billy asked knowingly.

If they had the resources to check out what was going on in the rest of the world, they should be doing it.  It wasn’t like those subs were doing anybody any good just sitting off the coast.  In the meantime, why not try to make this continent a safer place?  It was never going to be the good old USA again, but they might be able to carve off a section for people to live their lives in.  They were cut off from their individual thoughts when the Marine Lieutenant who’d driven them around in a dragoon the last time that they’d been in Cape May hunting breakers walked in.

“Good morning, Jetson.”  Jeff said.  He was feeling good about remembering the man’s name.  It’d helped that Jetson had a whole bit around it where he said his middle name was actually Elroy.

“Good morning, sir.  Captain Kate told me I might be able to find you in here.  We’ve got a crawler holed up in one of the houses over on the beach.  She thought Yue might be able to help us ferret it out.”  The young lieutenant got right to the point.

“You want us to go wake up my sister to play hide and seek with a crawler?  She spent the night almost dying hunting a breaker.”  Drew responded acidly.  Yue wasn’t a weapon to be reloaded and taken back out on the field after a quick cleaning.  Kate should’ve known better than to even bring it up.

“I wouldn’t bother you, but this is a special case.  The crawler got into a house last night and turned a family.  My men just wasted a couple of kids and their parents.  We need someone to help us kill the crawler, so we don’t have to do it again tomorrow morning.”  Jetson replied stonily.

“What would you do if Yue wasn’t here?”  Jeff asked.  It was a fair question.  One that Drew already knew the answer to.  He wondered if Jeff had asked the question more for Drew’s benefit than to get an answer.

“We’d search the houses manually sir.  We’ve done it before.  Same as you guys have.  If Yue could just pinpoint which house that would help a lot.  Otherwise, we’re searching a ton of houses.  One of those things can blast out of nowhere and take out one of your guys before they can even react.”  Jetson answered.  Wyland, Billy, and Drew all nodded along with that.  They’d each seen it happen enough times to know how dangerous searching houses was.  Drew wasn’t ready to give up yet though.

“You could just have everyone hole up in the barracks and take your time finding the crawler.  Maybe hook up some cameras to track down where it ends up at night.  It might not even be in a house.  It could just be burying itself in the weeds somewhere.”  Drew said.  He realized too late that he’d basically just explained why they needed Yue to help.  The damned thing could be anywhere.  A kid could go to use the slide and end up a slobbering surger all because Drew didn’t think Yue should be woken up so early.  The problem was that everything now a days was a matter of life or death.  When was Yue supposed to get any rest?

“If there’s any way that we can get her to help us we’ll take care of the killing.  We just need her to tell us where it is.”  Jetson repeated.  Before Drew could tell him to pound sand Jeff chimed in.

“We need places for people to feel safe.  Cape May should be one of those places.  Let’s give Yue another few hours to sleep then we’ll grab her and go kill the crawler.  Sound good?”  Jeff asked Jetson.  Both Drew and Jetson were a little embarrassed that neither had thought of giving Yue some more time to sleep.  It wasn’t like the crawler would be strolling around in the daylight.  They had time.

Three hours later Lisa repetitively punched Drew in the arm until he woke up.  He’d come stumbling back to the room as his drug induced alertness wore off.  He’d woken her up and made her promise to wake him up to go hunt some crawler that was hiding out on the Cape.  Then he’d crashed face first into a pillow and immediately fell into the kind of deep sleep that only infants, cats, and Drew could achieve.

Wondering if she was going to have to resort to dumping water on his head again Lisa reached over and plucked a hair out of the back of Drew’s arm.  He hopped up immediately giving her a hurt look.  For her part Lisa was thrilled to have found a technique that she could use in the future to get him out of bed.  It might even lead to his forearms looking slightly less gorilla like.  It was a total win-win.

Drew grabbed the rest of his gear, and they left the room together.  Assembling in the cafeteria they waited with Jetson for the rest of their party to show up.  Jetson let them know that the rest of his team was out searching for the crawler already.  So far, they hadn’t turned up anything.  He was explaining how they were going about searching the soccer field area when Jeff and Yue walked in.

Yue looked miserable.  The smile she shot around the room wasn’t reflected in her eyes.  Jeff informed them they could head out immediately.  Yue was looking to find the crawler and then go back to sleep in the room with Melissa in it.  She was paranoid that Melissa was going to wake up and she wouldn’t be there.  Yue’s stress level decreased slightly when Lisa intuited what was bothering her and offered to go sit in the room with Melissa. That would allow Yue to focus on being used as a psychic monster detector.

Lisa disappeared down the hallway right before the Suicide Squad entourage for Yue showed up.  No way was Billy letting Yue leave the building without some troopers to watch her back.  He’d come personally to supervise the men who were going to be responsible for watching over Yue.  He’d ordered Harley and Tiff to stay with Melissa.  Trying to keep people alive was beginning to require way too much manpower.  Drew sat next to Yue in the golf cart they were taking to ask her how she was doing.

“A lot better than Melissa.”  Yue answered tersely.

“Has she woken back up yet?”  Drew asked curiously.

“The doctor has her on a bunch of stuff to keep her resting.  If she wakes up, she’s just going to freak out.  The longer she’s out the better.”  Yue answered.

“It’s not your fault she’s hurt.”  Drew said quietly.  He twisted around in his seat to face Yue directly when he said it.  He wanted her to know he meant it.  Yue looked at him sadly for a second then turned away.

“Let me do my thing now so I can get back to her.  Tell them to drive slowly by wherever they think the crawler might be hiding out.”  Yue finally said.  Drew relayed that to Jeff in the front of the cart. Jeff relayed the request to Jetson over the military style headsets they were using.

Yue started doing some deep breathing and mumbling to herself.  She was working on getting in a receptive mode to pick up whatever signals the crawler might be sending out.  Even if the crawler was just lying under some bushes snoozing somewhere it’d still be broadcasting to the groupthink.  They’d been driving around for a good thirty minutes when Yue emerged from her semi-trance to direct them towards a house on the corner of the street.

“Are you getting something?”  Jeff turned his head to ask her.

“Stop up there by that shed.”  Yue directed.

Jeff drove them up to the garden shed Yue had indicated and stopped.  It was a small wooden building in the process of falling apart.  It was barely big enough to shove a lawnmower and some garden tools in.  The overgrown state of the yard stood as proof that no one had bothered taking the lawnmower out of the little building for a very long time.  Yue hopped out of the golf cart with her pistol in hand.  Before anyone could join her, she walked over to the shed.  With zero warning given she started slamming rounds through the flimsy piece of rotting wood that served as the door.

Experienced though they were most of them still watched slack jawed as the door to the shed flew off and a dirt covered crawler blasted out of the opening to land on the door now covering Yue.  Drew, Jeff, and one of the squad troopers were on top of the crawler almost immediately.  They jumped back just as fast as Yue finished off the rounds in her magazine.  The bullets easily piercing the thin wood and blowing chunks out of the crawler on top of the door.  The crawler rolled off the door and swiped for her from the side.  It was bleeding from a few places but nothing critical must have been hit yet.

Drew slid on his knees to put his pistol within a few inches of the crawlerz head.  Quickly checking to make sure he wasn’t going to shoot Yue by accident he put two rounds into the crawler’s cranium.  By this time the rest of their party had joined them.  The door was picked up and flung to the side. Everyone gathered around to check and make sure Yue was ok.  Not only was she ok she was laughing her ass off.  It was then that Drew remembered Yue was able to control the crawlerz.  There was no reason it should’ve been able to get the drop on her like that.  His big sis must be more exhausted than they’d realized.  As if to emphasize that Yue stopped with the crazy cackling and started sobbing into Jeff’s shoulder instead.

The ride back to the base was as awkward as it was silent.  No one could wrap their brains around what’d just happened. Why had Yue decided to needlessly endanger herself and everyone else by engaging the crawler like that?  Everyone kept their mouths shut out of fear that if they opened them, they’d end up yelling at Yue.  She was immensely important to the campaign against the crawlerz.  Despite knowing how critical she was to them she’d still decided to risk her life to take out a single lone crawler of zero strategic importance.

Once they got back to the base Yue left to go check in on Melissa.  Drew started to follow her when Jeff grabbed his shoulder and shook his head.  Drew nodded and turned back towards his own room instead.  Jeff was right.  Yue wanted to be alone.  If she’d wanted one of them to come with her, she’d have asked.  She wasn’t shy about that sort of thing.  She was obviously working out some stuff.  Most people didn’t vent their frustrations by going toe to toe with psychotic garden shed demons, but most people weren’t powerful world saving witches either.

Drew went to his room and smashed his face back into his pillow.  It felt like he’d only been gone for a few minutes.  Despite Jeff telling him not to follow Yue he might’ve gone anyway except that he knew Harley, Tiff, and Lisa were down there already.  Now that they were back to ‘civilization’ there was a phone sitting in his room. They could reach Drew easily enough if he was needed.  With that reassurance to himself that it was ok he closed his eyes and fell instantly asleep.

Chapter 5:  Another Nose Candy Kind of Night

Drew watched as Yue took her spot on the bow.  Lisa handed him his rifle and told him to get ready.  Wyland had already sprawled out on the deck behind the stock of the 240.  They were cruising the Chesapeake Bay tonight.  They were about a hundred yards off the coast while Yue chanted and did her best to turn her mind into an HD antenna for crawler TV.  They were by Annapolis when Yue signaled for the Chief to bring them in closer.

It was the sixth time they’d been out since Melissa had gotten her eyes gouged.  They’d bagged at least one breaker on each outing.  The previous night they’d managed to get two of the mass murdering monstrosities.  Yue had been disappointed by the results.  In the back of her mind, she’d been hoping that there were far fewer breakers than she’d originally guessed.  The way it looked now she may have grossly underestimated the number of crawlerz that’d evolved into the next generation version of killing machine.

The crew was having issues staying motivated.  It was like they were trying to clear off a beach by carrying away handfuls of sand.  The call they’d had with LeBron earlier in the week hadn’t helped on the motivational front.  He’d let them know that the crawlerz coming up from South America appeared to be attracted by the noise from all the bombing runs.  It was like more sand just kept washing up onto the beach they were trying to clear.

They were hunting now more out of a sense of duty than because they thought it’d do any good.  None of them really cared about trying to clear out the land so that their great great grandchildren might have a chance to live free.  It’s not in the scope of human nature for most people to be able to put off their own self-interest for the sake of children they’d never even meet.

In that same conversation LeBron had provided some hints at the side project he was working on with Jeff.  They’d found some locations where they’d be able to clear out large swaths of land to settle on.  The crawlerz might not even be a huge issue.  The bigger issue would be the people who’d already settled in those places not wanting to share.  That shouldn’t be a problem considering the armament they could bring to bear.  There may be some ethical issues with that, but end of the world ethics had evolved to meet the times.  Might makes right was the new norm.

The Chief brought them within about fifty yards of the shore.  That was about as close as he was willing to get.  Even at that distance they were all weary of infected long jumpers.  Wyland keyed off Yue.  When she started twitching her fingers, he let off a few bursts from the 240.  He was sure to aim high so that he didn’t accidently kill whatever infected was sending out the broadcast Yue was picking up on.  Every breaker they tracked down and killed was one less breaker that could swing by Cape May with an army of thousands to take down the base.  That was their main motivation for being out there.  Keeping the area around the base a little bit safer.  Drew had coined the phrase for what they were doing as establishing a ‘breaker buffer’.

“They’re trapped!”  Yue stumbled slightly as she came out of her trance like state.

“Who’s trapped?”  Harley asked curiously.  He was standing behind her in a trench coat chewing on one of those ridiculously long Slim Jims.  No worries about those things ever expiring.

“I don’t know.  Crawlerz have people pinned up in a house with a red door.”  Yue answered.

“Close by?”  Harley asked.  He was wondering how many houses had red doors.  Drew and Lisa came closer to hear Yue’s answer.  Wyland was sitting up attentively as well.  On the bridge everyone was looking out curiously at the impromptu meeting happening outside.  Jeff was on his way out when Yue went back into her trance.

“What’s up?”  Jeff asked the small group of people staring at his girlfriend.

“Yue says there’s some refugees who might be in trouble.  House they’re in has a red door.”  Harley said around a mouthful of the spicy preserved sausage stick.

“Sounds about right.  I assume she’s gone back in now to try and get some more details.  Obviously, we’re going to risk our lives trying to save a bunch of strangers, right?”  Jeff asked rhetorically.  Harley shrugged with a wry look on his face.  That about summed it up.

“We haven’t almost been ripped limb from limb in like a week.”  Drew said nonchalantly.

“It’s not like the house having a red door is enough for us to find them anyway.”  Lisa added.  Like their lives didn’t suck enough Yue had to always be pulling stuff like this on them.

“It’s a boathouse.  There’s a dock outside with a sailboat that’s tipped over with the mast sticking up at a weird angle.  The crawlerz are on the roof trying to beat their way in.  There’re definitely refugees inside.  They’re still alive, I think.  We need to save them.”  Yue said.  She was trying to stay calm while she provided the data to everyone, but her voice was cracking.  The refugees didn’t have much time.  The groupthink she was getting was full of images of wood splintering.  The crawlerz had been driven into a frenzy by the sight of the humans disappearing into the boathouse right before the sun went down.

“These boathouses are built pretty solid.  It should be able to take the beating.”  Jeff said.  If he could avoid a midnight battle, he was all for it.  Especially if he could do it in a guilt free manner.  He was even kind of confident that he was speaking the truth.  Boathouses were built to withstand storms.  Of course, there’d been tons of storms with no repairs done since the fall of civilization…

“I need you guys on the spotlight.  We’re looking for a boathouse with a dock coming out of it. There should be a sailboat that’s kind of flipped onto the dock with the mast sticking up at a weird angle.”  Yue called out to the men hanging out by the bridge.  She completely ignored Jeff.  She’d felt the way the wood cracked when the crawler slammed its hand into it.  She’d felt how the roof moved when struck.  The smell of rot was pervasive in the groupthink.  Plus, if a breaker showed up anytime soon the people inside would be opening the door and walking out to be eaten anyway.  Unless they were higher than the purple haired hippies in the front row at a Grateful Dead concert.

Sensing the futility of arguing Jeff went back to the bridge to relay their new objective to the Chief.  Not that anyone was going to get overly stressed about it.  They were all chilling on enough Xanax and Valium to handle pretty much any bad news with grace and dignity.

“Why the hell would we do that stupid shit?”  The Chief erupted when Jeff told him they were going to go deeper into the area around Annapolis to try and find a specific dock.  It was going to require them passing under bridges and getting unpleasantly close to the shoreline.  Their salt and pepper haired skipper was being asked to go against all of the rules they’d come up with to keep from dying on these little dusk to dawn slaughter cruises.  These last few trips had been relatively painless.  Yue had been the one dealing with the psychic stuff.  No one else onboard had gotten close enough to see the infected without using the fancy binoculars.

“Tonight’s going to be a rescue instead of a hunt.”  Jeff said trying to calm the old sailor down.  Maybe he needed an extra Xanax.

“Like we’re not going to end up neck deep in those man-eating freaks.”  The Chief muttered.  He continued cursing under his breath while steering them close enough to the docks to look for the landmarks Yue had provided. When they found the place, it wouldn’t be the mast that was going to give it away.  It’d be mob of undead bastards crawling all over it.

Back outside Yue was thinking the same thing.  She kept it to herself though.  Asking everyone to look for a crooked mast jutting out above a dock sounded a lot better than looking for a boathouse coated with crawlerz.  They’d see for themselves soon enough how much rescuing these people really needed.  She was picking up the images now without even having to focus.  They must be getting close.

“Is that it?”  Lisa asked pointing towards a dock up ahead.  Lisa had commandeered the binoculars. She’d placed Drew on spotlight duty.

Yue looked in the direction Lisa was pointing. The vibes she was picking up were definitely increasing.  The overexcited crawlerz on the dock weren’t even paying attention to the boat pulling up.  There were hundreds of the monsters throwing themselves at the boathouse.  Occasionally one or two of them would fall off the dock and flounder around in the water.  A few of them had actually managed to sink and resurface inside the boat house.  The ones who’d surfaced inside had been killed.  They’d still had time to share the sight of uninfected humans to the groupthink before they died.

The quick snapshots Yue was picking up showed that the group in the boathouse wasn’t afraid to defend themselves.  All of the encounters with the half-drowned crawlerz who surfaced inside the small building ended in a muzzle flash.  The people inside the small building knew better than to give a crawler time to spring in the small, enclosed space.  Yue couldn’t make out how many people were inside the building, but she thought it was more than two.

“They’re inside that building, aren’t they?”  Harley asked with a sigh.  Of course, they were.  You couldn’t even see the boathouse in the dark.  All you could see was a wall of tortured humanity crawling around in the shape of a boathouse.  The infected were illuminated now by both spotlights being aimed at them.  The Chief had pulled back from the boathouse, so they were out of the typical jumping range.  Not to say that one of the beasts might not go for a record and smash into them regardless.

“Could we call for backup?  Maybe get those Black Hawk guys to swing by and thin out the herd?”  Drew asked.

“I don’t see how they do that without hitting the boathouse.  If it takes rounds, then it’s going to fall apart.  Those things will be inside in a heartbeat.”  Wyland said.  He’d been thinking along the same lines.  He’d concluded that they were going to have to do this the medieval way.  They were going to need to get a witch involved.  He didn’t want to be the one to say it though.  Mostly because whoever brought it up was automatically volunteered as the person for Yue to chew on to get her spell casting going.  The idea of letting Yue gnaw on his arm freaked him out.

“This is going to be more of a scalpel than a hammer then.”  Harley said.  They wouldn’t be getting any outside help on this one.  It was going to be small arms and whatever Yue was able to whip up in her head.

“You guys might want to do a line or something.  I think there’s a breaker coming to the party.”  Yue said breathlessly.  The breaker had just ruthlessly taken control of the groupthink.  They were too far out in the bay for the others to tell the difference.  Yue was tuning in directly though, so she got to feel the full blast.  She hadn’t been trying to put her own feedback into the groupthink yet so the breaker shouldn’t be aware of them.  Unless the breaker saw the twin beams of light from the powerful spotlights on the boat.  The boat that was a mere fifty yards from the end of the dock.

They’d been trying to get control of the rampant insanity of everyone laughing like hyenas when they rolled into battle.  Valium remained a tried-and-true way to block most of the bad karma put out by the crawlerz.  It didn’t lend itself well to getting your game face on though.  In an effort to expand their pharmaceutical counter measures Harley had gotten access to the evidence room at Cape May.  Given the fact that it sat at the entrance to New Jersey there was plenty of product available for them to experiment with.

Harley setup everyone with lines of cocaine to help keep the breaker out of their heads.  Everyone except Harley still felt a little weird about snorting coke before going into battle.  Yue had never even touched any drugs before all this started.  She’d been too afraid of the look of disappointment that would’ve crossed her mom and dad’s faces if she’d been caught.  As an athlete Drew had avoided drugs as well for the most part.  If Harley hadn’t been there, they’d have been fumbling for how to even do the cocaine.  It wasn’t like they could YouTube it.

Seeing the bits of white powder on everyone’s nose Lisa winced in disgust.  She was anti-drug for the most part but understood the need.  Still, she couldn’t help but think that having everyone get high before going after a dock full of ravenous monsters wasn’t the best idea.  Steeling herself for yet another late night of lunacy Lisa walked into the bridge to get her share of the booger sugar.

Chapter 6:  The Boat House Blitz

“Woah!  Woah!”  Drew was shaking his head trying to clear out the sudden rush of lightheadedness from mixing cocaine, Valium, and whatever else Jeff had handed them earlier.  He’d stopped asking what the little pills were and just shoved them in his mouth.  Lisa worried about the drugs enough for both of them.  It wasn’t like they were going to live long enough to have to worry about long term effects or anything.

For her part Lisa had no idea why people did drugs for fun.  She absolutely hated the blurry out of control way they made her feel.  If people thought drugs made them look cool, then they needed to check out the people around her.  Everyone was shaking their heads and muttering weird thing to themselves.  Everyone but Harley anyway.  He could probably snort a bottle of rat poison and be fine.

Yue was the only one on the boat not under the influence of any sort of narcotics.  As a cold wash of fear filled her belly she was once again jealous of the others.  She was about to have hell explode in her head.  There was no telling what kind of horror movie moves the breaker was about to throw at her.  The rest of the party boat was just going to have to deal with your normal everyday assault on superpowered psychotic killers.  Yue longed to be able to charge into the fray with her rifle blasting.  A physical assault was a million times better than what she was about to go through.

The Chief had them moving forward so slowly that it was hard to tell that they were actually moving.  A few of the crawlerz had finally taken notice of the bright lights heading their way.  They looked at the lights curiously before diverting their attention back to where the groupthink assured them victims were waiting to be mauled.  Wyland was waiting for the word to unleash the big gun.  He didn’t know if it was the chemical cocktail he’d just imbibed or if he was picking up some of what the crawlerz were putting out, but he was starting to feel a little off.

Jeff joined them out on deck as Harley rolled up his sleeves.  Jeff, Drew, and Billy were each covered in scar tissue from Yue chowing down to enable her to broadcast visions of eating flesh to the groupthink.  Everyone including Yue kept hoping she’d figure out how to fake that particular part of her power.  Drew had suggested she should get one of those turkey legs like they sell in the theme parks and try ripping into that instead.

Yue stood between Harley and Jeff.  She was chanting as her white streaked hair blew in the cold breeze.  Wyland’s finger tightened on the trigger when he saw her pulling Harley’s arm up to her mouth.  The plan was simple.  Yue was going to put a vision of herself munching down on a living human at the end of the dock.  The ghouls crawling all over the boathouse like gigantic fire ants would then run for the end of the dock.  Wyland would kill the ones who didn’t fall into the bay and drown.

Once all the crawlerz were turned into floating corpses they’d dock the boat and rescue the people in the boat house.  It’d all sounded great when Jeff had summed it up for them earlier.  None of them, including Jeff, were under the illusion that it would actually work out that way.  The loud thud of a body bouncing off the hull of the boat announced the commencement of the night’s festivities.

“Where is it?”  Lisa asked wide eyed.  She was spinning in a circle looking for the crawler she’d just heard slam into their boat.

“That one bounced off the side.  They’ll be landing on the boat next.  Wyland feel free to unleash the Kraken.”  Jeff ordered.

Even in her semi-trance state Yue cringed at the Kraken comment.  She wondered how long her socially awkward beau had been saving that one up.  Her amusement at Jeff’s attempt to sound cool dissipated as she felt the powerful hum of the breaker resonating in the groupthink.

Darkness.  Yue was falling with nothing to hold on to.  Yue fought against the psychic attack.  She couldn’t pull out of it.  The fall ended as the breaker wanted it to end.  Splashing down into a deep cesspool of some kind of gel.  Trapped in the gel unable to breathe.  Yue struggled clawing at the gel as her lungs burned from lack of oxygen.  She couldn’t get out of it.  Gone was the belief that this was all happening in her head.  The pain and the suffocation were real.  Yue lost all her resolve in an effort just to stay alive.  Animal instincts kicked in as she grasped at everything around her.  Then there was just blessed darkness.  It was cool and welcoming.

“Get us further out in the bay!”  Jeff screamed.  Yue was lying on the deck unmoving.  She didn’t appear to be trying to breathe.  She’d been gasping like a fish out of water for about thirty seconds then stopped moving.

The Chief spun the wheel and worked the throttle to get them out of range of the broadcasting breaker.  All of them had felt some of the darkness that Yue had been subjected to.  Even with the smorgasbord of drugs they’d consumed the powerful hallucinations had leaked through.  When they were a hundred yards past the end of the dock Yue finally started breathing on her own again.  One of the Coast Guardsmen had started CPR on her after a terror-stricken Jeff had yanked the man over and thrown him at the deck to help her.

A gasping Yue came back to life in front of their eyes.  She sat up and stared around at all of them.  Not trusting herself to speak she took several deep breaths and then drank deeply out of the cup of water Jeff offered her.

“Drug me up.”  Were the first words out of her mouth once she trusted herself to talk.

“What?  Why?”  Jeff asked in a surprised tone of voice.

“The breaker’s too strong.  We’re going to have to go in guns blazing and hope for the best.  Those people aren’t going to last much longer if we don’t do something.”  Yue said.

Yue looked up wondering what was taking so long.  No one had made a move to go grab some drugs for her.  They were all standing around staring down at her.  Yue made a face and raised her hands in a WTF gesture.

“We can’t just go in guns blazing.  There’s too many of them.  We’ll lose.”  Drew said slowly.  He wanted it to sink in and for her to understand.  They would all die.  The people in the boat house included.  Their only chance was if she could pull off her special brand of magic.

Yue turned her face away.  Tears streamed down her cheeks.  She knew they had no chance against that many crawlerz in a head-to-head confrontation.  At least not if they wanted to take the dock in time to save the people inside the boat house.  She couldn’t subject herself to that breaker again though.  It was too powerful.  Feeling the weight of all the pitying eyes on her she tried to wipe off the tears and snot.

“We got to go out.  We don’t have to come back, right?”  Drew said with a grin.

“Me personally when I go out, I always plan on coming back.”  Lisa said intentionally trying to defray her boyfriend from getting everyone hyped up.  He could spout all the mottoes he wanted to.  What they needed to do was call the suicide hotline and speak to an agent before charging that damned dock again.

“Are there kids in that building?”  Harley asked.

“Maybe.  I couldn’t really tell.”  Yue said.  She wasn’t going to lie to them to get them to do the right thing.

“Screw it.”  Harley said putting his big hand into the middle of the loose circle the group had formed.  Yue put her hand on his and smiled at him.  Not to be outdone Jeff put his hand in the middle after giving Yue a kiss on the top of her head.  If Yue was willing to risk her life for these strangers, no way was Jeff going to stand on the sidelines.  Even though he knew the smart thing to do right now was order the Chief to point the boat the other way and call it a night.

“I’m not getting up to do the hand thing but I’m in.”  Wyland called out from his position behind the 240.

“No reason to suddenly stop doing stupid shit.”  Billy said with a wicked grin shoving his hand in.  Not that there had ever been a question there.  Where Yue went so did the tattooed leader of her infamous squad of bodyguards.

“Why do you guys all want to kill yourselves so damned bad!  I didn’t sign up for this!”  Lisa yelled loudly with spit flying out of her mouth.  No one said anything.  Lisa looked around with her eyes flashing.  She was already pissed off from being forced to take all kinds of drugs and now they wanted her to go along with this.

“We could call in the other boat to come pick you up…”  Jeff offered trying to find a compromise.

“Shut up Gumby.  If you dumbasses are going in, then so am I.”  Lisa said turning her laser eyed glare on Jeff.  At the risk of Lisa’s wrath Drew and Harley both started giggling at Lisa calling Jeff Gumby.  She flipped her gaze over to them then started cackling away herself.  Watching and listening from inside the bridge the Chief wondered if he should grab a lifejacket.  Chances were good that he was going to end up swimming for his life before the sun came up.

Harley quickly crushed up a brain numbing line of various pills mixed with some of the various powders from the evidence locker.  Snorting it would get the drugs in Yue’s system way faster than taking them orally.  She did enough of it to hopefully erect a mental steel wall between her and the groupthink.  When she was done, they went back out on the bow to wait for it to kick in.  Inside the bridge the grizzled Chief went ahead and did the rest of the lines.  He figured what the hell since they were all about to die anyway.

“Once that kicks in, you’re just another gun you know.”  Harley stated while they waited.

Yue didn’t respond.  She felt the crushing weight of the guilt of not being able to use her powers to make this whole operation a million times easier.  If the breaker hadn’t been too much for her, she could also have made it safer.  There was a really good chance some of them were about to die.  There were going to be deadly demons flying through the air to massacre them in a matter of minutes.

Jeff didn’t agree with Harley’s assessment of Yue just being another gun.  Yue was good in a scrape.  She could hold her own when the bullets started flying.  The problem was that everyone would be keeping one eye on the enemy and one eye on her.  She was going to make the rest of them less likely to survive the coming confrontation.  When she leveraged her psychic sensitivity, she was a major force multiplier for them.  Once the drugs kicked in, she was going to be more of a distraction than an asset.  He really should trade her out for a couple of the Marines on the backup vessel trailing them.  Instead, he got ready to put his cards down and go all in on this assault.

“You ready?”  Jeff asked Yue.  She was huddling close to him with her hands shoved into his pockets.  Even with the gloves and thick jackets it was still cold out on the bay at night.  Jeff could feel her hands trembling.  Whether it was from the concoction Harley had put together for her, fear, or the cold he had no idea.

Yue took her hands out of Jeff’s pockets, planted a cold kiss on his cheek, and swung her rifle around.  Taking that as a ‘yes’ Jeff gave the order to begin the assault.  They’d try and keep quiet until they were close enough for Wyland to start working the 240 without accidentally sending rounds through the boat house itself.  They didn’t need Yue to tell them that the crawlerz were still fixated on the refugees huddled together inside the boat house.

The plan was pretty much the same except that now instead of Yue getting the crawlerz to fling themselves off the dock after imaginary bait they’d be using themselves as the bait.  Once they got close enough to the crawlerz, it was a certainty that they’d get more than their fair share of attention.

When they were about twenty yards out Wyland opened up.  He’d been waiting until he could be reasonably sure not to accidentally kill the people in the boathouse.  Everyone else followed his lead.  They sent an avalanche of lead skimming the air above the dock to crash into the tangled mass of infected storming the boathouse.  The crawlerz noted the noise and the lights.  Even the ones close to breaking into the boathouse paused to see what was going on.  The hundreds swarming around the other side of the dock surged forward at the sudden sound of gunfire.  The sound that promised fresh uninfected flesh to feast on.

Rather than holding them back the breaker spurred the mob forward.  They stampeded down the dock intent on sinking their teeth into the uninfected flesh they could all clearly see in the groupthink.  The powerful breaker whipped them into an even more intense bloodlust.  The monsters leapt towards the twin beams pointed at them.  They shrugged off the bullets ripping their flesh from their shattered bones.  Nothing mattered but getting to the boat and devouring the fresh flesh on it.

Even drugged up Yue could tell that they’d made a huge mistake.  She wasn’t the only one to notice the mob of monsters snowballing towards them wasn’t being slowed by the rounds they were pouring into them.  They must’ve killed a hundred of the beasts already without even putting a dent in the ones coming at them.  Yue tried to slip into the groupthink, but that part of her brain was too foggy from the drugs.  She watched in horror as the crawlerz leapt into the air like they’d been born on Krypton.  She prayed while she simultaneously cursed the beasts coming at them.  Her family stood by her side spraying bullets into the air at the demons raining down on them.

Luckily for them the Chief wasn’t trying to get killed if he could help it.  Seeing they were about to be capsized under a wave of the living dead he pushed the throttle to full ahead and spun the wheel hard.  Everyone on deck went tumbling backwards as the boat’s powerful engines sent them rocketing sideways.  Moments later a string of crawlerz bellyflopped harmlessly into the rooster tail the yacht was kicking up.

A few of the crawlerz managed to stick the landing despite the boat suddenly changing course and rapidly accelerating.  Wyland had his sidearm out and was blasting the ones who hit the deck and held on.  He was the only person who hadn’t taken a nasty spill thanks to already being in a prone position to fire the 240.  After a fierce but brief battle with the infected on the deck they found themselves once more retreating out into the bay.  The deck had a few corpses on it and there was blood flowing but none of it was uninfected blood.  Harley and another trooper busied themselves tossing the bodies over the side to clear off the deck.

Chapter 7:  Third Times the Charm

“We have to try again!  They don’t have much time left!”  Yue yelled.  She was losing it.  All she could think of was how those people were going to die because she hadn’t been strong enough to handle the breaker.

“We’ve gotten our asses kicked twice already.  What’s going to be different this time?”  Jeff asked miserably.  If the Chief hadn’t reacted so quickly, they’d be dead already.  Trusting in blind luck for a third run seemed a little much.

“What if we call the Black Hawk guys in?”  Lisa asked.

“I thought they’d hit the boathouse?”  Yue asked sharply.

“Maybe.  They’d definitely hit a lot of the infected.”  Lisa said shrugging.

“Yeah, and the people in the boathouse can swim.  I’m getting the Black Hawk to head this way.”  Jeff said excitedly.  Bringing in air support may be just what the doctor ordered.

Yue wanted to argue.  She wanted to point out that the by the time the Black Hawk got here the people inside the boathouse may be dead already.  She couldn’t make herself do it.  She’d been the one who failed tonight.  She was the one they depended on to get in the heads of the infected and make things happen.  This should’ve been a straightforward raid for her.  How could she ask them to try going in again when they’d already been roundly defeated twice?  She knew better than to question their bravery.  By hesitating to make a third run they were showing their sanity.

It was time for a Hail Mary.  Staring through the binoculars Drew confirmed the boathouse was once again swarming with the infected.  The Chief brought them a little closer so that Wyland could start surgically slinging rounds downrange.  Billy and a few of the others tried to join in as well.  Between the limited visibility and the motion of the ocean they weren’t scoring a lot of points though.

After what felt like forever the sound of a Black Hawk swooping in was beyond welcome.  Yue just hoped it wasn’t too late.  Drew didn’t think the infected had gotten into the boathouse yet.  He was basing that on the fact that he didn’t see less of the infected on the dock.  There were several reasons his assumption could be wrong. Yue preferred just to go with the glass being half-full.

A few yards away on the bridge Jeff was on the radio communicating with the Black Hawk pilot.  Not that there was a whole lot of coordination to do.  Jeff basically wanted the pilot to go kill as many infected as possible without blowing up the boathouse.  The pilot was trying to explain that once they started ripping rounds into the dock there was no telling what was going to happen.  They also wouldn’t be able to do anything about the crawlerz all over the roof.  Jeff told the pilot to do his best then told the Chief they’d be going in for a third time in support of the Black Hawk.  The Chief grunted his acknowledgement while idly wondering if they had any more of that magical white powder handy.  Hopefully the pilot of the Black Hawk had done a few lines before coming out.

Jeff handed the radio to the crewman behind him on the bridge so that he could walk out to take his place on the deck with Yue.  He wished she’d let him talk her into staying somewhere safe during the coming assault.  It was going to be full of fire and teeth and random death.  They were going to be speeding into the mouth of hell to try and rescue an unknown number of strangers who were most likely already dead.  If they did rescue the refugees trapped inside, then those people were going to owe everything to a girl they’d never met.  A haunted young woman who’d never tell them the extent of the sacrifices they’d made to come to their aid.

The Black Hawk rotated in the air and headed for the dock.  The Chief slowly took them in the same direction.  Everyone who could find a pair of binoculars was watching the Black Hawk lazily hover above the end of the dock.  Without warning fire flashed from the front of the helicopter as it’s chain gun ripped apart the dock and everything on it.  The pilot steadily walked the stream of bullets up the dock until they reached the boathouse.

The Black Hawk ceased firing when he got close to the boathouse.  The pilot flew forward to open fire on the crowd of infected massing by the base of the pier.  The ones who hadn’t been able to fit on the overcrowded dock yet.  The massive firepower of the Black Hawk was turning the mob of monsters into piles of hair covered hamburger.  Yue was starting to think that this plan may actually work when the Black Hawk began jerking around in the air erratically.  The attack craft spun in a circle before banking hard to the left and crashing into a row of houses across the street from the docks.

A massive explosion lit up the night sky.  The pilot might as well have crashed into a firework warehouse for all the chance they had of surviving.  Pieces of debris rained down on the dock.  A few pieces of wreckage thrown into the air by the explosion hit the water around their boat.  In silent shock they watched as the fire raged.

“What the hell just happened?”  Jeff finally asked in a pseudo whisper.  It’d been going so well.  The Black Hawk had been deconstructing the dock and removing crawlerz from all around the target area.  Other than crashing into the ground and exploding the pilot had done a phenomenal job.

“The breaker must’ve gotten to the pilot.  They must not have done enough drugs to block it out or maybe they just flew too close…”  Yue shrugged sadly.  The Black Hawk could be easily replaced.  There were plenty of the aircraft sitting around gathering dust in hangars all across the country.  There was a serious shortage of pilots though.  Especially ones with the guts to fly into situations like this one.

“Look!”  Jeff pointed at the line of infected running away from the boathouse towards the fire engulfing the row of houses the Black Hawk had gone down into.

The Chief must’ve noticed as well.  He was bringing them in once more.  Pieces of wood from the shredded dock banged against the hull as they got closer.  A few crawlerz were still on top of the boathouse ineffectually slamming their limbs into it.  At some point they were going to get lucky and find a way in.  It wouldn’t have surprised Yue to see a bunch of the infected driven by the powerful breaker dive into the water and surface in the boathouse.  A concerted effort to breach the boathouse would be way more effective than the random crawlerz who’d surfaced inside so far.

They were close enough to flip the spotlights around and start sniping individual crawlerz on the roof.  They needed to figure out a way to let the people inside the boathouse know to dive in and swim towards them.  They’d cover the swimmers until they could pull them onboard and get the hell out of there.  If the people inside would come out right now, then there was a good chance they could salvage this operation.  The explosions from the Black Hawk crash were putting out some serious decibels.

The Chief took them in way closer than he felt was prudent.  They were close enough now where the crawlerz wouldn’t have to go into Olympic long jump mode to reach them.  For the adrenalized freaks it’d be a skip and a hop to board the boat.  The Chief wasn’t willing to leave empty handed though.  Not after their friends in the Black Hawk had just eaten it trying to assist them.  The Chief was a seasoned Coast Guardsman.  He was old school when it came to rescues.  You didn’t stop trying until you’d verified there was no hope.

“Can we get right next to the boathouse?”  Billy asked.  He was holding up a cordless drill with a large bit in his hand.  It was crude but it’d work.

Instead of answering out loud the Chief just tapped the throttle to bring them up against the side of the large structure.  They didn’t have long to communicate with the people inside.  There was no way to know how long before the dock would be swarming with the infected again.  Jeff had mentioned diving in and surfacing inside to let the survivors know to come out.  Yue had squashed that immediately by saying anyone who surfaced inside that boathouse was going to be served a lead sandwich the second they broke the surface.

Billy stood on the bow as the Chief maneuvered the boat through the flotsam and jetsam from the destroyed dock.  Once they were close enough Billy leaned over with Harley holding him by the belt and drilled a hole through the wall.  It took a minute to get through the layered wall.  The second he was through he wasted no time in yelling for the people inside to come out.

“Hurry them up!”  Harley hissed loudly bringing his AK-47 to his shoulder.  The crawlerz had decided to come back and see what was going on.  Harley started popping off single shots while Billy continued yelling through the hole he’d drilled in the wall.  If the people inside wanted a ride they needed to come now.

“We tried.”  The Chief whispered under his breath reaching for the throttle to get them out of there.  They’d be swarmed if they were still sitting there in a minute or two.  The Chief ignored the mild drama taking place behind him as Jeff dragged Yue off the deck into the relative safety of the bridge.  She wanted to be out there mixing it up.  Jeff was clearly not in the mood to let her play at being an infantryman any longer.

Everyone else was spread out taking shots at the fast-moving shadows coming for them.  The Chief was about to push the throttle forward and get them out of there when Lisa stuck her head inside the bridge.  She’d been working a spotlight around the outside of the boathouse to see if anyone came out.  Before she even spoke, the Chief intuited that she was going to tell him she’d seen something.

“They’re coming out!  Can we get close again?”  Lisa said excitedly.

Not bothering to waste time arguing the Chief tapped the throttle to get them moving back towards the boathouse.  Lisa tracked the people coming though the water while everyone else continued to blast away.  The junior Coast Guardsmen who’d been hanging out on the bridge were ordered by the Chief to help bring in the swimmers.  They hurried to comply.

“We should be out there!”  Yue hissed at Jeff.  He kept a firm grip on her arm.

“You’re way too important to risk.  Besides the guys out on deck right now are the best in the world at this kind of stuff.  We’d just get in their way.”  Jeff said trying to assuage Yue’s monumental guilt that was driving her to get out on deck and help.  Neither of them liked standing idly by while others were in harm’s way.  It was necessary though.  Especially if it was the only way to keep Yue safe.

Out on the deck Wyland and Billy were slinging rounds at the approaching crawlerz as fast as they could.  Harley and Drew were standing over the Coast Guard guys who were trying to help the refugees get up on the boat.  It was midnight madness as they fought like crazy to save the trio who’d emerged from underneath the boathouse.  A leaping crawler landed on one of the survivors bearing him down into the deep.  More crawlerz began jumping in the water trying to get at the swimmers.  Their normal fear of the water overcome by the proximity of fresh meat.

In the end they were able to rescue one young woman who was lucky enough not to be ridden like a boogieboard by the leaping crawlerz.  Drew helped pull her up on deck as the Chief took them back out into the bay.  More crawlerz continued to spring high into the air coming for them.  In the darkness with all the drugs coursing through his system Drew felt invincible.  He stood tall on the deck with his M-16 tucked into this shoulder letting loose at anything he saw moving towards them.  He’d left the woman they pulled out of the freezing water to the care of the Coasties who’d helped him pull her out.

The gun smoke was thick in the night air.  The spotlight refracting off the thick smoke made it almost impossible to see.  The continuous rumble of the 240 made it impossible for anyone to hear anything.  Wyland was pouring shots at anything he thought might be a risk to them.  He was filling up any empty airspace with rounds on the off chance that a crawler might come flying through the air and collide with the bullets he was putting out there.

The young survivor that Drew had helped pull onboard had kicked a crawler off of her while she was struggling to get to the boat.  She’d barely even registered the sharp pain in her ankle as she was pulled on board.  The sharp pain right where her hiking boot met her jeans.  She’d been just as surprised as the young man checking her out to see the blood soaking her sock.  That surprise had quickly turned to horror when she lunged forward biting him on the forehead and nose.

Drew remained oblivious to the bloody scene playing out behind him as he focused on making sure no airborne crawlerz dropped in on them.  The young woman turned surger streaked quietly across the deck to pounce on a completely unsuspecting Wyland.  Lisa opened fire on the infected Coast Guardsmen munching on his shipmate’s neck. The man fell to the deck dead. Blood spurted into the air from the man that he’d attacked like someone had broken a sprinkler head.  Drew, Harley, and the others continued scanning the dock while the real danger rampaged behind them.

Lisa stepped over the bodies of the two men she’d just killed and watched in horror as the recently turned surger savaged Wyland’s back.  She was about to pull the trigger when Wyland managed to fling the infected girl off his back and plunge a knife repeatedly into her torso.  Once the surger stopped moving Wyland hopped to his feet and smiled at Lisa like nothing had happened.  He tossed her the peace sign then turned and dove off the boat.  Lisa ran to the bow and sighted in on him as he swam with powerful strokes towards the shore.

A conversation flashed through her mind from weeks before.  Sitting around the back of a truck while the crawlerz beat on the walls they’d talked about what they wanted if they were turned.  Drew and Harley had immediately said they would want to be shot in the head before they could hurt anybody.  Wyland had hesitated to throw in with the shoot me immediately crowd.  He’d only recently made peace with outliving his family.  He’d only recently decided it was ok to live again.

“Screw it.  If there’s a safe way to let me dive into it then what the hell.  It’s not like it’s easy to find victims anymore anyways.  Might be neat to go on a permanent trip like that.”  Wyland had tossed out to the laughter and boos of everyone else in the truck.  He’d taken the abuse good naturedly.

Given how drug fueled their lives were Lisa didn’t know if he’d been serious or not.  She was high as hell right now to be honest.  She hated the feeling. She couldn’t wait to get back to Cape May and go to sleep so she could wake up her normal self.  Instead of pulling the trigger on Wyland’s broad back she lowered the barrel of her rifle and let him swim out of sight.  Despite the anti-depressants she was on she still teared up.  They’d just lost one of the finest warriors still living.  More importantly she’d just lost a very dear friend.

Lisa almost shot Drew when he snaked his arms around her waist and pulled her close.  The idiot should know better than to sneak up on people like that.  Drew’s arms broke the dam. Her tears flowed unchecked down her frozen face.

“I remember that conversation in the back of the truck too.  You did the right thing letting him go like that.”  Drew whispered in her ear.

Lisa didn’t respond.  She just wormed her way backwards so that Drew could wrap his arms around her more tightly.  They stayed like that as the Chief set them on a course to get back to Cape May.

Chapter 8:  Big Problem, Mon

LeBron read the latest batch of communications in his inbox.  Network connections over satellite were spotty at best and only going to get worse.  The brief on the disastrous rescue operation Yue and Jeff had attempted convinced him he was doing the right thing.  They’d fought the good fight, but it was time to throw in the towel.  They needed to stop before he lost one or both of his siblings to a doomed campaign.

LeBron had been poring over reports for the last few months showing what the rest of the world looked like.  The rest of the globe looked a lot like North America.  Massive swaths of land were totally uninhabited. The infected formed large murderous mobs to rampage across entire continents.  The only continent to have remained relatively normal was Australia.  They’d locked down at the beginning of the plague and used their military to keep anyone from entering the country.  That travel ban had included Aussies who’d been travelling abroad.  The policy had led to plenty of criticism on the nightly news, but the Aussies were having the last laugh there.

Similarly New Zealand and various other island countries around the globe. The Caribbean had returned to its piratical roots.  Half the people on the East Coast with boats had charted a course for the islands when the outbreak started getting real.  Cuba found itself in the odd position of trying to keep an armada of Americans from landing on its shores.  The massive influx of refugees from the Americas overwhelmed the poor island nations.  Boats were even pulling in from as far away as Europe.  It became impossible to quarantine enough to keep the infection out.  What happened was inevitable.

One by one the islands become massively overpopulated until the infection managed to reach the shores one way or another.  Ironically it was spread more by people landing on privately owned air strips than by the boaters everyone was so fearful of.  As fast as the infection hit someone it was hard to contain it on a trip over via boat.  More than one pilot succumbed to their passengers when opening the cabin door to let them know they’d arrived though.  It only took one infected person running wild to start a chain reaction that’d bring down an entire island.

Some of the islands had managed to avoid the infection altogether.  Primarily by emulating the actions taken by Australia.  An immediate lockdown with no one allowed near their shores under penalty of death.  Other islands had reclaimed their land after intense battles with both refugees and the infected.  Still other islands were now owned by the refugees who’d come with guns and supplies determined to take what they needed to survive.

The locations LeBron was interested in were those populated solely by the infected.  Neither Jeff nor Shaun had disagreed that they should be targeting a place to colonize that didn’t require them moving in on existing survivors.  There was more than enough land out there for them to claim a place without going to war with another group of survivors.  God knew there was few enough of them still standing as it was.

Finishing up his inbox LeBron got up and opened the door to his stateroom.  He wanted to get topside and check out the scenery.  It’d been dark when he’d arrived the night before.  Walking down the wide grey corridors he drew a curious glance or two but not so many as he might have at one time.  He was getting older.  Where he would’ve looked out of place before due to his age, now he looked out of place due to his lack of a uniform.  Cargo shorts, dirty sneakers, and a t-shirt with a picture of an owl on it was far from the designated uniform of the day.  LeBron had left Cheyenne so quickly that he hadn’t put much thought into packing.  He was lucky he’d remembered to bring clothes.

Deciding late in the day to go somewhere wasn’t well received in a time where real life monsters emerged once the sun went down.  A few minutes after he’d decided he needed to get on a plane the duty air crew had been rushing him out the door.  The only thing they’d had going for them was that they didn’t have to worry about crawlerz at the other end of the journey.  Although LeBron knew that even in the middle of the sea crawler fueled tragedy could strike.  He hadn’t been aboard the vessel Yue and Drew had narrowly escaped from, but he’d watched as the massive carrier rolled around where it’d run aground after the crew was wiped out by an outbreak onboard.

That was ancient history now.  The tragedy had spawned all sorts of new processes on board the remaining ships of the fleet.  No one wanted to go down the way the Ford had.  It’d led to every interaction with people coming from the shore to the carrier being treated with extreme paranoia.  LeBron was ok with that.  He had no desire to mimic the adventures Drew and Yue had barely survived aboard the Ford.  Unless it was to find the love of his life like Yue had done.

LeBron stared at the ‘you are here’ type signage located periodically throughout the large labyrinth of a ship.  Thinking he knew where he was going, he began walking up flights of stairs.  After about fifteen minutes of stair climbers and wrong turns he finally found himself standing on the flight deck.  A warm tropical breeze was the first reminder he wasn’t in Colorado anymore.  Leaning against the safety railing on the starboard side of the deck he got his first real look at the island. He’d been staring at it on satellite feeds for over a month now.  It felt surreal to be sitting off the coast in real life.

Within easy eyesight were multiple nuclear-powered warships.  A few diesel-powered ships were mixed in. Fuel for the non-nuclear ships was becoming scarce though.  Especially at the rate those floating gas hogs went through it.  Shaun had joked to LeBron during one of their training sessions that the Navy still had so many diesel-powered ships thanks to the oilfield rich state of Texas having senators who conveniently served on the armed services committee.  Being privy to how the country really worked was a sobering situation.  LeBron kind of missed the naivety he used to have before getting the chance to peek behind the curtain.

That country was dead now though for all practical purposes.  LeBron found himself in a position where he could help forge their new tomorrow.  He took the responsibility seriously.  It was going to be the future that him, Yue, and Drew had to live in after all.

Jamaica was the third largest island in the Caribbean.  Almost all of the large islands had been overrun by crawlerz.  For a number of reasons Jamaica had been chosen as the territory for them to annex. The plan was to turn it into a home away from home for the survivors from the United States.  They’d be building their future on the bones of over two million Jamaicans.  They’d need to kill a good half million of the Jamaicans who’d been turned before they could begin trying to resettle the lush island.

LeBron watched as strike aircraft took off from one of the other carriers.  He hadn’t had a lot to do with the tactics being used to clear the island.  Those were being determined by a handful of admirals.  LeBron had provided some directives to be considered when the admirals planned the tactics to retake the land.

One of the guardrails LeBron had set in place was that they needed to maintain enough shelter to house everyone.  That meant they couldn’t just carpet bomb the living hell out of the island.  They needed to be more surgical.  That’d translated into a highly methodical approach where they lured the creatures into different kill zones overnight then took them out in mass once the sun came up.  That kind of assault was good as long as it kept up an acceptable kill rate.  Eventually they were going to need boots on the ground though.

