Zombies! (Book 6): Hold The Line

by Merritt, R. S.

  Krantz leaned forward to catch a glimpse of the leaders of the herd as they flew over them. There was almost always a decent gap between the leaders and the rest of the herd since the leaders were normally the adrenalized Zombies. The herd below was no exception as the ones leading the pack were moving fast enough for it to be noticeable as they flew over. He was happy they hadn’t tried using the interstate to move troops into South Carolina.

  They’d opted on a looser approach to moving people in. It was going to take longer, but the bulk of the troops were marching in on old roads or hiking in through the forests. They were being given different routes in groups of no more than fifty people. Those fifty troop patrols were intended to break into even smaller groups the closer they got to their objectives. Krantz and Roberts had assumed that even moving troops covertly like that they’d still lose a minimum of twenty percent of their men to Zombies. It just wasn’t possible to move large groups of people without attracting the notice of the infected hordes wandering the area.

  They’d considered air lifting everyone in, but fuel was an issue as was qualified pilots. Plus finding a place to land was challenging enough without trying to land in the same place with multiple helicopters repetitively. A helicopter setting down once a week somewhere wouldn’t necessarily build up a ton of Zombie interest as long as it was a remote location. Multiple helicopters setting down would definitely attract way too much Zombie interest. Large troop carriers were a pain to land since there was always the possibility a group of Zombies may wander onto the runway. Little planes were fine, but the large ones just weren’t worth the risk.

  It wasn’t just the infected they had to worry about. One of the main challenges with taking over South Carolina was that it’d closed down by sections. There was no single group that exerted any substantial influence over the other groups. When the disease started spreading the orders had gone out to the different counties to lock down and avoid contact with one another. Every county had basically been ordered to self-quarantine. The people who’d ended up carrying out those orders in most of the cases were the Sheriffs for the different counties. They’d cooperated statewide until they’d all agreed to just take care of their own counties and leave one another alone.

  The lack of a central warlord or leader for the Brotherhood to target made this more difficult than conquering Tennessee had been. There were around fifty counties in South Carolina to start with. It didn’t end there though. In lots of towns and cities the local Sheriffs or the city police had been the ones who seized power after martial law was declared. Then there were of course the large swaths of land that were barren where massive herds of the infected had cleared everyone out.

  The other issue was how to let the people know that they’d been beat and were now under the authority of the Senator. It wasn’t like they could send out a mass e-mail or announce it on the nightly news. It’d be a pretty hollow victory if the people in South Carolina didn’t actually know that they’d been liberated. Not that the vast majority of them would care one way or the other. They were too busy just trying to survive and rebuild some semblance of a normal life to be overly concerned with what flag they were supposed to be flying. The Senator was looking to take away that driftlessness and unite the people the same way he was doing in the other states he controlled. They’d be gifted a sense of community and purpose. Two things men needed to be considered civilized.

  One way they were looking to let the people of South Carolina know they now reported up to the Senator was to drop flyers. The brochures were being cranked out by the thousands on printers set up in one of the camps down in Georgia. The waterproofed one pager basically told whoever read it that South Carolina was being added to the New America that the Senator was building from the dust of the old America. It went on to detail how they could volunteer to be in the people’s army or sign up to be clearers or laborers. It told them how this system made them safe and kept their families safe. It also told them that any groups which didn’t comply would be dealt with severely for the good of everyone.

  Krantz didn’t know how well the brochures would work but he did know that they had their work cut out for them. Each of these South Carolina counties had turned into its own little feudal system. They’d pulled up the drawbridges and weren’t letting anyone in. The Roberts approach to diplomacy was to blow up a few of the cities and see if that helped change the rest of their minds. If not, their soldiers would start arriving soon and looking for their objectives. It was a giant tird sandwich of an operation and they were each going to have to take a big bite.

  Krantz looked down again seeing that the massive herd they’d flown over had disappeared behind them. There was nothing below them now but trees and roads with the occasional lake peeking through. They were on a combination scouting and leaflet dropping mission. They had a few special operators in the back they were going to drop near a small municipal airport to see if they could get it up to speed to handle refueling the helicopters that they were going to be using for the attacks. The men were currently sitting on top of the boxes of leaflets that they’d be dropping on top of the target settlements they’d be flying over. If the leaflets didn’t work the next aircraft to fly over would be dropping bombs.

  The scope of what they were doing seemed insane if you thought about it too much. Krantz tried to avoid considering the big picture as much as possible by focusing on the logistical details. He was well aware he was doing the same thing Roberts was. It was a necessary coping mechanism to stay sane. When you were trying to reoccupy the remnants of the USA during a Zombie apocalypse it helped to do so one step at a time. Just like the age-old question about how you eat an elephant. One bite at a time.

