Rotters: Bravo Company

by Cart, Carl R

  Everyone pitched in to shore up our defenses. The mechanics and medics worked just as hard as we did, their lives depended on them, too.

  Sgt. McAllister stalked back and forth down the line, looking for weak spots and shouting encouragement, driving us back to work when we slacked or faltered. His deep voice bellowed out above the pounding of the mallets, sledgehammers, machetes, and shovels.

  We had done everything we could. McAllister did one final walk around and called it a piece of work.

  “It’s crude, it’s rude, it’s pathetic, but it beats a blank. Good work gentlemen.”

  Each of our foxholes had been cleared and deepened. Each had been stocked with a half dozen Molotov cocktails, the last of the gasoline in a glass whiskey bottle with a bit of rag stuffed down the neck. You just lit the rag and tossed it at whatever you wanted to burn. Each of us had five hundred rounds of ammunition, twenty magazines each. Once that was gone, well, we all knew what would happen then.

  Sgt. McAllister had set up a SAW in the two diametrically opposite corners of the box. Each could fire down two sides of the perimeter. The ammo would last longer utilizing two heavy machine guns instead of four. He set back three M27 linked belts of 556 ammo and another SAW in the center, as an emergency reserve. At each of the other corners he had set a single Claymore mine, wired back to the corner hole. The man in the corner hole could trigger the mine by pulling its cord. They also had two grenades each.

  We had set up an improvised defensive position around the command tent. It was just a small square made up of empty crates, barrels and four of the abandoned Humvees as a last resort. Everyone was to fall back on it if we were overrun again. The two fueled Humvees and the cargo truck were parked directly adjacent to this area, ready to go.

  The remaining mechanics and the medics went into the lines to fill the empty foxholes. Each had an M-4 with two full magazines, fifty rounds each. McAllister had set the rifles to single shot and warned the men not to change the selector switches back to auto. The remaining Berettas and nine-millimeter ammo had been distributed to them also.

  I could tell they were shit scared. I didn’t blame them; I just hoped they wouldn’t bolt.

  We had exactly enough people to fill the foxholes and corners, that was it.

  1st Platoon faced the village, 2nd Platoon faced the forest. We all faced death.

  Only the old man, Col. Warren and a couple of lab techs weren’t in the lines. Even Lt. Beckham walked out and asked the sergeant where he should post up. McAllister slapped him on the shoulder and sent him over to command 2nd Platoon. Sadler would be the SAW gunner on that side of the world and Sgt. Price would be the gunner on our side. Sgt. McAllister would be in command.

  The sun set in a blaze of crimson against the gently waving canopy of the giant trees. No zombies had wandered in while we finished our defenses. There either were no more left, or much more likely, they were massing under the trees, slowly moving forward through the forest, drawn to us like iron filings to a magnet.

  My money was on the later.

  It grew still. The night was still warm, and the place still stunk, but I was too tired to care anymore. I sat back against the rough dirt wall of my foxhole and closed my eyes for a precious moment. Nothing was trying to kill me just this second. I heard someone laugh, on the other side of the camp. The birds chirped, the insects droned, the night came on. I wished I could just go to sleep and wake up back home, far away from the Congo.

  “Hey, asshole, you awake over there?” Hard-on shouted to me.

  I stood up in my hole and leaned my ass back against its rim.

  “Yeah,” I replied. I looked over at him and Gordo. We were the middle of the line. I rubbed my eyes and twisted my head from side to side, trying to work out the kinks and knots in my neck and shoulders. I stretched and yawned.

  “You look like shit,” Gordo observed dryly.

  “He’s looked worse,” Hard-on observed.

  “Kiss my ass,” I replied.

  It grew steadily darker. The light began to fade away.

  “Do you think they’ll come back again?” Gordo asked.

  I didn’t answer for a moment. I just stared out at the empty village and the towering trees. I tried to imagine it before all the death, before the virus. I tried to imagine the people who had lived there before they died.

