She sat with the clipboard on her lap. Thinking.
“I made a promise to Liam that I wouldn't leave without telling him where I was going.” She spoke quietly, though it was picked up in the comm system.
She ran the numbers, as Liam often joked. Could she be put down somewhere, then sneak back into the camp? What if Liam never—
No! Liam is fine. Just like me.
Could they look for Liam from the helicopter? She admitted she had no idea where to start in the city. The only information she had was that he went to a railroad loading dock somewhere near downtown. That left a lot of ground to search.
All while drones attempted suicide by slamming into them.
“Victoria. I know how you feel. Trust me. But we have to clear this airspace. If they send a plane to fetch us, we'd have no chance. You have to give us a destination.” Jane's voice was soothing and made total sense.
I'm sorry Liam.
She judged that of all the bad options, Liam would want her to protect his Grandma above all else. Hayes had shown her clear proof he had a lead on the cure, and that it was all due to the blood he'd drawn from her. It stood to reason that the next step was to work with him get more samples humanely. Surely Grandma would cooperate if it was all explained to her by someone who had seen the results, so far.
Elsa was the x-factor. What if she told Hayes where to find Grandma, and Elsa followed them in? What if this was all an elaborate trap to get her to reveal her location? Hayes said he planned ahead, and that Elsa planned even further ahead than he did.
She was gripped by indecision.
“Please. I can't keep flying in circles.”
Do what Liam would do.
He would have some suitably crafty plan that would get her where she wanted to go, but wouldn't reveal the location of Grandma until she could be sure of their intentions. Somehow, he'd been able to protect the old woman through the Apocalypse, and now she had to do the same.
I'm not going to betray her. "Don't trust anyone," is what Liam would say.
With a long sigh, she picked up the pen and wrote her response.
She handed the board back to Hayes.
He turned back with a frown after looking at her answer but said nothing. He handed it to Jane.
The helicopter turned south.
Chapter 11: Warfighter
Nineteen days since the sirens.
John Jasper stood on the levee, engulfed in quiet admiration for the army of undead crawling, walking, and running toward humanity’s last refuge. Though Cairo, Illinois was far from the last human-occupied town in the dying world, it was his town. The men and women behind him had given him the keys to their fair village, with the simple caveat he must help them survive. They placed their trust in him, and this was the moment he decided he would do everything in his still-considerable power to save it.
Twenty-four hours ago he'd been stripped of his command and arrested by Elsa, then—though he didn't advertise it—he'd been beaten up by the skulking woman. He was tossed into a watery grave by her minions, but he clawed his way back to life, only to discover she'd taken his battalion to points unknown. Yesterday he spent his day organizing the civilians to defend their own town, but today he'd gotten lucky when some of his unit returned. However, they were pursued by the textbook definition of a horde. Now, standing there, he had a few final minutes to prepare.
As he’d done many times before, he studied the layout of the battlefield. Always searching for the advantage over an unpredictable enemy.
The town of Cairo sat on a wedge of land that looked like a long finger, pointing south. On the west, the Mississippi River streamed fast and wide. On the east, the mighty Ohio did the same. He could see both rivers from his position up on top of the east-west levee that was now the northernmost berm—a wedding band at the base of the finger—between the zombies and his people. Below the levee, to the north, was the massive public works effort the locals called “the ditch.” Elsa and her people had ordered the construction, and the result was an impressive water-filled obstacle that would be very difficult for the zombies to get across.
Looking back on those days, he recalled an innocent statement Elsa made about the construction that only now made sense.
“This ditch project ought to keep the locals too busy to revolt.”
It was the kind of thing a government employee might joke about, but it had kept the locals very busy—and tired—at the same time she was planning her own secretive projects. Even when she ordered him to put his military units outside the levees so as to not intimidate the locals, he didn’t see what she was really up to. She’d tricked him. Tricked the whole town.
Now most of his defensive units had been ordered to the north to support the Orwellian-named “Operation Renew America” convoy, while he was left with nothing.
I do have the rebels.
The irony stuck him, even in the face of such pressing danger, and he had to reconcile it all.
Elsa had been worried about rebellion for some reason. She put those men and women to work digging and toiling in the hot sun. They had no time for do much else. His military force was kept busy fighting off the odd zombie rush, or planning for the larger battle she assured him was coming. Then, it was her that ended up being the rebel. She left in the middle of the night with his troops, and the town became an open buffet for the zombies.
But some of his men came back. They disobeyed orders to return so he could command them. Was he the traitor? Were they? And, strangely, he didn’t know if Elsa was really a traitor. As a creature of the chain of command, he felt strongly there had to be someone left alive above them all. And if that person or persons had a grasp of the bigger picture, his actions could be hobbling that effort. Any general could appreciate that.
They shouldn’t have cut me out of the loop.
