For her part, the young girl seemed to have made a miraculous transformation, though her soft spoken voice betrayed the look of woman warrior she tried to convey. The layers of clothing might be designed to fend off the bites of zombies, but she would still have to take her spear and jam it into the face of a zombie. Marty was unsure the girl could do it...or if she realized what would soon be required of her.
They began their way back up the levee. “Please take me over to that man,” she said as she pointed to the general.
The gunfire picked up as people regained their senses after the tsunami of horrid smells dissipated. By the time she’d reached the summit, many of those who had run down the backside had also returned. The nearby tank adjusted its turret and fired its machine gun as it sought targets. A man on top operated a second machine gun, though he fired less frequently.
The general was in his front seat, with his door opened. His face was pale, like maybe he’d gotten sick, too.
“Hello, Ms. Peters. I thought your goose was cooked.”
“That makes two of us. I guess it wasn’t my time.” She pointed up.
“Well, you jumped out at the right time,” he said with a weak smile.
“I wonder. I think...” Her mind was a little fuzzy, so she wasn’t sure she could make the claim. But something told her she’d seen it correctly. “...that Duncan pushed me out. I wasn’t right, either, and I wasn’t holding on as tightly as I should. I felt someone push my back, and I tumbled out of that seat, onto the dirt. It was still a miracle I didn’t break anything, but that cart was near to the ground.”
“Well, maybe Duncan knew what he was doing, even though he was overcome,” the general offered.
“Then Debbie came and got me.”
Debbie and the general smiled at each other.
“Marty, I want you off this levee. We don’t know what else is coming. I expect it will get worse before we get an upper hand.” He looked at Debbie. “Can you walk her down there?” He pointed to the inside of the front gate where the military vehicles and their families had come through. “Someone can give her a ride to a safer place in the town.”
Marty saw the uncertainty on his face.
She thought of Al’s words. Something she was missing. Was she supposed to leave? What would she do about Liam? Leaving was an option, and soon it might be a requirement, but for now she had time. And, she knew what she’d do with that time.
“My dear, let’s do as the general asks. If you take me down there, I’m sure we can find some help. I’d very much like to go back to your home.”
It’s where Liam will return. At the very least I need to leave him a note.
Her mind planned what she would write, but without having the slightest idea where she would go, her note was destined to be blank.
3
“My great-grandson, Liam, usually walks me like this.”
Debbie steadied her arm as she paced her down the gravel road on the inner slope of the levee. It wasn’t very far, but they weren't moving very fast.
“He was the boy that came from, like, the hospital, right?”
“Yes, dear, he was injured rescuing me in St. Louis.”
“I heard you all talking when he woke up. So, that pretty girl with him was his...girlfriend, right?”
Marty looked at her and winked.
“Well...I thought so. They both ran out together the day he, um, woke up. Then I guess they left together the next day?”
“That’s correct.”
“So they’re not coming back?” she asked with too much nonchalance.
She searched her feelings. The dream she had with Al placed both kids out in the middle of the zombie horde, alive, but in great peril. Was that allegory, or was it literal? If the latter, how could she have possibly known that? Al never made much sense, but lately, he made less sense than usual. Whatever the explanation, she was unable to answer Debbie’s question with authority.
“Why do you ask?” Her voice carried concern.
Debbie looked at her, and her eyes grew wide. “Oh, no reason. Well. I guess there is a reason, but it’s stupid. Just ignore me.”
She turned forward and continued down the ramp. Marty sensed that Debbie wanted her to pursue her answer.
“They’re coming back. I’m sure of it. I just can’t say when, dear.”
“Good,” she said with cheer. Then, looking at Marty with horror on her face, she followed up with, “No! I didn’t mean it like that.” She physically rubbed her hand over her face, like she wanted to wash away her effort. “I, like, am happy to help you out is all. I’ll take care of you until they make it back.”
Marty was glad for the help but was concerned for the girl. She hadn’t said two words in the days they were in the house—her face had been glued to her phone as she punched keys on it—but now she seemed to be a different person. Was it fear? Bravery? Confusion?
“That’s delightful. I would love to have the help.” It was the truth, but she was wary. In the Old World she would have never thought twice about the motives of someone so eager to help her, but here, now, everything had to be questioned. The very thought turned her inward for the remainder of their walk.
Finding a ride was easy. Getting back to the house was easy. Debbie remembered exactly where to go, and the young woman driving the SUV was eager to deliver them and get back to the front gate. Her husband was one of the soldiers up on the levee.
When they got inside, the silence was comparatively shocking. The levee was on the far side of town, and while the noise of the battle was constant—like roofers nailing in shingles two streets over—it was far enough away to be filtered out.
No one else was in the house, which was a switch from the last time she’d been there.
“My dear, where are all the kids?” She didn’t expect all the young people to be there, as they had been asked to fight with spears, but the younger kids surely wouldn’t be out there, too.
“Oh, they, like, moved them all to the middle of town. In the town center, I think.” She finished with an upward inflection, making her statement sound like a question.