LeBron shuddered thinking of what that was going to look like.  They were going to need to send troops building to building to secure each area.  It was one of the reasons he’d chosen Jamaica over some of the other islands.  Less cities meant less time in an urban zombie hellscape.  It also meant a smaller area to secure once they were done.  It was going to require a lot of effort to clear the island but once they did the rewards were going to be enormous.

The island was going to make an excellent home away from home.  It was large enough to house both the military and refugee populations.  There’d be enough room to ferry others over from the mainland in the near future as well.  The bikers in Philadelphia may be able to survive the torture of breaker mind assaults every night inside their welded together safe houses but it was no way to live.  Same with others holed up around the country.  With the exception of places like Cheyenne Mountain they were planning on evacuating everyone left in North America who wanted to leave.

Satisfied that the bombing runs were underway according to plan LeBron turned to try and find his room again so he could prepare for the rest of his day.  He was physically here as a direct representative of the POTUS.  His job was to evaluate where they were at in taking the island and make any recommendations as to how it could be expedited.  It was understood that any ‘recommendations’ he made had the full backing of the President.  Shaun had made that very clear in his communications to the admirals commanding the flotilla.

LeBron dragged his feet on the way back to his cabin.  He wasn’t in a huge hurry to face the patronizing looks waiting for him.  Like it was his fault that he’d been put in charge of men two- or three-times his age with a thousand times more experience than he had.  Maybe they should try not sucking at their jobs.  Then he wouldn’t have to fly out to the Caribbean in the middle of the night for a scary ass landing on a tiny carrier deck to check in on them.

Back in his cabin he checked his e-mail again.  One nice thing about the end of the world was that it’d really cut down on the spam.  He also didn’t have to deal with the flood of cute cat memes Yue and his mom used to insist on sharing with him.  He blinked back some tears surprised by the emotional outburst triggered by the memories of his mom.  He’d been so busy the last few months that he hadn’t thought of his parents more than once or twice the entire time.  It was a far cry from the promise he’d made to never forget them.  A harsh reminder of everything that’d been taken from him.

Other than an e-mail reminding him of the agenda for today he didn’t really have much else.  The agenda itself was pretty straightforward.  He was meeting the admiral in charge of the fleet for lunch on board the carrier then there’d be an afternoon in a briefing center talking tactics and strategy.  LeBron would be expected to provide his feedback and then report back to the President.  Altogether it sounded like a really long and awkward Monday.  He was going to have to keep reminding himself that hundreds of thousands of lives depended on this getting done right.  Otherwise, he’d be in danger of getting bored.  He could see himself agreeing with everything he was told just so he could escape from the briefing room.

In deference to the importance of the people he’d be meeting that afternoon he pulled on a pair of pants and a button-down shirt.  The shirt looked like it’d been sprayed with starch and thrown into a tornado.  Since he had some extra time, he poked around the cabin until he found an iron.  If there was one thing the military hated more than people being late it was wrinkled clothing.  LeBron could care less but when in Rome…

Shirt ironed and tucked in he headed to the dining room for his lunch meeting.  He felt a little silly tucking in the shirt, but he’d managed to burn the bottom of it with the iron. Tucking it in was the only way to hide it.  His stateroom smelled like someone had set a wet puppy on fire.  He had no idea how such a small burn mark could have generated such a horrible stench.

Five hours later he walked back into his stateroom frustrated with how he’d been treated but content with how the first phase of the mission was proceeding.  Leave it to a group of high-ranking officers to somehow make attacking an island full of zombies seem dull.  They’d spent the afternoon talking about how they’d divided the island into sectors and were measuring their success by how many sectors they cleared.  They had an overly complex color-coding system in place.  It must have been the Admiral’s idea because he really loved talking about it.

LeBron didn’t care if they used pink or green or blue to show that an area was cleared.  He wanted to know how long until it was time to send in the Marines.  He wanted to know how they were planning on dealing with the breakers they were inevitably going to run into.  He wanted to know how they planned to keep the island from being reinfected once it was cleared.  He wanted the white-haired officers in their starched uniforms to stop staring down their noses at him.  They’d made it perfectly clear they felt it was a waste of their time to be explaining themselves to this civilian kid instead of doing valuable officer type stuff instead.

None of the senior officers explaining the plan to him had ever set foot on infected land.  They’d all been at sea or camped out on secured islands since the beginning of the outbreak.  They knew how to run bombing missions and they knew how to support teams running missions on land.  None of them knew how to actually plan a ground operation though.  The problem was that they assumed they did.  LeBron had questioned them thoroughly on that topic. He was now positive that they really were clueless on what to do with the boots on the ground once it came time for phase two.

That was it.  LeBron prepared a short report based on what he’d learned in the official briefing.  He sent that off into cyberspace in the hopes that Shaun would receive and read it at some time in the near future.  The gist of it was to let the Navy keep doing what the Navy was supposed to be doing but when it came time for the ground assault to ensure someone else was in charge of that.  It seemed like common sense to LeBron.  It had to be proper military doctrine to ensure you had the right people doing the planning for their specialties.  Roles had gotten weird lately though as people jockeyed for power.

LeBron put that all out of his mind as he headed for the enlisted galley for dinner.  He wanted to find a few enlisted guys to hang out with.  That way he could get the real scoop instead of the high-level hoopla he’d just been spoon fed.  He needed to process all of this and make sure they were headed in the right direction.  If they screwed this up, then the last hope for the survival of humanity was going to be a bunch of boomerang chucking, kangaroo boxing, Fosters chugging Aussies.

Chapter 9:  Live to Fight Another Day

“If we sit here long enough a breaker’s going to try to take the Cape again.”  Yue said.  Jeff was sitting at his desk scrolling aimlessly through excel files.  They’d been on lockdown ever since that last disastrous rescue attempt where the Black Hawk had gone down.  No one was even allowed to go outside anymore after sunset.  That rule had gone into effect after the crawlerz had shown that they could put Michael Phelps to shame when properly motivated by a breaker.

“It won’t be long before they start working on evacuating all of us.  They’re going to have to ferry a hell of a lot of people over to Jamaica.”  Jeff said distractedly.  They’d already had this conversation multiple times.  Yue kept pushing the fact that it was risky sitting in secured buildings on the Cape.  What she wanted to be doing was those midnight runs to hunt down and kill breakers.  Those hadn’t really been working out so well though.  They were lottery winning lucky to have walked away from that last battle.  All of them except Wyland and the crew of the Black Hawk at least.  Not to mention those two young Coasties who’d been with them.

“Why are we stuck here while all the important stuff is happening where LeBron is?”  Yue asked.  She realized too late that Jeff could easily take the question as an affront.  After all, if anyone was going to be the liaison with the fleet it really should be him.  Yue already felt guilty that Jeff was spending his time with her instead of focusing on his day job.  She was wondering how she was going to get her foot out of her mouth when Jeff turned around and grinned his goofy Jeff grin at her.

“Careful what you wish for.  If there’re breakers hanging out on the island, then you’re going to be needed.  When they start clearing the crawlerz out during the day your skillset’s going to come in handy.  You’re going to save a lot of lives.  I highly doubt you’ll have the luxury of staying shacked up with me here on the Cape once the ground assault on the island gets rolling.”  Jeff said.

“And what will you be doing during all of this?”  Yue asked him.

“Hunting for fresh limes to put in my Corona while LeBron does my job for me.”  Jeff tried to make light of Yue’s earlier comment.  It’d stung because it’d been so on point.  Yue typically didn’t slip up and say things like that to people.  Unfortunately, her superpower of knowing the right thing to say didn’t seem to work on him.

Yue got up to hug her man to make him feel better.  She was saved from sticking her other foot in her mouth by the sound of the phone ringing.  The obnoxious ring tone coming from the cheap tan colored phone startled them both.  Laughing at the way they’d both overreacted Jeff picked up the handset.  He put it down a few seconds late motioning for Yue to put her shoes on.

“What’s up?”  Yue asked.

“Kate wants to see us.  Satellite reports show a large number of crawlerz heading this direction.  Best guess is one of the breakers is on our track again.  She wants to have a quick meeting to figure out what to do.”  Jeff responded.

Minutes later they were in the officers’ mess listening as Captain Kate briefed her leadership team on the intel she’d received.  No one really freaked out until she hinted at the numbers.  The estimated number of infected approaching the Cape was in the mid six figures.  They’d barely survived the last time when there’d only been around ten thousand of the monsters throwing themselves in the intercoastal to try and get across.  Attack aircraft loaded down with smart bombs were already in the air.  The large, fixed wing bombers that they used for land-based attacks were too big to land on the carriers.  Those required an extra degree of coordination to ferry pilots to airfields where the planes waited for them.

“Won’t the planes be able to stop them?  I thought that was the whole point of having them on standby?”  One of the officers asked.

“We track the crawlerz at night so we can see where they’re holing up for the day.  Once the sun comes up, we’re able to blow up a ton of them since they’re all just sitting in one place.  We don’t even try to bomb them anymore at night. The bastards spread out and move so damned fast.  The planes dropping bombs will help but they’re not the solution.  Not if there’s a breaker behind this assault.”  Jeff answered.

“Only reason so many would be coming so directly and so fast is if something’s driving them.”  Yue clarified.

“How long until they get here?” Another of the men in the room asked.

“Can we blow up some bridges to slow them down?”  A tired looking officer asked.

Kate held up her hand for silence.  Once the noise died down, she took a second to look around the room at the anxious faces staring back at her.  They needed to decide what do in the next ten minutes and set the plan in motion.  If they took much longer than that then they were going to be screwed regardless.

“The fighters are taking out all of the bridges between us and them.  That doesn’t mean the crawlerz won’t just jump in and swim for it.  Even if they just run around, they’ll get here eventually.  As fast as they run it’ll most likely still be before first light.  We can’t count on them not having enough time to make it here.”  Kate said.

“Is there a ship on the way for us to evacuate?”  Jeff asked.

“There is but trying to get hundreds of people out to the ship once it gets here isn’t going to happen fast.  Not in the middle of the night with everyone panicking.”  Kate responded.

“We get everyone in the barracks and HQ.  We lock them down.  We leave in the morning.”  Yue tried another idea.  She honestly didn’t understand why no one else had suggested that plan.

“That’s along the lines of what I was thinking.  I’ve already sent men out to start telling people to report to the barracks.  We’ve gotten a process in place since last time.  I’m just concerned with the numbers of crawlerz and the fact that there’s a breaker.”  Kate said looking at Yue.

“As long as everyone’s stoned the psychic attack should be minimized.  Have Marines guarding all the doors just in case.  If it’s a single breaker pushing that many crawlerz along then it’s more powerful than any we’ve run into yet.  It might even be the same one who took out the Black Hawk.  I don’t know if the normal drug dosage will be enough.”  Yue answered.

“As far as that many crawlerz piling onto the barracks and HQ buildings.  If they’re completely solid we should be ok.  If there’s a crack or two then with that many of them trying to get in, they’re going to get in.”  Jeff added.

“What if we took out the breaker before it gets here?”  Kate asked staring directly at Yue.  It was the most direct way to ensure everyone survived the night.  Everyone except for the crew that went out to hunt the breaker anyway.  There was guaranteed to be a few casualties there.  Good thing they were called the Suicide Squad Yue thought wryly.

“How long do we have?”  Yue asked standing up.

“Woah!  No way!  We get everybody into the barracks and HQ and go into lockdown.”  Jeff said standing up as well.  He towered over Yue physically.  The petite young woman radiated an iron strength though.  The brave princess wasn’t overshadowed by her gangly knight.  No one in the room doubted Jeff’s bravery.  It was his concern for others driving him to question the plan.  If Drew had been in the room, he would’ve rolled his eyes at Jeff’s theatrics.  Jeff should know by now that once Yue had her mind set on something it was game over.

“You really think the barracks is going to last against that many crawlerz?  If they all get on the roof together and jump up and down that might do it.  We’ve seen these things beat their way through solid concrete before.  With a smart breaker driving them it just makes them even more dangerous.  We take the breaker out they never even figure out how to cross the intercoastal.”  Yue wheedled.

“We have no idea where the breaker is.  She could be behind a line of a hundred thousand infected for all we know.  How are we supposed to get to her?”  Jeff argued

“Once we get close enough, I can filter through the groupthink and find her.  She’ll be the one projecting the hardest.”  Yue explained.  Everyone in the mess was watching the two argue like it was a championship ping pong match.  The eyes of the gathered group collectively swept back to Jeff to hear his response.

“If this breaker is stronger than the last one that we ran into, what do we do?  That one was too much for you to handle.  This one may be stronger.  It may be the same one.  It’s probably the same one.”  A flicker of fear crossed Yue’s face at the memory of that last encounter.  She’d lobbed the ping pong ball over the net way too gently.  Determined to keep her safe Jeff had stepped in and mercilessly spiked the ball.

“When the walls are coming down around us and the children are screaming in fear there won’t be time to stop the attack.  The time to stop the attack is now.”  Yue took a step towards Jeff looking up into his face.  “We have to try.”

There was nothing Jeff could really to say to that.  They had to try something.  Even though there were going to be helicopters landing shortly to start evacuating some of the children.  The children they’d rescued from Vegas were designated as the first to leave.  When Kate had mentioned that a surge of sadness had gone through Yue.  Those poor kids getting bounced around all over the place after losing everything in Vegas.  Jeff was tossing around for some argument to counter Yue when a communications officer ran into the room.

The man waited impatiently for Kate to acknowledge him. The second she did he blurted out that the guards stationed on the intercoastal were seeing crawlerz belly flopping into the water.  Those men were pulling back now.  There was no time for any kind of evacuation.  It was time to lock down.  Kate gave the order to send any evacuation flights back.  Everyone on the Cape was to get inside and be given an extra-large dose of Valium immediately.  Guards were to be set in pairs.  Anyone who lost it would be restrained.

“What about stopping the breaker?”  Yue asked once Kate finished relaying her orders via the radioman.  He’d immediately saluted before charging out of the room to set things in motion.  A handful of the other leaders had been dismissed as well to help with preparations.  Kate herself looked like she was ready to head out the door.

“They’re already here.”  Kate said looking at Yue in confusion.  In her mind the time for action was past.  Now it was time to hunker down and pray they survived the storm.  The barracks and HQ were going to look like someone dropped sugar cubes on ant piles in a couple of hours.  If there were any weaknesses in the structures, then the occupants would die.  It was that simple.

“If we can get to the boats then we can get out in the bay.  If we can get out in the bay, I can figure out where the breaker is and call in a missile strike.  We have to go now though.  Otherwise, we won’t make it to the boats.”  Yue argued forcefully.  She wasn’t ready to roll over and put her faith in government buildings constructed by the lowest bidder.  Not while there was still a window for them to make a difference.

“We’ll die if we go out there.  You know your brother will come with us.  He’ll die too.”  Jeff said directly.

“No, we won’t.  Once we’re on a boat if it all goes to hell we can just turn around and go the other way.  We’ll be safer than anybody left here.  We have to go now.”  Yue repeated.

“I’m good with you guys going if you can get out of here in the next five minutes.  Once you leave though we’re not opening the doors to let anyone back in.  Go out the main entrance if you’re going.  I’ve got to get to the command center.”  Kate said.  She gave them a respectful nod before hurrying out of the room.

“We need to get a crew together and get out of here right now.”  Yue said.  Jeff just nodded.  There was no more time for debate.  He’d wisely decided to just roll with it.

Getting the crew together didn’t turn out to be an issue.  The Suicide Squad made sure to keep tabs on where Yue was at all times.  Keeping her alive was their primary mission after all.  The whole squad plus Drew and Lisa were waiting in the hallway already.  Harley and Billy had intuited that since the base was going into lockdown, they were probably about to get stuck doing something stupid and dangerous.  Yue didn’t disappoint them.

Chapter 10:  Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

A rush of emotion put some moisture in Yue’s eyes when she noticed the group of people waiting around in the hallway.  These were the men and women she’d been to hell and back with over the last few years.  There were plenty of faces missing from the people who hadn’t made it.  The ones in the hallway still showed up.  They didn’t just show up. They showed up armed to the teeth ready to jump into that hell again with her.

It took less than thirty seconds of explanation for them to be double timing it down the hallway in a neat single file line.  The refugees and soldiers rushing into the building cast curious glances their way.  The ones wearing camouflage gave them respectful nods as they passed.  The guards at the door leading out to the parking lot took it a step further.  They came to attention and gravely saluted the men rushing past them to go face off with the demons.  As soon as the last squad member exited the doors were slammed shut and barricaded.

The sound of the doors shutting behind them was the sound of their commitment.  There was no turning back now.  Rifles were tucked into shoulders as the group formed a protective perimeter around Yue.  Everyone was moving quickly in the direction of the docks.  With time to plan they’d have had a vehicle waiting for them.  There were several sitting around already.  Billy had tried one and after not finding a key had ordered them to keep running for the docks.  If the crawlerz were already hopping in the intercoastal, they’d be here at any second.

A beeping sound directly behind her scared Yue so bad she almost fell over.  She’d been so attuned to anything out of the ordinary that something fairly ordinary had managed to slip through and scare the crap out of her.  Swinging around with her pistol in hand she stopped when she saw Tiff in a golf cart.  Lisa had already hopped on board.  Yue completely agreed that the ladies should absolutely ride to the dock.  Let the boys get all sweaty and chafed.

“Early warning please.”  Jeff said as Yue climbed aboard.

Yue nodded in response to Jeff’s request.  The second she’d planted her butt in the seat she’d started chanting.  Eyes closed she made herself receptive to pick up the barest breath of the groupthink.  There was some tingling from afar.  Nothing that caused her to raise an alarm yet.  That tingling was going to get more and more intense as the night wore on.  Harley had already circulated all kinds of random pills.  He insisted on making sure that they all built a solid foundation of pharmaceutical protection.  Knowing Harley, he’d quickly add walls and a roof to the analogy as well.

Yue was once again jealous of the others in the party sucking down anti-depressants.  She was going to be going in with a clear head.  There was going to be a tsunami of animosity thrown off by the massive numbers of infected.  Assuming Kate’s report was correct they were going to be confronted by more crawlerz tonight than she’d ever seen in a single location.  The crawlerz were being driven by a breaker who had to be more powerful than any of the others they’d faced.  Yue wondered if she might’ve bitten off more than she could chew.

She’d been so focused on making up for the botched rescue at the dock that she’d been blind to the repercussions of trying to stop this massive movement of the infected.  Maybe they should just take a boat out to sea and wait it out.  She couldn’t be responsible for any of these people that she loved so dearly dying in vain.  She also couldn’t imagine sitting safely off the coast while the families inside the barracks were ripped apart by the infected.  In the midst of all this internal debate she started picking up hints of the groupthink.  It wasn’t strong enough yet for her to dial in on anything specific.

It was strong enough for her to know that there were crawlerz headed this way.  She didn’t bother telling Jeff or anyone else to hurry.  It wasn’t like they were taking their time.  She set aside her self-doubt to pour herself into listening for signs that the infected were getting too close.  They were only a hundred yards away from the dock when she caught a flash of themselves running.  That quick glimpse was enough to let her know a crawler had spotted them.

“They’re getting close!”  Yue shouted to the group.  The crawlerz had already spotted them.  No need to keep the volume down now.  It wouldn’t be long before the first rifle shots ripped apart the chilly stillness of the nighttime air.

The golf cart she was in accelerated as Tiff took it on herself to make sure Yue was the first one to the end of the pier.  Billy and another guy were hoofing it beside them while Drew had hopped in the backseat.  If Lisa hadn’t been so laser focused on scanning the darkness behind them for any monsters that might suddenly emerge, she would’ve already been giving him grief for it.  As it was, she did note that he’d jumped up in the seat when everyone else was still running.  She saved the information in the back of her head to rib him about later.

Drew hadn’t hopped in the back seat with Lisa because he was lazy.  He could run full speed in all of his gear for way longer than most of the people there.  He was more than likely the most athletic person in this entire team of special operators.  He’d jumped on the back of the cart because he didn’t want his sister and his girlfriend driven full speed to the end of a dock when no one knew what may be waiting for them there.  He’d also thought they could use the extra gun on the backseat.

The golf cart was hallway down the dock when the first shots were fired.  A crawler had come out of nowhere to knock Jeff to the ground.  Harley had put a slug through the monster’s head from five feet away while running.  He’d done it one-handed.  It was not a tactic taught in most gun safety courses.  Having seen the monster’s teeth flashing towards his friend’s neck Harley hadn’t had time to think.  Combat instincts had kicked in and he’d just reacted.

Unaware of exactly what’d just happened Jeff pushed himself back up on his feet.  The mostly headless body of the crawler rolled off him in the process.  The back of Jeff’s head was covered in the warm, wet, sticky stuff that’d been inside the crawlerz skull seconds prior.  Turning to keep running towards the end of the dock Jeff spotted Harley standing about three yards away.  Harley’s tactical shotgun was still extended straight out towards where he’d blown away the creature attacking his friend.  Seeing that Jeff was alive broke Harley out of his stasis.  Together the two of them broke out in a sprint for the end of the dock.

Looking up ahead Jeff saw that half of their group had formed a skirmish line. The warriors from the squad were walking backwards firing at the shadows moving in on them.  Running straight towards all of those muzzle blasts was unnerving.  Bullets were cutting through the air all around them. Jeff kept waiting for one to rip into him.  Knowing that there wasn’t anyone in the group who wasn’t at lease scout-sniper proficient in sending rounds down range didn’t do a lot to lessen the fear.  He desperately wished the Xanax would hurry up and kick in.

Harley was a lot less anxious.  He tended to spend a lot of time medicated, so it hadn’t taken much for him to take the edge off.  There’d been a time recently when he’d made an honest effort to go straight.  That wasn’t proving to be possible given the state of things.  His friends plan’s for an intervention had fallen to the wayside after his addiction had saved all of their lives a couple of times.  The irony wasn’t lost on him.

In the golf cart at the end of the dock the foursome hopped out of the cart to get on the boat.  Rushing around they piled onto the sleek craft and began readying to make way.  The Chief had insisted they all learn how to cast off and drive the boat.  Given the sophisticated automation on the million-dollar vessel it wasn’t super hard to learn most of it.  Tiff had the engines starting up as the first of the squad jumped aboard.  Lisa and Drew were manually holding the boat next to the dock.  All they had to do was shove off and let Tiff hit the throttle to get them out of there.

“I guess we’re not bringing two boats tonight!”  Yue shouted.  She was staring down the length of her rifle at the darkness enveloping the dock.  One of the troopers flipped on the searchlight and aimed it down the dock to provide some additional illumination.  It made life a whole lot easier when you could see the monsters charging at you.

“Should you be shooting or trying to get in their heads?”  Lisa shouted over her shoulder.  She was struggling to hold her side of the boat to the dock.  The current was pushing them away.

Lisa was right.  Yue’s mind was their most powerful weapon.  Letting the rifle fall down to hang off the sling around her shoulder Yue closed her eyes and concentrated.  It didn’t take long to pick up on the vibe coming from the end of the dock.  Feeling good about finding it so quickly she opened up her mind to check out what was going on in the crawler broadcast.

Harley and Jeff stayed with the loose line of troopers advancing backwards towards the boat.  Fighting the crawlerz was more art than skill.  The damned things moved so fast you couldn’t really sight in and lay down accurate fire.  It was more like you had to use your intuition to guess where one of the crazy fast shadows suddenly emerging from the dark may be headed.  It did help that most of the time you could safely bet they were heading straight for one of the people in your party.

Harley liked to use himself as a target.  He screamed and hurled curses at the crawlerz as they came for them.  Knowing the monsters were going to make a beeline for him made it easier to take them out.  They were all thankful to whoever flipped on the searchlights behind them.  The bright lights revealed a small group of crawlerz leaping towards them from the opposite side of the dock.  Without that sudden burst of light, they could’ve easily lost the troopers holding down that side of their line.

They continued to unload on anything that moved until they’d made it far enough down the dock to get on the boat and shove off.  Lisa happily let go of the rope she’d been holding to keep them tied to the dock.  It’d never occurred to her to ask someone else to hold on to the rope.  She was wired to do her part.

“Don’t let up!”  Harley shouted when he saw more figures outlined in the piercing beams of light sweeping the dock.  Everyone immediately emptied their magazines at the shadowy figures leapfrogging towards them.  They didn’t have to kill them.  They just had to hit them somewhere that’d keep the monsters from long jumping anytime soon.

“How the hell are we supposed to handle hundreds of thousands of those things?”  A frazzled trooper asked loudly.

“That was maybe like a dozen, and they almost took us down.”  Another trooper chimed in.  Those were valid points.  Neither of the troopers were cowards.  They were just stating facts.  The drugs they were all on didn’t exactly help with people keeping their mouths shut.  In addition to compulsive giggling the drugs also led to a lot of awkward oversharing.

“I think we’re clear now.”  Drew said.  He poked his head into the bridge to ask Tiff how far from the dock they were.  She gave him a thumbs up that they were far enough out that they should be able to relax some.  The heads-up display on the boat’s console provided a ton of useful information like that.  None of them had seen a crawler jump over a hundred yards yet so they used that as their safe distance guideline.

“Now what?”  Billy asked.  The skull tattoo on his face looking a little ragged after all the abuse he’d taken in recent battles.

“Good question.”  Jeff said turning to see how Yue was doing.  He’d seen her sitting with her back against the wall when he boarded.  He’d assumed she was chanting away in that weird world of the crawler groupthink.  Looking at her now he realized the way she was sitting didn’t look natural.  Drew had noticed the same thing and was already squatting down beside his sister to see what was going on with her.

“She’s out.”  Drew said looking up for advice on what to do.  He’d felt for a pulse and made sure she was breathing.  They were far enough out where she shouldn’t be subject to the groupthink anymore.

“Let’s go further out.”  Jeff said fighting off the drug haze that’d suddenly descended on him.  Sometimes he felt like the pills didn’t do anything and other times he felt like he was all over the place.  It looked like this was going to be an all over the place kind of night.

Billy was about to ask Tiff to take them further out when Yue’s eyes suddenly flew open. She started screaming.  The screams were like those of someone being flayed alive.  Someone getting the skin and fingernails ripped off their bodies.  Fear and pain intermingled in the harsh cries.  Yue started thrashing around to try to get away from everyone.  She lashed out at both Drew and Jeff when they tried to reach out to her.

They backed off into a semicircle to make sure Yue didn’t suddenly lunge past them and end up in the bay.  Instead, she seemed content to curl up in a ball and continue screaming her head off.  The screaming slowly fading to great big sobs that made her whole-body shudder.  Bright flashes of light off in the distance distracted them from Yue’s plight momentarily.  They looked up as thunder rolled over them.

“The fighters finally made it to the party.”  Drew said.  The bright flashes got more intense as the planes began dropping their payloads closer and closer to the Cape.  The noise was now a steady rumbling interspersed with high pitched whining.  How the crawlerz were anticipated to survive that kind of assault was beyond Drew.  Watching the fireworks, he wondered if what they were attempting was redundant.  A bunch of crazy naked people weren’t going to be able to hop through those explosions and still be able to assault the Cape.  Drew just didn’t see how the infected could possibly do it.

“The bombers aren’t going to be able to get them all.”  A shaky voice called out.  Everyone’s attention shifted back to Yue.  She was shaking like someone with severe hypothermia, but her eyes looked like she was herself again.

“How come?”  Drew asked curiously.  He was convinced this battle was already over.  The hundred or so crawlerz who might actually make it to the Cape weren’t going to be able to do any damage to the HQ or barracks before morning.  Worst case they’d need to repaint.

“There’s too many of them coming.  The network of connected minds is huge.  It’s why this breaker is so powerful.  It’s because she’s controlling so many minds.”  Yue said.

“There’s nothing we can do then?”  Billy asked.  He was wondering if they were going to get the night off.  It’s not like they could do any more damage with the 240 mounted on the bow than those bombers were doing.  If they couldn’t take out the breaker then nothing they could do was going to matter as far as the survival of Cape May went.

“Same plan as before.  We find and kill the bitch!”  Yue barked out in a cold, merciless tone.

Chapter 11:  Nut Up or Shut Up

“How are you going to find the breaker? You get blown away every time you try to connect.  Do you think this one might just be too much?”  Jeff asked.  It was all well and good for Yue to give inspiring speeches.  She was the bravest person he’d ever met.  She was ready to go full ahead right now.  She wouldn’t hesitate to crash into the waves of crawlerz that’d be running out of the inferno the bombers were creating on the mainland.

“I have to get it right this time.  Otherwise, those kids from Vegas may die.  All of the people on the base may die.  We don’t have a choice here.”  Yue said.

“We could cruise out to sea and let the pilots do their job.  The barracks and the HQ are built to withstand hurricanes.  They’ll probably still be standing in the morning no matter how many of those things try knocking them down.”  Lisa said.  She was going to be voted down.  She had no doubt of that. Still, she wanted to get it out there.  When they were all being ripped apart later, she’d at least be able to say, “I told you so”.

“You know we can’t do that.”  Yue said looking at Lisa.  Lisa nodded in resignation.  That’s what she got for aligning herself with a group called the Suicide Squad. A group led by a guy with a skull tattoo covering his face.  Her parents had told her that she needed to be careful not to run with the wrong crowd.  Running with ‘hooligans’ had repercussions after all.  Of course, they’d been talking more about getting community service if she got caught vaping or something.

“So, what do we do?”  Jeff asked.  The medicine head really was the worst.  On the plus side, no matter how much he should be scared of taking on hundreds of thousands of insane super killers he just couldn’t make himself be worried.

“More drugs.  You guys need to be impervious to the groupthink.  If you’re not wasted out of your minds, then they’ll get in and shred your sanity.”  Yue said.  She was thinking back to the last time a large group of the crawlerz had gotten close to them when they were on a boat.  The only people who’d been able to stay on their feet had been Harley and one of the seamen with them.  It’d later been revealed that their lives had been saved thanks to the seaman’s newfound coke habit.  Harley was on another level when it came to drugs.  Cocaine was just another garnish on his narcotic buffet.

“Sweet.  Time to party.”  Harley said heading into the bridge.  He had a nice stash in the cabin down below. He was willing to share if it was going to keep them all alive until morning.  Captain Kate had given him carte blanch access to the evidence locker which enabled him to be a lot more generous.

“This just keeps getting better.”  Lisa muttered.  The thought of dumping more drugs on top of the ones she was already on was making her feel queasy.  She wasn’t the only one who felt that way either.

“Dude I hate fighting wasted.”  One of the troopers muttered.

“You love playing call of duty when you’re drunk as hell.”  Billy chided the man.  The trooper laughed but it was halfhearted.  These men were highly skilled warriors.  The drugs took the edge off those finely honed skillsets.  It was hard enough with a couple of pills in them.  When you added on whatever Harley was about to set them up with, they were going to be next to useless.  At least if clear thinking or hand eye coordination were needed.

“If we need to fight then we’re probably dead already.  I just hope Tiff can drive drunk.”  Drew commented.

“I’ve got it if she can’t.”  Billy said walking onto the bridge to check out the party package Harley had put together for them.

“We’re all about to die.  You know that right?”  Lisa asked Drew.  She’d pulled him aside to talk to him.

“We’ve walked away from worse stuff.”  Drew said dismissively.

“No, we haven’t.”  Lisa replied immediately.

“Well, the next time something like this happens we’ll be able to say that.  I can’t imagine anything being much worse than what we’re about to do.”  Drew said looking over Lisa’s head. The whole sky was lit up by the bombs being dropped to try and keep the massive mob of monsters out of Cape May.

Ten minutes later they were headed around the Cape.  They had no choice but to go the long way. Cutting through the intercoastal would mean risking a bomb wiping them out before they even got close to the breaker.  If they managed to avoid being blown up there was also the issue of the crawlerz doggie paddling their way across the narrow channel.  Yue had a hunch the breaker was hanging out a lot further from the front this time anyway.  If they could find and kill her then the rest of this would fall apart.

The cruise around the Cape was giving everyone time to become more comfortably numb.  By the time they got around Yue was wondering how many of them would still be able to communicate intelligently with her.  Lisa had already slid down the wall to sit hunched over on the deck.  Drew had joined her almost immediately.  They were holding hands staring out at the bay like they were on a dolphin sightseeing tour.  Given the quantity and quality of the drugs Harley had brought to the table they might very well think they were on a dolphin tour right now.

Jeff was literally drooling on himself.  Tiff was staring out the windshield of the boat with a death grip on the steering wheel.  Billy was standing beside her doing his best to focus on where they were going.  Harley was standing behind both of them munching on some kind of beef jerky.  He was the only one Yue thought she could rely on to keep them from running aground.  The next time they were putting together an elite group of fighters they needed to make sure to include some hardcore drug addicts in the mix.

Tiff swung them around the point and started running them out into the bay.  She was keeping the shoreline a good three hundred yards off the starboard side.  It wouldn’t do them any good to get blown out of the water before they even made it past the intercoastal.  Once they were past the area where the bulk of the bombing was happening Tiff was going to take them in closer.  Once they were close enough, Yue was going to try and connect with the groupthink again.  In theory once she connected, she’d be able to trace the breaker back to wherever it was holed up.  A nice big bomb being dropped on top of the breaker was only a relayed radio call away once they had a fix on its position.

The cold wind whipped Yue’s hair around while she waited for them to make it to the point where she was close enough to reach out again.  An icy ball of fear had formed in the pit of her stomach.  Her mind was overflowing with the horrific visions she’d been subjected to earlier.  Images of sore covered crocodiles swimming jerkily across a muddy river.  The huge beasts converging on a beach full of unsuspecting people.  The effortless lunge to sink their teeth into the warm moist flesh.

Those were the types of images being broadcast.  The maniacal movie the breaker was streaming into the crawlerz heads to drive them forward.  The ending of the movie was all the crawlerz cared about.  Nothing mattered beyond sinking their teeth into uninfected flesh.  They allowed themselves to be controlled for a chance at a mouthful of warm blood and flesh.  Their lust for uninfected flesh was insatiable.  It drove everything they did.

The visions were a hundred times stronger than usual.  They were being rebroadcast by more crawlerz than Yue had ever seen gathered together in one place before.  She needed to figure out a new way to connect up to the groupthink.  One where she only broadcast without receiving.  There was no way for her to know if that would work.  She did have one big advantage over the powerful breaker.  In the visions she was going to broadcast she’d be able to give the crawlerz a real sample of that which they craved.  She had a boat full of volunteer victims to bite chunks out of to fuel her psychic assault.

“You good?”  Jeff didn’t exactly slur the words but there was an unusually large amount of spit involved in the simple question.  His glassy eyes and dilated pupils stared down at her.  Yue wanted to tell him to go inside before he managed to fall off the boat.

“All good.  Have Tiff start driving us in once we get past the bombing range.  I’m going to need a couple of volunteers.”  Yue said.  She pantomimed biting her own arm when Jeff continued staring down at her.  That triggered him to action.

Worried Jeff might forget to talk to Tiff in his rush to find a couple of willing victims she stood back up.  Looking around for someone who looked like they might still have their act together she settled on Harley.  He was on the bridge keeping an eye on Tiff.  Harley was ready to step in if Tiff exhibited any signs of being too high to keep them from running aground.  Other than Billy and Yue, Harley was the only one who looked like he was still remotely sober.  That was the benefit of his always being high.  He was used to living at that altitude.

Jeff came back with three troopers.  The three of them were busy rolling their shirt sleeves up.  Jeff was struggling with something he needed to say.  Yue had gotten out of control one time in the past and a trooper had died because of it.  That man’s death had saved them all.  His sacrifice had given Yue the strength to drive a group of crawlerz away from them at a crucial time.  Yue had been completely out of it.  Caught up in the crawler vibe she’d gone feral and attacked them all until Lisa knocked her out cold with a chair leg.

They’d never told Yue what’d happened.  Jeff and the others agreeing that if Yue knew she’d killed a man she’d hesitate the next time they needed her to go all in.  Jeff still thought it was a good idea to not tell Yue she’d gotten a little carried away with the biting in the past.  He was now trying to process all of that in his drug addled brain.  If he opened his mouth, he knew he’d say something stupid.  He decided to stay quiet and just make sure they had a first aid kit standing by.  He’d make sure Lisa had a chair leg on her too just in case.

“Can you ask Harley to come out for a sec?”  Yue asked Jeff.  He shot her an odd look then went to fetch the oversized gypsy.  Yue wondered briefly what Jeff had been thinking about then chalked it up to the drugs and dismissed the look.

The cold was seeping into Yue’s skin.  She had on multiple layers with leather on top.  She liked cloaking herself in material that was bite proof.  It was normally pretty toasty inside all of those layers.  The breeze tonight seemed to be finding every opening to suck her body warmth away from her though.

“You rang?”  Harley asked in his best butler voice.  His perceptive eyes caught the nervousness Yue was projecting.  She was wringing her hands together.  Her eyes were darting in all directions.  It was cold outside in the wind.  With all of the clothes Yue was wearing her teeth shouldn’t be chattering as bad as they were though.  Harley wished he could do something for her.  He couldn’t though.  No one could.  The places she was about to slither through in her mind were filled with horrors most men couldn’t bear.  Yue willingly exposed herself to that primal insanity for them.

“Yeah.”  Yue looked lost for a second as she tried to remember why she’d asked Jeff to have Harley come out.  The words flooded out of her when she belatedly recalled why she’d wanted to talk to him.  “I just wanted to let you know that once we get past the air strikes, we can head in.  I need to be close enough to the beach to pick up on the groupthink.”

“Sounds good.”  Harley said.

“Are you ok?”  Yue asked quickly before Harley could head back inside.

“I’m stoned out of my mind if that’s what you’re asking.  Don’t worry I’m a functional stoner.  I’ll be coherent.”  Harley said sensing what she was trying to ask.  If she was trying to avoid hurting Jeff’s feelings, there really wasn’t a need to.  Jeff was tripping out on the white water they were leaving in their wake.  He occasionally looked up at the bombs pounding the area around the intercoastal.  He wasn’t paying attention to anything anyone was saying.  Yue nodded to let Harley know it was ok for him to go back inside.  The last thing they needed was to end up on the beach.  Tiff’s tolerance was nowhere near the same level as Harleys.

“You guys good with what I need you for?”  Yue asked the troopers sitting beside her.

“Yes ma’am.  Whatever it takes.”  The troopers seated on her left said immediately.  The trooper on the other side of her looked like she could saw his arms and legs off to make a sandwich and he might not notice.  He must be on the lower end of the tolerance scale as well.  There was always the chance he’d gotten handed something by Harley that was three times more powerful than everyone else had gotten.  Harley was more disorganized drug dealer than knowledgeable pharmacist no matter how much he liked to talk about doling out the dosages scientifically.

Gigantic fireballs lit up the sky on their starboard bow.  They were struck repeatedly by the powerful shock waves from the bombs striking so close to them.  The ordinance was ripping apart the land the crawlerz were stampeding across.  When an errant bomb hit close enough to soak them all with the spray it threw up in the air Tiff took them out an extra hundred yards from the bombing lane.  No one had any problem whatsoever with her doing that.

Yue did her best to calm her breathing and focus on what was coming.  She was thrown off by the soaking she’d gotten from that one misfired bomb.  She was worried her teeth may break off they were chattering so hard.  Refusing to go inside herself she sent one of the men to fetch her some blankets and a coffee.  Going into the warmth might make her sleepy.  She couldn’t afford to let her guard down.  Not when she had to face off against an enemy that’d already beaten her into the ground twice without even trying.

“We’re heading in.  Let us know when we’re close enough.”  Billy informed Yue.  He was doing his best to stay coherent.  Despite the borderline overdose quantity of drugs that he’d dumped into his system.  He was determined not to lose his situational awareness no matter how messed up he was.  Kind of in the same vein as a drunk saying they’re ok to drive…

Yue sat down and gently took the arm of the completely spaced-out trooper to bring up near her lips.  She’d never admit to anyone that now when she got near flesh like that the urge to bite and draw blood was almost always there.  She’d spent too much time soaking her brain in the primordial savagery that existed in the groupthink.

“We’re close!  I can see some of them running along the beach.”  Billy called out to Yue.  The powerful motors hummed loudly as Tiff slowed them down before they got too close to the beach.  Yue could feel the tingle of the psychic waves emanating off the crawlerz as they drifted closer.  Closing her eyes, she began chanting.  This time she wanted to locate the groupthink but not immerse herself in it.  Not until she was ready to take it over.

Her body convulsed sending the back of her head smashing into the wall she was leaning against.  The arm in her hands was forgotten as she found herself in nightmare world where everything was blood and darkness.  She was being pulled towards the Cape like it was a gigantic magnet and she was a paperclip.  The images of the blister covered crocodiles jumping in the water and swimming hit her again.  Then something changed.  Yue’s whole body went rigid as a board.

The breaker knew she was there.

Chapter 12:  Tastes Like Chicken

Jeff squatted down next to Yue doing his best to shake the buzz out of his head.  Harley had done a great job making sure the crawlerz couldn’t get into his head.  The unfortunate side effect was that he was having a really hard time getting into his head.  He was barely able to drum up the appropriate level of concern at seeing Yue smash her head into the wall before trying to run off the boat.  If Billy hadn’t been paying close attention, they’d be fishing Yue out of the bay right now.

Billy had grabbed Yue by the back of her leather trench coat and flung her down on the ground before she could plunge into the icy cold water.  She hadn’t fought back like a wild woman this time.  She was flopping around weakly on the deck now with Billy pinning her down.  Jeff squatted next to them wondering what the hell he was supposed to do in this situation.

“Should we drive out of range again?”  Billy asked.  He was feeling pretty good about having caught Yue considering the state he was in.  His physical reflexes had kicked in leaving his brain largely out of the process.  If it’d required thinking, then he wouldn’t have been able to pull it off.

“I don’t know.  Maybe?”  Jeff answered vaguely.  He was putting way too much effort into not slurring his words.  Now that the burst of energy he’d gotten from seeing Yue hurt herself had died down he was feeling lethargic again.  He was fighting hard against the apathy sweeping over him.  It was a fight he was losing.

Harley came out to see what was going on.  He took one look at Yue before rushing back onto the bridge.  Moments later the twin props were kicking up a rooster tail as Tiff drove them out into the middle of the bay.  Harley rejoined Billy to watch along with a wasted Jeff as Yue slowly returned to the land of the living.

“Are you ok?”  Harley asked once Yue looked like she might be capable of a conversation.

Yue was not yet capable of conversation.  She barely even registered the fact that Harley was trying to talk to her.  She’d just been dragged through the darkest obscenities the breaker had been able to dredge up.  The all-out psychic attack may have taken place inside her head, but she’d felt the atrocities across her whole body.  Knowing what it felt like to have the skin flayed off your bones while a myriad of stinging insects crawled inside to bite and lay eggs.  Subjected to brutal physical assaults that’d left her reeling from the trauma of having her limbs ripped off.  Those had been enough to drive anyone crazy.

Way worse than the stimulated damage to her own body had been feeling herself devouring the flesh of others.  Lustily ripping into a set of intestines while the child they belonged to screamed in terror.  Her head buried in the bloody entrails of squirming victims.  The intense spasms of pleasure she’d gotten from ripping away at victim’s insides with her teeth and fingers.  Escaping back to the cold reality of the small vessel’s wind-swept deck was a welcome relief. It wasn’t anywhere near enough to let her recover from all that trauma instantaneously.

“Thanks for pulling me out.”  Yue finally managed to say after Harley, Billy, and a very glassy eyed Jeff kept asking her if she was ok.  She was never going to be ok again.  She knew that.  No one could be ok after having experienced what she had.  Hopefully they didn’t use up all their drugs in the war against the crawlerz.  If they somehow managed to win, they were going to need a lifetime supply of a little something to stave off the permanent PTSD.

“So that didn’t work.”  Harley offered up.

“I think you may have overdone the drugs.”  Billy said looking around at how completely wasted everyone was.  Harley shrugged with a slightly embarrassed grin.

“Doesn’t matter as long as we can drive Yue around and operate the radio.  Everybody else is just along for the ride.”  Harley answered.  Jeff looked like he might be about to say something but then he just turned his head to watch the explosions.  On top of the PTSD, they were all going to be deaf before the night was over.

“Hang out here until morning then go try and save whoever’s left on the base?  Those buildings are both pretty solid.”  Billy said thinking out loud.  He was also thinking maybe next time they could just handcuff themselves to their posts.  They had to figure out a better way to go to war.  This was not a great way to conduct an operation.  He wasn’t stoked about all his battle buddies being baked.

“Let’s make another run.  This time I’ll go in broadcasting instead of waiting to pick up the signal.”  Yue said.  Her mistake had been letting the breaker take the first swing.  If Drew had been semi-sober, he would’ve endorsed her new plan.  The thinking behind it was based on things he’d told her after all.  She wasn’t equipped for a fair fight with a powerful breaker backed up by a horde of broadcasting beasts.  She needed to bring a gun to the fist fight.  A big gun.  A big gun that she could shoot the breaker in the back with before it even knew she was there.

“You know we have no idea what you’re talking about, right?”  Billy said looking at her with a tired resignation.  They were all used to Yue pushing the envelope.  It normally resulted in them adding new and unique scars to their already impressive collections.

“What are you going to go in broadcasting?”  Harley asked curiously.  He didn’t necessarily need to know how it all worked.  What he wanted was to see that Yue had thought it through and had a plan ready to set in motion.  That first run had been a disaster. She’d acted like she had a plan then as well.  This time he wanted her to articulate it prior to the run.  Just to get it straight in her own head.

Yue crawled back over between the two stoned troopers with their shirt sleeves rolled up.  She held up the arm she’d never gotten around to biting the first time.  The man connected to the arm didn’t seem thrilled with this new plan.  When she turned her head and looked at him, he winked at her though.  With all of the drugs he’d taken he may have thought she was just hitting on him. If so, he was in for a really rude awakening.

“You’re going to do that before you’re in their world?”  Billy asked looking shocked.  Harley merely shrugged.  He got what Billy was trying to say.  Normally when Yue was biting somebody, she was half in the crawler world already.  When you were in that nightmare zone the taste of flesh was something that you craved.  Yue was proposing biting into some guy’s arm while she was stone cold sober.  To get the cannibalistic brutality started before she even got into the zone with the groupthink.  That was pretty hard core.

“That’s all I can think of.”  Yue said looking at the hairy forearm in front of her.  What she was about to do felt really wrong.  She did sometimes get a craving for some sweet human meat. Unfortunately, now was not one of those times.  She looked from the hairy forearm back up to the two men staring down at her expectantly.  Jeff was back to staring at the exploding bombs.

“You need us to get closer to the crawlerz?”  Harley asked.  He was thinking maybe the lust for human flesh would kick in the closer they got to the beach.

“Yeah.  Let’s go that way again.  This time let’s do it slowly.  If I hold my hand up, then come to a stop.  I’ll put it back down when I’m ready to go again.”  Yue said.

“I don’t get it.”  Billy said.

“If I hold my hand up then that means to stop the boat.  If I –“  Yue started to explain before Billy cut her off.

“I get that part.  I’m high not stupid.”  Billy said.  Hearing those words come out of his mouth tripped him up for a second.

“Not sure I get the difference.”  Yue said seriously.  Harley started laughing like a hyena.  Billy struggled to stay sane long enough to ask the question eating away at him.

“If you’re not broadcasting what the blood tastes like then how does this help?  If you’re not part of the groupthink thing they have?”  Billy asked.  He looked more relieved to have gotten the question out than curious about the answer.

“I’ll have an answer to all those questions in like thirty minutes.  Let’s get moving before I lose my nerve.”  Yue said.

Harley had taken the helm.  Tiff had finally succumbed to the narcotic snack mix Harley had handed out earlier.  The motors revved up and the boat spun in a circle until they were facing the shore once more.  The grey outline would’ve been hard to see from this distance on a normal night.  Tonight, their night vision had been destroyed by the massive fireballs ripping the mainland side of the intercoastal apart.  The explosions weren’t as constant now as they’d been earlier.  That didn’t bode well for the people back on the base if this last attempt Yue and crew were making didn’t end with a target for the bombers.

Motoring slowly through the rolling water of the bay Yue stared down at the arm she was holding.  Thinking it was the courteous thing to do she started to look at the owner of the arm and ask if he was still ok with her eating part of him.  Not able to come up with a good way to say that out loud she renewed her focus on the arm in front of her.  In the past she’d fought back the urge to bite people that sometimes overcame her after interacting with the crawlerz.  Now when she needed that urge it wasn’t happening for her.

“Chomp away.  I get what we’re trying to do here.  Harley has me so high I probably won’t feel it anyway.”  The man the arm belonged to spoke up in a slightly slurred voice thereby ruining the illusion Yue was working on to make the flesh in front of her more palatable.  One in which the arm was an unattached hunk of meat no one cared about.

Yue awkwardly said thank you then once more tried to dredge up that lust for flesh that’d plagued her so many times before.  The boat continued bopping along towards the shoreline.

“Maybe just take a bite and that’ll get you going?”  Billy offered.  This wasn’t really a situation where anyone was qualified to offer Yue advice.  Most especially not the drugged-up leader of a group of warriors with a suicide pact.  Or maybe that made him supremely qualified to offer advice on this subject.  Yue had no idea anymore.  It wasn’t like anything else made much sense either.  With the same sort of trepidation that she’d feel hopping into a freezing cold swimming pool Yue brought the arm to her lips and bit down hard.

The feeling of the man’s salty skin breaking under her teeth brought back all those forbidden urges.  It was no longer a question of whether or not she’d be able to take a bite of the man’s arm.  It was a question of being able to control her lust for flesh and focus on her other tasks.  Now she had to channel that euphoric rush into a broadcast to send out to the crawlerz. Unfortunately, she was a slave to the endorphins flooding her brain from that first bite.

“Are you ok man?”  Billy asked loudly.  The trooper definitely didn’t look ok.  Yue looked like a leather clad vampire from a straight to streaming horror movie.  Only if you saw the scene in a movie, you’d think it was overdone because there was way too much blood being splashed around.

