Honed by a lifetime of soldiering, mercenary work, and coaching, Hoss had an eye for talent. What he saw when he looked at his current team was the mix of talent and experience you don’t see very much outside high end mercenary units. He had thought his days of running a merc outfit were over, but this mission was worth coming out of retirement.
He was actually surprised, all ten people who followed him to the power station signed on when he said he was going to get in the fight. They were all fighters, but he expected them to want something other than following an old man around a battlefield. At the moment they were doing an inventory of their weapons, ammo, and equipment. They already knew what needed done, they just needed a nudge in the right direction.
Everyone pooled their resources, Hoss put forward the idea that they should at least use weapons with the same ammo type, and keep spares that used NATO standard ammo. Since the zombies were about as durable as a person, and weren’t armored, they optimized their load out for maximum soft tissue damage. Everyone pooled their weapons and they had enough shotguns to make sure everyone got a semi or full auto 12-gauge. Deviding up ammo left them with a few hundred shells each, and everyone got a sidearm. Hoss had broken open a storage unit he kept at an old army air corps landing strip outside of Houston and handed out the few AA12's and a USAS he kept there to go with the Siaga-12’s some of the others brought in. The airfield was officially decommissioned, but plenty of flights still went through there if you knew the right people.
Every person in Texas who didn’t have a gun was trying to buy one, and every person with a gun was trying to buy ammo. The couple dozen weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammo, that the team could all agree they wouldn’t need, or couldn’t carry, were as valuable as gold. Hoss had been in enough countries wracked by conflict to know that very soon money would not be able to buy as much.
There was a brief dispute when nobody wanted give up the semi-automatic Barrett. 50 caliber rifle, Johnson settled it when he decided that whoever got to use it should be somebody with experience, and they would still need to carry a shotgun. A man by the ominous name of Pain, a former army MP, was chosen as the sniper. Cunningham, a former Marine who lost an eye during the second battle of Falujah, had been obsessively cleaning their acquired M-60 and nobody really wanted to go without the fire support it could offer
Everyone had a different mix of ammo, rifled or fin stabilized slugs, and buckshot eventually distributed. Except for Olson and Dawson, who were both chuckling maniacally in the corner of the living room.
Dawson had a drum for his siaga painted red, with an explosive warning label and the words “caution explosive" stenciled on the front. Olson had two magazines for his custom Fostech Origin-12 painted orange with “caution hot" stickers applied to the sides. Hoss got the feeling he would need to keep an eye on how much time those two spent together unsupervised.
On the back patio, Hoss found Cook, a former analyst with a crazed intense look in her eye, and Lee, a former combat engineer missing a leg. They had a pile of disassembled spider disks spread out on a table next to a battered looking laptop. They both had their heads together poking at a cracked open disc situated between them.
“This has to be the battery" Lee said pointing at one part.
“That doesn’t make any sense, there aren't any…” Cook cut off what she was about to say as Hoss walked up.
“Cook, I heard you were a spook, I hope you didn’t lose your touch. I need you to look up some people for me.” He handed her a stack of envelopes with ID's paperclipped to them.
Nine people had died defending their position south of Houston. They died to give people behind them a chance to organize. More people than that died, but he had been leading these men and women. Writing these letters had become a habit, but this time he didn’t need to create a reason or make up a cause.
Cook took the envelopes and tucked them under her laptop, “I can find anyone, these will get where they need to go.”
“Good, and make sure none of those disks come with us when we move out. I don’t want any alien low jack giving us away or wake up in the middle of the night to find out they can self-repair.”
Lee and Cook looked at Hoss then at each other. Neither of them had thought of that.
Hoss left them to it and went into his home office to start calling in favors, going into debt, and swindling like a gypsy.
Hours later he finally got as much as he hoped, borrowed as much as he could, and promised more than he knew he could deliver.Johnson and Sharp had returned from trading guns and ammo for accessories and equipment. Everyone now had night vision goggles and they had a handful of thermal scopes to go around.Just as everyone got done playing with their new toys a courier knocked at the door with orders for scar company.
“For anyone who took a trophy from the aliens or zombies, it goes in here" Hoss said holding a small gun safe. “We cant afford to take the chance that they have a way to track the dead ones.”
There was some grumbling, but everyone emptied out their pockets and turned over the disks they'd taken as trophies from the alien ship.
“Enough of that! Yall have the sense to know these aren't safe to keep around. So, instead of keeping them, we are trading them for our new ride. Load everything up and follow me.”
Even with all the roads empty and Hoss orders getting them past the road blocks, it took the company a few hours to reach their destination. The sun was setting by the time they turned off the hard top and onto a dirt road. They stopped inside a fenced off area that looked like a large abandoned lot in the middle of nowhere west of Houston. A guard at a rusty gate waved them through to an area at the end of a battered concrete landing strip. There were a trio of old corrugated sheet metal hangers, a single shack with radio antennas jutting out of it, and rows of neatly stacked shipping containers.
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There were two groups of people already there, a man and a woman in tan flight suits sitting at a table outside the shack. Twenty feet away and closer to the entrance was a trio of black SUV's that were obviously armored with gun ports on the windows. Six men wearing suits and carrying sub machineguns stood in a cordon around a man wearing khaki pants and a dark polo.
Hoss had Johnson help him carry the safe with the spiders-disks in it to. Everyone started to follow him, but he sent them off, “Why don’t you go meet the Chiefs? No need to spook our friends with all this hardware.”
They dropped the safe in front of the nearest man in a suit and handed him the passcode. Hoss reached out and shook the other man's hand in a firm hand shake. “I didn’t think you’d come down in person. Its good to see you Scott. How’s the family?”
Hoss really was surprised the CEO of the company that owned Bell Aviation came in person, but it was always good to see a former customer. At least it was if they had parted on good terms.