  “Yeah, they’ll be back,” I finally replied. “They can’t help themselves.”

  Darkness settled down over the village like a funeral shroud. All of the animal and insect noises faded away and it grew still. No one was laughing or talking now.

  A tension filled the air, a waiting, a sense of apprehension. A cold chill ran through me despite the oppressive, stifling heat. I could feel them out there, slowly moving forward towards us like an inexorable wave of death and destruction. I tried to remember that they were just human beings like me once.

  My throat went suddenly dry and I felt an overwhelming urge to urinate. I ignored them both. I strained my eyes against the darkness, seeking a target.

  Abruptly the eerie moans of the undead broke the silence, all around us. Gunfire broke out on the other side of the square.

  “Hold your fire! Wait for a clear target!” Sgt. McAllister bellowed out of the darkness. I eased my finger back off the trigger. I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax. Now that I knew they were here, a calmness overtook me.

  The unearthly moans grew in pitch to a nerve shattering howl. I was sure the zombies had somehow cleared the flares, it sounded as if they were right on us.

  “Wait for it! Conserve your ammo!” McAllister warned.

  The zombies hit the wire as they stumbled out from between the huts. Two flares sprang to sputtering life, illuminating the advancing horde of undead.

  “Fire!” the sergeant screamed.

  I leaned forward in my hole and rattled off short, controlled bursts at the shambling horde, switching from one target to the next as they crumpled under my withering fire. The bolt of my rifle locked back far too quickly, I was empty. I mechanically dropped the spent mag and slammed in a fresh one. I threw the bolt and opened fire again.

  Dozens of the disgusting, rotten monstrosities surged forward. They clambered and shuffled over the shredded, shot up corpses that littered the killing ground. The smell washed over me in a fetid wave as they advanced. I fired off one magazine after another as the festering, putrid walking cadavers came on.

  They were incredibly tough. One zombie took a full dozen hits without stopping. I poured the bullets into its frame, walking the rounds from its waist up to its head. Each hit blasted away a chunk of rotten, soggy flesh. The horrible travesty of a human jerked and twitched grotesquely, staggering and stumbling towards me before finally collapsing into a twitching, gibbering mass of shredded red meat. Even then it struggled to rise and claw its way forward.

  The SAW fired from my left. Its tracers and ball ammo walked across the zombies that went down, shredding them into bloody, jerking gibbets of flesh and shattered bone.

  Still the zombies came on. There were a lot more of them. Dozens poured forth from the village and the forest. We could not stop them. There were too many to shoot.

  They poured forward over the shot up pieces of their destroyed kindred and hit the slit trench. The zombies dropped mindlessly into the trench, one after the other. They attempted to climb out, only to be trodden down by the zombies who fell into the pit behind and beside them. The pit began to fill up. A few zombies cleared it by walking across the undead struggling to escape. I concentrated my fire onto them, driving them back.

  Sgt. McAllister leapt forward to the fifty-gallon drum. He hit the bung with his shotgun butt, knocking it clear. Diesel fuel gushed into the pit, sloshing over the struggling zombies to either side. They reached out to grab the sergeant, but he was already backing away, firing his shotgun into their outstretched hands. He emptied the gun and pulled a phosphorus grenade from his belt. McAllister pulled the pin and lobbed the expl
osive into the trench. He dove headlong for the corner foxhole.

  The grenade went off with an earth shaking concussion as the cascade of glowing white-hot phosphorus ignited the diesel fuel. The burning liquid roared through the trench from corner to corner, engulfing each pair of jugs in a raging, twirling inferno of flame. The entire trench erupted into a blazing wall of fire and smoke. Tiny burning droplets of flaming liquid rained down on my unprotected arms, and smoldered in my hair.

