Whiskey Delta – Chapter 27
“You are remembered for the rules you break.”
-Douglas MacArthur
The white-blue flame sent more sparks flying as it hit a particularly large nub in the grillwork. Standing just a few feet away, Braun kept his visor down, a precaution against the intense glare. The lovely HUD’s had come equipped with a auto-resolution system that mercifully dimmed whenever the bright light got too intense. And yet, he couldn’t help but feel incredibly bored and antsy at the moment. The beeping of the hardened laptop and the stench of the lot was beginning to get to him.
He keyed his comm. “Mill, how much longer is this going to take? We got a job to do!”
Mill didn’t speak back into the comm but raised a finger. Just one, and a polite one at that. Braun sighed and tried to martial his patience. It was a testament to his and Whitman’s welding work that they had sealed themselves in so well the night before. No Whiskeys were getting in, but at this rate, Braun feared they might not make it out before sunup.
He keyed the comm again. “Whitman, what’s our fuel status?”
“We got a good three quarters, LT,” he replied. “More than enough to get our boy and get to the LZ.”
“Yeah, about that…” Braun said, taking a second to choose his words. “Sergeant, check the nav console and tell me the range to a location in Orange County.”
Dezba came on the comm a second later. “Got a specific location, sir?”
Braun took a deep breath. “Designation follows, USMC Air Station, Sierra Echo Tango.”
He waited while Dezba punched in the name on the console and got a location. It took another second for him to figure the distance and fuel consumption.
“That’s another seventy klicks from our current position, not much of an expenditure. Why sir, we changing the dust-off coordinates?”
“Might have to.”
“Our new passengers,” Dezba said knowingly. Braun would have nodded we they standing together; but luckily, no words or gestures of confirmation were needed. There wasn’t a soul amongst them who didn’t understand that their mission had changed drastically since they had come upon their nest of friends several floors above. Nor was anyone particularly confident about bringing them with them. Even with the knowledge that they were being saved, Beaumont and his men seemed dangerously close to the edge. Kobayashi had even suggested they be sedated for the return trip. Braun had responded by saying he would consider that a final resort, but after what they saw last night, there didn’t seem to be any way around it.
Thinking of it in terms of last night was a bit of a stretch, he knew. Not a single member of his squad had slept a wink after their confrontation with the local Whiskeys. It was more of an occurrence that had happened earlier that morning. Cobb was the first to find them, but quickly radioed for assistance. It was the kind of “sensitive situation” that required the presence of someone a bit more… senior.
“What happened?” he came as soon as he arrived on scene. All of them were huddled in the same position, arms wrapped around their legs, heads to their knees. The same horrid wail was rising from them all.
“They’ve been like this since I got here,” said Cobb. “They keep howling and saying the same thing over and over.”
Braun listened in. All he could hear was the incessant moaning and wailing. Not a discernible thing at all.
“What did they say?”
Cobb stepped towards him so he could be heard over the noise. “Soon us,” he said in a low voice. “That’s what they’ve been saying over and over since I got here. ‘Soon us, soon us!’ What do you think that means.”
He kept listening to them as they rocked back and forth. A terrible feeling began to creep up on him as the familiarity of it became clear to him. The pained, rumbling noise, the distant low growl. The only thing missing was the occasional blood, curdling roar. But he didn’t imagine they were possessed of much anger at the moment.
“They think they’re turning,” he said. They’d been fighting to keep them back for weeks. Every night, the monsters came for them. Eventually, after all that time, it began to seem like their was no point in fighting them off. In their minds, they were already turning.
Crazy, he knew. Completely irrational. A sure sign that they were losing it.
“What was that, sir?”
“Nothing,” Braun said, and removed his pistol. He fired a shot up in the ceiling, and Beaumont and the others seemed to snap right out of it. All at once, they shot him a look of terror and complete awe. Now it was Cobb’s turn to yell. His visor had been up and he had barely time to plug his ears before Braun had fired.
“A little warning, sir!”
“Sorry, Private,” Braun said, then looked back to Beaumont and his men.
Strangely, they seemed to look a lot better. Nowhere near where they needed to be, but at least they weren’t rocking back and forth on their haunches and crying out for help. The monsters’ wailing was what had been infiltrating their minds, overpowering their wills and erasing all traces of their humanity. He had reasoned, correctly it seemed, that the loud thunderclap of a bullet would silence the noise in their heads. Bullets were what they used to silence the monsters, after all. It didn’t seem odd that something familiar bring them back.
After that, their only recourse was to sedate them and let them get some sleep. When morning came, they were sluggish and dull, but not apparently too panicked. Alas, he knew it was only a matter of time before they came upon another company of Whiskeys and Beaumont and his men would be tested again. If they showed any signs of reverting to their compromised state, Kobayashi would have hit them with them with a hefty dose of Diazapam again.
He had hoped there would be another way, that perhaps they would begin to feel safe once they realized his squad had them covered. In his weaker moments, he even hoped they might be able to pick up a weapons and provide a little cover of their own. But now he doubted they’d ever pick a weapon again…
Braun snapped out of it when he realized Mill had stopped cutting. The last of the welding points was clear and the piercing light of the torch snapped off. Kobayashi moved forward to help him raise the gate, and both began collecting their equipment once it was all the way up. The Stryker rolled forward a second later and stopped in the street. The ramp began to drop, letting the three of them inside.
Braun flipped up his visor and looked around the cabin. Beaumont and his companions were seated, though they didn’t appear too comfortable. Mainly, their eyes looked glassy and pained, the apparent effects of the sedatives that were slowly wearing off. Cobb and Saunders were looking ready, the hardened laptop open on her lap and beeping away noisily. He stopped by her side first.
“How’s our target doing?”
“Changed it’s position by about a click since yesterday. But he’s still in the ballpark. North by North East, four and a half clicks out. Shouldn’t take us but a few minutes to find him.”
Braun nodded and moved up ahead. Whitman and Dezba were both strapped in their seats and ready to go, the former with his hands poised on the driver’s wheel while the latter was monitoring the nav console. At the rear, Mill and Kobayashi were now loaded up and the ramp had retracted. It was time!
He slapped Whitman on the shoulder to grab his attention. “Alright, Private. Bring us about, heading north on this boulevard. We’ve got a Pappa Zulu to capture.”