“The kids are shaken, Hellen is worried. I'm worried. I was surprised when I got your message, everything’s setup. Your birds are flying in and should be here soon.” Scott paused and glanced at the safe being loaded into the back of a SUV by his men. “Is it as bad as it seems?”
“Just about, it could be worse. If Texans weren't so fond of guns, we wouldn’t be havin’ this conversation.”
“I guessed they learned not to mess with Texas"
They both chuckled over the old saying before the deep rhythmic thumping of helicopters in the distance silenced them. “I really appreciate this.” Hoss said as he began to turn back to where the rest of Scar Company was grouped. “You put that alien tech to good use. We are going to teach the rest of these things why nobody ever tried to invade the US in the past two hundred years. If you'll excuse me.”
Before he could take more than a few steps Scott reached out to him but stopped short of grabbing his shoulder. “Is there anywhere safe?” he asked with a pained look on his face. “Not for me, I’ll need to work, but for my family.”
Hoss paused then looked north, “For now, we know they aint’ hit Canada. Could be the cold, but I figure the population is too low for them to spread quickly.” Hoss posed for a moment, collecting his thoughts as the sound of helicopters steadily grew louder. “I seen one of them, not the zombies, one of the aliens. It was already dead, half of it turned ta’ pulp when some hard SOB put a couple rounds into it. But enough was left ta’ figure how it looked. I walked in one of their ships, Scott. And that ship wasn't built for something that was the shape nor size of what we found inside… Spend as much time with your family as you can, Scott.” By the time he finished speaking the sound of helicopters had grown loud enough to drown out any response Scott had.
Hoss squared his shoulders and walked back to his gaggle of warriors who were collectively watching two brand new, primer grey, Bell 412 helicopters in the process of landing. Modern versions of the famous Hueys from Vietnam that had proved the concept, these were nearly the same size and shape. They had two engines instead of one, four rotor blades instead of two, and most importantly were single pilot designs.
They touched down, stirring up a blizzard of dirt and rocks. The pilots hastily shut down the engines, got out and jogged over to the trio of black SUV that immediately sped out of the area as soon as they were in.
“Chief Rodriguez, its good ta’ see you, hope you like your new rides. Sergeant Johnson, you know what ta’ do.”
Johnson immediately began to bark out instructions, “I want two teams of five, everyone start loading gear into those choppers. We need to get moving, yesterday!”
Scar Company was in the air. It had taken them around 30 minutes to get everything loaded and gave the pilots a chance to familiarize themselves with controls and specifications, then they were flying off in the night.
They headed west, generally following interstate 10. The side going west was orderly columns of military vehicles. Convoy after convoy loaded for war. The lanes going east were choked with civilian evacuees trying to escape the horror.
The sky was thick with military aircraft, transports, cargo planes, bombers, close air support, and fighters, flying east and west. Closer to the ground, entire fleets if helicopters shook the sky flying west loaded with troops and weapons. Satellite communications were down, and the global positioning system couldn’t be trusted, making coordinating the entire thing nearly impossible.
Scar Company’s helicopters, their call signs Sierra Charlie 1&2, fell in the back of a formation of Blackhawks. They made occasional stops to refuel, at every stop they traded gossip and news.
All of LA was blacked out, no power and no communication got in or out except high power transmitters, even then only analog signals were comprehensible. It seemed like the hard lines had been cut, engineers and teams of scientists had been working around the clock to find a solution.
The 82nd airborne division, the entire division, along with the 75th ranger regiment, had dropped into the blacked-out portion of California north of LA. Over ten thousand soldiers, broadly considered to be some of the best in the army, but up against millions of zombies they weren't expected to do more than buy time for everyone else. Rumor was they all volunteered, even the cooks. Nobody knew anything about New York besides that it was being quarantined.
In New Mexico, a national guard soldier from Wisconsin said that when everyone was being activated, they meant everyone. The Boy Scout troop his sons were in had been sent to dig fighting positions and setup temporary Federal Emergency Management housing. While his daughter in the Girl Scouts were organizing collection and delivery of food and clothing for people fleeing California and New York.
Some rumors were less helpful, like the 3rd Infantry Division in Georgia found another alien invasion in Atlanta. Hours later another rumor said that was a blown transformer and the 3rd ID had spent an entire day terrorizing Atlanta before the power came back on.
Most us army units have some piece of equipment they don’t need or don’t want. Sometimes they don’t have enough people to use it, other times getting it was an error. Whenever large movements of troops happened in a hurry, something always goes missing, and if the unit was in a big enough hurry nobody asks why something was missing. Every time Scar Company landed for fuel Hoss would pass a brown paper bag to Olson, having worked in supply he spoke the right language. He would slip off while Hoss haggled for fuel and Johnson passed on valuable first-hand zombie fighting experience to anyone in the area. Olson would usually return with a few boxes or a piece of equipment. By the time they landed in California he had managed to find a medical company with a mk19 semiautomatic grenade launcher they didn’t want and a weapon repair shop who had a trio of m240's that a California national guard company sent in for repair, but nobody had heard from them since the lights had gone out. Sieria Charlie 1 & 2 now had teeth.
Their last rest stop was at a Fort Irwin, just north east of the LA blackout area. There was a hastily constructed Forward Operating Base unimaginatively named FOB Irwin. The base was used as the US military’s desert warfare training center, the units stationed there were filled with some of the most experienced soldiers in the army and were tasked with training others how to fight. Most of those units had already been sent forward to hold strategic mountain passes and keep the base from being swarmed by the millions of zombies in LA.
As soon as they landed everyone piled out of the helicopters to stretch their legs and find food while Hoss and Johnson went to find out about their assignment.