Stryker: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale Read Online Free PDF Page A

would die of
low blood pressure due to both external and internal bleeding. At the last
stage, doctors would know the cause of their illness, but it would be too late
for most of them. Some would survive. Those that received intensive medical intervention
might get through the acute state of the illness, but would be forever
weakened. A small percentage would be immune. And, those who lived in remote
areas that were cut off from the rest of humanity might live to see the wave of
illness pass and die out.
    When the
plague passed, the 12,000 would emerge from the caves and build a new world
that would be comprised of only devout Muslims.
    He moved to
the prayer room of the airport, spread his rug, and performed the required
rituals. Then, he got up, and extracted a pistol from his jacket pocket, placed
the barrel in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. Nobody outside of the 12,000
in the caves now knew where the colony was located. Nobody ever would.

CHAPTER THREE
     
    DIE OFF MINUS SIX YEARS
     
    Stryker had never been more proud. He
was exhausted, filthy, thirsty, and sore. He had completed the thirteen-week
Marine Corps. Basic Training. They had just finished The Crucible, the
culmination of the course. It was the final test to become a Marine, and consisted
of a fifty-four-hour exercise with eight hours of sleep and very little food.
The tasks they completed during the exercise included marches, night
infiltration, and a host of other physical and intellectual challenges. Each
challenge was named after a heroic Marine or a famous Marine battle, and they
were referred to as “Warrior Stations.”
    He stood at the bottom of a long sloping
hill with the other recruits, many of whom were squeezed in between two other
recruits so they wouldn’t fall from exhaustion. To do so was to fail the course
and they had all come too far and paid too high a price to wash out now The
recruits, who were about to be pinned with the Marine Corps insignia, were all
in varying stages of fatigue. Stryker glanced around and saw nothing but
exhaustion, drawn faces, heavy breathing, and slumped shoulders. It had been
brutal for everyone.
    They lined up in two formations in front
of the half-sized replica of the Iwo Jima Memorial. The chaplain led them in prayer,
after the color guard raised the flag, and each new recruit accepted the
insignia. Then the first sergeant addressed the formation, and the drill
instructors passed through the ranks, shaking hands and addressing each of them
as “Marine” before they moved on to the next man. Several men leaked tears down
dirty faces.
    Stryker was the last to receive his pin.
He shook hands with his drill instructor, a small wiry cracker from Georgia who
had singled Stryker out for additional scorn and abuse. He grew to hate the
sergeant with a ferocity he had never known and the entire thing had been hell
on earth because of the small man who stood in front of him. During the
training, Stryker wanted to twist the man’s skinny neck off his body almost
daily, and he still felt a smoldering resentment toward the drill instructor.
    As the men broke ranks, family members
and other loved ones crowded around the new Marines, backslapping, shaking
hands, embracing, and otherwise expressing their happiness for the young men.
Stryker stood next to his DI. Sergeant Keynes said to him, “get cleaned up and
I’ll meet you after breakfast at the front gate. We’re going to get a beer.”
Keynes turned and stalked off with that menacing stride Stryker knew so well.
     
    Two hours later, the men were sitting in
a booth in one of the many bars that surrounds military installations. They
were all pretty much the same, with cheap beer, flimsy furnishings, and servers
who couldn’t make the cut at the more expensive places. Keynes, true to his word,
had picked up Stryker at the front gate, and they drove to the bar in a brand
new F-150 that had every option. Stryker was uneasy with the silence, and
unsure what the