Red Hammer: Voodoo Plague Book 4
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Authors: Dirk Patton
Red Hammer
Voodoo Plague Book 4
By
DIRK PATTON
Text Copyright © 2014
by Dirk Patton
Copyright © 2014 by
Dirk Patton
All Rights Reserved
This book or any
portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing, 2014
ISBN-13:
978-1500717995
ISBN-10:
1500717991
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, businesses, brands, places, events and incidents are either
the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely
coincidental.
ALSO BY DIRK PATTON
Voodoo Plague: Book
One
Crucifixion: Voodoo
Plague Book Two
Rolling Thunder:
Voodoo Plague Book Three
Rules Of Engagement:
A John Chase Short Story
Author’s Note........................................................................................................................ 6
Dedication............................................................................................................................. 7
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Acknowledgements........................................................................................................... 180
Thank you for purchasing Red Hammer, Book 4 in the Voodoo
Plague series. If you haven’t read the first three books I strongly encourage
you to do so first, otherwise you will be lost as this book is intended to
continue the story in a serialized format. I intentionally did nothing to
explain comments and events that reference Books 1 through 3. Regardless, you have
my heartfelt thanks for reading my work and I hope you’re enjoying the adventure
as much as I am. As always, a good review on Amazon is greatly appreciated and
the best way to ensure more books get published.
Take the children and yourself
And hide out in the cellar
By now the fighting will be close at hand
Don't believe the church and state
And everything they tell you
Mike and the Mechanics – Silent Running
Army Master Sergeant Darius Jackson stood leaning out from
the narrow platform on the edge of the slow moving locomotive, watching Major
John Chase plummet more than eighty feet to the brownish grey water of the
Mississippi River. There was a large splash, then the Major disappeared beneath
the swirling surface of the river.
“Crazy Motherfucker!” Jackson said to himself, staring at
the spot where the Major had gone under. He wanted to stand there and see if
the insane man surfaced, but he needed to get the train stopped and reversed.
There were still evacuees back on the Memphis side of the bridge that hadn’t
boarded when the deserter, Air Force Captain Lee Roach, had hijacked the
train. In a struggle with Rachel and Dog, the three of them had fallen off the
train, past the bridge and into the flood swollen river below. Major Chase had
immediately gone in after them.
Shaking his head, Jackson slung the Major’s M4 rifle with
his own and stepped into the locomotive cab to figure out the controls. It
only took him a couple of minutes to get the train stopped, but several more to
get it in reverse and moving back toward Memphis. While he worked, he was in
radio contact with his CO, Colonel Crawford, somewhere above him in a Black
Hawk helicopter.
“He did what?” The tone of incredulity was clear in the Colonel’s
voice.
“He jumped off the goddamn train and into the river, sir.
Guess I should have listened to him and killed Roach when we captured him.”
“Don’t waste time second guessing yourself, Master
Sergeant. We’re peeling off to see if we can spot them in the water. Get
those people out of there. The Hummers and Bradley are almost out of ammo.”
“Yes, sir. Out.”
While the train rolled backwards on the bridge, Jackson
opened the side door, reached out and pulled the large rear-view mirror back
into alignment. Roach had knocked it out and down to prevent Jackson and Major
Chase from seeing inside the cab as they approached. Mirror in proper
adjustment, he was able to see down the side of the train. Over a thousand
people still stood on the bridge decking, as far away from the Humvees and
Bradley that were guarding the bridge entrance as they could get. All three
vehicles were firing their machine guns, the Bradley also utilizing its 25 mm
chain gun to stop the infected, and there was a respectable pile of shattered
bodies in a semi-circle around the end of the bridge.
Eyes on the mirror and hand on the throttle, Jackson slowed
the train as the rearmost car reached the part of the bridge that had solid
decking underneath the rails. This was where the panicked evacuees waited, and
he slowed further as the locomotive approached the deck. Fully on the solid
portion of the bridge, Jackson cut the throttle to idle and set the brakes for
the train cars and the four locomotives. Immediately, people surged forward,
climbing into the waiting cattle cars that were all that was left of the
original train.
