Dead America The Second Week (Book 11): Dead America: Heartland Pt. 4

by Slaton, Derek

  The three soldiers nodded and clicked away on their keyboards, sending info off to sync with his computer.

  “Okay Captain,” David murmured as he typed on his own keyboard. “The west side teams are within a couple blocks of the bridge,” he said, “so they should be able to start pushing west towards Post Falls within the hour.”

  Kersey cocked his head. “We ever find a rally point for them?”

  David typed for a few moments, and then stared at some data, tapping his chin with his finger.

  “Oh, sorry sir,” one of the soldiers piped up, “look on page four of the scouting doc.”

  David shot him a thumbs up. “Thanks.” He pulled up a map of Post Falls with a circle around a golf course on the far east side, and another building several blocks away that also had a circle around it.

  “The golf course looks like the best rally point,” David said. “Lots of open space so nothing can sneak up on ‘em. From there, they’ll be able to regroup and condense teams before pushing to the high school in the northwest.”

  The Captain leaned forward. “How far away is the school?”

  “Half a mile at the most,” David replied. “A few rows of houses between the two locations, but with that size of a force it won’t be a big deal.”

  Kersey nodded. “And how are the east side teams progressing?”

  “Little bit slower due to the density,” David replied, pointing to the screen. “They’re still about eight blocks away from the bridge.”

  “They’re going to need to pick up the pace if they’re going to make it to the waterfront by dusk,” the Captain said, pursing his lips for a moment. “When they get parallel with the bridge, break off a couple of tandems and send them over to the bridge to help them clean up that mess. That should free up another team to help with the river push.”

  “We’ll make it happen,” David agreed with a nod.

  Kersey took another sip of coffee. “What’s the casualty report looking like?”

  David opened up a new document, scanning through the numbers. “Minimal, but not insignificant,” he reported. “East side teams are reporting fifteen dead or bitten, and eight more with non-bite related injuries. West is a little bit worse, with thirty-five dead or bitten and another twenty with non-bite injuries.”

  Kersey furrowed his brow. “That’s a hell of a discrepancy there.”

  “One of the ten man teams was clearing a mid-sized store built into an old building,” David explained. “One of the store rooms was apparently used to house the bitten and they got overrun.”

  The Captain nodded thoughtfully, taking a deep breath and then another long sip of coffee. His chest clenched a bit at the loss of his men, but he knew that this wasn’t the time for dwelling or mourning.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “Send out the orders and keep monitoring the situation. Let me know of any significant developments.”

  There was a chorus of yes, sir, and the quartet turned away to hammer at their keyboards.

  The Captain leaned against the table behind him, taking another thoughtful sip of coffee. He hoped beyond hope that he’d already received the worst news of the day.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The party boats moved quietly up the river, with the engines running on low to draw as little attention to them as possible.

  “I’m guessing that’s not the airport we’re supposed to rally at?” Mason asked, inclining his head to the southern airport in the heart of Spokane.

  “No,” Bretz confirmed, “and it’s a good thing, too. We’d be pretty much surrounded on all sides if we were in there. Wouldn’t be a good situation.”

  The sharpshooters had remained on the roofs, using their scopes to scout the area as they moved. There were zombies everywhere. Some wandered alone, others in groups of five or so, and occasionally a mini-horde in the thirties of forties.

  Kowalski sighed. “We’re going to need a hell of a lot more men if we’re going to clear this place out. And we haven’t even gotten to the main part of the city, yet.”

  “Pretty sure we have another mile to go before we hit it,” Wade replied.

  Kowalski shook his head. “Urban sprawl, man,” he drawled. “Great for when you want half a dozen SuperMarts within five minutes of you. Not so great for the zombie apocalypse.”

  “Could be worse, though,” Wade said brightly.

  His companion raised an eyebrow. “How?”

  Wade grinned. “We could be walking this.”

