The other truck veers away, its gunner hanging on, as the Bradley fighting vehicle crashes through a chain link fence and hurtles onto the parking lot on screaming treads. A wreath of wildflowers trembles on its metal chest like a necklace. A faded American flag waves from one of its antennae. The crew of the Technical raise their fists and whoop as the armored vehicle rushes past, its turret rotating to align the cannon for its first shot at the monster.
The men glimpse the words BOOM STICK stenciled on the side of the turret, partly erased by deep grooves in the armor, as the cannon fills the air with manmade thunder.
♦
Gum cracking, Wendy sits at the gunner’s station in the Bradley and feels the surging power of five hundred horsepower flow through the rig’s twenty-five tons. She applies gentle pressure to the joystick with her gloved hand, keeping the giant monster centered in her integrated sight unit as the cannon continues to boom.
“Target,” she says, announcing they are making solid hits. “Target.”
The tracers surge into the monster, which sags, collapses. The tracers begin to flow over it. Instead of correcting, Wendy ceases fire.
She finishes: “Target destroyed.”
“Rapid scan,” Toby says.
“Hotel Bravo identified,” Wendy answers, referring to the monster type known among their militia as horn blowers, then adds, “One.” One hundred meters.
Another of the monsters has entered the parking lot, bellowing in rage. Wendy confirms range on the RANGE-SELECT knob and that the AP LO annunciator light is illuminated on the weapons box. They’re going to fire armor-piercing rounds from the cannon at a rate of about a hundred per minute.
“Line it up,” Toby tells her, watching the thing on his optical relay.
“Wilco,” Wendy says. She pushes the joystick a little, making the turret rotate until the reticle falls center mass on the new monster on her screen.
She was once a cop and now she’s a tanker, a monster slayer. It used to be exciting. Now it’s just slaughter. Every day, she thinks, some of us get killed, some of them. It never ends.
Toby puts his ear against the instrument panel, listening to the Bradley’s beating heart. Wendy breaks from her mental routine and watches him. Armored vehicles are impervious to most children of Infection, but not malfunction.
He shakes his head. “It ain’t nothing.”
She catches the reticle drifting and feathers the joystick to stabilize it. Then she realizes the thing is moving. Galloping straight at them. She blinks sweat from her eyes, ignoring the sweltering heat inside the tank.
“One thing at a time,” Toby tells her. “Fire.”
“On the way,” Wendy responds.
She presses the trigger switch, feeling the stresses of the cannon’s recoil spread through the rig’s frame. Like Toby, she knows every inch of the rig by feel as well as sight and touch. She can tell if one of the guns is malfunctioning before the annunciator lights confirm it.
She knows when to use the coax MG and when to use the twenty-five-millimeter cannon. She knows which creatures require a high rate of fire to bring them down. She knows when to use the heavy explosive ordnance and when to use the armor piercing.
“Target,” she says with cold familiarity to the task. She remembers when firing the tank’s cannon filled her with a primitive joy, enough to make her whoop as it sent its devastating ordnance flying down range. Now Wendy and the gun are an old married couple. “Target. Target destroyed.”
“What’s wrong?” Toby asks her, sensing her mood.
“I don’t know,” she says, shrugging. “Everything?”
The radio crackles.
Sarge, this is Joe. Sherman Tully and his boys didn’t make it.
Toby glances at Wendy, who winces, but says nothing. The New Liberty Army is made up of people who do not expect to live long. Death is so commonplace, when one of them dies in the fighting, it is expected, not mourned. And yet every death weighs on her.
“Roger that,” Toby says into the comm. “What about the equipment?”
The truck’s a total write off. The gun too from what I can tell. We’re salvaging the ammo and some gas and whatever else we can.
“We’ll provide overwatch from here until you’re done,” Toby tells him.
Much appreciated.
“Then we’ll camp inside that Costco tonight.”
This is Russell, Sarge. My boys missed out on all the fun. We’ll get to work clearing the Costco.
“Fine with me,” says Toby. “Any word from Ackley? Moses Ackley, how copy?”
Moses, here.
“What’s your sitrep?”
We found a litter of their young, Tobias. You should see the yard where they built their nest. It’s covered in bones and hair. Small animals—I’m guessing dogs, mostly. Some human kids in there too from the looks of it. We killed the adults. We’re gonna torch the little brats next.
Wendy winces again. She hates the idea of killing children, even the children of monsters. But it has to be done.
“Roger that,” Toby says, and takes a deep breath. “Lebanon has been liberated.”
The men cheer over the radio. A few pop off rounds into the sky. Tonight, they will break out the whiskey and drink until oblivion.
Toby turns to study her. “Tell me what’s wrong, Wendy.”
“How’s she doing?” Wendy says, extending her arm to touch the instrument panel. She feels its pulse flow through her hand and into her arm.
“We’re going to need some real maintenance soon,” Toby says, frowning at her evasion.
“Sergeant,” Lieutenant Chase says from the back. His young face appears past Wendy’s shoulder, frowning at them. “Why are we stopping here for the night?”
“We’re stopping here because we’re done,” Toby tells him.
“You said we’d sweep through and continue on to Washington. That’s our mission.”
“Don’t worry, LT,” Toby tells him, pronouncing the word as el tee, an abbreviation for lieutenant. “The war will still be there by the time we show up.”
“From now on, I expect us to do what we agree to do,” the young officer says.
Toby’s voice becomes low and menacing. “Lieutenant, you should know by now that the NLA ain’t the regular Army, and that it follows its own impulses.”
Wendy stifles laughter. To claim the New Liberty Army follows its own impulses is an understatement, to say the least. The outfit was created by men who cannot live in the refugee camps, who have the stomach for constant slaughter, and who do not fear death. They’ve been mopping up towns all over eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania for the past three weeks. They are good at what they do. They are damaged people; they can never go back to the way things used to be. After the war, they will have to be put down like wild dogs.
Wendy does not worry about that too much. She doesn’t think the war will ever end. And if it does, she doubts any of them will live long enough to see it.
“It may not be the regular—”
“Besides,” Toby adds, “we are providing overwatch for the salvage operation. We are still in combat. Now’s not the time.”
“I just wanted to point—”
Wendy wrenches her eyes from her display and says, “Sit the fuck down, sir.”
Lieutenant Chase blinks and glares at Toby, who shrugs. “You heard the lady, sir.”
As the young officer returns to the passenger compartment to retake his seat with the squad, Toby sighs and says, “So are you going to tell me what’s eating you today?”
“Nope,” Wendy tells him.
♦
The fighters shoot out the skylights in the Costco to create smoke vents, chop up some of the empty shelves, and settle into lawn chairs around their cook fires. The beards, sunglasses, bandanas and leather make them look more like a biker convention than a military force. The women look even fiercer than the men, some of them wearing bits of armor and body paint and necklaces of ivory monster teeth. At any one time, roughly six hundred men and women to serve in the New Liberty Army. Outside, the sentries stand guard on the beds of the trucks arranged in a line in front of the store. Inside, a boom box blares an old Jimi Hendrix song, rebellious and nostalgic. The fighters swap war stories and pass around chewing tobacco and mason jars filled with grain alcohol. Franks and beans and Ramen noodles bubble in pots set over the fires, filling the store with the rich smell of camp food. The fighters play cards for hundreds of dollars looted from the cash registers. They trade toilet paper for cigarettes, chocolate bars for antacids, silver dollars for porno mags and Percocet. A man tries to sell a handful of gold wedding bands, but gets no takers. Everyone knows carrying such things around is bad luck.