Virgil's War- The Diseased World

by Larry Robbins

  “All right, Dan listen closely. Find bandages or clean towels, anything to hold on the wound without causing infection. I’ll wait until you tell me you have them.”

  Pops sped off up the stairs again. He came back down with his arms full of white towels. “I spotted these when I was looking for the meds,” he explained. He dropped them in my lap and grabbed the walkie. “Okay, Sharon. I found some clean towels that were in a closed linen closet. No dust or dirt on them. I think they will have to do.”

  “Okay, now listen. One of you will have to loosen the tourniquet while the other holds a towel tightly on the wound. I mean tight, Dan. It’s going to hurt, but it is necessary. Let the blood flow back into the leg for one minute then cinch up the tourniquet again. If you have any alcohol or hydrogen peroxide, douse the wound with it then wrap it in a clean dressing, the towels will do, just tear them into strips.” Sharon’s voice took on a less professional tone, more sympathetic. “Virgil? Listen, honey, everything I just told Dan to do is going to hurt like the dickens, but we have to do it. Trust me on this.”

  Pops stood and dashed upstairs again. He came back down carrying a big brown plastic bottle of peroxide. I perceived pain in my immediate future.

  Pops knelt in front of me and started tearing the towels into strips which he laid on the sofa beside me and opened the peroxide, setting the bottle on the floor. He began to rip my trouser leg open, but I stopped him and struggled to my feet before dropping my pants to my knees. My leg looked red and swollen, and my calf was black with dried blood. He handed me a large bath towel.

  “Ready?” Pops asked.

  I nodded and pushed the towel against my leg wound as tightly as I could. The pain hit me like a freight train of agony, and my vision blurred and went black. The last thing I remember was helping Pops with my leg.

  I regained consciousness sometime after that and glimpsed Pops still kneeling in front of me. He was using the peroxide and a towel to clean the blood from my lower leg. I looked down and was surprised to see the wound had been rewrapped in towel strips and tied in place. The belt was cinched around my upper thigh again.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Not long. Buck came over and helped me get everything done. You passing out was a blessing. Saved you buttloads of pain.”

  He pushed some scraps of towel away to make room for him to sit beside me. “We’ll need to release the belt every five minutes, but we don’t have to hold pressure on the wound now that we have a proper dressing to staunch the bleeding.”

  Pops felt my head again and nodded as if my fever was receding.

  Buck called from the front door. “Dan? Heads up, man, we’ve got company coming.” He raced over to the sofa and grabbed the walkie. “Major, be advised we have tangos approaching. I think they’ve picked our hidey-hole to break into. Looks like a few hundred of them. If you hear shooting, that’ll be us. Any help you can give us will be cheerfully accepted.”

  Pops grabbed the M-240 and rechecked it, then went over to where Buck was standing. I tried to get to a standing position but found it too hard while holding the M4, so I left it on the sofa and drew my Glock. Looking back over at Buck and Pops I saw them facing the door and standing about five paces back from it.

  Footsteps sounded on the concrete landing outside the door — lots of footsteps. Shadows moved around beyond the cheap shades like something out of a zombie movie then fists began banging on the door and the small living room window. The window wasn’t large enough for a bunch to come through it at once, but it was big enough for one or two at a time if they succeeded in shattering it.

  The lock on the door held but the old wooden door itself split right down the middle.

  “Here we go, boys!”

  Chapter 12

  Marcus heard the Suburban approaching and sent out the word to his people that it was the good guys coming. He raced outside carrying a white satchel bearing a red cross on it. At his side was a smaller man of Chinese extraction. The two ran up toward the vehicle when it stopped.

  Marcus immediately noticed Marie was driving and there was a trickle of blood running down her face. The bullet hole in the windshield told the tale of bits of flying glass having made their mark. The back door opened and Jimmy stepped out beckoning them forward. He had blood on his hands and wiped them on his pants as they approached.

  He pointed into the backseat. “The Major took a round to his side. The bullet passed through, but I think it busted at least one rib.”

  Marcus pointed to his companion. “Ronnie was a combat corpsman. Let him take a look.”

  The Major still held the walkie and was talking to Buck. He spotted the man approaching with the medical pack and waved them off. “We don’t have time. Buck and the others are under attack by the infected.”

  Marie twisted in her seat until she could see him. “Major, we all need you and your knowledge. If you bite the big one, that leaves us all weaker. Now take a moment and let the man patch you up, so you don’t bleed to death on us.”

  The Major reluctantly agreed to treatment, but he refused to remove his shirt, just raised it up and held it out of the way while Ronnie dabbed at the wound with a moist wad of gauze. He then held a medicated patch in place while wrapping an elastic bandage around his torso.

  The former Navy Corpsman gave him a shot for pain then looked up and nodded. “That’s the best I can do for now if he won’t let us take him inside.”

  “It’s fine for now,” the Major told him. He looked at Marcus. “We have people under attack out there, and we will probably have some of those other idiots shooting at us.” He turned to Jimmy. “If we draw fire, don’t mess around, shoot a grenade up their ass.”

  Jimmy hoisted the RBG. “Will do, Major.”

