The Apocalypse Crusade 2

by Peter Meredith

  “No,” the reply came.

  “Good, now where is the end of the line? We’ll fill in from there.” As they were more of a line segment, the man, a sergeant by the name of Segal posted seven men on the far end and eight on the nearer one next to Jerome.

  He was almost mewling with gratitude, but the feeling didn’t last long. The zombies were coming again. No one doubted it this time and once again, someone whined: “Oh fuck.” Most everyone agreed with the statement.

  Sergeant Segal did not. “At ease that shit!” he barked.

  Men cringed at how loud the sergeant was being and one had the temerity to say: “Shush or they’ll hear.”

  “Let them hear,” he yelled back, his booming voice reaching to both ends of the line. “We need to stop cowering in fear and running at the first contact. Listen, boys, Connecticut is only so big and if you keep running you’re going to run out of state real quick.” The sounds in the forest grew and came on faster. Segal flicked on a flashlight and pointed it outward. “We need to man up, right this second. We need to put a halt to this or our families will be the ones to suffer. Now makes some noise! Louder! Get mean and get nasty and we just might get out of this alive.”

  Jerome felt a stirring reminiscent of when he had been wielding his M249 and mowing the fuckers down. He gripped his pistol tighter and gritted his teeth. “Fuck yeah!” he snarled.

  “Fuck yeah is right,” Segal declared. “Now let’s make some noise. Let’s bring them right to us and wipe them out.”

  The first part of the plan was the easier of the two. The men cried out in a yankeefied version of the rebel yell and the zombies came on. In a minute, the firing began and once again, Jerome with his pistol was forced to wait, but not long. Soon the black-eyed terrors came stumbling out of the woods with their mouths gaping and their clawed hands reaching.

  With his rediscovered bravado intact, he waited until the first was eight steps away before firing. For a fraction of a second, the light blinded him and by the time he blinked his night-sight back there was another of them charging. At six paces, he put a hole in the thing’s forehead dead center. Again, the flash was like a strobe, limiting his vision so that it felt as though he was taking extra-slow blinks.

  Four paces: and something horrible and mangled, something that looked like it had pulled itself out of a plane crash came closing in from his right. Another shot and another ugly thudding sound. The night was now a solid inky wall of blackness out of which creatures from hell strode. One monster had its head hanging by some tendons and a xylophone of creaking vertebrae. It took two shots to bring the thing down.

  Another was without arms. It waved stubs.

  Most came at him with chunks missing, fingers gone, jaws torn practically off and the skin of their cheeks split to the ear. Jerome’s bravado began to fade, replaced by a crazy, mindless panic. Involuntarily he took two steps back and then a third.

  “Hold the line!” roared Sergeant Segal. “Stand your ground.”

  It felt as though Segal was talking only to Jerome and with a feeling of guilt, his boots planted themselves as three of the things came at him. The last went down at his feet making a gurgling noise. There were more and they never stopped coming. A man began screaming: “Help! Shit, it’s got me, it’s got me.”

  Others wavered, their hearts quailing. The fight was a nightmare and, up until Dr. Lee’s miracle occurred, only Sergeant Segal and his booming voice held them in place. Nothing else on earth could have. The old adage that a man fought for his buddy in the next hole didn’t have any bearing on this fight. The dark made it seem like each man was fighting his own war, and if he did happen to catch the twinkle of a muzzle flash it wasn’t fired from a friend’s gun. They were strangers surrounded by more strangers…and all of them were surrounded by death.

  But then the miracle came in the form of a tremendous white bird that spat out a series of mini-novas as it banked over the battlefield. Each of the novas was bright enough to turn night into day. Jerome could finally see what was coming to eat him—the numbers were terrifying and yet he was able to fight the urge to run. Finally, he could assess the danger. He even saw that off to his right were a series of trees that had fallen during some long ago storm. They would make an excellent barricade.

