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

by John F. Holmes

  “Murdoch,” I said, in my normal voice. There was silence on the other end.

  “Murdoch,” I said again. “I’m coming to get YOU.” I reached over and shut off the radio. Brit burst out laughing.

  “What? I had to do it.”

  Chapter 228

  “You’re going to miss. Miss miss miss,” whispered Brit in my ear. “You always do.” Her eyes were glued to the spotter scope, looking for our target with its wide angle of vision. My eye was fixed to the scope on my rifle, drifting from face to face.

  “Suck it,” I muttered.

  “If you make the shot, I will.” I lost focus for a second, thinking about that.

  “Stop trying to distract me. Where is she?”

  Brit hadn’t taken her eye off the scope. “OK, I got something. Movement, top floor, someone peeking out of the curtains.”

  I shifted the rifle on its bipod and angled slightly downward. We were about six hundred meters past the wall of the trading post, up on a slight rise away from the road, and the sun was setting behind us. Brit, Red and I had crawled into position the night before, and spent the day literally scoping the place out. Red lay on the other side of Brit, looking through his own rifle scope. The top floor of the house was just visible behind the walls, and we had a clear sh

  “I still say we go in there and blow the shit out of everything,” she said.

  “That’s your answer to everything. We have no air support, and if we sent the scouts in there, we might lose a man or two.” The gate was closed, and there were two heavy machine gun positions set up outside, as well as guards in sandbagged emplacements on the towers. Everyone that we could see had been in a panic for most of the day, and what we thought had been a patrol going out in the early morning darkness had never come back. Rats deserting a sinking ship.

  “I see her,” I said, almost at the same moment Red said “Target.” It was indeed the woman who ran the trading post. Her fat, makeup smeared face was just visible, highlighted by the setting sun.

  “Firing” said the Navajo, a soft PLOP and the window shattered in front of Murdock, just above her head. As the glass fragmented, I centered my crosshairs in the middle of the triangle formed by her eyes and mouth, but slightly off to one side to account for the little cross breeze, and gently squeezed the trigger. The rifle rocked, causing my still healing shoulder flair with pain, and when the cross hairs settled again, there was a splatter of red on the curtains. Even as I watched, there was a spurt, and more red splashed the wall. Once again, then it stopped.

  “You missed! Haha!” exclaimed Brit.

  “Bullshit! She’s dead!” I said, putting the weapon on safe and starting the slow crawl backwards out of our hide site.

  “Oh, I’m sure she’s dead. But that was arterial spray. You probably got her in the throat, almost six inches down. Misjudged the distance. You are such a suck shot! No sexy time for you, husband.”

  Red laughed, and we made our way back into the tree line where the rest of the Scouts waited for us.

  Showdown at the Stillwater Trading Post

  Billy “Bones” Blutarsky had a full belly and a plan. He finished gnawing on the roasted finger bones as they walked down the battered remains of the two lane county road. It ran next to the Hudson River, south of Glens Falls. In the six years since the Apocalypse, the road had become full of small brush growing up through the cracks, and in one case, a bridge over a small stream had collapsed. Nothing Billy Bones and his reavers weren’t used to, though. They climbed down and back up, without slowing the steady pace, eating up the miles.

  There were five of them, one less than yesterday. The group had hit an isolated farmstead up by Greenwich, but lost a man in the process. Well, not lost, really. Gina had gone in first, since people were always more welcoming to a woman, and once they had opened the gate, Billy’s crew had smashed their way in, killing the farmer and raping his wife, before killing her, too. Bad thing though, in the rush, one of his own men, that moron Haynes, had tripped and broken his ankle. Not even a gunshot wound, but Billy had slit his man’s throat, and they roasted him slowly over an open fire. It was the rule of the gang. You kept up, or you got eaten.

  Their next target lay a few miles ahead, a trading post in Stillwater. The farmer’s wife had told them about it before she died, describing in detail the amount of goods there. Who knows? If it was rich enough, maybe Billy and the guys would set up shop there themselves. Gotta stop wandering sometime, and looting was turning up slim pickings.

