by J. J. Fowler
Chapter Forty-Four
Dagos slammed his fist against the locked control room door. A guard appeared behind him, pointing his assault rifle at his superior officer.
“Halt!” the guard ordered.
Dagos spun around. His face was incensed. His mind flooded with anxiety, and his hands shook with trepidation. He said, “Can’t you see my rank, Corporal?”
“I see it, sir, but the colonel has standing orders that no one enters.”
“To hell with those orders! Open the door. This is an emergency!”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.”
Dagos considered taking his rifle from his shoulder to fight the bald-headed, over-forty corporal, but changed his mind when he heard the corporal click the safety off his weapon.
“Very well,” Dagos said calmly, “but you’re making a mistake.”
“The colonel will decide that.”
The corporal gestured with his rifle for Dagos to move forward down the long corridor in front of him. Dagos nodded and moved past the corporal. Then, in a move that surprised the corporal, Dagos hit the muzzle of the rifle away from him, and whipped his body around to deliver a swift kick to the corporal’s genitals. The bald man immediately dropped his weapon in horrible pain and slumped to his knees moaning.
Dagos picked up the man’s weapon and aimed it at his head. He considered shooting him for a moment, but dismissed the notion. He wasn’t a murderer and this man was simply following orders. He decided on another solution.
He flipped the weapon around and slammed the butt of the rifle against the man’s head. As soon as he did that, a giant explosion ripped through the massive steel door entrance to Alpha. The concussion from the blast threw Dagos to the cold, hard, unforgiving, concrete floor.
* * *
The blast woke Mifune from his temporary mania. He saw the bodies of the dead troopers and then looked at the frightened soldier. The man was not armed and appeared as confused and upset as he did.
“What was that?” the trooper asked Mifune.
“Some sort of explosion. Whatever, it isn’t good.” Mifune looked at the man’s dead comrade and realized the man’s brain was still intact. Reanimation would occur at any moment. One of them needed to act. “You gonna take care of him?” Mifune asked, gesturing at the dead man.
“No. He was my friend.”
“I’m sure he was.”
The dead trooper’s eyes opened as the new zombie sat up and scanned his surroundings. Mifune fired a shot into its head. The terrified trooper gazed at the greenish red fluid flowing from his former friend’s head.
“We should go.”
“No, sir.”
“That’s not a request.” He stopped staring at his friend and got up. “Pick up your rifle.” The man slung it around his shoulder. “Good, let’s go.”
As they walked out of the comm room, they encountered a volley of gunfire. The trooper died instantly from a shot to the heart and face. Mifune crumpled down as well from a slug to his gut. Despite having been shot, Mifune reacted immediately by returning fire down the corridor. More shots whizzed past him. Through it all, he could see it wasn’t troopers firing at him. It was deaders.
* * *
The control room lost all power from the blast except for the flashing red emergency lights. The reddish hue made Tarte appear all the more evil to Drake. Drake kicked him in the head and yelled a slew of obscenities.
“That won’t do any good now, Captain. We’ve been breached.”
Drake searched the room with his eyes to find an answer on what to do next. He stopped at the giant monitor, which now displayed nothing. Then he glared at Tarte and said, “You fixed it real good. Didn’t you? Everyone dies and Freetoria is defended by poorly manned Beta and Charlie bases.”
“It’s over for us all. I’m prepared to die. Are you?” Tarte spat blood on the floor and sat up.
Drake promptly put him back down by kicking him in the face. Tarte moaned in pain and grasped his shattered nose. Drake aimed his weapon at Tarte’s face and depressed the trigger. Nothing happened. The gun jammed. He swore and threw it on the ground, and then picked up Tarte’s pistol.
Tarte lay on his back ignoring Drake entirely. He was thinking of his long dead sister. We will all be with you soon, my love, in peace. Soon… Drake pulled the trigger again. Nothing happened. He noticed the grip required finger and palm print identifications. He swore and threw Tarte’s gun on the floor.
“Enemy troops have entered the base! Enemy troops have entered the base!” Mifune’s voice echoed from the intercom.
