by J. W. Vohs
Zach finally shouted, “There’s a chopper on both flanks along the shore, and another out over the dam.”
Maddy looked at Chad, “Let’s go for that one, Sarge.”
“The bird over the dam? One of those choppers back over the horde is probably the command bird; we should probably go for one of those.”
“Sarge, I’m pretty sure that one over the dam is the same Blackhawk that turned the hunters on the walls back at Brandenburg. The monsters attacked without any of ‘em even seein’ us.”
Chad scratched his head. “You sure? They all look the same to me.”
“Will you just trust me, Sarge? Please?”
Chad held his hands up in supplication, “All right, honey, let’s go after the loner over the dam.”
Maddy bit her tongue, though she wanted to point out that Chad never called any of his other soldiers “honey.” Trusting her judgment about the helicopters made up for the old sergeant’s unintentionally condescending remark.
Shane pulled the boat up close, and Chad got comfortable with the Barrett. Maddy and Zach were glassing the target. They were all in the cabin, as was the muzzle of the sniper-rifle, in an attempt to keep the helicopter pilots from locating the source of the fire. The first shot made everyone jump except Chad, who knew it was coming. A few seconds later, Maddy and Zach both reported that there was no sign of a hit, and the chopper was still hovering. A second shot roared, and this time Zach excitedly declared, “Sparks flew at the base of the rotor! I think you hit it that time.”
Chad adjusted his sight and settled back into his perch, aiming for half a minute before the cabin shook once again.
“Alright!” Zach shouted. “Alright, Alright, Alright!”
“What happened?” Chad yelled as he chambered another round.
Maddy was awestruck. “Oh my God—I think you hit it!”
Zach had pulled the binoculars from his face and was wearing a huge grin. “Hell yes, you hit it! I saw a big hole in the cockpit glass on the pilot’s side.”
“It’s going down!” Maddy screamed with delight.
The four soldiers all stopped what they were doing and looked out the windows of the cabin just in time to see the Blackhawk spiraling out of control as it disappeared on the other side of the dam.
“Shane, take me closer to the other two.” Chad commanded.
“I would, Sarge, but they’ve pulled way back.”
Chad grabbed a pair of binoculars and took a look for himself. Sure enough, the choppers near the shoreline had pulled back nearly a kilometer. Realizing they were sitting ducks on the river, with no way of knowing how many boats were on the other side of the dam, Chad considered the mission accomplished.
“Shane, I’m hopin’ the folks in those choppers can’t tell who fired on ‘em.” Chad smiled broadly, “But just in case, get us the hell outta here.”
The relatively fresh squad sent to reinforce the trailer helped stem the tide there, but the phalanx was rapidly losing steam even with a protected right flank. Carter grabbed the radio.
“Luke?”
“This is Luke,” The radio squawked after a long moment.
“Get your troops off that trailer! The phalanx is a meter from the back of it. You gotta get outta there, NOW!”
“Holy crap, Carter—did you see that?”
“See what? I need you outta there!”
“That lead chopper just crashed behind the dam,” Luke enthusiastically shouted.
“Good news, but that ain’t gonna save us. Get movin’!” Carter was sounding almost frantic.
“Chill,” Luke replied calmly, “and check out the front.”
Carter put his eyes to his binoculars and saw a miracle unfolding before him. The phalanx was in the process of pushing back the hunters, and most of the flesh-eaters climbing gingerly over the dam had stopped in place. The horde was still on the shore, right up against the collapsed road atop the dam, but they seemed to be milling about rather than pushing forward as they had been doing all morning.
“What the hell . . .” Carter whispered to himself.
Even Luke seemed awed as he called over the radio, “Orders, sir?”
Carter shook himself out of his daze. “The trailer, Luke, I want a platoon with pikes up there with you. I’ll handle things down here.”
“You think they’ll be back?” Luke wondered.
“Ya’ll know the answer to that.”
Luke was quiet for a moment, “Yeah, they’ll be back. Something on that chopper that went down was pushing them forward, but you can be sure they have a backup.”