“Shouldn’t we go there, too? I think maybe we should.”
“No, you can sit in your comfortable chair, like you were.” She helped Marty to the same chair where she’d spent her days while they were all together.
When she was down, she kept her face steady and calm, though she felt something else. A deep-seated fear that this wasn’t going to end well.
“Debbie. What’s wrong?” She didn’t know if that was the right tact to take, but something was wrong. She just couldn’t pin it down.
“Oh. Um.” She hesitated. “What do you mean?”
“How old are you, Debbie?”
“How old am I?” She seemed to think about it. “Seventeen, I think. I don’t know the year.”
“Seventeen. That’s a great age. Liam’s friend Victoria is seven—”
“Don’t talk about her, OK? I’m going to take care of you, Grandma.”
“Until Liam returns, right?”
Debbie’s face was sweat-covered and full of confusion. The inside of the house was much warmer than the outside air because it had been sealed like a tomb. Not as hot as the motel where she almost died, but not much better.
“I have to help you, Grandma. I, like, have to show him I can do it.”
“Liam?”
“No! The President of the United States!” She smirked. “I’m sorry. I’m tired. You need to rest for a while. When Liam gets here, we’ll get you to safety.”
Debbie sat in a chair across the room. Marty assumed she’d pull out her phone and start texting again, but the girl seemed true to her word about being tired. She crossed her arms and lowered her head to her chest, as if to sleep.
Marty had been leaning forward in her chair, hoping to convince Debbie not to leave her there. But now, in the face of the girl’s obvious need to rest, she let herself lean back into the soft recliner seat. It w
ould be very difficult to get out of the plush chair without assistance, but if she was going to do it, she needed to park her weary muscles for a little while.
She wasn’t exactly in danger, but not safe, either. Debbie was disturbed, but she didn’t sense anything malicious about her. Maybe a good sleep would do the girl some good.
Minutes later, a distant tornado siren cranked up. It was eerily similar to the tornado sirens she’d heard on that first day, back in her home in St. Louis. Those sirens screamed for an hour, and they announced the end of the world.
These sirens only howled for sixty seconds.
Nothing trumps the end of the world.
She hoped.
Chapter 13: JDAM
As Marty and the young girl walked off the levee, John Jasper cleared his head. The defensive line had been scattered and weakened, but the zombies were too uncoordinated to take advantage of that. A comparable human force could have run themselves over the open bridge in the middle, and have been among the confused defenders in a relatively short time. The zombies, on the other hand, hit the ditch from end to end, almost at the same time. It weakened their punch.
He looked at his people. Several men and women had partially, or completely, stripped off their clothes and were doing who-knows-what in the grass on both sides of the levees. Many others were recovering from being hunched over—tossing their cookies, like the general. Others ran away. Some fought with each other. A critical few went toward the zombies.
Some stripped, puked, then fought.
It could have been worse.
He reestablished contact with his units. First, by voice. Tyler, Xander, and Rando were all nearby, though Rando had run to the base of the levee before returning. After ensuring they were solid, he worked on getting in touch with his vehicles.
The Bradley that had nearly driven into the ditch reported that they'd gotten themselves together—they were back in the game. He thought about using the other Bradley to pull the first one off the berm, but in the end, it wouldn't really matter. It could fire its main gun—the deadly M242 chain gun—and its lighter machine gun from where it sat on the dirt pile. He wasn't going to risk an extraction unless the situation out in the field stabilized.
He took a deep breath. He'd survived the critical initial contact with the enemy. So what if he'd thrown up. At least he didn't run from battle or drive himself over to the enemy side. The wave of gas created by the zombies affected everyone differently, it would seem.
“Alpha-1 and -2, focus fire on those approaching the ditch. How copy, over.”
They responded in the affirmative, but it illustrated a new problem. Alpha-2 couldn't fire anywhere near the immobilized Bradley in front of it. And, because of where the Bradley sat on the mound, it couldn't fire down and hit the zombies closest to the ditch in its sector.
Alpha-1, on his left, executed his orders perfectly. The Abrams' machine gun swept just over the top of the berm behind the ditch, and it made a satisfying swath of destruction hundreds of yards into the first echelons of the endless zombie horde. The walkers had approached behind the runners, and the crowd was growing. As best he could tell, the runners had all fallen into the water...lost from view.
The job of his military units was to keep the followers from jumping in and clogging the pipes.
Minutes later, tornado sirens spun up from the town at his back.
“Yeah, why not. Let's call them in,” he barked.
Someone is really trying to screw me over.
The emergency sirens turned off almost as soon as they got to full strength, which gave him some relief. It cleared his head so he could focus on the driving melody of gunfire. The louder the music, the more zombies fell. He likened it to Death Metal—a musical genre he hated each time his men cranked it. It was the right soundtrack as he watched the zombies get shredded up and down the line.
