by John Holmes
My radio sparked into life. “Nick, we have roadblock ahead. We have been seen, and someone is coming out.”
“Roger, moving left.” I swung my arm left, where a good stand of wood covered a slight rise up off the road. Bognaski looped the mule’s bridle around a tree and hit the quick release straps of a 60mm mortar, hauling the tube over his shoulder as we ran. We each carried a few rounds in our packs, and I had been practicing shooting it without the baseplate. Sweat poured off my forehead as we ran.
The rise we got to provided a good line of site to the barrier, which was an old bus parked across the road, about three hundred meters away. We hunkered down behind a fallen tree, and Hart set up the SAW on its bipod. Then we waited.
There were close to a dozen behind the bus. I scanned the area and then looked higher up on the road cut, looking for someone on overwatch. There, about two hundred meters back, I saw a glint of sunlight on glass. Someone with a scoped rifle. I tapped Bognaski’s arm.
“How good are you with that rifle?” I meant the battered scoped M-14 that he carried.
“Pretty damn good, Sarge.”
I nodded, and said “Two hundred meters back, right side, behind the tree.”
He squinted without using the scope, then grunted. “Got it.”
I keyed the radio, calling over the open channel. “Wait for the shot.”
Brit called back instantly “Do you want any prisoners?”
“Negative. Just get clear.”
Hart rested her cheek on the stock of the SAW, ready to start firing bursts into the crowd behind the school bus. I lined up my rifle on the two walking slowly towards Brit, Red and Ziv. Two men, well fed, with the paunchy look that came from eating too much read meat and not enough other foods. Fucking cannibals.
“Ready?” I asked Nasty and Hart.
“Ready.”
“Ready.”
I felt like I wanted to puke for second, but then everything fell into place. The lead figure was a blur just past my front site post, center mass. I flicked my selector switch from SAFE to FIRE and gently squeezed the trigger. The CRACK of my rifle was echoed by the BANG of the heavier M-14 as Bognaski fired, then everything was overwhelmed by the ripping sound of a six round burst from Hart’s gun.
I fired another shot into the falling figure, then turned slightly to get a sight picture on the other one. His head disappeared in a red splash as Brit’s shotgun boomed. I took a second to watch the three of them go to ground behind a large fallen tree and start firing towards the bus.
I dropped my rifle in its sling and grabbed the mortar. As I had expected, when faced with surprise and superior firepower, the bandits had turned to run. Guessing the range at about two hundred fifty meters, I tilted the tube till the bubble was level and slapped Bognaski on the back. He rolled over and grabbed a round, armed it, and dropped it down the tube. I leaned back, shielding my face, and a hollow THUNK sounded, followed a few seconds later by a muted CRUMP.
“DROP FIVE ZERO!” yelled Hart. I angled the tube a little higher, and Nasty fired another one. This round landed smack in the middle of the largest group, a half dozen who had sought shelter behind a barricade of logs.
It was over almost as soon as it started. The return fire dropped off to nothing, and I gave the cease fire order over the radio. I took a minute to get my pulse under control, then said “Hart, you and Nasty go back and get the mule, meet us up here.” They headed off without complaint, carrying the mortar with them. Both were veterans of dozens of short, quick fights like this.
I moved down the slope to join Brit as her and Ziv advanced warily on the smoldering bus, pocked marked by dozens of bullet holes. The first one I had shot was rolling around on the ground screaming, clutching his stomach. Ziv cut his throat with a quick swipe of his knife, and the screaming stopped. Past the bus was nothing but blood, chopped meat, and ruin, except for one man, who sat on a log, completely unscratched. He looked at us with dead eyes as we came up, guns covering every sector.
“Get up” I said. I noticed the remains of a cooking pit, with bones scattered and charred, split open for their marrow. A red haze of anger filled my mind and I lost it. The man had stood up and I hit him full in the face with the barrel of my rifle, scattering teeth. He fell down, trying to cradle his head in his hands, but he landed on top of a small child’s skull with a bullet hole in the face. I reached back and drew my Mace, the one I used to smash zombie skulls in, and proceeded to hammer him into the ground, until his face no longer resembled anything human. Then I sat down on the log and started to cry, sobbing into my hands. Everything in the last four years came pouring out of me. Ziv and Red stood watching to either side, scanning their sectors, as Brit sat with her arm around me. I babbled for a full minute, talking about all the shit I had seen and done over the past four years. She just listened.
