by John Holmes
Early the next morning, we were given a tour of the town by the Mayor and Captain Freeman. Brit and I walked with them, meeting people going about their daily work. Smallville was a farm town, and the fields around it were being tended, on a rotating basis, by most of the men and women, guarded by the town militia. They still had some tractors running, fueled by alcohol, and I admired how they made do with what they had.
“If you’re going to stay out here” asked Brit “what are you going to need to survive?”
Mayor Olsen answered her, taking a second to greet a cat that had wandered out in front of her, leaning heavily on her cane. She straightened back up and took my arm, shoving Brit out of the way.
“If I was forty years younger, I’d be needing your man here, honey” she cackled, and Brit laughed good naturedly.
“What we need” she continued “is weapons, of course, but spare parts for our farm equipment, medicines, generators, and fuel. Alcohol, as you know, isn’t as efficient as gasoline. Maybe some engineers and some mechanics too.”
I thought about that for a bit. “You know, just because everyone else has pulled back to New York, doesn’t mean you have to be abandoned. You were in regular contact with Task Force Bronco, right?”
“They knew we were here” said Captain Freedman “but the SF guys are the only ones who we had contact with. The rest of the Special Forces A - Team was spread all over this part of Nebraska and Kansas. No idea what happened to them.”
“Hopefully they made their way back east, or maybe they’ll show up here.”
He grunted, non committal. We both knew the odds of two people travelling alone through bandit country. “Maybe. Tough guys.”
We climbed the steps to the firing parapet on the wall. At this point was a broad open space, one of the legs of the star shape, mounting defensive weaponry. The crew was there, performing a battle drill under the direction of Staff Sergeant Olaes. All of them, to my surprise and Brit’s delight, were women, none under the age of fifty.
“Welcome to my merry band of widows!” said Olaes, wiping some grease off his hands.
“I’m pretty impressed!” I said, looking over the machines. I recognized several different kinds of catapults, all counter weight, spring or torsion powered, several made from car leaf springs or salvaged steel cable.
"So what is this one?" asked Brit as she ran her hand along the huge steel and wood arrow that laid on the frame, ready to be cocked. Along the wood, burned in with a heat gun, was the word “Cucumber”.
"That" said the woman who lead the catapult crew "is a Ballista. It has a flat trajectory and is pretty accurate out to three hundred meters. We can disable an oncoming vehicle with it. Of course" she said, gesturing to the name carved in the wood "we call her 'CUCUMBER' after my favorite sex toy."
She and Brit both burst out laughing, and I shook my head. Women! We moved on to another machine, what people actually thought of when they pictured a “catapult”. In the basket of this were several hundred needle sharp spikes with fins welded on each, essentially lawn darts.
“So let me guess” I said. “The catapult throws these up in the air, when a horde gets to a preset point out in the distance, and these drop straight down, hitting their heads.”
“Exactly” said the gun chief, who was named Nancy June. “That and we have a shitload of barbed wire that we can throw out, untwists up in the air, and makes ‘em stumble.”
“Pretty damn smart, if you ask me” commented Brit. “who thought all this stuff up?”
Captain Freeman modestly coughed and gestured to himself. “Doctor Freeman, Professor of Medieval History, University of Nebraska. Never thought it would actually be useful!”
At that moment, the Iridium phone in my pocket rang. I saw Scarletti’s number, and I answered it. “Agostine.”
“Hey Nick, it’s Tony Bascom.” I knew Tony, he was the S-3, or Operations, Sergeant Major for Task Force Liberty.
“Hey Tony, what’s up?”
He hesitated, then said “Well, the Air Force retasked that Predator they had hanging out around you to do a general area scan. Colonel, I mean General, Scarletti was thinking of turning that town there into a FOB for future operations, so he wanted to know what was out there.”
“Makes sense” I agreed.
“Yeah, well you’re not going to like what we found. We had been monitoring a horde from the St. Louis area for the past year, preparatory for TF Bronco taking them on.”
“So?” I asked. St. Louis was hundreds of miles from here.
“Well, we called it the St. Louis horde, but really they moved around a lot. Let’s just say you’re going to be up shits’ creek in” and he paused again “less than twelve hours.”
