Last Stand on Zombie Island

by Christopher L. Eger

  “Candidates for the Order of the Wooden Cross these guys are,” Reid had said when they were done with their picks for the new battalion. Reid and Stone had diluted the MPs among the new intake as a cadre. Each military man assigned as the team leader of a new four or five man group.

  With the arms that Stone already had in his arsenal, the new weapons turned over by Jarvis from Pascagoula, and the sporting arms from the camping store in Foley, the force all had a firearm of some sort. With the Horde reported by the latest Rough Riders patrol being only fifteen miles away from the bridge, each team leader only had two days to train their group. Some had been detailed such mindless but important tasks as digging trenches, building explosives, and cleaning bullets and magazines by hand with old socks so that they would feed better.

  “I’m not sure I can do this, sir,” Oswald said to Stone.

  “Have you ever read about a guy named Heraclitus?” Stone asked the 16-year-old girl. She was trying not to lead a group of four newcomers, the youngest of whom was about ten years older than her.

  She shook her head.

  “He was a Roman general, one of the better ones. He said, of every one hundred men he had, ten should not even be there, eighty are nothing but targets, and nine are real fighters. Of those nine, one of them is a warrior—and that warrior will bring the others back.”

  “Are you saying I’m a warrior?” she asked with a grin.

  “Get your people ready, MP. The Horde is in Summerdale now, only 15 miles away. You can expect to be in action in two days,” he said and snapped a salute, which she returned before making a sharp about-face and charging off after her group.

  Reid watched her walk away as he petted Jenny on her huge head. “They miss Oswald on the bridge right now big time. That old hippy with the Mosin let one sneak up on him last night and got his face ripped off.”

  “Don’t worry, Top, she will be back there in a couple days. We all will. How is it going there today, any sign of an increase in undead traffic yet?”

  “They are popping one about every ten minutes or so. That’s a pretty big jump from a few days ago.”

  “I guess the faster ones decided to come see the beach, get a good spot picked out before the crowd showed up.”

  “Anymore refugees make it through?”

  “Tiny and Specialist Wright rode in this morning with the last two survivors that could be found in Zombieville. A couple of bearded hombres armed to the teeth. Those two were asking a hundred and one questions, but not offering any info other than that they have been walking here for days. Said they heard the radio station. Offered to help, said they had commo experience. Talking radio-radio-radio. Look like a couple of bikers.”

  “Hmmm, we’ll see if Mack can use them. If so, get them assigned to the station and let’s integrate them as best we can. Get Tiny, and the rest of the Rough Riders reassigned to infantry teams. How is the barricade at the bridge coming along?”

  “We have had anyone that can operate a shovel up there making sandbags and laying block. Those engineers from UAB are supervising the crews. The concrete trucks are coming this afternoon after lunch.”

  “Remember, we need that wall at least ten feet high. That should channel them into a kill box and we will just mop em up with .50-cal until they run out of bodies to throw at us.”

  “That’s the plan. Which is good because I have about five seconds worth of confidence in these militia guys holding the line if we didn’t have that wall.”

  “You’ll see. It will be like the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. They held off 70,000 Persians.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t read the book, but I saw that movie. It didn’t work out for the Spartans in the end, did it?” Reid said as he threw a ball out for Jenny and walked after it.

  No sooner had the First Sergeant moved off then the tiny female MP, Specialist Wright, popped up and cornered Stone.

  “A word, sir?” she asked.

  “For you Specialist, of course,” he said as they walked side by side.

  “Permission to sign over my team to one of the other MPs and go out on recon with Tiny and the Rough Riders, sir?”

  Stone shook his head. “No way, I need you leading four new ass clowns who don’t know which end of a rifle the bullets come out of. Besides, the Rough Riders are history by this time tomorrow.”

  “Sir, Sara, Err-Major Reynolds, and I were pretty close. I know how to ride; I have a CRF-motocross at the house that I got when I was in high school.”

  Stone knew about the relationship between Wright and Reynolds. It would have never of flown before the outbreak as any sort of fraternization between an officer and enlisted personnel was punishable, but these days everything had been reset. He felt Reynolds pain, Wright was a cute little piece.

  “Sir, someone has to have the guts at least try to look for her.”

  He waved his hand as if he was swatting a fly. “Turn your team over the Top for reassignment, and report to Tiny. If you get yourself killed out there, it’s on you.”

  ««—»»

  Stone stood on the high glacis in front of Fort Morgan and peered into the moat thirty feet below. He pivoted around and looked at the impressive fortress. Constructed in 1833 to protect Mobile Bay from foreign invasion, it enclosed some eight acres of ground inside its three-story high walls. Each of the five walls in the pentagon-shaped fortification held seven huge casemates and a bastion designed to withstand everything a British fleet could throw at it. With a platoon of motivated soldiers and enough ammo, Stone could die of old age holding the fort from a zombie invasion. Unfortunately, it was at the wrong side of the island, 26-miles down the long narrow beach from the town and the bridge. That did not mean that it was not part of his military plan.

  “So you guys rode out the outbreak here?” Stone asked the two cousins who were the caretakers of the fort for the State.

