The Apocalypse Crusade Day 4: War of the Undead

by Peter Meredith

  Ten minutes later, Strassle ran dry—his chest rig was empty, his bolt was back and the port was open on his M4. “I need ammo!” He looked for Murray, however his friend had disappeared. There were only four of them left.

  “Murray!” Strassle cried looking back the way they had come. They were now nearly two hundred yards from the house that they had tried to defend. Although it had collapsed into a jumble of wood and dead bodies, the Disco lights still pulsed. They were no longer festive. They showed only piles and heaps of corpses strewn everywhere.

  Strassle was shocked to see that there were now only a few dozen zombies left alive. With the lights blinking, they were killed one after another and when the last went down, the little group was stunned to find that they had only six bullets left between them.

  Breathing in harsh gasps, King radioed a message of their “victory.” He then turned and dropped to his knees. “Someone do it…please. Make it quick.”

  Another of them was swaying, standing in a pool of his own blood. He knelt as well, saying, “We did it right. We did the job right, now let’s finish it right. Riggs, you, too.”

  “It’s not even a scratch,” Riggs said, showing them a red line on the back of his right hand.

  Strassle pointed at the jagged, bleeding tear in the flesh beneath his jaw. “You don’t feel that?”

  “Feel what…oh, no,” he said, touching the real scratches. He looked at Strassle in horror and looked to be on the verge of running away— Strassle would have shot him in the back if he had. Slowly Riggs took control of himself and knelt as well. “We’re heroes, right?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Strassle whispered and raised his M4. “We’re heroes.”

  Chapter 24

  1– 10:08 p.m.

  —Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport, Massachusetts

  Courtney Shaw sat with her bushy hair freed from the bun, listening to the reports coming in from the different ranger and Delta teams. They’d all had contact with zombies and the numbers that were being reported within the border of the state was staggering.

  Staggering but, as the saying was being bantered about in the hanger, manageable. Thuy’s plan had worked. The creatures were coming out of the woodwork, and were being destroyed as soon as they showed their vile faces.

  “You’ll let them through, now?” Courtney asked, speaking loudly enough that her voice echoed in the hanger and every one of General Axelrod’s staff heard. Axelrod himself scowled. “She did what you asked, General, now I trust that you’ll come through for her.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I made a promise. We will get this done, but it’s going to take time to set things up with the Air Force and the line companies.”

  “So as soon as that’s taken care of, I can contact them?” Courtney asked. He started to nod and she reached for her radio. “Good, because I already have everything set up.” She had known right off the bat that Thuy’s idea would work. For the last four days, it had been the conventional wisdom to hide from the beasts, to not make a sound or they’d hear and come after you. Thuy had used that to her advantage.

  Axelrod’s bald head began to turn red. “You did what?” he asked in a low, menacing voice.

  Cortney guessed that he was supposed to be scaring her, but wasn’t she already under arrest with a charge of treason hanging over her head? What more could they really do to her? “I saved you and your men valuable time. You’re welcome, by the way.” She had her own map in front of her and put her finger on a little dot. “This is Taconic High, where Thuy and Deckard are. I’ve alerted all the company commanders from Mount Everett to Stockbridge. As well I’ve contacted the operations officers here and at Pittsfield not to shoot at any ‘observational’ balloons for the next two hours.”

  “You know they won’t be allowed to just land anywhere. They are possibly contaminated.”

  “I already thought about that,” Courtney said. She pointed at John Burke, who was sitting against the wall, wiggling a pinky back and forth in his ear. “John is immune to the disease. He’s going to track the balloon and once they set down, he will drive them to a quarantine area being set up for the rangers.”

  The general was staring at John as if seeing him for the first time. “He’s immune? How? And who has verified this?”

  Despite the pinky in his ear, John had heard the entire conversation. “I was in the o-riginal test group out at Walton and they shot my ass full of them Com-cells, but they didn’t hurt me none. Ever-body else turnt into them zombies, but not me. Dr. Lee can vouch for me iffin you don’t believe me.”

