by J. W. Vohs
With Jack in Vicksburg, Deb had to do something about the men being held here before the evacuation was complete. As she walked quickly toward the house where Chuck and the pilots stayed, she noticed that the guards normally present were gone. Carter had ordered a permanent security detailthere to protect the prisoners from the people, especially the USAMRIID officer who was locked up in an insulated garage behind the building where the aircrew was billeted. She jumped when she felt a hand on her shoulder, and turned to see Chuck suited up for theblizzard.
“C’mon in out of the cold, hon, and tell us what’s going on out there.”
Deb stepped into the small house, thankful to be out of the raging storm for a few minutes. “Someone blew a big hole in the wall on the bridge, and at least one Blackhawk made a couple passes above us, leading hunters to attack across the bridge. The storm is picking up, and we’re barely holding on at the breach. I’ve ordered an evacuation.”
Chuck whistled in disbelief. “We heard the alarm, and all the commotion, and figured it couldn’t be anything good. Y’all are going out on the river in this weather?”
Deb wearily nodded. “We don’t really have a choice. The Castle’s been overrun too, and we don’t have the manpower to defend this place right now. I talked to Carter and Hiram Anderson, and they’ve briefed Jack; they know what we need to get everyone on the boats and headed downstream.”
“How can we help?”
“I’ve been thinking--what’s the status on the choppers?”
Chuck grimaced, “Two of ‘em are in hangars out at the airport; they’ve both got engine problems we’re trying to figure out. The third one is on the helipad on top of the headquarters building.”
“Fueled up and ready to go?” Deb asked anxiously. “Can you fly it in this weather?”
“I can fly it in a blizzard; the biggest thing we need to worry about is frame icing, and I was just checkin’ the conditions outside. It feels colder than it is; the snow is still pretty wet and heavy. We have to be careful with the wind, and the poor visibility, but we should be able to fly it outta here.”
“How far can you go?”
Chuck shrugged, “Depends on a lot of things. Where do you want me to fly?”
“Can you make it seven hundred miles to Vicksburg tonight?”
Chuck looked briefly at the other pilots standing nearby, who all nodded their belief that the Blackhawk could do it. “Yeah, probably. It’ll help if we got the wind at our backs and can fly outta this damn blizzard. We got stub wings and external back-up tanks, and they’re filled up right now. We should be able to make it to Vicksburg, but we’ll have to find more fuel to go anywhere else after that.”
Deb looked relieved. “All right, grab your pilots and take off as quickly as possible; I don’t know how much longer we can hold the bridge. If you can get back this way tomorrow, fly along the Maumee east of town and call out on the handheld until you find us. Be sure to let Vicksburg know you’re coming so they don’t think the chopper belongs to Barnes.”
She started to turn back to the door but stopped suddenly. She pulled out the Glock 19 Carter had taught her to shoot and demanded that she carry everywhere she went. She held the handle out toward Chuck. “I’m sorry, I can’t kill the USAMRIID officer, but we can’t take him with us . . .”
Chuck waved her offer away. “Jack’s been lettin’ me carry a .45 auto and one of those silenced .22s y’all have around here. He didn’t want me to ever have to make an emergency landing out there without any weapons. There’s two AK’s in the Blackhawk too.”
Deb tucked her weapon back inside her coat. “We just can’t let that bastard go free; he’s got the blood of thousands on his hands.”
Chuck nodded. “I’m not sure that shootin’ him isn’t too easy on him. Can you trust me and us pilots to handle it? We’ll make sure that bastard pays for what he’s done.”
Deb agreed without hesitation. “I understand that you all have a personal score to settle with him, on top of his general war crimes. Whatever you do, just take care of it fast and get out of here.”
