by Mark Clodi
John spotted the convoy first, when he did he excitedly yelled out, "Juan! There they are Juan! Do you see em?" The eighteen year old was dressed in green hospital scrubs badly in need of changing. He stood about five foot ten inches tall, had black hair and hazel eyes with long soft looking eyelashes. His hair was, like his clothing, in need of a good washing, his face had the pall of someone who has been up too long and is running on pure adrenaline and caffeine.
Juan was in the bathroom, which did have a window, however he was sitting down and could not see outside, let alone back along the road leading to the hospital, "No. I don't see them, Give me a minute to finish! Jesus wept! Call it in to Jack, let them know they are coming, okay?"
"Sure thing!" pulling the walkie talkie of off his belt he pressed the send button and said, "I can see them Jack, they are pulling up the street now. Juan is on the pot, so I am calling to let you know."
Some laughter came back at John a moment later as Jack replied, "Thanks, we'll open the doors for them and tell Juan not to rush things, cleanliness is next to godliness, right?"
John looked puzzled for a second and looked at Juan as he came through the bathroom door, "What did he mean by that? God that guy is so weird sometimes!"
"Sì. Don't worry about it. Next time you don't have to mention I am on the pot, right?"
John's face blushed as realization dawned on him, then he turned quickly to look out the window again with a clipped nod. "Say, Juan, you guys got a humvee, eh? That must be nice, did you run into military guys then?"
Turning to look, Juan shook his head slowly, "No, no they didn't when we left, maybe someone came in or something, I better tell Jack, make sure it is who we think it is." Putting his lips near the talkie he said, "Jack."
On the other end, Jack answered, "Juan old pal, you all buttoned up already?"
"Good to go. Jack one of the vehicles coming up is a hummer. Did we have a hummer that I didn't see at the club? It is painted in a camouflage pattern."
"What? No! I don't think so. Aw hell Juan you don't think they are bad guys do you?"
Peering at the vehicles closely Juan watched for a few seconds, shaking his head he answered, "Not bad guys, they look okay to me, but they have lots of guns and stuff, you better try and call them on the cell before they get to much closer!"
"Affirmative, right away!" the walkie talkie went silent for a few minutes while John and his Spanish counterpart watched the convoy approach with trepidation.
"Its them Juan! Its them! They picked up a straggler, but it's okay!" Jack's voice brought the welcome news over the walkie-talkie.
"Gracias a Dios!" Juan muttered quietly, then said, "Good, glad to hear it, me and John will stay here until you send someone for us, okay, just to keep a couple eyes out."
"Yeah, as planned anyway, well send someone up there to relieve you soon, we have to figure out how we are going to proceed, probably me and a couple other guys will come up and we'll shoot the shit about it in fifteen minutes or so, okay?"
"Yeah, super, we'll be waiting.", Juan said, turning to John he continued, "You still got that deck of cards you found?"
Closer to twenty minutes later Jack showed up with Nanci, a man in an Army uniform and no one else. The man in the uniform looked a bit shabby, he was shaved, but the uniform was a little big on him. He was wearing a military style cap, though he had a Kevlar helmet hanging off of his belt. He was also dressed in full body armor, which may have contributed to making his uniform seem overly large. His hair was not close cropped in a crew cut, just a normal looking haircut. His face was tanned, not Hispanic and he had brown eyes. His eyes conveyed the look that Juan was familiar with these days, Sylvia had the same look, so had Kevin. The two thousand yard stare of a man who had seen so much his mind was no longer quite focusing on the here on now, so much as the 'there and then'. Juan had only a second to take this in before Nancie grabbed him by the neck and kissed him, she then started hugging him tight, while whispering endearments and praises to God that he was alive. The look on Jack's face told Juan the other man had news, and that it was not good. After a few seconds Jack cleared his voice and said, "It will just be us talking Juan. No sense pulling everyone into this. Juan this is Ted Jenkins, Ted, Juan and John."The men shook hands all around, "John you and Ted get to watch and see how we do things, if you have anything constructive to add, jump in and say something., Turning to John he said, "You might know parts of the hospital better than we do, did you work here or were you visiting?"
