Zombies! (Book 6): Hold The Line

by Merritt, R. S.

  Krantz sat there absorbing the information. Everything he was hearing screamed that they didn’t have a chance. He knew basically what their troops disposition looked like and what their capabilities were. They were nowhere near what was needed to attack a freaking operational aircraft carrier. If the north had subs, then they may even have nukes. They could have harpoons and tridents strike any target they wanted to take out without even being near it. Sam seemed competent and smart. The Senator may be a lunatic, but he was obviously a shrewd individual as well. They had to realize they were screwed.

  “What am I missing? What do we have that I don’t know about?” Krantz asked.

  “We have drone pilots and a base full of drones that’s still intact. It was a training center for the Air Force. We have a team of dirty operators that specialize in things like assassinations and demoralization strikes. We have a ton of intel on the virus and Zombies in general that the people up north probably don’t have. We do have assets. I’d say after the strike they just hit us with that we’re still on a level playing field. They have the military might of that carrier, but they’re also bogged down by a lot of concerns we don’t have.”

  “What concerns are those?” Krantz asked. He was feeling really out of his depth here. With Sam here at headquarters why did they even need him? He was starting to wonder if it’d been Roberts calling the shots out in the field or if Sam had been the one pulling his strings the whole time.

  “They’re putting a lot more effort into taking care of the civilians on their side. They even have shelters for people who’ve lost their minds. They expend resources on people like that. We don’t have those concerns. We can’t afford to have them. The goal is for us to unite as much of the states back together as we can to form the New America. Everything else is secondary to that goal. Understood?”

  Krantz nodded at her to show he understood. What he really thought was that he’d just boarded the bus to crazy town. At least with the Senator there had been libations while he got lectured. His new personal goal was to get the hell out of this bunker as soon as he could before the crazy got into his clothes. Sam ignored the nod and sat behind her desk staring at him with her head cocked slightly to the side waiting for him to speak.

  “The Senator and you both keep mentioning knowing more about the virus? Anything I should know there?” Krantz asked.

  “It worked better than expected. Hopefully it’ll burn out fairly soon. We’ve got people studying the effects of the virus and it does seem like it wears off after a while. They’re brain dead and useless at that point but at least they don’t try to eat you. The percentage it wears off on is pretty small based on the clinical observation so far. For a much larger portion of infected the virus keeps them alive in ways the doctors still don’t understand. It’s like their cells eat themselves then multiply all at the same time. One of them tried explaining it to me and it almost made sense but then it didn’t. If you know what I mean?”

  “Sounds like freshman trigonometry.” Krantz answered. “Any other questions I should be asking you that I haven’t yet?”

  “You should be wondering who you report to. I’m not in the official chain of command. I prefer it that way. Officially you report to the Senator. Unofficially you will be given your tasks by me. Those tasks will support the Senators efforts to build the New America. I don’t want to see you being an idiot like Roberts and leading raids yourself. I do want you up near the front lines so you can get information quicker and be perceived to be leading from the front. You’ve come up with some creative ideas like the rooftop supply chain that I think may be useful moving forward. For now, we need to focus on crushing the people who just tried to wipe us out. You’ll get any specific tasks from me when you get back to Iron Turtle. Until then focus on coming up with a plan to win this war. The Senator will not cede any territory he feels he needs for the rebirth of America. You’re dismissed.”

  Krantz walked out to the hallway where a soldier met him and escorted him back out of the bunker. A golf cart ride later he was in the air on another helicopter headed back to the base he’d flown in from that morning. He was surprised to see the sun was still up. He felt like the meetings had taken all day. In reality it’d been less than four hours that he’d been on the ground. Now he just needed to figure out how to mercilessly attack a group of people who had aircraft carriers and bombers at their disposal. A group that was just trying to do the right thing in a messed-up world.

  He stopped himself from dwelling too much on that. It wasn’t going to do him any good in his current circumstances. He set his mind to just working the logistical and tactical aspects of it. He did his best to filter out the moral and ethical implications of the decisions he was going to be making soon. He was looking forward to getting back to his room at Iron Turtle and hitting another bottle of whiskey.

  Chapter 28: Road Trip!

  They made great time on the interstate. The people in the settlements in North Carolina had obviously been busy clearing the roads in between dealing with the whole Zombie apocalypse thing. It was surreal to Kyler how all of that worked. When he’d watched a Zombie movie or show back before all of this it’d never really occurred to him all the tedious tasks that must be taking place in the background. The fact that people still had to eat. They still needed a place to sleep. That fifty people living in the woods together would fill up a latrine pretty quick. At some point the people got used to avoiding the Zombies and just started working on trying to rebuild. Trying to actually have lives again instead of just surviving. At a certain point it would just become normal that you were living in an apocalypse. That’s just how humans were built. Adapt or die.