“Uh, wait one” I said, and took the phone away from my ear. Why the hell does all this always happen to us?
“OK, can you give me an estimate on the size? If it were a couple hundred, we can handle that” I said, looking at the defenses.
“Over ten thousand, give or take a couple of hundred.” The blood drained from my face, and I got light headed.
“Ten THOUSAND?”
“Sorry, brother, but that’s correct. We’re trying to whistle up a bird to come get your team, but the town will be on its own. Not even sure about you guys, we’re really short on aviation fuel until the carriers dock. Scarletti told me, and I quote, ‘people are expendable, aircraft are not’.”
“That son of a bitch!” I yelled into the phone.
“I hear you. Just wanted to give you a heads up. I’ll call you if we can come get you, but don’t count on anything. I’ll feed you intel as I can.”
“Thanks, Tony. I owe you one.” I hung up the phone and faced the rest of the people who were all staring at me, expectant looks on their faces.
“Brit, go get the team together at the vehicles. We have a decision to make. Mayor, Captain, please call your head people together. I’ve got some bad news.”
Chapter 28
I found the team gathered around the vehicles, cleaning weapons and readying the trucks. We had given all the ammo we could spare to the town militia, and I knew what I was going to do, but this was one decision that I couldn’t order the guys to make.
“How are we doing on ammo?” I asked Sergeant Ripley.
He took out a little green notebook from his sleeve pocket and started reading off. “Twenty Seven rounds of 40mm grenade. Three hundred and nine rounds of 7.62 for Bognaski’s M-14. One hundred eighty six rounds of .223 or 5.56 for the two M-4’s. One thousand, eight hundred and eleven .22 rounds for the five M-4a2 rifles. Ninety six 9mm for three M-9 pistols, and thirty one 12 gauge shotgun shells for two shotguns, one pump action and one double barrel.”
“Well, that’s not enough. Not near enough. Here’s the deal. There are over ten thousand undead headed this way, and the outliers will be here in about twelve hours, around 22:00 tonight. Once the shooting starts, I’m sure the rest of the horde will come running, and this place will get overwhelmed. It’s a given. We MAY have a chance to get out, someone is trying to get a bird to come get us. If it does, the Mayor has agreed that all children and as many women as possible will get on board. Every one of us that stays is another two kids that can go.” I looked hard at Brit, and she looked straight back at me, her eye heard and blue, unblinking. She nodded slowly, even as tears rolled down her face.
“I’m not stopping anyone from going; we’ve all fought and sacrificed enough.” I looked at Red and said “Angelo, if the plane comes, you’re in charge of getting everyone on board, and safe back to New York.” He started to protest, but I cut him off. “Sergeant First Class Redshirt, that is a goddamned order. You go home and take care of your kid and mine, if Brit and I don’t make it back.”
“As for the rest of you, are you staying or going? I have a plan, but no guarantees that it will work. It may save the town and sacrifice us. I don’t know, but these are the people we swore to defend. So, let’s hear it.”
I asked
each in turn.
Master Sergeant Dowling. “Staying”
Captain Crossley. “Staying. I’m no good with a gun, I’ll just get in our way, and I can help with one of the gun crews.” I nodded to her. She was right.
Lt. Schwertig. “Staying, but I’m going to stay her in town to help with the defenses. Like Captain Crossley, I’m no sharpshooter. I can help more here.”
Major Rhodes looked at Ziv. He stared at her, impassive, giving her no hint of what he was thinking. Finally she looked away and said “I’m going. I want to fly again.” Ziv looked away.
Sergeant Ripley. “I can drive.”
Corporal Bognaski. “Staying.”
Doc Bailey. “You need me.”
Ziv. I didn’t know what he would do. For a very brief second, I could swore I saw a look of anguish pass over his face as Major Rhodes put her hand on his arm. He shrugged it off and said “I never run from a fight.” Then he walked away. The Air Force Officer ran after him.
Last I looked at Brit. I wanted her to go home, but I couldn’t decide for her. For a second, I saw the young woman that Doc Hamilton, Ahmed, Jonesy and I had met in the ruins of Syracuse, what seemed a lifetime ago. Her red hair twisted and blew around her face in the constant prairie wind, making it dance like it was on fire.
