Mosher
Mushroom dad
There was a permanent green haze that surrounded the city of Columbia, South Carolina, that never seemed to fade; not rain, nor shine, snow, or wind could break the gloom that terrorized the city. Specialist Jackson noted as much in his report. Not that there was much there worth looking for: the city was a bombed out husk of its once beauty. Jackson had a friend whose mother came from somewhere around here, and she had talked at length to Jackson and his friend when they were children, spinning tales and fables of the glory – and the decadence and corruption – of the old world. Jackson sighed, standing up; he had taken a break from his long march, on top of a hill a few miles out of Columbia, and he had a long ways to go yet.
Specialist Jackson, a freshly minted Ranger – an elite light infantry battalion – had been assigned, along with the rest of his platoon, of mapping out the terrain surrounding the former military emplacement known as Fort Jackson (Spc. Jackson had found this amusing when he had been given his assignment, but now that he had been in the field, a full two months without seeing his home or garrison at Shreveport, the amusement had dried up. Three Rangers in his forty-four man platoon had been taken already on this operation – one from gangrene, and two from hostile locals taking potshots from the treeline – and his mood was fouling by the day. He was tired of humping eighty pounds of equipment in the searing, humid, August heat of South Carolina.
The sudden chatter of gunfire – the sharp, characteristic crack of an M16, followed up by the deeper, roaring sounds of a full-sized round – came as no great surprise, but Jackson started jogging anyways. It had come from the direction of the platoon's rendezvous point, after they had scouted their assigned parcel of ground. Running with so much equipment wasn't easy, but he was a Ranger, dammit – the best light infantry in the world, if his platoon sergeant was to be believed. Jackson ran – really, it was closer to a fast shuffle – for several minutes until he saw the clearing he was supposed to be meeting his platoon in. The shooting had stopped a couple of minutes before he got there, and he was greeted by the sight of several hasty fighting positions, dug in a triangle in the treeline surrounding the clearing, a single command tent in the center, and an order to halt.
“It sure is a nice day out,” drawled a voice, emanating from the dugout hole in front of him. He recognized the code.
“It surely is, my friend. A great day for picking apples.” The private snorted, and waved him forward from his position.
“Sergeant Miller wants to hear your report and brief you on whats going on, Jackson. He's in the command tent.” Jackson muttered a thanks and hurried forward.
“Specialist Jackson reporting, Sergeant,” Jackson called from outside the olive drab tent.”Permission to enter?” Jackson heard a grunt from inside, and pushed back the flap. The inside of the tent was spartan, holding just a table, with a radio, map, and a few reports, a cot, and two chairs. Inside was Sergeant Miller – a veteran of the Reclamation of Louisiana, and by all accounts a tough son of a *****. Jackson handed the Sergeant his personal map of the area, complete with notes and important locations, along with a report of his findings in the field.
“Any resistance in the field, Jackson? Any clear path into the city, or the fort?”
“Aye, Sergeant. I don't know how much time I'd want to spend in the city – that green haze is pretty eerie, and probably radioactive, but it doesn't seem to move much, with the wind or otherwise, and all of the highways into Fort Jackson and Columbia are open – just a lot of abandoned and burned out cars.”
“All right. Good work, Specialist. Find your squad and dig your hasty. Muster is at 0600.” The Sergeant nodded, and Jackson muttered an affirmative, leaving the tent to finally rest his feet, for a few hours.
* * * * *
The first rays of cold sunlight were starting to break through the cloud cover as the platoon of Rangers gathered in a loose formation, chatting in low voices to each other, waiting for Sergeant Miller to come out and brief them on their mission. The sergeant walked out of his tent, a map and a notebook in one hand, and the talk cut off immediately.
“All right, soldiers, here's what we've got. The overall mission is to get into Fort Jackson, see how much military hardware we can recover ourselves, catalog the rest, and get the hell out so the regular grunts can get the rest. I want to spend no more than twelve hours inside the Fort – we have no idea if anyone or thing is in there, and I think all of you know how nasty the local wildlife has gotten in this cesspool of a territory. Squad leaders, get a head and weapons count. We move in five minutes.” Sergeant Miller talked in a hurried, low voice, and his four squad leaders talked in the same low, hurried voice. Everyone wanted to get out of here. This place didn't quite feel right.
