by J. W. Vohs
The line rotations that had generally gone so smoothly during the confrontation at Pickwick broke down almost immediately on Highway 61. Fresh troops were still forcing their way to the front while the weary and wounded straggled back to the rear, but squad, platoon, and company cohesion was lost within a few minutes of the initial collision. Jack managed to stay near the front, still killing hunters with nearly every thrust of his halberd. The pressure on the forward lines had definitely diminished from both directions, but the toll of killed and wounded had weakened the soldiers’ resistance. The hunters naturally flowed into the trees on the sides of the road as they attempted instinctive flank-attacks after being basically stopped in their tracks by the Utah infantry, but most everyone understood that this initial clash was just a weak rehearsal for the main event.
Jack knew that the soldiers of the truncated 1st Battalion were armed with .22 rifles in addition to their other gear, and they were moving along the lines of wire killing trapped hunters before they could work themselves free. Carlson wanted to avoid putting the Pickwick troops back into the meat-grinder of the phalanx after the losses they’d suffered a week earlier, but the celebrated survivors of the battle at the dam had begged for a role in this action. Now they took to the forests with gusto, exterminating thousands of flesh-eaters tangled in the concertina. The only drawback was that with the weight of every corpse the strands of wire hung slightly lower, and before long some of the monsters were managing to crawl over the dead bodies of their pack-mates and attack the shooters. Nobody was killed before the order to withdraw was given, but everyone knew that the lead phalanx would have to retreat before the increasing numbers of hunters across the wire were able to hit the flanks of the tightly packed formation.
Carlson himself ordered the battalions to pull back, a maneuver that had been practiced many times, but never with this much pressure on the ranks. Soldiers began to stumble and fall, accidentally tripping others while causing some troops to panic and run. Even though he couldn’t be sure in all the confusion, Carlson was fairly certain his fighters were safe from the propane bombs when he ordered them to be detonated. The string of explosions shook the ground and sent out a blast wave, mostly toward the hunter-army, that knocked the life out of hundreds of monsters and gave the infantry the space they needed to escape. Most of the westerners made it back to the second phalanx and safely passed through their lines as they headed for the next defensive position. Nevertheless, an early roll call taken when the phalanx was reformed indicated that almost two hundred soldiers were missing from their units. Many were assumed to be wounded, while hope remained that others would be found wandering around in the rear. Still, Jack knew that in an hour-long melee, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Battalions had lost over ten percent of their strength. Those losses were a disheartening sign of how the day’s fighting would transpire.
CHAPTER 23
By late afternoon, the two phalanxes formed by the 1st Utah Division were at half-strength and standing along their final prepared defense lines. Carlson had radioed Jack from the rear of his formation to tell him that a rough count revealed over three hundred dead with almost twice that wounded. Those troops remaining on their feet were exhausted but still game as the next wave of infected shook off the effects of the propane explosions shielding the last retreat and resumed their assault on the Allied lines. Only God knew how many hunters were dead on Highway 61 and in the thick woods that bordered the road, but Carlson believed that at least twenty thousand had been killed by his soldiers. Jack had a decent idea of how many infected had died in the first skirmish of the morning, and when he extrapolated that figure out over the many positions the 1st Utah had defended during the grueling day of fighting, he thought that Carlson’s estimate was a bit low. The western infantry was absolutely lethal when fighting in the phalanx.
Jack could actually hear the next collision between the horde and Carlson’s phalanx from almost five hundred meters away. “You still there?” he called out worriedly.
Carlson shouted in return, “Damn! They just hit us with some fresh troops or something—we lost ten meters in ten seconds. Firming up a bit now.”
“Just hang on!” Jack yelled into his radio. “I’m heading up there right now.”
