The Apocalypse Crusade 2

by Peter Meredith

  The trio also found that Max was the best shot of the three, something that had been argued over for the last two years, but had never been proven. All three had qualified as expert over the years, but it was one thing to hit a stationary man-sized target at three hundred meters, it was quite another to hit a target that was three inches high and five wide—the size of the average forehead. They had wasted many bullets blowing out teeth, cheeks, and lower jaws; the forehead was the only true kill shot.

  The forty-third had been easy compared to the rest. It had come strolling right up the road as if on parade. Except for the missing arm, it seemed very human. Max had pushed the thought out of his mind as he leaned into the M16A1, breathed out gently, and caressed the trigger. The gun bucked mildly, as it always did, and the zombie lost the top of its head, though it didn’t seem to notice for a few more steps. When it pitched forward in midstride, Johnny gave the thumbs up sign and then pointed forward.

  He was on burial duty for the next twenty minutes. He climbed out of his foxhole swinging his shovel—they had gone into town and had “liberated” a few items of need: shovels, soda, chips, bleach, scrub brushes, thirteen hoses they linked together, and a bottle of Jack Daniels. They were supposed to take a swig every time they manned the back position, however the bottle was practically ready for its own burial. Someone, Max strongly suspected Will, was drinking more than their fair share. His mood had been strangely cheery for the predicament they found themselves in: they had done in seventy or so zombies so far and hadn’t heard dick from anyone in the unit.

  As Osgood slung the shovel onto his padded shoulder and started off for the body, Max eyed the bottle of Jack. The honest truth was that he really, really wanted another swig, but he’d had his one shot already and it wasn’t fair. Just then, Osgood yelled something, causing Max to jump in alarm. For some reason Osgood lifted the shovel over his head and then to Max’s surprise he did a sort of primitive tribal dance around the corpse brandishing the shovel like it was a spear. He went around twice before he slammed the shovel down onto the body with a sickly thump that could be heard all the way back to the crap town of Myers Corner.

  A second strike and a second ugly thump made by the shovel decided things for him. “Fuck it,” Max said and took a pull of the amber whiskey. “Ahh that burns.” But it was a good burn. He blew out a contented breath and looked up to see Osgood just standing there holding the thing’s stiffening legs. He was supposed to drag the body from the road and cover it over with dirt to keep the flies from spreading the germs, but he was just standing there staring off around the bend in the road.

  “What the fuck is he waiting for?” Max asked. He screwed on the top of the whiskey and set it aside. Then on a hunch, he picked up the M16 resting against his knee. The barrel was warm to the touch as he lifted it to his shoulder and because of the extra padding of the MOPP gear, he had to snuggle it good into the pocket of his shoulder to keep it steady. There were more zombies coming.

  Johnny Osgood dropped the legs of the corpse and with one hand holding his mask in place, he ran back, waving his free arm and yelling.

  “It’s alright, Johnny, I’m not blind,” Max whispered and pulled the trigger. At a hundred and fifty meters, there wasn’t a discernable drop in the bullet’s trajectory, the cross breeze was practically nonexistent, and the motion of the target: steadily forward, meant any miss was operator error. The bullet went through the thing’s right eye. One leg shot straight out, it did a pirouette and then fell, twitching. Max was already onto the next target.

  There were many targets, too many targets, in fact the road was suddenly full of them, and yet, just as he lined up his shot, the zombie jerked as it was struck by a three round burst. Half its face was torn off and yet it continued to plod forward. Max switched to a new target, thinking that Johnny or Will would have to clean up their own mess. He swiveled to his right slightly, blew out a light breath and fired—his bullet parted the hair, scalp, and skull of the beast and despite the horrible groove running right down the middle of its hairline, it kept coming.

  “Shit!” Max tried to calm his breathing and fired again. Now it went down. How it fell or where it was hit, he didn’t care. There were far too many zombies to care. The number of the beasts was thirty-five, but he would have sworn it was a hundred. Still thirty-five was a frightful number, especially for the two men in the foxholes on either side of the road. The zombies fell one after another, but very quickly, the rest were at the concertina wire. The first of them, an old farmer from the looks of his bib overalls, fell across it and got caught up in the barbed coils; the next eleven stumbled over the others and kept coming.

