Walking Death
After I signed off with Gibson, the thoughts settled in heavy. This was not a world you survived by bolting south on instinct, the way ancient peoples had fled the ice.
Civilization had seeded catastrophe into every corner of the map, and whether they understood that or not, human beings remained the most dangerous thing in it.
I unfolded the map again. The next destination stretching across it — Grand Junction — sat on my mind like a stone. A city of more than sixty thousand. An elongated sprawl running nearly thirty miles along US Route 50, its junctions tangled like a spider's web. I knew in my bones how dangerous it was to thread a long convoy through a maze like that.
A scene from Black Hawk Down flickered through my head. Hard on its heels came something far more vivid: a memory of my own. A dust-choked city in the Sahel, a GCP operation, an ambush we never saw coming. A friendly Humvee went down in the middle of an alley. Rounds poured from rooftops and windows on every side like rain, and we spent hours in a hell of urban fighting just to pull out a single vehicle. The stink of powder and the screaming of the men beside me were still as sharp as the day they happened.
And it wasn't only the map. Since leaving Fallon we had covered eight hundred miles almost without a stop. I couldn't ignore the fatigue stacked up in my people, and the trucks needed work. If we were going to be ready for whatever came next, we needed a little room — in the body and in the head.
I made the call and opened the convoy-wide channel.
A short silence held the net. Then the voices came in, sounding like men who had just been handed a stay of execution.
Frank laid it on thick, and the laughter of the other truckers rolled in behind him. My own mood was dark, but I wanted to give them even a few hours of slack. Not every voice on the net was bright, though.
Gunner's low voice still carried that old wariness. Mike answered the way he always did, settling the younger man without ever talking down to him. There was a veteran's caution in it. I wondered if he already knew what I had been turning over in my own head. People like to say the mind rules the body. They have no idea how naive that sounds. Willpower is only whatever you can pour into the vessel of your stamina. Nothing more.
I keyed the mic again and called Jake and Frank.
Frank showed up not long after, the mild grousing of a man whose first real rest in days had just been interrupted written all over his face.
"What is it, Boss? You about to put me to work again?"
"Yeah, well, when I need someone I can trust, the same names keep coming up. Haha."
"Tch. Fine. Let's hear it."
"Haha. Jake first, though."
"Yes, Boss."
"Tomorrow morning, before the convoy rolls, I need aerial recon of the stretch past Grand Junction out to the Delta area — about seventy miles. Scout us a bivouac site near Delta while you're at it."
"I'll get it ready."
"And Frank."
"Yeah, go ahead."
"We're going to pass straight through Grand Junction, but it doesn't sit right with me to just blow through Colorado's first real city without a look."
"So you want me to get a read on the local atmosphere. That it?"
"That's right. I want you to put a team together and gather intel on the mood in town and the situation farther east in Colorado. I'll attach an escort from the Division, of course."
Frank waved that off at once.
"Come on. You think I'm gonna get any intel walking around with guys in uniform? Everybody'll clam right up."
He thought for a second, then his eyes lit the way they did when he had a better pitch.
"How about this instead? I take the Anderson family and we go in as an advance party. Just look like an ordinary string of refugee families."
"..."
"That way we can blend in naturally and get the real story, right? Do a little trading while we're at it."
"Fair point. No sense making a production of it when the place is right in front of us. All right — you put the advance party together and enter Grand Junction first. We'll link up afterward at whatever bivouac Jake finds."
"Got it. Geez. First time in ages I was gonna sleep in, and you just can't leave a man alone."
"I'm counting on you."
"Oh — and you need anything in particular? It is a city, after all."
"Geiger counters. Radiation meters, if you can find more of them."
"Got it. I'll see what I can turn up. Easiest way to ask around is to buy a few things anyway."
And that was how the long day finally burned down.
The next morning I woke without an alarm, into the rare gift of an unhurried day. I ran through the usual morning routine to get the blood moving, then took Wolf on a loop around the laager. The air hung at fifteen below Celsius, a mockery of the word summer, but to a body that had already made its peace with the deep cold it came as a clean, almost pleasant shock.
My eyes found the radiation meter that now hung from my plate carrier like a second self. The display read 0.61 μSv/h. The number was still falling, if only a little, and that alone lightened something in my chest.
