The Failed Coward

by Chris Philbrook

  All those gathered added their two cents. Fitz even took the time to set his beer down and pat the Brit on his shoulders, showing his admiration for the young man. Fitz rarely sat a beer down that still had beer in it, and the immensity of the gesture was not lost on Kevin.

  Hal looked over his shoulder at Fitz, then at everyone around thoughtfully. He reflected on the situation before responding with a sad smile, “Well. I used to fight for my Queen and Country. At least, that’s what I told everyone who had a higher rank than me. But we all know the real truth of it, yeah? We fight for the men and women who stand with us, beside us. It’s been a long time since I did anything for anyone but you blokes here. I was told to stand by your side and get my mission accomplished, and that's what I should do. My home is wherever we are now.”

  “Here here brother.” Jaden bumped knuckles with the Marine, and the pact was fully formed. They’d ride together, or hang together.

  Everyone nodded, and they started the secret process of being ready for their world to come crashing down, yet again.

  *****

  The dam broke in late November when General Reeves decided to start thinning the herd. The pressing mass of rotting, dead flesh was moving some of the impossibly heavy Hesco and Jersey barriers, and folding the chain link fences over like paper. In preparation for the failure of the defenses, an inner perimeter was established around the airfield and the structures nearest to it. Sandbag and plywood walls were built, vehicles were flipped on their sides to create blockades, and additional fortifications erected. The engineers even went so far as to dig giant trenches across open areas in the hopes the undead would shamble straight forward, and plummet into the gaps cut in the earth. A second inner ring of guard towers was constructed as well to give the sniper teams a place to fall back to should the outer defenses fail.

  Reeves had an opulent Thanksgiving meal served to the survivors in the base’s confines, and the day following he ordered the triggers pulled. Once the snipers began to open fire into the tide of undeath ringing the base, it was as if the power was abruptly routed to the inside of the zombie minds, and the delicious, living flesh inside the walls of Mildenhall suddenly appeared to them. The snipers observing the dead through their high powered optics reported seeing a simultaneous expression cross the collective faces of the dead. All at once their visages lost the passive, blank looks they shared, and immediately registered an expression of betrayed fury and life strangling rage.

  It was exactly as if a veil had been lifted, and their infernal hunger returned with a vengeance. They surged inward in a stampede of raw, unrestrained evil the likes of which the world had never seen.

  The outer wall of defenses held for nearly two weeks before they fell to the horde. The snipers worked in shifts around the clock, trying to cull them. They would shoot for two solid hours, switching out gun barrels as they overheated, and taking breaks to ice their black and blue shoulders. No one was left idle for long. Those unable to fire rifles were put to work repairing defenses as they failed, or building new defenses. For the first time since the planes left to bomb the cities of The United Kingdom, each aircraft sat on the tarmac, idling as their crews drew their handguns and rifles to beat back the bloody tide surging in to suffocate them. To drown them in teeth, and pain.

  The outer walls were finally defeated when someone operating a heavy duty forklift made a minor mistake. He had been working for fourteen straight hours, and when he lifted the tines of his fork to gently set a small compact on its side near a weak portion of the gate, he’d lifted it just a bit too far, and the car precariously tipped over, smashing into the plywood sheets that’d been propped against a portion of the chain fence.

  Despite being a small car, its weight and momentum carried it through the thin wood as if it were so much tissue, and smashed the relatively flimsy chain free from the steel supports it had been attached to. The wretched mass on the other side stood still, clutching their knives, swords and implements of destruction as the car tumbled into them. The clatter of their metal weapons was drowned out by the sickening crunches of their bones under the wreckage.

  In a desperate and suicidal attempt to plug the breech he’d just created, the forklift operator floored the pedal of his massive lift, and sent it into the gap. He was torn down from the seat of the lift screaming as the people around him fled for the inner security of the base. The gun towers observing the situation immediately opened fire, blowing the screaming airman’s head off before he was forced to experience the pain of having his flesh torn from his bones one bite at a time. His sacrifice was for naught.

