Zombie Crusade (Book 4): Eastern Front

by J. W. Vohs

  They had some choices at the dam. Maps showed what looked to be a simple, short portage on the Kentucky shore, and several massive locks along the Indiana side. Carter assumed that the locks were constructed of concrete, and while they all hoped that the portage was clear, the walls of the locks could also be used to get around the dam. Marcus and Bobby were no strangers to water travel with David; they had travelled the Maumee to Lake Erie together in order to deliver a radio to the settlement on Middle Bass Island. During the journey, the men had quickly developed an ability to communicate almost wordlessly, which was certainly an advantage against hunters who relied mostly on sound to locate prey.

  As they approached the dam, David guided the boat close to the Kentucky bank. He was worried that they could possibly get caught up in the strong current and be sent crashing over the structure, and his unspoken concern informed Bobby to be alert for such a possibility. As it turned out, the portage was short and open, an easy carry for the men as they ferried their gear and supplies back and forth until they were ready to continue downstream.

  By then Carter had received a radio transmission from Lori and was

  able to spot her boat about three hundred meters above the dam. She could see him too, and followed the glow stick he’d set on a large rock to guide her in while he and the rest of his team set up a security perimeter. Once again, the movement around the dam went quietly and quickly, and soon the two groups were ready to resume their trip toward the Hawesville bridge. David breathed a huge sigh of relief when they left the bank and assumed that Lori and Blake felt the same way he did.

  The two boats approached to within about four hundred meters of the Hawesville bridge before going ashore on the Kentucky side of the river and beginning a search for good observation positions. Within an hour, Carter and Lori believed they had all the information they needed. They reported seeing a Blackhawk as well as a small roadblock almost exactly like that found near Brandenburg. Nobody believed that they would be able to gather any new intelligence from this group of scouts, and Bobby and Todd were all for putting their U.S. government-paid shooting skills to good use without risking a close-quarters confrontation with armed, enemy humans.

  David and Blake had no stomach for deliberate killings, especially when considering how easily the chopper crew in Brandenburg had been captured. Marcus and Lori were neutral on the issue. Carter decided that keeping the pilot alive was definitely in Fort Wayne’s best interest, but that the soldiers on the bridge could be put down at the first sign of resistance. He left Gabe to keep watch over the boats while he led Bobby and Marcus out to deal with the guards.

  Lori put Todd in charge of capturing the air-crew seen sleeping near the Blackhawk, trusting that his Ranger-instincts were better suited to the stealthy approach they needed than her medic training. She was a bit worried that Barnes might have set up some sort of trap for them until she remembered that Jack had convinced the pilot at the previous bridge to answer radio calls normally following their interrogation the night before. Since then, Jack’s troops had been supervising all communication to and from the location. The people here were almost certainly convinced that everything was going according to plan—they had no reason to suspect otherwise.

  Sure enough, the pilot and crew-chief were found camped out in a tent next to their chopper, and they didn’t put up an ounce of resistance when roused from their sleeping bags at gunpoint. The problems began when they heard the door of the Blackhawk slam shut behind them. Lori quickly approached the helicopter and tried to see who was inside. Her life was saved when the captured pilot shouted, “That idiot will shoot!”

  Two years in a combat zone had taught Lori to respond immediately and automatically to danger, and the desperate urgency in the pilot’s voice instantly convinced her that something was dreadfully wrong with this situation. She lunged to her left just as a burst of gunfire erupted from inside the Blackhawk, bullets ripping through the air where her face had been just half a second earlier. Before she could tell them not to, David and Todd instinctively turned their weapons on the chopper to try to eliminate the threat. Their small-caliber rounds failed to reach the enemy soldier huddled inside, but the inexperienced militiaman panicked and slid open the opposite door to escape. That should have been a positive development, but nobody realized that the guard had tossed a grenade into the cockpit as he jumped out.

  The explosion was deafening and shocking, but the sturdy Blackhawk protected the people standing outside from serious injury by holding the shrapnel in. Again, what had seemed to be a good thing turned out to have a dark side, as a howl from the small town led the crew-chief to exclaim, “That bastard just blew up our transmitter and alerted every creature within earshot that we’re here!”

  It took a moment for Lori and the others to process the extent of their problem, but then David exclaimed, “The helicopter’s transmitter was keeping the hunters away, and now it’s destroyed!”

  “Damn everything to hell!” Lori shouted, her voice nearly drowned out by the report of rifle-fire from the bridge. She knew that the guns were ARs, and she realized that when Carter heard the dust-up at the chopper-site he had ordered the guards taken out. A chorus of howls closer than the first floated to their ears, and Lori understood they were now in a familiar type of danger. “Get to the bridge!”

  By the time they reached the roadblock, pulling the Blackhawk crew along with them, the members of Lori’s team were trying to brainstorm some way to salvage the mission. They needed time to blow the bridge, but it sounded as if a thousand hunters were about to descend on their position. Two vehicles parked between the railings proved that these guards had a bit more sense than those captured the night before, but there were still five-foot gaps on either side of the makeshift barricade, and hunters could easily climb over SUVs.

