by Lundy, W. J.
The gate on their end was open, the rear gate sealed by a large HEMTT. The things were trying to get past it but were instead pushing themselves up and over the wire around it. He heard Mega shout below. The man was trying to work the controls to close the back ramp. “Stryker’s hosed!” Mega shouted. “There’s juice in the battery but not enough to start it, and the ramp is jammed.”
He turned back to spot six bloodied faces pouring in from the back of the perimeter. Gyles raised his rifle and fired, stepping closer to the back of the Stryker as he moved. Weaver was already out and down below, firing away with Mega by his side. Gyles saw the immediate threats to the front go down. The things were surrounding the perimeter, the roars growing closer to them; they had to move before they were cut off from the Humvee.
“Leave everything, bound back to the Hummer!” Gyles ordered. He reached down for a handhold on the top edge of the STRYKER and took a hard swing to the ground. Hitting harder than he expected, he rolled forward and flattened out on the blacktop. Pushing up and rolling to his side, he was surprised by a mob closing in on him. “Where in the hell did they come from?” He pushed back and opened fire from his hip. Hitting the first two before the third collided with him. Weaver was quickly beside him. The soldier kicked the third infected loose, landing a boot strike under its chin that echoed with a sickening snap.
Gyles rolled and went to get to his knees, his weapon up and in action. Before he could place his feet and stand, Mega had him by the handle sewn into the back of his gear, dragging him. “Let go, you big bastard! I can walk, damn it.”
Mega ignore him, charging toward the vehicle like a runaway bronco, firing his rifle in his left hand, dragging his platoon sergeant with his right. The big man charged ahead, screaming obscenities, not stopping until he reached the driver’s door. He released the harness with a twist, causing Gyles to tumble to his side. Again, he found himself clawing at the ground and rising to his knees. Infected were moving it at them from all angles now. Weaver, who had been firing, reached out with an open hand and swung open the passenger side door. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!” he shouted.
Gyles nodded. Already back to his feet, he pressed his back against the fender, ahead of the front passenger door. With his weapon up, he rapid fired into a straight line of infected charging directly at him. They dropped like lemmings, his rounds tearing through multiple bodies at a time. As the infected dropped, they tripped up others in the line behind them. He heard the Humvee engine roar to life, and looking over his left shoulder, he could see that Mega was back in the driver’s seat.
“Move boss!” Weaver shouted behind him as the rear door slammed shut.
Gyles stepped back and dropped into the vehicle with the other men, latching the door moments before the impacts. The bodies collided with the steel. Looking through the armored front windshield, he could see nothing but a flurry of activity. A face missing its bottom lip was pressed against the glass, the teeth bending and scraping against the armored windshield as others behind it pushed the jaw against it. He heard them on the roof, clawing at the turret hatch and screaming against the thick glass embedded in the doors.
Mega dropped the vehicle into reverse and eased on the accelerator. The vehicle hardly moved. He pushed harder, and it surged back, crunching over creatures. Bodies were pressed against them on all sides; they were in a sea of death. “Where are you going? You can’t see shit!”
“I remember where we were. I made sure it was clear to turn around before I parked us that way,” Mega said.
“Maybe you aren’t such a shit driver after all.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Mega shouted.
This time the driver clenched his jaw and mashed the accelerator. He cut the wheel, and the vehicle crunched and vibrated over organic obstacles. He cut the wheel hard again. Gyles cringed, hearing the wheels of the Hummer spinning on bodies. The vehicle listed badly as it picked up speed moving through the mob in a tight turn.
The creatures on the roof lost their grip and began to spill off into the road. Mega cursed them, using every profanity in his book as the bodies rolled across the vehicle’s hood. He squeezed the wheel and continued to snake the vehicle in reverse, building speed, before locking the wheels in a screeching halt. He then put it back into drive and slammed the pedal again, racing them forward. With a pair of creatures clutching the hood snarling at him, Mega laughed like a psycho and swerved left and right, dislodging the last two from the hood.
