Alea Jacta Est: A Novel of the Fall of America (Future History of America Book 1) (82 page)

“
Like
a cattle drive back home
,” observed Tank. 

The
ground shook violently as they started to move forward.  Most of SEALs were
thrown to the ground, along with the civilians.  It was like a giant hand had
just come along and toppled everyone in one swipe down the street.  Cooper
could see through the flaining arms and legs, a huge explosion erupted,
lighting up the sky briefly – he guessed it was somewhere downtown.  The
shockwave blew out windows and set off car alarms in the wave that rolled
toward them.  Bits of flaming paper floated on the breeze.  Debris rained down
on the surrounding buildings and the screaming throngs of panicked civilians. 

“
What
the
hell!?
” someone yelled.

Another
explosion shook the ground like a small earthquake.  Cooper found himself on
his back on the sidewalk, under a woman in a hospital gown.  She screamed
hysterically and clawed at his face, begging for help.  His mind had enough
time to register that she reminded him of Allie, before he shoved her roughly
aside.

Thunder
rolled through the sky from the north.  Bits of glass fell from above—busted
out of windows overlooking the street.  The ground trembled again and Cooper
glanced up and shielded his eyes.  It was like some sort of nightmarish rain.

“
Coop!
”
said Mike, struggling to his feet on the other side of the street.  He pointed
up into the evening sky.  “
We got some
big
fuckin’ missiles inbound!
”

Cooper
rolled to his side and fought the urge to hold onto the ground as it shook
again.  He could feel hands grabbing his legs and feet, voices screaming for
help and crying out in pain.  He risked a glance up where Mike had pointed and
his heart froze in his chest

Holy
shit
.

His
training kicked in and the cold rationalization hit him that if the missiles
were
nuclear
, then nothing would make a difference in the next fifteen
seconds and everyone around him – his brothers in arms, all the civilians—would
be burned to a crisp and obliterated in a ball of fire and radiation. 

If
they were
conventional
missiles, though…

“Stay
on target!” Cooper said as he knocked a man away from his rifle.  He picked
himself up off the street and elbowed through the crowd.  A hand slapped his
face and he had to pause and adjust his night-vision goggles.

“Mission
first—we
have
to get into that hospital!” he yelled.  “Weapons-free!”
Cooper roared as he raced forward and fired his carbine in three-round, tightly
controlled bursts.  The wall of civilians parted in front of him as they tried
to escape the gunfire. 

He
could see muzzle flashes out of the corner of his eyes—his SEALs were advancing
in step with him.  He smiled.  If this was going to be the end of their world,
if they were going to die in a nuclear holocaust, then by God, they were going
to go out like
SEALs
: teeth bared, guns blazing,
advancing
on the
enemy, and taking no prisoners.

Cooper
ignored the shrieks and screams of the enemy soldiers as fell under the hail of
bullets unleashed by his Team.  He was surprised to see that despite the
hot-leaded hell he and his men had created in their rear, the mass of soldiers
seemed to surge forward, hell-bent on gaining entrance to the besieged
hospital.

The
ground rumbled and Cooper looked down to see his feet above the ground.  Then
all he saw was empty sky, then concrete rushing up to meet his face.  When the
earth stopped vibrating, he coughed and pulled the night-vision goggles from
his face.  The smell of concrete dust filled his nose and made his eyes water. 

First
thing he noticed, upon getting to his knees, was the fleeing crowd was thinning
out at last.  Only the weak, the wounded, and the stragglers remained near the
hospital now.  And the dead.  They were everywhere, covering the ground in
twisted, broken shapes.  Arms and legs stuck up at wrong angles where people
had been trampled to death in the mad stampede to escape the North Koreans.

His
ears were ringing and everything seemed to moving a slow as the flaming paper
drifting through the air.  Cooper looked down at his hands; black gloves
covered in fine gray powder.  He brushed himself off and peered through the
smoky darkness.  The world had been transformed in a heartbeat. 

No
longer could he see orderly buildings and streetlamps and parked cars.  All he
saw was a wall of smoke.  Here and there in the grayness, a burning car or a
fire in a building made a bright point, but otherwise, only things within about
twenty feet were visible.  He swallowed.  He didn’t want to look at those things
– the bodies of the civilians, the body parts, the faces, locked in
horror-filled screams that would never be heard, the struggling forms of people
still alive, still desperate to get up and get away…

He
heard one of his men coughing over the squad’s comm-net.  Cooper blinked to
clear his head and focus again on the mission.  He slapped the side of his
rifle to clear the dust.

“
Jesus
…”

“
Guess
it wasn’t a nuke
,” said Tank’s deep voice.

Someone
else grunted a bitter laugh. 

“
Swede,
gimme a hand—I’m stuck over here…
” gasped Mike.

“
On
it,”
was the reply.

Cooper
looked up at the sky.  Only two more missiles were up there, falling like
shooting stars to the north.  He put them out of his mind and turned back to
the task at hand.  Before him, scattered among the dead civilians – and a
growing number of dead Koreans – was the remaining mass of invaders, all
struggling to force their way into the hospital.

“
Lot
of NKors got inside
,” said Charlie, voice steady as steel.

“Changing
mags,” Cooper called out.  He took a knee to quickly switch the empty magazine
from his MP5 and slap in a fresh one.  Jax staggered by, still shooting and
tapped Cooper on the shoulder to let him know it was safe to stand again.

“
I’m
out,”
said Tank in a calm voice, taking a knee to switch magazines, exactly
as Cooper had done it, ten feet to his left.  Cooper watched out of the corner
of his eye as Mike’s small form stepped up to signal Tank it was safe to rise
again.  He grinned.  Precision.  Deadly precision.  He stepped over another
North Korean body and moved forward.

