It wasn't much, but it was home.
Chapter 11 - Assault
28 April 2032
Hoover Dam, Nevada
Lazarite Forces
The man, one side of his face marred by the Red diamond branded on it, lit a cigar and took a long hard pull. The end lit up brightly, clearly illuminating his face in the afternoon twilight. Dressed in old style ‘tiger stripe’ camo’s with a shotgun slung over one shoulder, he grinned around the expensive smoking implement – something he would never have been able to afford before the rise, and stared at the dam he and his people had just taken.
Hoover Dam was a miracle of modern construction. Once completed, it created not only a lake, but also enough electrical power to serve several cities. Since the rise, or the fall, depending on whose eyes one was looking through, of civilization, a small group of technicians had stayed on, keeping the generators running. They were resupplied by two different Enclaves, but hadn’t been reinforced yet. The military was still too spread out in that area to cover every contingency. So other than an occasional recce or aerial interdiction mission, the dam, and its people had remained pretty much alone.
Then the Lazarites learned about it. They shot down a resupply chopper and taken one survivor. The man was tortured mercilessly, eyes taken out; skin peeled from his arms and legs, but hadn’t broken until he felt the first clammy touch of the zombies on him. Then he’d told everything he knew – not much – but enough to galvanize the local Lazarites into motion. If they could take the dam, ruin the electrical equipment within, they would keep the unbelievers from using it. Wreck the floodgate controls and perhaps the dam would overflow, even collapse, destroying all below it.
The Lazarite who stood there smoking, enjoying the coming of twilight, staring down from the roadway that crossed the damn, was a High Docent, one of the top ranks in the order. Before the Rise, the Order of Lazarus was thought of as a small and annoying fringe group. They ran soup kitchens and helped set up homeless shelters, rebuilt homes. That was an act. In reality, they were a hardcore group dedicated to seeing the fall of civilization and the birth of a dead world. Once the dead had risen – an event they were prepared for thanks to Lazarus, their leader – they revolted, killing and looting, making rescue operations difficult to impossible. In the post rise world, where normal humans lived on the run, or, if lucky, in an Enclave, fortresses originally prepared for disasters as varied as nuclear war to asteroid strikes. The Lazarites were a greater enemy than the living dead, the creatures who had risen to devour the living.
The man, whose name was Jonah – only one name allowed in the Lazarites, led a group of fifty, followed by an unknown number of zombies, against the unprepared workers of the dam. There was some resistance from the small security detail, but most of the technicians were unarmed. Several of the more resistant were given to the zombies, who devoured them with no mercy. While this had taken place, Lazarites with some military training began running through the dam, plotting where they would put explosives. They carried some, but the rest were with another group coming from the west. Communications between groups was spotty since Enclaves were constantly searching the airwaves for Lazarite communications. Once they triangulated on them, a flight was sent out and, if the ordnance was available, saturated with bombs. Runners were used more constantly, but that took more time.
Jonah knew they couldn’t destroy the dam, it would likely take a nuclear explosive to do that, but they could wreck the turbines, keeping the ability to make electricity out of the hands of the Enclavers, who they hated with a passion.
But in their eagerness to take the dam and make sacrifices to the Blessed, the Lazarites made one mistake; they hadn’t searched for a radio room. In it, safe behind a heavy steel door, a single brave woman signaled the nearest, Enclave 31 near Carson City, Nevada. Help was on the way.
Jonah took a deep pull on his cigar and a moment later, his face exploded outward, a heavy caliber bullet smashing it from behind. As the body fell, troopers from the Enclave began scrambling from cover onto either side of the dam. As they did so, armed choppers rose from the bottom, the sound of their rotors masked by the roaring of the open floodgates and began hosing down the surprised Lazarites with their miniguns.
The sniper who’d shot the unaware Jonah turned to his spotter and grinned. “And that, Corporal Thyme, is why you don’t smoke when it’s getting dark.” Together the pair joined the assault team coming from the roadway, ready to take out any Lazarites or intelligent looking zombies. While most zombies were morons, or about the same level of intelligence as the average politician, some showed a rudimentary form of cunning and were the first targeted for destruction.