Free of the mob and approaching the tangled mess of traffic, Mega stopped cursing. He slowed further to make his way back onto the path they took on the way there. The big man took in labored breaths, a large vein poking from his neck. Weaver leaned between the seats, handing him a bottle of water. “Damn, brother, road rage much? Hope you don’t drive your momma’s minivan like that.”
Mega snatched the bottle and poured half over his head before chugging the rest. “Sergeant, tell me we aren’t never going back there,” Mega gasped. “No more interstates, no more fucking places like that.”
Gyles had his eyes closed and was clenching his rifle to his chest, muscles still twitching with adrenaline. “Yeah, we’re done with that shit, Mega. Just get us back to the camp,” he said.
Weaver moved equipment and cans into the center of the vehicle. In his haste, he’d jumped in the wrong door and was crammed in against the MK19 and several cans of ammo. He dug himself out then pushed several cans to the middle. Gyles looked back. “How’d we score?” he asked. “Did we get enough ammo?”
“Four cans of 5.56, two cans of 7.62, and about a hundred and twenty-five for the MK19. Oh shit, boss, take a look at this,” he said, holding up a large canvas bag. It was long, holding the shape of a woman’s shopping bag. “I thought it was a tool bag when I grabbed it.” He held the bag open. Inside were a dozen storage tubes for M67 fragmentation grenades. Gyles reached in and took one of the tubes. Prying it open, he grinned. “That’ll do, pig, that’ll do.” He laughed as he stuck a pair of the grenades into empty pouches on his vest.
Chapter Nineteen
Day of Infection Plus 10, 2055 Hours
Interstate 81, Virginia.
As requested, they didn’t go near the farm on the return leg, and by the time they passed the corner store, the forest was growing dark. Mega asked about the headlights, and Gyles shook his head no. They couldn’t risk white light; there were too many things to consider. For the moment they hadn’t seen any of the infected after making the turn back onto the county road at the intersection. There were a scattered few moving in that direction, but they hoped the things would continue and not make the turn toward the national forest.
He’d seen them in action several times now, and he was convinced there wasn’t anything Luke would be able to do to the camp to defend against a horde. And he knew that eventually a horde would come. It would start in ones and twos, but they would fire their weapons, and more would come, then every damn thing in the valley would be moving toward them. There would be no place to go, and with a large convoy they might not be able to outrun an advance. Or worse, they might find themselves running into even more.
Gyles held his breath, watching Mega make a turn onto the narrow roadway that would lead them back to the campground. He could see that the men had been busy. There were boxes of supplies stacked in the parking area. The pickets had been expanded, and all the windows completely secured on the cabins. Humvees were parked at the corners of the compounds, and the two MRAPs flared at the gate parked in a way that one could back up and completely seal the entrance, yet still allow people to board the rear ramps.
It would be hard to convince people to leave here. Maybe just as hard to convince others to stay. Colonel Erickson told him to dig in and protect his people, that the fight was lost. But his division was fighting and dying somewhere to the north. He was part of them; it was his job to get back to his people. No, his people were here. He shook his head and looked toward the window as Mega pulled into t
he end of the gravel lot. “What’s up, G-Man? I see you stressing up there,” Weaver said.
“Just been a long day, brother. Let’s unass this steel box,” he said, swinging the door out and stepping into the cool twilight. The temperatures were dropping, and the humidity had finally faded to where he wasn’t sweating standing still. He moved to the front of the Humvee and placed his rifle on the hood. He leaned against it and watched Weaver and Mega walk toward the cabins. Halfway there they were greeted by Luke and Rose. They exchanged words and the two men continued the walk down the path toward him.
“You did good on the recon,” Luke said, pointing to the boxes. “We’re working on breaking everything down and packing it into the armored vehicles.”
Gyles nodded his agreement. “We found more than that.”
“Yeah, I kind of got that idea from the looks on your men’s faces. I take it the rest of the day didn’t go well,” Luke said.
“No, it didn’t,” Gyles said, shaking his head. “I think we may be stuck here for a while.”
