That is the best we can do for them right now.
“Watching the roofs.” Russ rasps out to me as we go and I flick a quick glance to make sure that he is.
I give him a grateful nod and we continue this fucked up parade down the street.
Jumpers try for us twice more before we have the sporting goods store in view, but we manage to kill the freaks before they do us any harm.
“We got them all around us boss, keep getting glimpeses of them out of the corner of my eye. They are hanging back because of the noise and guns, but they are out there.” Matt leans in close and tells me.
“There are too many of them, where are they all coming from?” Henry mutters to himself.
Valid point. Even with all of the survivor enclaves that have fallen lately, we have killed so many, that numbers should have been thinned by now. Herds of the undead must be coming in from other areas.
“Then kill a few dozen or so and keep moving, we are burning daylight and batteries.” I spit the order at him and move away from him, without looking back to see how he reacts.
Mostly because, I don’t care.
The last time we sent a scouting crew this far out, most of them didn’t come back and those who did, told us how horribly overrun with the undead the whole area was. We take down a few common Feeders on the way to the front door and one Singer, that was just leaning against the side of a building across the street. Hell, maybe it was a sentry of some kind, but we killed it before it could make a sound.
“Ok people, we are in and out. Grab the good stuff and load up. Team Alpha in first and clear the building.” I shout as we reach the main entrance.
I am proud of my people, as always they function like a well oiled machine and do the job at hand. Team Alpha is led by Matt and two of his hand picked crew and they are through the door, weapons ready, before the echo of my words has a chance to fade.
There is gun fire, a lot of it at first. It is a symphony of violence and the steady thump thump thump of Matt’s shotgun provides the bassline.
A dizzy spell hits me and for a second everything goes gray, I shake it off and focus on what is going on right now. I have been having them on and off lately and keep meaning to see our new medic about it, but haven’t had a spare second, you know with the whole zombie apocalypse going on around us and crap.
I reach into my pocket for the cigarette, I know isn’t there, I smoked my last one yesterday.
But lo and fucking behold, I pull one out.
I stare blankly at the cigarette in my hand for a few seconds, hell, I could of swore I was out.
More than swore, I remember being pissed off that I had none left after smoking the last one.
Won’t argue with small miracles, so I light the stale piece of crap up and inhale deeply.
A sharp whistle from inside the store interrupts my break and I pinch the cigarette out and stuff it back in my pocket for later.
If we are lucky enough to have us a later of course.
Rule one is that is never guaranateed.
Chapter Seven
At the signal, we all move into the store, we don’t trust the all clear whistle enough to not have all of our weapons at the ready. Henry and company set up shop with the speakers outside of the front door to keep the undead at bay while we do this thing.
We aren’t the first ones to hit this place, there are gaps in the shelves from the early days of looting, but the place is still a fucking treasure trove. My people fan out and go about the business of filling up the dufflebags and boxes we brought with us.
Matt greets me with a nod as he calmly reloads his shotgun, for a change not from his own pockets, but from a box of shells he snagged off of a shelf full of them.
“We can’t do this in one trip brother, this time round, we should concentrate on the heavy duty shit.” He tells me with a tired smile.
“Make it so.” I tell him blandly, doing a terrible imitation of a voice from an old sci fi tv show.
Sometimes you have to boldly go where just about everybody has freaking gone before.
We are scoring rifles, pistols, shotguns, ammo, cans of gunpowder and more other useful crap than you could shake a dead zombie at. I am feeling good about this, but I know the clock is ticking.
A fact underscored by the bursts of sporadic gunfire from those guarding the front door.
“Tick fucking tock people, pick up the pace!” I bark out the order as I make sure my own guns are completely loaded.
Two sisters made the run with us this time, I have worked with both of them before and would cheerfully include them on any run I happened to be going on.
The oldest is named Sheri, tough as freaking nails with a mouth like a truck driver. Her sister is quieter, but just as damn tough and her name is Anne. As I watch they are methodically working to strip the ammo counter of anything remotely useful to us. They load the bags like they think somebody else is carrying the damn things back, but I know they will manage to bear the weight of the packs somehow, even though neither weighs more than a hundred and twenty five pounds soaking wet. They are both pale skinned brunettes with weathered faces and bad attitudes.
I love them both.
They have both helped smooth out some of the rough edges after I took power following the death of Big Al, quietly giving me their loyalty without asking anything in return, except that I strive to be worthy of it.
I have done my best, I hope, in that department.
Sheri catches me watching and with a wink tosses me a small bag of beef jerky that was on a rack full of the same next to the ammo counter.
If I wasn’t in love before, I am now.
“Love ya babe.” I tell her with a grin and a wink.
She gives me the finger and gets back to the business of overloading her pack to the bursting point.
Her sister never even looks up.
All is as it should be.
I watch fifteen minutes tick away on the watch we managed to scrounge from somewhere. It is a pink Barbie plastic piece of crap, but it does its job.
“That’s it boys and girls. Form up, time to double time it back home.” I shout out.
