Zombie Killers: AMBUSH: Irregular Scout Team One Book Six (Zombie Killer Blues 6)

by John F. Holmes

  “Old hunting tactic, Nick,” said Burns. “Leave some bait tied up outside and see what comes up. Though I AM surprised they came straight here. Perhaps your wife’s concern for you overcame her good judgment.”

  “She always was” I managed to cough out “a bit headstrong. If I join you, you let her go?”

  “Oh no” Burns laughed. “We are far past that now. I’m going to publicly fuck your wife tomorrow, and probably hang you as a race traitor. I might give your friend here over to Martin, it’s been a while since he tortured anyone to death. The Indian gets to be my personal servant.” He laughed one more time as the lights went out. “Good night, don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

  The night fell silent, and I got collapsed back against the tree, coughing. Beside me, I heard Billy struggling to tie a bandage around his leg. I did the best I could to help him in the darkness. After a minute he started laughing and cursing at the same time.

  “You know, three tours overseas, two apocalypses, that crazy rescue mission we did together in Seattle, and I’ve never gotten even the slightest scratch. Some two bit asshole up and shoots me in some Podunk town rescuing YOUR pathetic one legged ass. You owe me, Nick.”

  I wheezed out a laugh and said “I guess I do. How many?”

  “Everyone that’s left from the teams that was on the east coast. The call went out two days ago and we launched last night. Ryan Szimanski is out there somewhere with twenty of the baddest motherfuckers left alive in the world, including one very pissed off Italian body builder. Though I’m not sure I trust that squid head Szimanski in the woods. Probably lost by now.” He handed me a small bottle of water from a cargo packet, and I drank it down in one gulp.

  “Let’s hope not” I said, and meant it.

  Chapter 225

  About an hour later, I could see false dawn starting to appear in the sky. Balls was quiet next to me, but every few minutes I talked to him, just to make sure he wasn’t going into shock. There is very rarely any kind of “easy” gunshot wound. A .38 is a pretty big slug with a lot of punch behind it, and it can cause serious tissue damage even if it doesn’t hit an artery or a bone. Once the numbing sensation from a round like that stops, it hurts like a mother fucker, with torn flesh and a giant bruise forming from the hydrostatic shock. Billy was in a tough way, and he needed more medical attention than a makeshift bandage.

  I sat up when I heard a quiet whisper from just behind me. “Don’t move, just keep acting same way. They have some night vision, at least one set.”

  “Got it. Who is it?” I was wondering if it was one of the team guys, but I didn’t recognize the low, hesitant voice coming from the brush behind me.

  “A friend. Colonel William Jackson, United States Air Force, Retired. I’m one of them slaves Burns is so proud of.”

  I thought about that for a minute, listening to see if Billy was awake. He was, and I could tell he was listening too. “But,” I whispered back “how are you free?”

  The man chuckled softly. “Burns and Martin ain’t that smart. I broke my chains a few months ago, but I stay around for my people. Believe it or not, this used to be my home, till those bastards showed up. I welcomed them in, too.”

  “Well, cut us loose then, and we can help your people.”

  “No way” answered the voice. “What happens to your redheaded girlfriend when Martin comes out here to torture you first thing in the morning? Burns will have her tortured in your place. Trust me, I’ve seen enough.”

  “Then what,” I said, getting angry “good are you to us?”

  “Hey, Sergeant Major, I can’t do shit for you right now. I just wanted you to know that you ain’t alone, and even most of the white folks here only go along with Burns for safety’s sake. He only has about a dozen gunmen, but they have all the firepower. If you have a way out of this, we can back your play, but …”

  “…but not if everyone is going to get slaughtered” finished SFC Ball for him. “Cut him some slack, Nick. He has his own people to think of.”

  “That’s right” he answered. I was angry, but I also felt like shit. I was shivering, even though the summer night air was still warm. I felt flushed, and knew that I had a fever, maybe a serious one. Another spasm of coughing racked my body, kicking my ribs. I barely bit back a scream of pain.

  At that moment, I felt something hard and rectangular being slipped into the pocket of my ragged jacket. Using my hands, I felt the shape of a small semi-automatic pistol, probably a Glock. If I tried, I could get it out, despite my chains.

