Plague War: Pandemic

by Alister Hodge

  ‘Ok, make it a quick trip. Don’t go too deep into town. The one thing you can’t afford is to be surrounded; make them come to you,’ said Mark. ‘Once you’re back, join us on the wall, we’ll be stationed to the right of the main gate,’ he said, pointing out the thirty metre stretch for which their squad would be responsible. ‘Good luck.’

  Steph climbed up onto the ute’s tray, stood behind the cabin’s roof and ran through a last check of her weapons. Nate had taken residence behind the wheel and brought the engine roaring to life. Ahead, the steel-plated gate began a slow roll to the right, its pulley system squealing painfully at the movement. Once the gap hit a minimum width to allow passage of the car, Nate released the clutch and took off.

  Mark watched the car for a few moments through the closing gate before sending a silent prayer for their safety to any bastard god that would listen. It was out of his hands now, and with a determined effort, he shut down the circling anxious thoughts. He could see Vinh hovering nearby waiting for him. Mark spat a sour taste from his mouth then headed toward his Sergeant. He owed the rest of his men his attention now, and last preparations still needed to be finalised before the swarm hit.

  Nate drove slowly along the street extending from the Fort, keeping the engine noise to a minimum to avoid excess attention until they were ready. Empty parkland slipped by to the right and old weatherboard housing to the left, everything bathed in a soft light as the sun breached the eastern horizon. The battle had been intentionally planned for early morning, aiming to take advantage of the coolest hours of daylight when the Infected were cold and slow, and still yet to increase their body temperature in the sun.

  Jai had his rifle propped against his shoulder as he knelt alongside the huge amp, fiddling with the iPod while Steph watched with curiosity.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Just picking a new song list to play. Some idiot had a bloody pop selection lined up, and I’ll be fucked if I’m shooting bloody Carriers with Taylor Swift whining behind me,’ said Jai as he placed the iPod back on top of the amp, happy with his new choices.

  Nate hit the cabin roof lightly from inside the cabin to gain their attention. Both looked forward and saw what had him concerned as the ute slowed to a stop. On a street to the left, the swarm could be seen two blocks distant. Shuffling figures moved slowly, oblivious to their position so far.

  Steph hung her head down the driver’s side of the cabin. ‘Take us further in. What do you reckon, get within a block of the crowd, then turn on the music?’

  ‘I’ll go a bit closer, but I don’t want to get flanked. If the houses spill a bunch of Carriers, it could make it difficult getting back out,’ he answered. Nate swung the front out and then started to reverse down the street. When the shit finally hit the fan, he didn’t want to be wasting time on a three-point turn before high tailing it back to the Fort.

  ‘Right, that’s close enough,’ said Nate as he brought the vehicle to a standstill and cocked his pistol.

  Steph picked up the iPod and a smile kinked the corner of her mouth as she saw Jai’s first selection. ‘Isn’t “Rage Against the Machine” a little before your time?’

  ‘What can I say, my dad had a good CD collection,’ said Jai, unperturbed by her sisterly teasing. ‘Just hit the fucking play button already, time to get this show on the road,’ he said raising his weapon. Some of the Infected had already noted the vehicle and were breaking away from the main body to head their way.

  Steph turned the volume on the amp to max, then hit play on the iPod. The opening chords pounded out of the speaker followed by an iconic bass riff. Steph could feel the music vibrate through every muscle of her body, drawing out adrenaline to course through her veins, dilating her pupils as fear dropped away, replaced with a surreal exhilaration.

  The swarm turned toward the noise. Enraged by the disturbance, they stumbled forth. Closer at hand, Infected were emerging from houses to either side of the ute. Nate opened the driver’s door and aimed over the engine, firing a handful of carefully aimed shots to take out three Carriers.

  The music rose to a crescendo, drums hammering as Steph lifted her own rifle and took aim. ‘Killing in the name of!’ roared from the speaker behind her as she squeezed off her first round, blowing the right half of a Carrier’s skull away.

