by J. W. Vohs
Within ten minutes over a thousand flesh-eaters lay dead on the muddy earth outside the palisade, their black blood and gray brain-matter leading many of their still-attacking pack mates to slip in the gore and present easy targets to the furious defenders. Now fully engaged in the battle, most of the soldiers had forgotten their fear and focused only on killing the abominations below. The fighters steadily thrust the heartless tips of their deadly pikes into the faces of the frantic monsters that were now climbing upon the corpses of those who’d fallen in the earlier assaults trying to reach the humans.
In the end, the mounds of the dead produced by the efficient violence of the defenders proved to be the settlement’s undoing. In less than half an hour, a few soldiers were being pulled from their fighting platforms and horrifically devoured by the creatures that were now able to climb to within a few feet of the top of the palisade. Minutes later the first of the monsters momentarily cleared the wall and landed in the midst of the fighters occupied with the flesh-eaters in front of them. This first breach was dealt with by Curtis Jackson. The huge former football linebacker spun around and knocked the eater to the ground before stomping on its head. He relentlessly fought off the invaders, sometimes knocking back half a dozen at once. He smashed two creatures’ heads together and decapitated them both with one blow; he used a spear for assembly line killing—quickly and rhythmically piercing skull after skull. Harden and several other men rushed over to where the infected were starting to break through the barrier, but they couldn’t stop the inevitable. Sheriff Meeks was holding his own with his hammer, but too many of the flesh eaters were pressing forward. After killing a huge alpha male, the lawman was tossed to the ground behind the wall by two other powerful beasts who didn’t even stop to finish off the now broken-hipped man, choosing instead to attack the screaming people who had waited too long before trying to push their overloaded boats into the river. The injured sheriff managed to trip another large male that was sprinting towards Harden’s group, but as the creature fell it let out a spine-chilling howl that brought half a dozen eaters to make a quick meal of Larry Meeks.
Marlon Morris and Don Crowley had tried to keep a healthy distance from the fighting, choosing instead to focus on maintaining ready weapons and a water supply for the settlement’s defenders. Once the creatures made it over the wall, the battle quickly advanced toward the two councilmen. Morris grabbed his personal .308 and began firing in the general direction of any creature in his line of vision. He inadvertently shot Crowley as the old man tried to make a run for it, and the blasts from the gun attracted the attention of more than a few of the infected. While Morris had spent many hours on the practice range, he simply couldn’t manage a fatal headshot to any of the moving targets sprinting toward him. He was tackled and devoured with his gun in his hand.
The two creatures that had downed the sheriff were eventually killed by a couple of twelve-year-old boys with .22 rifle who shot the flesh-eaters in the head from only a few feet away while they were busy disemboweling a screaming old woman they’d easily pulled to the ground a few seconds earlier. As the boys were shouting in triumph they failed to see the pack running at them from behind, and their cries of victory quickly turned to wails of terror as they were violently thrown into the mud and systematically torn apart by a group of flesh-eaters who’d enjoyed this type of meal many times before.
By then the soldiers still alive on the wall realized that the battle was lost. The surviving fighters rushed down the ladders and stairs in a near panic and ran to find their families and friends as the first wave of monsters to make it over the wall unwittingly allowed some of the humans to escape because they couldn’t resist joining the feasts taking place all around them just inside of the palisade. Dozens of watercraft were still being launched from the muddy bank, and some people simply waded out into the cold current and grabbed onto the gunwales of escaping boats to be towed away from the monsters on the shore.
Charlotte watched the nightmare play out from the relative safety of the water, holding her young daughter, Lucy, in a tight embrace. The girl kept her face buried in her mother’s shoulder, and whimpered whenever she heard an especially loud scream from the settlement. T.C. was supposed to have joined her as soon as he’d finished loading supplies, but the stubborn teenager had yet to appear. Charlotte knew he’d be looking for his father, and she prayed that Curtis could keep him safe. T.C. had been an impressive scout for Captain Harden, but the boy was no fighter.
A last stand of sorts was made in a semi-circle around the food-barges where nearly a hundred soldiers stood shoulder-to-shoulder, fighting off waves of hungry creatures while the cargoes were secured and the rafts floated into the depths. There were two things that saved these troops and their watercraft: the number of dead bodies strewn about the compound attracting the attention of thousands of starving flesh-eaters, and the intentional distraction of Curtis Jackson. Charlotte watched in awe and helplessness as her husband fired several shots in the air to draw the attention of the eaters, then somehow managed to hold them at bay long enough for all of the food-barges to pull away from shore and begin floating downstream. Curtis shouted battle cries to keep the monsters close on his heels, and the massive human disposed of several eaters as he drew them away from the river.
Out of the corner of her eye, Charlotte saw Captain Harden literally toss T.C. into one of the boats. The captain then motioned for Curtis to head for one of the departing watercraft. Just then a woman with three children emerged from underneath a parked vehicle, and they all began to run toward the water, wailing in terror. A crowd of a dozen eaters were soon nearly upon them, but at the last moment something large and heavy flew through the air and landed in their midst. Charlotte knew what was about to happen, and she screamed at her husband, “NOOO!” The mother and her children all made it to safety; Curtis did not.
