by J. W. Vohs
“Hey, David, you OK?” Luke inquired. “You look like somebody in an indigestion commercial.”
David told himself to concentrate on the present moment. “It’s just that we don’t know what their long-term plans were here, but there’s no way they could have predicted this kind of attack. Just do your best tonight, stay safe, and save as many people as possible.”
Luke stared at him with a look that would have sent a stranger backing up a few steps, but David knew the boy, and that look, well. “I’ll be there; you never have to worry about that. But when I say it’s time to go, you need to listen to me.”
David was a bit put off at the teen’s tone of voice, but at the same time realized that he’d always encouraged Luke to be forthcoming with his “feelings” about dangerous situations. Besides, David wasn’t sure that he was personally thinking straight at this particular moment. “All right, son,” the last word caught in his throat and he paused for half a second, “you have my word. I’ll tell everyone else the same thing.”
Luke bowed his head and apologized, “Sorry if I sound like a bossy jerk. I just don’t feel good about this one, David, I really don’t. We can’t see into the neighborhoods around here. There could be twenty thousand hunters within a mile of this place. I know there are a lot in the area; I can feel them all around. Something seems different than in the past when we’ve been in contact with them. I have no idea what it is, but we need to be ready for anything.”
David could only nod his understanding as a chill crept along his spine; he’d never before seen Luke like this. In some ways, he felt like he was seeing Luke for the first time. “Okay, get your helmets on. I’ll spread the word.”
He quickly went around to the different vehicles and told all of the fighters that when he and Luke ordered a retreat to the boats they had to go, no matter what was happening around them. Everyone signaled their understanding of the orders, but David knew that in the heat of battle it would be difficult to extract everyone safely from the fighting. He finally pulled his own helmet on and climbed into the vehicle with Christy. Through her visor she asked, “Luke’s freaked out about this, isn’t he?”
David just nodded, then added, “When he says it’s time to get out of here tonight, don’t hesitate.”
“The same goes for you.”
David lifted his visor and promised, “I go where you go.”
A minute later the first of four explosions sounded from the west, each spaced about fifteen seconds apart. Shortly after that came the sound of AR-15s firing rapidly, and then through cracks in the warehouse walls and around the edges of the door they could see the night lit up by several flares fired from the side of the keep farthest from the lake. The defenders on top of the wall opened up with small arms fire on the hunters that came running toward the noise and light, easily shooting down the bravest of the creatures that tried climbing up the wall by using the rails on the sides of the shipping containers.
After several tense minutes Shane pulled open the warehouse doors, allowing David and the others to roll out of the building and head across the few hundred yards toward the back of the compound. The unlucky hunters that got in the way of the convoy were unceremoniously run down by the large SUVs, and all of the vehicles quickly pulled into two lines that stretched from the wall of the fortress to the edge of the docks. There was a gap behind the last SUV in each line of about five feet, but the plan was to use shotguns to pile up the attacking hunters in those two places in order to create an obstacle to slow their charge. After that was accomplished, the fighters defending those spots would need to employ halberds to push the next waves of monsters into the water at the edge of the dock.
As everyone scrambled out of the vehicles and climbed on top of them to claim the high ground from the packs of hunters already heading their way, Luke scaled the wall of shipping containers in order to offer his firepower to the crane operator’s security team as they rushed to create the bridge they needed for the refugees to escape the keep. Luke was also the communications link between the people trying to escape the besieged fortress and the fighters from Middle Bass defending the escape corridor. From his perch sixteen feet above the ground, Luke saw that the fleet of yachts from the island were approaching the docks as planned, and to the west he could see a small boat motoring in their direction at a high rate of speed. That would be Bobby and Marcus, as well as the two guardsmen who’d accompanied them on their mission. Then he heard the engine of the crane fire up from behind, and he turned his attention back to the battle now erupting all around him.
The fighters at the front of the keep had fired two more flares into the sky above the compound, and the entire area was bathed in an eerie glow that seemed more like amplified moonlight than the brightness offered by the sun. The sound of the fighting in front hadn’t diminished one bit, but hunters were pouring around the sides of the wall as the crane operator rotated the boom to the first container. A dozen fighters were firing into the gathering hunters from their posts on the wall, while one man stood on top of the first giant, metal box that needed to be moved. The waiting soldier slipped the hook at the end of the cable into a massive, wrought-iron eye and then rode the container down to the ground as it was swung into place. As soon as the box was set, the soldier immediately removed the hook and started shooting at nearby hunters as the boom turned toward the next container. Luke added his arrows to the bullets flying into the creatures trying to get at the crane operator, while the soldier on the container already in place was fighting a three-hundred-sixty degree battle to keep the monsters off of his position.
