Surviving the Dead (Novel): The Hellbreakers

by James N. Cook

  I stood up and shook the hand. Lt. Downs was as tall as me. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of reflective, wrap-around sunglasses. A Chicago Cubs ball cap provided further shade. The face beneath was blocky and pitted with acne scars, the skin weathered and brown from too much wind and sun. Not a pleasant-looking man, but he was behaving politely at the moment. There was something about him, however, that led me to believe he could shift gears from cultured civility to exploding anger in about half a second.

  “Alex Muir, Delta Seven.”

  “Right. You’ll be with Sergeant Hahn, then. You’ll want to stay on your toes with her, Private. She runs a tight ship.”

  “I’ll, uh…do my best.”

  “Four hundred yards and closing,” Morris announced.

  Lt. Downs lifted a pair of binoculars hanging from his neck and looked across the stretch of desert separating us from the horde. “Yeah, looks like it. Okay, folks, you know the drill. We’ll engage at one hundred yards. Runners, keep the ammo a-comin’. We’re gonna need it.”

  The support crew acknowledged and continued their work, stacking magazines next to each shooting station. There was another shake from the floorplates, and two men appeared on the platform.

  “’Bout damn time,” Lt. Downs said irritably. “The hell you two been?”

  “Sorry, LT,” one of the men said as he hurried over to a shooting station. “Commander had us on rear guard. Took a while to get up here.”

  Downs gave a grunt. “Fair enough. Get set up quick. Don’t have much time.”

  “Yes sir.”

  As I returned to my seat, I glanced at the two newcomers. They busied themselves tuning their sights and checking their weapons. If they noted my presence, they gave no sign.

  “You gonna take the line?” Morris asked.

  “Not yet,” Lt. Downs replied. “Give the new guy a chance to prove himself.”

  The other shooters glanced at me briefly, some grimly, others smiling in muted amusement. I had no idea what was going on, so I ignored the looks and concentrated on making sure my rifle was ready.

  A few minutes later, Sergeant Morris announced the enemy was at a hundred and fifty yards and closing.

  “Look alive, ladies and gents,” Downs said. “Wait for my signal.”

  There was a round in the chamber. The safety was off. I stretched my neck one way, then the other, and settled a cheek on the AR’s adjustable stock. I could see the ghouls at the forefront of the horde clearly now. The ones behind them had fanned out into a teardrop formation.

  From what I could tell, it seemed the least physically hindered undead were the fastest, the rest following in order of mobility. I surmised most of them were impaired in some way, probably as a result of the wounds that killed them.

  “Thirty seconds,” Morris shouted.

  “Roger, thirty seconds,” Lt. Downs said. “Stand by.”

  Shortly thereafter came a countdown. I listened, but tuned out everything else. The scope’s reticle was lined up on the intersection of a ghoul’s nose and forehead. The scope was at six power, and I knew that with a fifty yard zero, shots at 100 yards would go high. So I aimed at the ghoul’s mouth and watched carefully as he approached, timing the uneven gait. Its head consistently dipped, then popped back up as it used its uninjured left leg to move forward. After a few steps I had the rhythm down, the crosshairs finding the right place every time the creature stood upright.

  “Five.”

  “Steady,” Downs said.

  “Four.”

  “Pick your targets.”

  “Three, two, one…mark! Horde at one hundred yards.”

  “Fire at will,” Downs shouted.

  I waited until the head reappeared, let out a breath, and squeezed the trigger.

  SIXTEEN

  I expected to miss.

  I did not.

  The head snapped back, the ghoul’s mouth went slack, and a conical discharge of black muck painted the face of the ghoul behind it. The bullet went all the way through the first ghoul’s skull and smashed through the teeth of another one a few steps behind. It remained upright, plodding along as though nothing had happened.

  Well I’ll be damned.

  I had never made, nor even attempted, a head shot from that far away. A couple of seconds passed while I admired my work before the continued cracking of rifles reminded me why I was there.

