Zombie Crusade (Book 4): Eastern Front

by J. W. Vohs

  “After everything I’d seen and done over there, when that kid finally died I threw up and started bawling like a baby. John actually sent me back to battalion and they made me drop three sleeping pills so I would crash. Slept for twelve hours, and woke up as if it had all been a bad dream. The memory returned, still does, but I was able to deal with it better.”

  Luke had a lump in his throat as Jack looked off into the distance before explaining, “I’m sure that the kid wasn’t even your age. The young ones were always the bravest over there, and the dumbest. They died like flies while the tribal elders accepted bribes from us, and sent more youngsters out the back door to find the local Taliban recruiter.

  “When I went to war I worried a little bit about getting killed, or worse. Deep inside I guess I never stopped worrying about that the whole time I was over there, but what I didn’t know was the toll killing takes on your soul. I’m not exactly sure who I was when I went to Afghanistan, but that person damn sure didn’t come back. We were all Rangers, and we were a crazy bunch of bastards. I don’t know if war bothered any of the other guys like it did me, but they didn’t judge me after I came back to the platoon a few days after my breakdown. I never hesitated in a fight—always had my buddy’s back. But I wasn’t the same, ever.

  “What happened in that village Barnes infected was a nightmare, unbelievable even, but shooting that kid and watching him die was the worst thing that ever happened to me. And you know what? Things like that happened to almost everyone fighting over there. We went from video games and anime to killing other humans halfway around the world.

  “Aw, hell, kid, I know I’m rambling on when I really should be listening to how you feel right now, but I just want you to know that most of us understand exactly what you’re going through. It’s the price we pay to keep our families and friends safe from the monsters at the city-gate, and trust me, there are always monsters at the gate. Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Huns, Mongols, al Quada . . . some crazy bastards are always willing to use force and terror to get what they want. It’s always been that way, and guys like you and me, and the rest of the people we’ve been fighting beside the past four months, are the only thing between the monsters and the destruction of our homes and loved ones. It’s really that simple, Luke, and even if we win we lose part of our souls doing it.”

  Finally, Jack seemed to run out of words and a silence settled on the pair as Luke continued to digest what the veteran warrior had shared with him. He realized that he’d always assumed the older guys who’d been to war were somehow different, immune to killing and maybe even fear. Jack and Carter, and every other former Ranger Luke had met since joining the settlement, seemed to almost be characters forged from the hazy myths of warriors-past. The way they carried themselves, the confidence they displayed as they prepared for battle, and especially the way they kept their composure in combat, had greatly impressed the teen. The fact that the veterans viewed him as some sort of mysterious, mystical, almost-otherworldly warrior-priest had never really hit home. From the first time Jack’s war-buddies had seen Luke in battle they’d wondered where he’d come from, and how he was able to kill hunters so efficiently and quickly. Most of all, they couldn’t understand the teen’s seeming lack of fear no matter what the odds. But now Luke had killed a person who didn’t even have a weapon raised, and the youngster turned out to be as unprepared for that nastiness as any other rookie soldier.

  One thing Luke had learned as well as everyone else who’d survived the outbreak was the utter inability of words to accurately describe what they had endured. Language could never capture the visceral fear and terror felt when first seeing what was thought to be a corpse move again, let alone watch the creature drag down and eat people while they screamed in mindless horror. But in this time and place, Jack’s words did help Luke cope with how he was feeling. Just understanding that he wasn’t alone made him feel better, and knowing that the warriors he idolized had suffered through emotions similar to what he was experiencing after killing someone helped him see the situation differently.

  Luke had heard people argue that war was “kill or be killed” but that wasn’t accurate as far as he was concerned. War was “suffering so those you love don’t have to” far more than a mere survival choice. A subconscious loathing had driven him to kill the infected since the beginning of the outbreak, but he didn’t hate the man he’d killed on the bridge. He hoped that he wouldn’t have to do anything like that again, but until Barnes was destroyed he would have to be prepared kill enemies in whatever form he encountered them. The lives of everyone he cared for depended on his willingness to use lethal violence without hesitation when faced with anything, or anyone, who threatened them.