“Shit man.  Get her to flip to Wessel’s arm.”  The trooper was looking away from the damage Yue was doing to his arm.  The only reasons he wasn’t punching Yue in the head were the drugs and his ironclad discipline.

Billy looked down at the blood covered face of Yue. She looked like a toddler diving face first into a big piece of bright red cotton candy.  This was way more than he’d signed up for.  How was he supposed to get Yue to flip from her current meal over to the virgin flesh on Wessel’s arm?  It didn’t look like the trooper was going to be any help either.  He’d passed out after asking Billy to get Yue off his arm.  Billy hoped he wasn’t dead.  He looked kind of dead.

Not knowing what else to do Billy grabbed Wessel’s arm and tried to shove that into Yue’s mouth.  The problem was prying her jaws away from the arm she was already gnawing on.  She was stripping the flesh off it like a big meaty chicken wing.  Her face covered in a bright red sauce that was getting everywhere.  She really needed some wet wipes and a bib.  When she didn’t take the bait and switch arms Billy grabbed her by the hair and attempted to pull her away.  He wasn’t making much headway when a fist suddenly darted past him and smashed Yue in the forehead rocking her backwards.

“Put the other arm in her mouth now.”  Jeff said pulling his fist back and working on pulling the trooper with the savaged arm away from Yue before she could latch back on.  Either Billy had already been working on that or Yue had just flipped to the other arm automatically.  She was now working on wrecking Wessels’ arm.

Wessel had been passed out prior to his arm becoming a side dish.  Waking up to a massive burning sensation in his arm as Yue ripped into it triggered his survival instincts.  He swung his free arm at Yue and connected with the side of her head.  It was a punch thrown by a drugged man who’d awakened in a nightmare.  He had to swing from an odd angle at a target he hadn’t even seen yet.  The drugged man throwing that wild haymaker happened to be a decorated special ops soldier who’d been about to go into the Secret Service when this all went down.  He knew how to throw a punch.

Yue’s head flew back into the wall.  Before Wessel could line up another punch or jerk his arm away Billy kicked him in the face.  Wessel hit the ground and stayed there.  Billy stood over him making sure Wessel didn’t snap back and attack Yue again.  For her part Yue took zero notice of the whack to her face and went back to tearing up Wessel’s arm.

“Switch spots with me!”  Jeff called out to Billy.

Billy had no problem with that whatsoever.  He was way out of his element.  Happy to have Jeff deal with Yue he went into trauma EMT mode trying to patch up the trooper Yue had used as her appetizer.

“Yue!  Yue!  We’re almost there.  You need to get control Yue!”  Jeff was on his knees yelling into Yue’s face.  At least the parts that weren’t buried in Wessel’s arm.  Gone were the days when Yue just kind of bit hard enough to draw blood. She was ripping off a flap of skin now right in front of him.  That was enough for Jeff.

“How’s she doing?”  Harley had poked his head out to see what was going on.  They were getting close to land.  He was wondering why he hadn’t been ordered to slow down or anything yet.  Looking out the window he hadn’t even been able to see anybody.  Coming out and looking at the bloody mess splayed out on the deck he saw why.

“More flesh!”  Yue roared in a deep demonic voice.  She’d dropped Wessel’s arm and was casting around desperately for another victim.  There was a third trooper who hesitated before stepping forward with his arm extended.  He had his eyes focused on Yue and was obviously horrified.  He was saved taking his turn when Yue reached froward and grabbed Jeff’s arm instead.

“We need to abort!  She’s out of her mind!”  Jeff yelled back to Harley.

Harley watched as Jeff played tug of war with Yue trying to keep his arm from passing through the grinder.  If they were aborting, then there was no more need to sacrifice chunks of their bodies to supercharge Yue’s psychic broadcasts.

“Not out of mind!  Give arm!”  Yue screamed the oddly worded phrase at the top of her lungs.  Jeff looked around helplessly.  That was a pretty direct statement she’d just made.  He looked at Harley who helpfully shrugged his shoulders and made a face indicating he had no idea what they should do.  Sighing Jeff quit fighting Yue and let her have his arm.  He had no idea why they were taking orders from someone who sounded like the love child of the Hulk and the possessed girl from the exorcist.

“Ow!  Ah damn!”  Jeff yelled when Yue bit into his arm.  That hurt like holy hell.  He had no idea how the first trooper had been able to handle it.  The pain of it cut right through the drugs he’d taken.  Jeff felt like he’d sobered up quite a bit.  He’d happily go back into drunk mode as soon as Yue found the breaker.  Hopefully neither of the troopers died from her ripping their arms apart.  Even more importantly he hoped she didn’t kill him.

“Abort?”  Harley asked.  He was looking back over his shoulder where Tiff was doing her best to hold the wheel steady.  She was rocking back and forth on her feet.  There was a chair she could sit in but so far, every time she sat down, she passed out within a minute of her butt hitting the seat.  She was so messed up that Harley was using her the same way he’d have propped a chair against the wheel to keep them going in a straight line.

“Give her a few more minutes.  If I pass out somebody wrap a band aid around my arm.  Ow.  Son of a bitch!”  Jeff answered.  He was hopping around and hissing through his teeth in pain.  Yue seemed more in control now.  She wasn’t doing that great white shark thing anymore.  Now she appeared to be savoring the blood. She was working her lips to milk the blood out of his arm.  Jeff wasn’t really sure which was more disturbing.  Watching her suck on his arm like an infant latching on to a teat was a new level of disturbing.  For his arm’s sake he was glad she’d toned it down though.

In her mind’s eye Yue was sailing over the tops of the crawlerz converging on Cape May.  She owned the groupthink with the sensations of ripping and biting and warm sticky uninfected blood.  The army of crawlerz had ceased their relentless march towards the intercoastal and were now meandering in the direction of Cape May.  The massive herd kept moving forward.  They were moving now more out of muscle memory and momentum than from anything to do with the breaker’s desire to drive them onto Cape May.  Yue had them in the palm of her hand.  Connecting when she had such powerful visions of what they craved had been the key.  The memories they bandied about in the groupthink were a pale comparison to the colorful real time sensations Yue had brought to the psychic party line.

Even the breaker had been caught off guard by the strong images that’d overwhelmed her troops.  She sensed another in the groupthink.  Another like her but not like her.  The breaker paused in the alley she was pacing down and studied the visions filling her head.  The visceral sensations of biting and rending.  The breaker was swept away by it at first.  She didn’t fight it so much as just let the sensations pass through her while she savored them.  Searching the images, she spotted oddities in them.  The host broadcasting them was holding back.  She wasn’t pure animal.

Caught off guard by this realization the breaker threw a millennium worth of repressed memories into the groupthink.  None were strong enough to overcome the steady trickle of blood flowing into the broadcaster’s mouth though.  The breaker knew she was being hunted.  She turned to run down the alley she was in.  Other crawlerz leapt past her.  One of them turned to stare at her as she stood directly underneath a sign advertising a local craft beer.  A sign Yue recognized immediately as having set Wyland off on a wild goose chase not too long ago.

Gasping for air Yue broke out of her trance to order whoever was listening to get on the radio and have the local airport bombed out of existence immediately.  She had to spit out gobs of blood and hairy piece of skin stuck in her teeth to get the message out.  She let go of Jeff’s arm and he sat down hard on the deck.  Billy came out from the bridge where he’d radioed in Yue’s intel.  He gave her a thumbs up when she looked at him.  Yue shot him a weak smile then turned to vomit all over the deck.

When she was done puking, she wondered how much human flesh she’d just spewed out on the deck.  That thought brought on another surge of stomach stew to add to the existing hot mess.  Harley had them heading back out into the bay.  In the distance behind the boat a massive explosion ripped the sky apart as two of the planes dropped their whole loads on the airport.

Yue made a mental note that if she survived throwing up everything on the inside of her body, she’d be sure to let everyone know what’d tipped her off to where the breaker had been lurking.  It was a fitting tribute to Wyland that his obsession with finding the craft beer on that particular sign had been the reason Yue had been able to identify where the breaker was.  She got a chill thinking of it being Wyland reaching out from his warrior’s rest to help out his brothers in arms.  It was so like him.

Chapter 13:  A Day at the Beach

LeBron watched as the helicopter’s rotors slowly stopped revolving.  They’d spent the morning touring the island from the air before landing on the overgrown lawn of what had once been an exclusive beachfront resort.  The Admiral had insisted on stopping there for lunch.  He’d evidently spent a good bit of his vacation time there when he was younger.  Nothing like a little nostalgia to guide their journey.

LeBron doubted the resort was living up to the Admiral’s memories.  The huge pool set as the centerpiece of the luxe getaway was full of algae.  A thick layer of moldy looking scum covered the deck surrounding the pool.  Weeds covered the lawn and were making progress on covering everything else.  The aides de camp had jumped out of the helicopter immediately upon landing.  LeBron had watched in amusement as the junior officers struggled to find a nice place to setup for lunch.

The day had been a colossal waste of time in LeBron’s viewpoint.  It’d been more like a sightseeing tour than a real recon mission.  In his opinion there’d been zero reason to check out the beaches and jungles.  He might just be projecting though.  He was having issues being objective. He’d long since reached the point where everything his current companions said made him want to punch them in their closely shaved faces.

He respected them for being able to shave so closely without cutting half their faces off what with the wrinkles and everything.  That was about the only thing he respected them for at this point.  He knew he was being overly sensitive to the whole situation.  The naval leaders he was working with were all consummate professionals.  They were also politicians.  To have reached that exalted rank in the military required navigating a ton of political landmines.  LeBron’s problem with them was that they were acting more like politicians than the warriors that he needed them to be.

This was a different kind of war.  A type of conflict that didn’t show up in any of the history books.  None of these well-read gentlemen with their Annapolis rings and encyclopedic knowledge of every major naval engagement since the Cretans took on the Egyptians were qualified to run it.  This wasn’t a war between nations.  This was a war for the survival of the human species.  This was a war against an evil far more ancient than anything in the history books at the Annapolis library.  This evil had existed long before humans had developed writing as way to record history.  It was a putrid infection born of the mix between the slimy parts of the reptilian human brain and natural elements that had no mercy.

The aides moved further and further from the resort to find a place that would meet with approval.  LeBron felt for them.  The whole area was pretty nasty between the algae polluted pool and the tall weeds covering what’d once been an immaculate lawn.  It was a safe bet that both the overgrown lawn and pool concealed human remains.  Not that a few mostly meatless rotted corpses were a huge turnoff in today’s world.

In the end they walked down a path towards the beach.  There were some covered picnic tables overlooking the Caribbean that were straight out of a brochure.  The aides laid out a meal of soup and sandwiches.  Having lived off random cans of botulism surprise for far too long LeBron was focused on the meal in front of him when one of the flag officers asked him a question.  Mouth full of deliciousness LeBron turned to the man and hastily gulped it down.

“Sorry sir.  Sandwich had my full attention.  What was that again?”  LeBron asked awkwardly.

“No worries son.  An army travels on its stomach.  I was just wondering what your impressions of the operation so far were.  What do you plan on reporting back to the President?”  The man with multiple stars on his shoulders repeated his inquiry.  The Admiral most likely wasn’t used to asking the same question a second time.

“The bombing campaign shouldn’t last too much longer.  It’s going to be boots on the ground soon.”  LeBron responded honestly.

“Who do you think should be running that phase of the operation?”  The Admiral asked intently.  So much for top secret network privacy LeBron thought with a sigh.  His e-mails to the President must have been passed around within this group.

“You thought you could send e-mails on our network without us seeing what you were sending?”  Another high-ranking officer asked looking at him curiously.  The man seemed genuinely interested in what LeBron thought about that.

“I never write anything that I don’t expect everyone to be able to see.”  LeBron replied smoothly.  Inwardly he was seething.  He’d gotten lazy.  Or rather he’d assumed that everyone else had gotten too lazy to be putting eyes on his e-mails.

“Really?  So, you don’t think we’re capable of coming up with the tactics to take an island?  Or is it more about building out the infrastructure afterwards to support our entourage of citizen refugees?”  The officer asked.

“Maybe he doesn’t know about all of the humanitarian missions we’ve completed.  Ones where we’ve accomplished objectives like supporting hundreds of thousands of refugees in disaster zones.”  Another officer offered up the comments in between bites of his sandwich.

“Do you think the President has more experience than us?  Is he somehow in a better position to make these decisions than we are?  A man with neither political nor military experience is going to be calling the shots for how our nation survives?  A man put into office by an obscure political move that smacks of nepotism.  Please enlighten us since you’ve been sent to pass judgement on how we’re doing.”  The Admiral said sitting back and smiling patronizingly at LeBron.

It suddenly occurred to LeBron that he was eating lunch in a deserted resort with men who despised him and his boss.  Everyone surrounding him was loyal to the Admiral who’d just finished dressing him down.  This lunch might very well be an excuse to get him out to the middle of nowhere and assassinate him.  LeBron liked to think these men wouldn’t do such a thing. Seeing how they were looking at him now he had his doubts.  He considered his words carefully.  All the time wishing he had the gift to say the right thing to smooth over a situation.  If there was ever a good time to channel his silver-tongued sister, it was now.

“You’re the experts at Naval warfare.  You all have a ton of experience with humanitarian type missions as well.  Some of that translates directly into dealing with the issues we’re going to have trying to colonize Jamaica.  There are challenges we’re going to face that you don’t have the experience to address though.  There’re others that do have that experience.  My suggestion is we use the talent we have available to ensure everything goes as smoothly as possible.  Does that make sense?”  LeBron asked.  He’d worked his hand down to the grip on his sidearm while responding to the hard-faced men interrogating him.  If they were planning on killing him, he had no problem shooting first.

“Sergeant this man is an unlawful agent of an unlawful President.  Seize and disarm him at once.”  The Admiral said dramatically.  It was an order the jarheads guarding the perimeter had been told to expect.  LeBron knew that trying to fight half a dozen well-armed Marines wouldn’t end well.  If he just shot the Admiral, then the Marines would shoot him with no further discussion.

Scenarios flashed rapidly through LeBron’s head.  He could pull the pistol and try to stop the Marines from disarming him.  He could stand up and loudly denounce the Admiral as a bitter old traitor.  He could open fire and try to talk his way out of it later if he happened to survive.

He did none of those things.  He handed his pistol over to the Marine that approached him.  The high-ranking group of traitors wouldn’t have left anything to chance.  They’d have made sure the guards in the helicopter were sympathetic to their cause.  It wouldn’t have been super hard to convince them that this was the right thing to do.  LeBron had to admit that Shaun being the President was a stretch.  Not that the Marines would be highly versed in constitutional law.  Watching the Designated Survivor series on Netflix was the closest any of them had probably come to understanding how Shaun had ended up the leader of the free world.

“You have a bunch of other traitors on the team or is it just you guys so far?”  LeBron asked before he could stop himself.  A barked order from the Admiral and the next thing LeBron knew he was on the ground puking up the delicious soup he’d just scarfed down.  The Marine had swung the butt of his rifle into LeBron’s chest before knocking him to the ground with a casual punch to the side of his head.  On the ground LeBron reminded himself that the hapless leatherneck didn’t have the foggiest clue who he was.  The man was following the orders of someone with enough stars on his shoulders to be considered a demi-god.  There wasn’t a reason in the world for him to take the word of some stranger dressed for gym class over the word of a highly decorated senior officer.

“Secure him to the table.”  LeBron heard someone say.  He couldn’t quite place the voice.  He wondered if he could die from being hit so hard right in his solar plexus.  His head was ringing from the punch.  He didn’t resist when he felt his arms being pulled up so he could be secured to the table.  He was able to lift his head and look around a minute later.  Just in time to watch the line of uniformed men walking back towards the resort.

“You’re just going to leave me here?”  LeBron called out after them.  He didn’t really expect an answer.  To be perfectly honest he’d thought they were going to execute him and dump him in the ocean.

“Don’t worry.  You’ll have plenty of company once the sun goes down.”  The Admiral turned around long enough to sneeringly answer him.  Then they were gone.  LeBron watched disbelievingly as the helicopter took off.  He’d been left behind as an early bird dinner for the crawlerz.

LeBron wasn’t so much scared as he was furious.  How could a group of high-ranking officers go rogue like that?  How could they just up and decide that they knew best?  How did they expect to pull this off?  They’d need the buy in of every other senior officer in the fleet.  Not to mention the enlisted men and women of the fleet.  Why would they show their hand by taking him out like this?

The table was solid wood.  It was sitting under a richly stained wooden pergola.  It all appeared a little weathered, but the wood hadn’t started rotting away yet.  LeBron gave up on trying to break the wood after a couple of extremely painful attempts.  He also wasn’t able to slip his wrists out of the zip ties that the Marines had used to secure him to the table.  Pulling on them just made them tighter.  They were already borderline tourniquet tight.

Forcing himself to stop and think LeBron realized they hadn’t bothered searching his clothes.  He awkwardly patted himself down with his elbows.  They’d taken his pistol, but they’d left everything else.  That included the folding knife he had in his pocket.  He hadn’t bothered dressing for battle since he’d expected to spend the day bopping around in a highly guarded helicopter with a bunch of spoiled officers.  He wasn’t even wearing pants.  Hopefully they hadn’t left him behind because he’d decided to wear cargo shorts to their little picnic.  That’d be an excessively extreme punishment for such a minor fashion faux pau.

He’d left his rifle in the helicopter.  The pistol never left his side.  Except for showering or when Marines knocked him out and took it from him.  Considering how lightly LeBron had dressed it did seem a serious oversight that no one had bothered checking his pockets.  Cargo shorts weren’t just the height of post-apocalyptic fashion.  They also allowed for all kinds of tools and supplies to be crammed into the myriad of pockets.  LeBron verified they hadn’t taken his extra bullets, drugs, or either of the two folding knives he had in his pockets. He was feeling good about that until he realized they probably hadn’t seen the need.  Even with a rifle and tons of ammunition his chances of surviving the night were somewhere between zero and not going to happen.

Having beaten the odds a million times over just by still being alive LeBron wasn’t too distressed yet.  He spent a few minutes working the knife out of his pocket and cutting the zip ties to free his hands.  He had to slice off some of his own skin to get rid of the zip tie tourniquets.  The painful rush of blood back into his hands indicated how close he’d been to losing them if he hadn’t acted.

In a resort like this there had to be a place guests could go to rent an ocean kayak or a jet ski or something along those lines.  It shouldn’t be too hard to find something he could float around on before it got dark.  What he’d started to become more concerned about was why they’d chosen to leave him.  The more he thought about it the more he wondered if it might be a way to coax the President out of Cheyenne.  If they could get Shaun to fly over then they could pull the same trick on him.  Once the President was out of the picture it’d be simple enough to declare martial law and set themselves up like royalty.

Fingers tingling painfully as blood flowed into them LeBron jogged back down the overgrown walkways towards the resort proper.  The adult beach toys should be in a shed closer to the beach, but he wanted to see if he could find a vehicle of some sort.  He’d much rather drive to a marina and snag a real boat.  He might be able to survive the night drifting around on a half-inflated banana boat, but it wasn’t going to get him anywhere.  Unless it got caught in the undercurrent.  He may wake up to find himself out in the middle of the ocean when the sun came back up.  Being eaten by sharks didn’t sound like much more fun than being eaten by crawlerz.

LeBron had noted during the aerial tour earlier that Kingston Bay was chock full of boats.  They were anchored all over the breakwater protected cove.  The ones that hadn’t sunk in the subsequent storms since being abandoned by their owners anyway.  LeBron was hoping some of the boats may still have gas in them.  At least the ones belonging to the people who lived on the island.  It wasn’t like the Jamaicans had any reason to try and get off the island at first.  Although in retrospect they really should’ve considered it.  Anyone with magical foresight would’ve taken the first flight to Australia as soon as the rumors started.

LeBron searched around until he found the loading dock.  There were three trucks parked there. Each of the trucks had the name of the resort boldly printed on the doors.  With three trucks there was a good chance one of them might actually start up.  There were some golf carts scattered around as well as an oversized riding lawnmower.  LeBron didn’t bother with those.  He needed to be able to drive far and fast if he was going to have any hope of making it to a marina before dusk.

It may be a foreign country, but a loading dock was a loading dock.  LeBron would bet dollars to donuts that the door at the top of the ramp led to a room where the keys to the trucks were secured in a metal box on the wall.  He had no clue why people said ‘dollars to donuts’ but he’d be willing to bet that the box would be a pale tan color.  There may or may not be a clipboard underneath it for signing out the vehicles.

Feeling good about his progress so far LeBron rushed up to the door at the top of the loading dock.  The door had one of those skinny rectangular tinted high tensile strength windows in the middle of it.  LeBron wasn’t able to see in until he got close.  Trying the handle, he found that it was locked.  More concerning was the crawler who started slamming itself against the window when LeBron put his face up to it.

Chapter 14:  Cool Running

Looking up at the clear blue Caribbean sky LeBron ascertained he had some time.  It was still early afternoon.  All he had to do was get the keys for the trucks from the office with the superhuman killing machine in it, hope one of the long-neglected trucks started, drive to the harbor, find a boat, and sail off into the sunset.  His self-confidence took a few hits as he thought through what needed to be done to accomplish each task.  Minor things like his biggest weapon being a pocketknife, not being entirely sure where the harbor was, and his very minimalistic understanding of sailing a boat.

Shunting those minor concerns aside he focused on the issue at hand.  The massively muscled crawler had retreated from the sunlight filtering through the window in the door.  It was now lurking somewhere in the dark recesses of the office.  LeBron would’ve been a lot more enthusiastic about his chances if the crawler had kept bashing it’s bloodied face into the window and trying to bite through the glass.  In the words of an infamous picnic basket stealing cartoon character this one was smarter than the average bear.

At the top of the ramp leading out of the loading area there was an iron chain that ran through posts inserted in regularly spaced holes to block off the entrance.  The barrier had been erected to keep drunk guests from taking the golf carts for joy rides at three in the morning.  It’d been fairly effective.  As any resort manager knows though the ingenuity of drunken revelers can never be underestimated.  Which is why the golf carts were all secured by additional chains to iron circles set into the cement.  Luckily LeBron wasn’t interested in the golf carts.

Wrapping both of his hands around the top of one of the iron posts he pulled as hard as he could.  All that accomplished was making his shoulders hurt.  Telling himself to slow down he looked carefully at the post and saw that there was a pin inserted in the bottom of it keeping it secured to the concrete.  A few minutes and some severely scraped knuckles later he had the first post out.  He needed the posts removed so he could drive one of the trucks out of the loading area.  As a bonus the heavy iron post would make a great blunt weapon.

Not feeling up to the next step in his plan LeBron busied himself removing enough of the posts to ensure he could get one of the trucks out.  Another reason to hurry up had occurred to him.  The dirtbags who’d ditched him here controlled which sections of the island were getting the bombing treatment of the day.  He’d grown used to the constant rumble of explosions off in the distance.  It hadn’t occurred to him until now that those bombs could start falling a whole lot closer at any time.

Nervously scanning the sky for inbound planes LeBron approached the loading dock door with one of the iron rods in hand.  The next step in this plan wasn’t really his forte.  He’d much rather channel Drew and just toss a grenade in the office in front of him.  He was super comfortable storming into dark enclosed spaces with his rifle tucked snugly into his shoulder as well.  Bashing in a hurricane proof window then hoping the lurker got stuck coming out so he could beat it to death wasn’t sounding super fun.  He couldn’t think of another option though.

Taking a step forward LeBron swung the heavy iron rod against the window.  The tempered glass shattered leaving a bent metal mesh.  LeBron quickly recovered the iron rod and bounced backwards out of reach of any hands that might come groping through the broken glass to grab him.  Standing beside the broken window like Babe Ruth waiting for an easy pitch LeBron was thrown off when nothing happened.  He tapped the door a few times with the rod before settling back into his stance.

The damned crawler wasn’t rushing the door.  LeBron’s plan had pivoted around the crawler sticking it’s head through the broken window and getting conveniently stuck.  LeBron had pictured himself bashing the trapped monster to death with the heavy iron rod.  If the crawler had decided it’d just wait until LeBron stuck his head in, then that messed up the whole plan big time.  Flipping the script like that wasn’t the usual modus operandi of the infected.  Just his luck he’d gotten stuck with a creative one.

Expecting bombs to start raining down at any second LeBron moved back in front of the window and stuck his hand through the broken glass.  He felt more exposed than he’d ever felt in his life.  Trying to ignore the cold terror gripping him he turned his back on the window so he could reach the door handle from the inside.  Reaching down he unlocked the door and pushed it open.  With the door open he stood in the sunlight wondering how come the crawler hadn’t killed him already.

He wasn’t able to talk himself into walking into the dark room.  Armed with a metal rod he’d be no match for the crawler waiting inside.  His only chance was to get the beast to come out on its own.  LeBron stepped back from the door and tried calling out to the lurker inside.  Sounding to himself like he was trying to get a dog to come outside and go pee LeBron stood a few feet back from the open door.  After five minutes of trying differing versions of “here crawler crawler…” LeBron gave up and took a few steps away from the door in complete exasperation.

The door smashed against the wall and a dark shape flew straight out at him.  LeBron dodged to the side to avoid being steam rolled.  The crawler had its eyes closed against the hated sun.  It’d held back as long as it could.  LeBron turning to leave had been what forced it to finally act.  Scared that the victim it lusted for would simply walk away had been more than enough reason to make the leap into the hated sunlight.  A clawed hand clasped LeBron’s shoulder as the crawler hurdled past.

Dragged along like a ragged blanket in the grip of a toddler hopped up on Pixy Stix LeBron struggled to bring the heavy iron rod to bear.  The crawler looked surprised to actually have LeBron in his grip.  LeBron swung the iron rod at the crawler’s head.  The rod bounced off the crawler’s head without accomplishing anything.  The crawler tossed LeBron against the side of the building hard enough that something in LeBron’s body make a popping noise.  Completely dazed LeBron drove his legs to propel him off the loading dock with no other purpose than to get as far from the man eater as possible.

Smashing face first into the gravel he rolled to the side frantically searching for the crawler who’d grabbed him.  Blood dripped into his eyes from a deep gash on his forehead obscuring his vision.  Wiping away the blood he turned and looked behind him.  Less than a foot away from where he was sprawled out on the ground the motionless crawler was staring up at the sun.  The crawler still had the remains of a t-shirt covering his upper body.  His legs were skeleton thin.  Toenails and fingernails curved away from him like the claws of an ancient demon in a horror flick.

LeBron scrambled to his feet searching around for the iron bar.  The crawler never stopped staring at the sun.  At least not until LeBron pulverized its skull with the heavy iron rod.  When he was done with that grisly task LeBron tossed the blood and hair covered rod on the ground and limped up to the door to the office.  Belatedly realizing he should’ve held onto the bar in case there were more of the monsters waiting inside he tentatively took a few steps into the shadow filled space.

The locked cabinet was hanging off the wall exactly where he’d imagined it being. He’d hoped a key would be dangling out of it that he could use to open the cabinet.  After fumbling around for a minute or two he gave up and limped back down to where he’d left the bloody iron bar.  He used it to pry the lock box open.  Once open he grabbed all of the keys out of it and walked back outside to where the service vehicles were parked.  He unlocked the first truck and dumped all the keys on the passenger seat.

The world exploded around him.  Dirt, rocks, and pieces of the resort fell from the sky.  The windshield of the truck splintered in a dozen places.  LeBron had been so focused on the crawler in the office he hadn’t been watching out for planes.  Not that there was much he could’ve done if he’d seen one flying by.  The Admiral must’ve called in an airstrike after all.

LeBron shoved the key in the ignition.  Another nearby explosion rocked the truck up in the air.  LeBron smashed his already bloody face into the steering wheel.  This time the debris running down smashed a hole through the windshield on the passenger side.  He couldn’t see anything around him anymore because of the smoke and dust in the air.  He was going to die trying to get this stupid truck started.

LeBron paused to pray before turning the key.  The engine coughed a few times before rumbling to life the next time he twisted the key.  Despite the danger he was in LeBron still sat there momentarily stunned it’d worked.  Frustrated by the blood dripping into his eyes he pulled his shirt up to cover his forehead as a makeshift bandage.  He had a brief vision of his mom in heaven smiling down at him.  He hoped the vision was true because he was going to need a few more miracles to make it out of this situation alive.  He put the truck in reverse and pulled out of the parking spot.

Turning on the windshield wipers didn’t help much.  He ignored the limited visibility when another bomb went off close by.  Flooring the accelerator, he aimed the truck for where he thought the loading dock exit was.  He made it out after a minor collision with the corner of the building.  Thankful he’d pulled all of the iron rods out earlier he sped out onto the service road that would take him to the front of the resort.

A resort that was quickly being reduced to a gigantic pile of flaming rubble.  Jerking the steering wheel to the side he tore through the overgrown fields instead of following the road.  He was worried about hitting something given his extremely limited visibility.  The decision to put some more distance between himself and the resort was validated when a gigantic explosion sent the truck spinning sideways through the brush.  Slamming on the brakes he came to a stop facing the fireball that’d been a lux resort less than five minutes prior.  Not knowing if more bombs were incoming LeBron floored it to continue through the brush.  He was rushing towards the highway he knew was somewhere in front of him.

His mind locked in on one key piece of the planning he’d sat in on.  They’d been discussing which pieces of the island infrastructure it was necessary to keep intact.  The list included things like power plants, air strips, and desalinization facilities.  Less prioritized resources were things like housing and resorts.  From an infrastructure perspective the roads had been considered crucial.  The pilots and planners were under orders to avoid striking them as much as possible.  They were going to need the roads intact to quickly move people and supplies around the island.  It wasn’t like the crawlerz used them anyway.

That meant the roads were going to be one of the safest places for him to be.  LeBron was ecstatic when he skidded out of the brush and up a gravel covered slope onto the two-lane highway he remembered seeing from the sky.  Knowing the pilots would include the sighting of any vehicles in their post flight reports he immediately pointed the truck down the road and floored it once more.  Driving way too fast for the washed-out debris covered roads he slalomed his way in the direction he was fairly certain a large marina was in.

An hour later he saw what he was looking for.  Which was a good thing since he was running low on gas. He’d hit something in the road earlier that’d made the bottom of the truck make a funny noise every time he turned the wheel.  He’d gotten out to look and hadn’t seen anything wrong.  Nothing besides the dents and dings that came from driving through an exploding resort anyway.  He doubted whatever insurance card may be stuck in the dashboard would cover a hailstorm of bricks.

Based on the road signs still standing the clear blue waters of the harbor up ahead belonged to the capital city of Jamaica.  The city in line to become the next capital of the United States.  It’d been argued that Cheyenne should remain the capital. After all, Jamaica was just a temporary refuge for waiting out the eventual destruction of the crawlerz covering the North American continent.  LeBron didn’t much care one way or the other.  He just wanted a place where they could stop living in a constant state of fear.  A place to live their lives.  A place he could meet girls.  He wasn’t off to a particularly great start in Jamaica.

He was staring out the wasted windshield at the boats in the water up ahead when the truck stopped.  There was a really loud banging noise as the engine seized up.  The screech of metal on metal pulled LeBron’s attention back to the problem at hand.  What he’d thought was going to be a short drive was now going to be a long walk.  A long walk he needed to make before the sun went down.  He hopped out and started jogging down the road.  He didn’t bother sparing the steam shooting out of the engine compartment a second glance.

The long road ahead of him didn’t seem to grow any shorter as he jogged towards the marina in the distance.  There were a few cars on the road.  They were showing some serious wear from being buffeted by the salt spray from the nearby Caribbean.  LeBron didn’t pay much attention to the moldy corpses he spotted inside a few of the vehicles.  Death was everywhere.

Whereas before he’d thought he’d have plenty of time now he was wondering if he might have to jump off the seawall and swim for it after all.  The shadows were growing longer as he nervously shifted from a moderate jog to more of a frantic lope.  He was in pretty good shape thanks to the cardio workouts the apocalypse tended to put one through.  He wasn’t as toned as he’d been before though.  Months of sitting around Cheyenne working on strategy had taken their toll.  A half an hour every day on one of the base treadmills hadn’t been enough to prep him for this life-or-death marathon.

Dripping with sweat and completely out of breath he finally made it to the first pier jutting out into the cove.  Blood was dripping down into his face.  The shirt he’d wrapped around his forehead was loose and kept slipping down over his eyes.  He wanted to rip it off but didn’t have anything else to staunch the blood flow from the gash on his forehead.  There wasn’t much time left before sunset.  LeBron still had to fight the urge to collapse on the dock in exhaustion.  He’d run so hard he was close to blacking out.  Stumbling down the dock like a drunken sailor making their way back from liberty call he gazed out at the forest of masts in the harbor.

The sailboats that’d been tied up at this end of the dock were a mess.  Half of the masts were pointing up at weird angles from boats resting on the bottom of the shallow water.  Others were floating down low at the water line.  None of the boats looked like he’d be able to just hop aboard and sail away without some serious effort.  They also all looked way more complex than something he’d be able to handle by himself.  Not seeing anything that looked usable he turned and jogged off that dock to go check the next one.

The next one wasn’t much better.  LeBron’s standards were going down as fast as the sun was.  He’d be happy now if he could find a usable rowboat.  Then he could tool around the harbor and check out the boats anchored further out.  Even if none of those turned out to be useful, he’d still be better off out in the water once the sun went down.  As long as he kept away from the sides of the harbor and stayed quiet, he’d be fine.

Rummaging around the floating wrecks he lost track of time.  It was easy to do when you were desperately searching through mounds of garbage on long neglected boats with blood dribbling down your face.  LeBron’s only useful finds thus far had been a flare gun and a life vest.  He’d strapped both of them on so that he didn’t have to carry them around with him.  He was hoping to find a real gun in one of the cabins.  Realizing how late it’d gotten a cold sensation of terror began to spread outwards from LeBron’s stomach.  He began to imagine he could see shadowy figures darting around on the shoreline.

It was entirely possible that there were a few crawlerz crashed out on the boats he’d been rummaging around in.  Even if the boats were devoid of the monsters, it wouldn’t be long before they’d come down the dock looking for him.  It was inevitable that the beasts would sense him out here.  Once that happened, he was dead.  A flare gun and a pocketknife weren’t going to be enough to keep him alive for long.  He snapped the clips on the life jacket and pulled it snug against his chest.  Giving up on finding anything useful he’d decided a refreshing twilight swim was in order.

He was about to jump in when a crashing noise behind him told him that he was no longer alone on the boat.

Chapter 15:  Clairvoyant Cloak and Dagger Crap

Yue and crew looked like the living dead themselves as they stepped carefully onto the dock the next morning.  Two troopers plus Jeff were sporting heavily bandaged arms.  Jeff had come out ahead on that one being the arm Yue had gone for once she’d sort of regained control.  The two troopers she’d abused first were scared to remove the bandages they had on.  Billy had done his best to staple the wounds closed and cover them with antibiotic cream before wrapping them up like they were mummy arms.  They’d looked pretty bad.

“How many do you think made it over?”  Drew asked Jeff as they walked.  Lisa perked up at the question.  She was curious as well.  They knew that the HQ and barracks had survived the initial wave of the infected.  They’d kept in radio contact with the base the entire night to check in.  Sections of both buildings had been breached but nothing major.  The defenses had been setup to accommodate for certain sections giving way.

“A few hundred maybe?”  Jeff guessed.  There’d been at least a hundred thousand of the infected converging on the base.  Most wouldn’t have made it past the wall of destruction thrown up by the bombing runs.  Those that did would’ve still had to contend with swimming the intercoastal.  If swimming was really the right word for flinging your infected body into the water and trying to emulate a diseased crocodile.  Crawlerz didn’t swim normally.  The only thing driving them to do it’d been the breaker.

“Sounds about right.  Otherwise, this place wouldn’t have made it.”  Billy chimed in.

“Looks like it took a hell of a beating regardless.”  Harley said.  His blood red eyes scanned the wreckage of the HQ building down the street from them.  Any parts that could be torn off by the adrenaline-fueled rage machines that’d been assaulting the structure the previous night had been.  Blood stained the sides of the buildings.  A few bodies were lying at the base of the walls. Those would be the crawlerz who’d killed themselves by running repetitively headfirst into the building until they snapped their own necks.  It was also possible they’d cut themselves trying to rip open the walls and bled out overnight.  Either way the dead ones weren’t the ones they were concerned with.

“Looks like you’re pulling a double sis.”  Drew said putting his hand on Yue’s shoulder.

Yue looked like hell.  That made sense as she’d been through hell the night before.  All she wanted was a long hot bath and a big fluffy bed.  Sleeping for a week or two should do the trick.  She was considering accompanying her slumber with whatever chemical concoction Harley recommended for keeping the nightmares at bay.  Instead of curling up into a ball and passing out she was now going to have to assist in ferreting out the infected around the base.  They needed to find and kill them all.  She really wished the only other person with anything like her talent hadn’t lost her sight and been evacuated already. Being the unicorn psychic crawler catcher was a tough job that she really didn’t want.

An exhausted Yue commenced pointing out the spots where she sensed the infected hiding.  Billy and his merry band of killers blew holes through the rubble everywhere Yue pointed.  Once they’d cleared the front of the HQ building a squad of Marines came out to assist.  Jeff and the wounded troopers were led away by the base doctor to have their wounds cleaned and patched up.  Drew, Billy, Harley, and Lisa fought back their exhaustion to stay with Yue while everyone else was dismissed.  They ended up just being there for moral support after an exhausted Harley accidentally shot one of the Marines in the foot.  The leader of the squad, Lieutenant Jetson, ordered them to holster their weapons and stand back.

When Yue couldn’t stand up any longer Billy called for a break.  They’d have the Marines continue patrolling for hidden crawlerz while Yue took a three-hour nap.  Hopefully that’d be enough to allow her to pick back up on the crawler detection.  No one expected them to finish off all of the crawlerz today.  They just needed to kill enough of them to make it safe to spend the night in the buildings again.  They could always keep on killing the next day.

Yue woke up the next morning to the sound of the phone ringing.  The previous day was a blur.  She vaguely remembered going back out with Jetson to point out where more of the infected had been holed up.  She had no idea at what point she’d ended up back in bed or when Jeff had joined her.  Jeff rolled over her to pick up the phone.  He answered in an extremely annoyed tone.  The tone changed immediately as the person on the other end of the line explained the reason for the early morning call.  Jeff put the phone down and rolled over to face Yue.

“How’s your arm?”  Yue asked guiltily staring at the bandages crisscrossing her man’s arm.  She assumed the early morning call had been to ask when she’d be available to haul her ass topside and recommence locating targets for the jarheads to execute.

“LeBron’s missing.”  Jeff said slowly with his hand in Yue’s hand.

“How?  I thought he was on a carrier down by Jamaica?”  Yue asked sounding confused.  Her mind had been nowhere near thinking about LeBron yet.  At some point during the day, she’d have allowed a worried thought or two around her youngest brother.  This early though she was mostly concerned about getting a cup of coffee in her before she had to go play hide and seek with a bunch of zombies.  She’d assumed LeBron was relatively safe out in the middle of the ocean.  Given her own history with aircraft carriers she should’ve known better.

“He got separated on some sort of fact-finding mission.  Shaun called and asked if I could fly out to the carrier and take over his responsibilities.”  Jeff said.  Yue weighed that statement for a few seconds.

“I assume that’s code for you want me to grab Drew and the squad and we’ll all fly out and work on finding LeBron.”  Yue finally said.  Jeff nodded and began throwing his gear into a bag.  He agreed completely with Yue.  The rest of the world could go to hell. They needed to go find LeBron.

“When do we leave?”  Yue asked.

“There’s a plane landing soon.  We need to get over to Ocean City.”  Jeff answered.  He’d finished with his bag and was gathering Yue’s junk into a pile.  He’d let her sort through it and decide what she wanted to take.  Based on the faraway expression on her face he might just end up dumping it all in her bag for her.  Packing was obviously the last thing on her mind right now.

“Ocean City?”  Yue asked trying to piece together what the plan was.  Jeff didn’t have a ton of details either.  He did have an answer for that question though.

“We blew up the airport in Cape May to kill that breaker.  Ocean City is the closest cleared one now.”  Jeff answered.

Yue hopped out of bed right as Drew came barging in.  Lisa was right behind him.  The conversation immediately turned to everyone harassing Jeff about what he knew.  It took a minute for Yue and Jeff to convince Drew that they only knew what Jeff had learned in like a thirty-second-long phone call five minutes prior.  It was the same call and the same info that Drew had received.  Once that was all settled, they stormed out of the building to head for the boat to get to Ocean City.  Jeff wondered if anyone had let Kate know that she’d be dealing with the crawler cleanup without their assistance.  That question was answered when Kate came on the radio as they were leaving to wish them God speed and good luck finding their brother.

The Ocean City airport was a small municipal airport that looked like it’d seen much better days.  The runway was covered in dirt and weeds.  A crew had been sent out to clean it up not too long ago.  They’d removed everything that’d interfere with a plane landing.  They hadn’t spent a lot of time trying to make the place pretty.  Sitting in the middle of the dirt and the muck was an expensive jet.  The kind that only massively successful drug dealers and third world dictators could afford.

“Nice ride.”  Billy commented as they trekked through the muddy field towards the strip the plane sat waiting on.

“I hope they have peanuts.”  Harley chimed in.  That ended the kind of back and forth that normally would’ve lasted the rest of the walk to the plane.  Everyone was feeling the stress of the last few days.  No one wanted to be too flippant when Yue and Drew looked like they were ready to lose their minds at any second.  They weren’t taking the news about LeBron well at all.

The pilot met them on the tarmac to escort into the plane.  There was no co-pilot.  Once they’d all taken their seats the pilot handed Jeff a sealed letter before going back to the cockpit.  The pilot closed the doors very intentionally so that Jeff would know he was on his own.  The pilot had also left the main door open and the stairs down.  Jeff understood why after he reviewed the letter.  He cleared his throat loudly to get everyone’s attention.  Then he realized everyone was already staring at him in anticipation anyway.

“What’s the note say?”  Lisa finally asked when Jeff just sat there quietly.

“It’s from Shaun.  It basically says that LeBron disappearing wasn’t an accident.  Based on some e-mail threads and other intelligence they suspect a high-ranking officer’s a traitor.  Possibly more than one officer.  If we fly out there, it’s even odds we get shot down before we get a chance to land.”  Jeff answered.

“Why would they shoot us down?”  Drew asked.

“Shaun is supposedly on this flight.  They think the traitors want to assassinate Shaun then declare martial law.  Evidently some of the admirals aren’t very impressed with our fearless POTUS.”  Jeff said.

“Does it say anything about LeBron?”   Yue asked.

“They don’t know where he is.  He disappeared on a fact-finding mission is all it says.  The stairs are down to give anyone who wants to leave a chance to walk away.”  Jeff said.

“How do you get the stairs up?”  Harley asked.

“Is there like one of those wind-up things?”  Billy asked looking over at the door.

“Thank you.”  Yue stuttered out around the tears that suddenly sprang into her eyes.  The men and women on board the plane were her family.  They’d just been told they might get shot out of the sky.  None of them had even considered leaving.  A few looked bored with the entire conversation.  Tiff had located the blankets and pillows and was already half asleep.  She even had a fancy looking mask over her eyes.

“This is a fancy plane.  I think the guy who drives it just presses a button.”  Harley said.

“Nice.  They got any of that expensive champagne?”  Billy asked.

“We’re going to fight regular people, so we’re not allowed to get wasted first.”  Tiff warned her rambunctious battle buddies from behind her silken sleep mask.  Harley looked like he might make a crack about the pretty pink mask she was wearing.  He visibly reconsidered.  Pissing off the stone-cold warrior hiding inside the petite feminine body was a very bad idea.  Seeing the huge gypsy trooper intimidated by the camo clad woman with the pink face mask was enough to stabilize Yue on her emotional teeter totter.

“We’re not going in guns blazing.  We don’t know how deep and wide this goes.  Hopefully it’s just a little tumor in the fleet.  In which case the President wants us to cut it out.  We have to be careful since that little tumor may know where LeBron is.”  Jeff said.

“Can we not use the tumor analogy?  Kind of gross.”  Billy said.  Harley nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, if your next words were going to be something about squeezing the tumor to get information out of its data pus or something…”  Harley joked.

“Alright.  I’ll let the pilot know it’s time to go wheels up.  We’ll either be landing on a carrier or shot down when we get in range.  If we don’t get shot down, then that tells us the cancer hasn’t spread too far yet.  Sorry, still stuck on the cancer analogy.  If we don’t get shot down, we act like we’re just there to help search for LeBron until we figure out what’s up.  Which works out good since we’re there to search for LeBron which is going to require figuring out what’s going on anyway.”  Jeff said.

“How do we handle the spying pieces?  We’re more the people who shoot the bad guys.  Someone else normally figures out who the bad guys are.”  Billy asked seriously.

“Easy enough.  Shaun put a short list of who it probably is on this note.  We have a psychic with us who should be able to figure out who the bad apples are.”  Jeff said.

“Wait!  Are you talking about me?  I’m not a regular human psychic.”  Yue said.

“Yes, you are.  How do you think you can manipulate people so easily?  You’re reading them and it’s not just a body language thing.  You’re going to need to dig deep and suck the info out of their heads.  That’s another reason Shaun sent us.  He thinks you’re the best option to get this figured out.”  Jeff said.

Yue settled back in her seat and shut her eyes.  That was great.  LeBron’s life was hanging in the balance and their plan was to land in the middle of the enemy and wing it.  Their most important weapon in the fight being a skill that she didn’t actually possess.  She’d explained about a million times that she didn’t read minds, but it didn’t seem to sink in with the Neanderthals she associated with.  She had a couple of hours to develop that skill before they landed.  Assuming of course that they weren’t just blown out of the sky.  Either way this mission was no doubt going to end in disaster.  Of course, that’s what she thought about most of their missions, and she was still alive so who knew…

Chapter 16:  Maximum Pucker Factor

“Please fasten your seat belts and return your tray tables to the upright position.  We’ll be landing in approximately five minutes.  It’s been a pleasure flying with you.  If we don’t die in the next few minutes, I sincerely hope you’ll consider flying Suicide Airways again someday.”  The pilot ended the cheery transmission as the plane began its descent.

“Hopefully he’s a better pilot than comedian.”  Billy said.  He was white knuckling his armrests.  Beside him Harley looked much more relaxed.  Harley had probably ignored the order to avoid getting high for this mission.

Yue wished she’d thought about asking Harley what else he may have in his bag of tricks.  Everyone on board could use a little chemical courage to get them through the next few minutes.  As if landing on an aircraft carrier wasn’t nerve wracking enough.  The very real possibility of meeting a missile face first on the way down made it even more exciting. You could cut the tension with a knife as they plummeted towards the gray speck that gradually turned into the ship they were landing on.  Even the most seasoned of the band of warriors were holding their breaths when they finally felt the wheels touch down.

Yue was halfway out of her seat before catching the look Jeff was shooting at her.  They couldn’t just jump down on the deck and start accusing people of mutiny.  They were going to have to be a bit more subtle about it.  At least until they knew what was going on.  There was also the awkwardness associated with the men on the carrier being under the impression that the POTUS was on board.  They were going to have to explain why the jet with the call sign Air Force One didn’t actually have the President aboard.  Based on the bevy of dress whites heading their way they were going to have to start the explanations the second their feet hit the deck.

Jeff led the way down the stairs to meet the men headed in their direction.  The rest of the group formed up behind him.  Yue, Drew, and Lisa all stood around Jeff as the uniformed men approached.

“I’m Admiral Rittlin.  Is the President with you?”  The Admiral asked.  He was looking past Jeff as if he expected the President to materialize at any second.

“No sir.  He sent me in his stead.  It’s good to finally meet you in person.  I’m the Director for Reunification.  The title keeps evolving but still doing the same sort of work.  My protégé was LeBron who I understand disappeared on some sort of fact-finding mission ashore?”  Jeff asked.  His heavy-handed approach left Yue cringing behind him.

“I’m LeBron’s sister.  We’re looking for any news you have on the search and rescue effort.  We’d love to jump in and help.  On top of being my brother LeBron’s also got a ton of useful intel in his head for the reunification effort.  Which is lucky for him since the President authorized us to grab whatever resources were needed to find him.”  Yue said.  She hadn’t been able to stand back and let Jeff continue with his approach.  She’d sensed right away the other man wasn’t impressed with Jeff.  She focused all of her attention on Rittlin and let her mind wander like she did when she wanted to jump into the groupthink.

“Absolutely.  I’ll have one of my men take you to the briefing room.  We’ll review everything we’re doing with you and your team.  Is there anything you need immediately?”  Rittlin asked graciously.

Yue hid her sudden flash of anger behind a tight-lipped smile.  She hoped Jeff would pick up the conversation.  There was no way she was going to be able to address this man directly right now.  Jeff had been right.  She was able to use her psychic skills on people.  All that time spent in the crawlerz mind space had sharpened that talent.  This traitor thought LeBron was dead and he was the one who’d made it happen.  He felt pride and amusement in it.  Instead of empathy for her and their situation the man was full of contempt for them.  They didn’t have long to live on this ship.

“Ah.  No thank you.  We’d like to get the briefing commenced as soon as possible to understand what’s being done to locate LeBron and how we can best assist.  I also need to pick up where LeBron left off to understand how the mission to retake Jamaica is progressing.”  Jeff stammered out.  It wasn’t a smooth transition.

“Sounds good.  Lieutenant, please take them to the briefing room.  We can run through the same presentation we’d prepared for the President.  I’ll swing by operations and get the latest on the search for LeBron and the bombing runs and meet you over there.  We have some refreshments waiting as well.”  Rittlin said.  He’d noticed the awkward pause before Jeff had jumped in to respond to him.  He kept glancing curiously over at Yue.

The group broke up with an officer marching them down a couple of decks to the briefing room.  Yue kept tripping on the hatchways and stairs as she let her mind wander trying to pick up anyone else who harbored any animosity towards them.  She’d picked up some signals of ill intent from a handful of the officers up on the flight deck.  For the most part though she wasn’t getting anything.

