John O'Brien - Sanctuary

Other moans and cries of pain now drift into our deafened ears, along with stirs of the injured crawling or moving; like the spirits of this darkened tomb have come alive. Anticipating a change of tactics and another rush of night runners, as we have seen in the past, we all stay in our positions. The only movements are the lasers moving about in the green glow.

“Anyone see or hear anything?” I ask after a moment of searching and listening.

“Nothing here,” Cressman reports.

“Same here,” I hear from Drescoll with all other team leaders reporting the same.

“Anyone from Delta still on?” I ask only to be met with silence.

I call for an ammo check. Blue, Charlie and Alpha report they are down to just a few mags. The rest report that they are okay. I have the others share some of their remaining mags with those that are low. The action inside was intense but didn’t encompass a lot of time.

“Okay. Charlie and Red Team are going to advance up to Delta on the right. Stay sharp and be aware that there are injured night runners out there,” I say.

I coordinate with Mullins and both Red and Charlie begin to move up on the right side of the first floor. We have to step over the many bodies lying in the check-out aisles and just beyond. The going is slow as we check over each body to make sure it is indeed visiting whatever afterlife it has in store. There are several night runners that are injured; some barely hanging on and others that are a little feistier. The slow advance is accompanied by the occasional shot as the injured are put to rest. The slow pace is also due to checking each body on the ground for Delta Team members and to make sure we are only shooting night runners.

Once past the registers, we spread further out on line and continue up to where Delta had been positioned. Night runner corpses litter the ground and are entangled in fallen clothes racks and the clothes that once hung in an orderly manner upon them. It is a very confused, scattered mess. Bodies are moved after first checking to make sure they are dead as we search the area for the members of Delta. Any hope we had of finding them alive is quickly erased as we wade through the entwined bodies. The reek of bowels and bodies that have been ripped open hangs in the air.

We find the first Delta team member and see it has been torn apart by the night runners in their frenzy. The flesh has been ripped off in many places with gouges where teeth ripped into it. Blood covers absolutely everything. It is apparent from the scores of bodies on the ground that Delta put up a valiant defense but the quickness of the assault, the numbers of night runners materializing, the limited visibility, and the fact that I put them too close to the overhang didn’t give them much of a chance. Searching through the rest of the piles, after putting a number of night runners down for good, we find the rest of Delta and lay them to the side. I notice Robert grimace a few times while searching, heck, we all are, but he continues with the process anyway. Only a few faint moans now drift through the structure coming from the escalator and top of the stairs near the entrance.

I have Mullins set a defensive line and call for Lynn on the radio, “Lynn, can you bring Black Team up and help us carry the bodies out?”

“Sure. Be right there,” she answers. Black Team makes their way through the bodies and reaches our position.

“Did you find any of them still alive?” Lynn asks as she reaches my side and referring to Delta.

“No. They were overwhelmed pretty quick,” I answer softly.

“You know you did the right thing pulling Charlie back when you did, right!?” She says. “Otherwise, we’d be pulling a few more bodies out of the piles and we might not have had enough to keep them in check on this side. We could have been completely cut off.”

“Yeah, I know, but it doesn’t make it better or easier,” I reply.

“Yeah, I know. It never does,” she says and moves over to help the others from Black Team carry the slain members of Delta out of the building.

Bri stands by a Humvee in the bright afternoon light. The rays of the sun beat down and strike her shoulders and back, warming her in her baggy, black fatigues. But as as she stares at the front entrance to Cabela’s, she doesn’t notice. Black-clad team members press against the outside walls of the structure; tense, ready and waiting to go in. She sees her dad and brother standing by the shattered glass door on the left peering into the building. Worry courses through her. She knows her dad can take care of himself and knows he will do everything he can to make sure Robert is safe. But she has also heard the stories of the attacks in other buildings. It’s much different hearing those stories than witnessing one, she thinks watching the scene before her. Perhaps it’s because the story is being told by the survivors and she knows the ending comes out well .

She looks to the side and sees Nic, Michelle, and her grandmother with the same tightness around their eyes. The M-4 in her hand feels heavy and unfamiliar yet reassuring in a way. She makes sure there isn’t a clip in the lower receiver and pulls the charging handle back, like she had been taught, to make sure there isn’t a round in the chamber. Taking a few steps away from the Humvee into the clear, she raises the carbine and looks through the sight. Reaching up, she turns it to the 1x setting and looks around the empty fields surrounding her; putting her red dot on one object after another. She fired this M-4 at the range with the others and found that the kick, although there, was negligible. That was one fear she had – that it would buck hard against her shoulder. The red dot wobbles slightly as she tries to hold it on a clump of dry grass near the edge of the parking lot. Bri notices the gun isn’t as unwieldy as the first time she fired it yet it is still hard to hold steady. Much better than the M-16 she fired briefly in Kuwait. She switches the zoom control and the red dot changes to a cross hair. She continues to play with sighting in before turning the sight off, steps back into her previous position, makes sure her radio is on, and focuses once again on the entrance.

Bri sees her dad and brother step away from the entrance and another group moves quickly up to take that position. “Okay, let’s do this,” she hears her dad say into the radio. “Go!”

The teams by the doors quickly rush in and disappear from sight. She watches as her dad and brother vanish into the building immediately after and sends a prayer in with them. “Please let them be okay,” she whispers. With not knowing where her mom is or what happened to her, seeing her dad and brother disappear into the building like that brings the quick fear and thought that if something were to happen to her dad, her and Nic would be orphaned and alone.

She hears a small gasp from Nic. She looks at the others and notices that they, like her, seem to be holding their breath. “Alpha, Bravo, Go!” She hears her dad call and the rest of the people outside of the building flow inside like a mist; everyone vanishing from sight. She has been inside numerous times before with her dad and follows their progress in her mind from the radio calls. Noticing that she has been rubbing the trigger guard of her M-4 with her finger, she pulls it away, takes in a deep breath, and tries to calm her nerves.

Her thoughts, while following the initial entry and progress inside, folds back to the events of the past. She finds it hard to believe they were in class just over a week ago and her biggest concerns were what she was going to wear and what friend’s house she was going to go to after school. The whirlwind adventure of this past week seem very unreal to her. Or really, the time before this is the one that seems surreal . It still seems like an adventure but with terrifying events mixed in. It was a lot of fun flying around and being the flight engineer , she thinks but then turns to thoughts of her mom and friends. A tear leaks out and runs down her face. The thought of her mom and what happened brings a stark reality of their situation.