After all personnel and weapons were accounted for, the platoon broke down into a staggered column and began marching – the entrance of the fort was roughly twelve miles away, and the Sergeant wanted to get to it before noon, and so the column moved at a breakneck pace down old dirt fire brakes and small country back roads, stopping for brief, five minute rests once an hour. By the time the column had acquired visual contact with the fort's gates, they were coated in sweat. And something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Strung up on the gates, hanging from ropes, were three desiccated corpses, dressed in ragged, dirty US Army uniforms – the men's faces were twisted, and Jackson could clearly make out the bulging tumors hiding underneath the skin of two of the men. One of the men behind him whispered a quick prayer. Jackson's squad leader, a man only a couple of years older than him named Smith, ordered him to lock it up. Up ahead, the column stopped. Sergeant Miller had called for a halt, and motioned for his squad leaders to break and meet him in the center. They talked low among themselves for a few minutes, before breaking.
“Okay, Second Squad, I know this is pretty friggin' creepy. Us and third squad are going to bound forward while first and fourth cover us from behind. We're going to secure the left side, third is going to secure the right, and we'll cover first and fourth as they move up. Fourth will stay behind to guard the gate and figure out what happened to those gentlemen up on the rope. Any questions?” Smith talked low, his voice deathly serious. No one had any questions. Smith nodded, and gave the order to move out.
As the first and fourth squad formed a semi circle, covering the gate from all possible angles, the other two squads slowly crept forward in a loose wedge. The world had seemingly gone mute in the couple of minutes it took to clear the distance – no animals seemed to live here, and it seemed even his squadmates' breathing had stopped. They reached the guardhouse, cleared it, and secured the street on the other side – it ran perpendicular to the road coming in, forming a T. All clear, except for the ancient, pre-war bones. Second and third squad set up a defensive perimeter and covered the other half of the platoon as they moved forward, and they settled in while the squad leaders and Sergeant Miller decided on what to do.
It seemed almost ridiculous, then, when a tan humvee started driving down the road. It seemed almost lazy, it was going so slowly, until the MG mounted on its roof turret opened up on the men watching the left road. Powerful 7.62x51 ripped four men to shreds before the rest could break and get into cover. Jackson lifted his M16, opened the M203's breech underneath it, and loaded one of the precious few HEDP grenades they had been allotted for the mission, aimed carefully, and... thump. The round penetrated the thin metal frame of the vehicle, and exploded – the humvee veered off, its occupants certainly dead, as it crashed into the thick pre-war wall of the fort. Squad leaders barked orders, watching for movement in the distance, and a couple of men dragged the bodies of their comrades back into cover to see if there was anything they could do.
Then the intercom above them crackled. A horrible, warped laugh came from it – it contained no humor, but instead seemed almost feral. The laughing grew louder and louder, and the men uneasier and uneasier, until Sergeant Miller drew a sidearm and shot the speaker out.
“Don't focus on the goddamn creep on the speaker, men, focus on the roads. They're trying to distract us,” Sergeant Miller barked. “We're changing our plans. Retrieving any gear is now considered a secondary objective. We're going to head to where the old vehicle depots are, see what's left and what shape it's in, and get the hell out. Fourth squad, we need you to keep the gate secure. Keep in radio contact. Check in every ten minutes. Rest of you are with me.” Miller handed an old, battered walkie-talkie to fourth squad's leader, and motioned for everyone to get on their feet. “Staggered column, ladies, and double time. Remember that we're doing this for our brothers and sisters back home. Lets make this quick.”
* * * * * *
The run to the first depot, about a mile away, was harrowing – to say the least. They encountered exactly one contact – three old men, standing in the street in the same ragged US Army uniforms that the men hanging from the front wore, with bayonets fixed in rusty, beaten, unloaded rifles. The platoon of Guardsmen took no chances, and cut them down as soon as they started to charge – Jackson could see the tumors bulging and rippling under their skin, as though they were alive and moving - and as a couple of members from first squad moved to check the bodies, there was a burst of machine gun fire from far away, peppering the pavement around them and striking one Guardsman in his leg. Jackson once again loaded a grenade into his M203 – buckshot, this time – and shredded the MG, which had been on a hill about 150 meters out. He had only two HE grenades left. Two riflemen carried the struck man back to the gatehouse, and they continued onwards – finally reaching the first vehicle depot. And struck gold.