  “One in the chamber and two in the magazine. All I’ve got. Don’t know about the ammunition. Good luck.” With a rustle of moving branches, the retired Air Force Officer disappeared into the night.

  “Well,” grunted Balls “that was interesting.”

  “He gave me a pistol. Not sure what I’m going to do with it. Only has three rounds.”

  Billy grunted out a laugh. I could tell he was in serious pain. “Well, that’s one each for me, you and Brit. I really don’t feel like getting hanged and tortured.”

  “Torture first, THEN hanging. Get it right.”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry. I’ve kinda been shot. Little woozy here.” He reached over and put a cool hand on my forehead. “Jesus, Nick, you’re burning up.”

  “Feel like shit, too.” I started coughing again, and tasted a bit of blood. “Billy, if we get out of this, I am never leaving the farm again.”

  “You’re so full of shit. I give you a year, then something else will come up.”

  We talked like this until the sun came up, trying to keep each other’s spirits up. The only thing that kept me going was that I knew, by now, there was a spotter scope trained directly on us. Hopefully. Around the village there was a five hundred meter cleared space, a good field of fire that left plenty of time to engage any undead. The only approach would be through the cornfield I had seen today, and I had earlier seen a patrol go out into the darkness.

  I had just dozed off, exhausted, when a high pitched scream broke out of Burn’s quarters, followed by a shout and then a bellow of agony. The front door burst open, and Brit came flying out, thrown out by Martin. She landed in the dirt, hard. Her fatigues were ripped in the front, torn away, and her hands were bound in front of her.

  Burns followed Martin out, clutching at his face, blood flowing freely between his fingers. Martin grabbed Brit by her hair and started punching her, hard. I sat up and yelled, trying to get at the pistol in my pocket.

  “STOP!” ordered Burns. “Chain her up with the others, and get the ropes. I’m going to hang all three!”

  Martin dragged Brit over to where both Billy and I were struggling with the chains holding us, and threw her down on the ground in front of me. Brit struggled to her knees and spit on him, blood and a tooth hitting his face.

  “Fuck you, you fucking faggot, I’ve killed better men than you with my bare hands!” said Brit, and he slapped her again, across the face, starting to laugh high and maniacally. “DO IT! KILL ME, YOU FUCKING PUSSY!” she yelled at him. He drew a police issue 9mm Berretta and thumbed back the hammer, pushing the gun forward into Brit’s face. She turned away from the bullet that would be coming at her, and looked at me with her one good eye, a slight smile on her bloody face.

  I shot Martin, just as his gun barked.

  Chapter 226

  And missed.

  I missed because his hip exploded. It was followed by the deep BOOM of a Barrett .50 caliber rifle, echoing across the open field. A spray of blood erupted from the side of Brit’s head, and she fell to the ground screaming, clasping her hand to her ear.

  Burns raised his shotgun, and I fired again, two shots to his chest, and the pistol slide locked back, empty. Both impacted on the body armor he must have been wearing under his shirt. He staggered back, then raised the shotgun again, pointed it at me and fired.

  Billy Ball leapt in front of me and caught the full load of buckshot in his gut. They had taken his body armor off when they cha
ined him up, and he crumpled onto the ground, mortally wounded. Gunfire crackled from the woods and Burns ran, throwing aside the shotgun, even as rounds zipped past him to smack into the wall of the town. He slipped inside the gate and was gone.

  I pulled furiously at the chains, desperately trying to get to Brit as chaos erupted around us. Gunshots boomed and people started screaming. I reached the end length of the chain holding me, and Brit crawled slowly over, trying to stop the blood gushing from her mangled ear. I grabbed her hand and pulled her tight against me.

  “Nick,” she sobbed “why the hell do I always get shot? Why can’t YOU get shot, just for once?” I tore at my shirt, but I was so weak that I couldn’t even get it started. She slipped a small razor blade from somewhere on her body, and handed it to me. Cutting off a long piece of my T-shirt, I wrapped it around her head, covering the damaged ear. Her blazing red hair was black with blood, and she was pissed and in pain. She shoved me over to Bill, who was still moaning feebly.