  Johnny Osgood, twenty yards away, clambered out of his foxhole and ran. Will Pierce kept shooting and so did Max. Knowing Will would go for the closest ones, Max concentrated on the second closest one at any one time. At sixty yards he couldn’t miss…just as long as he didn’t rush his shots. He rushed four of them and his heart was in his throat as his gun went dry with three of the beasts, a family still in their PJs, practically in Will’s foxhole.

  With trained hands he dropped the empty mag, slapped home a fresh one, sprang the bolt forward and shot again in the span of a second. His thumb slipped the gun into three round burst and, four pulls of the trigger later, the last zombie fell forward onto Will, spouting black blood.

  “Holy fuck!” Will cried. His words were muffled due to his mask, but there was no denying the emotion: wild, angry, panicked relief.

  “You’re welcome,” Max said, quietly before returning the selector to single shot. There was still killing to be done. The zombies in the wire were tearing their own flesh off in order to get at the hyperventilating Will Pierce. As Max shot them through the head, needing twelve bullets to kill nine of the beasts, Will came stomping up, and was actually reaching for the whiskey before Max leapt away.

  “Hey! Dumbass, you’re covered in blood! Get away from me.”

  Will’s chest was huffing hugely, trying to suck in all the oxygen he could through the filters. “Sorry. I’m sorry. Man, that was too freaking close. Oh, God, they were right on top of me for fuck’s sake.”

  “It was close,” Max agreed. “Now, go and bleach yourself. I hate you being so near when you got all that blood on you.”

  “Will you scrub me?” he asked pitifully.

  “What would your boyfriend say?” Max asked with a smile. Will didn’t laugh. He turned away but not before Max thought he saw tears in the man’s eyes. “Hey Johnny! Make sure all them zombies are dead.” Johnny had come back to his foxhole, lowered himself down and tried to pretend he hadn’t just run off screaming.

  Max thrust his head into his mask, zipped his coat, and pulled on his gloves. The usual fog of claustrophobia engulfed him. Breathing became a chore as he brought air up through the filters. After sucking in a big breath he said, “Alright, let’s get you cleaned up.”

  Their clean station consisted of three gallons of bleach, two long-handled scrub brushes and the end of thirteen hoses stretching from the nearest spigot three hundred feet away. The pressure was surprisingly strong. He soaked his friend and then doused him with the bleach. A part of him wondered if this was the proper method to kill the germs in the blood. He didn’t trust it, that was for sure, and he made sure to stand as far back as he could as he scrubbed down Will.

  “Where are they?” Will asked when Max smacked him on the back. He tore off his hood, angrily. “The lieutenant said he’d be back. It’s been four hours, Max. It’s been four fucking hours. I don’t think he’s coming back.”

  A sigh escaped Max. He was starting to think the same thing. “So what? Are you thinking we should leave?”

  Will lifted a single shoulder and refused to look him in the eye. His normal jovial self had completely withered. He was hunched, shooting his nervous glances everywhere. “Yeah,” Will said through gritted teeth. “They’ve abandoned us. They fucking left us out here all by our fucking selves. That is treasonous. Th
ey have an obligation to us, you know what I mean?”

  Max didn’t remember any mention of an obligation when he had taken the oath, joining the Guard. “I’m staying. You can leave, but I’m staying. I have a wife, man. She’s thirty miles that way,” he said, pointing south, “and that’s way too close. I can’t leave, I have my own obligations. I hope you can understand.”

  “So we’re just going to sit here killing those things?” Will said. He raised a gloved hand and was within an inch of running it through his short blonde hair, but he stopped and looked at the black rubber. “I don’t think I can, Max. It’s like shooting people. It’s like…” He broke off suddenly and hurried to the back position. Max grabbed the bleach and came after. Will had been wet with black blood when he had come stomping up; if there were any drops, Max planned on drowning the germs in bleach. Will went straight for the whiskey and downed the remainder, probably four shots worth.

