Alan Dale - Death Nation's Army 01 (4 page)

Delaying the inevitable.

A woman screamed and as the gates were fully open, the rounded up cattle – his friends – began to panic at what they feared for months and now faced.

He saw
her.
She was only 22. Gorgeous even in a world such as this. The man liked her. A lot. He wanted to be with her until the end.

He would be. He saw her pushed into the other cattle, joining her fellow entrees. She was bleeding from her left arm. Crying.

God damn it.

The man felt the first set of teeth wrap itself around his upper left arm and leaned with the force of the pull. Released he fell back into place, smelled the blood, his blood. He heard the chewing of flesh. His flesh.

Then another. Another. Another. Fading away, the man, saw the scrats walk forward, stumble rapidly, and giddy-up, toward his friends, the cattle.

Her. God damn it.

As the blood left him and his life with it, the man looked toward the soldier, the one who opened one gate to release another. Scrats bumped into him, walked around him, groaned and reached out toward the cattle.

Why aren’t they…

The soldier. Untouched. He looked back at the man. The man’s neck half gone in the mouth of an old lady no more than five-feet tall. Her chewing splattered blood and human secretion back into the man’s face.

God damn it.

The soldier looked at him. Fading, the man saw him. Saw him watching. Expression completely blank like he’s done this before.

He probably has.

Screams. Plenty. His friends, the cattle. The scrats made their way over to them, trying to scramble past the soldiers keeping watch, penning them in.

Flesh torn away. Bodies being tossed about. Meals made of his friends.

Her.

God damn it.

The soldiers. The soldiers simply stood, watched, seemed to wait until all cattle were claimed, branded.

Eaten.

They moved away. They went on with their jobs.

Killing us.

Untouched.

Why? Why not, them?

If he had a few more moments the man would have maybe figured out why. He may not have cared. He simply watched
her
lose her brain, her scalp pulled back, to die.

He could think no more.

God damn it…

He is a soldier. A protector of the way. One of so many who defend the integrity of what it is now meant to be.

Sandy blonde hair, blue eyes, strong build. A modern day Nazi. But this is not a simple act of throwing one particular ethnicity, religion, race into an oven to watch them die.

No.

This man. This soldier. Is indiscriminate in his movements, unrelenting in his targeting of who will die.

As are his orders.

He must stand aside and watch those with so little die so badly. He must feed those of such small influence to the conduit of eliminating such a breed.

His eyes see a little boy, maybe 10-years-old, black, get split in two by three scrats fighting for a meal. The boy’s internal organs hit the pavement to feed more scavengers. His life machinery giving continuation to the dead, allowing them a little more of shelf a life.

The Indian woman only three feet in front of him. Dying slowly. Her eyes fixed on him. Waiting for him to help, knowing he won’t, his AK-47 only needed for her. People like her. Like her, full of bite marks, more to come, losing blood, dying. She is dying to come back as a vessel of global elimination or luckily eaten to the point of death with no chance of coming back.

The soldier silently prayed for her.

And the white, fat, man, whose greasy stomach was split open and used to feed at least four or five scrats. Rotting deaths given a reprieve.

He could actually see the change in the feeding monsters. Cuts healing if only so little. Skin patching up if only barely evident.

The dead continue to go on while the living joined them.

This soldier watched as he became one member of the earth’s worst killing machine. An army with a sole purpose of cleaning the slate and wiping it out.

Basically, they were hitting the restart button.

Even though he knew he was safe from these monsters he still flinched at the sight of one only inches away. He never felt confident of his place in the food chain as long as these ghouls, these casualties of war, made contact with him.

He would be safe. They guaranteed this.

It still didn’t make the soldier feel any better.

The screams slowly died out. The chewing of meat, loud, profound, and full of rejuvenation. Each bite a little quicker than the last. Silence at the dinner table. Except the chewing.

The chewing.

The chewing.

The black boy, eyes wide, head turning left and right. A wobble, a growl. No legs to carry him, one arm left to prop his ripped torso. His hunger was already here. He was one more obstacle. One more distraction.

One more victory for the New World Order.

Looking for blood and flesh, the little dead-not dead black boy not once looked at the soldier.

Not once.

He was safe.

Safe in a world like this? So oxymoronic.

“
Major?”

A voice behind him, the soldier turned around to face one like him. An agent of this. All this. All this. A soldier.

“
Corporal Bingham.”

The younger soldier saluted and looked down at the carnage. He didn’t blink, did not waver. They were used to this by now.

God help us.

