The Apocalypse War: The Undead World Novel 7

by Meredith, Peter

  “You did great,” Grey told her, before squinting up at his remaining men. Their camouflage was so well applied that he only recognized one of them. “Rider, pull Morganstern back, and you two,” he pointed at the other pair, “Set up a secondary ambush site right here. We’ll leapfrog our way back to the valley. Remember, don’t get bogged down. Kill a couple of them and move. One team up, one team back. Bound past each other with enough intervals to lay down cover fire.”

  As the men looked for cover, Sadie waited for instructions with her face impassive and hard. She seemed to think that he was going to send her into battle and he planned to, but only as a last resort. His soldiers were trained to act together in perfect harmony. Two of them would wait in hiding, firing when the enemy closed to within fifty yards and when the return fire became too hot, they would retreat past the back team, who would now repeat the process: hide, ambush, fire and retreat.

  It took practice to perfect. If one of the team members left their firing spot early, he would leave his friend alone and unprotected, and if he didn’t leave quick enough, he risked being surrounded, unsupported and killed. Grey knew that Sadie’s courage was easily greater than her experience.

  “I’m going to need your help to get out of here,” he told her. “But first, grab as much ammo as you can carry. We’ll act as a supply point for the men.”

  As Sadie began rushing around, stooping here and there among the dead, picking up magazines and checking their loads, Grey tried his best not to faint. In the grass next to him was a dead Azael, strapped to his bloody shoulders was a bulky backpack that was spilling fully loaded 30 round magazines onto the ground. Grey tried to stoop to replenish his supply and nearly passed out. The world spun as it had before and he fell against a tree; it was the only thing that kept him on his feet.

  Forget the ammo, he told himself, realizing that he was no longer capable of fighting. It would take everything he had just to survive.

  Of course, survival was secondary. Leading his remaining men out of danger was paramount. They had done their job; their mission had been a success and Grey wasn’t going to let them die out there if he could help it. And that meant he wasn’t going to burden them with the weight of his body by fainting.

  Going from tree to tree, Grey started hobbling on a diagonal up the slope toward the deer trail they had been following. Sadie hurried to catch up. She had pulled the chest rig off of the dead Azael and had filled it with ammo. She ‘clinked’ as she walked, something that he normally would have frowned at. Frowning took more energy than he had to spare.

  She put a shoulder under his good arm and tried to heft him up. “Other side,” he said. With his good arm over her shoulder, he was virtually useless; he couldn’t hold a gun or help to pull himself along, or even catch himself if and when he fell. There would be no getting around falling—the land was as rugged as almost anywhere on earth.

  While he held onto another pine, she slid around to his left. When she lifted his arm, the pain was immediate and yet he only grinned through the waves of agony. His men, and Sadie, needed to see that he was a rock. Their morale would sink if they saw him struggling.

  He wanted to tell himself that his injuries weren’t so bad and, after moving a hundred yards, he found that his burned right lower leg grew stronger as the blood flowed in his veins. The same was partially true with his left leg as well. His calf muscle was a gory mess and useless, but at least the blood flowed; his boot was filled with the stuff so that every step was accompanied by a squishing sound that had Sadie looking both anxious for him as well as revolted.

  He said nothing and made no noise of complaint as they trudged along one step at a time. The Azael were hot on their trail, revenge driving them despite the casualties they were suffering. The soldiers, using every bit of natural cover available, were holding back hundreds of enemy fighters through sheer courage and marksmanship. Working in pairs, they were constantly in motion, going back and forth, keeping up a drumbeat of fire that was always answered by a firestorm.

  Gradually, Grey became numb from exhaustion. The spurt of energy from the water was long gone and his feet began to stumble so that Sadie was forced to take more and more of his weight on her shoulder. She didn’t complain. For an hour, nothing changed for Grey except the steepness of the slope they were on and the number of bodies that they left behind.

  To the east, the sun arced over the mountains while in the air, bullets passed each other and the sound of the guns echoed, bouncing from one stark mountain side to another.