  To make matters worse, both teams had left their helmets back in the boats with absolutely no time to retrieve them. Carter was waiting for them to arrive with one of the vehicle’s doors opened, shoving the two prisoners inside while calling out, “Pull the bodies of the guards out in front of the roadblock . . . give the hunters somethin’ to chew on if they come up here—might slow ‘em down fightin’ over dinner.”

  “Where’s Bobby and Marcus?” Lori quietly asked as she watched David drag an enemy’s corpse around the inadequate barricade.

  “They’re wirin’ the bridge,” Carter explained, “but we’re gonna have to buy ‘em time.”

  “How much time?”

  “Don’t know, but least a half hour . . . maybe a lot more’n that.”

  “There’s no way—” Lori began to argue before Carter cut her off.

  “We’re gonna find out! If we can’t hold ‘em off we’ll make a run fer the other side of the bridge and try to swim out to the boats. Hopefully, Gabe’s got ‘em both in the water by now. I already radioed ahead and told’m to head out to the middle of the river.”

  “All right,” Lori conceded with a heavy tone of doubt in her voice, “I guess it’s time to find out how good we are.” She looked to the captured pilot and crew-chief. “What do you think we should do with these two? The fact is they just saved my life back there.”

  “That complicates matters a bit,” Carter observed. “Woulda been easier just to shoot ‘em, but now that seems purty ungrateful. Tie their hands and tell ‘em to stay in the vehicle, outta sight on the floor, and keep quiet. If they’re lucky we’ll be able to thank ‘em by savin’ their sorry asses.”

  The same light wind from the north that had aided Jack and Luke during the previous fight the night before now worked against the bridge-blowers. Dozens of hunters were congregated around the burning Blackhawk, all of them roused to a fever pitch after catching the grenade-tossing guard and tearing him apart. Even though there had been no evidence that the human sense of smell had been greatly improved by the mutations wrought by the virus, several of the alphas were staring toward the roadblock with their noses in the air. David believed that the
monsters could smell the distinctive odor of blood from a long distance, or maybe one of the beasts saw the bodies of the guards lying dead on the bridge. The bottom line was that a few seconds later one of the creatures roared in the way they all did when they spotted prey, and then the monsters began running toward the roadblock as they realized fresh meat was nearby.

  As Carter had planned, the flesh-eaters went after the bodies of the guards lying about ten meters in front of the SUVs he and his fighters were silently hiding behind. For a moment they all hoped that the hunters would be content with the feast laid out for them, but with dozens of the creatures roughly jostling each other as they tried to grab a hunk of flesh, several of the smaller monsters were eventually pushed up against the vehicles. The hungry beasts loudly slammed into the sides of the SUVs while snarling in frustration. The experienced warriors from Fort Wayne remained quiet, but one of their prisoners let out a yelp of fear that attracted the attention of the flesh-eaters at the edge of the frenzied mob rapidly devouring the corpses.

  The two small hunters roared with excitement and hunger as they redirected their attention to the interior of the SUV. Every flesh-eater not already busy consuming the dead guards quickly joined the pair as they pounded on the vehicle. Though the men tried to conceal themselves in the back seat, it was a futile effort once they had made a human sound. Carter accepted that their attempt to hide was now ruined, and quietly hissed, “Fire,” before opening up on the creatures with his pistol.

  All of the fighters had ARs or shotguns with them, but they hoped that by using only the silenced, small-caliber pistols they would be able to kill many of the infected while they were still eating the bodies in front of the roadblock. Lori and Carter were the best handgun marksmen in the group, so they had positioned themselves behind the hoods of the SUVS and were dropping hunters with nearly every shot they fired. Blake and David had their halberds in hand and were defending the gaps between the rear bumpers of the vehicles and the edges of the bridge. Todd was roaming from railing to railing with his .22, picking off the monsters that managed to crawl over the barricade.

  For the first several minutes of the assault the hunters charged as individuals like they always did, and they were easy pickings for the seasoned group of killers awaiting them behind the SUVs. The battle took on the air of a shooting gallery, with the burning helicopter perfectly silhouetting the attackers as the soldiers fired away at them. Two of the creatures had managed to crawl over the roofs of the vehicles, only to be immediately dispatched by Todd, who was able to take his time and make the deadly head-shots. Lori and Carter each killed at least half a dozen of the infected, including a number of monsters still feasting on the guards’ ravaged corpses. Blake had speared three hunters who’d attacked his position at intervals, probably because he was backlit by the moonlight. David stood unmoving in the darkness, watching the entire action take place to his right, unnoticed by a single hunter during the short-lived massacre. Even the aircrew inside their jail-vehicle had calmed down as they watched the monsters steadily drop to the cement, killed with a rapid efficiency which stunned them into silence.

  Since David had nothing to do but monitor the fight, he’d kept his eye on a large, male hunter who was standing in the shadows about thirty meters from the roadblock. The creature was feasting on what looked like a long strip of flesh he must have ripped from the leg of one of the guards. The beast was completely naked, his muscled body covered with stretches of the pink scar tissue many of the infected displayed as time passed and their wounds healed. As the last of his pack-mates involved in the charge were shot down, and those feasting on the corpses began to drop, the large alpha-male cocked his head for a moment as if he was studying the situation. Even over the howls of the hunters in the distance and the snarls of the monsters still tearing at the bodies, David could hear the beast utter a series of grunt-like growls that drew the immediate attention of every living flesh-eater in sight. Still carrying the meat in a one-handed grip, the huge hunter turned and walked off into the darkness, quickly followed by the few creatures still alive.