  Axelrod gave John a searching look, then abruptly shrugged his wide shoulders. “It sounds as though you have this mission under control. Carry on.”

  This was all Courtney needed. “Deck 1, this is Dispatch 6, we are good to go. You have flight clearance. Light your fires, Deck 1.”

  In the middle of the football field at Taconic High, Thuy and Deckard were crouched down in the truck’s cab, their eyes just at the level of the windows. When she heard the message, Thuy felt like crying. She bit it back and whispered into the radio, “Roger that, Dispatch 6. Hopefully we’ll be airborne in a few minutes. Wish us luck.”

  “Good luck, Dr. Lee.”

  Thuy started to unplug the radio, but Deckard took her hands in his and kissed her palms. “It’ll all be over in four minutes,” he told her. “Then we’ll be safe.”

  She didn’t know if she believed it, but she believed that Deckard would do almost anything to keep her safe, and that was enough. “Don’t leave without me this time,” she said, meaning for it to be a joke, but her voice was too high and shaky for it to be anything except a desperate plea.

  “I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” he told her. “Are you ready?” She took a deep breath but swallowed her response. “It’s your plan, Thuy and that means it’s going to work. We just have to carry it out, starting with you driving away.”

  Just like last night, she thought.

  “No, not like last night,” he said, reading her mind, perfectly. “This is a better plan, by far.” This time the balloon was anchored, it couldn’t just float away on its own, and their distractions were more intense, and they had worked out the steps to inflating the balloon so that it would take minimal supervision.

  The plan was as good as she could make it, and yet the setting for it was in a world filled with zombies. Their numbers, their speed, their naked aggression were impossible to control by two people for more than a minute or two, and they would need four.

  “We had better do this before I really chicken out,” she said. Her chest was beginning to thrum and the fear was going to her arms, and soon it would be in her hands where Deckard would be able to see. “Kiss me,” she demanded, moving closer. There was little romance in the kiss. She was too afraid for romance.

  “It’ll be fine,” he said, giving her an easy smile. “Now, let’s get our masks on and do this.” He reached out, pushed aside her long black hair and pulled her mask into place. His was sitting on the top of his head like a blue yarmulke. He snapped it across his face, took the radio and slid from the truck. “Why is it I always want to tell you I love you right before we split up?” he asked, after shutting the door.

  “Because you want to torture me, I think. Maybe this time you should wait to tell me. Maybe you can wait for four minutes when everything will be perfect and we’re flying off to safety.”

  Above his mask, his eyes crinkled. “I’ll just have to settle for thinking it.” He patted the side of the truck and then backed away, disappearing into the dark.

  “Love you,” she whispered and then turned on the truck. It seemed very loud. “But that’s okay,” she said to herself. “It’s supposed to be loud.” She was the bait to draw the zombies away and to that end she flicked on her high-beams and stuck the truck in gear.

  Thuy tore out of there, ripping divots in the dirt, her horn blaring a long, ugly note. Once out of the stadium, she bounced over a curb and into the parki
ng lot where she and Deckard had dumped a pile of broken down cardboard boxes that they had swiped from a recycle bin outside of the high school. They had soaked the pile with varnish from the wood shop and when Thuy set a lighter to the pile, it went up with a whoosh of flames that rose higher than the top of the truck.

  She climbed back into the cab just as the first of the zombies arrived. There were hundreds more behind it. They were so fast that Thuy found herself staring in shock. If Deckard’s M4 hadn’t gone off, she probably would have been surrounded and killed before the plan had really gotten underway.

  “Oh, my goodness,” she said, frantically. “It’s too soon. It’s too soon.” She gunned the truck, plowing through the undead and heading for the baseball diamond at the north side of the stadium where they had left more cardboard. As she drove, she kept her head cranked sideways trying to see Deckard, but all she saw were the backs of the bleachers.