“Yep, that’s what I was thinkin’. Get that platoon up there, and try to get ‘em to eat somethin’.”
“Yes sir, Luke out.”
The soldiers in the phalanx all had time to take a knee, tend to their wounds, and scarf down an MRE. Gore-covered as they were, the energy they’d expended over the past three hours demanded that they refuel their bodies, so that’s what they did. Luke pulled the platoon that had suffered the most losses and positioned them on top of the trailer with explicit instructions.
“I screwed up the first time around; we have to hold this trailer in strength in order to protect the phalanx. Half of us will kill the monsters trying to climb the front, while the rest of us will assault the hunters attacking on the road. Make sure we have plenty of extra pikes up here and pile your shields at the front of the trailer, then make sure you eat while you have a chance.”
One of the Utah sergeants spoke up, “You think they’re coming back?”
Luke shook his head. “No, Sergeant, I know they’re coming back.”
After making sure that his orders were being followed on top of the trailer, Luke made it known that he was going back to see Colonel Wilson. Not wanting to lie, he did check in to see how Carter was faring and to discuss their good fortune concerning the crashed Blackhawk. With no way to know what caused the chopper to go down, they both agreed it was unlikely to happen again. Luke wished Carter good luck, then began walking through the ranks of the phalanx. The westerners had seen him in action, and he’d watched them. A great measure of respect had been earned by both parties that morning.
Luke slowly made his way past the troops, stopping occasionally to share a few words of encouragement. Most of the Utah men knelt with their helmets pushed back, sharing MRE packets with one another and telling stories of the morning’s combat. Luke saw that they still had hope in their eyes, most of them not realizing just how close they’d come to disaster before the hunter attack stalled. Many of the troops asked if the monsters would resume their assault, and Luke assured them that the flesh-eaters would come again. When he reached the front line, he found a group of officers looking over the rubble and corpse-strewn dam. They were talking about the heaping mound of dead just beneath the jagged edge of the blown road. They quieted as he approached, one of them calling out, “Thanks for the cover up there, sir.”
Luke resisted the urge to tell the officer not to call him sir. Instead, he nodded and complimented the men on their resilience. “All of you were outstanding this morning; your discipline and deadliness were really incredible.”
The officers just smiled and averted their eyes, not certain how to respond until a captain said, “Thank you, sir. I assure you that the feeling is mutual.”
Luke pointed out over the dam, “They’ll be coming again, soon. They won’t stop this time.”
“What stopped them last time, sir? We were steadily losing ground.”
Luke shook his head slightly, “Something to do with that Blackhawk going down—we’ve seen it before. In Kentucky, we kept the choppers away and the monsters poured right off the bridge. Maybe bringing this one down stopped them somehow—maybe the explosion scrambled the signal.”
The officers all nodded as Luke explained, “I’ve got a platoon on top of the trailer this time; we’ll cover your flank from up there. Hopefully it’ll help you hold the line down here.”
Luke gestured w
ith his chin toward the other side of the chasm filled with corpses at their feet. “I’m going over there to have a better look around.” He pointed to a relatively stable, large piece of asphalt lying flat upon a bed of crushed, iron pylons. “That’s a good spot to check things out.”
The Utah officers looked aghast as Luke started walking away. The captain carefully asked, “You’re going over there? By yourself?”
Luke looked back over his shoulder and nodded nonchalantly before he reached the edge of the road and began carefully stepping out upon the mound of dead hunters.
“Sir, why are you taking such a risk?”
