by J. W. Vohs
The troops were evenly divided upon the three walls; there simply wasn’t enough room for more than about fifteen fighters on top of each barricade. The plan was for the first line to hold as long as possible, but to retreat in good order when they were finally exhausted or in danger of being overrun. On the backside of the first two walls sat two large propane tanks with dynamite taped beneath, Jared’s plan altered only by wireless detonators. The third wall was the highest of the defensive structures, and the fighting platform on top was deep enough to hold a double line of infantry standing shoulder to shoulder. If and when the soldiers were forced from this final barrier, the next sixty meters of bridge was wired with enough explosive to essentially cut the span in half.
Jack and Chad were rightly proud of the defenses their troops had constructed with equipment and materials gathered from a hostile landscape, and though Jack hadn’t told anyone else, he personally thought they might actually hold the bridge indefinitely. Jack had placed himself on the forward wall, along with the teens and a squad of Chad’s veterans. He’d insisted on leading from the front in this fight, arguing that his old platoon sergeant should command the battle from the third barricade. The truth of the situation was that Chad knew these men and their capabilities much better than Jack did. In addition, conducting successful retreats while being attacked was going to be tricky, and Jack wanted somebody he knew well to be holding the detonators on the homemade bombs they had planted between the walls.
Of course, regardless of how long Jack and Chad’s troops held the bridge, sooner or later they would need to bug out and begin to lure Barnes toward the Mississippi. But every hunter they killed here was one less they had to worry about in the future, and that was a good enough reason to put up a fight at this location. Also, Jack hoped to bloody the general’s nose here at the bridge so the would-be ruler of the world had one more reason to give up his idea of invading Indiana. Judging from the success his soldiers had enjoyed in the past against the infected attacking strong defensive positions, Jack was certain they would stop the hunter-army in its tracks for a day or two. Then the vanguard of the horde came into view.
With the sun fully over the horizon, Jack could clearly see the massed hunters pouring into the eastern edge of the town of Brandenburg. The crisp, morning light illuminated the ice-crystals that had formed overnight in the hair that flowed wildly from most of the creatures, creating a sparkling shimmer tinged with pink from the scars that seemed to cover more of the monsters’ bodies than the toughened skin created by the virus. Through field glasses Jack could see the faces of the beasts, their black eyes feverishly focused on the ground before them as they cantered along behind the choppers emitting the signal only the infected could percieve.
As the forward ranks of the hunter army came closer to the bridge, Jack could see the following waves of the host filling the land to the south as far as the eye could see. If there was an end to the roiling mass of infected, it had yet to come into sight. Everyone standing on the walls was silent, awe and fear mingling in their minds to rob them of the ability to even try to describe what they were seeing with any words they had yet learned. Numbers had no meaning as the endless swarm of hunters rushed steadily forward. The soldiers had heard the enemy army described in the tens and hundreds of thousands, but they now realized that they had been listening to the ravings of propagandists: nobody could possibly have any idea how many monsters were heading directly at them.
Without being ordered to do so, every fighter on the bridge had slowly dropped to one knee as they watched the endless flood of flesh-eaters approach, instinctively trying to avoid the monsters’ prying eyes as the beasts crashed through the town and into the fields just south of the river. The soldiers’ efforts to hide were for naught, however, as one of the Blackhawks slowly flew over their fortifications at a low enough altitude to easily see and count every single individual. Less than a minute later, in a manner that the survivors later described as similar to a flock of birds in flight, the hunter army did a right face and continued their steady pace without missing a step. Now they were moving north, on a route that led straight to the river.
As the forward elements of the horde reached the shoreline, they turned west again, moments later scrambling up onto the ramp leading to the bridge. If the presence of the walls caused any of the hundreds of hunters now heading directly toward the fortifications to hesitate in any way, none of the soldiers later reported seeing a single beast pause for even one second. In that moment everyone realized that regardless of how many fights they’d participated in against the infected, they’d never encountered so many healthy, fully-evolved flesh-eaters as they now saw hungrily charging toward the first wall.
