Stryker: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale
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Authors: Bobby Andrews
STRYKER
A
POST-APOCALYPTIC TALE
THE
STRYKER SERIES
By Bobby Andrews
TEXT
COPYRIGHT 2016
BOBBY
ANDREWS
This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of
the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, or events or places is coincidental.
DEDICATION
This book is
dedicated to the brave and honorable men and women who serve our country on all
points of the globe. We call them by different names and know they belong to
different services; but they all make the same sacrifices and know the pain and
sorrow of separation from loved ones. Many know the horror of a field of
battle, and the overwhelming sadness at the losses we suffer. The loss of a
service member anywhere is a tragedy. They are not replaceable. They are not
expendable, and they are not somebody else’s problem. They belong to all of us;
we are a smaller and weaker people if we just go through the pale gestures that
make us feel better about ourselves. “Thank you for your service” is just not
enough. Get involved. Contribute to their charities.
But
most importantly, let them know your thanks is not a hollow gesture, but a
heartfelt attempt to understand their cost of war and the price they continue
to pay.
--Bobby
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
DIE OFF PLUS TWO YEARS
Caleb Stryker struggled to get his
breathing under control as he peered through his rifle’s scope. The man
pursuing him was as unrelenting as the pain associated with a needed root
canal, and Stryker had spent the better part of six hours lumbering through the
flat, featureless land to the west of the Cedar Breaks, just outside Austin,
Texas. He was not built for running, nor was he accustomed to it. He was a sledgehammer
of a man who stood six feet five inches tall and weighed 240 pounds. His body
consisted of bones and layer after layer of lean, tough muscle.
The sun beat down on his back as he
continued to take deep breaths. His shirt was stained white with sweat residue
that dried almost as it formed, and he repeatedly wiped his forehead with the
back of his hand. This time of year, in this part of Texas, the heat was bad,
worse, or unbearable. It was well into the last category. As the sun moved
higher, the shadows around him grew shorter. He was lying in the dust under the
concealment of a scrub cedar, hoping the man would appear soon so he could kill
him, find more water, and get back to his Jeep. There was no question the man
had to die. The relentlessness of his pursuit convinced Stryker he couldn’t
leave him alive. “Who the hell is this guy?” he muttered to himself with a
tinge of admiration in his voice.
The chase had begun at a house he was
searching for trade goods. He traveled light when he scavenged, wearing desert
ops boots, tactical pants, and a t-shirt covered by a combat vest. His weapons
were a Springfield XD .45 and his M-4A1 that he liberated from the Marine Corps
when he left Camp Pendleton after the plague swept over the country like a tidal
wave, killing almost everyone.
He also carried spare mags, a personal
water filter, a canteen, and a Pilot survival knife. His cell phone was tucked
into the vest. It hadn’t rung in years, but every so often he would look at it
and find it was still receiving signals.
He stood up, hidden behind an
outbuilding and quickly glanced at the clearing in which the house sat. After
ducking back behind the cover of the building, he examined the mental photograph
he took with the glance. The house was built of red brick and was the standard
cookie-cutter, ranch-style home found throughout the state. The clearing where
it stood was large and an ancient green Ford pickup sat beside the home. A
window on the north side of the house was open, with a faded paisley drape
puffing out with the light breeze. The gravel driveway stopped at the side of
the house and the yard was filled with weeds. There were no flowers or plants
of any description, save the grass and weeds.
He zoomed to the center of his mental
image and concluded there was nowhere on the front porch to hide a house key,
and that the occupant is or was a single man. The weeds and lack of a garden or
flowers, all pointed to that conclusion. He decided the house was likely empty.
He also saw the front door was made of metal, and was likely probably more
sturdy than the back door.
He again examined the image and noted a
dilapidated barn with peeling red paint, a tool shed to the north of barn, and
a Quonset-style building that was open on the end facing him, with a John Deere
tractor parked inside. Two paths snaked across the yard, shallow, narrow
pathways where the grass and weeds were flat and faded in color. One led from
the front of the house to the barn, and the other to the Quonset hut. He
concluded that someone lived here until recently, as the paths through the yard
would disappear in one season.