Other than a couple of muffled jokes about her supposed sobriety level no one commented too much on Yue stumbling around.  Harley and Billy had tossed out the jokes as a way to cover up what they both knew she was trying to do.  Jeff was dying to find out if Yue had picked up anything.  He had way more confidence in her abilities then Yue herself did.

Yue was so focused on this new ability she’d just discovered that she didn’t even notice all the dings to her toes.  She’d always been extremely perceptive and been able to intuit what people wanted.  She’d always thought she was just really good at reading people.  It turned out that was true.  It was just more literal of a talent than she’d ever imagined.

Her newfound superpower would be a lot more helpful once she had a better idea of what was going on.  This wasn’t like the way the crawlerz lived their lives in the groupthink.  The infected didn’t have any filter between what they thought and what went out for the world to see.  They were creatures of evil lust and didn’t care who knew it.  Uninfected humans were much less open.  They hid things even from themselves.  Forget about broadcasting it out for the world to see.  The only reason she’d so easily picked up on Rittlin’s thoughts was because they were so powerful.  The man wanted his thoughts to be known.  He hated that he had to hide from them.  The dirtbag traitor actually thought his actions were honorable.

“You got anything?”  Jeff asked once they’d been shown where the briefing room was.  There was a bathroom directly across from the large conference space.  The young officer who’d escorted them had excused himself after showing them where the head was.  Jeff had whispered the question, but Yue still motioned for him to keep the volume down. She leaned in to give him a hug and a quick kiss.  In the midst of that action, she whispered that she was sure Rittlin was involved.  Jeff nodded at that new piece of intel.  He’d suspected as much.

“Are you ok?”  Drew asked her moments after she’d broken the embrace with Jeff.  Billy had also wandered over to sit down near them.  Yue reasoned that they were most likely being watched.  Even if they weren’t being watched she couldn’t tell Drew anything yet.  He wasn’t good at subtle.  He’d have Rittlin on the ground with a knife to the pompous traitor’s throat the next time he saw him.  As much as imagining that scene made Yue happy, she knew it wouldn’t help them or LeBron if it was played out.  At least not yet.

“I’m ok.  We just need these guys to hurry up and tell us what’s going on.”  Yue said.  Lisa and Drew stared at her for a couple of seconds.  They were processing the fact that Yue was avoiding telling them something.  Lisa understood why Yue wouldn’t want to tell Drew something.  Following that line of logic, she guessed that Yue already had a pretty good idea who the bad guys were.  Hopefully it wasn’t the whole crew.  She couldn’t even imagine the whole ship was full of traitors.  A couple of overly ambitious self-important senior officers would make sense to her.  Maybe even that one they’d already met.  Something about him had seemed off.

The briefing revealed Admiral Rittlin’s arrogance even more.  He didn’t show up until near the end of it.  The whole thing had only lasted about an hour.  Most of that’d been around the operations to reclaim the island.  The bombing missions were going according to plan.  The next phase seemed a little shaky as to how the boots on the ground were going to be leveraged.  Billy pretty much tore those plans apart when the presenter asked if anyone had any questions.  Especially after he noticed there wasn’t a single soldier attending the briefing.  It was all sailors.  Why were a bunch of swabbies trying to plan a ground invasion?

For their part the officers providing the briefing made it obvious they didn’t expect to be questioned by a bunch of ground pounders.  Especially not ones with their faces tattooed to look like skulls.  Looking around the room Yue could see their point.  The Suicide Squad had gone way off the reservation as far as acceptable dress codes for a combat unit.  It was all tattoos, oddly shaved facial hair, and patches paying homage to their namesake movie.  The troopers had really embraced the image of being the bringers of death in a post-apocalyptic horror scape.

The officer running the briefing had very limited knowledge around what’d happened to LeBron.  Either because he hadn’t been properly briefed himself or because there wasn’t much to be known.  LeBron had gone inside a large building to have a look at it while the party he was with had been having lunch at an abandoned resort.  He’d been standing in a courtyard area where the sun should’ve kept him safe.  A crawler had come out of nowhere and dragged him into the shadows before the guards had been able to react.  They’d tried to go in and rescue him only to find the resort was filled with the crawlerz.  One of the Marines had reported seeing what looked like a body being ripped apart in the shadows.  They’d assumed LeBron was dead and a bombing mission had been called in to destroy the property.

Yue and Drew should’ve been devastated.  The whole squad should’ve keenly felt the loss of the brilliant young man.  Jeff was surprised not to be moved by the report on the death of his beloved prodigy.  None of them were impacted because the story rang so false that none of them believed it.  LeBron was a survivor in the truest sense of the word.  He might have let himself get in the situation being described to them.  None of them bought that would’ve been the end though.  They also didn’t buy a group of Marines standing around with their thumbs up their collective butts while all of that went down.  LeBron may be dead, but it wouldn’t have happened the way they were being told.

“So, what’s the search effort that’s under way all about then?”  Jeff asked.

“That’s been called off as of the bombing run.  We checked the perimeter and sent in men to get as close as they could to the resort.  There was no indication of a survivor.”  The briefing officer answered.

“You all left after he got snagged by the crawlerz?”  Drew asked disbelievingly.

“Yes.  The first priority at that point was to protect the others from being similarly taken by the infected.  If they were venturing out into daylight like that then no one was safe in that area.”  The officer answered.

“Were you there?”  Drew asked.

“No, I was not.”  The briefing officer answered.

“Do you believe it happened the way the report says it happened?”  Yue asked.  The question appeared to shock the briefing officer.

“That report has been signed off on by multiple witnesses at the highest levels.”  The officer answered indignantly.  He gave Yue a dismissive look and asked if there were any more questions.  It was at that moment that Admiral Rittlin deigned to make his appearance.

“I was there at the time the incident occurred.  I can assure you it happened the way it was reported.  I want to offer you all my condolences.  We kept the story purposefully vague until we were able to confirm your brother was no longer alive.”  The Admiral answered.

“I’m not sure I understand why a message was sent saying there was a search and rescue effort underway then?”  Jeff asked the Admiral.

“I take responsibility for that.  We sent men back to search the scene prior to sending in the bomber to blow up the nest.  There really wasn’t much hope but we wanted to make sure he hadn’t escaped somehow before we leveled the place.  The search wasn’t necessarily the kind of search that’d be conducted if someone fell overboard or something similar to that.”  The Admiral answered slickly.

“Can we speak to the men you sent to conduct that search?”  Drew asked.

“Absolutely. I’ll make them available to you as soon as they return from the recon mission that they’re on.  Again, I’m very sorry for your loss.  Please take all the time you need. In the meanwhile, if you’d like to accompany me Jeff, I can answer any additional questions you have around what needs to be reported back to the President on our current status for retaking the island.”  The Admiral offered.  After hearing Yue’s warning Jeff had no desire to be taken to some noisy section of the ship and shot.  He didn’t think that would happen but wanted to talk to Yue in more depth before wandering around the huge ship with the murdering scumbag.

“If it’s all the same I’ll setup a meeting with you for later today.  I’d like to be with Yue and Drew right now.”  Jeff said.  Yue dutifully teared up and placed her head on Jeff’s shoulder.  Not seeing a way to gracefully pry Jeff away the Admiral graciously agreed.  He even offered up dinner in his dining room for Jeff and Yue if they were feeling up to it.

“I see why he didn’t invite everyone else, but what about Lisa and me?”  Drew asked once they’d been shown to their quarters.  A large room that could accommodate all of them with multiple bunks.

“What do you mean you see why he didn’t invite the rest of us?”  Tiff asked glaring at Drew.  Lisa laughed when Drew had zero comeback for that exchange.  Tiff was someone you did not want to get on the bad side of.  Telling her that the punk rock hair and visible tattoos were going to keep her out of a fine dining establishment was basically asking to be punched in the throat.

Jeff and Yue ignored the back and forth between the rest of the squad as they huddled in a random bunk using a combination of sign language, writing, and their own special language they’d made up to communicate in the field to come up with a plan.  Knowing they were being watched and listened to made it a little tricky.  They made sure to get the rest of the squad to be as loud as could be considered appropriate given the circumstances.  At the end of the day the ‘plan’ was to play it by ear and kill the traitors before the traitors killed them.  Not really a great plan when they didn’t even know who all of the traitors were.  There was also the fact that they had to then convince everyone that the people they killed were in fact traitors or they might be labeled traitors themselves.

That was an awful lot to try and communicate with hand signals that revolved around moving in silently on a nest of crawlerz.

Chapter 17:  Dinner Theatre

The witch knew.  Rittlin had seen it in her eyes.  It was why he’d skipped most of the briefing.  It was why he’d sent in an officer to conduct the briefing who had no first-hand knowledge of what’d happened.  If the witch knew then that group of misfits with her knew by now too.  Their lack of a reaction when informed that LeBron was believed KIA proved that much.  They weren’t buying what Rittlin was selling.  The brazen manner the witch had challenged his briefing officer told him these people were dangerous.  They had to be put down before they ruined everything.

Rittlin understood what he was doing would be considered seditious and unbecoming by many of his peers.  His disdain for politicians had festered ever since the President’s televised speech at the beginning of the breakout.  The speech where he’d told the country they were on their own.  The speech written by the bureaucratic coward down in the conference room.  Hiding his contempt for Jeff had been harder than hiding his fear of Yue ripping secrets out of his head.

Rittlin didn’t see where he had much of a choice.  The path of least resistance would’ve been to ride his high-level position into a nice manor on the beach in Jamacia.  He just couldn’t honorably do that under a President as reckless as Shaun.  Under Shaun’s leadership they’d lost hundreds of thousands of survivors, reserve soldiers, and sailors.  Shaun had been the one to order the troops to execute on the strategy devised by Jeff and his team of morons.  The team had come up with the brilliant idea to drive around the country setting out claymores to cull a herd of millions of the infected.  Considering a key member of that brain trust had been too young too young to legally buy cigarettes the idiocy of that plan made sense.

Even without the evolution of individual crawlerz into breakers the plan made zero sense.  Rittlin had gone on record as being against it from the beginning.  The President had chosen to listen to a handful of civilians with no real-world experience over the recommendations of the experienced military officers seeking to advise him.  Even now Shaun was interfering.  Despite failing miserably at deploying troops effectively on the ground in North America he’d sent his inept advisors here to tell him and the rest of the fleet what to do.  LeBron had been sent here in shorts and a hoodie to evaluate him.

It was all just too much.  The plan to lure Shaun here by getting rid of LeBron had been born in the moment.  Rittlin wasn’t an impulsive man by any means.  The need to act against the insanity of the path Shaun was taking them down had been brewing for so long now that he hadn’t been able to contain it.  Together with a core group of longtime conspirators he’d come up with the helicopter tour idea.  Ideally, they’d have killed LeBron right there on the spot.  The Marines who’d travelled with them weren’t in his group of conspirators though, so he’d been hesitant to push too far.

Those Marines had been dispatched to secure and guard a beachhead on a nearby island immediately upon their return to the ship.  They’d have no communication with the fleet for at least a year.  Before being allowed to rejoin the fleet they’d be ordered to keep their mouths shut.  A year from now it shouldn’t matter too much anyway.  A year was an eternity in today’s world.  If a year didn’t seem like enough time, then ‘accidents’ could always be arranged.

Rittlin had been in a reactive mode ever since setting the events in motion with LeBron.  The original idea behind getting rid of LeBron was to inspire Shaun to make the trip out.  They’d have simply repeated the tour they’d given LeBron.  It would’ve been more of a challenge to quietly take out the President.  Shaun would have Secret Service agents with him.  The last vestiges of a Secret Service that’d taken a lot of hits.  It wouldn’t have been easy to get the Marines to fight the Secret Service.  Getting them to assassinate the President would’ve been next to impossible.

Rittlin had come up with a straightforward solution.  He’d fly the helicopter himself.  Or, have one of his conspirators do it.  You didn’t get to be an admiral in charge of aircraft carriers without your pilot wings.  The plan would’ve been to get everything setup for lunch then casually head back to the helicopter to grab a ‘present’ for the President.  They’d simply take to the air and blast the hell out of the whole party.  Instead of announcing a weird search and rescue effort being underway like with LeBron he’d just say a group of surgers had attacked.

It was a solid plan.  With Shaun out of the way he’d declare martial law and make sure the island got settled properly.  Once everything was running like clockwork, he’d happily turn the reigns back over to the politicians to screw everything up again.  Only then would he allow himself to settle down in that manor on a cliff to live out the rest of his days sipping Mojitos on a balcony overlooking the Caribbean.

That balcony view was slipping from his fingers.  The President hadn’t come himself. Shaun had sent a bureaucrat and his psychic girlfriend along with a gang of cold-eyed circus freaks to meet with him instead.  Rittlin wasn’t fooled for one minute by the tattoos and colorful hairstyles.  The troopers making up the Suicide Squad were hard-core operators.  It was obvious in the way they moved.  The way their eyes scanned a room when they walked in.  The way their weapons seemed to be part of their wardrobe instead of awkward accessories.

At this point the only out Rittlin saw was killing Jeff, the witch, and their merry band of men before they were able to prove what the witch already knew.  The second they had proof it was going to be game over for Rittlin and his pals.  It might already be too late.  The days of lengthy court martials were over.  If the President issued an order to take Rittlin and his men prisoner, most people would consider that good enough.  If Rittlin and the others died during the process, there wouldn’t be six months of CNN coverage and a host of tabloid conspiracy theories.  There’d be a new admiral promoted to head up the operation. Rittlin and his men would become a footnote.  A warning to others not to rebel against the establishment.

Rittlin was hoping inspiration would strike during dinner.  Once the dinner was over there’d be no going back.  He’d invited the psychic witch and the President’s most trusted advisor to break bread in a room filled with his fellow mutineers.  Before the night was over, they might very well have a couple of bodies to feed the fish with.  Rittlin had the cooks prepare the food and leave it in the dining room buffet style.  There’d be no servers or busboys present.  Rittlin also had plans to dispatch the Suicide Squad to ‘assist’ in a rescue mission on shore.  A mission he didn’t plan on them returning from.

Dressing in casual khakis for dinner Rittlin arrived early to make sure everything was being setup as ordered. Officer’s clothing with no insignia had been sent to the quarters Jeff and the squad had been assigned.  Rittlin could care less what the two wanted to wear to dinner.  He wanted them in the khakis to throw off how they concealed their weapons.  Anything he could do to knock them off their game was a good thing.  If it came down to shooting them then Rittlin was going to have to count on surprise.  In a fair fight the officers in the dining room were nowhere near as combat experienced as Yue and Jeff.  It wouldn’t matter how fast the power couple were on the draw if they got shot in the backs though.

Eight of his high-ranking conspirators showed up for the dinner.  Rittlin briefed them on what he expected to go down.  The men knew what was at stake.  They’d do what needed to be done.  Ironically enough it was their shared love of country that was giving them the strength to mutiny.  They’d each given plenty of thought to what they were doing and decided it was the right thing.  None of them liked the idea of secret assassinations.  This was one of those times when the end justified the means in their minds.

Yue and Jeff didn’t show up alone.  They brought Drew and Lisa along with them.  Rittlin found himself graciously allowing the additional couple to join them.  Jeff also made a point of mentioning that Billy and Tiff would be stationed outside the door.  He briefly explained how the squad was under orders to guard Yue wherever she went.  That was why they’d had to turn down the mission they’d been asked to go on by operations.

“I’m pretty sure she’s safe on board an aircraft carrier.”  Rittlin said in an effort to dismiss the two heavily armed troopers standing in the hallway outside the dining area.  It hadn’t occurred to him the squad may just refuse to go on the mission he’d made up for them to get them out of the way.

“That’s what we thought aboard the Ford.  Right before the massive crawler outbreak that ended up taking her down.”  Yue answered.  She’d ignored the formal wear Rittlin had sent for her.  She was dressed in her normal leather look.  The outfit Drew referred to as her dominatrix matrix cowgirl attire.  Ignoring the smirks of the senior officers she walked into the dining area and began picking through the buffet.

“That outbreak was a nightmare.  We ended up jumping over the side once the call came to abandon ship.  It’s like nowhere is safe anymore.”  Jeff said.  He was wearing the freshly pressed khakis that’d been provided.  It wasn’t a big deal to him since that’s what he wore most of the time anyway.  He was armed as well.

The officers in the dining area wearily regarded the young woman stacking crackers and slices of pickled fish on a plate.  She smiled disarmingly at them and engaged a few in casual chit chat.  Asking them how long they’d been aboard and if they were looking forward to Jamaica being cleared was all she needed to do.  Within a few minutes she knew everyone inside the room was a traitor.  Rittlin was growing more and more nervous.  None of this was going as planned.

In the hallway several more of the Suicide Squad stealthily joined Billy and Tiff.  Harley had taken a spot down the corridor to keep anyone from disturbing them.  The large, fully armed, wild looking man had little difficulty getting the mild-mannered officers on this deck to divert to other passageways.  This was senior officer territory anyway.  Not a space traveled often by the rank and file.

In the dining room the officers awkwardly introduced themselves to the newcomers.  Yue couldn’t take it after the fifth one mentioned something about being sorry for their loss.  A loss she was sensing had been caused by these pompous pricks.  She smiled and walked over to the door.  A door that was unguarded since Rittlin hadn’t wanted any witnesses.  Yue went to open the door and found Rittlin and another man staring at her.

“Need to go powder my nose.  I’ll be right back.  You can get started without me if you like.”  Yue said as demurely as she could.  She wanted to start cussing, pull a knife, and slash the treasonous Admiral’s fat, wrinkly throat.  However, that wasn’t the plan.

No one had bothered telling Rittlin their plan.

“This dining room looks like a clown car.”  A frazzled Rittlin announced to the room at large through clenched teeth.  The odd statement threw off Jeff and Drew.  The officers in the dining room reacted immediately to the code phrase.  Weapons were pulled and aimed.

This was a group of Naval officers though.  Their idea of fighting was sitting in the cockpit of a billion-dollar plane launching missiles at a target so far away you could only see it on a radar.  This was a group of pilots and engineers.  Rittlin would’ve done well to have recruited a few SEALs to join the team.  He’d been hesitant to broach the subject of treason with those men though.  The majority of the conspirators were senior officers, so they weren’t in their physical prime.  They hadn’t seen much real action in a long while.  They’d been sitting on a ship busy thinking they knew better than the soldiers in the field.  They may have been warriors at one time, but now they were mostly middle management.

At the other end of the table, you had a group who’d been battling creatures from hell for years now.  Creatures who moved with supernatural speed.  Monsters that came out of nowhere and had no remorse or mercy.  The group of traitors drawing down on them moved almost comically slow.  Jeff and the others had already discussed what to do in this situation.  They dropped to the floor and started shooting legs.  Behind them the heavy door was smashed inwards as the squad breached the room and pressed the attack.

When the smoke cleared the outcome was pretty much as expected.  All of the mutineers were on the ground.  A few of them looking very dead.  The Suicide Squad wasn’t really used to taking prisoners.  Getting up off the floor Jeff surveyed the wreckage of the room.  Troopers were moving around securing the prisoners.  Tiff had to remind one of the men that they were trying to keep the scum alive.  None of the squad were even wounded.  Rittlin’s crew had evidently thought that pointing guns at them would be enough to make them surrender.  They hadn’t understood the first rule in a bar fight.  Never screw around.  Escalate to the highest level of violence immediately.

They were now in the second stage of a bar fight.  Getting away before the cops showed up.  This phase was going to get tricky.  Especially since Rittlin hadn’t survived the gun play.  Unwilling to be taken prisoner he’d been the only officer to actually get any shots off.  Billy had dropped him almost immediately.

“How much of that did you get?”  Jeff asked.

“My camera got blocked by my jacket.”  Drew said.  He was watching a video of the inside of his coat.

“I’ve got them pulling on us.”  Lisa said excitedly.  They’d spent the afternoon under covers in their rooms trying to convert their iPhones into spy cameras.  It was amazing what a little ingenuity and some duct tape could accomplish.

“Is this all of them?”  Billy asked Yue.

“I think so.  Rittlin was the leader so with him dead it might be hard to know for sure.  I can interview these guys before we kill them though.”  Yue said loudly.  Billy and Tiff cracked up at the looks that crossed the prisoner’s faces.  Yue had been kidding with that last comment.  For a freaky ass witch, she could be pretty funny when she wanted to be.

Chapter 18:  Get Out of Jail Free Card

Tiff stood guard over the half dozen traitorous officers sprawled out on the blood splattered floor.  She’d kicked the chairs out of the way and enlisted a few of her fellow troopers to help truss up the prisoners after they’d searched them for weapons.  The complete lack of concealed weapons was kind of sad.  Tiff was probably walking around with more weapons strapped to her than the whole group of sullen mutineers had brought to the fight.

For a bunch of murdering garbage piles, they were super whiney.  They’d kept the complaining and pained moans down until they figured out Yue wasn’t serious about mercy killing them.  They’d shut up again when Tiff loudly asked Jeff if she could please waste a few of them.  Suffering from the internal damage the little lead missiles had inflicted on their bodies the officers had a hard time keeping their mouths shut.  Two of the troopers were currently administering first aid to the ones bleeding the most.  They were triaging the bleeders based on the lack of enough duct tape to bandage all the wounds.  The fancy embroidered cloth napkins from the table settings were working nicely though.

The plan now was to quickly interrogate the prisoners then contact the President.  Shaun would arrange for a new group of officers to be flown over to the carrier to take command.  Yue would interrogate everyone associated with Admiral Rittlin and his henchmen to uncover any additional mutineers.  Yue assumed she’d be doing a lot more interrogating now that they knew she could do it.  Best case scenario all the traitors were here in this room. Being ‘fairly confident’ that was true wasn’t going to cut it with the stakes this high though.

“Are there any other traitors out there?”  Yue asked a blood covered officer that Drew was holding up by the hair.  These were the guys who’d murdered LeBron.  They’d used him as bait.  Drew wanted to know if there were more traitors so that he could make sure every one of them died horribly.

“We’re not traitors.  We’re trying to save the country.”  The man gasped out.  Lying on your stomach while your leg pumped blood into a soaking wet designer napkin fastened to your leg by duct tape wasn’t pleasant.  Having someone hold you up by your hair so you could be interrogated by a psychic witch didn’t help.

“Were you there when LeBron was murdered?”  Yue asked.

“We never murdered anybody.”  The man muttered.  Drew bounced the man’s face off the deck.

“What happened to LeBron?”  Yue asked the man again.  He pretended to be in too much pain to answer her.

“Dude she’s not asking again.”  Drew said putting his blade on the man’s neck.  He slid it back and forth a few times to draw some blood.

“We left him there.  Rittlin ordered the Marines to zip tie him to a table then we left.”  The officer had miraculously recovered his ability to speak.  Yue continued to prod the man until they’d gotten the full story out of him.  Including the fact that the Marines hadn’t been complicit in what was going on.  When Drew asked for specifics around where LeBron had been left the officer admitted that they’d ordered a bombing run on the resort.  He didn’t think there was much of a chance of LeBron having survived.

There was some noise out in the hallway as the squad members sent to contact the President returned.  The XO was with them along with a group of armed Marines and multiple corpsmen.  The corpsmen ignored the men with guns and dove in to begin rendering aid to the blood covered officers lined up on their stomachs.  Jeff approached the XO with Yue beside him.  The Marines looked ready to start shooting at any second.

“I assume the President let you in on what’s happening.”  Jeff said to the khaki wearing Captain staring back at him.  The man’s name tag identified him as Simmons.

“He did.  It jives with some things I’ve been wondering about.  Something seemed off.”  Captain Simmons answered cautiously.

“You didn’t know anything about what was going on?”  Yue asked staring directly at Simmons.  The captain didn’t flinch under her steady stare.

“No ma’am.  Like I said something seemed off.  The Admiral never really liked politicians, but I didn’t think that he’d ever go this far.”  Simmons responded.  The President had ordered him to cooperate and defer to Jeff on what to do next.  What Simmons wanted to do was lock everyone in the brig until he could figure out what the hell was going on.

“Did you have anything to do with a bombing run on a resort in the last couple of days?  It would’ve been ordered by Rittlin.”  Yue asked continuing to stare at him.

“I was on duty when the Admiral requested a run following his recon of the island with your brother.  It seemed a little odd, but we got it taken care of.  It took longer than normal. There were some issues with other sites and such, but it got done.  Why?”  Simmons asked.

“He’s a good guy.”  Yue announced.  They’d all kind of assumed the XO would’ve been in on it.

“Wait.  How much extra time did it take to get the mission underway?”  Drew asked excitedly.  The XO was sidetracked by the corpsmen carrying out the mutinous officers.  He was also trying to figure out why Yue had just randomly told everyone that he was a good guy.  It took him a few seconds to process Drew’s question and provide an answer.

“An hour or two maybe?  I’m really not sure.  We’d have it in the logbook.”  Simmons finally responded.

“What about satellite images of the site?”  Jeff asked.

“That depends on what time it was.  We lose visibility on that half of the island for about four hours every day.  It’s a minor miracle we can still access those feeds.  It’s going to suck when the satellites all fall out of the sky.”  Simmons said looking around curiously at all the faces staring back at him.

A very excited Drew immediately requested to be taken to the communications room or wherever he could go to review the satellite feeds.  Simmons looked at Jeff who authorized Drew’s request with a curt nod.  Yue vacillated between going with Drew or staying with Jeff.  She opted to stay with Jeff for now in case she needed to interrogate anyone else.  It seemed likely she’d be needed again soon.  She elicited a firm promise from Lisa to let her know immediately if they saw anything on the recordings.  Assuming there even were recordings available.  A pretty big assumption since the ‘cloud’ had turned out not to be apocalypse proof.

Moments later Drew and Lisa were rushing out the door accompanied by a bewildered Marine leading them to the operations center.  Simmons looked down at the bloodied men being loaded onto stretchers by the small army of corpsmen he’d summoned.  Everyone who wasn’t a corpsman or bleeding profusely or dead had been asked to wait out in the corridor.  He still couldn’t fathom how men he’d considered as honorable as the ones he served beside had fallen so far.  Most of them wouldn’t meet his eyes.  Even in their pain they were ashamed of what they’d become.  At the least they were ashamed of how they’d gone about it.

“Hey Captain, what do you think they’ll do to us?”  One of the most junior traitors called out.  The man looked scared.  Simmons didn’t blame him.  It wasn’t like there was a whole lot of extra supplies laying around to take care of prisoners.

“What normally happens to traitors?”  Simmons said walking out.  In the hallway he was just in time to hear one of the officers being hauled away call Yue something that rhymed with witch.  A man with a skull tattooed across his face stepped forward and slammed the hilt of a large combat knife into the guy’s nose.

Blood splattered everywhere.  The officer started hurling expletives around and demanding the skull faced warrior be locked up.  Simmons could hardly believe the arrogance of the wounded officer.  He wasn’t surprised at all when the leader of the Suicide Squad swung the knife hilt again knocking the man unconscious.  There was a decent chance the officer wouldn’t ever wake back up.  Billy wasn’t in the mood to pull his punches.

“I’m sorry about that.”  Billy said to the two corpsmen who’d been carrying the stretcher the officer had been laying on.  Blood had splattered all over them when Billy broke the man’s nose.

“I have no idea what’s going on right now.  I’ll reserve the right to either be pissed off or buy you a beer later.  Just try not to hit anyone else.  We’ve been out of laundry detergent for like a year now.”  One of the corpsmen said before they continued hefting the unconscious officer down the corridor.

A bemused Jeff shook his head slowly at the sight of the completely unapologetic Billy.  Other than getting blood all over the two stretcher bearers Billy was fine with having smashed in a wounded man’s face.  Jeff couldn’t really drum up any empathy for the traitor either.

“Now what?”  Yue asked.

“Captain Simmons please escort us to a conference room.  We need to interview the head of every department on the ship starting now.  Also, anyone else who was close to Rittlin.  I need you to work on a list and start sending people to us.  Once we say they’re clear then they’re good to go.  Until then try to keep anyone who was close to Rittlin from hopping on a plane or raiding the armory.”  Jeff ordered.

Simmons grabbed one of the phones in the corridor and started issuing orders.  A deck above them the young Marine was trying to explain to the officer in charge of the operations center how come Drew and Lisa needed access to satellite images of the island from the last few days.  Men in charge of top-secret military operations centers aren’t used to being told by junior enlisted Marines that a couple of civilians need to be shown logs and classified satellite imagery.

A very impatient Drew had to wait while Simmons was tracked down and confirmed that Drew and Lisa were entitled to any data they wanted to see.  Drew immediately went to one of the officers sitting at a computer and told him what he needed.  The man looked over at the officer in charge to confirm it was ok.  The officer in charge responded with a very unmilitary looking shrug.

“Can you pull up the logs and show us Rittlin’s flight path when he toured Jamaica a couple of days ago?”  Drew asked once all of the shrugging and side glances were finished.  Drew wished he knew how to look stuff up on the terminal.  Then he could knock the nerd out of the way and do it himself.  Patience wasn’t his strong suit.

“Also, we need satellite feeds of the site that he wanted bombed.”  Lisa added.

The naval nerd tapped away at the terminal.  Drew told him they were trying to figure out if his brother had escaped when Rittlin left him tied to a picnic table at a resort that was due to be bombed.  That response got the technician to stop tapping away.  The man adjusted his glasses and looked up from his keyboard for a second.  Seeing that Drew was dead serious he hurriedly began to fumble with the keyboard once more.

Chapter 19:  Swimming with the Fishes

LeBron stopped himself from jumping off the boat in midleap.  The crawler he’d just heard behind him would just jump on top of him as soon as he surfaced.  Instead of taking the plunge he spun around with his pocketknife in one hand and the flare gun in the other.  It was that intermission between night and day where the sun was gone but the sky was still lit up.  This crawler must have spent the day aboard one of the sailboats moored up to the pier and hopped out right as twilight hit.  LeBron shuddered thinking he may have searched the boat this killer had been snoozing on already.

It was a waif of a crawler.  A girl a few years younger than LeBron.  It was hard to tell her exact age with the hair cascading down over her face.  The lack of cloth covering the groin area was the easiest way to tell male from female with the crawlerz.  If they happened to still be wearing pants it was almost impossible.  The mannerisms of the infected were all about the same.  The infection cleansed any conception of the females being the weaker of the species.  Both sexes were equally vicious.

The crawler dispensed with the horror movie theatrics and lunged straight for LeBron.  LeBron pulled the trigger on the bright orange flare gun.  He’d checked earlier to make sure there was a shell in the chamber.  He had some extra ones shoved in his pockets.  The flare bounced off his attacker’s forehead and went hissing into the bay.  A moment later LeBron and the crawler tumbled in after it.

The bright light from the flare must have thrown the crawler off its game.  That’s the only thing LeBron could think of to explain why he landed in the water without the devilish damsel chewing a hole through his face.  He popped to the surface almost immediately thanks to his lifejacket.  The life vest was another reason the crawler may not have been able to get a good grip on him.  Bobbing around on the surface trying to catch his breath LeBron completely lost his cool when he felt a hand wrap around his ankle.

The hand jerked at him.  LeBron’s fevered imagination was quick to serve up a picture of the infected girl standing on the seaweed covered bottom reaching up to pull him down to join her.  Kicking for all he was worth LeBron thrashed around in the cool dark water between the floating wrecks.  The second the hand slipped off his ankle he swam as hard as he could.  A shoe and sock get tugged off as he broke free.  Doing his absolute best to keep his feet on the surface he swam out into the harbor as fast as he could.

Expecting to feel the weight of a crawler slam into him from behind at any second LeBron attempted to set a free-swimming speed record.  He wasn’t going to consider himself safe until he was at least a hundred yards from the dock.  Any closer and one of the mutants might be able to springboard off the dock far enough to actually land on him.  It wasn’t likely but it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility either.  He kicked off his other shoe to help him swim faster.  Trying to use his energy wisely he picked one of the anchored boats and headed for it.

He was looking back with fondness on having to jog forever down the road earlier by the time he made it to the boat.  A boat he could barely even see on the moonless cloudy night.  He’d wondered multiple times if he’d accidentally swam past it. If so, then he was heading out into the ocean.  He was checking for a flashlight in his pockets when he heard the slapping of waves on a hull.  At first, he had no idea what the odd noise was.  He quickly guessed the noise had to do with the boat he was trying to get to. Veering towards the sound he was happy to see a large blob up ahead.

With humanity wiped out the fish population had sprung back like nobody’s business.  LeBron had been very thankful for all the fresh fish dinners onboard the ship as well as back at Cape May.  What he didn’t like was feeling random things bump into him in the dark water as he swam towards the dark blob.

When he finally made it close enough to put his hands on the hull, a sense of euphoric relief washed over him.  That elated feeling lasted about a minute.  Panic began to set in when he realized that there was no way for him to climb into the boat.  He swam around it twice to confirm he couldn’t get aboard.  Swimming around the boat felt better than just bobbing around in the cool night breeze.  The water wasn’t freezing but it was cool enough to steadily leech the heat out of his body.  It’d be just his luck to die of hypothermia right next to a boat in the middle of a harbor in sunny Jamaica.

Giving up on the first boat he blindly set a course for another boat he remembered seeing.  Teeth chattering, he lined himself up with the bow of the first boat and tried to swim as straight as he could in the direction that he thought the other boat was in.  He’d gone for the sailboat first as it’d been large and in slightly better shape.  It’d also seemed slightly closer than the other boat.

LeBron willed his arms to keep moving.  His feet were dangling behind him now.  He was still kicking but it wasn’t doing a lot of good.  His legs and arms felt like someone had wrapped weights around them.  It became an act of extreme willpower to make his arms rise and fall.  The current was moving him along way more than the pathetic splashing he was accomplishing with his arms.

Noting a dark shape blotting out the dark sky he summoned up a last reserve of strength and stroked hard for it.  The closer he got to this new dark blob the more excited he became.  He might not die after all!  Assuming he could figure out how to get from the water to the deck anyway.  Slowly circling the boat, he began to lose hope.  This one set a little lower in the water than the sailboat had but it was still impossibly high.  He was ready to give up until he made it around to the stern.

The back of the boat featured an area for swimmers to get into and out of the water.  It was a little high, but LeBron could stretch and get his hands up on the platform.  If the owners were swimming around in some rich person party cove, they’d have had a ladder dangling into the water to make getting back into the boat easy.  That ladder was not currently available.  The deck was way too smooth for him to just pull himself up on it.  He worked his way slowly back and forth along the deck with his arms fully extended trying to find some way to get up.  It wasn’t going to be easy. His arm muscles were on fire.  He was barely able to hold them above his head long enough to grope around for a way to pull himself up.

His outstretched fingers finally brushed by a large cleat in the deck.  It was too far away for him to easily wrap his hand around it.  Summoning up his last reserve of energy he surged out of the water grasping for the cleat with both hands.  Unsurprisingly, he didn’t have the strength to hold onto it and slipped back into the water.  The lifejacket was the only thing keeping him afloat at this point.  A few tries later he was getting desperate.

It’d be completely asinine to die this close to safety.  He hoped the current carried his body far enough away that nobody would find it.  After doing so many brave things to help in the war against the crawlerz he couldn’t believe this might be the end. He didn’t want his legacy to be as the moron who died because he couldn’t stretch another inch to pull himself up on the deck of a boat.  Drew would be cracking jokes before LeBron’s casket was even closed.  Not that there’d be a casket after the crabs spent a few days dining on his face.

There was also the fact that no one had the slightest clue where he was.  LeBron was assuming that Rittlin had let it out already that he’d died in some weird freakish accident.  Imagining Drew cracking jokes reminded LeBron that Drew was the physically fit athletic one.  LeBron was the thinker while Drew was the doer.  LeBron realized he’d been approaching getting on the deck of this boat with zero thought.  Bobbing repeatedly out of the water to try and grab a cleat with arms that were barely functioning wasn’t the smart approach.

LeBron lay back in the water and gazed up at the cloudy night sky.  Here and there he spotted stars where the clouds were starting to break up.  His teeth were chattering uncontrollably now.  He’d lost track of how long he’d been in the water.  If he didn’t come up with a plan soon, he wasn’t going to see another sunrise.  What he needed was something to wrap around the cleat that he could pull himself up by.  He didn’t trust his shorts or his shirt to do the trick.  Either of those items may rip dumping him right back into the drink.  He didn’t know how many more attempts he had left in him at this point.

The most solid item he had on was the life vest.  It was also the reason his tired, aching body was able to keep his head on the dry side of the water.  Removing it could mean the next time he slipped under that he wouldn’t come back up.  Floating around like one of the dead dudes in a life vest at the end of the Titanic movie wasn’t going to be ideal either.  Deciding to roll the dice he carefully removed his bright orange safety blanket.  Thrashing around like a walrus trying to learn Zumba he desperately got the lifejacket back under him when it slipped out of his grasp.

Heart thumping wildly LeBron worked to get his fear under control.  He was terrified of losing the life vest.  He didn’t think he could stay afloat in the cool water without any help.  He absolutely didn’t want to try flinging his lifeline up onto the small platform.  It was the only way he could think of to hook the cleat though that’d hold his weight.  He couldn’t stop imagining getting the vest stuck up there.  That’d be next level stupid if he drowned trying to get his vest back down.

He gave himself a few minutes to gather his remaining strength.  Once he was ready, he started treading water while holding the jacket up in the air.  Aiming for where the cleat was, he tossed the jacket up on the deck.  The idea was to hook the cleat with the strap that he’d worked out of the vest.  Tossing it up on the platform sent him underwater.  He struggled to claw himself back up to the surface.  Once there he took a few ragged breaths before checking to see if the jacket had hooked on successfully.  He was happy to see it was within easy reach.

The jacket felt like it’d hooked on securely!  That was a huge relief since he’d just felt something bump his leg pretty hard.  He sensed rather than felt a large shape slide past him in the water.  He was beyond exhausted, but his fevered imagination was sent into immediate overdrive.  A surge of energy went through him as he scrambled out of the water.  The entire time all he could think of was that he was about to be attacked by a gigantic zombie shark.

Up on the deck LeBron’s rational mind kicked in wondering why it’d taken the fear of a zombie shark to get him up on the deck.  Like a regular shark ripping off his leg wouldn’t be bad enough.  He lay on the platform shivering.  His teeth were chattering even harder than he remembered them doing in the water.  Tempted to close his eyes and curl into a ball he forced himself to get up on his knees.  From his knees he pulled himself up to his feet using the bannister above the small deck area.

There were stairs to go from the platform to the main deck.  LeBron followed those up onto the bridge and fumbled around in the darkness until he found a door.  The door opened up to a much longer set of stairs which he followed down into utter darkness.  He was so miserably cold it didn’t even occur to him that a crawler could be sitting in the darkness just waiting for some idiot to show up and provide a free meal.  In the dark room below, he discovered what felt like a leather couch.  Using his hands to feel his way around the space he found another door.

Opening that door, he found a dark space with a huge bed in the middle of it.  There was a nice thick comforter and sheets with a thread count higher than anything he’d ever felt before.  Fatigued out of his mind from the physical overexertion and slow onset hypothermia he sat down on the bed.  Making his mind up he quickly shrugged out of his soaking wet clothes and shut the door to the room.  Praying that nothing killed him he slammed his face into the stupidly comfortable, kind of mildewy pillows, and tugged the comforter over him.  He was asleep before the dust from the bedding had time to settle back down.

LeBron woke up after sleeping for well over twelve hours.  He had no clue how long he’d slept since the room was still dark when he awoke.  A sliver of light on the other side of the room caught his attention.  He rolled over the lumpy bed to get to it.  It felt like maybe the side of the bed closest to the light source was covered in duffel bags.  LeBron was hoping those bags might be full of apocalyptic treasures like canned spam and bottled water.  Rolling off the other side of the bed he reached up to find some curtains covering a window set up high on the side of the cabin.

Pulling the curtains away from the window let in the late afternoon light.  LeBron basked in the fact that he was alive and well rested.  The basking lasted until he turned around and noticed the ‘luggage’ he’d been crawling across to get to the window.  That luggage was a couple of corpses.  A couple of corpses he’d been snuggled up to all night between the silken sheets.  He wondered how many times he’d rubbed against the bodies.  Highly regretting his decision to sleep in the nude LeBron hurriedly looked away from the desiccated bodies.

Ignoring the cadaver couple snuggling in the bed LeBron searched the room for clothes.  Pulling on a fresh pair of boxers, some jogging pants, and a t-shirt he left the cabin to the dead couple. Stretching his legs out he headed into the area he’d come through the night before.  As suspected, it was a kitchenette, bar, lounging area.  The curtains were wide open.  The sunlight that filtered in though another window illuminated the expensive bottles of booze displayed on the bar.

Sipping on a bottle of super flat Diet Coke he walked out on the deck after doing a more thorough job of searching the area downstairs.  It didn’t taste right, but it was wet and slaking his thirst.  He set the two-liter bottle down and walked over to the edge of the deck to take care of another bodily function.  While he was working on warming up the Caribbean, he happened to notice his life vest down on the swimming platform.  He thought once again of how lucky he’d been to make it this far.  Pulling the borrowed jogging pants back up he whispered another prayer of thankfulness and walked over to the bridge.

LeBron messed around with the controls until finally concluding that the dead people downstairs must have used up all the gas before offing themselves.  Or maybe they’d just let the boat keep running after splitting a bottle of expensive whiskey and a handful of sleeping pills.  If they were going to kill themselves anyway, they could’ve at least had the common courtesy to turn off the boat first.  Irrationally angry at the deceased couple downstairs he went ahead and dragged the bodies out of the cabin and tossed them unceremoniously over the side.

It wasn’t until after he’d found more food and water below that he felt bad.  He should’ve wrapped them up in a tarp or something before dumping them in the harbor.  Sitting on the deck he continued sipping on the flat soda. In between sips of the soda, he was munching on Doritos that tasted like cheese dust coated cardboard.  Once he finished his meal he got up and went back down to the new and improved corpse free cabin.  With no gas and zero desire to hop in the water and swim anywhere anytime soon he lay back down in the big bed to continue stocking up on sleep.

Worried he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again after sleeping most of the day away he was surprised when he felt himself drifting back off again almost immediately.  It didn’t even occur to him how odd it would’ve seemed not too many years ago to be able to lie down in a bed he’d just dragged a couple of decomposing bodies out of.  He hadn’t even changed the sheets.  He honestly couldn’t imagine anything you could smear on these sheets that would make him want to give up their silky smoothness.

Chapter 20:  Till Death Do Us Part

Looking out over the crystal blue waters of the bay reminded LeBron of a day not too long ago when he’d thought his luck had finally run out.  Waking up in the morning on that broken down yacht anchored out by the breakwater he’d scrambled to hide as a green attack copter screeched by.  The helicopter had turned and come back to hover in the air over each vessel still afloat.  While LeBron had been cowering in the cabin, he’d heard the sound of motors approaching.

When armed men burst into the cabin, he’d got one of them pretty good with a kitchen knife.  The man had been wearing body armor, so Lebron’s wildly swung blade didn’t kill him.  It did earn him a smackdown from the other soldier who’d come down the stairs to investigate the cabin.  LeBron had recognized the trooper he’d cut too late to take it back.  The man was hopping around cussing and trying to stop the bleeding with his hand.  Tiff had thought the whole thing was hilarious.  She’d been the one who knocked LeBron to the ground after he cut the first trooper.

The hard-core warrior who’d taken LeBron out with ease that day was currently walking around in a strapless pink dress with flowers in her hair.  It was a little embarrassing that she’d kicked his ass without even breaking a sweat.  Not that anyone would ever make fun of him for it.  The petite warrior was a badass and everyone knew it.  Watching how Harley was staring at Tiff in the dress made LeBron wonder if maybe they’d be doing this again in the near future for those two.  There were way too many couples around for LeBron’s liking.  He felt like he was the only one dateless for this.

“You guys next?”  LeBron asked Lisa with a grin on his face.  He was mostly doing it to see the look on Drew’s face.  It was totally worth it.  Although honestly Lisa herself wasn’t too keen to tie the proverbial knot either.  Not that either of them was going to be seeing anyone else anytime soon.  They’d grown so close it was barf worthy.

“Drew?”  Lisa asked echoing LeBron’s grin.  They were both enjoying the way Drew awkwardly shuffled his feet and glanced around for some sort of inspiration on how to answer.

“She’s coming.”  Drew said pointing out to the bay.  Yue had planned this wedding based on a dream she’d had.  The whole setup seemed a little odd but when your sister was the world’s most renowned psychic witch you learned to deal with a little bit of weirdness.

The small, flower covered boat came in hard enough to bury itself in the sand.  Two men sporting Suicide Squad tattoos peeking out from their dress uniforms walked quickly over to the boat and dropped a set of stairs into the sand by the bow.  A tuxedo wearing Jeff walked off the boat first then turned to help a wedding dress wearing Yue walk down.  The couple turned to watch the sparkling ocean water together before walking hand in hand through the well-dressed crowd of family and friends.

A chaplain stood underneath a wedding arch that Jeff had built himself.  Yue had worked with Lisa and Tiff to weave the flowers through it until it looked like what she’d seen in her visions.  It’d been a long frustrating night.  Not the out-of-control bachelorette party that Lisa had envisioned at all.

Jeff and Yue exchanged vows then allowed the chaplain to go through the standard spill.  It was a complete break from the hard work of the last year.  Ever since squashing the treasonous Admiral Rittlin and his gang of misguided patriots the focus had been on making Jamaica inhabitable.  Yue had been deeply involved in that.  She’d told anybody who’d listen that she was being used like a pig looking for truffles.  If truffles happened to be super dangerous zombies lurking in the dark recesses of rain forests and dilapidated buildings.

She’d pulled in Melissa to try and get her to help.  Despite being a mostly blind alcoholic Melissa had been able to pull it together well enough to provide some assistance to the teams clearing the cities.  In the hustle and bustle a couple of other women had stepped forward who had similar psychic gifts to Melissa’s and Yue’s.  Neither was as anywhere near as powerful as Yue, but both were measurably more sensitive than was normal to the groupthink.  They were enlisted in the effort as well.  Yue kept them close hoping with time that their powers might grow as hers had.

They’d accomplished a lot in the year leading up to the nuptials.  On top of slaughtering the infected like it was going out of style they’d also built out a thriving agricultural working group.  Building a home away from home had required them to master all sorts of skills.  The ones everyone had been worried about turned out to be the easiest.  Fishing and farming had become the default career paths for anyone not actively involved in killing the infected.  Most people were more than happy to wield a hoe in a sun lit field rather than a rifle in the darkness.

A good portion of the population still slept aboard the ships to reduce the risk of a breakout spreading too quickly.  Ambassadors had been sent to the other populated islands including Australia.  Plans were being made for retaking North and South America.  It’d been a busy, super productive time.  Yue and Jeff had thrived in it.  It felt good to be building something instead of just trying to survive.  The idea that they may actually be able to live semi-normal lives was the catalyst for Jeff finally popping the question.  A question Yue had been able to answer in the affirmative with zero hesitation.

Once the ceremony was complete everyone adjourned to the nearby resort.  The place ran on solar so had power.  Power meant ice cubes.  Ice cubes meant some serious drinking was about to commence.  Harley joked on the walk over that you could hear their livers screaming in fear as the popular after work socializing spot grew closer.

“I still think it’s weird to go entire weeks without getting blitzed out of my mind and leading an attack.”  Billy joked in reference to the mind-numbing amounts of medication they took to keep the crawlerz out of their heads when going in on an operation.

“Speak for yourself.”  Harley said earning himself a punch in the shoulder from Tiff.  She’d spent a lot of time in the last year making sure the big guy didn’t overdose.  Everyone had more or less given up on getting him sober at this point.

“Settling Harley in the weed capital of the Caribbean does seem like a pretty bad idea.”  LeBron said.  He was already wondering how long he needed to hang out before he could sneak away and get some work done.

“Don’t even think about it bro.  Our sister done been locked down.  This calls for shots not creating macros or whatever it is you’re thinking about doing right now.”  Drew said staring straight at his little brother.  LeBron had actually been thinking about how he could setup some new reports.  It occurred to him there may be a reason he was still single.  Before he could consider this new dating epiphany in more detail Yue whirled into the middle of them.

“I heard somebody say something about shots?”  Yue said grinning.  Drew immediately disappeared with Harley to locate said shots.

“How you doin’ brother-in-law?”  Jeff asked walking up immediately after Yue.  Based on his eyes someone must’ve already helped him locate the shots.  LeBron still couldn’t figure out how it was possible to be such a lightweight when Jeff spent so much time out in the field.  At some point it seemed like he’d build up the same level of tolerance the rest of them had.

“Congratulations again husband of my sister.”  LeBron responded.

“I’m just loving that we’re doing normal stuff like weddings again.”  A familiar voice from behind Jeff explained who’d hooked him up with the shot.  Pretty cool when the POTUS shows up to your reception.  Even if the legitimacy of his office was open to debate.  Shaun was many things but chief among them was a provider of extremely good whiskey.

“Speaking of which why didn’t you show up?”  Yue demanded with one hand on her hip and a stern look on her face.  When Shaun just looked at her, she raised her eyebrows and continued to wait for an answer.

“I mostly just like the reception part.  Drunk bridesmaids and a chewy chicken buffet are two of my favorite things.”  Shaun responded tongue in cheek.  It was obvious he wasn’t going to go into the details of why he’d been late here in public.  Ever since the treason incident everyone had gotten a lot less free with sharing information.

“How’s everything back in Cheyenne?”  Lisa asked.  Cheyenne had become the working capital of what was left of the USA.  It was a little strange that 95% of the US citizens now lived in Jamaica and their leaders still worked out of Cheyenne.  Shaun and others said it had everything to do with ensuring the continuity of the government.  Cheyenne was also hard wired into a lot of communications platforms that weren’t as easily accessible from Jamaica.  Although an argument could be made that Shaun would have access to almost the same info from the deck of any of the highly sophisticated aircraft carriers bobbing around.

Everyone thought the continuity of government argument was built around a fear of the infected.  It was actually intended to keep the POTUS safe from any more uprisings.  There were a lot of people who felt the same way as Admiral Rittlin had.  A lot of people had died while Shaun was in charge.  Decisions had been made that looked pretty bad in hindsight.  There’d been discussions of a vote for a new leader from multiple quarters.  Shaun was actually good with that if they could figure out a fair system for voting.  The electoral college wouldn’t be getting together to cast ballots anytime soon.