  He blasted out the useless brains of the closest zombie and then jogged the twenty feet and took a position behind the trees. The zombies came at him and got tangled in the branches or were brought to a standstill by the belly-high trunks. Calmly, he shot them down.

  His gun clicked empty just as the flares descended into the trees.

  “Oh please come back,” he whispered, his head canted upward as his hands went through the motions of reloading. The sound of the twin engines on the Coast Guard HC 144-A Ocean Sentry burrrred away, and for a time, he stared after the twinkling lights, but then the fiends came and he fought in the dark but always with an ear out.

  A few minutes later, the plane was back and more flares were ejected and the men cheered and smiled as they fought.

  The plane was far from its usual Atlantic haunts where its eleven-hour flight time and its two-thousand mile range made it ideal as a search and rescue craft. General Collins was embarrassed that no one but Dr. Lee had thought to contact the Coast Guard and ask for assistance. They were technically a part of Homeland Security and his mind had been on the purely military side of the question.

  General Collins went limp with relief when he saw the large white planes whisking over the lines. “Oh, thank God,” he said. After a brief chuckle that was mostly relief, he barked out: “Get someone, anyone in contact with the Coast Guard. I don’t care how you do it, but we need to be able to talk those birds and direct them as if they were ours.”

  The general then radioed Courtney Shaw. “The Coast Guard is here. Tell me, where are we on the second part of our deal?” He thumbed off the mike to listen, what came back to him was the rattle of small arms fire and screams. “Courtney!” he bellowed into the mike. The others in the Humvee lifted their eyebrows and shot each other glances, each thinking that Courtney was likely the general’s mistress.

  They weren’t far off the mark. In the last day he had begun to think of her as, if not a daughter exactly, then maybe a favorite niece, and it had stung his heart when he told her that rescue was off the table, but then Doctor Lee had offered something Collins had been in desperate need of: a way to light the battlefield, a way to give his men a fighting chance, and that had put rescue back on the table again.

  It meant he was going against a direct order from the President, and a separate one from the Governor and, of course, common sense, which told him that absolutely nothing should come out of The Zone, alive or dead. But he had relented, though not without a stipulation of his own, one that he was not sure was worth it.

  A voice on the radio screamed something about a door that “wasn’t going to last” and then the line went dead in his hands. For over a minute he sat with his ear to the headphones, his face was that of a carven statue; the lines in it were deep with worry and his brows were heavy with grief.

  “Hold on Courtney,” he whispered. He then turned to one of the three lieutenants in the cramped confines of the Humvee. “I need two Blackhawks, right now. Divert the first two that aren’t carrying anything essential to a…”

  The lieutenant didn’t look up from his console. “They’re all carrying essentials.” He pointed at his screen. “We’ve got seventeen of them transferring fuel, another twelve are bringing up ammo. These ones near Kingston are moving troops. Most of the rest are overloaded with everything from water to concertina wire. All except these parked south of the Point. Six are down for repairs and the rest are out of fuel, in fact, most of the birds that are in the air are low to very low on fuel. The rest are being controlled at the brigade level and lower. I can try to get in contact with them but communications are still fucked…sorry sir.”

  Collins ignored the curse words; he’d been cursing practicall
y nonstop all night. “Well how soon can you get me two?”

  He stared again at the screen and spoke low under his breath. Collins caught only mumbled numbers. Finally, the lieutenant looked up, his face had an unhealthy glow from the light of the computer; it made the young man look Collins’ age. “Fifty minutes…maybe an hour,” he said.

  Chapter 29

  The Boy with the Striped Shirt

  9:43 p.m.

  General Collins’ bargain was simple in concept, nearly impossible under the circumstances and within the time allotted. All Courtney had to do was convince the Governor of New York of two things: One to ignore the Rules of Engagement laid down by the President, and allow his men the ability to shoot on sight, something they were doing anyway, and two, Collins wanted the use of his entire arsenal.

  Basically, he was asking for Stimpson to grow a pair and take some: “Damned personal responsibility for the state he was the governor of.”

