by Gary Chesla
The Captain set the helo down where he had landed before. The XO again examined the men before they entered.
They were ready to return to the carrier.
The Captain stopped the XO before he got back into the copilot’s seat. “XO. Would you send the Lieutenant up here for the ride back? I’d like to talk to him.”
“Yes Sir!” The XO replied and moved into the back. The Lieutenant appeared a moment later.
“Sit down Lieutenant.” The Captain said. The Lieutenant slid into the empty seat and the Captain powered up and started the trip back to the carrier.
“Lieutenant, tell me about what happened to you and your men.”
The Lieutenant nodded. “We were on base in San Diego. We were ordered to prepare to be deployed. We were informed that something was going down in China and we might be deployed first to Japan and then wherever we might be needed. The whole base was on alert and preparing to go into battle. For a few days there were rumors but nothing concrete.”
The Captain nodded.
“Then reports started about riots starting up in LA and San Francisco. We didn’t think much about it, we were getting ourselves prepared for war. Riots were a problem for the police. Then we heard something about riots breaking out in New York and Washington and a lot more cities around the country. Before we received much information about what was happening all the major networks went off the air. We were later informed that we would not be shipped out to Japan because we were needed to protect the country and the base.
It was confusing as hell. No one could really tell us much about what was going on. Two days later we were informed that we were going to be deployed around San Diego. I thought we were being invaded or something. We were just told that we were to defend the city. No one was telling us who we were defending the city against. What confused the hell out of us were the rules of engagement.”
“What were your rules of engagement?” The Captain asked as he guided the helo towards San Diego.
“We were told that we were to defend the city against anyone that tried to come into the city. We were to use live ammo and to fire at will with no restrictions. Marines do not fire on our own citizens. We were told that we would be able to identify the enemy and they were not citizens. We were shipped out to different parts of the city. I don’t know what the brass knew about what was going on, but all we knew was we were to keep anyone from coming into the city. We heard some rumors about being attacked by the dead. We all thought someone was yanking our chain with that ridiculous bull shit. Sorry Sir. We didn’t know what they were trying to pull. Some of us thought it was some kind of test. That made more sense than anything else we heard. So we just prepared to do what we were told. I think we all believed that it was some kind of exercise to test how prepared we were in the event the country was invaded. I think that is what everyone was expecting. When we got into position, I figured they would tell us what we needed to know.”
“How long were you in position before anything happened?” The Captain asked.
The Lieutenant continued. “We were in position for about three hours before it started. We were told a large group of the enemy was approaching the city. We were told to expect thousands to start invading the city shortly.
We all looked around at each other. No one knew what to expect. We kept waiting for someone to tell us the exercise was over. We did everything by the book. We posted lookouts in forward positions. I had three snipers posted in some of the skyscrapers on the outskirts of town. I ran potential coordinates with our artillery. We pulled together all our knowledge on urban fighting. We were prepared and organized. Still after all of that, no one called to say job well done and we would be going back to base. So we held our positions.
When the Captain came around to inspect our positions, I thought it was over. When he started to leave I asked him when would this exercise be over?
He chewed my ass out. He said this was no exercise and we would soon be engaging the enemy.
So I thought, fine, it was all part of the exercise. I thought it was a dangerous exercise to have thousands of guys running around with live weapons. Someone could get hurt. The press would really have a field day if any civilians got injured. I ordered the men to exercise caution so they didn’t hurt someone.
I got a report from one of our snipers. He was laughing. I asked him what the hell was so funny. He said it looked like a Halloween parade coming down the interstate. He asked me if I ever went to a zombie fest. I asked him what the hell was a zombie fest? He said it was when everyone dressed up as zombies and staggered around the city. He said it was usually done at night. He said he used his scope to check out some of the zombies and said they had some really good costumes.
It was October. A Halloween parade made sense. I couldn’t figure out why the brass would schedule an exercise on the same day as a parade. I figured someone had screwed up.”
“Yea someone really screwed up. Continue Lieutenant.” The Captain said.
“After chewing my ass out, I wasn’t going to call the Captain. I was hoping the parade would be directed around us.
So we maintained our positions.
Twenty minutes later the parade started down our street. They were moaning and groaning like wild animals. The men started laughing. As the parade got closer the men started to get nervous, not sure what they were supposed to do with this parade of idiots.
They started to look to me for instructions on what to do. I wasn’t going to order them to shoot at these assholes. It was ridiculous. The whole situation was insane. Surely they weren’t expecting us to fire into a crowd of trick or treaters. So I decided before things got out of hand I had to do something. I ordered the men to move up on the street and form a barricade and divert the idiots down a side street and away from the street where we were deployed.
