While Scar Company had been busy sweeping the first two parking decks LtCol Brown had another company sweep the other parking structures. They had also setup sharp shooter teams in the control towers, and a command post in the famous arched ‘theme' building. After that the plan was to have several squads sweep and clear the three terminal buildings, but everyone except Scar Company had been pulled off to defend the airports fenced parameter and main entrance. The operation was still under way, but now Hoss and his team had to do the work of what would normally call for a complement of between sixty and one-hundred troopers, Hoss only had a dozen men and women.

A runner reached Hoss with a message from Brown, they were to continue their sweep and a detachment of Air Force Security Forces would start clearing the opposite terminal shortly.

Hoss split his people into teams again, team one with him and team two with Johnson, who was turning out to be an excellent hire. He figured that how the army ever let him go was bound to be an interesting story, every fiber of the man practically screamed senior NCO, if you knew how to look. And a competent one at that.

The effect Johnson was having on the team was potent, several of the former soldiers had even started blousing their pants. Much to Hoss’ amusement this included Dawson who was a sailor and didn’t even have feet.

They continued sweeping the terminal buildings, moving through the security checkpoint, gate by gate. Checking every boarding ramp, overpriced shop and restaurant. Like elsewhere in the building, all the visible electronics had been stripped. Unlike elsewhere there were signs of a series of huge fights.

There were piles of benches outside some shops and at the entrance to a few of the gates. The deeper they moved into the building, going from gate to gate, a grisly picture of what had happened emerged.

Mangled security gates in front of shops, scattered barricades across walkways or in front of restaurants. Bloody drag marks leading away and disturbingly claw marks left by people who were carried off alive. Despite all the evidence of fighting they didn’t find any zombies or any survivors.

Scar company took a break at the end of clearing sweeping the first domestic terminal and took in the spectacle outside the windows while Hoss and Johnson used an airport map to plan their next moves.

From their vantage point they could see the parameter the bulk of their force had setup. Machineguns and heavy weapons were constantly firing. Zombies had started to make a pile of bodies over the chain-link and razor wire fencing while constantly being hammered with automatic weapons fire. Beyond the fence there was a sea of zombies pushing forward and spreading out. Red smoke marked several places in the growing hill of zombie bodies. After a few moments there was a deafening ‘BRRRRRRRT’ that coincided with a chunk of the hill and a wide swath of zombies on the other side disintegrating. A10 Warthogs were making their presence known in the area. Every strafing run was followed up with a load of incendiary bombs that turned sections of the airport perimeter into smoking funeral pyres. To the east there was a constant stream of helicopter ferrying messages, supplies, ammo, and reinforcements. Cook started taking pictures and video with her phone

When they got to the international terminal they swept layer after layer of barricades and the scenes of desperate last stands. The barricades nearest the main entrance were stained in dried blood and gore, the further they got from the security checkpoint the scenes of carnage were fresher and more violent. Dismembered arms and legs were jumbled in with the scattered piles of benches, kiosks, and overturned vending machines. Behind it was what looked like the scene of a last stand. Torn cloths and pieces of bodies were trampled into the floor. Right before the entrance to the furthest boarding ramp they found a wall covered in pictures, photo ID's, and passports that had been stapled or taped up. Next to the pictures was a section of wall covered in writing in multiple languages, but two words in English stood out to Hoss. Scrawled in black spray paint near the bottom of the wall of text is said ‘Remember Us' underlined with an arrow pointing to a section of carpet that looked looser than its surroundings.

Hoss bent down and lifted up the section of carpet, below it was a worn but serviceable leather bound book with Cyrillic writing on the front. It seemed to be a journal, its pages were filled with neat lines of text, like the cover they were also written in Cyrillic. Near the back of the journal was a page marked with a Russian passport and filled with hastily written text in English. Hoss pondered the page for a few moments the passed it off to Johnson. “Thoughts?”

If you are reading this I hope you are human, if not then what I say does not matter. Who I am Who I was is not important, if you feel otherwise then the contents of this journal and my passport may inform you of my identity. I will tell you enough here so you will believe what follows, but time grows short. I was hired by a Russian information technology company to pose as a potential investor and collect information on American technology companies. Corporate espionage was not my original career, but the past two decades have changed much, for me, and for the union.

I can hear bombs falling in the distance and see the flash of weapons fire in the mountains to the north. It is not the first time I have been in a city that was being sieged, I could have left, but I stayed to collect information that might be of some help.

We have been trapped in the airport for days, despite what some believe, there have only been probing attacks. I and my fellow travelers have built barricades out of anything available, when the enemy comes it only slows them. They take who they want and withdraw. Anyone who tries to run is killed and turned. One of the airline pilots stranded here attempted to communicate and was held down while a mechanical spider was forced into his mouth. He screamed for a few moments then silently stood up and followed the rest of them out of the building. Since then he has returned with every wave of enemies, looking more putrid each time. Their bodies are not alive, they are being worked like puppets by a technological horror. I know of no human weapon that can do this.

They always leave a few to watch the barricade with their dead eyes, but I have also watched them. They have eliminated the survivors in the other terminals, we are the last group. They could have killed us all on the first day, but they are like a shepherd, only taking from his heard what the butcher can process. We have all fought, and now there are only a few of us left, nailing our passports to the wall so we might be remembered.

I have learned little, but it may help. The first groups of the enemy to arrive at the airport were wearing prison uniforms. Some of the ones we disabled were dragged away were not seen again for many hours, then they returned with any mangled or missing pieces re-attached. I believe that any body damaged enough to not be mobile or functional are brought to a repair facility somewhere nearby. I have confirmed this theory by marking one I had chopped the legs off of and hours later seeing it with its legs re-attached.

I still have a suicide pill from the old days. We will soon be overrun, I will take the pill and the man posing as my bodyguard will remove my legs and insert a tracker. He is a Kazak, so I know he will do it. I retrieved the tracker from an old dead drop in the terminal, it was forgotten after the wall came down but it should still work. It will leak a trail of infra-red ink, follow it from here and you will find the repair facility.

Towards the bottom of the page the writing became more frantic, the last line clearly written with haste and cramped onto the bottom of the page.

They are at the barricade now, I can hear helicopters in the distance, but they will not be here in time.

For Mother Russia.

Make them pay.

Johnson handed the notebook to Cook, “Take pictures of every page, the passport, and the murals. DAWSON! Get your NVG's back out and look around for an IR ink trail.”

Hoss chuckled and ran his fingers through his short cropped hair, “I thought so too, been fighting the Russians or their friends my whole life, this seems like something one of their old school spooks would try to pull off.”

“FOUND IT!” Dawson called out from further down the terminal, “goes through a fire door out to the runway.”

“Looks like we have our next target.” Hoss said as he started walking towards the exit door.