Anna shoved her shoulder and hissed, “Stop it.”
There was no stopping it and out came a rush of stomach juices and chunks of the dinner she had scarfed down hours earlier. The nearest zombie turned right for her. It had been a black man once; now it was a demon the color of midnight, all save for its flashing white teeth.
“Damn it,” Axelrod said, straightening. He’d been in a stoop, which hadn’t been kind to his aged back. “Everyone up.” There was no need to order the creature killed. As if they were part of an execution squad, three of the men shouldered their rifles and fired. All three bullets struck home, staggering the creature, and knocking it on its side. It was still alive, however.
Two of the three went to shoot again. “Don’t waste your ammo,” Thuy said, remembering the nightmare inside the Walton Facility. “It’s harmless to us now and we need to conserve our bullets.” The three looked to Axelrod for confirmation.
“She’s right. We should get out of here.” If there was ever an unnecessary order that was it. With fifty or so zombies racing at them, Anna hadn’t waited to be told and was already taking off, running deeper into the neighborhood, with Sergeant Carlton right behind her. The entire group followed as quickly as they could. In no time, they lost what cohesiveness they’d had earlier. The younger and faster among them sped ahead, while the heavier and slower ones slogged after, casting frightened looks back as the zombies formed into a shadowy evil mob, filled with sharp teeth and raging screams.
Katherine and the colonel, whose name was Kyle Taylor, were at the very back. Her lungs felt like they had shriveled and were full of steel wool and if Taylor hadn’t been propelling her along, she probably would have been the first to be eaten. She needed a few minutes simply to get her breath back. There was no time. Some of the zombies were dreadfully fast and came charging along at a tremendous pace.
In only a few minutes, it was obvious they weren’t going to make it. “Go,” Taylor growled, pushing a heavy pack into her arms and giving her a shove. It had been unexpected and she spun, flailing backwards and would have fallen if she hadn’t slammed into a six-foot fence. She wished she had gone face-first. The sight behind her was enough to make her want to scream. There were so many of the dead coming after them that they were crawling over one another like spiders.
“I said, go!” Taylor yelled. He stood alone in a small gap between two of the houses, raised his rifle and began firing. With death staring him right in the face, his aim was magnificent, and the creatures fell one after another.
With her head reeling, Katherine clawed frantically for the gate in the fence, threw it back and careened into the backyard. She almost ran into Thuy and Axelrod, who were both coming back to help. Before Katherine could suck in enough air to say a word, Axelrod pulled her behind him, saying, “Go. Get out of here.” He ran for the gate, while Thuy ran for the house.
Katherine stumbled away, in no shape to help anyone, not even herself. She had no idea how she was going to get over the fence. Everyone except for a crazy-eyed and sweating Sergeant Carlton had already climbed over. Somewhat heroically—he was almost pissing himself in a most non-heroic manner—he was waiting to help her over.
In his fear, he practically heaved her over and onto her head. She barely held onto to the top of the fence where she had a perfect view of Taylor a second from being thrown down and eaten.
He was firing quickly and efficiently, but there were so many of them; hundreds now. Before he died, General Axelrod stormed through the gate, grabbed Taylor by the back of the vest and pulled him through the gate. He then shouldered the wooden gate shut.
Almost immediately, the gate was attacked, the top of the slats breaking off as if they were made of styrofoam. “Now shoot them, damn it!” Axelrod ordered. From point blank range, Taylor began shooting every face that appeared. He killed five of them when the night was suddenly lit by a rush of flame. Thuy had run to the patio where an outdoor grill sat under a neat weatherproof cover. She ripped it off and began digging in the cabinet below it. Just as she had hoped, it held a nearly full bottle of lighter fluid and a long-tipped lighter.
Since the house was brick, she doused the fence with half the bottle before lighting it up. The old, dry wood burned wonderfully and the wall of fire finally stopped the zombies who were became mesmerized. “This will keep them busy,” Thuy remarked, pretending not to notice the colonel’s shaking hands. She added more lighter fluid in a line across the rest of the fence and the fire spread eagerly after it. “Come on. Don’t just stand there.”
