If I may make an observation, though, there’s a point where this becomes useless. That’s what the brass never gets. You can’t spend years training a soldier to do A and then expect him to switch to B in a day just because some intel told him to. Oh, he’ll get it right during that week of drills, but once he’s on mission those years of training are going to kick back in and override that week.
I know training. I was a drill sergeant for seven years before I joined Project Krypton. There’s something special when a fuzzy hears he’s been assigned to Sgt. Paine. You can see the dread on their faces before you even start talking. So I knew—I know now—we were overconfident and our brains were filled with the wrong kind of training. We went into Yuma and all that training kicked back in.
Yeah, even for me, too. I was a former drill sergeant who could throw a refrigerator fifteen feet. Damn straight I was well trained and overconfident.
The convoy went forward down Freeway 95, the long stretch when the road runs east-west but before the locals start calling it County. The first exes were sighted at approximately oh-nine-forty-five hours. They crawled out from behind cars or staggered out of ditches. You could hear their teeth clicking before you saw them. They were put down.
All the Unbreakables were carrying M240 Bravos. One of those will put a trio of rounds through a skull with no problem. The downside to the Bravo is it’s damn loud. We knew sound attracted the exes. Rather than four or five targets at a time, we’d have a dozen or so staggering at us at one mile an hour. We didn’t think it’d be a big deal. Even if one got close, all the Unbreakables were wearing the newest ACUs. They still had pockets for knee and elbow pads, but were also triple layered at the shoulder, forearms, and calves—all the major bite points.
We found our first large cluster of about ten exes close to ten-fifteen hours. They were heading our way, stumbling down 95, bouncing off abandoned cars and trucks. Freedom already had sections Eleven and Thirty-one flanking them when he saw the movement. I think I saw it at the same time, but I’m not sure.
There was another cluster just a few yards behind the first one, maybe as many as fifteen of them. They were almost close enough to be one big group. And there were two or three lone exes stumbling along either side of the street. Freedom pulled in Twelve and also brought up two sections from Charlie platoon for support. Charlie’s most of the washouts from the program, and Delta’s the only control platoon left at Krypton. They’ve started calling themselves the Real Men. It’s probably going to stick.
Section Twelve and the Real Men started at the back and worked in. It took about two minutes to put down all the exes with head shots. I remember I saw a few rounds punch through chests and barked an order down the line to confirm targets. Looking back, I should’ve seen where it was going right then.
Captain Freedom made a point of grabbing the last ex and twisting its head off with his bare hands. It was a heavy man with long hair and a thick mustache. He tossed the head underarm, letting it roll up the street like a bowling ball. A couple soldiers chuckled at that. It was a good morale boost. We needed it. The road was getting too clogged for the Humvees.
By ten-thirty-five the convoy had gone another mile and a half and killed another three dozen exes. Sections Twelve and Thirty-three dropped back to reload. The other downside to the Bravo, for us, is it eats ammo like candy. The spare ammo boxes were awkward things for a soldier to carry. Even for a soldier who can bench nine-hundred pounds.
We’d also found four survivors in a mobile home. Family of three and the son’s girlfriend. We loaded them in one of the last Humvees. We had three with us just for potential survivors.
From here we could see the intersection of 95 and East County 9 1/2 a hundred yards or so ahead. It had a gas station and a Circle K. Everyone stops there if you’re taking the long way back to the proving grounds after a night in Yuma.
There were a lot of cars there. I couldn’t tell if it was a huge fender-bender or everyone in this part of the city decided to drive out and all abandon their cars at the same place. There were two or three big trucks as well, including one semi stretched right across most of the intersection. We could see a few exes milling around the vehicles. Nine, maybe ten. One or two of them had seen us or heard our weapons.
We moved up nice and slow. Another four exes stumbled out from between the cars while we did. They were finding a path through the pile-up. We got close enough to hear their teeth clacking together.
But there was a lot of clacking. Too much for the exes we were seeing.