Dead Man's Party

by Nathan Robert Brown

  The soldier to Erik's right dropped forward, catching himself with his hands and puking at the same moment. Erik quickly moved the man's side signaling Glover to stay put. “Sergeant, we have a sick man.” Erik pulled the rifle sling over the downed man's head and pushed the weapon away. The man gasped and groaned for a second between bouts of vomiting. Dark muck streaked with bright bile pooled on the ground and spread toward Erik's boot.

  By the time J-man reached the pair, the man collapsed into the puddle vomit. Erik and J-man rolled the downed man to a recovery position. After another minute, he shuddered and stopped breathing.

  “Shit,” J-man rolled the soldier onto his back. Erik immediately started opening the man's armor. “He's not breathing.” J-man performed a head-tilt chin lift and got no response. He looked at Erik while checking for breathing. Erik with his fingers still on the man's wrist, shook his head. J-man checked for a carotid pulse.

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No, sergeant. He looked a little pale and wobbly a few minutes after the incident on the other bridge, but he looked fine when we got here. I chalked it up to the close call.”

  “Didn't he get blood all over his face?” Erik nodded slowly. J-man looked back at the man. “Jamison, stand up and back away.”

  J-Man waited for the downed man to open his eyes. Without hesitation, he swung his E-tool in an ark, cleaving the skull. He checked the body then set about salvaging the soldier's gear.

  Erik dropped to a knee and puked.

  “It's alright,” J-man materialized at his shoulder. “Better for him that he didn't have to watch his body attack us. We'll hang his tags with the others. Go back to the line and get ready.”

  A couple zombies lurched along about five hundred meters from the bridge. Everyone expected the zombies to appear sooner and in larger numbers. They felt relief at the scant handful of undead shuffling toward the bridge. Given their movement, they still had several minutes walking to come into comfortable firing distance.

  “Sergeant. Not to be out of line,” the older National Guard soldier said over his shoulder, “But those guys gonna be done soon, or we going loud?”

  J-man looked over his shoulder from where he knelt on the line facing the approaching zombies. He decided he had time to walk to where the Demo team went over the side and ask for an ETA. They answered by sliding down their lines to the boats below. Torrent waved, signaling the rest of them should get off the bridge via the ropes. J-man felt inclined to agree.

  He whistled to get the attention of Lee on the Key Largo side of the bridge. Lee understood immediately and led his group to the ropes. J-man returned to his point on the line.

  Erik returned his attention to the lurching forms as J-man started telling them they would move as soon as the last man from the other team went over the edge. Glover fired three rounds, shattering the silence. Erik assumed it was a lone zombie or a pair at most.

  Four more rounds erupted from Glover's rifle. Erik swung his rifle to provide assistance. His stomach dropped. More than two dozen zombies approached the waist high barrier, struggling up the concrete hill. Three zombies lay in careless heaps on the road, dropped by Glover. Several rolled down the embankment where the falling bodies knocked over several zoms like shambling bowling pins. Erik spotted two zombies mounting the barrier. He fired five times to drop them. Glover fired two shots at two more. The older National Guards man turned and brought his rifle into play.

  “Shit,” J-man said, “Pull back to the ropes. Jamison. Paulson.”

  The National Guard soldier popped up and ran toward the ropes. Clearly he planned to move in one bound. Erik jumped a half second behind him. They took up positions in the middle of the road. Once J-man crossed to one side or the other, both of them had clear views of the zombies trying to figure out how to climb over the barrier.

  “Set!” Erik yelled. Glover covered the open ground to the ropes fast enough for NFL tryouts, if the NFL had still been a thing.

  Paulson snapped two rounds at the zombies who had regained their feet. Erik assumed J-man was clear and took three shots of his own.

  “Jamison, Paulson, down the ropes,” J-man bellowed, popping off a round.

  Neither of them wasted time, simply slinging their rifles on their backs, grabbing the ropes and climbing down. Erik nearly laughed. It seemed as soon as he cleared the bottom of the bridge his feet landed on the upper deck of his boat.