  I shifted aim, picked another ghoul whose head was not oscillating too wildly, and took another shot. My timing was good, and the second attempt scored a hit. Another ghoul down.

  “Not bad,” said Lt. Downs. I jumped a little, not realizing he was standing behind me, looking over my shoulder. “You got a knack for this. Ex-military?”

  “No sir,” I said.

  Downs stayed quiet, letting the silence hang, an old interrogation trick. My father, in an effort to teach me how to deal with cops, had taught it to me. Make a statement, ask a question, then stay quiet and wait for the other guy to speak. I wasn’t biting. I settled over my rifle again, let out a long breath, and took aim. Footsteps rattled the floorboards as Downs walked away.

  I filed the brief exchange under things to consider later, timed the head movement of an undead teenage boy with long hair obscuring his face, and fired. Another hit, another splatter of brains, and another ghoul went to its final rest.

  The shooting continued. My world narrowed to the truncated window afforded by my scope and the rhythm of aim, breath, squeeze, evaluate. The din of gunfire faded until all I could hear was my own breath and the pop of the AR-15 when the trigger hammer smacked the firing pin. An indeterminate amount of time passed, the horde growing ever closer while never seeming to really shrink. They did, however, scatter and widen out over a larger area. The teardrop formation disintegrated as dead ghouls created trip hazards for their brethren.

  Finally, when it seemed I was shooting nearly straight down with my scope dialed to one-power, Lt. Downs lowered his binoculars and bellowed, “Cease fire! Cease fire! Cease fire on the firing line!”

  He said it with a nearly musical cadence, a command issued so many times it had become performance art. The men and women around me pulled out magazines and ejected unspent cartridges from smoking chambers, carefully loading all live ammunition back into the mags.

  Not a single bullet wasted. Impressive.

  I looked to Lt. Downs and saw him pick up a couple of spears standing against the back rail. Up close, they looked impossibly long, like pikes from some medieval European battlefield.

  “Time to get dirty, boys and girls.” Downs handed a pair of spears to two of his people. The others stepped away from the table and grabbed weapons of their own.

  “Give me a hand,” Morris said, tapping me on the shoulder.

  I glanced at him, hesitated, then said, “Sure.”

  We went to the far side of the platform. Morris put his hands under one end of a table and indicated for me to grab the other side.

  “Where we going with it?” I asked.

  “Back rail.”

  We lifted the table. It was heavy from the rifles and ammo stacked atop it, but not so much we couldn’t move it. When it was against the back rail, Morris pointed behind me.

  “Grab the next one.”

  When I turned around, a few other people were moving tables as well. In less than a minute, they were all out of the way and the front side of the platform was open. Lt. Downs opened a fiberglass crate and removed a handful of nylon ropes with large carabiners on both ends held in place with thick metal crimps over eye-loops. He held one in my direction.

  “Clip one end to the back rail. Wrap the other end underneath your arms and clip it behind you.”

  I took the rope and began doing as instructed. “What’s this for?”

  “Safety harness,” Downs said, turning away to pass out more ropes. “In case you fall. Hate to see you get torn apart on your first day.”

  Downs was smiling, but the others stopped and stared in grim disappro
val. Downs noticed and held up a hand.

  “All right, all right, bad joke. Sorry. Won’t happen again.”

  The tension eased and the squad turned back to the business at hand.

  I stepped to the front rail and took position next to Sergeant Morris. “What happens now?”

  He looked me up and down. “First, you need to get your stance right. See how everybody else has one leg braced against the rail?”

  I looked. “Yeah.”

  “You right or left handed?”

  “Left.”

  “Okay. Brace your right leg then.”

  I did as he said, leaning my weight forward in a modified southpaw stance.

  “Good,” Morris said. “Now let the tip of the spear drop until it’s about five feet below the deck. Should be just above the second crosspiece from the ground.”

  The spear made a rasping sound as I let the haft slide through my fingers. When it was in position, I noticed a hole had been drilled through the center of the wood. Through that hole, someone had threaded a short length of paracord with a piece of double-sided Velcro crimped to it. It did not take much imagination to figure out what it was there for. I began looping the Velcro strip around my left wrist.

