Rolling Hunger Read online

  Rolling Hunger

  Book Two of the Yard Gnome Action Team

  By RW Krpoun

  Copyright 2015 by Randall Krpoun

  All Right Reserved

  ISBN-13: 978-1508671954

  ISBN-10: 150867195

  Dedicated to my wife Ann, and to Deedra for always having my back.

  Acronyms and terms

  Backstop: The area beyond a target which may be affected by a bullet that misses or over-penetrates the target.

  CATL: Counter-Asset Target List, commonly pronounced ‘cattle’. The CATL is a tax-free bounty placed upon specific terrorists by the US government. Many CATL entries specify the subject must be alive.

  DSR: Department of Strategic Response. The Federal agency tasked with overseeing the war against the zombies inside the USA (to comply with the legal requirement of civilian oversight of US military operations)..

  ERF: Environmental Restoration Front, a radical eco-terrorist organization.

  FASA: The group responsible for the deployment of the 618 virus, and for mounting hundreds of terrorist attacks against numerous governments since the viral outbreak. The group’s name is in Lingala, and loosely translates into ‘Front for world alignment’.

  Flex-cuffs: Single-use plastic straps similar to, but wider than, wire ties that serve as handcuffs and similar restraints. They have to be cut to be taken off.

  Zombie truck bomb: A term used to describe a terror device created by loading a cargo truck with infected subjects in the final stages of the disease, and then driving the truck into an unaffected area and releasing the cargo of zombies. Normally a barrier of plastic sheeting is erected inside the cargo doors so that the terrorists opening the cargo area have sufficient time to depart the area before the zombies emerge.

  Taken from the headlines…

  The Dogs of War Reborn: Mercenaries in America’s Battle for Survival

  (API) With the passage of the controversial Bradford bill corporate employees will be shouldering military-grade weapons in the battle against the infected victims of FASA’s bio war attack.

  Opponents of the bill warn of dangers posed by the transfer of government power to private entities and the expansion of ‘private armies’ begun in War on Terror, claiming that this will lead to a point where corporate power achieves ‘mini-nation’ status.

  Supporters of the bill point out that private contractors will take on security and salvage missions which will free military forces to be employed in aggressive operations against both infected and terror threats. They claim that the contractors will offer a cost-effective force multiplier and that the restrictions on weaponry, size, and equipment will effectively prevent the security contractors from posing a threat to the Federal government.

  Lieutenant General Howard (USMC, retired) takes a more pragmatic and middle-of-the road position: “The contactors, as set out in the current bill, will be no more a threat to the regular military than private security companies are a danger to the police. The simple truth is that the threat facing our nation is unparalleled in scope and scale; we find ourselves to be at war across our own country with virtually no warning, and we cannot expand to a wartime footing fast enough to meet the threats. In time the contractors may be phased out as the military expands, but for the moment we cannot afford to turn away any asset available. This bill also gives the government a method and a system to control, regulate, and gainfully employ the bands of irregulars who have sprung up in the face of the initial outbreaks; these groups are highly motivated and often extremely effective, and therefore a resource which should not be disregarded.”

  Senator William Graves (R-Texas) offered a simpler viewpoint: “The United States is in a fight for its very existence, a fight which at this moment has no clear outcome. We cannot afford to exclude or diminish the efforts of any American willing to stand with his nation, be it for patriotism or pay.”

  The 618 virus: A study in potential extinction

  (UPI) The bioweapon deployed by the terrorist conglomeration we know as FASA has been formally classified by the CDC as Viral Agent 618, or more commonly the 618 virus. Developed and weaponized in labs in Indonesia whose intended product was to be a two-stage strain, airborne in its pure state and transferred by salvia once the virus had firmly established itself in a host.

  When the joint CIA/Mossad investigation threatened to uncover the operation FASA planners moved the incomplete virus into production and ultimately into a partial deployment before US-launched tactical nuclear strikes eliminated the research, production, and planning sites.

