The front cab of the M939A2 cargo truck smelled like the Army. It was a mixed smell of metal and  some type of oil or grease. It was comforting and took Lieutenant Rhine’s mind back to more pleasant times in his life; times when the term “Zombie” had only been  a stupid movie gimmick. The jolt of PFC Garner’s knee digging into his back brought him back to the real world.

“Sorry sir, just trying to adjust my stance” Garner said from his position standing on the passenger seat with his upper body out of the cab’s rooftop turret and manning the trucks M2HB .50 caliber machine gun.

“Its fine Garner, I needed it anyways” Rhine said, grabbing his SCAR and opening the door to step out

The platoon had acquired the two five ton M939A2’s from an infantry unit that had poorly positioned itself during an engagement with Zack and as a consequence, had ceased to exist. Rhine’s company commander called them in to plug the gap that Zack had punched in the dangerously thin defensive line and “plug” they did. They had dismounted from their Humvees and engaged the group of around 40 Z’s; their silenced M-4’s and SCARS dropping the undead with slightly hushed pops.  As they scoured the area, it was noted that Zack’s original formation had only been of about 30 Z’s; the remainder being made up of members of the fallen unit whose corpses had risen and joined the attack. Advancing past the permanently dead corpses, they reached the unit’s position and discovered the two trucks; their insides filled with some valuable supplies. Rhine decided to take the trucks and their goods since their previous owners certainly didn’t need them anymore. Their little rolling war machine now consisting of three Humvees, the two M939s, twenty five Rangers and five Colorado National Guardsmen sat off to the side of the highway on I-25, just South of the New Mexico-Colorado border and about 7 ½ miles North of the town of Raton, New Mexico. The platoon was down to twenty five Rangers from the original thirty they had assaulted Dallas with. The five Guardsmen they had been given may not have been as highly trained as Rhine’s Rangers but they were competent and did their jobs  so they fit in well. The whole contingent of men was currently holding a checkpoint to observe and assist refugees fleeing North from Albuquerque and its surrounding cities North to Colorado.  “Checkpoint” was a drastic misuse of terms Rhine thought to himself. The highway was filled from shoulder to shoulder with haggard and beaten looking refugees; god knows how many of whom were infected and just weren’t showing signs yet. There was absolutely no way the platoon could spot even one-tenth of the infected amongst the refugees if they weren’t showing signs of illness. It was a hopeless task and Rhine felt they should have been far to the South helping to keep the horde of Z’s chasing the refugees off their tail.

He stood with my back leaning against the truck’s door thinking of how stupid it was to have some of America’s most elite soldiers pulling checkpoint duty. It was like using your Ferrari to tow a boat; it just didn’t make any sense. He guessed the Army was really running low on personnel to have crack troops pulling traffic duty. As he was getting lost in his mental crusade against the poor planning on the Army’s part, a commotion roughly thirty yards South snapped his attention back. The crowd had parted and he could see some of his men running to the spot, rifles up and ready. Rhine followed and soon found himself standing in front of a man on his hands and knees, coughing deeply, droplets of blood falling from his mouth onto the pavement. Two Rangers quickly donned thick rubber bit proof gloves and grabbed the man, forcing him all the way to the ground. The man fought back, trying to escape while the Rangers tugged at his clothing, trying to locate infected wounds or bite marks.

“Get your goddam hands off me!” the man grunted as he reached out towards a Ranger’s face, trying to fight back.

A third Ranger standing above them saw the move and brought the butt stock of his SCAR down hard  into the man’s shoulder, causing him to cry out in pain. The man’s wife and children standing nearby began sobbing. Rhine nodded his approval of the Ranger’s move. It had caused just enough pain to get the man to cease his reaching but didn’t cause any blood splatter such as a similar blow to the face would have.  One of the Rangers called out as he pulled the man’s shirt up and located a deep bite wound on the man’s upper back.

“We’ve got a bite here, he’s infected!!” the Ranger hollered as his standing comrade placed the SCAR’s muzzle against the infected man’s head.

The crowd of refugees surrounding the commotion recoiled back in fear, a virtual parted sea flowing around the infected.

“Move again and you’re dead” the Ranger with the SCAR said to the infected man, the adrenaline in his bloodstream ratcheting up his nervousness and aggression.

Rhine moved forward, pulled the two Rangers off of the infected man, and grabbed him by the arm.

Once he had helped him up Rhine looked him in the eye and hissed under his breath “Don’t you dare do this in front of the children! You know what this means, now be a fucking man about it!”

The man hung his head and sobbed. The truth about his fate that he had so desperately been denying was now visible for the world to see and he could no longer hide it.

“Kids, you and your mom gotta keep going, your dad needs to stay here and help us stop the bad people.” Rhine said followed by a loud shout of “Everyone keep moving! Come on, you gotta keep moving North!”

The crowd began moving again, the wary eyes of passing refugees tracking the man as they passed.

“Can I say goodbye to my family?” the man asked, desperation in his eyes.

“Yea; make it quick though, I can see your skin losing its color already”

The man began to walk away when Rhine grabbed his arm, “Hugs are fine but DO NOT kiss them, the risk of infection is too great, I am sorry but those are the rules” he said.

