Snareville II: Circles

by David Youngquist

  Henry moved to Emily. Bright red blood coursed down her thigh. It dripped to the floor from her knee. Henry yanked her skirt off. The girl looked him in the eye.

  “Hank’s dead.” She said.

  “Hank?” Henry asked

  “Her horse,” Harriet answered.

  “They shot him,” Emily said. She was beginning to pale as well. A shiver ran through her body as Harriet threw a blanket around her shoulders. Henry moved her hand to wash the wound. “They shot him,” she said again.

  “What else?” Henry asked. “They just opened up on you?”

  “We rounded a bend in the road,” Elizabeth explained, “and we ran directly into one another. I recognized them. They recognized us. We have to keep them away from our people, so we charged.”

  “How are they moving? Walking? Driving? What?”

  “Some vehicles like yours. Others are pickup trucks with guns and steel on them.”

  “God. Now you know how the Polish cavalry got wiped out in World War Two. How many?”

  “I do not know.” Elizabeth stroked Gertrude’s forehead, whispered something in German.

  “Elizabeth. Focus on what your man asks of you. How many vehicles?” Harriet snapped.

  She looked up. Gathered herself. “I apologize. Gertrude and I have been together since the cradle. There were between fifteen and twenty vehicles on the road. We had to fall back. Anna Yoder is dead. She took a bullet to her face and her chest.”

  “Shit,” Henry muttered.

  Jinks crashed through the door first, followed by Mart and Cody.

  “We’ve got trouble coming down,” Henry said. “Jinks, she’s bleeding bad. Femoral artery from the looks. We need to get it stopped.”

  Jinks set her box on the floor. They pulled a coffee table from the front room, laid Emily on it. She cleaned the wound, gave the girl a shot for the pain. Soon Emily was muttering and crying about her horse, but not in pain. From the box, Jinks pulled a bag of wound clot Tom had supplied from the Arsenal. She dumped a liberal amount of the bag into the bullet hole and wrapped it in a bandage. The powder went to work. The bleeding stopped in seconds. They tucked blankets around her and started an I.V. bag of fluids.

  Henry filled Jinks in on what happened as she started to examine Gertrude. Jessica and Horse showed up, as did Beno, Johnson and Vickie.

  “She’s lost a lot of blood, Hawk.” Jinks said. “I don’t have any with me. We need to do a transfusion. There’s no exit wound either, which means the bullet’s still in there. She needs surgery.” She dug around in her box, came up with a transfusion line and a tourniquet. She raised a vein, took the cover of one needle in her teeth, removed it, spat the cover on the floor. “What blood type is she?”

  She didn’t get an answer. She looked up at the Amish gathered. “I asked a question. What blood type is she?”

  “We do not know. We do our birthing at home with the midwives. If we cannot handle things, we go to the emergency room, or have a doctor come to us,” Harriet said.

  “Fuck,” Jinks muttered as she found a vein.

  Mart rolled up her sleeve. “I’m O Positive.” She held out her arm as she sat in the chair next to the table. Jinks looked at her for a moment, wrapped the tourniquet around her arm and found a vein. Blood flowed between the two.

  “Everyone but Mart get the fuck out of here and let me work.”

  “I will stay. You will have need of help,” Harriet said.

  “Fine.”

  “I am staying as well,” Elizabeth said.

  “Like hell you are,” Jinks replied. “I’ll have you dragged out if I need to.”

  The group stood. Elizabeth kissed her cousin on the forehead, then left with the others. They gathered outside in the street.

  “Gear out,” Henry barked. “I want you in full battle rattle in five minutes. Meet back here.”

  People scattered to their respective houses where they pulled on combat gear, loaded rifles and pistols. Elizabeth ordered her people into full battle drill. Extra ammo was pulled from where it was stashed. Soon there were more than thirty people gathered in the small street.

  “I need my people to run back to the clearing and bring our rigs up. Bring up the ones from the Indiana Guard as well. We’ll need them. Make sure everything is loaded to the gills. I’ll meet you at the back wall.” He turned to Elizabeth as they walked to the back gate. “Do you people have any defensive positions?”

