by J. W. Vohs
Jack hesitated for a few seconds, “Okay, send Rickers and all the fresh Utah squads you have. Keep John and Tina, and you are in overall command there. Chad’s people aren’t as experienced at this kind fighting as our folks are. Keep a good eye on them.”
Carter nodded and turned to give instructions to the squad leaders to move calmly through the milling refugees, and report to Jack. Chad had been listening in on the radio chatter; he sounded annoyed when he declared, “My boys are holding just fine; you can see that for yourself.”
Carter looked out at the massive army of hunters scrambling over and around the abandoned train in their hungry thousands. Unfortunately for them their numbers were rendered nearly impotent since they could only attack along a narrow front established by four lines of soldiers whose flanks were anchored on the bridge railings. Greenburg’s fighters were tough and strong, and all of them had learned to carry edged-weapons as backups to their firearms as they had fought to survive the deadly weeks following the outbreak of the virus. The troops from Buffalo and Middle Bass had few shields, and their armor wasn’t as good as that perfected by the warriors from The Castle, but they were piling up hunter corpses at an impressive rate and Carter had to admit they looked fully capable of holding their positions.
He nodded at Chad, “Ya got damn tough fighters there; this is yer fight, so if ya don’t mind I’ll stay here with my wife and operate the radio while yer folks do the killin’.”
Sergeant Greenburg smiled fiercely through his raised visor, “We’ll fight here all day if Jack needs us to. Now, if you don’t mind I’m gonna go kill a dozen or two of the bastards!”
Jack wiped the blood and gore from the front of his helmet and looked over the ground to the north of the river. The immediate area was covered with dozens of hunters’ corpses, and as the soldiers from The Castle and Utah came running up to reinforce the small group he’d led across the bridge, he couldn’t see any infected between him and the buildings he needed to occupy. When Rickers and Hiram asked for orders, Jack told them to split their force into two groups then lead their soldiers in an attack to clear and hold the Old Fort and the water-treatment building. As they left to complete their missions, he ordered most of the people in his oversized squad to spread out and find large vehicles with which they could form a temporary wall to block the bridge.
With the exception of some condos and upscale apartment buildings, few people had lived in downtown Fort Wayne before the outbreak. The morning and afternoon streets had filled with vehicles carrying workers into and out of businesses every day of the year with the exception of weekends and holidays, but the area was a ghost town at night. That was the only reason why the bridge wasn’t totally blocked by pile-ups from people frantically trying to escape the virus when the outbreak gained traction in the city. But now they needed to create their own traffic jam to stop the hunters from crossing the river. Jack had faith that his soldiers would find vehicles in the streets, driveways, and garages of the residential neighborhoods that lay beyond the flood plain and the buildings he planned to use as fortresses.
Within ten minutes a school bus, two public transit busses, and a large delivery truck were headed toward Jack’s position at the north end of the bridge, and radio calls had come in from Hiram and Rickers informing him that the buildings for the refugees were secure. One hundred non-combatants and fifty soldiers were sent into the Old Fort, while the rest of the people waiting on the bridge were ordered into the water treatment facility. Deb and Carter had been calling in updates on Greenburg’s fighting line every few minutes, and even though they were now facing thousands of infected, the narrow front they were able to form between the railings above the river allowed them to maintain a four-line-phalanx while resting half of their force at any given moment. The corpses of hunters were piled high in front of the fighters while the humans hadn’t suffered any losses since the retreat from the train. An early count indicated that about fifteen soldiers were lost during the confusing withdrawal, but considering the hornets’ nest the train had rolled into, Jack figured they were fortunate to have only lost that many troops. The most important thing was that none of the non-combatants were killed or seriously injured during an evacuation while under attack.
Moving the refugees off of the bridge didn’t take long, and soon the vehicles had been backed up between the railings, immediately forming a wall nearly ten feet high and more than thirty deep. The school bus had been rammed sideways out on the middle of the span, with the loading-door facing Chad’s position. Jack ordered soldiers to climb on top of the vehicle with spears and pikes, planning to have the retreating troops enter the bus, walk down the aisle, and come out the back where they could safely approach and scale the main wall. Unlike the retreat from the train, this withdrawal was completed in an orderly manner and nobody was lost as the plan unfolded with no major problems.
As soon as Greenburg’s soldiers were evacuated over the main wall and inside the safe-houses, Jack decided to hold the blockage formed by the school bus. Once the hunters attempting to crawl under the vehicle had been killed, their accumulating corpses prevented others from trying the same tactic, effectively stopping the horde’s advance. Luke and Gracie were in charge of a squad of Utah troops holding the makeshift barrier for as long as possible, allowing the people working on the primary roadblock behind them more time to fortify their position. Before Jack left the youngsters to their duty, he looked over the heart of the city of Fort Wayne, the rays from the rising sun making the dome of the historic courthouse sparkle with tiny bursts of beautiful light that presented a perfect contrast to the ugliness filling the streets below.
