The Last Days (28 page)

“Until I can confirm that my worst fears are indeed true, I am not going to order you to return with me at this time, but you are welcome to come. If you and your men agree to return with me, you will be under my command until further notice. I intent to carry out the business of the U.S. Navy until conditions dictate otherwise. If you would like to talk to your men, I’m getting low on fuel and plan on leaving in the next few minutes.”

“I think I can speak for my men. We are soldiers Sir, not mountain goats.” The Lieutenant smiled. “We would like the opportunity to find who did this and kick their ass!”

“The people that did this are already dead, but I’m sure I can find someone else that needs their ass kicked.” The Captain smiled. “I can take six of your men now. I will have to refuel and return for the rest in an hour or so. Also Lieutenant, before anyone gets on this helo, he must be examined to verify they have not been bitten or infected.”

“No problem Sir. If it is OK with you, I will send six of my men to go with you now.” The Lieutenant replied. “I will wait with the rest for you to return.”

“Very good Lieutenant. Get six men over here now. The XO will inspect each man before they board, so have them remove their shirts and roll up their pants. I have to be in the air in the next three minutes. Move it Lieutenant!” The Captain said.

The Lieutenant saluted and ran over to his men.

He must have asked for volunteers to stay with him until the second trip as all of the men held up their hands.

The Lieutenant pointed at six men, gave them their orders and they began to run towards the helicopter, pulling off their shirts as they ran.

The XO jumped out and stood outside the door. He quickly examined each man’s eyes then looked them over quickly before ushering them inside.

After examining the last man, he jumped inside and slid the door closed.

The space inside was cramped, but no one complained as the helo slowly climbed into the air.

The men were excited to be finally getting off that mountain and back into action. Their main concern was if they would be able to get more ammo. They were low on ammo and in order to conserve what they had left, they had been reduced to throwing large rocks at the few infected they had come across in the hills.

All conversation stopped as the men looked down at San Diego as they flew overhead. Their low altitude gave them all a new look with a different prospective at what they had only seen at street level before. The view of the larger picture was over powering. Seeing the huge naval base below with thousands of staggering figures dressed in uniforms roaming the base was humbling.

To see them all stop and look up at the helo, with their arms reaching into the sky made their skin crawl.

“McClain. This is helo one. We are approaching with six survivors. Please report.” The Captain said.

“Clear for landing Captain. No activity to report.” McClain answered.

“Very well. Helo one out.” The Captain replied.

The chopper flew out over the water and approached the carrier. The Captain set them down on the deck near the tower.

“Sergeant.” The Captain said to one of the Marines. “Would you have two of your men help Petty Officer Clawson refuel the helo so I can go back out to pick up the rest of your men?”

“Yes Sir!” The man saluted. “Sir, how did you know I was a Sergeant?  We removed all of our insignias when the fighting got heavy.”

The Captain smiled. “I’ve been in the military for twenty-five years. You could be wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I know a Sargent when I see one.”

“Yes Sir!” The man smiled as he saluted.

When the helo had been refueled, the Captain gathered all the men together. “Clawson would you show these men where they can get something to eat?”

“Yes Sir!” Clawson replied.

“And be sure to show them what areas are safe to move around in and where they shouldn’t go.” The Captain added. “When I return with the rest of the unit I will brief you men and bring you up to speed on our situation. Until then get something to eat and Petty Officer Clawson will assign you a place in the tower. For now we are residing in the tower for safety reasons. Any questions see the Petty Officer until I return.”

‘Yes Sir!” The Marines answered in unison.

The XO followed the Captain back to the helo.

The Captain powered up and picked up the mic. “McClain. We are heading back for the rest of the unit. I intend to run silent. You will continue to monitor for anything we need to know.”

“Yes Sir!” McClain replied.

The helicopter lifted off and made its way back to the position of the waiting men.

The Captain set the helo down where he had landed before. The XO again examined the men before they entered.

They were ready to return to the carrier.

The Captain stopped the XO before he got back into the copilot’s seat. “XO. Would you send the Lieutenant up here for the ride back? I’d like to talk to him.”

“Yes Sir!” The XO replied and moved into the back. The Lieutenant appeared a moment later.

“Sit down Lieutenant.” The Captain said. The Lieutenant slid into the empty seat and the Captain powered up and started the trip back to the carrier.

“Lieutenant, tell me about what happened to you and your men.”

The Lieutenant nodded. “We were on base in San Diego. We were ordered to prepare to be deployed. We were informed that something was going down in China and we might be deployed first to Japan and then wherever we might be needed. The whole base was on alert and preparing to go into battle. For a few days there were rumors but nothing concrete.”

The Captain nodded.

“Then reports started about riots starting up in LA and San Francisco. We didn’t think much about it, we were getting ourselves prepared for war. Riots were a problem for the police. Then we heard something about riots breaking out in New York and Washington and a lot more cities around the country. Before we received much information about what was happening all the major networks went off the air. We were later informed that we would not be shipped out to Japan because we were needed to protect the country and the base.

It was confusing as hell. No one could really tell us much about what was going on. Two days later we were informed that we were going to be deployed around San Diego. I thought we were being invaded or something. We were just told that we were to defend the city. No one was telling us who we were defending the city against. What confused the hell out of us were the rules of engagement.”

