by John Holmes
The rifle bucked in my hands, and thumped into my shoulder. The scope jumped off the target for an instant, and then settled back down. The report echoed up and down the valley.
“MISS!” shouted Ziv, and I cursed. Epson had ducked as the bullet sailed over his head, and I hurriedly laid the crosshairs again. Instead of running for cover, though, he stood and faced me, arms down at his sides, eyes closed. As I watched, I plainly saw him mouth the words “Do it.”
Chapter 16
Honest to God, I tried. I dropped the sight down a little to compensate for my miss, and he waited. Behind him I could see people moving, looking for where the shot had come from. My finger tightened on the trigger again, and I tried to control my breathing. My hand started to shake, and the sight picture jumped like crazy.
“Fuck it, I’m no goddamned murderer” I said, and took my hand off the trigger. “We’re outta here. Back to the RP.” I called Red on the radio and told him to meet us, and we started hauling ass back down the valley, and up the hill. As we jogged, keeping some wrecked houses between us and the town, Ziv gave me a questioning look.
“I couldn’t do it. I can’t just shoot people down in cold blood, Ziv. He wanted me to do it, and I couldn’t.” I stopped and drank some water from my camelback. Sweat was running down the back of my neck and I still felt shaky.
“Couldn’t do what?” said Bognaski, who was watching our back trail.
Ziv answered for me. “He couldn’t shoot him. We should go back. Let me shoot him.”
“No. I need time to think. Come on, let’s go.” We had reached the spot where we had grounded our rucks, and I tossed my pack back up onto my back with a grunt. Either the pack was getting heavier, or I was getting older. Probably getting older.
The rest of the team was waiting for us when we got back to the RP. I quickly filled them in on what happened, and told them I needed time to think. At least I thought I did, but I made up my mind quickly.
“I have to go back and talk to the man. He HAS to go with us. I can’t just shoot the man down in cold blood.”
“I didn’t think you could” said Brit, “but what are we going to do? Just walk in there and say ‘sorry I shot at you, but please come with us’?”
“Pretty much. I’ll go in with a white flag. You all are staying here. I’ll go in tomorrow, first light.” Hart started to protest, but Red held up his hand.
“Kelly, he’ll do what he has to do. But Nick, I don’t think that it’s the best idea. They’re probably going to be mighty pissed off.”
I scratched at the stubble growing on my face and thought about that. “True, it’s not the best idea, but it’s better than walking into a horde of zombies naked covered in ketchup. Anyone got any better ideas, now is the time.”
“We call in airstrike, blow up town.”
“Um, no.”
Brit raised her hand and said “We go home!”
“Can’t do it. Murder charges.”
“We can sneak in, kidnap him” said Red.
I shook my head. “Nope. Maybe before we showed up here, but not now.”
“Yeah” said Bognaski “we can’t all sneak around like Injun Joe. Get it? Injun Joe?”
The entire group stopped talking and turned to stare at the Corporal. “What? I was just joking. You know, just kidding. Haha.” No one said anything and he continued on. “Hey, we’re a team. Everyone picks on everyone, right?”
Red drew his bayonet and stuck it in the log next to him. He was short, but very powerfully built, and had more than his share of scars. He turned to Hart and said “Honey, how long has it been since I scalped anyone?”
“Vermont, I think. Almost two years. Want me to hold him down?” She could, too. Hart was over six feet tall, and had been a professional female weightlifter. She stood up and cracked her knuckles.
Bognaski also stood up and started backing away. “Now hold on a second, I was just kidding!”
Ziv picked his nose and flicked it at Bognaski. “Maybe you be part of team when you not die for, oh, say, two weeks. “
“Quit picking on the kid. Let’s saddle up. I’m going in there alone, but if something happens, I want you to either come and get me or wax that entire town. “
Brit grabbed a shovel out of her pack. “Come on, Kelly, I gotta take a dump. You know I never saw anyone on that stupid TV show get killed taking a shit. Although, on my favorite show ever, Tyrion Lannister killed his dad on the crapper. You know, before you joined the team, we had this engineer guy get bit in the ass by a Z, so Doc popped him in the head. Speaking of which, have you got any toilet paper? ‘Cause in a real live zombie apocalypse, there ain’t no toilet paper because all …”
Their voices faded out as they moved further off into the trees. Ziv looked at me and said “Nick, she never, ever shuts up. This is why I stay in woods so much.”
