He took out a notebook and started scribbling in it. He handed it around when he was done writing. Kelly read the page and looked up at Bryan disbelievingly. Even by apocalypse standards he’d had a busy morning. Almost as soon as they’d left that morning, they’d been forced to hide in some trees from a group of infected who’d appeared out of nowhere. Right after the infected finally wandered off they’d almost gotten caught out by a group of Brotherhood soldiers slinking through the woods. When they’d finally climbed down out of the trees they’d headed towards the interstate. Standing in the trees out of sight of the road they’d watched as about a hundred Brotherhood soldiers on motorcycles rode by.
Randy was still confused why it’d taken them so long to get back until Bryan handed them another page to read. When they’d turned to head back, they’d run into a pack of Zombies that’d chased them out towards the bikers. They’d run across the road in between the bikers with Zombies in pursuit like some kind of real-life apocalyptic version of Frogger. The bikers had taken out the pursuing Zombies then tried to track them down. They’d spent an hour lying in a drainpipe with rats eating dead things at both end of the pipe. Not a pleasant hour. Once they’d felt safe enough to leave the pipe they’d managed to get mixed up in the woods. It’d taken them a while to actually find their way back.
Kelly wanted very badly to ask them why they hadn’t stopped and asked for directions. The men always seemed to be trying to one up one another with corny jokes and she felt like she had a really good one. Bryan was indicating there were Zombies all around them though and that they needed to immediately engage in a life or death version of the quiet game. Deciding it’d lose all its funny if she wrote it down, she stored up the tasty one liner for another time and considered the problem at hand.
Randy hadn’t thought of any good jokes so was a few cycles ahead of Kelly on working through the issues presented by Bryans little essay. They were falling further behind enemy lines every hour. They were in an area with a heightened level of Zombie activity. It sounded like both the Brotherhood and the Zombies suspected they were in the woods. Hopefully the bikers thought Bryan and the two warehouse guys had just been random survivors running across the road. If they suspected that they may be from the settlements, that could mean the difference between drones hunting them down or being ignored.
Randy really hoped they weren’t considered important enough to divert resources to look for. If the Brotherhood soldiers were riding dirt bikes through the woods, then at least they’d be the ones chased by the infected. Dirt bikes were loud. They were going to have to be careful of getting between the Zombies and the bikers. How they managed to avoid doing that when they were surrounded by bands of both was a problem that he hoped one of the others in their group had the solution to. Looking at everyone’s worried faces he had a bad feeling that they were all thinking along the same lines as him.
Kelly grabbed a pencil and scribbled out a quick note. Looking at it Randy found himself nodding. It was the safe bet. She wanted them to find a farmhouse or something and just lay low for the next two weeks. The war should be over by then and it’d be safe for them to come out. Or at least it would be if the Brotherhood wasn’t too thick in this part of the Carolinas afterwards. They’d possibly be behind enemy lines by then depending on who actually won the war. Not a good place for them to be. Especially since they were on the short list to be executed slowly and painfully. If only they’d just wounded the Senator’s sister instead of killing her.
They passed the notebook around a few more times. Bryan was adamant about trying to make it to the settlements. Kelly was on the other end of the spectrum pushing for them to stay in one place and lick their wounds. She was perfectly fine with letting the world carry on without them. The final consensus was they’d keep heading towards the settlements until such time as they were forced to stop. No one thought it was a great plan. There wasn’t a great plan for the situation they were in.
They checked their weapons and got moving.
Chapter 21: The Front Lines
Forrest tugged off his boot to check out his blood drenched sock. They’d driven into an ambush right at the main entrance to the airport. He’d ridden to the front gates with a hundred special forces troops. They’d been rolling out to do some damage following the new orders they’d received. He’d thought leaving in the middle of the night would be all the protection they needed. He’d lost at least ten men to that assumption.
On top of the KIA a good number of the men who’d escaped the ambush were nursing some sort of wound. There’d been a lot of lead in the air. These were all hard men so there wasn’t a lot of complaining. They were all about the mission. Even when faced with severe pain and the very real prospect of death they kept their mouths shut. They maintained their focus on the mission. It was just how they were wired.
The force he’d put together at the airport consisted of special forces type from the different branches. They’d all survived the years of constant fighting. They’d fought for the Senator against Zombies as well as the other regions that’d resisted being absorbed into the New America. Being special forces might have been the reason they’d made the rookie mistakes that a regular infantry soldier would’ve avoided. None of these guys were used to working in large groups. They were used to being carefully inserted in small packs to carry out very specific objectives. That was the excuse Forrest was letting himself believe anyway.
Getting lit up by men hidden in the bushes on the other side of the front gates had been devastating. The fact they’d only lost ten men in those intense few minutes of fighting was a miracle in and of itself. His men had scattered like they were trained to do. Forrest had put his head low over the handlebars of his motorcycle and retreated back up the road they’d just come down. Him and about thirty men had fallen back to the rally point at the back of the airport. The others had broken through the ambush and continued on their missions. Small teams had been tasked with different sectors to hit. Command wanted them to put on a show close to the coast so that’s what they were going to do. Brief bursts of coded radio communications had confirmed that most of the teams were now in route.