Drake cursed again and raced for the control room door, leaving Tarte semi-conscious on his back lying in a small pool of his own blood. When he opened the door, he witnessed an appalling sight: the long corridor of Alpha covered in debris with small fires burning everywhere. Through the smoky haze, he saw men being shredded and devoured by the zombie horde. It was then he realized he wasn’t armed.
“Drake!” a crouched Dagos yelled over the screams and gunfire. “Over here.”
Drake saw Dagos aiming his weapon down the corridor taking shots at the slowly approaching deaders. Drake came to him and crouched down beside him.
“I take it you didn’t reach them. Did you?” Dagos said nothing. Drake knew the answer before he even asked the question. “Well,” Drake continued. “I don’t have a gun.”
Dagos whipped out his pistol and handed it to him.
“You know we’re fucked. Right?” Drake said to him.
“Yup.”
Drake aimed his pistol at a deader feeding on a trooper and fired a round through its head.
Chapter Forty-Five
The closet door burst open from the strength of three large deaders pounding on it to feed on Lara and Murphy. Murphy shot one in the face, but couldn’t react quickly enough to get the other two. Lara picked up Murphy’s knife and yelled in rage. Then she thrust it into the eye of one of the bloated zombies. The last deader swung its fat arm, hit Lara hard, and threw her to the floor. It let out what sounded like a chuckle to Murphy. The rotund zombie was mocking them.
Murphy slammed the big creature in the head with his rifle. The creature leaned back, stunned from the blow, and then jumped on Murphy. He smelled its rotten breath as it bared its decaying teeth, hissed at him, stuck its half-decayed tongue out, and moved in to take a chunk of flesh from his face.
Then Murphy saw a hand grab its hair, pull the deader’s head back away from him, and fire a round from a pistol into its head. The deader collapsed next to Murphy.
Murphy saw the silhouette of a man standing in the entrance to the closet. The fires burning behind him dimly lit his face, yet Murphy knew who it was instantly. Mifune.
“I’m not losing any more men,” he said with some confidence. He reached out and helped Murphy to his feet. Lara stood and appeared dazed.
“What happened?” she said softly.
“Everything,” replied Mifune, clutching his bleeding stomach. “Deader bullet.”
A moment later, a deader appeared behind Mifune and almost sunk its teeth into his exposed neck. Mifune pushed it back and Murphy blew its head off with a round from his rifle. Mifune lost his balance and Lara dashed over to support him. He shook his head. “There are so many more. Keep watch.”
He handed her his assault rifle and she released him into Murphy’s arms. Then she stood outside in the corridor keeping watch. This section of Alpha was relatively peaceful compared to the main corridor where Dagos and Drake were battling.
“Sergeant, we need to get you medical attention right away.”
Mifune shook his head and said, “Too dangerous to move right now. Deaders everywhere.”
He lifted his weary head up and stared at Murphy.
“What do we do?” Murphy asked.
“We wait here, kid, and hope the captain comes through.”
* * *
A bullet smashed into Dago’s shoulder. T
he veteran fell backward, grasping his wound. Drake moved to help him, but his superior brushed him aside.
Down the smoke-filled corridor where fires burned and the dying moaned, the deaders made a sustained assault deep into Alpha. The only two men preventing a complete collapse of the base were Dagos and Drake. They were running out of ammo quickly.
Two soldiers suddenly appeared behind Drake and Dagos and took up positions on their flank. The taller of the two kneeled and aimed a rocket launcher down the corridor. Drake watched them with hopeful eyes. They needed some bigger firepower, and it had finally arrived.
Then a high-pitched wail echoed throughout the base. It was so loud it overwhelmed the screams, the gunfire, and the alarms ringing around them. The soldier carrying the rocket launcher dropped it and covered his ears. The deaders knew the danger he posed with a weapon like that inside a long corridor. They are learning, Drake thought.
The wailing abruptly stopped and a garbled voice hollered in Humanese through the smoke and fires. “Destroy them!” Deaders surged toward the defenders. They had only a couple dozen meters more to cover before the men were swamped. The rocket soldier picked up his weapon and aimed it, but a hail of gunfire sliced into his body and the body of his comrade, killing them both.
