The Shores Of The Dead: Omnibus Edition

by Josh Hilden

  “Sir,” Ashley said from the back seat of his Humvee, she was monitoring the communications bands. “Radio activity on the northern end of the bridge has increased exponentially. I think this might be a trap.” She sounded cold, almost reptilian to his ears. Adam began to have the feeling as of late that Ashley would like to join the ranks of the Risen Dead in their hunting, and devour anyone that she might be lucky or skillful enough to catch.

  “It doesn’t matter, we have our orders and we will carry them out to the best of our abilities.” He told her, but inside he wanted to order a full retreat so they could assess the situation. For the thousandth time, he wished that they had a helicopter to scout ahead for them.

  The moved forward faster as the debris left to delay them was passed by. Most commanders would have had a competent team of scouts to go forward and relay information back to them, but Baker was forced to lead from the head of the force. This was not just because he’d been ordered to do so, but because it was the only way he would have accurate and immediate information to work from.

  He was sure there was a surprise waiting for them ahead, but when the defenders’ trap was sprung it was something that he could have never anticipated. As the first 100 of the Dead crossed from the bridge to the land, half a dozen objects flew through the sky toward the Army of God. It took half a second for Baker to realize somebody over there had ordered a missile attack, and another half a second to understand his advantage in armor had been neutralized. For the moment, his forward force was going to be cut off from the main body of the Army.

  “INCOMING!” He screamed, and dropped to the bed of the truck that he had been commanding from. For a second, he felt he was back in Iraq, and the Republican Guard had just cut his unit off and was pounding them.

  Only three of the six missiles struck their targets. The other three veered off and over the water to splash harmlessly into the depths of the straits when they exhausted their fuel supplies. The three which struck home were more than enough to accomplish their purpose. Two of the Abrams and one of the Bradleys were struck. It was obvious to Baker that the Bradley was wrecked, but the Abrams were tough fuckers and the damage appeared to be less severe. Hopefully, they could be brought back into service after they had secured their beach head in the Upper Peninsula.

  Baker decided to dig in on the bridge and wait for the debris to be cleared while he swarmed the enemy with his Dead cannon fodder. Just as he was about to give the order, a voice screamed in his head and he dropped to his knees in agony.

  “ATTACK NOW BAKER! ATTACK THEM AND MAKE THEM MEAT FOR THE DEAD! CAPTURE THE WOMAN AND BRING HER TO ME! DO IT NOW!”

  It was the first time that Lord Clarke had used his mind to mind link with the General to cause pain and he didn’t like it. To Baker, it felt like a spike had been driven through his head directly between his eyes. As he rose from the bed of the truck to observe the situation in front of him, he had to hold onto the walls of the bed to stop himself from falling again. The enemy had not advanced on them, and they were only firing on the leading edge of the Dead coming toward them. Abstractly he admired their fire discipline. Many others he’d fought in the last month had panicked at the approach of his warriors.

  “There is red on you.” Ashley said in a monotone voice from her seat in the converted truck bed.

  Baker looked down at his chest and saw bright red drops of blood falling there. He reached to his face and touched his nose. When he drew it back, he saw that blood was flowing from his nose from the psychic assault on his brain. He had no choice they had to move forward regardless of the cost.

  “Attack,” he breathed into his command radio. Then through his mark he gave the same order to the Dead.

  15

  Liam & Lisa

  “They have to stop now and regroup.” Liam said looking through his binoculars. He was more than pleased with the rocket attack. They’d had very little time to train the volunteers on the weapons. He’d expected to lose at least four of the missiles. They’d not needed to fire a second volley, and therefore still had four of the weapons in reserve.

  “Just because you or I would do that, doesn’t mean that they will.” Lisa said. She was also pleased by the results of the strike, but she was distracted. Her head was hurting, and she was having trouble concentrating. Even though she was wide awake, she was experiencing an almost irresistible urge to sleep. Just a few minutes ago, she’d felt a spear of white hot agony mixed with anger lance through the center of her head. It’d taken all of her will to not pass out.

  “True, but some of the things that they have done speak to somebody with Army training running things.” He said and picked up his radio to listen to the reports from the forward observers who’d volunteered to remain on the south end of the bridge. They both would have given a limb for some airborne recon. His face suddenly drained of all color, and Lisa could feel fear coming off of him.

  “Are you fucking kidding?” He said into the radio. Lisa couldn’t hear the reply through the headset. His expression told her that it wasn’t good.

  “Alright,” he said, “We have to hold here until more of them are on the bridge.” He paused and then yelled into the radio, “If they make it over here, we are as good as overrun!” He slammed the mic down on the hood and looked at her.

  “What is it?” She asked him, even though she knew what the answer would be.

