by J. W. Vohs
Trudy watched as several hundred people on ice skates, dressed in a hodgepodge of gear and wielding modified hockey sticks, bore down on the rear of the hunters almost directly in front of Jack’s position. The ice-warriors were flying across the frozen surface, and their impact with the infected was beautiful and horrific: a perfect picture of war. Skating along at nearly thirty miles per hour, the fighters didn’t have to swing their weapons hard to part heads from torsos. The mystery warriors were spaced five meters apart, and after killing one monster apiece they looped back out onto open ice to regroup and then completed the same maneuver again. Trudy didn’t see a single skater fall, and as they formed up for a third pass she saw that the stick-wielders weren’t alone.
Hundreds of snowmobiles had formed into a massive wedge pointed right at the spot where the horde had been weakened by the skaters. Most of the monsters were still focused on the humans to their front, paying little attention to this annoying new threat from the rear. Trudy decided that even if the hunters had been able to turn and face the epic charge of snowmobilers, they would have had no chance of stopping the humans.
All of the machines had been creatively modified, with spiked racks welded to the skis in front of the engines. The drivers were all heavily armored, and the passengers wielded small axes and swords as they stood in some sort of cradle that stabilized their torsos. The wedge hit the hunters with a resounding smack unlike any noise Trudy had ever heard. She didn’t know how fast the snowmobilers were going when they made contact with the infected, but to her untrained eye it sure looked like they were travelling at a higher rate of speed than the skaters. The resulting impact looked more like an explosion than a collision of two fighting forces. Broken hunters, and pieces of their shattered bodies, rained through the air. The drivers of the snowmobiles continued to accelerate until the sheer volume of dead flesh-eaters finally stopped their impressive advance, but the winter warriors were within ten meters of Jack when they finally came to a halt.
David was far too busy fighting to see, or even hear, the arrival of their mystery-allies, but he certainly noticed the lessening of pressure in front of his position. After a few seconds, he even had time to look to his left, out in front of where the Castle’s leadership had positioned themselves. He could see the flash of blades rising and falling above the heads of the infected, and briefly wondered if a group of fighters had somehow been cut off from the circle and was trying to hack its way back to friendly lines. Then he heard a roar of gunfire erupt from the position and realized that a new force of friendly humans was trying to help the refugees from Middle Bass.
A red mist seemed to hang in the air above the hunters now turning to face the threat on their flank as hot lead shredded their flesh and shattered their skulls. They fell by the score; then hundreds were writhing in pools of dark blood on the frozen surface of the river while even more of the monsters lay still with their brains leaking out onto the ice. David and Christy, along with the rest of the surviving fighters, retreated back towards the huddled crowd of refugees while keeping their weapons pointed at the increasingly confused enemy. The flesh eaters seemed to realize that they were now at a disadvantage; even the monsters that had penetrated the Middle Bass ranks began to drift away from the prey who’d turned out to be so vicious. David wondered why the monsters were giving up, until he heard Trudy shouting that the Blackhawks had disappeared over the horizon. He turned and saw Christy on one knee, trying to catch her breath. She looked up at her husband with a questioning glance. David could find no words, or even the breath, to express how he was feeling. He had no energy to speculate about the nature of their salvation. Finally, he simply placed his gloved, gore-crusted hand atop Christy’s battered helmet, and silently prayed that the baby was okay.
As the skaters chased the fleeing hunters away from the traumatized refugees, the first of the snowmobilers reached Jack and took off his helmet. The man looked vaguely familiar, but Jack didn’t recognize the voice as the blood-drenched fighter scanned the carnage and commented, “My God, it’s a miracle anyone survived this.” He turned to Jack, smiled, and held out his hand. “No place for a nervous person, eh?”
