World of Ashes

by J. K. Robinson

  Raising his hand for all to see, Ethan threw it down, signaling for the clearing of the hillside to begin. Clean kills, every one of them, the men taking their time as instructed. This part really was just like the movies, if they filmed from the point of view of the man in the pillbox and not the one charging at it. The fight almost resembled wars of the distant past; stand in lines, shoot the enemy, hope you don’t get hit back. Luckily this enemy’s only weapon was their own rapidly decaying bodies, a rifle could keep them at bay, or at least at arm’s length. Whether or not being partially eaten before succumbing to a virus that could not be cured was worse than having your bones shattered by a soft-lead musket ball, history would have to be the judge.

  “One shot one kill!” Could be heard from deputies all along the line, especially at the gate where there was nothing but men with shields and long riot sticks and pistols stopping the zombies. The moans of the undead thirsting for flesh cast an eerie background noise to the battle. Someone had the presence of mind to climb on the roof of the buildings and look down the hill along the path the residents had built to gather water from the river. There were at least two hundred dead climbing the hill toward them and more floating down the river like so many turds in a toilet.

  “Are you sure we have enough ammunition for this?” Keith asked.

  “We should have plenty if we keep up this pace.” Ethan took a deep breath, “Really wish we had a helicopter in town, airlift would be nice for supplying ammo and water. The faucets aren’t working here anymore. I think the park service shut the mains down. These amateurs don’t seem to know how to turn it back on.”

  “Still.” Keith breathed a sigh of relief as the riflemen got comfortable, sure they could stop most zombies before the lurching, uncoordinated sacks of runny, waterlogged snot were halfway up the hill. Ethan took a few shots, his ACOG making it too eazy. He wondered briefly how much more sporting it might have been to use his cap & ball pistols against the zombies. It wasn’t like the ghouls were raging anymore, making themselves perfect targets.

  Six hours later the men were still at it. Any zombies coming up the roads had been eliminated, but the infected were still wading through immobile carcasses the other undead to come up the path. A siren at the gate heralded the arrival of two fire trucks and the five-ton filled with ammunition, food and most importantly, water. The water was especially welcomed. Someone had also had the presence of mind to bring a generator and a couple of construction lights in case the battle went on through the night, along with a separate generator on top of the high school for a repeater tower.

  “Are we going to start down the hill?” Kenly, who’d come along with Reynolds, asked. The Mayor was armed, his choice of a Colt. .44 Magnum Python an interesting choice. The gun could stop a car, let alone a zombie.

  Ethan looked at Kenly as if he’d grown a dick out of his forehead, “Are you high?”

  Kenly smirked, “Only on days that end in Y.”

  “No, we’re not going down the damned hill!” Ethan seemed enraged at the very suggestion. “What if we didn’t kill all of them? There could be dozens of undead fuckers who aren’t completely dead. I’m not risking anyone’s life for that. Besides, we’re occupying this hill for the foreseeable future. There will be plenty of time to search and destroy. It’s not Vietnam, man. The Viet Kong didn’t eat their enemies and turn them into one of their own.”

  Allen came running up to them. “Keith, Ethan, we’re not seeing any more come out of the river. I think this may be it.”

  Ethan nodded. “Hold positions. And get me that woman who was here first.” Allen ran off and a minute later brought the woman to them. She was about five foot six, her clothes were tattered and smelled horrible, her once brown hair black with oil. Her eyes were calm, though. She was used to the death and violence by now.

  Kenly offered his hand to her. She took it and they shook. “Your people built this? It’s impressive.”

  She nodded, obviously exhausted. “Yeah, we heard about the Army abandoning refugee camps all along the Mississippi, so we drove the back roads until we found this place. A few of us had been here before, so we drove up the hill thinking we could camp for a few nights. Those nights kinda turned into a few months.” She just shrugged after that. It was obvious none of them were soldiers, a couple were history buffs and a few more were carpenters, so that was the idea for the medieval style moat and fence. Their tactics were little more than what had been seen in movies. Someone even had a gladius sword, though it had been a cheap replica and half the blade was still sticking out of a zombie’s head, the tang broken completely off.