  Grey got used to seeing his remaining soldiers huffing and puffing past him to find their next ambush point. At one time or another they each came to Sadie for more ammo—it was going fast. They were weary and getting sloppy, missing their shots with greater frequency.

  Eventually, Morganstern jogged by alone, his face set to a purposefully expressionless blank. Grey grabbed his arm. “Where’s Rider?” It was a stupid question. Rider wasn’t taking a leak or a smoke break.

  “Dead,” Morganstern replied. “One of them got off a lucky shot.” He didn’t have time to elaborate, the Azael were pressing too close. Some were on the string of hills to the north and were taking long distance potshots at the three of them.

  Morganstern took up a lone position behind a boulder that had good cover on his left to protect him from the flanking shots. At the moment, the incoming fire was sporadic and poorly aimed. It was a mere nuisance, but it likely wouldn’t remain that way as the Azael grew bolder.

  Ten minutes later, they lost another soldier. He came hobbling up the trail supported by his teammate; there was blood turning his camouflaged trousers black. “It’s nothing,” he said in a whisper. “I just caught one in the leg. It doesn’t even hurt.”

  It wasn’t nothing. His face was stark white beneath the mud and his blue eyes were so drained of color that they were the color of a pond ice. On the trail behind them, there was an alarming amount of blood. “Let me see,” Grey said.

  The wounded soldier didn’t so much as sit down as he allowed his legs to buckle beneath him. In a second, he was on the ground staring up at the sky and looking confused as though he thought the sun was the wrong shape or the wrong color perhaps. “It’s nothing,” he said, again only this time his voice was softer.

  He pushed aside the soldier’s shaking hands and a fountain of blood came spurting from the wound; Grey saw right away that he would soon be dead. The femoral artery had been shredded—it was a death sentence. In vain, Grey pushed the heel of his palm onto the wound and leaned his entire weight down. In seconds, there was a pool of dark blood covering his hand; Grey estimated that the man was losing a quart of blood a minute and, in the situation they were in, there was nothing more he could do.

  “Why is the sun like that?” the soldier mumbled. “It’s dim…what’s that mean?”

  “It means we’re almost home,” Grey told him. He wore a warm smile that hid the misery bubbling up from his soul. The soldier’s coming death was another on his head. His men could have escaped by now if they hadn’t been lugging him about. He turned to the other still-unknown soldier. “I’m going to cover your retreat. Take Morganstern and Sadie and get over that ridge and when you get to Estes, tell them…tell them that we did our jobs.

  The soldier’s lips twisted and his eyes went hard. He wanted to argue with his captain; however, he was a good soldier; he wasn’t going to disobey a direct order. Sadie was a different story altogether.

  “Hell no!” she spat. “We’re getting out of this together. The valley needs you, Grey. Especially now. The valley needs a hero and a leader. If anyone’s going to stay, it’ll be me. I’m practically useless. We all know it.”

  Just then Morganstern came out of the forest. His brown eyes darting over the dying soldier, Sadie’s imperious face and Grey’s tired one. “You’re being loud,” he said. “And they’re right on my tail, about sixty yards back. You guys have to get moving. I’ll stay with Beeman and buy us some time.” />
  “Beeman,” Grey said the word as a ghost might, he breathed it out slowly, vaguely. How had he not recognized Sergeant Charles Beeman? How was that possible?

  They had stood side by side through a dozen battles; they had laughed together and bled together. They hadn’t been the best of friends since they had been in different companies; however the odd, unpredictable nature of battle had frequently thrust them together. Grey could remember one star-filled night north of Santa Fe when they had sat in adjacent foxholes, trading stories, mostly of women from back before the apocalypse and playing remember when.

  They had also competed in a juvenile game of one-upmanship, trying to outdo the other telling farfetched tales. Grey remembered he had grown quiet after a while thinking about all the death he had seen and of everything he had lost in so short a period of time. Beeman had cheered him up in the strangest way.