  Nate hammered on the inside of the roof to indicate he was going to start driving. Jai and Steph both dropped to one knee for stability as the ute slowly took off at the pace of the following swarm, each taking a side to clear the way forward for Nate. What had been empty street minutes before, was now coming to life as Carriers stumbled from open doorways and crashed through windows to pursue the noise.

  Steph took in the bared teeth of the Infected, their snarls of rage drowned out by the music and rifles. She and Jai kept up a steady rate of fire, smacking Carriers from their feet with every trigger’s depression until the road ahead was clear once more. As Nate rounded the corner back onto the home stretch, they slowed further, allowing the swarm to come closer now that there was little fear of being surrounded.

  Steph and Jai turned their attention to the crowd at their rear, now trailing only twenty metres behind the ute. Steph gripped the back of the cabin as she stood briefly over the swarm. The road behind them was packed, jammed from gutter to gutter with walking corpses for as far as she could see. The entire swarm from the centre of town had been successfully lured toward the Fort. They’d done their job properly, now they’d see if the gamble would pay off, if the walls would be enough to fend away the tide of rabid, dead flesh.

  She squatted back down and continued to fire alongside Jai, their stock of magazines rapidly dwindling. Although the majority of their shots drilled home to perfection, their efforts were akin to a child trying to empty a lake with nothing but a cup. The undead lurched onward, uncaring for the corpses that dropped to disappear under the feet of the swarm.

  Jai’s trigger clicked silently under his finger. He ejected the magazine and fished blindly in the crate for another refill. They were out of ammo.

  ‘That’s us done, Nate!’ he called over the blaring music, banging on the roof. Nate looked over his shoulder and out the back window, and finally understood as he saw Jai holding an empty magazine up to him. The Fort was less than a hundred metres distant anyway. As Steph emptied the last of her rounds, Nate picked up speed and pulled away from the mob, gunning the engine for the Fort’s gate that was rolling open slowly. Behind, the swarm spilled off the confines of the road into the adjacent parkland. Angry whines passed through the air above Steph’s head, belying the passage of the first shots from the Fort. Snipers with long-range rifles were starting to fire into the swarm behind the ute. Nate kept the accelerator down as he sped through the narrow gap, the gate bare centimetres from either side of the vehicle.

  ***

  Mark was standing on the makeshift battlement walk as his mates returned, the red bricks of the wall reaching to the height of his ribcage. The men of his platoon spread out on either side along the thirty-metre stretch for which he was responsible. Mark winced as they sped toward the gap, certain he was about to hear an impact of metal on metal, then they were mercifully through. Nate slammed on the brakes bringing the vehicle to a shuddering stop. He saw Steph and Jai jump from the back of the ute, landing on the gravel road as the main gate trundled shut again.

  Jai reached back over the edge of the tray, turned off the amp, and suddenly the demonic cries of the following Carriers washed over the soldiers on the wall, no longer drowned out by music. Mark looked back out at the swarm his friends had led home. Stunned faces lined either side of him as the sheer enormity of the task ahead sank home to his troops. Even at this distance, the Carriers looked hellish. Half-naked bodies, dry ripped flesh and exposed bones lurched relentlessly to their position.

  Mark raised his arm to get the trio’s attention. Steph spotted him, and the three soldiers ran toward his position, taking the steps two at a time to reach t
he battlement. Steph arrived on the walkway, strands of blond hair broken free of her ponytail, whipping behind in the stiff breeze. Her cheeks were pink from the morning cold, pupils dilated by adrenaline and battle lust, giving her face a fierce type of beauty that Mark couldn’t help but notice. The nearest soldiers made room for them on the wall. Steph slotted in next to one of the older men, a retired veteran that had re-joined after the breakout of plague.

  ‘You and the kid did good this morning,’ he said somewhat grudgingly.

  Steph nodded, accepting the compliment as a statement of fact. She glanced up at the gathering clouds that had become ominously grey; it would rain soon, and hard.