Decision time. Life is full of options
and they present themselves every minute of every waking moment. Stryker had
long been processing them constantly without a second thought. It was a part of
him that seemed to work by itself, almost like a parallel computer processor.
Weighing and evaluating each choice with care was something he never stopped
doing. One choice made, by definition, changed the options that presented
themselves in the wake of the first decision. If you pick path A, you will not
be confronted with the same options as you would if you selected path B. Some
choices opened new opportunities and risks, while others might further limit
your options going forward. The choice Stryker faced now was a binary one. Go
in or leave? Opportunity or risk?
He chose to go in, and approached the
back of the house after clearing the outbuildings. The back door was made of
wood and looked flimsy, so he approached it slowly as the boards of the porch
whined under his weight. He took one long stride and kicked the door next to
the handle, then entered the kitchen, gun up, after catching the rebounding
door with his free hand. He stood completely still, listening for any noise
that would indicate any living presence in the house. The house was silent.
He moved into the room, tracking the M-4
in all directions, and cleared the rest of the house. He returned to the
kitchen and examined the room more carefully. The countertops were ancient
linoleum and the fridge and stove were both colored yellow. A dinette with two
chairs sat at the end of the countertops and the floor was brown-painted
concrete. The room smelled of garbage, rotting onions; the air was still and
dry. He went through the cabinets and found them all empty. Whoever lived in
the house had obviously packed up and left.
Moving through the living room, he noted
a thin layer of dust covered the hardwood floor. He examined it carefully for
tracks and found none. He opened and searched all the furniture drawers.
Glancing around, he noted the furniture was old and consisted of a sofa and two
armchairs. There was no television set or phone in the room. He searched two
bathrooms and three bedrooms, and discovered nothing more than a few old towels
and blankets in one of the bedroom closets.
Returning to the kitchen, he paused to
considered the situation. He was scavenging further into the exclusion zone
than ever before, and was surprised that nothing of value remained in the
house. Rumors of radiation leaks at a nearby nuclear power plant discouraged
most survivors from entering the area. Whoever left the home did not even leave
a single matchbook or empty bottle. It was as though a giant vacuum cleaner
sucked the contents of the home up, without any regard for the value or
usefulness of anything. It was puzzling to Stryker.
“Think,” he whispered to himself. He
moved to a window and stared out at a bleak, brown landscape. There was
virtually no vegetation to be seen and the terrain was so flat you could spend
a week watching your dog run away. He grunted, hating the view. There was no
cover anywhere, so virtually no concealment. It was dangerous terrain and he was
anxious to reach the Cedar Breaks, where the rolling hills were green and lush
with plant life. He concluded there was no point in searching again, and
started to move to the back door to exit the house and go back to his Jeep.
As he crossed the dining room, he
stopped and stared hard at the wall between the room he was in and the kitchen.
He noticed that the partition was unusually wide and the dimensions were not
the standard width of a two by four with sheet rock on it. He carefully
examined the end of the wall and saw a small horizontal crack across the bottom
end of the partition. He drew his knife from its sheath, knelt down, and
wiggled the knife into the crack. After a few gentle attempts, the crack
opened, and Stryker realized it was essentially a tiny door mounted on a hinge.
He pulled a small yellow fabric bag from its hiding place and opened the pouch.
He then poured the contents into one massive hand and stared down at eight gold
coins. They were 1.2-ounce Mexican Centenerios, a coin minted in Mexico City
years earlier. He had seen them before, but he couldn’t help staring.
This was the largest score he made in
two years of scavenging the zone. A wide grin split his normally taciturn
expression, and he chuckled quietly. After attaching a carabiner to the
drawstrings on the pouch, he clipped it to his vest and stood. The realization
hit him that whoever cleaned out the house was not the occupant. The owner
would never leave something of this value behind and take out the rest of the
stuff. Whoever emptied the place wanted to make sure there was no reason for
scavengers to linger, as there was nothing in it. Options? Risk or opportunity?
He concluded whoever stashed the gold here was also scavenging and used the
house to stash his loot while he continued to work, which implied he would be
coming back. It was time to go.
