Apocalypse Unleashed Read Free

with all the rest of the children in the world. If Megan was right, God had taken Goose’s son. And there wasn’t anything he could do about that.
    None of it made sense.
    “Sergeant.”
    Goose coughed and wheezed, unable to find any air in the room. His lungs felt like they were already on fire. But he recognized the voice.
    “Sergeant, you’ve got to get up,” Corporal Joseph Baker said.
    You’re dead, Goose wanted to say. I buried you weeks ago. The image of Baker’s torn body, mangled by a fragmentation grenade, had haunted Goose’s sleep nearly every night.
    “Get up, Sergeant. It’s not your time to die.”
    It wasn’t yours either, Corporal.
    “How do you think Megan will feel to learn you just lay down and died?”
    Goose knew the answer to that. Somehow, in spite of everything that had happened, she’d found the strength to keep going and to believe in God more fiercely than she ever had before. He’d heard it in her voice. Even if God forgave him for quitting, Goose knew Megan never would. He’d promised her on the day he married her that he would never give her less than what she deserved.
    “Then get up,” Baker’s voice said.
    Goose stopped thinking about dying. He stopped wondering how he was hearing from a dead man. He did what the United States Army had taught him to do every day for the last seventeen years.
    He got up.
    And he had his assault rifle in his hand when he did. But the smoke was so thick and his eyes tearing so much that he didn’t know which way was out through the flames.
    “Here.”
    Goose moved at once. He ran through the flames because he knew he wasn’t going to get a second chance. Arm across his face, he felt the heat of the flames surround him for two strides … then three …
    … and then he was out, racing into the night in front of the house. Overcome by smoke and exhaustion, he dropped to his knees and tried to breathe. His lungs remained frozen for a moment, then kick-started to life. Without warning, he threw up and felt a little better. His lungs opened up.
    “Sarge!” someone yelled. “You’re on fire!”
    Looking down at his pant legs, Goose saw flames clinging to the material. He raked up a handful of dirt and smothered the flames. Then he stood on shaking legs. His left knee, damaged so long ago and never quite right since, ached and felt infirm. He looked around at the villagers and the Rangers gathered there in the firelight. When he spotted the two girls he’d gone in to rescue, he felt better.
    “Thought we’d lost you, Sarge,” Private First Class Billy Hendricks said. He was in his early twenties, new to the army and to the area.
    “Not yet,” Goose said. “We’re going to be all right.”
    “I knew that when I saw you come out of that burning house.”
    Goose spotted Corporal Jamal Donner, his second on the transport assignment. Donner was an African-American in his early thirties, only a couple of years younger than Goose. He kept his head shaved clean, even managing to do so in the confusion of these past few weeks.
    “Where do we stand?” Goose asked.
    “We’re all present and accounted for,” Donner said. His voice was soft and smooth with the Southern accent he’d acquired while growing up in Atlanta, Georgia. “We got lucky.”
    Goose looked at the handful of bodies lying on the ground. Some of the other villagers sat beside the corpses and wept without restraint.
    Thank God there are no children, Goose thought. They would have been among the casualties for certain. Then he realized that God was exactly the reason why no children were there. That only brought up thoughts of Chris again, and he tried not to go there.
    “Not everybody got lucky,” Donner said.
    “Does anyone know what happened?”
    “Got a man over here who says he saw the whole thing. Ain’t had time to talk to him.”

    Local Time 2112 Hours

    The man’s name was Achmed. Sixtyish and frail, he spoke English well.
    “They came out of nowhere,”