  The hint that something might be different was when they came to the end of the road and made a right. According to the map, a bridge spanned the Hudson into Stillwater. When they got there, though, there was a pretty damn effective stone barrier and gate combination across each end of the bridge. On an island in the middle was what looked like an honest to God bomb crater, centered on the remains of a house. The gate stood open, but two very heavily armed men sat inside, just in reach of a bar that would swing the heavy gate closed on a counter weight.

  One of the men stood up and walked over, casually cradling a pump action shotgun with the barrel cut just short of the grip. “State your business” said the man curtly, and Billy almost bristled at his tone.

  Gina put her hand on his arm, though, cocked her hip at Parade Pretty and said, in her sweetest tone, “Just passing through, maybe doing some trading, sugar.”

  Her southern drawl, which usually served to make a man lower his guard, did nothing to him, and the guard said, “If you have trade good, let me see them.”

  Billy scowled, but opened his pack to dump out some of the things they had looted from the farm the night before. Seeds, mostly, which were worth their weight in gold. The man grunted and nodded, and Billy noticed that his partner had never taken his eyes off them the whole time.

  “Go ahead, Stillwater Trading Post, Hotel and Tavern is half a mile down on your left.” He also spoke into a radio that was clipped to his tactical vest, before sitting down in his chair, never stopping watching, even as Gina walked past him with her best strut.

  “Those looked like some tough hombres, Billy” said Louie Vitello. The Italian mumbled, because he had lost all his teeth to scurvy several years before. There was nothing wrong with his reflexes, though, and he was Billy’s fastest gunman. “Maybe we should skip this one.”

  “Nah. You heard the farmer last night. Trading post is run by a woman and her gimp husband. How hard can it be? They probably put their best guys out front.” Truth was, Billy hadn’t like the cold look in the eyes of the guards. They reminded him of guys he had occasionally met in the army, Special Forces guys; the kind that would kill you as soon as look at you, and not lose a minute of sleep. He couldn’t, though, let any of the others see any fear on him. Like a pack of stray dogs, they would turn in him the minute he showed weakness.

  The trading post sat in the bottom floor of an old mill building, hard up against the river. I large sign hung out front, stating “NO MORE THAN THREE PERSONS INSIDE AT ANY ONE TIME. DON’T LIKE IT, TOUGH SHIT.” Beneath was a list of prices drawn on a chalk board, everything from ammo to a room for the night. Each was marked with a price in New Dollars, gold, or silver.

  “Looks pretty rich, honey” said Gina, and she proceeded to pimp herself up, getting ready for her act inside. Gina was a great distraction, usually allowing Billy and the others that spit second to get the drop on whomever they were robbing. He worried at a piece of human meat that was stuck in his teeth and spit it out, then told Jake and Dave to wait outside.

  “Don’t do nothing till you get my signal, then come in guns blazin if you needs to. This could be a big score for us.” Both men, not the brightest bulbs in the box, didn’t take their eyes off Gina, but they did nod to Billy, If they hadn’t acknowledged them, he would have had to make an example of one of them.

  The three of them, Billy, Gina and Louie, walked through the doorway. The first thing that shocked them was the electric lights shining from the ceiling. They
hadn’t seen electricity for years, but Billy quickly figured out that they must have hydroelectric from the river.

  Behind the counter stood a breathtakingly beautiful, redheaded woman wearing an eyepatch. She was about five four, and had a blazing blue eye that set off her pale skin. Billy stared. She was clean, something he wasn’t used to anymore, and my god, look at that rack! It bulked up the hoodie she was wearing. Billy made a mental note to keep her alive, for a while at least. She was just finishing up talking to another customer, a grizzled old guy in overalls, who had an ancient M1 Garand slung over his shoulder.

  The woman picked a round at random from what the man was offering, picked up an M-4 with a suppressor, put the round in the chamber and fired it down into what had to be a hidden barrel of sand. A red light lit up and she repeated the process, frowning, then shook her head. Billy’s mouth watered at the sleek, well cared for rifle.

