by J. W. Vohs
“Luke’s right, you should come with us.” Jack avoided looking at Gracie and focused his attention on Luke. “I wish we had more time . . .”
Luke raised his head and put his hand on Jack’s arm before rasping, “I know, but more than anything else, and I mean anything else, you need to stop Barnes and save Indiana.” He fell back on his pillow and closed his eyes.
Fort Wayne had once been called Kekionga, a strategic Native American town fiercely defended by the Miami and other tribes. The banks of the headwaters of the Maumee had run red with the blood of English, French, American, and native warriors many times in the past. But the heroes of this night fought with valor that their forebears would have been astonished to witness. The soldiers fighting at the bridge grew weak from exhaustion, hunger, and increasingly, wounds from the unceasing hunter attacks. For over two hours the fierce westerners held the wall against ever-increasing numbers of infected. The troops killed hundreds, as thousands closed on their position. A score of fighters died as they were pulled from the line and torn to pieces. Still, the defenders stood their ground and paid in blood for the time the evacuation needed, a red currency splashed across the ever-falling snow on this night of terror.
The intersection of Coldwater Road and U.S. 30 in Fort Wayne had been the city’s most dangerous crossroad for years before the outbreak, but as Christy approached the junction in the blizzard she found a different sort of threat waiting: a massive, snarling pack of hunters. By the time the monsters became visible in the truck’s headlights, there was simply no room to outmaneuver the beasts. As with all major roads in every American city, these two thoroughfares had been left gridlocked with crashed vehicles and pieces of rotting corpses following the outbreak. In the days after Fort Wayne’s collapse, fires had cooked the mess before humans finally returned to the area. Months passed before a one-lane trail through the carnage had been carved out along the highway; the city road was still blocked. As were the parking lots of all the businesses surrounding the intersection. The small group of refugees had no choice but to try to fight their way through the monsters.
Christy was still thinking about the dire situation they were in when Sal’s voice came over the radio. “Do you think this’s part of the horde attacking the settlement?”
“Nope, I think these are just some stragglers. Look at how bad some of those infected are; these creatures would never keep up with an army of hunters.”
“So, we try to drive through ‘em?”
“Yeah, but we won’t make it. Follow us but don’t ram us. Crack your windows and start shooting as soon as we’re stopped. If we run out of ammo, try to climb up on top of the trucks and fight from there. Good luck, Sal.”
“You too,” he almost shouted as Christy hit the accelerator and Vickie tried to keep up.
Bodies flew in every direction as the massive grille on the truck smashed into the crowd. Splashes of black-red blood sprayed through the night air before falling onto the piled white snow. The howls of the infected could be heard over the wind, and then the vehicle abruptly slowed and stopped in the middle of the howling pack. Within seconds the shooting startedas Tyler began emptying his JIC 12-gauge into the faces of the frantic flesh-eaters outside his window. Christy and Trudy added their fire to the fight, and even Jenny Alberts was unleashing a torrent of buckshot from her little .410 pump. Tyler created a big enough gap with his fusillade of death that he was able to quickly open his door and climb atop the crew cab, listening to Christy yelling at him as he screwed the pieces of his halberd together. The weapon was an exact replica of the one Jack had used when rescuing the teen from an overrun gas station, and also the first medieval-style implement he’d learned to use in his training.
Christy had shouted, “No Tyler! Dammit!” as he climbed out, but at the same time she’d realized that sooner or later the ammo would be exhausted and somebody would need to be out there. He wore all of his armor except his helmet, but with his head twelve feet above the ground he figured he wouldn’t miss it. His body was certainly protected where it was most vulnerable; as the infected scrambled to grab his feet, Tyler greatly appreciated his snake-proof boots. Vickie had ended up ramming the bumper of Christy’s truck, but not hard enough to harm anyone in either vehicle. She saw what Tyler did and immediately hit the child-locks in her SUV so neither Jade nor Sal could try the same thing. Then there was nothing more to do but shoot.