In past battles the monsters had usually attacked haphazardly, individuals and packs pushing forward toward their prey in piecemeal assaults that inevitably led to breaks in the action where the humans could catch their breath and reorganize. With this army, however, the hunters simply kept moving forward at the same speed they’d maintained since coming into sight. When the first of the creatures struck the base of the wall, the mass of flesh-eaters behind them continued to push forward with no hesitation. The effective result of this collision between immovable object and irresistible force was that dozens of snarling hunters were shoved up and over the struggling bodies of the monsters below them, reaching the humans atop the wall in a matter of seconds.
The experienced fighters standing with Jack managed to immediately engage the creatures in spite of the shock they all felt over the speed with which their fortification had been rendered useless. Every spear slammed home in a lethal thrust as the hideous faces of the first flesh-eaters came into weapons range. Fifteen hunters died almost simultaneously, but except for the soldiers standing on the flanks of the line pitching their kills over the edge of the bridge, there was nowhere for the corpses of the dead to go but through the line of defenders and over the wall. Somehow Jack’s fighters stood their ground as the number of monsters before them seemed to increase exponentially, and for nearly a minute the valiant troops managed to send their victims into the Ohio or tumbling onto the bridge’s surface between the first two walls. But any hope of holding their position had been extinguished in that short period of time, and even as he continued to kill with every thrust of his halberd, Jack was now shouting for retreat.
“What am I looking at?” Vickie leaned away from the microscope and shuffled through a stack of various annotated lab tests.
“The equipment we got from Utah is great, but it’s taken me a long time to find even general genetic data bases. I know we’re lucky to have anything at all since the cloud crashed, but relying on medical books, hard drives, and limited testing supplies is slow going. Plus, we’re conserving power, so I can only fire up the lab for a few hours a day.” Redders scratched his head. “I need you to double check everything—make sure I haven’t screwed up somewhere.”
Vickie agreed, “OK, but what are you trying to show me?”
“If I tell you, then I might influence your conclusions.”
“Just tell me what you want me to do,” Vickie offered, “and I’ll get right to work. You know I think you’re a genius—and not just because there’s a framed copy of your Mensa membership tucked away in one of those file drawers.”
Redders smiled self-consciously and handed Vickie a medical journal. “Read the article on optogenetics when you get the opportunity, but right now I want you to confirm our viral vector—that was the easy part, but we are going to take this one step at a time.”
CHAPTER 12
If the Brandenburg fight had occurred just a few months earlier, every soldier on the first wall would have died in the chaotic retreat from the top of the twenty-foot-high barricade, but Chad’s fighters had learned during the siege in Buffalo to always leave a way out no matter how strong your fortifications appear to be. In this case, they had dismantled swing-sets from local playgrounds and installed slide-rails at regular intervals along
the defensive line. Now they began to slide down like firefighters following an alarm, reaching the ground in seconds while the monsters pursuing them had to suffer the effects of a twenty-foot drop.
Still, only five railings had been placed on the wall and somebody had to be the last down. Jack and the teens were so fast and efficient with their killing that they were able to create the slightest bit of time and space in which to escape, but in the end there was simply no way to save everyone. Three of Chad’s soldiers were caught by the hunters. One managed to scramble to the northern edge of the bridge and pitch himself over the railing, where he fell into the chilled waters of the Ohio and disappeared from view. Another man dropped between the walls with four hunters tearing at his armor. Nobody ever knew if he died from the impact with the concrete or the hands and teeth of the flesh-eaters, but he didn’t move after hitting the surface. There was no sign or sound from the third soldier, and the remaining troops were in no position to go looking for him.
Once the survivors were on the bridge, the fighters on top of the second wall opened up with every firearm they possessed. Scores of hunters were pouring over the first barricade, pressure from the thousands behind forcing them from the heights in jumps and falls that left many of the first to hit the surface unable to walk. Chad’s sharpshooters didn’t waste ammo on the injured, wisely focusing a concentrated fire on the monsters still on their feet. Ladders and ropes were waiting for Jack and his fighters as they reached the next wall, and nobody even considered turning to look at their pursuers before beginning their scrambling escape.