When I was cried out, she took my face in her hands and said “Are you done?” I nodded and she patted my cheek. “Good” she said “because it’s time to man up and stop being a pussy, OK honey?” and she kissed me. I let out a deep breath and stood up.
“Ok, if there is anyone else alive, kill them, quickly. Z’s might be attracted by the gunfire, so we need to get away from this place.”
Brit saluted and said “Aye Aye, Captain Tightpants.”
Chapter 9
I lay wrapped in my sleeping bag, trying to ignore the mosquitoes that seemed to be everywhere. Sleep wouldn’t come to me. In my mind, I kept seeing the sniper, the one that Bognaski had shot. He was a kid, all of about fifteen. There had been a small black hole in his forehead, and the back of his head was a crater, the big 7.62mm round splashing his brains all over the tree behind him. The rifle he had been holding had a scope on it, but he only had two rounds, and I doubted the scope was even properly sighted. Still, his teeth had been filed down like the cannibals always did, the better to tear at cooked meat. I couldn’t get him out of my mind. Every time I closed my eyes I saw him, imagining him as a regular kid, playing football, going to the prom, but always with that hole in his head and his brain splattered. What a fucked up world we live in.
So instead, I lay there and sat and listened. We lit no fire, because we were out in the woods, no safe house around. We were standing watch on / watch off, meaning half the group awake at any one time. Five hours sleep each. Not enough in the long run, but it would keep you going. Two people roved the woods with night vision goggles on, another cleaned weapons and reloaded magazines. Right now, Brit was swabbing out the mortar tube by the light of green chem stick.
As I listened, I heard Ziv’s voice come out of the darkness. I started to get up, but realized he was talking to Brit and lay back down. Then I listened harder when I heard my own name come up.
“… don’t know, Ziv. I think he’s OK, but this is really our first time back in action since we killed that bitch Doctor Morano and we lost Doc and Ahmed. The three of them were really close. They started the team, together with Jonesy and now he’s the only one left.”
Ziv was quiet for a minute, then spoke. “I am not sure he is the man he was then. He has you, and baby now. Family makes man cautious, makes you hesitate.” His thick Serbian accent was even more pronounced, tired as he was.
“Did he hesitate today?” she asked.
“No. But maybe next time, he does. He will not even tell us why we are doing this. Getting this politicar, this politician.” He said politician like he was uttering a curse.
“I’m sure he has his reasons. How long have you been with the team, Ziv? Two years now?”
“Yes, ever since New York City.”
I heard Brit hawk up some spit, probably to help clean a firing pin, and then she went on. “Has Nick ever steered you wrong?”
“He has made some mistakes, yes.”
“Shit, we all have. Even you, mister stone cold killer. What WERE you doing in the City when you dropped in on the firebase?”
There was a long pause before he answered. “I have, I had fa
mily. I was protecting them from undead. I come back to fortress house in Bronx one day and they are gone. Vanished. Wife, son, nephew. All gone. I looked for a very long time, kill very, very many undead and living. No trace, ever.”
Brit had no answer to that. What Ziv had said was more than he had opened up about in the two years I had known him. I was as shocked as she was. Ziv had a family?
He went on. “I was going up river to find way to get back west, to American Government. I wanted to kill whoever was responsible for Apocalypse. I did not care who. Know we know, and she is dead.”
“Yeah” said Brit. “Know we know.”
Somewhere outside Saratoga, in the wastelands caused by the Knolls Atomic Power Lab partial meltdown, that someone wandered, an undead victim of her own madness. Doctor Morano, a researcher for the Army, had invented the parasite that caused zombieism and released it on the world. All to prevent her losing her job during a government shutdown. She had injected herself with the undead parasite. For research, and when we had captured her I kept the antidote from her and watched her turn into a mindless, raving Zombie.