  “Yup,” the older one answered. “Just closed all the embrasures, then shut the doors and waited for dawn.”

  “The doors are still the original ones?”

  “Yes, a set of four doors, one after the other. Each one is four inches thick of cypress, wrapped with lead. Moreover, you’d have to break through each one to get into the grounds. That’s not gonna happen.”

  Stone was taking notes. “Show me the armory you told me about.”

  The cousins led him down an incredibly narrow staircase that descended into the fort’s parade ground. As he followed the men, he looked around the citadel and noticed the incredible construction from a military point of view. Each of the walls was fifteen feet thick, sandwiched by brick on both sides, with sand and two lead sheets between them. Made obsolete by the end of the 19th century, the massive fortress would suit their needs perfectly if they had to defend it from the latest threat.

  The cousins opened a locked steel door and showed Stone into what had formerly been a powder magazine. He felt cool air blow past his face as he walked into the door as if someone has a strong fan on.

  “Pretty breezy in here,” he said.

  The older cousin nodded. “It’s got a system of ventilation ducts that have bronze covers and slats over them. Designed so that the powder did not sweat, but a spark couldn’t find its way from the outside if the fort was under attack either. Pretty smart.”

  “So after nearly two-hundred years the air conditioner still works, eh?”

  “That’s not half of it. The toilets are saltwater, and the tides flush them twice a day, every day, like clockwork.”

  “Do you guys have water here?”

  Again, he nodded. “Yes, there are four in-ground cisterns that collect rainwater. Each one is about the size of a swimming pool.”

  Stone stopped as they walked through the maze of tunnels inside the forts magazine and came to rack after rack of muzzle loading rifles. Dating from the Civil War, there seemed to be a hundred of the weapons complete with bayonets, shined up and locked in wooden racks along the wall. Cobwebs and dust covered the actions but
the rifles looked as if they were ready to stop a charge at Gettysburg, after a brief cleaning. Another rack held sabers, pikes, and swords.

  “Where the hell did all these come from?”

  “The former director told me that when the state closed the old Alabama Military Institute back in the 1960s, they found all these in storage there that some accountant had misplaced. They sent a few to museums around the state and sent us the rest for safekeeping. I guess over time they forgot about them again.”

  “Do they work?”

  “Hell yeah, they work. All we need is powder and bullets.”

  “Which you don’t have, right?”

  “Well, we have the molds to make bullets if we could just lay hands on some soft lead. The powder on the other hand is going to be an issue. We gave what we had for the cannon salutes to Doug for his limpet mine project.”

  Stone was furiously taking notes in his pad, counting rifles as he went.

  “Okay, let me work on the powder. I will be sending some people bringing supplies starting tonight. Store them somewhere safe and dry and make sure those cisterns are full of water. Let’s keep this all between us, for now.”

  “Will do.”

  “And go ahead and start cleaning those rifles.”

  ««—»»

  “So, give me some good news. How do I kill these things that I don’t already know about?” Stone asked Mr. Michaels.

  The science teacher sat in his classroom at the high school biology lab and started to draw on a whiteboard as Stone watched.

  “Ever seen one of those experiments where they introduced a small electrical charge into a dead frog, and its legs started kicking?”

  “Yes.”

  “The re-animated brain is doing the same thing to these zombies. The disease creates extreme amounts of Kryptopyrrole that in turn is causing an electro-chemical reaction in the brain. It is just sending electrical waves through what’s left of the nervous system to move the rest of the body. The nervous system is still operating as a two-way street with the infected being able to see, hear, taste, and feel to some point until the nerve endings decay away.”

  “Okay, so how are they working together and how do we stop them?”

  “It’s some sort of hive mentality. From what I gather, they saw the coast guard cutter in Mobile, found it interesting and started walking after it. Once they made it to Highway 59, they found your motorcycle patrols and followed them. Now they are coming here, and I am sure when they see the island it will consume them with desire. Be the one thing in their life.

  “The cerebellum, the softball-sized base of the brain is the center of the nervous system and controls inner ear balance and movement. This is the section that seems enlarged and almost, for lack of a better word, healthy. It seems to be feeding off the rest of the brain. It is quite fascinating.”

  “That’s great, so how do we stop them?”

  “Stop the cerebellum. Blow them up, cut them apart, shoot them, burn them until the brain cooks. No matter what you do, you have to kill the brain. Specifically that part of the brain. That’s the only way you are going to stop them.”

  “Do you think we will be successful in outwaiting them if we just build a high enough wall?”

  “I doubt it, their blood has congealed since the heart and circulation set has stopped, their liver and kidneys are dead, their skin is drying out and cracking open…but as long as the brain is alive, its producing electricity and this electric current is moving the body. The muscles themselves are dying since they have no blood to carry oxygen to them. They are turning necrotic and rotting. However, there seems to be some sort of putrification due to the nervous system overload that is slowing the decay process. It may take years for them to actually de-animate for good.”

  “This just gets better and better. Thanks anyway, sir,” Stone said as he stood up to leave.

  “I’m just answering your questions.”

