by John Holmes
After twenty minutes the guards switched out and I stood to take my turn. After a few minutes of watching the road, I heard a blood-curdling shriek erupt from inside the perimeter. As I turned back toward the sound, the Engineer dude came tearing past me, pants hanging low, half of a zombie kid holding on for dear life trying to chew a chunk out of his ass. I stood open-mouthed as he ran past. He was trying to knock the thing off him with an unfolded E-tool, probably the one he had been using to take a crap. Jonesy stepped forward, faster than me, and swung that big steel rod he carries right at the guys’ legs. Down he went, and then Jonesy was beating the brains out of the Z before it got a chance to scream.
“Everybody up! Weapons Hot! Doc, check him out! AND SHUT HIM THE FUCK UP!”
The team was up already in a 360 perimeter. Doc Hamilton ran over to the Engineer, who lay on the ground yelling “OH MY GOD!” over and over. The Doc took one look at his wound, stood up, pulled his suppressed .22 and shot him in the head. The guy flopped once more then lay still. I stood in shock for a few seconds at the speed of the whole thing, then snapped out of it.
“Doc, take his tags, any personal effects; Jonesy, you and Syzmanski bury him. Then split his equipment up around the squad.”
I had screwed up. I hadn’t assigned anyone to keep watch over him and now the guy was dead, killed by a stupid mistake. He had probably just dug a cat hole and not checked the brush or tall grass around him. Like I said, Zs are animal-smart. It had probably waited for him. Damn, just goddamn. I hung my head down and watched them dig a quick, shallow hole and roll his body in it. You just assumed that someone who had survived this far in the post-plague world would know you never went anywhere alone and you always checked out the area you were in.
Brit walked over to me, wanting to know what to do next.
“Hey Chief, it could have happened to anyone. You can’t babysit everyone and it was the chain of command that saddled us with him. Are we Charlie Mike?” She was asking if we were continuing the mission.
“Yeah, I suppose we have to. Just a sucky way to go.”
“I know, Nick” she said, then punched me as hard as she could in the shoulder. “Now suck it up and let’s go. You know it’s a hard world we’re living in.”
“Yeah, I know … if you can call it living.”
Chapter 30
“Empire, Empire, this is Lost Boys, over.” I let go of the hand mike and waited 30 seconds. Stupid radio watch back at Fort Orange was probably stuffing his face.
I tried again. “Empire, Empire, this is Lost Boys, over.”
“Kilo 39, this is Gulf 38, use proper radio procedure, over.”
“Yes, because the Zombies are listening over the secure net, over.”
There was a long silence. I pictured the fat fobbit running to his commander. Sir, those stupid civilian scouts are on the radio again, they are being mean to me.
“Lost Boys 6, this is Empire 6, SITREP, over.”
Great, the Task Force Commander, LTC MacDonald, aka Jackass. We love each other. Actually, we frackin’ hate each other. Mutual disrespect based on numerous incidents of his stupidity and incompetence.
“Well, Empire 6, we lost our Engineer asset, over.”
“What do you mean lost, over.”
“Lost, gone, finished, dead, over.”
“Dead how, over?”
“Cessation of heartbeat due to interdiction of cranial matter by copper and lead alloys, over.”
“Don’t be such a fucking smartass, Agostine.”
“Empire 6, please use proper radio procedure, over.”
The line was quiet for a full minute. I pictured Jackass smashing things in the TOC. He was notorious for throwing things at subordinates. I couldn’t help messing with him. I knew the fact that he needed me and my people and couldn’t do anything about me sent him ballistic. I was actually trying to get him to have a stroke.
“Lost Boys 6, this is Empire 6. What happened to your engineer, over.”
“Bitten by a zombie, we had to neutralize him, over.”
“Way to fail on the job, Lost Boys 6. I’ll make sure you write his wife, over.” God, that man was a prick.
“Can do, Empire 6. Are we going to get another asset? Over.”
“Negative, no air assets available. Continue Mission, Lost Boys. Out.”
Had to get the last word in. Jerk. I stuffed the hand mike back in Syzmanskis’ rucksack and turned off the SINCGARS radio.
“I think you two should kiss when next time you meet. Just give him a big, wet sloppy kiss.” called Brit over her shoulder as she moved to take up point. “Give him a reach-around.”
“Such a pig.” I muttered.
“OINK OINK!” she called back. We moved out down the broken road.
Chapter 31
We stood over the Route 4 bridge, just north of Schuylerville, and watched the water flow underneath. It was clear, clearer than I had ever seen it before. Clear and toxic. Not as bad as downstream, but there was a sheen of oil slick across the top. Millions of gallons of heating oil, industrial chemicals, toxins released by houses decaying. The engineers testing the water figured it would be close to a hundred years before it was drinkable. The streams draining into the Hudson were almost as bad. Who would have thought clean water would have been an issue after the Zombie Apocalypse? Another thing the movies got wrong. We knew of one good well on the east side of the river, a mile south of here. A hand pump into a deep well, but in a few years the ground water would be contaminated by rusting gas tanks and underground oil tanks. From here on out we would have to hump our water, which is heavy as shit. On a hot spring day in Upstate NY, humid as hell, humping seventy pounds in a pack, you wind up soaked to the bone with sweat in about ten minutes.