Twenty-thousand infected, mostly fully developed hunters, packed the avenues and boulevards, stretching from the bridge, back into the artificial canyons created by the tall office buildings where bankers and lawyers had plied their trade only a few months earlier. For as far as Jack could see, from side to side and into the distance, the snarling, howling flesh-eaters, driven into a frenzy by the smell of freshly-spilled human blood, shoved and pushed at one another as they tried to make their way through the crowd that funneled down to a small line of monsters attacking the bus blocking their way. The infected only had two problems in the world: armed humans and water. Now, Jack thought with a wry smile, those two forces had come together in a nearly perfect location.
Within minutes the first teams of scavengers that Jack had sent out behind the company of soldiers who advanced through the houses and alleyways of the peninsula had found plenty of four-wheel-drive trucks and SUVs, a dump-truck, and two large Bobcats from an abandoned water department project. There were also plenty of chain-saws and other equipment to use on the timbers that were quickly hauled to the site of the roadblock presented by the vehicles forming the main wall at the northern end of the bridge. The workers cut down trees and demolished several houses for lumber, then anchored a palisade twice the height of the busses in mounds of earth brought up by the heavy equipment. The structure was crude but solid, and high enough that the defenders could kill hunters all day long without the corpses forming a pile high enough for the others to climb up and reach the top of the wall. In any event, Jack equipped several soldiers with long pikes tipped with large hooks to roll the dead off of the bridge so there was no chance of the hunters using the corpses of their pack-mates to reach the humans above.
As soon as Jack believed that the new wall would hold the pressure of thousands of hunters pushing on it, he organized a fresh squad to replace Luke’s team on the bus and personally led them out to view the current situation. The warriors on top of the barricade were covered with blood and gore, and a mound of corpses that had to consist of several hundred slaughtered infected lay in front of their position. The exhausted fighters were led back to the palisade where they climbed the high wall using aluminum extension ladders taken from nearby garages. Once Luke’s team was safely over the barrier Jack told the squad that had replaced them to abandon the school bus posi
tion and return to the main wall as their primary purpose had only been to protect the withdrawal of weary soldiers. Jack was the last one to climb the ladder off of the bridge, noting with satisfaction that the hunters still hadn’t found a way to climb over or around the bus Luke and his fighters had defended so effectively. If it came down to it, he would ask Bobby and some of the other Rangers to blow the bridge, but if there was any way they could keep it for the future they planned to create here he intended to do so.
The next order of business was to check on the people setting up the northern defensive works. All of the houses along Prospect Street had been cleared of infected, and construction on walls connecting the homes was progressing well if the radio reports were accurate. Hiram Anderson and many of his Utah troops were involved in the building project, while Stanley Rickers and his squad had set up security on the other side of the street. While all of that was going on, the RRTs from The Castle had reassembled and were busy clearing every room of every house between the river and the fortifications.
Inside the Old Fort and the water plant, wounds were being attended to, meals were being prepared and served, and some grieving was taking place too. The Utah force had suffered most of the casualties during the helter-skelter retreat from the train, but two men from The Castle, including Deputy Jeff Little, had died as well. Jack was sad about the loss of Little, but more than a bit frustrated as well. The Deputy had been the first person to welcome him to the Noble County Sheriff’s office when Bob Gates had been infected and had named Jack as his replacement. Not long after that, Little had gone on to completely botch the defense of a fire station that had been set up as a safe house for refugees. A number of people had died during a bitter fight against thousands of zombies at that safe house, and in the end Carter, Maddy, and Ted Simmons had almost died saving the chubby deputy during the evacuation. The man simply made too many mistakes in too many dangerous situations, and his decision to run for the bridge this morning instead of joining up with the unit leader, as all of The Castle’s fighters had been trained to do, had cost him his life.
Jack pushed those thoughts from his mind as he approached Prospect Street, finding Hiram’s men hard at work on the houses and the growing wall that was to eventually rival the strength and height of that at the bridge. After thanking the western leader and encouraging him to keep up the good work, Jack crossed the street to check in with Rickers’ security detail. He found the hard-fighting local in the attic of the tallest house on the block, carefully observing the streets and yards to the north from a hole he’d created by kicking out a small vent.
“What’s happening up here?” Jack asked.
Continuing his observation, Rickers replied, “We’ve put down three small packs and two loners. Found one zombie shuffling in our direction and smashed its brain like a rotten pumpkin. Other than that it’s been quiet out here, really quiet. How’re things at the bridge?”
“Most of the hunters have moved back into the buildings they came out of this morning. We’ve seen plenty of cattle carcasses over there with meat still on the bones, so I guess those pilots were telling the truth about filling the city with beef on the hoof for the flesh-eaters. they’d lured here.”
Jack was quiet for a long moment before continuing, “David was telling me earlier about a pack that attacked his group out on the river when they were headed to Lake Erie, and he said that after his crew shot a bunch of them the rest turned tail and ran. Luke thinks the hunters actually realized it was a lost cause and took off before any more of their group were killed. If they’re capable of that level of problem-solving, it’s not surprising that they’ve basically given up on the bridge. The pilots out at the airport said that they used some sort of transmitter signal to round up the infected, then a different one to get them to attack and keep attacking. My guess is that without an active attack signal they rely on those basic self-preservation skills that David and Luke witnessed. The hunters figured out that they had a better chance of finding a meal from those dead cattle than by trying to kill us, so they broke off their assault.”