"I had part time hours here after school, they called me in when people didn't show up to work their shift. I just swept the floors." replied John.
"Good enough, you know the main hallways and can help us figure out where to go. I want to basically try and isolate the cafeteria, maternity ward and ER, if we can keep these places clear it will make it easier to eat and escape if we have to. Of course the guys back at the warehouse will get a call if there are any problems. Doc tells me they are getting another load of vehicles working now if we need reinforcements. They sent over twelve men, plus we got Ted and his two more guardsmen.", pausing he pulled a box of ammunition out of his jacket and handed it to Juan, "Oh they sent a ton of shotgun ammo, you might want these, huh?", Juan took the shells, opened the box and while they were talking he busied himself tucking the shells into his various pockets.
"Okay, John, any thoughts on how to block the hallways or anything between the areas we want to isolate and the rest of the hospital?" asked Jack.
John thought for a moment, rubbed his chin and said, "Yeah, the fire doors! We can just shut and lock them from the central panel, I think Tim has a key and knows how to do that, he can shut the maternity ward off on the second level and shut the doors between radiology and the ER on the ground floor, there are not any doors between the cafeteria and the main entrance, but the other ground floor rooms can be cut off. We had a problem with one of those doors locking once, it was a big deal, had to call in a contractor, patients and doctors had to go up the stairs and down the other side to get to rooms, it was a big mess….Sorry! I didn't mean to go on there, uh, yeah we can mostly do it, except for the cafeteria, the stairway exits all open out and can be locked from this side, nothing would get through, but we could get out."
"Okay, we can build more barricades to seal off the cafeteria from the main entrance better, we already got one up, but it is pretty flimsy. Why don't you go ask Tim about it and get stuff locked down now John? And thanks for your help."
John got up to go, saying, "No problem" and as he left Juan could not help but wonder at how smoothly that had been handled by Jack. Ever since the group came in, Jack had been a little edgy and Juan was pretty sure it was because of the Guardsman, Juan recognized what Jack did as a way to get the kid out of the room so Ted could talk to them in private. Jack waited until he heard the door at the end of the hallway clang shut and then turned to Juan again, "We may have a problem."
"Sì? I got that, what?"
"Bad news from Sergeant Ted, I am afraid. You guys saw how the road was cleared and how there were a few body bags here and there as they did it?" Juan nodded, "Well, the military was trying to go and relieve that dj, who is holed up in his building, broadcasting instructions and news on how to deal with the zombie threat, well, shoot, I better let him tell it." Jack cast a glance at Ted and nodded.
Ted spoke for the first time, his voice was gravelly and not unlike Hank's in many ways, he said, "We are from the depot between Colorado Springs and south Denver, near Larkspur. My unit, part of the 36th Infantry Division, was attached to the 36th Aviation Brigade, a National Guard unit, when this mess started we were equipping for rotation in the middle east, we had three days to go until we shipped, that would have been, why today! Anyway we were confined to base to keep some of the younger guys from going AWOL at the last second, usually by having car trouble or drinking so much they passed out or getting into a bar fight and thrown in the drunk tank the night before, there has been a real
problem since the wars started. So we got to sit on the base and almost mutiny before the army gave us our orders. This whole thing took the military by surprise, I can tell you that! A foreign war on foreign soil, sure, but a horde of zombies in our own back yard? How can we fight that?"
"Well yesterday we were ready to do it, break out and go home, find our loved ones and kick some zombie ass. We were ready to go with or without official sanction, then word comes down of a mission that might do more good, rescue one guy, a hero of sorts, and use rescuing him as a reconnaissance mission to plan future attacks into the city to rescue other pockets of humans still alive. None of us liked it much, we all wanted to rescue our families and check on our friends, however in the military they train you to know that ten individuals are not as effective as ten men working as a team. This was a military situation; our country is being overrun, even if our foes were unconventional and unarmed. A few lectures by our superiors and most of us bought into the strategy, even if we did not like it. Plus, I have to admit, we were afraid, the only news we got was from the dj, and according to him there was a sea of zombies around and in his building. What could we do alone?"
