by J. W. Vohs
Snow flurries had fallen off and on through the night, but there was little wind coming off the river or from any other direction so the smokescreen plan was still looking good. The nervous breathing of more than ten thousand soldiers gathered in the phalanx below engulfed the formation in a ghostly-white vapor that should have looked beautiful, but appeared rather ominous considering the blood-letting that was about to occur.
As Jack contemplated the surrealistic scene, it occurred to him that, except for Andi and a few others back in Fort Wayne, everyone he loved was standing in the middle of the tightly-packed troops waiting to grapple with the horde. With that realization came a startling thought: Except for my son. He silently cursed his brother for both keeping and sharing the information about Maggie, and he decided to get the full story from David that very evening if they both survived the day.
Luke stood between David and Blake in the center of the front line of the phalanx. He had reluctantly left his bow in camp for this fight, choosing a halberd as his primary weapon and trench axe as a back-up. Gracie and Lori were with Marcus and Bobby along the railroad-cut. They were four of the best shooters in the Indiana Company and were beginning the battle where they could do the most damage. Luke worried about all of them, but was confident that he would soon see them passing through the phalanx on their way to new firing positions atop the escape barges at the river’s edge. Everything that needed to be said to Gracie and the rest of his loved ones had been said, so now he silently prayed to his God for the strength he would need in the coming fight.
Gracie wished for the hundredth time that she could feel Luke’s shoulder next to her own, but she understood why it couldn’t be; her parents had raised her for a moment such as this. Since she and her brother had been strong enough to hold a rifle, they had been taught how to shoot by professional instructors. With a war-veteran, prepper for a father, and an Israeli-born and raised mother, she’d been trained in various self-preservation skills. But biology was undeniable, and she weighed one-ten soaking wet. She wasn’t built for a shoving match in the phalanx, but she was one of the best snipers in their settlement. She was glad to have Lori at her side, as she’d been since they first met near Cleveland in the early days of the outbreak. Marcus and Bobby were with them, and they all had people they loved in the dense formation to their rear. She was grateful to be among friends as dawn approached, ready to accept whatever fate brought her way with the morning light.
Jack finally realized that his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him: the eastern horizon was lighter than it had been a few minutes earlier. T.C. was serving as his aide, and he had been relatively silent over the past hour after informing Jack that all commanders had reported that their units were in place. Vicksburg was silently waiting for sunrise, its defenders simultaneously fearing the monsters the light would bring and anxious to get on with the business they were here for. T.C. appeared at his commander’s side with another steaming mug of coffee, and after a few sips Jack returned his gaze to the east, just in time to see flames roar into the dawn air from one of the propane bombs along the railroad.
Gracie and the others had heard the rotors of the Blackhawks slicing through the ice-cold morning sky just minutes before they saw the first of the hunters shuffling toward them along the I-20 corridor. Howls began to echo across the frosty landscape as the flesh-eaters started to hit the stakes and wire waiting for them. Jack had predicted that many of the monsters in the vanguard of the horde would successfully navigate the traps and make their way down into the railroad-cut. Only when the full weight of the massive army pressed into the backs of the forward ranks would the creatures begin to impale themselves in large numbers. The bridges over the cut had been blown the night before, and as the first monsters stumbled down into the rubble-strewn ditch, somebody with twitchy fingers prematurely set off one of the bombs that was supposed to be saved for when the snipers could no longer keep up with the horde.
Gracie jumped in her shooter’s rest, but luckily wasn’t looking in the direction of the blast so her vision wasn’t affected by the sudden, brilliant light of the exploding propane. Still shocked by the wave of the enormous blast, Gracie’s training took over and she found herself peering through the scope on her Ruger 10-22. She quickly picked out a hunter sliding down some gravel, waited until its feet hit solid ground, then sent two bullets through the beast’s forehead. The .22 wasn’t a powerful round, but at this range it didn’t need to be. Bigger guns were waiting in the barges for covering the phalanx later in the battle, but for now all Gracie and the other shooters needed to worry about was the fifty meters directly in front of their line.
Now the cut was rapidly developing into what the ex-Rangers would call a target-rich environment, as hunters began pouring into the ditch by the score, then the hundreds. Wire and stakes stalled their advance, but soon the remaining propane bombs would be needed to stop the strengthening horde. Gracie’s weapon was a semi-automatic rifle, and she had a backpack filled with loaded, twenty-round magazines. She had no incentive to conserve ammo, so she fired as fast as her eye could acquire targets. With the other snipers shooting nearly as fast as she was, the air around her reverberated with the sound of so many rounds being popped off that it seemed as if the hunters were being hit with machine guns.
Between the bullets, wire, and cruel stakes, thousands of hunters were being removed from the battle without ever seeing their prey, but still they pressed forward in numbers too high to stop. The propane bombs began to detonate all along the line, blowing pieces of earth and flesh-eaters into the sky and warning every shooter to retreat immediately. Lori grabbed Gracie’s shoulder and pulled her toward the rear as blast waves hit the girl from seemingly every direction. Marcus was suddenly with them, shouting that Bobby was on their six and they needed to run. Seeing the Rangers retreating was enough for Gracie, who finally put her remaining energy into her already aching legs as nearly a thousand other snipers joined in the withdrawal. None of them knew the full extent of the damage the snipers had wrought in less than half an hour of shooting, but they had killed or disabled more than ten thousand of Barnes’ best monsters while losing only six soldiers to the beasts.
