by J. W. Vohs
There was a huge power station over there, plus the semis and other large vehicles parked all over the open ground, so the hunters had to navigate an obstacle course before they could even begin to cross the rubble-strewn dam. As was the case at Brandenburg, after a brief delay in which thousands more infected joined the crowd, several Blackhawks flew over the edge of the dam and completed several slow circles. Even before the helicopters backed off, hundreds of creatures ran toward the collapsed road and began to pick their way across. The land behind this first wave was rapidly filling up with a mass of hunters packed shoulder-to-shoulder, jostling one another in their attempts to reach the dam.
Slowly at first, a few gunshots could be heard echoing across the lake from the boats now lined up below the road approaching the dam. Then the firing became so heavy it sounded as if someone was rocking on full auto with no need to reload. Carter continued to watch the gathering horde behind the monsters making their way across the dam, finally holding up his index finger so T.C., who was standing a few feet away with the detonators for the propane-bombs, knew it was time to set off the first explosion. Even the soldiers standing in the phalanx could see the geyser of flame shoot skyward on the opposite bank, while from his perch Luke watched dozens of hunters tossed about like debris in a hurricane.
The bombs continued to blow every few seconds for nearly five minutes, the soldiers cheering as the sky above the enemy army turned black with so much oily smoke they doubted there would be many monsters left for them to fight. Luke could see that there were definitely huge gaps created within the mass of hunters with each new explosion, but his heart sank as the openings were almost immediately filled with new flesh eaters pouring out of the tree-line. The snipers were now concentrating their fire on the elevated road leading to the top of the dam, a place where so many corpses had fallen that the survivors were forced to climb their way over the macabre mound before continuing on. For the moment at least, the momentum of the horde’s charge had been slowed and their formation broken up, which meant that there would be actual fighting at the front of the phalanx rather than just a shoving match the humans would inevitably lose.
Luke nocked an arrow and shouted down to the lead platoon, “Thirty seconds till contact!”
The first hunter to scramble across the mountain of iron and concrete was pulling himself up on the road when he spotted the humans and opened his mouth to let out the howl that signaled the presence of food. His cry was transformed into a whistling gurgle as Luke’s first arrow of the day entered the beast’s open mouth just before slicing a one-inch hole through the larynx and spinal cord. The quarrel flew on out over the Tennessee River and disappeared into the morning gloom, while the now paralyzed, dying hunter rolled back down into the rubble where scores of callused feet used his body as a foothold in their own climb to reach the undamaged section of the road above. Within seconds a dozen flesh-eaters had taken the place of the one Luke had killed.
The creatures were now making their way across the dam in such numbers that Luke was witnessing a miniature version of the phenomenon he’d seen on the wall in Brandenburg: the hunters were pushing their own kind to the surface and using mounds of their writhing bodies to climb toward their prey. The Utah fighters in the first ranks of the phalanx now entered the battle, and Luke immediately saw that the newbies were good, damn good. Instead of the panic and confusion he expected to see at the point of contact, the western infantrymen were hunched behind their modified riot-shields and pushing forward against what was rapidly becoming a mass of attackers. The soldiers were relying on their protective gear to keep them safe from bites as they simply pushed the hunters back into the hole from which they’d climbed, or, much better yet, over the side of the dam into the waters below.
Luke emerged from the fog of doubts that had plagued him just minutes earlier, firing arrows into the attackers faster and more accurately than he could ever remember doing before. The soldier serving as his radioman carried an AR-15 in addition to the rest of his gear, and he was killing hunters almost half as fast as Luke. Between the two of them, they were allowing the edge of the phalanx to practice their rotations without yet facing the full pressure of the monster-army that would inevitably hit them. More and more of the creatures were scrambling over the dam now, many of them knocking other beasts to their deaths by shoving them off the crumbling rubble in their frenzy to get across. Luke saw their numbers increasing by the minute, but by this point his mind was back in a familiar, almost happy place, killing hunters with machine-like efficiency.
Carter had a much different vantage point of the battle. He could see the big picture developing in a way that did nothing to sooth his earlier anxieties. The propane-bombs had killed thousands of hunters, filling the ground near the dam with gore and body parts that literally sent rivulets of black blood pouring across the frozen ground until it joined streams flowing into the river. That was the first twenty minutes of engagement; now every square foot of ground on the other side of the dam, including that filled with vehicles to disrupt the enemy formation, was covered with the feet of hunters pushing forward. A steady flow of bodies fell from the precarious trail across the dam as flesh-eaters were shot, pushed by others, or simply lost their footing and slid over the edge. Already the corpses flowed in the Tennessee River like monstrous pieces of driftwood, floating away by the hundreds, then thousands. Still they came on.
Even without his binoculars, Carter could see that the hunters had definitely gained a foothold on the undamaged section of road being defended by the phalanx, but it wasn’t much of one. The westerners were fighting better than expected, while Luke and his radioman continued to drop hunters every few seconds. So far the fight had gone as planned, but the next twenty minutes would be decisive; the battalion of humans would soon face the full weight of the horde pushing over the dam.