  “We’re from the town at the top of this valley.” Kenly said. “Your people are being taken care of, we really appreciate it that you stayed to help us hold the fort.” Again the woman shrugged as if it had been the natural thing for her to do.

  The fire trucks started spraying down the fires, and before nightfall the hill top was under control. Keith and Ethan didn’t even bother driving home, instead they crashed in the hotel for an all-too-brief couple of hours before a knock came at the door. Keith answered it groggily.

  “Is Ethan up?” Allen asked. He had a clean set of BDU’s with white sneakers on, so he’d been back to town for sure.

  “No, I think he’s down for the count. What’s up?”

  “We might have a problem.”

  Keith rolled his eyes and scratched the red stubble that was covering his face. “I got ninety nine problems, kid, and you’re all of them.”

  Allen got the joke, glad someone else could speak internet meme* besides him. “There’s a Humvee with a Texas flag on it at the top of the hill opposite the Eastbound-44 checkpoint. They’re holding position and won’t answer the radio or our signal flags.”

  Keith groaned. “How long ago was this?”

  “Right now.”

  Keith walked over and poked Ethan with a shoe. “Hey, get up. There’s another crisis your yokels can’t handle on their own. It’s Babysitting time again.”

  Ethan wasn’t a morning person and flipped them both off as he climbed out of bed and put the clothes from the day before back on. They still hadn’t found the water mane to turn it back on, and so they hadn’t been able to wash during the night. Brushing his teeth would have been nice, Ethan thought. Washing the oil off would have been even better.

  Outside in the bright morning light the area already looked cleaner. Children were policing up spent brass so it could be reloaded back in town and resold. Apparently Allen had gotten his hands on one of the cars from the dealership across the highway and was driving a brand new Dodge Challenger. They piled in, Allen refusing to sit in either passenger seat, forcing Keith into the rear grocery seat no grown man could really get comfortable in. Allen wasn’t a very good driver, and the car was a manual, which made everyone sick by the time they reached the top of the hill, lurching and grinding gears all the way. They met up with Kenly and the rest of the lieutenants at the North overpass. Someone handed Ethan a set of binoculars while Keith went about trying to raise the truck on the radio.

  “What do you suppose they’re doing?”

  “Staying out of small arms range.” Ethan said. “Assume there are more of them out there in the woods and near other checkpoints. They want us to know they’re out there. It’s an intimidation tactic.”

  “I’ll bet they’re also getting firing solutions on our checkpoints.” A man with a Vietnam Vet’s hat said. “If we piss ‘em off they could call in artillery and mortars.”

  “Are these the people you guys saw at the power plant?” Kenly asked.

  “Yeah, same people alright. I really hope they didn’t follow us here.”

  “It’s not like we’re hard to find.”

  “Unfortunately.” Ethan turned to Keith, “Anything?”

  “I’m getting bits and pieces, but our radios aren’t synchronized. I doubt they could talk to us if they wanted to. Hell, we’re using MBITTRS routed through a fucking CINGAR system.
They might have brand new satellite radios. For all I know we’re listening to National Public Radio.” Keith tossed the mike down.

  Kenly looked over at another deputy, “Write our frequency on a board and hold it up. Let’s see if they answer.” Keith told the deputy the numbers while he used old gas station price numbers to make the sign. As soon as it was ready they held it up. A few seconds later Keith nodded that there was someone on the other line, but that they weren’t talking, only listening.

  “Maybe they’re not authorized to talk.” Someone suggested.

  “Yeah, right…” Kenly took the microphone. “This is the North Sullivan checkpoint to the Texan patrol on top of the hill. Please respond.” Nothing. “This is Mayor Aaron Kenly, please respond.” Again, nothing. “Be advised, if you cannot respond via radio, flash your lights so that we know you have received our signal. We are not, I repeat, are not hostile. We’re all Americans here.”