The barges carrying almost two hundred kids, parents, and soldiers slowly moved up the St. Mary’s River toward the CSX railhead. The position had been steadily fortified and strengthened in the past months as the importance of regular train movement to Utah, and eventually Vicksburg, became increasingly obvious. Old boxcars topped with massive amounts of concertina wire had been hauled into two, parallel lines stretching from the river to the locomotive. Ted Simmons knew that no fortifications were safe if enough hunters could be led to attack them, but unless thousands of the monsters were available to swarm the walls and cover the razor-tipped wire with their own bodies the corridor from the dock to the train should be clear.
The barges were pulled against the current by a system of ropes and electric winches, which were much quieter than any motors big enough to propel the large craft would have been. The blizzard also helped muffle the inevitable noises accompanying the movement of so many people. No lights were allowed in the convoy, and as far as Simmons could tell, the banks of the river were free of hunters with no sign of helicopters above. Less than an hour after the decision had been made to evacuate the children by train, the youngsters and their guardians reached the docks that led to the railhead.
Ted was still determined to take no chances in spite of the so-far uneventful evacuation; before the kids could leave the relative safety of the barges, a squad of soldiers leavened with a few armed parents was sent toward the tracks. The scouts wore NVGs and armor, but carried no guns as a precaution against making any noise that might attract more flesh-eaters if any were found prowling about. Sure enough, a handful of hunters had crawled under the locomotive and were stumbling around the area, probably drawn by human scent lingering about the site.
One of the Utah soldiers had volunteered for point duty, and he saw the flesh-eaters through the swirling snow before they detected the humans headed their way. The experienced fighter held up a closed fist to halt the patrol coming up from behind, then motioned for everyone to fan out into a skirmish line facing the train. Most of the troops leveled stout spears before they advanced, though several of the local folks had learned to prefer halberds while learning from Jack and the others in the early days of the outbreak.
The small line began to move forward, one slow step at a time, the fighters doing their best to avoid making any noises that might alert the hunters to the human presence. The wind covered the sound of snow crunching under boots, but before the soldiers had covered ten meters somebody slipped on the icy gravel of the rail bed and fell to their knees. Suddenly the area was full of hunters, at least a score of the creatures crawling out from under the boxcars where they’d been sheltering from the storm. The monsters still hadn’t seen the troops, but they were now close enough to hear the slightest sounds the humans made, and some of the creatures could smell their nervous prey. Then, as the man who’d fallen climbed to his feet, he sent rocks clattering down the slope. Almost as one, the huge pack attacked.
The hunters came in blind, and every soldier was easily able to pick their initial targets and bury cold steel in flesh-eater skulls. This first blood-letting evened the odds, and then the real contest began. A few months earlier the struggle would have been one sided and quickly finished by the humans, but the hunters had continued to evolve as they consumed more protein and could now actually think as they approached their prey. Most of the creatures who’d survived this long knew how to use their brains as well as brawn during a fight against armed people. Many of the beasts had learned how to control their instinctive fury when they encountered soldiers, and they had adapted their tactics after gaining, and surviving, combat experience against tough survivors.
Carter and some of the other leaders argued that the stupid hunters were all dead now, and survival of the fittest had winnowed the infected population to the point where only the cautious still lived. When steel met beast, however, nobody had time to tr
y to figure out if the increasing deadliness of the hunters was due to natural selection or cognitive improvement; the soldiers still had to fight for their lives against lethal monsters who wanted to eat them.
One tactic still worked for the troops against the flesh-eaters, a formation as ancient as civilization itself: the phalanx. The language describing the practice had changed over the millennia of human experience, but the concept remained the same: armored soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder with their flanks protected. Almost six months following the outbreak, the Indiana and Utah fighters had used the formation so often they moved into position without conscious thought. Some of the warriors had lost their spears, the tips still stuck in the quivering corpses of the first wave of attackers. But either swords, axes, or war-hammers were carried by everyone as back-up or close-quarter weapons, so the now tightly-packed human line continued to bristle with gleaming steel as the hunters renewed their assault.
