Divided We Fall

Whiskey
Tango Foxtrot

Divided We Fall

 
By
W. J. Lundy

V7.24.2015.01

Whiskey Tango
Foxtrot

Divided We Fall

© 2015 W. J. Lundy

 Cover Design by
Andres Vasquez
Junior

Editing:
Terri
King
,
Sara Jones

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters,
places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or been used fictitiously
and are not to be construed as real. Some places, especially military locations
and facilities are intentionally vague or incorrect in layout and security
perimeter. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales,
or organizations is entirely coincidental. All Rights Are Reserved. No part of
this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission from the author.

* * *

Dedicated to the American Warfighter.

“Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting
we stand, by dividing we fall!” John Dickinson, July 1768

PROLOGUE

The nightmare woke him from his
sleep; the sound of his own screams as he called out his wife’s name… always
her name. He turned in the bed to search for his smart phone. It no longer
worked, not for making calls anyway, but he still used it to check the time and
keep track of his notes… to see the photos of his girls, read old messages from
her. Finding it tucked underneath him, he pushed a button and lit its display—
02:30
.
He had only slept for an hour. He reached for the nightstand and turned on the
touch-activated lamp, filling the room with a warm light. Looking at the other
bunks, he could see that he was still alone. No one else checked into the
lonely hotel hundreds of feet under the rock.

He had fallen asleep on top of the
bedding, still in his uniform, having only taken off his shoes and jacket
before sleep found him. He moved to an upright position and sat drearily,
staring at the floor. He felt far older than his forty-two years. The months
and days without sunlight were taking a toll on him—the chaos and the moving,
the running, and of course, the fighting. The thought of it all caused him to
steal a quick glance at the Glock in the shoulder holster resting over the back
of a chair near his bed.

A strobe light began flashing above
the door. He’d become familiar with the light. It’d been going off almost
constantly since they’d arrived at the bunker complex in Colorado. It meant
they were at the blast doors… survivors, infected, attackers… who knew? It
didn’t make much difference to the security teams. The first move against the
steel bunker doors had been by locals. Not criminals, not militias, not even
the hate groups; mostly just average civilians—now refugees in their own
country. The bunker was not a secret in the nearby town. Secrets were hard to
keep these days. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, this bunker became
common knowledge; a television documentary had even featured the site years
earlier.

When the barricades broke and the
roadblocks failed, hundreds, then thousands, of civilians made their way up the
mountain pass. They occupied the road, pounding on the doors and begging for
refuge. The Air Force provided as much assistance to them as they could; food
drops had been made and they set up tents to try to shelter them. They even
allowed some inside… those with special skills like doctors and engineers. The
overall situation considered manageable, the approach road to the bunker
converted into a survivors’ camp.

That all changed when the first
sightings of the infected reached the base of the mountain though. The bunker’s
command team ordered in all available air assets and even sent some of the
security teams out beyond the perimeter to assist the state troopers. Holding
the pass turned out to be impossible for the under-equipped law enforcement
types. Wave after wave of them poured into the valley. Air National Guard
combat planes provided close-air support, dumping everything onto the
approaching enemy, but for every one killed, ten more of them were drawn into
the valley.

The people at the bunker entrance
began to panic as the sounds of the fight drew closer. Civilians rushed the
outer fences and pushed through the gates; most of the security guards refused
to fire on families—families looking for nothing but safety for their children.
Several civilians managed to make it past the blast doors before the automated
triggers closed and sealed them. Still, thousands more had not. The military
inside all sympathized with the refugees. So many of the soldiers had no idea
where their own families were, and they could not help but wonder if they were
in the crowd beyond the heavy blast doors.

He stood in the control room when
the infected finally broke through the final defenses. The guards used
spotlights to try to blind them and slow their advance. It did not work; the
Primals—as they would come to call them—found their way through and made their
way up the mountain. The external closed-circuit cameras captured everything.
Pockets of soldiers who held the lines outside—refusing orders to fall back to
the bunker—chose to make a last stand in front of the civilians and formed a
meager perimeter around the survivors.

The colonel watched, terrified, as state
troopers and security guards came crashing through the woods ahead of the
advancing monsters and ran through the crowd of civilians in a fast retreat. Shouting
warnings to run, they caused further panic in the crowds. Realizing early on
that the bunker’s gates were never going to be open to them, some ran beyond it
and farther up the mountain. The remaining civilians pushed themselves against
the doors, crushing each other under their own weight.