  The zombies caught in the trench went absolutely berserk. Those that could pulled themselves free and ran like human torches helter-skelter. Most of them hit the trip wires and went down onto the stakes, where they twitched and burned. Some ran back into the forest and the village, setting the huts ablaze. The zombies who couldn’t escape sank down into the flaming trench, thrashing wildly as they slowly burned and melted. The smell of smoldering, rotten meat overwhelmed me. I vomited until my throat bled. Acrid, thick black smoke swirled over the line and all around me, blinding me and stinging my eyes. I couldn’t breathe or see. I struggled to recover.

  I splashed water into my eyes and gulped my canteen dry. I could see that the flames in the slit trench were dying down. More zombies were struggling into the channel, and attempting to climb out the other side. The flames didn’t deter them.

  In a panic I slapped my pants pockets until I found my lighter. I lit a pair of Molotovs and tossed them at the zombies nearest me in the pit. The bottles shattered, drenching the already smoldering undead in fresh fuel. They burst into flame, and staggered back to drop down, sizzling onto the blackened, smoking remains littering the trench. Up and down the line, everyone methodically tossed their Molotovs into the channel. They didn’t even have to be lit. The flames leapt back up momentarily. Still more rotting cadavers advanced from the burning village and approached the perimeter. I tossed in my last Molotov and brought my rifle back up.

  I fired controlled bursts at the zombies who cleared the slit trench, shooting out their knees and dropping them back into the burning inferno.

  For a precious moment the slit trench held. The flames roared and leapt to the sky. The zombies tumbled forward into a fiery slice of hell on earth, where they were destroyed, incinerated and cremated. I gave out a ragged cry of victory.

  It couldn’t last. The fuel burned down, and the consumed dead smothered the flames. Still more zombies advanced through the smoke and the swirling ashes.

  I heard the Claymore go off on my right. The zombies staggered over the stakes and the trip wires. They fell, impaled themselves, tore themselves free, and came on again. The gunfire became sporadic as one by one the M-4’s ran dry. I could no longer hear the SAW’s automatic fire.

  I checked my hip pouch; there were only two loaded magazines left.

  A disemboweled zombie lunged toward me, impaling itself on one of my stakes. The sharpened pole tore through its ribs and stuck. The cadaver slowly pushed itself forward, impaling itself further as it reached bony claws towards my face. I aimed and fired off a point blank burst that decapitated the zombie and took off both its arms. What was left quivered on the pole.

  As I reloaded I looked through the swirling smoke down line to my right. Gordo leapt from his hole and ran back to the center, a cadaver hard on his tail.

  I could see Hard-on fighting hand to hand with a zombie. He drove the corpse to its knees with a sledgehammer, and then crushed its skull with a savage overhand stroke. Before he could recover two cadavers stumbled forward into him. They went down in a tangle of trashing limbs and then the smoke obscured my view.

  A grenade went off directly to my left. I was tossed to the side, shrapnel buzzed by me. Zombies began to emerge from the smoke all around me. I staggered back to my feet, and fled for the center.

  I ran back to our last ditch position, passing a pair of limping cadavers that reached out for me as I passed. If we hadn’t been overrun then I was a Chinese jet pilot.

  A handful of survivors were assembled behind the barricades. I scrambled up a pile of crates and collapsed inside. I still had my M-4 and about fifty rounds.

  It was pure chaos.

  I painfully stood up and looked around. I only saw Gordo, Sgt. Price, and a couple of guys I knew from 2nd Platoon, Smith and Jacobs. A pair of the medical guys and one bloodied mechanic staggered in. Nobody was in charge; the survivors were just shooting at the zombies as they approached.

  “Where’s the sergeant?” I asked Price.

  “He’s still out there somewhere,” he gasped back.

  Gunfire broke out from three sides as the zombies approached our position.

  The major appeared out of nowhere, screaming contradictory orders. His uniform was crumpled and he looked like shit. He singled out the corpsmen.

  “You two, load up our survivors from the sample tent, we’re pulling out!” he bellowed.

  “What, sir?” one of them stammered back.