Everybody falls in instantly, even if they are looking around longingly at all the good stuff we are leaving behind.
We are plenty loaded up, but none of the shit is of any use if we don’t survive bringing it back home. I take a look around myself and vow that we will be back for more soon.
If you know, we don’t die on the way back or some shit.
Matt takes point leaving the store and I bring up the rear, in seconds we are back on the street. The speakers are still kicking up loud terrible music, but I don’t know how long the batteries will hold out under this constant use.
Five more Jumpers come at us before we are two blocks down the road, Russ, Matt and one of the newbies we picked up awhile back, pretty much blast them out of the sky and we keep on moving.
Feeders are skirting the area of the stun zone created by the blasting speakers, some of them get a little too bold and get too close to it. Those we kill where they fall, the others fall back and follow us just out of reach as we go.
Which fails utterly at giving me a warm fuzzy feeling about how this shit is going to play out.
An upside down mini van in front of us and to our left, suddenly explodes sending a fireball up into the sky and filling the air with a cloud of thick black smoke.
The shock wave knocks us all down except for Henry and Marvin who somehow keep the shopping cart and themselves up right and the noise still blasting.
As Sheri and Anne struggle to their feet and bring their weapons shakily up a hulking figure steps through the flames, right in front of them.
It is tall and bulky, with a bright red rough look to its skin, it is naked and a shimmer of heat waves radiate from it.
They unload on it, but it keeps coming until it is close enough to lay a red scaly hand on each of their shoulders.
Their screams are pr
etty much the worse damn sound I have ever fucking heard.
As the rest of us watch for a stunned moment, they begin to writhe spasmicly as first their clothing and then their hair and then their flesh burst into white hot flames. They twitch like frogs in a damn microwave and the smell of charred flesh fills the air. In seconds they are reduced to fine white ash that floats gently down to the street.
“Burners!” Russ bellows as he begins firing at the new threat.
The bullets only serve to draw the mutants attention and then it starts to move towards him.
“Head shots people! Go for the fucking head!” I yell as I get back up and bring my gun up.
Henry abandons the cart and races up to the Burner, snapping off shots from the piss ant little .380 he favors as he comes. His first three rounds go wide, but he puts the other four right where they need to go.
Then almost dies, because the first rule of the universe we live in now is, that no good deed goes unpunished.
The Burner crumbles to the ground in a boneless heap and then begins to make a high pitched hissing sound.
And then the fucking thing explodes.
Chapter Eight
The blast flings Henry backwards and he slams into a big green rusty dumpster. He slumps to the ground and doesn’t get back up again.
Somebody is screaming like a girl, high pitched and shrill even through the hearing loss from the explosion. I look to my right and see a new recruit named Mike something and he is all torn up from schrapnel from the blast. He stands there screaming as his hands desperately clutch his chest and belly, trying to hold his guts in.
His hands are bloody and slippery with gore and as I watch he sinks to his knees still screaming. He doesn’t stop until finally the screams dwindles to a sick gurgling sound as his hands fall away and his guts fall out onto the dirty street with a soggy splash.
Then he falls over sideways and is gone.
We have to move, we have to make it back to base with the equipment we scored. The longer we stay, the more time we give them to pick us off, one by one.
“Keep moving! Cover each other.” Matt bellows out, beating me to the punch.
Marvin scoops up Henry and tosses him over his shoulder, like a not particularily heavy sack of potatoes. He keeps on pushing the cart with the speakers lashed to it, like he is carrying nothing on his back.
We pick up the pace as much as we can, considering how weighed down with the gear and weapons that we have scored. More Jumpers try for us as we go, but we manage to kill them all without taking any more losses. It is going to be hard enough trying to explain to the friends and family of those we have lost that this trip was a win for us.
Hell, I am the guy who not only will have to take on that task, but who is going to have to look in the damn mirror and try to convince myself.
We just encountered our first Burner and have learned some hard lessons about them. As reported, the loud music failed to stun them, as reported, head shots take them down.
The whole exploding as they fucking die thing, was just a bit of a surprise though.
Good news, bad news department update.
Good news, is that we are in sight of our new home.
Bad news, is that the sound from the speakers is beginning to diminish.
We all exchange looks, because we can all hear it, and so no doubt can the hordes of Feeders who have been skulking around the edges of the safe zone created by the blasting waves of sound.
That zone is shrinking with each passing second now.
“Haul ass people!” Matt barks as he begins to fire at the Feeders trying to come at us from the edges.
By the time we get to our building, we are all firing more or less constantly as we move, the speakers go quiet, just as we hit the front door. The snipers on the upper floors are helping us out and we manage to get all of us and the bags of gear inside, without further incident.
The guards inside give us grim nods, they are all too used to doing the math on how many go out on runs and how many come back. A couple of them whistle appreciatively when they see what we are bringing back with us.
“Get Henry over to Viv.” I point a finger at Marvin who nods and moves out to head up to the small infirmary we have put together.