Sergeant Greg “Haigy” Russell brought his rifle up and fired off two quick shots. One zombie, dressed in a tattered coverall fell over, destroyed, the other, a Lazarite went down head spinning off as the heavy slug tore through his throat and neck bone.
Russell made sure he had another magazine handy and moved on. Next to him, Corporal Ashton Thyme brought up her M11A and fired off a burst. A Lazarite, rising from an abutment went down, shot across the stomach. As they passed the twitching man, she put a round through his head. Russell nodded his approval. He liked her thoroughness.
The battle for the outside of the dam lasted fifteen minutes. When it was over, twenty-seven Lazarites and over two hundred zombies were dead. But now came the hard part, trying to find out what deviltry the Lazarites inside were planning.
28 April 2032
Hoover Dam, Nevada
Command Post
Enclave 31 Reaction Force
Major Karl Hausefeld set up his command post near the entrance to the turbine area. Before him trussed like hogs for the slaughter were three wounded Lazarites. One of them wasn’t going to last, having been gut shot. Thick runnels of blood, nearly black, stained the ground beneath him. Hausefeld made a motion with his head. Two troopers grabbed the moaning man and carrying him to the edge of the dam, tossed him over the side. His loud scream was quickly cut off by the water pouring out of the floodgates. One of the troopers grinned at the two remaining Lazarites and said, “It isn’t the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end.” As his partner laughed, one of the Lazarites threw up on herself. The spew of vomit was thick and smelly. It landed in her lap and lay there stinking.
Hausefeld nodded at her. The laughing trooper, Private Gerry Collins grabbed the wounded woman and yanked her to her feet. The vomit that had pooled in her lap spilt off to soil her shoes. Collins held her up while making a face of disgust. Hausefeld said, “How many of you are inside the complex?”
The woman started to shake her head when Collins slapped her across the back of it. “Listen, fucker,” Collins hissed. “You’re not going over the side. We’ll fucking drop you from a helicopter so your legs break, leave you to get eaten.”
This was the wrong tactic. The Lazarite sneered at him, “I’ll just be among the Blessed sooner, unbeliever.”
Hausefeld took out his pistol and shot the woman through the top of her foot. With a scream, she went down, her foot blown off from the ankle out. Hausefeld gave her a second for the shock to subside. “I’m not going to lie to you,” he said in a low voice. “You are going to die. It can be quick,” he held the gun to her face. “Or I can take you apart. How many inside?”
The Lazarite woman blinked then spat on him. The gun fired again, shattering her other foot. Collins let the woman drop to the ground, then tore strips off her shirt and applied tourniquets to her ankles. As she did, the female trooper hissed, “You’re going to be a long time dying, Bitch.”
28 April 2032
Hoover Dam, Nevada
Enclave 31 Reaction Force
Russell and Thyme; crouched behind a concrete abutment with four other troopers watched as supply choppers lowered steel barricades at either end of the dam. Put into place, these could be welded or chained together; then topped with concertina wire. It was only a stopgap mea
sure, but it would keep the zombies, who were still arriving, having heard the sounds of the shooting or smelled the blood, off their backs until a more permanent solution could be put in place. Fortunately, the terrain around the dam was sparsely populated so the zombies were more spread out. This gave a very slight advantage to the Enclave troops.
“I’ve seen a few peekers, Haigy.”
Russell turned and flipped up the covers on his scope. Sure enough, the Lazarites were getting curious. Likely, they had hostages, but they knew that the troops wouldn’t bargain with them. Hunkering down into his rifle, he waited and waited…
A face came out at last, peering around the edge of one of the entrances. A moment later, it flew back, the bullet having smashed its way in through an eye.