  He stared at the empty bottle for a moment and then tossed it aside. “It’s like murder, Max. It feels like murder every time I pull the trigger.”

  “Then go,” Max replied. “Johnny and I will hold out here.”

  Will didn’t leave. Max allowed him to stay in the back position while he and Johnny geared up and, after clearing the wire, they settled down to wait for more zombies. They weren’t slow in coming. Thankfully, they came in twos and threes and made easy marks—but they did drain their ammo. The three of them had come to Myers Corner with a full combat load: 210 rounds a piece, plus they had the ammo crate, another 900 rounds. It went fast. By one p.m. the crate was empty.

  “Now do we leave?” Will asked, after he had topped off the last of his magazines; he was three rounds short.

  “No.”

  “No? You’re going to say no to me? I’m a fucking specialist, Max. I outrank you. What do you have to say to that?” Max had nothing to say, especially since they had already been given orders by an officer. Will couldn’t countermand them no matter what he thought. Will stood staring, sweating in his MOPP gear, until some internal frustration switch clicked on and he kicked the empty ammo crate. “Fine. We stay until we run out of ammo. Then I say fuck ‘em.”

  He started to walk to the back position and said over his shoulder: “I thought you were cool, Max. I didn’t know you were some tight-ass, gung-ho senator’s son. When did that happen?”

  Max was taken back by the venom in his friend’s voice. “Will, I’m the same guy.” For most of his life Max had been the guy who sat at the back of class making off-color comments under his breath. He was never mean about it, in fact he was a nice guy. He had an easy way about him and every one he knew considered him a friend. That easy way about him extended to everything in his life. School had been easy, but dull. Three semesters at college had been the same. At twenty, and already bored with life he had joined the National Guard, hoping to see a little adventure, but the wars had wound down at that point and he became the soldier in the back of the formation who made barely audible jokes and whose uniform was just barely acceptable and whose hair was just barely above his ears. He always knew he could do better but there never seemed a reason to try. Except now there was.

  “I became gung-ho about the time the shit hit the fan. This is real, Will. Look at all those bodies. You saw how they are. They may look like normal people, but they’re monsters. Someone has to stop them. Someone has to draw a line in the sand. Someone has to stay and fight.”

  Will glared for a moment, then grunted out a bemused laugh. “Nice speech, Captain America…shit.”

  Johnny swung his head from Will to Max and back again. His forehead was all done up in lines of worry and confusion. “So what’s that mean? Are we staying or going?”

  “Our fearless leader says we’re staying, so we stay,” Will said. “What are your commands, oh Great Captain?”

  Max ignored the sarcastic tone. “Since there are too many bodies to bury, we’ll stack them in front of the wire as another barrier. Next, I want to change the rotation. I want only one up at a time.”

  “Why do we need any one up by the wire?” Will asked. “All three of us should stay here. It’ll save ammo. Johnny can’t shoot for shit with his mask on.”

  “Fuck off,” Johnny answered right back. “You ain’t no Audie Murphy yourself, Will. But, yeah, let’s all stay back from now on.”

  They zipped up their MOPP gear and made their “line in the sand” using corpses. It was a hundred feet long, stretching across the road and right up to the forest on either side. The wall of bodies dribbled a ghastly black fluid, like thinned oil. The flies couldn’t seem to get enough of the stuff. Max and Will were staring at the insects constantly running their hairy legs through it when Johnny nudged them.

  “There’s more coming.” Eleven of them came stumbling up the road. They were mowed down before they got to the wall. A minute later fourteen came round the bend. Three of these made it past the wall of corpses only to die in the wire.

  Max was just getting up to head down to the wire when Will pulled him down. There were more coming. Twenty-three this time. They fired their guns hot and empty brass casings, blistering and smelling of spent powder littered their foxhole. The wire was covered in the beasts and no longer useful in holding them back. It was nothing but a speed bump.