  After several moments considering Jack’s words, Luke gave a tiny smile and said, “Thanks. Thanks for everything. I was, like, a toddler when you were in Afghanistan, but I guess some things never change. It’s not easy to reconcile the necessity of killing some abstract enemy with the reality of killing a regular person—somebody who could have been a friend or a neighbor under different circumstances.” He looked up at the sky, avoiding eye contact with Jack. “And thanks for worrying about me . . . it means more than you know.”

  “So how do you feel right now?” Jack asked.

  Luke raised and lowered one shoulder as he replied, “That guy on the bridge could have ruined our mission, and a week from now a hundred thousand hunters would be in Indiana, heading toward Fort Wayne. He should have made a different choice; I don’t regret mine.”

  Jack nodded, “If your arrow had hit one second later that guy would have been able to warn his buddies. We’d have had that car for cover, and the AKs they were using would have cut through that little thing pretty fast while our rounds got buried in the SUV they were behind. So thanks for saving my life.”

  Luke shrugged again, but a slight smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Probably won’t be the last time,” he mumbled.

  Jack chuckled, “I’m counting on that, smart-ass.”

  Chad Greenburg’s convoy of modified SUVs and pickups, taken a month earlier from a lot in Toledo, pulled off the road on the Indiana side of the bridge at just past two in the afternoon. Jack could hardly believe how quickly they’d made the trip. In the old world, it would have taken at least four hours to make the drive; in the new world such a distance was often seen as impossible to travel, likely requiring weeks of furtive, night-time marches. These hardy veterans from Buffalo had just completed the post-apocalyptic journey in an almost unimaginable eight hours. As the veteran soldier from Buffalo led his fighters in a column over the bridge, Jack and the others met him half-way across.

  “Took your time, Sarge,” David quipped. “If we’d have made that kind of time from Toledo to Fort Wayne, Jack and the rest of these guys would be dead. What took you so long?”

  Greenburg laughed as he explained, “Found an open McDonalds just north of Muncie and the guys made me stop. Otherwise we’d have been here by noon.”

  “Seriously, though,” Jack interrupted, “How’d you get down here so quickly?”

  “Went fast where the roads were open, and used the off-road capabilities of our wonderful vehicles where they weren’t. Didn’t bother to stop and deal with the packs that were following us, either. Well, once we started getting close to the river we shot them with .22s, but that was it. Figured you had enough trouble without us leading a bunch of flesh-eaters onto your precious bridge.”

  Jack slapped the tough commander on the back and declared, “Well, we’re really happy to see you guys. I left an SUV back in town here that we need to reclaim.” Jack tossed a set of keys at Greenburg. “At your convenience, would you mind sending a couple of your certified stunt drivers to pick it up? I’ll draw a map to the dealership—it’ll be the only zombie-proofed vehicle on the lot.”

  “Should I have my men pick up anything else while they’re in town? Thermal underwear? A few pretty girls?”

  Jack grinned, “We’r
e good on the underwear, so skip it unless the girls can bring some dowries of heavy explosives.”

  By the time darkness had settled over the area, two of Greenburg’s men had returned with the SUV. The rest of the contingent had managed to build a wall of shipping containers and dumpsters nearly twenty feet tall between the bridge railings. The structure was truly formidable, and with Greenburg’s troops guarding the roadblock and the prisoners, Jack was free to meet Lori and her team when they arrived via Blackhawk a few hours later. The tough EMT had spent two tours of duty as a combat medic in Iraq, but given her facility with handguns, on this mission she was more valuable for her marksmanship than her healing abilities. Not counting Luke, she was the deadliest fighter from David’s group.