“Its ok……. I understand”

Rhine could see that the Rangers were uncomfortable with the man being so close to the children. They all should have known by now that the infected would pass out and died before the infection took hold. They didn’t simply go from living to Zombie in an instant. The young Lieutenant wanted to turn away but forced himself to stand and watch this man’s last moments with his love ones. He was about to take this man from his family. Infection or not, Rhine would be the one taking his life and watching these last moments was his punishment. He stood and was escorted into the tree line and out of sight from the road by four Rangers. Rhine caught his wife’s eyes as she began walking past while holding a hand of each of her children. She hated him and he understood; no matter what the situation. They always gave him that look. Regardless of the fact that the infection would have killed her husband anyway and transformed him into a walking cannibal, in her mind, Rhine was the Grim Reaper.

He walked away and through the woods, entering a small clearing to find the man sitting on the ground. A couple feet away from him lay six other bodies hog tied with high strength zip ties. Unlike the man, these bodies drooled blood from their snapping mouths and thrashed like beached sharks, still trying to attack but unable to move far enough to do so. The man was smoking a cigarette offered to him by one of the Rangers, his tears dried, finally at peace with his situation. Rhine stopped next to Staff Sergeant  Moreno, taking the silenced MP-5 from his hands.

“These six all turned in the past hour. God it creeps the hell out of me when their eyes open back up and they stare at you and start snapping.” Moreno said. “You don’t have to keep doing this sir, I can handle it”

“No Enrique, this is what they mean by “the burden of command.” The shit rolls uphill in this platoon.”

The infected refugee stubbed his cigarette out and looked at Rhine, “ I’m sorry for fighting your men, I was so scared. It was stupid to put my family in danger like that……..”

“Its ok, I understand and my men do too”

“Will it hurt? You know when you…when you do it?” he asked, the tears building back up in his eyes.

Rhine had no idea if it would hurt; he had never been shot in the head before. He lied anyways “ I promise, you won’t feel a thing. You are just going to sleep.  Now just close your eyes and relax.”

The man closed his eyes but began to shake, his clenched fists turning white as he tried to control the fear coursing through him.

Rhine had an idea that might help. It wasn’t the best idea, just the best he could come up with at that moment.

“You know this cold weather is telling me we are going to get a pretty good snow fall this winter.”  He said, the MP-5 suddenly feeling very heavy in his hands.

The trick worked and the shaking stopped as the man’s mind briefly left what was happing and focused on the snow and what Rhine was saying.

“ With any luck we can—“.

The MP-5 answered Rhine’s squeeze of the trigger and fired a three round burst, blowing the refugee’s  brains all over the damp ground. He had hoped that his attempt to comfort the man would put a dent in the darkness he felt but he had no such luck. Flipping the selector switch to semi-auto, he walked down the line, firing a single 9mm round into the head of each bound Zombie. There were no spoken words this time, just the cold metallic clicking sound each time the firing pin struck the primer of a round, the pop of the bullet, and the MP-5’s chamber cycled another round in its place.

Rhine handed the MP-5 back to Moreno, “I’m gonna  get back to the road and start packing things up. Get these bodies ready to burn. We move up the road for the next checkpoint in 30 minutes.

It was an hour and a half later and dark while the platoon sat roadside on the Colorado side of the border. They had moved up to checkpoint being manned by another unit. Rhine put his men on 25% watch, which meant three quarters of them got get some desperately needed sleep while the rest pulled guard duty.  It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the soldiers manning the checkpoint, it just felt better knowing his boys had a say in the safety of this area. He was sitting in the cab with 1^st sergeant Rhodes using a blue filtered Surefire flashlight to study a map of the area when his intuition was proved correct. Both of their heads snapped to the right as a blood curdling scream filled the air. They looked out to see the sea of refugees scatter in panic. It was pandemonium everywhere, people fleeing in terror. Rhine flipped down his helmet mounted night vision goggles and saw a thin green beam stabbing through the night to a point on the opposite side of the road, about fifty or so yard down. Someone had spotted the source of the panic and was using his rifle mounted infrared laser designator to point it out to the rest of the platoon. They could see clearly now that four Z’s had come out of the tree line and run right into a soldier from the other unit who hadn’t been paying attention. The soldier was flat on his back, still fighting as the Z’s tore into him. Rhine was about to holler up to PFC Garner to open fire when he unleashed with the M2. The noise was deafening, causing both Rhine and Rhodes to duck their heads in surprise.  Shell casings rained down onto the truck’s hood and foot long muzzle flashes lit up the night as Garner’s M2HB heavy machine gun unleashed half inch rounds that decimated the five bodies on the ground. The armor piercing-incendiary rounds blew the four Z’s as well as the fallen soldier apart, pieces scattering in all directions. The M2 fell silent and a deep and eerie quiet followed as the soldiers scanned the tree line with their NVG’s and the refugees began picking themselves up off the ground.

“Good work Garner, keep your shit tight while we get this place back under control!“  Rhine hollered up through the turret hatch.

“I didn’t have a clean shot, I shouldn’t have fired” Garner said, sadness seeping into his voice. Rhine knew what he was feeling; it was becoming a daily part of their lives now.

“That soldier was dead the second Zack popped out of the tree line and he wasn’t paying attention. Someone gets bit, you burn ‘em; end of story. I don’t care if it’s a refugee, myself, one of our boys, or  Mother Theresa. You saved a lot of lives by being on point and doing your job. Sgt. Rhodes and I are proud of you.”

“Yes sir, thank you sir” Garner hollered back, the usually confidence restored to his voice.

Rhine brass checked his SCAR, pulling the bolt back slightly to make sure a round was chambered, and grabbed the door handle. “What do you say Sgt? Feel like waking the boys up and earning our paychecks?”

Rhodes brass checked his M-4 and shook his head, “ LT, the only people who aren’t awake  after Garner’s little fireworks show are in a pile down the road.”