  The warning klaxons began sounding the death knell of Mildenhall.

  Kevin and his men were eating lunch with Kate and her flight crew in their ghetto-esque Hesco home off the airfield at the time. It was high noon, on a windy, mid-December cloudy day, and they were discussing the merits of the different MRE meals when the dreaded klaxon began blaring.

  No one said a word as they exchanged glances. Kevin and Kate both reached for their stashed satellite phones to dial Jaden to see what he knew, wherever he was. Kate waved Kevin off as she dialed his number first.

  Jaden answered after two rings, “Jaden here.” He sounded winded.

  “This is Kate, what’s going on?” She bit her lip and looked at Kevin as she waited for his response.

  “The wall was breached on the southwest side near the ball fields and the end of the runways. Large gap in the fence I guess. They’re in, and we’re responding to the towers over there to lend support.” Jaden huffed and puffed as he ran.

  Kate could hear the echoes of the gunfire nearby through the phone speaker. The reverberation coming from the real ear and the electronic speaker threw her off for a bit. “Is it bad, are we compromised? Or is this just scary?” Everyone else in the makeshift home/bunker was getting their kit on to go to war. Every gun might need to get in the fight.

  “I dunno. I don’t have eyes on yet. I’ll advise. I’d get shit ready though just in case. Will advise in ten. I’m out.” And with that, he hung up the phone.

  “His fire team is moving to the southwest to lend assistance. He’ll advise in ten. I’m fueling the bitch up anyway.” Kate got up to leave, but Kevin snagged her arm, stopping her.

  “Get everything loaded. I got a bad feeling about this.” Kevin’s feelings were almost never wrong, and Kate had heard of his reputation as “Sergeant Nostradamus.” She nodded at him, and Kevin let her go.

  Kevin’s men watched her team leave out of the heavy fabric door they’d put up. Fitz, Quan, Harold and Kyle all looked intently at their leader as he donned his white cap once more. Kevin realized they were all looking at him, and he took a deep breath, steadying his heartbeat. From outside they heard the distant rumble of thunder, and the heavy fabric roof of their shelter began to pitter-patter with swollen English raindrops. It was like the tears of God.

  Kevin charged his M4, chambering a round. “Sounds like rain. Bring your big toes fellas. Let’s go push some turds down the drain.”

  *****

  Jaden and his three fire team members had relocated to a high spot in the southwest corner of the airbase near the building that had previously served as the base’s post office. The engineers had bulldozed a swath of trees and dropped massive steel shipping containers down to create a makeshift barrier and elevated firing position.

  He and his men dropped to the prone firing position after climbing to the top of the now slick steel container, and within seconds they were sending accurate rounds through the increasingly heavy rain across the baseball fields into the skulls of the undead swarming around the hole in the fence.

  Jaden observed the situation through his optics. A few dozen still living souls were hoofing it across the large field in their general direction, evidently having failed to get into the abandoned vehicles left at the fence. He watched as they slipped repeatedly on the rain soaked grass, and struggled back to their feet.

  “Keep those folks ru
nning clean, fuck the dead assholes at the perimeter,” Jaden told his men. Immediately they adjusted for the range and started picking off the undead nearest the fleeing people.

  He carefully observed the wall as the hole’s edge slowly eroded and became larger under the streams of armed undead. The mystery of how they were still moving in the first place was lost on him as he pondered why the hell they were holding onto weapons, and not using them. Right before his eyes he watched three of the mangled dead toss the weapons aside and tackle a rain soaked uniformed airman to the ground. Jaden watched him mouth a scream from the distance as he was murdered by the savages. Why in the world would these things all pick up weapons, then discard them at the moment they should be used?

  Jaden tested the wind with his shooter’s senses, and put the crosshairs on the dying airman’s skull. He sent the dying man’s brains all over the grey Jersey barrier, releasing him from his pain, and the curse of returning as one of his killers. The undead mauling him stopped their attack when he slumped lifelessly, and they turned to join the flood of their brethren pushing into Mildenhall.