By the time the second container was dropped into place it crushed three of the several dozen hunters trying to reach the man defending the first. Within seconds the boom was moving back toward the keep, with two soldiers now frantically fighting to keep the ever increasing number of hunters at bay from the top of the growing bridge. While Luke continued to support the two men trying to protect the recently placed shipping containers, the rest of the members of his group were coming under increasing pressure as they fought to defend the two lines of vehicles protecting the escape route to the dock. He was the only one who could see the action on both sides of the wall, and if the diversions they’d employed were actually drawing away any of the monsters, he couldn’t tell by the numbers of beasts roaring down on the fortress.
After a few more minutes of intense fighting went by, Bobby and Marcus came running up to help David and the others after bringing their small motorboat right up to the edge of the dock and hopping out. The young lieutenant was with them, but one of the guardsmen that had accompanied the team was missing. As Luke watched them join the fight out of the corner of his eye he thought to himself, that’s one.
Turning his attention back to the bridge-building operation he saw that the third container was being swung in to position very close to where he was standing, finally coming to rest about three feet from the outer wall he was on. Luke admired the crane operators handiwork—the three containers rested neatly in a line leading from the keep to the ships. The rest of the soldiers hopped down from the two-container–high part of the wall they’d been shooting from and ran forward to help the three men trying to keep the crazed hunters off of the top of the makeshift single-level bridge. One of the soldiers was screaming into a walkie-talkie until he finally shoved it back into his pocket and yelled up at Luke, “Sarge said we gotta go with what we have in place now.”
Luke shouted back, “The bridge is supposed to be two containers high!”
“I know,” The soldier shouted back, “but the diversion up front is just pulling more zombies inside the walls and it looks like hundreds of others are heading toward your friends on the vehicles. And look at the crane . . . we’re outta time!”
Look looked down at the operator’s cab of the crane to see that it was completely overrun by hunters. Even as he watched he saw one of the biggest of the creatures smash through the glass of the front window and reach for th
e man inside. Luke thought to himself, that’s two, but was surprised when he saw the huge monster’s brains fly out of the back of its head as the crane operator showed that he wasn’t going out that easily. Luke’s arrows and the soldiers’ bullets quickly cleared away the hunters mobbing the cab, giving the man inside a fighting chance to scramble out of the broken window and begin climbing up the boom of the crane. When he reached the top he simply slid down the heavy cable and without a moment’s hesitation began adding the fire of what looked to be a .45 magnum to that of the soldiers pouring lead into the faces of the leaping hunters frantically trying to reach the food on top of the containers.
Seconds after the crane operator escaped the cab of his machine, the first of the people trapped in the keep appeared at the top of the wall and began making their way down to the bridge. Several aluminum and makeshift wooden ladders appeared, and soldiers were doing their best to help the non-fighters climb down in the midst of the noisy, frightening battle. Many people were also climbing up from the ground surrounded by the walls, and when they looked at the chaos below them for the first time some of them literally froze in place. Luke watched as a heavy woman climbing down toward the bridge lost her grip on the ladder and slid to the bottom. Her right knee buckled horribly and she fell into the grasping hands of the hunters attacking at the place where the bridge and the wall of the keep met. The screams that came from beneath the clawing, jostling pack of flesh-eaters were primal howls of pain and inexpressible horror as the monsters tore huge chunks of flesh from the writhing woman. If Luke could have gotten a clear shot he would have put an arrow in her just to end her misery. The sounds of her dying seemed to last forever, though in reality they ended with a final gurgle less than a minute after she fell.
Two kids must have been related to the dying woman, because they were screaming and crying as the soldiers pulled them the rest of the way down the ladders and forcibly carried them over to the wall Luke was standing on. In all of the commotion he hadn’t even noticed that two ladders were now extended up from the bridge to the container he was standing on, and several soldiers had joined him on his perch. They were lowering more ladders into the space between the vehicles that were now under heavy attack, and the hysterical children were the first two refugees to escape the keep as they now ran sobbing across the dock toward the waiting yachts.
Finally a steady stream of refugees was running across the bridge. Not long after the dying woman’s screams had ended, a man carrying a toddler tripped over the heavy iron eye used to connect the container to the crane’s cable, and he stumbled into the back of a soldier pushing hunters away with a pike. The unlucky fighter fell head first into the waiting horde below, but this time one of his buddies ran over and emptied a heavy revolver into the scrum that immediately gathered above the fallen man. The impact of the heavy rounds promptly ended the screams that had just begun as the frenzied hunters began tearing the leather armor from their next victim.
Luke had set his bow aside by this point and was simply pulling people up the ladders and sending them down the other side of the wall as quickly as he could. He could hear the screams of other people falling off the bridge but didn’t bother to look. Every thirty seconds or so he would hear the soldiers shouting, and that was how he knew at least one hunter had made it up onto the top of the containers and set off a mini-panic, but again, he just focused on the terrified civilians who made it to the place where he could actually help them.
