by Ricky Fleet
“Stay frosty!”
The tracked APC’s easily pushed any vehicular obstacle out of the way and, apart from a fleeting glimpse of zombies through the darkened windows of the trailers, all was still. It was a shock when they rounded a bend and came upon the residents gathered in a small recreational area of the grounds. It was impossible to avoid the horde, so Eldridge swung the barrel down.
“Contact, twelve o’clock! Engaging!”
As the gun bucked in her hands, 12.7 mm rounds punched through the decrepit, stooped corpses as if they were nothing. The sounds of gunfire came from her rear and she could see Carpenter accelerating forward to allow Harkiss a clear line of fire. Heads exploded in a green mist, destroying the purple rinses and long strands of ill-judged comb overs. Eldridge felt a pang of sorrow that these poor people had been cannibalised so brutally in their twilight years. Raised to respect all elders, the creatures in front of her elicited a wave of guilt as she cut them down without mercy.
“Hold on tight!” Holbeck yelled as they reached the smoking pile of meat.
With a sickening, crunching, squelching noise, the APCs drove straight through the bullet forged channel in the crowd. Distended bellies were crushed flat, releasing the trapped gas and stinking bile in a spray of brown liquid.
“Fucking hell!” shouted Harkiss.
Eldridge let go of the HMG and withdrew her sidearm in one fluid motion, thinking that Harkiss was in danger. She almost burst out laughing when she saw him gingerly pushing a set of dentures away that had somehow been ejected from their owner’s mouth and hit him.
“Save them, Harkiss. You aren’t getting any younger!”
“You’re sick!”
“Hey, I’m just being practical!”
Eventually managing to flick the brown teeth from the roof of the vehicle, he wiped his hand clean and gave her the finger.
“Carpenter, fall into line!” Holbeck called over the radio and the second Warthog dropped back as they neared the single-track entrance.
Reaching the main road, Holbeck ignored the turns and motored straight across both lanes, maintaining an east southeasterly course which would take them directly to Ham and the two farms. Eldridge checked the box of belt fed ammunition but the assault had only used fifty of the rounds so she left it unchanged.
“All clear. Maintain visual on our six,” Eldridge called out and Harkiss duly spun in the turret.
The burst of adrenaline wore off and the freezing morning was starting to leech through the gloves of her hands. Rubbing them together briskly, she looked down at the track indents in the soil as they passed. With the weight of the APC’s, ruts many inches deep were the norm, but the cold earth was far less pliable now. If the expanse of boggy land around the farms was experiencing the same firming in the ground, then they had no time to waste.
“Early Bird, this is Hawkeye, can you hear me, over?” Morrow’s voice crackled over the radio.
“Receiving you, Hawkeye, over.”
“You’ve got quite an entourage developing. I estimate over a thousand have left West Wittering and are now in pursuit, over.”
“Keep a close eye on them for us and update if anything changes, over.”
“Understood. Over and out.”
She hooked the radio back to her belt and dropped down into the vehicle. “Sarge, we may have to change the mission to a smash and grab if the zombies maintain their current course. We can’t hold two farms against a horde.”
“But what about the marshland? I thought it provided a safe zone?”
“We’re barely making a mark on the field with the Hog,” she explained. “It may be the land around the farms is already navigable by the undead.”
Holbeck weighed the options quickly. “Ok, but it means we won’t be able to mount a rescue of the entertainment complex today. We’d need to retreat with anyone at Ham and try again later in the week.”
“Understood.”
In the distance the sun glinted from reflective surfaces and Holbeck could pinpoint their position. It was the vast solar panel farm which spread north from the town of Almodington towards Chichester. This would be one of the most dangerous parts of the mission as there was no alternative except to cut through the middle of the homes and businesses or risk drawing thousands more zombies from the coastal town of Bracklesham Bay.
“Hawkeye, this is Early Bird. Come in, over,” said Holbeck into the radio.
“Go ahead, Early Bird,” Morrow replied.
