The Retreat (Book 5): Crucible

  THE RETREAT

  Episode Five: Crucible

  by Stephen Knight

  with

  Craig DiLouie and Joe McKinney

  THE RETREAT, Episode #5: CRUCIBLE

  ©2018 The Retreat Series, LLC

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in the novel are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

  Cover design by Jeroen ten Berge.

  http://jeroentenberge.com/

  Published by The Retreat Series, LLC.

  www.TheRetreatSeries.com

  Sign up for Craig DiLouie’s mailing list here to be the first to hear about new releases of The Retreat.

  ONE.

  “This is the President of the Disunited States speaking. To my fellow infected Americans, I say...

  “HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW! It’s killing time!

  “But seriously, now. I want all military units under my command to make for Fort Stewart, Georgia. One of the Four Horsemen is there. I don’t know which one, and I don’t really care! But I want him or her saved from the vile Uninfected and brought somewhere safe, where I can pay my personal homage.

  “Infect all who oppose you. If you can’t infect them? Kill them! Kill any who get in your way—but get me the Horseman!

  “Do it now!

  “HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW, make the fuckers bleed!”

  TWO.

  Lee awoke to the sound of distant gurgling pipes, the whisper of air-conditioning, and the echoing thrum of far-off machinery doing whatever it had been designed to do. The darkness that enveloped him was complete, rendering his eyes essentially useless. Stevie Wonder would have a better go of seeing what lay only a foot away than he would. If he had to ever visualize what screaming into the void might look like, he faced it now.

  He lay in the darkness and listened. Nothing indicated any element of danger. The glowing dial of his watch told him it was 0423; well before his scheduled wakeup time of 0500. Just the same, he didn’t feel tired. Weary, yes...the weariness would be with him for months if not years, given what the battalion had gone through under his short command. But the mounting exhaustion that threatened to drop him in his tracks was held at bay now, for just a little longer. His XO had been right. Getting some shut-eye in an environment where he didn’t have to worry about some klown pouring a cup of infected piss on his face had been a great idea.

  But the separation from the battalion and the command staff left him feeling uneasy, unmoored. He needed to get out of the reclaimed High Point facility and make his way back to the surface, where the Fifty-Fifth was still encamped in defensive positions, waiting for the next wave of infected to attack. Lee was almost seventy feet below them, separated from the troops by a heavy blast door and tons of sculpted rock and fortified superstructure. It wasn’t right. He should be up topside, taking the same risks as they were, not lying on a rack underground where he could have a hot shower, three hots, and shit in a normal toilet as opposed to a waste bag.

  The fact of the matter was, Lee realized he still couldn’t shake the company commander mentality. In his last career arc, he was much closer to where the rubber met the road. Commanding troops, yes. But also still one of them. Now the silver oak leaves he wore conferred a separation he did not feel. He was supposed to be one of the men, but partitioned off; some great military strategist who wore the same uniform, but who was able to impartially consider combat losses an acceptable sin in order to achieve the mission. To Harry Lee, that was crazy. The troops were the oil that made the military machine run. Lose too much, and the entire contraption would seize and stop entirely.

  He needed to get back topside. He’d had his few hours of uninterrupted rest, safe and sound while allowing the men and women under his command to guard his pale white ass and keep the crazies at bay.

  It was time to get back.

  THREE.

  The battalion was bleeding out.

  Command Sergeant Major Doug Turner stood and regarded his senior noncommissioned officers from across the dented hood of his Humvee. Dawn hadn’t arrived yet, so the men were more like phantasms than soldiers, their features generally unreadable despite the slowly brightening sky to the east. He could have turned his red-lensed flashlight toward them, but there was no need. Turner knew what he’d see. Four men with over a hundred years of military experience between them bringing him nothing but a huge bag of dicks.

  “You’re sure about this?” he asked. “Weide? You sure?”

