The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (32 page)

Jeremy and Sarah stood among the group. The
injuries on their heads were healing swiftly, with only a small
bandage showing where the scabbed-over wounds remained. Jumper
stood next to Jeremy, wagging his tail at the attention he garnered
from those around him. This was the first run that Jeremy had been
able to take the dog along on. Shavers had okayed bringing him on
the mission to be used for what Jeremy coined “the Loony
detector”.

Spirits were high as they unloaded the heavy
stainless steel containers that held the bricks of white phosphorus
submerged in distilled water. Willy-Pete was a highly reactive
compound that at room temperature and in the presence of oxygen
would auto-ignite in a spectacular fashion. This was why it was
employed extensively by the military in ordnance for use against
enemy personnel. The burning flakes of white phosphorus would not
only cause severe debilitating burns, it was also very toxic.

Heinlich oversaw the unloading of the
Willy-Pete along with several canisters of carbon disulfide that
they had liberated from the same plant. Shavers and McCully snaked
a hose from a diesel fuel tanker truck to the Stryker and refueled
it.

Sergeant Heinlich would be the one mixing the
Willy-Pete with the carbon disulfide in the far corner of the
parking lot, which was vacant of any vehicles and away from the
living quarters. It was dangerous work, however, he had had the
opportunity to do it once before in Iraq, so had some experience
with the technique. The IED they were making was very simple. With
the two compounds mixed together and stored in an airtight
container it would be fairly stable. When the top was removed and
the solution exposed to air the carbon disulfide would rapidly
evaporate, forming a flammable mist, leaving the Willy-Pete all to
its lonesome. Then
poof
! The compound would explode in a
large burst of white-hot particles, sticking to any surface,
especially the skin of crazies and instantly making crispy critters
out of them. In an enclosed building and in the presence of the
vaporized carbon disulfide, the expectation was for an impressive
roof-lifting explosion of skin-searing heat. Heinlich smiled to
himself at the thought of a warehouse full of the creatures burning
in their own hell of sun-hot flame.

Upon finding the breeding grounds of the
crazies and their accursed offspring, the 29th’s mission had
changed. Now they were going to hit them where they lived, destroy
their breeding grounds and as Shavers put it, “Stop this evil from
inheriting the Earth”. Tomorrow would be their first test of this
new paradigm. They would set up an observation post on a hill
overlooking a large building that a moderate swarm was still
nesting in. When the swarm of crazies left to do whatever fucked up
shit those insane human animals did during the day, they would send
a team in to clear the building and set up a tripwire mechanism so
that when the crazies returned they would pop the top on the IED.
About an hour later…
boom
! Toasted tangoes!

As the last of the chemicals were unloaded
and moved to a storage container set up against the fence, the
Sergeant felt his stomach rumble. It was dinner time and he was
starving. Hopefully, whoever was duty cook for today had something
warm and hearty put together. A cold wind blew through the compound
causing him to shiver slightly. He glanced up at the sky and saw
the dark clouds building to the northwest. The weather was going to
get nasty. It felt like snow in the crisp, cold air. He followed
the last of the personnel into the armory.

Kyle Reese sat at one of the tables in the
dining hall enjoying his last cigar. Smoke swirled up and around
his head as he savored the aroma and taste of the Cohiba; he knew
these were going to be rarer than a prostitute singing in a
Catholic choir. He took another puff of the Cuban cigar and closed
his eyes in pleasure. He had to get out and find a cigar shop. He
may not be able to find another one of the Cubans in his lifetime,
but he sure as shit could find an Arturo or Padron in one of the
shops in this stinking town.

People began to pile in for dinner. The raw
recruits, Pickeral, Ferguson, and Murchison were now dressed in the
standard Army ACU’s after McCully had unearthed a cache of uniforms
buried in the supply room of this dreary place. Hell, even the boy
was dressed the part with the loose fitting pants and shirt that
were cut for a small woman. Reese refused to put on an Army
uniform. He was a Marine first, and would always be a Jarhead until
they planted him in the ground. He would never wear a uniform of
another service, especially the ones of these infantry grunts.