Jonesy and Hamilton stood pissing into the river.
“Damn, Jonesy, This water is cold.”
“Deep, too. You can’t play jokes like that on a brother, Doc!”
Brit rolled her eyes at both of them. “Boys.”
I took point, walking down the west side to the lock. We ran into two Zs stumbling down the main road. The first went down from a head shot from my rifle. The second was walking away, upwind from us. Brit took her out with a shot to the back of the head and we stepped around the still-twitching corpse. Doc flipped the first over and took a picture of her face for the National Database. It would go in the missing file, where the software would try to match her face. Not much, but it sometimes answered survivors’ questions. Maybe a one in a hundred got photographed, and one in ten of those got ID’ed. Better than nothing, I guess.
A quick note about our rifles: They’re standard, Army issue M-4s that have been rechambered to take a .22 caliber Long Rifle round, with a bit more charge than a regular .22 LR. Instead of the usual combat load of 180 or so .223 rounds in a regular M-4 load-out, we each carry 600 rounds of .22 Longs in 50 round magazines. We could also use them in our pistols and if we have to, we could use scavenged .22 rounds. It’s impossible to find any .223 rounds anywhere but .22’s are still pretty common in the ruins of sporting goods stores and gun shops. One thing you need when fighting zombies is ammo, and plenty of it. No one is that good to hit a Z in the head every shot, and, especially in combat, it is more like 3 or 4 rounds before you put one through their heads. Another thing they got wrong in the movies.
~ N.A.
We heard the howling long before we got there. It grew slowly with each step we took. It seemed to sink right down through our teeth into our bones. The Zombie Moan.
Jonesy stepped up to the edge first and looked over.
“Hollllllyyyyyy shit, Nick, come get a look at this.”
I tapped Ahmed on the shoulder and he took my sector, looking back down the road. I walked over to the edge of the canal lock and looked into the water ten feet below. It was filled with Zs, floating, standing on top of each other, clawing at the concrete wall. The doors of the lock were closed and they had wandered in there from the town. Hundreds of them. Packed
in, rotting, bloating. The ones underneath were truly dead, killed by the water. The ones on top saw us and started in a surge towards us, piling on top of each other, pushing each other down into the water. Jonesy started popping them in the head with his pistol but I told him to stop and not waste ammo.
“Damn, Nick, this shit creeps me out. What are going to do about this?” I noticed his accent had gotten softer and he was more serious, like it always did when we were discussing a fight.
“Leave it. Take pictures of the canal doors, check out the pump house and the electric machinery, get pics of everything, spray the crap out of the electrical system with the silicone. We gotta keep the stuff in working order but the Zs are going to be Lieutenant Colonel Jackass’s problem.”
“Do you want to open the doors? Let this shit drift into the river?”
“Fuck no. Do that and when we get back to the COP in Stillwater they’re going to be crawling all over the wall. We’re upstream. They can’t swim but they can wash up.”
He shook his head and spit on the Zs trying to climb at us. “Didn’t think of that. This here city boy can’t get directions straight, you know me.”
I walked back to the guys, picked my ruck up off the ground and rummaged for my Nikon.
“Hey Nick, check it out!” Brit pointed and we caught sight of a bald eagle soaring high overhead. The wildlife was coming back strong, but I hope it didn’t eat too many of the fish from the river.
“No doubt, the plague was a good thing and bad thing. Make the best and drive on.”
Brit bumped fists with me. “Make the best and drive on.”
Chapter 32
“Know what I’m pissed about?”
I sighed as we walked along the river road. Here it comes, I thought.
“I’m pissed that we’re never, ever going to go to the stars. This killed it. Right here.” Brit gestured to the potholes in the road, the ruined house we were walking slowly passed, eyes peeled for Zs.
“Why Brit, I didn’t even know you had such ambitions,” said Ski. Doc walked past, made like he was tightening down the chinstrap on his helmet and hunched his shoulders with an oh no look. Jonesy started whistling and pretending to be interested in some flowers on the side of the road.
“Well, Ski, you don’t know shit about me. For example, what did I do before the plague?”
“I dunno. College girl who banged football players?”
She stopped in midstride and smacked him as hard as she could upside his Kevlar. “DAMN, BRIT, OW!”
“You’re right, but you deserved that anyway, jerk. I was a duel major in architecture and aerospace engineering. I was going to go to the stars. Or build in space, anyway. Do you understand me? I was going to design space habitats. I wanted to design the first habitation on the moon.”
She started crying, tears rolling down her cheeks, and lengthened her stride. Then she sat down in the road, screamed as loudly as she could and started pounding on the pavement in front of her with her war hammer. The guys walked around her, ignoring her screams and frustrated pounding. After a few minutes, she stopped, slung the hammer over her back, picked up her weapon and resumed the march.
“Hey babe, you OK?”