  With his platoon back to full strength, a hard smile broke across Mark’s face. The ground outside the walls had been marked for distance; orange flags topped stakes set at 50, 75 and 100 metres. He raised his hand and pointed at the middle marker, ‘Once those dead bastards reach the second flag, we open fire. Single shots. One round drilled through each skull without wastage. Lieutenant Murphy’s platoon has the job of restocking during this battle. When you’re down to your last magazine raise your right hand and a runner will deliver fresh packed ammo to you. We’re aiming for a constant rate of accurate fire and calm nerves. The only thing that can beat us here is if we fuck it up for ourselves. The maths is simple, we have enough bullets to kill every Carrier in that swarm twice over – we only have to slot a round home in each one of their rotting heads and the day is ours!’

  Faces along the wall hardened at his words, fear tempered with resolve. Bullets ripped through the air overhead like angry wasps, fired from the roofs of taller buildings behind, and from the high walkway around the black lighthouse. The swarm of Carriers had spread off the road, filling the open grassed space before the walls as they moved forward. The front line of Infected passed the second flag.

  ‘Fire at will!’ ordered Mark.

  His soldiers opened up, shooting well aimed rounds into the swarm, dropping body after body, creating a floor of torn flesh for the Infected to climb over. Their rate of advance slowed, but still continued through sheer weight of numbers.

  Heavy drops of water began to patter on the heads of the defenders, rapidly escalating into a torrential downpour. Visibility dropped, hiding anything past 100 metres from sight. Popping noises issued from behind them, and Mark looked back to see that the mortar crews had stepped into action. The shells arced steeply into the air, falling to earth amongst the Carriers beyond to explode. In the dense crowd, the small bombs worked to devastating effect, mincing legs and throwing bodies and mud skyward. Few Carriers sustained head trauma sufficient to remove them from the fight permanently, but hideous injuries to lower limbs served a purpose to slow the attack. Those Infected reduced to crawling or dragging themselves were trampled by the Carriers coming from behind, driven into the developing quagmire where open parkland had stood but an hour before.

  The wave of tortured corpses broke against the wall, crushed against the bricks in the press. Their faces were turned to the soldiers above, screaming in fury, impotently reaching up at the uninfected humans above. Most soldiers were now shooting into the mob directly below, putting down Carrier after Carrier with workman like efficiency. Slowly, the pile of dead grew in height, lifting those Infected that crawled onto the bodies ever closer to the defenders on the wall.

  Mark ordered his squad to start firing further out into the crowd in an attempt to stop his soldiers inadvertently creating a ramp of human flesh for the Infected to climb. The platoon delivering ammunition to the soldiers on the wall laboured up and down the embankment, taking away spent magazines and replacing them with fresh packed rounds.

  Time ground on slowly, and Mark began to notice the growing toll on some of his soldiers. Next to Jai, a younger man dropped a magazine twice as he tried unsuccessfully to load with hands shaking from fatigue. If the guy couldn’t load his rifle, he had no hope of shooting straight. Missed shots would feed insecurity and destroy confidence that they could defeat the hellish creatures below. Mark took three quick paces over and tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Step back!’ he said, shouting to be heard over the hideous noise around them. ‘I’m going to start rotating people in and out of the firing line for rest breaks. You’ve got ten minutes to get some water and food into you, then drop back in to keep going.’

  The soldier accepted the order with obvious relief. Slumping with his legs dangling over the edge of the walkway, he pulled out his water bottle and chugged down its contents.

  Mark walked along the line and extracted a further two men and a woman who were each showing signs of stress or fatigue. He needed his squad to retain control of their thoughts and actions and had to avoid at all cost stress levels rising to the point that they broke and ran.

  Despite his change in tactic of shooting further into the press, a move that was promptly replicated on other areas of the wall, the bodies continued to mount higher, bringing Carriers ever closer. In some sections, the bloodied fingers of the Infected were almost within arm’s reach. Mark looked along the wall with growing concern. It was too much like the fight at the farm, where the Infected had almost breached the top of his shipping container battlement.