The sound of gunfire sputtered out as the soldiers atop the wall turned to pikes to keep the crazed monsters off of their friends climbing to safety. The scene was one of utter chaos as hunters stumbled and crawled over the bodies of their dead and injured pack-mates, few of them able to find the solid footing necessary to effectively jump after the fleeing humans. Somehow, all of the survivors managed to reach the waiting hands of the defenders atop the second wall. They were pulled up and pushed to the floor of the fighting platform as cries of, “Fire in the hole!” rang out just before the propane-dynamite explosive was detonated.
The world erupted in a deafening roar that shook the bridge like an earthquake. The defenders who managed to look up at that moment saw pieces of hunters hurtling in every direction from the kill-zone between the two walls, immediately followed by a macabre storm of black blood and shredded body-parts raining down upon the cowering soldiers. Jack managed to shake off the shell-shock before any of the others, rising to one knee only to be confronted with a scene that he thought hell would reject as beyond the pall of acceptable horror.
The two walls and bridge railings formed a large bowl that held a three-foot-deep stew of flesh and black blood, with pieces of pristine-white bone scattered about in a ghastly contrast to the colors presented by the rest of the gore. Into this horrible soup of obscene butchery came the inexorable push of the hunter army, who’s unstoppable advance was now obvious to the shocked soldiers still committed to the fight.
The flesh-eaters tumbled from the top of the first wall in a steady flow that quickly covered the morass sucking at the feet and legs of the first monsters to enter the hideous stew. Within minutes the following waves of hunters somehow found the footing they needed to stumble toward the second barricade, where everybody expected to see the same process used to scale the first wall begin anew. The only positive development for the defenders was that they had a short period of time to organize and communicate with one another before the fighting reignited.
Jack walked along the platform and shouted that everyone had to use pikes and halberds to spear the creatures anywhere possible, and then pull the skewered monsters to the edge of the bridge and toss them over. The plan was weak, as it would require hard-pressed defenders to cross in front of one another in the middle of a desperate fight. Jack knew it wouldn’t work for long, but trying to stand in place and kill every hunter that reached them would result in the humans being overrun in less than a minute once again.
Luke used the brief interlude to wipe gore from his visor and gloves, then he looked over to Zach and Maddy to make sure they were okay. The teens were obviously shaken, all prior combat with the infected in no way preparing them for what they’d just experienced.
“You guys hangin’ in there?” Luke shouted from under his helmet. The both looked at him and nodded, each gripping a pike with fierce determination in spite of the hopeless situation.
“Listen,” Luke continued, “you two kill one of the bastards each and get the hell outta here; I’ll hold ‘em off for a few seconds and then join you.”
Zach’s blood-spattered helmet slowly swung from side to side at the same moment a muffled, “Screw you,” came from Maddy.
“Dammit!” Luke shouted, “didn’t you hear anything Jack said about taking orders?”
“We ain’t on your mission right now,” Zach retorted. “Me and Maddy are just soldiers; our people need you to survive this.”
Luke fought the urge to immediately push his friends down the back of the wall, but then he forced himself to consider Zach’s statement for a brief moment. Somehow, in the middle of a horrific battle, a calm washed over him as he looked out over the horizon at the most beautiful sunrise he’d ever seen. Beyond this hideous killing-ground, somewhere in a future he’d never been willing to consider, he saw himself leading an army, the spearhead of a fierce people carving out a homeland from the apocalyptic chaos that had plagued the earth for years. He was certain that he heard the laughter of children playing, children born after the outbreak. He suddenly remembered that humanity had a chance to survive, and for some unfathomable reason, the people needed him to lead the struggle. He saw Gracie’s eyes and knew she was smiling, even though he could see nothing else of her face. Then he heard Maddy repeatedly shouting his name and the scene slowly faded from his consciousness. He had no idea if he’d just seen a vision or experienced some sort of fantasy spawned by the concussion of the explosion, but he knew for a certainty that Zach, in some inexplicable way, was correct in his argument.
