Zombies! (Book 7): Still Standing

by Merritt, R. S.

  When they reached the buoys that told Frank they were at the docking area for the secondary warehouse the fierce cries of the Zombies could be plainly heard drifting across the water. The bulk of the cries were coming from the landing area they’d need to be at to collect the supplies they needed. Frank had a secondary detonator sitting on the dash of the pontoon boat steering area. It was in a little box so that no one would accidently hit the transmit button. He planned on hitting the button once they gathered what they could carry from the warehouse. In this case the number of weapons and ammunition being stored was much lower so the repercussions of pressing the button should be a lot less dramatic.

  He directed the driver to steer the boat over to the dock. They tied off with a long line off the bow. The other pontoon boat came in beside them and did the same. The current from the river pushed them backwards about twenty yards from the dock. That should be plenty of space to keep the adrenalized ones from being able to jump into either of the boats. They’d have a guard awake and alert at all times anyway just to be safe. Once they were good to go everyone got settled in to sleep for what was left of the night. Silence was going to be the theme of the day as they reclined on the deck. They’d be covered by tarps that were being rigged up to keep the blazing sun off of them as well as keeping them hidden from the prying eyes of the infected.

  If all went well any Zombies wandering by on the beach in the morning wouldn’t look twice at the floating, tarp covered boats tied up to the dock. Assuming their luck held once it got to be dark, they’d spend a few cycles retrieving everything they thought they’d need for their strategic retreat back to the first outpost on I-40. Frank assumed they’d need lots of ammunition to blast their way through any Brotherhood patrols or roadblocks. Logistics officer or not Frank felt his warrior blood flowing. If the Brotherhood wanted a fight, he was ready to bring it.

  Chapter 9: Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day

  The meeting with Sam had gone remarkably smooth. She’d been keeping the Senator in the loop on the daily status reports Krantz had been providing. They were both enthusiastic about the progress he’d been making. Sam endorsed the selection of Forrest to lead their troops on the ground in North Carolina. She’d made a note to legitimize the field promotion Krantz had granted to the grizzled old marine. She’d also provided Krantz with some new intel that was going to significantly impact the campaign.

  It appeared the settlements were pulling out of North Carolina and establishing strong defensive fortifications in Virginia. The reasoning behind this move wasn’t clear yet. Sam theorized they were doing it because the leadership in the settlements understood they couldn’t hope to keep the Brotherhood out of both North Carolina and Virginia. They’d probably determined that their forces were spread too thin to protect both states. Instead it appeared that they were consolidating their forces in Virginia. None of the Brotherhood forces had even engaged in North Carolina and they’d just managed to claim that territory. Although they’d still have to split it with a few million screaming infected cannibals.

  Krantz picked up the phone on his desk and dialed the extension for the duty officer. The officer sent a man to track down Forrest and let him know Krantz wanted to meet with him. Krantz took a warming slug of whiskey from his over-sized flask while he waited for Forrest to show up. He’d gone out of his way to find the novelty flask to carry his personal liquor around in. He was well aware of what that said about him. He still felt better about it than he had when he’d been carrying two flasks. A large flask was masculine and implied you were a social drinker while carrying two flasks just screamed that you were a raging alcoholic.

  “You sent for me sir?” Forrest said. The guard had let him in after a quick knock on the door to let Krantz know he was there.

  “Settlement spies already found out that I put you in charge of the forces to take North Carolina.” Krantz stated coldly while staring at Forrest to see his reaction.

  “How’d that happen sir?” Forrest said looking confused. There were only a few people who knew about the promotion so far and none of them were likely traitors. Even if they were traitors how’d they get the information to the north so quickly?

  “I’m screwing with you. I just got off the phone with Sam. The settlements are pulling out of North Carolina to fortify Virginia. Congratulation on your successful campaign to conquer the great state of North Carolina. Now I need you to do the same thing to Virginia. Hopefully you inspire the same kind of fear and they run away from us there before we have to fight anybody.” Krantz said. He watched Forrest process the new intel. It was a lot to process. Forrest absorbed the information, mulled it over and had a couple of questions ready to lob back at Krantz all within a few seconds. A good sign that they‘d picked the right man for the job.

  “What kind of intel do we have on Virginia? When do I leave?” He asked.

  “I asked you down here so we could work out the details. We already had some loose ideas on how we were going to tackle Virginia. A lot of that was based on how well the campaign in North Carolina went.” Krantz said.

  “What if this is a trap sir? What if they’re pulling back to clear the area so they can bomb the living crap out of us when we advance?” Forrest asked.

  “That’s possible. It’s going to be something they’ve probably considered. I brought up the same thing to Sam. It wouldn’t surprise me if they tried to lure herds of the infected towards us as well. How do you propose we counter these threats?” Krantz asked. He had some ideas of his own but wanted to see what Forrest could come up with on the spur of the moment.

  “We break our forces up into smaller fighting units. We avoid main roads as much as possible. We move as fast as we possibly can to get across the killing field as quickly as possible. They have superior air power, so they have the advantage until we close ranks with them. They’ve also had plenty of time to wire up roads and bridges. I’d suspect we’re going to hit a fair number of ambushes and booby traps. We have to go with a distributed, fast moving attack sir.” Forrest answered.