Christy felt as if the fight was dragging out for hours, but experience told her that it had probably been only minutes. Corpses were piled around both vehicles, falling snow covering the blood and gore almost as quickly as the monsters fell. The sound of footsteps on the roof of the crew-cab, as well as the steady transformation of skulls into flying bone and brains outside her window let her know that Tyler was still in the scrum. As she seated her last magazine for the .22 pistol, she made sure that her dagger was on her hip. She was determined to go down swinging if it came to that. The volume of fire around her had dropped to almost nothing, and she figured they were in deep trouble now, their ammo gone and only a handful of true fighters in the group.
Then she stuck the barrel of her gun out of the cracked window and found nothing to shoot at. Every creature out there was lying in the snow. Tyler slid off the roof and explained, “I think I can hear a helicopter out there somewhere, probably trying to bring more hunters in, though only God knows how they can fly in this weather. You and Vickie back up a few feet and I’ll pull out the corpses lying in front of your wheels.”
Christy quickly radioed Vickie and they managed to reverse the trucks a few feet before the dead piled behind them stopped their progress. Sal had pulled on his helmet as he ran up to help Tyler remove the bodies from their front, and within a minute or so a path was clear for their escape. They rushed back to the vehicles as Tyler shouted, “I just saw ‘em! Hundreds more of ‘em, we need to get outta here!”
He didn’t need to tell Christy to go, as the ghostly shapes of the first members of the new pack of flesh-eaters were already emerging from the swirling snow, climbing over the mounds of corpses between them and their next meal. They weren’t going to eat now though; after a tense few seconds of spinning the wheels, the lead truck finally found traction and the two vehicles rapidly resumed their trek to the east. Christy reassured herself that Johnny Appleseed Park was only a mile away, then all they would have to do was exit the trucks with her mother, four kids, and a dog. Two teens and a recently reformed pacifist would be protecting them. Hopefully, if there was an enemy helicopter in the area, it would lay its next trap somewhere beyond their destination.
Carter showed up at Luke’s cabin about the same time Luke fell back into a heavy sleep.
“What is it? Have we heard from anybody?” Jack was throwing on his coat before Carter had a chance to answer. “David, stay here and I’ll come back for you when everything is good to go.”
Carter shook his head with what passed for an apologetic look from him. “We ain’t heard nothin’ yet. It’s probably a good idea if ya can get a couple hours sleep. I’m plannin’ on crashin’ by the radio myself. I just wanted to check in here first, see how it’s goin’, maybe have a word with ya.”
Jack sighed with frustration. “I’ll walk with you as far as headquarters, but there’s no way I’m taking a nap.”
“Suit yerself,” Carter replied. He nodded towards Luke. “He been sleepin’ most of the night?”
“Off and on,” Gracie answered. “He knows about Fort Wayne, and he told Jack and David they need to go deal with Barnes.”
“That boy must have gotten his good sense from his momma,” Carter cracked. “When he wakes up again tell ‘em I’ll be keepin’ an eye on his daddy.”
Gracie smiled. “I think he’ll appreciate that.”
“I don’t need a nap or a babysitter,” Jack grumbled. “Now let’s get moving.”
They walked out into the freezing night air, the ground covered with a light dusting of snow that was still falling as
flurries from the dark sky. Jack could feel the cold seeping into his bones as they headed toward the meeting house, and a fleeting burst of anger flashed through him as he thought about what Carter had said back at the cabin.
“Do you really think that I can’t handle myself, that I need you watching out for me?” Jack demanded.
Without another word, Carter reached over and grabbed Jack by the loose folds of his coat and dragged him toward the nearest cabin.
“What the hell?” Jack angrily called out until he lost his breath when Carter slammed him into the solid, outside wall of the dwelling.
“I’ve just about had it with ya,” the whipcord-tough Kentuckian coldly declared. “Now yer gonna listen to me, jackass!”
Jack feebly struggled for a moment to pull free from his buddy’s grip, but Carter had gotten the drop on him and there would be no getting loose without a fight, or listening to what the angry soldier had to say. Jack decided to hear Carter out.