He agreed to play soldier with these
part-time pukes and civilians because that was what he needed to do
to survive. Of all the things the Marines had taught him, surviving
was at the top of the stack. At least nowadays the enemy wasn’t
shooting back at you, and although he missed a lot of the things
from his Force Recon days in ‘Nam, the sound of bullets zinging
past his ears wasn’t one of them. Yeah, he would play soldier with
these boys and girls and maybe teach them a thing or two if they
would pay attention for one damn minute. The First Sergeant wasn’t
a bad apple though. He was turning into a damn fine leader. Hell,
in his book anyone who could gather and hold this ragtag group of
exiles together couldn’t be all that bad. Shavers still had some
learning to do though. He had to figure out the hard way that he
couldn’t use a lot of the tactics here that he had learned in the
sandbox against the ragheads or even those he himself had learned
fighting the gooks. The crazies were another league altogether.
They didn’t follow protocols or tactics that the usual enemy
employed; no, these bastards were running off of pure instinct and
animal rage. They never fucking did what you expected them to do
and that right there would bite you in the ass as hard as a police
dog latching onto a fleeing felon.

Reese watched as the boy filled his tray with
steaming piles of goop, then spotting the old Marine and smiling
while walking his way with the teenaged blonde girl right behind
him. They had become quite the pair. Not in a romantic way of
course, but more like blood siblings. Unfortunately for the kid,
she didn’t look back at him with those lovesick eyes that he had
for her. The boy was sporting a serious crush on the pretty young
lady. The pair walked over to his table and sat down without
asking. For some reason the boy had taken a shine to him and Reese
had reluctantly taken him, and by extension, the girl, under his
wing. He tried to pass on tidbits of wisdom and advice that he
thought would help keep them alive. The boy, and to a lesser
extent, the girl, were fresh canvases waiting for the right lines
and colors to fill it up and give it the right perspective, so he’d
decided he would do what he could to help fill in that canvas.

I’m
a
fucking
artist
, he laughed quietly to himself.

“Missed you on the run today, Kyle,” Jeremy
said to him after taking a seat. His faithful mutt took a place on
the floor next to the table in anticipation of the scraps of food
that were usually tossed his way.

“My turn on the rooftop,” Reese muttered. He
stared at the hot food that adorned the two trays then over at the
dinner line which had shrunk to two people.

“You missed a good run,” Jeremy replied in
between bites. To the kid, any run where they didn’t see any
crazies was a good run. Reese much preferred making any dent he
could in the crazy population.

“I think I’ll grab some grub.” He carefully
stubbed out his dwindling cigar, sticking it into his breast pocket
and then stood. The pain in his knees told him that there was going
to be a change in the weather soon, and by the feel of the air, it
wasn’t going to be a nice change either.

Shavers met with all the members of the 29th
that evening in the briefing room to discuss the next day’s
operation. They were going after a group of crazies nesting about a
klick from the armory in the heart of downtown Staunton. McCully
was the last to have eyes on them and he estimated their numbers to
be around five hundred. If the IED worked as expected, in the
coming weeks they would branch out and take on the bigger swarms
like the one in the warehouse across from the Kroger.

They had never recovered the disabled Stryker
from Statler Boulevard, which put most of the load on the two
remaining Strykers, supported by the half dozen armored Humvees
that were in the yard. The plan for tomorrow would have the Humvee
leaving in the pre-dawn hours with a three person team utilizing
night vision gear and driving to a wooded hilltop near the target.
The hill overlooked the strip-mall where the store that held the
nesting crazies was located. The observing team would contact Gypsy
Hill when they spotted the crazies leaving the building. When the
area was clear a strike team would rush in utilizing a Stryker and
secure the building. Once secure, the IED would be placed in the
nesting area and the team would exfiltrate back to the armory while
the observation team stayed in place for the duration to watch the
results.