The fire enveloped the wooden slats and the bushes on either side. The zombies that managed to bash their way through the fence did so as walking torches with their clothes and hair on fire. If their eyes hadn’t been melted out of their sockets, they were night blind and went in circles, frequently setting more of the yard ablaze. It wasn’t long before the house caught fire and after that, the remainder of their trip to the research facility was relatively simple.
With the zombies flocking to the blaze, the little group crossed through the neighborhood, passed through a shopping center, hurried across a deserted highway and were at the R&K Building in next to no time.
The building was locked, dark and cold. “Wow, what a fucking surprise,” Anna cried, yanking on the handles. “Tell me, General, how much research do you think we can do in the fucking dark?” He didn’t have an answer for that besides glaring at her. “That’s what I thought,” she said, a smug look on her face. “The only reasonable thing to do; hell, the only smart thing to do is to send a few of your boys back to fetch the helicopter. It makes no sense to risk all of us, especially those of us who are extra valuable to the mission.”
Colonel Taylor was red in the face. “Look lady, there’s more than one mission here. We’re all valuable.”
“She isn’t,” Anna said, gesturing at Katherine, barely able to hide the sly smile that wanted to creep onto her face. Deep down, Anna worried that her pardon would be extra-conditional and that if Katherine was ever called on to testify against her, things would go very badly. It would be better if she never got the chance. “She could go with the fly boys. She’s not just an FBI agent, she’s a Special Agent in Charge. They don’t give just anyone that sort of rank.”
Katherine, who had finally gotten her breath back, didn’t feel all that special. No, just then, she felt small and weak, and the last thing she wanted was to go back through the maze of undead once again.
Chapter 3
1-2:01 a.m.
Grafton, Massachusetts
An hour before, Sergeant Troy Ross had hit that point of exhaustion where death was beginning to seem like a fine alternative to the endless marching and fighting. Now he was in some sort of numb fugue where his body seemed to be doing its own thing, following along after the man in front of him. They could be walking straight into the Atlantic for all he knew.
The thought had just crossed his mind when he splashed knee-deep into a long strip of black water. The sudden cold goosed him into a semi-state of consciousness and he gazed around at the night forest. There was a ubiquitous nature to the mossy trees standing guard over the river and he felt he could have been anywhere from Mississippi to Maine.
The men around him were of a very average sort. Interspersed with the soldiers were civilians in a mishmash of grungy denim jeans and camouflage coats. They were ragged and hollow-eyed, most looking even more exhausted than Ross. He couldn’t summon any energy for compassion. After all, most of these men had been his enemy only hours before. Now they were part of his company. “I think,” he mumbled. None of them looked familiar in the least. As far as he knew, he had stumbled into another formation.
Checking his watch, he saw that it had only been twenty-three minutes since their last line had crumbled away under the screaming, howling attacks of the dead. “Twenty-three? That’s it?” It seemed like it had been at least an hour since they had run pell-mell through the dark forest, chased by the shrieks of the wound
ed they had left behind.
Ross shook his head to try to clear it and as he did, one of the men in the stream knocked into him and gave him a bleary, “Sorry,” before continuing on.
“Yeah,” Ross answered. He took a deep, shaky breath before wading across the stream along with the rest.
At the far side of the stream, there was a bit of a hold-up as men struggled to mount the muddy bank. Ross pushed through the men, got to the bank and sighed at the lack of unit cohesion.
“What company is this?” he asked. He received shrugs in answer, which was no wonder since the men had been assigned to their companies by being tapped on the head by some unknown major saying: “You’re Alpha. You’re Bravo,” and so on. Half of them went to where they were assigned, while the other half went with their friends or chose a company that they thought looked tougher than the others.