“That might be a problem,” Luke said. The man turned and glanced at Rose standing beside him with his hands in his pockets.
“You should show him,” Rose said.
“Show me what?” Gyles asked.
Luke grimaced and turned, walking away. Rose signaled for Gyles to follow. He sighed and grabbed his rifle from the hood and followed the men away from the lot and into the tree line. When they’d gotten ten feet from the grass and into the thicker foliage, they were greeted by a soldier with a hood pulled down over his brow. His rifle was slung over his back, and he was caring a sharpened pike across the front of his body. When he saw the group approach, he pulled up the hood. Gyles recognized him as one of the riflemen from First Squad, Specialist Culver. He was a grunt from Illinois, good kid, always reliable in a fight. Gyles moved up next to him and stopped with the others.
“What you got going on out here, Culver?” Gyles asked, pointing at the man’s spear. On first impression, that was what Gyles thought Luke wanted to show him. That his troopers were already going Lord of the Flies only a few days into this.
That thought vanished when the young soldier turned and pointed to a patch of brush off the trail that was pressed down. Gyles took careful steps toward it and stopped. There were at least six corpses stacked up. Gyles turned back and the soldier nodded, no show of pride or shame. It was a matter-of-fact look; the kid’s face was hard. Gyles had seen the look plenty of times, in faraway places. Men did what needed to be done, but they took no pleasure in it.
“Those things have been coming up the trail all day. One at a time mostly, but sometimes two, even three,” he said.
“You’re out here all alone?” Gyles asked.
Culver shook his head. “No, Sergeant. Couple guys are further up the trail, scouting. If they see something coming, they slip back, and we ambush them together with the spears. There is a place just ahead where we hold the high ground, and they must move up to get at us. These things don’t do much tactical thinking, so we just pop out and stick ’em.”
“And you took these with pikes?” Gyles asked.
Luke grunted and Gyles turned to see the man shaking his head. “A lot more than this. There is another body drop fifty yards up the trail. And we are running another identical setup to this on the backside. No gunfire unless it’s life or death; we have to stay quiet.” The man looked down and kicked dirt at his feet. “We’ve put down over twenty of them since lunch.”
“They’re going to keep coming,” Gyles said.
Rose nodded and considered the camp and vehicles in the distance. “We have to plan for it; these trails go for miles. Who knows what’s at the other end? Could just be a few stranded cars but could also be a community of them on the march.”
Luke stepped closer to the men. “We have some advantages… they seem to like the paths. These things are a lazy. When not attacking, they stick to the easy terrain.”
“We also have night vision,” Rose added.
“That’ll give us an edge as long as their numbers are manageable.” Gyles’s hands tightened as he thought about the roadblock. “We need a plan to escape when they horde up, because they will.” His voice creaked, and the men looked at him. They knew the comment was about more than what had happened at the armory. He took a deep breath and looked back toward the cabins in the distance. “We ran into hundreds of them not even an hour away—possibly thousands. The highway was congested. It looked like civilians were fleeing in every direction and got caught up in something—it was bad.”
He paused as scenes from earlier flash in his head. “Listen, if we fire even one shot up here, they’ll come in from miles away. This Dawn of Civilization, spears and trenches stuff will work for now, but not with what I saw out there today.” He slowly walked away from his spot and tuned back toward the fading daylight. “We found a small encampment—they were tactically dug in, they were prepared, and the things poured over the wall. I mean dug in with machine guns and armor. This camp won’t hold. We need a real plan.”
Luke rubbed his knuckles against his temple and pointed to the hastily built perimeter fences with vehicles parked in every corner. “We took a quick egress into consideration. None of us want a repeat of what happened at the armory. I have the vehicles parked at holes in the perimeter so they can pull out if needed. The MRAPS are at the gates and ready to go. If we get surrounded, we’ll mount up and haul ass. You guys did good on the recon today, all the trucks are topped off and we have cans to spare.” He paused and looked down at his boots again. “But with that… When it comes time to pull up stakes. Where do we go?”