The dance continued for several hours. As morning turned to afternoon, the Napoleon's maxim about who is really the King of the Battlefield became a factor. It wasn't the biggest guns, or the bravest soldiers. An army marches on its stomach—it depends on supply. The quartermaster would determine the outcome of this battle, too.
He had a lot of time to think about it. Each time the truck came up the ramp of the levee to deliver ammo to his vehicles, it was one resupply closer to the end. The bullets would run out before the zombies…
They kept coming. There were so many, in fact, they had practically come to a stop. Like your typical evening commute on the interstate—there were too many bodies packed into the fields.
The zombies nearest the tanks and guns were pushed back by the force of the cold steel heading their way. It seemed to confuse them and spin them in the wrong direction. That swirl of indecision was the only thing keeping the defenders alive. And that worked into the evening until his radio crackled.
“We're out of 7.62."
He watched the writhing mass of death out in the fields. The men and women of his command had achieved the impossible. They'd held the zombies for almost a full day by whittling away at the leading edge of their battle force. The resulting stack of dead and injured zombies was ten feet high and a mile long. Each time a zombie fell, more took its place—mashing it into the ground to become part of the foundation of the dynamic monument they were all constructing.
Without the 7.62 ammo to fuel their most effective weapons, he had to think of alternatives.
The Humvees were all parked in the middle, belt-feeding their ammo onto the far end of the bridge. It was the most vulnerable point of their defense, and worth every round they'd expended there. Belatedly, he wished he'd thought of a way to blow the bridge. If the zombies got in, they'd never need the road again anyway. But blowing a bridge—even with tanks—was not an easy proposition.
Over the course of the day more and more people showed up with the spears Chloe had provided. She was earning her keep. By the time the sun was nearing the horizon, there were hundreds of people on the levee nervously holding their makeshift spears. About an equal number of people stood below the levee—nearest the town. They appeared to be the young, infirm, or groups of women managing gaggles of children. He wanted to order them away from the tip of the spear but guessed they wouldn't dare leave their loved ones on the fighting line, no matter if it made sense or not.
He caught sight of his runner, Tyler, and called him over. “You've done excellent work out there, son. But I have a new challenge for you.” He pointed down into the town. “See those cars down there? We need them up here. Pointing toward the zombies. Once it turns dark, we need to maintain the light. Get it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you, son. Good luck.”
He wondered if they could survive until nightfall, but they'd have to be prepared in case they did.
2
Before the darkness fell, he OK'd the use of the remaining canister rounds from each Abrams. The shotgun blasts were by far the deadliest and most effective single rounds in his arsenal, but he had precious few of them. Even the munitions truck only carried a few extras per tank. The rest of the spare rounds, as he feared, were for use against enemy armor. He still wasn't ready to waste those.
The canisters served one important purpose, though he didn't realize it at first. Because the Bradley was in its way, Alpha-2 had to fire into the crowd at angles, instead of directly forward. This created angular ridges of broken bodies, which served as funnels to keep the dead moving along those piles, instead of straight toward the ditch.
“Alpha-1. Use canister at a 45-degree angle—about 2 o'clock—into the crowd. Alpha-2, continue to fire at your ten o' clock. Wait for zombies to fill in the gaps, then fire again. Out.”
He didn't wait for the confirmation. They each turned their turrets in the required direction, and the murdering continued.
No, they're already dead. Never forget that.
The rounds went out and knocked down bodies like bowling pins. The tungsten balls of the shotgun-like shell
s traveled several hundred yards into the crowd until their energy was completely absorbed by the thick number of bodies. As instructed, the tanks would wait for the zombies to walk over their fallen brothers and sisters before unloading another one on them.
It was grisly. He almost couldn't watch as heads detached and bodies evaporated. But the consolation was that it created a wedge of a sort, painted into the crowd using dead bodies as the medium. If the zombies were a waterfall, tumbling down toward the ditch, the tanks had created an inverted V shape, which would deflect the follow-on zombies away from the central bridge.
He was mesmerized by the destruction when he snapped to attention.
“John, John, John. Tsk, tsk. Who gave you permission to use my toys?”
Elsa's smooth, feminine voice cut through the harsh gargle of boring sitreps and ammunition requests. And, he admitted, it scared him.
“John? I know you're there. I can see you sitting in your little truck.”
He looked up, knowing a drone had to be flying. He spied the toothpick-thin drone with its long, narrow wings high above. He waved.
“That's right. I'm up here. Always watching. And, John, I don't like what I'm seeing.”
He keyed his mic, knowing there was no point in ignoring her.
“What can I do for you, Elsa? I'm sort of busy here.” He figured the noise of gunfire would bleed through as his supporting evidence.
“I guess I should have known you'd survive. I should have shot you myself, then thrown you in that cesspool. No matter. That can be fixed. But I can't have you messing up my plans with your traitorous rebels.”
“We aren't rebels, ma'am; we're United States Army.”
“You were Army. Just like those men and women playing soldier up in St. Louis were citizens of this great country. Now you're all rebels.”
Zombies Ever After: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 6 Page 23