It was a simple plan fraught with
uncertainty. With uncertainty usually came the unexpected. They
talked about contingencies, offered solutions to those
contingencies, yet in the end it came down to the basics: react,
adapt, and overcome. Shavers gave out the assignments: McQuinn,
Ferguson, and Murchison would be the observers in the Humvee while
Heinlich, Carroll, Reese, and Pickeral would be on the Stryker
team. Shavers would be on comms while McCully and Hernandez would
be waiting at the armory in the Ready Stryker loaded for bear.

After he finished with the briefing for the
operation, he received the optimistic updates on the supplies of
diesel and gas for the vehicles, propane for heating and cooking,
and food and ammo supplies. They were sitting pretty for the
foreseeable future. Food would always be a concern, especially
fresh vegetables. Plans were already in the works to plant gardens
around the lake that sat just outside the Armory grounds after the
local swarms had been eliminated. Finding seed packets in the few
farm stores around the county would be a high priority in the near
future. The seed packets would be difficult to locate since the
apocalypse had occurred after planting season and most places no
longer carried seeds in their floor stock. He was assured though by
several of the amateur gardeners in the brigade that some could be
found. The meeting finally broke up and everyone cleared the
room.

As Jeremy strode down the hallway beside
Sarah, Shavers ran to catch up with him.

“Jeremy, a minute.”

“I’ll see you downstairs in a bit,” Sarah
said to him with a smile and left the two alone in the hallway.

“What’s up, First Sergeant?”

“Jumper needs to stay behind tomorrow. You
won’t need him on this mission.”

Jeremy shrugged. “Okay, I kind of figured
that.”

Shavers smiled a relaxed smile. “Have you
given anymore thought on staying with us?”

Jeremy shrugged again. He had made several
good friends at the armory, including Sarah and Kyle. He still
longed for his parents; however, he didn’t want to abandon his new
friends either. Plus he was having a blast playing soldier.

“I want to stay, but I need to find my Mom
and Pop,” he said finally.

Shavers smiled at him and nodded in
understanding. “I’ve been thinking about that. Sergeant Heinlich
told me that your parents’ farm is only a couple of hours away. I
think we can spare the fuel for a run down there, maybe next week.
I’ve wanted to scout the areas south for survivors and crazy
activity anyway. Maybe make a couple days’ operation out of
it.”

Jeremy’s face lit up. “Really?”

Shavers nodded. “I’ve talked it over with
Heinlich and Hernandez and we all agreed it could be a productive
run for all of us. There are some risks. Then again, where aren’t
there any these days?” Heinlich had suggested the idea of hitting
some farm co-ops that were located to the south to find seeds. The
sooner they located them the better. If the seeds were subjected to
a long, deep freeze it was possible they wouldn’t be viable come
springtime.

“Woo-hoo!” Jeremy proclaimed wildly and
jumped into the air.

Shavers’ eyes crinkled in amusement as the
kid vented his excitement. “I’ll let you know when we have a
mission date set.”

Jeremy nodded enthusiastically, then turned
and ran off down the stairway after Sarah so he could break the
good news to her.

The snow set in that night and blanketed the
compound in a thick cover of white. The members of the Stonewall
Brigade woke up very early the next morning to a frigid, blowing
storm that dumped copious amounts of dense snow from the dark,
sullen sky. Visibility outside was reduced to a handful of paces at
best.

“As you all can guess, the mission is a no-go
this morning due to weather,” the First Sergeant informed them in
the lantern and LED-lit mess hall in the pre-dawn hours while the
two teams sat around drinking hot coffee and trying to stay warm in
the poorly-heated building.

“We’ll assess the weather again this evening
and make a decision about tomorrow.” He smiled at everyone in the
room before continuing. “So today is going to be a training day.
Sergeant Heinlich and I will be conducting room clearing drills and
later I want Private McCully to organize weapons training,
concentrating on the breakdown, cleaning, and lubing of the M4
weapons system.”

McCully nodded. “No problem First Sergeant.
How about we start at 0800 hours right here?”

“Okay,” the First Sergeant replied. “We’ll
then meet back here at 1300 hours for the room clearing exercises.”
Shavers left then, leaving the tired brigade members sitting
quietly and pondering the day ahead.