"So we spent a restless night griping and getting what rest we could. I think all of us planned to take our vehicles and head out on our own when we reached town, most of us are from up and down the front range, maybe twenty percent are from down south where the unit is 'Officially' stationed, Texas and Oklahoma. My two guys, in the humvee were from Aurora, like me. We thought we'd scope the situation, get this Blake guy first, then head east to get our families. A humvee can hold eight easy, and we had a total of eight family members to go and find. Not a coincidence, but a stroke of luck that we were one of the 'short' vehicles. The plan was to go in rescue any civilians we could, take down as many zombies as we could, at least put a dent in their numbers and then get the hell out. We had tanks, a couple of the 'Interim Armored Vehicles', the newer ones, with the turreted twenty millimeter guns that can be slaved to take down aircraft, like on those navy ships, you catch that in the news a year or so back?"
Jack and Juan shook their heads 'no', Ted shrugged his shoulders and continued,
"Oh, that is a sight to see, works great with drones anyway and they have some anti-missile capabilities too. Anyway they mount a twenty millimeter 'main' gun, and an M2 fifty caliber machine gun, same gun we have on the humvee
Then they loaded us up with ammo, an extra quarter ton of the fity caliber rounds, three extra cases of belt fed twenty millimeter ammo for the IAVs and two cases of the hundred and five recoilless rifle high explosive rounds. Plus we had two fifty gallon drums of fuel and medical supplies. Not much fucking room in there with that garbage loaded up. No problem, we knew how to deal with excess. Heck it ain't like any of us were going to have docked pay or worry about a court-martial."
"So we climbed in our M1132 humvee, I was in command and I put Thompson on the turret with the old fifty caliber and Sanchez on shotgun. Thompson didn't have to be up and out for the ride, so we chatted about our plan on the way up from Larkspur. It would be cake to do a fade out and we wanted to go back to the base, there were no zombies there, we hadn't even seen one until we hit Castle Rock. Me and the boys only saw dead ones until we got into the Tech Center. Oh and we were the tail too, we rode about a klick behind the last vehicle with orders to call in if we saw anything creeping up our ass. Mostly we were supposed to be there for re-supply, something we would not need, I mean the zombies didn't even have guns and could not fight back, right? We were a wasted resource and fading to get our families would be no big deal, especially on the way back."
"Well when we hit Denver everything slowed way down, we had major, I am talking major crashes to content with, we were lucky to make four clicks an hour with all the moving we had to do, I guess the Major was not so stupid after all, to have brought up our heavy movers and equipment. We heard the gunfire at the front of the column before we saw any hordes of zombies, the scuttlebutt that came back to us was that the zombies were hiding in wrecks or on overpasses, or coming up the ramps at us when we stopped. I ordered Thompson into position, it should be a cake walk, the new lightweight cupolas are real effective against small arms and fragments and our enemy didn't even have guns. He wasn't worried, I wasn't worried. Still when that first mob came up the on ramp at us they made it all the way to the rear bumper before he stopped them. You ever see what a fifty caliber bullet does to a man? This gun can plow through cement walls about a foot thick with the armor piercing rounds, the standard rounds we were using don't have quite that penetrative power, but when they hit." the sergeant made a ka-plowing sound with his mouth while opening a fist with one hand, "when they hit, they make great big holes in things. Especially meaty things."
The zombies were not stopped though, they kept on coming over their dead, the slow rate we were moving kept the rain of bullets just beyond the back of the vehicle and then some of them hit us from the side. I was never happier to have Sanchez than yesterday, he knows how to work his AR-3. He muzzled it out of the firing port on his side and kept that clear and I used my pistol out of my side. Sanchez had to squirm into the back to shoot out of my side, he ended up staying there for the rest of the trip. Because he could hand Thompson ammo from there too."
Anyway by the time it ended we had burned up half our allotted fifty caliber rounds, and most of our small arms ammunition. The Major had us catch up to the tail and we got more small arms ammo out of an actual supply truck. He told us it was 'open' firing too, but not to waste ammo on things that were not heading towards us or were too far away to be a threat. We took extra small arms ammo, a triple load and I grabbed a rifle off the truck too. Normally the driver just carries their side arm, the army doesn't want a driver getting his crew killed because he is not paying attention to his job: driving. I took the rifle, just in case."