  Jack had asked her to lead this mission because he knew how tough and composed she was in and out of combat, plus he knew her husband would come with her. Blake was a former firefighter and SCA enthusiast whom David considered one of the best river-pilots in the entire settlement. Though the two were loving parents to their ten-year-old daughter, Jenny, and her orphaned friend, Addison, they knew that the best way to provide any kind of future for their children was to stop Barnes, and the infected, as soon as possible. Christy’s mother, Trudy, had agreed to watch over the girls in Lori and Blake’s absence. Jenny and Addison were told that they were going to spend a few days helping Grandma Carboni with the horses at the well-guarded ranch back in Noble County, and the prospect of working with horses blinded the girls to everything else that was unfolding around them.

  Lori had recruited Todd Evans, a former Army sniper, and Gabe Fox, an ex-Navy officer, to round out her team. It was clear to Jack that Lori had chosen well. The only change he felt he needed to make when Lori’s team arrived was to switch Marcus for Gabe. The Navy-man was a stalwart fighter who had the heart of a lion, but he didn’t have Marcus’ experience with explosives. The personnel change put two Rangers and at least one experienced river pilot on each team, and Jack had complete confidence in both groups.

  All of the team members, along with Chad Greenburg and his squad leaders, sat down to discuss the mission one last time. Jack took the lead by explaining, “I’d like to find one bridge over the Mississippi where we can make a stand—“

  “Don’t you mean the Ohio?” Todd interrupted.

  Jack shook his head. “Actually, we’ve updated our strategy a bit. We’re not letting Barnes cross the Ohio, but it’s in our best interests, long-term, if we don’t just stop there. I’d like to find one bridge over the Mississippi where we can make a stand. Hopefully we’ll find a strong settlement of survivors near one of the spans. Once we choose our location, every day we have to prepare will be critical. That’s why I want to keep Barnes occupied up here along the Ohio as long as possible. He’s an evil son-of-a-bitch but he isn’t stupid, not by a long shot. As soon as he realizes we’ve stopped him here, he’ll head west as fast as he can.”

  Luke raise his hand with a question, “What if he just stops and tries to repair one of these bridges? Or maybe even build a temporary one of his own?”

  “Well,” Jack offered, “I don’t think he can stay in any one place for more than a day or two; he has to keep those hunters on the move. There were more cattle than humans in the pre-outbreak world, and God knows how many other types of livestock. As long as Barnes keeps his flesh-eaters moving they can live off the land, but the minute they stop the supply problems begin. So, in answer to your question, we’d try to sabotage his efforts.

  “Anyway, we need to find a defendable location along the Mississippi, preferably with at least a railroad bridge to facilitate the reinforcements and supplies from Utah we’ll need if we’re going to fight. At that point, we’ll fortify as best we can and prepare for battle. If worst comes to worst, we’ll retreat across the bridge and blow it.”

  Luke again had a question, “Why do we have to fight Barnes at all?”

  A few voices echoed the same concern so Jack responded carefully, “We need to kill him and his cronies. We could try to simply contain him with rivers and mountains, but I see two major problems with that. First of all, Barnes will just go on with his march of terror across the entire south with that army of his. How many more Americans, brave, strong Americans, who managed to live through the outbreak, are we going to let fall into this maniac’s hands?

  “The second problem is one of time. The longer we wait to confront Barnes, the stronger he’ll become. Eventually he’ll have the entire eastern seaboard, and the area south of the Ohio river, under his control. Sooner or later he’ll establish a beachhead on our side of the river and march north. Hell, General Sherman’s army could have done it in a few hours a hundred and fifty years ago; how long would it take Barnes to build a pontoon bridge once he actually thought about it?

  “No, time is his greatest ally in the long run. Eventually he’ll have thousands of humans working for him, using terror to keep them in line. They’ll figure out ways to get at us. Plus, we all know that if Barnes was willing to spend a few months north of the river with his choppers he could put together a massive army with just some of the hunters still roaming the Great Lakes states. We simply can’t afford to give him the time to figure all that out and make new plans. He’s here now, and he wants to kill us more than he wants anything else. We need to lure him along to a place of our choosing and fight him there.

