35 minutes before operation cauterize

I quickly reached for my radio, “Carmine! Sit rep! What do you see, over.” There was no response.

“Saber One-Three this is Saber One-Six. How copy? Over.” I looked towards the guys as I attempted to reach Carmine. They both shrug at me.

Jasper then advised us to go check on him. I tried for another minute attempting to get in touch with Carmine. After the fourth time I began to slightly panic.

“We need to get to the roof now.” I said.

They both looked at me and nodded in agreement. All three of us started moving towards the stairwell. The halls were completely devoid of sound. I could hear the sound of our beating hearts as we made our way through the halls. A sign above a bright red door illuminated the hall, “exit”. We opened the door to find that the fire escape was pitch black. We looked at each other one last time as Jasper asked, “Should we turn on our NVGs?”. Fear slightly lingering in his voice.

“No, we can’t waste the battery.” I replied.

“But-“

“No! Use Surefires until op start.” I looked back at Jasper and Jackson, the fear in them was more than apparent. I reached my hand out and grabbed Jasper's shoulder. “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. I’ll take point.” I responded. They both looked at me with a sense of reassured confidence. Nodding their heads in approval of the plan.

We clicked on our flashlights as we moved into the fire escape.We stacked up and moved up the stairwell. Our training took over as we scanned every inch of the darkness, even if we cleared the school, better to be safe than sorry, right? As we moved, the beams of light emitting from our rifles showed bloodstains covering the walls.Every step was agony. “Step, step, step,-Wshht” a crash was heard as Jackson’s rifle fell to the ground, he slipped on something and fell. Before I could fully move to help him, he let out a shriek and flailed back towards the railing. He moved so fast he almost went over the railing, luckily Jasper was fast enough to grab his plate carrier, pulling him back towards us. I motioned my rifle towards whatever freaked out Jackson so violently. My eyes quickly met the milky white eyes of a little girl. Half her body was missing, her face mangled from the lips down. I froze, just staring at what was left of this girl, she couldn’t be any older than eight, a pink hair tie with what looked like a hello kitty knock off in her hair. I blinked after an eternity, and looked towards them. Jackson didn’t know what to do, there was an Erie silence as Jasper quickly pulled his bag off his back and ripped out his half shelter. He quickly extended it and covered the little girl's body. After covering the body, he knelt down and crossed his hands. Jasper spoke in a voice I’d never heard before, “Lord, take care of this little girl, may your heavenly angels guide her into the lovin-“

“We don’t have time for this shit!” Jackson shot off.

“Jackson, I don’t want to say this, but if you don’t shut your mouth, I’m gonna make sure the next trip you take to sick call will be to get new teeth.” Jasper said.

I put my hand on Jackson’s chest to stop him from retaliating. “Jasper, I understand, but we really do not have time for this, we need to check on the living.”

“Lieutenant! I get I’m a polarizing character! I can get under everyone’s skin, just.” He choked up a tiny bit. “She’s just a little girl. No older than my Sarah. Please.” He turned back towards the body, crying. I can only imagine what was going through his mind. Seeing Jasper cry didn’t just hit me, I saw it hit Jackson just as hard. I sat my rifle down. And knelt down next to him, Jackson slowly did the same. We sat there in silence as Jasper finished his prayer. We quickly got back up and continued on our way up the steps.

Finally, we made it to the rooftop access. As I began to move towards the door, I felt a hand hit my shoulder. The sudden impact on my shoulder made me jump. I quickly realized that Jackson had grabbed me. My eyes met his.

“Yeah?” I asked

“Shit, sorry. Muscle memory.” He retorted

“Solid”, I gulped as my arm began to outstretch towards the handle. I opened the door and rushed through. I was met by a startled Man about five foot nine, his white skin turned a hue that would make Snow White blush. His brown eyes stared into mine with a look of horror. It was Carmine.

“Lieutenant?” He paused for a moment, his eyes widened as he took a look at me “Oh god.” He looked me up and down at me as he recoiled back, “Jesus Christ they got the lieutenant!” He shouted. In an instant I was ontop of Carmine telling him “Shut the fuck up! Don’t yell!” I lifted my hand from his mouth. And pulled him back up.

“Oh thank god! But why in the fuck are you busting through a door as if you’re the fuckin Swat on a no knock raid!”

“Because we have no comms with you! Why the fuck aren’t you on comms!” I said to him, his eyes widened as he realized.

“What? I am on comms aren’t I? He rushed his hand over his radio and attempted to get it to work. As he moved the knobs, it became apparent the radio was off. “What the shit?” He said as he pulled his radio out of his pouch. Slamming it on his hand. “This stupid thing!”

“Jesus! Give me the damn thing!” Jackson said, ripping it out of carmine’s hands and began to fiddle with it.

“God! What the hell’s his problem?” Carmine said to me.

“Why didn’t you clean the body in the fire escape?” Jasper spoke up.

“What? What are you talking about?” Carmine questioned.

“The little girl's body, why didn’t you clean it up when we first swept the building like you were ordered to!” Jasper said, anger emanating from his voice.

“Little Girl? There was no bodies in the fire escape?” Carmine said, his southern accent leaking out of his voice.

“Right, well how about this! You and I take a short walk down there and find out!”

“Are you threatening me? Jasper?”