  “Bet I can spot more shootin’ stars than you,” he said. “Me and my brothers used to have this competition ‘bout who could see more.”

  So they fell into calling them out as they streaked across the sky. There were many dozens to see that night and, although Grey had a quick eye and got into the friendly game, he lost and lost big.

  “Hey, Beeman, it’s going to be ok,” Grey said as the man began to gasp for breath. “Maybe just close your eyes and think about those shooting stars. Remember them?”

  “Yeah...I do,” he answered, slowly.

  Grey watched him for another second and then said. “I got this. The rest of you get out of here, that’s an order. Morganstern, carry Sadie if you have to.”

  Sadie glared at Morganstern, warning him with a dark look not to touch her, making it obvious that she was going to fight the order tooth and nail. They locked eyes, communicating something between them and before Grey knew what was happening, Morganstern had a firm grip on his chest rig and had hauled him to his feet.

  Standing so quickly caused the world around Grey to go hazy as the blood drained from his head and his legs went wobbly. It was a sign that he was heading into a hypovolemic state and that he would be in shock in the near future and dead not much longer after that. “What the hell are you doing, Morganstern? You have your orders.”

  “I don’t take orders from dead men,” the young soldier said.

  Chapter 19

  Captain Grey

  Grey tried to push away from Morganstern, however he lacked the energy to both stay on his feet and fight the young buck. “Let me go,” he seethed.

  Morganstern refused the order with a simple: “No. If you stay here, you’ll die. I have a fighting chance at least. Now, everyone get out of here. Sadie, help the captain. Rutledge, take up a position in that stand of trees and together we’ll cover our retreat.”

  Sadie didn’t wait for the argument brewing on the captain’s lips to materialize. With her usual fiery determination, she started hauling Grey along against his will. He didn’t have the strength to fight her either, he could barely keep his feet moving. Behind them, the shooting started in right away. Morganstern’s lone rifle sounded and was answered by a hundred of the enemies’. The firing seemed to come from three directions at once. Sadie looked back, fear in her eyes.

  “Please make it,” she whispered.

  “He’ll be fine,” Grey lied. “He’s a good soldier.” Good soldier or not, Grey knew his chances of breaking contact when engaged with so many opponents were slim.

  Morganstern proved elusive and a difficult target, however. He kept up a steady rhythm with his M4 for half a minute and then somehow managed to scramble away with bullets flying all around him.

  He jogged past Sadie and Grey to crouch down among some low fern-like plants, thirty feet off the trail, managing to blend wonderfully with his surroundings so that just the smile he had for Sadie was the only truly human appearing part of him.

  There was a lull in the fighting as the Azael came on slower, nervous about where the next shot was going to come from. They were spread out all along the hillside, moving steadily and somewhat predictably forward.

  Rutledge, a man Grey had never spoken to until that morning, fired three times, killing with every shot, and then was on the move…but too quickly. In his haste to get away, he stumbled on a root and his gun flew out of his hands. He scrambled to retrieve it and by the time he did, bullets were flicking over his head at knee height.

  From up the slope of the ridge, Grey and Sadie had a perfect view of him scrabbling in the dirt, desperate to get to cover. A little below them, Morganstern began laying down a stream of lead, raking the tree and rocks across from him, trying to take the focus off of Rutledge. In seconds, he was forced to duck away from the answering barrage heading in at him.

  Like a noob, Grey was doing nothing but watching the spectacle and was surprised when Sadie suddenly shoved him up against an outcropping of rock. She pulled the M16 from her back, loaded one of the 40mm grenades and was just in the process of pulling the trigger when Grey stopped her.

  “Wait! You’re aiming too low. You have to loft those shells or you might drop them on Rutledge.” She banked the launcher up until he said: “There; fire!”

  Foomp! The grenade sailed in an arc to land with a Bang! thirty yards past Rutledge and in a stand of trees.