  “If you feel yourself being pulled over the rail,” Morris instructed, “don’t try to be a hero. You see this tab?” He pointed to the lanyard around my wrist.

  “Yeah.”

  “This is a quick release. Pull up on it and the Velcro comes off. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Don’t worry about losing your spear. Happens all the time. We have spares, and we can always track it down later.”

  “Okay.”

  “That said,” intoned Lt. Downs from behind us. “Try not to lose your spear.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “If your arms get tired,” Morris continued, “take a break. Shake it out as fast as you can and get back to work. And again, don’t try to be a hero. This is no place for pride. If you’re tired, take a break. Better that than lose your spear or get dragged over the side.”

  I nodded. So far, I liked the strategy. It made sense. Pride and ego have no place in a fight. Unless, of course, you have a burning desire to lose.

  “Make ready,” Downs ordered.

  I glanced around me and matched my body position to the others as well as I could. Morris looked me over again and gave a grunt of approval. On the ground below, the ghouls were level with the first line of platforms, their milky eyes wide, skeletal hands reaching out with clawed fingers, moans of raw hunger echoing like a savage whirlwind. I gritted my teeth against the sound and tightened my grip on the spear.

  “Wait for it...”

  The ghouls drew closer. Across the way, the undead vanguard had reached the lead platform and were bumping against the supports, hands reaching uselessly at the people above them. Spears began moving up and down in jerky waves like a set of poorly synchronized pistons. The spiked, edgeless blades punched through skulls and sinus cavities, sending the undead slumping bonelessly to the ground.

  Only a matter of time before they pile up.

  “Contact.”

  I looked down. A pack of more than a hundred ghouls descended on our platform. They came in waves, comprised of every ethnic group, age, gender, and body type. Some of them looked relatively intact, while others dragged their guts behind them and limped on ruined legs. A few were missing limbs. The one that hit the crosspiece immediately below me was an elderly black woman with no teeth and half her face bitten off. I raised the spear, aimed the tip at the bridge of her nose, and stabbed downward. The spear punched through her face so easily I nearly lost my balance.

  “You okay?” Morris said, glancing over.

  “Yeah, I’m good.”

  “Don’t stab so hard; you’ll wear yourself out. Let the spear do the work.”

  “Okay.”

  The old lady shuddered and slid off the spear. A hand reached toward the crossguard just behind the long spike. I quickly pulled the spear out of reach, adjusted my aim, and let my arms fall downward. This time the spear hit a little too lightly and I had to give it a shove to push it the last few inches into a pre-adolescent girl’s head. The spike slid free easily and the little girl became part of the dust and gore littering the foot of the platform.

  The next few minutes felt like an eternity. There was no conversation, no shouted orders, no banter. It was grim work I did, and I faced it with grim determination. Our mouths were thin, hard lines as we raised our spears and let them fall, each stroke reducing the horde below. It seemed, however, that there was no end to the walking corpses. In minutes, they were well on their way to surrounding the militia’s defenses, all of whom were now engaged with the enemy.

  When the burn in my shoulders became decidedly unpleasant, I hauled up my spear, planted the tip against the deck, rested the haft between neck and shoulder, and let my arms hang loose. Lt. Downs was also taking a break.

  “Hard work, eh?” he said.

  I wiped my forehead with a finger and flung sweat into the horde. “I’ve done worse, but not much.”

  A quiet laugh. “You’re doing better than most first-timers. Certainly better than I did on my first day. Been keeping yourself in shape, huh?”

  “Trying to.”

  “Good thing. It’s gonna pay dividends.” Downs picked up his spear and heaved a deep breath. “All right. Back to the grind.”

  I looked up and shielded my face against the burning sun. The day had climbed to over a hundred degrees. Out here on the highway, there was no shade. Harsh light reflected from the surrounding sand and pale dust on the interstate. I remembered I had a pair of sunglasses in my shirt pocket and put them on. The polarized lenses made the glare tolerable.