She looked at me. I knew her back-story. Living in a college campus, in the ruins of Syracuse University. Doc and I had found her holed up in a cafeteria, on one of our first scouts. Six months, living on canned food and having the most god-awful amount of traps around her, drinking rainwater from barrels on the roof. Going slowly crazy with no one to talk to, dodging Zs every day to get wood for a fire. She had nearly taken my head off with a baseball bat and Doc had needed to sedate her to get her calm enough to talk to us. Even now, I wasn’t sure she had completely gotten over it.
“I’m OK. I just got to thinking, you know, about before.”
“Keep that up, you will go crazy. You can’t think about before. You know that.”
PTSD. Crazy. Traumatized. We all are, we all have it. How can you watch the death of almost everyone you loved? OK, for most of us, everyone we loved? How can you watch civilization, or most of it, crumple around you in a month and not go crazy? The Snap, we called it. For a minute, for half an hour, whatever it took, sometimes you just grew so goddamned bitter and angry and felt such a deep sense of loss you broke down and screamed at the world. For some, they broke and never came back. Walked off and were never seen again. Someone like Jacob, he went off into his own world of denial. Thinking this whole thing was a dream. For others, like Jonesy and Ahmed, growing up in the ghetto and in the middle of a war, life honestly wasn’t much different now. Maybe better. They could shoot who they needed to shoot without repercussion, and for the most part, no one cared what color your skin was or which side of the war or city you’d been on. Just that you were alive.
On point, Jacob held up his fist, dropped to one knee, cut his hand sideways then pointed forward. People, not Zs. We all dropped down and took up firing positions, a quick hasty ambush set up along the road.
We heard them long before we saw them. Horses. HORSES. At least two, coming along at a trot. No one had horses anymore, or more like no one used them for transportation. If a horse got within a hundred meters of a Z, it bolted. Flat out took off running like its ass was on fire, regardless of who or what was on its back, and often ran until it collapsed from exhaustion. Back in the secured zone, I heard, they still used them for farming, but out here they ran in wild herds that were impossible to come near. They had gotten even wilder and ran from humans, too, now. I would kill for a freaking horse to ride, instead of walking.
“OK, time to earn my leader’s paycheck.” I stood up out of the grass and stepped into the road, weapon pointed down but safety off.
“HALT.” I spoke forcefully, and the two enormous horses slowed but kept plodding towards me until their riders could get a good look at me, then they were reigned in. Two men sat astride them, shotguns pointed in my general direction, threatening but not directly so. They looked like just about any post-plague refugees---secondhand clothes, heavy leather jackets to keep off Zombie bites, chaps to guard their legs from bites, heavy gloves. These guys were cleaner than most, but damn, they smelled. Something I hadn’t smelled in a while. Yep, these guys were farmers. Manure clung to their heavy rubber boots. Their noses were immune to the smell, but it burned my nostrils as they got closer.
“Mighty presumptuous of you to be telling us to halt on our own road. We’ve got no tolerance for scavengers here. Though from the looks of you…” He eyed my uniform, with the American flag, the black and red Z patch on my right shoulder and the Task Force Liberty patch on my left shoulder. I saw his eyes read the “US ARMY” stenciled on the front of my black armor.
“Your road? I thought this was a County road.”
The older one, a grey-haired dude with a scarred face, laughed out loud. “Ha! A scavenger with a sense of humor!”
“We’re not scavengers.” I lowered my weapon and put it back on safe. “Nick Agostine, United States Army Irregular Scouts.”
“Irregular scouts?”
“Yessir. We work for the Army, but we aren’t actually in the Army.”
“Funny line of business. So, I suppose you’re just scouting out here all by your lonesome? Good way to get killed.”
I whistled once, low, and the rest of the team stood and stepped out onto the road. Five of them stayed on guard, weapons pointing out or back down the road. Jonesy stood next to me, M-4 looking like a toy in his massive hands. What good that would do if the frigging huge horses decided to trample his ass, I don’t know. The horses were gigantic and stood rock still. The riders seemed more taken aback than the horses but they recovered quickly. “I see,” said the older man, who introduced himself as Dave. “Well, maybe the rest of the world is catching up with us. Knew it would happen eventually. Hang tight while we dismount and talk for a spell.”
Dave, his brother Alan and their families, lived on a fortified farm a mile inland from the river.
We had come across people like him before; tough farmers who had busted their asses to fence off a couple of dozen acres, fortified their houses and generally held their own. Farms that were a combination of small fortress and house stood off in the fields, usually farther from town. What was unique about these guys was the horses. They didn’t even flinch when we came near them, just flared their nostrils. The two of them were out on what he called “Z patrol,” basically riding around a few miles from the farm, looking for stray undead that might have stumbled their way.
“So what’s with the horses? How come they aren’t running screaming, actually letting you ride them? How do they handle being around Zs?”
“They hate ‘em, but not like normal horses. I had a hobby horse farm, imported these guys from Belgium. These two were made for war. They were bred to carry a man in full armor and they make a hell of a plow horse. You can ride them into a crowd of Zs and they will stomp flat anything in their way.”
I eyed them enviously. To ride instead of walk!
“Are they for sale?”
“Not on your life, Sonny.” Alan leaned a little closer to his shotgun and kept a wary eye on the rest of the team.