When they got back, we moved slowly down the road, back towards the town. We expected to meet a patrol, or some form of pursuit from the town, but came across nothing. We stopped before the intersection, and I motioned the team off into the woods. Brit gave me a kiss, then disappeared into the trees. I got all the way to the intersection where I had my wrestling match with Epson before a loud speaker told me to halt.
I did, and waited. I stood in the hot summer sun, waves of heat broiling cracked pavement, for more than a half an hour.
“Fuck this” I said and turned to walk away. I felt a bullet pass over my head, and heard the sharp CRACK of a high powered rifle shot. I stopped my turn and faced back towards the buildings.
“OK, I suppose I deserved that. Are you coming out to talk, or not.” On the building closest to me, a rope ladder fell out of a second floor window, and three figures came clambering down. It was Captain Houseman and Master Sergeant Ramirez, followed by Epson. Houseman and Ramirez had pistols trained on me.
“Put it down!” said Houseman, pointing to my M-4 that I had taken back from Bognaski. I had it held out in front of me, a white rag tied around the barrel. I placed it slowly on the ground.
“Now the pistol. Slow.” I pulled it out by the butt and placed it next to my rifle.
“Now everything else.” I started pulling various weapons out piling them on the ground in front of me. Three frags, two flash bangs. A Willie Pete. My Hammer. A .22 automatic, and another .22, this one an eight shot revolver. I could just hear Brit saying right now “He thinks he’s Mad Max”.
Once I stopped, Ramirez came over and patted me down. “Clear!” he said, and stepped away. Epson came over and looked me up and down.
“Nice shiner there, Mr. President. Sorry about that. I lost my temper. Happens a lot nowadays. The war and all.” Epson started to reply, but I held up my hand to stop him. I had heard something in the distance, a sound I knew well. He heard it too and then so did his two men.
Coming up the valley from the south, building in strength, was the sound of a high performance jet engine. Actually multiple jet engines. Whining turbines. They suddenly rose in volume and pitch as a long cylindrical object with stubby wings executed a tight turn around the side of a mountain just south of us. It was quickly followed by another, then two more. I didn’t wait to see how many were following, just turned and hauled ass as fast as I could towards a deep ditch by the side of the road. I dove in headfirst, landing in a foot of mud. I turned and faced towards the village just as someone landed on top of my legs and someone else splashed into the water in front of me. I shrank into the smallest ball that I could, opened my mouth and put my hands over my ears just as the first missile impacted.
The shockwave bounced me off the ground. I fell back down just as the ground rose up to meet me again, and I tried hard to keep my head and face out of the mud. Each one was followed by another, a second behind it. Each warhead was half a ton of High Explosive, but my ringing ears also barely heard the crackle and pop of submunitions mixed in, a hundred and sixty six grenade sized bomblets for each missile.
It seemed to go on forever,
but probably lasted no more than a minute. Right before it stopped, something red hot zipped across my shoulder. I could taste blood in my mouth and my ears were ringing so bad I couldn’t hear anything. I tried to roll over, but my arms and legs felt like jelly. I threw up into the mud just as someone grabbed me by the strap on the back of my body armor and hauled me up out of the mud. I sat there as Brit leaned into my face, her mouth moving. I couldn’t hear anything. I shook my head and tried to stand up. The sun had gone dark, crowded out by brick dust and smoke. I choked and Red handed me a bottle of water as Brit ran her hands over me, checking for wounds. I swished some around in my mouth and spit it out, and managed to keep from throwing up again as she tied a field dressing around my shoulder. Shrapnel ad scored a groove across the muscle, and it hurt like hell.
“CHECK ON EPSON!” I told Ziv, not even hearing myself, and he jumped down into the ditch, flipping over a body. Ziv shook his head, then went onto another figure moving slowly, and helped him sit up. It was Epson, blood welling from a nasty cut on his forehead. He shrugged off Ziv and stood, looking back at the town. I turned and looked myself.