Forrest wrapped a clean strip of gauze around the bridge of his foot. He was happy to note there was both an entry and an exit wound. The last thing he needed was a bullet rattling around inside his foot. Gangrene would mean amputation. Amputation wouldn’t get him a fancy new prosthetic in today’s world. Amputation would just end up getting him dead. If you couldn’t run, you weren’t going to live very long. The ADA wasn’t applicable to the apocalypse. He finished giving himself first aid then carefully pulled his boot back on and laced it up. He downed a couple of antibiotics and a Percocet before walking around to check on the rest of the men.
The building by the airport they’d spent the night in exploded. Pieces and parts of the building rained down on them. They took cover under the trees or used their motorcycles to try and shield themselves. The sentries they’d posted came running back towards them. The one who’d been down near the end of the road made it almost all the way to them before being gunned down. Zombies were pouring out of the woods. It was only a matter of time before they got overwhelmed. It was time to get the hell out of Dodge. A complete FUBAR type situation.
Forrest hopped on his bike and gingerly kick started it. Of course, they’d shot him right in the kickstarting foot. They’d only been waiting at the rally point for a few minutes. He’d hoped a few more men may have survived to rejoin him. That wasn’t happening.
“Let’s go!” Forrest yelled leading the way down the small asphalt service road leading out the back of the airport. He was riding without lights since he was wearing a pair of NVGs. That’s how he saw the group of Zombies up ahead ripping into a small group of men who’d been hidden in the marshy weeds on the side of the road. He rode a little closer before stopping and waiting for a few more men to back him up.
When there were enough of them Forrest opened fire on the
Zombies in the road up ahead. He appreciated that the Zombies had taken out the ambush that’d been waiting for them. All they had to do now was shoot the Zombies since there was no way for them to safely ride around the infected on the narrow road. Once they killed this pocket of them, they’d ride fast and hard for the beta base.
He’d code named the airport the alpha base. Most of his men probably assuming because airport started with the letter ‘a’. In reality it was because that was where he’d ordered all the spec ops guys to meet him. They were the alphas in the military. The beta base was an empty field set off the main highway that he’d ordered a battalion worth of men to make their way to. They had multiple battalions moving into position around eastern Virginia. They were made up of the small squads who’d traveled across North and South Carolina in a trickle. If that worked as planned, they should be at full strength fairly soon. Once at full strength they’d begin to really engage the settlements militia.
They’d gunned down most of the Zombies up ahead when the enemy slammed into them from behind raking the last row of bikers with automatic weapons fire. With bullets flying all around them the rest of the men followed Forrest down the road riding stupid fast. They dodged road debris and Zombies at full throttle down the narrow road. Behind them the powerful engines of the military style hummers screamed as they tried to keep up with the more maneuverable bikes.
Forrest saw one of his men zooming past him spin out when a bullet from the mounted fifty caliber on one of the hummers chasing them caught him in the neck. The man on the gun probably couldn’t see a damned thing and was just shooting blindly in their general direction. A lucky shot killed just as dead as a well-aimed one though. Especially if that lucky shot was a fifty-caliber bullet. The corpse was probably a thin shred of skin from being fully decapitated.
Forrest dropped his head even lower over his handlebars trying to squeeze a little more speed from his bike. He was riding on the edge of losing control. If a snail happened to be crossing the road at the wrong time he was screwed. His whole world became the NVG view of the road in front of him. Tunnel vision sank in. The roar of the howling wind covering up the sounds of the screeching Zombies. He was darting back and forth like an Olympic skier headed down the world’s most dangerous slalom course. One where the flags on the course would rip your head off and feast on your guts if you made the slightest mistake.
Only a few of his men were able to keep up. The rest succumbed to either the bullets of the enemy or the dangers inherent in riding a motorbike through a mass of stirred up Zombies in the middle of the night at a high rate of speed. Most of the ones who made it were sporting the NVGs. This was the special alpha crew, so the extremely valuable night vision goggles were a lot more prevalent than they would’ve been with the soldiers from a regular battalion. They still weren’t provided for everyone. There was only a certain number of the devices and once they were gone it wasn’t like they could bid for refurbished pairs on E-bay or trade beer money to get them off some jarhead.
Each soldier that fell took with him priceless armaments that mankind may never reach the technological level to produce again. It was true there were stockpiles all over the place but the warehouses containing all that gear weren’t listed out on any map Forrest was aware of. Even if they were, the warehouses were probably in Kanas or Nebraska or one of those states in the middle with all the corn and wheat and whatnot. They might as well be on the other side of the moon.