Later that night most of the traumatized survivors were huddled together on a series of small islands a few miles east of Nashville, trying to make sense out of what had happened to them in the last twenty-four hours. Half of their community was missing, including nearly three-quarters of the soldiers who’d been on the wall. Once again there seemed to be no safe place in their world, and the impact of that devastating truth left all of them depressed and mute. Soldiers and civilians alike stared numbly into the campfires as they forced themselves to eat and drink to keep their strength up. In the days to come they would encounter other small groups such as their own, living near the relative protection of the river, and everywhere they went they explained the series of events that had led to them becoming battle-scarred refugees.
Nobody believed that the force responsible for the Tennesseans’ plight was a threat to their own communities, so the survivors’ warning of an army of fully-evolved runners under the command of soldiers in helicopters didn’t convince anyone to leave their own hard-won forts. Some of the people in the settlements the survivors came across offered them places to rebuild, but the group always politely declined and continued to float down the Cumberland until they came to “The Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area” in Kentucky. Here they stopped for a week and considered their next move. Some wanted to stay on the peninsula, but the majority of people were determined to move on and continue to put space between themselves and whatever political entity had unleashed the unimaginably large army of infected onto their small community. Eventually they came to the Ohio River, floating down to the confluence with the Mississippi in a just a few days. They continued to encounter groups of survivors along these major waterways, most of them wary but peaceful, though a few were hostile and threatening. The refugees from Tennessee carefully floated by all of them and kept moving southward.
The new leadership council wanted to find a place of their own and start over, so the raggedy flotilla allowed the current to carry them along the mighty river until they came to Vicksburg, Mississippi. Scouts were sent out into the town to search for supplies, and within a few hours
were reporting that the entire area appeared to be deserted except for a few, badly-injured infected shuffling around. Most of the stores had been at least partially looted, but the soldiers believed that plenty of supplies still remained in the businesses and homes that had survived a fire that had burned part of the town.
Except for the residential and business sections of town, the entire area was full of waterways and small peninsulas divided by swamps and marshes. The massive river completed a huge loop just to the north of Vicksburg, and the banks held high cliffs that had once protected the Mississippi from Union armies and fleets for several years during the Civil War. T.C. Jones politely asked if he could speak during the impromptu conference held by the surviving members of the leadership conference after camp was set up for the evening.
Harden introduced the boy, even though the wiry teenager needed no introduction. Hundreds of people had witnessed his father fight like an ancient hero, and then sacrifice himself to save a mother and her children. T.C. had seen it too. The group was silent as the boy spoke, “If my dad was here, he’d tell y’all that this is the place we should stay. You can go on down the river if you want, but I’m gonna stay right here with my momma and sister; there ain’t no better place in America to make a stand. I want our group to stay together, but other survivors will come here eventually; I know they will. People from the west may be headin’ this way right now, and these bridges will lead ‘em here to Vicksburg.
“I know we’re all scared and tired, but I’m more angry than anything. I lost my father, and I intend to avenge him as soon as I get a chance to. We can build walls at the ends of the I 20 Bridge, and then construct shelters on the span until we feel safe enough to try livin’ on the banks. These bridges are a mile long; we can all fit on ‘em, and still have room for other groups of survivors that come along. I know most of you see me as just a kid, but my dad taught me to know when to listen to my gut. We can make a life here; we can make a stand here. And someday, I’m gonna find that Major Jackson and feed him to the eaters. Thanks for lettin’ me speak.”
Shiloh Forrester looked at her fellow council members and declared. “The boy makes sense; I move that we make Vicksburg our new home.”
Captain Harden seconded the motion, and the other council members slowly nodded their agreement. They realized that the area was eminently defensible. If they faced another army of flesh-eaters they could fight on a much smaller front, continue to float downstream, or destroy the bridge and head west to resume their search for security. They weren’t trapped here. The interstate bridge was a modern structure, but an older bridge still spanned the Mississippi here as well. As T.C. had claimed, there was plenty of room for everyone. This time their walls would be higher and stronger, and they would build secondary and tertiary defenses as well. Ladders and ropes could take them to waiting boats if they couldn’t hold against an army like the last one they faced. Or they could head west along the railroad.
Just to the north of where they were currently gathered stood the national park commemorating the great battle of the Civil War that had taken place here. Plenty of fortifications remained where the Confederates had desperately fought a losing battle to hold the town from Ulysses Grant’s determined siege. Those brave defenders of the past had ultimately been starved into surrender, but the ferocity and determination of their resistance was still a point of pride for southerners more than a century later. Many of the survivors couldn’t help but hear the ghosts of Vicksburg calling out to them, the voices of the fallen soldiers calming their fears by reminding them that this ground was sacred; the defenders would have the pride of history strengthening their hearts.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.W. Vohs is a former soldier and high school teacher. He lives in Northeast Indiana with his co-writer (who also happens to be his wife), children, and a worshipful dog.