Jack was too exhausted to do more than glance at Carter before taking the proffered hand in his own. The stranger shook Jack’s hand before attempting to explain his odd remark. “It’s a Canadian hockey saying—”
“Michael!” Trudy shouted as she pushed herself through the milling soldiers. “Michael!” She flung herself into his arms, then stepped back to get a good look at her nephew. “Jack, I’d like you to meet Michael Carboni.”
Jack cocked his head and raised one eyebrow. “You’re the engineer turned fishing guide?”
Michael smiled broadly. “Yeah, and I bet you’re the history professor who turned out to be the leader of the resistance. Aunt Trudy, is Christy here? Did she make it?”
Before Trudy had a chance to answer, Christy and David appeared on the scene. Christy burst into uncontrollable tears of joy, so David spoke for the both of them. “We didn’t think we had a chance; how did you know—”
“After what Father O’Brien told us, and what happened in Sarnia, we started paying closer attention to any communications we could possibly pick up. We got the message that you were evacuating under pressure, plus we’ve been able to monitor quite a few enemy transmissions.” Michael was joined by several Canadian comrades, and he pointed to a big guy caked in gore. “This is the man most responsible for us being here.” He waited patiently as the tall warrior carefully removed his helmet. “Robbie, we found my family and Jack Smith.”
Robbie grinned at the battered fighters before him. “Pleased to meet you all, but I think we should keep moving and save the pleasantries for later.”
“What did you have in mind? Do you have a way to transport our civilians?” Jack directed his questions to both Michael and Robbie. “I’m sure we have wounded . . .”
Michael nodded. “We pulled five sleds outfitted as small ambulances with us, along with two doctors and five nurses. We can start evacuating the injured right away. We’d like you all to come back to Manitoulin with us.”
Carter looked to Jack. “Any idea how many folks we got left?”
“You and Deb are in charge of figuring that out,” Jack murmured. “We’ve lost too many for me to keep track of.”
Michael sensed Jack’s despair. “Look, we wouldn’t be here, and our families wouldn’t be alive and waiting for us, if you hadn’t sent info on how to survive to your brother and my uncle Jim. Your foresight had a longer reach than you probably thought it did.”
“Glad to know that,” Jack replied with no hint of emotion in his voice, “but a lot of people here didn’t survive. Fort Wayne didn’t survive, Middle Bass Island didn’t survive, and my fiancé and my son didn’t survive . . .”
“Oh,” Michael almost smacked himself in the forehead until he remembered that his gloved hand was covered in blood. “I have a letter here for you, from Vicksburg. Carolyn, Robbie’s fiancé, wrote a message down from a man named Stephen Carlson.” He pulled off his glove and fumbled around under his gear until he found the slightly crumpled envelope. “Here,” he offered.
Jack took the letter with a mixture of hope and dread. He carefully read the short note twice silently before reading it aloud.
“Jack, I waited to contact you, hoping that sooner or later we’d be able to communicate with one another in a more discreet fashion. I am loath to share such important information with you through a third party, but I figured that you might need some good news about now.”
Jack took a deep breath and continued, his voice cracking slightly with emotion as he tried to read the next few sentences as loudly as possible so the people who’d gathered around could hear the news.
“Luke survived the bite wound with no significant ill effects. According to Gracie, he was on his feet within twenty-four hours. He experienced the terrible fever, but rather than falling into the near-death state and ret
urning as one of the infected, he came back as himself. He is himself, Jack, though his eyes turned black like a hunter’s. He said to tell you that he’d had one of his feelings, and that he’s heading west. He said you’d understand. Gracie, Zach, and Maddie are with him.”
Jack slowly lowered the letter. He scanned the astonished faces of his friends and family, and for the first time in a long time, felt a genuine smile crease his weary face. “Why are you all still just standing around here?” he asked, sounding like the old Jack. “Manitoulin Island isn’t getting any closer. Let’s get a move on!”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.W. Vohs continues to spend most of his days writing zombie fiction, playing with his dog, and honing his lumberjack skills. He lives with his wife and children in northern Indiana.