“Can you perform a scout of Almodington again? I want to know rough numbers, over.”
“Changing course, over.”
Squinting into the bright sky, Eldridge could just make out the faint speck of the Watchkeeper drone as it passed over them.
“Early Bird, do you read me? Over.”
“Give us good news, Hawkeye. Over.”
“Estimated force around six hundred. Your earlier devotees have dwindled and half are just loitering in the fields now. That’s the best I can do, over.”
“Early Bird, out.”
Holbeck sighed and stared ahead for a few moments. Carpenter pulled alongside and Harkiss relayed her question rather than use the radio.
“What’s the plan?”
“We don’t stop under any circumstances. I don’t want to get trapped between the houses where we can’t get clear.”
“You got it,” Harkiss replied and quickly explained it to her.
She gave a nod up and waited.
“Sarge, we know the grenades don’t kill zombies well but it may help us slow them down. The streets will force them to converge and we could cover our trail with a few?”
“Good idea,” Holbeck agreed, turning to their passengers. “Dougal, Langham, get into the rear compartment and when I give the signal, open the door and start dropping frags at their feet.”
Jumping down from the front section, they quickly climbed aboard and prised the grenade box lid off. Slamming and sealing the door, Private Melanie Langham came over the radio, “Ready when you are, Sarge.”
Holbeck pressed transmit, “Good. Carpenter, you’re on point. Find us a clean route and we will be right on your ass.”
“Copy,” came the tinny reply.
The second APC gunned it and headed for a walled off back yard of the nearest house. Slowing down at the last moment, she expertly pushed the brickwork over instead of charging through it to spare any damage. Though the vehicles were rated to withstand RPG blasts, they were well trained in using caution instead of foolhardiness. As the bricks crumbled into a pile of rubble, she swung it to the left and aimed for the wide path to the side of the property.
Eldridge watched Harkiss glimpse through the windows as they passed the building. She couldn’t resist either, but the shadows were total and nothing could be seen within. A Mercedes was sat in the driveway, but even the solid German engineering couldn’t hold up against the caterpillar tracks crushing straight over the bonnet. From the street, a massed groan went up as the zombies caught sight of the trundling behemoths.
“Contact, twelve o’clock! Engaging!” Harkiss yelled and started to fire short bursts into the crowd.
Flesh and bone impacted the protective steel mesh as the APC hammered through the zombies, spraying gore onto the windscreen. With a flick of a switch, the twin wipers tried their best to clear the blood away but the syrupy thickness made it smear instead.
“I’m driving blind!” Carpenter yelled, reaching back to slap at Harkiss’s leg.
The HMG stopped firing immediately. “What?” he shouted.
“You’re my eyes. I can’t get this shit off the windscreen so you have to give me directions.”
“Ok,” he replied. “Whoa! Turn a bit to your right, now!”
She corrected the course and narrowly avoided the turned over security van. It had been involved in a collision with a small coach and the money which had been thrown from the rear was stuck to the road like papier-mâché. The interior of the coach windows were coate
d with dried arterial spray from the doomed passengers who had gone to help the dead driver.
“Now left… a little more… now straighten up! Good.”
Carpenter was staring at the green covering, willing it to disappear and clear her view. Any progress the wipers made was swiftly undone as they drove through more of the undead. Surrounded on all sides by the Almodington horde, any other vehicle may well have ground to a halt. The Warthog’s powerful engine didn’t have the issue and pressed them on through the tightly packed bodies.
Reaching the shopping precinct, windows exploded as the trapped dead inside the stores slammed into the glass to reach the succulent meat of the soldiers outside. Faces and bodies horribly slashed, the tattered cadavers joined the fray.
“Fuck!” Harkiss yelled.
“What?” Carpenter called back with concern.
“We have a multiple car blockage in eighty feet,” Harkiss explained.
The burned-out shells filled the whole road and he quickly glanced back to weigh up their chances of turning around. The swarming monsters were filling any available space, sealing off their rear.