  “It was just one gunshot,” she told herself. “It was prob…” She hit the curb at the far end of the lot with such force that she bounced in her seat, hitting her head on the roof of the cab. “Damn!” The truck slewed right as her eyes went in and out of focus. Thankfully, she was in the wide open grassy portion of the baseball field and there wasn’t anything to hit, except for more zombies, that is.

  Swerving left and right, she raced to the infield to an empty patch of dirt to what Deckard had called “second base.” Apparently, it was a sports term, though what it signified, she didn’t know and hadn’t cared enough to ask. There had been too many zombies lurking in the dark to risk asking any questions.

  Now, they weren’t just lurking. They were charging in a shambling run, converging on the pile of cardboard in the middle of the infield. She was so terrified and the desire to light the fire and get out of there was so great that she forgot to put the car in park.

  It was rolling away before she was even out of it, and with a shriek she jumped back in and nearly broke the gear shifter slamming it into place. Now, it was a race to light the fire before the beasts were on her. It was a race she won in a disgusting fashion. The first zombie came at her from the opposite side of the cardboard pile, which was just shooting up into a roaring bonfire. The beast fell straight into it and, as Thuy watched, the thing’s hair burst into flame and its lips blackened and shriveled, and there was a furious hissing sound as its flesh bubbled into blisters and then popped.

  Thuy had never thought of herself as squeamish, though in truth squeamishness was measured on a scale with small spiders on one end, dirty diapers somewhere in the middle and a maggot-infested corpse at the far end. What she was witnessing was off any possible scale as the creature kept crawling towards her as it burned alive.

  “That’s not right,” Thuy said, backing to the truck and then scrambling inside and locking the doors behind her. She had another bonfire to light, only she was fumble-fingered, her hands not remembering on their own how to drive. Accidentally, she stuck the truck in neutral and jumped in fear when the engine screamed without surging ahead.

  Her brain was just beginning to realize the problem when something hit the side of the truck next to her left knee. She didn’t have to roll down her window and look out to know it was the zombie that had been in the fire. An awful black smoke was running right up the side of the door.

  The engine was still screaming and she was probably screaming as well when she yanked the gear shifter into drive. The truck shot ahead and her grip on the wheel had nothing to do with steering; she was just holding on as it plowed through the zombies. One went under the wheels and it felt like it caused the truck to leap into the air. Thuy hit her head on the roof for the second time and the pain was similar to having a two-ton hammer swat her.

  “Son of a bitch!” she cursed and hauled the truck around so that once again she was racing through the outfield, heading back the way she had come on a parallel course. Another thump and she was in the parking lot, turning circles. There were zombies everywhere going in all sorts of directions…all except towards the football field, which was exactly what she was hoping for.

  The balloon was filling. When she got to the far end of the parking lot she could see it clearly, looking like a cloud had fallen from the night sky and was sagging into nothing on the grass. As she raced back and forth, the balloon grew and grew until it slowly lumbered up from its reclining position and lifted into the air. She made two more wide circles and then raced the truck towards the balloon.

  It was time! She and Deckard would get away and they would be safe. She slowed the truck as she neared the balloon but did not stop it. Her mistake with the gears earlier had given her an idea. To add to the confusion among the zombies, she leapt from the truck as it was still moving and watched as it coasted along, brightly lit. She then turned and crawled to the basket and climbed in.

  Deckard was nowhere in sight.

  “Don’t panic,” she told herself, “he’s probably just drawing some of them away.” Even as she said this, there was a gunshot from out in the dark. For reasons she couldn’t name, she found the gunshot reassuring. She was hoping to hear more or perhaps the sound of his running feet, returning to her.

  Instead, she heard nothing but the moans and growls of zombies, and she slunk down even further into the basket. With the burner going just seven feet above her head, everything in a wide circle around her was perfectly visible, including four zombies that seemed to be heading in her direction.

