Zombie Killers (Book 7): HEAT Read online

  Zombie Killers Volume 7

  HEAT

  By

  John F. Holmes

  Chapter 235

  The Blackhawk settled on my east field, crushing down the green shoots of young corn, and knocking down our scarecrow. I was really, really tempted to take a pot shot it with the pistol I habitually wore.

  “Nate, keep an eye on your sister and keep working on this. I’ll go see what they want,” I said, passing the wrench to my oldest son. Just above six years old, he already had an instinctive grasp on engines, and spent a lot of time with me refurbishing salvage from the Zombie Apocalypse. Eight years in the open had started to wreck even the things that had been in storage or on display in stores, drying out gaskets and ruining batteries.

  “BRIT!” I yelled. “I’m going to see what they want.”

  I heard her voice come back from the kitchen of our house, “Tell them to piss off!”

  “Mommy has a potty mouth!” exclaimed my daughter Jean three years old and repeating everything.

  “That, little one, is true,” I answered and started jogging over to where the helo had ruined some of my planting. There was a perfectly serviceable LZ just to the south of the house, bunch of pricks.

  A figure stepped out as the rotors wound down, and advanced towards me, rendering a salute when he got near. I ignored it. I was RETIRED, especially after my stupid adventure last summer.*

  The man lowered his salute after a few seconds while I stared at him. “Colonel Agostine, ah, well, I’m Captain Rheam, from Joint Special Operations Command, Z. Major General Scarletti sent me to get you.”

  “I know who you are, I can read, and that’s nice. I’m not going anywhere.” Which was true, but I had a bad feeling about this. I had been watching the news over the last couple of weeks. Fighting between Federal forces and the so called “Mountain Republic” had been heavy.

  “The General told me you’d say that.” He opened a briefcase and handed me a printed sheet of paper. As I suspected, orders putting me back on active duty. I ripped them up and started to walk away. The guy followed me, talking as we went.

  “He said you would do that too. He said that I was to quote him directly. ‘Tell that one legged shitbag that if he doesn’t come down to Albany, I’ll turn his farm and his trading post into a refugee resettlement camp.’ End quote.”

  I stopped at that one, and looked around. My farm sat on an island in the Hudson River, about twenty miles north of Albany. On one side was the river proper, and on the other the now functioning lock Number Three on the Champlain Canal. Both barriers protected us from the stray undead that still turned up, eight years after the plague. On the other side of the bridge stood our trading post, which occupied a former mill building. A skeleton still swung from a makeshift scaffold where some idiots had tried to hold us up a while ago.*

  There were still hundreds of thousands of refugees from the second plague living in tent camps run by FEMA, and I knew the bastard would drop a horde of them if I said no. He wanted me to do something for him, and I had a sneaking suspicion, based on news reports from down south, what it was he wanted done.

  “OK then. However, you get to tell my wife.” I was too scared to, and I was right to be. She was waiting for us at the screen door, our youngest slung at her hip. Just turned thirty, and more frigging beautiful every day.

  “ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY NOT.”

  “Mommy has a potty mouth.”

  “You’re goddamned right I do, honey,” she said gently to our daughter. Then she turned back to the hapless Captain Rheam, letting lose her full redheaded furry.

  “You tell that ugly faced, no good manipulative son of a bitch that there is no way in hell any of us are going anywhere. We are DONE, and so is this conversation. Take yourself outside, get back on that bird, and tell Scarletti to kiss my Irish ass.”

  “Ms. O’Neill,” he started to say, and she slammed the door in his face. It was not going well for his mission, so far. He turned back to me, resting his hand on his holster.

  “Colonel, I was told to bring you back one way or another. I don’t want to do this, but I was authorized to.”

  I stared at him, and then said, “Draw it, and you die.”

  “Come on, Colonel. I’m twenty years younger than you. Let’s not play pissing games.”