“A little bit crazy actually.  Remind me to tell you about the anthill sometime.”  Shaun said cryptically.  Before anyone else could ask any more questions Drew and Harley showed up with bottles of Jamaican rum and a carafe full of some sort of fruit juice.  Plastic kiddie cups were handed around and multiple toasts ensued.

Drew made it his mission to ensure that LeBron participated fully in the proceedings.  That meant that well before the sun began it’s slow dive to the horizon LeBron was passed out underneath a table.  When Lisa asked Drew what he was going to do about it Drew took a few pictures of LeBron for posterity.  Noticing the look on his girl’s face Drew sighed and dragged LeBron’s dead weight over to one of the couches.  After tossing him into a big pile of loose pillows on the couch Drew headed back for the bar.

Yue and Jeff disappeared somewhere around the fourth round of rum.  Plenty of jokes thrown after them about Jeff probably passing out before they made it back to their honeymoon suite.  An hour before sunset the men assigned to make sure the wedding party made it back alive began rounding everyone up.  It took a little longer than usual.  LeBron wasn’t the only one who needed to be carried.  Luckily Harley was back to being a functional alcoholic.  They would’ve needed to call SeaWorld to help get him down to the water.

Technically they should be safe in the resort they were at.  Officially they were in a sector that’d been cleared and declared crawler free.  Unofficially there was no telling how many more of the infected might still be skulking around.  Any of the infected that dug deep and shut their minds down wouldn’t be detectable by Yue or anyone in her miniature coven.  It wasn’t likely in the area they were in that there were any still hanging around.  Up near the jungles though it was very likely there were still infected wandering around.  Likely or not no one thought it was a good idea to be galivanting around after the sun went down.

They’d literally slain tons of the infected.  It’d been a major issue they’d had to contend with. The island was covered in biohazards that had to be burnt or otherwise disposed of.  It wasn’t easy gathering enough fuel to incinerate thousands of bodies.  The grisly task gave everyone assigned to it nightmares.  You’d have to be a complete sociopath not to be impacted by the sight of the dead stacked like cordwood.  The smell of that much burning meat permeated the air.  The people aboard the ships could easily smell it if the wind was blowing their way.

None of that really concerned LeBron too much when he woke up the next morning in his room on the carrier.  The cramped officer’s quarters he’d been assigned seemed overly warm.  His stomach was churning like crazy.  The reasons for his sudden wakefulness became apparent when he involuntarily began puking all over himself.  When he was done being sick, he looked around and noted he’d thrown up pretty much everywhere except in the trashcan someone had thoughtfully placed next to the bed for him.  He’d have to remember to thank Lisa for that the next time he saw her.  Right after he yelled at Drew for forcing all those shots down his throat.

The room continued to spin as he lay there wishing the nausea and pain would go away.  There was a jug of cool water sitting next to the trashcan.  Another thoughtful gift he assumed had been provided by Lisa.  The water didn’t look so appetizing covered in his stomach stew though.  What he wanted more than anything was for the hangover to go away.  While he had Lisa to thank for the trashcan and water, he had his brother to thank for the actual hangover.  That’s what he got for following Drew’s lead.

LeBron considered using the phone in his quarters to reach out and make sure everyone was ok.  If it hadn’t seemed like such an enormous task to get out of bed and pick up the phone he’d have done so.  Instead, he pressed his face hard into the pillow and willed himself to slip back into sweet oblivion.  On the plus side at least him and his siblings would only have to contend with hangovers and the occasional crawler moving forward.  The need for boots on the ground had died down for a while.  Everyone was content to keep the bombers raining down death on the infected herds.  LeBron was absolutely fine with spending more time in a nice calm Caribbean setting before going back to face the hordes.

Chapter 21:  The United States of Australia?

“What did Shaun want?”  Yue asked the second LeBron got back to his office.  It was in the suite of offices he shared with Jeff and the other members of their team.  Yue had posted herself there to ambush him.  She’d been amusing herself looking through pictures on her laptop when he walked in.  Thanks to an existing power plant and the multiple nuclear warships circling the island power wasn’t an issue.

“Sounds like we may be going back home after all.”  LeBron said.  Yue looked at him with those piercing eyes of hers.  She was getting way too good at the psychic stuff.  It was annoying not being able to lie to her.  Shaun might as well have invited Yue to the meeting this morning. It would’ve made sense since she was directly related to the two people Shaun was having organize this top-secret mission.  He probably just hadn’t wanted her reading his mind again.  Ever since the incident with the representative with the very low-cut blouse.  Not that it’d taken a psychic to know what Shaun had been thinking about on that occasion.

The secret wasn’t going to be a secret for long anyway.  The long-admired safety of Australia had finally been breached.  The Prime Minister had reached out early that morning to let Shaun know that Australia had fallen.  They’d had around twenty million people still running around the continent a week prior.  In an unbelievably short amount of time that number had been reduced to about three million.  Even that number was a complete guesstimate as everything down there was in shambles.

The people left alive weren’t going to last much longer. They were holed up in walled off cities that’d been built to keep the populations isolated.  The Aussies had placed a lot of trust in the fact that their country wasn’t very densely populated.  They’d moved a good portion of their citizenship to more agricultural locations since they weren’t going to be importing food anytime soon.  The fishers and farmers had supported the politicians and military who’d kept the country safe until it wasn’t.  The military had mercilessly patrolled the perimeter of the continent ensuring no one got in or out.  The shoot first, ask questions later, zero tolerance policy had worked for a good long while.

Those severe measures had gotten them further along in the apocalypse with more people alive than anywhere else on the globe.  That it’d finally come crashing down was no real surprise.  LeBron had put the odds at about four to ten that Australia would actually be able to go the distance.  They’d had a lot of things going for them but so had a lot of other places that’d eventually fallen.  Their isolation and proactive stance on protecting their borders had been what kept them going this long.

“Why would we be going home?  Which home exactly?  What are you talking about?”  Yue fired the questions at LeBron.  She was watching him intently.

“Well, I’m not supposed to…“  LeBron felt like he should at least make the effort not to divulge everything he’d been sworn to secrecy about less than fifteen minutes prior.  Everyone in the room knew that Yue would get it out of either him or Jeff in a few minutes anyway.  Jeff and LeBron had avoided bringing that up.  They didn’t want to make Yue look any more like a witch than she already did.

“Why would we be taking a bunch of Australians to Florida?”  Yue asked cutting him off.

LeBron didn’t bother answering.  That way when she figured it out just by staring at him, he’d have plausible deniability.  They could hook him up to a lie detector and he’d pass.  He wasn’t telling her anything.  She was sucking it right out of his head.  Not really in a psychic way.  She was just super perceptive.  She was also really good at putting the bits and pieces together.  Her talent might help give her the pieces, but she still had to assemble them to make any sense.

“It might not even be called Florida by the time we get there.”  LeBron added.  He let that clue dangle out there.

The Prime Minister wanted to work with them to retake parts of North America.  Australia was lost.  There were too many crawlerz running around for them to take it back anytime soon.  In the meanwhile, he had a couple million mouths to feed with no one working the farms or fisheries.  He wanted to transport his people to the Caribbean and launch a campaign to retake the real prize.  North America was jammed full of resources compared to Australia.  Well over a year of constant bombing had eliminated most of the large herds of infected.  In his mind it was ripe for the picking.

The idea made a lot of sense.  The remaining Aussies would join up with what was left of the US forces to retake the USA.  They’d all agree to write off Australia for now.  The Australians were also in extreme need of aid.  They had millions of people in bunkers with limited food supplies.  Shaun and Jeff had been feeling really good about the supplies they’d built up on the island.  Now they were being asked to empty out the storehouses to feed the people who’d refused them shelter when the infection hit. They were being asked to utilize their navy to assist the Aussies in moving their people from Australia to Jamaica.  The formerly oversized island nation would become a lot cozier with a couple million more people added.

“Has she gotten everything out of you yet?”  Jeff asked in amusement.  He was watching while his wife stared down his brother-in-law.  Jeff often felt a little out of place around the two of them.  Yue was all kinds of perceptive on top of being a straight up psychic.  LeBron was a logistical savant. He understood things in a way that could make Jeff feel like a three-year-old trying to load the dishwasher.

“He hasn’t actually told me anything yet.”  Yue said turning her gaze on Jeff.

“Should I just tell her?”  Jeff asked with a smile.

“Might as well.  Then we can go have lunch.”  LeBron answered idly.  It was a bit of a foregone conclusion that they’d tell Yue.  They’d depended on one another for survival for so long that sharing was second nature.

“Long story short we’re going to help the Aussies get back on their feet.  Shaun’s already asked me and our little brother here to come up with a plan to supply them with food then evacuate them.  Simple math says a lot more of them are going to die while we try and evacuate them.  We only have so many ships and so many places we can put them.  We went through this same kind of scenario early on with our own people.”  Jeff explained.

“The sooner we get started the better then.”  Yue said.

“Already loading up supplies on carriers.  We’re not sure how to handle this yet but it’s going to require us to get supplies to Australia.  We figure once we have them on the way we can figure out the next steps.”  Jeff said in agreement.  It was a foregone conclusion that they’d help out their brothers and sisters down under.  It was starting to be more about the survival of the human species than the survival of any particular country.

“Do you think you’ll need me or the coven?”  Yue asked.  She was thinking they could help by distracting the crawlerz to allow for ships to be safely loaded with the refugees.

“No, I don’t think so.  We’re going to keep the loading and unloading to the daylight hours.  We’ll have them keep moving their people towards the places we can dock at.  We’ll off load supplies and onload refugees.  I don’t see any reason we’d have to load up at night.  Not worth the risk to our carrier crews for one thing.”  Jeff said.

“So, what do you need me and the girls for then?”  Yue asked.  She’d sensed they were needed for something when she’d brought them up earlier.

“The evacuation is going to be a complex undertaking. It’s going to use up a ton of resources for a really long time.  Once we pick them up, we need places to put all these people.  We have to feed them and give them medicine.  I’m thinking you’re going to come in on the supplies and where we’re going to put them parts.  Either in helping clear other islands or scouting out parts of North America to see if we can move back in yet.”  Jeff said.

“Ohm.  Ok.”  Yue said.

“It’s kind of a lot when yesterday we thought we were pretty much going to be working on our tans for the next few years.”  LeBron said.

“Hopefully you still get a chance to work on yours honey.”  Yue joked as LeBron pretended to compare his skin color to Jeff’s.

“I guess we need to get the band back together and start working on a plan then?”  LeBron said once they’d worn out the skin pigmentation and melanoma jokes.

Drew and Lisa took the news surprisingly well.  They both thought the solution to their current relationship slump was being thrown back into more life-or-death battles.  Billy and the others were less enthusiastic.  The action for them had slowed down but not stopped.  They’d gone on their share of neck hair tingling missions this last year.  While everybody else was playing Bob the Builder they’d been dropping into infected nests along the coast to gather intel and critical supplies.  It was the curse of having everyone from the President down knowing they were absolutely the best team out there to get the job done.  No matter how insane that job happened to be.

Once they got past the fact that they may have to risk their lives even more than usual they started working up plans.  LeBron was key to this piece of it as he was working on the logistics around migrating the Aussie population to North America via the Caribbean Islands.  He was thinking they could queue up the refugees in Jamaica then send them to the places in North America that were declared safe.  Of course, those ‘safe places’ would only be safe until they sent a bunch of people there.  That was the problem with this whole plan.  It depended on the bombing efforts they’d undertaken over the last year having been wildly successful.

“How about we just tell the kangaroo humpers to stay on that little island that we weren’t good enough to join them on?”  Drew asked in frustration as they tried to work out how this was all going to work.

“That would make us as bad as them.”  Lisa answered.  His callous attitude about others was one of the reasons they were fighting a lot lately.  She didn’t really care if the Aussies lived or died either.  For some reason though since Drew had said out loud that he didn’t care that made her want them to live.

“We’re worse than them actually.  Remember how we left the whole population to die while our politicians and military all went out to sit on boats until it blew over?”  LeBron reminded Lisa.  Lisa didn’t like being called out like that.

“Wasn’t that your brother-in-law who came up with that strategy?”  Lisa asked snarkily.  Everyone else in the room was suddenly busy checking their gear or fingernails or just staring out the window.  This wasn’t the first time this had come up.  It always turned ugly.

“It was my husband and it’s ancient history now.  The real reason we’re helping them is because otherwise we might have to fight them.  There’re not enough people left alive to go around killing one another.  Especially not over land when there’s so much of it out there for the taking.”  Yue said trying to head off the argument.  Drew and Lisa were so much alike that it tended to make them fight all the time.

“Survival of the species and all that.  Whatever.  How are we supposed to clear out sections of North America?  We’ve been on missions back to the states.  We were in Atlanta like a month ago.  The place is bombed to hell but there’s still plenty of infected wandering around.  Not all of those things like to go hang out in the big herds with a breaker bossing them around.  There’s plenty of loners.”  Billy said.

The loners had been a real issue for the team in charge of trying to clear off the continent to resettle.  While hundreds of thousands of the crawlerz had been kind enough every day to walk into the traps set for them there was no way to get them all.  Even the ones who were lured into the target areas day after day weren’t all killed on the first pass.  The breakers who figured out what was going on kept their minions from congregating in big clumps as well.  Even with all of those roadblocks the team had been averaging an estimated quarter of a million infected casualties daily.

That meant in the last year they’d blown apart around a hundred million of the infected.  Considering more of the infected were arriving daily from South America and that the population of North America had been half a billion to start with they were slowly making a dent in the threat.  Just like with Jamaica though the bombing was never intended to get rid of all of the infected.  Eventually there needed to be boots on the ground.  It was time for Yue to break out her dominatrix outfit again.

Chapter 22:  Mind Games and Machine Guns

“Is she close?”  Harley asked.

They were standing on the roof of a drug store in a small city.  They’d been dropped off by helicopter earlier in the day to set their trap.  That hadn’t taken too long since they were using themselves as the bait.  All they really had to do was be visible.  Reports had confirmed that a breaker was likely lurking somewhere in the area.  Due to the breaker they all had to be intoxicated before the sun hit the horizon.  No one suspected this to be one of the uber breakers, so they weren’t too freaked out about it.

The drug store was the tallest building in the area of the city they were in.  They’d already scouted around and found one crawler holed up in a dumpster.  Drew had tossed a grenade in the dumpster then laughed hysterically as they all made a mad dash to get as far from the dumpster as possible.  Drew had then spent the next fifteen minutes getting chewed out by everyone from Billy to Lisa.  Yue had noticed the way Drew was doing his best to contain the big grin that wanted to break out.  She’d chosen not to waste her breath.

“I don’t feel anything yet.”  Yue said.

“Me either.”  Melissa said unnecessarily.  Yue had brought Melissa along to continue her training.  Whether the woman thought she’d done enough already or not she’d been coerced into coming.  Her and Yue were the only two sober ones on the roof.

Billy had rigged up battery powered motion lights all around the sides of the roof.  They’d liberated a large Amazon warehouse a few weeks prior.  They’d been using the toys they salvaged from there ever since.  The coldness of the night began to seep through the multiple layers of leather and wool that Yue was wearing.  It’d been about nine months since they’d first learned that Australia had fallen.  Since then, everything had been moving fast.  She could still remember thinking that she had plenty of time before she’d be setting foot in a helicopter to go hunting breakers again.

The bombing runs had been stepped up to attempt to kill as many of the infected as possible before they started sending people back in.  Abandoned bases had been repopulated.  Especially the ones that could support the bombing runs.  It really was amazing how many bombs the US government had stockpiled.  They’d been dropping them for over a year now. No one had said anything about even getting close to running out yet.

Luckily it was the same with ammunition and weapons reserves.  The idea was to gradually move back in taking over region after region.  The infected didn’t have the advantage of numbers anymore thanks to the persistent bombing.  As long as the satellites held out there was no plan to stop that bombing either.  Anytime a clump of a thousand or more of the infected could be seen the location was noted and a bomb was dropped the next day.  They were getting to the point where finding groups over a thousand was becoming a challenge.  That was a good thing.

“How are you feeling?”  Yue asked Lisa.

“Drugged up.  Hate this part of it.”  Lisa answered without taking her eyes off the ground five stories below.  Lisa’s theory was if she just focused hard enough, she’d be able to hold on to some of her sobriety.  No one had the heart to tell her she looked like a kitten on crack staring at a red dot moving around below.

“How about you hon?”  Yue asked Jeff.  Jeff really should be back in Jamaica running things.  He’d insisted on coming along, however.  Everything was running like clockwork anyway.  Plus, LeBron was back on the island to take care of anything that came up.  Shaun hadn’t even tried to get Jeff to stay behind.  It wasn’t like there was a choice about sending Yue.  None of the other psychics had turned out to be anywhere close to as good as she was.

“I’m good.  I just don’t like how close some of these other buildings are.”  Jeff said glancing around nervously.  It wasn’t the drug’s fault either.  Jeff was just naturally nervous and excitable.  He’d be fine once the bullets and blood started flying.

“I’m fine too!  Thanks for asking!”  Harley called out loudly from the other side of the roof.  They were spread out in a rough perimeter with Yue in the middle.  She was protected by Billy, Tiff, and a couple other members of the Suicide Squad along with Jeff.  Drew and Lisa were both on the front lines ready to slay.  That was assuming Lisa actually knew where she was.  It was really weird how some people had zero tolerance levels while others like Harley could wolf down copious amounts of pills and appear to be fine.

“Yeah, nothing like getting high and fighting for your life wearing NVGs.”  Billy said.  Some nights when they were in the thick of it, he felt like he was at a Pink Floyd laser light show.  He assumed that was because Harley had gotten mixed up on which drugs to hand out again.  He didn’t bother saying anything since it made the nights more interesting.

“She’s coming.”  Yue said suddenly.  She dropped the pretenses of cheerful chatter and went into her trance.  The squad immediately turned it on.  Gone were the jokes and the smiles.  Gone were the masks they wore to walk among mere mortals.  Now there was no masquerade.  Only the chiseled faces of a team of death dealing professionals.  The Suicide Squad was the personification of every saying on the t-shirts and posters you could buy out of the back of a Soldier of Fortune magazine.  You could see it in their eyes.  This crew had been to hell and back.  They’d left a trail of bodies along the way.

Yue let her mind settle.  She chanted and followed the tendrils of the groupthink that she’d picked up.  She was running down an alley below.  The breaker knew they were somewhere nearby.  She’d heard the helicopter come in.  Like the other infected converging on this spot, she’d heard the grenade thump explosively in the dumpster.  All of those images swirled around desperately in their collective minds.  Their lust for uninfected flesh had driven them even further out of their minds.  Yue had a hard time following the thoughts they were so disjointed.

“Contact.”  One of the troopers hissed calmly.  The trooper sent a single round through the head of a naked young crawler who’d walked by one of the motion sensing lights on the street below.  On the other side of the roof the same scenario played itself out.  Pretty soon people were popping off shots from every side of the building.

“I can’t get it.”  Melissa mumbled loudly.  She was looking to Yue to help her.  Unfortunately, Yue couldn’t seem to connect either.  The breaker down below was so out of it she didn’t seem to know that they were even there.  Without the breaker organizing the groupthink and slinging those nightmares at them they had no path to attack her from.

“We might have to do this the old-fashioned way.”  Yue said.  She appeared calm but inwardly she was quaking.  This should be a cakewalk for them.  Typically, Yue would control the breaker until they killed it.  Then she’d send the crawlerz running around in circles until they put them all out of their misery.  This time though the breaker was a broken conduit.

“What’s that mean?”  Jeff asked looking over at her.  His eyes looked huge.  Yue thought at first her hubby was terrified.  Then she remembered the drugs.  He was just high as hell.

“Kill them all!”  Yue shouted.  Down below the motion lights were all lit up as a crowd of the crawlers surged around the base of the building.  Yue was getting nervous as well.  Normally she’d have control of the monsters by now.  The brain damaged breaker was going to be more of a problem than the normal ones they faced.

The entire roof went off.  Every trooper began acquiring targets. In a matter of seconds, they were unleashing hell on the mass of monster flesh in the streets below.  Their secret weapon wasn’t working for some reason.  If they wanted to live, they were going to have to mass murder their way out of this one.  Drew was flinging grenades like they were Mardi Gras beads. Lisa had cast aside her bewildering buzz to send lead screaming down towards the asphalt.  If she was hitting anything it was sheer luck but at least she was contributing.

“They’re on the rooftops!”  Harley’s bellow could be heard above the roar of the guns going off.  Half the troops continued firing down while the other half angled their barrels and their eyes to cover the rooftops in their sectors.  This was where the NVGs came into play.  The rooftops around them were blanketed in deep shadows.  The closest one was about twenty yards away. Well within jumping distance for the crawlerz.  The other ones were further off, but you could never rule out one of those things cannonballing their way over to rip your face off.

It helped that the closest rooftop was also a story below them.  Two troopers busted out road flares and lit them.  Once the flares sputtered to life, they flung them onto the other roof.  Drew almost wished they hadn’t.  The roof of the building next to them looked like the crowded front row at a Metallica concert.  This little dustup was about to change from target practice to up close and dirty.

Yue was vaguely aware of Billy talking on the radio behind her.  Her attention was focused on the hellish scene from the nearby rooftop though.  How was it even possible that she hadn’t sensed that mess of monsters massing so close by?  The breaker must really be jamming her up.  Maybe the breaker wasn’t defective.  This could be a new tactic to slip past Yue’s psychic net and get the infected within striking range.  Also, why weren’t those things jumping for them yet?

“We need to get out of here!”  Yue turned and yelled to Billy.

“Already radioed in for a chopper.”  Billy answered in between taking shots at the crawlerz below.

A massive rolling wall of fear hit them all at once.  Yue was completely blown away by it.  She’d been totally disoriented by the breaker keeping the fear at bay.  Had the breaker sensed Yue had figured out her ploy? Maybe it was just coincidence that the breaker revealed it’s true power now. Yue took a deep breath and struggled to get back into the fight.  Taking a step forward she crumpled to her knees.  Around her a few of the troopers had faltered as well under the sudden onslaught.

“Grenades!  Rockets!  Let fly!”  Billy yelled.  Spit flew from his mouth as he heeded his own orders and hefted a grenade towards that hellish roofscape that now seemed way too close.  Machine guns and rockets started chugging out metallic bits of explosive death in the direction of the incoming monsters.  It wasn’t going to be enough though.

“Get up!”  Jeff shouted down to Yue.  Seeing that she wasn’t moving he bent down and scooped her into his arms.

“We’ve got to get out of here!”  Drew yelled.  He was in the midst of ejecting one magazine to slam in another.  He’d spun around to check on Yue and make sure they weren’t being flanked by another group of roof hoppers.  The noise from all the guns and explosives completely overpowered the volume Drew had put into the statement.  The message was easy enough to figure out by anyone who could see his face as he said it though.  Jeff agreed a thousand percent.  This mission was teetering on FUBAR status.

There was a pair of Chinooks on the way to lift them off the rooftop.  Exactly how the hell that was supposed to work Jeff had no idea.  He’d ordered Billy to get them a ride and Billy had called in the cavalry.  The Chinooks had set down far enough away to avoid being a distraction to the mission.  They were close enough to get to the rooftop in a matter of minutes.  Like everyone else who might come in contact with the breaker they were tweaking on whatever drugs they’d been given.

The crawlerz were in the air.  They were catapulting themselves across the empty space between the two buildings.  The bullets screaming through the air and the steep drop to the ground below not even fazing them.  The normal wave of horror that would come crashing down over them was weaker than normal.  The troopers probably didn’t even notice it with all the party favors coursing through their systems.  This was going to come down to a plain old brawl.  A zillion zombie long jumpers versus a bunch of hardcore soldiers sporting state of the art weaponry.

A Chinook circled the roof then positioned itself directly above the alley.  The downwash from the rotors was keeping most of the jumpers from actually making it all the way across in the section the helicopter was hovering over.  That’s why having Suicide Squad pilots along to cover them was so important.  The pilots were just as crazy as the troopers they were supporting.  Completely mental as far as the situations they were willing to fly into.  Total badass geniuses at what they did though as evidenced by this pilot figuring out an effective defense for them after a single revolution of the battleground.

The hovering helicopter began hammering the neighboring roof with rapid machine gun fire as well.  The other helicopter in the pair buzzed by with searchlights scanning the other roofs.  Without any warning the pilot launched a missile into a nearby building sending bricks tumbling all over.  The building that’d been hit was the second closest to them.  It must’ve had a crawler issue as well.  Rockets and chain guns now dominated the fight.  The team on top of the building were now in more danger of death by concrete chunks hitting them in the head than by the monsters they were fighting.

Billy and Jeff had dragged Yue over to the door that popped out of the roof on the building they were in.  They had her and Melissa sitting by the wall while they stood in front of them.  Billy had called over a couple of other guys to help form a human shield around the two women.  An errant brick flying through the air wasn’t going to take out the woman he’d been assigned to watch.  Yue was the most important weapon they had in this war.  If they had to sacrifice their skulls for hers then that was part of the job.  Yue just hoped they didn’t start making her wear a helmet from now on.

The raging explosions all around them seemed to go on forever.  The thunderous sound of the chain guns chewing up crawlerz and buildings filled in the moments of silence between the rockets going off.  Troopers were going down around the perimeter.  Blasts of blocks and bricks propelled outwards from the explosions knocked them to the ground.  The occasional crawler still managed to get through all that mess and land on the roof.  Drew took out two crawlerz before a flying lead pipe smacked him in the head hard enough to lay him out.

“Medic!”  Lisa screamed loudly when she saw the blood pooling up beside Drew’s face.  She ignored the world around her as she tried to help her man.  The pipe had smashed the top of his ear and gouged a chunk out of the side of his head.  Drew was out cold.  Lisa screamed for a medic again knowing she couldn’t be heard above the cacophony of explosions all around them.

Giving up on getting help Lisa pulled out her knife and cut Drew’s shirt sleeves off.  She took those and jammed them up against his head to apply direct pressure to the wound.  She got as close as she could to his prone body to shield him from all the crap still falling out of the sky.  Worried about a crawler sneaking up on them she maneuvered around until she could hold the blood-soaked sleeves up to his head while still being able to wave her pistol around.  She’d dropped her rifle on the ground when she’d seen Drew fall.

With her hands soaked in her lover’s blood she screamed out loud when a trio of totally nude bodies slammed into the roof beside her.  One landed in front of Drew, one landed with its head inches from Lisa’s belly, and the final one thudded into her from above knocking the breath completely out of her body.

Lisa didn’t have time to be in pain.  She didn’t have time to recover.  Reaching down she grabbed the hair of the beast trying to chew through her body armor.  The head whipped around but she held on long enough to know where to shove the pistol.  Long greasy hair gripped in her left hand she shoved her pistol down where the head should be and let off a few shots.  She stopped shooting when the head stopped moving around.

Looking up she saw a black-eyed crawler sniffing at Drew’s face.  It’s tongue licked the blood pooling on the side of his head.  The crawler noticed her looking and they made eye contact.  Lisa put a hole right between those eyes.  A second later she felt herself being picked up in the air.  The crawler who’d grabbed her hurled her out of the way to get to Drew.  The smell of the blood from Drew’s head wound was driving it crazy.

Lisa hit the rooftop hard.  Tumbling a few times, she stopped when she rammed into an exhaust pipe sticking out of the roof.  Ignoring the pain that she was in Lisa tried to stand up and see where Drew was.  Her ankle gave out on her.  Unable to stand up she pulled herself into a kneeling position trying desperately to figure out where Drew was.  Dizzy and disoriented she finally figured out the shadowy form to her right was Drew.  The other shadowy form beside Drew must be the crawler.

Surprised to find she hadn’t lost her pistol she raised a shaky arm to send some rounds into the crawler threatening Drew.  Before she could pull the trigger a tall man with a rifle shot the crawler in the face from point blank range.  Lisa watched in appreciation as the man bent down and lifted Drew up in a fireman’s carry to take him to the center of the roof.  Watching the Gumby like silhouette pick up Drew, she knew it’d been Jeff who jumped in to save him.

Lisa groggily climbed to her own feet.  The rockets had died down.  She turned to look where Jeff had taken Drew.  A body was slithering along the ground like a broken snake.  It was a crawler who’d been shot in the spine.  No longer able to control its legs it was pulling itself along the blood trail left by Drew.  Lisa walked unsteadily towards the barely noticed killer.  Once she trusted her aim, she put a few shots into the crawler’s body.  It turned and looked her in the eyes.

Lisa raised her pistol to put the crawler to rest.  The stillness of the crawler indicated something was odd.  Normally you could fill them up with holes and they’d still try to get to you until they ran out of blood.  This one had just stopped crawling and was staring at her.  Lisa haltingly made eye contact with the soulless creature.  She was sucked into a world of darkness and death.  The thoughts of the dying crawler thrust themselves into her mind.

It wanted nothing more than to sink its teeth into her throat and be filled by her blood pumping into its mouth.  Lisa could feel the pressure of the teeth on her neck.  She was barely able to stay on her knees as her and the dying ghoul stared deeply into one another’s eyes.  She saw her body cold, pale, and blood stained.  The hand holding her pistol fell to her side as her eyes filled with tears.  Shivering she stared into the crawler’s eyes as it died.

“Come on let’s get out of here.”  Harley was trying to help her up.  He ended up on his knees besides her as she lost it.  She sobbed uncontrollably with her face buried in the broad chest of her giant gypsy friend.

Chapter 23:  Finishing the Job

One of the Chinooks landed on the roof of the building they were on.  The pilot kept the rotors going in case the weight of the big bird collapsed the roof.  It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had to bounce off a collapsing building.  He was hoping if he had to do it this time that it’d actually work.  The last time he’d done it had ended with a lot of running and gunning once they climbed out of the rubble.

“Time to go!”  Billy announced as Harley came over with Lisa clinging to him.  Drew was sprawled out on the ground with a medic working on him.  What a complete cluster this had turned out to be.  Billy was ready to hop in the helicopter and put this whole experience in the rearview.

“We’re not done here yet.”  Yue said firmly.

“What now?”  Billy responded completely caught off guard.  After the night they’d had he thought he’d have to race everyone else to get onboard the first helicopter out.  They had two of them, but he couldn’t imagine anybody wanting to wait for the second one.

“Get the wounded out of here.  We have to go inside.”  Yue said.  She had that weird witchy look going on.  Billy had been excited to be getting the hell out of Dodge.  He sighed knowing that a quick helicopter trip to coffee and snacks on board the closest carrier was no longer in his immediate future.

“Inside the building?”  Billy asked unnecessarily.  He just couldn’t help it.  He didn’t expect her to suddenly change her mind, but it was worth a shot.

“The breaker’s down there.  She’s too strong.  We can’t let her live.”  Yue said looking right back at him.  In desperation Billy looked over at Jeff.  Going down into a building that was packed with crawlerz in the middle of the night to find and kill an exceptionally strong breaker was pushing it even for the Suicide Squad.

“I haven’t felt anything?”  Billy said questioningly.  If this was a super strong breaker then they should’ve felt something.

“Exactly.”  Yue said as if that settled the matter.  Even Jeff looked perplexed by that answer.

“Start getting the wounded loaded up.”  Jeff ordered.  Billy acknowledged the order and went to take care of it.  As soon as Jeff was alone with Yue, he turned his attention to her and arched his eyebrows.

“The breaker is keeping the groupthink from getting to us.  She hid it so they could sneak up on us.  We can’t let the other breakers find out how to do it.  She has to die tonight.”  Yue said in a beseeching tone.  Desperate for Jeff to see the extreme danger they’d be in if more of the breakers learned this trick Yue waited to hear what Jeff was going to say.  They were going to lose people if they went in there.  This breaker had to die though.

“Ok.  Let’s get the wounded out of here then we’ll deal with the hell bitch downstairs.”  Jeff said after a few seconds of contemplation.  Yue was the undisputed expert in this area.  If she said they had to kill the one below right away, then that’s the way it was.  He recognized that it was going to be beyond dangerous.

“Is Drew, ok?”  Yue asked in a halting voice.  There was a lot of blood around his head.  Lisa had pushed Harley away to kneel beside Drew again.  She was frantically mopping blood out of the way to make sure there were no teeth marks.  She’d go to the grave keeping what she’d seen a secret.  The obscene way the crawler had licked the blood off Drew’s face would become a frequent scene in her nightly nightmares.

The medic returned with more dressings and wrapped Drew’s head up with a few rolls of the absorbent material.  He’d performed a quick inspection for bite marks as well.  When he was done Harley reached down and picked Drew up as easily as if he was a child.  Lisa looked from Drew back to Jeff and Yue then back again.

“Go with him.  Make sure he’s ok!”  Yue said intuiting what Lisa wanted to hear.  It wasn’t like anyone was going to doubt her bravery.  No one wanted her going down into that building distracted though.  Yue doubted Lisa would be able to keep Drew off her mind.  That worry would end up killing her where they were going.

Less than ten minutes later the helicopter carrying the wounded was disappearing into the dark sky.  The other pilot was circling around seeing if she felt like parking on the same roof.  Just because it hadn’t collapsed yet didn’t certify it as landing pad worthy.  Not really having much of a choice in the matter she went ahead and landed.  She finally exhaled again when the roof didn’t collapse underneath her.  Not wanting to tempt fate she didn’t say a word about the roof holding.  Billy should be able to tell that she was down without her saying something she might regret.  She was convinced the best way to make the roof break was to get on the radio and announce that the roof was secure.

Billy understood why the pilot wasn’t saying anything.  Everyone had developed their own personal quirks during this endless campaign.  Not wanting to say anything that required knocking on wood immediately afterwards was a typical sign of someone who spent a lot of time out in the field.  Luck played a big role in them still being alive.  None of them wanted to do anything to jeopardize that luck.  It was worse than a major league locker room.  Troopers wore the same underwear into every battle.  They would only brush their teeth in a clockwise direction.  Little things like that had come to take on a life of their own.

“Bird’s down for a quick getaway once we whack the witchy walker.”  Billy reported. He was feeling pretty pleased with his word play.

“How long were you working on that?”  Harley asked.

“Some soldiers sort of suck at sonnets.”  Tiff said.

“Roses are red, violets are blue, shut the hell up or I’ll gut both of you.”  Billy responded with a rakish grin.  He wasn’t going to let these two clowns ruin his brilliant prose.  They were all going to be dead in like five minutes anyway.  Might as well wax a little poetic.  They should all be working on their last words.

“We’re really going in there?”  Tiff asked staring at the door.  It was a thick wooden door.  They’d wrapped a chain around it and locked it as one of the first steps in securing the roof.  Focusing on the door now Yue could sense the electric hum of bodies on the other side of it.  She still wasn’t getting more than a tingle of the groupthink leaking through though.

“We have to.”  Yue answered.  She was working on her courage as well.  Unlike the rest of them she didn’t have a bunch of mind-altering chemicals lending her a narcotically induced nonchalance.  She felt like she should at least be allowed a shot of tequila before they opened the lock on that door to hell.

“What if that’s what the breaker wants you to do?”  Harley asked.  Leave it to the oversized gypsy to come up with an angle no one had really thought of yet.  The question threw Yue off.  She’d started to dismiss it out of hand before it occurred to her that Harley could be right.

“It’s kind of like what you do to them right?  Put a vision in their heads of where they should go by showing them bloody humans or whatever?  Maybe this breaker is switching it up and leading us on a chase this time.”  Jeff said.  Even high he couldn’t turn off the analytical part of his mind.

“It doesn’t matter.  Either way it has to die.”  Yue finally responded.  Looking around at the faces of the men and women who’d become her extended family she didn’t see any fear.  All she saw was resignation.  They’d follow her down this rabbit hole without harboring any illusions on the odds of coming back out.  If she hadn’t been sure how important it was to crush the life from this particular crawler she’d have backed off.  There wasn’t a single person here she considered expendable.

“Stack up.  We’ll cut off the chain.  Flashbangs and then the real thing.  Standard entry.  Yue to let us know once she figures out where we’re going and who we’re killing.  Team one in first.  Team two sweeps in behind and team three to support the VIPs.”  Billy rattled out the orders.  The squad was made up of elite soldiers who didn’t need to be told twice.  They fell in and slapped in fresh magazines.

A trooper with a short purple mohawk and an intricate web of tattoos visible on his neck shoved a key in the lock holding the chain together. Pausing with the key in the lock he waited for the command to open it.  Billy checked to make sure everyone was in place and then gave a curt nod.  Despite the deadly seriousness of the moment more than a few of the squad started smirking when the guy couldn’t get the lock to open.  He looked like he thought he might have the wrong key or something.  He kept twisting away though and finally the lock popped open.

Before the chain had even hit the floor the door was thrown open from the inside.  All the pent-up visions from the formerly blocked groupthink crashed over the team like a storm surge hitting a reef.  Handfuls of pills or not the raw force of the visions slammed into the troopers’ minds.  The entire force was rocked backwards by the viscousness of the sudden full-scale mental assault.  Behind the wave of palpable fear came the physical attack.

Too late Yue realized the others had been right about the breaker playing them.  The breaker had lured them here.  The crawlerz on the other rooftops had just been a distraction.  Decoys to keep them from focusing on the real threat.  The building they were standing on.  It’d been steadily filling with crawlerz ever since the sun went down.  Crawlerz who were now erupting from the open door on the roof like the water from a fire hose.

The troopers who’d been positioned to toss in the flashbangs once the door opened were the first hit by the lightning-fast parade of madness marching out onto the rooftop.  Stunned by the sudden surge of horrifying visions shredding through their subconscious they barely had time to take a step back before being trampled.  Both troopers released the flashbangs they had in hand.  The incendiary devices lit up the rooftop hellscape.  The glowing red rooftop was beginning to seem like it might be the backdrop for their last stand.

Yue fell to the ground writhing in pain as her head began to pulse.  Her brain was trying to ooze out of every hole in her head.  Screeching hysterically, she tried covering her ears with her hands.  Then she was blind.  Everything was a bright white light.  It was the shared experience of the first wave of crawlerz blinded by the flashbangs.  The roof had lit up like it was noon thanks to the hardened troopers unleashing every flashbang they could get their hands on.  The bright flashes of light were impacting the troopers ability to maneuver.  That was acceptable since the light was really screwing up the crawlerz.

The squad may have been mostly blinded but that didn’t stop them from loping their way towards the helicopter with machetes and knives gripped in their hands.  Unable to see most of them were just rolling forward with a vague plan to stab anything that tried to bite them.  Considering the circumstances, it was a decent plan.  Probably not a good enough plan to save their lives but better than hanging around waiting to be some undead freaks entrée.

The crawlerz who’d come out first were standing around like a bunch of hairy mannequins with really big eyes.  They were being jostled out of the way by the stream of crawlerz continuing to flow out of the open door.  That steady stream of crawlerz was getting a steady stream of flashbangs hurled at them.  A small pile of crawlerz by the open door shifted around as the ones on the bottom mechanically munched the still warm corpse of the purple haired trooper who’d cut the chain off the door.

Jeff was groping around on the ground trying to find Yue when Billy yelled that he had her.  Jeff had been shielding his eyes after the first round of flashbangs went off.  Squinting now he could see that Yue was dangling across Billy’s shoulder.  Tiff had a fistful of the incendiary devices and was chucking another one every few seconds.  Harley had a machete in one hand and a tactical shotgun gripped in the other.  He’d immediately moved to protect Yue when it became obvious this mission was turning into a complete cluster.

“Get to the helicopter!”  Jeff yelled at Billy.  Not that Billy needed any encouragement to get Yue out of the kill zone.

Jeff and the others had wound up on the opposite side of the roof from where the helicopter was perched.  The door that went down into the building was much closer to the side they were on than the side the helicopter was on.  The door faced in a direction that meant there should be a clear path around the roof still available for them to take.  That was assuming the crawlerz kept coming out, running directly away from the door, and then being blinded by a flashbang.

Billy had already taken off running in that direction.  He was sprinting to get around the crawlerz on the roof and over to the waiting helicopter.  Everyone knew that once Billy had Yue on the big green bird of war that he’d order the pilot to immediately go wheel’s up.  Anybody not already aboard by then was going to have a really rough time getting home.  The Uber upcharge to get picked up in the middle of all this mess would just be excessive.  Anybody with any brains would be working to make sure they didn’t miss their ride out of there.

A psychic bomb went off.  The shockwave radiated outwards from the door on the roof.  The powerful signal easily overpowering the sensory blockers enabled by dry swallowing a handful of Valium. The breaker forced its way into the heads of everyone on the roof from somewhere deep down in the bowels of the building they were on.

Darkness.  Cold and still.  The troopers on the roof collapsed to the ground like someone had pulled the strings out of a troupe of puppets.  Yue smashed to the ground as Billy crumpled under the irresistible weight of the mind melting attack.  On the ground the stillness and coldness of morbidity settled over him.  He experienced what it was like to be trapped inside a body that was dead.  The dredged-up memories of people whose minds had lived on after their bodies had died.  The breaker regurgitated those intense memories into their heads.  It inflicted that ultimate hopelessness on them.

The breaker could only keep that level of witchery up for a few seconds.  It wasn’t even long enough for the most recently released flashbang explosion to fade away.  It set the retreating soldiers back on their heels big time though.  Most of them hadn’t been impacted by the groupthink nightmares much since they’d started slamming drugs prior to raids.  They hadn’t been ready for this reminder.

The only people routinely hit with these sorts of attacks were Yue and Melissa.  Melissa was nowhere to be found.  In all likelihood she was lying underneath one of the piles of blood covered naked crawlerz around the door.  The ones who’d collapsed on the victims of their initial surge out of the building.  Jeff was glad for the deafening noise of the rockets, flash bangs and guns.  Otherwise, he knew he’d be able to hear the sounds of the undead pigs at the trough.  Having to listen to the slurping sounds of people being eaten alive may be the straw that cracked his sanity.

Billy and Harley were both on their knees almost as soon as the horrific darkness stopped being broadcast.  Jeff had pegged his head on a pipe sticking up through the roof.  He was rolling around on the ground holding his blood covered face.  Tiff punched Harley in the back to get his attention.

“Get them to the chopper!”  Tiff yelled.  She’d just flung her last flash bang at the door to try and keep the murderous mob off them for a few more vital seconds.

“Don’t be a hero!”  Harley yelled the order right in her face.  Then he bent down and scooped Jeff up like he was a toddler.  Billy already had Yue back over his shoulder.  A phalanx of troopers formed around them as they ran for the Chinook.

It was a nightmare.  Everyone was tripping and banging into one another.  Every time someone jostled someone else that person’s mind immediately went into flight or fight mode.  With this crowd it was more like fight or fight mode.  Fists were swung and friendly fire was becoming more of a threat than the infected.  It didn’t help with the confusion that some of the jostling was now being done by the infected. More of them were engaging now that the river of flash bangs had slowed to a trickle.  The powerful breaker driving the crawlerz forward was merciless.

Billy ran with everything he had.  Bright spots danced in front of his eyes.  He could barely tell where the Chinook was.  Not caring one bit about whether he made it or not he ended up running full speed face first into the side of the big metal beast.  Nearby troopers scooped both him and Yue up to fling into the open cargo bay.  The machine gunners were firing blindly into the mass of crawlerz beginning to quickly move in their direction.

“Go!”  Harley yelled at the men in the helicopter.  It was hit or miss if anyone heard him or not.  He grabbed a squad mate and told him to find the pilot and get the bird in the sky right now.  Saving Yue was more important than anything else.  Almost as an afterthought Harley tossed Jeff into the open bay.  Jeff moaned a few times then sat up groggily holding his hand over his ripped cheek.

Harley turned and ran towards the enemy.  The troopers passing him slowed and turned to offer covering fire.  Harley may be crazy but luckily for him he was in good company.  Everyone in the squad had a good bit of crazy running through their veins.  There really wasn’t any other reason to volunteer to go on missions like this one.  Missions where the chances of walking away without a craving for human flesh were about fifty-fifty.

Harley spotted his target up ahead.  A lone figure blasting away at the crawlerz as they emerged from the door.  How the petite warrior was managing to fire two machine guns at the same time was something Harley fully planned on finding out more about later.  For now, he needed to get her out of berserker mode and into evasion mode.  If he couldn’t then he had no problem dying beside her.  No way was he leaving without her though.

“Hey babe!”  Harley shouted as he picked her up from behind in a big bearhug.  Without any more discussion he started running backwards towards the chopper.

The troopers who’d turned to follow him formed a firing line and blasted away while falling back themselves.  The oversized machine gun on the Chinook was going into overdrive.  They were going to have to replace the barrels when they got back to base.  Assuming they actually made it back to the base.  Harley nodded at the black clad man jogging backwards beside him.  The trooper ejected a magazine and started to slide in a fresh one.

The man never got the chance to reload.  From out of the darkness a crawler flew right into his face.  Mouth first the crawler ripped into the man’s chin as they tumbled to the ground together.  Harley saw the trooper was done for and kept running backwards yelling for Tiff to take care of the guy.  Bouncing backwards in the big gypsy’s embrace Tiff lit up the ground with her remaining rounds hoping to put the trooper out of his misery before the crawler turned him.  She also was hoping Harley let go of her soon.  Arriving back at the helicopter being transported like an errant toddler wasn’t going to do anything for her image as a bad ass bitch.  More importantly she was pretty sure her hulk of a hero had bruised some of her ribs.

Harley threw himself backwards into the Chinook as the helicopter was starting to lift off.  Other than a few people cussing when he landed on them it seemed to work out ok.  Tiff elbowed him hard enough to make him let go of her.  Popping to her feet she ran to the open door and helped another trooper into the helicopter.  That was the second to last man to make it off the roof.  The last of the squad to make it off the roof tumbled to the alley below when he missed his grip on the helicopter skids.

Chapter 24:  Crawler Hunt

“We can’t leave!”  Yue yelled out.

“We already have!”  Jeff yelled back over the roar of the helicopter.  The cargo doors were all still open.  The machine guns had finally quieted down.  Not that any of them could hear anything anyway after what they’d just been through.

“We have to get that breaker!  She’s too powerful!”  Yue yelled.

“Exactly!  That’s why we can’t get her.  I’m going to call in an air strike to level this whole damned city.”  Jeff answered loudly.

“We have to get her.  She’ll be gone before the missiles get there.”  Yue said.  She’d leaned in closer to Jeff, so that she didn’t have to shout.  The side of his head was covered in blood.  She didn’t feel any better than he looked.  The last thing she wanted to do was go another round with the powerful crawler who’d just handed them their asses.

Jeff started to ask how Yue knew that the breaker would be gone before the bombers got there.  He thought better of it before he opened his mouth.  The explanation would go right over his head.  It’d go over the head of anyone who didn’t have her understanding of the crawler psyche.  That club was very small. With the loss of Melissa back on the rooftop it’d just gotten even smaller.

“How do we track her?”  Jeff asked.

“I might be able to sense her if we get close enough.  Assuming she’s not in stealth mode again.”  Yue answered.

Jeff nodded and started to stand up.  A wave of wooziness washed over him.  Head spinning, he sat back down again immediately.  Looking around the cargo bay he called Billy over and explained what was going on.  Billy didn’t question a word of it.  He merely held out his arm for Yue to cling to as he helped her up into the cockpit.

“That’s not happening.”  The pilot said without even turning to look at Yue.

“It’s happening.  Official order is we turn around and let Yue try and hunt down this queen among crawlerz.  The breaker dies tonight. Otherwise, she screws up our whole effort to retake the country.”  Billy said evenly.  He could easily pull rank as well since he was the leader of the Suicide Squad to which the pilot belonged.  The pilot seemed to have selective amnesia as to how the chain of command worked though.  Most likely due to her pilot status.  There weren’t many people both skilled and stupid enough to fly for the squad.

“Alright but I’m going to need some more pills.  If that thing blacks me out while we’re flying the friendly skies, it’s not going to be a happy ending.  What with the fiery crash and the death and everything.”  The pilot said spinning them around to head back the way they’d come.

“Here.”  Billy said producing a bottle of Valium.

“We’ll take those and some of the good stuff.  These things weren’t enough to stop that thing from cracking open our skulls and pouring in a gallon of nightmare juice like ten minutes ago.”  The pilot said.

“Yeah, we need to be so stoned you’re seriously worried about us flying the helicopter.  Otherwise, we’re probably all going to die.”  The man in the co-pilots chair chimed in.  Billy nodded and left to find Harley.

A few minutes later their pilot was scanning the ground with highly dilated pupils looking for landmarks to get them back to the buildings they’d shot up earlier.  Harley was standing back admiring his work.  He went ahead and did a line of Oxy to congratulate himself on how high he’d gotten the pilot.  The trick had been not letting her overdose.  The man sitting in the co-pilots chair was not a pilot.  He was more of a glorified navigator.  Harley administering the wrong amount of narcotics could’ve easily initiated the fiery death scene the pilot had described.

The pilot zipped by the building they’d so recently vacated and went into a hover about a hundred yards above it.  Yue had dropped to the floor and was chanting to get her focus to the point where she might be able to pick up some of the groupthink.  Not getting anything, she motioned for the pilot to descend.  The hammered pilot had to be told twice before the order got through her head.  Not that the rest of them were doing a whole lot better.  No one wanted to experience that soul crushing darkness again if they could help it.

Looking up from the floor Yue watched as Billy slurred his way through an explanation of the pilot descending then going whichever direction Yue pointed.  Watching the exchange Yue wasn’t filled with confidence that they were going to be able to pull this off.  Regardless of her fears she shut her eyes again and let her mind wander freely.  She lost her focus when the inebriated pilot jerkily began lowering their altitude.  Wrapping her hands around the base of the seat in front of her she dropped back into her meditative trance.

Her mind settled on a vision of running through an alley dimly illuminated by the moon.  The vision flickered to running down a road then morphed into climbing down a fire escape.  The random visions were mixed with memories of tasting flesh and lapping puddles of dirty blood.  She was picking up plenty of fragments of thought from the crawlerz scurrying around below.  What she wasn’t getting was any indication whatsoever of which way the breaker had gone.