Those twenty minutes passed, and then another, with the phalanx still standing intact against the surging hunters. The humans had slowly but surely lost twenty paces to the flesh-eaters, who could now bring the force of hundreds of their mates against this small group of prey. But the irresistible surge from behind had yet to develop for the monster-army. The tenuous trail across the top of the dam to this point was now being successfully traversed by thousands of hunters, but there just wasn’t room for tens of thousands to add their strength to the push.
Luke had one quiver of arrows strapped across his back, and his radioman had seated his last magazine before slinging the M-4. Both fighters were now using long pikes to keep the monsters from the top of the semi-trailer, and the struggle was becoming difficult to maintain. Luke had sent a message back to Carter fifteen minutes earlier, telling him that they needed a squad if they were to hold their position much longer. If they lost the trailer, the phalanx would immediately have to retreat ten meters beyond the rear of it so they couldn’t be flanked by leaping hunters. Neither Luke nor his radioman could follow up on the call though; they were facing a steady attack by monsters that saw the two as easier food than the humans below.
Suddenly Luke found his pike being ripped away when a beast he’d just speared through the neck grabbed the shaft in a death grip as it tumbled over the edge to the road below. Luke pulled his trench axe almost before the pike left his hands, and with a vicious back-stroke sprayed brain matter all over the spot where the radioman should have been. Unfortunately the brains didn’t hit Luke’s partner because he simply wasn’t there. Without a scream, shout, or cry of any kind, the young man had just disappeared. Luke didn’t have a spare second to look for him either, as a scar-covered female had managed to stand erect on top of the trailer while two more monsters were pulling themselves up. Luke took two quick steps toward the flesh-eater and used a half-swing intended to punch a hole in the side of her head with the spiked side of the trench axe. The beast ducked at the last moment and tackled him with an ease that his brain just couldn’t comprehend.
His helmet hit the surface of the trailer so hard he
actually saw stars. Then he felt what he thought was the other two monsters grab hold of him, and he knew he was a goner. His last thought as he was being pulled to his feet was, “She ducked?”
The two Utah soldiers were shaking him, hard, while the rest of their squad cleared the remaining hunters from the top of the trailer.
“Are you injured, sir?” one of the men was shouting.
Luke finally managed to shake his head before mumbling through his visor, “Think I hit my head hard when I went down. Any sign of my radioman?”
“No, sir, we saw him go down while we were climbing the cab of the truck. He went over the side just a few seconds before you were jumped.”
Luke just nodded as his senses slowly returned. “She ducked?”
Following the opening parries the battle turned into something of a stalemate. Carter’s snipers were out of ammo, all of the propane-bombs were gone, and the soldiers in the phalanx were holding their ground against an enemy that seemed incapable of mustering any more of a push across the rubble-strewn dam than what they had already demonstrated. On the far bank helicopters were hovering above the horde, and the monsters still appeared to be more than ready to charge across the dam if there was simply room to do so. But Carter knew that what appeared to be an impasse was a looming defeat for his troops. Three hours had passed since the battle had begun, and beneath the weight of their armor and the strain of swinging heavy weapons the soldiers were tiring. The rotations were more frequent and much more confusing than they’d been earlier in the fight. Casualties were mounting as well. At least a score of men were gone, over the edge of the dam or buried beneath mounds of hunter-corpses. Twice that number were injured badly enough to be out of this fight, though nobody had returned to the convoy with a bite-wound. With the cold weather, dehydration wasn’t as big of an issue as it had been in the summer battles Carter had participated in, but there was now no doubt that the energy of the troops was flagging.
Luke was somewhat loopy for a few minutes after hitting his head, and the Utah soldiers who’d rescued him used their radio to put him in contact with Carter. The teen babbled on about a hunter actually dodging an axe-swing, but Carter knew they’d never seen that sort of awareness from any of the infected they’d encountered. After a tense few minutes, Luke calmed down and promised that he could stay in the fight. In the communications they’d shared since then, Luke seemed his normal self. The squad on the trailer continued to endure intense pressure though, losing one soldier over the edge while another suffered a broken arm. Carter had relieved the squad twice, but they were now holding a line about halfway across the trailer. The hunters hadn’t pushed Luke’s men far enough back to endanger the flank of the phalanx, but that moment was rapidly approaching. When it arrived, the battalion would have to almost double the line across the road atop the dam, and the rate of fatigue would increase. Luke was right, Carter thought, it was indeed a math problem, and the humans hadn’t solved it yet.
After blowing the Highway 64 Bridge over the Tennessee about five miles north of the Pickwick Dam, Chad Greenburg had pulled his undersized platoon five miles to the west and put them into a comfortable bivouac for a few days before heading to Vicksburg. Early in the morning on the second day, they heard gunfire to the east and figured that the fight at Pickwick was finally underway. Maddy and Zach were in their armor and carrying weapons within the hour, requesting permission to go back to the river, find a boat, and head up to the dam to see how they could help out.
Chad shook his head sadly. “Kids, it’d be one hell of a lot easier to just send a vehicle over there, and I already asked Jack about doing that. He’s worried that something like what happened in Brandenburg could happen at the dam, and doesn’t want us risking ourselves by getting in the way of a million hunters.”
