Chapter Twenty Three

I headed out of the bus to join the others where they'd lined up in front of White. It was a loose formation with none of the stiffness demanded by my instructors at the boot camp. White gave me a nod, gesturing for me to join the end of the line next to Carver.

"Good job out there," Doc said, leaning out of the line to look at me. "I was impressed how you handled the civilians in the cellar."

"What do you mean?" White asked. "What happened?"

Doc was only too happy to tell her. "According to the brat who stayed behind, some of the civilians were looking for a scapegoat. Grumpy just stared at them like they were fucking idiots until one of them started screaming in Grumpy's face like a wannabe drill sergeant. Grumpy headbutted him and you should have seen their faces when the guy went down. Grumpy instantly went from being a nobody to being a somebody. None of them gave him any shit after that."

White looked at me for an explanation and I shrugged. "The guy assaulted me and my hands were full making sure no one grabbed my rifle, so I put some distance between us using the only thing I had."

"He hit you?" White asked, her expression turning stony.

I shook my head and smirked. "The assault was chemical warfare. He tried to gas me with his breath."

Next to me, Carver snorted out a laugh and clapped me on the shoulder. "Good one."

I was pretty pleased with myself until Overwatch—Sergeant James—and another man I didn't remember meeting joined us next to the billet bus. The frown on their faces wiped the smile from mine.

"At ease," he said, even though no one snapped to attention or tried to salute. "Well, gentlemen, you put in a solid eight hours of work and two hours of overtime, evacuated twenty survivors, and brought back enough bacon we'll be having it for breakfast the next three days. Good work. That said, Bryant—"

I stiffened as all eyes turned to me.

"Do you want to tell me how Matthew Williams managed to get left behind during the evacuation of the brewery?"

I winced. "I thought I had the only key to the bathroom holding the lich, so I didn't check it before escorting everyone out. He must have sneaked in using a spare key he found in the office while I was focused on getting everyone sober and ready to move."

"That's on me," Doc said, raising his hand to draw the Sergeant's ire in his direction. "I did the final sweep while Bryant held the comm lines open at the door. I thought he had the only key, too, so I didn't think to check the bathroom again."

James sighed. "Since you had reason to believe the room had already been secured, I'll hold off on the lecture. Bryant, in the future you should always take a headcount, then double and triple-check it to keep track when you're handling a large group."

He stared at me until I nodded to acknowledge I got the message.

"We haven't been formally introduced," the man beside James interjected with a gentle smile. I'd thought he was just an assistant—he had that kind of look to him—until I heard his voice.

"D-Nav," I said in surprise. I held out my hand to shake his, but he shook his head in refusal and left me hanging.

"No offense," he said as I backed off. "I can't take any chances since we still don't know the minimum level of contact needed to transmit infection. I am happy to meet you, though. For the record, I'm Staff Sergeant Oscar Porelli. Drone Navigation is just my job."

"And he does it well," James praised, jumping in again. "Does anyone have anything they'd like to report? Any questions or concerns?"

"I have a question," Grady replied. "When are we going to move from scouting to actually clearing the damn city? The horde numbers are only going to increase as more time passes."

James straightened his back as if the question raised a topic he'd wanted to cover. "Soon," he said. "Possibly as early as this week, according to Command. The numbers of apes and runners have dropped off significantly since we moved into the area and it's believed the ones you tagged today might have been the last."

"What's the tentative SOP?" White asked.

"The finer details are still being hashed out by command, but I can tell you our unit won't be included. Our primary mission will remain scouting. Cleanup units are being formed as we speak. The main holdup is how to manage the actual incineration process. The initial idea was to commandeer a funeral home and incinerate them one at a time, but that would take too long considering the numbers we're seeing. The most recent plan involves constructing a pit trap and funneling the undead into it, but we'd have to build an incinerator large enough to keep them from piling up. At the moment, we don't have the resources for that, although the boys on the West Coast are working on something."

"Does it have to be fire?" I found myself asking. Once again, every eye turned toward me. "You said cold kills them, too. Can't we mist them with liquid nitrogen? Wouldn't that stop them from moving long enough to toss their remains in something mobile like a garbage truck?" I didn't mention using the garbage truck to smash them into pieces. It was already implied.

James seemed to give my idea serious consideration. "What would you do once the truck is full? We don't want wildlife carrying off any pieces or any of the unfrozen pieces to crawl off on their own, so dropping them off at the local dump isn't an option."

"Does Memphis have a covered stadium? That'd keep wildlife out and if you turned on the air conditioners so it's cold enough, the pieces would stay inanimate. Wouldn't they?"

Everyone else grabbed hold of my idea and offered their own suggestions.

"We could raid the hospitals for lab waste incinerators. Then you'd just need someone to shovel the pieces in."

"We'd still need to funnel them together so we're not wasting liquid nitrogen. If there's an area with a lot of cargo containers we could move around, that'd be the easiest to work with."

"You're assuming we have enough liquid nitrogen to work with. We'd need to send out a team to find out how much is available in the city and whether we'd need to get a supply drop to supplement."

"If we're going with alternative routes, we should look into acids, too. Why not just drop them in a big vat of the shit and close the lid once we're done?"

James interrupted before we could get too far ahead of ourselves. "Those are all good ideas," he said over us, making us go quiet. "I'll forward your input up the chain and see what response they get, but be aware the final decision will depend on what resources we can make work with the least amount of manpower—preferably something we can automate and will continue working even after we've left. We'll have to wait and see what that will be."

He waited a moment to see if anyone had anything to say about that. When no one spoke up, he prompted, "Are there any other questions or concerns I need to know about?"

When no one said anything, I spoke up again, although I was more hesitant this time. "Would it be a problem if I called my dad to let him know I'm still alive? I wasn't planning on it since he'd have put himself in danger to come get me, but I was thinking it should be okay now. He won't come looking if I tell him I enlisted."

James and Oscar both stared at me with a strangely penetrating gaze. It was Oscar who answered. "Contacting your family is permitted, but you can't tell them anything about where you are or what Unit you're with. If they ask, just tell them it's classified. Information about lich and immunes are currently being disseminated to the public in the Quarantine States, so there should be no problem with talking about that. I just hope you're prepared if they don't take the news well, especially when they realize it might be years before you can safely meet in person again."

"Do I tell them I joined the Army or the Marines or something else?" I asked.

"Gloss over it for now and just use the generic term 'military'. They'll be too distracted to notice this time around. You can give them more details once they begin the volunteer draft, which should be any day now. After that, the President will announce the formation of ZED, and you'll be free to talk about your work and the Unit you're in, although you should always consider details about your location and specific activities to be classified."

"If that's all, gentlemen, we have an appointment with SATCOM," Sergeant James interjected. His tone made it clear he didn't have time for further questions. "Finish decontaminating your gear and prepare for another sortie at 0400 hours. I'll have more details about your mission at that time."