Opening her eyes, she saw that Billy and Harley were both intensely studying her.  The helicopter was no longer descending.  She couldn’t tell how far from the street they were, but the strained look on their faces indicated she needed to point somewhere pretty soon.  The problem was that she had no idea which way to go.  Which just went to show how dangerous this newly evolved stealth breaker was.  If they could hide themselves at will then Yue would be useless to help hunt them down.  If they couldn’t hunt them down, then they couldn’t resettle North America.  It just wasn’t realistic to keep the population of an entire continent high for the next few decades while the crawlerz slowly died out.  Assuming the unholy creatures even had to worry about old age.

Yue tried to cut out the stress and let her mind wander again.  It was hard knowing everyone was depending on her.  It was hard knowing that if she connected with the breaker, it’d immediately blast her mind so full of darkness that she might not ever see the light again.  All she needed was a visual though.  She just needed one of the crawlerz the breaker held in thrall to participate in the groupthink.  As long as one shared their visions for long enough for Yue to recognize the breaker and figure out where she was at.

“Anything?”  Billy asked after they’d been hovering in silence for an awkwardly long period.

“No.  There was some earlier, but it’s all died down now.  I can’t tell which way she went.  I don’t know how to catch her.”  Yue finally said in an exhausted tone of voice.  She opened her eyes and stood up to stretch her legs.

Darkness.

Groggily looking up from the floor Harley saw Yue leaning against the pilot’s chair with her eyes closed.  She was convulsing like someone was punching her in the stomach.  Shaking off the effects of the psychic slug to his head Harley got up to help her.  He was distracted when the pilot started screaming about bugs sliding down her throat.  A second later the helicopter was tilting forward and flying erratically past the surrounding rooftops.  Knocked off his feet Harley slammed into the floor hard enough to knock the breath out of him once again.

“Get it under control!”  Billy screamed in the pilot’s face.  It sounded like Billy could use a little help getting it together as well.

“They’re in my skin!”  The pilot panted.  She’d slowed them back down though.

“They’re not!  It’s in your head.  It was in mine too.”  Billy said.  He leaned forward to make his point to the wasted pilot flying them around the city.  The sweaty woman finally calmed down a little bit.

“It’s time to get the hell out of here.”  The pilot muttered once she looked slightly more in control of herself.  Her hands danced around on the panel.  They began to gain altitude and slowly revolve around in a circle.

“We can’t leave yet.  We have to kill her.”  Yue said before vomiting between the pilot and the co-pilot.  The hot puke splashed all over the place.

“Do you have any idea where she is?”  The pilot asked staring down at the steamy mess dripping off her thigh.

“She had to have been close to get in our minds like that.”  Yue answered.

“Call in a missile strike.  Hope for the best.” The pilot said.  Yue looked over at Billy.  He nodded in agreement with the pilot.  Harley had recovered enough from being slammed into the floor to be grossed out by the puke that’d gotten on him.  Regardless of that he nodded in agreement as well.

“We can’t get close to the breaker without it mind raping us.  You can’t pinpoint exactly where it is.  I say we bomb this city to the ground and hope we get lucky.”  Billy said.

“Hell, we can always do another flyby after the bombs drop.  It’s not like we’re using nukes.”  Harley said.

Yue dipped her head in defeat.  They were right.  It was suicide to keep buzzing around when the breaker could swat them out of the sky anytime that they got too close.  A bombing run might not take out the breaker, but it had a better chance of doing it than them flying around in circles like a bunch of idiots.  Yue listened as Billy started calling in the coordinates then left to go check on Jeff.

“Figure out where she’s hiding?”  Jeff asked when Yue emerged from the bridge to talk to him.

Darkness again.

A sense of speed as the helicopter tilted forward and once again tried to outrun the hurt and anguish.  The rushing wind died down after the helicopter skidded to a stop along a narrow highway in between two buildings.  The rotors buried themselves in the concrete facade of a popular fast-food franchise.

Billy woke up this time wondering why everything was at an angle.  He’d just had visions blasted into his head that made him believe he was stuck inside his own dying body.  That he was fixing to blink out of existence.  His resilience was such that seconds after that horror he was on his feet trying to figure out why the helicopter felt funny.

“Did we crash?”  Harley asked from behind him.  Looking out the windshield over the heads of the two comatose pilots Jeff nodded.  It was a sign of the abuse he’d taken already that night that he hadn’t realized they were on the ground until Harley asked.

“I think so.  We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”  Billy replied.

“True.  Wake up the pilots and get them to put out a distress call.  We’re gonna need a new ride.  I’ll get in the back and see how it’s looking there.”  Harley said.

Billy smacked the pilot around until she woke up.  It took her a little bit longer to calm down this time.  Once she was calm, she put out a distress call requesting immediate evacuation.  Asked for their current position she gave the best answer she could.  That they were staring at a crooked set of the golden arches.  The man on the other end of the broadcast told them the other chopper was on the way and to pop smoke as soon as they saw it.  If they had a way to illuminate the area around them then they should do that too.

The pilot reached down and flipped some switches. The running lights and searchlights on the downed Chinook came on.  That should give their rescuers a reference point.  The man in the co-pilots seat was out.  His right arm was hanging out of the socket grotesquely.  Billy worked on getting him out with the pilot’s help.  When Harley tried to help Billy snapped at him to go check on Yue and get her out of the helicopter.  Once they had the semi-conscious co-pilot cut out of his seat, they started dragging him along to the cargo bay of the helicopter.

The scene in the cargo bay was even more chaotic.  Anyone not strapped in had been tossed around like they were in a washing machine.  The cargo hold of the Chinook wasn’t designed to be comfortable.  There wasn’t any padding on the walls or ceiling.  There were metal conduits and sharp edges throughout.  Those had done their damage.  The troopers and crew were rolling around in pain.  On top of the physical pain, they were still doing their best to fight off the chill of the psychic attack that’d brought them down in the first place.

Billy watched as Harley scooped up Yue.  Jeff was on his knees with even more blood added to his clothing.  A trooper beside them was laying on the ground staring straight up into the sky.  His eyes no longer had the spark of life in them.  His neck was twisted almost ninety degrees.  The lifeless eyes of the trooper stared accusingly at Billy as he carried out the navigator with the broken arm.

“Are we getting out of here?”  Harley asked Billy.

“Can we lock down the helicopter and just wait until morning?”  Jeff asked.

“The side doors got blown open and they’re wedged in place.  We’d have to lever up the helicopter then beat them back into place.  I checked that when I got back here.”  Harley answered.  Hiding in the metal covered war machine was certainly preferable to trying to exit and find a place to hide in the darkness with an army of crawlerz coming for them.

“We don’t have long.”  Billy said looking around at the men slowly pulling themselves to their feet.  Even with this hardened group of crewman and troopers more than a few were staring around with a catatonic look on their faces.  They’d been through a lot in the last five minutes.

“Yue’s the priority.”  Jeff hacked out unnecessarily.  Turning his head to the side he spit out the bloody chunk of his tongue he’d bitten off during the crash.

Chapter 25:  Stand and Deliver

“There’s a busted up looking Mickey D’s and a credit union.  The credit union’s our best bet.”  Tiff reported to Billy as soon as he emerged from the ruined side of the Chinook.

“Let’s move.”  Billy ordered.  There wasn’t time to screw around. It may already be too late to get into the credit union before the crawlerz got there.  It was hard to think with the drugs coursing through their bodies.  It was hard to get past the nightmarish poison that’d been poured into their heads by the breaker.  How do you recover from knowing what it feels like to be dead?  What other trauma was the breaker loading up to shoot into their skulls?

They began moving across the street towards the three-story building housing the credit union.  The movement was a little ragged since half of the crash survivors were carrying the other half.  They’d left a handful of their comrades behind in the helicopter.  They’d wait for daylight then burn what was left of them.  There was no time now.

Tiff had run ahead with one of the demolitions experts from the squad to see about getting into the credit union.  The trick was to get in without messing it up so bad they couldn’t secure the entry behind them.  The credit union itself looked like it’d hold up pretty well to a mob of crawlerz running into it.  It was sandwiched between two other buildings. The only windows on the first floor were on the front.  Those windows were already covered with plywood.  This must have been one of the towns where they’d treated the news of the infection the same way they’d have handled a hurricane warning.

The plywood would slow the crawlerz down for about a minute once they figured out there were non-infected humans hiding inside the building.  If they could get in before the crawlerz showed up, then that would buy them a considerably longer span of time to work on their defenses.  The door had chains wrapped around the handles.  Tiff whipped out the bolt cutters she’d carried across the street and made short work of those.  The two of them then worked together on picking the lock to get inside the building.  The goal was to not have to blow anything up if they could help it.

After a frustrating minute they were rewarded with the door popping open enough for them to pry it open the rest of the way.  The deadbolt mechanism was damaged, but they could fix that by reusing the chain they’d cut off.  Behind the two working on the door the rest of the party had built up.

“Incoming.”  Someone in the back of the group announced.  Billy barked out orders to get everyone inside.  He ordered two of the troopers to hang back and guard the door until everyone was in.  The two immediately went to the back of the group and posted up.  Seconds later their first shots shattered the stillness of the night.

Tiff and the demolition expert went to work on the interior door to gain access to the building proper.  The first door let them into a small, enclosed space where there was yet another door to get through.  Unable to contain himself Billy ordered them to hurry up.  Harley looked over at him with a raised eyebrow.  If they survived Billy knew he was going to catch hell from Tiff for saying something so stupid.  It wasn’t like they were taking their time.

The level of violence coming from outside continued to intensify.  The wounded were being pressed into the small space while the able bodied were gravitating towards the sound of gunfire.  The VIP they were all working so hard to protect was still dangling off Harley’s shoulder.  Yue didn’t look like she was trying to wake up anytime soon either.

“Try and wake her up!”  Billy called out to Harley.  They were packed so tightly into the tiny lobby space that there was no way for Billy to poke at Yue.  Not that he thought Harley would be able to do anything more than what’d already been done.  If Yue didn’t wake up while being tossed around in the middle of a gun battle, then Billy wasn’t really sure what else Harley could do.  Maybe he should just stop talking for a little bit.  Between the order to wake up the comatose girl and the order for Tiff to hurry up and open the door he wasn’t feeling overly confident in his leadership skills at the moment.

Harley gave him the eyebrow again.  Shrugging he spun Yue around and tried talking to her.  Jeff forced himself through the tightly packed crowd to try and wake her up as well.  There didn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with her.  She wasn’t on any drugs though. She was taking the breaker attack head on with no filter.  Billy shuddered thinking what that must feel like.  He was high as hell, and it’d still freaked him out more than anything else ever had in his life.

“We’re taking hits.”  Billy heard over the tiny speaker in his ear.  Forcing himself not to yell at Tiff to hurry up again he shifted the wounded navigator over to stand on his own.  If he had to leave the man to die to make it more likely Yue would survive then that’s what he was going to do.

Tiff got the door open.  The crowded foyer emptied out as everyone rushed into the main lobby.  Carried along by the crowd Billy put the navigator up against a wall and slapped him hard in the face.  The man’s eyes opened, and he stared back at Billy.

“You’re on your own.  Wake up and fight if you want to live.”  Billy told the petrified man.  The guy had an arm swinging around like it was a badly taped on turkey leg.  He was still better off than a lot of the others.  For one thing he was still breathing.  It was going to be up to him to stay that way.  Billy ignored the man’s pained whimpering as he turned to go see what was going on with getting the lobby locked back down.

Everyone was inside except for a couple of troopers standing in the foyer firing at the fast-moving shadows illuminated by the search lights on the Chinook.  They would pause every once in a while, to chuck out a grenade.  The wounded inside the lobby now outnumbered the troopers who were defending them.  The walking wounded were going to have to fight for themselves.  The only excuses not to be engaging the enemy from now on were going to be unconsciousness or death.

A crawler collided with one of the troopers in the foyer.  The man was spun around with his gun still firing. The randomly fired bullets riddled the inside of the lobby.  Billy rushed forward to shoot the diminutive crawler making a bloody mess of his trooper’s face.  The crawler died after a couple of well-placed rounds leaving the blood covered trooper staring up at Billy.

“I hope it’s not like the visions.”  The trooper said weakly.  Billy shifted his barrel over to aim the weapon at his man’s head.

“It won’t be.  It’ll be beautiful.  You’ve earned it.  God speed.”  Billy said then pulled the trigger twice.  He blew the brains out of a man he’d considered a brother for over two years now.  He wanted to make sure the trooper died straight away.  No way was he going to make him experience his brain being alive while his body died.  Not after what the breaker had been doing to all of them with those hellish hallucinations.

Billy stared down at the deformed face of his friend.  He was knocked off balance when the other trooper in the foyer grabbed him by the shoulder to pull him backwards.  Stumbling into the lobby Billy got smacked in the hand when Tiff slammed the door.  Her and another trooper went to work on wrapping the chain around the handles once they had it closed.  The outer entrance to the foyer stood with one of the doors wide open. There was already a crawler smacking on the interior door trying to get in.

“Now what?”  Tiff asked.  She was short of breath.  Mesmerized watching the hairy nude man on the other side of the thick glass door trying to get in Tiff struggled with the drugs in her system.  Used to having to prove herself in the mostly male circles she ran in her face revealed very little of her inner struggle.

“Upstairs!”  Billy ordered.

“Chopper’s here!”  Jeff called out.  He was clutching his communications unit in his hand.  He’d been flipping channels trying to reach the helicopter.  They’d let him know they were in position now above the downed Chinook.

“Let them know we’re headed to the roof.  See if they can pin down the crawlerz coming down the street.”  Billy said.

“No.  Tell them to get higher now.”  Yue croaked.  Her eyes were still closed but she must have been listening in.  Harley almost dropped her when she spoke up out of nowhere.  He’d forgotten he was carrying her in all the excitement.  Her weight didn’t amount to much on his broad shoulders.  The pack slung across his back probably weighed twice as much as she did.  It’d weighed even more before they’d used up most of the ammunition and grenades earlier.  He’d barely had time to replenish his personal stock before they’d abandoned the Chinook.

“So, they don’t get blacked out!”  Tiff blurted.  The stupidity of having the helicopter sit in the air right where the breaker was probably headed had hit her like a ton of bricks.  They were lucky Yue had decided to rejoin the living.  Otherwise, they’d have had two crashed Chinooks sitting outside.

Yue hadn’t just been dangling lifelessly off Harley’s shoulder all this time.  Unbeknownst to the rest of them she’d been in a battle for her sanity against a breaker more powerful than any she’d ever run into before.  This one had crushed her spirit with the morbid visions of her being trapped inside her own rotting corpse.  The breaker had followed up with cold and then fire.  Yue had alternately experienced her whole body freezing followed by being burned alive.  The intense pain felt in the final seconds of people’s lives.  The pain felt while their blistered skin ran from their bodies like wax from a candle.

The breaker hadn’t broken Yue with those attacks.  Yue’s psyche had been bent but she was still relatively sane following the full-on blitz by the breaker.  Not only was she still sane she now had a decent fix on where the breaker was.  Not that they needed to hunt it anymore.  The demoness was intent on coming to them.  The breaker wanted to turn Yue.  Everyone else would be devoured in a blood drenched orgy of cannibalistic lust.  Yue would be turned though.  Not because she had psychic powers that could be used against humanity.  Yue would be turned because the breaker had sensed that was Yue’s greatest fear.  That was the way to break her.

“Put me down.”  Yue whispered hoarsely to Harley.  He carefully set her on her feet.

The interior of the lobby was lit by a couple of sizzling road flares.  Beams of white light from handheld flashlights pierced the remaining darkness as everyone scrambled to get the door open to the next level.  Several crawlerz were now pounding on the door from the crowded foyer.  The glass door was vibrating violently.  The chain added as extra security was rocking back and forth.  Once the crawlerz figured out they needed to take a few steps back to strike the door harder they’d be in.

“Doors open!”  Someone yelled from across the lobby.  Everyone who was mobile ran or limped in the direction of the voice.  Jeff was one of the ones limping.  He had an arm around Yue so that they could help each other along.  Harley strolled along behind the two of them like he didn’t have a care in the world.  Billy waited until everyone was moving then walked backwards with two of his troopers.  They covered the exodus from the first floor.

“They break the doors yet?”  Harley asked when Billy made it up the stairs.

“Not yet but they will soon.  They packed in there too tight to really hit the glass hard.  When more of them get there and start piling in they’ll eventually get in.  We need to get out of here now.”  Billy said.

“She’s close.  If the helicopter comes down to get us, she’ll swat it out of the sky.  We have to kill her first.”  Yue said.

“How the hell are we supposed to do that?”  Billy asked in a tired, frustrated voice.

“She wants me.  She’ll come for me.  We just have to fight off the others while we wait for her to get here.”  Yue said.

“How many others exactly?”  Jeff asked.  He was super woozy and not really in the mood for a lot of close quarters combat in the dark.  Not that it sounded like they had much of a choice.

“I might be able to slow down the others.  I’m going to try to stop her from blacking us out and letting the others just crawl over our bodies and rip us apart in the darkness.”  Yue said.  The matter-of-fact way she said it made everyone freeze and stare at her.

“You need some arms to get you primed?” Harley asked to break the awkward silence.  It sucked to have the team psychic talking about how she’d already seen them all dying.  Especially when the way she talked about them dying sounded a whole more realistic than the way she talked about them being able to kill the breaker.

Yue nodded as she sat down on the ground.  Not wanting to use anyone who could still fight Billy had three of the most damaged people dragged over to Yue.  She gave him an odd look but recognized the reality of the situation.  Picking up one of the unconscious men’s arms she waited for the sound of glass breaking that’d indicate the crawlerz were in the building.  Once they were swarming to the stairs, she’d do battle to take over the groupthink.  Then she could use all of those infected minds to amplify her attack on the breaker.  It was a gamble that Yue prayed would pay off.

“A couple of things.”  Yue said loudly enough for everyone to hear.  “If the breaker gets in and we lose the fight then they need to blow this building up immediately.  Once the breaker’s dead we can all get the hell out of here.  I’m going to be in deep.  I’ll have to find some way to signal you to pick me up and carry me out.  That’ll be the time to have the pilot drop down to pick us up.”  Yue said.  Once she was sure they’d heard her she closed her eyes and started working on clearing her mind.

“Get the rest of the wounded upstairs.  Leave a couple men to guard them.  Have them find the exit to the roof and make sure we can get out.”  Billy ordered Tiff.  She nodded and took off with Harley in tow.

“Here we go.”  Jeff announced once they all heard the sound of glass breaking below.  Yue must have sensed or heard it as well.  She bit into the arm she was holding like it was a nice juicy apple.

It didn’t matter how powerful the breaker that she was going up against was.  Yue knew that if she could enter the groupthink with the taste of blood and flesh fresh on her lips, she had the advantage.  Her mind entered that dark demented world while her body went into auto mode to savage the flesh being offered up to her.  Lips slurping at the rushing warm blood she let the current of coppery liquid fill her with power.

The scenes playing out in the groupthink shifted.  The breaker had been driving the crawlerz onwards with visions of what awaited them upstairs.  Visions of ripping apart the humans they’d seen wandering the streets.  Those images were replaced with images of a door leading down to a basement.  A basement full of body parts and the cowering uninfected.  A basement with steaming pools of blood sloshing around in it.  A rec room for the mob busting into the credit union.  The fact that the building didn’t have a basement wouldn’t stop them from searching for it from now until Yue ran out of the fresh blood needed to remain their mistress.

A dark tension filled the air when the breaker arrived at the front door.  Looking through the eyes of the crawlerz she’d enthralled below Yue got her first good look at her nemesis.  This breaker was breathtaking.  Easily over six feet tall with soft blond hair flowing down to her thighs.  She was less bruised and battered than most of the infected they saw on a daily basis.  Her eyes were black as night.  Her teeth perfectly straight.  Her lips were pulled back as she beat her way through the crowd of crawlerz towards the stairs leading up to the second floor.

On the second floor Yue continued to chant.  She redoubled her assault on the forearm someone had shoved into her face.  She channeled the taste and texture of the arm she was ripping apart to keep the crawlerz below in check.  Even the breaker was drooling at the imagery Yue was throwing out.  The breaker knew that they’d gone up and not down.  The breaker was coming for them.

Then she stopped.  Yue willed her to continue making her way across the room.  Yue sent the things the breaker would want to see.  A still movie of them waiting to be savaged by her.  It wasn’t working.  The savvy breaker sensed it was a trap.  Yue slurped down a mouthful of bloody skin and called out to the people she knew were listening to her.

“Amazon blond trying to leave.  Don’t let her live.”  Yue stated succinctly before diving mouth first back into the arm.

Down below the infected had surged towards the doors to the second floor while Yue was distracted.  The breaker used that momentary lapse to send a shockwave of blackness and paranoia through the uninfected in the building.  She began cutting through the crowd to head for the stairs again.  Confident that she could regain control of the crowd and drown the people above in despair she didn’t hesitate when the door to the second floor suddenly popped open.

Her lips pulled back from her teeth when a man with his face covered in a skull tattoo aimed his rifle at her.  The confidence drained from the breaker as Yue completely reclaimed the crawler crowd in the lobby.  The undead Amazonian demoness rushed for Billy.  Hate fueled her every move.  A lust to rend and destroy.  She dodged the first few bullets by leaping on the top of the crowd of crawlerz to dance across them towards Billy.

She wasn’t fast enough to dodge the next dozen bullets.  There just wasn’t enough room.  Billy tossed a couple of grenades into the crowded lobby and pulled the door shut once he saw her fall.  He’d put a couple of bullets through her skull, but it never hurt to be thorough.  Killing crawlerz was the name of the game after all.

Chapter 26:  Who Dares Wins

“I hear we’re getting some fresh meat.”  Drew said by way of greeting. He’d run into Billy on the way to lunch.  The Suicide Squad was working off of an aircraft carrier assigned to patrol the East Coast.  They waited for reports of a breaker then scrambled to hunt them down.  The reports turned out unsubstantiated a lot more often now.  That might be because a credible report was typically followed by a Tomahawk being launched.  The idea was to try and take care of the problem right then and there.  Missiles were replaceable.  There were stockpiles of missiles in warehouses scattered across the country.  There was only one Yue.

The Suicide Squad knew all too well the toll it took on them to battle the monsters.  There wasn’t a man among them who didn’t have scars covering their arms.  The only ones who’d avoided serving as Yue’s chew toys were Tiff and Lisa.  Most of the squad were also missing pieces and parts of their bodies.  When you hung out with a group that tossed around as many grenades as they did in close quarters it was inevitable.  As long as they didn’t get their trigger fingers blown off all was good.  Most of the men had taken to wearing metallic cups now during a mission.  If there was one thing worse than losing your trigger finger…

“Yeah.  There’s a team of Aussie special operators getting assigned to us.  Poor bastards. They have no idea what they’re getting themselves into.”  Billy answered.

“Isn’t that the opposite of how we normally get people?”  Drew asked.  Both Drew and Lisa had finally gotten around to volunteering for the squad. They were considered full dues paying members now.  It’d made sense considering they went on pretty much every operation anyway.  They’d proven how qualified they were by still being alive.  Neither Drew nor Lisa had really mastered the ‘taking orders’ part of military life yet but they were getting better.  Billy didn’t care if anybody listened to him or not under normal circumstances.  Once the bullets started flying everyone was expected to get real obedient real fast though.

Drew’s question was a good one.  Normally people volunteered to join the squad.  You had to have a special ops background or be recommended by someone.  You had to be willing to go on missions that no sane person would consider.  The squad had an extremely high number of KIA troopers.  Once you signed up you had a seventy percent chance of being killed within the first six months.  Billy had done the math one night after half a bottle of tequila and way too much reminiscing.

“I guess somebody figured it was about time the kangaroo humpers started earning their keep.  Otherwise, we’ll all be dead by the time the country’s cleaned out.  Then they’ll get to move in without having to do any of the heavy lifting.  Let them pay the price too.”  Billy answered.  It came out a little more passionately than he’d intended.

“Works for me.  I just hope they’re good at what they do.  I don’t want some noob tossing a grenade right beside me or shooting me in the back when a crawler freaks them out.”  Drew said.

“Yeah.  They’re solid soldiers.  The Australians copied the British and built an SAS group.  Kind of like one of our SEAL teams or the Green Berets.  I just don’t know how much they’ve been exposed to the crawlerz.  All they’ve done since this went down has been kill people trying to get into Australia.”  Billy said.

“LeBron said they’ll be here this afternoon.  I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”  Drew said.

“We won’t know how they do in the field until we see them in the field.”  Billy responded.

There was a ton of truth to that statement.  They’d be headed out in the field with them soon enough.  Normally the new guys trickled in.  It was a lot easier to watch over a couple of noobs than it was going to be to watch over a few dozen.  Hopefully they got sent out on a couple of missions where the breaker wasn’t really there before they had to deal with the real thing.  It’d give them some time to see how these FNGs were going to hold up when they got their first taste of the crawlerz.  The Aussies may be super cool when someone was shooting at them.  It was a whole different ball game to have multiple crawlerz come flying at you out of the darkness.

The two of them met up with the rest of the squad for lunch.  They had their own table.  All the ranks in the squad ate together.  There was none of that officer’s mess, chief’s mess, petty officer’s mess stuff.  The Suicide Squad ate together, fought together, and died together.  Given the crazy hair colors, tattoos, and general disregard for the uniform of the day their table was the most colorful one in the galley.  It was either the cool kids table or the rejects table depending on who you asked.  Not that anyone was stupid enough to say anything like that to their faces.  The squad troopers may dress like hippie surfers who’d raided a military surplus store, but they were all killers.

“I take it you’re the squad then?”  A man in a foreign uniform asked from behind Drew.  A chorus of “G’day mates” and “Throw a shrimp on the barbie” greeted the newcomer.  The man smiled and pulled up a chair next to Drew.

“Where’s the rest of your team?”  Drew asked.

“They’re getting settled in mate.  I wanted to take a little walk about.  Saw a table full of fancy dressers and figured this was where I belonged.”  The man answered.

“I’m Billy.  I’m in charge of this outfit.”  Billy announced casually from the other side of the table.

“That explains why my orders have me reporting to you then.  Major Edders at your service.”  The Aussie responded.  Normally, a major would be so far above Billy in the chain of command that they’d never run into one another.  This was a unique situation though.  Billy was not only in charge of the premier special forces unit of the apocalypse he was also on a first name basis with the POTUS.

Billy was on the verge of asking the Major more about the troops under his command when a request for the Suicide Squad to report to the flight deck boomed out over the overhead speakers.  The squad troopers dragged their kits along with them everywhere they went.  Their weapons were strapped on and ready to go at all times.  Additional supplies were stored in lockers up by the flight deck for easy loading and unloading.  The Chinooks were kept fully stocked in case they were close enough to the target site to use those.

Every second counted on these missions.  The instant an area was deemed a viable target the squad was put on alert.  Once Jeff and Billy reviewed the data the mission was normally either launched or scrubbed immediately.  Fuel for the big birds of war wasn’t easy to come by so joy rides were frowned upon.  When they did leave the ship, it was normally after a missile or two had been fired.  Ideally the missiles would wipe out the threat before they even got there.

“You and your boys coming along?”  Billy asked the Major as everyone hurriedly wolfed down the rest of their meals.  The Major said he’d see them topside and took off running.

“So do you salute him or how does that work?”  Tiff asked petulantly as she walked by Billy.

“Salute this.”  Billy responded in kind.

“She’s already gone dude.  You gotta be a lot quicker than that.”  Harley said filing quickly past Billy.  The rest of the unit was behind him as they scrambled for the deck.  They normally got there before the helicopters made it up the elevator. A little lag wouldn’t kill them.  Wondering if he should’ve saluted the Major Billy fell in and jogged along with his men.

Up on deck they were met by Jeff and Yue.  Yue looked hollowed out.  Her cheeks were gaunt, and her skin had an unhealthy yellowish tinge to it.  About ten percent of her hair had turned white over the last few months.  The stress was catching up with her.  Billy knew that no matter how horrific the experience was for him and the others when they went out on raids it was a thousand times worse for Yue.  The rest of them were on drugs to keep the crawler induced visions at bay.  Yue allowed those nightmares to wash over her.  She willingly submerged herself in those demonic daydreams to save everyone else.

A light rain slowly soaked them as they waited for the Chinooks to be brought up.  It was a dark and dreary day at sea.  Jeff started explaining how they’d picked up satellite images of a group of crawlerz headed into one of the power plants on the coast.  The group of infected had barely been detected. They’d slunk into the building from different directions in small groups of ten to twenty.  The strange gathering had been flagged since it seemed like it might be a new tactic the breakers were using.  It made sense as a way to move their enthralled forces around the map without attracting attention.

The breakers weren’t brilliant military minds.  The constantly evolving tactics were due to how the crawlerz shared information in the groupthink.  That information became part of how the crawlerz acted.  When large groups of the infected were bombed every single day for over a year they eventually adapted by forming smaller groups.  Or maybe the ones who liked to run in small groups had always been there.  It was possible that they just hadn’t been noticed until the larger groups were all bombed to smithereens.  An undead form of Darwinism.

Either way the smaller groups seemed to be associated with smarter breakers than the larger groups.  Or maybe the breakers who were still alive were just getting smarter as time went on.  It was hard to tell.  It wasn’t like any of this was an exact science.  They only studied the breakers long enough to figure out where they were so they could kill them.

This mission seemed like it was right up their alley.  The missiles had stayed on the ship this time.  The powers that be didn’t want to risk blowing up the power plant the crawlerz were camping out in.  It was a strategic one for supplying power to one of the first settlements they wanted to get up and running.  They needed to take the mob of crawlerz out the old-fashioned way.  The Aussies were about to get a crash course in crawler warfare.  The ones who survived would most likely be reevaluating their decision to volunteer for these missions moving forward.

The squad was boarding the Chinooks when the Aussies showed up.  They came jogging up in full battle rattle.  Major Edders broke off from his men to come over to where Jeff was waiting for him.  Billy hurriedly introduced the two men.  Yue had looked up initially, but her interest had faded rapidly.  She found herself walking around in a mind fog half her waking hours now. Those waking hours had been greatly expanded since she couldn’t sleep for more than an hour or two without a nightmare waking her up.  She was in a constant fight with Jeff over his insistence to sleep in the same bed as her.  She didn’t want him to die because he was too tired to watch his back on a mission.  He refused to let her sleep alone though.

They needed to get to the site before dark.  They needed to get setup to do maximum damage before the crawlerz came out to play.  The plan was to lure the crawlerz into kill zones where there was minimal risk of damaging the power plant.  Controlling the crawlerz once the breaker was dead shouldn’t be too hard.  Yue would have plenty of fresh Aussie arms to munch on.  If all these reinforcements did was provide a new source of blood and flesh for Yue, then they were still worth their weight in gold.  The squad wore the bite scars as symbols of pride, but it was painful as hell when Yue really started going at it.

The two helicopters easily lifted off with the additional men and gear aboard.  Jeff, Edders, and Billy squished together at the end of one of the benches.  Drew and Lisa came over to sit down beside Yue who sat facing Jeff on the outer row of benches.  The birds were noisy, but they’d all mastered communicating inside of them.  Tiff looked over at Major Edders and asked the question that’d been bugging her.  She was pretty sure she already knew the answer, but it never hurt to confirm.  Also, she knew it’d put Billy in an awkward spot and that was always fun.

“Hey Major.  Does Billy salute you or how does that work?”  Tiff asked with a big grin on her face.  Billy shot her a WTF look.  Harley elbowed Tiff but he was also smiling.  The Major took the question seriously though.

“We’re all special operations.  You blokes have a ton of experience fighting the infected.  This is your mission, so Billy’s in charge.  We’re here to support and learn from you.”  The Major answered.  Once everyone had nodded their understanding it was Edder’s turn to break out in a big grin.  “He still has to salute me though.”

“I’ll salute anybody who helps me and mine waste the infected.”  Billy answered immediately.

The rest of the flight to the landing zone was spent discussing tactics.  The Aussie unit had never conducted an exercise like this.  They’d only shot at the crawlerz from a distance up until now.  This was going to be their first experience coming face to face with the infected.  They’d been briefed on the groupthink.  They understood logically the need to snort, inject, smoke, and drink their way to a clouded mind before the fight.  They’d even heard how Yue could control the crawlerz with her mind.

None of them had known Yue needed a sacrificial forearm to work her magic.  Hearing that he was going to need to set aside a few men to be used as some sort of Voodoo woman’s appetizer was news to the Major.  He rolled with it though.  Especially once he understood a little bit about what Yue had to do to gain control of the crawlerz.  Like anybody just hearing about it he was skeptical.  He did a good job of keeping the skepticism hidden though.

“You ready?”  Drew asked pointing down at the power plant that’d just come into sight.

“Not even a little bit.  Let’s do it.”  The Major answered with a carefree grin.  Billy decided he liked the guy.

Chapter 27:  Just Another Day at the Office

The instant the helicopters touched down everyone rushed out the doors to take care of their assignments.  There was a lot that needed to be done in a short amount of time.  A handful of men were running around slapping sheet metal over windows and bolting it on.  They were looking to herd the crawlerz a certain way.  The monsters were much easier to take care of when they were contained.  They had Yue to handle corralling them psychically, but she’d be the first to say they needed a backup plan in place.

Other men were carefully placing claymores in strategic locations.  Those would be setoff once the crawlerz rolled themselves out of the building.  Ideally Yue would get the infected to walk over and mill around aimlessly while they were blown to bits.  The sheet metal was in place in case that didn’t happen. The barriers should cause the crawlerz to come streaming out the doors in the middle of the building right into the path of the mines.

In the event the mines and small arms weren’t enough to slow down the infected there were machine guns being mounted on top of buildings around the perimeter.  Lighting was also being run around the area so they wouldn’t have to fight in the dark.  They had plenty of NVGs but there was no real advantage to using them when you were fighting the night loving demons.  A combination of string lights and battery powered floodlights were being positioned wherever they’d be the most useful.

“Not your men’s first rodeo I take it.”  Major Edders said walking up to where Billy was helping get the string lights up around a building.

“More like our millionth.”  Billy answered tiredly.

“Your men seem focused.  That’s good to see.  People can get sloppy after running the same kind of operation too many times.”  The Major commented appreciatively.

“All the sloppy soldiers die within the first month.  There’s not a lot of room for error out here.  That focus you see is driven by sheer terror.  Once the sun sets this place is going to turn into hell.  You’re going to be questioning your sanity.  You’ll be higher than hell from whatever crap Harley feeds us, fighting for your life against naked cannibals with super strength, and you’ll have to deal with feeling their disgusting fantasies in your head.  Hope you guys are ready for all of that.  Otherwise, you’re going to die.”  Billy responded.  He walked away to help a man carrying a box full of flashbangs.  The Major stood still for a moment absorbing Billy’s harsh reality.

“Good to go?”  Jeff asked startling the Major out of his thoughts.

“I was doing fine.  Billy needs to work on his motivational speaking.”  Edders joked.

“Yeah.  It’s hard giving those little speeches when there’s a good chance that we’re all going to die soon.  Make sure you have everybody in place before sunset. Sometimes they come out early if they’re starving for flesh.”  Jeff said before turning to go climb up onto the top of the building where Yue had been stationed.  He left the Major silently repeating the ‘come out early if they’re starving for flesh’ knowledge nugget Jeff had just dropped on him.

Up on the roof Jeff and Billy were huddled around Yue.  She was chanting under her breath as she worked to sense where the crawlerz were hiding out.  Yue would sporadically point out a location where she felt something.  Billy sent orders through his headset to the men stationed on the ground below.  The men scurried around blowing holes in crawlerz hiding under floors and buried in the soft ground.  Edders had climbed up onto the roof to join them.  His skepticism melted away as he watched Yue pointing out the hidden infected.

“It’s starting to get dark.”  Edders said when Billy glanced over at him to see how he was handling everything.

“Yes sir.  Does it not do that at the end of the day where you’re from?”  Billy joked.

“Do you have your volunteers for up here?”  Jeff asked before Edders could come up with a response to Billy being an idiot.

“Honestly I didn’t get it before.  I’ll get two more guys up here, but I’ll be first in line.”  Edders said rolling up his shirt sleeve.

“It’s easier if you just take off your shirt.”  Drew said.  He was looking around anxiously. They’d cut it a little close on getting to the roof before it got dark.  He’d been going around with Lisa making sure all the lights were coming on.

“Yeah, it can get super messy.”  Lisa said gnashing her teeth together and laughing at the stricken look on the Major’s face.  Drew pulled off his thick leather jacket to show off the scars on his well gnawed arms.  The Major’s face got a couple shades paler.  Edders was a seasoned SAS operative who’d endured hardships well beyond what most people could handle.  This was all getting a little too crazy for him though.  No wonder the squad troopers all seemed a bit off.

“Game faces.  It’s getting dark.”  Billy called out to put a stop to the hilarity.  He was all for the graveyard humor that popped up in these highly stressful situations.  They were about to have hundreds of ravenous undead sprinting at them over a courtyard that would hopefully erupt into thousands of speeding ball bearings to shred them.  It was inevitable some of them would get through though.  He’d personally witnessed the creatures hopping up three stories like they were getting on a bar stool.  This was no time to be distracted.

The lights in the courtyard gave off a bright white glow.  They dragged them around now because the road flares were just too freakin creepy.  The flickering red glow really did make it feel like they were battling demons from hell.  The bright white lights didn’t help any with their night vision, but they helped a lot with morale.  At least they did until the mines ripped them apart or the crawlerz tore them down in their rampaging.  Luckily, they’d looted enough of the string lights from an Amazon warehouse to keep them in lights for the foreseeable future.

“Arm please.”  Yue called out to the Major.

Edders was staring out across the dusky courtyard.  He suddenly needed to take a piss.  He’d been nervous before a fight before, but this was a whole new level.  It took him a second to figure out that he was scared.  It wasn’t an emotion the badass leader of a group of elite badass warriors was used to feeling.  The pills he’d swallowed an hour earlier weren’t doing anything to take the edge off.  Or, if they were, then he’d really hate to know how terrifying this must be if you were sober.

“Arm sir.”  Drew said from right beside Edders.  The Major looked at him in a distracted way before remembering what he was supposed to be doing.  Looking around he spotted the other two men he’d ordered to the roof to be blood donors.  The two men were looking back and forth from Yue to their commanding officer.  Pulling his shirt over his head Edders walked quickly over to Yue and sat down beside her with his arm extended.

“Sorry you have to do this sober.”  Edders said as Yue pulled his arm towards her mouth.

“She’d trade places with you in a heartbeat.”  Drew said from beside them.  Yue had a circle of close friends and family circling her as she bit deeply into the Major’s arm.  To his credit Edders only cussed like crazy under his breath.  One reason Drew was standing so close was to knock the Major away from Yue if he tried to attack her.  Drew wouldn’t have blamed him for trying.  Fighting back was a normal human reaction to someone eating your arm.

The other reason Drew and Lisa were standing so close to where Yue was munching on the man from down under was to make sure she didn’t kill him.  When Yue started channeling those demons it unlocked the part of her mind that the infection permanently unlocked.  She suddenly had the strength of ten men.  When she went into a craze, she could strip an arm of its flesh like a fat guy sucking down a chicken wing.  There was a box of gauze and wraps a few feet off to the side in preparation for the first aid Lisa would be knocking out once they pulled Yue off Edders.  Drew would be working with Harley to get the next guy in place to keep the blood flowing.

This turned out to be one of those times Yue got carried away.  Edders lost all of his stoicism as Yue reared back and struck his bicep like she was a giant cobra.  Her mouth pulling back again with a big glob of bloody flesh hanging out of it.  Drew and Lisa yanked the Major up off the ground and tossed him out of Yue’s reach.  Drew turned to help get the next guy get into position as Lisa went to work on patching up the cursing Major.

The next guy had knocked Harley on his ass and taken off running for the side of the roof.  The other ‘volunteer’ was walking backwards with his pistol in one hand shaking his head to indicate he was a hard no on being used as the next chew toy.  Harley sat up and looked Drew in the eyes.  Without saying a word, he held his fist up in the air and silently mouthed a countdown from three.  Simultaneously their hands flashed down.  At the end of the day Harley’s rock smashed Drew’s scissors.  Pissed at himself for not throwing out paper Drew sat down and stuck his leg in his sister’s mouth for her to munch on.

Down in the courtyard the world was exploding.  Crawlerz had erupted out of the front doors as soon as the sun went down.  Unknown to the men charged with killing the beasts Yue was locked in an epic battle with two breakers that’d taken up residence in the large administrative building.  She was locked in her own private hell having her mind flayed by the ancient evil that lived again in the crawlerz brains.  Outside the Aussies were shooting and reloading as fast as they could.  Their minds had locked up with fear, but their battle tested reflexes had kicked in to keep them in the fight.

From the rooftops Billy surveyed the battle happening below him.  On both sides of him men lined the walls steadily firing their rifles into the chaos below.  A machine gun setup on one corner of the building was blasting out an unceasing stream of death.  The Chinooks swooped in to add the sounds of their guns and rotors to the mix.  It seemed impossible for any being made of flesh and bone to pass through the crucible below.

The crawlerz were doing it though.  Billy had long ceased to be amazed at how the creatures could soak up abuse and keep coming at full speed.  Firing his rifle, he heard a scuffle to the left of him.  Turning quickly, he saw one of his men on the ground with a fistful of crawler hair in one hand and a long knife in the other.  The trooper had gone completely berserk.  He sawed at the neck of the skinny crawler until the thing’s head came off in his hand.  Covered in blood the trooper lurched to his feet and flung the head down into the sea of monsters coming for them.  Screaming out a loud challenge the man pulled a pistol and started blasting away.

A bemused Billy belatedly realized he was standing there watching his out-of-control trooper instead of watching the enemy.  Looking to catch back up on his body count Billy swapped out the magazine in his rifle and took aim at the shadowy shapes below.  Further back towards the middle of the building Lisa was watching with a worried expression as Drew kicked Yue off of him and stuck his other leg up for her to chew on.  Before Yue had latched on to his offered calf Harley showed up with an unconscious Aussie over his shoulder.  He’d knocked out the guy who’d pointed a gun at them.

“How’s your leg feel?”  Lisa asked once Drew had broken free of his sister’s merciless grip.  She was doing her best not to look too closely at the open wound below her as she shoved in gauze and antibiotic pills before wrapping it all up.  The ship’s doctor would be working on Drew once they made it back.  For now, she just had to keep him alive.

“Harley passed me an extra couple of oxy.  I can barely even feel my leg.  I think he might’ve given me muscle relaxers or something by accident.”  Drew slurred his response.  It wasn’t out of the norm for Harley to dispense the wrong drugs in the wrong doses.  He tended to shove everything into Ziploc bags then shove the Ziploc bags into different pockets without labeling anything.  Add into that the fact the Harley was pretty much perma-stoned and that explained the random quality issues that popped up in the pharmaceutical dispensing process.

“Could I get a few of those?”  Edders asked.  He was sitting up now watching with eerie fascination as the bandages on his arm gradually turned red in places.  One look told Lisa that the Major had taken quite enough drugs for one night.  The man was seriously tweaking.  Pulling a couple of antibiotic pills out of the medical kit she handed those to him.  He dry-swallowed the pills without even looking to see what they were.

“Is the gunfire dying down?”  Drew asked.  It was hard to tell since they were all starting to have hearing problems.  If they survived this war, then they were going to get hooked up with all kinds of disability checks for the rest of their lives.  So, they had that going for them.

“I hope so.”  Harley said.

“You just don’t want to roll up your sleeve for Yue next.”  Tiff called out from her position guarding the side of the roof by Yue.

“You know me so well beautiful.”  Harley responded with a smile.  The Harley and Tiff romance was an off-again, on-again affair.  It sounded like it may be on again for now.  It was hard to keep up with who everybody was sleeping with now that Facebook was permanently offline.

“How’s my guy doing?”  Edders asked.  He may have been trying to sound concerned but he mostly sounded stoned.  Lisa hoped the rest of the Australian SAS had a higher tolerance for drugs.  The squad had gotten to the point where they sucked down enough pills to send most people to the ER on every mission.  It wasn’t like any of them were overly concerned with the long-term side effects.  Not when the long term for them was measured in months.

“How’s the snack?”  Lisa called out to Harley.

“Alive.”  Harley answered back after checking on the man.  Yue had one of the man’s arms near her mouth but wasn’t doing anything with it.  Blood was slowly dripping from the arm down into her lap.  Once Yue stopped cannibalizing people that was normally the sign the chaos was coming to a close.  Nothing to do now but clean up any stragglers and collect their dead and wounded.

“Did he pass out?”  Edders asked looking over at the man.

“Yeah, pretty common to pass out when Yue bites off a hunk of your arm.”  Harley said immediately.  He was planning on leaving out the part where he smacked the man over the back of the head a few times before dragging him over to Yue.

Major Edders moaned and stood up to look around.  The whole battle had only taken about twenty minutes once the sun set.  No one besides Yue would ever know that most of that battle had happened inside her head.  Without her there the breakers would’ve psychically crushed the men outside before the rest of the infected even had the chance to sprint across the courtyard

It’d been a unique experience for Yue.  She’d never run into more than one breaker at a time before.  The breaker duo had both attacked her, but the attacks had been out of sync.  It was like they were trying to work together but just ended up cancelling one another out.  Even canceling one another out they’d been powerful.  They’d also been starving.  The allure of Yue’s blood drenched visions had let her seize control of the groupthink with minimal contestation.  From there it’d been easy enough to rein in most of the crawlerz and get them to chill out in the kill zone.

The Major had no clue as to how they were all still alive.  Lisa was right to assume the fit man had never been one to abuse drugs or alcohol.  Walking over to look off the roof he stopped way back from the edge to avoid falling off by accident.  The world was spinning.  The residual fear and adrenaline from the battle that’d raged around him hit him all at once.  Combined with the pills and blood loss it was enough to make him slump to the ground and pass back out.

Yue meanwhile dropped the arm of her most recent blood bag and glided over to the edge of the roof to stand beside Jeff.  His half-closed eyes hinted at his low tolerance level as well.  Yue called Billy over and guided them on miniature hunts to kill the last of the crawlerz.  She basically walked around and picked up on the groupthink to see what the hidden ones were looking at.  From there they had to reverse engineer where the locations were.  It was a complicated procedure they made look easy because of how many times they’d done it.

A final sweep to collect their fallen and check for any additional crawlerz and they were out of there.  A team of Seabees would be flown in the next day to seal the buildings back up.  There may be a few crawlerz still hanging around, but the majority of the threat had been eliminated.  Thanks to Yue there hadn’t even been any KIAs this time.  Ironically enough the most critically wounded were the men she’d bitten.  That list included Drew who had to be carried to the helicopter thanks to the damage she’d done to his leg.

Chapter 28:  After Action Report

Lisa sat on the bed next to Drew spearing pieces of fish off a plate with her fork.  The Mediterranean diet was in full effect aboard the USS whichever big grey boat they were on.  Drew was sleeping as per normal anytime he got near a bed.  Lisa had actually asked around about how narcolepsy worked.  She’d been afraid Drew had a bad case of it.  It turned out he just had a serious case of lazyitis.

Yue had really done a number on his leg.  The doctor had him on bed rest and had prescribed pain meds along with antibiotics.  Not that Drew needed a script to have access to whatever drugs he wanted.  It was nice to be able to get them from the ship’s pharmacy in a nicely labeled bottle though.  Taking the pills Harley handed you in a Ziploc baggie was always sketchy.  One of the benefits of Drew being laid up was that he got to order room service versus taking his meals in the galley.

Lisa had fully availed herself of the room service. She’d been sure to get breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a few snacks delivered through-out the day whether Drew was awake or not.  She’d made it through all of the movies that could be accessed via the onscreen selections in the room.  Drew’s injury had elevated them to a private cabin.  There was even a private bathroom with a private shower.  The shower was tiny. It was still way better than having to wear shower shoes to avoid catching some sort of fungus in the communal bathrooms.

“Are you watching Fifty First Dates again?”  Drew asked.  He’d decided to wake up and grace her with his presence.

“It’s a classic.”  Lisa responded without taking her eyes off the screen.

“You save any of my dinner for me?”  Drew asked eyeing the fish Lisa was scarfing down.

“No.  Why don’t you hop down to the galley and grab us some snacks?”  Lisa asked testily.  She still didn’t know why Drew had felt like it’d been his responsibility to get his leg chewed off.  There’d been a ton of people there that night.  They could’ve easily thrown down someone else to get munched on.

“Nobody died.  We get room service and our own shower.  I’m feeling pretty good about it.”  Drew said wrapping his arm around Lisa.  She couldn’t really argue with that.  No matter how badly she wanted to.

“What do we do now?”  Lisa asked pausing the movie.

“Watch the movie?”  Drew asked in a confused tone of voice.  He wanted to ask her to hand him the bottle with the pain pills in it but was afraid that might set her off.  He was better off waiting until it was time for his antibiotic then asking for a pain pill. Best case she just handed him both pills at the same time.

“I mean how long do we keep going out on these raids?  When does this crap end?  At what point can we settle down in a house in Jamaica or wherever and have a normal life?”  Lisa asked.  Drew shrugged.

“No clue.  Want to call LeBron?”  Drew asked.  If anyone had crunched the numbers and put together a timeline it was going to be LeBron.  He was scary efficient when he got in the zone.

“No.  He’s way too busy.  When do you think we’ll see him again?”  Lisa asked.  She’d finished the last of the fish.  Drew was staring at the tiny scraps of flakey white meat still stuck to the bones.

LeBron was orchestrating the entire effort now.  He was connected at the hip with Shaun.  They could only assume the PM from Australia had been suitably impressed as well. The strategies Drew’s little brother was formulating were the ones everyone was following.  LeBron had an army of bureaucrats carrying out the instructions that were keeping them moving forward.  LeBron’s supposed boss, Jeff, had given up even pretending to be leading the department.  He nominally still held the title, but LeBron reported straight to the POTUS now for all practical purposes.