“So now, I have family again. Even though I think you are annoying bitchy woman, I like you, and Nick is good man, and you are family to me. So why are we doing this? Running in to danger again? And I do not know if Nick is up to this. He cares too much.”
I threw the sleeping bag off me and sat up, grabbing my rifle and moving over to where they were talking. They both looked at me, faces turned a pale, dead shade of green by the chem light.
“Ziv” I said “I’m OK. At least, I think I’m OK. Today bothered me a lot, because, as much as I hate cannibals, they were still alive. Undead, no problem, but this is going to be a much different mission, and we HAVE to do it.”
“Why?”
“Because if we don’t, Colonel Scarletti is going to haul me and Brit in on charges of murder for killing Lieutenant Colonel MacDonald, the prior Task Force Liberty Commander.”
Brit sucked in a breath and said “Holy shit! How the fuck did they find out about that?”
“We missed one of the old traffic cameras mounted on a telephone pole. Someone had hooked up an IR camera to it, but stopped monitoring it. They just found the video when they were dumping their servers.”
I let that sink in, then said “Ziv, you and Kelly and Brit don’t have to go. Red and Bognaski are under orders as soldiers, but the rest of you can drop any time. I should have told you before we left, but I didn’t want to get you tangled up in Army politics and bullshit.”
Ziv grunted. “Yes, you should have, but who cares. I go with you. Hart goes because her husband goes. Brit goes because she is crazy woman. OW! Kučka!” Brit had pinched the inside of his thigh.
“Back to work, Ziv. You’re on guard, keep roving. I know this is a pretty unpopulated area, so we aren’t slinging hammocks, but there’s always the chance of a wandering Z.”
He didn’t answer, just dropped his NOD’s back down over his face and wandered off, silence pistol at the low ready. Brit looked at me for a long minute, and I sat down beside her.
“He’s right, you know. You care too much. How many teammates have you lost?”
“Dead or injured?”
“Dead.”
“Carson in California, Szymanski, Jacob, Jonesy, that stupid LT at West Point, Mya, Killeen, Esposito, Ahmed, and Doc.”
“Plus a shitload of others that you can’t name but you can’t forget.” She slid over to sit next to me. “And now you have one more mission to do and you’re worried that you’re going to screw up and I’m going to get killed, or one of the others who are really close to you now.”
“Pretty much” I agreed with her.
“If it happens, it happens, husband of mine. People die, Nick. Everyone dies. I died inside a long time ago, when the world died. Now I have some life again, and we are going to live.”
I shut her up by kissing her long and hard, then went back to my sleeping bag to try and get some rest. Our mule, MacDonald, looked at me and peeled back his lips in a grin.
“You shut the hell up too. I’m not going to kiss you.”
Chapter 10
The next day brought rain down from the north. A cold, steady rain, unseasonal. It poured steadily down on us, splattering on our ponchos, finding its way into our gortex jackets, soaking our boots. Despite this, we were happy about it. Zombies don’t like rain, The parasite that infects them is killed by prolonged immersion in water; a couple of months will kill it off, but it doesn’t like water in general. That was all that had saved us, really, from going out all together as a civilization. After a few weeks of fighting and complete chaos, barricades thrown up along major rivers had stopped the plague, keeping a small island of order in the Pacific Northwest, where the Columbia River defenses held fast. England and Singapore, parts of Japan, a few other island nations, had closed their borders and survived.
So we trudged slowly onward. Step by sloshing step, sweating from the effort even as cold water trickled in through rips and gaps in our rain gear. Step by step, listening for the unholy zombie howl, a snapped branch that meant someone was ahead of us, watching for the turned blade of grass that showed recent human movement.
My team was on point now, Corporal Bognaski watching the front, Hart and I each side. She had traded Brit the SAW for her shotgun, a much handier weapon in case of an ambush. I winced to think of Brit, all five foot four of her, carrying the bigger gun, but we all had to pull our fair share.
