Alan Dale - Death Nation's Army 01 (7 page)

“
Yeah, I had it in control,” she confirmed, taking a step closer to the Hummer, standing over the girl.

“
You okay, Bridge?” Corrine asked.

I can’t believe it…

“
I’m great,” she lied.
This poor little girl. Thank God, they didn’t find her.

What would he have done if he had?

“
Let’s get back, it’s a long drive,” she said more to the little girl. “Let’s get safe.”

It was then when as Corrine began to guide the little girl around to their side of the van, when the child stopped cold at the last statement. Her dark eyes turned sharply to Bridjett, demanding contact. The older woman obliged and she saw the raw intensity and doubt the little girl held.

“
You don’t think we will be safe do you?”

Bridjett slowly looked to her left.
Dead scrats, bloody bits of freshly dead, stains of life in the pavement.

To the right…

More of the same, plus a decapitated head, eyes wide, once belonging to a middle-aged man, now stuck in an eternity of gore.

Back to the girl, eye contact still demanded, the child remained stoic.

“
I guess I can see why,” Bridjett acquiesced to the girl.

Corrine smirked and gently held the child by the arm and slowly, the child’s body agreed to follow even if she remained looking back over her shoulder at Bridjett until they made their way around the Hummer.

“
The kid likes you,” Cisco said as he revved up the engine.

Bridjett opened up her door behind him and got him, saying nothing. As she began to sit, Corrine and the child made their ways in from the opposite side. When they were all settled and the doors closed and locked shut, the girl sat between the two women and once again her eyes look toward Bridjett, but this time she just couldn’t answer the call. At least not yet.

The Hummer began to move back out of the Heavenly Gates and Bridjett’s gaze lingered back into the once, gated community.

After all this time…

“
Only one. One fucking survivor,” Brick said and then groaned when he realized his lack of etiquette. “Sorry, honey. I guess I have to watch my mouth around a little girl.”

The girl’s eyes never left Bridjett.

“
People say fuck all the time,” the child whispered. “I am big girl.”

All four adults made some gesture of surprise at the girl’s first words. Bridjett turned and faced her. The expression remained grim, the eyes of the girl still seeking and finally finding hers once again.

Bridjett reached forward and gently push a bang out of the girl’s face without facing any resistance.

“
No…you sure aren’t.”

“
You okay, Bridge?” Corrine asked again. “You just seem, like, well…

After all this time…

“…
like you’ve seen a ghost, Miss Alexi.”

Bridjett’s breath caught for just a moment at the comment, slightly stunned with the ironic timing of Corrine’s observation. She continued to gently touch the girl’s hair, those dark eyes taking all of her in. For some reason, despite the shock she endured, this child, found Bridjett in the darkness.

I had lost him and found her.

But, had I found him?

“
No ghost, Corrine.”

Bridjett finally broke eye contact with the girl and turned toward her window and watched as she could see the Heavenly Gates
slowly disappear into a memory.

“
Just another day at the office.”

What do I do with this?

She reached out and felt for one of the little girl’s hands and found one. Bridjett gently made a play to let her know they could hold hands if it made the child feel better.

Don’t kid yourself…it’s not just for her.

Before she could think any further about how much more fucked up her life was, she felt her hand as the little girl took a hold and held tight.

After all this time…

Bridjett wouldn’t turn to face the rest of the team for the rest of the three-hour trip, because there would be no good to come from them seeing the occasional tears that would fall as the night came and took her reflection in the window away.

Now what?

The major found his way back to the chopper they landed about a half-mile down the road from the Heavenly Gates.
They always left one off target site and out of detection just in case the DNA came sweeping in, knowing their units were on location. Of course, all these covert tactics were useless since he the DNA had figured it all out, but routine was ritual and ritual was protocol.

And protocol was God.

I guess this means God is a cannibal, since protocol includes feeding live humans to undead ones.

He noticed the two others assigned to sweep details were already at the bird, sitting on the grassy field in which it was parked. It appeared to be an old soccer field. The two seemed quite relaxed which gave the major the impression they had been here awhile. Once they heard the crunch of his steps approaching, they rose from their prone positions and leapt to attention.

The major, the solider, waved them off.

“
At ease,” he watched them relax. “You left the sweep early?”

The two men looked at each other with guilt sketched on their faces. “Yeah,” the shorter one of the two admitted. “I mean we
did
sweep, we just…we just did the shorthand version.”

“
I mean, major, you
know
how these things turn out,” the taller one added.

The superior officer looked both over, somberly nodded, and gestured toward the chopper.

“
Let’s not make it a habit,” he said. “Time to get.”

“
Where’s major London?” The shorter one asked after moments looking around behind the major standing before them.

The superior officer could only look down and shake his head, telling them the story.

“
Survivors?” the taller one guessed.

Kind of…

“
Yes, corporal.”

Both grunts muttered grievances about their loss for a moment and the major let the news sink in. They each asked if the major himself was wounded and he told them he was fine, having survived the engagement.

That’s understating what this all was.

“
Let’s get,” he motioned toward the bird after a few moments.

