The only fantasy that scared him more than putting a gun in his own mouth was the recurring one he had about putting a hole through the Senator’s head. He wanted to end the senseless killing. He hated that he played such an important role in it. The only way he slept at night was by occasionally giving commands that spared civilian lives. Every once in a while, he was able to twist and distort the orders he received from Sam to accomplish that. He hated himself for his own cowardice. He knew he should just disobey the orders he was being given and shoot anybody that insisted he follow them.
Another thing that made him smile was daydreaming about shooting Sam right in her smug face. He imagined her lying on the floor with her hair matted down from blood afterwards. He wanted to wipe that smirk off her face that popped up at such inopportune times. Like when she ordered the mass murder of children in the settlements. She’d give the command like she was reading off items from a grocery list. She was an automaton. A beautiful woman with no soul. A golem. A demonic life-sized Barbie.
It should all be over soon. Krantz stood walked over to the board to look at the troop disposition. Blue circles represented battalions of men forming in Virginia. Six of the battalions were approaching full strength with three other reserve battalions forming farther out from the front lines. That didn’t even count the battalion on the way via train. The train battalion was bringing all kinds of cool toys with it. From tanks to tons of ammunition along with a resupply of weapons. The train would also be playing an important role in sweeping through the remaining settlements in Virginia and cleaning them out. A role Krantz was unable to do anything about since all the orders to the train battalion went through Sam.
They’d lost hundreds of men in North and South Carolina to the massive herds of Zombies flooding the state. Hundreds was lower than their original estimate of a thousand men lost running that gauntlet. Thanks to that they now had more men available than they’d planned on having to attack the settlements. Krantz hadn’t emphasized that in the last call with the Senator but he knew Sam had noted it. He just hoped that extra fire power didn’t encourage the Senator to order him to attack the carrier head on.
Krantz walked out of the conference room. He walked past the banks of monitors showing the activity in the outside area of the hub. The helicopter that’d dropped Krantz off was back at the base sitting on top of the garage. There was once again a group of Zombies gathered around it. Krantz thought about proactively sending crews out at night with bows and spears to quietly kill as many Zombies as they could. If nothing else, it’d make it a little safer for the looters who dropped off their supplies every month.
The weight of the world settled down on his shoulders as he walked down the stairs to his room. He was tired. He knew once they won this battle that there’d be an endless campaign following it. A campaign that’d roll across North America on the piled up broken bones of the children he’d be ordered to slaughter. All to stroke the ego of a single man. A man Krantz didn’t even respect. With no target to strike out at Krantz sat down and poured himself a shot of tequila. He slammed the warm shot of amber liquor and struggled for a second to keep his gorge down. It wasn’t like him to waste valuable alcohol by vomiting.
Once he was sure he wasn’t going to puke he took another shot. Then another. Then he punched the wall a few times before sitting on the floor and taking a big swig straight out of the bottle. At some point in the next few hours the alcohol overwhelmed his stomach’s defenses and he vomited all over himself. That’s how Tom found him when he came down to check why he wasn’t answering the phone.
Swinging open the door after no one responded to the knocking Tom went in the room expecting the worst. He knew there were demons waging war inside his boss. He knew the stress the man was under. He’d guessed at the reasons for being ordered to ping the Senators video equipment. He’d known it wasn’t safe for him to do it. He hadn’t slept well since the day he’d done it. Especially not since he’d noticed one of the airmen staring at him from behind his desk while he’d done it. The man had ducked away quickly when Tom spotted him.
Tom helped a very intoxicated Krantz to stand up and get undressed. Clad only in his boxers Tom sat him down in the shower and poured cold water over his boss until most of the grossness had been washed down the drain. He toweled Krantz off and put him in bed. Krantz coming back from his drunken stupor long enough to thank him for helping out and apologizing for being such a mess.
Tom waved off the thanks. As far as he was concerned any man who didn’t get torn apart carrying out the Senators orders would be a monster. He respected Krantz. He just hoped he’d either come up with a way to reconcile the actions he was forced to take with his conscience or come up with a way to fight back. Either way Tom knew that he was happy to be on Team Krantz. He didn’t know what good he’d be in the conflicts that were coming but he was determined to come out of them with as clean a conscience as possible. A clean conscience being close to impossible to maintain in the new normal.
He remembered a quote he’d seen somewhere. It popped up in his head frequently lately. ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ He promised himself that when the time came, he’d be willing to stand up and do something.
Chapter 25: Fish in a Barrel
“We’ll be at your insertion point in about an hour. Be ready to move once we state to slow down. Any questions?” The man who’d escorted Kyler to the planning car earlier asked. He’d been sent back to let them know it was almost time to rock.
“No. I’ve got the maps and plans. I’ve shared them with the squad leaders. We’re good to go.” Kyler informed the man. Ritz didn’t even look in his direction when he sat back down. He was staring vacantly out the window. Not that he could see anything. The sun had gone down hours before.
