by John Holmes
“Understood, be advised, horde is about four hundred meters from IR strobe, azimuth twenty-two degrees. Strobe marks our position, do not drop on strobe. Hurry up, over.”
“Roger, four hundred meters azimuth 22 degrees. Standby.”
A minute passed, and then she came back over the radio. “Dropped, heads down.”
“INCOMING!” I yelled, and buried my face in my arms. A tremendous WHAM lifted me off the dock and set me back down, and I looked up to see a fireball rising in front of us. Bits of body parts flew through the air.
“Stinger, dead on, put one more just past it, over.”
“Roger that, then I’m out. Good luck, Lost Boys, next air on station an hour from now. Buy me a beer next time you’re in the City. Stinger out.”
The follow on JDAM blasted another hole in the horde, but they kept coming. We opened fire but more and more of the red eyes glowed in the moonlight, hundreds coming over the hill in front of us. The barrel of my M-4 was getting hotter as the bolt locked back on an empty magazine. Reload. Release the bolt. Aim. Squeeze. Shoot.
Fifty meters. They were coming closer, despite our knocking them down in rows. The bodies were piling up, and the Zs were screaming now, charging towards us, climbing over the bodies. I heard, over the scream, the thudding of chopper blades coming from up river.
Twenty meters. I could see the flashing navigation lights and a long stream of machine gun fire arched out of the night and into the horde, to no effect. The rounds shot through their bodies, only hitting their heads here and there, dropping a few. The rest kept charging at us.
Ten meters. I reached for another magazine, and there weren’t any. I pulled out my pistol and started taking single shots. The rotor wash from the helo threw off my aim. Next to me, Brit pulled out her crowbar and started swinging hard, smashing at the first Zs that grabbed toward her. Jonesy was swinging his iron bar in a wide circle, savagely knocking them down and cursing at the top of his lungs.
The helo came to a hover at the end of the dock, and I risked a quick glance behind me to see Doc and Mya throw Redshirt into the open doors. Mya climbed in next to her, followed by Doc, but the LT came running back to us, firing and charging into the melee, swinging his plastic-stocked rifle at the closest Z. I saw him go down as I smashed one in the head, swarmed by a dozen who immediately started tearing him apart. Ahmed ran backwards, firing his pistol until the slide locked back, then turned and jumped in through the open door.
Jonesy had been separated by more Zs and there was no way for him to get to us. He swung his bar again, clearing a space around himself, and yelled, “I’LL SEE YOU IN HELL, NICK!” and started moving away from the helo, swinging hard, smashing them down, leading them away from us. One grabbed his ankle, and he started to fall. A shot rang out from the helo, and Jonesy collapsed to the ground, shot through the heart by Ahmed.
Brit was bleeding from the stomach, blood staining her uniform where her stitches had ripped open. She flung her crowbar at the head of the nearest Zombie, then turned and ran, clutching her side. I followed close behind her, the Zs right behind us, howling and screaming. A gust of wind pushed the helo away from the dock just as Brit jumped for it and the door gunner opened up with his 240. I saw her fall into the water, slipping down between the helo and the edge of the dock.
In front of me, the door, and salvation, gaped wide open. Ahmed and Mya reached for me, hands held out, while Doc fired over my head, knocking Zs back from me.
I dove off the dock, and the cold river water closed over my head.
Chapter 63
Even with the full moon shining on it, under the surface was black as hell until a bright light stabbed downward. I could hear the thump of the helo blades coming down through the water. I unsnapped my gear and dropped my weapon as I sank towards the bottom, shrugged out of my body armor, kicked for the surface. Taking a deep breath, I turned over and dove for the bottom, trying to feel for where the current was running. Next to me another figure splashed into the water, and Doc dove down with me.
Fortunately, in the shelter of the point, the water was almost still and only about fifteen feet deep. I could see the bottom in the glare of the powerful spotlight on the helo, and after three dives I saw Brit’s body. I slapped Doc’s leg, and he turned and followed me over to her.
