CHAPTER 10

​Delaware River, Delaware
 
This time Raymond had come prepared. With an extra warming layer and draped in a thick poncho, that had been tactically acquired from the neighborhood guard force, he was nice and warm. Wrapped in his cozy cocoon, he watched with a sinister grin as Victor shivered from icy water that sprayed over the Zodiac gunwale tube.

“Thanks for the warning.” Victor snarled, shivering uncontrollably.

“Sorry, bud. I thought all Marines had boat experience.” Raymond’s shoulders shrugged under the heavy layers.

Victor shook his head, wishing that they would have inserted by helicopter instead.

Corporal McCune snickered while cranking the throttle to full speed up the Delaware River. Off the starboard side, Victor could barely make out their second Zodiac that was required for this multiphase operation due to the multiple mission objectives. Behind the rubber raiding crafts, moonlight reflected off white frothy wakes that cut glowing lines into the black water.

Bright stars that filled the night sky fought a losing battle against the light blue eastern horizon as the morning sun leisurely announced the arrival of a brand-new day. Morning twilight gave shape to slowly narrowing riverbanks that became progressively littered with signs of prior civilization.

Without warning, McCune turned the boat sharply towards the norther riverbank and killed the engine. He nodded for Raymond to hand out the paddles.

Thank God, Victor thought to himself while quietly begging the sun to make the final leap above the horizon. Sunup is the coldest time of day.

River current lazily pulled the boat back down stream as the crew paddled towards shore. The skill and experience of the coxswain was astonishing, as Victor realized that they had passed their objective upriver, but the coxswain had considered the river’s current speed, time, and distance that it would take them to paddle to the predetermined long wooden dock.

Victor was happy for the physical activity, that slowly warmed his muscles, of paddling the rubber boat quietly towards the long wooden dock. Reaching forward, stabbing the oar into the river, and pulling smoothly making micro whirlpools in the smooth steaming water reminded him of times before the Dark Day when his family would leisurely canoe down north country rivers.

Silence, in the absence of the rumbling boat motor, was a reassuring comfort. Victor had expected to see packs of Grays chasing the sound up the river banks. At the unoccupied dock, the crew fought against the current as they maneuvered the boat 180 degrees before tying off. Having the bow facing away from shore, offered them a quick getaway if needed.

The second Zodiac remained offshore at a safe distance while Victor and Raymond’s crew offloaded a kill-o-matic generator, fuel cans and the cargo bag filled with the whip assembly. Members of the recon team secured the parking lot at the end of the dock while Raymond wheeled the generator into position and Victor lugged fuel cans from the boat.

Raymond silently showed Victor how to assemble the contraption. Stabilizing sandbags were set into place same as before. The fuel lines were set, whip pole erected, speaker system plugged in. It was time to fire it up. Staff Sergeant Beckett, gave Raymond the thumbs up to start the generator.

Security quickly pulled back to the dock while Raymond tugged on the generator pull cord until it coughed and stuttered alive. Speakers crackled to life and ripped open the curtains of silence with a painfully loud message. At a safe distance, Victor pulled the cord, which dropped the upright pole into the aligning gears and the steel cables began whipping around.

McCune was already in the Zodiac, unwrapping lines from the dock cleats. Beckett waived Victor and Raymond down the dock as he held security until everyone was safely in the watercraft. From paddling up to the dock, to throttling away at full speed took less than thirty uneventful minutes.

Bright rays of sunlight sparkled through whisps of fog that hovered over the glassy river and illuminated the shore bank as the boat crew continued upriver towards their next objective. Without the generator and fuel cans, there was much more room in the boat allowing Victor and Raymond to take up low profile positions by hugging the gunwale tube.

A couple minutes later, McCune checked his wrist mounted GPS and nudged Victor. The Coxswain pointed off the port side towards a massive industrial complex that had dozens of white cylindrical liquid fuel storage containers sprouting from the earth. Sitting on the Delaware Pennsylvania border was the Trainer Refinery which had been owned by Monroe Energy. The refinery was their third objective on this operation. But before they reconned that lot, they had another objective.