He exited the house through the back
door and started walking back to his vehicle. The yellow bag bounced off his
chest as he moved, and his eyes clicked back and forth like a metronome. He had
moved thirty meters from the house when a shot rang out and the dust three feet
in front of him puffed a cloud.
Stryker could see the shooter in the
distance. He was around 700 meters away and the roar of the rifle sounded like
that of a .308. He was resting the bipod of the weapon on a heap of rocks.
Stryker knew the maximum effective range of that rifle was around 800 meters.
The record Marine Corps confirmed sniper kill with that weapon was at a range
of 1250 meters.
The man had come close with his shot.
Stryker could see him doing something with the weapon and concluded the man was
adjusting the elevation setting. He turned and ran in the opposite direction of
travel and at an oblique angle to his previous direction. He didn’t want the man
making the same shot with a dialed-in scope. As he ran, he heard a second shot,
and the dust kicked up to his right and slightly ahead of him. Stryker
increased his speed to a full run. His only hope was to get to the Breaks,
where he could find concealment and take the guy out. His M-4’s maximum
effective range was 400 meters, but that was with match grade ammo and perfect
conditions.
“Must be his gold,” Stryker muttered as
he ran. After ten minutes or so, he slowed to a walk and doubled over, sucking
huge amounts of oxygen into tortured lungs. He stood and scanned the horizon.
The man was following at around a 1,000 meters and was settled into a loping
gait that was more measured than Stryker’s desperate sprint. He continued to
breathe in air and felt his wind returning after a minute. He glanced up and
saw his pursuer was maintaining his speed with a graceful stride.
“Christ, I gotta get into this
with some former track star?” He shook his head and started running again, this
time at a pace that seemed to match the man pursuing him. He knew the man was a
good shot, and maybe even a sniper in a former life. He also knew that snipers
needed three things to shoot accurately: excellent vision (he guessed the guy
had that), a low heart rate, and controlled breathing. Stryker intended to keep
the man running as long as his legs held up. He didn’t want him to have a low
heart rate, and he wanted him breathing hard until they reached the Breaks and
Stryker could fight within the range of his weapon.
If there was one thing Stryker hated it
was a sniper. Most Marines and soldiers felt the same way. He had seen the
hardest men he knew crack under the pressure of knowing a sniper was operating
in an AO they patrolled. It was death from nowhere. One second you were there,
and the next you’re gone. You might even be lucky enough to hear the shot
before you die. It was the randomness of it that made people so fearful. There
was no skill involved with defeating one. A good Marine or soldier was no less
likely to die a sudden death than the worst one in a given unit. You couldn’t
be more careful-that would just make your movements slower and present an even
better shot for the sniper. If you tried to move more quickly, you were more
exposed. There was just no way to avoid casualties.
The only way to find the shooter was to
see where the shot came from, and that meant that somebody was likely to die.
The worst snipers were the ones who shot to wound. The calibers were large with
most snipers’ weapons, and the wounded would probably eventually die; but you
can’t stand by and watch your comrades bleed out, either. Eventually someone is
going to try to recover the wounded, and they get shot next. Rinse and repeat
until either men stop trying to recover their wounded, or everyone is on the
ground, wounded and dying.
In the ideal world, somebody spots the
sniper early on and calls in an artillery strike, or lobs a motor round at the
shooter. Or you maneuver on him with suppressing fire, and force the shooter on
the defensive. None of that was going to happen today.
Stryker hated snipers.
The game of cat and mouse continued
throughout the afternoon, with Stryker halting to get his wind and allowing the
pursuer to get within 800 meters before again running to build a buffer of 200
meters more. Every time he looked over his shoulder, the man continued to jog
at the same pace, relentless and apparently untiring. At one point, the man
closed to 700 meters, and another round whizzed by Stryker’s ear as he again
picked up the pace. Stryker was losing this war of attrition and if he didn’t
make it to the Breaks, he was going to die in the next hour or two.
He considered leaving the bag of gold on
the ground where the man would find it and give up the chase. But, Stryker now
understood that the man’s motivation was personal, and that it had nothing to
do with the gold that bounced against his chest. Nobody would expend this kind
of energy and time over a few pieces of gold. One of them was going to die, and
he didn’t intend to be the loser in the contest.