Over
the constant staccato of his team’s gunfire, he could hear the roar of jets
overhead.  Explosions scorched the air in the distance and seemed to be getting
closer.  And on top of everything, the screams of civilians.  He saw people
racing up and down the streets in a wild, mob-like stampede, leaving buildings
to witness or flee the gunfight.  Some even had cell phones up, trying to
record the movie-like violence.

A
jet streaked by overhead, turbine engines whining.  Cooper looked up from the
controlled carnage to see afterburners glowing in the night sky like twin
stars.  A building exploded with a tremendous roar down the street as the jet
banked hard left and screamed west.  In the distance, through the haze of
smoke, he could see toy cars and tiny people tossed through the air from the
shockwave as the building collapsed in a billowing plume of smoke and dust. 

“
Damn
civvies are
everywhere
,” said Sparky.  “
This is ridiculous – hey,
get the hell out of here!  Move!
”

“
This
is some serious shit, man,
” yelled Jax over the din.  “
They got
fast-movers past NORAD, ICBMs…how the hell is this possible?
”

“Stow
it – we’ll worry about that later!  Charlie,
go
,” ordered Cooper.  Whatever
North Koreans had pulled on America, his Team would respond
after
they
secured the President.

“Right
flank that breach,” Cooper said as he raced forward over the bodies and dying
enemies to secure the blasted-open north entrance.  Smoke was billowing out of
the hole, rendering his night-vision nearly useless.  Charlie slammed against
the wall on the other side of the gaping hole and nodded.  Cooper looked to his
right to see his fireteam spreading out and covering the entrance. 

Farther
behind Charlie, the other fireteam was doing the same. He took a quick scan of
the immediate area and counted at least twenty dead or dying North Koreans.  He
grinned.  Poor bastards never had a chance.  Just the way he liked it.

Another
jet screamed low overhead, splitting the night sky as it streaked away trailing
smoke, fire, and destruction. The smile faded from Cooper’s face.  North
Koreans doing ground strikes in downtown L.A…Where the hell was the Air Force?

Cooper
watched as Charlie took a second to slap in a fresh magazine and stow the
partially spent one in his tactical vest.  He checked his weapon and nodded at
Cooper.  He looked back at his fireteam and flashed the hand signal to cover
the lead elements.  Cooper did the same and watched as his team took knees and
scanned all sectors, looking for someone to shoot.  Other than the occasional
North Korean that rolled over half-dead, there was really no one that needed
dispatching.  His SEALS had been efficient, brutal, and lethal.  They had used
the element of surprise and had wiped out at least twenty enemy
soldiers—marines by the look of their uniforms.

Cooper
looked at Charlie and motioned to enter the building.  Charlie nodded and
ducked under a piece of the wall and stepped in, weapon up.  Cooper followed a
second later.  Behind him, he could barely hear the footsteps of his Team
moving forward.

Once
they cleared the immediate entry-point, the smoke dissipated and their
night-vision was effective again.  Cooper looked around the small waiting room
and notice two figures in dark outfits with small packs on their backs moving
toward the far wall where an exit door was being held open by a third.  The
figures turned and started firing.

Cooper
dove for the deck and rolled left into a corridor.  Charlie and the rest of the
Team went to the right and sought cover behind the low walls of the waiting
area.  Plaster and masonry exploded in little puffs as the North Korean marines
fired their AK-47s blind.  The noise was deafening.

Cooper
raised his MP5 and sighted in one smooth-as-butter motion and fired two shots
to the head of the first soldier.  Before that man knew he was dead, two more
bullets were flying downrange to his partner’s face.  The third soldier
screamed as he saw his two comrades die and slammed the door.

“Clear!”
called Cooper.  The SEALs ran through the waiting area, stepping over bodies
and checking for survivors.  Two or three of them were scanning for enemies and
covering the rest that knelt down to check for signs of life among the fallen
bodies strewn through the room.

“
Got
a
lot
of dead civvies
,” Jax said sadly, kneeling next to a small
boy.  “
No pulse.  Most of ‘em still warm. Lot of blood, man…
”

“
Got
a bunch of ‘em over here, no wounds…
” said Swede.  “
Oh
shit
…
”

“
What
is it?
” asked Charlie’s hushed voice.

“
Bio-hazard
sign taped to one of the bodies.  Looks like flu victims
.”

Cooper
looked around, night-vision goggles casting an eerie green light on the macabre
scene. 
Whole place is full of bodies.

“
More
over here
,” said Mike, kneeling a few feet away from Cooper.

Well
that’s comforting,
Cooper thought. 
The NKors sure picked a convenient time to attack
—he
paused, mid stride to examine the bio-hazard sticker hastily slapped on the
black body bag at his feet.
 

That’s
why there’s so many of them here.  They knew in advance the flu would be deadly
and take out a lot of their
own
people.  Son of a
bitch
.  There’s
no way they could have timed this…bastards turned the flu into a
weapon
and hit us at just the right time…

Cooper
stepped away from the pile of flu victims and instinctively covered his mouth. 
“Everyone break out your masks…no body touch
any
thing!”

“Found
a stash of level-three respirators over here!” called out Jax.  He tossed one
to Cooper.  “Looks like they were in the process of handing them out when the
NKors breached.”

“Good
find,” Cooper said.  “Eveyrone put ‘em on.”

He
put his mask on and hoped it didn’t distort his voice too much as looked up in
the air and spoke again, keying his mic: “Slipknot Support Slipknot Support, do
you read?”

“Secret
Service,
any unit
, respond,” Cooper said, his radio blasting on all
emergency channels.  “I say again, Secret Service
, respond!”

A
few static-filled word faintly came back over the bone phone in his ear.   
“Say again!” he called out.

“
This
is Slipknot Support…nnnnhh
…”  Cooper heard gunfire and shouting in the
background.