Red Hammer: Voodoo Plague Book 4 Read online

  Red Hammer

  Voodoo Plague Book 4

  By

  DIRK PATTON

  Text Copyright © 2014 by Dirk Patton

  Copyright © 2014 by Dirk Patton

  All Rights Reserved

  This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2014

  ISBN-13: 978-1500717995

  ISBN-10: 1500717991

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, brands, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ALSO BY DIRK PATTON

  Voodoo Plague: Book One

  Crucifixion: Voodoo Plague Book Two

  Rolling Thunder: Voodoo Plague Book Three

  Rules Of Engagement: A John Chase Short Story

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note........................................................................................................................ 6

  Dedication............................................................................................................................. 7

  1............................................................................................................................................ 9

  2.......................................................................................................................................... 12

  3.......................................................................................................................................... 15

  4.......................................................................................................................................... 18

  5.......................................................................................................................................... 21

  6.......................................................................................................................................... 23

  7.......................................................................................................................................... 26

  8.......................................................................................................................................... 30

  9.......................................................................................................................................... 33

  10........................................................................................................................................ 36

  11........................................................................................................................................ 39

  12........................................................................................................................................ 42

  13........................................................................................................................................ 44

  14........................................................................................................................................ 48

  15........................................................................................................................................ 51

  16........................................................................................................................................ 54

  17........................................................................................................................................ 56

  18........................................................................................................................................ 58

  19........................................................................................................................................ 61

  20........................................................................................................................................ 65

  21........................................................................................................................................ 69

  22........................................................................................................................................ 73

  23........................................................................................................................................ 76

  24........................................................................................................................................ 79

  25........................................................................................................................................ 82

  26........................................................................................................................................ 85

  27........................................................................................................................................ 89

  28........................................................................................................................................ 93

  29........................................................................................................................................ 96

  30........................................................................................................................................ 99

  31...................................................................................................................................... 103

  32...................................................................................................................................... 107

  33...................................................................................................................................... 110

  34...................................................................................................................................... 114

  35...................................................................................................................................... 118

  36...................................................................................................................................... 121

  37...................................................................................................................................... 125

  38...................................................................................................................................... 130

  39...................................................................................................................................... 133

  40...................................................................................................................................... 139

  41...................................................................................................................................... 142

  42...................................................................................................................................... 147

  43...................................................................................................................................... 150

  44.................................................................................................
..................................... 153

  45...................................................................................................................................... 157

  46...................................................................................................................................... 161

  47...................................................................................................................................... 166

  48...................................................................................................................................... 172

  49...................................................................................................................................... 175

  50...................................................................................................................................... 177

  Acknowledgements........................................................................................................... 180

  Author’s Note

  Thank you for purchasing Red Hammer, Book 4 in the Voodoo Plague series. If you haven’t read the first three books I strongly encourage you to do so first, otherwise you will be lost as this book is intended to continue the story in a serialized format. I intentionally did nothing to explain comments and events that reference Books 1 through 3. Regardless, you have my heartfelt thanks for reading my work and I hope you’re enjoying the adventure as much as I am. As always, a good review on Amazon is greatly appreciated and the best way to ensure more books get published.

  Dedication

  For my brothers, my comrades in arms from the Reaper Team. Gone, but never forgotten.

  Take the children and yourself

  And hide out in the cellar

  By now the fighting will be close at hand

  Don't believe the church and state

  And everything they tell you

  Mike and the Mechanics – Silent Running

  1

  Army Master Sergeant Darius Jackson stood leaning out from the narrow platform on the edge of the slow moving locomotive, watching Major John Chase plummet more than eighty feet to the brownish grey water of the Mississippi River. There was a large splash, then the Major disappeared beneath the swirling surface of the river.

  “Crazy Motherfucker!” Jackson said to himself, staring at the spot where the Major had gone under. He wanted to stand there and see if the insane man surfaced, but he needed to get the train stopped and reversed. There were still evacuees back on the Memphis side of the bridge that hadn’t boarded when the deserter, Air Force Captain Lee Roach, had hijacked the train. In a struggle with Rachel and Dog, the three of them had fallen off the train, past the bridge and into the flood swollen river below. Major Chase had immediately gone in after them.

  Shaking his head, Jackson slung the Major’s M4 rifle with his own and stepped into the locomotive cab to figure out the controls. It only took him a couple of minutes to get the train stopped, but several more to get it in reverse and moving back toward Memphis. While he worked, he was in radio contact with his CO, Colonel Crawford, somewhere above him in a Black Hawk helicopter.

  “He did what?” The tone of incredulity was clear in the Colonel’s voice.

  “He jumped off the goddamn train and into the river, sir. Guess I should have listened to him and killed Roach when we captured him.”

  “Don’t waste time second guessing yourself, Master Sergeant. We’re peeling off to see if we can spot them in the water. Get those people out of there. The Hummers and Bradley are almost out of ammo.”

  “Yes, sir. Out.”

  While the train rolled backwards on the bridge, Jackson opened the side door, reached out and pulled the large rear-view mirror back into alignment. Roach had knocked it out and down to prevent Jackson and Major Chase from seeing inside the cab as they approached. Mirror in proper adjustment, he was able to see down the side of the train. Over a thousand people still stood on the bridge decking, as far away from the Humvees and Bradley that were guarding the bridge entrance as they could get. All three vehicles were firing their machine guns, the Bradley also utilizing its 25 mm chain gun to stop the infected, and there was a respectable pile of shattered bodies in a semi-circle around the end of the bridge.

