Fireteam Delta, J. Halpin [online e book reading .txt] 📗

done writing, then continued to scroll through the phone.

“Come on, baby, you still got a pixel left. Don’t die on me.” Nowak read as fast as he could. He took a few more notes before he powered the phone down himself. “Okay, I got what we need. I’m going to keep a small charge just in case we can use it down the line.”

“How in the hell are you going to get us home? Start talking!” Cortez shouted, a little more insistently this time.

“What we saw wasn’t the only machine. The 63rd were running a scouting group, or something like that. All their research is done out of some base in Nevada I’ve never heard about.”

“Area 51?” Adams prompted.

“No, not—of fucking course I’ve heard of Area 51. Somewhere different. General has a back and forth with a researcher there. They’ve got a permanent setup. If we can get to that, then we can get out of here. And if this place is a 1:1 match of our world, then we just need to go from their version of Alaska to Nevada.”

“On foot?” Cortez asked.

“With shit like that thing we killed walking around?” Summers added.

Nowak smiled sheepishly. “I didn’t say it was going to be easy.”

Chapter 4: Road Trip

“Are you absolutely sure about this, Sarge?” Summers watched as Cortez strapped a duffel bag, quite literally full of grenades, to the top of the Humvee.

“No, but if we run into more shit like that thing you killed, then it’s worth the risk,” Nowak responded.

On one hand, Summers could see the logic. On the other, they had approximately a fuckload of ammo, grenades, and guns strapped into and on top of an Humvee they’d be driving through rough forest terrain. As well as enough gas salvaged from the camp it was becoming an issue of weight. In fact, anything from the camp that wasn’t nailed down, they were trying to take with them. He couldn’t help but worry that one bump would spell a loud and colorful end to their little excursion. Cortez had also mentioned two bricks of C-4 being lodged in there somewhere. He took some solace in the knowledge that if something did go wrong, it would at least be so quick and brutal, he’d hardly even need to worry.

“What if we just stayed here?” Adams asked. “They gotta come back some time, right?”

“You’re assuming they know we’re alive. Or that they care. Near as I can tell, they only had the two machines, and Summers blew one to chunks,” Nowak responded.

They’d found pieces of the machine mixed in with the bodies. Summers was not optimistic about whatever remained of the 63rd fixing it. Or even wanting to fix it, for that matter. Losing an entire platoon and a goddamn general was probably a mess they’d spend months trying to recover from.

“And this plan of yours is solid?” Summers looked over to Nowak. “I don’t want to hump it through all this shit just to find out there’s nothing waiting for us in Nevada.”

“The general talked about the similarities between this world and ours, which was a huge breach of security—but then again, I doubt anyone else would realize what he was talking about without first knowing about this place.”

Nowak flipped the journal over, showing Summers a haphazard string of nonsensical messages. “These guys were looking for something out here: something big, maybe some kind of classified drug—I didn’t really understand it. But topography was one of the reasons they came to our base, to confirm that it was the same . . . and in case something went to hell.”

“Think they’re covering up what happened?” Summers asked.

“Definitely. No way is a word of this shit making it out of that base,” Nowak responded. Summers wasn’t quite sure that would hold true. From what he could tell, the base had been a favorite dumping ground for guys like him—people that other people wanted to get rid of, but who couldn’t do it outright. He had no doubt one of the survivors would be telling anyone who listened what they saw. The only issue was if anyone believed them.

He saw Cortez step forward with another fuel can. They’d found two other Humvees, but neither were in as good of shape as the first one. They’d decided instead to siphon what fuel and parts they could for the road. Cortez tossed the cannister onto the pile. Summers heard something underneath it shift and froze for a long second. He was pretty sure it had just been the ammo, but for Christ’s sake, they were going to leave behind a crater the likes this world had never seen.

“So, what are we doing with all the crap we can’t fit?” Adams asked, snapping Summers back to reality.

“I don’t like the idea of those zombie things with guns. I say we dump them in a lake somewhere,” Summers responded.

“Skeen,” Asle corrected. “Monsters are skeen.”

“Skeen? Oh, you mean skin?” Summers asked, pinching the skin of his forearm for emphasis.

“I said skeen.” Asle mimicked the gesture. “They are only skeen.”

Nowak threw Summers a shovel. “You’re right. We should probably make sure no locals end up with all this. How deep do you think? Six feet?”

Summers groaned internally at the idea of burying all that gear, let alone digging a hole big enough to fit it. But it was the smart move.

“What about the bodies?”

“You want to dig a grave big enough for ’em, be my guest,” Nowak responded.

“More skeen if not buried,” Asle added. That was news to them.

“What, are they going to eat our dead?” Summers didn’t like the idea of leaving them, quite literally, for scavengers to eat.

“No. They be skeen,” Asle said, pointing at a corpse off in the distance.

“Oh. Oh fuck, those things were actual zombies?”

Asle just