When they were all in, Deckard eased the Bronco forward, secretly afraid that it would go a mile and then die for good.
It was not a nimble machine; its turns were wide, more like gentle arcs, that left them a few times dangerously close to sliding off the dirt shoulder of the road and down into the ditch.
The Bronco was also a loud car that had zombies flocking in from all sides. Speed was the answer to this issue, and yet too much speed was a dangerous thing. At fifty miles an hour the vehicle developed a shimmy that was downright scary. It felt as if both front wheels were being held on by a single lug-nut each—a single loose lug-nut.
Feeling the sweat trickle down his back, Deckard bled off speed to keep a steady forty miles per hour, but even that was too fast for the circumstances. Chuck Singleton drawled in that seemingly unconcerned way of his. “You know, iffin you hit one of them bad boys at this speed, things will get a might bit messy.”
Deckard pictured running over a zombie: half-rotted parts flying, black blood coating the front of the Bronco, Com-cells saturating the air, and maybe a tire or two bouncing away down the road.
Cursing, he slowed down to an agonizing twenty-five miles an hour and putt-putted eastward.
With the number of zombies ticking up, he had to slalom all over the road to avoid hitting them, however it was impossible to miss every one. After a particularly portly zombie took out the side mirror, the last of the blue surgical masks were donned, windows were rolled up and, as no one knew how effective the air filters were in the ancient vehicle, the air-conditioning was switched off.
They sweated and grew increasingly carsick with all the jerking back and forth and the occasional ka-thump, ka-thump as they ran over zombies that couldn’t be dodged. Their misery lasted for a few miles and then, just as Deckard feared, one of the tires blew. The tires had been showing their steel belts through the rubber when he had first spotted the car and all it took to doom them was a little too much swerving and a single You-hoo bottle that exploded as they ran over it, sending a shard of glass up into the core of the tire.
A jolt struck the Bronco, which suddenly started to shake violently as its rear axle tried to haul around and overtake the front. Deckard fought the vehicle straight, but didn’t try to pull over. They were on a lonely two-lane stretch of blacktop with forest and black-eyed monsters ranging along either side. If they stopped, they’d die.
The tire began to disintegrate, first in little crumbles of rubber and then in long strips that looked like alligator hide. Soon there was nothing left of the actual tire and they ground along at ten miles an hour on nothing but a rim. The sound emanating from it was a hell-spawned scream that could be heard for miles in the quiet morning.
Sparks flew up from it continually in an endless 4th of July fountain. The white hot shower was brighter than the early morning sun and it kindled a new fear in Deckard: what if the gas tank caught on fire? He was sure the engine leaked six ways from Sunday, so why not the gas tank as well.
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” he said to himself. No one heard. The screech from the rim had the rest of them covering their ears with both hands.
The Bronco gave out after another mile and a half. To keep its forward momentum as they lumbered into a string of zombies, Deckard downshifted and kept the gas pedal floored. The RPM needled swung far into the red and gradually the oil temperature indicator crept higher and higher. It wasn’t long before the engine let out a bang, a thump and a squeal as a belt gave way. The Bronco died right there, smoke creeping from beneath the hood.
“Everyone out,” Deckard ordered and then pointed at Chuck. “You take the rear. Keep them off of us without wasting ammo. We don’t have a lot. Fowler, help the doctor. Stephanie carry their weapons.”
In spite of the now dead truck, luck seemed to be on their side. A hundred yards to the north, a string of slow moving zombies cut toward them. A half mile to the south echoed the last dregs of battle that Thuy had inadvertently caused. Behind them, to the west, came a few hundred zombies lurching along the road. In front of them, to the east, exactly where they needed to go, the forest was empty and quiet.
Deckard took point and led them along the road, pushing on as fast as they could go, which wasn’t fast enough. They were a slow, plodding group. Dr. Wilson was game but even with Fowler’s help, his injury, age and exhaustion had him moving at the speed of a Sunday stroll. Stephanie wasn’t any quicker. She coughed constantly and carried the three rifles as if she had a millstone across her shoulders. Chuck labored to keep up as well. He had to stop every thirty seconds to keep the ever-growing horde off of them.