The people were loading themselves quickly, frightened, but
still willing to help each other. Jackson watched them climb on in the big
mirror, willing them to move faster. The chain gun on the Bradley fell silent,
a moment later one of the Hummer’s machine guns going quiet as well. That left
one Humvee mounted machine gun and the machine gun on the Bradley still in the
fight. The greater destruction of the Bradley’s 25 mm chain gun had equaled
the firepower of at least three machine guns, and with it out of ammo the wall
of infected quickly started pushing forward. The semi-circle of clear space
around the bridge entrance began rapidly shrinking.
Jackson got on the radio with the soldiers holding the line,
asked a few questions then started issuing orders. Momentarily, he saw the
majority of the men and women manning the vehicles exit and start running for
the train. Once they had a hundred yard head start the Hummer that still had
some ammo, and the Bradley, started driving out onto the bridge deck, machine
guns still firing to keep the infected at bay.
By the time the running soldiers reached the rear of the
train all of the civilian evacuees were loaded, and even in the cab of the
giant locomotive Jackson could hear them screaming for him to start the train
moving. The two military vehicles came to a stop 20 yards behind the rearmost
car, the Hummer’s machine gun running out of ammo. The infected surged, but
only covered a few yards before a Black Hawk swooped in and opened up with its
door mounted minigun. The helicopters were very low on ammo, and Jackson had
held this one in reserve for just this moment. He was determined to get all
the soldiers on the train.
The leading ranks of infected fell under the withering
minigun fire. The heavy, high velocity slugs tore through bodies, the steel of
the bridge, anything they touched. The remaining soldiers wasted no time in
abandoning the two vehicles and running for their lives. As soon as Jackson
saw their boots hit the bridge deck he throttled up the diesels, ready to go
the second the running defenders were on board.
They had only covered half the distance when the minigun ran
out of ammo. Dozens of female infected screamed and immediately sprinted past
the devastated bodies. They didn’t make it far as the Black Hawk performed a
brief aerial ballet, peeling off and dropping towards the river as an Apache
took its place and opened up with its chin mounted chain gun. Jackson smiled,
watching the leading edge of infected dissolve as the explosive rounds hit in
their midst. Pulling his attention back to the fleeing soldiers, he released
the train and engine brakes when he saw the last man climb on.
Managing the controls he advanced the throttle. Jackson
didn’t know what he was doing and was a bit intimidated by the complicated
control panel, scanning the myriad gauges and warning lights. He figured that
as long as he kept everything in the green, he was ok. Manipulating the
throttle and the controls that fed the electricity generated by the diesels to
the drive motors, he successfully kept everything working and soon the train
was moving at 25 miles an hour. That was fast enough to prevent any infected
from boarding, and Jackson wasn’t comfortable with pushing the speed any
higher.
The bridge across the river was four miles long and it took nearly
ten minutes to cross the span. On the Arkansas side, the infected were not
nearly as numerous and had been held back by a Black Hawk and Apache
helicopter. Bodies were piled several feet high on the track, but the heavy
train pushed them aside without so much as a shudder. They continued on into
the flat countryside, rice paddies stretching out as far as the eye could see
on either side of the tracks.
Jackson looked over his left shoulder through the thick
windows of the locomotive. Above the middle of the river more than a mile
downstream from the bridge, a pair of Black Hawks were slowly moving south,
apparently still searching for the people in the water. They were too high to
be conducting a rescue. Jackson had been raised in Mississippi, not too far
down the river and he well knew the power of the water. Very few people had
ever gone into the river and come out alive.
A rumble of explosions sounded over the heavy throb of the
locomotive’s diesel. Shifting his gaze to the large, external mirror, he
watched as two Apaches fired multiple hellfire missiles into the mid-span of
the bridge. The structure was no match for the warheads which cut through the
steel with ease. Less than a minute after the bombardment began, nearly a mile
of girders and tracks broke free and fell into the river below, preventing the
hundreds of thousands of infected in Memphis from crossing to the west. Reaching
to his neck, Jackson worked his fingers under his uniform to grasp the small,
gold cross his mother had given him the day he enlisted in the Army. Saying a
prayer, he rubbed the cross with his thick thumb, turning his attention back to
the track in front of him after a heartfelt Amen.