Jack immediately broke into a run across the distance between the two formations, his suspicions confirmed well before he reached Carlson’s phalanx. The tired troops were somehow holding their own against an enemy Jack hadn’t seen since Brandenburg: Barnes’ prime hunters. The well-fed, trained, and conditioned flesh-eaters had hit Carlson’s line like a freight train, but then the creatures tried the same flanking maneuver that had led thousands of monsters to their deaths all day long. The survivors of the 1st Battalion had been reinforced with two companies from the headquarters unit, and even over the ferocious howls of the hunters Jack could hear hundreds of .22 rifles firing in the woods. It was reassuring that even the strongest beasts were discovering that concertina wire was impossible to run through. Carlson’s crack division was fighting the flesh-eaters to a stand-still for the moment, but Jack could see that Barnes’ creatures were still getting their act together behind the large group that had hit the phalanx so hard just a few minutes earlier. Soon the entire weight of the horde would link up with the monsters currently engaged, and then there would be no way for the depleted battalions to hold them back.
Jack finally found Carlson giving orders to several aides from his make-shift command post behind the formation. “We have to get out of here,” Jack warned.
The pugnacious ex-SEAL didn’t want to give up yet. “We’re holding them back now!”
Jack shook his head and shouted over the din of combat. “This was just a few thousand of the prime hunters I was telling you about; we’ve been fighting riff-raff all day that Barnes rounded up after Pickwick. In a few minutes the entire weight of the horde is going to fall on your exhausted troops, and they’ll all die if you don’t get them out now.”
Carlson stared at Jack for a moment. Except for radio conversations he hadn’t known the man long, but he had already grown to trust him. Perhaps Carlson had demanded that Jack be the overall Allied commander for situations like this one, where the Utah leader might not recognize defeat until it was too late. Carlson finally frowned and nodded before turning to his aides, “Call for the retreat, now!” He then turned to Jack, “I never did ask you about the extraction plan; I honestly believed we’d kill ‘em all along this highway.”
Jack managed a tight grin. “We’ve got three lines of explosives between us and that overhead road; I think it’s called Culkin Road. We’re wired a mile wide there, and as soon as we pass under it Chad and Carter are gonna drop wire from the overpass. They’ve got snipers ready too. Semi-trailers are lined up on the other side of that road, but we’ll have to mount up best we can and run like hell.”
“That’s one of the worst extraction plans I’ve ever heard,” Carlson declared, “but it’ll have to do. Let’s go!”
Carter and Chad had brought the entire Indiana Company out to Culkin Road to help extract the 1st Utah. Snipers armed with AR-15s, AK-47s, and M1As were lined across the overpass and well onto each flank, all of them nestled into comfortable shooting positions with plenty of ammo. Thirty men wearing protective gloves had already secured one end of a concertina roll to the ground or the bridge, ready to pull the coil out to its full length as soon as the infantry scuttled past. Lined up in all four lanes of the highway was a convoy of fifty semi-trucks, engines running and waiting to receive their precious cargo. The wounded had been steadily evacuated throughout the day, so fewer than four-thousand division troops needed transport. Everything necessary for a successful extraction was now in place; all that was missing was the presence of one spent infantry division and the operation could begin.
Several explosions had been heard in the distance before the first troops appeared on the highway, doing their best to double time across the remaining distance to the waiting trucks. A few minute
s later the road was filled to the horizon with soldiers still in formation, but behind them came the fastest of the dirty-pink hunters, rapidly closing the gap on the weary human fighters. Suddenly another series of explosions rippled across the highway, tearing a great gap in the ranks of the pursuing horde. Dozens of the monsters had already passed the bombs before they were detonated, and those creatures continued their run toward the humans lagging behind the main force. Just when it seemed that the westerners were about to be overtaken, they turned around and formed a line of spears, killing all of the hunters who’d managed to avoid the blast.
Now there was truly nothing left to do but make a run for it. The soldiers of the 1st Utah had gotten little to no sleep the night before, were hungry and dehydrated after a full day of fighting, and were wearing or carrying at least fifty pounds of gear and weapons. They were moving at a pace faster than a walk, but not much faster. The horde had been slowed by the blasts to the road, but not for long. It only took about a minute for the creatures to push over the rubble and their fallen brethren to continue their pursuit of the retreating humans. The infected weren’t full-out sprinting, but they were maintaining the steady jog that everyone knew they could continue all day if necessary. The gap between the two forces was quickly closing, and there were no more pre-planted bombs to slow the pursuers. The Indiana troops were shouting encouragement, but nobody stopped to consider if they were even being heard over the howls of the hungry hunters.