  “Marcus, your guys ready? Better get them all in vehicles, we might get overrun by the infected, and they’ll need steel around them.”

  Marcus appeared to be considering something. “Major, Give me five minutes. I’ve got something that can help us out.”

  “Make it fast, man. Our people are under the gun.”

  Marcus pointed to Ronnie and two other men and told them to follow him. They took off running west down Shields Avenue.

  The Major took charge of the dozen or so people from Marcus’ group and had them pile into four vehicles, three trucks and a sedan. When everyone was loaded up, they lined up behind the Suburban, pointed north on Fowler.

  A green Humvee came around the corner, its diesel engine clattering away. Marcus had his head and shoulders sticking up out of the turret. He saw the Suburban and waved.

  The Major did a quick calculation and told Jimmy to take the M-240 over to Marcus along with the remaining ammo belts. All of the magazines had been used up, but the Hummer was primarily made for belt-fed weapons use anyway. Indeed, the mags used for the machine gun were just cans into which ammo belts were folded. He leaned out of the Suburban and shouted to Marcus.

  “You plow the field for us since you’re armored. If you draw fire from the enemy call it in to us, Jimmy will throw them a valentine. Our people are halfway between Ashlan and Shields.”

  Marcus set the big gun up on the rotating turret and chambered a round from the first belt. “Say when, Major.”

  “When!”

  The hummer started up Fowler Avenue. They passed East Dakota Avenue and spotted the horde. They were currently involved in destroying the surrounding homes. There did not appear to be any discernable method to their madness. It looked to Marcus like the noise of the shootout had enraged them to the point that they wanted to destroy anything and anyone they could get their hands on.

  From his vantage point on top of the hummer, Marcus could see that the numbers of infected reached up into the hundreds. Most of them had empty hands but about a quarter of them were carrying sticks, boards, pipes and anything else they could use as a bludgeon.

  There was a bungalow on the east side of the street that had a raised brick porch, and a front door that
was crowded with infected trying to smash their way inside. There were easily over a hundred of the mindless Ragers on the porch or trying to force their way up to it on the stairs.

  As the Hummer drew near, he noticed their heads pick up as they searched for the source of the diesel engine. They set eyes on the hummer rolling towards them and started flowing off of the porches and out of the smashed in doors, all of them intent on attacking the noisy vehicle.

  Marcus keyed the radio. “Heads up, Major. Here we go.”

  Then he opened up with the M-240.

  ✽✽✽

  The door splintered and the enraged mob fought each other for room to squeeze inside the house. Pops leveled the M-240 and squeezed off a string of bullets. The devastation of human bodies in front of the weapon was painful to witness. The .308 rounds blew apart the first few infected through the door, but the bullets didn’t stop there. They kept right on traveling through those first bodies and then on through the crowd behind them. Blood flew everywhere, especially back out on the porch.

  As soon as the first victims of the machine gun fell, dozens of others fought to take their place, and Pops chopped those people up also. He operated the weapon with grim efficiency, keeping his bursts short and focused. Buck had his M4 leveled and ready, but he declined to fire. Instead, he stood by with a replacement magazine for the M-240 in his hand, prepared to hand it over to Pops for a quick reload. The noise and smoke in the room quickly became overwhelming.

  The window I was covering smashed inward and an obese woman with pink hair fell through onto the floor inside. I raised the Glock and sent a ten-millimeter slug through the top of her head. Others outside started fighting their companions for the opportunity to wriggle their way through the opening. I waited until they exposed their heads then shot them down. My pistol held fifteen shots, and I made a kill with each one before swapping out the depleted mag for a fresh one. That left me with three more before I would run out.

  The smoke and fumes inside the small living room were already beginning to choke me up. It hung in the air like a dense fog from the ceiling down to shoulder level. I knelt lower to get to the cleaner air down there while continuing to shoot the window infiltrators. There were probably a dozen of them piled inside the house and a similar number on the porch outside. I got a respite when two of the dead bodies got wedged inside the opening, and their unsympathetic friends had a hard time trying to push them out of the way. I backed up to the sofa and allowed myself a moment to sit on the arm of it. The meds that Pops had found for me were working now, and the pain was minimal, but the effects of the blood loss were still making themselves known. My head would go from total clarity to watching the room spin around me and then to seeing fireflies flitting over my head. My biggest fear was that I would pass out and allow infected to get behind Pops and Buck.

  Pops finished off the first magazine and ejected it. Buck shoved the replacement into his hands then opened up with the M4 while it was slapped into the magazine well. Smoking bullet casings were covering the floor now, and I worried that one of them would slip and go down then be swarmed over.

  The M-240 buzzed again, and it acted like a laser, mowing down anything in its path. The porch in front of the door was swept clean of living bodies, the dead ones forming a grisly carpet on top. I could smell the blood, excrement and other nauseating scents building up in the room.

  Pops started moving forward, the stream of bullets clearing the path in front of him. Buck followed, another magazine for the big gun in his hand. The two made it to the door just as I observed the bodies which were plugging the window being violently jerked away. The face of a huge African American man poked through the window. He was naked to the waist, and his eyes caught sight of me and the pure fury in his expression scared me. I knew if he ever reached me he would do his best to dismember me for the crime of being uninfected so I raised the Glock and sent a slug through his head.