I watched them moving closer to our positions. I had to agree with my sniper, they had excellent zombie costumes. The smell was gross as hell. I figured they all must have bought a can of ode de zombie along with their costumes.
The whole situation seemed insane.
I thought the whole premise of this exercise was insane. It dawned on me that they probably gave us all blanks instead of live ammo. I figured that had to be it. This had to be the wildest evaluation exercise in the history of the Marines. The insanity of it all started to piss me off.
The parade got closer to the men blocking the streets. I expected the idiots to turn and go down the side street we left open and move on. But the mob started to push into the men. I was ready to order the men to fire their weapons into the air as a warning. Before I could give the order I saw the men begin to fall. Blood was flying everywhere. I saw them get their arms ripped off. The bastards started to grab the men and bite them. Blood splattered and pieces of flesh were everywhere.”
The Lieutenant stopped to compose himself. “The whole thing was insane. I ordered the men to defend themselves. They began firing into the crowd. The machine guns cut the figures in the first three layers of the mob in half.
The half creatures still struggled to push forward. None of us could believe what we saw. This was real!
The men unloaded their weapons into the mass of creatures coming at them. They went down but most of them didn’t stop moving and thousands more pushed in to replace the ones that had fallen.
We reloaded and fired over and over, but they didn’t stop. Soon our ammo was gone and our position was over run. They were all over us, behind us pressing on into town. I contacted our snipers and look outs. They said as far as they could see through their scopes, more were coming.
I gave them coordinates for a meeting point. I ordered the men to retreat so we could regroup.
We worked our way through the city. You could hear gun fire and explosions all through the city.
After an hour all you could hear was that eerie groaning.
I tried to contact the base, but all I could reach was some low level Private who said he was t
old to tell anyone that called back into base to hold their positions.
There were no positions to hold.
I tried to gather the men that had survived and work our way to the outskirts of town. I lost most of my men in town. I lost most of the rest trying to get to the outskirts.
I was able to contact the remnants of a few other units after we got out of town. It was the same story everywhere. Zombies had overrun everyone and they were everywhere.
I got my men up into the hills until we could regroup and work on a plan to get back into the city. For the next few days I had some fragmented communications with a few men that survived, but soon there was nothing.
Then you found us Sir!
Do you know what the hell happened? Where did these things come from? Are these things really zombies?”
“Yes I think I can answer those questions to a degree. When we get back to the carrier, I will get everyone together and tell you all what I know.” The Captain replied. “Were you able to get the positions of any of your last contacts?”
“Not really Sir. Some were in the city holed up in some of the buildings and the others were just trying to get somewhere to regroup.” The Lieutenant replied.
“I think if there any more survivors they would have done what you did and go up into the mountains. I am hoping we can find small pockets of survivors in the hills on the coast.” The Captain said. “After we spend about a week in the area we can decide what to do next. Decide where we go from here.”
“What about the rest of the country Sir? Why didn’t they send reinforcements?” The Lieutenant asked.
“Lieutenant, as far as I know, the entire country, the rest of the world is like what you see below.” The Captain said as they passed over San Diego and the naval base.
The Lieutenant stared down at the city and the base, now populated with millions of the dead. “Shit!”
Chapter 22
John drove the little Chevy along Route 30. They were now half way between Ligonier and Latrobe.
Route 30 followed the Loyalhanna Creek through a pass in the mountains that separated Ligonier and Latrobe.
They had six miles to go before they would pass by Latrobe.
John worried that the much larger town of Latrobe could be a problem. The larger population would mean more of the dead to contend with.
Now, in the mountain pass the conditions were not too bad.
The right side of Route 30 was the start of the mountain side. It started six feet from the side of the road and angled steeply upward for a few hundred feet. Nothing would be coming at them from that direction unless they were at the top of the mountain and happened to fall over the side and landed on top of their car.
John thought that could be a real possibility, but since he would never see them coming, he decided to just worry about what he could see. That was more than enough to keep him occupied.
The left side of the highway followed along the banks of the creek.
Unless the dead could swim, he shouldn’t have much to worry about from that direction either.
He didn’t think the dead could swim. He had seen them walk into the creek near his house and get washed down stream. He had also seen them walk through the water and come out the other side, but nothing that indicated that they could actually swim. Hell, they could barely walk. Animals swam so they could keep their heads above water and be able to breathe. Half the dead he had seen had their lungs and insides torn out. Apparently the dead didn’t breathe. He doubted they even needed the ability to swim. They would just keep walking in the water until they came out the other side somewhere.
The creek here was much deeper and faster moving than the creek back home. He shouldn’t have to worry about any of them coming through the creek.
He only had to worry about the dead that had followed the highway.
He swerved and dodged, trying to avoid as many of them as he could.