I leave Matt in charge of sorting what we have scored into the armory and general provisions. We did well, but at a cost. I am going to have to examine what just happened and learn whatever bloody lessons I can from it, so that next time, hopefully, I bring all of the team back alive.
We came in hot and had brought a lot of Feeders to our doorstep, I need to make the rounds to make sure we are staying out of trouble. I know without looking, that even as I walk away a team is stripping the batteries out of the speaker cart and loading them with fresh ones.
It is what makes this place work, everyone knows and does their job for the greater good.
I pound up the stairs to start checking sniper stations and as I come out to the first one, I find Katrin gently directing a team of snipers to do their best to eliminate the threat that is presenting itself.
“Fire you fucking twats! No wasted ammo you assholes, one shot to the head for each of the bastards down there and onto next fucking target you shit stains!” She bellows at them, even while she is snapping off shots from her beloved sniper rifle.
“Report!” I shout from the doorway.
“Guns go bang, zombies die, building safe, for now.” She tells me without even stopping firing to look at me.
“Next time try not to go on and on lady, try to give me a brief unemotional report.” I tell her dryly.
“Fuck you.” She tells me as she reloads the rifle.
I walk away telling myself that I can hear the barest hint of a smile in her voice, but that is probably bullshit.
Within minutes, I have checked in with all of the sniper stations and the good news is pretty much universal. Feeder activity is high, but being safely contained for now.
Next stop now is the infirmary to check on Henry, I am hoping for good news here. The cost of this last mission, sadly has already been quite high enough.
Viv meets me at the door of the infirmary, she looks tired, but she has looked that way pretty much since taking over as our new doc after the last one got slaughtered by a patient gone zombie. She is a former Marine which makes her way too bad ass to whine about how exhausted she might be, she rakes her fingers through her short hair and puts a finger to her lips.
“He is asleep for now, I sedated him lightly. He has some minor burns and lacerations and what is hopefully a minor concussion. In short, he is pretty banged up, but he will live.” She tells me softly.
There is a note in her voice that I cant quite place, like there is something more that she wants to say, but isn’t sure how.
I stare at her calmly for a few seconds waiting for her to figure out what she wants to say to me.
“I found a lot of old scarring and healed injuries, Jesus Jake, what has this poor kid been through?” She asks quietly between clenched teeth.
“He was kept for awhile as a slave by a sick ass gang of biker pukes. One of our teams rescued him on a run, awhile back now. He doesn’t talk about it much to anybody.” I tell her with a small shrug.
We stand together without speaking for a few moments, both of us lost in our own thoughts, I suppose. What happened to Henry before he came to us sucks, but sadly it is far from the worse thing I have seen since the Dust fell. The world quickly devolved into a lawless jungle after the thin veneer of society fell away. Take away the cops, that thin blue line that seperates the decent people from the animals out there and things get messy very fast.
Our team found the gang, took a look at the half starved abused slaves they kept and performed a little on the spot justice.
Which translates to, we killed them all, down to the last single rat bastard of them.
And even though I wasn’t on it, I know that the whole team that was, slept like fucking babies that ni
ght.
“Have him report to me, whenever he is up to going back on duty. No rush on that, just want to know when he is up and running again.” I tell her briskly as I walk away.
“Are you ok , Jake?” She calls after me, I can hear the concern in her tired voice. I almost take this as an opportunity to tell her about my weird dizzy spells, but she sounds so exhausted, that I don’t want to put even one more thing on her over crowded plate.
“Whatever doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.” I tell her over my shoulder as I walk away.
Sad thing is, she knows it is bullshit, but she is too tired to call me on it.
Sadder thing is, I walk away calling that a win.
Chapter Nine
Two days later we have used the new weapons to arm two large squads of volunteers. I am leading Team Blue and our new pal Russ Olsen is leading Team Red.
We are going to take the fight to the zombies and kill as many of them as we possibly can. Both teams will have a cart with speakers mounted upon them. The plan is to follow our stun and gun program, ring the dinner bell, let the zombies attack and then use the speakers to stun them for easy killing. Our plans have been updated to face new threats, like the Jumpers attacking from above and of course, the Burners.
Henry is with Team Red, his face and arms are shiny with the burn ointment that Viv gave him, but he looks fit enough from here. He lost the little 380 he favored when he got almost blown up and now he has a Glock 9mm in a holster on his belt and a beat up machete in a sheath strapped to his back.
Matt is with me and he seems eager to get on with this, everyone does actually, this has been a long time coming. When we came back missing people, the council was predictably in an uproar, what the hell did they expect? Normal runs were dangerous, we often lost people on them. Taking the fight to the freaks will not be without losses, no battle, no war, ever is.
“Ok people, everyone knows what to do. Listen to your squad leaders, stick to the plan. We are going to wipe out enough of them to create a safe zone around us. As time goes on, we expand that zone until we have taken our damn world back. It all starts now, today, we are going to war.” I give them the more or less required speech.
War (The Zombie Extinction Event Novels Book 3) Page 3