  “Now, Joe,” she said to the customer, “you got screwed. You should have tested these hand loads; both those rounds were about twelve hundred feet per second. There’s about forty percent of the powder in here that you need to get a good muzzle velocity. We’re going to have to reload them, and you know what a pain in the ass that is. Now, seeing as you’re a good regular customer, I’ll take the whole box off you for, say” and she typed some numbers in a laptop, “One ounce of gold.”

  The man grimaced and said, “Jesus, Brit, you’re killing me.” But he accepted the gold she handed him, and the woman placed the box of 5.56 rounds down under the counter. Then she turned to Gina, and her eyes narrowed. Uh Oh, thought Billy. As he thought it, he noticed a short, dark skinned, Native American guy sitting on a stool at the other end of the counter. A wicked looking automatic shotgun lay across his knees as he seemed to read a book. He would have to go first.

  “Can I help you?” said the woman, coldly.

  Gina seemed taken aback. They were used to dealing with men in this tough world, and her chest and her ass had always been a good enough distraction. Next to the redhead’s clean good looks, though, she just looked kinda slutty. “Ah, why yes, we’d like to do some trading.”

  “Sure, what have you got?”

  Billy stepped forward and lifted the seed bag onto the counter. As he did so, his hand slid to the pistol hidden in his belt. “Seeds” he grunted.

  “You don’t look like farmers. Where did you get them?” she asked.

  “Traded them with some folks up in Greenwich last night” said Gina, trying to charm the woman, and Billy knew that was an immediate mistake. The more she laid it one, the harder the redhead looked.

  “Did you all have anything to do with that column of smoke from up that way this morning?” Billy cursed inside his mind. He KNEW they shouldn’t have burned the place!

  “TAKE …” Billy started to shout, but he was cut off by two loud CRACKS; the redheads’ pistol had come up with incredible speed from a drop holster on her leg, and next to him, Louie’s pistol fired into the counter as he sank bonelessly to the floor.

  The shotgun boomed once, and Gina’s head disappeared in a splash of red gore, splattering Billy with blood, bone and brains. He managed to free his .25 automatic from his belt and fire one round at the red head, center mass. She said OOOF! and staggered backwards. Billy was turning to fire at the Indian, who was shifting aim at him, when the barrel of a rifle smacked across his head. He saw stars and fell to the floor, and his gun was kicked away from him by the man who had been on his way out the door. Billy Bones stared upwards in the train tunnel muzzle of the twelve gauge shotgun as the Indian held it an inch from his eye.

  “Try it. Please.”.

  “Ms. O’Neill,” crackled a radio “Are you OK? We have two down outside the front door.”

  Billy was hauled roughly to his feet by the short but powerful Navajo, and pushed towards the door, the shotgun barrel digging into his back. “Two down, one prisoner, everyone OK” he heard her answer behind him, and the redhead followed them outside. She stood there, hoodie stripped off to reveal a bulky chest plate carrier. There was a small rip in the front where his bullet had hit.

  Billy’s other two men lay exactly where they had stood, neat holes drilled through their heads, pools of blood slowly leaking in the dirt.

  “Thanks for your help, Joe. I won’t forget, next time you come in to trade.” He nodded but kept his rifle aimed at Billy Bones.

  A four wheeler pulled up and a man hopped out. Average height, but with a tough, worn look to his face, he limped over to the redhead and asked her if she was OK. When she answered yes, he came over to where Billy stood, still in shock and covered with Gina’s brains and blood.

  “What’s your last four?” he asked, and out of reflex, Billy answered “Three Nine Zero Three!” drilled into him during his time in the Army.

  “Thought so. Deserter, too. Under the Federal Emergency Powers act, I sentence you to death for two counts of attempted murder and one count of Desertion. Red, get the rope.”

  “Hey!” exclaimed Billy. “I want a lawyer! You can’t just hang me! What about my rights?”

  “You pointed a gun at someone who could shoot back, so I guess you exercised your rights, just like they did. You lost. Hang him, Red.”

  “Hey now, this ain’t right!” yelled Billy as he felt the rope loop around his neck and draw tight.