  Stone stopped as he flipped through his notebook. “Thank you for your time, sir. One last thing and I will leave you alone; do you know how to make black powder?”

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER 53

  The WC Holmes Bridge, Gulf Shores Alabama

  November 19, 0530

  Z+40

  Stone looked down from the barricade in the center of the bridge. The Horde had begun showing up en masse at just after midnight. The laddertruck and its sandbagged machinegun nest were abandoned and the guards at the post fell back over the wall, pulling the steps up behind them.

  It was a solid mass of homo zombius, the new species of biped that had taken over the earth. They were the last and worst evolution of man and would cleanse the planet of the hairless apes that had held sway for the past few millenniums. They stretched for as far as the eye could see.

  Along the newly built sixty-foot long, ten-foot high, cement cinderblock wall was constructed a platform scaffold on the island side which Stone and a hundred fighters gathered around to look at the infected standing on the other side who looked up with outstretched arms. On each end of the wall was mounted one of the Fish Hawks fifty-caliber machineguns. Four Coasties stood by the weapons, with 10,000 rounds of heavy machinegun ammunition linked in yard after yard of brass, lead and steel.

  “Pretty scary sight,” Stone said.

  “No,” said Reid, “Scary is a chupacabra, the ATF, or the Sham-Wow guy; I’m not afraid of a goddamned zombie.”

  Stone managed a laugh.

  “So, now what?” Reid asked peering over the side as he spit a stream of dip-juice into the face of an infected below him.

  “We hold them until the whole party gets here then we start mowing them down. Is the radio station ready if we need to fall back?”

  “They have been making announcements all day, for everyone that isn’t military to head for the Fort, taking what they can carry with them just in case. I drove around with a patrol a while ago and it looks like everyone has boarded up their houses for a hurricane.”

  “That’s good. Can’t be too safe.”

  Stone looked up and down the line at the assembled company of MPs and new militia members. They would have to do. Four other companies just like it sat at the Armory to call for reinforcements, but until then they would rotate every six hours. Everyone had been warned to only fire if the infected below had climbed the wall or had somehow broken through. Stone wanted to delay the inevitable for as long as possible.

  “What’s on your mind, Top?” Stone asked the old First Sergeant.

  “Ever won a game of pinball, sir? That is what we are doing here, you know. We are just lasting longer than everyone else did, but on a long enough time line, that pinball is gonna fall.”

  Stone looked up and down the line. The expressions on the faces of the defenders in the early morning twilight were different on each figure. Some looked despondent. Some anxious. Some scared shitless. The occasional watery eye was always balanced out by the nervous smile on the next man or the lip chewing of the third soldier in the line.

  From where he stood, almost every man, woman, and child holding the line could hear him. A commander’s delivery of oration to his troops, to remind them of the importance of the battle for themselves, their family, the children and grandchildren you are yet to have and ultimately the entire human race, is the key to battle he had always believed. An officer is, by definition, a professional liar. If people trust you, they will follow you. However, sometimes you have to lie to them and make them understand something that is not understandable to keep them going. He cleared his throat and yelled from one end of the wall to the other.

  “Give me your ears, people. A buddy isn’t the guy next to you watching the game or drinking a beer. A buddy is the guy who is next to you while you are bleeding, haven’t slept in a week, when you think your arm is broken, and he isn’t leaving you behind. We are all buddies here. You are fighting not for me, but for yourself, for the person next to you, for the town behind you.

  “This i
s more than just a fight. This is a textbook struggle against everything pure and evil as much as the Archangel Michael versus Lucifer is. We are fighting extinction. You are all biblical, fire breathing, zombie-killing heroes. Are you with me?”

  The line erupted in cheers and yells and each of the defenders thrust their weapons in the air with satisfaction. Stone nodded and slapped those near him on the back and returned a number of high-fives.

  “Every now and then you put the machine into Tilt, First Sergeant Reid, remember that.” Stone said as he climbed down the scaffold. “I’ve been up here all night. Haven’t slept since Tuesday. I am headed back to the armory for a few hours to get a powernap in. If anything happens, call me, and I’ll be back with the Ready Company.”

  ««—»»

  The sound of fifty-caliber heavy machinegun fire carries for a great distance. Stone thought it was in a dream until he opened his eyes on his rack in the office of the Armory. He shot straight up on the mattress and was on his feet just as the RTO MP burst through his door white as a sheet.

  “The Horde is climbing the wall!” the man said.

  “Assemble the Ready Company. Get the commanders of the other companies and have them form up. Get the Reserve Company to their barricade on the fort road,” Stone calmly ordered as he moved through the armory, throwing on his TA50 gear and press checking his M4.

  Chaos reigned as dozens of old and new MPs yelled orders at people who, up until three days ago, were merely modern holocaust survivors but were now soldiers. A weapon fired in the room, and a corporal slapped the man who had accidentally triggered it in his haste to get out the door. A month ago, he had nothing but pre-outbreak MPs under his command that had years of formal training, drills, and, almost without exception, at least one tour in Iraq or Afghanistan. Now his professionals had been so greatly diluted that they made up less than 10% of his new battalion.