Ross had a reputation for winning and had twenty or thirty men over his allocated one hundred. When it came to fighting, he was happy with the number. When it came to resupply and getting chow, he figured he wouldn’t be. So far neither had happened.
“What a cluster fuck!” he snarled. “This isn’t so hard, people. One man goes up and helps the next in line and so on. You,” he barked to a long, lanky scarecrow of a militiaman, “put out a damned hand.”
Soon, the clump of men thinned and the formations began slugging through the river. Ross cut the line and let himself be pulled up by one of the burlier men. He was walking up the river when he came across some major he had never seen before, wearing a unit patch that was just as foreign.
“Are you Ross?”
If Ross could have willed himself to attention he would have. Instead, he laid one arm over a tree branch and sagged against it. “Yes, sir.” He could barely keep his head up.
“You’re being promoted, congratulations,” the officer said with no more energy than Ross had demonstrated. He held out two plastic bags; one was filled with white pills, while the contents of the other wasn’t obvious until Ross dug his hand in it and pulled out a staff sergeant insignia.
“Cool, thanks sir.”
The major looked tiredly disgusted. “That’s not for you. You’re being bumped to first lieutenant. You’re going to have to decide who gets the other patches. Don’t screw it up.”
First lieutenant! For a few seconds, Ross was stunned, unable to even count the number of pay grades he’d just been bumped…not that he ever expected to get an officer’s actual pay. He knew the army well enough to know that if they managed to win, all he’d get was a little bit of ribbon for his Dress A uniform, a pat on the back, and a boot back down to E-5.
He found the little silver bars that denoted his new rank and sighed. Given the choice between the promotion and a full night’s sleep, he would take the sleep. Lifting the other bag to his face, he gave it a little shake, asking, “So, what’s with the pills? They some sort of vaccine or something?”
“They’re caffeine pills. Give them to the men every six hours. They’ll help for a little while.”
“Will we get cocaine after that?” The major grunted out a laugh and looked like he was about to leave. Ross grabbed his arm. “Hold on, sir. What about resupply? We are stupid-low on ammo and no one’s been fed since…I don’t remember the last time we got chow.” The only food he’d had that day was a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich and some cold left-over mac-n-cheese, liberated from one of the abandoned houses they had passed.
The major jerked his arm out of Ross’s grip, and while he unbuttoned his fly, answered, “We’re working on the ammo as fast as we can. Trust me, we know your situation is precarious. I don’t know what to say about the food. It’s on our to-do list, but it’s kind of down the line. Right now, everything is screwed six ways from Sunday. Our communications are wrecked. Our chain of command is about to be…”
He stopped himself in midsentence as if he had been about to spill some state secret. “Let’s just say we have challenges.” Urine started to splash against a tree and he tilted his head back with his eyes closed. In a conversational tone, he said, “By the way Ross, don’t ever grab a superior officer like that again. That’s how you get shot.”
Ross snorted. This guy wasn’t going to shoot anyone and after fighting for his life for the last two days, the threat was utterly empty. “Yes sir. Hey, do we have orders yet? I’ve only been following Delta and I get the feeling they’re going in circles.”
“Yeah, we got you staked out defending a section of the Quinsigamond River.”
“And where’s that?” The major pointed at the stream they had just crossed; it was all of thirty yards from one side to the other, and only knee-deep. “That? Jeeze. Tell me we have some support, please. We haven’t seen any birds since, hell, since we won at Webster.”
The major cocked an eye at him—the odd patch on his sleeve meant he was Massachusetts National Guard, which meant that he had lost at Webster to the 101st. “We, uh we are working on that, too,” he answered. “There’s a fuel sitch that we’re trying to untangle. We might be able to get some Apaches in the air soon.”
There was no way the major was going to let slip that all air units had been diverted south and were busy decimating the northern stretches of Baltimore, rendering the landscape completely unrecognizable. Thousands of sorties had already been flown, and now the air was filled with ash and flames, while below, the earth was a desolation of craters and rubble.