  While counter-terror forces stopped the dispersal units aimed at Miami, London, and Jerusalem the releases in Pakistan, India, Tokyo, Shanghai, Saint Petersburg, Warsaw, Paris, Dover, Mexico City, Toronto, New York, and Seattle were sufficient to initiate a world-wide plague.

  The 618 is transmitted by the products of the viral epicenters in the parotid and submandibular glands; in a word, saliva. While the virus is present in blood and other body fluids the concentrations and survival time when exposed to air and UV light are such that the transmission risk is extremely low.

  The virus is extremely aggressive, creating increasingly severe fever and flu-like symptoms within minutes of exposure; the fever tends to be fatal for the young and infirm, while adults will transition into what is commonly called the ‘zombie state’ in one to three hours.

  The viral changes to the body reduce the victim to a shambling, nearly mindless creature whose sole programming seems to be to nothing more than spreading the virus by biting. This ‘zombie’ is largely immune to pain or the effects of shock and will continue to function despite incredible damage (on the short term) unless the spinal cord or brain are heavily damaged.

  The CDC, working with viral material extracted from the device intended for Miami, may have developed a counter-agent which, when administered immediately via an auto-injector at the point of infection, has a chance of killing the virus. The first KIND injectors are being field-tested by ground troops and civilian contractors in contact with the infected. As yet no vaccine or successful treatment method have been developed, but the CDC continues to address both issues.

  The CDC dismisses the claims circulating that the longer-infected subjects are displaying changes in behavior, but does concede that the 618 virus is a particularly unstable strain whose developmental history has been lost.

  Defeating the infected has become a critical issue, all the more so because of terrorist support for the infected. The use of nuclear devices by India and China to eliminate the outbreaks have failed due to delays in authorization and poor targeting, and US experts have stated that their studies have indicated that the use of such devices within the USA would be counterproductive.

  The option to use nuclear devices outside the borders of the USA remains open.

  Chapter One

  The YGAT Security Corporation (Motto: You want it, y’gat it) was rolling north on a county road, rolling hot, great plumes of dust boiling up behind them under a leaden October sky.

  The Gnomes had been just north of the Oklahoma/Texas border on an area recon and general salvage operation when the Department of Strategic Response regional controller radioed them and advised that there were survivors trapped at a rest stop forty miles north-northeast of the contractors’ current position, and that no military forces were closer.

  The Gnome force consisted of three M-35 Truck, Cargo, General Purpose, a model better known to generations of military personnel as a ‘deuce and a half’ for their cargo rating of two and a half tons; two drew cargo trailers and one pulled a fuel trailer. Although the trucks and trailers still wore their woodland pattern camouflage, the front and back bumpers of the trucks and the fenders of the trailers were painted
pale blue to show that they belonged to security contractors. The M-35 series had been withdrawn from the US military years earlier, and now scores of the rugged trucks had been pulled from storage and sold to security contractors or given to state and local relief agencies.

  The truck beds’ canvas covers had been removed and the Gnomes riding there faced outboard, weapons in plain evidence.

  In the cab of Gnome-2, the lead truck, the man known to the others as Senior Chief Operator Addison Smith leaned back against the thin low-bid padding on the seat, one booted foot braced against the steel dash, the barrel of his H&K G36K assault rifle resting on the sill of the open passenger window. Slender, olive-skinned, and hard-featured, with his dark hair now worn in a buzz-cut, Addison could pass (and had, in the past) as Italian, Greek, Hispanic, or Native American. Even slumped it was apparent he was a man in good physical condition, the sort of muscle tone that was a product of professional training and hard work.

  Like the other Gnomes he wore desert battle dress uniforms, or DCUs, the discontinued ’coffee-stain’ series, the fruits of a lucky find in their first corporate salvage operation. Marv had been determined to get the corporation into uniform and the discovery of countless bales of the discontinued uniforms was a Godsend. They had not found headgear to match so the former Ranger had decreed that Gnomes would provide their own headgear in black. The same warehouse had had a cache of the collar brass used by cadet officers of the Army ROTC program, which had promptly been adapted to Gnome service.