He turned to Colonel Vince Thompson as his anger flamed out. He had no time, once his mind was made up, to dwell on the past. “I need your tanks up on this levee, spaced out with a couple of hundred yards between the two. You don’t have to worry about return fire, so use the front of the levee to get the best angles. Sweep what you can out there,” he pointed to the arriving horde, “but try to focus on the thickest bunches. Our ammo isn’t endless.”
As he pointed to the eastern side of the levee, he gave instructions for the Bradley’s and the Humvees. His goal was to provide enough firepower along the levee that they could knock down the bulk of the zombies before they reached the ditch. He had no illusions about their fate if enough zombies stacked themselves into that waterway. It would take tens of thousands of bodies to fill it up, but there were many times that number advancing across the field. They were still pouring over the distant interstate.
Between his introspection and handing out orders, the fastest elements of the tide had crossed to about the midpoint of the field.
“Close the gate,” he shouted down to the team in charge of that. In moments the heavy door began to creak its way across the road into town. When sealed, they would be surrounded on all sides by a steep levee, and a moat. Essentially they’d become a medieval fortress town.
The modern steel of the Abrams and Bradley’s was welcome, but he feared the real battle would be won or lost by Chloe and her teams of spear-builders. Yesterday he’d tasked her with arming the citizens in any way they could, and it was decided that since guns were scarce in the town thanks to the former mayor, they would have to depend on spears and other hand-held weapons.
This is exactly like a medieval battle.
If they had more time, they could have killed deer for sinew and crafted bows from local trees. They could have fashioned stakes to skewer the approaching zombies. Maybe they’d have had time to build catapults. Then the similarities to those ancient battles would have been complete.
Even now a gaggle of teenaged boys traipsed across a field in the town, heading for him on the levee. They carried metal poles—Chloe had delivered for him.
; He recognized the fear on their faces, even from such a distance.
It was the same fear he kept hidden from his own.
2
“How did it come to this? Why are they all coming here?” Tom—his longtime friend and aid—asked.
“Elsa said it was because of the rivers. They wandered out from Chicago and Indy, hit the rivers, and found their way here.”
“So are these from Chicago or Indianapolis?”
“Who knows. It doesn’t matter. They’re here, now.”
The two Abrams tanks had come up the ramp and were in the process of getting into position on opposite ends of the levee. There was a lot of ground to cover—about a mile. He sent the two Bradley’s to the far end where the levee bowed north a little. They would fire their M242's almost sideways, along the frontage of the ditch. His hope was they would catch the zombies before they could fall into the waterway and clog it up.
That effort will fail.
For all his planning, he knew how it would end. That’s why he tried to stay in the moment. He wanted to do the best he could in the time he had.
“The Humvees will stay in the middle. I want them to spray that bridge over the ditch, Tom. Let them know.” The ditch started from an existing waterway which channeled water away from the levee frontage. It was now several times wider, and much deeper. He didn’t have the resources to blow the one stout bridge over it.
Tom, holding the radio, sent the message. The trucks had been waiting on the ramp up, and now sprang to action with their orders. When he was done, they both watched the dance.
“I wish I had air power. That’s one thing Elsa took from us that we can’t duplicate.”
“Maybe we should have tethered men in balloons out in that field. It would have distracted those things from coming here,” Tom said with a touch of regret.
“We could have used little blimps with fresh meat hanging from them, and walked those zombies right into the rivers. Tom, you’re a genius!” John replied, though he wasn’t serious. He didn’t have balloons, blimps, or bloody meat. But something that simple could have helped them.
Tom, rising to the challenge, continued. “We could have built more ditches. Maybe put some bungee sticks at the bottom. Or, maybe we dump glue out there, so they all get stuck. Or—”
“Glue?” John said thoughtfully.
“As if, huh?”
"Yeah," he said with distraction. He didn't want to fix himself and his people to this levee, or this town if he could help it.
He looked at the sky, then grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper. He scribbled something down, and handed it to Tom. The other man looked at it grimly, then pocketed it.
“Find me one of those and you’ll be the hero of Cairo.”
"You want me out of the battle?"
"I want you here, but need you there," he said while pointing at the paper. "I think that's where we're going to end up."
"I'll be as fast as I can." Tom smiled, then began his jog down the ramp, off the levee. Before he got too far he stopped and turned around. “Good luck, sir.” He snapped a salute, then kept going.
“Everyone has their mission,” he said quietly while looking at the creeping mass of death as it continued to slither across the miles of farmland to his north.
Men and women from the town streamed up the ramp, taking their place on top of the levee. Many were there to watch, he was disappointed to see, but he wouldn’t ask them to leave. Much like the early Civil War battle at Bull Run, the citizens had to see firsthand what this new type of warfare would entail. It would either send them screaming, or harden their souls so they could do what was needed to survive.
Others were there to fight. Some had guns. Too few. Many of the others carried shovels, hoes, and sharp sticks. One older black woman had a bright yellow broom handle that had a deadly point on one end. The broom’s bristles were still attached to the other.