  They were getting desperate. Johnny was spraying bullets everywhere and Will was cursing with each shot that he missed. He was cursing a lot. They were going through their magazines too quickly.

  “Johnny single shots, damn it!” Max ordered. “You’re wasting ammo. And don’t go for the head shots; just aim for center mass. It’ll slow them down at least.”

  Compared to the other two, Max had a calm about him that was surreal. It almost felt as if he was born to do this, that it was natural he was fighting, not zombies exactly, but “enemies” in general, and for the first time in his life he was at one with his nature. Technology had outstripped evolution so quickly that a man was somewhat lost in society. Women were no longer dependent on him and so his primary roles of provider and defender were essentially discarded leaving him with little but cultural inertia to keep him heading off to a dreary job day after day.

  Why Will and Johnny weren’t feeling it, he didn’t know. One guess was that they weren’t married, however, he hadn’t really thought too much about his wife that day—she fell into that easy part of his life. She had been easy, love had been easy, and it had been easier to get married than to not to. But, Max didn’t know if that was the reason and he didn’t have a second to spare to analyze why.

  He fired with precision and kept up a steady pace of one bullet every three seconds: to go faster meant he would begin to miss, to go slower meant he would die. Next to him, Johnny dropped one of his magazines and when he looked up, he made a choking noise. Max turned with a jolt to see that there were zombies behind them in the town and more coming out of the forest on either side.

  “Shit! Shit!” Johnny screamed. “What are they doing there?”

  “They’re following the sound of the shooting,” Max said and fired at the nearest zombie; it pitched forward onto its face, fifteen feet away. That was too close. Max could feel his breathing begin to ramp up.

  Johnny was turning a slow circle, staring all around him with his jaw hanging loose and his eyes huge and dry in his head. “I mean what are they doing back there at all? Remember the line in the sand? The zombies are supposed to be all in front of us. You know what that means, don’t you? The line hasn’t held. The company must have retreated and left us out here to die.” He was babbling but he was right.

  “Masks on!” Max cried.

  “But…” Will started to say.

  “Masks on now!” Max ordered as if he were a general instead of a private first-class. “They’re too close and I don’t want to end up like them if we can get out of this.”

  “How the hell are we going to get out of this?” Johnny practically screamed as he pulled on his mask.

  First things fi
rst, Max thought as he too struggled the mask over his ears. “We’ll fight our way back to the town. I’ll take the rear.” They barely made it thirty yards before the zombies were pressing too close. Will and Johnny fired from point blank range, dropping corpses almost at their feet; Max began to stumble over them as he walked backwards, firing faster now, no longer going for headshots.

  “On the left!” Will yelled.

  A quick glance showed that they were hemmed in now. A wall of living corpses closed from every side and the three men put their backs to each other, forming a triangle. The blasts from their M16s were constant thunder in their ears and yet, strangely, over it Max could hear Johnny sobbing. He could also hear his own breath come faster and faster. What was stranger still was that he didn’t hear the Blackhawk helicopter that was right above them. With his heavy MOPP gear, he didn’t even notice the down wash it was generating as its four blades cut the air with their tips flashing by at the speed of sound.

  Like magic, it was just suddenly there.

  Salvation was within reach not twenty feet overhead. Johnny started waving; he dropped his weapon and began swinging his arms, oblivious to the danger all around him. The only reply he received was when a door gunner opened up with an electrically powered minigun. It could fire two-thousand rounds a minute—to Max it looked like it was shooting fire instead of bullets. Zombies all around them began disintegrating right before their eyes. They would stand, transfixed for a fraction of a second, and then they just appeared to explode outward as chunks of flesh flew off of them, coating the ground in black blood.

  The minigun showered the road with bullets, striking a thousand sparks and sweeping the zombies back. It was an amazing sight and to Johnny, the helicopter was a straight up miracle from God. He clasped his hands and shook them toward the great machine as if he were praying…and his prayers seemed to be answered. The Blackhawk dropped suddenly until was it was just about head height. Johnny made straight for it but with his mask tunneling his vision he tripped and Will stumbled over him.