  “Yes. On top of the wall and portholes along the inside.”

  “I don’t want you on top of the walls. If people are shooting back, you’re instantly dead. Get down on those portals that face east. Don’t waste ammo. Only shoot when you have targets.”

  “I understand. We cannot let them get away.” She looked Henry straight in the eye. “If we let them escape, they will return with more. We have no place for prisoners.”

  Henry thought about it. He slowly nodded his head. Cody pulled up behind him with Johnson behind the Ma Duce. They needed gunners. They had enough drivers. Henry handed Elizabeth a spare radio, tuned to the frequency they would use. They shuffled people around. Three Amish girls were given quick lessons on how to run machine guns.

  A sharp whistle got his attention. Jinks stood outside her makeshift operating room. She waved him over.

  “Henry, if we don’t get these two to a doctor, they’ll be dead before morning.” She stood, bloody to the elbows.

  “Suggestions?”

  “Call a chopper.”

  “Closest one is in Moline.”

  “I know. You’ve got the satellite phone. Call Colonel Tom. Tell him where we are, get a bird down here. Call Dan, tell him to get Leary ready for casualties.”

  “Good thinking, Corporal. On it. Stay on your radio, I’ll keep you posted.”

  He trotted back to his Humvee. Elizabeth’s people were fanning out to take positions. The two Guard vehicles were mounted up with heavy M-249 automatic rifles. Box fed, they had taken the place of the M-60 a few years back. Elizabeth waited for him. He stopped in front of her.

  “We have to get moving.” He told her as he looked into her eyes.

  “Yes. Be careful. Come back to me, Henry.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Ich liebe dich.”

  He took her hand in his and kissed her black lips. Slowly he let go and turned to his troops. Elizabeth turned, trotted down the street to join her people.

  Chapter 38

  The telephone chirped in the holster of Colonel Tom Jackson’s belt. He was in the middle of an after action report about Des Moines. They had sprayed the city from the air, as they had with Iowa City. The after action team found two neighborhoods of survivors banded together for a total of three hundred people. The two groups fought one another on occasion for food. They were united now and all zombies that had been in the city were being burned in the power plant. Stilled was the official word these days. The phone chirped again. This time Tom flipped it open.

  “Jackson.”

  “Colonel Jackson, this is Sergeant Henry Hawk with the Snareville Raiders. We have wounded and we need a dust off.”

  Tom sat forward in his chair. “What? Details.”

  Henry gave a brief explanation over the phone. He gave coordinates from his GPS. “We’re going to be hot down here when you come in. Better load your birds for combat as well.”

  “It’s going to be a couple of hours. You’re a long way out in ass scratch nowhere.”

  “Understood, Colonel. We’ll do our best to hold.” Henry gave the frequency his troops would be using. The pilots would be able to call in when they got within one hundred miles. The phone went dead.

  Tom scrambled his pilots on Arsenal Island. He would meet them in the flight office. He got off the radio, called his brother Danny on the satellite phone. Told him to get Leary moving to accept casualties. They would be there within three hours with at least two gunshot wounded.

  The flight crews assembled in the block building that ha
d been part of the golf course. Their meeting room was the banquet room of the clubhouse. There were enough men on the island to put together four full crews for the Blackhawk helicopters parked out on the fairway of the ninth hole. Tom had eight Blackhawks parked on the fairway at a given time. He hoped to soon have enough pilots for all of them. He also had four Apache attack helicopters, but this mission was a hundred miles out of their range of operations.

  Tom briefed the men, gave two crews the orders along with coordinates. Within ten minutes from the call, two big, black birds were warming up on the green. Pilots plugged the data into the map in their computers, cranked up the rpm’s on the engines, taxied down the fairway and pulled into the warm air.

  Henry hung up his phone and put it back in the pocket of his shirt under his body armor. The community was locked down. His radio net was working. All the Humvees were connected, as was Jinks and Elizabeth. Johnson now drove one of the Guard Humvees, with one of his women at the gun. Henry climbed in with Cody. He’d man the fifty through the spider hole.