When they crested a rise that was clear of the forest, Deckard looked back and saw that they weren’t going to make it. What looked like a thousand zombies were closing in on them from the rear. They didn’t have enough ammo to fight them, they were too slow to run away from them and there was nowhere to hide that the overly sensitive noses of the zombies wouldn’t be able to sniff them out.
The obvious course of action was to kill Dr. Wilson, strip Chuck and Stephanie of their guns and ammo and then press forward with all possible speed until they couldn’t go any further at which time, Deckard would be forced to kill more of his friends.
“Or I think of something else to save us. But what?” When nothing came to him, he asked a different question: “What would Thuy do?” That was far easier to answer. “She would analyze our strengths and their weaknesses, and pit one against the other using the materials on hand to…”
A grin broke out on his face and he began patting his pockets until he found his lighter. It no longer had that silvery shine. It was a blue-black as though it had been in a fire recently. Twice in the last few days fire had saved them. “Third times the charm,” he said and then sprinted down the hill, leaving the others struggling to catch up.
After two hundred yards he jogged off the road and into the forest, looking for the right sort of downed tree branch. In order to make a big fire in a short amount of time, he needed a branch that was six or seven feet long with a halo of dried leaves still attached. He found one in a matter of seconds, and when he lit the leaves, the branch blazed with the light of a dozen torches.
Quickly, he lit the underbrush along the side of the road, concentrating on the long grass and the floor of leaves underfoot. Fire fed fire and soon the smoke was everywhere. For a fleeting moment he wondered: What if I start a forest fire?
There were worse things, he concluded as a downed cottonwood suddenly caught fire, filling the forest with a brown haze.
“Get in here,” he said, in a carrying whisper when he saw his little group pausing on the side of the road, trying to peer through the smoke. Following his voice, they plunged into the smoke and came out of it a hundred yards later, hacking and coughing, but grinning as well. The zombies had given up the chase and were milling around in confusion on the other side of the blaze Deckard had created.
“Now for the hard part,” Deckard said to himself. Fooling zombies with a bit of smoke was one thing, getting past thousands of trained soldiers, who were likely to shoot first and ask questions later, was a different thing altogether.
Again, Deckard took the lead and again, he pushed them as hard as he could. Still, it was a half hour hike before they came up on the new perimeter of the Quarantine Zone. There wasn’t a black line in the forest marking the boundary, there were only soldiers in a long line, hidden in the woods. Sudden gunfire, two hundred yards up and to their right, gave away the position of a squad of paratroopers.
Deckard dropped into a crouch and pointed for the others to slip into the brush on the side of the road. “Fowler, you’re with me. The rest of you stay here and keep out of sight. Fire your weapons only if a zombie is heading right for you. Chances are they’ll be drawn to what’s going on up ahead and ignore you if you keep out of sight.”
When Chuck gave him a tired nod, Deckard slipped away with Fowler, and Sundance who wouldn’t leave his side. They
cut through the forest, angling away from a few zombies that were fixated on the sound of the short but furious battle. Men screamed back and forth at each other. One sided claiming to be soldiers and pleading to be let through the new lines, and the other obstinately repeating their orders that no one was allowed to pass.
Deckard wanted no part of that. Begging wasn’t going to change anyone’s mind and, not only that, it sounded sad and weak. With Fowler twenty steps behind, Deckard crept through the forest, making little more noise than the wind in the trees. At one point he heard murmuring from ahead of him and he detoured to his right, staying low and moving slowly and purposefully.
He was so quiet and sly that Fowler lost track of him a number of times. Fowler wasn’t nearly as slick and so he kept further west of Deckard until the older man apparently found the hole in the line he was looking for and tried to slide through it.