From water level, bridges always seemed more extraordinary. The amount of engineering needed to construct bridges always astonished Victor. Looking upward at the underside of the Commodore Barry Bridge, that connected Pennsylvania with New Jersey, was breath taking. As he took in the view, Victor wondered how long the cantilever bridge, and bridges like it, would remain standing without proper maintenance. Moister would soon penetrate the thick layers of paint and then slowly begin to rust away steel bolts and beams, weakening the structural integrity overtime until finally it succumbed to gravity to a watery grave.

Further upriver around a wooded bend, high-rise towers of downtown Philadelphia came into view as the shoreline seemed to morph into modern mountains that reached up to touch the sky. With the bridge to their rear, and the international airport to the front, the coxswains of both boats turned the Zodiacs towards the northern riverbank of their second objective.

Harrah's casino of Philadelphia is located right on the Delaware riverbank with a massive five story contemporary designed gaming building, attached multistory parking garage and a one-kilometer harness horse racing track that actually extended over a water inlet on the third quarter of the oval shaped racetrack via a curved bridge.
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Both teams carefully paddled their Zodiac boats under the low-lying racetrack bridge, negotiating through thick spiderwebs and long mossy strands, which brought them right into the grassy center of the track that was about four times the size of a high school football field. As they had done many times before, they lifted both boats out of the water onto the shore and tactically positioned the craft.

Members of the recon team swiftly and silently spread out, taking up concealed security positions keeping observant eyes on the casino. After a several quiet minutes, SSgt. Beckett gave Victor and Raymond the nod to begin setting up the kill-o-matic machine. They wheeled the generator and carried the gas and equipment into the middle of the grassy racetrack center and assembled the contraption as they had before, with an addition of a few shop lights.
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Instead of starting the culling machine, the team leader wanted to gain a foothold inside the casino first. After checking the entire backside for an unsecured door, they finally were able to gain access through the parking garage by prying apart a sliding door that would have automatically opened before the Dark Day.

Stepping into a deserted and quiet casino floor was spooky. Three thousand dusty slot machines sat empty. Ghosts of old ladies breathing through oxygen tubes, while holding a cigarette in one hand and a casino club card in the other haunted the crypt. Two things casino floors do not have, clocks and windows. When the sun crested the horizon, the visitors shouldn’t be reminded how long they had been throwing away hard earned money at empty dreams of beating the odds that were not in their favor.

Even with newer night vision binoculars, that the team had outfitted Victor and Raymond with, it was still dark without all the blinking lights and neon signs inside the 100,000 square foot of gaming space. But the NODs did illuminate  enough to notice gaudy patterns in the industrial carpet that quieted their damp boots.

Knowing that it is better to have Grays come to you, versus stumbling into one surprised, Victor gave a sharp-loud whistle. After a long minute pause, he shouted into the darkness, “Hello. Anyone home?”

Echoes faded into stillness.

“Stick together. We’ll conduct a hasty sweep of this main gaming room clockwise. Do not enter adjacent spaces, shut open doors if possible. Keep your guns up, IR lasers and floods on, no white light just incase that we are not alone.” SSgt Becket said in a faint, yet commanding voice. “Look for stairs leading to the upper-level racetrack observation VIP rooms.”

Around the gaming floor they went, Raymond and Victor took up rear security of the formation as the rest of the team took the lead. Whenever they came to an open door, the point man would pause and hastily clear the room from the outside, then hold the door while the team passed him. The second man in the formation would then become point man.

Rows and rows of tall slot machines were cleared and held the same way as they did hallways. Slowly, methodically, quietly. No one spoke, yet they collectively negotiated complex angles as if using telepathy to communicate. The ease of which the team flowed, the way they filled voids, looked for work, maintaining eye-muzzle-threat without ever flagging a teammate, spoke volumes of their professionalism and years of quality training and experience of working together.

Eventually they had circled all the way back to their initial start point near the parking garage where they huddled in close.

“Alright, what did we see?” The team leader asked.

“Escalators going up near the front entrance. Parking lot stairs are right around this corner.” Darkness, the radio operator said.

“Six bars fully stocked with booze. That’s what I saw.” Said McCune, turning his head inward.

“Dibs on the Irish Whiskey.” Raymond chimed in.

“And a cigar shop!” Said Rios, a little to excitedly raising his voice.

“How about the cashier cages? Do you know how much money is in this place?” Doc grinned.

“And what are you going to do with it? Wipe your ass, or start a fire? Because that is all green backs are good for now.” Beckett said shaking his head.