  They pulled out along the north side of the wall, drove out the other side. Fields of corn and wheat opened to the east for a mile. They were bisected by the rock driveway that split off the gravel road. They would be able to see a dust cloud if the others came along fast enough. There were a few splits from the main road, so Henry didn’t know how long it would be before they found the right one. He didn’t know anything about these people. He didn’t know how long it had been since the initial attack. He hated operating like this.

  The south side of the road was pasture. It was divided for cattle, sheep and horses. Tall squares of woven wire stretched far into the distance, topped with three strands of barbed wire. It ran around the south side of the wall that kept the community safe. Half way down the wall was a smaller door through which the animals were moved in and out. The fence ended in the double row of parked cars. It would be an advantage. It would keep these forces in the open fields. Movement for the Raiders would be easier. They had two or three hundred yards of space to maneuver in, where the incoming scavengers would be tight against the fence initially.

  Henry spaced his troops out. Five trucks of trained and semi trained people against fifteen or twenty vehicles of unknown abilities. God, he prayed it worked. He left the Humvee with the M-19 Grenade cannon closest to the settlement. Beno backed the rig into the woods at the edge of the field. He put the engine of the rig behind a thick, ancient oak tree. Henry spaced the other Humvees, the three with machine guns, equally along the tree line. His own rig, Cody backed in behind the spreading branches of a wind fallen oak. From the distance, they should be pretty well invisible.

  In the distance, Henry saw dust rolling up through the trees. It was deceptive. The rigs moved slow enough not to stir much gravel. A slight breeze dispersed what little rose into the air. He only saw a slight puff before the green, black and brown nose of a Humvee poked into the clearing. His body immediately tensed.

  Flames blasted from the front and rear of a square green box mounted on top of the lead Humvee. A short, thick tube flew out of the box and streaked toward the settlement a mile distant. It was followed five seconds later by a second. The rocket flew straight, impacted against the tall wooden doors. They dissolved in a ball of fire and splinters. The second flew inside the settlement and detonated there. The column punched the throttle and raced forward.

  Before the explosions had died away, Vickie returned fire on the M-19. All of Henry’s crew opened on column.

  “They have TOW missiles, people,” Henry screamed into the mic of his headset. “Watch what you’re doing.”

  “We can’t let them inside.” Horse’s voice boomed over the network. His rig raced out of the brush, Jessica at the guns.

  The first three rigs in the column were heavily armored Humvees. Henry had driven one in Iraq. The first ones overseas had the thin armor of the ones he drove now. They were nothing more than heavy pickups. I.E.D.s had a bad habit of shredding the rigs and killing everyone inside. The later models to get over to the Sandbox were much more stout. Lots of thick metal at all the vulnerable places.

  “Pull out. Hit ’em hard,” Henry shouted. He sighted the fifty on one of the pickups in the middle of the column and cut loose. The heavy bullets shredded the truck and blew it into the fence on the other side of the road. Survivors bailed out, threw themselves behind the truck and opened up with their rifles.

  Cody had their rig out of the brush. More trucks rushed across the field at them. The lead Humvee fired another TOW. The missile slammed into Horse’s rig. The explosion ripped it into a hundred different pieces scattered across the field.

  Vickie replied with three well placed shots from her cannon. The first shot took the front off the other rig, the second blew out the cab, the third just added to the misery. A fireball erupted in the field as the remaining missiles were destroyed.

  Two more Humvees still came at them, guns blazing from the spider holes, rifles from the doors. Henry lined up on another and chopped it to pieces with his fifty. A tracer plowed into the engine, sent it up in flames. Troops bailed out as the rig died. They crouched, firing rifles behind. A pickup raced up behind them and three troops dove into the bed and raced off.

  Henry had lost track of what was going on. While he and his team were in a duel with part of the column, more trucks had blasted past. There were now several lined up outside the wall. Two had gotten inside, to be chopped up by heavy fire from AK-47s and heavy machine guns mounted in the buildings. Two more Humvees came out of the woods, guns blasting.