  “Good shot! Fire for effect,” Grey told her.

  She blinked at him. “What kind of effect are you talking about?”

  Right. He had forgotten she wasn’t a soldier and didn’t know the jargon. “It means to fire in the same vicinity, you know, for maximum effectiveness.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Why didn’t you just say so?” She began working the grenade launcher, thumping the rounds down the trail they had been climbing. The explosions and the zing of flying metal kept the Azael hunkered down, however, she had only three shells and very quickly she was out of ammo. And worse, Rutledge hadn’t taken the opportunity to get away. He was still caught on the uneven ground without real cover.

  In seconds, the Azael were shooting at him again and it wasn’t long before Rutledge was shot. “Crap! I’m hit,” he yelled. “Shit! Stop shooting. Ah, damn it, stop shooting!”

  Sadie and Morganstern immediately let up and so did a number of the Azael, though not all of them. Eleven or twelve kept firing and, quickly, Rutledge gave a second cry and then slumped, face first into the dirt.

  “You son of a bitches!” Sadie raged. She threw herself down between two jagged hunks of exposed rock and started blasting away, her anger growing with each shot.

  Grey’s energy dissipated in the same proportion. By the time Morganstern, running low and dodging side to side, arrived, Grey could barely stand.

  Morganstern took one glance at his captain’s ashen face and whispered: “Shit.” He then chanced a look back the way he had come at the Azael as they ran in short bounds, going from cover to cover, coming ever closer. “Sadie, I don’t think he can walk anymore. You’re going to have to cover us. Can you handle that?”

  Without hesitation or looking up from the sights of her gun, she replied: “Yeah, get going and don’t stop for anything. I’ll keep up.”

  Leave me behind, Grey wanted to say, however he was too tired to make the effort. Only a whisper of breath came out and he could do nothing but watch as Morganstern stooped and hefted his bulk onto his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

  There was no discussion of tactics, signals or even of their route. This was how Sadie operated, by the seat of her pants, and it went against everything Grey had ever been taught. Morganstern should have known better; Grey wanted to call a halt and bitch him out, only he couldn’t. It was taking everything he had just to stay conscious. The world went in and out, sometimes in focus, but more and more it appeared to be made up of a swirling fog of mashing hues of green and brown.

  Even Morganstern became insubstantial to Grey. At first all Grey could see of him were his legs however, these blurred into the background and his human shape lost all meaning. The only thing about the young man that made s
ense was his ragged breathing. It was very loud in Grey’s ears as though the PFC had the lungs of a giant—a very sick giant.

  He started off with a steady rhythm, but as they mounted the last ridgeline looming over the Estes Valley, Morganstern’s breathing degenerated into an awful, strident gasp. Up and up they went until the soldier reeled from exhaustion and was plodding along so slowly, bent under the mass of his captain, that it was all Sadie could do to keep the Azael off of them.

  At some point, Grey blanked out. He wasn’t unconscious; he could still hear the hoarse breathing and the gunshots, some close, some far, and he could still hear the near misses as the bullets whined off of the rocks around them. Yet none of that held much significance to him anymore. He was barely hanging onto the last embers of life.

  Then something abruptly changed.

  A brisk, chill wind suddenly struck him, its icy fingers slipping over the wet blood that ran down his back. His eyes fluttered open and he found himself in a little dell carved out of the side of the mountain. Over the lip of rock to the east was the ragged slope they had climbed and to the west was a crag in the ridgeline, through which he could see the Estes Valley. It was maybe four miles away and there were a thousand smaller hills and peaks between them, but even from that distance, he could see that it was still and quiet and peaceful. The zombies hadn’t overrun it yet.

  He had done his job and now he felt he could die in peace.

  It seemed as though Morganstern thought so as well. Without warning, he dropped Grey onto the hard earth. It was a few inches of dirt covering over a mountain of rock and all Grey could think was that he wouldn’t be buried when he died. He’d be left for the scavengers; and that was alright with him.