In front, Ski raised his hand in a fist, and we all stopped. Then he dropped out of site into the tall grass on the side of the road. Hart and I immediately did the same, then rolling to one side and unsnapping our heavy packs, leaving us with our ammo and survival kits. I slowly wormed my way forward, taking the time to break squelch twice on the radio. That would stop the other team from advancing.
Ignoring the mud slowly finding its way down my shirt, I came up to Bognaski and tapped the heel of his boot. His M-4 was aimed down the remains of the road, and he was peering through a small spotting scope at ruined building some three hundred meters away.
“What have you got?” I whispered.
“I saw movement just around the corner of that building. There. Gotcha, fucker. Tree, ten meters to the right, half way up hidden in the leaves. Hunting stand.”
I took out my own binos, and looked closely. It took me a bit to find it; the stand was well hidden. I continued to scan the area, and saw something else. A camouflaged bunker, a firing slit showing behind some branches that had started to wilt a little, stood off to the left. I scanned right, and barely made out another one, on the other side of the road. Interlocking fields of fire, well hidden. I doubt that we would have seen them until too late if Bognaski hadn’t spotted the movement.
“Probably someone got up to take piss. They need to replace that cover, leaves are wilting.”
“Yeah, I saw that too” he said. “What should we do? No going around them.”
I had pulled my plastic covered map out of its case, and slowly traced the route. The road ahead cut through a rock pass, effectively blocking any flanking movements, and I’m sure that they would have listening posts out there anyway.
“Wait here, call me on the radio if you see anything, or if you think we’ve been spotted.” I wasn’t too worried; the rain made it hard to see as it was, and we were hidden now behind a fallen tree. I filled Hart in as she came up through the grass, and crawled my way back towards Brit, Red and Ziv. Once I made it around a slight turn in the road that cut off line of site to the house, I stood up and moved in a half crouch to their position.
I heard a safety click off, and tensed up for a second. Then it clicked back, just as the rain started pouring harder. Three sodden figures rose up out of the grass, and I quickly headed over to them.
“This will be tough nut to crack, Nick. You think we can take them?” said Ziv, after I explained the situation.
Brit spoke up before I could answer. “
I don’t know if we WANT to take them. This road we’re on goes directly down to the back end of Petersburgh, if you follow the creek bed.” She traced it out on the map. ”Odds are, this an outpost, if they are a well-organized bunch of survivors. I think we should head south here, to Cherry Plain State Park, and stick with the plan, going up Route 22.”
Red grunted, then said “That adds about ten miles up and down hill to the trip. About another day.”
All three looked at me. “Well,” I said “we aren’t under any kind of time crush. I’d rather sore feet than a casualty taking on those bunkers.”
I called Hart on the radio, told her and Bognaski to pull back. They arrived a minute later, rising up out of the grass at the same point I had and rejoining us.
I turned to Ziv, the most experienced man here in actual straight on fighting. Hart and I had both had our share in the Middle East, but mine was more about chasing Taliban across open mountains, and hers was city fighting as part of an EOD team. Ziv had fought in the Serbian – Croatian war as part of a Serbian Special Forces Brigade.
“What do you think? Take these guys here, or backtrack, lose a day, and come up from the south?”
He pondered it for a minute, then said “From what you say, these men are not cannibals. Professional soldiers. We send lowest man out under flag of truce. Ask for parley.”
As one, we all turned to Corporal Bognaski. His face went pale and he immediately objected. ”Hey wait a minute, Sergeant Major! I ain’t the lowest ranking guy here! What about those two” he said, pointing at Ziv and then Brit. ”They’re freaking civilians! I out rank them!”
Brit laughed out loud. “Big infantry man you are, sending a mom out to do your job.”
“Well, what about him then?” and he pointed to Ziv.
The man snorted and said “We may have been in different armies, boy, but I think Major out rank Corporal in any.”
We all turned away from Bognaski to look a Ziv now. Major? I had always assumed he had been, at most, a Sergeant. He was a killing machine, and I had never seen him take the lead on any mission. He just waded in and started shooting and stabbing.