Assuming Room Temperature (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 3) (25 page)

“Wait,” Jake didn’t like the sound of that at all, “I thought Fort Leonard Wood was secure. You’re saying it’s not?”

“For the moment,” Kirk advised him. “But the increasing dead activity, coupled with the need to resupply on things like ammunition and food-stuffs, are part of why my team and I are out here. That, and to scout for a suitable location to move our personnel to.”

“I thought you were here to rescue
us.
” Mooney frowned. “You’re suggesting moving your people here?”

Kirk nodded. “Our forces, our dependents, all of it. Along with every bomb, bean, and bullet we’ve got. Langley is ideal. Actually, this little island here—even though it’s technically Disney and not Langley proper—between the Pensacola and Grand Lake Dams is ideal. An abundant water source, natural barriers if needed by blowing the dams, close to smaller population centers without being
too
close. Even more so than Fort Leonard Wood, this is the perfect place for survivors to gather. A defensible locale to begin taking back more ground from the creatures. One they absolutely couldn’t breach, thanks to the Lake of the Cherokees.”

Jake was a bit disappointed when he left Mooney and Foster—still speaking with great interest—with Kirk. Upon witnessing a military convoy pull up to Langley’s walls, the unruly-haired man had truly hoped their time fighting the dead would be over. That there would be help on the way from the Powers That Be, enabling him to put aside the leadership mantle forcibly placed on his shoulders by his companions. That they could rest and somehow be transported safely over the Rockies. Maybe by way of a convenient C-141 Starlifter or something. But that didn’t seem to be likely anytime in the near future.

He was still making his way down Beach Drive, back towards the center of town when he saw Gwen heading his way with the soldier she’d greeted still in tow. She didn’t look happy, even though her hand remained firmly locked with his.

“Jake, you need to hear to this.” she said quietly.

O’Connor took a good look at the corporal. He was perhaps a year or two older than his blonde companion, with serious eyes that never left her face as she spoke.

“What is it now?”

Gwen pulled the soldier closer. “This is Mark Weaver. I told you about him before, when you guys first rescued me and Donna? At the Agri-Supply?”

“Wait. This is your ‘friend with benefits’ guy? Holy crap, what are the odds?” Jake stuck out his hand and took Weaver’s. “Nice to meet you. Gwen’s told us absolutely nothing about you.”

Weaver shook Jake’s hand but turned his head to Gwen, clearly hurt. “Friend with benefits? That’s all I was?”

“Mark, we weren’t
serious.
We only saw each other every few months for God’s sake.” She still hadn’t let go of his other hand, telling Jake her view on the subject might have changed. “We discussed that. You were talking about ‘going career’, and I was in college, so—”

“That didn’t mean I don’t care about you, you know.” Weaver told her. “I wanted to give the long-distance thing a try.”

That seemed like news to her. “You never said anything!”

“You’d had your mind set by the time I worked up the guts. Then I got activated and… Well, it seemed like you didn’t want to consider it, so I just let it go.” He looked crestfallen. “I still keep your picture in my pocket, you know.”

“You do not.”

Weaver pulled his hand free and opened the pocket over his heart, under his tactical harness. He pulled out a photo of the two of them sitting in front of a restaurant. Gwen was mischievously smearing ice-cream on the tip of his nose with one finger, but it didn’t seem to affect his smile in the weathered picture at all.

Her mouth fell open. “You
kept
this?”

“It was the only one I had of you,” Weaver admitted sheepishly.

Jake sighed. He didn’t need to be part of that particular conversation. “Guys? You obviously have some things to discuss, so can we get to whatever it is you need from me?”

Corporal Weaver shook his head. “Sorry. I’ve been at Fort Leonard Wood for months now, just trying to keep it together. Stay alive and
sane.
With everything that happened. I was sure I’d never see her again.”

“I know the feeling,” O’Connor told him. “So, what’s up?”

Mark glanced around quickly. “Gwen tells me you have a MATTOC? That it’s safe, from
them
I mean?”

“Yeah, we’ve got one.” Jake glared at the nervous blonde beside Weaver. “The folks in Langley know, but Mooney specifically told them not to
blab their mouths about it,
if we came into contact with any other survivors. Something I didn’t think I had to stress with
our
group, but evidently—”

“You need to go.”