“There are not a million of ‘em,” Maddy snapped.
“Close a damn ‘nuff for me!” Chad retorted.
Maddy wouldn’t look him in the eye; she just stared holes through the road they were standing on.
“Look, kid, ain’t nobody wants to be in that fight over there more’n I do. I was Carter’s platoon leader on THREE deployments, and now he’s over there without me. But orders are orders, and even though they might be shit, if we all stop following them and start doing our own thing we’ll lose everything.”
“Sarge,” Zach quietly asked, “Were the orders not to drive over there because we could be overrun by the horde?”
Chad looked at Maddy with an expression usually found on the faces of fathers who don’t know what to say to their angry daughters. She wouldn’t meet his gaze, so he looked at Zach and nodded. “Yep, that was the order.”
Zach hesitated, realizing that tensions were high. He chose his words carefully. “Sarge, did Jack say anything about sending a scout team up the river to see how things were going?”
Chad shook his head, “No, but I’ve looked over the maps. We’d have to wade through a forest for a mile or two to even reach Carter, and it’s probably just a big swamp.”
“No, Sarge,” Zach countered, “just one boat up to the dam to have a look around.”
“What good is that gonna do?”
“Well, remember how the Barrett turned that chopper around back at Brandenburg? Maybe we could help out with one of those.”
Chad cocked his head and considered the idea. It likely violated the spirit of Jack’s directive to stay clear of the dam, but it didn’t directly contradict any specific order. And Zach had a valid point. A small smile twitched at the corners of the old sergeant’s mouth. “I guess it couldn’t hurt. I suppose you two know where a boat is?”
“Yes sir!” they shouted in unison.
Carter could see that the situation on the front line was rapidly deteriorating, the troops were simply exhausted. The forward rank of the phalanx was just a few meters from the back of the semi-trailer, and after that the defense would disintegrate quickly. He felt helpless until he looked over the two squads he’d held back to be the rear guard. The sergeant in charge of the detachment looked into his eyes with a longing Carter completely understood.
“Hey Sarge,” Carter asked, “think we could rotate these men up to the front for a round or two?”
“Absolutely, sir!”
“Well, let’s get in there.”
As Carter led the fresh troops through the lines of the phalanx, he was once again amazed at their discipline and self-control. There was no panic, and the soldiers were still communicating with one another as they waited to rotate back to the front line. They seemed happy to let Carter and the two squads through, but they did shout out advice and warnings as the clean fighters passed through the bloody ranks. Finally they approached the front line, the sergeant in charge of the squads shouting, “Rotate!” until the weary, gore-covered men in front gave one last heave forward before stepping toward the rear.
Carter instantly found himself faced with a snarling, short hunter that seemed to be nothing but muscle and pink scar tissue fueled by rage. The experienced soldier immediately punctured the creature through the face with the tip of his halberd, though for just a moment it seemed as if the flesh-eater made a grab for the shaft as the weapon approached. Carter killed two more before the third ducked the weapon, surprising Carter as much as it had Luke. Unlike the teen on top of the trailer, Carter had friends on each flank, and from the left T.C. killed the beast before it could approach any closer. Still, the hunters were apparently continuing to evolve in mind and body, making them even more dangerous than the last time Carter was in this type of situation.
Being fresh and full of anxious energy, Carter and his two squads refused to rotate to the rear when the next group called them back. He still had plenty of fight left in him, and hoped the exhausted troops were taking good advantage of the break they were getting. The line actually gained a few steps until a hunter jumped from the trailer and landed on the soldier guarding the right flank. Carter managed a quick visual scan and saw that there was no way t
roops on the road could advance beyond the line being held on the trailer. As he went back to killing flesh-eaters, he mentally slapped himself for not placing an entire platoon up there to begin with, both to hold the position and kill hunters from the flank. Once again, he was learning command lessons through the bloodshed of soldiers entrusted to his care.
Finally, after almost half an hour of successful, sustained combat on the front line, Carter led his squads to the rear where he could consider their next move. The man who’d been jumped from the trailer was dead with a broken neck, and another had been pulled into the mass of attacking hunters and disappeared. Eighteen, slightly battered soldiers were all Carter had to work with. He returned to his observation post and looked over the situation once again. He saw that the phalanx had been forced to pull back a few steps because the line on top of the trailer was losing ground. Carter ordered the sergeant to lead nine men up there to help Luke out, and now there were ten soldiers, including Carter, remaining in the rear guard to cover a retreat. That wouldn’t be enough.
CHAPTER 20
One of Chad’s most trusted soldiers, a young man named Shane, was piloting the cabin cruiser as it rocketed up the Tennessee River. Maddy and Zach, armed only with binoculars, were serving as spotters for Chad, who was personally manning the .50 cal on this mission. As the dam came into view, Maddy shouted that Carter’s troops were still holding the road, but barely. Drawing closer, they could all see how the defenses had been arranged, and they marveled that the horde had been slowed down enough for the humans to fight back this time.