“Don’t know.  Hopefully soon.  Last I talked to him he was supposed to be going back to Colorado with Shaun.  Something about better access to secure data or something.”  Drew said.  Yue noticed how her love’s eyes were glued to her empty plate.  She decided to take mercy on him.

“You want to go for a ride?”  Lisa asked.

“Absolutely.  These walls are closing in.”  Drew answered.

Lisa pulled the wheelchair out of the corner of the tiny room. She messed with it until she got it to fold out.  One of the reasons they’d been given these quarters was that the corridor outside didn’t have any hatchways between them and the officer’s dining area.  That allowed Lisa to roll Drew out for food.  The ship’s doctor was also accessible without having to go up or down any stairs or through any hatches.  Not that the guy wanted them banging on the door asking for more Band-Aids or anything.

They rated access to the cabin deep in officer country by virtue of who they knew.  Neither of them was under the delusion that they’d been put up there based on who they were.  If they weren’t on a first name basis with the POTUS then Drew would’ve been stuck in a bed in the sick bay like the rest of the wounded.  It didn’t hurt that both of Drew’s siblings were also really big deals.  A little nepotism could go a long way.

“We should call Jeff and Yue and see if they want to meet up with us.”  Drew said.  Lisa nodded and picked up the phone to make the call.  They hadn’t seen or heard from Jeff and Yue since they’d gotten back.  Lisa had heard that Yue spent most of her time in her room.  Surprisingly enough Jeff answered on the second ring. He agreed to meet up with them after a quick conversation.

Lisa pushed Drew slowly down the corridor while she contemplated why Jeff would’ve been in his room in the middle of the day.  Unlike the rest of them he had a day job.  It was a pretty important one too.  Just because he was living in LeBron’s shadow didn’t mean he wasn’t brilliant in his own right.  Getting Jeff’s take on Lisa’s question about when this would all be over would be well worth breaking out the wheelchair.

Lisa and Drew ignored the looks shot at them as they settled in at one of the tables by the back of the dining area.  Neither Lisa nor Drew was the slightest bit worried what the uptight sailors in their ironed khakis thought of them.  Drew was wearing a pair of cargo shorts and a green hoody with a leprechaun printed on it.  His leg was covered in bandages.  The wheelchair had a rifle and a pistol tucked neatly into it where Drew could easily reach them.  Lisa was going through a hair dying phase.  Her longish hair was currently red with purple highlights.  She wasn’t exactly wearing the uniform of the day either.

“You think they’ll show?”  Lisa asked.  Drew shrugged and began playing around with the bandages on his leg while Lisa went to get them coffee and snacks.  This dining area was self-service.

“Sorry.”  Yue said from behind Drew.  A startled Drew spun his head around so quickly he heard a cracking sound.

“Sorry about what?”  Drew asked.

“Your leg.”  Yue answered nodding her head to indicate the bandages.

“Once the staples and stitches are out, I’ll just have to spend some extra time on the treadmill to get back into speedo shape.  No big deal.  Enjoying the time off actually.”  Drew answered.

“I bet you are with Lisa waiting on you hand and foot.”  Jeff said as Lisa walked back with a tray holding two bowls of fish soup.  Seeing that Jeff and Yue had joined them Lisa set the tray down and went back to grab bowls for their guests.  Based on how frail and pale Yue looked Lisa had decided to just get her food and hope she ate it. She hadn’t even bothered asking Yue if she was hungry.  Lisa must be super concerned about Yue since she didn’t bother taking the time to respond rudely to Jeff’s comment.

Yue thanked Lisa for the soup as everyone sat down.  Conversations at the other tables gradually started back up again.  Much of that conversation was inspired by Yue being in the room.  She was almost universally known as a witch.  Stories of what she did to control the crawlerz had circulated widely.  The more they circulated the further they got from the truth.  Although to be honest the truth itself was pretty damned weird.

“How are you doing sis?”  Drew asked in a concerned voice.

“I’m fine.  You’re the one in a wheelchair.”  Yue answered tiredly.  The spark of enthusiasm she’d shown when she walked in had sputtered out.  Yue sat there absently poking her spoon into the watery bowl of soup.  The way she was sitting it looked like she might get up and leave at any second.

“We can’t stay too long.  We have another flight to make in a little bit.  This one a lot further inland.”  Jeff said into the awkward silence.  Being Jeff, it hadn’t occurred to him that saying that out loud would just make the silence even more awkward.  Or even worse instigate a super awkward conversation.

“Leaving us here I guess.”  Drew said around a mouthful of soup.  He didn’t sound too surprised.  If he went, they’d have to assign someone to push him around.  He was on a very legit medical leave right now.  Lisa however was not.

“Why am I getting left behind just because you’re all gimpy?”  Lisa asked.  It wasn’t like she wanted to go. She just hated the idea that she was only considered useful when Drew was going.  She could fight as good as the rest of them.  She was practically a certified nurse now as far as taking care of people bitten by Yue went.

“We could use you.”  Jeff said.  He saw the look Drew tossed his way.  “Or you can stay here and keep taking care of the gimp.  It’s not like there’s a line of volunteers to help him get to the toilet.”

Lisa looked mollified by the statement.  She kind of wished she’d kept her mouth shut.  She’d much rather hang out on the ship watching the same old ROMCOMs over and over again.  The sappy movies weren’t going to shove drugs up her nose then start slinging monsters at her while she slapped bandages on bloody Australians.  Unsure what to say she opted to change the topic.

“How much longer do you think we’ll be flying around the country fighting these things?”  Lisa asked.  Jeff considered the question before answering.  He also made sure to lower his voice so that only the people at the table could hear him.

“I don’t know that we’ll ever be able to kill them all.  Especially not the lurkers.  These things don’t die until something kills them.  Whatever genetic switch they turn on to go adrenaline pumped crazy cannibal also seems to stop the aging process.  We’re not finding any of them lying around dead from natural causes.  We’re killing them off like crazy though.  At the rate we’re going North America is going to be clear of major herds in a few months.  At least all of the ones that we’ve been tracking.  Then it’s just going to be us going on missions until all the breakers we can find are put down.  I wouldn’t be surprised if these things are still popping up a hundred years from now though.  Think back to the beginning of all this.  How long do you think those crawlerz had been sitting around in that hole in Egypt?”  The detailed answer showed Jeff had put some thought into the topic.

“So, the world gets its freedom back in a few months but we’re going to be fighting these things for the rest of our lives?”  Drew asked.

“I’m sure we’ll all get killed before it gets too boring.”  Yue chimed in sarcastically.  Unfortunately, there was a lot of truth to her attempted levity.

“That’s the spirit sis!”  Drew joked.  Jeff was looking thoughtful again though.

“Yeah, I’ve considered that. Not much of a life for us if we have to spend the rest of our days hunting these things down.  Like Yue said eventually our numbers will come up.  Especially since the things keep evolving.  We need to figure out our end game.”  Jeff said.  He was looking around like he expected one of them to lay out the best course of action right then and there.

“I’ve got nothing.”  Drew said cheerfully.  Now that Lisa wasn’t trying to volunteer to run off and get herself killed, he’d gotten his appetite back.  He couldn’t stand the thought of her going out there without him.  Not that there was much he could do if a crawler hit her anyway.  He just couldn’t imagine not being there while she was putting her life on the line.  Although if she left, he’d finally be in charge of the movie selection.  If she put on My Big Fat Greek Wedding one more time, he might kill her himself.

“Please tell me we don’t have to spend the rest of our lives getting high and fighting monsters.”  Lisa said.

“You don’t.  I don’t see how I get out of it.”  Yue said.  She sounded like Eeyore talking about how nobody loved him.  She had a point though.  Unless they found somebody else who could sniff out and control the crawlerz she was pretty much stuck.  Her being there saved lives every single battle.  If she wasn’t there when people died, she inevitably took those deaths personally.  As if she needed any more weight on her shoulders.

No one had a great response to that.  Unable to cheer her up they listlessly stirred their soups around. Finally, Jeff announced he needed to go check out the report on the breakers they were going to be going after.  Lisa clarified she was planning on staying to take care of Drew.  She felt fine about saying it now that she knew they were evidently expected to keep going on missions until they were either killed by crawlerz or old age.  She didn’t think old age had much of a chance.  Hopefully they got the opportunity to talk to LeBron soon.  She wanted a second opinion.

Chapter 29:  I’m Kind of a Big Deal

Sitting next to the President of the United States on a plane bound for a top-secret Space Force base to meet with the other most powerful person on the planet LeBron wondered if he was stuck in some sort of surreal nightmare.  He wasn’t old enough yet to legally buy beer.  Yet here he was coming up with the stratagems being used to rebuild human civilization.  It was an awesome responsibility.  One he wasn’t sure he was up to.

Shaun was asleep.  He was one of those people who immediately nod off when they get on a plane.  It might have been different if they were utilizing one of the lux customized Boeing 747s to fly around in.  Instead, they were tooling around on the C-2A Greyhounds.  Air Force One was now the same model aircraft normally used to ferry high priority supplies and mail between aircraft carriers.  Shaun wasn’t big on status symbols.  They’d even stopped having fighter pilots escort them due to the excess fuel consumption.

There were pilots on standby to scramble if something did go wrong.  The most likely issue was an engine problem in the middle of nowhere.  They’d been worried for a little while about other countries moving in to try and take over North America.  Months of scouring China and Europe had revealed that the people who’d survived the early rounds of the apocalypse weren’t there anymore.  They’d either gone completely underground or been wiped out.

That meant that it really was on them to keep humanity from going extinct.  The rest of the world was basically a wasteland populated primarily by roaming herds of the undead.  There were undoubtedly some bunkers full of the elite that’d survived but they weren’t in any hurry to contact the Americans.  Or at least they hadn’t tried reaching out yet.  Most likely they were holed up with a decade’s worth of DVDs and barrel upon barrel of freeze-dried provisions.  They’d come out in a few years once they thought the plague had moved on.

There were some islands out there that’d managed to escape the plague as well.  Those populations had been depleted by things like storms and food shortages.  There were still people living on them though.  Even if it was a Lord of the Flies kind of existence.  There were also large communities still living in the Caribbean.  They’d reached out to them to include them in their planning for rebuilding North America.  Some had been excited for the idea while many of the shellshocked who’d survived the initial surge were adamant about never going back to the mainland.

LeBron was wrapping all of those variables into his planning.  He’d already made the shift in perspective as to what being an American was going to be mean.  In the next generation or so it was going to mean being a survivor.  It was going to mean living on a mainland where the occasional crawler still had to be dealt with.  It would mean living in a land where your nightmares might have an external source.  An external source that people like Yue were going to be needed to track down and destroy.

LeBron was deep in thought when he felt the plane begin its descent.  Some of the supplies stacked behind them shifted around as the pilot lined up with the landing strip below.  Shaun’s eyes popped open.  It was still amazing to LeBron how Shaun’s body shut down when they were taking off and came back to life the second that they started their approach.  Shaun was a huge fan of being able to conk out like that for long plane flights.  The only issue he ever had was that he woke up right when you weren’t allowed out of your seat to hit the bathroom.  Now that he was President, he had no problem ignoring the rules to hop out of his seat and take a quick whiz.  Rank hath it’s privileges.

“I bet if you had a tray table, you’d leave it down the whole time we were landing.”  LeBron said to his rebellious Commander in Chief as he came stumbling back out of the bathroom trying to accommodate for the steep pitch of the plane.

“I may or may not fasten my seatbelt.”  Shaun joked once he got back into his seat.

Their pilot wasn’t fooling around about getting them on the ground.  After a long flight it was possible the man needed to make use of the facilities himself.  Co-pilots were at a premium.  Pretty much every available pilot had been conscripted to fly bombing runs. The effort to eliminate as many of the crawlerz as possible was the number one priority for everyone.  They’d dropped tens of thousands of bombs in that effort.  The pockmarked face of the American countryside gave testimony to the kill ‘em all policy.

Breathing slowly through his pursed lips LeBron was thinking of that countryside now.  They had a list of places for the bombers to avoid.  The people who planned out the bombing runs worked around that list.  It included thigs like manufacturing plants, essential highways, power plants, certain types of housing developments, and a host of other things.  Those other things were often on a lower priority list.  One where the planners were asked to consider whether bombing whatever target they’d located was worth losing that particular resource.

“You can’t turn it off, can you?”  Shaun asked with a bemused smile.  He’d been watching the face of their beloved young protégé.

“I don’t think we have time for me to turn it off sir.”  LeBron only used the honorific when they were in mixed company.  There were a few other passengers on the plane.  LeBron didn’t know most of them. Rather than catch weird looks for talking to Shaun like a long-term friend he added that bit of deference.  He had no desire to raise any suspicions with the tough looking Secret Service agents assigned to go with them on this flight.  You never knew when one of them might take it upon themselves to ‘explain’ to him how he should be addressing the POTUS.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.  We’re lucky the Aussies get how useful you are.  They have us outnumbered.  If they decided to just take over there’s not a lot that we could do about it.”  Shaun whispered to LeBron.  There wasn’t anyone on the plane who wasn’t cleared to hear what the President had to say.  Shaun saw no reason to broadcast their weakness to the masses though.

“At some point we’re going to have to come together as a single entity.  Otherwise, there’ll be issues.”  LeBron responded.  The statement got Shaun to thinking.  Neither of them said anything else until they were walking into the mountain.

LeBron agreed to meet Shaun later for a dinner with the Prime Minister.  After coordinating that LeBron headed up to his own quarters to relax.  They’d left first thing in the morning in case they had to ditch somewhere along the route.  If there’d been an issue forcing them to the ground, they wanted to make sure they could get assistance before the sun went down.  LeBron wasn’t the kind of deep sleeper his brother was, but he hadn’t loved having to wake up when it was still dark outside.

Stomping along the corridor to get to his room he noted the large number of Australian soldiers who greeted him.  He’d been aware that the Prime Minister traveled with a large party of bureaucrats but hadn’t realized how many soldiers that included until now.  It seemed like an excessive number.  The Australians had every reason to be paranoid though.  They’d been forced from their homes by a crawler somehow getting past their defenses.  That single crawler had set off a chain reaction destroying everything they’d spent years protecting.

LeBron opened the door to his room and tossed his backpack on the ground.  He knew his suitcase would make it up to the room once everything was unloaded.  This place was like a five-star hotel in a lot of ways.  Knowing how people were living over on the islands made him almost feel guilty about the creature comforts he was enjoying.  That guilt was gently blown away by the cool breeze that filled the room when he adjusted the thermostat.  Nothing like a top-secret base with hundreds of feet of solid rock separating you from the outside world to make you feel secure.

Normally he left his boots on even when he slept.  Here in Cheyenne, he let himself lapse into a semblance of normalcy.  Given the sterile corridors, easy access to food and medicine, not to mention the air conditioning system it was easy to forget the world outside had gone to hell.  He set his phone to silent to keep it from beeping every time he got a message and collapsed into the bed sans boots.  A nod towards being always ready to rock and roll was the fact that he kept his socks on.  He barely remembered to set his alarm before nodding off.

A loud banging noise woke him up.  Confused he rolled over and tried to turn off the alarm on his phone.  He belatedly realized it was someone knocking on the door to his room.  Rolling off the bed he wiped his face with his hands to get rid of any errant drool.  The main base alarm was silent so it couldn’t be anything too serious.  He walked in his socks over to the door and cautiously opened it to see who was on the other side.  A couple of Aussie SAS types were standing in the hallway.  They told him his presence was requested in the dining room.  Once LeBron had run what they were saying through his Crocodile Dundee decoder ring he told them he’d be right out.

Walking back into his room he grabbed his boots and phone.  As he sat on the bed to lace up his boots, he noted the soldiers had come into the room with him.  They must’ve blocked the door from closing all the way.  He didn’t think much of it until he looked down at his phone and saw there were several messages waiting for him.  As casually as he could he punched one of the messages with his thumb to see what Shaun had been trying to tell him.  He wasn’t filled with confidence when he saw the message.  It very simply said ‘betrayal’.

Not sure what to make of the message LeBron did his best to continue to act like this was all just a normal day.  It made total sense to have a handful of special forces soldiers watching him as he laced up his boots.  The comforting weight of the weapons he had strapped on made him feel a little bit better.  If something was going down, then he’d have been asked to remove those weapons first thing.

“We’re going to meet with a couple of VIPS.  We were requested to ask that you leave your personal weapons in your room.”  The leader of the detail stated.  His tone didn’t leave a lot of room for debate.  LeBron debated anyway.

“I never take off my personal sidearm.  The President’s fine with it.”  LeBron answered the imposing officer.

“By request we mean it’s more of an order.”  The man said.  He moved closer to the bed LeBron was sitting on.  His men did as well.

“Hey.  No worries.  I’ll leave my pistol here.  We’re in one of the safest places in the world anyway, right?”  LeBron said.  He was thinking that if he ditched his obvious pistol, they might not pat him down.  He had multiple knives and another pistol hidden under his clothes.  It was odd to think out loud that he actually slept with all of those weapons strapped to himself now a days.

“Appreciate it mate.”  The Aussie said.  The down under goon squad backed off as LeBron finished getting his boots on.

LeBron announced he was ready to roll out once he got his boots laced up.  Normally he’d have taken his laptop with him, but he didn’t really want them searching his laptop bag.  Plus, if anything went down all of his files were saved up on the central server in the mountain anyway.  Or at least they should’ve started saving once he connected to the network.  He didn’t have a ton of data on his laptop.  It shouldn’t take more than a few hours for it all to get backed up.  Glancing up at the hard eyed men waiting to march him down the corridor he wondered why he was bothering to worry about his data.  It was seeming less likely by the second he’d be compiling it and working on a report this evening like he’d planned.

Feeling naked without the comforting weight of the Beretta on his hip he walked out the door flanked by the men who’d been sent collect him.  He tried to keep the mood light as they walked down the corridor towards the elevator up to the VIP area.  He couldn’t help but feel like an old dog on his last trip to the vet.  It was the equivalent of a gangster you’d just ripped off asking you to go for a ride.  Noting they were heading up towards Shaun’s offices LeBron grew even more concerned.  Did they have the POTUS already?

Based on the text he’d seen earlier he could only assume the answer to that was a resounding yes.  Outwardly calm LeBron was freaking out on the inside.  Had he really survived the zombie apocalypse only to be marched up to a conference room and quietly executed?  LeBron had been one of the few people who’d championed saving as many of the Australians as possible. He’d put together the plans that’d made it possible to evacuate Australia as quickly as they’d done.  Now they were going to execute him for no apparent reason.  It didn’t make sense.

LeBron was relieved when he found himself marched into an intimate dining room instead of a blood-stained closet.  Shaun and the Prime Minister were sitting at a table enjoying a bottle of wine.  Maybe he’d misread the whole situation.  The text from Shaun had seemed pretty ominous but maybe he’d misunderstood.  It could’ve been a butt-text of some sort.  Maybe Shaun had meant to ask if he wanted to meet up for lunch later and get a tray of beef or something…

“Have a seat LeBron.  We’ve been waiting for you.”  The tall man sitting across from the President beckoned with his hand for LeBron to join them.  The Prime Minister was a tall man with a hard weather wizened face.  The ominous way he said they’d been waiting for him wiped away any hope that this was all a misunderstanding.

“Saving these pricks may not have been such a great idea after all.”  Shaun said as LeBron sat down.

“How come?”  LeBron asked as he sat down.  They hadn’t killed him yet so maybe he had a chance to walk out of here.  He couldn’t help playing along with Shaun though.

“How come your master plan has my people settling Florida first?”  The PM interjected the question before they could continue their back and forth.

“Is that what this is about?”  LeBron asked incredulously.  The plan did indeed have the last evacuees from Australia being the first to settle in Florida.  It’d made sense to LeBron to have the people shipped straight to where they were going to be living. Otherwise, they’d have had to stop on one of the islands first.  That would’ve been a waste of resources.  By the time the last evacuees arrived in Florida LeBron fully expected the area to be safe.  At least as safe as anywhere on the mainland was going to be for the next decade or so.  The PM must have read something nefarious into something that was simply intended to be expedient.

“Your plan calls for the evacuees from my country to be used as the sacrificial lambs for your plans to retake this land.  So yes, that’s what this is all about.  We no longer feel that this alliance is in the best interests of my countrymen.”  The PM responded levelly.  Looking in the man’s eyes LeBron saw there was no point in arguing.  This guy had gone over the edge.  It was a common enough look in this apocalyptic age that LeBron placed it easily.  This was going to be a serious problem.

“How would you like to proceed then.  Plans are meant to be modified.  There’s no reason for us to stop working together.”  LeBron said as smoothly as he could.  This was a situation where Yue would shine.  She’d get a read on the PM and figure out a way to talk him around.  LeBron was out of his element.  This may be his only shot to talk some sense into the delusional PM though.  He had to try.

“I’m going to proceed by having you two locked in the Presidential suite.  You’ll act like nothing has happened until such time as I have new orders for you.  You will not be allowed out of the suite.  Your Secret Service detail has been permanently reassigned already.”  The PM answered.  LeBron could almost hear the maniacal laughter this would’ve generated in most low budget films sporting an insane dictator.  Instead of feeling secure behind those hundreds of tons of rock surrounding the base he was beginning to feel trapped.

That ended the conversation.  Shaun stood up and two armed men walked in to escort the two of them to their new prison.  LeBron was in shock.  How had this happened without a single shot being fired?  He thought back to all of the Australian solders he’d seen in the corridors.  It began to make more sense.  He was still piecing together what must have happened when the two guards stepped out of the way to let them into Shaun’s room.  The two men followed them in and shut the door behind them.

“Strip.”  The one man said while the other one began tossing the room to gather any concealed weapons or communication’s devices.

“You gonna buy me dinner first?”  Shaun asked snarkily.  The snark was wiped off his face when the soldier landed a solid punch in the middle of his chest.  Shaun dropped to the ground.

“You need to get hit first too mate?”  The Australian asked LeBron.

“No but I think you hurt the President.  He’s got a heart condition.”  LeBron said bending down to help Shaun up.  The soldier pushed LeBron roughly out of the way as Shaun moaned in pain and twitched around on the ground.

LeBron took a few steps back and pretended to hit the shelf hard enough to hurt himself.  He was busily unsnapping the sidearm tucked into the back of his pants.  He got it out just as the soldier who’d punched the President stood up and turned to walk towards the door.

“Freeze!”  LeBron shouted pointing the gun at the man’s head.

The soldier didn’t freeze.  He did the opposite of freezing.  He dropped into a crouch and swept his rifle barrel up towards LeBron.  LeBron’s instincts took over and he drilled the guy in the face.  A bullet through the forehead should be enough to keep that one out of the fight. LeBron swept his pistol up to cover the other soldier. That man was now holding up the mattress he’d been searching under.  LeBron emptied his magazine into the mattress.  One of the bullets must’ve struck home as the mattress and the man collapsed to the floor.

Meanwhile Shaun had collected the rifle of the dead soldier off the ground and was aiming it at the door.  When the door swung open to admit a few more storm troopers Shaun went full auto on them.

“Lock the door!”  Shaun yelled at LeBron.

LeBron shifted his attention from the hopefully dead dude under the mattress to sprint for the door.  Expecting a bullet to send him painfully spinning to the floor at any second, he could scarcely believe it when he actually pushed the door shut and locked it.  Shaun jumped up bedside him to engage a few massive looking deadbolts that slid across the door.

“Secret Service had them installed in case the base got overrun by the infected.  It should keep out some angry Australians for a little while too.  Got your phone?”  Shaun asked.

LeBron nodded and reached in his pocket.  The mattress moved slightly to the side and a gun barrel poked out to blast away at them.  LeBron hurled himself to the side as Shaun returned fire with his borrowed rifle.  LeBron yanked a knife out of his belt and ran at the man under the mattress.  He was halfway there when he saw that he had plenty of time.  The rounds the President had fired had done a number to the soldier’s head and arms.  LeBron spun around to ask Shaun who he thought they should call.

Shaun was on the ground with blood soaking his pants.  LeBron ran over to help him.  The pounding on the door grew louder.  Unsure what to do LeBron sent a couple of quick e-mails then began trying to keep Shaun from bleeding to death.

Chapter 30:  Why Can’t We Just All Get Along?

“Wake up!”  Lisa punched Drew in the side.  Giving Lisa a hurt look Drew rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.  Noticing the expression on her face he forgot all about acting hurt.  Sitting up quickly he started groping around for his weapons.

“What is it?  Infected on the boat?”  Drew asked.  His leg was feeling ok.  He could probably walk if he had to.  Hopefully the stiches and skin grafts wouldn’t all pop off.

Lisa shoved her phone into his face.  It took Drew a second to figure out he was supposed to read the e-mail on it.  LeBron had responded to a group e-mail thread they had going.  It was the one where they kept each other up to date on what they were doing.  The ship they were on wasn’t always in a place to receive data that was sent out.  The senders weren’t always in a place where their e-mails would go out either.  Which was why Drew looked immediately at the timestamp on the message.  Once he’d seen it was sent almost twelve hours prior, he read the short message underneath.

“Oh hell.  What do we do?”  Drew asked sitting up straight.  Pulling the phone back Lisa reread the message herself.

“I don’t know.  Yue and Jeff are the only other ones on the thread and they’re out doing God knows what.  They could be gone for days.  It doesn’t sound like LeBron has days.”  Lisa said with worry in her voice.  She was humming with intense energy.  Whoever was doing this to LeBron needed to die.  Unfortunately, they weren’t in much of a position to do anything about it.

“Why would the Australian Prime Minister lock them in a room and shoot Shaun?”  Drew asked.  None of it made any sense to him.  Lisa was shaking her head in confusion as well.

“I don’t know.  Maybe saving their lives by evacuating their entire continent wasn’t good enough for the ungrateful pricks.”  Lisa vented.  Cold dark rage flooded her body.  It was a completely useless emotion since there wasn’t any nearby target to use as an outlet.  Or was there?

“What about the guys who went with us on that last raid?”  Drew asked.

“What about them?”  Lisa asked.  Surely Drew realized that LeBron had been taken prisoner thousands of miles from where they were currently floating.  The men on board couldn’t have had anything to do with it.  They probably had no idea it’d even happened.  If this was some kind of giant conspiracy, then they were seriously screwed.

Billy, Yue, Jeff, and almost everyone else they’d want to pull into this were all traipsing around the country killing crawlerz.  They’d brought the Australian team with them as well.  Except for the ones in sick bay who were too battered to make the mission.  Assuming they’d fought the crawlerz overnight like normal and that the target area hadn’t been too far away the squad should be back by noon.  At this rate it was going to be a full day before they all read LeBron’s message.  Unless Yue and team happened to fly through a random hot spot or something.  Not likely since it was getting harder and harder to coax connectivity out of the remaining satellites.

“We need to call the captain.”  Drew said looking at Lisa.  Lisa stared back at him until she realized that by ‘we’ he meant ‘she’.  Picking up the handset she quickly got in touch with the bridge. After a brief conversation the captain agreed to come down for a meeting.  Drew had Lisa help him get in the wheelchair while they waited for the captain to make his way down to them.

It only took them a few minutes to convince the captain it was in all of their best interests to interview the half dozen Australian special forces soldiers lying wounded down in the sick bay.  Once they’d mentioned the possibility of a mutiny the captain had gotten a lot more motivated.  He hadn’t agreed to wheel Drew down there to torture a bunch of wounded guys though.  He was sending a couple of Marine Corps NCOs instead.

The NCOs came by the cabin to get briefed.  Any worries Drew or Lisa had about the Marines doing the interviewing being too soft were dispelled when they met the men who’d be conducting the interrogations.  The Marines who walked in were a couple of wizened, scar covered veterans who looked like they could hold their own in a knife fight anywhere on the globe.  They listened to the scenario the captain laid out without batting an eye.  Once the men acknowledged their orders the captain dismissed them to go take care of business.

“When’s the squad getting back sir?”  Drew asked before the captain could disappear back down the corridor.

“They’re due back around noon today.  I’ll make sure you’re notified when they’re getting close.”  The captain replied.

“Can you let us know what happens with the interrogations too sir?”  Lisa asked.  They’d both learned that people with gold stuff on their shoulders really liked being called ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’.  They’d been laying it on ultrathick ever since.  It came out sounding more like someone trying to brown nose a cop out of giving them a speeding ticket than as the honorific it was intended to be.

“If we get anything off those guys, I’ll let you know.  I need to go now and alert my command about what’s going on.”  The captain turned once more to leave.

“Be careful how you communicate it.  There’s bound to be places where the Australians outnumber us.”  Drew said forgetting to add the ’sir’ at the end of it.  It actually came out sounding slightly better that way.

“They’ve locked up and shot the President along with one of his closest advisors.  I think we’re way past being careful.  I’ll pass that along though.  Stay by your phones.  Let me now if you get any more messages.”  This time the captain strode off with a distinctive no more questions stride.

Drew sat in the wheelchair a few minutes before asking Lisa if she thought they should go down to the sick bay and get his leg checked out.  Lisa agreed that with everything going on it was important to make sure he was ready to fight again as soon as possible.  Twenty minutes and a lot of cussing later they were rolling into sick call.  Drew had gotten out of the chair numerous times while Lisa lifted it over hatchways.  He’d bumped his damaged leg into every sharp metallic edge along the way.  He really was looking for someone to take the bandages off and make sure he hadn’t done any additional damage now.

While the corpsman worked on removing his bandages Lisa took a few steps backwards to look around the space.  Not seeing anything that looked like a couple of Marines beating the crap out of some wounded Australians she turned her attention back to Drew.

“Ouch!  How much longer until that heals?”  Lisa asked staring at the patchwork of skin grafts covering Drew’s leg.  Yue had done a number on him.  Of course, if she hadn’t, they’d all have had a lot more problems than some gnarly looking legs.  Lisa had been changing Drew’s bandages every day in their dimly lit room without really looking.  Based on what she was seeing now that was the best way to do it.

“Probably another two weeks before he’s past the hard part.  If it’s still clean by then he’ll be good.  Keep changing the bandages, keep it clean and dry. The most important thing is to make sure he takes all the antibiotics.”  The corpsman answered.

Lisa bummed a bunch of extra dressings in case they ended up flying out in the near future.  Watching romcoms for the next two weeks probably wasn’t in the cards.  Drew was going to insist on being part of the operation to get his brother back.  Wherever her temporarily gimpy but mostly loveable boyfriend went Lisa was determined to go as well.  Ideally the skin grafts would hurry up and heal.  She didn’t want to be pushing him around in that damned chair with crawlerz chasing them.

“You happen to know where they put those wounded Aussie dudes at?  We wanted to swing by and see how they were doing.”  Drew asked casually.

“Popular guys.  A couple of jarheads just asked me the same thing a little while ago.  If you go down this corridor, they’re the next door on the right.”  The corpsman admonished Drew not to push it too much with the skin grafts by reminding him that they were considered a major surgery.

Drew got back in the chair so they could go say hi to the Australians.  He needed to get Lisa away from the corpsman before she decided that he should just sit in bed for the next couple of weeks.  The look in her eyes told him the corpsman’s last words had struck a chord.  The door the corpsman had pointed them at was closed.  When Lisa tried the knob, she discovered it was locked.  She looked over at Drew and shrugged her shoulders.  Not much else they could do unless there was a doorbell.

Drew leaned forward and rapped hard on the door.  There was no reaction to his knocking.  He leaned forward to knock again.  One of the Marines they’d seen earlier opened the door and gave them a scowl.  Drew shot a big cheesy grin up at the sour faced warrior.  If he was trying for a laugh, he failed miserably.

“You looking to come in and say hi?”  The Marine asked.

“If you’re not too busy.”  Lisa said awkwardly.  Drew was still trying to recover from his failed attempt at levity.

The Marine slid to the side so they could come in.  The other Marin made a WTF face to his buddy when he saw them.  That man shrugged and asked Drew what he needed.

“Just checking in.  We wanted to see if you’d found out anything one way or the other?”  Drew asked.  He was uncomfortably aware that they were standing in the middle of the men he’d envisioned being tortured for info.

“These guys don’t know shit if that’s what you’re asking.”  One of the Marines answered.  The big man was busy shoving vials and needles into a briefcase.

“Should we be talking in here?”  Lisa asked in a shy whisper.  She couldn’t imagine how this could get much more awkward.  Being with Drew she was used to straight up foot in the mouth moments of rampant stupidity, but this was on a different level.  They were surrounded by the men the Marines had been sent to interrogate.  Soldiers who may or may not be planning to take place in an armed uprising.

“They won’t remember anything anyway.  They’re all higher than Snoop Dog at a Grateful Dead show.”  The Marine provided the anachronistic analogy with a totally straight face.  Lisa would never be mistaken for a dead head, but she got the part with Snoop Dog.  He was the kind of persona that appealed to multiple generations.

“You don’t beat ’em.  You drug ‘em.”  Drew said.

“That’s right.  That’s how we know that they don’t know a damned thing about any of the stuff we were tasked to question them about.  We’re going to keep at it, but I wouldn’t be overly concerned about these guys.  If their buddies are all in on it, they’d have had to switch to being bad guys in the last few days.  That doesn’t seem right.  We’ve got a decent sample of ranks here too.  You good?”  The Marine asked impatiently.  It was obvious he wanted to stop explaining himself to the odd couple who’d rolled in unannounced and get back to the task at hand.

Back in their room after another twenty minutes of bandage banging torture for Drew, they settled in to wait for a phone call announcing the squad was on the way.  They were both compulsively checking their phones when the phone finally rang.  The unknown voice on the other side verified it was them and told them to report to the flight deck.  The unknown voice had no other information to provide.

“It would’ve been nice if he could’ve told us why we’re hiking up to the top of the boat.”  Lisa said.  Drew started to correct her then stopped himself.  He didn’t want to end up stranded in a wheelchair in a closet or something. That could easily happen if he pissed off his girlfriend by ‘mansplaining’ the difference between a ship and a boat.  He also wasn’t entirely certain he understood what the difference was anyway.  Other than being told they were on a ship and not a boat by a couple of sailors he’d used the ‘b’ word around.

“It has to be to meet the squad, right?”  Drew asked.  He was looking down at his leg.  Blood was seeping through one of the new bandages already.  He was walking around way too much for someone who’d just had a few flaps of skin cut off one part of his body and sewn onto another.

Lisa didn’t bother answering.  She just upped the pace at which she was pushing him down the corridor.  He wasn’t looking forward to having to get out and walk up the stairs.  He was saved from having to do that when he saw Yue walking down the stairs in front of them.  She was surrounded by squad guys as well as a clump of the Australians.  Lisa immediately aimed for Yue and started cutting though the crowd.  Drew watching in front of them the whole time to warn off anyone who might bump into his leg.

Capturing Yue, Billy, and Harley’s attention they got them to divert into a room off the main corridor.  They ran out the sailors sitting in the room playing cards so that they could talk.  For the first time Drew took a good look at his sister and their two friends.  The trio looked like holy hell.  They were covered in dried blood.  The right side of Harley’s face was one big bruise lightly iced with crusty old blood.  Billy was shirtless for some reason…

“Have you checked your e-mail?”  Lisa asked.  She didn’t know how else to get Yue and the others up to speed quickly.  She’d thought about just blurting out what’d happened, but it seemed like it’d come out funny if she just put it out there like that.

Harley sat down at the table the sailors had been playing on and idly flipped over the hands each man had.  For fun him and Billy started rearranging the cards so that the one player would be able to ‘shoot the moon’ in spades parlance when they restarted the game.  An exhausted Yue meanwhile scrolled through the e-mails popping up on her phone until she found the one Lisa was guiding her to.  Blinking away the tiredness clogging her eyes she became much more animated as she read the message a second time.  Instead of answering Billy and Harley’s demands to know what was going on she handed them her phone with the e-mail open on it.

“Tell me what you know.”  Yue said in a level voice. She’d taken the time to breathe and gain control of herself before asking.

Lisa and Drew ran through what they’d found out so far.  Basically, that they’d had the wounded Aussies in sick bay interrogated.  As far as they knew they’d checked out.  When Lisa asked where Jeff was Yue turned and left the room motioning for them to follow her.  Jeff had been asked to report to the operations center on arrival.  He’d asked Yue if she wanted to go with him, but she’d been much more interested in a shower followed by a nice long nap.  It was obvious now what Jeff had been summoned for.  When her phone app rang a few seconds later to Jeff asking if she could swing by the operations center she broke into a jog.

After all of their struggles and sacrifices it wasn’t fair.  There was no way she was going to let LeBron die at the hands of the very people he’d worked so hard to save.  She didn’t know yet what the PM’s problem was, but she’d find out.  Then she’d either talk their way out of this mess or reclaim her brother over the dead body of whatever Blooming Onion eating bastard was stupid enough to get in her way.

Chapter 31:  Ours Not to Question Why

“Can someone tell me the plan again?  I feel like it pivots around my whole team getting massacred and the rest of you being taken prisoner.”  Billy said.  He was sitting in the seat across from Yue and Jeff.  He didn’t look super happy with the situation.

They were on a plane headed for Cheyenne.  A few minutes after making it to the operations center on the ship they’d received an e-mail from the Australian PM in Cheyenne.  It confirmed what they’d already guessed from LeBron’s short note.  Cheyenne was now under the control of the Australian PM.  He’d requested the presence of Jeff and Yue to assist in planning operations for transitioning to a new regime.  The man was slick.  He was trying to take over everything as bloodlessly as possible.

The problem Yue had was that the little bit of blood the man had spilled so far had belonged to her brother and one of her friends.  Shaun may or may not be dead by now.  The PM made no mention of any hostages or anything else in his e-mail.  He didn’t have to.  To add insult to injury he’d also requested the special forces unit on their ship be flown out to Cheyenne as well.  They were not only going to be walking blindly into a trap they were going to be bringing the enemy reinforcements while they were at it.

Jeff had brought up not doing what the e-mail said.  That’d lasted until he saw the look on Yue’s face.  It was a look that said she was going with him or without him.  Arguing that all they were doing was reinforcing the enemy wouldn’t hold much weight with her.  The President had been taken.  Their main base had been seized.  A thousand US citizens were in that mountain.  Yue would probably survive the trip anyway. No leader with half a brain would take her out while there were still crawlerz wandering around.

There was another plane barely visible off the port side of the one they were in.  That one was stuffed to the gills with the Australian special forces unit.  They’d even taken the wounded out of the sick bay with them.  None of the Aussies had wanted to be left aboard once they heard what’d happened.  They’d seemed disappointed and surprised by the news though.  Jeff and Billy believed them when they said they hadn’t had a clue this was going down.  The soldiers had excellent poker faces, but they radiated integrity.  These were men whose words meant something.

“We should try to think of a different plan.”  Harley announced into the echoing silence that’d followed Billy’s outburst.  Billy had done a good job of summing up what they were all expecting to happen.  There really wasn’t a lot more to say.

“Like what exactly?”  Jeff said with his hands spread in front of him. When everyone looked over at him, he continued.  “They’re holding all the cards.  They’ve got the President and Lebron.  They’ve got us outnumbered.  They’re in an impenetrable fortress.  In case they didn’t have enough soldiers, we’re bringing them some extras.”

“I’m not bringing you all there to die.  I just need to get close enough to know what he’s planning.  Then we kill everybody responsible.”  Yue said.  She said it so confidently and calmly that it was creepy.  There was zero uncertainty in her voice.

“Kill them all.  I like that plan.  You mind expanding on it with some details?”  Billy asked.  Judging by the expression on his face he should be pacing back and forth between the seats.  It was strange seeing the skull faced warrior nervous.  Throw him on the line with a thousand crawlerz charging them and he kept his cool.  Put him in charge of people though and his sense of responsibility for them overrode everything else.  He wasn’t seeing a way out of this one.  He needed to know what the point of this mission was.

“Just stick with me and you’ll be good.”  Yue said cryptically.  Billy looked around at the others.  He was hoping someone else may try talking some sense into her.  No one was able to meet his eyes though.  No one except Harley.  The big warrior gypsy just pointed at the tattoo on his forearm.  As if Billy needed to be reminded that he was leading a unit known for repeatedly leaping into the flaming pits of hell.  It wasn’t like they normally had a detailed plan when they did that.

That was against mindless demons though.  There wasn’t really a ton of planning you could do in those situations.  This time they’d be facing armed soldiers.  They’d be marching into a hardened military installation where they’d most likely be disarmed and locked up.  They weren’t going in guns blazing.  Or maybe they were.  Billy had no idea since no one else seemed to care about coming up with a plan.  He looked at his watch and saw that they had three hours left.  He found himself wishing they were getting ready to battle the crawlerz.  At least then he’d have an excuse to hit up Harley’s stash to take the edge off.

They touched down early in the afternoon on the strip at an airbase a few miles from the entrance to Cheyenne.  As soon as they were done taxiing the second plane began its approach.  A few Hummers full of armed men waited for them.  There were a couple of covered trucks standing by along the tarmac as well.  Billy figured those were for transporting the reinforcements in the other plane along with them.  One of the Hummers drove over to idle beside them while they worked on getting the stairs down.

Expecting to be stripped of their weapons, shackled, and thrown in the back of the truck they were surprised when the soldiers greeted them cordially.  They were allowed to grab their gear and board the waiting truck.  Across from them the special forces guys exited their plane and boarded the other two trucks waiting for them.  Major Edders nodded over at Billy as he walked past them.  Billy nodded back wondering what the hell was going on.

The convoy made the short trip back to the entrance to the mountain base in less than twenty minutes.  The squad piled out of the truck followed by Yue and Jeff.  No one stopped them or tried to tell them where to go.  Two of the men sitting at the main desk to watch over the vehicles going in and out were US Marines.  No one made any move to corral them or tell them where to go either.

“What’s the trouble then?”  Edders asked walking over to where Billy was staring around warily.

“No one’s told you anything?”  Jeff asked the Major before Billy had a chance to answer.

“Not a thing mate.  You all are acting like you think we’re going to open fire on you at any second.  What’s going on then?”  Edders asked again.  A few of his men walked over to see what was going on as well.  Friendships had formed between the two teams as they’d fought the infected together.  Operators at this level were naturally drawn to form friendships with one another.  There weren’t many other people that they could relate to.

They hadn’t told Edders and his men what was going on.  They had no idea if the Aussie soldiers were in on the coup or not.  When push came to shove the Australian military was going to be loyal to the Australian government.  Brothers in arms or not if the order was to take them out then that’s what they’d do.  A soldier is an instrument of war.  They don’t get to pick who that instrument is used on.  They have to trust that their leadership has good reason to use them.

“We got word something might be going on inside the base.  Looks like that word might’ve been wrong.  Appreciate you checking in on us though.”  Jeff answered dismissively.  Edders recognized the dismissal for what it was and waved to his men to follow him into the base.

Wondering when they were going to be ambushed, they fell in behind the Aussies and entered the base.  Once inside they headed for the squad bay that the Suicide Squad used when they were in residence.  They entered the bay with no issues.  All their extra gear was still where they’d left it.

“Is this freaking anybody else out?”  Billy asked.

“Why aren’t we locked up somewhere yet?”  Drew added in confusion.  Why were the Marines they’d passed acting like nothing was going on?  Hadn’t anyone told them their Commander in Chief was bleeding out in his bedroom?  That was an act of war by any reasonable measure.

“They don’t know.”  Harley said.

“He’s right.”  Jeff echoed.  When everyone looked at him for an explanation he continued.  “No one knows anything.  Those Marines wouldn’t be hanging out if they knew the President had been shot.  We wouldn’t be allowed to walk around freely like this if what was going on was common knowledge.  They’ve kept it under wraps.  It’s business as usual here.  Except for whoever interacts daily with the President anyway.”

“Those people are either dead or think the President is sick or something.”  Billy said catching on.

“I’m going with the bulk of them think the President’s sick or something.  His doctor’s probably locked up somewhere. The Secret Service guys are probably stuffed in a closet somewhere with a bunch of bullet holes in them.”  Jeff responded.

“Why invite us here then?”  Lisa asked.  Before anyone could answer a couple of soldiers walked into the squad bay.  The two men ignored the hard looks being thrown at them by the squad.  Walking over they asked if Yue and Jeff were available to meet with the PM and the President.

“Sure.  We’ll be accompanying them.”  Billy said before anyone could respond.

The soldiers took the response in stride saying they’d be allowed to wait outside the conference room.  Yue could bring whomever she wanted but there wasn’t enough room for them all in the meeting space.  The easy way the soldier responded kept them on that surreal journey they’d been on since landing.  Maybe they’d badly misinterpreted the e-mail LeBron had sent?

“Will they have pineapple juice?”  Jeff asked the man.  The soldiers looked at him like he was an idiot.  Nobody had pineapple juice anymore.  Not in Colorado anyway.  Which was why that phrase was so useful to them.

With zero warning the squad members who’d formed a loose circle around the two Australian soldiers attacked.  They’d been primed this whole time to fight.  Jeff had finally cut them loose with that phrase.  The two soldiers went down in a flurry of hard punches.  Within ten seconds of inquiring about the availability of the citrusy treat Jeff was looking down at the bloodied faces of the two men.

“Search them.”  Jeff said coldly.  They were close now to the men who had to know what was going on.  There had to be an inner circle of soldiers keeping the secret.  There was no other way this could work.

Billy and Tiff expertly emptied the pockets of the two soldiers.  On top of weapons and the other expected personal gear there were also two phones.  Soldiers with phones in their pockets wasn’t anything out of the ordinary when serving in Cheyenne.  The interesting part was the phones being turned on and connected to someone.  Someone who’d been listening in.

Billy killed the connections on the two phones before shoving them both in his own pocket.  The two phones could prove to be valuable pieces of intel if they could get the passwords off the two guys they’d just captured.  No time for that now though.  One or both of the barracks door would be flying open any second now.  There was probably an assault group stacked up on at least one of them already.  No doubt they’d been waiting to see if the two men they’d sent in were able to get the lambs to walk themselves to their own slaughter.

Billy was beginning to question if maybe they’d been wrong to take those two guys down when both doors to the bay flew open simultaneously.  The attackers had made the mistake of giving the squad time to organize a defense.  Why they’d been allowed to enter the base without being stripped of their weapons and gear was beyond Billy.  The attackers came at them in a standard room clearing formation.  Cannisters of tear gas went off immediately.  Their assailants were all wearing gas masks.  So was everyone in the squad.

No one had opened fire yet.  Jeff had ordered everyone to hold their fire until fired upon.  Everyone had assumed the men infiltrating the room would open fire right away.  It looked more like the shield carrying heavily armored assault force were focusing on filling up the room with men to overwhelm them.  They also appeared to be trying to do everything quietly.  A politician must be involved in their planning.  No real soldier would ever endorse that kind of approach.  Especially not against a force as experienced as the Suicide Squad.  The squad wasn’t anywhere near full force, but they were extremely combat ready.

“Back off or we will open fire!”  Billy yelled.

“Throw down your weapons or die!”  Came back the reply from the men who continued to flood into the room.

“Pineapple!”  Billy yelled.  The men he’d designated to toss the flash bangs did so.  The squad all did their best to cover their eyes and ears.  Even with the masks on this was going to suck.  The bright light ripped through the heavy aerosol of the tear gas blinding everyone in the room who hadn’t been shielding their eyes.  The massive banging noise in the enclosed space sounded like someone setting off sticks of dynamite.  It was so loud it was painful.  There was a quick round of the flashbangs going off one after the other.

Blinking the white spots out of his eyes Drew tried to focus on his section.  If winning this battle meant setting off more flashbangs, he was leaning towards telling Jeff they should surrender.  Half blinded by the intense light he let his eyes slide over the line of men snaking through the door closest to him.  Most of them were trying to recover from all the light and noise.  A few of them were waving their weapons around in circles and throwing out threats.  Those threats all came in a heavy Australian accent.

“Back off!  Last warning!”  Billy yelled.

New men came busting in through the doors.  These new guys knocked the others out of their way as they began to take shots at the squad warriors strategically scattered around the barracks.  There was no need for Billy to yell out the name of a fruit.  Every one of them keyed off that first shot.  They lit up the guys on the wall as well as the newcomers sprinting into the room.  The attackers began blindly firing out of fear.  There was minimal aiming involved but a poorly aimed bullet could kill you just as dead as a well-aimed one.

Being assaulted in an enclosed space by an overpowering force was just another day in the office for the squad.  Doing it sober actually made it a lot easier.  It sucked that they were getting shot at, but their targets were a lot easier to hit.  Crawlerz moved like cheetahs on crank.  The men attacking them weren’t standing still, but they weren’t crawlerz.  It wasn’t long before their attackers had all been put down.  Even in the armor if you get hit by enough bullets, you’re going to want to take a little time out to shake it off.

The squad slammed the doors shut and locked them when the influx of additional attackers ceased.  Billy tossed tie wraps to everyone.  They began the process of securing the men they’d put on the ground.  Drew was surprised at how many were alive.  Their body armor had really done the trick.  Drew stripped each man of their body armor before securing them.  They might need the extra protection in the fight ahead.  The squad didn’t have a ton of it in the room since crawlerz didn’t shoot back.  They mostly just wore light armor to shield them from friendly fire.  Before the day was over Drew fully expected they’d look like they jumped face first into a meat grinder.

“If anybody gives you any sort of hassle shoot their asses!”  Billy yelled.  He’d been providing cheerful encouragement like that the entire time.  It seemed to be doing the trick.  No one had given Drew any hassle at least.

“Now what?”  A sweaty Harley asked when they’d finished tie wrapping the bad guys and dragging the breathing ones into the corner of the room.  He was watching Drew strap body armor to an uncomfortable looking Yue.

“We do what you’re supposed to do when you have an advantage.  We press it.”  Jeff said.

“We rescue LeBron.”  Yue said.  The tone of her voice made it very clear that they weren’t going to have any mercy on anyone who got in their way.  Harley was cool with that.  He didn’t expect anyone else in their merry little band was going to have a problem with it either.

Chapter 32:  So Much for the Geneva Convention

Harley and Billy were taking turns beating the hell out of one of the poor souls Drew had pulled the armor off of.  So far, the badly beaten soldier had refused to answer any of their questions.  Punching the man wasn’t getting them anywhere so Billy took out a folding knife and grabbed the man’s thumb.  Working quickly, he got the tip of his blade underneath the man’s fingernail.  With a flick of his wrist, he pried the fingernail off.