Drake’s eyes bulged in fear. The deaders were getting close. Drake dove for the rocket launcher and pointed it at the surging horde. He depressed the trigger. Nothing.
“Fuck!” Drake yelled as he examined the weapon. He looked momentarily at Dagos and then at the horde. Dagos took a deep breath and realized they needed a few moments for Drake to get the rocket launcher working.
“I got this,” Dagos said to Drake. Drake gazed at him and understood what he planned to do. Dagos raced down the corridor toward the horde with his assault rifle blazing and his voice yelling a chilling war cry. The deaders paused, took aim, and fired a torrent of bullets into his torso. Dagos collapsed, mortally wounded, still holding his weapon and firing it into the horde.
They surged upon him and ripped into his flesh with purplish and black teeth, and long, sharp nails. His abdomen was ripped open by hungry-eyed deaders with mouths agape in hysterical anticipation of Dagos’ soft flesh and warm organs. It was a macabre orgy of the dead and the dying.
Dagos summoned the strength to yell one last time for Drake to fire. Drake slammed the launcher against the floor. A red light appeared in the scope indicating it was ready to fire. Drake pulled the trigger and the rocket screamed out of its tube, straight toward the mass of deaders devouring Dagos alive. Only a few of them even saw the impending doom racing toward them before it slammed into them and exploded.
A brilliant fireball erupted from the blast, sending debris, body parts, and shrapnel all down the long corridor of Alpha. A small piece of shrapnel hurled through the smoke and fire, clipped Drake’s head, and rendered him unconscious.
Chapter Forty-Six
The fires and smoke were gone. All that remained were blackened concrete walls, mangled bodies, and the cries of the wounded. Armed patrols walked down the long corridor of Alpha. They occasionally paused to fire a shot into a body to prevent reanimation.
An old medical orderly with a limp tended the wounded. There were many of them. Several guards stood by ready to bring to the execution chamber any of those with bites. The old orderly appeared rather chipper despite the circumstances, and said soothing things to each man he visited. Frequently, he would look over his shoulder and nod to the guards. Then they would drag some poor soul off for his last hurrah.
Drake was unconscious and leaning against the wall. His face was partially blackened by soot and a large, open gash on the side of his head bled continuously. The medical orderly leaned over him, gently tilted his head back, and shook his head.
A guard put his hand on the orderly’s scrawny shoulder and said, “Not this one.”
“But this man is wounded. I must inspect him!” the orderly protested.
“Go tend to the others,” the guard ordered.
The orderly looked down the corridor and saw only body after body. Drake was the last of the wounded.
“But he’s the last one.”
“Then find some. He’s bit.”
“Well, then, I don’t know why he’s still here.”
The medical orderly stood up, lit a cigarette, and began wading his way through the bodies, occasionally stumbling slightly from his limp. The eyes of one of the dead opened as the orderly’s foot passed it. It reached out and grasped the old man’s ankles. The orderly, without any sense of fear or apprehension, removed a scalpel from his bloodied frock and thrust it into the deader’s ear. Then he went on his merry way.
Drake’s bloodshot eyes slowly opened. His head pounded and his mouth was dry. Am I hung over? he wondered. Then he remembered. He saw the line of wounded and dead all about him. He also saw two guards standing over him.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked them hoarsely. The two guards looked at each other, unsure of how to answer Drake’s reasonable query.
A younger medical orderly with a long, black beard quietly moved past Drake dragging a body behind him. Drake recognized the bloodied body right away. Mifune. Drake peered into his old friend’s dead, cold eyes and felt a surge of anger rise through him. He demanded to know where Tarte was.
The guards said nothing.
“Then I’ll find him myself, the cowardly dog.”