The flesh-eaters continued to emerge from the blowing snow, now howling as they realized that they were in close proximity to humans, unable to contain their excitement at the prospect of quickly obtaining their favorite food. Protein was protein to the infected, and they’d eat a rat as hungrily as they’d devour a deer or cow. But when the virus had forced their bodies to mutate, a desire for human flesh seemed to become hard-wired into their DNA. The monsters didn’t howl when they saw other animals; the hellish sound was reserved only for people. The soldiers knew that the howls would alert nearby hunters, and soon they’d be facing even more of the creatures. Still, all they could do was fight and hope that Ted Simmons could hear all the commotion, and pray that he had a plan.
The hard-bitten engineer had indeed heard the noises that he knew by experience would bring more flesh-eaters to the scene. He also realized that he was hearing only a handful of howls so there was still a chance of reaching the train before the area was overrun. The remaining parents and many of the children were armed and armored to at least some degree, so Ted decided to go for the boxcars rather than trying to return to the settlement and putting all of these people into canoes and other small boats while under attack. The veteran knew his decision carried the potential for disaster, but sometimes there just wasn’t a good choice available.
He shouted out over the storm, “Weapons in hand and move at a steady walk to the cars. No panic! We still have time to get aboard the train so keep your wits and get your kids on those boxcars.”
Of course there was some panic, the same men and women who’d calmly stood in the line against thousands of infected earlier in the war now reacted quite differently when their children were in imminent danger. The crowd’s steady walk almost immediately turned into a frenzied rush forward as everyone was determined to reach the relative safety of the small train as quickly as possible. That soon led what was becoming a frightened mob up against the back of the line fighting off the last of the hunters, where they pushed their way through the troops and fell on the remaining monsters with a mindless rage before sliding open the doors to the boxcars.
One soldier was dead with a broken neck, an increasingly common injury as the hunters evolved into creatures determined to kill with their ever-strengthening arms and hands before employing their teeth. The rest of the stout warriors divided up into groups of three and moved to guard the gaps between the cars sitting on the rails, arriving just in time to meet several packs of flesh-eaters arriving at the site in response to the howls they’d managed to hear over the storm. Simmons was thankful that the wind had probably muffled the monsters’ calls before they reached the horde attacking the settlement, but worried that the refugees were still going to run out of time as he locked himself in the locomotive and began firing up the engine.
Miraculously, no children were lost in all the chaos surrounding the confused rush for the train, but one parent was dragged under the cars and pulled into the blizzard, where his screams continued for several long minutes before being abruptly cut off. The fighters guarding the gaps also suffered another casualty when one of the Utah soldiers was grabbed by a huge hunter and smashed into the couplings. The man’s arm was rendered useless, probably pulled from its socket at the shoulder, but his comrades were able to kill the injured fighter’s attacker and push their friend into one of the boxcars as the last of the civilians were boarding. Finally, the people guarding the sliding doors shouted for the soldiers to join them, after which everyone sat inside the crowded cars for twenty minutes listening to frustrated hunters howl. The raging creatures beat on the sides of the train until the locomotive finally began to pull out of town. At the loss of two adult fighters killed and another wounded, the children of Fort Wayne had escaped the beleaguered settlement.
In the months following the Battle of the Castle, Jack’s forces had systematically cleared the surrounding area for miles in every direction. As houses became available following the military sweeps, families and friends were billeted according to their needs and abilities. Basically, they had to be able to farm and fight. They also had to be prepared to evacuate at a moment’s notice. Trudy operated the ranch where Jack had established a training school for horses and horseback riding. Most of the human recruits were teens and promising adolescents who Jack hoped would one day become the foundation of an armored cavalry force. Now, Trudy sent Jade and Tyler out to open all of the stalls and gates, determined to provide her beloved animals with an escape route if hunters did show up here. They also threw down all the hay from the mow and sliced open the bales. By the time that task was completed, all of the bug-out-bags were loaded into the four-wheelers and everyone was ready to leave.