“Enough! Carmine, send men down there right now and clean up that body! Jasper, chill out! Jackson? Any ideas on the radio?”

“Yeah! The dipshit didn’t charge his batteries, the radio’s worthless.” He tosses it back to Carmine as he fumbles to catch it. “Hey it’s not my fault!”

“Then whose fault is it, Carmine?” Jackson asked.

“I- I don’t know! Probably supply! Or something!” Carmine said, attempting to shift blame.

“Carmine! I’m not in the mood for excuses. You’re just going to have to make due, or grab one of your squad member’s radios. I don’t care what you do! Just come here so I can go over this with you all one last time.” I said as I pulled out a map and chem light. I point out the school and explain this is where we are. “Alright, so this is us! And over here is our Objective. Vascorp Labs, a biomedical research lab for the DOD, they have important eggheads that need to be evaced. It is our job to reach this skyscraper and secure everything we can. From there we will move to the rooftop and prepare for extraction. This was our original plan, but I’m changing it up. Second platoon requested support, they have also possibly taken heavy casualties. Carmine, I want your squad to move to eighteenth street and check out what’s going on. Their objective was to move towards the police station here, your new job is to Link up with second and move to support the evacuation of civilians.”

“Lieutenant, don’t you think Jasper’s or Patterson’s squad would be better suited for that job, mine is the heaviest, which would make it much harder to-“

“Carmine, your squad is moving because you have the largest base of fire, and ontop of that, you have the most intact squad. You are currently the only force that can move separate to the main element and still be effective.”

“You got it sir, I’ll make sure to stay on comms. If anything happens I’ll let you know.” Carmine got up and began to brief his men. Then we heard him say “Fisher, Hags! Head into the fire escape and clean that little girl up.”

As the two rushed past us, I heard one of them say “I told you he was gonna get in trouble for leaving the body there.” Reassuring my suspicions about Carmine.

“Perfect! Now as for us. Jasper, Jackson, on the route, there is the central cathedral here. I want us to move there for a vantage point, with that we are taking feathers, and the recon team. It’ll be our job to secure the cathedral as a rally point in case anything goes wrong. It will also work as a CP, if I need other platoons or anything else to regroup with us, it’s a great central point. Other than that the plan is the same as usual. And no matter what, we need to make sure that we do not cause too much commotion. You all read the Briefing on the BZs. They are relentless if they even hear you. Make sure you all tie your shit down, make sure no one will cause any sound or it could be a legitimate danger. Also, Fort Green went dark on day one of this outbreak. I want to avoid it at all costs. Alright that sums it up, Any questions?”

“Uh, lieutenant.” Jackson said as he raised his hand.

“Yeah, what’s up Jackson.”

“That police station, I’m not someone to leave people out to dry, but don’t you think the two forties would be better used with us?“

“While they could be, we need to be fast in case we need to move around larger groupings of the BZs. High concentrations of them have been seen moving together. I’d rather not have to keep a heavy team like that attached to us. It’s safer for them and us both if they go and support a more stationary force like second and third platoons. Besides, they will need the firepower.”

“Alright, I can understand that.”

“I’m sorry, did you say high concentrations of BZs?” Patterson said as he walked through the door.

“Oh! Yeah, that’s right, I expect you were listening over the radio?”

“Yeah, how else am I going to get info from you assholes while I have to play tard wrangler with half the goddamn platoon.” Patterson said with a smirk. “Anyways, how much concentration are we talking about?”

“Well, Warchief, during the briefing alluded to larger groupings of BZ’s to be anywhere from forty to-“ I hesitated to say the upper number.

“To?” Jasper said.

“Up to a few thousand.” I said with a sigh. The group recoiled at the revelation.

“What in the fuck do you mean a few thousand?” Jackson said in shock.

“Yeah, apparently, the groups can reach rather large numbers.”

“Groups? Dude their zombies, just call them hordes!” Jackson said.

“Fine, hordes can get rather large. We need to avoid them if we come in contact with a large one. Fast movers we’re supposed to target huge concentrations with precision munitions, but apparently it’s as Jasper put it, “rolling thunder” out there.”

“Well, even though I don’t like the heavy use of cluster bombs, I am kinda happy they are if those are the numbers we are up against.” Jackson said.

“I have a question!” Carmine shot up and rushed over.

“Yes Carmine?”

“So, uh, about the virus? Can it infect animals? I’d rather know now if I have to deal with resident evil style Dobermans coming at me full speed.”

“As far as I was told, no, it cannot jump the species barrier.”

“Okay good!”

“God you are such a nerd!” Jackson says as he nudges Carmine’s shoulder.

“Hey! All I’m saying is if I have to deal with a legion of dead animals ima fuckin cry! Haven’t you ever seen the movie Zoombies?“

“What? No? What is that?”

“It’s this zombie movie where a bunch of zoo animals become zombies! And eat the caretakers!”

“What in the name of sci-fi, B movie bullshit is that?” Jasper asked.

“Actually it was pretty good! Acting was awful but premise has some serious-“

“Okay enough! We are in a war zone and y’all are talking about a fucking movie!” Patterson finally shot up.

“Sorry!” Carmine retorted.

“Anyways, now all we have to do is wait. Until we get-“

Suddenly my radio shot on, “All call signs, this is Warchief, Operation Cauterize is a go. Over.”

The men all got quiet around me as I looked up. I said one word.

“Showtime.”