  Some of these boys were trained, Henry thought as he pivoted his fifty. Heavy guns front and back to protect the lighter rigs in the middle of the column. Beno pulled his rig alongside and added to the firepower. Bullets slashed at them. Windshields shattered. Henry slapped the top of his rig. “Take ’em,” he shouted.

  Together, they charged the oncoming Humvees. Bullets snapped past. Henry pulled the barrels of his guns lower as they closed in. He centered the sight on the windshield of one and sprayed the cabin with red as the bullets chewed up the men they found inside. The man behind the gun screamed, fell inside as a heavy round took his leg off. Natasha, behind the M-249 on Beno’s rig, focused on the other. The driver whipped the wheel to the right, punched the gas and blew by them to head for the other rigs at the settlement. Tracers followed it down the road. Bullets chewed at the tail until one shattered the axle. It rolled to a stop on the roadbed. Troops in digital camo jumped out, laying down cover fire as they dashed for safety.

  Cody and Beno pointed their rigs back west, to join Johnson and the other Humvee driven by Myrtle, an Amish girl who had practiced her driving on abandoned vehicles and helped to set up the barricade of cars around the walls. The two other rigs had taken up position on the northeast corner on the wall. They were parked behind the wall of cars with the woods at their backs. Four pickups peeled out of the pack, to charge the approaching Humvees.

  Two of the trucks had M-60’s mounted in the beds. Henry and Catherine returned fire as the drivers peeled away. They headed for the tree line. The pickups kept moving and soon, the rest of the rigs followed. Each laid down covering fire as they pulled back down the road and into the trees. The fields were littered with smoking metal and shredded bodies.

  “You think they’re gone?” Johnson asked over the radio.

  “No. I think they’re falling back to regroup,” Henry said. “They’re too well trained and there’s too many of them. They’ll be back.”

  “Suggestions?” Beno said as they stepped from their Humvees.

  “The light rigs need to get inside the wall,” Henry said. “Pull the guns, place them on either side of the gate. Give them some heavy fire when they come at us again.”

  “The other two?” Myrtle asked.

  “The heavies stay out here and convince them to go away. We’ve got a longer reach. We can hit them before they get into rifle range. Move.”

  Two Humvees lim
ped inside the gate. The Indiana rig steamed and blew fluids from under the hood. Beno’s crept in with flat tires on opposite corners. Johnson backed his rig further behind the dead cars, Cody did the same. Both guns had a clear field of fire to the tree line opposite.

  “Horse and Jessica…” Cody said as they stepped out of the truck.

  “Not enough left to bag and tag,” Vickie said. She raised her hand against the sun as they looked out over the field. “How long ’til we get choppers?”

  “Fuck,” Cody muttered. “They don’t deserve to be left out there.”

  “I agree, Cody. But they’re out there in the kill zone. When this is over, we’ll bring them back in.” Henry said as he checked his watch. “Choppers won’t be here for another hour, minimum.”

  Cody glanced down at the dash of his Humvee. “We’ll hold.”

  “Let’s hope they don’t have a fuckin’ tank back there,” Vickie said.

  They all grunted assent.

  Chapter 39

  One hundred twenty miles from the location on his computer, Captain Jim Busch started calling from his Blackhawk Super Bird. Static came back to him. He tried again. Still nothing. He had the throttle wide open on the chopper. He and his wingman, Army Air Reserve Colonel Ted Vandevorde knew little of nothing of what they were flying into. Busch had seen combat time in Iraq and survived the zombie plague. He had helped gas hordes of walking dead from one of the modified Hueys they had stashed at an airport in Davenport.

  Vandevorde had piloted slicks in Vietnam. And survived. His gray flat-top haircut bristled under his helmet. It was thin enough these days to show the scar that ran from just above the ear on the right side of his head, over the top and ended at behind his left ear. It was the gift of a stray AK-47 bullet that punched through his flight helmet while he was in a hot landing zone in the Ia Drang valley. Somehow the bullet deflected, raced over the top of his head and punched out the other side of the helmet. It hung in his quarters at the Arsenal. Since that day, his nickname was Lucky.