  The Senator had screwed the people of South Carolina out of entering the living again phase. They’d gone from surviving to momentarily looking like they may have lives to being invaded and conquered by a group that was intent on ripping their families apart and turning most of them into slaves. Slaves that got sent out without weapons to loot towns to build up supplies for an army that was moving forward to try and enslave more people. How evil did you have to be to be considered a worse plague than the Zombies?

  Kyler finally felt like he was back on the right side of things again. Fighting for the Brotherhood had always felt wrong to him. Except that when you were fighting with a group of guys that you’d grown close to it stopped being about the Brotherhood. It stopped being about the New America and all of the propaganda. It started being more about just trying to keep your buddies and yourself alive. Kyler knew if he’d stayed in the south much longer that he wouldn’t have been able to betray Krantz like he had. He could’ve pretty easily walked away from the whole New America concept. He couldn’t as easily have walked away from the individuals who’d earned his respect and loyalty.

  Either way he was happy to be back up in North Carolina. Happy to be riding along with a roving patrol. He felt like this was where he belonged. This was where he could fight the good fight. At least he’d be able to fight the good fight once they took the cuffs off and acknowledged that he was one of them. It was probably going to be hard for them to look past the brand on his back. Not that he’d had much choice in that matter. It was just another one of the many scars he’d collected trying to survive in this new normal.

  He was seated in the back of the large SUV. The truck had three rows of seats and a large trunk space. The trunk was full of gear and ammunition. Kyler was sitting in the back row in between two guards. The middle row was Caitlyn, Myriah and the little kids. They were shoved together completely ignoring all applicable seat belt laws. The view from the truck was pretty much limited to the brake lights from the Hummer they were following closely behind. Behind them the jeeps headlights were shining brightly into their back window.

  “Charlottes a pretty big city isn’t it?” Kyler asked out loud. He figured one of the guards might answer him. A conversation may loosen them up towards him some. If nothing else, it’d help pass the time.

  �
�Google it.” The guard on his left answered sarcastically. Word about the Brotherhood brand on his back had evidently gotten around. The story about him being a James Bond double agent kind of guy must not have been circulated as widely. Oh well, at least they hadn’t dragged him outside and beaten him to death as soon as they saw the brand.

  “I’m just asking since I seem to remember it being a big city. A big city would have a lot of people. That means that there’d be a lot of infected roaming around the area now. That’s all I was curious about.” Kyler said. He kept trying to get a conversation going. There wasn’t anything on the radio and he was sandwiched in between two men who hadn’t been stressing personal hygiene lately. He didn’t even want to try and nap. He was worried about how the guards would react if he tried to snuggle up to them in his sleep.

  “Is there going to be a ton of Zombies up ahead?” Caitlyn asked. She’d swung around in her seat to listen to the conversation Kyler was having with the guards. For some reason the guards were much nicer to the eighteen-year-old girl with the little kids in her lap than they were to the scarred enemy solider handcuffed between them.

  “It’s pretty bad in the city proper but the surrounding towns are actually pretty empty. Some of them have even been completely cleared out. The problem is the Zombies pretty much go wherever they think there might be regular uninfected people, so you never know when you’re going to swing around a corner and run into some of them.” The guard to Kyler’s left answered.

  The brake lights flashed brightly on the hummer up ahead. The Expedition Max they were riding in rocked forward as their driver quickly applied the brakes. Kyler was waiting for a wave of Zombies to come screeching towards them. It’d be exactly what they deserved for letting the moronic guard tempt the god of jinxing like that. The Hummer stood still in front of them for a few more minutes before it slowly began moving forward again. It gradually picked up speed and pretty soon they were back to normal.

  “Probably cows crossing the road.” One of the guards said. Wildlife and barnyard animals were common sights on the roads now that there was basically no traffic.

  They drove in silence after that. Kyler looked out the window but didn’t spot any cows. He understood it could’ve been any number of things that’d decided to run across the road at that particular moment. It wasn’t like wildlife needed to fear humanity anymore. Although that wasn’t entirely true. Animals were actually fiercely afraid of humans now that the Zombies would band up to hunt them down and eat them. In years past Kyler wasn’t so sure if animals had really ever been able to make the connection between the loud booming sound and Bambi’s mom hitting the forest floor. Now it was five Zombies hanging on to fistfuls of fat and fur eating the flesh off a living cow while it ran around in an overgrown meadow bellowing insanely and trying to fling them off.