  Behind him and off to one side, we both heard the hammer cock on a shotgun. “You want I should take him, dad?” My son Nate stood there, double barreled .410 aimed straight at the officer’s head from about six feet away.

  “No, Nate. I’m sure the Captain is under a lot of pressure, and regrets any offense he might have made. Don’t you, Captain Rheam?”

  He turned his head to look at Nate, and said, “Really, kid? Why don’t you run along and play.”

  The boy held the small shotgun steady, and said to him, “Sir, we grow up real fast out here. Now take your hand off that pistol.” He did, and Nate lowered the shotgun, easing the hammer back down, giving me a thumbs up and a wide grin.

  I returned the thumbs up, then looked back to the Captain. “So what the hell is so damned important that you’re willing to pull a gun on me to get me back to Albany?”

  He said only one word in answer. “War.”

  Chapter 236

  Six years after the original plague, the United States had consisted, mostly, of forty million people living in the Pacific Northwest. It had been our refuge, the place we fell back to, after the outbreak and the panic. Still, we had been making progress. U.S. Army task forces had been advancing slowly through the Midwest, Texas, and California, relieving fortress cities and collecting survivors. Our work here in New York was pretty much done. A transportation corridor stretching from Buffalo to New York City had been opened, and there had been regular commerce with Provisional Canadian government in Halifax and the Republic De` Quebec.

  My job, from soon after the Apocalypse to a few year ago, had been to lead a team of mixed military and civilian personnel through the ruins, scouting out in front of the task forces, checking transportation infrastructure and locating survivors. We avoided the undead; not hard to do if you’re smart. Along the way, I met my wife, who had been a student at Syracuse University. I had lost many good friends, people who I called my brothers and sisters. I also lost my leg, amputated in the field after a bite from an infected, and Brit had lost her eye, destroyed by a sociopath.

  Two years ago, my team had been instrumental in restoring the legitimate President to power, and had barely escaped the second plague, released by the false President, with our lives. That plague, and the nuclear devastation that followed trying to contain it, had destroyed the Pacific Northwest, and the survivors had fled to our part of the Northeast. The United States still stood, and compared to the rest of the world, we were doing pretty well. New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Maine, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Hawaii made up the new Union, as well as the new states of Bermuda and Gibraltar. Any place that had a surviving population of more than fifty thousand and a functioning government could apply for statehood, as long as they spoke English as their primary language. In New York, we were doing pretty well, with a population of almost four million, and there were quite a few towns in the Mohawk Valley that were seeing population booms unheard of since the early 1800’s. Many of the refugees settling there were brought from England and parts of Europe that had survived the Second Plague.

  As for us, well, we had returned to our farm and our kids. Members of my old team lived close by, or came and went as their travels permitted them. I know it seems hard to believe that we were in the thick of just about everything, but it happened. It’s true, all of it. The dark, and the light. I was there, knee deep in brass and hand gren
ade pins. If you want to read about it, I finished the book last year. It’s on Amazon, called Irregular Scout Team One.

  Now, well, it looked like things were happening again. The East Coast was a wreck; all the mega cities and the suburbs had come falling down in a giant crash. It wasn’t so much the undead that did it, but the disruption of the global supply chain that kept the millions fed. When the 101st had tried to evac the government out of DC, it hadn’t been the undead that had overrun them. It had been the hordes of starving, wild people trying to get on a helo for a way out, any way out. There were Navy bases in Providence, Norfolk and Hampton Roads again, but they were walled enclaves that we had taken back at great price. There was even a garrison at the White House again, Forward Operating Base Monica, but it was mainly there to provide security for the Reclamation Corps, the men and women who were charged with salvaging our history. The Capital, along with the government, remained in Albany, NY. There were whole parts of the country, though, that hadn’t seen help or even an overhead flight in eight years.