  “They’re still coming. Everything in front of the armor we hit is moving again.” He said. That amounted to at least 100 truck and jeep mounted Infantry and several thousand of the Dead.

  The blood drained from Lisa’s face. “How are we supposed to hold them till they are all on the bridge?” She asked. The one volunteer who’d stayed at the south end of the bridge reported that less than half of the Army of the Dead had embarked upon the bridge.

  Before he could answer the controlled and precise rifle fire which had been the order of the day till this point was broken by sustained bursts and rapid fire shooting. The Dead were approaching the hastily established line.

  “We have two options,” Liam said, “We blow the bridge now and fall back. Or we attack and hope we can catch them off guard and push them back onto the bridge till we get the word.” Neither option sounded good to either of them.

  Lisa was about to speak when she heard her sister’s voice. It wasn’t the voice that she’d used when they talked the night before her trip to the Bahamas. It was the voice that the 12 year old Sandy had used when they’d played at their Pa’s house on the lake. She knew this was impossible, and that she had to be hallucinating, but in a world where the Dead walked she had seen stranger things.

  “You have to move forward Lisa. You have to stop as many of them now as you can.” Her voice was soft and young. It was voice of an innocent and happy Sandy, her best friend and most trusted confidant.

  Then her mind was flooded with images. She wanted to scream with the horror of them, but no sound could be produced by her body.

  She is standing on one of the hills that overlooked the town of White Harbor. The manmade berm that surrounded the city was broken in several places, and the town was burning. The Dead wandered the streets unchecked, and they hunted the few human survivors until they collapsed and were consumed. The freighter was burning at its mooring in the harbor, and the Army of the Dead held the community in their clutches.

  She watched as the Dark Priest stood on the steps of the Municipal building, and branded those who’d chosen to surrender to his will. Behind him was a beaten and broken woman chained to the flag pole. She was horrified to see that the woman was her.

  “Lisa? Lisa, are you alright?” Liam called to her and her eyes snapped back into focus. “You seemed to go away there for a second kid. I thought you might be having a stroke.” He tried to make it sound funny, but she could hear the concern in his voice and it touched her deeply.

  “I’m alright,” she said then she looked back at the bridge. The dead were still advancing. Behind them th
e human soldiers were pushing ahead. “We need to attack. We need to hold them back as long as we can before we blow the bridge.” She said it decisively.

  “Why?” he asked, “Maybe we should just cut our losses and try again.”

  “I can’t explain how I know Dad, I just do. If we don’t stop most of them here, they’re going to take the town no matter what we do.” The use of the word Dad had an effect on him. He’d been serious when he asked her to call him that. He had not expected her to do it so soon, it warmed his heart.

  “OK, we’ll hold them as long as we can.”

  16

  Baker

  General Baker believed that when the enemy realized he was going to advance, they would fall back. It was what any decent military mind would have done, and the commanders of this force seemed to have a good head for tactics. But now they were swarming like angry hornets after their nest had been knocked over. He was considering his options and wondering whether or not they had any more of the anti-tank rockets in their inventory, when his mind was once again split open by the voice of his Master.

  “CHARGE THEM YOU COWARD, CHARGE THEM AND GET THE BITCH!”

  Baker dropped to his knees and vomited all over the bed of the truck from the pain and the feeling of violation. In his years as a police officer, he’d dealt with more than one rape victim. The way those women described their experiences was the closest he could come to describing the sensation of having Rudolph Clarke in his mind.

  After the wave of nausea passed, Baker stood straight and unstrapped the axe from his back. He’d held onto the weapon since the first dark day at the church in Royal Oak. He’d used the powers granted to him through the mark on his forehead to imbue the weapon with dark and forbidding power. He then leapt from the bed of the truck and waded through the Risen Dead to the front of the ranks. He used the mark on his brow to channel commands to the Dead all around him who then formed into a wedge and headed straight toward the center of the defenders’ ranks.

  The first of the defenders he encountered was wielding a short sword like the ones the people in Hession had used, and a police revolver that must have lived for years in someone’s collection before the Dead had risen. The young man fired three rounds directly at Baker’s chest. Under normal circumstances, all three would have shattered his sternum and spilled his innards all over the dirty snow. But the mark had many properties, one of which was a limited ability to warp space and time. The net result was all three bullets missed him by a solid foot.

  The look of shock on his face was short lived, as Baker brought the axe around and split his skull wide open. For a few seconds, the boy attempted to pull the steel head of the axe free, and then he went slack. Baker wrenched the weapon free before moving on to the next target. In the midst of the blood and the slaughter, his concerns and irritations were washed away in a shower of crimson waters.