“You’re going to have to go through them!”
“Ok. Distance?”
“Forty… thirty… twenty… brace yourselves!”
With a rending shriek, the cars were pushed out of the way and sent spinning into the nearby shop displays.
“We’re in the clear!” Harkiss shouted.
The blockage had ultimately worked in their favour as the zombies had struggled to move past it too. Open road waited ahead and Harkiss guided Carpenter down a side street.
“Keep straight, I’m going to use my canteen to help clean the screen!” Harkiss ordered and climbed out of the turret.
Uncapping the bottle, he slowly poured the contents onto the glass and, swipe by swipe, with the aid of the Warthogs own wash spray, the gore cleared.
“That’s enough,” Carpenter called, “I can see now. Thanks!”
A quick right took them into a cul-de-sac. The rear yards backed onto the fields which would lead them directly to the marshland and then the farms themselves.
“Grenade!” came the cry from Private Dougal and the lethal ball arced upwards before dropping at the feet of the zombies.
Eldridge and Harkiss ducked down and the explosion sent metallic fragments tearing through their enemy’s rotten flesh. Those closest were blown to pieces and heads, arms, and portions of torsos went cartwheeling in the air.
“Grenade!” shouted Langham, lobbing another frag underarm and out through the rear door, before pulling it shut.
“Two more,” she said to Private Dougal.
Taking out one each, they pulled the pins and held the safety levers in place. Swinging the door wide, they tossed them out and watched as they landed among the wounded. Twin cracks preceded the eruption of green gore into the morning sky.
“That should do it.” Dougal slapped Langham on the back.
Langham nodded and radioed in. “Sarge, the bodies have blocked the road for now. It should buy us a small window to exfil the survivors.”
“Good work. We are about to go through the outlying houses so get the door shut and wait for further instruction.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Warthog slowed as Carpenter’s vehicle rolled over an entrance gate with a shrieking of wrought iron. Dougal leaned out and clasped the handle, preparing to pull. Without warning, Langham grabbed him around the neck and pulled as hard as she could. Tendons stretched painfully as his hand was torn free of the handle and they fell in a heap to the floor.
“What the fuck?” Dougal shouted angrily at his friend, lashing out.
A zombie fell inside the rear door and bit fruitlessly at the steel toed end of Dougal’s boot. A second earlier and it would have been chewing on his exposed arm as he pulled on the hatch. Langham withdrew her knife and used the distraction to stab straight through the monster’s skull. With a cry of fear, Dougal kicked out and the body went tumbling from the rapidly accelerating APC.
“Sorry, mate. I heard a sound but didn’t have time to shout a warning,” Langham said, offering a hand to help him up.
Standing on shaky legs, Dougal slumped into the seat opposite and tried to calm his racing heart. “Don’t be sorry. You saved my ass.”
Langham was satisfied they were going too fast for any more surprises and pulled the door closed.
“I’ll always look out for you, brother. Besides, I didn’t want to waste the bullet!”
“Bitch!” Dougal chuckled, raising the drool soaked boot and waving it in her face.
“Take that thing off and let me clean it up. It’s making me sick seeing all that shit dripping from it.”
Unlacing, he handed it over. His hands were shaking too badly to do the job and he smiled gratefully as his comrade rinsed it off with clean water.
Above, Eldridge rotated the HMG turret in a full circle, taking in the fields and the surrounding area. To their rear, the first of the zombies started to filter through the shattered fence of the back yard.
“We’re at the marshland,” Holbeck called out, “How does it look?”
Eldridge looked around at the ground as the Warthog dropped away into the low-lying wetlands. The unmistakeable white sheen of frost was all around her and she was about to give him the bad news, but the caterpillar tracks sank through the crust into the reassuringly moist mud beneath. The weight disparity between the army vehicle and the following cadavers would be an issue, though.
“We might be in luck. Keep going and I’ll monitor the progress of the zombies.”