  The problem we were facing now was the ‘Mountain Republic’. Northern Georgia, Western South and North Carolina, eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, even some of West Virginia, had declared themselves an independent country, elected their own President, and thumbed their noses at the Union. Negotiations with them had been ongoing for the last five years, but they took the second plague as a sign from the Almighty and told us to politely fuck off. I happened to know that the second plague had devastated their population also, and they were much weaker than their posturing indicated. Well, I didn’t know it, but Brit said so, and somehow that woman knew EVERYTHING that was happening inside the continental US.

  According to her, it was politics as usual. President Epson was willing to let them sit and starve while we gathered our strength; they had little to no manufacturing capability, low stocks of oil, and the country was tired of war. However, last night, the internet had been ablaze with stories about an “armored column moving on Washington D.C.” Helicopter news camera footage had shown tracers arching across the sky, a furious battle going on, before it went dark. Losing control of our historical capital would give the Mountain Republic a huge boost, even a claim to legitimacy, as well as threatening the Navy bases in the Chesapeake

  That had led to Captain Rheam standing there in my front yard. While Brit knew everything that was happening around the US, old friends kept me in touch with the military situation, and I suspected that it was worse than our propaganda led us to believe. There were still a LOT of undead out there, roaming in huge herds or sitting in the ruins of our cities. Most of our armored units were sitting and rusting out on the Great Plains, somewhere between Denver and St. Louis, and urban combat eats up infantry that we couldn’t afford to replace. It was complicated, and I didn’t give a shit. I didn’t want to go, but I knew that I really didn’t have a choice. General Scarletti was a cold hearted prick who would let nothing stand in the way of what he considered his mission in life, restoring and protecting America. The fact that I felt the same allowed him to manipulate me time and again.

  “So,” I said to Rheam, “before Brit comes out and manhandles you onto that chopper, tell me what Scarletti wants.”

  He looked uncomfortable, but then said, “You know what happened this week in DC, right?”

  “Yeah, FOB Monica was overrun by those Mountain Republic yahoos. Send in an armored column and kick them out. Then go back into waiting for them to start fighting among themselves and clean them up state by state.”

  “Well, it’s not that easy. We’re short on armor, and someone hacked our UAV’s out in Syracuse. So before we commit our heavy stuff, we need to know what’s going on there. Plus, the DC metro area is heavily infested. A surgical strike at their leadership…”

  I sighed heavily, and said, “And we’re the best you’ve got, so send in IST-1.”

  The Captain looked slightly embarrassed and said, “No offense, Colonel, but this is a young man’s game. The General needs you to run the mission from higher, and we’ll be sending in other teams. Ones whose specific job is to find the MR’s headquarters so we can call in an airstrike.”

  “And who is going to lead one of those teams? YOU?” I laughed, genuinely amused. “You’re going to take a team into one of the most heavily infested undead areas of the US, also crawling with MR patrols, cannibals, gang bangers and whatever, and get close enough to find and lase a target, which could be inside of any one of thousands of buildings?”

  “Well, this isn’t my first time, Colonel. I’ve led two successful scouts already,” he said in defense of his record.

  “Where? Disneyland? You just let a six year old get the drop on you. Oh, never mind. I hope they’re sending someone with some experience with you.”

  “Navy Master Chief Szimanski is my team chief.”

  “Finally got Ryan to actually enlist, huh? Well, lucky for you then. I’ll plan your mission, if that’s all it is.”

  I felt a little tug on my shirt and turned to see Nate standing there. “Mom says to come pack your shit, she’s too busy with her own gear. I have to go to Uncle Red’s and give him a head’s up.” He ran past me, yelling at the top of his lungs for his slightly older best friend, Nicholas Hart- Redshirt, before I could say anything to him about his language. It was probably her very words anyway.

  Chapter 237

  The ride down to Albany was quiet. Well, not quiet; the helo was loud, as they always were. I sat looking at Brit, who just gazed out the open doorway.