“You and your stupid fucking oath” she said, turned away, and started loading shotgun shells into a drop pouch on her vest. I blew out a breathe I didn’t realize I had been holding.
“OK, then, this is it. One truck, the Humvee. Ripley drives. Ziv on the Mark 19. Brit on shotgun, me as TC, Bognaski in the back with his rifle. I’ll get a truck from the townies to follow us as a recovery vehicle.”
“We’re not going to kill ten thousand undead. I mean, we’re good, but we’re not THAT good” said Ripley.
“No, we’re not. The trick to fighting zombies is to be smarter than they are. We’re going to head out to the horde, try to divert it away from the town, or at least enough of them that they stand a fighting chance.” Just then Ziv came back with a red mark across his face, like he had been slapped. He probably had. He said nothing, and Major Rhodes was nowhere to be seen.
“So” I continued “the next thing to do is to get with whatever machinists there are in town and seal this sucker up tight with firing ports. Ski, Ripley, that’s your job. The rest of us will be working with the townies to set up defenses.”
I caught up with Brit as she walked away to where the townies were getting the kids organized. Neither one of us said anything, and I used the opportunity to call Scarletti and fill him in on what was going on. I expected to get the OPS SGM, but the general himself answered the phone.
“Scarletti.”
“Listen up. I know you don’t give a shit about us, we’re tools for you to use. This town, though, has about a hundred kids in the path of that horde. If you don’t get a goddamned C-17 here before 2100 hours tonight to evac them, I am going to personally call President Epson and have him have you shot. He owes me.”
“Give me that fucking phone” said Brit, grabbing it out of my hand. “Listen up, dickhead, my stupid apple pie MERIKA FUCK YEAH husband is making us stay here to help defend these people. If you don’t give us every single ounce of support you can, I am going to knock him out, throw him in our truck, and in a few weeks put a fucking bullet through your ugly burned face. DO YOU FUCKING HEAR ME?” she yelled. Then she hit the end button, smiled sweetly, handed me the phone and kissed me on the cheek.
“I’ll meet you back at the truck, honey” she said, and walked away.
Chapter 29
We were thirty miles east of Smallville when the giant C-17 thundered overhead, back ramp open. The shortwave radio crackled to life over the general aviation frequency.
“Lost Boys, this is Thunderfist, We have you on visual, and we have a present for you. Shoot a flare to acknowledge, over.”
“Uh, we don’t have any flares. Shit” said Ski, rummaging through his pack. He grabbed one of the White Phosphorus grenades, flipped the spoon and threw it as hard as he could. It burst out on remains of a wheat field, sending up a shower of sparks and smoke.
“I guess that will do, Lost Boys. Stand by for drop. Thunderfist out.” The giant plane arched around and made another pass over our position, and a pallet fell out the back, the static line dragging the three chutes out. Only one opened, though, and the crate fell directly towards us, growing bigger by the second. We had stopped to watch, idling on the highway and both trucks shot forward, the pallet crashing to the road way with a loud BANG! where we had just been. The plane roared off into the afternoon sun, descending slowly towards Smallville, invisible beyond the horizon. The phone in my pocket rang, and I answered it. “You’re welcome” said Scarletti’s gravelly voice, and the line went dead.
Scattered ammunition and weapons lay all over the roadway, mostly full magazines of .22 for our M4a4 rifles. Claymores, a couple cases of 40mm BB rounds for the Mark 19, The shitty thing was that they were all covered in diesel fuel from a shattered five gallon can. We set to picking apart and drying what we could. Maybe Scarletti wasn’t such an asshole, after all.
“MAX AMMO!” shouted Bognaski. “I didn’t know I selected this perk, I thought I picked Autosentry.”
“Wouldn’t THAT be nice” said Brit “but I wouldn’t mind having a Lightning Strike.”
“This doesn’t change the plan, guys. We still have to draw as many of them away as we can. The horde should be up ahead about ten miles. Load up as much as you can, and let’s go.”