The enemy calls started; distant at
first, but soon the high-pitched screams were so loud they drowned out the
outside speakers. Loose pockets of armed men tried to fight; they stood their
ground but were quickly overwhelmed. The Primals flooded their simple defense
and mixed in with the civilians, slashing and attacking everything. The
rage-filled figures cut through flesh with dulled teeth. Amongst the chaos, his
eyes focused on a lone Marine who fired his rifle directly into the charging
mass. When his weapon failed, without hesitation, he jumped the barrier and
used his rifle as a club. The Marine knocked one down with a blow to the head
then used a KA-BAR to take out another. Soon the Marine disappeared in a
massing flurry of bodies.

The colonel turned away from the
video feed, refusing to watch anymore. He spun his chair toward a wall and
prayed for his own family in Virginia. He had lost contact with them after the
first of the barricades and safeguards were in place. Now he second-guessed
himself constantly for not breaking his orders and going to his family. What
kind of father does not put his family first? He had abandoned them in their
greatest time of need. His last contact with his wife was a simple text message:
orange
—a prearranged code word signaling her to gather everything and
head to his father’s house in West Virginia. He never received a reply.

After 9/11 and his posting to the
Pentagon, his clearance elevated and he became privy to the threats the world
really faced. He discussed contingency plans with his wife, and they developed
a strategy to get her and the kids quickly out of the area in case of an
emergency. Different words for different directions or contingencies: black,
lock the doors and go to the basement; orange, head for the mountains; blue,
meet at a storage building near the coast; white, drive west and stop for no
one. They kept a bag packed on a shelf in the garage and a safe with a loaded
pistol in the trunk of the SUV. He programmed rural routes into the vehicle’s
GPS, avoiding the interstates under each color. She should have easily made it
to his father’s home outside the city limits, far off the grid and located in the
high country. They would be safe there, he reassured himself, because most of the
attacks were against cities or high-population areas.

She knew he would find his way
there as soon as he could after things died down or once they contained it. He
had hoped that when everything settled, he would somehow be able to leave for a
couple days and check in on them. However, things never died down; instead,
they escalated. Defensive lines and cities fell, the borders sealed, air
traffic froze, and highways closed or were congested beyond use. Nobody knew
how to fight this enemy. The government reacted slowly to the early reports. Small
attacks—probes of two and three against rural locations or on terminals at
airports; crazed men and women who came out of nowhere and attacked without
mercy—soulless faces that showed no remorse in their killing, never halting
their attack. State governments began to clash with the decision making of the
President. Most of the federal troops abandoned their posts, and everything
quickly fell into chaos. Without troops to hold back the waves and organize the
withdrawal, everything spiraled out of control.

The Pentagon was surrounded by
remnants of the old guard in a final defense when he had been ordered to leave.
He could hear the fighting from his office deep inside the building when an Air
Force sergeant burst through his door and handed him a shoulder holster
containing a Glock. He took a family photo from a picture frame and folded it
into his wallet before following the sergeant into the hallway. With the outer
rings of the building compromised, parts of the Pentagon had been intentionally
set ablaze to slow the Primals' advance. All was lost and the defensive
operation became an evacuation.

All essential personnel moved to
the large courtyard in the center of the Pentagon. The defenders prepared final
protective lines. Guards desperately used C4 and detonation cord to knock down
trees and create a landing zone for the swarms of aircraft orbiting overhead.
Escorted by soldiers, he rushed through the maze of barricades and quickly
boarded a USN SH-3 helicopter. With little fanfare, a crewmember pushed him
into a seat and closed the door. As the helicopter climbed into the air, he
could see the tracer rounds zip across the courtyard as the things broke
through the south side. His helicopter climbed higher into the dark clouds of
black smoke, and he lost site of the building below him.

He strained to see out of a
portside window. The capital below swarmed in flames as people cowered in the
streets. On the National Mall, armored vehicles sat stoically at barricades
with guns thumping, trying to hold back the waves of attackers. Twisting
streams of tracers arced down city streets and into apartment buildings. His
mind could not process the sight before him. The briefings described the chaos
outside—the troops on the ground had dubbed it the
Meat Grinder—
but
seeing it was far worse. As the SH-3 helicopter joined an aerial convoy of
several others of varying makes, civilian and military alike, he lost sight of
the burning city below.

The strobe light mounted above his
door stopped flashing, pulling him from his thoughts. He quickly put on his
shoes and stood facing the mirror; he saw a face that he had not shaved in days
and gray, matted hair in need of a cut. The dark circles resting under his eyes
made him look as if he lost a fight with a very big stick. Shaking off the
feelings of despair, he slipped on the shoulder holster and put on his jacket. He
began to move toward the door when it pulled out and away from him. A uniformed
enlisted man burst through the threshold then stopped, looking startled to see
him dressed and on his feet.

“Sorry to disturb you, Colonel
Cloud; General Reynolds is asking for you.”