She had struggled half out of her armor, but floated unmoving, her eyes and mouth open, red blonde hair hanging in front of her face. I started pulling at her armor, my head hammering for oxygen. Doc pushed me aside and cut it off where it had caught on her uniform. We each grabbed an arm and kicked for the surface.
The crew chief of the helo directed the pilot to set the tail end into the water, and we struggled up onto the lowered ramp, pulling Brit’s body with us. Doc pushed me out of the way, listened to her heart, then started to perform chest compressions. I pinched her nose and breathed air into her lungs.
The helo rose in a smooth arc and headed north. Ahmed leaned out of the side door, firing steadily into the crowd of zombies until we were out of range. Mya was wrapping Redshirt in some blankets while holding up a new IV. The crew chief was hurriedly working on the wiring, where a short had sent sparks arching onto the floor. It smelled of blood, cordite and aviation fuel.
Brit suddenly coughed. A ton of water shot out of her mouth, then she vomited on me and started making choking sounds. Doc rolled her on her side and cleared her mouth out with his fingers, then worked on tying a bandage around her waist where her gunshot wound had opened up.
I sat on the deck of the helo and cradled her head in my lap as we thundered up river to Fort Orange. After a few minutes, she opened her eyes and said something I couldn’t hear over the roar of the twin turbines. I leaned closer.
“If you wanted to kiss me that bad, all you had to do was ask, you stupid ass.”
End of “Even Zombie Killers Get The Blues”
PART IV
C-130 rolling down the strip,
Zombie Killers on a one way trip.
Mission not secret, destination Dead Zone
We all know we ain’t never coming home.
Stand up, hook up, shuffle to the door,
Jump right out on the count of four.
If I get bitten on the old drop zone,
Put a bullet in my head and ship me home.
Chapter 64
Losing a friend is hard. When that friend was one I thought of as my brother, it was even harder. The helo thundered upriver, back to Firebase Castle. I kept seeing Jonesy in my mind, swinging away at the Zombies with that big piece of metal he always carried, leading them away from us so we could board the chopper and get to safety. Ahmed’s bullet ripping through his heart.
It seemed to happen in slow motion, in my mind anyway. In the movies, you get shot, you fall down. No blood, no gore. In real life, this sucky, post-apocalypse life anyway, you can see the blood splash out. It looked black in the light of the full moon. Again and again it replayed in my mind.
I sat leaning up against the wall of the CH-47. Brit was wrapped in a blanket and Doc was keeping an eye on her. Ahmed was up front with the pilot and SPC Mya was cleaning her weapon while she yelled nonstop in Redshirt’s ear, trying to be heard over the sound of the turbine engines. She was trying to keep him awake until we landed at the base and he was admitted to the hospital.
Below me the waters of the Hudson River reflected the silver moonlight. I started to shake, my hands clenched tightly together, and I threw up over the edge of the ramp. The vomit immediately blew back into the compartment from the powerful downdraft of the rotors, and the crew chief shot me a dirty look. Screw him.
We had been hurt, badly. Lt. Carter, attached to the mission, was dead, in a stupid, useless, suicidal charge against a crowd of Zombies. My friend and teammate for the last two years, Jonesy, had saved my life again, and had paid the full price for it. I could never pay him back now.
I knew what we had to do. After we had dropped off Redshirt and Brit at the base, we n
eeded to head back and recover Jonesy’s body. Zombies never eat corpses. They will only chew on you as long as you have a spark of life in you. Ahmed’s shot had punched out his heart, and I knew Jonesy would still be lying there.
Doc made his way over to me and handed me a helicopter crewman’s headset. I put it on and plugged into the intercom system so we could talk.
“Nick, we can’t bring Redshirt to the hospital. As soon as they realize that he’s immune to Zombie bites that kid is going to turn into the world’s biggest guinea pig. They will keep him just healthy enough to produce blood for lab tests for the rest of his life.”