“We contacted a colonel at Hunter,” Gyles said. He’d planned to give the message later over a full briefing but now seemed as good a time as any.
“Hunter? Are you sure?” Rose asked.
“Yeah, I’m sure. He said they were holding, but not able to send us help.”
Luke rubbed his temples. “Then we go to them. If shit here falls apart, we button up and head to Hunter.”
“That’s a hell of a haul,” Rose said. “Five hundred miles even when the roads weren’t closed.”
“Anything on the Chinook?” Gyles asked.
Rose tipped his head from ear to ear and rolled his hand. “It’s good and bad. The pilots found a civilian field inside our flight time that can probably support our refueling.”
“Probably?” Gyles asked.
Swallowing, Rose said, “They are on the map as a designated emergency field for the National Guard, but we can’t raise them on the radio. Still the place is out of the way from everyone, and they should have fuel.”
“But if they don’t?”
“Then yeah—no fuel and we’d be in the wind. We’d have to find a plan B and sort it out. Dozens of things could go wrong, but the pilots seem up to the challenge.”
Gyles nodded and pointed toward the camp. “So—real question is… do we go on our own terms or wait until these things run us off?”
Luke shrugged. “This can’t be permanent either way. The food you brought will last for a minute, but that’s not good enough. If this colonel is out there, then we need to link up as soon as we’re able or at first sign of trouble.”
“You’ve all done a lot of work here; you think folks will be open to leaving?”
Luke smiled. “You know the rules of defense, you dig in and continually improve your position until it’s time to bug out. You can’t get attached to your hole, or you’ll end up being buried in it.”
The platoon sergeant smiled. He’d heard that same lecture plenty of times in the field after digging out the perfect bunker to only have word come down that the company was moving a hundred meters to the left. “Okay, as soon as we’re packed and ready we go. Same with the Chinook. I’ll leave it on the crew if you want to take the risk or convoy out with us. But we all need to be on the alert and ready to jump.”
The men nodded agreements. Before Gyles could turn away, L
uke pointed at the front of his uniform, covered with blood and gore. “When are you going to get yourself cleaned up and grab some chow?” he said. “We don’t have time for any John Wayne stuff out here. You need to take care of yourself, so we can take care of the others.”
Gyles raised his hands in mock surrender. “You won’t get any arguments out of me; point me in the right direction, and I’ll gladly grab a hot and a cot.” He stopped and looked back to Culver, who was pulling his hood back over the top of his head. “These guys going to be okay out here?”
Luke nodded. “I have them rotating out every hour. If it gets too shady, I’ll pull them all back inside the wire, and we’ll take our chances at hiding.”
Apprehensively, Gyles let his eyes sweep the forest terrain again. He didn’t like the idea of his men being outside with fighting sticks, but the alternative was to let the infected slowly stack up against them. Even if it was just pounding corks into a dam, they had to do something to hold back the flood. He put a hand on Luke’s shoulder then turned to move back toward the main cabin. He saw a work party was hastily bringing the rest of the boxes inside or stuffing them into already overfilled vehicles. The black truck and trailer had also joined the convoy, the trailer now carefully filled with goods. Even the red Toyota pickup with the shot-out windows was in the lot, the bed stuffed with goods.
He moved closer to the cabin, winding around the fence line made of sharpened stakes. At the opening, he was greeted by a man with a police tactical vest, holding an axe. He gave Gyles a half wave and moved back a wooden gate to let him in. The dirt trail led up to the covered porch of the main cabin. Forty feet wide and at least sixty deep, it was obviously built as a bunk house, while the two cabins located on each side were smaller, thirty-by-thirty squares and more private.
The smaller ones to the left and right were shuttered with doors open. Gyles could hear children’s voices from the building to the left. Men were moving hastily to load boxes of goods into the building on the right. The daylight was fading fast, and the camp was preparing for darkness. A pair of women were standing outside the main cabin. They hushed their conversation when he approached. Gyles passed the women, dipping his chin to them in greeting and moved into the main cabin.