Craig DiLouie: Pandemic

He wasn’t afraid anymore. He still had a lot of things worth fighting to save. The survivors of his platoon, wherever they were. Ramos’s family, still holed up in their apartment waiting for the sergeant to come rescue them. And not least of all, Rawlings.

The command post was a beehive of frantic activity as First Battalion HQ worked to prepare for the retreat back to Fort Drum.

Redeployment , Lee reminded himself. He scanned the big board. The only blue units left in Boston were National Guard, and they were clustering to the south, pushed out of the city by fires and waves of infected. Everything else was gone. Fire, police, paramedics, all of it. The only authority still active had a lot of firepower. Or, in the case of the crazies, numbers and sheer will.

CNN and the other networks were off the air. All civilian television broadcasting had been bumped. Mount Weather had taken over what was left of the national communications network. On the video monitor, an attractive blonde shared the latest Federal propaganda. Captions rolled across the bottom of the screen, advising people to stock up on food and water, stay in their homes and avoid laughing when approaching military personnel. To find the nearest safety shelter, they were supposed to call an 800 number.

Walker was right. Local civilian authority had collapsed. Central civilian authority was following suit as decisionmaking at the top became increasingly erratic and military commanders in the field ignored their orders. The military itself was breaking down due to disruptions in the chain of command. Real authority rested with local commanders trying to hold what they could with dwindling resources.

“Sergeant Major Turner, reporting as ordered.”

Lee returned the man’s salute. “Sergeant Major, how long have you been in uniform?”

“Twenty-one years next month, sir.”

Lee had to handle Turner with some caution. Not only was he the senior enlisted man left standing, he had a monumental amount of tactical and operational experience that was worth its weight in gold. While officers ran the Army, senior non-commissioned officers ran the men, and without the men behind him, any plan Lee formulated would die like a fish out of water. He needed to get on Turner’s good side, and stay there.

“Another old-timer like me,” he said. “You served Lieutenant Colonel Prince with distinction.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I expect the same honesty from you. I respect your opinion. Always give it to me straight.”

The big sergeant grinned. “I’m your man for that, sir.”

“What’s the feeling in the ranks? About leaving Boston?”

“They’re happy to be going for the most part. They need a rest. Replace the gear they’ve lost. Retrain if there’s time. They don’t like failing a mission, but the mission ain’t everything.”

“The mission is everything, Sergeant Major. But the mission is changing. That’s how they need to see it.”

“Hooah, sir.”

“Do they still have confidence? I’ll be frank with you. We’re becoming more of a volunteer army by the day. Do they want to be here, or would they rather go home to their families?”

“The older guys, their families are at Drum. So we’re itching to get there. The others, well, they’re from all over, and they know that their hometowns might as well be on Mars at this point. Nobody’s going anywhere except in force.”

“Thank you, Sergeant Major. Please give my compliments to the men for hanging tough these past weeks. They’ve gone through hell, but they’ve got to go a little farther.”

“I’ll do that.”

“We’ll be on the move at eleven hundred hours on the fifteenth. Make sure they’re ready. I don’t intend to stick around any longer than necessary.”

They saluted. Lee watched Turner leave the command post, thankful he had the man on his side. The old-timers were the battalion’s bedrock, the centurions of the Army. If they fell, they could not be replaced.

They would go to Fort Drum. After that, maybe Florida. Maybe not. What happened next didn’t really matter at the moment. Just getting to Drum was going to be hell.

First, they had to fight their way out of the Greater Boston area with its population of five million. The short hop to Route 90 was dense with crazies.

Route 90 would take them all the way across three hundred fifty kilometers of open highway through or near ten large cities and countless small towns: Framingham, Worcester, Chicopee, Springfield, Westfield, Albany, Schenectady, Utica, Rome, Syracuse. Some were controlled by military, others had gone dark and were considered hostile zones.

They could make the trip in two or three days of hard driving if nothing stood in their way, but it was going to be a running battle. Nearly a million people were along the route just in the major metropolitan areas alone. Lee’s battalion didn’t have a million bullets.

The drones and Apaches were key. The drones would recon the road ahead. The Apaches would provide overwatch and security for the column. The Apaches would lay the wrath of God on any major opposition force observed out in the open. After an hour and a half in the air, though, they’d have to land on the highway for refueling and maintenance.

The urban areas would be a different story. The battalion would have to find a way around them or make a hard and fast run straight through, shooting anything that moved. From here on out, they were taking no chances.

War movies often made it seem as if soldiers charged into battle without extensive planning. Lee knew that intelligence was the key to mission planning, and planning was the key to mission success. Officers were trained to accomplish their missions at minimal risk. Heroism, the stuff of movies, was something else. Individuals had it, not organizations. And even then, heroism was only for those rare times one really needed it, and it was done without thinking.

If Lee had his way, they’d accomplish their objective with as little fighting as possible.

The problem was intelligence was never perfect. Plans often failed. And the enemy was everywhere, resourceful and determined.

Once the battalion reached Syracuse, they’d cut north on Route 80 and go about a hundred kilometers up to Fort Drum where, Lee hoped, they’d find survivors and resources.

If the soldiers found their families infected and waiting with weapons they found on base, they’d all end up exploring a new level of hell together.

And if they didn’t find resources, Florida would become a pipe dream.

They’d end up scavenging.

Once an army did that, they stopped being an army.

He wished Walker had never handed him these damned silver oak leaves.

“Colonel?”

Lee smiled. Still unused to the rank, it had taken him a moment to realize he was being addressed. “Yes, Major?”

Walker didn’t smile back. “Major General Brock is on the line, sir. He’d like a word.”

Arunning battle on the streets of Cambridge. A single ragged squad against a city gone mad. They bounded in two groups of six, leapfrogging by sections. One fired while the other ran. They dropped bodies with a sustained rate of fire.

Wade’s M4 ran dry. He patted his vest. Two mags left. “Reloading!”

Harvard Stadium was surrounded by green space—wide open, no cover—but they’d made it to Soldier’s Field Road without contact. They crossed Eliot Bridge, the Charles River below jammed with dead bodies and boats packed with refugees and crazies. The hellish screaming and crackle of gunfire at Harvard Stadium faded to a dull roar as they jogged north into Cambridge.