In the fight yesterday at West Point, Private First Class Redshirt, a Navajo kid who had been attached to the Zombie Killers, had gone down swinging in pile of zombies, and we had though he was lost. He showed up later, all torn to hell and bitten in several places, but still alive and uninfected. Doc had told me that he was only the third person he had ever heard of who was immune to the zombie plague, and the other two had gone missing.
“Tough on him. Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”
“Bullshit. If you believed that, you would be back in the real Army instead of scouting around out here.”
I knew he had me. The kid had done good and become a member of the team, and I knew what would happen once the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) got their hands on him. They would sic their pet zombies on him and keep trying to figure out why he didn’t get infected, and he would die soon enough from whatever other diseases developed in their rotting mouths.
“OK. He stays, but Mya is going to have to look after him. You, me and Ahmed are going back for Jonesy’s body tomorrow, if we can get it.”
He nodded and unplugged from the intercom. We touched down on the island as the sun rose.
Chapter 65
Brit complained, but she had to stay. We needed her whole. And she needed serious antibiotics after her wound had opened up and she had fallen in the river. By the next night, she had a raging fever. It had finally broken, but she had been left exhausted and wrung out. Even her complaints had seemed like something she felt she had to do. She drifted off into a deep sleep and the PA at the medical tent had kicked us out. Redshirt was recuperating in another tent, away from the eyes of the medical personnel, guarded by Specialist Mya.
We set off downriver that afternoon, with the boat crew gunning the engine at full blast. I knew they felt bad for leaving us. If they hadn’t had to return to base for repairs, Jonesy and Lt. Carter would still be alive. I didn’t blame them, though; equipment broke down. It couldn’t be helped. The military ran operations on a shoestring. When the Apocalypse happened, many of the bases and depots that held spare parts for the military had been overrun. In the few years since then, there wasn’t anyone making anything except the simple basics, like weapons and ammunition. Even our uniforms were patched and mended over and over. That and irregular maintenance (or, in most cases, no maintenance at all) had taken its toll on anything mechanical. The boats waiting for us at West Point had suffered an engine fire and an explosion, causing casualties. They had been forced to return to base, leaving us to duke it out with a horde of Zs.
The dock where we had fought as we waited for the helicopter pulled into view. Zombie bodies were scattered all over, from our rifles and the airstrikes. We pulled up to the dock and climbed out, weapons at the ready, but there was no movement in sight.
Ahmed kept watch with his sniper rifle as Doc and I searched for Jonesy’s body. He lay where he had fallen, sprawled flat on his back, iron bar still clasped in his hands. Doc unwrapped a body bag and we tipped him over into it.
“Damn, Jonesy, you stink.” My eyes were watering and I felt like throwing up. Two days in the sun and he was almost unrecognizable. At least his eyes were closed. The blood had dried black on his uniform around the hole in his heart made by Ahmed’s bullet. He had always been too big to wear body armor.
“I know, right?” said Doc. “Maybe you should take a bath every now and then, Brother.”
It was either that or bust out crying. It’s just how you deal with it sometimes. This man had been my friend, as close to me as my own brother, or closer. We shared untold danger and saved each other’s lives too many times to count, and here I was about to zip up the bag and close him off from the sunlight forever. Doc motioned me aside. “I’ll do it.”
I turned away, but I still heard the zipper as he closed it. Goodbye, Brother. We each grabbed a handle on the body bag and tried to lift. “Damn, he’s heavy” grunted Doc. Ahmed slung his rifle and came over to give us a hand, and we pulled him over to the boat. The boat crew helped us get him onboard and we headed back upriver. Not a soul or a Zombie in sight.
We buried him on the south side of Bannerman Island, just above the shoreline, so his grave got sunlight all year long. Brit stood with me and held my hand while one of the infantry sergeants, a lay preacher, spoke over the grave. He prayed for salvation of Jonesy’s soul, who apparently had died doing the Lord’s work. Brit squeezed my hand tight to keep me from interrupting him.
As far as I was concerned, God had turned his back on the world, and I can’t say I blamed Him.