“We won’t have to worry about that one, eh?” Haigy was of Scottish ancestry, though he’d been born in America. His Father had been in the military, was part of the troops who had waded ashore at Sword beach in Normandy, to wrest Europe from the Nazis. After the war, when England’s economy was struggling, he emigrated first to Canada, then America. Haigy was born in the States, in Chicago. While he was glad his parents passed on before the rise, Haigy knew his father, who gave him the nickname after his own, would have been proud of his son, helping take America back from zombies and Lazarites. Russell, like most Enclave troops hated them. How anyone could side with the dead against the living… well, Haigy didn’t want to know their fucked up reasons. He just wanted to kill them.
Thyme stared at the engineers who had finished putting in the barricades. Once that was done, Blackhawk helicopters came in with supplies. Thyme rubbed her stomach, which, under her armor was flat as a stone. “I’ll go get us some grub.”
Haigy nodded. “I’ll keep an eye here; see if any more curiosity seekers want a souvenir.”
28 April 2032
Hoover Dam, Nevada
Command Post
Enclave 31 Reaction Force
Hausefeld holstered his pistol while the corpse of the female Lazarite was tossed off the dam. His eyes, green as an old seven up bottle held no compassion of any kind. They were empty, the eyes of a killer. Hausefeld had lost his wife and twin sons in the battle of Las Vegas (a Lazarite stronghold, on the long list of areas to be bombed or assaulted), so since that day he wanted nothing but to kill the enemy. This was why he took the hardest jobs Enclave 31 had to offer. The more Lazarites he could kill, even if it cost him his own life, the better he felt.
The last prisoner was a young man, barely out of his teens. He had his red diamond tattooed on his chest. The tattoo looked fresh. Kneeling before the prisoner, Hausefeld used the pistols barrel to force the prisoners head up. The boys face was filled with tears, lower lip trembling. Hausefeld smiled, but there was no humor or compassion in it. It was a smile the grim reaper would make.
“How many left inside, what are they going to do?”
The kid Lazarite sniffled licked his lips and made gasping noises. Beach slapped him off the back of his head and he sobbed aloud. “I don’t know how many! I swear I don’t!”
Hausefeld nodded. “Fair enough. What are they planning to do, other than get killed?”
The kid’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. Finally, he said, “They want to blow it up.”
Hausefeld got to his feet even as the kid was pleading for his life. His pleas meant nothing to a man whose children and wife were devoured or worse, converted to living dead. He was almost hoping they’d been eaten.
Activating his commlink, Hausefeld said, “All troops hold position. The Lazarites have explosives.”
The kid looked up and, thinking he could save his life, said, “They don’t have enough yet. More are coming…”
Hausefeld, almost as a second thought put a pullet through the kid’s forehead. His former prisoner was already forgotten as he thought about what to do now.
Russell capped another curious Lazarite, both bodies lying in the entranceway, blood slowly seeping out. At either end of the dam, the barricades were in place, troops setting up positions behind them. It should have been a standard deployment of three SAW teams and two flamethrowers at either end. But this mission was thrown together fast, so one end had mortars and a fifty, the other had grenadiers and some SAW’s. As long as those barricades held, the men and women there could (and had) held off twenty times their own numbers of zombies.
It was when the Lazarites showed up that the troops problems would multiply. The members of the order would gladly give their own lives to breach the barriers, to allow what they called ‘the Blessed’ to be able to feed on their enemies. The choppers would be back, but for now, they were on their own as the birds returned to base for fuel and supplies.
Russell reloaded his rifle and shook his head. Things had gone to shit so fast. The zombies were bad, yes, but they were also stupid bastards. On a prior mission, he and Thyme had immolated an entire street full of the morons. They’d opened the valves on two gasoline tankers and watched as the zombies followed them through it. A flare into that mess and the zombies and most of the main street of the town had gone right up. The dumb fucks just stood there, flesh burning off their bones, staggering around until destroyed. Some other troopers, including Beach who had a real mean streak tossed in ten Lazarite prisoners. Beach had smiled at a young woman as she pushed her into the flaming gas, “We gonna have a Lazarque.” Russell wasn’t sure just how much longer Beach would last. He knew one thing, if she became a danger on a mission – he’d put one through her head. And it wouldn’t be the first time he’d done it.