But Deckard was not the only one who was slick. On the other side of the invisible line sat a boy with blue eyes and a little smirk. This boy wore a private’s uniform, but he wasn’t new to guns. He’d been hunting since his father had bought him his first BB gun at the age of five.
Back then it had been rock doves sitting on telephone wires and squirrels nattering in trees. Now, he hunted humans. Minutes before, he had caught sight of Deckard and watched him for some time from within the heart of an illusion. The hunter had long before mastered the art of camouflage and he blended in so well with his surroundings that he was invisible at sixty yards.
Slowly, cautiously, Deckard came on and, had he been going up against a lesser man, he might have slipped on by, but the hunter had him dead to rights. Deckard filled the man’s scope, giving him a choice of targets: Right eye, left eye, middle of the forehead—when he pulled the trigger, the hunter knew that he couldn’t miss.
Chapter 12
1—10:43 a.m.
Washington D.C.
Lieutenant General Phillips, commander of the Eighteenth Airborne Corp spent the entire flight back to New York fighting a growing headache. It didn’t help that his phone rang nonstop as his various commanders called looking for orders, or wanting to be reassured or simply to impart news, most of which was bad.
Due to a mix up on the aviation side of things, General Frank Frazer of the 82nd Airborne Division had three battalions drop onto the same drop zone, meaning there were two gaping holes in his line. One was four miles wide and the other eight.
“Son of a bitch,” Phillips cursed. He balled a fist wishing he could punch someone. “How the hell did you let that happen, Frank?”
Frazer actually laughed at the question. “How did I let it happen? I don’t fly the planes, sir. I just tell them where to drop my men. The foul up is all on them damned, strutting pilots. Suffice it to say I have the men double-timing it to get the holes filled. It’s putting us about thirty minutes behind schedule.”
“And the rest of the jump?”
“It was a thrown together mission, sir,” Frazer began, already deflecting blame. “Six deaths and seventy-one injuries; that’s from the drops alone. I did try to warn you about two of the DZs.”
He had been warned. Two of the twelve DZs were “six second” drop zones, meaning all one hundred paratroopers had six seconds to get out of the plane or they would be jumping out over the trees—a nightmare for any paratrooper.
Phillips, who sported a black and gold Airborne tab himself, had gone into the trees three different times and knew what a horrible feeling it was to be heading right for a forest of spears without any way to stop. Military paratroopers fell at a speed that could break a leg upon landing which meant that a tree branch in the eye, throat or even the chest could be fatal—and it had been that day.
To make matters worse, some of Frazer’s units had barely gotten into position before they were assaulted by a strange mixture of zombies, civilians, and military personnel, the latter causing many casualties.
“I did what I could about those DZs, Frank, but the pols wouldn’t budge,” Phillips said. “Let me know when the line is linked, thanks.”
He hung up and sat for all of one minute, pinching the bridge of his nose, before General Ed Stolberg, the new commander of the 42nd Infantry Division called. Ed wasn’t exactly happy with his new command. The 42nd was no longer a division except on paper. It was now a loose hodgepodge of local police, national guardsmen and straggling groups of civilians who fought with such a wide array of weapons that keeping them supplied with the right ammunition had caused one quartermaster to suffer a heart attack. Their communications were almost nonexistent and their command structure had dissolved so that in some places it was every man for himself. To make matters worse, the 42nd was spread out over three hundred miles of forest perimeter.
Stolberg began his call in his usual asinine manner: “This is the biggest pile of crap I’ve ever been handed in my life! I got men scattered everywhere. I don’t know what Collins was thinking…”
“Shut your fat mouth!” Phillips stormed into the phone. “I’m sure Collins did what he had to do and he died trying save this country. You will not speak ill of him.” There was a long silence between the two men that was broken only by Stolberg’s heavy breathing. He sounded like a bull that was considering whether or not to charge.
The two generals were both cut from the same cloth and had nearly come to blows on a few occasions. Still, Phillips knew that Ed Stolberg was the right man for the thankless job of reconstructing a division that was not only still in the field but also under constant attack.