Luke sounded confident and determined when he replied, “There’s something I have to do out there.” So many corpses were crushed into this gap that he was able to walk across to the slab without falling into the hideous gore squishing beneath his boots. When he reached the chunk of asphalt, he pulled himself up on top of it, wondering how many thousands of hunters had crossed the same rubble that morning before the attack was disrupted. Now he had placed himself between the relative safety of the phalanx and more than a hundred thousand flesh-eaters. He placed a pike and a halberd at his feet, their wicked spear tips pointed toward two monsters cowering on a mound of twisted, iron beams just ten meters away. The creatures eyed him with hungry malevolence, moaning and snapping in agitation when they saw Luke, but too worried about the possibility of falling from the dam to actually attack the lone human standing so close. Luke just smirked in their direction as he unhooked an extra quiver of arrows he’d found scattered on the roof of the trailer and set it next to the other weapons. Then he calmly strung his bow, pulled two fresh arrows from his last, untouched quiver, and shot each monster through the face before watching them tumble into the waters far below.
Satisfaction washed over him as he looked at the next group of hunters amid the rubble on the dam, apparently too frightened of the water to make any moves in his direction. Luke knew that their hesitation wouldn’t last, that a new Blackhawk would soon be flying out over the dam to compel the monsters to renew their assault. He looked forward to it. Brandenburg had haunted him long enough. The head injury following his shock at seeing a hunter purposely avoid his blow had faded into a low-grade headache he could live with. Now, here, he was going to return to his God-given mission of destroying the infected. They’d killed his hometown, killed his friends, and finally killed his father, but they hadn’t killed him. He knew he couldn’t stop this horde, but he was going to give notice that humans were the deadliest animals on the planet, not the hunters.
As a new helicopter cautiously made its way forward over the dam, the army of infected slowly stirred to action. One of the Utah officers called out to Luke and said he was bringing a squad over to help, but the teen warrior waved him away and called out, “Just don’t kill me by accident when I come running back.”
He turned around to see that three hunters were rapidly making their way across a jumble of cement and iron, heading toward the asphalt where Luke was defiantly standing his ground. Two arrows hissed through the cold air within seconds of one another, and two flesh-eaters dropped dead into the rubble. Luke allowed the third monster to actually place its hands on the slab before he crushed its skull with his trench axe and kicked its corpse down with the others. Now the top of the dam was a living creature, writhing and squirming in muted shades of pink and skin-tones as thousands of hunters threw caution to the wind and rushed howling toward the humans gathered on the other side.
Luke waited patiently with his bow, content to set the axe back into its belt-sheath while he practiced his archery skills on the objects of his enmity. There was no concern that these creatures were once humans, or that they were living animals, or that they were anything other than monsters from the pit of hell. Evil men had turned these bodies into instruments of death to be used against those who would not submit, and until Luke could get within weapons range of those men, he would destroy their abominable creations. Ten arrows flew in half a minute, dropping nine hunters in their tracks while knocking a mouthful of teeth from the last monster. The eleventh shot killed that one. Then the floodgates opened as Luke finally faced the first wave of hunters actually being pushed by the thousands moving forward on the northern shore.
Luke slung his bow and picked up the pike, slamming the razor-sharp point through the guts of one hunter and into the chest of another, sending the stricken monsters howling into the river far below. Before those two were even off the rubble pile, Luke had his halberd in hand, stabbing the spear tip of the eight-foot-weapon into faces and skulls with uncanny accuracy, even by his lofty standards. The creatures were ducking and grabbing—even the men in the phalanx had been dealing with the new behaviors all morning—and they were being pushed by the multitude behind them finally rousing themselves to fury. None of it saved the score of hunters from the cold steel Luke ruthlessly slammed into their brains in less than sixty seconds. Finally, several monsters managed to scramble to their feet on the concrete slab to grab at the deadly human, one of them rewarded with a kick to the sternum that sent it over the dam, while the second lost the top of his head to Luke’s trench axe.
Carter watched through his binoculars, his hands balled tightly into fists as he repetitively whispered, “Get outta there, get outta there, get outta there . . .”
During the western battles they’d been involved in, the men in the front ranks of the phalanx had never witnessed anything remotely close to what they were seeing now. The Utah soldiers had heroes in their ranks, men and women who’d made daring stands and lived to bask in the glory of their bravery. But what these veterans were watching unfold before them seemed to be an extended scene from a pre-war video game or Hollywood movie. Luke was now swinging and spinning his trench axe as calmly and efficiently as he had done countless times on the training grounds back home, in spite of the thousands of powerful, starving, furious hunters pushing inexorably toward his position.