“All right,” he gasped as he fought to regain his breath. “What’s so important that you have to toss me around?”
Carter didn’t loosen his grip. “We’ll get to Barnes, and we’ll get our settlement back. It’s not yer fault.” He paused for half a beat. “And the boy ain’t dead yet.”
Jack spat back, “Nobody survives a bite!”
“Oh yeah, well I never seen nobody survive half the scrapes that boy’s been in. In case you ain’t noticed, he ain’t exactly like everyone else. If God wants to call the boy home then he will, but I’ll believe that when I see it.”
There was no human being closer to Jack Smith than Carter Wilson, but now Jack tried to hurt his best friend. He smashed his fists upward with enough power to break a normal man’s wrists, then he punched his buddy square in the jaw and knocked him to the ground. Jack had grown used to winning his fights since the outbreak, somehow forgetting that Carter was a backwoods brawler and one of the toughest Rangers Uncle Sam had ever produced.
Almost before his back hit the ground, Carter was flipping himself onto to his feet and rushing head-first into Jack’s torso. The move wasn’t exactly Army-textbook, but it had the desired effect as once again Jack had his breath knocked out of him. Carter’s momentum sent them both sprawling onto the rock-hard ground. Before Jack could even begin to fight back, Carter had flipped him over on his belly and twisted his right arm up tightly behind his back.
“I’ll pull it outta its damn socket, asshole,” he snarled through gritted teeth.
Jack knew he was beaten. “Okay, say your piece and be done with it.”
“Gimme yer word that ya’ve had enough,” Carter demanded.
Jack had no more fight left in him. “You have my word, I’ll listen to what you have to say.”
Carter gently eased Jack’s arm out of the painful position it was in, even taking a brief moment to rub his buddy’s shoulder where, by experience, he knew it was tightening up. Then he pulled Jack up to a sitting position.
“I think Luke will probably die ‘cause I never seen nobody live through a bite. But somethin’ just don’t seem right about this whole situation. I don’t need to tell ya that Luke’s different; he’s linked to the flesh-eaters somehow. He knows where they are, what they’re doin’, and he can kill ‘em faster and more efficiently than any person on the face of the earth. If anyone can survive the infection, it’s him, so let Gracie keep his fever down and see if he can beat this thing. If he don’t make it, we’ll grieve then, not yet though.”
“I need to talk to Maddy and Zach; when he turns, if he turns, he has to be put down. I don’t think Gracie can do it.”
Carter nodded, “I think yer right ‘bout that. And if he don’t make it, the rest of us have to go on. We need ya to go on, Jack.”
Jack stared out into the bleak darkness, the inky black of the night mirroring his heart. “The fight will go on without me; if it can go on without Luke, it can go on without me.”
“I ain’t plannin’ on lettin’ ya turn this trip into a suicide mission. You’ve lost sighta somethin’ important, maybe the most important thing.”
“What’s that?”
“The wars we been in, the battles we fought, they ain’t never been ‘bout us. Ya know damn well we gave it up on that mountain a long damn time ago. Yeah, we love each other and our people, but we gave ourselves up for them when we started killin’ for ‘em. We lost somethin’ in Afghanistan, and whatever it was ain’t never comin’ back. Part of our souls is gone, buddy.”
Jack remained silent, so Carter continued. “We go on, we live, to fight the bad guys. We keep goin’ so others won’t have to lose what we lost over there. It’s simple, really—we just keep pushin’ on till we’re done. Fer guys like us, war don’t ever end. What’d yer dude Hemingway say, that ya used to tell me when we was still in?”
Jack nearly whispered, “For man there is no defeat, only death.”
Carter nodded, “Yep, that’s it. He’s wrong though, we can be defeated if we give up. Right now yer givin’ up, little by little so you don’t even realize what’s happenin’ to ya. Ya have to stop it, buddy, or that despair will tear ya down and ya might just take all of us with ya. Yer a moody bastard sometimes anyway, but ya can’t let it get the best of ya. Whatever happens with Luke, fer both of us, the fight goes on.”