The camp was already alive.
"Uncle Jed, run the prop torque values one more time. We had some vibration on the last flight."
"Got it. Cody, aux tank pressure lookin' normal?"
"Yes! No issues!"
Jake and Cody were busy under Jed's eye, running the last checks before the aerial recon. Off to the other side, truckers and Division troopers were wrenching on vehicles together.
"Hey, Bulldog. Lend me the filter wrench."
"Damn it, the oil's leaking! Gears, get over here and look at this."
Even in the racket their hands never hesitated, and the way they filled in each other's gaps had become second nature.
Presently a hazy sun climbed the eastern sky. Frank's advance party rolled for Grand Junction, and then Jake's helicopter started turning rotors with a heavy whup-whup-whup. It rose smoothly through the dust its blades kicked up and slid away toward the city.
Once the bird was airborne, Jake's voice came over the radio at regular intervals. Through his eyes, we were already seeing the road ahead.
When Jake's last report clicked off, I pressed the PTT again.
On that order the laager came alive again, a vast machine moving in perfect unison. Heavy engines rolled up from every quarter, and the big trucks unwound from their circular formation into a long single file. Alpha Echelon's scout element called ready to roll — and in the same breath Ryker's voice tore through the radio.
"Rear, rear! Unidentified vehicle approaching from the west on Route 50 — moving fast!"
A taut silence snapped tight across the whole column. Just a vehicle passing through. That was what everyone wanted to believe — and in that instant a sharp burst of gunfire shattered the quiet.
"Halt! Halt!"
Tat-tat-tat!
Gunner and I grabbed our rifles on reflex and ran for the rear of the column. Wolf, knowing exactly what to do, ducked into the sleeper on his own.
We got there and saw it: a battered sedan sitting precariously on the shoulder about twenty meters out. Division troopers had their weapons trained on it. The car had come off the roadway onto the shoulder; they'd ordered it to stop, it hadn't, and in the end a burst of warning fire had put it there.
The moment I stepped up beside the Division men, the radiation meter hanging from my plate carrier began to scream like a thing gone mad.
Beep— beep— beep— beep—!
I dropped my eyes to the display. The numbers were climbing at a speed I could not believe.
2.09 μSv/h
15.72 μSv/h
24.15 μSv/h
48.90 μSv/h
71.01 μSv/h
In a matter of seconds it had surged to dozens of times the background we had been living with. Inside that car sat a walking death.
A young trooper, rifle still trained, started to ease toward the vehicle.
"Stop!"
He froze at my shout. I glanced back and saw Gunner and Mike coming up behind us.
"Don't get any closer! He's irradiated!"
Gunner's face went hard as ice. In Mike's eyes, a deep compassion crossed with a cold recognition of what this was. The Division troopers around us stumbled backward, terrified in front of a death they could not see.
Then the sedan's door eased open. A man climbed out with both hands on his head, staggering. His lower garments were worn, but the material looked unmistakably like a protective suit. A survivor, I thought — someone who had gotten out from near Palo Verde.
He didn't make it more than a few steps. His knees went out from under him and he dropped to the ground.
"Hhk— khh—..."
He began to vomit with a violence that folded him in half. Dark red matter soaked the dirt. When he lifted his head, the face looking at us was no longer a man's. The skin had gone beyond pale into blue. The whites of his eyes were a solid, bloodshot red. Dark blood ran from the corners of his mouth and from his nose.
He started to crawl on all fours, like an animal. One agonizing movement after another, dragging himself toward us, stretching out a trembling hand. His eyes begged for salvation, but nothing came from his throat except a wet, choking gurgle of blood. His body heaved in despair.
Everyone stood helpless in front of that terrible sight, neither advancing nor falling back, only shuffling away in confusion, not knowing what to do.
In that instant I drew the VP9 from my holster without hesitation. I looked into his agonized eyes and put the front sight dead on his head.
Crack!
The shot rang out, and the man's body went slack. He was an unarmed civilian. There had been no other choice. I confirmed that his suffering had ended, and repeated the words to myself.
Until now, we had been running from radiation — an invisible demon. And today, we came face to face with the flesh it had possessed.