We had taken our first casualties then too, while we were fighting off the zombies at the rear, others had been bushwhacked all up and down the line. This was our first clue that someone was planning the attacks against us. I mean people just don't attack at the same time, unless they are ready to do so, this was not a case of 'Fred Zombie' hearing gunfire and coming over to join the fray, this was a case of three hundred and fifty 'Fred Zombies' waiting until they were given orders to run up the ramps and attack us. A lot of the guys were just in trucks, not even humvees, the trucks just had canvas walls and no guns mounted. They took it the worst we had maybe thirty left in body bags, all with a bullet into the brain, as most of them had come back during the fight, now if anyone died, we were to put a bullet in their brains first thing."
We made steady progress into town, the God damned radio station is in North East Denver, a rifle shot away from the Denver International Airport, by the afternoon we had made it to the station, we knew what was there, the 36th is an Aviation Brigade, which means it has helicopters, and it had done a few recon flights over the building, then they had come back and made strafing runs until it ran dry. They said there were a few left for us to mop up. They were wrong. The damned zombies just got under cover, or if they could not do that they just laid there pretending to be 'dead again', the details that can be seen from a helicopter are not that good for determining if a guy is faking it and just lying there or actually does have a head wound."
"I know where we were told to stop was a four way intersection, between two major thoroughfares, each four lanes, plus turn lanes, I am talking a lot of room there. And there were bodies everywhere, the helicopter had done its job well, even sawed off a street light, clean as butter, I know because I parked right under it. We had to drive over bodies to circle the wagons, nothing was moving. You ever see what a twenty millimeter round does to a building?" shrugging again, Ted said, "No? I suppose not. Anyway, for one thing calling a twenty millimeter shell a 'round' pretty much says it all. You know in the old world war two they had anti-tank guns that were that big? It is a round that used to be for taking out a fucking tank, a
nd nowadays we run that size through machine guns on our helicopters, is that crazy or what? Anyway, you can just imagine what the surrounding buildings looked like, the bullets go through the walls, sometimes they collapse the building, sometimes they fly all the way out the other side and into the building beyond that. Sometime even through that other building. These rounds were fired from above so a lot of the angles were up to down, the streets were uneven and pocked, kind of puckered up, like Satan's mouth blowing raspberries at God."
"I can't really say much about the fight itself, we were so far removed from it that most of it was over before it was obvious that we had lost. The tanks were overkill, a hundred and eighty millimeter shell is great against soft targets or infantry that could actually bleed to death from a fragment, against zombies? Tanks against zombie, well let's just say they didn't do that well.", shrugging yet again Ted went on, "Our part of it was a bit chaotic. The column had split into groups as we were supposed to, our group was to be the reserve, just hanging back in case we were needed. This really met that we sat a a four way intersection and waited. The soldiers were getting a little edgy, and started screwing around a bit, but for the most part our group was in good shape. The other groups were in three columns with an old tank leading each one followed by a couple LAV's those nineteen ton 'Light Armored Vehicles' we spent so much money developing, then found out they aren't worth shit against a common mine or roadside bomb, remember that on the news? Anyway we had nine of those, two in each column and three in the reserve pool in case they were needed. There were no extra main battle tanks in the reserve. We have another tank in the platoon, it is still back at the base in the garage, undergoing maintenance." Sergeant Ted paused in telling his tale and took a long pull from his canteen.
"Except for the LAV's we were the only unit with a mounted machine gun and we were positioned, once again, to watch our asses, make sure nothing crept up on us and to keep the way to retreat open. Hah! That is a joke, we drove right into them, not knowing what they were. We let them surround us completely and then we were surprised when they rose up off the ground almost in unison to attack us. At the same time the ones got up off the ground more rushed out of all those buildings. I saw this one guy, right before it started, at the urging of his buddies, creeping towards an open doorway, a dark open doorway. He got about eight feet from it and froze, after that, as my old drill instructor would say, 'the foul excrement hit the air moving rotary device'. The guy I saw by the door fired wildly into the building while turning around and running back to his buddies, they were laughing their asses off; I saw he had pissed himself, and keyed Tompson that they zombies were gonna hit us, that was all I had time for."