  The realities of their material situation had prevented Marv from standardizing weapons or tactical load-bearing gear, but he had reserved the right to veto any combinations worn or carried by the Gnomes on the principal that the first step towards being accepted as professionals was looking like professionals.

  Addison approved of Marv’s efforts both because he believed in the power of appearance to impact first impressions, and because the assassins his mother had undoubtedly dispatched would have difficulty in picking their target from within a group with identical haircuts and uniforms.

  The others were blissfully unaware that his mother was behind the entire zombie outbreak, but Addison wasn’t fooled. She had been obsessed with his teeth for as long as he could remember, and this entire business with FASA and the 618 virus was nothing more than a large-scale effort to end his life and secure his dental work. He had been on the run for years before the outbreak, living off the grid, always one step ahead of the hired killers his mother endlessly dispatched. Only his broad spectrum of skills and his mother’s obsession with keeping her maniacal ambitions fully denial-able had saved his life to date.

  After years living alone and off the radar it was jarring to be part of a group, but he had gotten accustomed to it in the days when the Gnomes were just a small group of survivors in a RV trying to help Marv reach government forces, and now he actually enjoyed it. He even took pride in the fact that it was his insistence that the group have a code name that had led to their group identity as the Yard Gnome Action Team; having not used his real name in years he found the idea of a group title to be comforting on a deep level.

  “Getting close, Chief,” Associate Fredrick ‘Sauron’ Olsen advised as he slowed to make a right turn. The driver was a tow-headed former delivery driver and State Champion quarterback now three years out of high school, an Odessa native whose nickname came from the from the modified yellow and black skull-faced welding mask he wore when in action or riding in the back of a truck. The Gnomes wore tactical goggles or ballistic glasses to protect their vision from road dust and their eyes from blood splatter, but Sauron had decided to take it one step further. Addison wasn’t clear on how the mask had led to the nickname but he wasn’t inclined to question anyone’s use of a cover identity.

  “Good.” It was another of Marv’s rules that Chiefs be addressed as ‘Chief’, and that Gnomes who wore two or more diamonds be addressed as ‘sir’ or ‘Mister’, all part of his efforts to transform the hastily-formed band of civilian irregulars into a viable paramilitary force. He tested the fit of the tactical gloves on his hands and glanced into the truck’s cargo area. The folding wood benches had been removed and the outward-facing Gnomes in the back sat on blocks cut from Styrofoam dock supports, often with cushions duct-taped atop as military vehicle suspensions are designed to protect the vehicle, not the passengers. “Let’s get this done.”

  The driver released the steering wheel to pull the mask, which had been riding on top of his head, into place. He had replaced the welding glass with ballistic plastic and had changed the webbing so that his vision was fully unobstructed. It was a literal donning of one’s ‘war face’, something Addison never had to do: ever since he had been young he had known his mother was out to kill him, and there was no standing down in the face of that woman’s implacable efforts.

  He liked Sauron because he was a reliable sort and didn’t talk too much, and because Addison liked his nickname. His mother had been a huge fan of the Lord of the Rings and had read all of Tolkein’s books to him when he was confined to his bed for most of his ninth year.

  She had read them to him as part of her ongoing efforts to brainwash him, and she had continued her efforts in that regard until the day after his sixteenth birthday when he escaped, shed his real name, and slipped off the grid.

  Despite hers and Tolkien’s best efforts Addison had seen the deeper truth behind the tale of The One Ring: that treachery and disinformation are embedded in the very nature of things. The trilogy had made that crystal clear to him, and by the end of the third book he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that his mother was plotting to have him killed so she could secure his teeth.