The large farm buildings came into view in the distance between a thin covering of trees. They had been constructed on a crop of land that was higher than the unfarmable swamp surrounding them. Holding up binoculars, she checked the rear with fingers metaphorically crossed. The horde had trampled their fallen and were in full flow from the town. Tumbling down the bank they regained their footing and continued their pursuit. After a dozen paces, Eldridge started to lose hope, but then a foot sank up to its calf in the mire.
“Yes!” she cried, slamming a hand on the roof.
“We’re in business?” Holbeck asked.
“I think so. They are progressing, but slowly. We can set up defensive positions and take them on before they reach the farms. With luck, they’ll never even get close.”
“Fantastic!”
“I wonder if the farmers have any daughters?” Harkiss shouted over.
“If they do, you have to get past the farmers first,” Eldridge replied, “If the dead fucks don’t get you, the buckshot of their shotguns will.”
“Someone out there will love me!”
“Tell me when you find him,” Eldridge teased.
“If I have to stay celibate much longer I’ll happily hook up with Patrick back at Thorney.”
“He has a thing for you, you know?”
Harkiss puffed his chest out, “He’s only human. I told you I’m irresistible.”
“Contact!” Holbeck yelled, diverting their attention to the two figures stood on the embankment.
Raising the HMG barrels, they pulled the charging handles in readiness. The two shadows stepped forward, revealing themselves to be very much alive, and dangerous. Double-barrelled shotguns were raised and pointed at the two soldiers. They were both redheads, sharing a similar height and thin build. As the Warthogs came to a full stop, it was clear that the two ladies were twins.
“You’d better be friendly or you can turn right on around and go home,” declared the one on the left.
“Fuck that. If you’re not friendly let’s throw down. I bet we can take you out first,” laughed the one on the right with glee.
Eldridge let go of the trigger and raised her hands. “We come in peace. I’m Private Eldridge.”
“And who’s your friend?” asked the laughing woman, raising an eyebrow salaciously at Harkiss.
“Private Harkiss, ma’am,” he replied awkwa
rdly.
“Harkiss, eh?” she said, emphasising the final part of his name.
Her sister rolled her eyes, “I’m sorry for my sibling Angela, she can be quite the handful. My name is Maxine, or Max if you prefer. We’re the Smith twins.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you both,” Eldridge acknowledged.
“Likewise,” Angela replied, not taking her eyes from Harkiss who was fidgeting uncomfortably.
“I see you’ve brought company,” Max said, pointing over their shoulder to the specks in the distance.
“Yes. Sorry about that. We’re on a mission from Thorney Barracks to rescue people who are trapped. You were the closest.”
Angela broke her gaze and looked at Eldridge, “But we’re not trapped. We’ve been doing just fine.”
“We were looking for the farmers who owned this land,” Harkiss explained, “Do you know where they are?”
Angela smiled, “You’re looking at them.”
“No husbands?” Harkiss asked and regretted it as soon as the words passed his lips.
“Why? Are you offering?” Angela giggled and Harkiss gulped.
“Erm… No… Erm.”
“Oh, calm down. I was only pulling your chain,” Angela sniggered, “You’re only a boy and I need a real man.” It was at this point that Sergeant Holbeck opened his door and stood on the mud coated left track. Angela gave an appreciative whistle, “He’ll do.”
“Ladies, time is wasting and we need to prepare for the dead. I understand this may be a bit overwhelming for you, but we’re here to take you somewhere safe,” Holbeck declared as if he was addressing new recruits.
The twins exchanged an amused glance, before Max answered, “Overwhelming? Son, we’ve been killing these things since day one.”
“Most of the time with our bare hands to save ammunition. Now you come along with your fancy guns and shiny new trucks and say you’re here to save us?” Angela added, holding a hand to her mouth to stifle the laughter.
Eldridge glared at Holbeck for his inadvertently sexist insult. “He meant no disrespect, ma’am. We thought you may consider relocating following the freezing of the marshland around your homes. It won’t take much for the ground to be solid and passable.”