  That was all the truck needed to hear, and it back off, gone over the horizon without a word. “We really need a fucking helicopter.” Ethan and Kenly said at the same time.

  “There’s one at the airport.” A Civil Air Patrol senior member suggested. “It’s not anything special, just one of those little bubble canopy private choppers. You know, the ones that everyone keeps crashing.”

  Kenly raised an eyebrow, “I see. What about the fixed wing aircraft? Any of them still work?”

  “Well, I’d assume all of them, Sir. The Army shut the airport down to civilian traffic, including us. We really haven’t been out there much to check on it.”

  “Yeah, we really need to go do that.”

  3

  “No rebels shall be allowed to remain at Davis Mill so much as an hour. Allow them to go, but do not let them stay. And let it be known that if a farmer wishes to burn his cotton, his house, his family, and himself, he may do so. But not his corn. We want that.” ~General William Tecumseh Sherman

  There were vagrants at the airport, people who weren’t helping the town and had no intention of doing anything more than meth and copious amounts of drinking. A couple of them were armed and claimed the property as their own. It only took the town’s convoy of gun trucks showing up to convince them leaving was the right thing to do. One of the storage areas had been made into a makeshift field hospital, which had been abandoned as quickly as the Soldiers could leave it. The junkies had made use of all the fun drugs in the lockers, but left most of the equipment alone.

  After the vagrants had disappeared over the hills most of the deputies returned to town. A spotter on the water tower reported more smoke from St. Louis’ general direction, and the newly elected mayor had to leave the checkpoint to calm some of the people who feared another wave of zombies. Keith, Allen and Ethan and a few others chose to stay for a little while, exploring the small regional airfield. The senior CAP officer showed them the building they used for meetings, which now smelled of backed up toilets and a half burned meth lab. It would take weeks for the two HAZMAT trained firefighters they still had to clean the building.

  The runway was divided in half for storage and Containerized Housing Units and connexes filled with supplies. It was shortened further by temporary hangars that had once housed half a dozen Apache gunships and twice as many Blackhawks. Only one Blackhawk remained, and it had obviously been cannibalized for parts.

  “Should we even try to get a helo in the air?” Keith asked Ethan, looking around.

  “I don’t think we should even try.” A deputy said, pointing to a dust covered monitor. “This is a radar screen for local airspace. Look at that,” He used an ink pen to point to something. “At fifty thousand feet we’ve got air cover. Speed and formation would suggest military. I don’t see anything else in the sky but them.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.” Another deputy argued.

  “Deputy Angelico is right. We shouldn’t put anything in the air if there’s still an Air Force to enforce the no-fly zones. A time of war would be grounds to shoot down a kite.” Keith said, ending the argument. “Now… there’s a lot of fuel and ammunition here. We need to take it all back to town and stash it. Winter is going to be a bitch this year, and we need to horde as much fuel as possible. So let’s get back to the truck stop, get some of the empty tanker trucks and get back here as fast as we can.”

  Ethan stepped in before Keith’s momentum failed. “Three of you need to stay here and guard the place. We’ll leave a gun truck for you.”

  Later that day the internet failed for most homes and the electricity went off for the rest of the afternoon. The phones rang at least twenty different houses, but there was no one speaking on the other end. Something that sounded like a fax machine made noises, which a few people had the presence of mind to record. More evidence was mounting that they were being probed, but was it by the Texans, or by someone else? The Zombies were also probing the town’s defenses. It wasn’t a coordinated thing, because zombies can’t communicate, but some Zims would figure out not to attack the same place twice if they weren’t put down.

  The number of “strays” wandering into the perimeter increased heavily. So much so that they had to abandon the airport and the Japan checkpoints temporarily as herds of migrating zombies passed through. Ammunition was beginning to run low and the stench of the bodies already euthanized was overwhelming, the flies at epidemic levels Ethan hadn’t seen since Iraq. Despite heavy equipment to dig graves, the flow of bodies often outpaced the town’s digging capabilities. Attacks increased tenfold, the bulk of the dead from St. Louis and the surrounding areas had finally reached this far South, making the initial attacks seem like small skirmishes. It occurred to Lieutenant Reynolds they should begin checking the bodies for ID, for future reference at least. It might also give them a clue as to the migratory patterns of the undead.