  “We didn’t just miss them, Doug. This is what the unit commanders told us, and we did our own look-see. They’re gone.”

  Turner looked at the man standing next to Weide Zhu. “Boats?”

  First Sergeant Boats shrugged slightly, the motion barely visible in the inky darkness. He held his trusty Remington 870 tactical shotgun in both hands. “What can I say? Shit’s for real.”

  “It’s been happening for a while,” Master Sergeant Riggs said. “It was just ones and twos before, and we couldn’t be sure they weren’t KIA during all the contacts we’ve been through. But now? We’re pretty sure.”

  “After everyone discovered the president was a klown, more Joes starting beating feet,” Sergeant First Class McAllister said. “To tell the truth, I’d probably do the same thing if my family wasn’t here. Knowing the senior leadership of the country is throwing in with the goblins is enough to make me wanna say ‘fuck you’ to all of you guys.”

  Turner turned his flashlight back to the handwritten list the soldiers had delivered to him only a few minutes ago. He regarded the names there, all written out in Boats’s impeccable block script. And at the bottom, the tally had been totaled.

  “So you’re telling me that in four or five days, over sixty troops have deserted the battalion, and taken all their gear with them.” It wasn’t a question. Turner had felt the battalion’s strength seeping away himself, a kind of queer foreboding that resonated in his bones. That his bully boys had brought him evidence of the dissolution shouldn’t have been surprising, but Turner still felt like he’d been gut-punched. Army Joes were only men, and men grew tired and worn out under continuous stress. But lightfighters were a different breed. They should have been able to shrug it off. Sure, they’d bitch—all troops bitched, it was a prerequisite. But to actually desert?

  “Yeah, but only after helping themselves to extra ammo and other stores,” Riggs said. “Didn’t bother with any vehicles, though. Lots of civilian transport around that’s higher grade.”

  “Don’t sweat it, Doug,” Boats said. “They’re probably congregating around the nearest Cadillac dealership now, bogarting all the Escalades they can get their hands on so they can go grab their stripper girlfriends. Should be easy to find ’em.”

  Weide stirred. When he spoke, there was no bantering tone to this voice. He was all business. “Yeah, okay. This is where we are, Sarmajor. The longer we stay here, the more we’ll bleed out. When we move out, there’ll be less inclination for the boys and girls to desert. They’ll be too fucking busy to think about it. Right now, we’re in control of this area, and the klowns can’t fuck with us. It’s easier for Joes to go over the fence. Out on the road, though, that’s a different matter.”

  “And we have about sixty fewer guns than we did on Monday. I’m not reading that as a positive on my quad chart,” Riggs said. “Fuck, maybe I’ll desert, too.”

  “Would you? Please?” Boats said.

  “Blow me, Boats. You were in the Coast Guard, I’m sure you’re awesome at it.”

  “How do you think I became the richest man in the entire regiment, sweet cheeks?”

  “You got all thes
e numbers from each unit commander?” Turner asked, looking at Weide. Losing sixty or so guns in around a week’s time was a serious issue. The battalion was already well understrength from being hit repeatedly by the crazies as the unit wended its way southward from its original duty position at Boston.

  “Yeah. And if not from them, from the senior NCOs.” Weide paused. “Some of the guys said they reported it up to headquarters.”

  “They did? To who?”

  “To the XO.” The way he said the position told Turner Weide didn’t think much about Major Walker, the battalion’s executive officer. Turner himself didn’t necessarily disagree, seeing as he’d been working with Walker pretty much full-time since the major had arrived at the battalion, but that wasn’t important now. What was important was if Walker hadn’t notified the colonel of the manpower situation.

  “I’ll tell Lee,” Turner said, folding up the list and placing it in one of his pockets.

  “Yeah, somebody sure should,” Boats said, “because it seems Major Buddy Fucker might not have.”

  “I get it, Boats. I’ll handle that. Thanks for doing the legwork, guys. Now get back to your assignments—we have what still passes for a light infantry battalion to take care of.”