  Kowalski chuckled and looked through his scope again, not even dignifying that with an answer. He definitely preferred the party boat life, even during Wade’s continuous whining about the yacht rock.

  Twenty minutes went by, of the same never ending zombie sea, leaving absolutely nothing untouched in their wake.

  “How many troops were following you guys up?” Kowalski asked as he scanned the cityscape.

  Wade took a deep breath. “Rumor had it that there was a thousand, with a could APCs and an Apache Guardian.”

  “Oh great, a thousand,” Kowalski replied, rolling his eyes. “Next they’ll hand us some buckets and tell us to go drain the Pacific Ocean.”

  His companion clucked his tongue. “You always so negative?”

  “Sorry,” the sniper replied with a pout. “Just haven’t shot anything in literally hours and it’s driving me a little crazy.”

  Wade inclined his head towards the front of the boat. “If I had to guess, you aren’t going to have to wait long.”

  They were approaching the heart of Spokane. The soldiers stared to the north, at a sea of big box shopping stores, small office buildings, and a college campus. To the south was the downtown core, filled with mid-rise buildings about twenty to thirty stories tall.

  Kowalski’s eyes lit up like a kid at Christmas. “Man, just look at all those sniper positions,” he said with glee. “We can have some fun up there, can’t we?”

  “I do believe we can, sir,” Wade replied with a grin.

  As they came around the bend, Mason gaped at the sight before them. “What in the hell is that?” There was an island right in the center of the water with several bridges connecting to it, like an urban spider.

  “That is the Riverfront Park,” the soldier above him, Hanson, replied. “There’s a Pavilion there that was the central attraction to the 1974 World’s Fair.”

  Byrd barked a laugh and hung his head over the side. “You’ll have to excuse Hanson here, he’s old and for some reason knows useless shit like this.”

  “Don’t knock being educated,” Hanson sniffed.

  “Not knockin’ it at all,” Byrd replied. “Just pointed out that you’re probably old enough to have been at that event, which is why you’ve had time to learn all this useless stuff.”

  Hanson shook his head. “Given its central location and natural protection from the river, it might be a good place to deposit some troops, provided we can do something about the bridges.”

  “Good point,” Bretz agreed. “I’ll add it to the report.”

  “Uh, Bretz,” Kowalski said, peering through his scope. “We might have an issue.”

  The Corporal turned to him. “What you got?”

  “Those bridges are filled with zombies, and the guard rails do not look very high,” the sniper replied.

  “Okay, look sharp,” Bretz said loudly, and the soldiers went on high alert as the boats approached the island.

  It was fairly large, with half a dozen bridges jetting out, three on each side of the river. Some of the zombies caught sight of the boats, and moaned and snarled, pressing against the railings in excitement.

  Before long, one of them toppled and splashed into the river about thirty yards ahead of the boats. The snipers immediately slid down from their rooftop perches to scamper underneath the shelter.

  “Y’all might want to speed up a bit,” Kowalski suggested.

  Both drivers increased their speed, hoping to nip under the bridge as quick as possible. Several more
zombies splashed down as they reached it, but one landed on the deck in the front of Kowalski and Wade. Its legs shattered with the impact, bones sticking up out of rotting flesh.

  Despite its condition, the ghoul managed to get up and stagger towards the snipers. Kowalski drew a handgun and fired a single round through its head. He peered out to take a peek at the second bridge.

  “We’re good on this one, Bretz,” he reported. “It’s better designed with proper safety rails.”

  “What about the last one?” the Corporal asked.

  Kowalski looked through his scope and made a dismayed noise at the state of it. “There’s almost no railing.”

  “What the hell happened?” Bretz demanded.

  “Fuck if I know,” the sniper replied. “Construction, car bomb, does it really fucking matter?”

  Zombies splashed into the water like kids doing a belly flop contest, falling in front of them in a waterfall of rotted flesh. All of the sharpshooters took aim, and Kowalski cocked his head to the Corporal.