  Krantz was impressed. Forrest had come up with basically the same strategy that him and Sam had cobbled together. It’d taken Forrest only moments to come up with it. Sam and Krantz had spent half of an hour running scenarios and brainstorming the best way to adjust to this new circumstance. Sam had gotten the intel a day prior to when she’d told Krantz, so she’d had even more time to think through a strategy. Forrest’s ability to come up with a solid strategy on the fly had just reaffirmed the decision to promote him.

  “That lines up with what Sam and I were thinking as well. As you know good work is typically rewarded with more work. You’re now in charge of the ground forces in North Carolina and the ones in Virginia. You’re still reporting directly to me. Just so you know Sam has validated your promotion so if I get eaten by a Zombie or something, you’re still stuck in a command position.” Krantz joked.

  “Thank you, sir. Try not to get eaten sir. I’d prefer not being promoted any higher. If that’s all then I need to get some orders issued around how the units should start breaking up into smaller units. We’re going to start taking hits very soon and I want to minimize the casualties. We can slow down long enough to get that done and still be well ahead of our timetable.” Forrest said.

  “Just don’t slow them down too much. We still need to slam into Virginia before they have a chance to get their defenses organized. I’ll see if we can’t get some intel on where the weakest parts of that line exist. Dismissed. Call me with any questions. Make sure you send me a copy of the final troop disposition when you’re done with the calls.” Krantz said. He waited for Forrest to salute. He returned the salute then picked up the phone to make his next call as Forrest walked quickly out the door to disappear down the hallway.

  A few minutes later Jenkins was seated in the office with Krantz. He’d ordered food for them so they could have a working meal. They made small talk while they waited for a man who showed up with a computer cart that
had two trays of food balanced precariously on it. The star of the trays were two small bowls filled with fresh lettuce and tomatoes. There were even some green onions mixed in with it. Small venison steaks and what looked like instant potatoes made up the rest of the meal.

  “You guys are eating like kings out here!” Krantz said drooling at the spread.

  “Don’t forget your beverage.” Jenkins said pulling up a box from the bottom of the tray. He opened it to reveal four bottled beers in a plastic bag with some ice packs keeping them chilled.

  The working meal turned out to be a quiet affair. Krantz focused on the delicious salad and the juicy steak. Washing it all down with a cold beer was heaven. The only discussion was around how the local looters had reestablished some local greenhouses to grow vegetables in. They delivered the fresh vegetables every month when they dropped off the other supplies. Deer were plentiful in the ruins which explained the delicious steaks. Wild turkey and other animals were making a major comeback also. Anything fast enough to outrun a Zombie was breeding like crazy. Krantz was happy to hear it. He had no desire to spend the rest of his life playing Russian roulette with expired cans of creamed corn.

  Meal finished they nursed their second beers. Jenkins gave Krantz the run down on the communications systems they’d be able to use. Basically, the patrols were going to have to send people to specific locations to communicate back to them. That was if they wanted to have secure communications. For real time wireless communications, they had long range radios that’d work well enough. They’d just need to speak in code. All of the encrypted gear available at the base was satellite phone focused. They could issue a few of those out to Forrest to pass out to his leaders in the field. The trouble with those was that they were unreliable. They’d be very secure when they worked though.

  Krantz updated Jenkins on what was going on with the settlement troops withdrawing from North Carolina. Krantz told Jenkins as much of the plan as he thought was appropriate then ordered Jenkins to prep a war room that they could use to track everything around the campaign. Work completed for the day Krantz dismissed Jenkins and proceeded to kill the rest of the whiskey from his oversized flask while trying to focus on happy memories. It was a new technique he was attempting to avoid the nightmares plaguing his sleep.

  Neither the whiskey nor the happy thoughts were enough to calm his inner demons. He spent yet another night stuck in a hell of his own manufacture.

  Chapter 10: Capture the Flag or Die

  The planning for this operation left a lot to be desired. Kyler understood that time had been extremely limited and the people doing the planning were working with outdated and unreliable intel. He still thought they should’ve been able to come up with something better than this suicidal capture the flag style assault. They’d approached the parking lot in the middle of the national forest cautiously. They hadn’t detected any sort of cameras or security systems in the woods surrounding the lot, so they’d circled around it until they discovered a small single lane road cutting into the woods.

  Road was a pretty glamorous description for the small path disappearing into the dense pine forest. It looked like the biggest vehicles it supported on a regular basis were four wheelers. The chief had them move to their search sectors at that point. They proceeded as a team into the woods. All of them moving in the same general direction as the small road. They moved slowly through the tall pine trees until the first signs of a security system put the operation on pause.