It was over-kill on a tragic level and already the lack of air-support was being felt. Over the last six hours, the line holding back the zombies had fallen more times than Ross could count.
“Well, I guess Apaches are better than nothing,” Ross muttered in disappointment. The major was still pissing and it seemed like he was going to be at it for a while longer. “If you got nothing else for me, I’ll let you get on with your business.” Dismissing himself wasn’t exactly proper, but they were both too tired to care.
Ross headed up stream for half a mile before he found a butter bar with a clipboard. The man, small and fastidious, looked as though he was better suited conducting an IRS audit. After Ross introduced himself as Lieutenant Ross of Echo Company, the second lieutenant shone a red light at the clipboard. “You’ve gone too far. This is all Foxtrot.” He pointed at the men settling down along the bank of the river. “You need to turn back. There’s orange tape on a tree. You can’t miss it. That’s you. Fill your men in until you get to the next tape.”
He was about to ask how much of the stream he would have to cover when there came a ragged burst of gunfire west of them. It was the 3rd Battalion acting as a rear guard. Their job was to slow the zombies down long enough for the rest of the brigade to get dug in. The 3rd had been lucky to get this long of a reprieve.
“How much am I supposed to cover?” Ross asked, one ear cocked, not just hoping the battle would go on for another hour, but also praying that it would.
“A little over a hundred yards.”
This interrupted his prayer something quick. “Son of a bitch!” Ross exploded. “That’s one man a yard. One man! Do you even know what you’re doing? How do you expect us to fight thinned out like that? Have you seen them…” He stopped in mid-tirade. The young lieutenant was almost hiding behind his clipboard, while the men around him looked nervous. Part of the job of a commanding officer was to instill a fighting spirit in their men and his outburst was uselessly detracting from that.
The butter bar took the break to stammer out, “Al-Alpha Company w-will be acting in reserve. They’ll reinforce any part of the line that gets in trouble.”
And what happens if the entire line gets in trouble at once? It was best not to ask. Ross mumbled an apology about yelling, a second before he bawled, “Echo Company! On me. Let’s go. We’re moving back downstream.” Even saying the word stream was particularly galling. The little trickle wasn’t going to slow the demons down for a minute.
After a short walk, he found the tape and began assigning a hundred of his men alo
ng the line at random, giving each one a caffeine pill before moving on. He kept the remaining twenty-two men back as his own reserve force. This only took minutes and he was just finishing up the little task when the shooting to the west began to peter out. Half a minute went by and it was down to a few sporadic shots.
“No way,” Ross whispered in angry shock. “How long was that? Was that even ten minutes?”
He wasn’t the only one outraged. “Did they just give up?” someone in the dark demanded.
A soldier next to Ross hissed, “When it was us, we held for twenty-eight minutes. Twenty-eight! I timed it, start to finish, and that was against that big bunch. You guys remember that?”
“Pussies!” another man yelled. “All of you are a bunch of…” Someone threw a hat at him and another punched him. He was being loud and now that the undead were coming for them, everyone buttoned up.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Ross said, just loud enough to be heard. “You have your positions, so let’s get to clearing the underbrush.” As the men hurried to get battle ready, Ross went among them, promoting a dozen men to sergeant and another four to staff sergeant. He was understandably biased and every man who received the new insignia were, regular army, like him. Then he divvied up his company into four nearly equal platoons.
Once done, he walked the lines, looking for the weakest areas—as far as he could tell, it was all weak. Nothing had changed; the tune was the same. They would hold for as long as possible before pulling up stakes once again. His guess was that they wouldn’t be able to hold for more than half an hour, depending on the concentration of the dead. Sometimes they came in small gaggles of twenty or thirty. At other times it was like being at the beach and they would come in long waves of a thousand or two. The worst was when they’d come as a flood. If ten thousand of them hit the little stream all at once, the fight would be over in a minute.
War of the Undead Day 5 Page 4