  17

  Liam

  Liam watched the dark apparition wearing the shape of a man wade into the lines and begin to hack his people down. Kyle and Benny were on the right flank with Clay and the rest of the Rangers, attempting to get the Dragon team into a position to hit the remaining armor. Lisa and Sam had taken the Wolverines and were on the left flank, trying to hit the company of enemy troops from behind. Liam was in charge of the middle of the force, with the bulk of the Militia troops and the Hession infantry with the sole task of holding the Dead back as they relentlessly chewed up the distance between them.

  They’d been doing well, and Liam began to believe they might be able to pull this trick out of their ass. Then the giant with the axe came forward and seemed to be directing the Dead toward certain points on the line. When he saw one of the Militia fighters miss the giant point blank and then be hacked down, Liam knew he had to do something. He leveled his rifle and put three rounds of his own into the man’s back. He seemed to shake off the hits and moved on to kill another of the militia kids.

  Then he saw him set his sights on one of his Rangers, Aaron Williams, and Liam sprang forth. The kid had been a good adjutant, and proven to be brave in a fight, but there was no way he would be able to take the giant. Liam watched as Aaron emptied his berretta into the giant’s chest. Then throw the gun down and draw his fighting pike from his back. Liam had to give the kid credit for courage. Aaron struck first, and actually struck the man in the side, but the giant moved with inhuman speed. His counter attack smashed the handle of the fighting pike into a dozen pieces. Liam tucked his cane under his left arm and drew his own pike as the giant raised his axe for the death blow.

  “Hey, you traitorous piece of shit!” Liam screamed then hurled the pike at the bigger man. The balanced weapon was not designed to be thrown, but Liam knew what he was doing and the blade buried itself in the man’s back. Liam closed the gap between them, and Aaron Williams retreated back to the line.

  Just as Liam got into his circle, Baker sprang up and the pike was expelled from his body. He swung his axe at Liam and the older man dodged by a hair. As he ducked Liam swung his steel headed cane, and smashed it into the side of the man’s head. Baker stumbled back from the blow and Liam took the opportunity to retrieve his pike from the ground.

  Both man eyed one another and circled. Baker spun his axe round and around as he moved sideways. Liam glided across the snow like a cat and held his pike in one hand and his cane in the other. The warriors eyed one another, Baker was stone faced and Liam was grinning.

  “Alright cock sucker,” Liam said, “Let’s dance!”

  18

  Kyle

  Kyle, Benny, and Clay maneuvered their people into position on the right side of the bridgehead. They had the last four Dragon rocket launchers with them, and they were determined to keep the Army of the Dead trapped on the bridge. Behind the wreckage of the armored vehicles, the remaining living troops of the enemy force were visible, moving the blockage to the side. If they finished, it would allow them to push forward, and disgorge their hellish legions on the sparse line of defenders.

  “What’s the plan, boss?” Clay asked.

  It took Kyle a full 10 seconds to realize the older veteran of two real wars before this one was addressing him in seriousness. The pause was noticeable to Clay Sanford, but he said nothing, he knew Kyle was the right person to be leading them, so he allowed the young man to collect himself before he spoke. The force of Rangers with them waited patiently. They’d covered a lot of distance, real and mental, since the day the Dead had risen, and they trusted this young man.

  “We need to keep them from advancing. If we hit the trucks already across the bridge, we will take some of the heat off our people, but the main force will have the wreckage cleared soon. But if we hit the armor behind the wreckage, we might be able to tie down the enemy until we can blow the bridge.” He hesitated, the obvious choice was to hit the armor and stick to the plan, but those were his friends giving their lives on this side, and the idea of not helping them did not sit well with him.

  “Whatever you decide we’ll have your back Kye,” Benny said from his place by the Dragon Team. Benny had been the one to find and uncrate the weapons, and he’d seemed to have an intuitive knowledge of how to use them. It had always been that way with Ben, it didn’t matter if it was a PDA or that old steam engine they’d worked on in High school. Ben Millette knew gizmos and gadgets.

  Kyle wanted to say hit the trucks, but he knew that was the wrong choice regardless of the losses. “Hit the armor,” he said quietly.

  Ben nodded, “Team Dragon!” he called to the squad whose members had been gravitating toward Ben since Findley. They’d become a mini force inside the Rangers’ structure. “We learned from the last volley people, we need at least two of those rockets to hit in order to stop them!”

  The four people manning the units hefted the tubes onto their shoulders, and aimed the massive bores at the bridge. The sound of the safeties being disengaged was audible despite the sounds of the battle.

  “Fire!” Ben yelled.


  The sounds of the four rockets leaping from the tubes caused them all to wince. They watched as the rockets streaked toward the bridge. For a second, they all thought the rockets were going to miss, and the sound of two dozen men and women holding their collective breaths was chilling in the freezing morning light. Then one…two…three of the rockets struck home, and they were rewarded with the sounds and sights of more of the enemy armor going up in flames and smoke.