  “And you’ll get us some helicopters?” Courtney had asked. “We need them right away.”

  There had been a long pause, which had Thuy and Courtney glancing at each other, nervously, and then the general had agreed: “Just as soon as I can.”

  That had been back when life was simple, back when there was only the one breach in the building. The office window had shattered into a thousand worthless diamonds and then, minutes later, the door was attacked. Pounding fists drummed at it and the walls shook.

  Doctor Lee had stood there, her face a porcelain mask, showing an outward calm that she didn’t feel. She had turned to Courtney, saying: “The Coast Guard has a multitude of flares of all sorts. They also have the means of delivery so the general won’t have to divert any airpower he is currently using. Call them before you try the Governor.”

  She had done just that. It had proved to be the simplest task she had performed in a week. The Coast Guard Air Station on Cape Cod had been preparing and waiting for exactly that sort of call; within minutes planes were wheels up and heading west at full throttle.

  The next call, to Governor Stimpson went nowhere. Her name seemed to be flagged and her first attempt at faking her way past the myriad of secretaries failed because just as she was affecting the bored voice of a “fellow personal assistant”—she was finding out the hard way that secretaries hated to be called secretaries—another loud gonging sound caused all the women in the call center to cry out as if in misery; another window was being attacked.

  “I’ll have to call you right back,” she said, as Deckard ran up and began shouting orders.

  “I need two men over here, now! The rest of you keep hauling out the furniture. And ladies, if you don’t mind, shut the hell up. The zombies still have to get through the doors and they’ll be harder to break down than the windows.”

  That seemed like an obvious lie to Deckard, but the women quieted and went back to work, doing what they could to untangle the communications mess that the 42nd Infantry Division found itself in. He knew the doors wouldn’t hold. Whatever evil creature was wielding the stone would probably put two and two together and see that the same stone that broke glass could hammer off a doorknob almost as quickly. When that happened, the halls would flood with the undead.

  Only that didn’t seem to be happening. The stone-wielding zombie went from window to window breaking them so that soon every office had been invaded and all the office doors were being subject to a relentless attack.

  “Ok, let’s pull back,” Deckard said when the men who had been guarding the doors started to look around in fear. At his orders, the office wing was basically abandoned. Only Deckard, Chuck, Burke and Max Fowler remained standing behind a barricade of desks at the end of the hall. At their backs was a heavier fire door that led into the center of the building, where the others were guarding the doors to the outside, working the phones, or sitting pensively, waiting without much hope for a rescue.

  Chuck practiced dropping magazines out of the bottom of his M16 and slapping in a new one as fast as he could. It kept his mind occupied. The sound of the zombies pounding and pounding had gained in volume so much that it seemed to be taking over his thinking. When he felt he had perfected the art of reloading he glanced around at the nervous faces of the others. “You fellas should go on and get inside. Me and ‘Ol John here will guard,” he said. At this, Burke gave Chuck a quick look, one that was easy to read: Why the hell are you volunteering me for this shit. But he didn’t say anything, he just rubbed the scruff on his cheek with the ragged nails of one hand. The scruff might have been only a few days old but Deckard figured he would look much the same if it had been a month.

  Chuck went on: “I don’t got long for this world, neither way and John’s immune. You two should ju…” One of the doors down the hall splintered, sending shards of wood flying. He swallowed loudly and began again: “As I was sayin’ y’all should get on inside.”

  “The other areas are holding firm,” Deckard said. “So there’s no need for you to be a hero, Chuck. And you too, Burke.”

  “I ain’t no hero,” Burke replied. “I’m jes tryin’ to stay alive. Just cuz I’m immune don’t mean I can’t get my face ate off. I swear that’s what I hate most about them, they like to eat faces. That’s just about the grossest...” The door down the hall staggered and then sagged in the middle and now grey arms could be seen reaching out, scrabbling at the carpet. Suddenly the desks in front of them didn’t look like much of a barrier and Burke felt exposed with only a few pieces of flimsy office furniture between him and who knew how many thousands of zombies trying to bash their way in.