  For a moment nobody said anything, but Carter eventually broke the silence. “What the hell . . .”

  “This is like that retreat we saw on the Maumee last month,” David explained. “We told you about it.”

  “Yeah,” Carter agreed, “but it still seems damn strange.”

  “Just reload and get ready,” David warned. “I seriously doubt that they’re giving up—probably just gonna try something different.”

  Todd scoffed, “You trying to tell us those bastards are making a plan or something?”

  David hesitated for a few seconds before murmuring, “See for yourself.”

  From out of the southern shadows cast by the flaming Blackhawk came a crowded mass of hunters running at a full sprint. The creatures weren’t silent, but snarls instead of howls accompanied the patter of their feet on the cement as they rounded the chopper and made their way onto the bridge. Carter and Todd immediately began reloading their pistols, but David had been in this type of fight before and knew the guns were now of little value. “Grab your halberds and follow us!”

  Blake and Lori had already shuffled to the front of the roadblock, quickly followed by the other stunned warriors as they extended their eight-foot, bladed spears and awaited the charging enemy. Luckily the hunters weren’t all capable of running at the same speed, so the large group was somewhat staggered as they approached the human line. The first monsters to make contact hit the razor-sharp tips of the weapons so hard that the shafts actually bent with their weight as the flesh-eaters were stopped in their tracks by six inches of steel buried in their foreheads.

  Having fought to defend a bridge against hordes of the infected in Fort Wayne just a few weeks earlier, David and Blake, who were now standing at each flank, remembered the tactic developed by Sal Martinez above the rivers of the city that day. He had held the vulnerable end of the line during the battle by stabbing the flesh-eaters in their bodies and flipping them over the railing into the rushing water below. The big man had killed dozens of the infected with the technique, which required strength and skill, and now his friends hoped to copy the tactic over the Ohio River.

  Lori was stationed in the center of the line, with Todd and Carter fighting to her right and left. This middle group didn’t enjoy the advantage offered by the railings, but they did form a wedge that shed hunters to either side where they either dropped dead to the cement, or, with their momentum broken, became easy targets for David and Blake.

  David soon realized that thirty or forty of the monsters were definitely involved in the attack, and the five humans fighting back were in imminent danger of being overrun. Blake had lost his halberd when one of the creatures had reached out and grabbed the shaft as she fell toward the river, but he was now using his mace to deadly effect, brains and black blood spraying in front of the fighting line with each powerful swing. Lori and her two wing-mates had killed enough of the hunters that their corpses formed a short barricade in front of their position. One of the three fighters had lost a halberd, because David could hear the pffft of .22 rounds that were punching into the skulls of the monsters who now had to climb over the bodies of their dead pack-mates.

  The tide of the vicious struggle was definitely turning in the humans’ favor, but the old, reliable enemy known as fatigue was steadily taking its toll on their ability to continue the battle. Since Jack and his fighters had developed their system of combatting the infected during the early days of the outbreak, one factor they’d learned that they couldn’t control was weariness. Modern warriors had to relearn what the ancients had known centuries ago: wielding hand-held instruments of death quickly tired a fighter to the point where he could barely lift his weapons, let alone kill with them. Jack’s soldiers had tried to mitigate the problem by forming ranks that could rotate in and out of the fighting line, but when a small group like this was caught in a surprise attack, they could only hope to outlast
the hunters.

  David soon lost his halberd in the same manner as Blake, but with his strength flagging he turned to a dagger instead of the war-axe that would require swinging. He began using a familiar, yet desperate tactic against the flesh eaters: ramming his gauntleted hand and forearm into their mouths and then stabbing them in the sides of their heads. As the fight wore on he slipped several times in the blood and gore, finally falling to his knees, which he figured was a death sentence without a helmet. Fortunately, Carter was watching out for his best friend’s baby-brother, and after shooting two of the monsters about to leap on the younger man at point-blank range, he pulled the exhausted David back to his feet.

  The two warriors looked up to see that once again the surviving hunters were retreating, perhaps in response to the fact that Blake had just crushed the skull of the huge alpha-male that had appeared to be calling the shots before the nearly successful, second attack. David finally rasped out, “They’ll come again. I’m done . . . have to get behind the vehicles and use a firearm.”

  “We’re all done, brother,” Blake breathlessly added while Todd just leaned his hands on his knees and nodded his head in agreement.

  “Y’all get behind the SUVs,” Carter ordered as he kept an eye on what appeared to be another group of hunters gathering together near the dying flames of the spent Blackhawk. The creatures were snapping and snarling in frustration and anger as they stood uncertainly at the edge of the bridge.

  “You were right about the bastards,” a chagrined Todd admitted to David as he set a fresh magazine into his AR. “They are trying to figure us out.”