All three men made their way into the NWO helicopter and buckled in. The shorter man, took the pilot’s seat, got the bird’s engine fired up and went through the regiment of making sure they got off the ground and out without a hitch.

The major sat beside him and the third man in the surviving ranks sat behind them both. The taller of the two corporals kept his eyes on his team leader for just a moment, intently watching the man, concern on his face evident.

“
Major…”

No response as the major stared straight ahead.

“
Major Alexi?”

Shad Alexi, major in the army of the New World Order, snapped to at the sound of his name and turns his head slightly left to hear the subordinate out.

“
Yes, corporal?”

“
Are you okay, sir?”

Major Shad Alexi, soldier, fighter, survivor, man, brother and once someone’s son, stared straight ahead wondering how to answer a question he would have to fail to address truthfully.

Bridjett…you are still alive…

Bridjett, my sister, my hero…

Now what?

“
Same shit, different day, corporal,” Shad finally told him. “Just same shit.”

Now what’s a liar to do?

I had my shot and didn’t take it. Almost six full years later and I see that traitor. The man who turned his back on his family. Turned his back on mom, me…

Dad.

Bridjett had seen the living ghost of Shad Alexi. Living in flesh and blood and a ghost of a memory of the only person she never hated until the war began and the undead came knocking.

Now she hated him more than anyone.

Or did she?

He would never have stopped me. His gun was set. Shad could have mowed me down or at least had me taken in.

Instead Shad put a dozen bullets into the body of a fellow NWO pig. A pig just like her brother.

So there is that.

Maybe, just maybe, something could be made of it. Maybe, there was still hope to make things right.

I could have put him down. I could have killed him and he would have let me. He was owed. Dad would have understood.

Or had Bridjett and Shad’s father, his image, his memory, kept her from killing her best friend for most of her life?

That had to be it…

Things had just gotten more interesting.

For better or worse? That was the question she needed an answer to. For five years she wondered if Shad was alive. He is. Bridjett wondered if he stayed with the NWO. He had.

She wondered if she could kill him if she saw him.

As of now, she couldn’t.

Now fucking what?

“
Hey guys,” it was Corrine.

“
Yeah?” Brick answered for the rest of the others.

“
The scrats…they are still doing it, you know.” It was a rhetorical question. The beginning to a conversation no one in the DNA ever wanted to be a part of it or admit to the subject matter.

“
I saw that back there,” Cisco said. “A couple of them definitely weren’t shambling about.”

“
Yeah, almost got tore up, trying to save this little sweetheart,” Corrine looked down at their new guest and rubbed her head gently.

“
Dr. Amy says it may be the juice,” Cisco said, looking into the rearview mirror at Bridjett said.

“
Yeah, well I didn’t say anything,” Bridjett offered even if it was a bit too quick.

Cisco eyed her suspiciously for a moment and appeared to shake something out of his head. Maybe he thought of pushing it further but changed his mind.

Good boy. Especially if you ever want to get laid again.

“
Point is…” Corrine began. “I don’t feel comfortable seeing a fast one here, a slow one there, an even faster one there. Their reflexes vary in terms of proficiency. It’s….”

“
Creepy? Scary?” Cisco guessed.

“
Unnerving,” Bridjett said, still looking out the window and the other three went still. Unnerving. Exactly. Their biggest advantage of predicting scrat behavior was slowly turning over into a battle zone of needing to scout the individual undead monsters and their abilities.

Since when did this become a game of basketball,
Bridjett scoffed and paid no mind as the others looked at her for a moment, gauging her before giving up as she refused to acknowledge any of them.

“
I just hope the Doc has some answers soon,” Cisco said.

“
It’s the fucking juice,” Brick snorted, shaking his head.

The juice. Evolving scrat behavior. Top that off, an alive, NWO-officer brother still alive. Everything happens for a reason.

It was just a matter of trying to figure out what the reason was.

Especially, since she still had no answers for why this all happened in the first place.

Well at least not the ones to those which made her wish her brother dead for over five years to find out maybe after all, she didn’t.

That could change…

Bridjett listened and could only hear the steady hum of their vehicle cruising along the barren highways of Illinois as her team remained silent. She could feel the little girl’s head resting on her arm, apparently sleeping.

It took a while but eventually Bridjett’s eyes slowly closed and she would capture an hour of fitful sleep.

Her nightmares were always the same…

II. Why We Are?

“
We were so important. Your ideas so advanced. Advanced. Advanced. You underestimated your own advancement. Gave yourself so much credit. Too much credit. Forgetting your history of biting off more than you can chew. Well we kept chewing. Chewing. Chewing. Advancement? You have no idea.

Silly little people…”

Starting six years earlier

Bridjett and Shad Alexi came from one of the last vestiges of the middle class in America. The nation had been taxed, economically dumped, and rebooted so many different times during the first part of the 21
^st
century that it slowly became a war of the haves’ one percent of the population and the other 99 percent of the world’s eventual dead weight. People were either starving, drinking to excess, getting high to escape, committing crimes against one another, or simply dying in the streets from the flu since insurance became a non-existent teammate in the battle against growing old.