There was supposedly five vehicle depots in the fort – and if they were anything like this, they could double or triple the size and scope of the Guard's Motor Corps. Sitting on the depot, on flat tires with pitted armor plates, was four rows of 20 humvees and the same number of large trucks. The only issue was the company-sized element of freak shows in Army uniforms, set up in hastily constructed sandbag fortifications, guarding the depot. Automatic fire ripped into the pointmen of the column, and the rest of the platoon dove into cover, and the freaks in the Army uniforms screamed, letting noises out of their throats that no human should be able to make.
“Jesus Christ!” cried out Jackson's squad leader, Smith. “I want my automatic riflemen on the line! Suppress those mothers! Jackson, put a grenade into 'em!” The men started moving, the automatic riflemen setting their 249s up and spraying wildly down onto the depot. Jackson put his last two 40mm grenades out, which struck on either side of one of the nests.
“Third Squad! Keep up your fire! First and second squad! Bound backwards! Keep your head down!” Sergeant Miller cried above the din, trying to get his squad leaders, frozen in fear, moving. Jackson crawled on line with the two automatic riflemen and the rest of his squad, and fired blindly over a sandbag, just trying to keep the enemy's heads down.
After what seemed like an eternity, Smith crawled up to Jackson and smacked him on the back, signaling that it was time for third squad to bound backwards. Jackson's comrades put rounds in between the sprinting soldiers – though a couple more were hit on the way back, only wounded thankfully, though they still had to be helped. The platoon continued on with this for a while, bounding back and providing covering fire, until they were clear of the hostile forces at the depot. They did not give chase, though their screaming carried on.
Sergeant Miller gathered the platoon together, back at the gatehouse, with an ashen face.
“We're coming back here, with more ammo, grenades, artillery and manpower than these... mother[bleep]s can handle. That equipment in there belongs to the American people, but we can't dislodge a force as large as that by ourselves. Squad leaders, you know what to do. Get the litters out for the wounded, and figure out who's carrying their gear.” The men nodded, exhausted. All of them were covered in sweat, and most of them covered in blood.
And so they turned away from the Fort, several men fewer than they were before – determined to come back. Nothing could keep the Union away for long.
my first time writing anything in a long time pls be gentle
Specialist Jackson, a freshly minted Ranger – an elite light infantry battalion – had been assigned, along with the rest of his platoon, of mapping out the terrain surrounding the former military emplacement known as Fort Jackson (Spc. Jackson had found this amusing when he had been given his assignment, but now that he had been in the field, a full two months without seeing his home or garrison at Shreveport, the amusement had dried up. Three Rangers in his forty-four man platoon had been taken already on this operation – one from gangrene, and two from hostile locals taking potshots from the treeline – and his mood was fouling by the day. He was tired of humping eighty pounds of equipment in the searing, humid, August heat of South Carolina.
The sudden chatter of gunfire – the sharp, characteristic crack of an M16, followed up by the deeper, roaring sounds of a full-sized round – came as no great surprise, but Jackson started jogging anyways. It had come from the direction of the platoon's rendezvous point, after they had scouted their assigned parcel of ground. Running with so much equipment wasn't easy, but he was a Ranger, dammit – the best light infantry in the world, if his platoon sergeant was to be believed. Jackson ran – really, it was closer to a fast shuffle – for several minutes until he saw the clearing he was supposed to be meeting his platoon in. The shooting had stopped a couple of minutes before he got there, and he was greeted by the sight of several hasty fighting positions, dug in a triangle in the treeline surrounding the clearing, a single command tent in the center, and an order to halt.
“It sure is a nice day out,” drawled a voice, emanating from the dugout hole in front of him. He recognized the code.
“It surely is, my friend. A great day for picking apples.” The private snorted, and waved him forward from his position.
“Sergeant Miller wants to hear your report and brief you on whats going on, Jackson. He's in the command tent.” Jackson muttered a thanks and hurried forward.