Drake attempted to stand up, but found himself back on his butt after a guard struck him on the head. “You’re not going anywhere, Captain,” one of the guards barked.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Private Murphy stood at attention in Alpha’s control room before Colonel Tarte. Men scrambled around to fix damaged equipment and remove corpses. Behind Murphy was Lara, her hands handcuffed, her blonde hair a mess, and her face full of rage. Guards flanked her on either side.
Tarte’s broken nose was bandaged. He puffed on one of his expensive cigars and appeared rather placid to Murphy, despite the recent madness that enveloped Alpha. Somehow, they had survived the siege of the base. Murphy assumed the only reason any of them were alive was because of Drake and Dagos.
“We were very fortunate the commander at Base Beta picked up the desperation of Captain Rhodes and his brave men,” Tarte said with no emotion. “Had they not sent a timely relief force to Alpha, we surely would not be here. I know you had nothing to do with the traitorous actions of Captain Drake and Lieutenant Colonel Dagos,” said Tarte with a smug smirk. “They misled you into believing that I had purposely set you men up.”
Murphy remained silent. He believed nothing coming out of the commander’s mouth. Tarte was a liar and a murderer. “I need to know one thing, my young and talented soldier. Do you believe me?”
Murphy examined Tarte’s face, saw the bandaged nose, the split lip, the wrinkled forehead, the pearly white teeth, and the tanned skin. No one but the most elite of the elite had a tan in Freetoria. He detested the old man. “I don’t know, sir.”
“Why is that?” He gazed over Murphy’s shoulder and looked at Lara and then back at Murphy. “Is it because of the nomad?”
“No. I don’t know. We did horrible things, saw horrible things. I don’t know, sir.”
“That’s all right, young man,” Tarte said with little believability. “We’ll figure this out.”
Murphy couldn’t hold it in any longer and blurted out, “What will happen to Captain Drake and Sergeant Mifune?”
“Mifune will live, but his days in the Army are over. Sadly, the enemy bit Captain Drake. He’ll have to be disposed of in the proper fashion.”
Murphy shook his head furiously. He couldn’t believe it. There’s no way Drake could be bit, he thought. Could he?
All Murphy could muster was “Oh Jesus,” followed by a long sigh. Tarte’s face lit upon hearing the name “Jesus” and said, “Jesus! Wasn’t he a great conqueror?”
“I don’t know much about him, sir.”
“Few
of us do.”
Tarte offered a cigar to Murphy. Murphy declined.
“Well, never mind all this business that happened. I know you’re a good, loyal man at heart, which is why I want to send you on a mission. You see, our situation is desperate. The Council has ordered me to make preparations to abandon this base and fall back. The deader army that crushed brave Captain Rhodes will surely move on us. The deaders that attacked Alpha earlier were a much smaller group.”
“What is the mission, sir?” Murphy said with little enthusiasm.
“We realize after losing a major force trying to rescue you that we cannot win by military engagements alone. We must have intel. I need you to go on a deep, probing mission to gather more knowledge on them in the hope we can use it to defeat them.”
Murphy’s mouth was ajar in horror. This was the exact same lunacy Captain Drake was ordered to do. He is trying to kill me.
“You’re now the best man I’ve got,” Tarte continued. “You should be able to scrape up a small squad from the men we have left alive here. I have some recommendations, one of whom survived that awful battle.”
He pointed to a shadowy corner and said, “Step forward, Corporal Trujillo.”
Trujillo, his large sniper rifle slung over his shoulder, stepped out into the light and nodded his bandaged head toward Murphy. Murphy returned the nod.
“The corporal,” Tarte continued, “is very experienced. That is something you’ll need on your mission, Lieutenant.”
“Lieutenant, sir?”
“Yes. It’s a field commission. I can’t very well have a private running this operation, now. Can I?” Tarte said with a chuckle. “Dedicate this mission in memory of the brave men who recently sacrificed themselves on the battlefield altar to try to save us all.”
Murphy hesitated. He didn’t know what to say to Tarte. He glanced back at Lara hoping to find some answer, but found nothing but hatred in her eyes. “What of the girl?” Murphy asked Tarte.
“Oh, the men will take care of her,” Tarte responded ominously. “Now, what will you need for the mission?”