  Sergeant Ball had blood running from his mouth, and his hands were clasped over his stomach, holding his guts in. “Before you go thinking I saved your life, I tripped, is all” he said, and collapsed sideways from his sitting position. I cradled his head in my lap, trying to get a look at his wound.

  “Jesus Christ, this fucking hurts, Nick,” he managed to choke out. “I guess you ain’t going to get that thousand dollars I owed you and Jonesy from” and he coughed again, sending blood flying “from that spades game in Cali.” Blood started flowing from his mouth, and I frantically tried to push his hand away from his stomach, but he grasped my arm and coughed out “Tell my brothers I’ll see them in Valhalla, Nick” even as the light went out of his eyes. I screamed out loud with pain and anguish. Another old friend gone. I reached down with my blood soaked hand and closed his eyes. “I’ll tell your brothers you died well, Bill.” I sat back and wept silent tears.

  At that moment, Lisa Cappochi appeared in front of me as if by magic, with six other multicam covered figures. Another dozen rushed past, weapons at the ready, and filed in through the open gate. She reached down and, bracing her legs against the tree trunk, broke my chains by brute force. “Do you even lift, Bro,” she said, handing me an extra rifle.

  Doc Williams from Team Three started putting a real bandage around Brit’s head. I shakily stood up on my one good leg. “Where’s Jimmy?” I asked.

  “He got wounded in the ambush. He’ll be ok, but we left him at Fort Orange.” I grunted in surprise as she unstrapped my spare prosthetic leg from her pack. I started to strap it on, but fell over, exhausted and feverish.

  Crawling over to where Martin lay on the ground, stood up, and jammed my boot down on his shattered hip, making him scream. “That’s right, fucker,” I whispered in his ear. “Were you raised a Catholic, Martin? Want me to get you a priest? Absolve you of your sins?”

  He nodded his head yes, and I knew I had hit the mark. Irish Corrections Officer. “Well, guess what. No absolution for you. You’re going to hell. I’m going to let you bleed out here, and die slow.”

  I saw the fear in his eyes, and he gripped my shirt. “Please, don’t let me die!” he whimpered. Coward. I stood up again and kicked his wound, feeling the bones grate together, and although I was satisfied by his scream, I didn’t enjoy it. It took a full minute for him to die, and I watched the whole time, then went back to the tree.

  I sat there, next to Brit, and watched the teams in action in the growing morning light, looking through the open gate. They moved quickly and smoothly, assaulting each building in turn by kicking in the door, tossing in a flashbang, and then flowing in smoothly to engage any targets inside. Their weapons were suppressed, so the assaults were silent, except for the screams of women and children and the harsh guttural shouts of men in combat. Twice we heard return gunfire, and after assaulting the third building on the street, the boom of a shotgun. One of my team mates came limping over to us, blood streaming down his leg, and I recognized Captain Hideyoshi, who I hadn’t seen since Seattle. The other guys had put Billy Ball into a body bag, zipped it closed. I always hated that, when the zipper went up over their pale bloody faces, and I thought how it must feel to be zipped in alive … Brit shook me.

  “Hey, don’t get like that. Shit happens. He knew what he was getting in to when he came down here, and he knew you would have done the same for him.”

  “I know, but…”

  “But my ass, Nick. No darkness for you. You stumbled on a bunch of slaver keeping bastards; if you hadn’t come down here on your midlife crisis vacation, all these people would still be slaves, and that sick fuck Martin would still be torturing people.”

  Around the settlement, the gunfire had died out, finally stopping all together. An older black man, who I assumed was Colonel Jackson, came walking up, a bloody axe in his hand, leading more than two dozen other people of various color, including a bunch of whites. As if to punctuate what Brit had been saying, he reached down, grabbed me by the hand, and pulled me up and into a bear hug, almost squeezing the life out of me.

  “I just want to thank you” he said, then taking a step back to encompass all of us “you and all your friends, for setting us free.” The crowd spontaneously burst into cheers and applause, and I sat back down, embarrassed.