  Many people were saving their higher caliber ammunition for hunting and defense, resorting to shooting the infected with .22 caliber rifles at much closer range. Some had even given up on guns altogether as ammunition became as scarce as it had under the last Administration. Some, like Ethan and Mayor Kenly, were known to carry replica cap and ball pistols when not on duty, just to save cartridge ammunition. Others carried medieval style weapons, including a market rush on compound bows and specialized hunting arrows. Some folks were taking playing Zombies and Indians a little too seriously, Ethan thought.

  Newton had suggested a chain link fence around the town, he and Reynolds had been spending their spare time at the police station building a “sand table” replica of the town. They’d used plastic barbed wire from a package of toy soldiers to represent the fence. It wouldn’t stop living people, probably barely slow them down, but it would hang the zombies up long enough for regular patrols to euthanize them. The only problem with the plan was the town’s boarders were massive. They didn’t have enough fencing in the city limits, which meant they’d need to go scavenge it from the highways and nearby towns. Most of it came from along the service roads and abandoned schools. The armed escorts of Deputies were wildly successful, and gathering supplies went faster now that the civilians felt safer.

  New tactics for drawing the undead out into the open for easy kills evolved rapidly. Zim was attracted to anything that sounded intentional, any movement that was fluid or directed, and anything that didn’t smell like it was already dead. Stories of people covering themselves in rotten entrails to escape herds of zombies abounded, and anyone with any common sense carried a small cassette deck they could turn on and leave as a decoy for Zim.

  “We’re running out of time before fall comes.” Ethan said quietly one day. “This fence is taking away manpower from scavenging food and setting up personal greenhouses for the winter.”

  “What if we just asked those guys at the power plant for aid?” Kenly suggested, puffing on a pipe, a habit Ethan thought he wouldn’t mind taking up. “They certainly haven’t been hostile, it might not be the worst idea we ever had. If they can provide coal for power and their own
protection, surely they can help fellow Americans with food and medicine.”

  “What if they are hostile?” Rowe shook her head. “I think we can just live without them, personally. If they haven’t bothered to contact us by now, then they are not interested in us at all.”

  “We should consider looting some of the larger towns.” Allen changed the subject. Keith had been teaching the boy and his brother Jimmy how to look and act like officers and gentlemen. Their parents didn’t seem interested in parenting anymore, and hadn’t left their house in months. The depression of losing their first born had wrecked them. “We haven’t gotten any refugees from the North in weeks. I think they’ve all left.”

  “Or they’ve all hunkered down, same as us.” Kenly said. “Look, boy, we’re busy. Find something else to do and lets the adults handle this.”

  “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, you simple fat fuck, but you had bettered show some fucking respect.” Ethan’s glair was murderous, he wasn’t beyond punching the mayor in the face with brass knuckles. Kenly didn’t say anything. He just puffed on his pipe and walked away, satisfied that he could trust Ethan to stick up for those under his care.

  “We’ll check the larger towns soon.” Keith offered, trying to distract Ethan from opening a can of whoopass on Kenly. “For now, let’s keep working on shoring up our defenses.”

  The next night at shift change at the police station, Kenly arrived to give new orders to his men. Some were assigned to protecting the town and maintaining law and order while others were ordered to plan raiding parties to loot local towns for winter supplies. Keith, Ethan and Allen were given the very specific mission of returning to the Labodie Power Plant to gather more intelligence and possibly make contact if the opportunity arose. Early in the morning, long before the sun came up, they prepped and fueled their truck. Allen, apparently having recently gained a girlfriend, kissed her goodbye out of earshot and climbed into the turret. Ethan watched and couldn’t help but let his jealously rage inside. He may never again hold Nicole. Smell her hair, hear her voice. He’d take an argument with her if only he could see her one more time. How horrible would that be, to spend every night alone in the cold for the rest of his predictably shortened life?