as the ice behind us literally began to explode under an as yet undetermined assault.
“Mom? Dad?” Travis asked as he skated next to us. “What’s going on?”
“Go!” I yelled to him. “Get to shore and get your boots on as fast as possible, we’ll be there in a minute.”
“Mom?” He asked.
Tracy nodded, holding on to the terror that was building up within in her. Not wanting her son to see it.
Travis had made it to shore and was nearly done putting his boots on when we finally huffed and puffed our way to shore. Walking on ice is already a slippery proposition, pun intended. But when you’re running because your life depends on it, it becomes infuriatingly difficult to gain any sort of momentum.
We turned to watch as one more hummer became forever locked in a watery graveyard. One of the two occupants barely escaped only to succumb moments later when another fissure opened up in front of him. I wanted to help but there wasn’t anything to be done. The remaining hummers pulled onto shore. They must have felt what I did because each passenger manned the mounted .50 cal sub-machinegun. Tense glances were passed around as we all wondered what in the hell was going on.
“Dad.” Travis said grabbing my arm and pointing off into the distance.
I could barely make out a glint of reflective light. I walked up to the closest hummer.
“Could I see your glasses?” I asked a tense looking Lance Corporal seated behind the wheel. I hoped my use of combat vernacular would aid in my question.
“Sure, whatever.” He said never taking his eyes off of the water line. He pointed into the back storage compartment.
“Thanks.” I said as I grabbed the binoculars. “Sweet Jesus!” I said as I pulled the binoculars down from my eyes and handed them to Trav. “Sorry God.” I mumbled. It was something I did every time I took the Lord’s name in vain, Old Catholic habits die hard. “Time to go.” As I grabbed the binoculars back and threw them back into the hummer. “Lance Corporal.” He didn’t move.
“Yeah, yeah.” He said thinking I was going to thank him for the binoculars.
“Lance Corporal!” I yelled.
He finally spared me a glance.
“Close to the shoreline on your left, use the binoculars.”
He held the binoculars up. “Sweet Jesus.”
“Yeah I thought the same thing, you Catholic?”
“What? You need to get out of here. Lutheran by the way” he said, getting out of the hummer to warn his fellow Marines.
“Yup, thought the same thing about getting out of here. Wouldn’t have taken you for a Lutheran.”
“Mike, what the hell is that thing?” Tracy asked, squinting her eyes and shielding them from the majority of snow blindness to see.
“Not a hundred percent sure, mind you, but Terex 5500 comes to mind.” I said grabbing her arm and rushing her back towards our barracks.
“A what?” She said turning back to get a better view of a rapidly approaching monstrosity.
“Oh just one of the largest dump trucks ever created on the good old planet Earth.”
“A dump truck? Big deal.” Tracy said digging her heels in and stopping our forward momentum.
“”I really don’t think you’re getting it. That thing is probably 30 feet tall and 50 feet long and can haul 100’s of tons of dirt. But I’ve got a pretty bad feeling that thing’s payload doesn’t involve dirt, only things that should be buried in it.”
Tracy was a little slow on the uptake, but quick to realize the horror. “There’s zombies in that thing?” She asked.
“That would be my guess.”
“Who the hell is driving it? Not the zombies right?”
Now at this point did it really matter who was driving? I guess there would be a higher threshold of fear if zombies had learned how to drive. The only thing that could be potentially worse would be a drunk Asian woman on her cell phone. The most likely answer though to this equation involved an old friend, and I had a significant throbbing in my shoulder to prove it.
“Durgan.” I said. The name came out flat, but it was charged with emotion. He had a lot to atone for and I was feeling in a judicial mood.
Tracy nearly pulled me over as she grabbed my arm and started to run back to grab everything we could and get out while the getting was possible. I had my doubts we’d be in time. Those trucks could travel somewhere in the 40 mph range, granted not on ice. But that thing was still moving at a good clip. We were just getting to the front door of our quarters when I realized a significant problem.
“Hon, you go on up and get everything ready. I will be right back.”
“Mike what are you doing?” Tracy asked with concern.
“I have to get something.”
“Could you be a little more vague?”
“I could but I don’t have time. Trust me I’ll be back in about twenty minutes, just have everything we can carry ready to go.”
“Mike I hate when you do this shit.” Tracy said. I thought she might put up more of a fight but was super- thankful she didn’t.
I kissed her before she wheeled away and up to our temporary home.
I was headed to the base commissary, which is basically just a stripped down super market. I was halfway through my ten minute run there when the battle for Camp Custer began. I hadn’t heard this much munitions being expended since my days in Iraq. No scratch that, this was worse, in Iraq there was a controlled rate of fire. Acquire target, fire, reacquire, fire. This was frenetic, panicked, blind dispensing of lead hoping to seek a target. I know I was placing human emotions where they didn’t belong but I would swear there was almost an anguish to this blitzkrieg. Mankind was desperately trying to keep a toehold here in an increasingly difficult world. Someone or something was doing its best to terminate that germ of humanity before it could put down roots.
Helicopters whipped past me heading towards the front of the base, not the back. Shit, apparently there was more than just the attack at the beach.
The ground under my feet was rumbling like the world had just eaten the largest burrito ever produced and now a killer case of indigestion was setting in. M1A1 Abrams tanks rambled past me going close to 50 miles an hour. God save anyone that got in their way. Nope I take that back, FUCK whoever gets in their way.
“GO!” I screamed. “Get those bastards!” Patriotic pride swelled up in me. If I thought I could have jumped on one of those tanks without getting my arm ripped off I might have done it. A young gunner, couldn’t have been more than 19, spared me a glance, the fear in his eyes brought me back to center. ‘Relax Talbot get what you need and get to where you need to be.’ The distinctive sound of missiles being fired and exploding gave me hope. Not much on this planet can survive the hell fire that is an Apache attack helicopter, but then again this wasn’t a conventional enemy.
As I approached the store I could feel what hearing I had left begin to slide further down the scale. I’d never be able to hear those stupid tones again at my next hearing test. The gunfire had increased, how that was possible was beyond my scope. I immediately found what I was looking for and just as quickly regretted my decision. Whatever was happening outside was coming to a crescendo and I was still a good 15 minutes from where I needed to be. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid.’
Too late to question myself now. I grabbed what I needed and hoped that it was fully charged. Outside the store the Gods deigned to shine down on me. A lone hummer stood sentinel in the parking lot. I figured whoever owned it was busy elsewhere. I opened up the rear hatch and with a concerted effort and some help from an elderly man who was stocking up on Similac, no clue why, we placed my ill-gotten booty into my ill-gotten booty. I remembered the last time I had ‘borrowed’ a military vehicle. Damn near got me a prison sentence. I was pretty certain that wasn’t going to be the case this time.
I shut the hatch and turned back to the store; the earth was still rumbling like Godzilla was laying waste to the Japanese countryside. I had to know, I had to look back at Sodom and Gomorrah, it’s who I am. I walked to the far corner of the parking lot so that I could look past the store and get a decent view of the front of the base. It was singularly one of the worst decisions I had made thus far in my life that was rapidly losing precious moments of