  The men nodded and faded away into the inky darkness. Turner stood alone by his Humvee, wondering what the hell was going on, and wondering if Florida was an achievable goal, or just a dream not worth having.

  FOUR.

  “Sorry, Major. The guy just won’t leave, and...” The young sergeant facing Walker looked uncomfortable in the dim light of the tactical operations center trailer. “Well, he looks pretty senior.”

  “Senior?” Walker said, rubbing his eyes. They burned, as if on fire. On the road, he’d been able to keep things under control and hadn’t had to deal with too many inane interruptions—movement under fire pretty much kept things like that at bay. But in the days the battalion had been encamped surrounding the contingency site, all the normal day-to-day bugaboos had come at him full force. Usually, these things didn’t bother Walker. He was talented enough to dispatch almost every trivial issue with ease, but that was during normal peacetime operations. In the here and now, where savage lunatics ran the world, nothing was mundane. Every complaint, hiccup, and fuckup had to be looked at long and hard to ensure it wouldn’t come back and bite the battalion—or more importantly, him—in the ass.

  And now, one of the civilians the battalion had been nursemaiding wanted to speak with him. Not Lee, but him. With only three hours sleep under his belt, the last thing Walker wanted was to hear another list of grievances from someone who should be damned thankful he’d been saved by the battalion.

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. “Definitely senior.”

  “Define senior, if you don’t mind?”

  “Like an O-6.”

  Walker blinked. “I’m sorry. A colonel?” He had to stop himself from asking A real colonel? “I thought you said he was a civilian?”

  “Yes, sir. He is, or at least he’s dressed like one. But, uh, he has command authority, you know what I mean?”

  Walker rubbed his chin. It was bristly; shaving was no longer high on his list of priorities. “What does he want?”

  The soldier shrugged beneath all his battle rattle. “You could ask him yourself, sir.”

  Walker sighed and looked around the TOC. The generators that hummed outside kept it fully illuminated, and even though there were no operations underway other than keeping track of patrols, it was fully staffed. Lots of listening ears, and Walker decided he would prefer to keep the conversation more private.

  “I’ll meet him outside,” he told the sergeant. “I don’t want any non-military in here.”

  The sergeant nodded. “Your call, sir. I’ll take you to him.”

  Taking Walker to the man who wanted to meet him involved turning and opening the trailer door beyond them which led outside. Once the sergeant had stepped through the opening and alighted on the ground, Walker could see the individual who wanted an audience with him. He was a tall man, rangy and a bit raw-boned in the light that spilled out of the TOC—the blackout curtains hadn’t been dropped, but the day beyond was getting brighter so it didn’t really matter. The man was dressed in faded jeans and a navy blue T-shirt that revealed a substantial musculature. Despite the fact his hair was mostly gray and going white at the temples, he was in good shape. Walker assessed his age to be around sixty or so.

  And sure enough, something in his bearing told Walker this was a man not to be fucked with.

  “Sir, you wanted to see me? I’m Major Walker, battalion exec—”

  “Walker, you realize your unit has a desertion problem?” the man asked.

  Walker blinked. The question had stopped him cold, and worse, it made the sergeant who had led the man right to him turn and look at Walker quizzically. Walker turned to the man and pointed into the distance.

  “Sergeant, you are dismissed,” he said. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Sure thing, sir.” The soldier adjusted the set of his M4 and turned on his heel, marching off into the gloom. Walker sighed and turned back to the older man, confronting him. There was no deference to his posture, no indication that Walker’s rank or the uniform he wore held any sway. That worried him. While he hadn’t met many of the civilians under the battalion’s protection, he had met some, and they’d always had an air of gratitude about them. The man before him seemed to want a piece of Walker’s ass, and that worried him.

  “Sir, can you identify yourself?”

  “Kief Tackaberry. Former commander of the Seventh Light aviation brigade. As in, Colonel Kief Tackaberry. Lightfighter, just like you.”

