Taking time to drill a rotten girl in the remains of a bikini, I yelled “FALL BACK!”, gave the hand signal, and let my weapon drop in its sling. Our retreat plan was to hit the ocean, where hopefully the undead wouldn’t follow, and we could kill them all if we had enough ammo. If we had enough raced through my mind. I didn’t like the idea of standing in a few feet of water while a horde of undead stared back at me, following our every move, waiting for us to drop from hunger, thirst, or exhaustion. It was all we had though; no one wanted to sleep in the forest, and there were no structures within easy march.
We peeled back, and I grabbed King as she struggled over the berm, almost throwing her towards the water. I counted as the guys passed me, three, four, five, six was Ziv, then I turned and ran for the water’s edge myself.
It was cool on my skin, quickly soaking my boots and then my legs. Waves washed up on us, and we dared go no further unless we wanted to get knocked down. We stood in a ragged line, chests heaving, pumped up with adrenaline. I looked back at the crowd of undead and raised my weapon to fire, but my hands were shaking so hard it was almost impossible to aim.
Beside me, Boz turned to face the ocean, and unzipped his fly, letting out a long stream of piss. “Ahhh,” he muttered. Then he zipped back up and turned back to me. “At my age, you piss when you can. Don’t worry ladies,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the waves, “there may be snow on the roof, but there’s still fire in the furnace!”
That actually got a nervous chuckle, and his humor calmed me down a bit. Enough to assess the situation. We stood in the knee high water, our feet slowly getting buried in the sand as the water rushed past. In front of us, stretching up and down the beach as far as I could see with my NVGs, were undead. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them.
Shit.
Chapter 270
“OK, everyone, let’s get our shit together. Anyone wounded?”
“Uh, I think I got shot!” squeaked a high pitched, feminine voice. It was King, trying to keep the pain out of her words, but failing completely.
“Well, I guess our position is blown anyway,” said Boz, and he flicked on a light. The covered red lens turned the small stain of blood on King’s pants black; it was a through and through on the outside of her leg. She looked down at it, and suddenly collapsed into the surf.
“Jesus Christ, someone pick her up before she drowns. It’s just a frigging flesh wound from one of our twenty twos!” exclaimed Boz, who held up her leg, braced it over his knee, and started winding a pressure bandage around it. “I’ve hurt myself worse sucking on a pierced nipple. What the hell are they making kids out of these days?” Even Shona, who had moved to hold up the sailor’s head out of the water, laughed.
“Anyone want to fess up to shooting her? Ziv?” I knew that odds were, it had been a complete accident in the middle of that running fight, but I had to ask.
“If I shot her, she would be dead,” answered the Serb out of the darkness.
“That’s true. Oh well, shit happens.”
“Nick, I hate to ask,” said Elam, “but we are up shit creek, no?” In the green light, I could see him gesturing to the horde of undead that stood three meters from us.
“Oh, them, yeah. Well, back in the day, your dad used to do something called a ‘runner’. He was good at it, too. He would drop everything except a pistol and run through a crowd of Zs to draw them away from us. Pulled us out of a bad situation more than once.”
“My father, Allah keep him, was an idiot sometimes,” answered Elam. “I’m suspecting that you don’t actually HAVE a plan, do you?”
Shona immediately stomped on that. “Of COURSE the Colonel has a plan.”
“Of course I do, and I’ll explain when I’m damn well ready.” I actually had no frigging idea what to do, and they all knew it. They didn’t hold it against me, though. Who knew that ten thousand undead were just going to show up here in the middle of the night?
“First off,” I said, “cross level ammo, food and water. Everyone has their patrol packs, but how are we set for water?” Turned out, not good. Most of us had almost drained our camelbacks walking in the heat, and we hadn’t filled up from our packs after we settled in. Only Lowenstein had. That was not good, and our packs, with water food and ammo, sat on the beach, forty feet and a world away.
“Well, we can’t go west, we can’t go east, might as well do what Jack Reacher says and turn left. South, back to the cache, and we can cross the river there.”