“Sorry, sir,” Ed eventually growled. After a shorter pause, he went on to report that his lines were suffering from an uptick in zombie attacks. The early morning’s calm had given way to a renewed fury which had been shocking for him to witness in person.
“And your lines?” Phillips asked.
“Holding for now, but unless someone has the guts to tell the president to sit down and shut the fuck up, they won’t for long.” Stolberg was becoming desperate for fuel and ammunition. Because of the horrendous traffic jams, a good portion of the 42nd had been choppered into position by seemingly endless relays of Blackhawk helicopters. Here it was, twenty-four hours later, and the highways were still rivers of steel and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon as tens of thousands of cars were completely out of gas and tens of thousands more had been abandoned before they could run out.
This meant that Solberg’s supplies would have to be choppered in, only there weren’t any helicopters available save for a dozen borrowed from the Coast Guard and even these were parked uselessly on the football field at West Point waiting on fuel. They’d be waiting a long time. The president, with his over the top demand for a show of force, had drained fuel reserves in three states.
“How long before things become critical?” Phillips asked, after listening to Ed bitch for ten straight minutes.
Stolberg grunted out a laugh. “Things became critical about an hour ago. These guard units are on the edge, sir. They shoot at shadows. They’ll empty a magazine at anything that moves—squirrels, rabbits, birds…sometimes even each other. Hell, there was a bit of a wind right at sunrise and those guys acted as though the trees were attacking them. I saw one guy go…”
Phillips knew that Stolberg would go on bitching for half the morning if he wasn’t cut off. “Well, do your best, Ed. Reinforcements are on their way. The 101st should be arriving in about seventy minutes, unless, of course the president wants to show off for the Canadians as well.”
He had meant this to be a joke, but it fell flat, mainly because with this president it seemed like an actual possibility. Phillips wished his subordinate “Good luck” as way of saying goodbye and then brooded as the Gulf Stream dropped out of the low ceiling of grey clouds to land at Reagan National. The runways sat just as silent and empty as JFK had been.
The quiet was oppressive and his brooding kicked up a notch. He had a thousand things to do and it didn’t bode well that the president had the balls to pull
a theater commander back to Washington in the middle of the largest combat jump in seventy years.
More presidential meddling, he assumed. More photo-ops. If this was the case, Phillips would be forced to take Ed’s advice and tell the president that it was time to let the adults get back to work.
Any more of these political games would leave the 42nd in a dangerous position. Although Stolberg had used the word “critical,” Phillips guessed that Ed could hold for another few hours. Using such hyperbole was the game all commanders played. They so feared the very possibility of running out of supplies that they always bitched and moaned and made it seem as if the end of the world was at hand.
And yet, in war, a few hours could be the difference between victory and defeat.
As the plane taxied towards a waiting limousine, Phillips checked Ed’s initial supply report. To say that it wasn’t “good” was a vast understatement. Still, at their rate of ammo consumption, Phillips figured they had at least two more hours before things became truly critical and that was plenty long enough for the 101st to arrive to save the day. Of course, interspersing twelve thousand air assault soldiers in among the crazy hodgepodge of the 42nd would be another logistical and communications catastrophe which Phillips was sure would age him thirty years.
In the end, he knew it would work itself out. Of course, in the meant time, he also knew that the staff work would have his eyes dry as dirt and red as…
The phone in his pocket rang; it was Ed Stolberg again. He’s found something new to bitch about, Phillips thought. He almost didn’t take the call, but after the fifth ring, he punched the button. “Ed, you know I have other divisions to deal with besides yours.”
“Do you have any other divisions that just lost all communications with two thousand men?” Ed shot back. The 42nd’s new commander let that sink in before he went on: “I was just informed that we haven’t been able to get hold of O’Brian or anyone in the Connecticut Bubble for some time. It’s just dead air over the radio.”
The Apocalypse Crusade 3: War of the Undead Day 3 Page 17