Nine of Nine: Pt:1 Airborne

In the midst of the Campion Virus mutation and spread the US Government all but disappeared. Most military personnel were either overrun, deserting, or being shipped to the west coast for the battle of Las Vegas. It was thought that moving the government with these units to a secure location would be the safest way to transport it in full and working, a sound plan in theory. With Air Force One Grounded due to mechanical issues the president and his immediate family and cabinet members joined a vehicular convoy and soon boarded a B-52 bomber for the flight west to The Cheyenne Bunker complex in Colorado with a breif stop at Barksdale Airforce Base for a VIP pickup and refueling. In flight a storm developed over the intend flight path. The pilots in their wisdom decided against flying through the storm system they instead turned south towards Houston Texas......It is not known what brought the plane down, perhaps a mechanical issue, maybe the rouge Lackland fighter pilots shot it down or perhaps the VIP they picked up was infected...stories like this circulated though out most units but no one really knew and thats what we were sent in to find out. We were a detachment of the US Marines 1st Recon division callsign "Nine of Nine".


At first our callsign didn't make much sense to me, nine when there was actually twelve of us? Of course the callsign was ment to inspire the folks who still cared enough about our government to even realize they had crash landed into the forth largest city in the country...Nine of Nine...that's what they expected of us. Nine airheads so full of themselves that they told the American people not to shoot the infected simply because "They are sick"...never mind the fact that they were told everyone who got infected was dead...but no the lives of twelve perfectly good soldiers was worth risking for nine idiots who crash landed in a sea of what was possibly six million undead. So I was a bit upset until I learned what the other option was, Las Vegas HAD a population four million plus tourists it was estimated that ninety-six percent of which was infected plus the St. Theresa outbreak, so Houston didn't seem so bad after all. Houston at the time had an estimated 57% infection rate but the Texas National Guard and of course the random armed civilian was actively fighting the infection. Our mission was supposed to be in and out quick and quiet...so we of course horded as much ammunition as possible, intel regarding these things was spotty at best and non-exsistant most of the time.

We were briefed in the usual manner, the last second before we boarded the helicopter,and got under way. We were stacked out in the usual manner for this type of mission; four riflemen, two heavy gunners, two medics (also riflemen), a radio/map man, two sharpshooters, and our close quarters specialist. Our plan was setup in the usual manner, find the biggest open area possible clear the area of hostiles extract the VIPS and crew then exfil from the area using the two helo's as gunship cover if needed. Would've been a perfect mission if we had known just what the hell we were getting ourselves into.

The commander at Lackland AFB near San Antonio had cutoff his base from the outside world once one of his officers had been bitten and nearly killed him and three others before being put down by an MP. Only personnel stationed there were allowed in cars were being shot up by the sentries posted at the front gates as they approuched and the commander had warned any Aircraft within fifty miles of his base would be shot down. The biggest problem was that the commanders pilots had all but leveled San Antonio and were now flying sorties over the I-10 corridor, Houston and Dallas areas. By the way I need to mention that Lackland has the largest stockpile of fighter aircraft and weapons for them in the southern US. Our flight from Phoenix took us well away for these clowns but more than once they showed up to harass us , to point that the Navy had to show up and chase them away. I heard rumours after wards that after that little incident the largest dogfight in recent history took place and ended with the Navy dropping four thermobaric bombs via cruise missles on Lackland and the Airforce dropping two MOAB warheads on the fleet in the gulf coast. What I do know for a fact is that for some reason our main extraction point, the USS Nimtz aircraft carrier, was canceled and we would return instead to Roswell AFB.

It was a six hour flight most of the time was spent trying to sleep with the last two hours spent trying to figure out our enemy. "Body Shots do nothing, head shots dropped them there gonna keep coming until you pop thier head etc"...none of it seemed real since we only enguged very few of them and those we had killed were normally killed in the same manner the army likes to do everything, over the top with far more than is nesscessary until we saw the smoke of Katy, Texas a small suburb of Houston was quite literally engulfed in flames. We watched the mindless hordes reach up to our helicoptor as if to grab us before turning thier intentions back to those still left to flee them. "We'll be in the thick of this shit soon enough boys and girls so sit tight and be ready." our squad leader called to us from the second helo.

The mood seemed to completly change from there on in. The first shot we fired on these things came from our helo as we turned north ward. Thomas callsign "Flatline" losed a round right from the door then sat back into his seat quiet and complacent he keyed his mic off of a private channel with the Sargent. When a asked him after wards why he did that he told me that the Sargent had spotted a woman in the middle of the street who was screaming for help as she was being dragged backwards by two of them

"...he asked me to make it peaceful for her...so I did,"