Closest to us was the body of Captain Houseman. He had been shredded by a bomblet, and a pool of blood was growing around what was left of him. That meant that Master Sergeant Rodriguez was dead in the ditch. Further on a blazing fire rampaged through what was left of the town, which was nothing. Not a single building was intact, and most were shattered into piles of rubble. I couldn’t see past the first half of the town because of the smoke and dust.
Well, shit.
My hearing was slowly coming back, and the dust was choking me. It was time to move. I waved my hand in a circle and pointed up the road, back west. Then I pointed to Ziv and Epson. The burly Serbian nodded and grappled Epson, who had started to move towards the town. Brit broke a med kit and jabbed a needle into the protesting Epson. His eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed in Ziv’s arms, who promptly slung him over his back in a fireman’s’ carry and started jogging up the road. Red and Hart each grabbed one of my arms and helped me start moving after him.
Someone, somewhere, had talked. Some trader passing through had heard something from another traveler, and he had told it to one of the Homeland Security goons who were showing their face more and more often in cleared areas. We just got a taste of what Acting President Taylor meant for the rest of the country.
Part II
Chapter 17
Behind us, as we struggled up the road, a column of smoke and ash rose high into the sky, blowing eastward once it cleared the mountain top. We could hear the distant thump of rotors, coming up from the South. Everyone picked up their step; the sound of the helos meant that they were hunting survivors.
I was sweating like a pig and my leg was killing me. Brit and Red were falling behind, their shorter strides making them almost have to run. Even Ziv, carrying Epson over his shoulder, was straining to get up the slope. A sudden THUMP THUMP THUMP of an Apache’s Chain Gun echoed across the valley, followed by another volley.
“That house, there!” I yelled, and pointed to a rundown ranch style house on the left. We charged across the road, moving into the trees and down the driveway. Ziv dropped Epson on the ground, and I motioned for Hart to guard our prisoner. She stopped and pulled out a pair of flex cuffs and started hog tying him. Red told Bognaski to guard the road, and when he started to protest, the Navajo told him to shut it.
Red avoided the probably locked front door and used the butt of his rifle to smash in the glass of a window, tossing in a flash bang and then ducking down. As it went off, all the windows in the front of the house blew out, showering what was left of the front law with shards of glass. Brit hauled herself over the window frame, shotgun leading. Ziv quickly followed, and then Red boosted me over just as Brit fired a shell into a zombie that had been standing by the front door, taking off its head. Ziv fired at another and missed, a rotting, fat corpse that grabbed him in a bear hug and started to try and bite his neck.
Ziv hunched his shoulders and jammed his rifle in the things gut, and triggered off a long burst. The rounds ripped through it and plowed into the wall behind them, blowing huge holes in the plaster and spraying blood and rotten meat all over. His weapon clicked empty, but the Z held on, hands tearing at Ziv’s’ body armor.
“I can’t get a shot!” yelled Brit. Her shotgun would hit Ziv no matter how close she was. I drew my pistol and stepped forward, lining up on the things’ head, and my prosthetic twisted off my leg as I put weight on it. My shot went wild as I fell to the floor and the .22 Magnum slug buried itself in the back of Ziv’s leg, He yelled and fell to the floor and the hugely overweight zombie landed on top of him. Red stepped past me and swung his baseball bat as hard as he could, shattering the things skull.
Ziv pushed it off, and sat up, clutching his leg. “Goddamned it, Nick, you stupid šupak!” I was busy pulling my pants lag up and trying hard to restrap my leg.
He pulled a field dressing from his body armor and started wrapping his leg. “Through and through. Ugh! Ne mogu da verujem da si si me pogodio!”
I really didn’t want know what he said to me, and I motioned to Red to continue to clear the house. Brit knelt down by Ziv, but he pushed her away. She unslung her aide bag, tossed it to Ziv, and charged up the stairs, followed by Red. I hopped over to Ziv and sat down next to him. Overhead, the shotgun boomed once, a pistol shot, and another shotgun blast. The two of them came charging back down the stairs, headed for the back.