  Chapter 227

  “And what” asked Ryan Szimanski, dragging a bloody Burns behind him “do we do with this piece of shit?”

  I turned to Colonel Jackson. “This is yours to deal with, unless you want me to. I have the authority under Martial Law, but I think your people might want a crack at him. Remember, though,” I said as I saw the hate blaze up in his eyes “justice, not revenge, Colonel.”

  Jackson cooled off a bit, and Ryan dumped Burns on the ground in front of me, not too gently. He fell hard; a lot of the blood on him must have been his own. Jackson turned to me and said “You do it. You’re the law; if I do it, it’s being a vigilante.”

  I nodded and stood over him. “Burns, under the Emergency Powers Act and Section One of the Thirteen Amendment to the Constitution, I hereby charge you with unlawful enslavement of United States Citizens. Also, you swore an oath as a corrections officer to protect and serve the people of the State of New York. By your own words, you are convicted of murder of your charges at Ossining Prison. As a duly appointed Commissioned Officer of the United States Army, as witnessed by Captain Samuel Hideyoshi, US Army, I sentence you to death. Sentence to be carried out by Colonel Jackson, US Air Force.”

  I turned to Brit and asked her, “Did you get all that?” She nodded, holding up her iPhone. I turned back to Jackson, but before I could say anything, Burns threw himself at my feet, crying hysterically. The bully really was a coward, after all.

  “Please, for the love of God, don’t let the nigger hang me! You’re a white man, you gotta understand!” Brit kicked him, hard, in the face. He sprawled out on the ground and was surrounded by an angry mob. The lifted him up on their shoulders and started to carry him towards the nearest telephone pole.

  “AGOSTINE! WAIT! I can tell you some vital info! About the President! There’s going to be a …” A rope being placed around his neck choked him off, and it was quickly looped around the cross beam. Several men hauled on it, and his feet rose off the ground, even as he clawed at the noose. I turned away, rather than watch him dance, and almost collapsed. Brit and Lisa lifted me up by the shoulders and half dragged, half carried me to a nearby porch.

  “Finally, a threesome,” I managed to quip.

  “Oh, you fucking wish, Nick,” said Lisa, and I laughed. In front of the porch stood several of the former correction guards, with weapons trained on them by scouts. They looked like a battered, dispirited bunch. Red sat there also, hungrily eating an MRE, saying nothing. I was glad to see him.

  “What should we do about you?” I asked, rhetorically. I didn’t care.

  “Just let us go, Colonel. We were just trying to survive, and Burns killed more than one person who disagreed with him.
We just wanted our families to have a chance. We gave up.” The man who spoke didn’t seem anyone different than anyone else, just an average white guy with the strain of the Apocalypse marked on his face.

  “It’s true, they DID surrender,” said one of the guys from Scout Team Three.

  “Fuck it,” I said, too tired to think. “If you can make a life here, after what happened, you’re welcome to it.”

  I lay back and let Brit clean my cuts and bruises. She said nothing for a minute, but then asked me the question I had been thinking of myself. “How did you get caught with your pants down like that, Nick? Lisa told me about the ambush, but you walked into it. Are you losing your touch?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that, and I think we were set up. We got so used to fighting zombies and reavers, we forgot about radios. I got up and hobbled over towards’ what had been Burns’ house. His corpse was still slightly twitching, tongue protruding out and eyes popping. I ignored it and continued on, going into the house, followed by a curious Brit and a quickly recovering Red.

  I searched the house, knowing it had to be there, and finally found it in an upstairs room. On a desk made from a door laid over tow filing cabinets sat a short wave radio, quietly ticking over. Sprawled on the floor was one of the guards, crumpled in that utter stillness of death.

  Grabbing the microphone, I tried to make an approximation of Burns’ gravelly voice. “Whoever is listening, I want you to get Margaret on the horn.” After a second someone replied back, but I cut them off. “Get me Margaret, NOW!” I yelled into the microphone.

  I waited and she came on after a full minute. “Burns, what the hell is so goddamned important that you get my ass out of bed this early in the morning? Are you having problems with your niggers? Did you kill them soldier boys yet? Need me to come down there and teach you how it’s done?”