  “Off rope!”

  A couple seconds later, J-man and Bookie came over the edge of the bridge.

  “Punch it. Get us the hell out of here!” Torrent yelled. The drivers didn't argue.

  Before they reached the end of the creek to begin the return trip, the concussion from the blast slammed into them. Erik looked back to see the section of bridge, snapped near the support beam, fall into the water, breaking as it slid completely away from its supports.

  “That was kinda cool guys. Let's not do it again any time soon,” Erik said, returning to his seat and watching the shore slip by.

  Chapter 19

  Get Your Kicks on Route...

  Dawn broke cool and gray. Lily acknowledged the possibility it would rain before midday. At the same time, she didn't care. Her feet and legs ached from trudging through the woods all night. Fire burned her chest where the wolf scratched her. She didn't want to see how red and swollen the marks became over night. Her arm throbbed constantly where the wolf's teeth tore the flesh badly.

  As soon as I stop to eat, it's time for more antibiotics.

  When the sun finished clearing the horizon, Lily felt hot. Burning hot. Forcing herself to walk took all of her concentration. The memory of the fight with the three wolves flashed before her eyes. She looked around, making sure nothing moved in the woods behind her. Nothing short of collapsing from total exhaustion would make her consider sleeping in the woods again.

  The sun cast orange light amongst the trees, and Lily felt safe enough to stop. She carefully took off her backpack and fished out breakfast and the bottle of antibiotics. The thirty minutes she allotted herself passed too quickly. She wanted more rest, but didn't trust herself not to fall asleep if she sat there another minute. Before she put the pack back on, Lily poured a small amount of water over the makeshift bandage on her chest.

  Her feet felt like lead at the end of long numbed sticks. They half dragged behind her as she walked, zombie-like, in the straightest line she could manage. At least the road, the one she half crossed before she realized was actually a real road, made walking less hazardous, fewer tree roots reached out to grab her ankles.

  Besides her, nothing traveled the small forest road. The state highway barely rated the title. Its two asphalt lanes showed evidence of infrequent repair and moderate wear. She stumbled in one of the pot-holes, lucky to have escaped twisting or breaking her ankle.

  All day she trudged along the road, struggling to put one foot in front of the other. Between the growing fever and the exertion of walking uncounted miles, sweat poured from her face and chest. Alternating bouts of burning up and freezing added to the pain of her injuries and the general ache of ten days hard travel over broken ground.

  If I survive this mess, I'm hiking every week.

  Every time Lily considered taking a break, she thought of curling up under a blanket and sleeping. Fear of sleeping outside, without some form of security kept her from stopping even for breaks. Instead she slowed her walk to a near crawl. She wondered briefly how long she could continue to walk before her mind seated itself firmly on how miserable she felt.

  Zombies be damned. I'm sick.

  Something ran into a trashcan with a crash and shuffled to keep its feet, kicking things loudly. The sound cut its way through the fever hallucinations to be processed by instincts. Lily probably couldn't have shot the zombie behind her, but turning and raising her rifle saved her life. Further down the street she'd been walking, someone fired a suppressed rifle. Its bark still exploded through the narrow street, but less like a g
unshot and more like close thunder, making it harder for humans and zombies to zero in on the shooter.

  The zombie flinched and fell backward. Lily only half saw it. She uttered a feeble cry “Help. Please,” before the ground rushed up to meet her. Everything ached as a pair of hands dragged her along the road, and everything felt so very far away, more like a dream than physical reality.

  Her rescuer pulled her eyes open and shined a light in them. Mumbled and garbled words floated to Lily's ears. Lily tried to answer questions she thought she heard. Something stung at her arm like a fire ant. Finally, despite every effort to stay in the situation, her mind sank into the sleep of fevered dreams.

