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Major Dionicio “Denny” Vargas, commanding Alpha Company (Homeland Security – Detached), rode in the center vehicle of their seven Mine-Resistant Armored Personnel-carriers, commonly called MRAPs. After landing with the Civil Affairs battalion, they’d quickly and efficiently mustered and moved out on their mission, heading south. Vargas was proud of them for that.
Each armored truck mounted either a .50 caliber heavy machine gun, a 7.62mm six-barreled electric Gatling minigun, or a 40mm grenade launcher. After furious, nearly mutinous “discussion,” the heavily armed paramilitary company had been issued a mix of lethal ammo and Needleshock rather than pure nonlethal. He’d had to go over Colonel Muzik’s head and make his case to the new Deputy Under Secretary of Homeland Security, but eventually they’d hammered out a compromise.
All the personal weapons were supposed to be loaded with nonlethal ammo – though Vargas wasn’t going to try too hard to enforce that one. But the heavy weapons had standard lethal rounds available, as well as a nonlethal supply. He’d argued that Needleshock grenades or .50 caliber wouldn’t penetrate armored vehicles or structures like good old high explosive or full metal jacket. On the other hand, he had to seem to accept the new military leaders’ arguments that anyone they were shooting at was an American, and their responsibility was to minimize casualties and save lives.
Denny didn’t give a shit about that. Kill them all, the sooner the better. Let El Diablo sort them out. He breathed the cool morning air as he stood in the top hatch of his MRAP, ecstatic just to have his own independent command.
His convoy crept southward along Highway 1 toward Richmond. They’d thought about using Interstate 95, but the Navy recon flights had shown that hundreds of thousands of fleeing vehicles had turned that artery into a hopeless parking lot filled with evil and death.
He flogged his mind, reviewing the special intelligence briefings they’d had, much more detailed than the ones given to those dumbass military personnel.
Immediately after the warheads had fallen, those at the edge of the death zones had fled, despite being told to stay in their homes. Marginally smarter people fled westward toward the mountains and the rural areas. The hopeless sheep, the professional classes of Northern Virginia, had joined hundreds of thousands of their closest friends in a pointless attempt to flee southward. Most had no plan, no supplies, and no skills, just a vague notion of getting away toward the rural South, where the rumors said no bombs had fallen.
When hours in their cars became days with no food, no water and no fuel, many had turned on each other, fighting and killing for something to drink or eat or just because they were frustrated. Some escaped overland into the farms and small towns, until they overwhelmed the people living there, who began to turn the refugees away.
Sometimes with bullets.
With martial law’s advent the National Guard, regular troops and first responders everywhere made a valiant effort to bring the civil disaster under control – and they were making progress. Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands had died in the aftermath of the bombs, but slowly order emerged from chaos.
Until Plaguefall One.
The population was hard-pressed, already straining to cope with fallout, radiation burns and sickness, scattered outbreaks of cholera, violence and starvation. When Demon Plague One spread down the East Coast, the camel’s back broke.
It was panic as much as anything that shattered the fragile remains of civilized society, especially in the zones north of Richmond. With over a million infected refugees, Virginia’s shaky remnants of state government had no choice but to establish strict borders around the capital and close them to all but a careful trickle of refugees.
Camps sprang up at the edge of the defended zones, hellholes of exploitation, rape and murder. Richmond tried to alleviate the problems by passing out food and sending armed parties to repair water sources, but soon gave up. There were just too many human animals. Demon Plague One had seen to that. Whatever vestiges of civilized behavior might have remained, the alien virus swept them all into a Darwinian nightmare, individual survival of the fittest as the virus destroyed any sense of community, any finer feeling, any decency.
Even that situation stabilized, somewhat. Then the next Demon Plague fell. All those infected with Plague One were fallow fields for number Two.
Onesies were nasty, brutish but still recognizably human.
Twosies became animals, no better than apes. Worse than apes, for primates showed affection and rudimentary kindness to their own. The only cooperation the Twosies showed was to band together to kill, to eat, and to kill again. Sometimes, for the sheer lust of it.
So Vargas could expect Richmond to have killed, driven off or captured their Twosies, but there was no telling how they had dealt with their Onesies. The federal government had airdropped vaccines and information into the city, but had often been shot at for their trouble, and the State authorities had refused to negotiate until ground forces showed up, citing empty promises and memories of FEMA failures.
So Vargas was back to delivering the Special Envoy in person.
They’d laagered that first night in the enormous parking lot of some kind of ruined motorcycle shop south of Fredericksburg, and no one had bothered them. A few stealthy figures crept about the periphery but no one challenged the unit’s right to be there or really seemed to care. Most of the shops and buildings had been looted; a few showed signs of fortification and defense.
Now the convoy moved carefully past intermittent vehicle pile-ups along the highway. Some had crashed and burned; others looked to have been blockaded and looted. Still others had simply crowded up in their own traffic-jam volume, unable to get by, and thus had been abandoned. The MRAPs with their enormous tires were usually able to make their way around these obstacles, through the fields and pastures. Sometimes they pushed cars out of the way, occasionally dismounting a double dozen troops to clear obstacles by hand.
It made for slow going.
By midday they made it some twenty miles, averaging three or four miles an hour. Vargas cursed loudly at his people. Their progress was hardly faster than the blue and gray armies that had marched up and down this green countryside so long ago.
They’d passed tiny crossroads villages like Thornburg and Cedon, Ryland Corner and Ladysmith. The remnants of buildings were broken teeth set in the green gums of pastures and peanut fields. Their first sign of occupation, or at least of a live community, was at the resort town of Lake Caroline. Vargas called a halt to the convoy as it came into view.
He lifted binoculars to his eyes and surveyed the west side of the highway. The crossroads and turnoffs were clear, but he could see that they were all blocked and barricaded about a quarter mile back. A wise precaution, if the community was still functioning and civilized. No need to contest passage along the highway, but he figured anyone that left the roadway to go in their direction would encounter well-armed citizens.
He could see a glint of sunlight at the barrier and could make out figures manning it. “Furth, tell everyone to lay their weapons on that barrier.” Go ahead, shoot at me, cabrons. Give me an excuse.
Disappointingly the townies did not fire, and he had a mission to complete, so he signaled the trucks to drive on. The MRAP lurched and he put the binoculars away, hunkering down inside the hatch, using the periscope in case of snipers. Maybe they’ll fire as we get closer. Por favor?
Vargas noticed the current stretch of road was empty of vehicles, apparently cleared by bulldozer; the cars and trucks were all off in the ditches and the lanes of pavement invited them to speed up and make some time. Smart, he thought. Encourage travelers to go by, wherever they were headed. Damn. They won’t give me a reason. He thought about telling them to open fire, make up some excuse later, but he decided against it. Not time to make a move yet.
As they passed Golansville and hummed southward at speeds approaching fifteen or twenty miles per hour – hallelujah! – his RTO came over the intercom headset. “Sir, you’d better hear this.”
