The Winter War

Chapter Nine

Authors Note: The first part of this chapter contains violent imagery and coarse language unfound unlike anything in my earlier work. Reader discretion advised.

Murfreesboro, Tennessee

            He didn’t think it got this cold this far south. Typically when you thought of the South you thought of swamps and warm winters, people with more teeth than brain cells, and good old fashioned racism. Yet here he was, bundled up inside a train boxcar and watching it snow.

            A fifty gallon drum crackled and popped in the rear of the car providing some heat to the assembled men of the Ghost Brigade. As they moved and took on the Druidth, occasionally saving people from them, they acquired new recruits who were eager to do their part; recruits who were often turned down for not knowing anything about guerrilla warfare. While Spinnaker would love to have the numbers, it wasn’t worth the lives of his veteran troopers.

            They had more than enough food to last them for a while, even longer with careful rationing, and water was very easy to come by with all of the streams and rivers that ran through this part of the state. Murfreesboro was a sizeable city about fifty miles to the south of Nashville and while it didn’t have the fame of its larger cousin it was still pretty big. But still too big for Spinnaker to risk running an operation for fear of bringing a large force down on them.

            Which was why they were hiding out in a train car even further south. The tracks were blown out a few meters ahead, a large crater with what remained of the engine was carved into the earth. The tracks themselves were surrounded by a forest that thinned the closer it got to the road, a major highway that connected Nashville and Murfreesboro with Chattanooga near the Georgia line. Now that he thought about it the tracks and the railroad probably mirrored each other all the way to the Georgia Central Train Terminal. When he was in Parris Island Spinnaker remembered talking to a reservist who worked there and said it was nicknamed “Terminus” because of a popular television show that ended last year.

            Spinnaker chuckled, then spat into the cold, dark night. “Wonder if zombies would be easier to deal with…”

            “Probably. ‘Specially since they don’t have friggin’ starships,” Came from the darkness outside the door.

            Spinnaker jumped and reached for his pistol but stopped when Esposito materialized into the light. “Didn’t hear you come up.”

            “You know me, Boss,” He said with a crooked grin as he climbed into the train car. “I’m half ninja half wizard, all badass.”

            “Nah, he’s just all Mexican. He got good at sneaking across the border,” Someone whispered from the rear which brought a chorus of chuckles.

            Esposito flipped the group off and held his hands over the barrel to warm them. He had taken his stolen Druidth armor off for the task Spinnaker sent him on, claiming tight clothes made it easier to move covertly.