Carter was watching the lopsided race through his binoculars, quietly urging his Allies to hurry. “C’mon, c’mon, ya’ll can make it . . . Shit, shit, shit!”
Two hunters had just pulled a soldier to the ground as easy as Carter could take down a child. Chad Greenburg was watching too. “You just see that? Dammit! There go two more . . .”
Carter ripped the field glasses from his eyes in frustration and shouted out an order. “The second you feel ya can hit those bastards, ya fire! They’re pullin’ our guys down now, so we got nothin’ to lose by hittin’ one of our own.”
Almost immediately a shot rang out from one of the M1As, which fired a powerful .308 round easily able to reach the almost five hundred meter distance to the rear of the 1st Utah’s column.
“You got him!” Chad cried out. “Damn good shot!”
Now the first squads of Allied soldiers were passing under the overpass, moving on to the farthest trucks without being told. Hundreds of the westerners were in the process of being rescued, but thousands were steadily being run down by exultant hunters spurred on by the close proximity of their prey. At least a dozen fighters had been caught by the flesh eaters before another shot was fired, but it too splattered a monster’s brains over the highway. The entire line opened fire on the swarming hunters; they didn’t hit much at first, but the show of support seemed to infuse the endangered soldiers with a burst of energy. More of them were being overtaken with each passing second, but now the snipers’ shots were really taking a toll on the pursuing creatures.
Luckily for the 1st Utah, the explosions had scattered the leading elements of the horde enough that they were being chased by scores of flesh-eaters rather than thousands. The distant horizon was now filled with a writhing mass of infected, but they weren’t close enough to affect the outcome of this chase. Hunters were still catching soldiers, but gunfire was quickly tipping the balance of the outcome in the Allies’ favor. In one particularly cheering instance, two, simultaneous head-shots killed two monsters trying to gnaw through the armor of a man they’d caught, and the lucky fighter jumped back to his feet and raced to catch up with his comrades.
Finally the last of the soldiers reached the absolute safety of the guns, where the number of bullets flying through the air outnumbered the hunters close enough to threaten any of the fighters before they passed under the road. The number of waiting semis proved to be more than enough, and three pulled away empty while the last two waited for the remaining members of the Indiana Company to return. The snipers had bought the wire-handlers nearly a minute to fully extend their coil and firmly attach it to something solid. The instant the last of the wire was placed, the troops rushed to the trucks and scrambled aboard. Carter was the final soldier to climb up into the trailer, thankful that he had a full headcount and most of the 1st Utah had been saved.
Incredibly, dozens of hunters were seen near the highway as the convoy drove the few miles south to I-20. Somehow, in spite of all the wire and the humans blocking the road, some hunters had managed to get past the defenses. With no nearby helicopters to control them, the flesh-eaters appeared to be roaming aimlessly, though they had all formed into small packs and were undoubtedly a danger to any humans who might be in the area. The 1st Utah and the troops from Indiana didn’t have time to concern themselves with the strays; they soon reached the interstate and turned west toward the bridges. About a mile from the intersection with 61, the highway passed over a rail-line that ran roughly perpendicular to the road. Moments after the last truck rolled over the bridge, the entire area erupted in an explosion that collapsed the interstate and set fire to the railroad-cut for a mile to the north and south. The ditch had been filled with the same type of debris the Allies planned to use for the smokescreen at the river, and all of it had been doused with hundreds of gallons of flammable liquids as the extraction had taken place. Now a truly spectacular sight filled the rearview mirrors of the vehicles carrying the troops: flames rising nearly a hundred feet into the darkening sky provided a poor-man’s fireworks show for the exhausted soldiers.