Chapter 66
I sat in the tent, cleaning my rifle, feeling vaguely depressed and incredibly bored. Doc lay on the cot next to me, leafing through an old Maxim magazine he had found in the ruins. On the cover was some actress who looked vaguely familiar. He reached the centerfold and flipped her open, then held her out for me to see.
“Does this look familiar?”
“Somewhat. One of those reality TV show or something.”
He laughed, pulled out a red marker and quickly scribbled on the picture, then held it back to me. He had reddened her eyes and put blood around her mouth.
“Holy crap!”
Doc burst out laughing. “Thought you might recognize her that way. Now if I could just find a yellow highlighter to draw in where you puked all over her. Ha ha ha!”
Redshirt sat up in his cot and Mya leaned forward.
“Come on, Doc, tell us the story.”
“Yeah, let’s hear it!”
I shot him a dirty look but he gave me the finger.
“So some bonehead gets the idea that we should scout out Malibu. Why, I don’t know. Reports of some civilian survivors holed up in one of those mansions or something. So we parachute on the grounds of this mansion, me, Nick, Jonesy, Simmons, and, um …” he trailed off.
“Rabinowitz.” I prompted him.
“Oh yesh, the Rabbi. I wonder how he’s doing?”
“I heard he’s getting around good on his new leg.”
“Cool.”
“Get back to the story, old timers!”
“Shut it, Kids. So anyway, we are scouting this mansion, everything is cool, no signs of life till we get into the kitchen. There, sitting at a table, is a woman with her back to us. Nick puts his hand on her shoulder, and says, “US Army, we’re here to help!”And this zombie jumps up, turns around and launches herself at him! I haven’t ever seen Nick move backward so fast. Just before she gets to him, he pops off a shot that catches her through the jaw and blows off the back of her head. She falls on him, spraying him with her blood and brains, and he throws up all down her back.”
“Screw you, Doc!”
Red and Mya were laughing. “Wait, it gets better. Every time, for quite a long while, whenever we shot a Z, someone on the team would yell, US ARMY, WE’RE HERE TO HELP!”
I was laughing too. It’s funny how things that were so terrifying at the time turn into funny stories down the road.
The tent flap was drawn aside and a sergeant from Operations came in.
“Nick, the Battalion S-3 is on the horn. They’ve got a new mission for your team.”
“OK, be there in a few minutes. Doc, start doing Pre-Combat Checks and Inspections. Red, you up for this?”
“I’m OK, Chief.”
“Alright. I’ll see if Brit can get away from the medics yet on my way back.”
I headed out into the bright June sunlight, feeling a little better.
Chapter 67
Inside the Ops tent, the computers were driving the temperature higher. Blue Force Tracker, Intel source trackers, artillery, plasma screen for briefings and more than a dozen radios to stay in touch with the various patrols on the shore and boats transiting the river. They all combined to generate a heat that the floor fan did little to dissipate.
I walked past a table where the liaisons from the other services had set up shop. We had one each from the Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard, and I made a note to get with each of them after I found out what this mission was.
At the Current Ops section, I took the microphone from the Ops Sergeant and called Task Force Liberty Ops.
“Liberty Main, this is Lost Boys, over.”
“Lost Boys, this is Liberty Main, wait one, over.”
After a minute, Major Flynn came on the line. After asking me how the team was doing, and getting my assurances that we were OK, he expressed condolences over us losing Jonesy. Then we got down to business.
“Nick, how do you guys feel about an airborne insertion? Over.”
“Friggin hate the idea, over”
I could almost hear him laughing.
“Well, tough crap. We need you to drop on a target, over.”
“I could say no, over.”
“You could, and I could draft you back into the Army again, over.”
He had me by the balls. I knew that Doc and I could disappear back into the woods, and Brit would go with us, but dammit, I liked what we were doing. We were, in our small way, making a difference.
“OK, send me a target with an OPORDER, over.”
“It will be in your inbox. The Navy wants back into New York, and we are going to do a hold and clear as soon as they identify a target facility. You guys will be jumping in first, giving a report, then waiting for the Airborne to drop. You will get relieved by the Navy. Over.”