Zombie Crusade

by J. W. Vohs

  “Too late, I’ve already been swept.”

  Jack smiled, “Now I really want to make it home in one piece. Hopefully I’ll see you later tonight, and I’ll keep you up to date over the radios. Take care now.”

  “I will, Jack; I’ll be thinking about you.”

  Carter pulled up five minutes later with what Jack considered a very good RRT. Bruce Owen and Marcus Goodwin were both former Rangers who had served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Marcus held a special place in Jack’s heart because he had been driving the Hummer that had plucked he and Carter off of the ridge following the USAMRIID-induced zombie outbreak in the valley. Jack had fought beside them for eight months and considered them as good as any soldiers he had ever served with. Carter had been with both men for two tours in Iraq, and he considered them family members. All things considered, Jack couldn’t have asked for three better warriors to go into battle with than Carter, Bruce, and Marcus.

  Jack jumped into the Hummer with his gear and told Carter to head to the station as quickly as possible, then he pulled out his radio and called Deputy Little. Jack could hear noise in the background when Deputy Little answered, and immediately was angry again. “What is all that shouting about?”

  “Well, these folks are telling me that they don’t want to follow my orders, especially the ones concerning gunfire.”

  Jack could hear voices through the radio but focused his mind on the task at hand. “Can I get the Hummer through the wire your guards set up on the road?”

  “Those creatures aren’t no thicker there than any other place on the perimeter, but I’d say there’s at least twenty of them caught in the wire across the road.”

  Jack thought for a moment, “We’ll be outside the gate in five minutes in a dark green Hummer from The Castle. Tell your guards out there to stop shooting as we approach. My guys are going to jump out of the vehicle and lead us in on foot. You copy all that?”

  “Yes, sir, sheriff.”

  “All right. Get out there immediately; you’ll be hearing our engine in less than four minutes.”

  Once again Jack ended the connection before Deputy Little could say anything else, then he turned to Marcus and Bruce to see if they’d heard the conversation. They knew what they were supposed to do. Carter was driving and Jack wanted him to stay with the vehicle, but the Hummer did have a firing port up top, and Carter was planning on providing covering fire from there with an M1A in case anything went wrong.

  A few minutes later the safe-house was in sight, and the compound looked anything but safe. Jack immediately assessed the situation and knew they could get through with the plan he‘d designed. Once they were in he would reevaluate the best way to proceed, but from the look of things Jack expected even more challenges ahead. The perimeter was surrounded by hundreds of zombies, perhaps more than a thousand, but even that wasn’t the main problem at the station. The danger here lay in the fact that at least half of the perimeter had no wire. Apparently Deputy Little and the men working for him had thought that the forest surrounding the north and west sides of the station, thick with underbrush, would be a sufficient barrier to the zombies. As they drove down the lane Jack could see that most of the guards were gathered near the trees, using all manner of firearms to stop the creatures that were steadily emerging from the “barrier” presented by the forest.

  Jack pushed all of that from his mind as the Hummer squealed to a stop in front of the wire. He shouted, “Go, go, go!” as the Rangers leapt to their assigned tasks. Marcus and Bruce quickly eliminated all zombies within twenty feet of the vehicle, giving Jack the time and space he needed. As he pulled on gloves and began cutting the razor wire as carefully as possible, Jack heard Carter open up with the heavy sniper rifle. Jack was thankful that his friend had quickly realized that sound-control was non-existent at this location. Combined with the continued shooting from the .22s being used by Bruce and Marcus, Jack’s Ranger buddies had killed every zombie within a hundred feet of the gate in less than sixty seconds. At that point Carter was left with the task of covering fire while the other two veterans produced their own gloves and began pulling back the razor wire as Jack cut through the strands.

  Several minutes later the Rangers had made a path to the gates wide enough for the Hummer to pass, so Carter drove the vehicle through the opening while his buddies modified the plan by taking the time to pull the razor wire back and tie the ends together as best they could before running up to the gates. As promised, Deputy Little was waiting there for them, and he personally opened the gates so Jack and the other Rangers could pass through. As soon as they were safely inside the compound, Jack told Little to bring in his guard-leaders for a quick conference on how they might salvage this location.

  As everyone was gathering in the lobby of the fire station an angry looking Black woman in a tattered business suit stomped up to Jack and pointed in his face. “Are you the sheriff of this county?”

  “Yes, I am. Who are you?”

  She seemed a bit indignant that Jack didn’t recognize her. “I am Doctor Mindy Roberts, superintendent of Fort Wayne Consolidated Schools!”

  “Wrong,” Jack declared. “You are just one more frightened, powerless person trying to make your way through a world you no longer understand.”

  Her eyes bulged with anger as she shouted, “The governor is a personal friend of mine, and he is going to hear about the way you and your county have treated me and my friends here.”

  Jack laughed in her face. “Listen, Mindy, you were never anything more than the governor’s lapdog, and if your master isn’t dead yet he is certainly powerless by this point.”

  Roberts just glowered as Jack continued, “You shut your mouth and actually pull your fair share around here or I will drive you back to the Fort Wayne city limits if I have to mount a fifty caliber machine gun on a Hummer and blow us a path through ten thousand zombies. By the way, why is there a bulge under your right sleeve?”