  A smaller naked white guy tried to take his place, but I nailed him before he could get his head in.

  After the naked guy dropped, I became aware that Pops and Buck were outside, firing from the porch. No other infected tried to get through the window, so I forced myself to limp over to the door with my pistol leading the way. I came out behind my two protectors. There were still infected trying to reach them by coming up the steps, but their numbers had diminished considerably. I heard more gunfire from the south and glimpsed several vehicles coming down the road from that direction with their guns targeting the throngs of infected who were rushing at them.

  I leaned back to steady myself against the doorsill, less from my weakened medical condition than the sight of so much death. Aside from the dead marauders that we had left out there earlier, I witnessed men, women and children, all of them dead or in different stages of dying. They were on the road, hanging over porches and lying on overgrown lawns. It was a sickening sight. The smell was indescribable.

  I spotted a big hummer leading the other vehicles and the M-240 in its turret was savaging the bodies in front of it. As I watched, a few bullets pinged off of the armored exterior of the military vehicle. The operator turned the machinegun upward and sent a burst of shells into a second story window, then resumed his mission of clearing out the infected.

  I don’t know when it was that the horde had been whittled down to the point where people were now getting out of their vehicles and engaging them on foot. I remember Pops and Buck sitting down on the top steps of the porch, exhausted. The M-240 lay across Pops’ knees, the barrel still smoking. There were not enough infected left around us to use the weapon. Our people were now clearing them out with hammers, axes, machetes, and handguns.

  I half staggered, half hopped over to where they sat and cleared my throat. They looked up to see me and scooted over to make a place for me in between them. I saw movement coming from the side of the porch and shot an infected black woman who was coming around from the back yard. She fell dead, and I lowered myself to the step with the assistance of Pops and Buck.

  “Look at you, boy,” Buck said. “Sixteen years old and already a combat veteran. We’re gonna have to get you a couple of Purple Hearts, Virgil. Maybe let Pepper pin them on you.”

  I was too tired to come up with a reply.

  Jimmy, Marie, and Marcus came walking over from the line of vehicles on the street. Marie had a small cut on her face, and Jimmy had blood all over the front of his shirt, but it didn’t look like it was his since I could see no obvious wounds.

  Marie saw my bloody pant leg and rushed over. “Virgil, Sharon told me to get you up the hill ASAP.”

  I held up a hand to stall her. I wanted to see how the situation with the surviving marauders would go. As if in answer to my curiosity, the Major’s voice boomed out over the public address speaker connected to the CB radio setup in his pickup.

  “Attention all of you people who were attacking us. It’s over. All of your friends are either dead or they have abandoned you to save their own skins. We have you all confined to this one city block. We will shortly begin to clear these houses one by one. If we encounter any resistance, we will just withdraw and blow that house up. I won’t risk any more of my people.

  “If any of you want to live you can come outside with your weapons held high over your heads. You have my word that you will be well treated which is more than you deserve. I’m not playing games, people. If you think you can hide and wait to see if we find you, understand that your only option is to surrender. If we find anyone hiding inside, we will shoot you. I’m not counting to ten or any of that nonsense. Come outside now.”

  There was no movement for a short while, then a screen door screeched open three houses down from us, and a girl with long black hair in her teens came outside. She held an M4 over her head, and she trembled in fear as Marcus had two of his people disarm her and fasten her hands behind her back with zip ties. Even though she had been part of an attempt to assault Marcus’ people I felt bad for her. She was my age or younger,
and I wondered what this new world had done to her to lead her into making the choices she’d made.

  In all, eight of the marauders gave themselves up. One guy tried to shoot at our people as they entered the house in which he was hiding. True to his word, the Major pulled everyone back and had Jimmy send a grenade through the door. Minutes later they dragged his dead body out into the street.

  The eight marauders were sitting on their backsides on one of the lawns near us. I observed the Major walking stiffly over to them. His shirt was missing, and his undershirt looked like a bloody Rorschach test on one side. They were close enough for us to hear his words.

  “Listen up. You attacked my friends and killed several of them. By the new rules of survival in this world, I could have you all shot. I probably should do just that. I don’t have a place to lock you up, and I don’t have the food to feed you.”

  The eight faces reflected fear and resignation.

  He continued. “Understand this, people. We are not like you. No matter what you have been telling yourselves, you aren’t hardened survivors just doing what it takes to get by. You’re thieves and murderers, taking from others instead of putting in the hard work necessary to stay alive.” He walked down the line of prisoners staring down each and every one of them. “You go back to your bosses and tell them that they got their asses handed to them today. You tell them we are an army of military veterans equipped with more than enough armament to kick their asses again.” He looked over at Marcus. “Cut them loose.”

  The eyes of all eight prisoners had been looking at the dirt. Upon hearing the command to set them free, they looked up hopefully. One or two of them seemed to think it was a trick and that we would shoot them. Marcus and Ronnie helped them to their feet and began snipping the ties, freeing their hands. When everyone was standing and looking at each other, expecting to either be released or shot down, the Major spoke again.