  Jaden’s earpiece crackled to life, “This is Lincoln tower two. We have a severe breach at our gate. Situation is FUBAR. All Lincoln towers are falling back to the inner perimeter wall. We’re being overrun.” Jaden didn’t know who was in any of the towers on Lincoln Road, but he knew it had to be bad for them to call out FUBAR and fallback already. He fired off a few more rounds into the host heading their way, and when he saw the running survivors get past their position, he reached for his satellite phone.

  Normally men in his specific line of work would sacrifice themselves so that others may live. In fact, it was his unit motto. This was different. If they didn’t escape Mildenhall right here and right now, there would be no one here left to save.

  It was time for him and his men to get the fuck out. Mildenhall was lost.

  *****

  “They’re on their way, hurry the fuck up!” Logan, the loadmaster of Kate’s MC-130 plane barked out to the men fueling it up. There was precious little time left.

  From deep inside the MC-130’s cargo bay Kate yelled to Logan, “Two humvees are locked down right? We have all the supplies loaded in already?”

  “All but half of one pallet of ammo and food we had stashed in the back. We’ve got spare parts; fuel and everything else good to go as well. We’ll be heavier than I’d like, but we can work it.” Logan grunted as he walked past her, carrying crates of 5.56mm ammunition.

  Kate nodded, observing the professionalism of her crew as they got the massive cargo plane ready to move. They could be wheels up in less than twenty minutes at this rate. She looked out the massive opening in the side of the hangar to the grey rain that was drenching the world. She wondered if the rain was God’s tears over their fate.

  “Fan-fucking-tabulous.” She smiled glumly, and trotted over to the pallet Logan was moving into the belly of her big fat beast.

  *****

  Kevin’s rifle kicked into his shoulder one round after another. The spent shell casings flung out the ejection port and soared across the concrete, tinkling and spinning in the virgin puddles. He and his team had wandered out of their shelter and towards the end of the runways near the breech that was closest to them.

  The other four of Kevin’s men formed a rough firing line with him, staggered slightly to prevent the hot shell casings from hitting the man to their right. Each of the men walked at a snail’s pace, snapping off rounds into the heads of the undead streaming across the field from their left to right. After a hundred yards and three magazine changes, the men simultaneously dropped to one knee and poured it on.

  Kevin and his men quickly emptied the contents of their magazine, dropping zombie after zombie into the grass. Kevin stood to look around at their surroundings. He was paranoid they’d be surrounded.

  As the white capped team leader stopped to look around, the throng of undead a hundred yards ahead ebbed. Through his ACOG Fitz saw the heads of the undead spin sideways suddenly, as if they were twisted marionettes with suddenly broken necks. Their milky white eyes glared with a ferocity he had never seen before as they looked in unison at a single thing they clearly hated.

  They stared directly at Kevin Whitten.

  “Kev brother. We got fucking issues here bro.” The rain clinging to Fitz’s enormous mustache flew off as he hollered over to his friend.

  Kevin looked back to their front at the undead that had been streaming in one direction, and were now streaming directly at them. Directly at him.

  Kevin brought his rifle up and observed the intent the undead had. Every last one of them was fixated directly on his person, and they were moving straight at him. The rest of his men slowly stood and realized what was happening.

  “HORY SHET Kev!” Quan’s head swung left to right and back again as he made the connection.

  Hal didn’t stop firing. He had shelved his standard issue L85 rifle for the M4 the rest of the men used. The last thing he wanted was for it to break and then not be able to find spare parts. He fumbled a bit as he swapped out the magazine and stopped to absorb what was happening around him.

  They were all thinking it, but Kyle said it first, “They’re here for you.”

  Kevin swallowed. In the back of his mind Corey’s words from the dream in the white room came back to him;

  “Shit’s gonna get thick for you.”