  ***

  SPC Randall Jims walked back to his barracks from the boardwalk at Kandahar Airfield (KAF), as three military police SUVs and an ambulance with the the red cross and red crescent sped past. His M-4 bounced lightly against his back as he turned to see where the emergency vehicles headed. They turned left past The Boardwalk. SPC Jims assumed they rushed toward a car accident or something near the civilian air terminal he knew lay somewhere past the big hospital. Being early evening, traffic increased at the gate and upped the likelihood of a collision. The way locals drove didn't help either.

  He shrugged, shifted the bag he carried and started walking to his barracks again. Throughout his deployment, he avoided KAF. The Super-FOB sprawled like a mid-sized city with a population to match: contractors, locals, and military from a dozen countries. Several compounds stand within KAF, hiding behind their own fences and walls topped with razor wire. Concrete bunkers, some covered in sandbags, stood like gray patches of mushrooms among the multicolored, re-purposed connexes and tents that formed the majority of buildings on KAF. Brick buildings exist on KAF, just not many of them.

  SPC Jims considered himself lucky. He lived in one of those real buildings, surrounded by a fence with convenient gates and less than two minutes walking from the USO. Another nice thing about the real building he lived in, you couldn't hear most of the alarms unless someone opened a door. That suited SPC Jims and his buddies just fine, especially after lights out.

  Inside or not, SPC Jims doubted anyone missed the explosion. Windows rattled, and a second later came the squashed sounding boom. SPC Jims ran to the exterior door of his bay a second ahead of everyone else in the room. Secondary blasts sounded, quieter than the first, but big in their own right. To the Northeast, near the entry control point for the civilian airport, thick, black smoke billowed in a massive column, tinged orange with fire.

  “Jesus. That had to have been nearly a thousand pounds of HME,” his First Sergeant said behind him.

  “What about those six secondaries?” someone asked.

  “S-Vests maybe,” Jims said to no one in particular.

  “Do we have everyone?” the First Sergeant asked. SPC Jims kept watching the smoke and watching groups of people scramble. He assumed the First Sergeant got his answer. “Alright. Everyone stays here. I'm going to go report and find more info.”

  SPC Jims broke down and bought the overpriced one-week internet package to kill some time. After a week with no contact with the outside world, he wanted to check his email and maybe post a picture or two. The news on his social media and the major news feeds seemed too surreal to be accurate.

  An angry Sergeant First Class burst through the door to the bay. He started yelling immediately. “Gear up. We need to lock this building down. Now!”

  SPC Jims and everyone else in the room jumped up. Jims started throwing his body armor over his head. As soon as he finished strapping his armor in place, Jims threw his rifle sling over his shoulder and dropped the mag. He reseated his ready mag and ran his hand across his belly, checking for his other six mags. The Sergeant yelled encouragement at the others in the room.

  “I don't give a flying fuck what your rank is. I'm telling you to establish watches on all the stairwell doors and the main doors for the building.”

  The Sergeant First Class yelled for SPC Jims and the other three who finished gearing up, a sergeant and two privates Jims didn't know, to go to the main entrance. As they reached the double doors, Jims heard the distinct pops of M-4s interspersed with the deeper bangs of AK's. He couldn't tell who pulled the trigger on the AK's though because at least three countries with soldiers on KAF carried them.

  Outside, only the gunfire a quarter mile or more distant and the monotonous computerized voice repeating “Ground Attack” on the PA system told of anything out of the ordinary on the base. Jims looked left and saw another fire team outside the next building. They looked every bit as confused as he felt. Smoke still plumed upward to the northeast, barely visible against the darkening sky, in the direction of the gate.

  Ten minutes crawled by with the shadows growing deeper.

  “Sergeant, rather than sitting here in the open and trying to control four entry points, should we lock the gates and that way we only have to watch two points?” SPC Jims asked still kneeling behind an heavy duty HVAC unit.

  The sergeant didn't answer. Jims heard more than saw the sergeant stand and walk into the barracks. He re-emerged a moment later. “Building manager only had the one chain and lock. We'll have to do some scrounging,” he said. “You, go tell the group on the next building to look for another chain and lock.”