  “Are we shooting, or what?” he asked.

  Bretz sighed. “They know we’re here,” he said. “Go for it.”

  The staccato cracks of bullets ripped through the air, hitting the zombies clustered on the busted bridge. One after another, each followed by a splash as the unmoving corpses fell into the river. Bretz kept a close eye as the area came closer into view, and when they were within twenty yards he held up a hand.

  “Full throttle!” he cried, and the helmsmen hit the gas.

  The party boats surged forward, moving just quick enough under the hole that the snipers had made in the cluster of zombies that they managed not to pick up any extra passengers. Zombies rained down around them, splashing into the water on all sides.

  As they cleared the waterfall of corpses unscathed, there was no time to cheer before they heard a gunshot in the distance.

  “Where did that come from?” Bretz asked immediately, and they all strained their ears. Soon enough, another shot rang out, and Byrd pointed.

  “Definitely south of the river,” he said.

  Hanson nodded. “Little further up, too.”

  Kowalski clambered back up onto the roof and used his scope to scan the buildings. As he swept the windows, he spotted a mid-rise apartment about ten stories tall about three blocks from the water. On the roof there were a handful of people waving their arms, hanging bed sheets off of the side to try to get their attention.

  “I got ‘em,” he said. “Survivors. Brown building with the red trim, three blocks up.”

  The rest of the shooters looked through their scopes to take a look, but Bretz shook his head.

  “There’s not a lot we can do for them right now,” he said.

  Kowalski pursed his lips and thought for a moment, before sliding down from the roof and rushing over to the console. He looked around for a CB radio type microphone that hung next to the CD player. He found a switch and picked up the mouthpiece, pressing the button.

  “Test, test,” he said, and his voice reverberated so loudly they all recoiled from the noise. He pressed it again, ready this time. “You, in the high rise apartment building, we see you. Help is on the way. Do not attempt to reach us. We will come to you when we can. One shot for yes, if you understand.”

  There was a moment and then a single gunshot rang out.

  “Ask them if there’s room to land a chopper up there,” Bretz said.

  Kowalski nodded. “Is there room to land a helicopter on the roof?” he asked, voice booming through the speakers. “One shot for yes, two shots for no.”

  There was another moment of silence and then a single shot.

  Bretz smiled. “Looks like you boys just might have a sniper’s nest after all.”

  “Stay safe,” Kowalski said through the radio, “we will be with you soon.” He hung up the radio and turned it off, and a moment later another shot echoed.

  Byrd shrugged. “Well, that was a nice little surprise.”

  “I mean, you had to figure there would be some survivors, right?” Mason asked with a grin.

  “In a city this size almost two weeks onto this thing?” Byrd shuddered. “Can’t be good odds on that.”

  Bretz straightened his shoulders. “Well, we’ll find out as soon as we find a helicopter. In the meantime, we’ve got a lot more scouting to do.”

  “How much further we got?” Kowalski asked.

  The Corporal waved a hand vaguely forward. “Should be a couple more miles on the river until we dock. Then just a short three mile hike to the airport.”

  “Oh, is that all?” Kowalski rolled his eyes, and the group shared chuckles at the long day still ahead of them.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Yes sir, I will pass that information along,” one of the soldiers said into his headset, and turned around to wave Kersey over. “Please stand by further instructions.”

  The Captain approached, leaving David to type away on his machine while keeping an eye on the afternoon developments.

  “What do you have for me?” he asked.

  The soldier raised his chin. “Sir, the final west side team has reached the golf course. They have formed a perimeter on the west side and are awaiting further instructions.”

  “Thank you,” Kersey replied, and headed back over to David. “Can you pull up their drone?”

  He hammered away at the keyboard for a moment, and then the image showed up on screen. It was hovering above the golf course, looking out over the town.

  “Where do you want me to go with it?” David asked.