“What about Brit?” asked Ziv. Shit, he was right. In the confusion, I had honestly forgotten about her, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Looking north, I could see a line of undead trailing off till, in the growing pre-dawn light, they disappeared into the distance. There were at least several thousand, with hundreds getting pushed towards the water, and the nighttime land breeze pushed their dry, rotted smell over us.
Right then, the horde, which had been silent, not even howling, started making sounds. At first, it was just a general hissing and moaning, but eventually it settled into some kind of rhythm, and eventually a word, howled and hissed and bubbling from rotten throats.
“Meattttttttttttttttttt …. Meattttttttttttt …. Meattttttttttttt….”
Fuck it. A whole horde of talking undead. I sat down in the water and put my face in my hands, thumbs in my ears to block the sound, letting the surf wash over me. I was done. I saw no way out of this. I was never going to see my kids or my wife again. Brit was dead.
Shona grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand away from my face. “What are you DOING?” she barked at me.
“He is giving up. Your great hero. He is quitting. Like before, only this time Brit is not here to stop him,” said Ziv, scorn in his voice.
“You can’t QUIT!” shouted Shona. “What is this shit?” She had leaned over in my face, and was yelling.
“Just leave him here. We will go south, to the cache, get more ammo, go west.” Ziv’s voice was coolly practical. I listened to it with detachment. It meant nothing, since we were all dead anyway. Brit was dead, I was sure of it, and I’d never get home to my kids.
“Boz!” said Shona. “Talk to him! We can’t just leave the Colonel here!”
“Hey kid,” he said, “I’m just along for the ride.”
The argument continued to mount, with Sergeant Yasser and Seaman King standing mutely; I could see them out of the corner of my eye, with her leaning on him for support. I didn’t care; it was if I was looking at a picture, or watching some play through on a video game. Brit was dead, my nightmare coming back to me full force. Maybe she was out there in the horde somewhere, infected as she struggled to survive. No, that wouldn’t happen. She’d kill herself first.
“We’re going to STAY right here until the Colonel comes to a decision!” yelled Shona, and I saw Ziv turn to walk away from her, through the surf, southward. She pulled out her pistol and fired, the round zipping past Ziv’s head.
“You are a shitty shot,” shouted Ziv, over the sounds of the waves. He kept walking.
“I never miss. Next one is in your back!” I tried to think, but it seemed like a huge fog was weighing on me. I kept scanning the faces of the undead, looking for her.
“No, wait…” I started to say weakly, but the .45 boomed, and Ziv was catapulted forward, the heavy round smashing into his back, knocking him down into the water with a splash. The next instant Boz reached over and grabbed the pistol out of Shona’s hand and shoved her back into the water by planting his other hand on her face and pushing. Then he jogged over to where Ziv was pushing himself up.
I actually started laughing at the absurdity of it all, like some kind of crazy guy. I finally did. I went over the edge like so many did after the Apocalypse. I quit, let the madness take me. Grabbing my rifle, I stood up and screamed, charging at the undead.
One, two, miss, fire again, three, miss, fire, four, and I was through them and out the other side, rotting hands grabbing at me, the foul stench coating me. I ran as ha
rd as I could across the beach without looking back, not even knowing where I was going.
Behind me, the howl started, and I heard the sound of gunfire. I didn’t care. I just ran. If Brit was dead, and I wasn’t going to see my family again, well, I might as well give the team a chance. I didn’t care anymore what happened to me. Shrugging off a gripping claw, I struggled up a dune, pulling myself up by the grass, and turned to look.
Below me were two undead, scrabbling at the sand. The rest of the horde still faced the group on the beach. Boz had lifted Ziv up, and the Serb was standing, leaning on him. Elam and King were shooting, dropping Zs onto the beach. Captain Lowenstein still sat in the water.
I pulled a flashbang from my vest, yanked the pin, flipped the spoon, tossed, and yelled, “RUN YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS! RUN!”