  Deckard brought up his weapon and sighted down the length and then made a noise in his throat. “It doesn’t need to be this dark. I think the zombies know we’re here already, and if not, when we start shooting…” he didn’t need to finish his sentence. They all knew that it would be like a tremendous dinner bell ringing and they would come flocking to the feast.

  He sent Burke to switch on the lights in the building. It was better to fight in the light and it would chase away some of the fear that was obvious on some of their faces.

  Chuck was the best to hide his fear. Max Fowler, who stood next to Deckard seemed to have the driest tongue on the planet. He kept licking his lips but they would never go moist, not even enough to put a shine on them. He tried to laugh as he said to Chuck: “He’s right, there’s no need to be a hero, but if you want to be last inside, be my guest—ha-ha.”

  Now a head and torso dragged itself through the gap in the door, leaving long peels of dead flesh on the shards and a smear of black blood on the carpet.

  “Who wants to take the first shot?” Deckard asked.

  With a grunt, Chuck raised the M16 to his shoulder. “I’m still getting used to this thang. It looks mean, but it’s so light that it makes me a tad nervous that it won’t do the job.” He was quiet for a moment and then Bam! He fired and his aim proved to be a hair too high; the zombie lost a good chunk of its scalp, but it didn’t notice and went on squirming in the breach.

  “Hmm,” Chuck murmured, squinting at the zombie. “I swear that bullet just jumped up some.” He aimed lower and the second shot holed the creature’s forehead dead center. “Careful boys, there’s a rise to these guns.”

  Deckard opened his mouth but before he could say anything there was a new sound that was even more frightening than the sound of the eight doors in the hallway coming apart, and the moans of the undead growing louder and louder.

  They all turned toward the admin area where a huge banging noise filtered through the cracks of the door. Burke asked: “What is that? A fuck-all sledgehammer?”

  “Sounds like two,” Deckard said. Each loud bang added to his burden of stress. He felt the stress more than the fear. It hunched his shoulders and made the muscles of his face grow tighter and tighter. “You three stay here. Just keep knocking them down until you feel it’s appropriate to retreat.”

  He left them just as another door came apart and a zombie fell into t
he hallway. Burke killed it with a single shot.

  There were eighteen people in the admin area and not one was moving. Conversations had ceased and satellite phones were ignored. Breathlessly, they stood listening to the crashes. The sound was coming from the incarceration wing. Deckard pointed to three of the state troopers. “You three come with me. If you have masks get them.” Deckard only had a blue surgical mask, while some of the troopers had more elaborate, protective masks.

  While the men scrambled to put their masks on, Deckard went to the door, but Thuy beat him to it. She came marching up fast with a pistol in her hand. It seemed very large compared to her delicate fingers. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked, very much ready to play the man card and demand that she stay back.

  “If that door is about to fail, we’re going to have to move the prisoners,” she explained and reached for the door handle.

  He grabbed her wrist in a soft grip, and whispered: “Be careful in there. Don’t trust any of them.”

  She gave him a smile. It was a small thing that barely showed her white teeth but it was a sweet one to him. It cracked the tense look she’d been wearing all day and it almost made him smile in return. The huge metallic banging was practically a guarantee that a smile wouldn’t replace the scowl that he wore.

  “I’ll be careful, that goes without saying,” she whispered. “But...but I’m glad you did say it. I’m glad you’re here with me.”

  His hand left her wrist and slid up her arm. He pulled her close, and despite the banging and the symphony of moans that filled the air to such a degree that it made a few of the women dribble tears constantly, Deckard leaned in and kissed her. It was gentle and way too brief.

  The troopers came up and their presence ended it and when it did, Thuy’s face twisted back into its tense sharpness, which she hid behind a blue surgical mask. She reached up and pulled Deckard’s mask down over his nose and mouth, just as she had done the day before and, just like then, he felt the same electricity at her touch.