  Kevin and his men turned and ran for their lives.

  *****

  Jaden and his fire team leapt off the metal shipping container when they saw the pulsating mass of the dead do a ninety degree turn and head for the four small shapes that he knew to be the WPG men. Jaden had no idea how they’d managed to get the attention of all those fucking dead pricks, but they were headed right at them, and past where they were was the MC-130 that was their ticket out of here.

  “To the hangar. Stop for nothing. We’re out of here.” Jaden’s men responded by covering the pavement at nearly superhuman speed. The men were all loaded for bear with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, multiple weapon systems and medical gear and more, but they ran like the wind. Each of the men was already soaked to the bone in the frigid downpour. Jaden was thankful the training he and his men received was so thorough and hellish.

  It made real life almost tolerable on days like this.

  The men crossed through a small copse of tree stumps and turned on a surface road to head towards the hangar and the plane that hopefully would have a clear enough runway for them to leave on.

  Jaden’s men began shooting on the run as the undead closed in around them like a vise.

  *****

  Kate and her copilot Nick sat in the cockpit of their plane and went through the preflight checklist. One by one they affirmed and reaffirmed every single item, readout and setting that the plane needed to ensure a safe takeoff and flight. They were attentive and mechanical in their process, missing nothing. In her helmet’s speaker she heard overwhelming chatter from multiple locations across the base. The talk over the channels was frightening. People were dying. Lots of people were dying.

  The frequencies normally reserved for their communication had been re-tasked for ground use, and it irritated the fucking piss out of her and her younger copilot Nick. They shook their heads in disgust as they finally switched over to a frequency they had planned to use with Kevin and Jaden’s teams should this moment occur.

  “-it started Kate! Get it started! They’re headed right at the hangar!!” Kevin was screaming into the microphone. Kate winced as her ear recoiled in pain from his yell.

  “Jumping Jehosaphat Kevin relax, we’re a few minutes from starting it, we need more fuel.” Her response was even and flat. She wasn’t the panicking type.

  Jaden came over the radio, “No time, he’s right. Spin that bitch up now. If we need to land in the middle of the goddamn M11 in fifteen minutes that’s better than what’s coming our way.” Kate could clearly hear Jaden was sprinting again. Kate lau
ghed at herself and wondered if Jaden was always running.

  “Alright. We’ll figure it out when we get in the air.” She toggled the comms to the interior channel and addressed the rest of her flight team. They were refueling the plane.

  “Yank the pump guys. We gotta move now.” Kate gestured to Nick to skip to the more essential preflight stuff. Emergency take off procedures.

  “Captain we’re less than half full right now. We won’t make it home on a half empty belly.” Her flight engineer Dale came back over the channel, telling her what she already knew.

  “I know Dale. No time to bitch, we’ll find a meal for her somewhere other than here. Yank the shit and get this thing moving. Jaden and Kevin are coming in hot and they’re saying we gotta scram.” Kate’s voice again was calm and indifferent to the horror out of her view outside the hangar.

  Dale responded with a, “You bet Captain,” and they stopped pumping the plane’s lifeblood.

  Kate continued with her checklist and readied the plane to go.

  *****

  Kevin’s men ran diagonally to meet Jaden’s men in a full sprint heading towards the hangar. Despite being significantly faster than their pursuers, the men ran with every single ounce of strength they could muster. The only thing that made any of them feel safer was putting additional real estate between them and the thousands of hungry, bloody mouths behind them.

  Jaden and Kevin exchanged breathless “heys,” as the two teams met each other’s stride. After just a few moments it became clear the younger active Air Force men were much faster than most of them. Only Hal kept up with them. They eventually moved ahead of the WPG men, leaving them a few yards behind and falling back fast.

  Fitz’s side split painfully with a stitch. He started to pull up lame, clutching the burning muscle on the side of his torso. “Oh you motherfucking bitch.” He cussed as softly as he could manage.