  Roberts looked very defensive as she stammered, “Nothing. My blouse is just bunched up under the jacket sleeve.”

  Suddenly Jack knew what was going on with this woman. He told Carter and Marcus to grab her, then he went over and pulled up her sleeve to reveal a dirty, blood stained bandage on her forearm. Jack roughly yanked the bandage away from the wound to reveal a small but deep bite wound. “Little!” he shouted out. “Look at this. You were supposed to have every person who entered here inspected by a medical professional.”

  Deputy Little shrugged his shoulders, defeated and embarrassed. “She kept shouting that she was Doctor Roberts and knew she was fine so we didn’t push it.”

  Jack was furious. “How many people are in this compound who haven’t been inspected?”

  Little shook his head as he explained, “I don’t know for sure. At first we were checking everyone, but this Doctor Roberts arrived with a bunch of people who looked as important as her, and she said she’d checked all of them herself.”

  Jack wheeled on the esteemed Doctor Roberts. “So, playing politics and getting rich at the expense of school kids wasn’t enough. You had to screw everyone over one more time, didn’t you?”

  Roberts finally had nothing to say. Her trail of smoke and mirrors was at an end and she knew it. Jack turned to Marcus and Carter, “Lock her up and make sure somebody inspects the people who came in with her. If they won’t submit to inspection, lock them up too. Everyone needs to shape up around here. I’ve had it with this nonsense.”

  After the unsavory business with the good doctor was taken care of, Jack asked Deputy Little to identify his best guards. As he suspected, Little didn’t really know his people very well. He had been unable to assert authority over the survivors coming in to the compound, and the rebellion fomented by Ms. Roberts had only added fuel to the fire. Jack finally decided to send Carter, Marcus, and Bruce out to monitor the perimeter on their own while all members of the compound were ordered to gather in the bays that had housed the fire trucks before they were moved outside to cr
eate more living space for the safe-house. Jack didn’t have the time or inclination to battle uncooperative refugees who were endangering the already fragile civil defense system he had set up to fight the real danger in this county, but despite his frustration, he prepared to address the crowd.

  CHAPTER 17

  As soon as the refugees were gathered in the designated areas at Station 2, Jack jumped up on a chair and shouted for everyone to shut up. He was wearing all of his gear except the helmet, and word had spread of his exploits battling the infected over the past few days. As soon as people in the crowd realized who was speaking, they quieted down and listened to what Jack had to say. “I don’t know why some of you have not been following Deputy Little’s instructions on how to protect yourselves here in this compound. Any orders he gave you came directly from me, orders that are keeping people safe at three other locations in this county while some of you believe you know how to do this better.

  “Now, let me tell you what is going to happen here in the coming hours. The hundreds of zombies you’ve drawn to yourselves through your complete disregard for noise-discipline are about to be reinforced by many others. The shots fired here, along with the shouting, can be heard for miles around, and I’m estimating that at least three thousand people lived within sound range of this station before the infection set in. If you think that isn’t a problem, my people found that out of nearly five hundred people living in the Hunter’s Ridge housing addition last week, less than thirty were uninfected by the time we got there this morning.

  “I promise you that we are going to have more than a thousand zombies trying to get through the wire within the next six hours.”

  A chorus of dismay arose at Jack’s announcement, finally quieting when Jack lifted a halberd above his head and slammed the butt end into the chair with a loud boom.

  “If you are terrified by what I’ve just told you that’s to be expected. If you are afraid you may be willing to listen to me and my men as we try to save you from your own stupidity. I don’t recognize many of you gathered here, and I sure don’t know what you’re capable of doing as far as fighting these creatures is concerned, but you and your friends do know. I want people with military experience to step over to the wall on your right. Do it now.”

  Jack paused as fourteen men and two women stepped to the wall. “Those of you who are hunters or recreational shooters, and know you are good with your gun please step over to the wall on the left.”

  This time seventeen men and three women went to the wall. “Now, anyone who doesn’t know much about guns but feels like they could stick a spear into a zombie and kill it will be given some sort of hand-held weapon as soon as I’m done speaking; all you have to do is ask. If you think that these weapons aren’t as good as guns I’ll promise you this: I’ve killed more than forty of these creatures since I first encountered them in Afghanistan, and well over half were killed with maces, axes, swords, and the weapon you see in my hands right now, which is called a halberd.

  “I don’t believe that we are going to be able to keep the zombies from eventually getting through the wire and attacking the station. We’ll keep them out there as long as we can, then we’ll fight them from in here. I’m going to have both fire-trucks moved back into the bays. Those of you who can handle tools need to try to remove those ladders and rig some sort of flat beds we can load up on and evacuate when it becomes necessary to do so. Were any of you volunteers here before the outbreak?”

  Not surprisingly, four hands came up among the ex-military people and three among the hunters.

  “Well, you people need to stay in here and work on the trucks while I set up a perimeter defense. When I get back in here I want to know who’ll be driving the rigs when we bug out, and who the backup drivers are. Now, when I am finished speaking, Deputy Little will be handing out hand-held weapons to all who want them. Those of you standing by the walls will follow me outside; I will assign you fighting positions and a team leader. Those of you without an assignment will keep the children under control and keep water flowing to the troops.”