  “You heard me!” the major screamed. “Go into the sample tent and evacuate all of our personnel. Load them on the truck. We’re leaving. Do it now!”

  The corpsmen rushed off.

  “The rest of you lay down suppressive fire until we are loaded and ready! We only need a few minutes,” he urged.

  I figured the old man had lost it, but at least we were leaving. He sent a man into the clean tent to bring out the colonel and his staff. He walked over to the barricade and fired off a magazine from his pistol into the approaching zombies, laughing manically.

  I heard the distinct noise of Sgt. McAllister’s shotgun, and then he leapt over the crates and fell inside the barricade. I had never been so happy to see anyone in my entire life. I helped him to his feet and hugged him.

  “Get off me, Parsons,” he said gruffly. He reloaded his shotgun and looked around. The major stalked over to us.

  “Sergeant, we are leaving,” the major repeated.

  “Bout time, sir,” McAllister grinned.

  Just when I thought we might get out with our skins, the colonel appeared. I didn’t recognize him at first. He looked like a mad scientist from an old horror movie. His lab coat was stiff with dried blood and gore. Dark circles stood out under his bulging eyes like old bruises. He was absolutely wrecked. His face was a mask of rage. I could tell he was super pissed.

  “Who gave the order to evacuate?” he roared.

  “I did,” the major replied calmly. He stepped up to meet the colonel.

  “I might have known it was you, Dorset,” the colonel growled. “I will not allow your cowardice to jeopardize my work!”

  The major leaned forward; his hand tightened on his pistol. “Do not call me a coward again, Warren!”

  The colonel ignored the major and looked around. “You men will go back to your defensive positions and secure this camp!” the colonel barked. “No one is to leave until you are relieved!”

  “We are overrun!” the major screamed back. “Look around you, Colonel Warren! These men are all that are left!”

  The colonel shook his head. “Nonsense. Secure the defense of this camp, Major. I must finish my work. Do not disturb me again or I will bring you up on charges of dereliction of duty!”

  Sgt. McAllister grabbed his arm and jerked him around, “With respect, sir, the major’s assessment is correct. If we do not withdraw we’ll all be killed.”

  Warren pulled away. “Stand down, Sergeant!” he ordered. “I want you men back out on the perimeter; now!”

  Everyone looked at the colonel in shock. Even the men on the barricade stopped firing for a moment to listen. We could all hear the zombies tearing at the flimsy barrier.

  Sgt. Price fired off a burst from his M-4, decapitating a zombie that was attempting to climb the barricade.

  The colonel screamed over the gunfire, “Everyone out to the perimeter! Secure this camp!”

  Maj. Dorset lifted his gun and calmly shot him three times in the chest. The colonel collapsed to the ground, dead as a mackerel. The rest of us were too stunned to react.

 
The major lowered his smoking pistol and looked around.

  “The colonel was obviously infected with the virus, and had become dangerously insane. I was forced to shoot him in self-defense. Does anyone remember any other version of these events?” he barked. He looked around at us; he still had six rounds in his pistol.

  “No, sir!” Sgt. Price replied quickly.

  “Very well. Load up. We are the fuck out of here!”

  We ran for the trucks.

  REPORT FROM MAJOR DORSET CO BRAVO COMPANY

  COLONEL WARREN KIA

  HAVE EVACUATED VILLAGE OF LAT AND PROCEEDING TO AIRFIELD.

  SPECIMENS SECURED

  PROCEEDING AS ORDERED

  TRANSMISSION ENDS

  MAJOR DORSET US ARMY

  Chapter 11

  09:22 p.m. Zulu

  Village of Lat

  The Congo

  Sgt. McAllister brought up the rear as we withdrew. He had me collect up all the gear we could quickly salvage, and toss it into the last Humvee. He fired off rapid bursts from his shotgun, blasting the clambering zombies who tried to climb the barricade. The buckshot knocked the undead off balance; they tumbled back off the wall. They began to push through the crates and debris; as their numbers grew, the barricade crumbled.