  He had quickly realized in the first book that there was no Ring, that the whole matter was just a ruse by Bilbo to take out the noble Sauron by means of an evil sorcerous act performed at Mount Doom before Sauron could move against the growing darkness that was the Shire.

  The facts were overwhelming: the Fellowship of the Ring was stacked with Hobbits, four openly in the group and a fifth trailing covertly. The historical account (written by a Hobbit) gave a series of implausible events to explain how four ended up in the group, but the fact was that they were a group when they emerged into Human lands.

  Further, as individual members of the Fellowship become suspicious Frodo acted. A hobbit ‘accidently’ alerted the Goblins in the Mines and Gandalf was taken out, with a double substituted under unlikely circumstances much later. As the evidence mounted, Frodo split the party. Taking only the ‘gardener’ who is surprisingly adept at fighting (even Shelob fared poorly against him) he slipped away to complete the mission free of witnesses, later linking up with the fifth, covert, Halfling. The other two Hobbits murdered Boramir while he was away from the rest of the group and made it look like Orcs, helped by mercenary Orcs in their pay (later Frodo will slander Boramir in the only written account of the operation). They led the rest of the Fellowship off on a wild-goose chase and the Orcs were killed by the Riders of Rohan (few of those riders survived the coming battles: no coincidence there); the story that there was a falling-out amongst the Orcs is substantiated only by the two Hobbits.

  Later at Minas Tirith Hobbits are assigned to the replacement ‘Gandalf’ and the Steward to the Gondor throne to ensure that there are no awkward questions asked. Hobbits were on hand when both the rulers of Rohan and Gondor died violently.

  On Mount Doom the fact was that three went up, and two came down. The business of the Ring was simply a sham to conceal the dark sacrifice and evil magic performed at the mountain.

  Returning from Mount Doom they find that the brave-but-dim Aragorn had failed to get the last army of Men slaughtered at the Black Gate and Frodo is forced to dispatch two of his henchmen back to the homeland to halt the mobilization of Hobbit-folk and its conversion into a war economy. The sudden industrial and military expansion in Hobbit territory is explained away (by Frodo) as interference by Men: the race card in action.

 
Sauron was undone, and while the opportunity to put Rohan and Gondor under the Halfling heel did not manifest itself, the operation is still a success. Wealthy from loot and black-ops payments from a grateful Halfling nation, Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam casually slip away to reside in a third world state which had no extradition.

  Even as young as he was Addison had had no difficulty in understanding his mother’s message conveyed via the books: hand over what was desired or face destruction.

  Like the noble Sauron he had refused to knuckle under. He doubted he could survive his mother’s efforts indefinitely, but at least he could make her work for her victory. She would have to claw her way up Mount Doom just as Frodo had, and just like that murderous little war criminal she would have to pay a bloody price to make it happen.

  Marvin ‘Marv the Maniac’ Burleson, Director of the YGAT Corporation and until recently a member of the US Army’s 75th Infantry Regiment (Airborne Rangers), thumped his hands together to seat his tactical gloves firmly. Marv tended to look bigger than his six feet because the harsh planes of his face and his burr haircut (one clipper guide above shaved) gave him a look of sullen brutality that was neither wholly accurate nor inaccurate.

  Until four weeks ago he had been an Airborne Ranger Staff Sergeant with four combat tours under his belt; in the space of six days he had been commissioned, promoted, decorated, and at his own request discharged. Now he was locked into the struggle of building a viable private corporate security force in a United States beset by a zombie virus and a guerrilla war being fought within its own borders.

  Marv had not gotten his nickname in the Rangers for being the sort of wild man that regiment often attracts, nor for being an exceptional drinker, bar fighter, or womanizer, three endeavors the Rangers also hold in high esteem. He had gotten his moniker in Afghanistan for his single-minded intensity and it had stayed with him; having lost his young wife to a rock climbing accident he had devoted himself to the Ranger mission to the exclusion to anything else.