  My wife was beautiful, even with the black eye patch she wore. Wisps of flaming red hair blew around the cabin, sneaking out from under the tan operator ball cap she wore, and her blue eye wandered around, looking at everything but me. I couldn’t hear, but I knew that she was whistling some kind of tune. She made a big show of nonchalance, which meant that she was up to something.

  I grabbed a headset and plugged it in, then handed one to her, holding up three fingers, meaning channel three. I didn’t want the crew listening in on us.

  “Don’t do it,” I said.

  “Do what?” she responded, the picture of innocence.

  “Whatever it is you’re planning.”

  She blinked at me, the perfect picture of innocence. I noticed, though, that her knuckles had whitened on the grip of her shotgun. That meant she was planning on using it.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re full of shit. Think I don’t know you after eight years?”

  “I think,” she said, “that you only ever know as much as I want you to know, husband.”

  Suddenly a light bulb went off in my mind. She was going to kill General Scarletti.

  “Jesus Christ, Brit, you can’t just kill the fucking Chief of Staff of the Army!”

  She grinned and said, “Watch me!”

  “Brit, I’m serious. You CANNOT kill him.”

  “But,” she said, “I promised him that I would, the next time he got you roped into doing something.”

  Holy mother of God, she was insane. I knew that the Apocalypse had left her a little unhinged, but this was really out there for her.

  “Brit, there is no way,” I said, “that you can kill him and get away with it.”

  “I have a plan,” she answered.

  “No.”

  “I promised that evil bastard, Nick. Told him we were done with his manipulative bullshit, and that the next time …”

  I looked up at the ceiling, exasperated, then reached over, grabbed her shotgun, and threw it out the door. As her face gaped in surprise, I grabbed her .22 automatic in its holster and worked it out. With my other arm, I blocked a punch that she threw at my head. The pistol came free and I threw that one out the door also. She launched a kick at my leg, and I used that opportunity to grab her ankle and extract her boot knife from a sheath on her leg.

  The crew chief ignored the whole thing, pretending he didn’t notice two strapped in passengers struggling wit
h each other. It was only when the boot knife came skittering across the floor to him that he stood up and separated us. Brit sat back with her arms folded and a pissed off look on her face.

  “Brit, come on. Even if his bodyguards didn’t shoot you down, they would HANG you.”

  “Fuck you, Nick. I promised.”

  I sighed in exasperation. “Why would you do that to our kids?”

  “I don’t fucking know, Captain America, why the fuck do you drop everything when your country calls and leave me and your kids alone because someone waves that stupid flag in your face?”

  “Because, I have to. You don’t understand. I swore an oath.” The old argument again.

  “Yeah, well, I made a promise to kill him if he fucked with us again. Therefore, it’s what I’m going to do. Now, don’t talk to me. I hate you right now.”

  My repeated entreaties were answered by her taking the headset off, unstrapping herself, and sitting down again on the other side of the cabin. Oh boy, I was shit deep in trouble.

  We landed at Joint Forces HQ, which was based in the Corning Tower, and walked into the lobby, accompanied by Cpt. Rheam. He had been forward of us, in the gunners seat, so he had missed our ‘conversation’. For my part, I was running through the list of other weapons that I knew Brit carried on her. I needn’t have worried. In front of us stood a metal detector and two heavily armed guards, who motioned to the security station.

  “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to surrender all weapons here,” said the smaller of the two. “You’ll get them back when you exit the building. We’re at Force Protection Delta.”

  Brit smiled sweetly, and the guard smiled back. I handed them my M-4 and my own .22 pistol, along with my K-Bar fighting knife, then stepped through the metal detector. It went off with a BLEEP and I rolled up my pants leg to show the guard.

  “Is this one of those trick legs with a shotgun in the bottom?” the man asked, no fool.

  “Well, I could beat you to death with it, if you want. It’s titanium. Of course, you could probably out run the one legged man.” He laughed and motioned me through. Then it was Brit’s turn.