Eli said, “I need to fire your artillery outside the walls past the prescribed point right of the gate.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, unfolded it, then took a look at it. Donovan watched as he made some calculations, then Eli said, “Point 4. Target 20 degrees to the right and forty feet past it. Can you do that?”
Jones responded, “Affirmative. Fire will fall in thirty seconds.”
Eli put the paper away and placed his hands on either side of his mouth, then shouted. “Stop your fire.”
A heavy, anticipatory silence fell upon the people on the wall. A few knelt down and unconsciously put a hand over their head.
Donovan rushed down the wall back to his position, motioning with hand gestures to cease fire. This took twenty seconds.
Ten seconds after that, hellfire fell onto the zombies behind the bridge of dead zombies.
No one on the wall was prepared for the bombastic display of firepower. It was like a Fourth of July Fireworks on steroids. And the steroids were on steroids.
The first thing was the explosion of light. To Donovan, it was as if a supernova had just gone off before his eyes. The brilliance of the explosions was so bright that it nearly seared itself into his eyes. The next wave was the sound. The blast sent out a sound wave that assaulted his ears, seeming as if someone had stuck a bass drum in his ear, and a drummer was going to town on it.
The final wave was the concussive force of the multiple blasts. It physically pushed Donovan and everyone on the wall backward. The only thing that prevented many from going over and down to the ground below was the three and a half foot inner lip of a wall.
In preparation for the attack, Sergeant Jones had worked with his men to pre-target multiple points outside the wall. The Stryker mortar carrier was equipped with a 105mm cannon, and that’s what Jones’ crew was using on the deaders trying to cross the zombie bridge. Each shell delivered the same as what came from a full-sized tank and carried the same devastation.
Zombies at the point of impact were vaporized. Those away from the immediate blast zone were torn apart. Limbs were ripped off bodies. Torsos exploded. Entire bodies were flung in the air as if they were dolls thrown by an angry child. The zombies outside that area were peppered with shrapnel. Those even further out were knocked off their feet and sent rolling like undead barrels along the ground.
And that was just the first strike. The MAV delivered four shells at fifteen-foot intervals. Each one had the same catastrophic effect on the zombies.
Just as the attack finished, an eerie dead silence came over the battlefield as the zombies stumbled around, stunned by the attack, looking like drunks after the bars let out. A few unfortunate ones, their shriveled brains scrambled by the force of the attack, actually walked into the fiery moat and were consumed by the flames.
The people on the wall directly in front of the attack slowly rose up. A couple of them let out cheers or war whoops.
Eli looked in Donovan’s direction and was wearing a maniacal grin. The man next to Eli raised his hand in the air for a high five. It took Eli a moment to respond, but he ended up slapping the man’s hand.
Donovan wasn’t a superstitious man, but something about the premature celebration set him off. You don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched.
As if his thought was some sort of horrible cue, a voice down the wall to his left shouted, “They’re coming through the fire.” The voice had an almost hysterical quality.
When Donovan looked that way, he saw zombies a hundred feet to his left repeating the same procedure as the last set of zombies. One by one and two by two, zombies fell into the moat, pushed by the ones behind them. Just like before, the bodies glutted the moat, and a new bridge was in progress.
Donovan knew the Styker only had about twenty shells. When this dawned on him, he said, “Oh shit.”
Chapter 59
Waiting for the Dead
“They’re coming!” Bonds screamed into the walkie-talkie as Henry pulled in beside him. “From the east.” Bonds paused, listening. “A hell of a lot of them.” Another pause. “Over a thousand.”
Henry watched Bonds’s body jittering around as if someone were running an electric current through his body. Henry began to worry that if the current got any higher, Bonds just might go over the wall. Another man with a long horse-like face and big teeth stood on the other side of Bonds, waiting expectantly.
“But we don’t have as many people as you do,” Bonds said, and a slight whine filled his voice.