Christy drove the lead vehicle, a huge pick-up with a crew cab and a powerful winch. Trudy rode shotgun while Tyler covered the driver’s side from the rear. Both passengers carried enough ammo to start a small war. Jenny Alberts, along with her adopted sister, Addison, were packed into the rest of the back seat. Vickie drove the second truck, with Sal providing firepower from the front while Jade rode in the back with the kids. Manny Martinez had won the battle with the Alberts girls over who got to hold Chewy during the ride, and the brave little Beagle added his powerful nose to the group’s anti-hunter measures by sticking it out of the small opening Manny left in the window.
As the tiny convoy pulled out of the driveway it was immediately obvious that the trip would take longer than they’d first thought. Drifts on the north-south roads were already over a foot high. The snow and wind continued their unabated assault on the area, showing no signs of slowing any time soon. Christy kept their speed at just under thirty miles per hour, worried much more about sliding than getting stuck in their over-sized four-wheelers. They made slightly better time after reaching Highway 30 leading into the north side of Fort Wayne from the west, but in their relief at finally being off the country roads nobody noticed the Blackhawk fly overhead through the gale as they reached the city-limits.
CHAPTER 7
The large yacht was nearly silent as it glided across southern Lake Huron, but music from Carolyn’s boom-box provided an interesting soundtrack to the otherwise serene atmosphere.
Michael leaned over a small railing and called over to where Carolyn was reclining on a deck chair, bundled up for the chilly morning. “Hey—can you turn that thing off? The eighties called and they want their music back.” He didn’t notice Robbie sneaking up behind him, and he jumped when his friend slapped him on the back and drummed out a beat on his shoulders in unison with the song that was already giving Michael a headache. Dum dum dum da da dum dum, Dum dum dum da da dum dum . . .
“Ice, ice baby,” Robbie cheerfully shouted to Carolyn. He turned to Michael with a mischievous grin, “Don’t you think it’s the perfect song for this gorgeous November morning? It actually has a special meaning for Carolyn and me; sometimes, when we’re feeling frisky—”
“Stop! It’s bad enough that I’m going to have that damn song stuck in my head for the rest of the day; I don’t want to associate it with your lo
ve life, too.” Michael looked over at Carolyn and squinted in disbelief. “Good lord, what is she doing?”
Carolyn was slowly rotating her hips while using her knees to lower herself to the ground, then upright, to the ground, then upright . . . Robbie gave her an appreciative thumbs-up before answering the question. “I call it dancing, but she says it’s her exercise routine. I guess she used to be pretty heavy, before we met, and now she really focuses on staying in shape. That’s her mix tape we’re listening to.”
Michael shook his head, looked out to the horizon, and muttered under his breath. “Considering what Katie said she paid for those boobs, I guess she’s just protecting her investment.”
Robbie held a hand up to his ear to indicate that he hadn’t heard Michael’s remark. “Huh?”
“Never mind, lover boy. Feel free to keep Carolyn company for a while; I figure we’ve got a good two hours till we reach our rendezvous point.”
Father O’Brien shivered as he leaned against the railing on the deck. He’d spent years as a fisherman and freighter crewman before tragedy had struck his life and he’d turned to the priesthood. No Great Lakes veteran wanted to be on the open water in November, a month infamous for the number of shipwrecks produced by the unpredictable weather. He’d personally known four members of the Edmund Fitzgerald before it sank in a vicious storm on Lake Superior nearly forty years earlier. Needless to say, when he finally led his own tiny crew into the relative protection of the Detroit River, he breathed a huge sigh of relief. The ice forming in the marinas and shallows along the shoreline was disturbing, as was the ominous silence as they passed the scorched and abandoned skyscrapers of the Motor City. This weather was more like winter than fall, and he suspected that most of Lake Erie would be covered in ice by Christmas. At his age he didn’t see too many new things, but a frozen Erie in December would certainly qualify as new.