We spent twenty minutes putting everything in the back of the pickup truck the townies had lent us, getting covered in diesel fuel. Getting constant updates from SGM Bascom through the Predator, covering another eight miles of road, we pulled up onto a low rise. I climbed up onto the hood and looked east with my binos.
“There they are. Damn, that’s a shitload of undead.” And it was. Thousands of them, in a broad front, shambling forward at a steady pace. I had seen it before; sometimes they got a bug up their asses and followed the setting sun, chasing it for some unknown reason. Once one started, others would follow. I climbed down and went over the plan one more time with everyone.
“Listen, if we do this right, we actually have a good chance of drawing some of them off. Let’s review.” I didn’t say survive.
The plan was to slip to one side and start engaging the undead from the North, trying to turn them. There was a bridge over a steep ravine cut into the prairie by one of the innumerable streams, and if we could get across that with time to spare, many of them would fall into the ravine, or be slaughtered in a kill zone as they crossed the bridge. Killing zombies was, like Ripley said, what were good at.
“Do we blow bridge?” asked Ziv. I knew he was trained in demolitions. Not as good as Hart had been, but good enough.
“No. We keep it up till we get down to about twenty percent on the ammo, then haul ass west and then south here” and I pointed to another bridge crossing on the map, about ten miles away “then head back to the town to reinforce their defenses. If we blow the bridge, they turn back west and hit the town again.”
I folded the map up and asked “Any questions? Holes in the plan?”
Any answer was stilled by a drop in the wind, and we heard it. The moaning of ten thousand damned souls walking towards us. Rolling over us, sending a chill right down through our bones.
“OK, let’s go.” We mounted up and started off, turning left at the next crossroads. This road was in worse shape, only a two lane leading to the bridge, and the potholes slammed us around. Ziv, up in the turret, grunted as the metal rung slammed into his kidneys, but I didn’t tell Ripley to slow down. We stopped about eight hundred meters from the main road, still about ten kilometers from the bridge.
“Ziv, when they get in range, start dropping rounds into the edge of the crowd.” He didn’t answer me, just pulled the trigger, and the weapon went THUNK, followed seconds later by a muffled BANG. Brit was watching fro
m the roof, and reported that they were still streaming east, even after Ziv fired three more.
“Ok, gotta get closer. Ripley, bring us to about five hundred meters and stop. Everyone, prepared to engage.”
When a modern infantry squad opens up with every weapon they have, the noise is deafening. In the movies, guns fire off thousands of rounds with nothing louder than a “POP” or a mild “BANG”. A modern assault rifle, when it goes off next to you, can make your ears ring. It was why, in my late thirties, I was half deaf. The torrent of fire we sent out now made my ears ring, despite the pieces of foam I had shoved in there. I was glad it wasn’t Brit’s shotgun going off next to my ear, which it had done, several times before in the past couple of years, leaving me with hearing loss and a permanent ringing in my head.
“CEASE FIRE!” I yelled over the roar, chopping my hand up and down. Quiet descended, broken only by the metallic clicks of half empty magazines being exchanged for full ones, bolts riding forward, safeties being clicked back on.
“I guess that got their attention” said Ripley, who had been balancing an M-4 on the window, squeezing off shots with his good hand. It had, in that the entire horde, or what we could see of it, had turned towards us. Out fifteen second fusillade hadn’t even made a dent in them, though here and there a few newly un-animated corpses, headshots by pure luck at this distance, were being greedily devoured by other undead.
“Time to git. Ripley, five hundred meters back, then stop.”
“Roger that, Chief” he said and shifted into gear, spinning the overloaded truck around and leaving a cloud of Nebraska dust in our wake. The other truck quickly came along after us.
For the next ten kilometers, we stopped and engaged, leading thousands of undead towards the ravine marked on the maps. At one point, I found myself, along with the rest of the guys, laughing hysterically. Part of it was stress, but part of it was that we were actually having FUN. There was no latent guilt of shooting real people, and even though the dust was choking us, the bitter acrid taste of gun smoke settling in our mouths, and sweat pouring out of us, turning our uniforms white with salt, we laughed like maniacs at the sheer joy of striking back.