O’Connor stood there with his mouth still open. “What?”

“Run. Run like hell.” Weaver said vehemently. “Kirk is full of it. I don’t know what he’s telling your guys back there, but it’s
total
bullshit.”

Jake’s stomach headed for China, by way of the center of the Earth.

* * *

“So how do you plan to get your people here?” Foster asked.

Lieutenant Kirk retrieved a map from his jacket and unfolded it on the table. “While it’s roughly two-hundred and seventeen miles from Fort Leonard Wood to Langley, it could be a bit before our forces reach this location. Possibly more. Traveling with only three Unimogs is quite different than moving a nearly nine-hundred member force—especially through ridiculously hostile terrain—so it may very well more than a week before the first of our men make it here. Mr. Mooney, will you and your people be able to continue holding out on your own for that long?”

The Sunset’s proprietor nodded with confidence. “We’ve managed to keep ourselves alive for months now by scrounging what we need from the surrounding areas, a few more days shouldn’t be difficult at all.”

Foster puffed his stogie. “What are your options for transportation?”

“We have a handful of Cougar Armored Fighting Vehicles, a large number of deuce and a half transport trucks, and a even a few Maxpro MRAPs, but the latter are in use within high-density areas around Saint Louis. That’s why we make do with the MOGs for scouting trips and contacting new survivor colonies.” Kirk traced his finger along the lines of the map. “It may take several trips, but getting our forces and dependents here shouldn’t be that difficult. The byways are
rapidly
falling to disrepair, that’s why part of my assignment is to confirm usable roads to the Southwest. We’ve mapped routes that detour around major areas of dead concentration here to Langley, and—”

Jake entered as Kirk was explaining the logistics of moving eight-hundred people to Mooney. Foster observed his return and, noting the expression on the younger man’s face, casually stubbed his cigar out on one of the plates atop the table. While Mooney asked Kirk about the aforementioned ‘infested areas’, the graying warrior discretely pulled the Glock from the Blackhawk Serpa holster at his hip. George kept it loaded and ready to go—even prior to the dead rising—and concealed the pistol to the side of his right buttock in an easy grip as O’Connor approached.

George had just known something smelled. He had decades of experience when it came dealing with lowlifes and liars and, from the get-go, the good lieutenant set his “bullshit-meter” buzzing loudly. Save for O’Connor and the rest of his companions, virtually no-one in Langley had the first clue about George, largely due to the man’s off-colored sense of humor and almost ridiculous lack of tact, and he liked it that way.

The fact was, in his younger days, George Montgomery Foster had been one of the elite. A member of a worldwide fraternity who’d engaged in everything from airborne assaults with Rangers, to maritime infiltrations with Navy Seals, to clandestine black-bag operations on the orders of the Secretary of Defense. He’d been judge, jury and—when necessary—an executioner of lowlifes around the globe. Everywhere from Cape Town to Cabo to Cairo. He didn’t drink his martinis “shaken, not stirred,” but he’d damn sure spent a major part of his life playing cloak-and-dagger games in truly remote areas most hadn’t even heard of. Especially during the Cold War. That coldest of wars.

Truth be told, Foster was lucky he’d managed to survive until the dead rose. He’d been both respected and feared by the hierarchy in his own chain of command, and had heard whispers in “the Community”—his safety net of salty, old naval master chiefs and hard-nosed, retired Marine Corps gunnery sergeants—alluding that someone up the food chain was attempting to have criminal charges brought against him. Evidently certain “preventative actions” he’d been a part of, eighty-one miles north of Kiev in the Ukrane, years back—weren’t looked upon in favorable ways by some of the useless pencil-pushers in office.

Those higher-ups hadn’t actually
known
what the Russians had been up to under that power plant though. If they had, they’d have ordered the city nuked from orbit. People thought
zombies
were bad—and they were—but what Foster encountered beneath that now-abandoned city near Belarus had been horrifying to say the least.

He had no illusions: If what slumbered there
ever
woke up, that would definitely be it for the human race.

Some monsters were just too big to fight.

Here and now however, from the look on O’Connor’s face, good Lieutenant Kirk was about to have a bad day.