  Mark tried his radio, but something was wrong with the equipment and he failed to get an answer. Swearing his frustration, he pulled a Private back from the wall, ‘Go to the command centre, say that I’m requesting permission to clear my section of wall,’ said Mark. The soldier looked at him with a confused expression on his face. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll understand. I need that answer quick, so bloody run!’

  The soldier took off at a sprint. Mark leaned out over the edge, pistol in hand, staring into the writhing mass of flesh below, picked out targets and began shooting. He just bloody hoped Command hadn’t left their decision too late. Within minutes, the Private returned, a fresh headset in his hands to replace Mark’s broken radio.

  ‘Sir, your request has been granted, they said an order has been sent out to the other platoon positions to fire their Improvised Explosive Devices as well,’ said the Private. ‘But that doesn’t make sense, where are they, Sir?’

  Mark pointed downwards, ‘Buried under two metres of bodies,’ he answered, picking up the detonator. He turned to the rest of his platoon, ‘Cease fire and take cover!’ he shouted. Abruptly, his soldiers stopped shooting and ducked low, Mark followed suit and depressed the button.

  Three succinct explosions thundered on the outside of the wall, causing the dirt to shift under their feet. A fine crack appeared in the brickwork at his shoulder, snaking upwards to the top lip. A section of the makeshift walkway that was already sodden from the storm slid out, forcing Mark to shove his back up against the wall to avoid falling off the edge. All along the wall, the IEDs began to explode, buffeting his eardrums painfully.

  Mark turned around and looked over the edge to survey the damage he’d wrought. The IEDs had been placed for this specific purpose, the explosive created to form a directional blast out from the wall. The mound of corpses that had blanketed the base had been largely blown clear, reduced to featureless scraps of tissue and bone. Each blast had formed its own crater, with bodies between these pits sliding down to the base of the holes. The force of the blast had knocked many Carriers further out in the crowd to the ground as well, but the urge to feed was overwhelming, and ghouls regained their feet to attack yet again.

  A short cry of excitement from many of the soldiers made Mark smile as they saw that the explosives had worked. The wall was still intact, with the Infected largely cleared to ground level once again. He raised a hand to roughly wipe the hair stuck to his forehead aside and noticed that the rain had finally stopped. The clouds still looked primed to release a second drenching, but for the first time in an hour, he could see to the back of the swarm.

  The extent of the slaughter was truly awe-inspiring. Fallen plague carriers littered the open area in front of the Fort and the streets beyond to waist depth. I
n some areas the height of the corpses rose higher, like sand swept in a gale. Across the top of these bodies moved the last of the Infected, crawling due to the unsteady footing of ripped and torn human flesh.

  Steph yelled out, gaining Mark’s attention as she pointed to the bay side of the Fort. He followed her direction and looked over to the fence at the rear perimeter. His heart stuttered briefly as he saw that this weaker barrier was now also under attack. Carriers had begun to skirt the main field of action, walking where there was solid ground underfoot. A sizeable group had formed at the other side of the wire, shaking the mesh in rage at the soldiers they could see behind. With the main attack successfully drawn to the more easily defendable brick walls, and a lack of soldiers being available to protect the entire perimeter, there were less than a handful of men there to repel the growing numbers. As Mark watched, he saw the steel poles holding up the wire begin to bend inwards under the combined weight of the Infected.

  If they didn’t gain support soon, the fence was going to collapse, and the Fort would be routed from behind. There wasn’t time to gain approval from the upper chains of command; someone needed to act immediately. Mark quickly chose five men to leave behind.

  ‘The rest of you follow me!’ he shouted and dropped off the edge of the walkway to the ground. Checking briefly that his squad was with him, he sprinted for the fence line, his rifle in a white knuckled grip.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Erin ran down the corridor after Bourke and his remaining guards, heading for the dining room at the back of the building. As the first shells from the Navy Frigate hit home, she stumbled slightly as the ground shook beneath her feet from the blast. The sound of smashing glass followed, windows destroyed by the concussion wave and shrapnel.