Jack was pretty sure that Barnes would stop his monsters on the other side of the burning railroad cut for the night. The section now in flames could be easily flanked, but the hunters had been scattered to hell and back during the chase to the trucks, and Jack’s guess was that Barnes would want to make sure he had everything in order before attacking the Vicksburg bridges. If the general decided to push forward in the dark, his creatures would be silhouetted by the flames while the Allies remained shrouded by the night. Jack figured that if Barnes had waited this long to take his shot at the Indiana-led rebels, he could wait twelve more hours in order to allow his helicopters to conduct a daylight reconnaissance over the town.
By the time the convoy rolled up to what was now the end of the road, nearly a mile from the bridges, word had come back from forward observers that the horde appeared to be completely halted at the burn-line. No organized flesh-eaters had been spotted trying to flank the flames, so Jack gave the order to keep a fifty-fifty troop line in place for the rest of the night, with all soldiers not on duty ready to rush back to their assigned positions at a moment’s notice. The battered 1st Utah was allowed to go into bivouac just behind the second berm they would have to defend in the morning, and Jack had to order Carlson to stand down and make sure his troops got the rest, food, and medical attention they needed.
Jack got himself cleaned up and grabbed an MRE before heading off to the meeting house for a briefing with most of his commanders. Everyone was heartened by the fierce defense put forth by the 1st Utah that day, though sobered by early reports of forty percent casualties suffered by the division. First at Pickwick, and now along Highway 61, the Allied troops had proven to be capable of standing up to the horde and making a fight of it in spite of being overwhelmingly outnumbered in both battles. In the morning, the enemy would be forced to enter the teeth of the Allied defenses, and most of the commanders expected a slaughter of Barnes’ forces.
Jack did his best to rid his leaders of that notion. “When the hunters come tomorrow they will force their way through our trap at the second railroad cut. They will push through, over, and around the thousands of their own dead left by all the bombs and other surprises we’ve created for them. When they first hit the phalanx, we will slaughter them because they will be attacking us piecemeal until the main body of the horde is able to put its full weight into the assault. Trust me, you won’t need to be told when that happens. Stand your ground! When we withdraw to the bac
k-up positions, we have to conduct a fighting retreat.”
Jack realized that he had repeated the same words so many times during the previous week that he was boring the soldiers. “I’m sorry, I know you’ve heard all of this a thousand times already.” He sighed as he searched for something new to offer. Finally he decided to tell the truth. “After what I experienced in Kentucky, I didn’t believe there was any force still alive on earth that could stop Barnes’ horde from going anywhere it wanted to go. Now, I’m pretty sure we are going to stop them here at Vicksburg. The cost will be high, at least as high as what the 1st Utah endured today. But the most important thing is that we CAN do this. You and me, and all of our soldiers, if we stand firm tomorrow, we will destroy the force that has ravaged most of the eastern United States. Right here, on ground our ancestors made holy with their blood and spirit, we can defeat a monster worse than Hitler.”
Jack tried to make eye contact with everyone at the same time before he quietly implored, “Have faith. We’re surrounded by flesh-eating monsters with the Mississippi at our backs, but keep the faith. Believe in yourselves, believe in one another, and believe in your soldiers. They’ll believe in us.”
With the eyes of his commanders glowing in righteous determination, Jack gave the benediction that had gotten him through every battle with the infected since Afghanistan. “Let’s kill ‘em all!”
Jack had forced himself to get some sleep during the night, having experienced enough combat to know when he needed to recharge his batteries. He awakened several hours before dawn and prepared himself for battle, then he made his way to the command post he would be manning on top of the wall above the I-20 bridge. With his NVGS he could see the infantry filing into their positions on the berms, pleased to see so many 1st Utah soldiers on their feet and ready to fight again. Jack couldn’t see them at this distance, but he knew from radio updates that the snipers were ready on the western lip of the nearest railroad cut. Those brave souls wouldn’t have to let him know when the enemy arrived; the propane bombs prepared for the horde would signal the beginning of the Battle of Vicksburg.