  Jims heard the designated soldier get up and trot away. “You,” Jims felt a bump to the back of his helmet. “You're with me while I lock the gate.”

  Fifty feet away, just past a pair of picnic tables that served as a smoking area, stood a gate just big enough for a person to step through. It stuck a bit short of half-way open, making it so you had to step sideways through the gate rather than walking straight through.

  The sergeant, Davies according to his name tape, pushed the gate closed. Jims kept his head on the swivel and checked three-sixty as Davies wrapped the chain twice around the gate and the fence pole, cursing the green mesh stretched over the fence and the gate.

  “Help!” someone on the other side of the fence yelled. Davies stopped short of closing the lock. The owner of the voice ran into the gate, beating on it. “Help, please. Let me in, quick.”

  Davies unwound the chain, and swung the gate just far enough to allow the man inside. Jims wondered what prompted the sergeant to close the gate so quickly. Davies re-wrapped the chain and closed the lock fast enough to set a record somewhere.

  Jims looked at the man they let in. He cradled one arm with blood on the sleeve, and held his pistol in his uninjured hand. From the way he held the gun, Jims figured it was his off hand. The man jumped at a short burst of gun fire that came from somewhere East of them.

  “Alright. Locked,” Davies said, turning to Jims. “See if you can find him a medic, and get another group of guys down here.”

  Jims led the man to the second floor of the barracks. He found a medic not far from his own bunk. The medic quickly and precisely set about treating the injured Captain.

  “I got him from here,” the medic said as he pulled dressings and an IV kit from his bulging aid bag.

  SPC Jims nodded and went to find the Sergeant First Class who ordered them to defend the building. He found the sergeant coming into the main halls from one of the stairwells.

  “Sergeant. Sergeant Davies needs another group of men for the main entrance so we can finish securing the perimeter fence,” Jims said crisply. He worried when the Sergeant First Class Hammer's face reddened for a split second.

  Hammer hesitated for a heartbeat. “Alright, I'll send down another team. How many gates are there?”

  “Two I think. The small gate near the smoke pit and the truck gate over by the USO. We've chained the small gate already. Sergeant Davies wants to secure the big gate and walk the fence to be sure.”

  Hammer nodded. I'll be down with the group in a moment.” Jims walked back to the entrance.

  SFC Hammer finally got through to some of the staff sergeants and Senior NCOs in the barracks. Two groups of five men, in full kit,
joined the squad of lower enlisted watching the two gates and the main doors for each of the three buildings.

  In the last hour, fewer vehicles coasted past the little barracks compound. The screams punctuating the periodic smalls arms fire crept closer. SPC Jims could see the concern on the faces of a few of the Senior NCOs.

  “You three got this?” Jims asked the sergeant and two privates with him at the main entry to his barracks, “I gotta use the latrine.”

  The sergeant nodded. “We got this.”

  Jims walked through the door and down the short hallway toward the ground floor restroom.

  “A little help!” The cry came from upstairs.

  Immediately, Jims spun and ran for the stairs, yelling “Sergeant!” as he passed the door. He took the steps two at a time, burning some precious energy to reach whoever yelled more quickly.

  “Sonovabitch! Get him off me!”

  Jims turned right toward the yelling. Through an open set of double doors, he saw two men struggling to pull a third man off his victim. The attacker suddenly released his victim and turned on the man whose hand was on his arm, biting two of his fingers clean off. Another ear splitting scream as the injured man pushed himself away from his attacker.

  Jims didn't slow down and plowed straight into the attacker with his helmet in the man's face. He heard a crunch as the two of them ricocheted off a bed post and mattress before landing in a pile on the floor. Jims's momentum carried him off his target. He rolled once to get his feet under him.

  As the crazed man pulled himself to his feet, Jims recognized the officer with the injured wrist. No color remained in his face and his eyes seemed off, though Jims couldn't say just why.

  “Sir, try to calm down. We can't help if you fight us,” Jims said, showing his open hands and keeping them close to his chest.