That got the guy to open his mouth.  The screamed curses were loud enough to rival the flashbangs they’d set off earlier.  Observing what Billy had done Harley grabbed one of the other prisoners and did the same thing.  That man skipped the obscenities and just went straight to howling in pain.  Looking to outdo the fingernail trick Tiff slid her knife into one of the prisoners nostrils.  Once she’d talked the man into looking her in the eyes, she ripped the knife sideways slicing through his nose from the inside.  That guy had issues screaming because of the blood streaming down into his mouth.

“This isn’t right.”  Lisa said.  She was ok with killing people in a fight, but torture was a bit much.  Especially the kind of savagery she was witnessing now as Harley, Tiff, and Billy continued to one up one another.

“We need information fast.  These are the bastards who hurt LeBron and Shaun.”  Jeff said icily.  He may be trying to sound cold blooded, but Lisa had noted that their gangly leader was busy looking everywhere except at the men being tortured.  Realizing that what Jeff had said was very true Lisa took a few steps forward and smashed her steel toed combat boot into one of their prisoner’s groins.  That guy wasn’t going to be giving them any useful intel anytime soon, but his painful groans should help encourage the others.  Harley gave her a thumbs up.

The savagery paid off.  The Aussie soldiers may be hardcore, but they weren’t Suicide Squad hard.  A few of the guys who ended up spilling their guts seemed ashamed of what they’d done.  That shame made them want to talk.  They were a part of the group of men the Australian PM had originally enlisted to carry out his coup.  Since then, others had been let in on the coup, but no one knew how many.  That information was highly compartmentalized.  The idea was to take over the leadership of the recolonization of North America with minimal bloodshed.  Their leadership had shared the fact that the plan concocted by the US government had them using Australian refugees solely as the first wave of colonists.

The President was wounded but as far as the bruised and blood covered group groaning on the ground knew he was still alive.  LeBron had similarly been bandaged up and secured in a room in the executive section of the base.  That section had been blocked off with armed guards.  The word had been put out that the President was sick.  None of the men on the floor had any clue that LeBron had sent out an e-mail before they finally captured him.  They’d found the phone when they searched him, but he hadn’t been willing to give up his password.  The PM had ordered them to go easy on him. LeBron would be a huge help in the effort to recolonize the states.  Even if he was the one who’d planned on using their people to clear a path for the USA settlers.

None of that seemed to upset the soldiers that were willing to talk.  That was all way above their paygrade.  A couple of their guys had gotten killed taking the VIP prisoners.  Drew had puffed up with pride hearing about how LeBron had fought off the men trying to capture him.  LeBron would still be holed up and fighting them off if he hadn’t been worried about getting Shaun medical treatment.  Yue’s heart swelled right along with Drew’s on hearing that.  That mix of compassion and bravery always led their baby brother to do the right thing.

The Secret Service agents had all been executed.  None of them had gone quietly.  Not a single agent had been willing to surrender.  Even on their knees surrounded by the Australian soldiers they’d continued to resist.  In their barracks they’d gone from sleeping to fighting without missing a beat after the Aussies had stolen in to slit their throats.  Killing honorable men in their sleep hadn’t set well with the Australian soldiers.  Following orders was one thing, but they were all part of a fight to save humanity.  Yet there they were killing some of humanity’s last protectors.  Killing them in their sleep.

That dishonorable act had been heaped on top of all the atrocities they’d committed in the struggle to keep Australia infection free.  All of the refugees they’d slain trying to make it to Australia.  Innocent families who’d braved the oceans in small boats only to be torn apart by a hail of machine gun fire.  Those exercises had filled the Aussie troops with a deep self-loathing.  Putting the cross hairs of your rifle scope on the face of a mother holding her two-year-old was soul destroying.  The number one cause of death among the soldiers up to when the infection finally broke out on Australian shores had been suicide.  The ones who’d walked away from it still carried that shameful burden.  A burden they wanted to see buried.

“Let’s go get them.”  Jeff announced once they had the info they needed.

“What about these assholes?”  Harley asked gesturing at the line of men on the floor.  He was wiping blood off his knuckles from where he’d been aggressively conversing with one of the bound bastards.

“Kill them all?”  Billy asked Jeff.  It made sense.  Dead men couldn’t get free and flank them.

“We can’t do that.”  Lisa piped up.  The torture was bad enough.  Murder was too much.

“Why not?  How do you think they’re going to treat us if we get captured?  Especially after what we just did to them.”  Billy asked angrily.

“She’s right.  Secure them so they can’t follow us and let’s get out of here.”  Jeff ordered.

Billy walked huffily over to where all of the tie wraps and other tools were kept.  Drew, Tiff, and Harley walked over to help him.  Halfway to the tools Drew saw Billy’s eyes light up.  Billy pulled one of the oversized hammers out of the toolbox and handed it to Harley before pulling two more out of the box.  Handing one to Drew he walked back towards the group of men laying on the ground.  A few of the prisoners saw what he was carrying.  The ones who could shift around to see Billy either stared bravely or began whimpering dependent on their constitution.  A few began begging for him not to do it.

“What the hell are you doing?”  Jeff hissed out the question.  If they were going to kill these men, they’d take care of it quick with knives or bullets.  He wasn’t going to stand around for forever while Billy and the others pounded them to death.  They needed the prisoners immobilized not tenderized.

“Breaking their kneecaps.  They can’t chase us if they can’t stand up.  This should knock them out of the fight.”  Billy said loudly enough for the prisoners to hear.  He dropped down to his knees and told the first guy in the row to flip over.  The whimpering man stayed firmly on his stomach trying to talk Billy into having mercy.  Billy let the hammer sit on the back of the man’s skull and told him to flip or die.  The soldier flipped.

The gruesome task was carried out efficiently.  Harley worked out a way to bust kneecaps without flipping anyone over.  You just had to swing at the right angle.  He went ahead and smashed a few trigger fingers while he was at it.  He saw no reason to show any mercy to these murderers.  They hadn’t shown mercy to the Secret Service agents.  They certainly wouldn’t have shown them any mercy if they’d been able to take them.  The dirt bags should be howling with gratitude for being left alive.  Maybe they would once they were done howling with pain.

“Can we go now, or should we maim the defenseless prisoners some more?”  Lisa asked testily.  Harley was stretching his back out after breaking the last man’s kneecaps.  He looked like he’d just finished picking weeds out of the garden or something.  His face betrayed no emotion at the damage he’d just done to the men writhing around in pain all around him.  He carefully stepped out of the pile of broken soldiers to rejoin the rest of them.

“We should reach out to the Marines.  They could help us take the rest of the base.”  Tiff said.  Billy was nodding along with that idea.

“It may take too long.  The longer we take to act the more time the PM has to pull in his own men.”  Jeff said thoughtfully.

“They have more soldiers here than we do.  We have more total people when you count the support personnel and everything, but they have more soldiers.”  Jeff added.  The Australians had been very keen on sending people out to this base to support clearing the crawlerz on the West Coast.  Now Jeff was realizing there’d been some ulterior motives for that show of partnership.

“We split up.”  Tiff said.  “Have someone grab a phone and get the Marines onboard.  The rest of us go for the President.”

“Don’t forget about LeBron.  Who goes?  Who stays?  I’m going.”  Yue said.

“Has to be Jeff who stays.”  Tiff responded immediately.  She’d been mulling that in her own mind.  Seeing that no one else had caught up to her yet Tiff explained.  “We need someone who has authority.  Jeff’s in the line of command, he’s well known, and he knows what we need.  Plus, we don’t want him dead in case Shaun’s out.”

No one could argue with that.  Especially the part about keeping Jeff alive.  He was the next in line to be Commander in Chief if Shaun was incapacitated.  There was no Vice President or Speaker of the House.  Jeff was it from an important cabinet post perspective.  That’d been done purposefully by Shaun.  Eventually they hoped to get all of that stuff square with the constitution again but for now it was about survival.

“Ok.  Yue stays too though.  She’s way more important than me.  We risk her enough on the crawler raids.  It makes no sense for her to catch a stray bullet in the face fighting the uninfected.” Jeff responded.

There wasn’t time to stand around arguing.  Jeff walked over to a phone to begin reaching out to the men in charge.  Billy quickly selected a couple of troopers to stay with Jeff and Yue.  He told everyone else to come with him.  They exited the barracks and proceeded quickly towards the stairwells.  They were only a couple of flights away from the executive suite level.

No one stopped them as they ran down the hall with their weapons out and war faces on.  They passed both US and Australian troops in the hallway.  Both groups looked at them in startled confusion.  Anytime you saw a group of armed men hauling ass down a hallway in the middle of an apocalypse it amped up the pucker factor.  That pucker factor went through the roof a few minutes later when strobe lights and a muted siren went off.  That alarm was intended for alerting everyone to an incursion of the infected.  All non-combatant personnel would be heading for their battle stations now.  The hallways would clear out to setup a witness free showdown between the squad and the people holding the President hostage.

Billy and team hit the stairs hard.  They thundered up them as fast as they could, but they still didn’t make it in time to avoid the doors being locked.  Billy worked quickly with Tiff to rig some C-4 around the stair door.  Anticipating a need to use it to ‘open’ multiple doors on this mission they’d brought pounds of the stuff with them.  Drew could testify to that since they’d handed him one of the backpacks full of the explosive playdough for him to lug around.  He couldn’t say much since everyone on the team was being treated like a donkey.  Even Lisa had a giant pair of bolt cutters hanging off her back.

They’d stripped whatever they didn’t have off the men who’d attacked them.  Thick body armor and a few shields that Billy thought may come in handy.  Add to that their normal gear and the fact that none of them felt like they should leave the house without enough ammunition to win World War III.  None of them were moving too gracefully, but they were moving.  They were in their element.  Running towards an extremely chaotic situation with minimal chance of survival.  That’s what they did better than anyone else.

This unit had been tested under fire more times than they’d bothered to count.  The weak and unlucky had been culled.  Those that were left were crafty, quick, and utterly fearless once the battle started.  Their backgrounds ranged from elite SEAL Team training to Lisa having spent some time on the flag team her sophomore and junior years at high school.  None of that mattered.  They’d saved each other’s lives so many times that they’d stopped keeping score.  It was just what they did.  They killed and they protected one another while doing it.

The explosion threatened to destroy what was left of their hearing.  Lisa had a pair of disgustingly waxy orange hearing protectors stuck in her ears.  Drew had handed them to her in a gallant attempt to preserve her hearing at the expense of his own.  Lisa had no problem wading through guts and blood to blow off some crawlerz head from inches away.  She had a serious problem forcing herself to shove the waxy orange tabs into her ears.

Ignoring their discomfort, the squad rushed through the smoking hole where the door had been into the executive section of the base.  They didn’t hesitate.  Moving forward at a slow jog they engaged the soldiers who engaged them.  They were grossly outnumbered.  Those numbers didn’t count for a lot in the narrow hallways though.  Their opponents could scarcely believe the utterly imbecilic way that the squad ran straight for them through a hail of bullets.  Fueled by a righteous rage that their enemy had stricken down innocents and sought to win control of them through a cowardly act the squad struck them down.

They looked like a squad of green stay puff marshmallow Marines with all the body armor they’d strapped to themselves.  Running into automatic weapons fire they were knocked off their feet but able to get back up and keep going.  Bits and pieces were blown off them where the armor didn’t cover.  Fingertips and ears and ankles suffered severely.  It didn’t stop them.  The squad mowed down their enemy until they made it to the door that they’d been told the President was behind.  It was locked.

Billy spun Drew around so he could get at the C-4.  Lisa and Tiff were behind them covering the hallway they’d just come down.  Harley and the rest were still moving forward.  They didn’t want to lose their momentum and give the Australians time to regroup.  While the rest of the team pressed forward Billy worked the C-4 around the sides of the door and stuck in a detonator.  The four of them ran back a few doors and ducked into an alcove.  A dead soldier lay outside of it with blood pooling all around him.  He’d been shot in the back.  Like the rest of his team, he’d been running away from the American berserkers coming up the hallway.

“Fire in the hole!”  Billy called out before pressing the button.  There was a loud whoomph noise followed by the sound that a door makes when it’s blown off its hinges and collides with a wall on the other side of a wide hallway.

The four of them ran towards the door right as someone started shooting out of it.  The shots were random, but if they’d been stacked up to get in right after the explosion those would’ve hurt.

“Grenade!”  Drew yelled seeing a small object rolling out into the hallway.  The four of them turned and ran back the way they’d come.  They leapt into the alcove right as the frags from the grenade peppered the hallway.  Drew started to stick his head out to look and Lisa pulled him back into the alcove.  A second later another of the loud blasts was followed by more of the metal frags ripping the hallway apart.

“I wonder how many grenades they have?”  Drew asked casually in between explosions.  He didn’t seem concerned, just curious.

“Too many.  I’m sending Harley and those guys in.  They have the shields.”  Billy said quickly after talking into his microphone.

“Will the shields stop the grenade frags?”  Lisa asked.  She was thinking she needed to get herself a shield.

“I guess we’ll find out.”  Billy answered vaguely.  Tiff just snorted.

Billy ignored them as more explosions rang out.  The frags continued to careen off the sides of the hallway.  The hot metal shards of flesh carving metal bouncing all around the alcove they were pressing themselves into as far as possible.  They’d all switched to the team band and were listening intently as Harley and his team got set to charge in headfirst with a couple of shields held in front of them.  Listening to the Ren Fair loving Harley complain about how it was more of a buckler than a shield would’ve been funnier if they weren’t in a life-or-death situation.

Harley and the other half of their team moved in on the door.  The sound of machine gun fire and explosives crescendo.  Drew didn’t even realize he’d been holding his breath until Harley broadcast that the package was secure.  The military men accepted the broadcast at face value.  Harley based all of his jargon off war movies he’d seen.  ‘War movies’ being a very loose phrase.  Harley had confided that most of his radio talk knowledge came from the first Die Hard movie.  Drew kept waiting to hear a ‘yippee kay yay’ transmission.

Billy led the three of them back to the Presidential suite.  Inside the room was a huge mess.  Squad troopers were standing around bleeding from the parts of their bodies the shields and body armor hadn’t provided adequate protection for.  A few bodies littered the ground.  There was at least one enemy soldier on his knees with a squad trooper casually pointing a rifle at him.  Standing in the middle of this chaos rubbing his wrists was Shaun.  He saw Billy and immediately moved in their direction.

“Hey sir.  Glad you made it!  We need to get you out of here.”  Billy said.  Although now that he was saying it, he realized he had no idea where they were supposed to go.  He hadn’t really expected to make it this far.  Also, where was LeBron?

Chapter 33:  Improvise, Overcome, and Adapt

After thanking them for saving him Shaun made a few calls from the phone in the room.  The alarms were still going off out in the hallway.  Billy had a couple of guys positioned out there behind makeshift barricades shooting at anything that moved.  Harley was ‘aggressively conversing’ with the man they’d taken alive when storming the room.  Lisa saw that the man was already missing a fingernail.  Harley was getting the torture stuff down to a science.

“LeBron’s with the PM.  They’re down a level in a briefing room.”  Harley said after letting the man he’d been picking apart collapse to the ground.

“Alright.  We’ve got to move.  What are you thinking Mr. President?”  Billy asked Shaun.  Should they be looking for a way off the base or trying to retake the base?  This whole situation was beyond messed up.

“We need to get out of here.  The Australians outnumber us big time.  They’re not trying to hurt the technicians or anybody though.  They were trying to whack me, and the rest of the leadership team then just slide into that vacuum.  It probably would’ve worked.  It might still work if we don’t get the hell out of here.”  Shaun said uncertainly.  It was a tough call.

“Who’d you call?”  Drew asked.

“The base Marine CO.  He’d already spoken to Jeff.  He’s going to keep the lockdown going for now.  I told him we’d most likely be leaving.  He’s sending a pilot and more guards to meet us in the garage.”  Shaun answered.

Not every Marine could meet them in the garage and fly away to safety.  Unless they stayed and fought there was no way to get everyone safely off the base.  This was a losing scenario no matter how they looked at it.  The only way to win was to stay and fight.  If they did that then way more people would die, and they still might lose.

“I’m not leaving without LeBron.”  Drew announced clearly enough for everyone to hear.

“I doubt your sister will either.”  Shaun said tiredly.  He was legitimately doing his best to give humanity a chance to survive.  How that’d been turned into some kind of conspiracy to take out Australian civilians made no sense to him.  The Australian leadership was just looking for an excuse to take over.  They’d bet big on this bloodless coup idea.  Time to raise them and see if they’d fold.

“Why don’t we grab him on the way out?”  Billy asked.  He made it sound like it’d be as easy as swinging by a gas station to get a soda.

“Hand me a rifle.”  Shaun sighed.

They did more than that.  Unable to simply secure him in a well-guarded room they covered the President in the body armor they’d been wearing.  He tried to talk them into keeping it on, but they all insisted.  He was able to talk them out of trying to tie the riot shields around his body.  Billy and Harley had actually thought that was a great idea.

“How the hell do you guys walk with all this crap on?”  Shaun asked when they were done suiting him up.  Out in the hallway the volume of rifle fire had been steadily increasing while they’d worked on prepping the first step of Shaun’s extraction.  Right as Shaun took his first step toward the hole in the wall where the door used to be the troopers from the hallway collapsed back into the room.  At least the ones who were still alive did.

“Enemy moving in from the north corridor.  They’ve got shields and a big ass gun.”  The last man to fall back into the room delivered the report over their team communication channel.  They could all clearly see the bodies of the two troopers who hadn’t made it back into the room.  Automatic rifle fire was pelting the bodies as the advancing enemy kept up a steady stream of fire to keep them pinned down.

“Stack up!  We can’t stay in here.  Go out by twos on my signal.”  Billy yelled over the deafening sound of the SAW spraying bullets down the hall.  Before anyone could move a grenade exploded right outside the hole in the wall forcing them all backwards.  One of the troopers who’d given up part of his body armor for the President fell to the ground with blood gushing out of a hole in his pants.  The shrapnel had cut open a major artery.  Before anyone could do anything, another blast drove them all further from the gaping hole.

They were dead if they didn’t get out.  Outnumbered and outgunned wasn’t a great place to be when you were also pinned down in a room with no other exits.  Billy yelled for them to stack up again.  Everyone struggled to the right side of the door.  More blasts made them lightheaded and dizzy.  Heavy acrid smoke was filling the room.  Someone on the attacker’s side had decided to up the ante by limiting their visibility.  Billy was about to yell for them to charge out in the hallway when the phone rang.  It was close to him, so he went ahead and picked it up.

After listening intently for a minute, he dropped the handset back in the cradle and made sure everyone was still stacked up.  Shouting to be ready to go on his command he stared down at his watch.  Seconds ticked by as grenades exploded outside the room.  The wall was starting to buckle now from all the abuse it was taking.  Drew and Lisa were directly behind Harley and Tiff in the line of troopers waiting to charge out into that hell hole of a hallway.

“How come when we’re about to die I always have to pee?”  Lisa asked Drew nervously.

“Wish you hadn’t said anything now I’ve got to go.  There isn’t any easy way to do it in this body armor either.”  Drew answered.

“Just piss in your pants.”  Harley said.  He’d somehow managed to overhear their conversation even with all the noise.

“Gross!”  Tiff and Lisa both responded at once.  Drew was about to say it didn’t really matter since they’d be dead in a second anyway.  Once those bullets ripped them apart, they’d be releasing all kinds of bodily fluids.  The thought of rushing out into that hallway might make him release a couple of solids too.  Before he could think of a clever joke about the bodily solids Billy was ordering them to go.

They went.  In teams of two they rushed out through the ragged hole in the wall to face the enemy.  The first two out carried the shields with them.  The large caliber rounds whipping down the hallway hit the shields like a drunk driver hitting a crossing guard at fifty miles per hour.  The troopers were thrown backwards with their arms twisting and snapping under the weight of the impact from the heavy machine gun rounds.

Drew ran right behind Harley as the big man hopped through the hole to face off with the enemy.  The second he was in the hallway Drew brought his rifle up and charged the men shooting at them.  Finger holding down the trigger of the AK he screamed out a challenge to the men trying to kill him.  In his berserker rage he wasn’t sure what to make of the line he was charging falling apart in front of his eyes.  The men who’d been firing at him were twisting around and dying.  Orders to cease fire boomed out over the team channel.  Drew shot an enemy soldier in the side.

“Cease fire!”  A US Marine yelled from the other side of the body coated hallway.

Drew stood breathing raggedly as the rest of the Suicide Squad caught up to him.  Lisa punched him in the back of his neck hard enough to get his attention.

“Wait for me next time.”  Lisa whispered in his ear before giving him a quick kiss.  They were both oscillating between extreme emotions.  Neither of them had thought they were going to survive the hallway.  To not only still be alive but to have met up with reinforcements was exhilarating.  The question concerning who Billy had been talking to on the phone was answered when a pair of familiar figures began picking their way through the corpse littered corridor alongside the Marines.

“I thought you were meeting us in the garage?”  Drew said looking up at his sister and her mate.

“Thought you might need a little help making it down there.  Plus, we need to rescue LeBron still.  Billy said you guys know where he is?”  Yue asked.  She was scanning Drew’s body to make sure he was whole.  Once she’d confirmed that she moved on to checking out Lisa and the rest of the team.  Drew knew she was also counting the faces she wasn’t seeing.  The battle buddies they’d all shared who weren’t going to be leaving this hallway under their own power.

Not to mention the two men who’d led the charge with shields held high.  Both of them had somehow managed to survive.  They were breathing but their arms were hanging at unnatural angles from their shoulders.  One of them was unconscious while the other one looked like he really wished he was unconscious.  Shaun met them back by the entrance to the suite he’d been locked up in.  He shook his head when he saw Jeff had joined them.

“We should see about getting the entire chain of command to participate.  Let’s make this coup thing as easy as possible for the ‘Asstralians’.”  Shaun exclaimed.  He was smiling though and took the time to try and give Yue and Jeff both hugs.  It was completely impossible to do with the thick bomb squad armor they were wearing.  Yue had been given the Michelin Man treatment as well.

“Let’s get LeBron.”  Yue said.  The worry in her voice was obvious.  They were surrounded by dead bodies.  They were in the middle of a Civil War and the leader of the opposition had her baby brother in his clutches.  Smiles and greetings were put away as game faces were pulled back on.  The badly decimated forces of the Suicide Squad mixed in easily with the seasoned Marines.  Once everyone was locked and loaded, they set off for the stairs to go down a level to where their informer had told them LeBron was being held.

The Marines leading the way had confiscated the Australian SAWs.  They had no mercy on anyone who dared stick their head out a door without first identifying themselves via yelling in a very loud American accent.  Storming back down the stairs they’d so recently stormed up they exited a level down after blasting that door off its hinges.  If they did manage to retake the base, there was going to be a lot of stuff to clean up.  Hopefully a few of these Marines were as handy with a hammer as they were with a machine gun.

They encountered their first real resistance on the first turn in the hallway off the stairwell.  A platoon of Australian infantry had spread throughout that level building barricades and preparing to defend it.  Billy had to put one of the men with SAWs in the stairwell to keep from being flanked.  Drew dropping grenades and the SAW guy blasting away every time he saw a shadow was doing a good job of holding off the reinforcements from that direction.  There was a whole other stairwell though.  Not to mention the elevators for the soldiers who may not be into calisthenics.

“We’re not going to be able to advance into this level.  I doubt we can even hold this position for much longer.”  A frazzled Billy informed Jeff, Yue, and the President.

“Bring up men from the garage?”  Jeff asked.  He’d been thinking along the same lines as Billy.

“They’ll be slaughtered.  Those guys are too entrenched.  There’s too many of them.  We need to get you out while the getting’s good sirs.”  Billy answered.  He was purposefully not looking at Yue.  They were going to have to hit her over the head with a club or something to drag her away.  Yue was too distracted trying to find something in one of her ten million pockets to bother acknowledging Billy.  The three men were all suspicious of the sudden interest in her pockets.  It appeared to be a delaying tactic while she thought of a way to get them to continue to press the attack.

Pulling a phone out of her pocket she glanced at it then looked back up.  It felt like they were in the middle of a massive thunderstorm.  The lightning of muzzle flashes and the thunderous roar of the guns.  The hail from the concrete flakes being flung outwards from the bullets striking the walls.  Hot bullet casings flying all around them.  In the middle of this tempest Yue stood untouched.  Her eyes were hard and cold.

“Have everyone retreat to the garage.  Get me prisoners.  Blow every door in the stairwell.”  Yue spun on her heel and headed for the entrance to the stairs.  The remnants of the Suicide Squad formed a phalanx around her.  A solemn oath to a long dead leader and an unshaken faith in Yue’s righteousness guiding them to guard her to the end.

“Make it happen!”  Shaun ordered the Marine attendants guarding him.  The Marines immediately started getting the message out to the communication centers.  The overhead alarm was changed to a general announcement for everyone to evacuate.  The Marines stayed on the line giving out specific orders for how to handle the evacuation.  This wasn’t a scenario they’d planned for, but that’s what Marines do.  They improvise, overcome, and adapt.

Drew battered his way through the troopers guarding Yue to get close to her on the stairwell.  It was impossible to talk there.  Bullets and shrapnel were humming all around them.  It was like someone had stuck a stick of dynamite into a hive full of robot hornets.  Now those hornets were zipping around indiscriminately rending flesh wherever someone was unfortunate enough to get in their path.  Drew grabbed Yue by the shoulder so he could try to talk to her.  He wanted to scream at her.  Why were they abandoning LeBron!

Yue spun her head to face Drew.  Drew instantly forgot about screaming at her.  Yue’s face was as pale and hard as a marble bust.  Her eyes had turned a dark black.  A thin line of blood dribbled out of the corner of her mouth.  Veins were popping out on her neck and forehead.  Drew paused and Yue kept moving.  It was only a few seconds, but Yue was swept down the stairs away from him.

Drew tried to turn to go back and get his brother.  The tide of people fleeing down the stairs carried him backwards.  Weeping in frustration he fought against Lisa until Harley worked his way through the people streaming down the stairs to grab him.  The big gypsy got him to calm down.  Yue would never abandon LeBron.  Drew let that thought swirl around for a second.  Realizing Harley was right he shrugged out of the big guy’s grip and followed the crowd down the stairs of his own accord.

Chapter 34:  Open the Gates of Hell

The parking garage was in complete pandemonium.  Aussies completely unaware they were at war with the Americans had no clue why they were being ordered to disarm.  A section of the garage had been setup to corral all the Australians in.  Many of them were refusing and it was turning violent.  The ones who hadn’t refused were starting to realize that they probably should’ve and were trying to get out of the areas they’d been put in.

For the moment the Americans outnumbered the Australians in the garage. The Marines leading the operation were using that to their advantage.  They had Humvees parked at the entrances with Marines manning the machine gun turrets to thwart any armed group that tried to push their way in.  Not that it’d be easy to figure out if the armed group was with them or against them.  There was a constant stream of people flooding the cavernous garage.  Drew caught up to Yue as Shaun was being whisked away by a team of Marines.  A long train of wounded limped along behind them as well.  They were being loaded into a personnel truck to be evacuated to the closest airfield.  A plane was standing by to fly them all to Jamaica.

“Are they going to make it before dark?”  Drew asked as the trucks disappeared towards the double gated doors to exit the base.

“They should be good.”  Jeff said shortly.  He didn’t have a lot of time for idle questions.  He was busy trying to orchestrate the chaos around them.  A chaos that he suspected was going to get a lot worse before it had any chance of getting better.

“What about LeBron?”  Drew shoved himself in front of Jeff to interrupt an officer in the working uniform of an Air Force specialist delivering a report on how many people were still left in the base.

“Ask your sister.”  Jeff answered cryptically before turning away to continue coordinating the partial evacuation of the massive top-secret base.

Drew and Lisa found Yue on the other side of the garage.  She’d gone there with her Suicide Squad escort to watch as the President’s convoy rolled out.  Billy and the others were in full alert status.  Australian soldiers were all over the place.  There was no easy way to tell which ones may be in on the coup attempt.  Unless one of them aimed a gun at them they were forced to presume that they were unaware they were enemies.  US Marines were rounding up the Aussie forces and pushing them all into troop carriers and buses.  Drew assumed that was going to make it easier to keep them contained than the original attempt to corral them in a corner of the garage.

“Hey sis!  What are we doing about LeBron?”  Drew asked when he was almost on top of Yue.

“We’re getting him back.  I’ll scour the base and see through their eyes.  They’ll do what they see for me.  I’m going to bathe in the blood of the traitors.”  Yue answered in her creepy voice.  She had blood running down both side of her mouth now.  Drew watched as she chomped down hard on her own tongue.  Her actions were wigging out everybody.  Even Billy was left a step or two behind when Yue abruptly set a brisk pace for the entrance to the garage.

A long road wound up the mountain to allow entrance into the not-so-secret Space Force facility.  There were double blast doors and gates guarding the entrance.  It was the only way in or out.  The doors pretty much stayed shut these days unless there was a reason to open them.  They were rolling shut again now that the last of the President’s convoy had departed.  Yue commanded the gates remain open.  The order was passed along through Jeff.  There was a loud groaning noise as the gate ceased to shut and then slowly opened back up.

The loud hum of conversations died down when people noticed the gates weren’t shutting yet.  It was getting late.  Yue told Billy to let everyone know that if they wanted to live, they should get inside a vehicle and stay out of sight.  Billy relayed the order.  The Marines began ordering everyone into the vehicles parked inside the huge space.  Luckily there were more than enough vehicles for everyone to fit.  The big green buses in particular were super popular.  Nobody wanted to be alone.  There was plenty of screaming, crying, and cursing for someone to close the gates.  Billy tasked Tiff and Harley to go make sure the Marines in charge of the gate didn’t lose their nerve and slam it shut as darkness descended on the mountain.

“I need flesh.”  Yue hissed.  She’d climbed up into the back of a covered truck.  Her guards were shifting around uncomfortably.  These were men and women who’d known her for a long time now.  Her preparation to descend into the lowest levels of hell had them all on edge.

Billy hopped on the communicator and ordered the Marines to grab any suspected enemy combatants and bring them over.  At least Yue would be hurting men who deserved it.  Not that the hell she was going to put them through was something anyone deserved.  He wished he could get a dolly up to the barracks room and load up all the broken kneed warriors they’d left lying around up there.  He’d feel a lot better if they were all dead.  Constantly looking back over his shoulder wasn’t how he wanted to spend the rest of his most likely very short life.

Less than ten minutes later a dozen Marines showed up with six prisoners.  One of them had a pair of broken knees.  How the hell he’d managed to get down to the garage was a story for another day.  The prisoners arms were secured behind them.  Billy had the Marines strip the men down to their underwear and toss them in the back of the truck.  The prisoners seemed more confused than anything at first.  When they recognized Yue in the back of the truck that confusion quickly turned to terror.

“Drive us outside the mountain.”  Yue commanded without looking up.  She was kneeling on the ground chanting.  She’d removed her body armor.  Her trademark leather ensemble was now all she wore.

“Are you okay?”  Lisa asked.  It was a stupid question.  Lisa knew that.  She felt like she had to say something though.  Yue was very obviously not ok.  She wasn’t in the same zip code as ok.  Someone needed to acknowledge that instead of just blindly carrying out the orders she was so imperiously throwing around.

“When it starts stay back from me.”  Yue said locking eyes with Lisa before scanning the truck to look at everyone else.  No one had the strength to reply after locking gazes with her.  Those eyes sucked the strength right out of you.  There wasn’t a trace of humanity in them.

The truck driver took them right outside the gates and stopped.  The tension was palpable.  The stress levels were off the chart.  Behind them they heard the chatter of the Humvee gunners lighting someone up.  Drew wondered what that was about.  He was about to ask over the communication channel when he felt a shift in the air.  Yue went from chanting half under her breath to roaring the nonsensical words aloud.  She liked to insist there wasn’t anything magical about what she did. Despite what she said there was absolutely an aura of dark sorcery around her as the powerful chants echoed in the back of the truck.

On some level Drew knew that Yue was using them to amplify her own thoughts.  It made sense if she was trying to summon the crawlerz to do her bidding.  It was going to take a flood of infected flesh and blood to retake the mountain.  Yue was going to have to drag them with her as she reached a level of control over the infected that she’d never reached before.  To guide them past the hundreds of people hiding in vehicles in the garage without doing any harm.  To ensure the infected mongrels didn’t break her psychic chain and kill LeBron after all of this.

Yue plunged her head down into the midriff of one of the prisoners.  The man screamed as she sunk her teeth into his flesh.  He cried out for his mother when she began shaking her head back and forth like a Great White with a mouthful of surfer topped boogie board.  The other prisoners began begging to be let go.  More than one of them pissed themselves in fear.  They knew they were next on the buffet line.

Drew felt his mind connecting with other minds.  He could visualize bright lines connecting each of them to the crawlerz digging themselves out of the dirt as the sun went down.  The crawlerz who were rebroadcasting the ultra-powerful signal Yue was transmitting.  A signal that carried the dark fantasies of the infected in 8K color.  A broadcast not to be ignored by any of the infected within range of the groupthink.

That mind melting media Yue was broadcasting was full of atrocities on a biblical scale.  The butcheries of the human body that Yue was advertising were sickening.  Drew had no idea how Yue was able to live with herself when she had to immerse herself this deep in that kind of depravity to protect them.  She was pulling out all of the stops to save her baby brother.  The crawlerz began to trickle past them into the base.  Yue filled the groupthink with visions of uninfected humans dripping with gore.  She painted a picture of the vehicles in the garage being empty.

Yue was controlling the surging mob of monsters as they flooded into the base like water gushing into a sinking ship.  She was doing more than just controlling the crawlerz though.  Wielding the massive power of all the minds at her disposal she was forcing the enemy out of their rooms.  Sending out visions akin to what the breakers used to attack them psychically.  Drew and the others around Yue all experienced the bugs inside their skin, the room filling with fire, the blood raining down from the ceiling to drown them.  These visions included the actual feeling of your skin being burnt off, your lungs filling with blood until you couldn’t breathe, and the itching sensation of insects crawling around inside you.

Through all of that madness Yue kept her eye on the ball.  As she slashed her way through the pile of prey on the floor, she stayed focused on her search for LeBron.  Locating him by spying on the thoughts of everyone in the base she sent her minions to ensure his safety.  The room he was in was filled with men rushing to get medicated.  Yue didn’t give them the luxury of time to escape from her.  She delved into the darkest recesses of her ancestral memories to dredge up visions that drove the men screaming from the room.  Drove them into the waiting arms of the crawlerz she’d guided to the end of that corridor.

When she ran out of people to kill, she set about calling off the hounds of hell.  To do that she needed to throw out meat in front of the base.  She needed to give them something to chase.  She ordered the driver to start moving slowly down the road.  The infected began swirling around them.  She built up enough power to become a psychic cyclone.  All of the crawlerz were sucked in towards her.  When they were all out of the base, she sent them off with a powerful vision of uninfected in the middle of a nearby lake.  Most of them would drown.

Yue opened her eyes to look around for the first time.  She’d spent the last hour looking out of the eyes of everyone else.  Bouncing around in the groupthink to read everyone’s minds.  Looking out of a single set of eyes felt weak to her after the omniscience of knowing everything about everyone around her.  The mortality of her own existence was crippling.  The pile of broken, bloody bodies at her feet barely even fazed her.  She’d been in ancestral memories where body parts rained from the sky.  Where people had built walls out of their dead families body parts to keep out invading cannibals.  There was no deviance she could be shocked by.  No obscenity that’d shock her.

“Are you ok?”  Lisa asked the same stupid question again.  She couldn’t believe it’d come out of her mouth.  She’d lived the same nightmare as everyone else in the back of the truck.  A witness to not only the horrific images Yue had used to decisively win this battle but also the physical images of Yue tossing around the bound prisoners like they were nothing.  When Yue had been deep in the visions, she’d unlocked that part of her brain that gave the crawlerz their super strength.  She’d snapped the bodies of the prisoners like twigs.  Lisa had vomited uncontrollably when Yue casually twisted the head off one of the prisoners to pour his innards all over herself.  She’d squeezed the body like a giant tube of toothpaste to get out every bit of the grossness within.

“No.”  Yue answered simply.  She looked like she was going to say something else, but she passed out before she was able to.

“Get us back in the base.”  Billy ordered the driver.  The man up front wasted no time carrying out that order.  Back inside Harley and Tiff hit the button to shut the gate as soon as they saw the truck pull in.

Everyone in the base was recovering from the horrific hallucinations that’d accompanied the crawlerz blitzing the base.  The visions Yue had been beaming into their heads had gone nuclear. Not even the breakers they’d encountered had caused that kind of trauma.

“How can somebody that tiny cause that kind of damage?”  Billy asked.  He’d watched as Jeff bent down and scooped Yue into his arms to carry her out of the truck.  Jeff was intent on getting her washed off and into new clothes.  He wanted her to wake up in a soft bed in a room with plenty of light.  She’d literally just been through hell for them.  It was his job to help her recover.  If that was even possible.

“I swear she looks ten feet tall when she goes into witch mode.”  Drew agreed.  He watched as Billy and a handful of the others peeled off to follow Jeff.  They were going to make sure he didn’t run into any of the enemy who might have managed to survive.

“Let’s go find your bro.”  Harley called out from a couple of trucks over.  He had a bunch of Marines with him.  He’d told them he had orders to search for VIPs and take out any nests of traitors that might still be alive.  The shellshocked Marines hadn’t bothered confirming.  They’d all seen Harley and Tiff with the President and Jeff.

Level after level was the same story.  The hallways were running with the blood of those who’d stood in Yue’s way.  Most of the bodies were impossible to identify.  That made sense when you considered that the crawlerz had descended in large numbers on each of the humans as they ran straight towards them in a blind panic.  In the murderous rampage that Yue had fueled the traitorous forces seeking to control the base hadn’t had a chance.

Drew knew they were close to finding LeBron when he spotted the layout of the level they stepped out on.  All of them had witnessed the crawlerz ripping the place apart via the groupthink they’d been connected to.  The normal rules of having psychic sensitivity hadn’t applied when so much power was being pumped into the signal.  Everyone had seen what Yue saw.  Including the moment that the Prime Minister and his senior staff had been forced out of their bunker into the hallway.  The PM and his coup planning henchmen had been mercilessly murdered.  The mob of crawlerz had stopped there and left the level without proceeding into the briefing center LeBron was in.

Running into the room Drew saw LeBron sitting at a table.  One of his hands was cuffed to the leg of the big table he was at.  That explained why LeBron hadn’t left the room to come find them.  When LeBron saw who was running to greet him, he broke out into a huge grin.  When he saw that it was Harley, Lisa, and Tiff with Drew the grin grew wider.  Drew noticed that LeBron was still searching the faces as they came in even after Drew got to work on the cuff for him.

“Yue’s fine.  She brought all this noise then passed out.  Jeff’s getting her cleaned up and in bed.  We can go see her as soon as we get this chain off your arm.”  Drew said as he tried using the crappy file on his multitool to cut through the chain.  Lisa gave him an exasperated look before turning around so he could see the bolt cutters still hanging off her back.

“I lugged these things through hell for you.”  Lisa said smiling at LeBron.

Lisa’s happiness at finding LeBron was real, but the smile was forced.  No one was going to be sleeping good for the next few days after all the garbage that’d just been shoved into their minds.  There’re some things that once you see them you can’t go back.  The visions would linger to haunt their slumber for much longer than their physical wounds.  Especially the people at the base who’d never been out in the field.  They weren’t going to recover anytime soon.

Together they headed down the stairs to check in on Yue.  There was still a lot of fighting in their future to reclaim the country.  After somehow scratching out a “W” on this last one they were all feeling better than normal about their chances.

Chapter 35:  Until We Are Free from Fear

Yue climbed out of the helicopter to stand on the flat roof of a high rise in the middle of the small city.  Her personal bodyguards smoothly slid into their positions.  Most of her guard sported visible Harley Quinn tattoos.  It was no longer a unit made up of men who wanted to die though.  Now it was a team dedicated to making sure everyone was able to live.

Yue was long past the need for a group of volunteers to sacrifice themselves to get the attention of the infected she hunted.  It was enough now for her to be close enough to detect the groupthink.  From there she was able to link into their thoughts and control them.  Her tactile memories easily overcoming the random thoughts of the mindless monsters.  She ran through the same routine she’d performed thousands of times over the decades since first discovering she had this power.  The crawlerz scurried out into the sunlit streets below like cockroaches when you kick a box in an old house.

She was able to trick them into overcoming their aversion to sunlight now.  Putting it into their heads that it was actually dark outside did the trick.  It was a real timesaver as far as hunting down and killing them went.  A lot safer as well.  The few times she’d lost control the infected had suddenly realized it was sunny outside and ran for the hills.  The tricks she’d learned over the years had helped in clearing out the bulk of North America.  Those tricks and a whole bunch of very active infantry soldiers.  Not to mention the booby traps and bombing runs.

Mostly everyone else who’d survived the early days were sidelined now.  Shaun was living a sort of retired life in a big house back in Jamaica.  Drew and Lisa were living in the yellow house on Cape May that Lisa had pointed out as the one she wanted so long ago.  It’d taken some work to get it back into a livable condition, but they were happy there now.  They ran a fleet of fishing vessels to supply dried fish to the settlers gradually moving in across the country.

LeBron was still in charge of the logistics of everything.  It was like the supply chain was part of his nervous system now.  New Presidents were being elected every four years.  LeBron was the one constant making sure everything stayed on course.  In between saving the country multiple times he’d even managed to finally find himself a girl.  Yue had nieces and nephews now thanks to both of her siblings.

Yue had no children of her own.  Her life was one of loneliness and fear.  Darkness danced in her half-insane mind most of the time.  She lived for the thrill of the missions.  After all these years of crawler vision she couldn’t bear to look at children.  All she saw was what they’d look like dead in a dozen different ways.  She could no longer see the world through the rosy filter of humanity.

Yue’s high died down as the crawlerz below were dispatched.  The only time she felt alive now was when she was dialed into the groupthink.  Wading through the cesspool of the crawlerz fantasies was the only thing that made her feel ok about her on twisted mind.  At least she wasn’t as depraved as those poor lost souls.  Once the infected got wiped out at each location she retreated back into her own mental castle.  A castle she’d built a gigantic wall and moat around.  All to try to keep the real world and the crawler world at bay.

Jeff smiled weakly at her as she walked back towards the helicopter.  His eyes no longer teared up seeing her as she’d become.  That spark of life that’d surrounded her had long since burnt out.  The aura of wholesomeness and fun.  The things that’d made her Yue.  She’d sacrificed those things to save the world.  Jeff waited for the day when that spark would reignite.  The day he’d get his Yue back.

The rational part of Jeff’s mind told him to get out.  Hell, Yue repeatedly told him to get out.  She’d begged him to leave her a hundred times.  What she’d let slip one time while talking to him was the reason that he stayed.  Everyone she looked at she saw dying and decaying.  Everyone except Jeff.  She’d been very quick to tell him that it meant nothing.  To him though it meant everything. It meant there was a part of her still left.  Some small embers that could be fanned back to life once the infected were all killed.  Or at least the infected that Yue was needed to take care of.

The attempt to get other people with a psychic gift up to Yue’s level had met with multiple disappointments.  A few had gotten to the point where they could at least point the patrols at where the crawlerz were hiding.  Most of the ones who did have some psychic abilities just lost their minds when exposed to the groupthink.  It turned out it was a combination of an acquired skill as well as a hereditary trait.  Yue had gone through hell to acquire her finely tuned psychic arsenal. It didn’t seem likely she was going to be taking on any more interns any time soon.

Jeff started up the helicopter and headed back for base once Yue got in.  She’d already pulled the hood of her long black coat over her face.  Her scarred hands were ratcheting open a bottle of long expired anti-depressants.  He sighed as he saw her knock back three of the pills before putting her head back to try and sleep.  Flying as smoothly as he knew how he got them back to the landing pad on the forward operating base they were working out of.  Thankful he’d decided to learn how to fly he shut the bird down and hopped out to help Yue down.

Back in their room he glanced up at the map he kept on his desk showing their progress.  All of the Caribbean islands had now been liberated.  North America only had a few markers showing reported hot spots.  The bulk of the country was wonderfully devoid of any of those pins.  Most of the markers were down by Central America.  They had yet to get serious about South America.  They’d figured out ways to herd the crawlerz together when they migrated north.  Once they had them in a large enough group, they bombed them.  The bombs attracted more of the crawlerz.  The current thinking was that they could just wash, rinse, repeat until South America was eventually horror free.

Jeff had talked with LeBron at length about all of this.  They’d eradicate the crawlerz on both continents eventually.  Except for the ones who went deep into the jungles or were trapped in the basements of destroyed buildings.  At some point they’d need to go clear off the other continents as well.  That sounded like a good job for their grandchildren’s kids.

Eventually civilization would return to normal.  This speed bump in the expansion of humanity would become a footnote.  Then one day in the distant future history would most likely repeat itself.  Instead of Cairo it might happen in the middle of Utah this time.  An archeological crew would pop open the basement door of some long dead politician and get bum rushed by a couple of millennia old monsters.  Crawlerz who’d just been waiting for the opportunity to sow the world with the baseness of mankind.  The depravity would start again.

Jeff shook his head to clear it.  What did he care about some nerds studying ruins a couple thousand years from now?  Morons should be on Mars by then.  Not digging through stacks of prehistoric playboys in some deceased senator’s basement.  Laughing at himself for his ability to go off on a tangent Jeff walked back into the living suite he shared with Yue.  She had her own bedroom.  It had industrial strength lighting in it to keep the darkness away.  Jeff loved her but at some point, he needed to sleep.

They rated whatever sleeping arrangements they wanted.  Yue was the most feared and simultaneously adored person on the planet.  Everyone knew about the witch who could pied piper the crawlerz into traps.  The woman in the long black leather trench coat who kept her face hidden so on one could see her eyes.  It was said if you looked into her eyes for too long, it’d drive you insane.  The rumors circulating around about Yue’s abilities and what she’d done to earn them had been a constant source of amusement to Jeff and Yue in the early days.  The days before Yue ceased to care anymore.  The days before she retreated from the world.

The most powerful witch in the history of humanity was fast asleep on the couch.  Her hood had been pulled back over her hair when she passed out.  Jeff noted with a smile that his wonderful witch was drooling quite a bit on her arm.  Knowing that if she woke up in the darkness that she’d lose her mind he flipped on all of the lights in the room.  He considered picking her up and moving her to her room.  Instead, he tucked her in and headed for his own room.

“I’m sorry.”  The words Yue called out after him made Jeff freeze.  She barely spoke anymore unless it was for practical purposes.

“Sorry about what babe?”  Jeff asked slowly turning to stare back at the love of his life.  He was trying to keep it casual.  Trying to keep her talking.  These moments of lucid intimacy were rare.  He guarded them as jealously as any dragon ever watched over his hoard.

“Not being there for you or Drew or LeBron or anyone.”  Yue said with her voice cracking.  All of the despair and depravity of mankind had rampaged unchecked through her mind. What’d finally broken her was thinking that she’d failed those she loved.  This was the Yue that Jeff had fallen head over heels for.

“You’ve been there.  You gave Drew and LeBron both a chance to have a family.  You’re giving their children a safe place to grow up.  They know that.  The world owes you a giant debt.”  Jeff said sincerely.  He meant it.  He didn’t think of her as a witch.  He only saw a shining hero who’d sacrificed everything for those she loved.

“What about your chance to have a family?”  Yue asked staring at him with her blackened pupils.  Her voice shook as she asked him.

“I have a family.”  Jeff said kneeling down next to her.  He took her tiny hand in his own and brought it up to his lips.  Kissing her fingers, he realized it was true.  She was his world.  Tears rolled down his cheeks to drip onto her hand.

“You’re crying?”  Yue asked pulling his face up so she could look at him.  Jeff saw the dull glow of emotion in her eyes.  He hadn’t seen that in a long time.

“Yes I am.”  Jeff said crawling onto the couch beside her.  He snuggled in and locked his arms tightly around her.  They wept together.  Eventually they fell asleep.  The savior of the world spooning the man who’d originally told the President of the United States to abandon the country.  For that night they were just Yue and Jeff.  Two people who’d made mistakes then done their best to make them right.  Two people in love willing to do whatever it took to survive in a world gone mad.

Author’s Note

What a ride!  THANK YOU so much for coming on this journey with me.  It’s been a trip with a lot of ups and downs.  I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

It’s not easy bringing a series to a close.  Not when your head is full of the different things that still need to be done.  The fights that still need to be fought.  The lovers that still need their happy ending…

Like Yue and Jeff though it’s best to look forward.  A new day’s dawning.  My wife’s due any day now to bring a brand-new baby into the world.  I’d actually thought this book was going to get delayed but the baby boy’s super stubborn.  He’s straight up refusing to come out.  He needs to soon or my wife’s going to stick him in timeout immediately upon birth.  I’m just looking forward to meeting and holding him for the first time.

For those of you who actually read these little notes you may be asking “does this guy have a new kid at the end of every book?”  It’s more like every two or three books but I get it.  It’s a lot of love!

THANK YOU all so much for reading these books.  For helping me pay for all those diapers!  If you’re so inclined, please leave a positive review on Amazon.  It really helps.  Plus, I really enjoy reading the positive ones!

That’s a wrap on this series.  I think we’ve left Drew, Yue, and LeBron in a good place.  Well as good as you get in a devastated country that still has the occasional blood thirsty psychic monster running around in it anyway.  I’ve got a few ideas for what comes next for me.  Just need to take a few days and decide which path to go down.  I have some ideas on where the next story may start but no idea on where it may end up.  Which is what makes it so exciting!

Also, how the hell is it already 2022???

Until the next time!

R S Merritt

December 28th, 2021

Other Books by RS Merritt

Try an excellent 7 Book series built around a Zombie outbreak:

Zombies!

Need more Zombies?  Check out the 6-Book Zournal series:

Zournal

Looking for something a little different?  Try the Son of the Keeper series:

Son of the Keeper