  Eyes on the mirror and hand on the throttle, Jackson slowed the train as the rearmost car reached the part of the bridge that had solid decking underneath the rails. This was where the panicked evacuees waited, and he slowed further as the locomotive approached the deck. Fully on the solid portion of the bridge, Jackson cut the throttle to idle and set the brakes for the train cars and the four locomotives. Immediately, people surged forward, climbing into the waiting cattle cars that were all that was left of the original train.

  The people were loading themselves quickly, frightened, but still willing to help each other. Jackson watched them climb on in the big mirror, willing them to move faster. The chain gun on the Bradley fell silent, a moment later one of the Hummer’s machine guns going quiet as well. That left one Humvee mounted machine gun and the machine gun on the Bradley still in the fight. The greater destruction of the Bradley’s 25 mm chain gun had equaled the firepower of at least three machine guns, and with it out of ammo the wall of infected quickly started pushing forward. The semi-circle of clear space around the bridge entrance began rapidly shrinking.

  Jackson got on the radio with the soldiers holding the line, asked a few questions then started issuing orders. Momentarily, he saw the majority of the men and women manning the vehicles exit and start running for the train. Once they had a hundred yard head start the Hummer that still had some ammo, and the Bradley, started driving out onto the bridge deck, machine guns still firing to keep the infected at bay.

  By the time the running soldiers reached the rear of the train all of the civilian evacuees were loaded, and even in the cab of the giant locomotive Jackson could hear them screaming for him to start the train moving. The two military vehicles came to a stop 20 yards behind the rearmost car, the Hummer’s machine gun running out of ammo. The infected surged, but only covered a few yards before a Black Hawk swooped in and opened up with its door mounted minigun. The helicopters were very low on ammo, and Jackson had held this one in reserve for just this moment. He was determined to get all the soldiers on the train.

  The leading ranks of infected fell under the withering minigun fire. The heavy, high velocity slugs tore through bodies, the steel of the bridge, anything they touched. The remaining soldiers wasted no time in abandoning the two vehicles and running for their lives. As soon as Jackson saw their boots hit the bridge deck he throttled up the diesels, ready to go the second the running defenders were on board.

  They had only covered half the distance when the minigun ran out of ammo. Dozens of female infected screamed and immediately sprinted past the devastated bodies. They didn’t make it far as the Black Hawk performed a brief aerial ballet, peeling off and dropping towards the river as an Apache took its place and opened up with its chin mounted chain gun. Jackson smiled, watching the leading edge of infected dissolve as the explosive rounds hit in their midst. Pulling his attention back to the fleeing soldiers, he released the train and engine brakes when he saw the last man climb on.

  Managing the controls he advanced the throttle. Jackson didn’t know what he was doing and was a bit intimidated by the complicated control panel, scanning the myriad gauges and warning lights. He figured that as long as he kept everything in the green, he was ok. Manipulating the throttle and the controls that fed the electricity generated by the diesels to the drive motors, he successfully kept everything working and soon the train was moving at 25 miles an hour. That was fast enough to prevent any infected from boarding, and Jackson wasn’t comfortable with pushing the speed any higher.

  The bridge across the river was four miles long and it took nearly ten minutes to cross the span. On the Arkansas side, the infected were not nearly as numerous and
had been held back by a Black Hawk and Apache helicopter. Bodies were piled several feet high on the track, but the heavy train pushed them aside without so much as a shudder. They continued on into the flat countryside, rice paddies stretching out as far as the eye could see on either side of the tracks.

  Jackson looked over his left shoulder through the thick windows of the locomotive. Above the middle of the river more than a mile downstream from the bridge, a pair of Black Hawks were slowly moving south, apparently still searching for the people in the water. They were too high to be conducting a rescue. Jackson had been raised in Mississippi, not too far down the river and he well knew the power of the water. Very few people had ever gone into the river and come out alive.

  A rumble of explosions sounded over the heavy throb of the locomotive’s diesel. Shifting his gaze to the large, external mirror, he watched as two Apaches fired multiple hellfire missiles into the mid-span of the bridge. The structure was no match for the warheads which cut through the steel with ease. Less than a minute after the bombardment began, nearly a mile of girders and tracks broke free and fell into the river below, preventing the hundreds of thousands of infected in Memphis from crossing to the west. Reaching to his neck, Jackson worked his fingers under his uniform to grasp the small, gold cross his mother had given him the day he enlisted in the Army. Saying a prayer, he rubbed the cross with his thick thumb, turning his attention back to the track in front of him after a heartfelt Amen.

  2

  “Oh, SHIT!” flashed through my head a half a second after I leapt off the train. The bottom of the bridge was 65 feet above the surface of the Mississippi River, and with the height of the bridge deck and the locomotive I was going to fall at least 85 feet before hitting the water. From that height it was likely I could be seriously injured or killed if I impacted the water on my back or stomach. Rachel had gone in feet first. I hadn’t seen how Dog impacted and didn’t give a shit about Roach. Well, actually I hoped he did a face plant and the river finished him off.