“I’d make a bed out of fifty’s and hundreds baby! Besides, our new civilization has to start trading in money again soon. And then, I’ll be in baller status boys.” Doc continues his rich man fantasy.

Before someone started an in-depth lesson on the creation and value of currencies, Victor interrupted the conversation.

“There are a few restaurants in here too.” Victor added, “Which means industrial size canned and packaged food is probably stored in here somewhere. We should scavenge what we can fit it the boats, before turning on the kill-o-matic.”

“That’s not our mission.”  SSgt. Becket injected. “But it’s not a bad idea. Let’s finish our sweep of the upper levels first.”
 
----------BREAK----------
 
They should have cut holes in the fence surrounding the casino’s horse track for the infected to effortlessly make their way to the kill-o-matic. Hindsight is always 20/20, unless you are a Gray with those freakish pinpoint pupils and a swollen rotted brain. On the bright side, some intel was gathered on that day. First generation Grays still cannot climb fences. And, if there is a motivated horde, shoulder to shoulder which becomes four rows deep, there is enough body mass to topple over a ten-foot chain linked fence.

Leaving just enough room for the passengers, the Recon team, with the help of Victor and Raymond, filled their Zodiac boats with industrial sized canned foods found in the casino’s kitchens. With much disagreement, cases of booze and cigars had to be left behind for some other lucky individual who may stumble upon the cache.

After the boats had been packed, and the casino cleared with a deliberate detailed search, they turned on the culling machine which began drawing in a steady flow of infected beasts from all over the south side of Philadelphia. It had taken a couple of hours before Gen 2’s joined their blood bath party.

A poker game in the high stakes’ VIP suite had killed some time and eased some mission tension while they waited. A game which Raymond and Darkness had both went all in with a chip pot of a thousand pushups. Unfortunately, the game was interrupted when duty called before Victor could show the last card. They would never know who had won that hand, that is until Victor spilled the beans.

Now the team was cramped into the landing at the top of a stairwell making final precautions. Each of the Marines wore MOPP NBC (Nuclear Biological and Chemical warfare) suits, which consisted of charcoal lined pants and jacket, and rubber booties and gloves. They had opted out of gasmasks so they could better aim the tranquilizer dart guns that Victor was passing out to each member. Victor and Raymond dressed casually, as cool-guy special advisors often do.

Just outside the closed steel door of the stairwell landing, was the top floor of the parking garage which attached to the casino roof where several Gen 2 creatures where scurrying about from the sounds of it. From Raymond’s field report, Victor had hoped that the little ones were perched of on the roof, watching all the first-generation adults committing suicide by walking into the spinning metal whip cables down below in the grassy racetrack center that was now painted black with an infected sludge.

A cargo net had been secured to the wall surrounding the exit door. When ready, Beckett gave McCune the nod to push open the metal door by using an extension pole found in a cleaning closet. McCune pushed the door open as far as he could flooding the dark stairwell with daylight, then stepped on the pole to keep the door from slamming shut.

The repeating message, blaring from the machine’s loudspeakers echoed in the hallway causing them all to tilt their grimacing faces in pain. Doc was the only smart one that had brought earplugs, which he was inserting the small orange ribbed plugs quickly.

SSgt Becket looked into the eyes of each individual who were nervously stacked on the stairway to confirm that they were ready. He cupped his hands into a funnel around his mouth and yelled towards the open doorway.

“Hey, you little demon spawns. Come and get us!” Beckett shouted.

Each member of the Recon team breathlessly held their tranquilizer dart gun pointed at the net covered doorway, with one hand on their rifles slung cross their chest rigs stacked with heavy magazines. Seconds seemed like hours in anticipation.

A bead of sweat rolled down Beckett’s breeze chilled forehead. His hand began to shake from holding the tranquilizer gun out in front of him. He lowered his arm and looked at Victor, who only shrugged.

“Maybe the loudspeakers are too loud. If the creatures are on the roofs edge, they’re getting blasted with the sound.”

“I thought that they had super hearing or something?” McCune smirked.

“Which is probably getting damaged by the volume of that machine out there. Besides, this doorway is facing the parking deck” Victor said, pointing out the door. “The targets, are probably over that way.” He said, pointing toward the wall to his left.

Victor pushed his way up the stairs and leaned in close to the net and tried to tilt his head towards the direction of the casino roof and yelled. “Hey you little shits. Get over here. I’ve got a present for you!”