  Warm water flowed into my mouth as I bit down on the mouthpiece of the tube snaking over my shoulder. I drank my fill, knowing it was better to store my water in my stomach than on my back. The assault pack became noticeably lighter. Some of the other people on the platform stepped back from the rail to catch their breath. We made brief eye contact and gave each other short nods, but there was no conversation. The howling of ghouls had become so loud it threatened to drown out rational thought.

  Okay. Round two.

  I hefted my spear and stepped to the rail.

  SEVENTEEN

  A horn cut the air from a platform across the highway. Looking up, I saw it was Father Cortez sounding the call. He blew three short notes on a bugle, then two long ones.

  “Haul ‘em up.”

  I looked at Lt. Downs. He was securing his spear to the rail with a Velcro lanyard.

  “Vic, Hop, since you were late, you two are first on the lever.”

  The two men who had arrived at the platform last muttered under their breath and stowed their spears. Lt. Downs unclamped a lever from the back of the platform and attached it to an A-shaped frame near the steering bar. A long drive shaft reached through a hole in the deck down to a gearbox below. Vick and Hop went to either side of the lever and gripped the handles.

  “Whenever you’re ready, LT,” one of them said.

  I wondered which one was Vick and which was Hop.

  “Stand by.”

  The remaining fighters tied up their spears and sat down cross-legged on the wooden deck. I found an empty spot and did the same. When everyone was settled, Lt. Downs turned to Vick and Hop.

  “Let’s go.”

  The two men bent to their work, one pulling and the other pushing. I heard a clank as gears engaged below us.

  On the ground, the horde was advancing steadily, the platforms slowly becoming surrounded with walking corpses. A rhythmic beat began to sound from the west and I looked up. Eight riders on strong horses emerged from the dust of the wagon train and galloped onto the highway between the militia’s two lines of wheeled scaffolding. The riders stopped about fifty feet from the horde and began waving their arms and shouting.

  “What are they doing?” I asked Morris as he s
at down next to me.

  “Drawing off the horde. They’ll lead ‘em back east a ways, then double back once we’ve created some distance.”

  “Oh.”

  Vick and Hop continued to strain at the see-saw lever. The platform shuddered, and then slowly began to creep westward on I-10.

  The riders on horseback now had the horde’s undivided attention. As I watched, they allowed the closest ghouls to come within ten feet, then rode a short distance away and resumed the distraction. While they did this, the fighters on the scaffolding stayed as quiet and out of sight as they could. No talking, no laughing, no sudden movement. Everyone went still, eyes fixed on the boards beneath them. I did the same.

  The horde gradually retreated eastward, chasing the riders. The platforms ahead of us gained distance. Vick and Hop continued pumping the lever, slowly gaining speed until our momentum increased and they didn’t have to work as hard. After a few minutes, the scaffolds to the west slowed and stopped. This continued down the line until Lt. Downs called for Vick and Hop to take a rest and pulled a brake lever next to the steering bar. There was a screech of metal on metal, and the platform eased to a halt. When we had stopped, Downs locked the brake in place, turned to his troops, and gestured to the tables.

  “Back on the guns.”

  Morris tapped my arm, and the two of us moved our table back to its place on the east-facing rail. That done, we sat down, loaded our rifles, and waited.

  “Give me a range, Sergeant,” Downs ordered.

  Morris peered through his scope. “Two-fifty, sir.”

  “Roger, two hundred fifty yards.”

  Downs pulled a radio from his belt and spoke into it. I heard a squawk of static and something unintelligible from the speaker, to which Downs said, “Copy, will advise. Stand by.”

  A minute later the riders came back at a trot, headed west toward the wagon train. The horde turned around and pursued, albeit at a crawling pace.

  “All right, everyone. You did good before, but we need to pick up the pace. I want a body on the ground every two-count. Got it?”

  As one, the other troops said, “Yes sir.”