After about ten minutes of rushing refugees up and down the ladders from the bridge to the escape corridor, a new problem erupted when one of the islanders guarding the wall of vehicles protecting the opening was pulled from his post and immediately killed by a huge hunter only twenty feet away from Luke. The lack of screaming led the teen to believe that the poor fighter’s neck had probably been broken when he was grabbed and pulled over, but Luke picked up his bow and nocked an arrow just in case the guy was still alive and suffering. When he didn’t see any movement from the leather-clad figure being torn to pieces, he used the arrow on the massive pack-leader who’d made the kill. It was the last death that particular hunter would ever contribute to as Luke’s arrow struck the brute directly in the forehead and penetrated all the way to the fletching.
Then he saw that Gracie was actually using a halberd to try to keep several creatures away from her, and even though she managed to kill one of them with a deft thrust into the eye-socket the impact with the beast sent her tumbling backwards from the hood of the SUV she’d been defending. For one brief second Luke didn’t know what to do. The screaming on the bridge was increasing and the refugees were crushing into one another trying to climb the ladder, so he knew that the soldiers were rapidly losing control of the situation between the keep and the back wall. The hunter that Gracie hadn’t been able to kill had leapt from the roof of the vehicle it had climbed and grabbed Marcus by the shoulders as it tried to bite his head. The veteran Ranger spun around and smoothly dispatched the creature by flipping it to the ground and splattering its brains with a mace, but now hunters were pouring over the wall of SUVs in several spots and more were pushing their way in with each passing second.
Suddenly, for Luke at least, the fight to rescue the trapped refugees was over. He shouted at the top of his lungs, “retreat!” as he jumped onto the roof of a Hummer before allowing his momentum to carry him onto the ground. He completed a perfect “airborne” roll and hit his feet running for Gracie. She was standing by the time he reached her but Luke wasted no time trying to convince her to run. The waves of premonition that had been lapping at the edge of his consciousness for hours overwhelmed him and he could think of nothing but getting the people he cared about to safety. Again he screamed for everyone to run as he tossed Gracie over his shoulder and thundered down the dock to one of the yachts that was already backing away from the dock as the pilot saw the defenses on shore being overwhelmed.
Luke leapt across five feet of water and unceremoniously plopped Gracie into the lap of a middle-aged couple who were splattered with blood and looked to be suffering from shock. He slapped the man across the face and shouted, “Are either of you bitten?”
The man seemed to snap out of his daze as he shook his head and mumbled, “No sir, no sir, but they got our daughter, they pulled her off the bridge.”
Luke grabbed the man’s hand and pulled his arm across Gracie’s prone body, “You hold her tight! You hear me? You hold her tight and I’ll go back there and see what I can do.”
The stunned refugee nodded his understanding and pulled Gracie into a tight hug as she began to squirm and shout, realizing what Luke was about to do. “No!” she shouted. “You stay here with me!”
But Luke was already gone, using a three-step run to propel himself across the growing space between the boat and the dock, landing in the midst of what had become a panicked mob. Luke hefted his trench axe in his right hand and a dagger in his left, pushing people away to each side until finally a path seemed to open to his advance against the tide of humanity fleeing the monsters. As he reached the intersection of the dock and shore he found what he expected to see: the brave members of his group holding off a tsunami of hunters trying to chase the scattering refugees.
More flares had been fired into the sky above the shoreline, painting the entire scene in a garish hue of yellow-green that highlighted a picture of madness. Soldiers on the wall were fighting to the death against an endless mob of howling hunters as groups of humans and infected fell together into the crowds of creatures below still looking for a way to reach the top of the containers. The sounds of victorious beasts snarling and snapping as they battled one another for scraps of flesh could be heard above the horrendous screams of agony from people being literally eaten alive. For a brief moment Luke felt a slight touch of madness brush against his mind, but then he reverted to the righteous fury he always felt when battling the infected, and a calm determination to destroy the abominations fell over his consciousness as he stepped into t
he line to help his friends.
David was at the end of his ability to resist. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath, and he suddenly realized that he must have cracked or broken a rib when the two hunters crashed into him from above, knocking him off of the SUV he and Christy had been defending. He hadn’t heard the soft whispers of the lethal bullets leave her revolver as she scrambled the brains of the monsters on top of her husband; he was just grateful to feel the creatures’ weight pull away and see Christy’s blazing eyes through her visor. When she’d shouted in his face, asking if he was okay, he’d only been able to nod before she turned and pulled him by the shoulder to the boats. Bobby had somehow ended up on his other side, and as they rushed onto the dock he could feel his boots bumping against the ground and hear screaming from what seemed to be every direction. They’d laid him on the dock as gently as possible with a ravenous pack of hunters clawing at their backs, and then all he could do was watch through a foggy visor as his wife and friends fought the battle of their lives to keep a countless horde of infected at bay long enough for the terrified civilians to run to the waiting boats.
David finally managed to pull himself up into a sitting position from which he watched Marcus and Bobby hold the ends of the line, stabbing, spearing, and simply tossing frenzied hunters off of the dock as the monsters continued to charge. He could see from the light of the flares that the entire operation had unraveled into an unmitigated disaster. Looking over the outer wall he could see that some soldiers were still on top of the keep, trying to pull several people up from the grasping, reaching arms of the hunters crowded below.