Jake was already mentally exhausted from being on high alert for the last twelve hours. Their initial plan of motoring up the Bay all the way to the docks north of Manhattan was ruined by the attack from atop the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The damage to one of their boats forced them ashore near Fort Hamilton. They’d attempted to seek entry into the fort, believing that it might be a good place to rest up before pushing northward, but the warning gunfire striking the ground several feet in front of Grady Harper had convinced Jake that there was no help to be found at the small Army base.
Instead, they made camp in the park, sleeping on the ground in their bivvy sacks. Jake would have preferred a house or some type of structure that they could secure, but they’d wasted too much time trying to get into the old Army base. The darkness was coming quickly and they needed to come up with a new plan for how to get up to Columbia University.
Now that they were on the ground in the city, their trip seemed to get a lot more dangerous than their original plan to take the boats all the way up the Hudson River. The crucifixes they’d seen, coupled with the raiders of the bridge, made everyone feel like they were in a hostile environment, and would not be welcomed as part of an official government relief effort.
Not that Jake blamed the people they’d spoken to in the half-day that they’d been in New York. In their eyes, the government had abandoned the city to lawlessness. They didn’t have the infected to deal with, but with limited sources of fresh food, it had quickly devolved into chaos after the first couple of weeks. He didn’t even want to imagine the hell that people must have endured over the last year, trapped in the city with no way of escape.
As they settled in for the night, Jake set a one-third/two-thirds security. At any given time, no less than one-third of the platoon was awake and on guard. He did it out of habit, something they’d done on the trip to New York when they were in the areas controlled by the infected.
It turned out to be the only thing that kept them from being completely overrun.
The thieves appeared sometime after midnight. They came from all directions, the apocalyptic version of a flash mob. The soldiers on guard duty shouted to wake the others. The men kicked out of sleeping bags, half-awake and full of fear. They brought up weapons, ready to kill anything that didn’t wear a uniform.
All along the line, Jake saw people fighting with his men. They used baseball bats, lengths of pipe, broom handles, and whatever else they could find. His men restrained themselves from firing their weapons, but there was a lot of hand-to-hand fighting. He wanted to move forward and help defend the perimeter, but Sergeant Turner’s hand on his chest restrained him.
“You need to stay here and manage the fight, sir,” the wizened NCO told him. “This is no different than a firefight. We’ll shift men where they need to go to ensure these people don’t make it through.”
The battle was over in minutes. The thieves yelled something to one another and the ones who could flee did so. Several of them did not move. Sergeant Turner’s hand knocked against his shoulder. “Looks like our SF-Ranger-Delta guy and his Iranian friend took things a little personal.”
Jake followed the platoon sergeant’s outstretched fingers to where Grady Harper and Taavi stood shoulder-to-shoulder, both crouched low, ready to fend off more attacks. In front of them lay the bulk of the unmoving attackers.
“Goddamn it,” Jake muttered and stumbled through the darkness to them. By the time he got there, both were searching the bodies. “What the hell, Harper?”
“Hey, LT,” the operator said, smiling. His teeth glowed dully in the dark night. “Just seeing if there’s any intel on these guys.”
Jake shined his flashlight on the five bodies. Dark smears of blood oozed from each of them. “What did you do?”
“We defended our position against people who would have slit our throats in the darkness, brother.”
“We aren’t here to kill civilians, Harper!”
“They’d have done the same to us.” Grady straightened up and pointed angrily toward the center of their camp. “You didn’t see what we saw in their eyes since you were back there hiding out. They would have killed every one of us and not given a shit about it.”
“I was controlling the fight, Harper.”
“Whatever, dude,” the former Green Beret muttered. “Call it what you want, but me and Taavi made a battlefield decision. And we saved lives. Probably yours.”
The grumbling of the men around them made Jake consider his next words carefully. The soldiers agreed with Harper. They’d already gone AWOL from the US Army at Fort Bliss to come on this mission. To suggest that they’d killed men in cold blood would likely send the group over the edge once more.
“As the platoon leader, I kept an eye on the lines and shifted soldiers where they were needed in case one section was going to be overrun. I’m not questioning your actions, Harper. I wouldn’t do that with any of my men. But I am trying to remind you that we need to exercise restraint—when we can. We’re down to thirty-seven men. Thirty-seven against ten million are terrible odds. If there are any bookies left in Vegas, they’ll take those all day long and twice on Sunday. We can’t turn the population against us.”
“Those guys were gonna kill us and take our shit, LT.”
“I get it—”
Sergeant Turner cut in. “What