“I’m also sure I can convince my superior to greatly fortify Langley’s walls, pretty much first thing.” Kirk explained, glancing briefly at Jake as he approached and giving him an absent smile. “They’ve evidently done their job so far, but there are massive hordes out there. Some number in the millions, and—”

Jake came up beside Mooney and without pausing, swiftly brought the KABAR knife hidden behind his left forearm down on Kirk’s hand. The tanto easily penetrated flesh and bone before spearing half its length through the tabletop, effectively pinning the surprised lieutenant’s appendage to the hardwood surface. After a moment of shock, the sensation of having an eight-inch, razor-edged length of high carbon steel shoved through his flesh made it up Kirk’s nerves and slammed into his thalamus. When his pain receptors lit up in earnest, he screamed and fell to his knees beside the table while Mooney stared on in horror.

“Your superiors.” Jake knelt and used one hand to grab the lieutenant’s jaw and bring is face up. The other was still firmly gripping his tanto. “Your superiors are
exactly
what I want to talk about.”

Kirk dry-heaved as O’Connor twisted the knife, but still had the presence of mind to reach for his Beretta. His movement halted abruptly as the cold muzzle of Foster’s Glock pressed forcibly against the exterior of his left ear.

“You’ll wanna’ keep real still there.” George told him, eyes flat and empty as a serpents. “My trigger finger’s getting a’ little iffy in my old age. Been havin’ spasms, so it tends ta’ twitch when I get excited.”

Fighting against the nauseating pain, Kirk slowly moved his hand away from his weapon and kept still as George relieved him of it.

Mooney was, in a word, freaked. “What the
hell?
Are you fucking crazy?”

“A little,” Foster told him calmly, “But we’re not stupid either. What’s the scoop, boy?”

Jake was still focused on Kirk trying not to puke on the dining room floor. “The lieutenant didn’t bother informing us about a few details regarding his “superiors,” and their preferred mode of operation.”

Kirk glared at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Eyes hot, Jake jiggled his knife and Kirk screamed again.

“Jesus! Stop” Mooney moved to restrain the unruly-haired man and Foster stepped between them.

“Have we steered ya’ wrong yet?” he asked.

Mooney’s eyes were wide, but he didn’t move. “You can’t torture him! Jesus! What…?”

“The boy has good instincts. He wouldn’t a’ turned Captain America here into a pin cushion without a damn good reason.” George continued to mollify the near-frantic hotel owner. “I trust him, so you just gotta trust
me.
”

“Don’t bother trying to go for your radio. Your men, minus Mark Weaver? All nine are locked up, nice and secure by now.” Jake looked at Kirk and snapped, “How was Jefferson City?”

Kirk snarled and kept quiet.

“That’s alright, I’ll tell them all about it. When the zombies took St. Louis, what was left of the population fled west to Jefferson City. It made sense, because Missouri State Senate is there, butted right up against an Amtrack line and the Missouri River. There was the 138
th
Forward Support Company, the 835
th
Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, and the 229
th
Medical Battalion of the National Guard based there too, so after the bridges over the Missouri on Routes 63 and 54 were demolished, it would’ve been pretty secure. But there was a difference of opinion about what to do after that, wasn’t there?” Jake waggled the blade again and Kirk grimaced. “One Senator Robert Quinn of Illinois was the problem. He didn’t take kindly to being shunted onto the back burner. Since his own territory had been written off, and he was basically without authority in Missouri, he used his influence with a few dissatisfied commanders and began recruiting his own little force from the units and survivors in Jefferson City. Then, once he had a sizable following—to which he’d promised all
kinds
of things—he convinced his fellow senators to authorize an enclave to the south.”

“Fort Leonard Wood.” George supplied.

“That’s right. It was supposed to be a secondary outpost, mainly used for supply and logistical resources, but then a horde stumped into Jefferson City.” O’Connor was spitting the words from his lips as if the subject left a foul taste in his mouth. “They could’ve repelled the creatures
if
the units at Leonard Wood had actually responded to their broadcasts. Instead? Quinn had his men shell Jefferson City’s fortifications. They blew the shit out of the northern defenses and let the zombies in. Then they shelled the enclave proper. No one made it out.”