“Don’t look like mindless beasts to me,” Ace said.
Dohi snorted out a puff of misty air. “It’s not the bears I’m worried about. It’s whoever or whatever has brought all of them here.”
***
“Bet you thought you could get rid of me, huh, Temper?” said Sergeant Candace Ruckley.
“Nah, after everything I’ve seen you go through, I know better than that,” Timothy said. “And honestly, I appreciate you letting me join your team. I know I didn’t exactly follow your orders in the field.”
“Yeah, but you learned how to handle yourself and kept my ass alive.” She gave him a playful punch to the arm. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Thanks.”
Sitting in the back of a moving Humvee, he checked over his M4A1 rifle and pulled on its sling to ensure everything was secure. Tonight was his first official mission as an enlisted soldier in the Allied States Army. Training in Galveston had only lasted a few days, but Beckham and Horn had agreed the experience he had in the field was even better preparation.
They are short on soldiers, he thought.
Most everyone was dead or injured like Ruckley.
She rubbed her healing arm. Her standard issue ACU-jacket covered the bandages wrapped around the stitches tracing up her biceps.
“How’s that feeling?” Timothy asked.
“Fine,” she said. “Infection is gone.”
Timothy wondered if she should even be on a mission out here. If the outpost doctors weren’t already stretched so thin, worried about patients in worse shape than her, they might’ve even forced her to stay behind. But Timothy had learned that Ruckley, like him, wasn’t the type of soldier who sat on the sidelines. She had sweet-talked her way straight out of the hospital and while she couldn’t carry an M4, she still gripped an M9.
“Closing in on our target, Sarge,” said Corporal Boyd. The middle-aged man with sharp features drove the Humvee with his eyes glued to the road. He had served in the defensive forces of Outpost Chattanooga before the Tennessee town had been overwhelmed by Variant forces.
“Locked and loaded, and ready to go,” Corporal Mark Wong said. The Asian-American man was a Houston native who had volunteered to join the scouting mission given his knowledge of the area.
“Good,” Ruckley said. “This should be routine. We go in quiet for recon.”
“What are we looking for?” Boyd asked. “Couple of gators? Bunch of empty houses?”
“Hopefully more of the latter and none of the former,” Ruckley said. “The SDS equipment Captain Beckham and those engineers set up haven’t detected any Variants tunneling, but Northside units reported straggler Variant activity just outside the I-610 loop.”
“That’s a little too close to the outpost for my comfort,” Wong said.
“Then hopefully all we see are gators,” Ruckley said. “Maybe we can make some good gator fritters if someone’s got a decent recipe.”
Timothy looked at Wong.
Wong laughed. “What, Temper, you think just because I’m from the south I eat gator? How about you, Boyd?”
“Only time I touched it was when I was in New Orleans,” Boyd said, downshifting as they pulled off the empty highway and into a neighborhood. “Kinda tasted like chicken.”
“Really?” Timothy asked.
“Well, like really fatty chicken. Not my favorite, but not bad.”
Boyd turned the Humvee down a suburban street lined with dark houses, drawing closer to their target. All the yards were covered in wild flowers and tall grass.
“Almost there,” he reported.
“Just remember, the beasts out here might be nothing but normal, dumb Variants, but when they’re hungry, they’re desperate, and we’re the snacks,” Ruckley said.
Wong leaned forward in his seat and clapped Boyd on the shoulder. “Some of us are more than just snacks.”
“Not going to let a Variant get close to me,” Boyd said, slowing the Humvee as they entered a neighborhood. “You know how fast you need to be to outrun a hungry Variant?”
Wong rolled his eyes.
“How about you, Private Temper?” Boyd asked.
“Don’t have any idea. I shoot them.”
Boyd laughed. “Good answer. But the real answer is you don’t have to be fast. You just have to run faster than your buddy. And I happen to know Wong is slow as shit.”
The Humvee slowed in front of a house with broken windows.
“All right, boys, get your shit together, because it’s serious from here on out,” Ruckley said. “Remember, recon only. Got it?”
“Yes, Sarge,” Timothy said.
Boyd and Wong each nodded.
The humor they used to mask the fear and tension disappeared.
Ruckley opened her door first and slipped out into the night. Boyd and Wong went next, followed by Timothy. Each flipped down their night-vision goggles.
The humid night air brought with it a cool breeze. Not nearly as cold as it had been in the northeast, but Timothy still shivered. He tried to pretend it was just due to the wind, but he knew better.
Ruckley signaled for Wong to take point, and Boyd fell in on rearguard. They carried their weapons at the ready as they walked down the middle of the street. Much of the road was covered in mud, splashing under their boots.
Vegetation grew along the exteriors of the abandoned houses with mold and mildew creeping up the sides. The sight was a reminder that Houston had been built on swamps and marshland, and nature was quick to reclaim civilization.
Wong paused at a T-intersection. He gestured for them to take a left down a street where half the houses were nothing but blackened beams and a few lone walls. Trees sprouted from what had once been living rooms, showing this fire had been years ago, likely during the first war.
Wind rustled over the structures and rippled the blades of overgrown grass.
Timothy kept his rifle pressed tightly against his shoulder. While the other soldiers wanted to avoid the beasts, he wanted to find and kill them. The more dead Variants, the faster the war would be over, and then maybe he could have a life, maybe even with Tasha.
He thought of her as he walked, recalling the moments they had managed to steal away together on Galveston. Soon he would