  The pilot checked his map and opened up the comms to everyone in the helicopter to standby to make a delivery. Krantz caught the motion of the men in the back as they maneuvered around to push one of the boxes over near the cargo door and wait for the order to open it up and dump the leaflets. The people down below would be getting the first mail they’d gotten in a long time. Krantz smiled to himself thinking it was probably going to be about as welcome as opening up your mailbox to see a letter from the IRS informing you that you were the lucky winner of a full audit.

  The pilot gave the order and the men in the back opened the bay door. Once they had it propped open, they flung out the letters. Looking out the window Krantz didn’t see anyone moving around in the town below. The fact that he didn’t see any Zombies streaking around told him the area was probably occupied. If the town had been abandoned there’d have been Zombies who’d have come out at the sound of the helicopter blades whipping the air above them. This town had obviously been cleaned out and the people in the town were smart enough to keep their heads down when a big warbird hovered over them. The men in the back signaled they’d dropped all the leaflets in the box and shut the door back up. The pilot tilted the nose of the helicopter down and they streaked on to the next town on their route.

  The list of towns had been supplied by spies that the Brotherhood had been sending up into the northern states to gather intel and cause mischief. They did things like set up sniper blinds and take out the leaders of the small communities. They’d been instructed to be extremely careful not to be caught so that the north never knew where they came from. The mischief patrols had been the brainchild of the Senator. He’d been planning to take over the east coast since the first reports of the Zombie virus spreading in the USA had been given to him in his daily briefings.

  The Senator had let Roberts in on a secret that Roberts had alluded to when him and Krantz were planning out the seizure of South Carolina. The virus hadn’t been a huge surprise to those in power. Climate change, income inequality, border walls, human suffering, overcrowding, and just the general decline of the planet due to the sheer numbers of people on it was an issue commonly acknowledged by everyone. Short of filling up space cruisers with millions of people and somehow colonizing Mars though the only real solution was to re
duce the population some other way. The Senator hadn’t come out and told Roberts that the virus was an attempt to curb the human population to handle those issues, but he’d definitely insinuated it heavily. It made a lot of sense when you thought about it. Like everything else the government did it’d gotten out of control and had unforeseen consequences. Instead of a twenty percent reduction in the population of the planet with most of those reductions coming from the poorer regions of the earth the virus had decided to be extremely efficient was well as diversity oriented. It hadn’t cared how much money you had or what color your skin was. If it could get near your lungs or in some sort of fluid that you traded with someone who was infected, then it had you.

  Krantz had decided to accept that explanation at face value and not put too much thought into it. To do so would make him have to consider that the man he’d sworn his allegiance to had something to do with killing most of the people on the planet. Especially since if you looked to see who’d benefitted the most from the infection. The Senator with his megalomania would be near the top of the list. It did seem like he’d seen it coming and been prepping for it. Those were some heavy things to consider.

  With about half the letters thrown out for the trip they got ready to land at the small airport and deploy the three operators who’d be responsible for securing the airport and getting it ready to refuel helicopters. They came into the airport low and fast. The pilot did one quick spin around the place to make sure there wasn’t any obvious threats to the men they were dropping off then set down. The three men immediately hit the tarmac and started running for one of the hangars. A few Zombies had already shown up and were screeching and giving chase. The pilot took off as quickly as possible to try and lower the noise level at the airport.

  Krantz hoped the same operation was going off as uneventfully at the other locations around the state. If so then this war with South Carolina would be over in a few weeks. The leaflets basically told them they’d already lost and what they could expect to happen next. If they were able to get half the state to go along with that then the other half would eventually either fall in line or die.

  The helicopter turned back towards Georgia. They were careful to make sure they flew along a different route for the return trip. They delivered the rest of the mail on the way back to their forward operating base on the border of Georgia and South Carolina. They’d see how many of the settlements they dropped the leaflets on chose to comply. Ideally this would be a bloodless coup but if not then the second round of examples they made would definitely encourage everyone else to stay in line. So far, they’d just laid down some rockets in a handful of locations as an example of what they could do. It was the easiest way to show the people of South Carolina that they needed to join with the people’s army for their own protection.

  They’d see how many saw the sense in that and how many decided to stand up to them. Krantz hoped most of the communities saw reason because they had a huge stash of ordinance ready to go thanks to the Senator’s knowledge of weapon stockpiles. Leave it to politicians to figure out how to make a Zombie apocalypse even more horrifying.

  Chapter 4: Twister

  Hearts beating a mile a minute they walked through the forest constantly expecting to stumble across either Zombies or more Brotherhood scouts. Stomachs gurgling and grumpiness setting in from a lack of sleep the little kids were having a hard time keeping their mouths shut. They’d been through a lot and this was taxing their last reserves. It was pretty bad when being locked in a basement with your parents in handcuffs with the possibility of torture and death hanging over you rated as one of the highlights of the last few months. Of course, the girls had just seen it as days upon days of being able to sit in a basement and rest while people brought food down to them. The huge fluffy robes had been a sweet bonus.