“I know why you’re worried, and, dammit, you were right to kick my ass. I agree with everything you said, and I can promise you this,” Jack assured his friend, “I won’t be reckless on this mission, and I will kill Matthew Barnes before I draw my last breath.”
CHAPTER 9
Christy and Vickie pulled the two gore-covered trucks into the lot next to the park where the boats were kept. They knew they didn’t have much time before the huge pack of creatures following the vehicles caught up with them. Incredibly, Deb had sent two guards upstream to the site, where they waited in their armor for the refugees from the ranch to arrive. They were both western soldiers from the Utah Company, and Christy didn’t know them by name, but they had six canoes fitted with powerful trolling motors and AR-15s to cover their retreat. Just as important, they wore high-quality NVGs and had extras for anyone who’d be piloting a boat. The entire group was floating with the current before the first hunters came scrambling to the river’s edge, howling their frustration as the tiny flotilla turned on their electric trolling motors and disappeared into the blizzard.
The earlier plan had been for Christy’s group to catch up with the Fort Wayne evacuees below a nearby dam, but as the small fleet passed the north wall of the settlement and travelled along the eastern border of the housing area, they could hear gunfire and shouts in the distance. Soon they could see the main dock, bathed in the glare of floodlights cutting through the whipping snow, where the last of the evacuees were climbing into small motor-boats before heading off to the southeast. Christy guided her canoe toward the shoreline, where eventually she saw Deb shouting into a walkie-talkie with two soldiers standing at her side.
When she finally noticed Christy out on the water, Deb enthusiastically waved her in. As soon as they were within earshot of each other, Deb yelled over the storm, “Ted Simmons got the kids and some of their parents onto a train heading to Vicksburg.”
“Best news I’ve heard all night!” Christy shouted back.
As the bow of the canoe reached the dock, Deb stooped down and pulled it along until Christy was just a few feet away. She peered at Christy with obvious concern, “How are you? Is the baby ok?”
“Jesus, Deb, I think we have real problems to worry about. I’m fine, the baby is fine—what can we do to help?”
Deb quickly scanned the area, then turned back to Christy. “We’re really getting backed up down at the dam, and I’ve still got people here to evacuate. Can you head down there and help them sort out that mess?”
“Of course,” Christy yelled over the wind. “Where’s Andi?”
“She just told me that there’s no way they can retreat from the breech in the wall
without being run down; they’re exhausted and two hunters take the place of every one they kill. I honestly don’t know how we’re gonna get them outta there alive.”
A male voice spoke up. “Christy, I’ll go back and get Andi off the wall; all those fighters are just gonna have to make a break for the boats.”
Christy looked at the tall young man bundled up behind Deb. “Do I know you?”
“Lieutenant Heder, from Middle Bass, ma’am. You were there when Luke saved me from drowning.”
Deb appreciated his offer. “Do you know Andi?”
“Not personally, but I know who she is. Everybody knows who she is. If you all concentrate on the civilians, I’ll see what I can do at the wall and make it my personal responsibility to get Andi out of there safe and sound.”
“Go on,” Deb agreed. “Do whatever it takes to get all those fighters away from the breach immediately.”
Lieutenant Heder sprinted through the blinding snow, guided more by the sound of battle than the eerie glow that now hung above the wall over the bridge. As he drew closer he saw that nobody was on the fighting platform anymore, and only seven or eight fighters were still standing in the breach. Andi’s leathers and distinctive helmet stood out against the armor worn by the Utah soldiers, so the lieutenant was able to immediately zero in on her location. He slid to a stop behind her and spun her around by the shoulder, intending to tell her to retreat when instead he found himself frantically ducking to avoid the skull-cleaving sword-stroke Andi tried to decapitate him with.
She shouted, “What the hell? You trying to get yourself killed?”
Lieutenant Heder shook his head vehemently as he yelled his reply, “Everybody’s evacuated, even Deb. They sent me back to get you and the rest of the fighters.”