Before Luke could say anything, Jack walked over to their position and stepped into the line with his trusted halberd in hand. The four of them watched as the first group of hunters able to cross the slippery carpet of their still-struggling mates lying face-down in the gore reached the base of the second wall. Hundreds more stumbled determinedly behind and began climbing over the others in their unstoppable drive to reach the humans above.
“Luke,” Jack shouted through his helmet. “Kill one of these bastards and toss him in the river, then get your ass back to the third wall and get ready to pull us up. Tell Chad to pull everyone back and get ready to blow the bridge—we can’t hold these walls.”
Still feeling a bit overwhelmed after what he’d just seen and heard, Luke merely nodded and loudly replied, “Yes sir.”
Maddy and Zach turned and stared as they tried to determine if their headstrong young friend was serious, but Jack was smiling under his helmet as he realized Luke had finally seen the light. The older fighter still wasn’t exactly sure what that light was, but he felt deep in his bones that the enigmatic young warrior had an important role to play in future of their people.
“You three better be right behind me,” Luke shouted.
Jack nodded before turning to the others, “Zach, Maddy, you kill two and follow Luke. I’ll expect all three of you to help pull me up when I retreat.”
“You WILL be coming as soon as we’re up that wall,” Maddy declared.
Jack’s battle-scarred helmet bobbed up and down in agreement before he yelled, “Here they come!”
No army that had ever existed would have been able to crawl across the horrors these hunters had just crossed, then attack a defended wall with such unmitigated ferocity. Once again, the monsters created by the virus proved to be soldiers of unprecedented will and strength. They didn’t think about what they were doing; they just did it. The
infection had transformed them into insatiable eaters of human flesh, and that food was right in front of them. Whatever role the helicopters played beyond steering the creatures toward their targeted victims wasn’t clear, but the frenzied and unceasing attacks at these locations were unlike anything else; even warriors with experience battling strong packs of hunters were completely unprepared for what transpired in these situations. From New England to Georgia, up through Tennessee and Kentucky, Barnes’ armies had crushed all resistance with increasing efficiency. They had faced higher walls than these, some with many more defenders, and they’d never failed to capture prey. This assault would be no different.
Jack had spent the past five months training every soldier he met about how to fight the infected. In the beginning, he focused on armor and weapons, and then moved on to tactics. As the creatures he’d called zombies evolved into hunters and their numbers increased, the strategies used to defeat them were changed as well. He hadn’t spent a lot of time with Chad’s fighters, but since they’d come riding to the rescue during the Battle of Fort Wayne he’d demanded they spend at least a few hours each day on the training grounds with The Castle’s veterans. Now the extra work paid off, as the troops automatically formed into a mini-phalanx, tightly packed next to one another and presenting an unbroken array of spears and pikes against the enemy charge. The soldiers were strong and experienced, victors of many battles against vastly superior numbers, but this time they were doomed to failure.
Jack knew that the key to success when employing the phalanx was to ensure rock-solid flank protection, and have enough warriors in the formation to prevent the enemy from simply bowling them over. Today they had the flanks perfectly sealed, but this horde of hunters was far more numerous and disciplined than any they’d ever faced. Perhaps discipline wasn’t the correct word to describe the tactic being employed by the flesh-eaters, but fact that they were working together was undeniable. Every one of the beasts was pushing the creature to its front with all of its strength, with the end result being an unstoppable momentum at the point of attack. The number of hunters able to confront Jack’s fighters atop the wall at any given moment was roughly equal to that of the defenders, but the pressure of tens of thousands of creatures behind the front line meant that even corpses were effective as crude battering rams. Ultimately, the humans were going to be pushed back no matter how many monsters they killed.