Bonds’ eyes went wide, and he threw his head back. “Come on, Eli. We need help.”
He stopped to listen for a moment and slowly lowered the walkie-talkie to his side and let it dangle there.
“What did he say?” the horse-faced man asked.
It took a moment to compose himself and finally said, “We’re on our own back here.”
“No way,” the horse-faced man said. “No fucking way. There have to be a thousand zombies coming our way. We don’t have enough people.”
“He said they’re up to their ass in zombies up there,” Bonds said.
“Look out there!” Horse-face said. “There’s an army of deaders headed our way.”
Bonds looked Horse-face’s way and said, “Eli said he’d do what he could.”
“Which means we are on our own,” the horse-faced man said, close to hysterics.
“Guys!” Henry yelled. “We need to get…” both men looked his way, and Henry continued, “To get our shit together. Whether we are on our own or not, they are coming.”
Something changed in the set of Bonds’ face, and he said, “Kid, why don’t you go back down to your end of the wall?”
“Because you two are losing your minds down here, and we need to get ready,” Henry said. Henry glanced at the other people around the three of them, and he saw that they were all looking back at them, their eyes leery. Henry leaned in closer to the two men and said, “Bonds, these people are counting on you. You need to show them you can handle this. Give them confidence. I think you can do it.”
“You do?” Bonds said, but the words came out tentatively.
Henry put out a hand and placed it on Bonds’ shoulder. “Why would Eli put you back here?”
“Yeah...yeah…” Bonds said as he shook his head up and down, slowly at first, then more vigorously. Then he looked at Henry and asked, “What should my first move be?”
“I think Eli would tell you to spread the people out a little and tell them to hold off on shooting because we’re thin on ammo,” Henry said. Henry looked past Bonds to a building connected at the end of the wall. “He’d probably tell you to get some people up there to get a crossfire set-up.”
“You know,” Bonds said, “you’re probably right.” He turned to the horse-faced man and said, “Eddie, get everyone spread out and place some in that building.”
“Sure, sure,” Eddie said and scurried away.
Henry’s eyebrows fell as he contemplated his next move and finally committed to it.
“Bonds, can I borrow your walkie-talkie for a minute?” Henry asked.
“Why?” Eli asked and placed his hand protectively on the walkie-talkie.
“Because I want to see if I can get us some reinforcements,” Henry said.
Bonds’ hand relaxed, and he unclipped the walkie-talkie from his belt and handed it over to Henry.
Henry took it, lifted it to his mouth, and pressed the talk button, then said, “Sergeant Jones, are you there? Sergeant Jones, please come in.”
He took his finger off the talk button and the next voice he heard from Jo’s.
“Henry, what is it?” She asked. “I’m here with Sergeant Jones.”
Henry said, “I’m at the back gate, and we have a thousand zombies headed our way.”
“Oh shit,” Jo said.
“You could say that,” Henry said and took his finger off the talk button. He pointed down the wall and said, “Those people might be better positioned near
that pillar.”
Bonds said and stepped down toward a small group of people on the wall, then yelled, “Hey, you people, get closer to that pillar.” He paused, then yelled more emphatically, “No, no, the other pillar.”
Henry turned away from Bonds and lowered his voice. “These people aren’t ready back here. It’s going to be a massacre. We need help.”
Static came back over the walkie-talkie’s tiny speaker, then Jo said, “It’s a mess up here, too. But I’ll do what I can.”
Bonds stepped back toward Henry and put his hand out. “Kid, give me the walkie. I’m going to call the people south wall and see if they can get any people to us.”
Henry handed the walkie-talkie back and looked over the wall to the east. The sun was fully free of the horizon, and its rays highlighted the shoulders and heads of the oncoming zombies, giving them an almost halo-like light around their heads. Henry knew there was nothing heaven-sent about these undead monsters and hoped like hell that Jo sent help. He seriously doubted that any of them would be alive when the sun went down that night if she didn’t.