  Walker blinked again. “Ah...Seventh Light...weren’t they inactivated?” He struggled to recall the exact information about the old division. He felt it had been based out of Fort Ord in California that had been forced closed during the Clinton Administration, back when Walker himself was still in high school. He did the math. If the man before him was a brigade commander back in the 1990s, then that would make him at least seventy years old.

  “It was, back in 1994,” Tackaberry affirmed. “I was the last commander of the aviation brigade. I may be old, Major, but I’m not an idiot.”

  Walker held up his hands. “Sir, maybe we can step back a bit. What is it you want, exactly?”

  “You seem to have a retention problem, Major. As XO, this should be something you’re acutely aware of.” The tall retired colonel paused for a moment, then leaned in. “You are aware of it, aren’t you?”

  As Walker struggled to formulate a reply, the battalion command sergeant major emerged from the gloom surrounding the TOC. He glanced at Tackaberry, then focused his attention on Walker.

  “Excuse me, Major. We need to have a talk,” Turner said.

  “Ah, Sergeant Major Turner. Right. Meet Colonel Tackaberry...retired lightfighter out of Fort Ord,” Walker said.

  “The sarmajor and I will get around to our introductions shortly, Walker,” Tackaberry said. “But son, I asked you a direct question, and you haven’t answered that yet.”

  “Colonel, with respect, I don’t believe I have to tell you a damned thing,” Walker shot back.

  “Really.” Tackaberry cocked his head to one side. “Okay, then. Sarmajor Turner, how many desertions have there been over the past week or so?” As he asked the question, the tall colonel spun toward Turner like an automated gun battery locking onto a target. Turner actually took a step back, then smiled like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming tractor trailer rig.

  “Sir, by my count, there have been approximately sixty desertions,” Turner said. Walker gawked at him, wondering why the command sergeant major of all people would stab him in the back.

  Tackaberry slewed his eyes back to Walker. “Major? Are you prepared to tell me your CO knows this? Because I’ve seen no effort to amp up retention, and this is a pretty serious matter.”

  “It’s being handled,
sir,” Walker said. The reply sounded lame even to him.

  Tackaberry practically whirled back to Turner. “Is this true, Sergeant Major?”

  “Ah...” Turner waffled, looking first at Walker, then back at the towering retired colonel. “Sir, I’m certain it’s being addressed—”

  “When did you find out about the retention issues, Sarmajor?”

  “Some time ago, sir,” Turner replied.

  “Exactly how long ago, Turner?” Tackaberry pressed.

  “Some...some time ago, sir,” Turner reiterated.

  “That’s a little imprecise, Sarmajor.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir, memory’s failing me right now. You give me and the major a few minutes, we can straighten it out.”

  Tackaberry grunted. “Yeah. I’ll bet. I know the lightfighter shuffle when I see it. How many years in, Sarmajor?”

  “Almost thirty now, sir. You?”

  “Had thirty-three. The Army’s changed a bit since then, but I’m not a dummy. You can go ahead and act like you don’t know what I’m talking about here, Sarmajor—I’ll take it up with your XO, here.”

  “Uh, yes sir,” Turner said.

  Tackaberry suddenly swung back to Walker. “Walker. How many years in? You promotable yet?”

  “Ah. No, sir. Just made grade about two years ago.”

  “Good. Then you’ll understand when I tell you I have twenty hard-charging shooters who want to hook up with you guys. We might be old, but we can still do everything we used to do, and we’re all senior leadership.”

  “Uh—what? Sir, I’m not sure that’s possible—”

  “I’m sorry, Major. Let me make myself clear. I’m not asking you for a God damned thing. What I’m telling you is that I’ll be addressing this with your CO directly. As in face to fucking face.” Tackaberry swung back to Turner. “Sarmajor, issues with that?”

  “No sir,” Turner said immediately.