“It about time for us to earn our horse tacos?” Ritz asked. The seriousness of his voice belying his attempt at a lighthearted joke. Without any sort of in-depth discussion of what they needed to do he’d intuited Kyler’s plan. He didn’t have the internal conflicts about it that Kyler was struggling with. The way he saw it every single person in this car had a duty to stand up and say they weren’t going to slaughter a bunch of innocent civilians. The fact that all of them hadn’t rebelled against the command justified killing them all in Ritz’s book. The sooner the better. He definitely wasn’t going to let any of them get near the settlements. He’d sleep like a baby after killing every single one of them. Except maybe for horse taco guy. Maybe they’d let him live.
“Yeah it is. Go tell the squad leaders to make sure everyone’s up. They need to be ready to hit the ground running. We’ll need a place to regroup once we’re off the train so we can get coordinated. I wish we could do it on the train, but I don’t know where they’re planning on dropping us off yet. Let’s do squads one and two through the front door and three and four out the back door. Send squad five back a car and have them exit that way. Wherever we end up at we meet up half a click due east. Radio silence. Blades and clubs only against the infected.” Kyler finished giving Ritz the orders he wanted relayed to the squads.
He watched silently as Ritz went down the aisle giving the squad leaders their orders. A wave of activity followed in his wake. The next couple of hours was going to be tricky. Standard procedure for moving through the woods was to split up the platoon. Fifty people moving through the woods together made a lot more noise than five groups of ten sneaking through the woods. If he was really trying to take out the settlements, he’d have the squad leaders converge from different angles on the first target settlement. He’d wait for them all to get in position then send a signal for them to attack all at once.
He needed to figure out a valid reason to have them stick together as a group for longer than they normally would. Otherwise he risked losing control of them on the way to the first target. If that happened, then the next chance they got to have them all together might be while they were standing around a big pile
of dead children. That wasn’t an acceptable outcome. He had to figure something out or there was going to be a grave filled with innocents with his name carved on the headstone. He rubbed his face hard over his scraggly beard with both hands trying to coax out a solution.
Another man came through the door and told him it was go time in fifteen minutes. Kyler had Ritz relay the timing to the squad leaders then rejoin him. They’d be going out the door with squads one and two. The man checked his watch when Ritz came back and gave them there five-minute warning. He pointed out on the map where they were going to be dropped off at. Then he handed Kyler a large Ziploc bag full of pills. Kyler handed the pills to Ritz to hang on to.
“Don’t feel weird about the pills. They help with the work you’ll be doing. Takes the edge off.” The guy said with a smirk. Kyler wanted to shoot the freak in the face right there for implying it was ok to get a bit of a buzz before you bayoneted a bunch of kids. He held back from dropping the guy on the floor and killing him right there though. That’d definitely blow their cover. Looking more closely at the man who’d handed them the pills he noticed the glassy eyes and enlarged pupils.
“I see you already got started.” Kyler said emotionlessly to the man. The guy looked uncomfortable for a second then turned and left without responding.
Ritz started to say something to Kyler but the train slowing down interrupted him. Ritz held back whatever he’d been about to say as three quick beeps sounded over the intercom system. A minute later two more beeps sounded as the train continued to slow down. When the final beep sounded Kyler counted down ten seconds in his head then told the squad to go. The train wasn’t going to come to a complete stop. They’d have a few minutes where it was rolling pretty slowly. They needed to get all five squads out in that window of time.
The squad leaders would be pushing their men out the doors. Hissing at them to jump and roll. Any that didn’t jump would get a friendly shove to help them on their way. There wasn’t time to screw around. The squad leaders had to jump last. They didn’t want to have to jump after the train started accelerating. By the time the doorway was clear for Kyler and Ritz the train had started picking up speed again.
Ritz being the parachuting expert he insisted Kyler jump first. With no time to argue Kyler took a flying leap out of the door. In the darkness there was no telling what he was jumping into. Turning on the trains exterior running lights would’ve made them visible to any drones or planes the settlements might be flying overhead. Not to mention attracting the interest of any Zombies in the neighborhood. The noise of the large train chugging along was attracting plenty of attention already. No one saw any need to add floodlights to guide the Zombies along their way.
In mid-jump Kyler thought they probably should’ve turned the lights on for the part where they were jumping out of the train. The doors they were jumping out of were intended to allow passengers to disembark onto train platforms. They were easily six feet off the ground. Jumping off a stationary platform in the darkness six feet in the air in full battle rattle wasn’t exactly easy. Jumping out of a train rolling down tracks covered in rocks with a steep grassy incline on either side was asking for a twisted ankle if you were lucky.
He hung in the air for what felt like an eternity. He’d been paranoid about some random train part snagging him in the air, so he’d really launched himself out the door. It was dark so he’d had no way of knowing that there was a pretty steep drop-off on the other side of the tracks. When he finally hit the ground, it came as an abrupt and welcome surprise. His paranoia was screaming at him that they’d jumped over a bridge by accident. He fought back the fear of a long fall to a painful death and braced himself to hit the ground soon. As painful as the landing ended up being, he still wanted to kiss the ground in relief.