  Jack stopped talking and looked the people over for a moment. They looked scared and confused, and he knew that they were going to eventually be overrun and have to evacuate. There was no way they were going to be able to do it without loss, and people were going to die. He decided right then that as soon as the first truck was modified he would make sure it was filled with children and the elderly, as well as the adults who were assigned to look out for them. Everyone else would have to do the best they could. He wasn’t being cruel, and he knew that he would lose sleep over the people who fell here, but war was war. They would fight for what they loved and believed in, just as people had always done. He hoped they would always do so.

  Jack finally gave them the spark of hope they were looking for. “Most of us are going to survive this fight, but I’ve been to war and I’m not going to jinx us by promising that nobody will die in this battle. I am hoping that everyone will make it, and I’ll do my best to try to make that happen. Your best chance for survival is listening to what me and my men tell you, and following our orders without question. Now, let’s get moving.”

  Jack left Deputy Little in charge of the inside operations and took his ex-military and hunter groups outside where he quickly explained what was expected of them as they defended the perimeter of the safe-house. “No more noise. In case you haven’t noticed, noise is one of the main attractors for zombies. From this point forward you will use suppressed .22s or hand-held weapons. Keep your regular firearms and ammunition inside the bays where the fire trucks are being modified; we may need them when we have to bust out of here.”

  Carter came walking up with a cart full of halberds and maces. Jack hefted one of each and said, “We are going to take back this world by killing the zombies one at a time, and these are going to be the main tools we use to do it. When we faced these monsters in Afghanistan, Carter and I found that our best strategy was to operate in a two-man team so we could cover each other’s backs, but we’ve modified that to three-man teams based on recent experience with this outbreak. During our fight against these creatures in Afghanistan, we eventually abandoned our ammunition and used a mace and a bayonet. We were surrounded and vastly outnumbered, even our commanding officer had abandoned us, and we fought our way out with a mace and a bayonet attached to an M-4. Since the outbreak here in the states, many of the zombies I’ve killed have been with the halberd, and in our battle today at Hunter’s Ridge this weapon accounted for most of the kills our people made.

  “I suggest you take one of each. You will be organized into three squads of ten to eleven soldiers. Divide yourselves up as best you can based on who you know and trust, and I’ll assign anyone left. This man beside me is Carter Wilson. The black guy I brought with me is Marcus Goodwin, and the tall white guy is Bruce Owen. These men were Rangers with me in Afghanistan, and they’ve served in war zones all over the world. They are better fighters than I am, and they will be your squad leaders. Follow their orders without question and you may live, ignore them and you will die. At the very least, if you ignore their orders, I will set you outside the wire and you can find another group to join up with. Any questions?”

  A fit looking blond haired girl in her late teens raised her hand. “Sir, if you don’t think we can hold this place why are we even fighting here?”

  Jack smiled, “Good question. The answer is that we don’t have the transportation ready, and we need to buy time to prepare our ride out of here. The vehicles you arrived in are in a motor pool outside the wire, and getting everyone over there through the hundreds of zombies around us would be more difficult than rigging up the fire trucks to carry everyone together. We don’t know how your vehicles would run; one stalled car on the road and we have a traffic jam being mobbed by zombies.”

  The girl smiled back, “But you have your Hummer, and you fought your way in here. You could save yourselves right now.”

  “Believe me
, the thought has crossed my mind.”

  A chorus of nervous giggles erupted from the crowd as Jack explained, “Whoever the idiots were who didn’t follow Deputy Little’s orders should be allowed to stay here and fight the battle their way, since they apparently know everything. But as of right now all is forgiven and we fight together. I realize that everyone is absolutely freaked out by the virus and the zombies, so I can understand why some of you made mistakes. And in the long run, if we are going to take back the land from the zombies, we will need each other. So, young lady, my men and I will stay here and help you.”

  She smiled again, “Thank you, sir.”

  Jack asked, “What is your name, and how old are you?”

  Her face turned red, “Maddy Johnson, and I’m eighteen.”

  “Not old enough to have been in the military, so I take it you’re a hunter?”

  “Yes, sir, my dad’s been taking me with him since I was old enough to remember.”

  “Sounds like a smart man, he here with you?”

  She hung her head, “No, sir, our car broke down on the way here and we were surrounded by five or six of those things. Dad led them off of the road and started fighting them so we could get away. My mom and me, and my little brother, walked three miles to get here. I killed four zombies on the way, and mom got one.”

  Jack grimly nodded, “Well, Maddy, you will be my radioman and runner in the fight that’s going to happen here. I need someone smart and brave, and it appears that you are both.”

  During the time Jack had been instructing the people gathered at the safe-house, Marcus and Bruce had been guarding the wooded north and west sides that they all considered the weak points in the defense. In less than a half hour, they had put down eighteen zombies that had made it through the underbrush and trees into the open ground bordering the station. The Rangers and their men had mostly been using their halberds, so when the new squads joined them the evidence for emphasizing medieval weapons could not be disputed.