Victor took a few steps backwards until he felt a hand push against his back, preventing him from accidently falling down the stairs. Victor waited, staring at the open door, waiting for the creatures to materialize. Again, seconds turned into minutes.

“Bro, my foot hurts stepping on this thing. Somebody else’s turn to hold my pole. No homo.” McCune complained, breaking the tense silence.

Victor tossed his hands up and turned around. “I don’t know. I thought that this would work. Sorry, these Gen 2’s are a different breed, which is why were trying to capture some to study.”

Victor eyed the open doorway disappointed. He knew that they were out there. The mission wasn’t a total failure. There was a genocide of Grays taking place below them, making this area a whole lot safer for any survivors that were bound to be in the Philadelphia area. Tomorrow's mission at the oil refinery was still a go. Maybe they would have better luck then.

But, capturing a couple of the younger second-generation species alive, could be life saving for not only their little community, but for the entire human race. They new almost nothing about them except for their ferocity and hunger of human meat. Victor wasn’t about to give up, they needed this mission to be a success.

Victor pointed towards the door. “Unhook the bottom corner of the net, I’m going out there.”

“The hell you are. Are you F’ing stupid or just suicidal?” Beckett hissed.

“It’s worth the risk. The knowledge that we could gain from these things could save your lives, the lives of other Marines, the lives of the entire colony.” Victor argued.

“Do you know what the General would do to us, if we brought our advisor back dead?” Beckett countered. “We would be on shit duty for the rest of the apocalypse. Our operational ranking would be below the cooks. This team would never get another mission. We’d never get to fight Russians.”

That comment caught Raymond’s attention.

“You know I’m right.” Victor looked at the team leader directly in the eyes. “I’ll just go out and around the corner, get their attention, and come right back in.”

Beckett looked at Victor harshly, then finally agree. “McCune, get the net. Darkness, take the other side of the door. Put the dart gun down and cover him with your rifle.”

Victor dropped all his gear, taking only his holstered pistol and the dart gun. McCune lifted the corner of the cargo net and Victor poked his head out the door.

“Bro. If you get eaten, can I date your woman?” McCune asked with a cheesy grin.

Victor shook his head at the comment. The coxswain was acknowledging, in a roundabout way, the stupidity of Victor’s dangerous stunt.

There was a long brick wall that stretched out into the parking lot that protected the stairway entrance from vehicles that had once raced around in search for a parking space. Victor needed to get around that wall.

Slowly, he crept forward. Heal to toe. One slow step at a time searching for loose pebbles or broken glass that would give him away if stepped on. Victor looked back towards the safety of the door when he neared the edge of the protective brick wall. All six of them were stacked up in the doorway like a cartoon, watching Victor’s progress.

At the corner of the wall, Victor pointed his pistol as he slowly pie’d around the corner searching for targets. It was clear. In fact, the parking lot was vacant between the stairway and the edge of the parking structure which was a solid hundred yards away. No wonder they couldn’t hear them yelling over the loudspeakers.
Victor lowered his pistol to his side and turned to face the team. He pointed at them and held up his hand, palm forward, to tell them to hold position. Then pointed to his watch and held his hand out with all fingers extended to say, “five minutes.”

Not waiting for the argument that was guaranteed to follow, for Victor to return to the stairs, he rounded the corner and was out of sight.

Straight ahead was a four-foot-high concrete barrier at the edge of the parking lot, that kept cars from driving onto the casino’s roof. He was kneeling behind that half wall before he knew it. Realizing he had been holding his breath, he inhaled deeply trying to calm his pounding heart that he was for sure was going to give him away. Breathing in slowly through his nose, he lifted his head until the concrete barrier was at eye level.

On the casino roof to his left was a massive air filtration system, that prior to the Dark Day had filtered out pounds nicotine smoke from the gaming floor, and another massive sheet metal airduct network was to his immediate right. Between the two rooftop units, he could see the little creatures squatting on the edge overlooking the racetrack below them.

Impulsively, Victor ducked below the half concrete wall again to hide himself and checked his six seeing that Beckett had taken up an overwatch position at the stairway brick wall. Victor nodded to him and continued to scan the parking lot around him wondering how the little creatures had gotten up here to begin with. Logically, they had ran up the parking deck drive ramps meaning that more of them could show up if he didn’t hurry.