  The first one walked past, going for the truck. The second paused, staring at the balloon. The third and fourth headed right for the basket. The basket was just under four feet tall; it offered zero protection and Thuy’s only options were to get out and run around or get the balloon out of reach.

  The basket was anchored to the ground by two twenty-foot long ropes, each attached to hundred pound bags of sand, but they were short-hitched, meaning that the majority of the rope was looped and tied off. With two quick yanks, she undid the hitches and the balloon lifted from the ground—very slowly.

  Her expectation was that the balloon would leap into the sky. It didn’t, and she found herself face to face with a zombie. The thing tried to grab her and she could only shrink back as its claws swung inches from her nose. It was a huge beast with long arms and if the balloon hadn’t been rising it would have scratched her at a minimum.

  As it reached out for her, the basket ran up under its armpits and lifted its arms away from Thuy, who had kicked back as far as she could have gone. The zombie screamed in anger and clawed and beat the basket as it went up and up and…and stopped. Thuy glanced over the side and saw that the monster had hooked one of its claws into the bottom of the basket and was hauling furiously down on it.

  Her one chance to get away was to run the burner full bore. With enough hot air, the balloon could lift the monster and the sandbags. But she would lose Deckard, and she wasn’t going to lose him no matter what.

  She was still trying to figure out a solution when the basket was jolted. Something else had grabbed hold. She could see its fingers curled over the edge of the wicker. Quick as a cat, she grabbed the radio in both hands and bashed the fingers only to hear a man cry out: “Stop! Thuy it’s me!”

  A moment later, Deckard’s grinning face appeared as he pulled himself up and over the side. The basket swayed alarmingly as she rushed into him. She meant for a longer hug, but the floor tilted at a thirty degree angle and she backed away, grabbing the sides.

  He laughed easily at her fear, in fact, he was liable to laugh at the stars or his toes just then. Deckard was almost ecstatic. “Hold on, we’re going to jerk a moment.” He unslung his M4 and, as Thuy plugged her ears, he shot the zombie hanging from the basket in the top of the head.

  They did indeed jerk and then jerked again when they got to the ends of the anchor ropes, which he cut away. Then they were sailing higher and higher, going straight up. He laughed again and she laughed with him, right up until she remembered the radio.

  “Dispatch 6, this
is Deck 1, we have lift off!” she crowed into the mic. “Tell me, Courtney, do you have us on radar, yet?” Thuy was sure that they were still too low for ground based radar, but one of the E-3s probably could pick them up at any minute.

  Courtney came on seconds later. “That’s affirmative, Deck 1,” she answered. “How could we miss you? There’s a great big blob just sitting on the screen.” She was quiet for a few minutes and when she came back on, she sounded worried. “Can you give me a weather check?”

  “It’s as clear as a bell,” Thuy said. “Why? Are we expecting storms?”

  Before Courtney could answer, Deckard cursed and pointed over the side of the balloon. At first Thuy didn’t see the problem. They were probably four hundred feet in the air and down below them was the stadium and the school and the fires and the…

  “We haven’t moved!” she cried, fumbling for the radio. “Courtney, are you there? We haven’t moved at all. We’re just sitting here. Can you check in with the Air Force’s weather personnel to see if there are any east bearing thermals higher up?”

  Courtney said that she would check but that it could be a few minutes. As they waited, Deckard and Thuy stood on opposite sides of the basket gazing at each other in silence. He was the first to break it, knowing exactly what she was doing her best not to ask. “We have about an hour up here. I only grabbed the one tank. I’m sorry, but there were so many zombies coming for us and I didn’t think we’d need more.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. You couldn’t…”

  Courtney interrupted her, coming across the radio saying, “Don’t try to go any higher. There’s a backing wind at about a thousand feet. It’ll push you west. Your best bet is to hold in place. The forecast is for the wind to pick up here in the next few hours. How much fuel do you have?”

  “Not enough,” Thuy answered.