  “They tried to trade us the same seeds we sold the McPhersons last week, too, Nick. I bet that smoke we saw this morning was probably their homestead.” The redhead stared at Billy as she spoke, fingering the small hole in her body armor.

  “Now wait,” choked out Billy Bones. “It’s a rough world, and we was just trying to get by, same as everyone else.”

  “Tough shit. It IS a rough world. Make your peace with God,” said the hard faced man, and the rope grew tight, choking off Billy’s screams. The last he saw was a tight smile on the redheads’ beautiful mouth, and a pained look on the hard faced man, almost as if he regretted what he was doing.

  PART 2

  Chapter 229

  “You look great, honey,” said Brit, adjusting my tie for me, making it too tight and choking me.

  “I feel like a monkey,” I replied, loosening the tie and looking at myself in the mirror. The President’s invitation to the new White House in Albany had come as no surprise, since Brit’s intelligence network had told her I was receiving the Medal of Honor long before official notice had come. Still, though, my uniform hung a little slack after my ordeal earlier that summer.

  “If you looked like a money, I would have shot you all those years ago. Get a load of those medals, stud muffin. Chicks dig it!”

  My ribbon rack stretched all the way up my shoulder, starting with some National Guard Medals, progressing through my Iraq and Afghanistan medals, through some achievement and commendation medals, up to the ones that meant something. A Purple Heart which in no way replaced my missing leg. The Bronze Star with V device, for a firefight in Afghanistan. Two Silver Stars for actions during the New York and Colorado offensives after the Apocalypse. A Distinguished Service Cross for (CLASSIFIED) stood on top. Oh bullshit on the classification. It was for taking out Dr. Morano, the evil bitch who caused the apocalypse. The world still didn’t know that whole story, and wouldn’t until I published these books, twenty years from now. Over the ribbons stood my Combat Action Badge. Though I had been in more actions than most infantry, I wasn’t qualified to wear a CIB, since my “branch” so to speak, was with the Scouts, and I had been an Artilleryman prior to the Apocalypse. There had been talk of getting the Scouts the right to wear the Combat Infantry Badge, but like the teams said, if we were getting in a fight, we were doing something wrong. Likewise, we had eschewed the Cavalry branch, because none of us wanted to be associated with the My Little Pony gang. Even if they DID ride horses again, as often as not.

  The thing on my uniform that I was most proud of was a pair of crossed tomahawks on my collar, with the number “1” above them. The symbols of the Irregular Scout T
eams, with the number being for the team. Brit, though a civilian, wore a similar set pinned to her dress. Only members of the teams could wear it, whether military or civilian.

  “Come on, it’s time to go,” urged Brit, and I took her hand in mine as we stepped out the door. I had mostly recovered from my ordeal at the slaver town, and Brit wore her hair long to cover her mutilated ear. Her diamond studded patch just accentuated the blue blaze of her good eye. We stepped out of the hotel, into the humid air of an upstate New York September, where a long black limo was waiting for us.

  I held the door for her and nodded a greeting to the Air Force driver, who was wearing multicam and sported Sergeants stripes. Brit scooted in and joined Sergeant First Class Angelo Redshirt, who had been staying at a different motel. He also was receiving the Medal, and Brit was getting the Presidential Medal Of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian award. Angelo’s wife, Staff Sergeant Kelly Hart, would be receiving a posthumous Silver Star for her actions in Seattle.

  The normally quiet Redshirt, who had come to the team as a nineteen year old replacement five years ago, and was now a widower with a young son, was sweating bullets, and nervously fingering the collar of his dress uniform. Brit couldn’t resist the opportunity to bust his balls.

  “What’s the matter, Red? Too many white people around?”

  “No, I just don’t like crowds.”

  “Crowds of white people, you mean.”

  “Yeah, that too. If they whip out a treaty, I’m leaving.” We all laughed, and it helped break the tension.

  My gaze was drawn out the window to see the Fuller Road exit go by. Instead, the car took the ramp onto the Northway, away from the new government complex at the old SUNY campus. Our suspicions were immediately on edge, but before I said anything, the other occupant of the front seat, an Air Force Captain in dress uniform, turned and spoke.