Lifting his eyes over the edge again, he could account for six of them between the two HVAC units. The tiny pail Gray creatures with dark gray splotchy patterns seemed frail as they perched naked on the ledge. Their bodies spasmed and their heads twitched side to side.

Out of harms reach, a single pigeon glided through the air that energized the micro predators. Their body spasms worsened. The creatures reached tiny boney talons for the bird unsuccessfully and appeared to hyperventilate from excitement of a bird dinner. While their chest heaved, in and out, gasping for air, the chilling sound of children whimpering appeared again. Victor then understood.

The haunting sound the youthful creatures made was a prestrike rally cry. An actual cry. A sinister sobbing, which would certainly lure in unsuspecting sympathetic humans towards the sound of distressed children, only to get eaten alive by the same children that they wished to help.

Holstering his pistol, Victor raised the tranquilizer gun. If anything, he would witness the effect of a darted 2nd Gen. He aligned the sights on the largest creature in the micro-pack, which was a long shot for an air gun, and he squeezed the trigger. The dart launched out the smooth bore barrel with loud burst of compressed CO2 creating a cloud of frozen mist. Like a deer, that instinctively reacts to the sound of a bowstring being released, while the arrow in midflight, the creatures turned their heads in unison to watch the dart projecting towards them.

Victor watched the dart stray from center mass drifting towards the right. It was going to miss the target, he knew it. Seeing the red fluffy dart tail blowing to the right, it kept drifting. Yup, definitely going to miss, he thought.

A dozen eyeballs, completely black irises and grey where normal healthy eyes were white, were on Victor. He should run. He should run really fast. But his own eyes were glued to the dart that continued to drift to the right off target and then stuck into the shoulder blade of the next nearby creature.

Chaos erupted. Hisses. Snarls. Wails. Cries. Screams that convinced Victor to turn and run, abandoning the need to witness the sedative effects. As soon as Victor turned back towards the brick wall, and gaged the distance, he knew that he’d made a serious miscalculation. This was a horrible idea, that he immediately regretted.

Victor sprinted and waved his arms, yelling for Becket to get inside the stairwell. Beckett ignored him, covering his retreat. Victor had only made it fifty feet from the parking lot’s edge when he heard the creatures behind him leaping onto the sheet metal airducts and over the concrete half wall.

“GO!” Victor screamed.

The sound of bare feet slapping against pavement was close behind him. Turning his head slightly to assess his fate, was a mistake. At least ten, if not more, were closing in on him. Redirecting his attention to his direction of travel, he saw that Beckett had disappeared, taking Victor’s advice.

In just a short distance his legs burned. He sprinted as fast as he had ever sprinted before, yet it seemed that Father Time himself was pulling on his shirttail tugging him backwards causing each step to be slower than the previous. Why was it taking so long for his feet to push off the pavement? How far apart where these white parking lines? This was a really bad idea.

Victor felt like he was on second base, trying to steal home plate for an upset win at the bottom of the ninth in the World Series. The brick wall was third base, that he had just rounded at top speed threatening to blowout an ankle. Looking towards the stairwell’s open door as home plate was McCune. The coxswain’s eyes were bulging out as if he were the catcher prepared to accept the game winning baseball.

Also in the doorway was Darkness with his rifle pointed just past Victor, which would have normally scared him far more than the pissed off snarling pack just feet behind him. But Victor had faith in the Recon Marine, who consistently trained in close quarters battle to clear their entire sectors, up to thirty degrees off their teammates muzzles. Thirty degrees isn’t a whole lot of room for error in terms of loaded firearms, and wouldn’t give an average civilian, or even trained infantrymen, a warm and fuzzy.

A small puff of smoke released from Darkness’s suppressed weapon registered, but the crack of the passing bullet never entered Victor’s consciousness. Victor was fifteen feet from the door and coming in at a hard angle. When he sucked in oxygen into his dry scratchy throat it burned doing more harm than good. Another bullet whizzed past Victor from Darkness’s rifle before he had raised his muzzle straight up, in fear of hitting Victor. Without looking back, he knew that he was out of time if Darkness was engaging at this distance.

Ten more feet.

A boney talon gripped onto Victor’s boot and he stumbled falling forward face first towards the rough concrete deck.