“
Major, we have swept the community. We believe we got them all gathered,” he looked at the bodies being devoured. Watching the scrats, even recognizing the few that just moments before owned a soul and wanted to eat anybody else’s. “Major London was instructed to stay back with one team to take one final sweep. He’s asked that you stay back. We have two other infantrymen that have already begun.”

The major nodded. That’s all he could do. He was a soldier meant to administer this. All of this.

The black boy still hungry, not looking at him. Not looking at the corporal.

We are safe, remember?

“
The other four choppers are loading up,” the corporal continued. “We counted 29 insurgents. Two committed suicide before we got to them. The scrats didn’t take.” He looked at the group of fed monsters slowly begin to stand, gather themselves and scatter. “Shame.”

The major nodded.

Shame?

“
There weren’t that many of those things, really,” the major told him. “They should all have gotten enough…for now.”

The corporal nodded. “Should I tell Major London you will stay back with him?”

The major. The soldier. Nodded.

Another salute and the corporal was gone looking left and right as he walked.

We may be safe but we never feel at home, do we?

The major was alone again. Only he and the shattered and torn black boy. Hungry, growling, and barely mobile. He will never stop seeking until he cannot find in time. Then his personal Hell would be over.

I envy him.

A soldier. An agent of this agenda. He is a major representing the interests of the New World Order.

Oh how interesting.

He is not a Nazi. He could never be that good of a person. He would never be able to shake the disease of his own memories.

No.

Never.

He could only try to be a soldier.

He would remain a soldier.

He only wondered what side he would end up on.

The black boy, not noticing the Major, growled, wobbled, and pulled himself forward. All the bodies remaining were almost picked clean of flesh. The others that stayed head-brain-intact were gone. Seeking. Searching. Feeding.

This was a campaign against not a particular race, religion, or political stance.

No. This was simply those who have against those who have not.

Man had begun to cannibalize himself and only the ones with a pulse avoided using their teeth. That’s what made the scrats so useful.

So useful.

Walking away from the mess of blood and bone, the major moved away, rifle off his shoulder, sweep begun.

He looked left. He glanced right. The major looked behind himself. Saw he was finally alone, if only for a moment.

“
God forgive me…”

Looking at the little black boy the major didn’t flinch. Not once at the grotesque nature of this scene. Not once. Not once.

I am used to this…

“
God help me…”

God help us all…

Helicopters in the distance, leaving, escaping the scene.

It was ob
vious to their trained eye the NWO were moving on and the sickening feeling of failure swept over them.

“
Fuck!”

She pounded the door of their reinforced black Hummer. She looked in the air, trying to see through the bars wrapped around the vehicle and across the length of the windows. They were safe inside but she knew the people they tried so hard to get to in time were not.

No. They were dead. Dead. More dead.

“
Bridjett,” the man in the front passenger seat said to her as he gazed concerned toward the woman. “Should we proceed?”

Bridgett Alexi. Long, raven-black hair, slender but sinewy build, and tight-set jaw, couldn’t think for a moment. Didn’t want to. All she wanted was a dream. A dream she could escape into and never return from. Her nightmares became her existence. She watched the helicopters fly away and take the souls she hoped to protect with them.

“
Shit.”

“
Bridjett,” the man wouldn’t look away. “What do we do?”

Bridjett turned from the window, gave the man – well muscled, short, stocky, and dirty handsome – a quick silent glance and saw the eyes looking at her from the rearview mirror.

“
Keep driving Cisco,” she told the driver, the other man, taller, Latino, beautiful.

 
Her lover.

“
You never know.”

 
Cisco nodded.

 “
Hope you are right, Bridjett,” the man in the passenger seat said to her.

 
Bridjett sighed. Closed her eyes. Praying. Hoping.

 “
I do too, Brick.”

 
Praying.

 “
I do too.”

Her name was Bridgett Alexi. Formerly she was a barista at Star Gazer Coffee outside Chicago. Now she was a major in the Dead Nations’ Army. The DNA. A collection of left behinds who decided to play modern day saviors. Remember all those missions to save starving kids in Africa?

Yeah? Well those missions became relief efforts geared toward saving the communities remaining in this world gone dead, undead, and destroyed. Those communities, left behind, as the elite, the powerful, continued to prosper. Those communities left behind to be the main course to the scrats.

Pets of the Utopias.

Bridgett was far from elite. She had been a 24-year-old barista, junior college dropout, who had no boyfriend, despite being considered damned gorgeous. She
was now left in
the world turned inside out, left to kill rotting cannibals and avoid bullets from the other side.

She performed
well in school and could have been something. Anything she put her mind to was hers for the taking. But, of course the New World Order made sure her hopes of turning around a stagnant life would die for good. Ironically, she was now someone important, someone key to this war between two worldwide armies.