Thyme, breathless with excitement, ran up next to him, carrying a bandoleer of ammo for each of their weapons and some MRE’s. “You hear what the major said?”
Russell, sitting down behind the barricade, tore open the package of chicken loaf. “Nah, I had my headset down too low. What’s up?”
“The Lazarites inside have explosives.”
Spooning his meal into his mouth, Russell could only swallow and wonder what the Major would do now.
28 April 2032
Hoover Dam, Nevada
Command Post
Enclave 31 Reaction Force
Hausefeld finally decided on a plan. Whoever had warned them about the Lazarite attack was still hidden inside the dam. Grabbing his radioman, Lance Corporal Benji Hastakis, the Major ordered him to make contact with Enclave 31’s command, to get the freq of their unknown benefactor. While this was going on, a second group of Blackhawk helicopters came in. But along with supplies, they brought bad news.
Captain Vanson McCormick was in charge of the chopper force. A tall man with a long face, it was even longer as he approached Hausefeld. The Major stood and put out a hand, which McCormick took and pumped once. Never one for tact, the chopper pilot said, “I’ve got some bad news for you, Major.”
Hausefeld motioned for the pilot to sit and offered him a canteen of water. “What is it?”
“The choppers are getting pulled out. Weathers coming in. 31 has ordered us back pronto. We don’t know how long the storms are gonna hold up, but they want the birds back where they’re safe.”
Hausefeld nodded slowly, almost to himself. “Have all the supplies been offloaded?”
A nod.
Hausefeld grimaced as he stretched. “Then we’ll hold here until we can be relieved. We’ve got Lazarites inside the dam. I want to try and neutralize them fast as possible.”
McCormick licked his lips. “That isn’t all, Major. There are Lazarite reinforcements coming as well. A shit load of them with the dead following.” McCormick pointed to the road that led right on to the dam. “They’re coming right up this road. We’ve hit them twice with air, but the weather is coming right behind them.”
Hausefeld looked at the road, blockaded at both ends and guarded by his men and women, people he’d been with since he reported to Enclave 31. He could see the darkening skies coming in from the west. Rain likely, but this was April and snow was still possible. “You’d bette
r get going, Vance. We’ll keep in touch with the Enclave. Before those fucking Lazarites get here, we have to clean house. Once they're gone, if we have to, we can retreat into it and use it as a redoubt. Wait for reinforcements.”
As the four choppers lifted off and flew down the valley, half the assault team’s eyes were on them. Pilots were the Enclavers Lazarites liked to kill the most. It was hard to train new ones and the birds weren’t coming off assembly lines anymore. No one wanted to see the smoke trail of a missile come up and blast one out of the sky. If any Lazarites were ever caught with a spent stinger tube – they would take a long time dying. So far, few Lazarites – to the annoyance of command – had survived capture for long.
“I’ve got the civvie, Major!”
“Let me talk to her.”
Taking the head set, Hausefeld said, “This is Major Hausefeld, Enclave 31. We’ve got the top of the dam, what’s your situation?”
The shaky voice of a woman replied, “This is Tabitha Newsome, Major. I’m in a tool room that we’d set up as an auxiliary radio room. I’m pretty safe unless they find me. There are zombies and people down here! I didn’t believe it was true!” She started to sob.
“Miss Newsome, please calm down. We’re coming in to get you. Do you know if any other techs have survived?”
“I don’t know Major. We have a lot of spaces to hide down here, but the zombies can, I don’t know, smell us out?”
Hausefeld glanced at his watch. It was nearly eight p.m. He wanted the dam secure soon; then he’d worry about the stinking Lazarites that were coming. Besides, he had an idea how to slow them up a bit.
Enclave: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse Page 25