Chapter 60
Bridge Building
The zombies started their messy stroll over the bodies of the zombies glutting the moat. Their fiery sacrifice went completely unnoticed. Had this been a conventional war and a conventional enemy, Donovan might have admired the courage of this enemy, dropping one after the other into the fiery depths of the burning moat. But he knew the undead didn’t have courage, pride, and any sense of self-sacrifice. Hunger was their only motivation and the only thing that made them jump into the moat, full of burning fuel. An unholy hunger that was an unspeakable force that no one really understood, not even the creatures compelled by it.
Donovan shouted, “Shoot those zombies coming over the moat!”
Mason aimed at the first three zombies to make it over the backs of their fallen colleagues. Albeit, this first wave was on fire, and one of them slipped off the pile and fell into flames. The problem came when three took that one’s place.
Mason opened up and blasted those three new arrivals, but they just fell over the side and widened the bridge of bodies.
“Start shooting,” Donovan screamed as he started shooting.
As fast as he fired was as quickly as the zombies made it over the bridge. Even with others joining in, more zombies pressed their way over the bridge of zombies. These zombies staggered on the grass in front of the Sanctum walls and started toward the wall.
More zombies followed the ones leading the way. Many fell, but more made it past the barrage.
Donovan leaned over toward Mason and said, “They’re coming too fast.”
Mason shot up an arm and pointed down the wall about a hundred and fifty feet to the right. “They’re coming across the moat down there, too.”
Once again, zombies sacrificed themselves to the fires in the moat, but like before, those that died made a bridge from their bodies. This bridge carried zombies across those bodies as they shambled toward the wall.
The people on the wall directly in front of this latest incursion began firing on the zombies, but as zombies were prone to do, they took the bullets, and they just kept coming. It was their way.
When Donovan looked down the wall, he saw Eli making his way toward them. His expression flat and his face the color of a paste. Over Eli’s shoulder, Lassiter was blasting away at the zombies making their way toward the wall.
Eli weaved in and out of the shooters. More than once, he almost lost his balance, and went over the wall once, but he just kept coming.
Along with Lassiter, people all along the wall were firing down on the approaching zombies. In so many ways, it was like a shooting gallery, but, in this case, there were too many targets. For each one they took out, three filled in the gap behind it. And these new targets were fearless and, worst of all, hungry. Insatiably so.
Two hundred feet down the wall to their left erupted in gunfire. When Donovan looked in that direction, he saw a mob of zombies surging over another bridge of burning zombies bodies. Donovan wondered how the hell this was happening. Deep down, he knew it was one of the smart zombies orchestrating these incursions.
This whole shit show is coming apart, Donovan thought.
“Donovan!” A voice called out to Donovan’s right. Eli was rushing his way, and he looked like a man on a leaking life raft surrounded by sharks.
“Oh great,” Donovan said under his breath.
When he got to Donovan, he asked, “Should we call in another artillery strike?”
Donovan wondered why this man, who was supposed to be in charge, was asking him this question. Over his brief time with Eli, Donovan hadn’t seen the metal needed to lead in a situation like this. Donovan didn’t want to be in charge, but neither did he want to concede his fate to this man.
“What did Lassiter say? Donovan said, his voice raised to be heard over the gunfire.
“He’s not sure,” Eli said, rubbing his forehead ad looking more than a little lost.
“I don’t know either,” Donovan said. “This could easily become a game of whack a mole, and we’ll burn through all our shells.”
“But they’ll get to the wall,” Eli said.
Donovan looked Mason in the eyes and said, “That’s why we have a wall.”
“What?!” Eli asked, and his mouth hung open.
“Calm down,” Donovan said. “These people are counting on you.”
“Keep your shit together,” Mason added, but he went back shooting.
Donovan leaned in close to Eli and spoke in a calm, even voice. “This was eventual. They were always going to get to the wall, but with your moat of fire, we’ve cut their numbers. Your wall is our final defense, and it is sound.”