A sharp turn coming up ahead was making Forrest sweat. It’d be suicide trying to make that turn at the speed he was going. The fast approaching intersection was only a few miles from where he had the beta group gathering. He’d actually planned on heading there tonight after kicking off the alpha attacks. He guessed his plans hadn’t really changed. He was just bringing a little extra company with him. Assuming he could make it there. Smart money was on him dead in a ditch within the next few minutes.
He didn’t dare take a hand off his handlebars to try to communicate which way to turn to his team. There probably wasn’t enough of them left to worry about anyway. Any of them that went the wrong way would be screwed since they’d have no idea where to go once Forrest was gone. That was by design. If they knew where the battalions were gathering, then they could be tortured into telling the enemy. If they didn’t know anything then it didn’t matter how much the enemy tortured them. It’d be like trying to squeeze lemonade out of a pinecone. If Forrest was captured, then that was going to suck for the battalions gathering now. Even though there was bound to be stuff Krantz was keeping from him as well.
Forrest considered his options briefly. He could slow down and get shot in the back or maintain his current speed and crash into the woods trying to make the turn. Neither option was super appealing. He’d been riding ridiculously fast though so hoped that’d earned him enough of a buffer to slow down some to make the turn. Getting shot was probably cleaner than the alternative of sliding into the woods and breaking something then being tortured until he gave up everything he knew. At which point he’d be killed anyway. He was way too old for this junk. Hopefully the Brotherhood had a nice retirement package.
He prayed his time riding dirt bikes as a kid combined with his love of Harleys as an adult would carry him through the turn. Putting it all in the hands of lady luck he let up on the throttle and applied the brake to swing to the left. His back tire swung wide into the rough gravel on the opposite side of the road, but he pulled it out. His bike was pretty much parallel to the road the entire time. A massive case of road rash was in his immediate future. Behind him two bikes smashed into the woods and another went up in flames as bullets found the gas tank.
The lead hummer came squealing around the turn and crashed into the woods. Another hummer skidded hard into that one. Forrest pulled the bike halfway up thinking he might actually make it. He completely missed seeing the adrenalized jumper that leapt out of the darkness stretching out its clawed hands to grab him. The Zombie, the bike and Forrest all went into a sideways skid. The Zombie leaving a trail of skin and blood on the road since it was completely nude. Forrest thinking that if he survived, he was going to go ahead and make leather chaps a mandatory part of their uniforms and just deal with the inevitable jokes.
The sliding stopped when they ran into the side of an overturned RV that was blocking the road. Forrest tried to standup and discovered his leg was stuck under the bike. He desperately tugged at his leg trying to free it while the blood covered Zombie got to its feet. The Zombie saw him moving around and jumped on top of him. The Zombies mouth snapped shut on the NVGs and ripped them from side to side. A single pistol shot, and the Zombie rolled off of him.
Forrest wiped off the goggles with the back of his hand and started working on freeing his leg again. The soldier who’d shot the Zombie helped him get his leg free and the bike back up. Once they got the bike up, they pushed it around the RV. Forrest was in bad shape. One of his legs was a bloody mess from being dragged along the rough concrete and he had a bullet hole in his foot. He could feel the boot with his wounded foot filling up with blood. The way his foot was squishing around in the boot wasn’t good. The soldier who’d rescued him wasn’t in much better shape after wrecking his bike. They both spun around at the sudden flood of light from behind them.
“Hurry.” Forrest hissed. The soldier was already hurrying but he still took a second to give Forrest a look. Forrest realized how dumb the order had been. He wondered if the man had been thinking about saying something rude or had just been checking to see if Forrest had hit his head when he wrecked. Either reaction was completely understandable.
They got the bike around the RV right as more hummers pulled into the intersection behind them. The sounds of gunshots filled the air. Forrest would’ve recommended pushing the bike farther down the road if they had time. That way the settlement guys may not hear it when they started it up. As it was, he said screw it and told the soldier with him to go ahead and get the bike started. He was trying hard
, but he couldn’t remember the guy’s name. He recognized him as one of the men who’d fought back immediately when they’d been ambushed earlier.
The bike started after a few kicks. The loud noise was easily audible on the other side of the RV. Bullets started pinging into the side of the RV. Men were running around it to get at them. Forrest got on the bike behind the soldier and wrapped his arms around the man so he wouldn’t fall off when they hit the level of acceleration he was anticipating.
“Long time at sea sailor?” The soldier joked. He gassed the throttle and whipped them into the darkness. Bullets and Zombies all around them and the soldier had still taken the time to make a bad joke. Forrest decided he liked the guy. If they happened to survive this cluster, he’d buy him a beer.
Behind them the settlement soldiers worked on winching the RV out of the way while shooting the Zombies who were starting to show up. Within a few minutes the settlement soldiers in the hummers were accelerating through the night in pursuit of the bike they’d heard take off.
“Not good.” The soldier Forrest was currently holding onto for dear life said when the high beams from the hummer hit them. It seemed like a bit of an understatement to Forrest. They’d had to go slow over a bunch of brush that’d blown into the road. The hummers barreled right over it without even slowing down.
Zombies! (Book 7): Still Standing Page 18