  “Head up towards the high school, and see what kind of resistance we’re dealing with,” Kersey replied. “Just don’t move it any closer to the city. Last thing we want is to draw any zombies to us.”

  “Understood,” his companion replied. “This thing has good magnification, so if you see something we can zoom in.”

  The Captain nodded and squinted at the screen as David strafed the town. He paused briefly on each road, giving them both a chance to look down it carefully. The first few were pretty bare, with only a handful of zombies roaming around aimlessly. The third road, however, had a strange black mass at the far end.

  “Zoom in on that,” Kersey instructed, and took a deep breath at the huge cluster of zombies. “That could be trouble. Looks to be in the high hundreds. Any idea how far down they are?”

  David jotted a few numbers down on a pad, and then did some quick calculations on the paper. “Based on the altitude and magnification, I’d say six, maybe seven blocks.”

  “Okay, that could be worse,” Kersey replied, shaking his head with worry. “Keep moving up towards the school.”

  The drone moved, scanning the rest of the area as they went, finding nothing too worrisome. Finally the school came into view, a large two-story building with an attached gym and several ball fields. There were a few dozen zombies creeping about, not grouped together very well, and without much direction.

  “That doesn’t look too bad, now does it?” David asked.

  Kersey shook his head. “Definitely seen worse,” he said. “Can you zoom in on the doors?”

  The drone moved a little closer to the school, and the camera zoomed on on the double doors facing them. They were shut, and looked intact.

  “If anything’s in there, they didn’t go through here,” David mused. He scanned the side of the building, not finding any broken windows or other forced entry, dead or alive. “Looks like this place is shut up tight, at least from this angle. Looks like the fencing is still mostly up as well on the fields. Should be able to defend it pretty easily, even if that horde comes up.”

  “Agreed,” Kersey replied with a nod. He checked his watch. “We have what, an hour and a half, maybe two hours of usable light left?”

  David shrugged. “If we’re lucky.”

  “Okay, let’s get the golf teams up to the school,” the Captain said. “They need to fortify it for the night.”

  “I’ll let them know rig
ht now,” one of the soldiers replied, and began speaking into his headset.

  Kersey turned back to David. “How are the east teams doing?”

  “They’re pushing south of the bridge, and should be at the water by nightfall,” he replied. “There’s still a lot of resistance at the bridge, but it’s more of a cleanup job than an actual threat.”

  “Good,” the Captain said. “Once they’re freed up, they need to push south as well.” He checked the map, tapping his chin. “Have the teams clear out to the water, then hold at the 95 bridge that crosses the river. The majority of the stragglers will come down the main road, and should be easy enough to pick off. Assuming they have night vision.”

  “Yes sir, we were all issued goggles before the mission,” one of the soldiers piped up.

  “Perfect,” Kersey replied. “Can you pull up the state line video feed?”

  David typed for a moment, and then the feed popped up on his center screen. The drone stared straight down the interstate towards Post Falls, positioned just behind the troops on the trucks. There was a sea of dead bodies on the road, thousands more lined up behind them. The corpses attempted to clamber overtop, but flew backwards as they were shot down quickly. The closest moving ghouls were about forty yards from the trucks, and both of the viewers drew in a sharp breath at the same time.

  “Jesus,” David breathed, hands freezing from their typing frenzy.

  Kersey nodded. “Yeah, that is quite the killing spree, there.”

  “Never been happier in my life to be a tech guy,” his companion declared, running his hands through his hair.

  “Why’s that?” the Captain asked, cocking his head.

  David grinned. “Because there is an extremely low chance I’m going to be put on cleanup duty.”

  Kersey chuckled. “Funny, I just had that same thought about being a Captain.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Kowalski, Wade, Byrd, tell me what you see,” Bretz said as the seven man crew reached the lightly wooded area just before the runway at the west side of the airport. They all crouched, and the trio pulled out their rifles to scope out the landscape.