“Why are all these people walking on the road? Didn’t their mother ever tell them to stay off the road so they wouldn’t get hit by a car?” Cindy had asked.
John had to explain that these people were sick and weren’t themselves anymore.
Cindy could understand being sick, but it was much harder to explain why he had to run some of them over with the car and then not stop to see if they were OK.
When he hit or ran over any of the dead, she would stare out the back window at the mangled bodies in horror, not understanding why her Daddy was doing this to these people.
She understood that these were bad people that wanted to hurt them. It didn't explain why they had to run them over.
The concept of what a zombie was wasn’t part of her prior life experiences. Barb would never let her watch Night of the Living Dead with John. She said it would give her nightmares.
Had she known at the time the movie would be required viewing for those who wanted to survive the end of the world, she might have reconsidered her decision.
A little zombie education might have gone a long way to help her understand what she was seeing now and avoid the horrible nightmares that went along with what their life had become.
John studied the road in front of them.
The narrow pass they had followed between the mountain peaks was coming to an end a quarter mile ahead. They would be coming out into the flats that approached the outskirts of Latrobe. Ahead, the four lane highway was surrounded by shopping plazas. Walmart, Lowes Lumber Supply, Giant Eagle Foods and a few car dealerships lined the left side of the road.
The right side was populated with restaurants, bars, grocery stores and Latrobe Chevrolet.
It would be like running through a gauntlet of the dead.
If he could get through this gauntlet, he would turn onto the small side roads and take the back country roads towards New Stanton.
The car passed Kingston Dam as they came out of the mountain pass. The next two miles could determine whether he would make it to the farm or be the end of his struggles to survive.
John tightened his grip on the steering wheel as he began to feel tense. Between getting out of Ligonier and the miles they had traveled on Route 30 through the pass, the little Chevy had been dented and bloodied, but still chugged along.
As he approached the area before Walmart, he looked down Route 30 in front of him and wished he had taken a bigger car for his escape.
There had to be hundreds of the dead on the road ahead.
John didn’t have a choice. He had to follow Route 30 at least for the next few miles in order to make it to the farm.
He did have a choice, but he didn’t want to turn around and go back to Ligonier. With how hard he had fought to get away from Ligonier, he didn’t want to go through all of that to get back into town, just to start all over again.
As he approached the dead, he had to decide. Should he speed up to ram his way through, or was it better to go slow and steady and try to push them aside before they could break into the car..
Going fast could damage the car, stranding them on the spot, but slow had its disadvantages too. The car was light. Maybe he couldn’t push through if there were too many of them piled up in front of him. If he ran them over, it could be like running through a muddy field with all the blood and slimy flesh that would be on the road. The car would slide and the wheels spin losing traction, bringing the car to a halt.
The car had bucked and protested when he had run over three of the dead back in the pass. Trying to run over and push hundreds of the dead out of the way seemed to be more than the little Chevy was capable of doing.
Either way he was facing the real possibility of being stranded and surrounded by the dead.
Stranded, it would only be a matter of time before the dead forced their way into the car.
From what he had seen in Ligonier, it wasn’t a pleasant thought.
He drove on slowly approaching the dead as he thought what he should do.
The dead began to turn their heads in his directio
n. They had seen their car coming. The movement had attracted their attention. They all turned and started moving in his direction.
John decided going slow was not going to work.
He pressed down on the gas. He fought the urge to floor it.
He had hit a deer one day on his way home from work.
It was only one deer and he was only traveling fifty-five miles an hour. His truck ended up looking like it had been hit by a bulldozer.
He would be colliding head on with hundreds of these creatures and the little Cavalier was in no way as sturdy as his pickup truck. Neither of his options seemed likely to succeed. He hoped he had picked the option that would at least give them the best chance.
He watched the needle on the speedometer slowly reach thirty miles an hour. He eased off the gas. He hoped thirty wasn’t too fast or too slow.
The Night of the Living Dead hadn’t given him any insight on how fast one should be driving when they collided with the dead. It dealt with being boarded up in an old farm house while surrounded by zombies as they tried to break in to get you.
That part would come in handy if he could get to the farm. Right now he was on his own.
They tightened their seat belts.
The first contact jarred his spine as they hit four of the dead. The car shook and rocked. Barb and Cindy gasped as the dead rushed to collide with the sides of the car.
Barb’s window cracked as a bloody face crashed against the window, then disappeared as the car plowed forward.
The windshield was bloodied, but had managed to remain in one solid piece so far. This was only beginning.
He began to second guess his decision to not turn around when he had the chance.
John glanced at the speedometer. The car was now down to twenty-five miles an hour.
The next three they hit hand fallen down onto the road before he hit them. He couldn’t swerve. If he did he would have hit the hundreds of bodies that were pushing into each other as they came from the sides of the road to get at the car.