The grenade went off with a CRACK and a blinding flash, just as the sun peeked above the sea. As one, the horde turned to me, howled, and charged. Laughing like a madman, overwhelmed by the joy of combat and not caring, I unscrewed the suppressor and fired till my bolt locked back. Then I dropped my weapon in its sling, gave the multitude of angry red glowing eyes both fingers, and turned to run inland, as fast as I could go.
Chapter 271
“Git up, ese.”
Something hard poked me in the chest, tapping against my SAPI plate.
“Mierda, yo podría utilizar esa armadura corporal,” said another voice behind me.
Opening my eyes, I saw what was poking me was a rifle barrel. I calmly noted the business end of a full length M-16a2. My eyes followed it up to a slender Hispanic man dressed in a battered set of Army ACU, the ugly grey digital stuff. He had a goatee and I could smell his breath from where I lay on the ground.
“I said, get up, puta. When someone from Bad Company says jump, you jump.” I looked around, first at goatee, then the guy wanting my body armor. That man stood, same uniform, with a pump shotgun held high in the air, buttstock resting on his hip. There was another man, smaller, back to me, keeping watch down the trail.
“OK,” I said, “give me a second. My arm’s asleep.”
“Sounds like a goddamned New York gringo,” said shotgun. The one keeping watch down the trail turned and looked over his shoulder. A white kid, maybe fifteen. Shotgun took offense to that and told him to keep pulling security, tapping his corporal stripes to emphasize it. The kid looked back down the trail, ears turning red.
“Just shoot the Yankee piece of shit, Jose,” said Corporal Shotgun. “Just don’t get no blood on the gear. Put on in his head.” I don’t know why he switched to English from Spanish, maybe for the kid’s benefit.
“Why the hell not? Less paperwork.” Jose leaned forward, putting himself off balance, and moved the rifle up towards my face. I grabbed the barrel and pulled, continuing the upward swing, and pulled with all my weight. Off balance already, he fell towards me. I jammed the .22 I had been holding under my body into his face and fired three times, fast as I could pull the trigger. The first round missed, the second smashed into his ear, and the third made a small black and red hole in his cheekbone. The M-16 dug into the dirt and I used it to lever his falling body away from me, rolling out from under and firing four more shots at Corporal Shotgun. Three of them missed, one didn’t. He grabbed at his throat, dropping the gun, and fell to his knees, choking.
The kid turned around, his own M-16 looking like a Kentucky long rifle, impossibly too big for him to maneuver easily. I took my time to line up the shot, centering it directly on his face from fifteen feet away.
“Don’t do it, kid!” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. He raised the rifle, fingers white on the hand guard, and tried to pull the trigger before he even had it lined up on me. I could see his finger working spasmodically in the trigger well, but the selector switch was on safe.
“Come on, kid. Put it down.” He didn’t, just reached for the selector with his thumb. He was white with fear, and I saw a growing stain on his crotch. He actually wasn’t more than fourteen, and his mouth was set in a grimace of fear. The weapon shook in his hands, barrel wavering. I heard the SNICK-SNICK of the selector.
“DON’T DO IT!” I shouted, my own fear rising up, making a tight knot in my stomach.
“I ain’t never killed a man before, but I will, Mister! By God I will!” His hands were shaking so much that the barrel of his rifle was jumping all over the place.
“And you don’t have to, today, son. You don’t have to die today, either,” I said, stepping forward.
“STAY BACK!” he yelled, and at that I launched myself at him from twelve feet away, dropping and crouching as I went, tossing the pistol up in the air to distract him and driving into him as the three round burst went off over me. I was only worried about the first round, which passed several inches above my head. The other two rose in the air with the muzzle blast; it takes a lot of practice and experience to put a three round burst on target.
I hit him midsection and we both landed in the sandy dirt; under his uniform he was skin and bones, malnourished like most survivors. I rolled him over on top of me and snaked my arms around his throat, putting him in a sleep hold Ziv had taught me. Within less than a minute, he was unconscious and stopped struggling. I felt his neck for a pulse, and then got up, using some zip ties to secure his hands.