From his perch on the wall, Jack did have some idea of the carnage his snipers and traps had inflicted on the horde. Beyond the railroad cut, the increasing light revealed hundreds of hunters impaled on stakes and tangled in concertina, and those creatures were only a fraction of what had to be moving through the trees and brush where they couldn’t be seen. The tiny, underappreciated .22s had cut through the forward ranks of the flesh-eaters like a sharp scythe through ripened wheat. Before the bombs exploded, the shallow ravine looked like some horrific scene from wars past, corpses lying in great mounds as the creatures were shot down while crawling over their own dead. Finally the push became too great, and the soldiers on the edge of the cut did exactly as they’d been ordered to do by withdrawing at the appropriate moment. Jack saw several snipers fall during the run back to friendly lines, something that was inevitable when so many people were running over rugged terrain, but almost all of the shooters reached the phalanx with room to spare.
Luke saw Gracie and Lori running back from the railroad cut and realized that they were going to make it, Marcus and Bobby too. They passed through the phalanx far to his left, so he couldn’t call out to them, but he shouted in joy and relief as they disappeared into the tightly packed ranks of waiting soldiers. Behind them came the hunters, many missing limbs and bearing horrible burns, but still seeking human flesh. This first wave of monsters was dropped with little effort, the relatively inexperienced troops of the Mississippi Brigade cheering until they saw the massed horde coming toward them at a steady trot.
Lanes had been left open for the retreating snipers, but most of the ground in front of the phalanx was filled with more of the stakes and wire that had already stopped thousands of hunters. Luke knew that the horde would simply push up and over these obstacles with no concern for how ma
ny of their own they left dead and injured in their wake, but the traps did reduce the severity of first impact between the two armies. With practiced ease, he impaled the first monster on the halberd he’d planted in the frozen ground at his feet, then flipped another over his shield before huddling behind the plexiglass and beginning to push. Stanley Rickers’ veterans were in the second and third lines, and they were spearing and hacking the hunters as fast as they appeared. All Luke could see was a steady fountain of black-blood raining down the front of his shield.
In one of those strange, isolated lulls common to combat from within shield walls, the pressure in front of Luke, David, and Blake momentarily disappeared. The three ultra-experienced warriors immediately pulled short swords and axes from their weapon belts and went to work on the nearby hunters. For half a minute the efficiently lethal trio stabbed and hacked to death a score of creatures before the tide ebbed back in their direction. At that point they all yielded to the shouts from behind demanding that they rotate from the front. As Luke scrambled back through the lines of the phalanx, breathing heavily and longing to drink from his water bottle, all he could think was, We’re holding, we’re holding. After his thirst was sated and he’d had a chance to catch his breath, pragmatism reminded him that the day was still young.
CHAPTER 24
Jack could see the entire battlefield. He was happy to note that there was indeed an end to the horde, but the monsters were still lined up over two-hundred deep as they steadily pushed and clawed their way forward. The Blackhawks kept moving above the hunter-army in unpredictable patterns, keeping a good distance from any place that even looked like it might be holding a sniper with a .50 cal. There were, in fact, five Barretts deployed on the walls, but in spite of the steady fire they were maintaining against the helicopters, not even one appeared to sustain any damage. The veterans within the Allied army knew full-well how hard it was to hit a moving aircraft with anything, even guided munitions, and they knew that Chad Greenburg had made a once-in-a-lifetime shot at Pickwick to bring down a Blackhawk. Some experienced soldiers even had their doubts about the Barrett being the cause of the chopper crash at the dam. But the army had the guns and the ammo, and the general feeling was that it couldn’t hurt to try for anything within even theoretical range of the guns.
As Jack watched the phalanx absorb the first enemy blow, he let out a sigh of relief when the entire line held. He knew that the 2nd Utah and the Indiana Company would almost certainly stand their ground, at least for a few minutes, but he had his doubts about the Mississippi Brigade. A few seconds later he saw that his doubts were justified. For whatever reason, the horde hit the Allied right with more power than the center or left. Maybe the wire and other traps had been less effective in that area. Jack would never know the cause of the higher enemy numbers on the right, only witness the effects of the disproportionality. The Louisiana soldiers to the right of the Indiana troops were pushed back a few meters, but then they stiffened and stood solid under the vicious onslaught. The break occurred where the Cairo and local levies were stationed, and Jack was certain he was about to witness a disaster until man’s best friend showed up.
At least a hundred well-trained war-dogs had been led into battle by their owners, and in the confusion of the jarring impact with the enemy, most of them found that their leashes were suddenly loose. The canines had spent months hunting down and attacking the infected, supposedly immune to the virus if their owners were to be believed. Since no one had ever seen an infected dog, there wasn’t much reason to doubt their immunity. They could, however, be caught by the hunters and crushed or ripped apart, so what happened next was arguably the most selfless act Jack had ever witnessed in all his years as a soldier.