He rose unsteadily to his feet happy to note that he hadn’t broken anything important. His body was in the appropriate amount of pain for the stupid stunt he’d just pulled. They should’ve passed out the happy pills before that jump. Might have helped everyone loosen up and prevent any broken necks. Maybe the problem about what to do to cripple this platoon would be taken care of for him by the stupidity of that disembarkation process. Doubting they’d get that lucky he jogged carefully into the tree line.
It wasn’t actually the train he was trying to get out of sight of. A parade of Zombies followed the train like a long tail hanging off a kite. Most of them would be miles behind the train and take forever to reach this part of the tracks. If any of the adrenalized ones happened to have started chasing the noise of the train recently then they’d be on top of them almost immediately. A screech followed by the sounds of someone screaming out in pain signaled to Kyler that the adrenalized ones were indeed already here and hunting.
Ritz showed up a few seconds later while Kyler was trying to figure out which way was east. All around them men were moving stealthily through the trees. They should slowly be forming back into squads. By the time they all got a half click east they should be semi-organized back into a platoon. Ritz held up a hand for Kyler to wait up. Kyler listened intently as Ritz leaned close to whisper to him.
“When we meet up with everybody have squad five come with us to scout out the first settlement site. We’ll take care of them nice and quiet then have first squad come up to get into position. Rinse and repeat.” Ritz whispered.
“You actually think that’ll work?” Kyler asked. His mind skirting around how they’d ‘take care of them’.
“Maybe. We keep them running with blades and clubs we should be able to get the drop on them. We can pass out some of these pills too. That should help get them nice and placid.” Ritz said.
Kyler nodded. His eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness. He could see well enough now. He assumed Ritz would be able to see him nodding. Another sign this platoon wasn’t expected to accomplish great things was that they hadn’t been issued NVGs. It wouldn’t surprise him to find out his platoon was here primarily just to get them out of Tennessee. If the Senator kept everyone moving around, then they’d have a hard time forming up and rebelling. The more he thought about it the more diabolical the Brotherhood really was.
Ritz led the way eastwards. They joined a group of men who’d located a clearing in the woods that was roughly positioned in the middle of where everyone had jumped. They sat in silence listening to the screams of the poor bastards who hadn’t made the jump successfully. Kyler shuddered picturing what it’d be like to be laying by the track with a broken leg waiting to be mercilessly ripped apart. None of them wanted to hang out this close to the tracks. They gave it a good ten minutes for as many people as possible to catch up with them.
When no one had limped into the circle for a full count of five minutes Kyler called it. He had everyone move another click deeper into the woods. He wanted to get far enough from the track to have a quick planning session without risking being overheard by ony of the ones with the super hearing ability. They’d already clubbed a few infected to death that’d ventured over too close to the group. The people who made up the platoon may not all be professional soldiers but none of them were shy about beating the brains out of a Zombie.
Once they reached a place that was far enough away that Kyler felt it was appropriate to risk a quick and quiet conversation, he gathered the squad leaders together to update the plan. He was really hoping one of them would suggest something similar to what Ritz had said to do. It’d look a lot more natural coming from one of the squad leaders. Then he could just adjust it to fit into something that’d work for him and Ritz.
“Casualties?” Kyler asked once they were all gathered together in a tight little huddle.
“Five MIA and one verified KIA.” Ritz responded immediately. He’d been going around gathering that info from the squad leaders.
“Any chance the ones missing could be saved?” Kyler asked.
“Not likely sir. Unless any of you know different?” Ritz said looking around at the squad leaders. One of them spit out
a long stream of tobacco. Copenhagen had aged much better than cigarettes had.
“That number sounds about right. Why the hell did they drop us off somewhere like that in the middle of the dark for? We’re down ten percent of our men already and we haven’t even got close to the damned enemy. It would’ve killed them to stop the train for a minute so we could get off without killing ourselves?” The impassioned squad leader asked. He was staring hard at Kyler the entire time he talked. Another clear challenge to Kyler’s leadership.
Kyler pulled out the map he’d been given and marked off where they’d started jumping. He ran his finger east of the drop off point to roughly where they should be now. The first red circle on the map was a good ten miles away through the woods. There were five circles in all. If he was actually planning to complete this mission, five settlements would be a pretty ambitious undertaking. The settlements had men and women in them who’d fight tooth and nail to protect their families. More importantly they had hard wired communication systems they’d use to call for help and alert nearby settlements that there was a threat. There was always the chance that a roving patrol might be spending the night at one of the settlements as well. Those patrols were made up of hard men who wouldn’t shy away from a fight.
“I want squads one through four to fan out and settle in right about here.” Kyler said pointing to a spot on the map a mile away from the first target settlement. “I’ll take squad five to scout out the first settlement. Once we scout it out, we’ll send a runner back with your orders. We hit hard and fast. No prisoners. Understood?”
Zombies! (Book 7): Still Standing Page 21