  They drove another hour with a few more slowdowns. Only two of the slowdowns were due to Zombies. One was an adrenalized Zombie who somehow leapt completely over the Hummer in the lead of their small convoy. It smashed right into the grill of the beefed-up Ford SUV Kyler and the kids were following along in. The driver locked up the brakes and they went sideways for a minute. They all started breathing again once the truck coasted to a stop and no longer felt like it may topple over at any second. After looking all around to make sure there were no more surprises waiting in the darkness the soldier in the passenger seat got out. He used a small trenching shovel from the trunk to pry the Zombie roadkill off the grill of the truck. When the grossed out looking guard sat back down, he immediately started squirting way too much hand sanitizer all over his arms and hands.

  The other Zombie they slowed down for was a little boy. The Zombie was standing on the side of the road looking for all the world like a kid walking to school. He even had a backpack on. A backpack, a shirt, one boot with a sock and that was it. The half-naked kid covered in dried up sores stood on the side of the road solemnly staring at the cars as they drove by. Kyler would’ve missed him if he hadn’t noticed the driver poke the guard in the passenger seat to point out the lone kid. The infected kid didn’t move or scream. He just stared at them with a sad and solemn expression until he disappeared back into the darkness.

  “You guys see a lot of the Zombies that just stand there and stare at you?” Kyler asked. He was genuinely curious. He was excited by the idea that some of the Zombies were coming down from the virus generated insanity. He’d take boring Zombies that didn’t do anything besides be creepy over the ones who kept trying to rip your head off and dine on your intestines any day.

  “Every once in a while. There seems to be a few more of them lately.” The soldier had evidently forgotten he was supposed to be a jerk to Kyler. Or maybe the way Caitlyn had followed up on Kyler’s question last time just had him acting nicer. By the tone of his voice it was something the guard was curious about as well.

  “What do you think makes them act like that?” Caitlyn asked.

  “I don’t know. I was kind of hoping it was the virus starting to die off. Either that or maybe it’s burnt them out.” The guard answered.

  “Could be they were the ones who never really got the angry cannibal twist.” The other guard added. This was actually something he’d spent a lot of time thinking about as well. It wasn’t like they could stream Netflix anymore.

  “What do you mean?” Caitlyn asked. The whole car had gotten quiet. Everyone was listening to the conversation. Everyone except the littles who were busy playing with the etch a sketch tablets they’d found in the toy section of the barn house they’d spent the day cooped up in. Caitlyn had cracked open a glow stick for them to be able to see by after the driver complained when she’d turned on the overhead dome light.

  “I mean the ones that just stare could’ve been around the whole time. Maybe when some of them go through the change they just don’t get the DNA or whatever that turns most of them into cannibals. We could be seeing them more now because there’d be more of them left wandering around. We’ve killed the hell out of the ones that charge straight at us screeching and the bulk of them have been joining herds. The quiet ones I’ve seen have all been alone or in a small group.”

  “What if you woke up one morning and realized you were back to being yourself after spending the last two years running around like a monster eating people. I wonder if that’d drive you insane enough to just walk around staring at people.” Myriah said quietly. Her voice trembling with the thought of what that’d be like.

  “I don’t know about that.” One of the guards said shaking his head slowly. “I don’t think you can burn your brain out for that long then just wake up one morning and remember everything. I guess it could happen. If it did you may be right. That’d be enough to drive you right back to crazy town.”

  The conversation veered off into less horrifying topics. Where the guards were from. Where everyone had gone to school. Movies and shows they used to watch. A very involved discussion of the top ten waterslides and roller coasters which Myriah started as a way to memorialize YouTube. The conversation made the trip go by a lot faster. Before any of them realized it, they were off the interstate and driving down a smaller road with the driver letting them know that they’d be getting out of the cars in another ten minutes .

  When they pulled off the road and start driving down another overgrown service road Kyler thought he was picking up on a theme. He was waiting to see another barn like house rise up out of the woods when they stopped in front of a dock instead. In the darkness Kyler could just make out what looked to be a very large lake in front of them. Everyone got out of the car and stood around slapping at the occasional mosquito. The guards went over to a rack by the dock and started taking canoes down off of it and sliding them towards the water.

  “Super quiet and doesn’t use up any gas.” Bryan said seeing the way everybody was staring at them. “There’s a bunch of lifejackets over by the front of the bar and grill over there. You should at least get ones for the little kids and Kyler.
He falls in with those handcuffs on he’s not going to be able to doggie paddle very well.”

  “Or you could take the cuffs off.” Kyler said smiling sweetly and holding his hands up imploringly.

  “Suck it up Buttercup.” Bryan told him. “We’ll be able to make some calls here shortly to see if we can put you out of your misery. Either take the cuffs off or shoot you in the head. One way or the other. No more misery.”

  “At least I don’t have to paddle.” Kyler muttered walking towards the beach where the guards were loading up the canoes.