Sitting back down on the civilian hiking pack I had looted, I looked at the scene. Corporal Shotgun was still holding his throat and choking on his own blood. I maybe could have saved him, but I didn’t care. My mind wandered as I watched him roll on his back, boots drumming on the earth as he spewed blood from his mouth. He looked over at me with panic in his eyes, and I shrugged. “I’m just a goddamned gringo Yankee bastard,” putting on my best Brooklyn accent, “and I don’t give two shits. So fuggedaboutit fugedaboutit . ”
Even as I said it, he rolled around once or twice more, then fell still. I sighed, and started looting the corpses. I took one of the M-16s; my modified M-4 had run out of ammo yesterday. One hundred and seventy two rounds of 5.56 between the two of them, with the kid only having less than one magazine full. The shotgun was clean and in working order, but beat to ever loving shit. I slid it through the top of my pack, and put the dozen shells for it in an outside pocket. The thought of Brit rose in my mind, but I pushed it back down savagely. A good Ka-bar combat knife replaced the looted kitchen knife, and I greedily devoured a chocolate bar that had probably melted a dozen times already.
I had expected them all to be dirty and flea bitten, but the kid actually had a clean, if worn, uniform, and his gear was in the same condition, clean and well cared for. The other two were a mess. Their uniforms wore the patch of the 53rd Infantry Brigade, same as the ones we had killed in the ambush so long ago. In one of the kid’s cargo pockets I found some fried chicken wrapped in aluminum foil, and I gnawed at it hungrily. Water I had, food I did not.
It had been three days since I had drawn the horde away from the team, and I had tried to reach the cache. Every time I turned south, though, the undead were everywhere. So I continued west, not caring where I was going. I honestly didn’t give a shit about anything anymore; I was a walking dead man who refused to die.
My kids would be better off with their Uncle Red, and maybe some of the team would make it back to them. Ziv would, I was sure, if that .45 round had hit his plate and not gone below it. Shona was a dead shot, so I’m sure he would be OK, just with a hell of a bruise. If she had clipped the plate, or missed it, well, then Ziv was probably dead. The rest, well, I had given them a chance. Now I just walked and fought, in an almost dreamlike state brought on by hunger.
I had my suppressor on my .22, but that shot from the M-16 would probably bring others from whatever this “Bad Company” was. The first one I killed, “Ray”, who had Staff Sergeant’s stripes on, wore a Motorola hand held clipped to his LCE. It squawked wildly, in military lingo, but I had ignored it as I looted the bodies. Now, I supposed, I should face the music.
“Last calling station, id
entify yourself, over.” The radio fell silent, and I waited.
“Last calling station, identify yourself, over.”
“Who the hell are you? Get off this net. Give the radio back to Sergeant Hernandez.”
“My name is Colonel Nicholas Agostine, United States Army. Your Sergeant Hernandez is, um, dead, over.”
More silence. I pictured whoever was on the other end yelling at some troops to head out on the late Staff Sergeant Hernandez’ patrol route. An older, more mature voice came on the radio.
“This is Captain Jonas Washburn, commander of Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 225th Infantry. Who is this?”
Pondering for a minute, I answered, “Actually, I’m nobody. Out.” I turned the radio off to save batteries, slipped it in my pocket, and sat and thought.
Chapter 272
The pursuit began immediately. I contemplated taking time to set up a booby trap on one of the dead bodies, but I heard yells in the distance, followed by an actual shot. Pretty shitty field craft, but maybe they had stumbled across an undead. I’d have to watch for them myself if I were to make a good escape.
Then I really did think about it. Escape, why? I had a hostage, and in this rough world, well, tough shit on the guys who drew down on me. The kid came to slowly, and lay there crying for a bit.
“Hey kid, what’s your name?” He responded with a blistering string of curses that his mother didn’t teach him. Well, maybe she did.
Zombie Killers (Book 8): Bad Company Page 4