  “We’ll be doing other things too. We have a lot of Rangers and other Special Forces types, and honestly, most of the rest of our fighters are as good as the pre-outbreak veterans are by now. This war’s reeducated all of us on what works and what doesn’t. We get Barnes focused on chasing us to the Mississippi and we’ll be doing damage behind his lines as he extends himself. We’re going to use small teams to disrupt his advance.”

  Jack finally stopped, worried that he was forcing his plans on a lot of very intelligent, insightful soldiers who probably had plenty of their own good ideas. But everyone gathered together became very quiet until Chad Greenburg stepped up beside Jack and began to speak.

  “I’ve known this kid most of his adult life, been to war at his side against monsters and humans. I know I ain’t the smartest dude in this little army of ours, but I’m willing to follow Jack’s plan.”

  He looked at his squad leaders before continuing, “What do you think, men, you with me?”

  They all nodded and shouted, “Hooah, Sarge! Rangers lead the way!”

  Greenburg chuckled as he considered the fact that most of them hadn’t even been in the old Army, but he had to admit that they were all as good as any Rangers he’d had the honor of going into battle with. He then looked at everyone else, “Me and my men were overrun in Buffalo—I gotta score to settle with Barnes. Some of you here tonight helped save our asses over there, so you saw what it was like to have an army of hunters thrown against a settlement full of women and children and old folks. It ain’t pretty. Just knowing that he’s been doing this all over the country keeps me awake at night. Personally, I’d rather die fighting the bastard right now than live the rest of my life knowing he’s still on the loose.”

  There was nothing more to say after Greenburg finished. Anyone who argued against Jack’s plan could be seen as enabling Barnes, whether it was true or not. Jack also realized that he now had a great recruiting speech already prepared for groups of survivors he hoped to encounter as they moved west. The die was cast; the Fort Wayne fighters were no longer simply defending their settlement, they were going on the offensive.

  CHAPTER 6

  Profoundly outnumbered in enemy territory, darkness was the best ally Jack and his fighters had in their efforts to halt Barnes and his army. Hunters weren’t particularly active at night, a characteristic that many observers believed was due to the virus having no great impact on human eyes. The flesh-eaters tended to hole-up in packs, often against the side of some type of structure, and sleep during the hours of darkness. Any people in the area working for Barnes, or otherwise hostile, would also be
mostly blind without any technological intervention. Jack’s soldiers, on the other hand, were all equipped with at least basic NVGs. With this advantage, their operational schedule was the exact opposite of that used by their enemies.

  Well before midnight, Carter and his team of David, Bobby, and Gabe departed on their trek toward Cairo and beyond. They were followed almost immediately by Lori and her group of bridge-blowers: Todd, Marcus, and Blake. Their first objective lay about forty river-miles downstream, a large bridge in Hawesville, Kentucky. Carter and his soldiers had left first in order to scout a portage site around a dam that lay about a mile upstream of the span.

  Being back on the water put David in a melancholy mood. Some of the most terrible memories he fought to keep at bay had been forged near portages along the Maumee River between Toledo and Fort Wayne. His group had lost Luke’s stepdad, Jerry, skirting a dam near Defiance, Ohio. Christy’s father had been killed at a dam in Fort Wayne. David felt responsible for both deaths, though he knew it was practically a miracle that any of them had made it from Cleveland to Fort Wayne under the circumstances. Now he was piloting another group of friends toward an unknown portage on enemy ground.

  David couldn’t stop thinking about Jerry. Though, in truth, they hadn’t know each other very long, David still considered the sensitive-yet-rugged cop one of the closest friends he’d ever had. He wondered what Jerry would want him to say to Luke about the boy’s true paternity—would it be a blessing or a burden for Luke to know that his mother had purposely misled him about his biological father? Luke practically worshiped Jerry—would he feel disloyal to Jerry’s memory by accepting Jack as his true father? And what if something happened to Jack? Luke could end up losing two fathers, which, to David, seemed an especially cruel fate. With neither Luke nor Jack along for this leg of the mission, David knew he had time to figure out what he should say to whom, or even if he should say anything at all. Finally, the dam came into sight, and he welcomed the interruption of the thoughts and questions that so often plagued him when he was alone.