The platoon on top of the trailer had the best view of all, just fifteen meters away from the fight and four above it. They were literally screaming themselves hoarse as Luke single-handedly kept the horde at bay, several of the more impetuous among them finally climbing down the back of the semi and beginning a stumbling trek across the dead to reach the mighty warrior before he was felled by the monsters. Several more soldiers from the front rank of the phalanx joined them, not even having to worry about breaking orders to hold their position as a captain had been the first to step out.
Carter was quivering with something between rage and an impossible desire to be at Luke’s side as he continued to watch the fight develop. Now the hunters were on the asphalt slab with the teen in numbers too great for any warrior to clear, and Carter cursed as he saw Luke go down under the frantically clawing and biting flesh eaters.
Luke wasn’t at the bottom of the pile, but he was close—several corpses had broken his fall as he was tackled by at least two huge hunters. He didn’t panic, having been in positions like this before. Luke knew that the key to survival when mobbed by a group of infected was to take advantage of any space they gave you. He couldn’t move his right hand, still gripping the trench axe that was unusable for the moment. So he pulled a short dagger from his belt with his left hand and thrust the strong blade through the ear of the closest skull.
That’s one, a voice in his head declared, somehow detached from the reality that the monsters on top of him were only a small portion of the vanguard of the massive army rapidly crossing the dam. But he knew no other way to fight against such outrageous odds—he could only kill them one at a time. He couldn’t move anything except his right foot and left arm, but that didn’t stop him from driving the dagger into the forehead of a hunter trying to gnaw its way through his visor. Then, somehow, the mortally stricken beast climbed off of Luke with the hilt of the blade still protruding from its punctured cranium. Now I’ve seen everything, Luke thought with numb astonishment.
Then the dead hunter
seemed to fly from the asphalt into the void above the rushing river below, and Luke looked up to see the concerned face of one of the officers he’d been speaking with before crossing the mound of dead.
“Are you all right?” the captain shouted.
Luke was too breathless to answer, but he allowed himself to be pulled to his feet by several more fighters who’d just thrown aside the other corpses holding him down. With his hands on his knees as he gasped for air, he finally waved toward the rising tide of hunters and wheezed, “Kill ‘em all!”
The troops who’d charged to Luke’s side would probably have been called Berzerkers in another time and place, for they were fighting beyond the reach of reason or any sense of mortal vulnerability. The warriors later claimed that there was no thought of life or death on that asphalt slab, only the unstoppable, visceral compulsion to kill the vile creatures that had brought so much misery and suffering to the human race. Luke would always believe that in that moment the soul of man transformed. An instinctive, justified, perhaps even holy, hatred of the flesh-eaters finally overwhelmed the desire of the soldiers to simply live in a world that seemed determined to kill them. From that moment forward, they would wage war as a sacred duty, an honor that brought glory not only in this life, but also in that yet to come. They had become crusaders.
Six men and one woman stood on the asphalt slab for nine more minutes. With unintelligible shouts and screams they repeatedly plunged their spears into the writhing mass of hunters, killing when they found the brain, and pushing the monsters from the dam when they didn’t. The horde had found their rhythm, finally pushing across the rubble with confidence after so many loose pieces of iron and cement had already taken thousands of their packmates to a watery death. Six, seven, sometimes eight abreast, the monsters scrambled over the dam, surging toward the despised humans with the strength of a hundred thousand working as one. Luke was young and powerful, five months of grueling combat and campaigning having fine-tuned his already athletic build into a potent bundle of muscle with a bad attitude and steady aim. So when a moment of clarity jarred him from the spell he’d been under since leaving the trailer he took note. His breathing was ragged, his axe swings were slowing, and he knew that if he was feeling this way the others were probably as bad or worse. It was time to rejoin the battalion.