The war-dogs ran between the legs of the massed flesh-eaters, ripping away at Achilles Tendons and hamstrings with a ferocity that would have made their wolf-cousins proud. Jack estimated that every dog brought at least one hunter down before being grabbed and killed by the furious beasts, but some of the more experienced animals eluded the grasping monsters and literally ripped a swath through the forward enemy ranks. Some of the flesh-eaters had continued to push forward toward the humans, but many others had become distracted by the presence of vicious canines at their feet and momentarily turned their attention to the threat from below. The attack on the Mississippi Brigade slowed enough for the local and Cairo troops to reform their ranks and push back, and almost a third of the heroic dogs managed to circle through the horde and return to their masters unharmed.
Jack could hardly believe what he’d just seen. A hundred war-dogs had prevented well over ten thousand hunters from collapsing the Allied right. The cost to their own ranks had been disastrous, and even the survivors were now spent, but the animals had just conducted the most fearless act imaginable to save their owners. Jack realized that he was shouting his appreciation for the dogs, his voice joined by dozens of other defenders manning the walls who had also witnessed the noble sacrifice.
The tumult around him gradually died down, and Jack could see that the phalanx was now in trouble everywhere. The Allies had the high ground, sharp steel, and the resolve only people defending their loved ones can have in battle, but those advantages couldn’t stop the laws of physics. Tens of thousands of powerful hunters, human bodies genetically altered to maximize every ounce of potential, were now pushing together against a far lesser number of people in all types of conditions. Inevitably, the formation was steadily forced back from the top of the first berm. Jack nodded at T.C., who shouted out for the retreat to begin.
The signal to fall back was a chorus of air-horns scavenged from big ships on the river. Even over the noise of thousands of howls, shouts, screams, and cries, the devices crushed all other sounds as they roared out from the top of the wall. Everyone heard the horns, but responses varied across the field. Most of the Mississippi Brigade tried to race each other back to the secondary position, and they were promptly swamped by the hunters they’d just been fighting. Most of the unit’s casualties during the battle were suffered during this first retreat. The Louisiana companies suffered from a crumbling right flank as their less-disciplined allies broke for the rear, but they still kept their weapons pointed toward the enemy and backed up step by stumbling step. The Indiana Company moved backward in time, coordinated to a degree that only such a small unit can be.
The soldiers of the 2nd Utah Division tried a different tactic, which wasn’t bloodless but worked comparably well. When the horns sounded the retreat, the westerners immediately executed one last troop rotation, ensuring that the front lines were relatively fresh. At that point, the first three lines were left on their own as all other soldiers rushed back through the lines of the waiting 1st Division. As soon as the rear lines were heading up the slope of the second berm, the soldiers still engaged made their break. Virtually as one they thrust their spears forward and immediately began stumbling backward while drawing short swords. At that point the propane-bombs dug into the forward side of the slope were detonated, creating a gap in the hunter attack that allowed the retreating troops to turn and kill their immediate pursuers before disappearing through their comrades’ lines.
Across the entire front of the phalanx the explosives caused their usual mayhem, blowing hundreds of monsters into pieces while knocking even more to the ground where they were slow to get up, if they ever got up again. Most of the time the fallen were quickly trampled by the flesh-eaters still pushing from the rear. Jack had seen it several times the day before, but he was still in awe of the damage a line of wired propane tanks could do to massed hunters. He wondered, briefly, if they ever would have learned to use the explosive gas if his unruly, teenage scouts hadn’t taken their prisoner in Kentucky. Focusing his attention back on the battle, Jack could see that with the exception of the units on the far right, the troops had managed to retreat without being too badly mauled. But the horde was now rushing over the top of the berm toward the second position. He hoped the shortened line w
ould allow the Allies to hold longer than they did the first time.
Luke and those closest to him, including Maddie and Zach, joined their left flank to the 1st Utah’s as they reached the top of the second defensive position and turned to cover their comrades’ retreat. The soldiers from the Indiana Company were already anchored in place, the reliable and rugged Louisiana troops forming up on their right as three battalions from the 2nd Utah crossed the interior lines to reinforce the struggling remnants of the remaining units of the Mississippi Brigade. Luke could sense that this phalanx was deeper, stronger, and more determined to hold than the first had been. Now that they’d experienced the nightmare that was retreating under pressure, every soldier in the formation hoped to avoid another withdrawal.
This time the full pressure of the horde was obvious from the beginning of the assault. The helicopters were apparently exerting total control of the hunters as the beasts stomped their fallen mates into the cold, gore-covered mud and pressed forward their attack. Regardless of the troops’ hopes to avoid another retreat, the fury and savagery of the monsters had become impossible to check. Luke didn’t know if all the bodies being forced up and over his shield were dead or not, but he could do little but push forward with all his strength and hope that the soldiers behind were using their weapons effectively. These hunters didn’t seem to care about flesh or killing, they were simply determined to scramble out of the path of those shoving from the rear. Again, the far greater numbers of the infected quickly sapped the strength of the humans resisting their advance.