The teens with the metal spears made it close to the top of the levee, though they stood on the backside, as if unwilling to face the menace they knew was over the top. So much like every young man in every war ever fought. They would fit into any of the eternal PowerPoint slideshows on morale and new recruits he’d endured over his career.
“You boys! Over here. Front and center.” Though he wasn’t dressed like a general, his voice carried the order and pulled them over to him.
When they were standing a few feet away, he saw their eyes were universally sucked out to sea, at the black tide seeping in. There wasn’t much he could say about that.
“I see you’ve got your spears. Did Miss Chloe make those for you?”
The three boys seemed to silently defer to each other for who would respond. Finally, a teen boy that could have been a football star in a past life began. “No, sir. Chloe has a team working with construction materials, but she insisted we all learn how to cut our own. We made these spears.”
His trust in Chloe was well placed.
“That’s excellent. After today, you will need to know those skills so you can take care of your own families. Your own towns. This is the JV match.”
The lie sailed off his tongue like the catapult he wished he had. He wanted them to feel confident heading into this fight, and parsing it in their own language seemed appropriate. The truth, in this instance, would only send them to an early grave. And then he’d have to put them down, too.
One of the other boys spoke up. Looking at the trio, they all could have been high school athletes. “A man showed us how to fight with this,” he held up his sharpened rebar spear, “so we can thrust it into the zombies' brains and yank it back out.”
Each piece of rebar was about two feet long but had a six-inch right hook at the base. The boys showed him how they would hold the base, point the thing kind of like a gun, and then drill it into the head of the enemy combatants. They explained that the natural serrations of the steel rods would keep them from getting stuck inside…
The boy’s faces paled as they discussed the implications of how it could get stuck.
“Don’t worry about it, men. These aren’t people anymore—”
So help me God, they can’t be.
“—they're the undead. Our loved ones are gone. These things are just the disease walking their bodies around, as the ultimate insult to you, to me, and everyone who loved the people they were. You will be doing the greatest service to humanity by putting them out of their misery.”
It was as close as he’d come to a pep talk. And it was only for the three boys in his earshot. But he was pleased to see it seemed to work. They visibly gripped their spears tighter and patted each other on the back as a show of mutual support. They even—almost—looked at the dark wave without flinching.
He hadn’t created unthinking fighting machines with his few words—he would need weeks of basic training to take an honest crack at that—but he’d given them a bit more courage than they had when they walked up the hill. That would have to be enough.
3
It wasn’t long before the first shots barked out from the big dogs. The Bradley’s on the far end were putting rounds on target. The small arms fire of rifles and shotguns was constant background noise he didn’t even notice anymore. It just always chattered away, somewhere.
Though the dark waters were filling the fields in front of him, the fact was zombies had been hitting his line almost continuously for weeks. Sometimes singly, but often in small groups. A few times they’d had major assaults, as on the night he was tossed in the ditch. A small part of his mind wondered if the zombies ebbed and flowed here based on his own drama. First, they rose up when he was in danger from traitors. Now, they were attacking to test his mettle at defending Cairo on his terms.
Am I being tested?
There was no more time for introspection. He got into his Humvee and prepared to lead his men and women into battle. He eyed the radio, wondering if some signals intelligence shop was listening in. Maybe this battle would be recorded and studied by futur
e warfighters, in a new West Point.
“Warfighters? Why not?”
In a few minutes, he had assigned call signs to all his equipment—all ten pieces. Two Abrams, Two Bradley’s, and six Humvees, including his own. He was Warfighter. The others were simply named Alpha 1 and 2, Bravo 1 and 2, and so on. He had no recon, no heavy weapons platoons, no foot soldiers to speak of, besides the townsfolk. They were outside his radio net and had no real leader besides himself.
He hopped back out of the truck and found the three boys. They were crouched low on the military crest of the levee—not that they knew the term—while waiting for the battle to begin.
“You three!”
When they saw him, they came over again, as if knowing they were wanted.
“Please tell me one of you young men was a quarterback in high school,” he said grimly.
One of them stepped up, though with hesitation. “I wasn’t a starter, but I can throw the ball.”
“That’s not what I need, son. I need a leader. Someone who can take my orders—I’m the QB today—and tell my soldiers what to do. Think you can handle that? You three are going to be my runners, making you the most important pieces of my battle plan.”
He thought this was the time they’d either sack up or whither away.
“You can count on us, sir,” said the backup QB.
“What’s your name, son?”
“Tyler, sir. And this is Xander and Rando.” He gestured to the other two in turn.
“Excellent. You’ll each have a zone.” He pointed to the western Abrams tank, still adjusting itself far down the levee. “Xander, you’ll be down there.” He pointed to the eastern end. “Rando, you’ve got that end. And Tyler, you’ve got the middle. I’m counting on you, as that’s where the battle will be won or lost.”
“What do you want us to do,” Tyler asked with a hint of fear.
“Don’t worry about that. You just do what I say, and everything will be fine. Just hang out right next to my truck and I’ll send you with orders soon enough.”
Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 6): Zombies Ever After Page 21