“Specialist Jackson reporting, Sergeant,” Jackson called from outside the olive drab tent.”Permission to enter?” Jackson heard a grunt from inside, and pushed back the flap. The inside of the tent was spartan, holding just a table, with a radio, map, and a few reports, a cot, and two chairs. Inside was Sergeant Miller – a veteran of the Reclamation of Louisiana, and by all accounts a tough son of a *****. Jackson handed the Sergeant his personal map of the area, complete with notes and important locations, along with a report of his findings in the field.
“Any resistance in the field, Jackson? Any clear path into the city, or the fort?”
“Aye, Sergeant. I don't know how much time I'd want to spend in the city – that green haze is pretty eerie, and probably radioactive, but it doesn't seem to move much, with the wind or otherwise, and all of the highways into Fort Jackson and Columbia are open – just a lot of abandoned and burned out cars.”
“All right. Good work, Specialist. Find your squad and dig your hasty. Muster is at 0600.” The Sergeant nodded, and Jackson muttered an affirmative, leaving the tent to finally rest his feet, for a few hours.
* * * * *
The first rays of cold sunlight were starting to break through the cloud cover as the platoon of Rangers gathered in a loose formation, chatting in low voices to each other, waiting for Sergeant Miller to come out and brief them on their mission. The sergeant walked out of his tent, a map and a notebook in one hand, and the talk cut off immediately.
“All right, soldiers, here's what we've got. The overall mission is to get into Fort Jackson, see how much military hardware we can recover ourselves, catalog the rest, and get the hell out so the regular grunts can get the rest. I want to spend no more than twelve hours inside the Fort – we have no idea if anyone or thing is in there, and I think all of you know how nasty the local wildlife has gotten in this cesspool of a territory. Squad leaders, get a head and weapons count. We move in five minutes.” Sergeant Miller talked in a hurried, low voice, and his four squad leaders talked in the same low, hurried voice. Everyone wanted to get out of here. This place didn't quite feel right.
After all personnel and weapons were accounted for, the platoon broke down into a staggered column and began marching – the entrance of the fort was roughly twelve miles away, and the Sergeant wanted to get to it before noon, and so the column moved at a breakneck pace down old dirt fire brakes and small country back roads, stopping for brief, five minute rests once an hour. By the time the column had acquired visual contact with the fort's gates, they were coated in sweat. And something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Strung up on the gates, hanging from ropes, were three desiccated corpses, dressed in ragged, dirty US Army uniforms – the men's faces were twisted, and Jackson could clearly make out the bulging tumors hiding underneath the skin of two of the men. One of the men behind him whispered a quick prayer. Jackson's squad leader, a man only a couple of years older than him named Smith, ordered him to lock it up. Up ahead, the column stopped. Sergeant Miller had called for a halt, and motioned for his squad leaders to break and meet him in the center. They talked low among themselves for a few minutes, before breaking.
“Okay, Second Squad, I know this is pretty friggin' creepy. Us and third squad are going to bound forward while first and fourth cover us from behind. We're going to secure the left side, third is going to secure the right, and we'll cover first and fourth as they move up. Fourth will stay behind to guard the gate and figure out what happened to those gentlemen up on the rope. Any questions?” Smith talked low, his voice deathly serious. No one had any questions. Smith nodded, and gave the order to move out.
As the first and fourth squad formed a semi circle, covering the gate from all possible angles, the other two squads slowly crept forward in a loose wedge. The world had seemingly gone mute in the couple of minutes it took to clear the distance – no animals seemed to live here, and it seemed even his squadmates' breathing had stopped. They reached the guardhouse, cleared it, and secured the street on the other side – it ran perpendicular to the road coming in, forming a T. All clear, except for the ancient, pre-war bones. Second and third squad set up a defensive perimeter and covered the other half of the platoon as they moved forward, and they settled in while the squad leaders and Sergeant Miller decided on what to do.
It seemed almost ridiculous, then, when a tan humvee started driving down the road. It seemed almost lazy, it was going so slowly, until the MG mounted on its roof turret opened up on the men watching the left road. Powerful 7.62x51 ripped four men to shreds before the rest could break and get into cover. Jackson lifted his M16, opened the M203's breech underneath it, and loaded one of the precious few HEDP grenades they had been allotted for the mission, aimed carefully, and... thump. The round penetrated the thin metal frame of the vehicle, and exploded – the humvee veered off, its occupants certainly dead, as it crashed into the thick pre-war wall of the fort. Squad leaders barked orders, watching for movement in the distance, and a couple of men dragged the bodies of their comrades back into cover to see if there was anything they could do.