“CLEAR!” yelled Red, and I heard them kick the basement door open. Ziv was having a hard time tying the bandage, and I stopped strapping my leg and put pressure on the bandage. He grunted and tied the bandage tight. I reached into the aide bag and broke out a vial of morphine, then jabbed it into the side of his leg. Ziv let out a deep breath and relaxed up against the wall, covered in blood and rotten meat, and lit one of those nasty unfiltered cigarettes he smokes.
“Hart, get in here! Bring Epson and Bognaski in!” I yelled.
She appeared at the window, glancing in got make sure everything was clear, just as Red and Brit appeared from the back. Brit unlocked the front door, and Hart and Ski carried a still unconscious Epson back in.
Brit knelt down and started checking Ziv’s wound. “What’s the plan, bossman?”
“Hide out here until the heats’ off.” I stood up, finally having gotten my leg strapped on, and walked over to the window. “In an hour or two every Z in the area is going to come streaming into the valley. We need to be super …” I was interrupted by the sound of two ATV’s coming down the road from the East.
They appeared from around the corner, hauling ass. It was Sergeant Riley and the rest of his outpost, coming to see what had caused the explosions in the town. Just as they appeared, a line of explosions raked their way across the road, walking into the four wheelers and throwing them into the air. Bognaski jumped up and made to run outside, but Hart grabbed him around the waist in a bear hug and threw him to the ground.
“STAY PUT!” she yelled, and then was proven right as another burst chewed through the prone figures. The four wheeler closest to us burst into flames. We waited more than half an hour, before I led Hart and Bognaski out to the road, looking for survivors. We found one, Riley, who lay bleeding from a head wound that looked worse than it was.
Chapter 18
Night had fallen, but the helos were still prowling up and down the valley. We could hear their rotors, punctuated by occasional bursts of cannon fire. We were on total lockdown. No fires, no talking. We had moved upstairs, and destroyed the stairway itself, blocking access. A steady stream of undead had started appearing, drawn to the fires still burning in the West, walking slowly down Route 2.
I sat at the top of the stairs, watching quietly in the darkness. I had already shot one Z through the top of the head as it came stumbling into the house, a soft COUGH from the silenced pistol from ten feet away. Now the pistol rested in my lap. Brit had the other half
of the watch, in another bedroom looking out over the back yard.
Sleep hovered at the edge of my mind. I wanted it, desperately. Since we had started out on this little adventure, three days ago, I hadn’t slept more than an hour each night. I missed my son, and wanted nothing more than to get back home again. In fact, I wanted all this bullshit, all the killing, to stop. Stop now. I closed my eyes for a second, and the faces came back to me again. All the dead faces, my friends, my soldiers who had died under my command, my leadership. I jerked my eyes open again, but the feeling was still there. I was haunted by everything that had happened to me. Years and years of fighting, first in the Middle East, and then here, watching the country fall to pieces, the struggle to rebuild. My soul hurt, and I just wanted it to stop, though I knew it never would.
The longer I sat there, the worse it got. The smell of the zombies shattered bodies brought back all the grime and gore I had seen. I started to think, or tried to. I was short on sleep; not because I hadn’t had the time, but because every time I did, as soon as I started to dream, it was the same dream over and over. It was the memory of me smashing the undead life out of my wife, when the barricades had fallen and I had fled back to our home to make a run for it. She had already been bitten, and was eating our baby daughter. Only this time, in the dream, it was Brit that I hit with the barrel of my rifle, using it as a club, screaming as I did it. Every time I fell asleep for more than ten minutes, I woke up sweating, only iron discipline keeping me from screaming, reflex drilled in from years in zombie country.
The pistol in my hand felt cold and heavy, and the thought that I had pushed back so many times edged back into my mind. The way out. The way to make the guilt and dream stop. The fear, too. What if, next time we got into a fight, I made a bad decision that gets Brit killed? Or gets all of the team wiped out? If I were out of the picture, Scarletti would leave us alone. He would have no need to threaten Brit, because we wouldn’t be a team anymore. I had been useless today, losing my temper with Epson, missing that shot, shooting Ziv in the back of the leg. What good was I to any of them anymore? One leg, useless around the farm, I felt like an old man with too many scars and too many aches. Headaches had been almost constantly with me since I had taken that round to the helmet back at Comstock Prison. Ziv had been right when I overheard him talking with Brit yesterday.