“Lord almighty,” Stanley replied, “what’s gonna happen next with these things?”
Jack gave a small smile as he speculated, “They’re gonna be as fast and strong as their bones and body mass will allow. Maybe they’ll keep learning; at least natural selection will eventually lead to the stupid ones being killed off. The good news is that we hardly have any hunters on this side of the river.”
Stanley finally set down his optics and confessed, “I didn’t really want to leave Noble County or The Castle, but I’d follow you anywhere you wanted me to go. I guess you know that. I gotta admit though, that we have a heck of a lot more room here, and the other peninsulas around here look to be just as defensible. Easy water access is basically priceless in this new world; we own the one place the hunters just don’t like to be: the rivers. Coming here was a good idea.”
Jack chuckled briefly, “Knock on wood, Stanley, but I think you’re right. Once we learn how to stop those helicopters from rounding up armies of infected we can move people back to The Castle who just don’t like it here. We’re not going to completely abandon any fort as strong as that one, and with the rail line going through Albion we’ll have easy access to Noble County.”
Stanley just nodded so Jack finished, “I’ll send up a few squads to take your place in about ten minutes. There’s a hot meal being prepared in the water building so get your people back there for some chow and rest.”
“Will do, Jack, thanks for checking in.”
When Jack returned to the safe-houses he found Luke, Marcus, and Bobby walking up from the river bank with the prisoners from the airport in tow. They’d volunteered to go back for them and managed to scrounge up a few trolling motors so they didn’t have to paddle again. Carter, Lori, David, and a few others drifted over, and they all escorted the prisoners into one of the smaller buildings that made up the Old Fort. Everyone was incredibly anxious to hear more from the pilots, and by the time the sun was setting on what had been the most momentous day since the Battle of The Castle, an amazing story had been pieced together.
The defiant man whom Marcus had first questioned was the USAMRIID officer attached to this group of pilots, and his attitude had not improved since his initial interrogation. As before, he was reluctant to talk at all; but after the other captives detailed their experiences under USAMRIIDs thumb, including their universal disdain for the man charged with relaying orders and monitoring their actions, he became defensive and verbally combative with them. When Jack assured him that he had no problem taking entire fingers or other body parts from anyone associated with Barnes, the man decided his best option was to cooperate in exchange for a promise of physical safety—from his former comrades as well as from Jack and the other captors.
According to the captives, General Barnes had locked himself and a select group of soldiers, pilots, and their families safely away in Fort Detrick soon after D.C. fell and the national media outlets went silent. They stayed there for a month before emerging into a new world the medical officer had spent a decade preparing to exploit. Almost a hundred million people had lived between Maine and Florida before the outbreak, and with that level of population there had been few places to hide from the voracious infected, so the virus had spread everywhere within a week of first appearing in the United States.
The general and his cronies from USAMRIID had ordered the pilots, of which he had over fifty, to take their helicopters up and find groups of survivors. For weeks the choppers had flown over most habitable locations east of the Appalachians until they had identified nearly a hundred compounds where people had managed to escape the virus and defend themselves from the hordes of infected shuffling everywhere humans could be found. At that point Barnes began issuing orders that most of the pilots didn’t like, but had to follow since armed USAMRIID soldiers accompanied every flight and handled negotiations with the leaders of the settlements.
T
he offer was always the same for the survivors: open their gates and accept the new government’s control or an army of hunters would overwhelm their defenses and kill them all. As word spread up and down the coast that the soldiers in the helicopters were capable of the destruction they threatened, most of the settlements surrendered rather than fight. Once under Barnes’ control, the people were mostly moved to special camps in agricultural areas where they worked on farms that were designed to provide food for themselves and the new “government” once all the stores and warehouses were emptied.
When the east coast was finally considered pacified, General Barnes had ordered his troops to coordinate in upstate New York, Georgia, and Alabama. The one exception had been northern Indiana, where these prisoners had been sent to conduct a systematic search for The Castle and destroy it without offering surrender. Barnes himself had created a cover story about The Castle housing an incompetent scientist trying to create an antidote but actually developing a highly contagious variation of the virus that could lie dormant for months. He thought such a story would help his pilots embrace any military actions against seemingly healthy people.
Nobody in the group was certain about Barnes’ ultimate motives, but they were fairly certain he intended to forcibly “unify” all survivors remaining in the United States. Virtually the only weapons at his disposal were the infected as the military had by and large expended every available round and soldier in its futile battle to halt the early spread of the virus. The captives believed that the nuclear weapons’ codes had stayed with the president, and not a word had been heard from him or any other elements of his government since a few days after the capitol fell to the zombies. At this point Barnes and his soldiers believed that they were the last viable military or political group still capable of providing any type of official governance in the country.