  Kyler and Ritz had been paired up to move down opposite sides of the small road. They kept a good amount of distance between themselves and the well-worn ATV path. Their additional responsibility was to capture anyone they spotted on the trail once the order to proceed was given. It was the chiefs attempt at performing the impossible task of somehow verifying the Senator was actually in the bunker. If they could capture and subdue a guard, they could question him later to determine if the Senator had actually been there or not. Unless the Senator liked to fly a flag with his face on it when he was in residence there was no other way to know for sure. It wasn’t like any of them were going to take an elevator ride to try and locate the guy while precision bunker busting bombs were in flight. Screw that. The target was there, or he wasn’t.

  If they managed to step in a patch of five leaf clovers and the Senator rode by on a segue right as they showed up, then they’d kill him. Otherwise they’d just have to hope he was at home when they blew his house down. Movement around the base would be limited normally since the Brotherhood guards wouldn’t want to attract too many of the infected. The parking lot in the woods had no road actually leading to it. The helicopters that landed there periodically were the reason there were Zombies wandering around the wooded area in the middle of nowhere. Kyler took the opportunity to wonder again who the genius was who’d built a secret base with a large parking lot nearby with no roads leading to it.

  When the order came to move it was pretty anticlimactic for the first hundred yards. They just kept running into the forest like they’d been doing. It wasn’t until they’d ran about a half of a mile that people started shooting at them. They’d managed to trip some sort of alarm so now they got to fight their way forward though a barrage of machine gun fire. In the breaks between the noisy gunfire the screeching of the infected began echoing through the forest. With sweat streaming down his body Kyler once again contemplated what a truly horrible plan this was.

  They now needed to continue moving forward to find a cabin in the woods that should be hiding a bunker. They had to fight their way forward through armed men guarding the cabin. The men guarding the cabin were well equipped with automatic rifles and apparently an unlimited supply of ammunition. On top of the people shooting at them the woods would soon be crawling with the infected thanks to the noise from the intense gunfight. If that wasn’t enough there was the added pressure of a bomber that was going to be dropping some very serious ordinance on their heads if they weren’t far away in the next thirty minutes.

  Kyler clicked on his comms. Operational security was out the of the bag at this point. If they didn’t coordinate their attacks, they were going to end up dead. His earpiece boomed with the chief’s commands to keep moving. Following the order, he moved out from behind the tree he’d taken cover behind when the bullets started ripping through the forest. Summoning his courage, he charged towards the men shooting at them.

  Bullets whipped through the forest all around him. He darted from tree to tree until the bullets got to be too many and he found himself pinned down again. This time he was stuck behind a large moss-covered rock. A hyperventilating Ritz joined him behind the rock. The other two men in their assault team either hadn’t turned on their comms or were dead. Most likely they were dead. Kyler didn’t understand how he was still standing after running through all those bullets. Chief Presly came across the comms and told them to get ready to move. He was going to draw the guards fire on the count of three.

  On the count Kyler and Ritz both bounced up and sprinted in the direction of the path to the cabin. Explosions up ahead indicating the chief had let some of his grenades fly for the promised distraction. The path ended in a clearing with a rustic looking cabin on one side of it. There was a machine gun turret poking out from between two trees. The machine gun had been silenced by the grenades the chief had launched at it. The gunners had managed to silence the chief as well though. A massive punch to his arm spun Kyler around and sat him down on the ground.

  He reached his hand up to his shoulder and it came back covered in blood. A man was walking towards him pointing a large pistol at his face and yelling something. Kyler stared at the man waiting for him to pull the trigger and end everything. He heard a loud booming sound and winced. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that the man who’d been coming at him was the one who’d been shot. Ritz was yelling at Kyler to stand up and get in the fight.

  He wasn’t able to move his right arm without crying out in pain, but he forced himself back t
o his feet regardless. He fought through the shock and pain to follow Ritz to the cabin. They tried the front door, but it was locked. A few bullets showed them it was also solid steel. They tried the windows. Those turned out to be fake with steel reinforcements behind them as well. Deciding it didn’t really matter they took their transponders and placed one on each side of the cabin. Just as they finished placing them the front door to the cabin opened and men rushed outside.

  Those men ran straight into the shrapnel from a couple of grenades Ritz tossed at them. Making sure the enemy was well and truly out of the fight Ritz and Kyler emptied the remaining bullets in their magazines into the men moaning and rolling around on the ground. Tossing a few more grenades through the front door that was now propped open by the corpse of one of the defenders they turned and ran. Glancing down at his watch Kyler noted they had about twenty minutes to reach the much-vaunted minimum safe distance. He felt bad leaving the chief and the other two men back there to rot. They didn’t have much choice in the matter though. Everything back there was going to be vaporized shortly anyway.

  Shouts and more gunfire behind them told Ritz and Kyler more troops had made it to the surface. Of more pressing concern at the moment were the dark shapes streaking towards them from out of the woods. Knowing they only had minutes left to put as much distance between themselves and the doomed bunker as possible they put their heads down and ran as hard as they could. Channeling their inner fullbacks, they stiff armed anything that got near them. A snarling sore covered mostly nude infected teenager hurled his gross self directly at Ritz. Without missing a step Ritz snagged the blood thirsty freak in midair by his greasy long hair. He spun in a circle smashing the Zombies face into a tree before continuing to sprint for the magical minimum safe distance.