I stared at him for a long time, saying nothing. I had always known my upbringing was unique; the training I had received from Dad, Mike, Blake and Tyrel was something most people never experienced. But it had never dawned on me until that moment just how different it made me. How dangerous.
I had been trained from the age of five to be a super soldier.
I could shoot as well as any Special Forces operator. I was as good a sniper as anything the Marine Corps had ever produced. I had trained for over ten years in jiu jitsu, boxing, wrestling, krav maga, and various weapons styles. Room entries and cover and concealment and combat tactics were as familiar to me as tying my shoes. Not to mention my knowledge of fieldcraft, lock picking, explosives, and a host of other skills.
If I were looking for someone to exploit, I’d be pretty damned high on my list.
Dad saw understanding register on my face and let go of my forearm. “Do you see now, son? You have to be careful. Never reveal more about yourself than absolutely necessary. Do what you have to do to stay alive, but tell no one about your past. Understood?”
“All right,” I said. “I get it, Dad. I really do.”
He stared at me searchingly, and after a few seconds he said, “I believe you.”
The morning sun was bright over his shoulder when I looked at him. “Really?”
“Yes. Because I know you, son, and I can read you like a book.” He leaned closer, lowering his voice.
“And I can see how scared you are.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Where highways 281 and 290 came together outside of Austin, the northbound lanes were a snarled mess of cars and corpses.
When the people fleeing the capital of Texas realized they weren’t getting anywhere, they jumped the median and tried to use the southbound lanes to escape. The result was a wide, stalled parking lot that spilled out onto the shoulder for dozens of yards in every direction. At some point the infected had shown up, and it was all over but the dying.
I was out on point with Dad, Mike, Blake, and a couple of combat engineers when we made the discovery. Tyrel had stayed behind due to his injuries, along with Sophia, Lauren, Lance, and Lola.
Morgan had decided the best use of our skills was to have us scout the way ahead. We surveyed the scene, then radioed back to the convoy. One of Morgan’s senior sergeants acknowledged and told us to stand by. Shortly thereafter, the Bradleys, a couple of HEMTTs, and the Abrams showed up, along with a dozen troops in a deuce-and-a-half in case infantry support was needed.
After they arrived, Morgan got on the radio and asked us to draw away as many infected as we could while his people worked to clear the road. The rest of the day consisted of my group off-roading in our Humvees and leading the undead around in circles while the troops dragged dead bodies from vehicles, put transmissions in neutral, and stood clear as the heavy armor pushed wrecks aside.
By nightfall, we had made it all of thirty miles and the infected had bitten four troops. But we had reached a point where we could use side roads to parallel the highway, which would make for faster transit. Despite the long, hot hours the convoy had just endured, Captain Morgan elected to press on a few hours into the night.
Tired as we were, no one argued. The moans of the San Antonio horde were close enough to carry to us on the wind.
The four bitten soldiers were kept under observation in the back of a truck for a couple of hours until it became clear their condition would not improve. When the medics gave their final diagnosis, Morgan ordered the convoy to a halt and the men were led out of sight under heavy guard. Three of them looked resigned to their fate, stumbling along and convulsing in the throes of their infection. The fourth, however, struggled and screamed and kicked and begged his brothers in arms to let him go, to let him run for it and take his chances. His words fell on deaf ears.
His voice sounded familiar, so before he was out of sight, I raised my scope to get a better look.
It was Johansen.
While I had not enjoyed my first meeting with the man, I did not wish him to die as one of the infected. Come to think of it, I would not have wished that on anyone.
About a hundred other people and I, including the survivors from the RV encampment, watched in silence as the doomed men were led away. Johansen’s increasingly panicked screams carried to us over the crest of a hill until the boom of a pistol echoed through the woods.
The shouting stopped.
Seconds later, there were three near-simultaneous cracks. Shortly thereafter, a few men lowered a small bucket loader from the back of a HEMTT and drove it in the direction of the shots. Half an hour later, their work finished, they returned to the convoy, faces drawn and somber. No one tried to speak to them. Morgan came over the radio in a quiet voice and ordered to convoy to get under way.
*****
We couldn’t follow 281 forever, so we cut toward Highway 16 and used any flat, wide, unobstructed stretch of ground we could find to take us north until we were within four miles of Interstate 20.
Along the way, we found a gas station with diesel tanks that had not been looted, allowing us to refuel and restock our gerry cans and fuel barrels as well as supplement our meager provisions. Near where we stopped, a side road led into a heavily wooded region away from any significantly populated areas. According to the map, there was a large natural pond nearby. Morgan’s senior sergeant ordered a HEMTT and a few Humvees to break off and get to work purifying as much of that water as they could. Morgan himself radioed us to wait for him and approached our position in his command vehicle.
“Got a mission for you,” he said as he pulled alongside.
“Let me guess,” Blake called back. “Recon I-20, see what we’re up against.”
“You are a man of impeccable logic.”
Dad exchanged a look with his old friend, then said, “Can do. But we’ll need to refuel first.”
Morgan motioned to his driver. “Not a problem.”
After topping off the tanks, we headed north toward the interstate. The section of highway we approached lay in the middle of a steep, broad V that had once been a hill. There were many such places along the interstate where the highway builders had blasted through the landscape in order to keep the road nice and straight. The resulting formation allowed us to park the vehicles at the base of the hill and approach the summit on foot, staying low to avoid detection. At the top we fanned out at ten-meter intervals along the hillside and surveyed the scene through our optics.
By that point, I thought I had seen some bad things. Crossing the bridge over I-35 that flaming evening had been something out of a fevered nightmare. The City of Houston in flames in the dark red distance was a sight that would haunt me for years. The 281/290 junction had been a blood-soaked cluster-fuck of epic proportions. But when I looked down that hillside at Interstate 20, for the second time in my life, I felt a sinking, bowel-constricting panic that I had died and my soul had been damned for all eternity.
It would have taken me years to count the infected. There were cars piled on top of cars on top of even more cars. Tractor-trailers and buses and RVs and every other vehicle imaginable lay overturned and crashed and burned down to skeletal husks. The stench of corpses was a living, crawling thing that reached down my throat and closed a hand around my windpipe. Dead bodies lay everywhere, some still in their vehicles, some on top of them, some on the side of the road, still others crawling, too damaged from the infected who consumed them to mount much mobility.
Organs, limbs and bloody streaks covered every surface, stained the ground red, splattered against windshields, and lay rotting in the ditches on the side of the road. I scanned left and saw a Blackhawk helicopter crashed in the middle of traffic, tail rotor pointing skyward, the skeletal visage of the pilot slumped against his restraints. I scanned to the right and saw a vintage convertible with the top down, the driver in pieces on the ground nearby, and, to my horror, a baby seat in the back. For a moment, the baby seat looked empty, then I realized the padding was beige under the red, and that lump at the bottom was-