Then the intercom above them crackled. A horrible, warped laugh came from it – it contained no humor, but instead seemed almost feral. The laughing grew louder and louder, and the men uneasier and uneasier, until Sergeant Miller drew a sidearm and shot the speaker out.
“Don't focus on the goddamn creep on the speaker, men, focus on the roads. They're trying to distract us,” Sergeant Miller barked. “We're changing our plans. Retrieving any gear is now considered a secondary objective. We're going to head to where the old vehicle depots are, see what's left and what shape it's in, and get the hell out. Fourth squad, we need you to keep the gate secure. Keep in radio contact. Check in every ten minutes. Rest of you are with me.” Miller handed an old, battered walkie-talkie to fourth squad's leader, and motioned for everyone to get on their feet. “Staggered column, ladies, and double time. Remember that we're doing this for our brothers and sisters back home. Lets make this quick.”
* * * * * *
The run to the first depot, about a mile away, was harrowing – to say the least. They encountered exactly one contact – three old men, standing in the street in the same ragged US Army uniforms that the men hanging from the front wore, with bayonets fixed in rusty, beaten, unloaded rifles. The platoon of Guardsmen took no chances, and cut them down as soon as they started to charge – Jackson could see the tumors bulging and rippling under their skin, as though they were alive and moving - and as a couple of members from first squad moved to check the bodies, there was a burst of machine gun fire from far away, peppering the pavement around them and striking one Guardsman in his leg. Jackson once again loaded a grenade into his M203 – buckshot, this time – and shredded the MG, which had been on a hill about 150 meters out. He had only two HE grenades left. Two riflemen carried the struck man back to the gatehouse, and they continued onwards – finally reaching the first vehicle depot. And struck gold.
There was supposedly five vehicle depots in the fort – and if they were anything like this, they could double or triple the size and scope of the Guard's Motor Corps. Sitting on the depot, on flat tires with pitted armor plates, was four rows of 20 humvees and the same number of large trucks. The only issue was the company-sized element of freak shows in Army uniforms, set up in hastily constructed sandbag fortifications, guarding the depot. Automatic fire ripped into the pointmen of the column, and the rest of the platoon dove into cover, and the freaks in the Army uniforms screamed, letting noises out of their throats that no human should be able to make.
“Jesus Christ!” cried out Jackson's squad leader, Smith. “I want my automatic riflemen on the line! Suppress those mothers! Jackson, put a grenade into 'em!” The men started moving, the automatic riflemen setting their 249s up and spraying wildly down onto the depot. Jackson put his last two 40mm grenades out, which struck on either side of one of the nests.
“Third Squad! Keep up your fire! First and second squad! Bound backwards! Keep your head down!” Sergeant Miller cried above the din, trying to get his squad leaders, frozen in fear, moving. Jackson crawled on line with the two automatic riflemen and the rest of his squad, and fired blindly over a sandbag, just trying to keep the enemy's heads down.
After what seemed like an eternity, Smith crawled up to Jackson and smacked him on the back, signaling that it was time for third squad to bound backwards. Jackson's comrades put rounds in between the sprinting soldiers – though a couple more were hit on the way back, only wounded thankfully, though they still had to be helped. The platoon continued on with this for a while, bounding back and providing covering fire, until they were clear of the hostile forces at the depot. They did not give chase, though their screaming carried on.
Sergeant Miller gathered the platoon together, back at the gatehouse, with an ashen face.
“We're coming back here, with more ammo, grenades, artillery and manpower than these... mother[bleep]s can handle. That equipment in there belongs to the American people, but we can't dislodge a force as large as that by ourselves. Squad leaders, you know what to do. Get the litters out for the wounded, and figure out who's carrying their gear.” The men nodded, exhausted. All of them were covered in sweat, and most of them covered in blood.
And so they turned away from the Fort, several men fewer than they were before – determined to come back. Nothing could keep the Union away for long.
my first time writing anything in a long time pls be gentle