“You really think so?” Eli asked.
“It has to stop them,” Donovan said.
A voice burst out of the speaker on Eli’s walkie talkie. “Eli, come in.” It was Jo.
Eli snatched up the walkie-talkie and practically screamed into it. “WHAT? We’ve got a shit load of zombies up here.”
“Eli, Eli, calm down,” Jo said.
“That’s easy for you to say,” Eli said. “You’re not even up here.”
“Eli, there’s a horde of zombies at the back gate,” Jo said.
Eli’s knees went weak, and he nearly went down, but Donovan reached out and held him up.
“Eli? Eli?” Jo said. “Eli, are you there?”
“Give me the walkie,” Donovan said.
Eli looked up at Donovan with blinking, red-rimmed eyes. Donovan wasn’t even sure Eli even saw him.
“Give me the walkie,” Donovan said again.
Shots rang out all around them, up and down the wall. Smoke drifted down from the wall like a fine mist.
Eli held the walkie-talkie up, and Donovan took it. “What is it, Jo?”
“Henry called from the back wall,” Jo said. “He says there’s a second horde of zombies headed their way.”
“We can’t help them,” Donovan said. “We have more zombies up here than we can handle.”
“Are they at the wall?” Jo said.
“Not yet, but soon,” Donovan said. “Can you help out at the back wall?”
“Jones and his men need to be ready if any of the zombies make it over the walls.”
“You’ve got to have someone?” Donovan said.
There was a long pause, and Jo said, “I can think of someone.”
“Get it done,” Donovan said.
When he looked back over the wall, he saw the undead pouring over five different zombie bridges. There was no stopping them now.
Chapter 61
A Leadership Dilemma
The two buildings across the large parking lot from the back gate pressed the incoming horde down into a cork-like funnel. Once they passed those two buildings, they spread out like smoke from a fire, flowing across the parking lot, oozing outward. The parking lot and narrow piece of green space were all that stood between the peo
ple at the back gate and a thousand zombies.
To Henry, ten miles of mountains and impassable terrain wasn’t enough of an obstacle. His eyes scanned the crowd, looking for any indication of a smart zombie, but all he saw was a thousand pairs of dead eyes looking back at him. Dead and fathomless, with no feelings other than hunger, but there was nothing new there.
He had seen the dead eyes of zombies before. They had always sent a chill through him, but his father had always told him that he could not let his fear rule him. It was okay and even smart to be afraid. Every good soldier felt fear, his dad said, but what was most important was how to channel that fear. How to use it. How to make it your weapon.
Ellen came beside him and put a hand on his shoulder.
When he looked at her, he asked, “Mom, what am I supposed to do?”
She darted her eyes in Bonds’ direction, then pitched her voice low. “You have to lead these people back here. He’s not up to it, and I can’t. Not after what I did.”
“But I’m just a fifteen-year-old kid. How am I supposed to lead these people?”
“I know what your dad would say,” Ellen said, “He’d say you lead them with a cool head and a keen intellect. The smart fox always beat the strongest one, he’d say.” She squeezed his shoulder. “And he said you were smarter than he ever was.”
“No, I’m not,” he said.
“You are,” she said. “And you’ll do it because you have to. I saw you manage,” she put her fingers up in air quotes, “him earlier. You can do it again.”
“Do you think Bonds is that dumb?”
“Whether he’s that dumb, I won’t comment on, but you’re smart enough to make it happen.”
Molly stepped up behind Ellen and said, “Oh yeah, he’s that dumb. Dumber than a brick. I think I’ve seen bricks fucking smarter than him.”
Ellen swiveled her head in Molly’s direction. “Do you have a filter?”
“What?!” Molly asked, tossing her hands in the air.
“Bonds is right over there,” Ellen said, pointing toward where Bonds stood, looking like a little boy waiting for his dad to show up and take over.
The Deadland Chronicles | Book 4 | Siege of the Dead: Page 27