Ever Onward Read Online Free Page B

remains
slid directly towards the Officer’s Mess.
    Pinkton, his eyes wide, sat in his
idling jeep as a wet stain spread rapidly over his crotch. A small
part of his brain told him to react, to do something! The larger
part, the part that had been forced to cope with a morning filled
with horror upon horror, wanted only to curl up and die --- like
the hundreds of brittle, gray bodies that reminded him of the pages
of a burnt bible.
    Jocco, however, was a creature cut
from a different cloth. Years of fighting and scrounging on the
sharp, knife-edge of existence, had honed his senses. Reacting with
a predator’s swiftness, he leapt into Pinkton’s jeep, shoved his
.45 in the startled man’s ear and stepped down hard on the
accelerator.
    “Clutch! ”, Jocco
screamed.
    Walter J. may not have been as
street-wise as his saintly mother might have liked, but neither was
he as stupid as his unsaintly father had thought. He popped the
clutch and the jeep peeled away, just as the nose of the B-17
slammed into the Officer’s Mess. The plane demolished the right
side of the building, continued lazily on its way, finally coming
to rest alongside an empty hanger.
    “Stop!”, Jocco said,
smiling.
    Brakes squealed. Jocco lowered the .45
and looked back at the demolished building. Private George Sampson,
still holding his bottle of Scotch, staggered out onto the runway,
seemingly oblivious to the fact that a wall had just been
removed.
    “Hey, man! What’s going
down?”
    Just then the eject-bomb on the B-17
blew the cockpit cover sky high. The pilot, a very shaken
Lieutenant Waterson, still wearing his plague suit, scrambled out.
Jocco motioned for Pinkton to drive over.
    “Who ARE you?”, Pinkton asked
the handsome soldier sitting beside him. “And where is General
Bremen? He told me to meet him here.” Walter’s voice was a strange
mixture of indignant-whine.
    The .45 and the smile were back. “I’m
God’s little helper. As for the General, he’s like all the others
--- gone. Now move it , asshole, we’ve got to pick these two
boys up before the rest of that plane blows!”
    Lieutenant Walter J. Pinkton’s momma
had always told him to listen to ‘God’s little helpers’ ---
especially if they whispered in your year while holding a Colt
.45.
    Moments later, with both Lieutenant
Waterson and Private Sampson bundled in the back, the jeep tore
down the runway. They’d gotten about two thousand yards when the
remaining tanks on the B-17 exploded. The blast rocked the speeding
jeep.
    “Sheee-it!”, Sampson yelled. Grinning
from ear to ear, he passed the bottle around. After taking a long
pull, Lieutenant Waterson looked at Jocco. “What the Christ
happened here?!”
    Jocco’s broad smile flashed. “Welcome
to the end of the world, soldier. Ain’t life a bitch?”

 
    Chapter 5 : A SAD AWAKENING
    High Peaks Region
    New York. June 23
    (2 days after C.D. let
loose)
    Josh Williams lay in his mummy bag
looking up towards Haystack’s rounded, rocky summit. Still almost a
thousand feet above him, all he saw was a blanket of wet, white
mist. He hoped the sun would burn it away by the time they reached
it.
    Unzipping his sleeping bag, he glanced
at the other two members of the tiny party. His seventeen year old
son, Jessie, was curled up in a ball, his tousled blond head
sticking out of the down-filled bag.
    Bob’s bag, still in the shadows,
appeared rumpled and empty. Frowning, Josh looked around for his
brother-in-law. It was not like Bob to rise early, especially after
lugging a heavy pack up four thousand feet.
    Answering the call of the wild? No.
The toilet paper was still on the branch. A walk? Maybe catch the
sunrise? Josh swore. One of the first rules about hiking the High
Peaks was never go anywhere alone. Bob could be a real asshole at
times, but he wasn’t stupid. As Josh pulled on his boots, a shiver
of fear coursed up his spine. His son’s voice made him
jump.
    “Hey, Dad. What’s up?”
    “Probably