“What were your rules of engagement?” The Captain asked as he guided the helo towards San Diego.

“We were told that we were to defend the city against anyone that tried to come into the city. We were to use live ammo and to fire at will with no restrictions. Marines do not fire on our own citizens. We were told that we would be able to identify the enemy and they were not citizens. We were shipped out to different parts of the city. I don’t know what the brass knew about what was going on, but all we knew was we were to keep anyone from coming into the city. We heard some rumors about being attacked by the dead. We all thought someone was yanking our chain with that ridiculous bull shit. Sorry Sir. We didn’t know what they were trying to pull. Some of us thought it was some kind of test. That made more sense than anything else we heard. So we just prepared to do what we were told. I think we all believed that it was some kind of exercise to test how prepared we were in the event the country was invaded. I think that is what everyone was expecting. When we got into position, I figured they would tell us what we needed to know.”

“How long were you in position before anything happened?” The Captain asked.

The Lieutenant continued. “We were in position for about three hours before it started. We were told a large group of the enemy was approaching the city. We were told to expect thousands to start invading the city shortly.

We all looked around at each other. No one knew what to expect. We kept waiting for someone to tell us the exercise was over. We did everything by the book. We posted lookouts in forward positions. I had three snipers posted in some of the skyscrapers on the outskirts of town. I ran potential coordinates with our artillery. We pulled together all our knowledge on urban fighting.  We were prepared and organized. Still after all of that, no one called to say job well done and we would be going back to base. So we held our positions.

When the Captain came around to inspect our positions, I thought it was over. When he started to leave I asked him when would this exercise be over?

He chewed my ass out. He said this was no exercise and we would soon be engaging the enemy.

So I thought, fine, it was all part of the exercise. I thought it was a dangerous exercise to have thousands of guys running around with live weapons. Someone could get hurt. The press would really have a field day if any civilians got injured. I ordered the men to exercise caution so they didn’t hurt someone.

I got a report from one of our snipers. He was laughing. I asked him what the hell was so funny. He said it looked like a Halloween parade coming down the interstate. He asked me if I ever went to a zombie fest. I asked him what the hell was a zombie fest? He said it was when everyone dressed up as zombies and staggered around the city. He said it was usually done at night. He said he used his scope to check out some of the zombies and said they had some really good costumes.

It was October. A Halloween parade made sense. I couldn’t figure out why the brass would schedule an exercise on the same day as a parade. I figured someone had screwed up.”

“Yea someone really screwed up. Continue Lieutenant.” The Captain said.

“After chewing my ass out, I wasn’t going to call the Captain. I was hoping the parade would be directed around us.

So we maintained our positions.

Twenty minutes later the parade started down our street. They were moaning and groaning like wild animals. The men started laughing. As the parade got closer the men started to get nervous, not sure what they were supposed to do with this parade of idiots.

They started to look to me for instructions on what to do. I wasn’t going to order them to shoot at these assholes. It was ridiculous. The whole situation was insane. Surely they weren’t expecting us to fire into a crowd of trick or treaters. So I decided before things got out of hand I had to do something. I ordered the men to move up on the street and form a barricade and divert the idiots down a side street and away from the street where we were deployed.

I watched them moving closer to our positions. I had to agree with my sniper, they had excellent zombie costumes. The smell was gross as hell. I figured they all must have bought a can of ode de zombie along with their costumes.

The whole situation seemed insane.

I thought the whole premise of this exercise was insane. It dawned on me that they probably gave us all blanks instead of live ammo. I figured that had to be it. This had to be the wildest evaluation exercise in the history of the Marines. The insanity of it all started to piss me off.

The parade got closer to the men blocking the streets. I expected the idiots to turn and go down the side street we left open and move on. But the mob started to push into the men. I was ready to order the men to fire their weapons into the air as a warning.  Before I could give the order I saw the men begin to fall. Blood was flying everywhere. I saw them get their arms ripped off. The bastards started to grab the men and bite them. Blood splattered and pieces of flesh were everywhere.”

The Lieutenant stopped to compose himself. “The whole thing was insane. I ordered the men to defend themselves. They began firing into the crowd. The machine guns cut the figures in the first three layers of the mob in half.

The half creatures still struggled to push forward. None of us could believe what we saw. This was real!

The men unloaded their weapons into the mass of creatures coming at them. They went down but most of them didn’t stop moving and thousands more pushed in to replace the ones that had fallen.

We reloaded and fired over and over, but they didn’t stop. Soon our ammo was gone and our position was over run. They were all over us, behind us pressing on into town. I contacted our snipers and look outs. They said as far as they could see through their scopes, more were coming.

I gave them coordinates for a meeting point. I ordered the men to retreat so we could regroup.

We worked our way through the city. You could hear gun fire and explosions all through the city.

After an hour all you could hear was that eerie groaning.

I tried to contact the base, but all I could reach was some low level Private who said he was told to tell anyone that called back into base to hold their positions.

There were no positions to hold.

I tried to gather the men that had survived and work our way to the outskirts of town. I lost most of my men in town. I lost most of the rest trying to get to the outskirts.