  Now they were out in the woods again. Zombies were running down the road below them occasionally letting out a piercing shriek. No food or water was making trekking through the woods increasingly miserable. When they came across a small stream running down from the top of a hill it seemed like maybe god was listening to their prayers after all. The small brook was crystal clear and chilly running over a bed of white river rocks. When you’re living through things like the Zombie apocalypse then worrying about things like if the water is safe to drink become a little less meaningful. In a small nod to safety Kelly tasted the water before she let any of the kids try it. It tasted wonderful to her, so a few seconds later they were all busy using their hands to scoop as much water into their mouths as possible.

  Kyler scooped in water along with the rest of them. He knew they should be using pills to purify the water or boiling it before drinking it but more than likely the worse that would happen would be some severe diarrhea. That wouldn’t be a pleasant experience for any of them, but it was hardly an uncommon one. Considering they were constantly eating food long past its expiration date that was typically stored on shelves exposed to extreme temperatures for long periods of time they were all pretty used to the occasional bouts of diarrhea. Seeing Doreen break into a smile when Zoey splashed her in the face made the potential need for Maalox well worth it.

  They had no canteens or water bottles to carry any of the water with them so they settled for each drinking as much as they could hold before moving on. Stomachs sloshing, they forded the small stream using big rocks to carefully hop across. On the other bank they took one last opportunity to sip some additional water before heading back into the woods. An hour later the road they were paralleling took a sharp turn to the north east which worked out well since that’s the exact direction they wanted to be moving in.

  The small two-lane road below was still covered in a decent number of Zombies trudging towards the sound of the explosions earlier. Kyler theorized the ones below may not have even heard the explosions. They were probably just moving down the road in the direction of the other Zombies who’d been moving down the road. Whatever the reason for the Zombies being on the road it meant that they were stuck beating their way through the woods instead of walking along the nice smooth concrete below.

  It was starting to get dark outside. The shadows cast by the trees were getting longer. Between exhaustion and the reduced visibility, the girls were starting to trip over roots and branches every second step they took. The adults weren’t doing much better. An overgrown and washed out dirt road intersected their path. Hoping the small road may lead to a house they could spend the night in Kyler stopped and waited for everyone to catch up. As if to help his cause a light rain started to fall.

  “I say we head up this road and see if it leads to somewhere that we can spend the night. Hopefully somewhere with food.” Kyler whispered to Randy and Kelly. They were standing in a circle with their heads close together. The light rain having escalated to more of a steady drizzle. Kyler wasn’t too worried about anything hearing them with the muting effect of the rain. He still made sure to whisper just loud enough to barely be heard. Randy looked like he wasn’t convinced. Kelly looked like a human bobblehead in her enthusiasm to agreeing to find a house to stay in for the night.

  “Love to give the kids the chance to sleep in an actual bed. Especially with this rain coming in I don’t like the idea of crashing in the woods for the night.” Kelly whispered emphatically. Randy shrugged his shoulders knowing he’d just been overruled.

  They looked up and down the dirt road and didn’t see anything moving along it. Kyler carefully stepped out on the road and began walking. He was really hoping for a nice big house. A mansion would be wonderful. He’d settle for a log cabin or something along those lines. What they got was an overgrown opening in the woods at the end of the road with three dilapidated looking trailers. Two of the trailers were missing windows. A common occurrence when the infected stuck inside homes broke out to look for uninfected to munch on. They had to use the windows once they passed the point of being able to figure out how to operate a doorknob.

  Open to the elements for w
ho knew how long those two trailers were going to be nasty on the inside. With the rain really beginning to pick up some gusto Kelly started jogging towards the third trailer. Randy and Kyler rushed to catch up with her while Caitlyn and Myriah ushered the little kids along. Kelly paused on the concrete block stairs leading up to the front door to look back and make sure everyone was following her. She turned back around and tried twisting the doorknob. It was locked.

  Undeterred she skipped down the concrete block stairs and ran around to the other side of the trailer. A large wooden deck on that side of the trailer was leaning over crazily where a few of the supports had rotted away. Kelly carefully climbed up the slick deck to check out the sliding glass doors. The rain was really starting to come down as she checked to see if the doors would open. They weren’t opening for her but when Randy materialized beside her a few seconds later they were able to get the door off its track by pushing it extremely hard at different angles. The owners of the trailer hadn’t gone the extra mile for security and shoved a piece of wood in the lower track, so they were able to push it up to disengage the lock then slide the door open.