by J. W. Vohs
Jack and the others gave it all they had, somehow managing to hold their sagging line for nearly two minutes. The first hunters to come into range of the wicked spear points were literally thigh-deep in the squirming bodies of those that had arrived before them and were now being crushed to death as the horde steadily pushed over anything in its path. These were easy enough to kill, though the plan to push all of the corpses over the sides of the bridge immediately proved impossible to execute. It seemed as if two monsters took the place of every one that was cut down, and they quickly began pulling themselves onto the fighting platform and grabbing at the legs of the defenders.
Screams along the line indicated that at least a few of the soldiers had been pulled down into the squirming, howling mass of hunters, and after Jack pulled Maddy back from the edge by chopping off the hand that gripped her ankle, he shoved her onto one of the escape poles before returning to the fight. Luke had already retreated to the third wall, where he stood waiting for his friends even as most of Chad’s soldiers were following the order to evacuate behind the section of bridge rigged to explode. He pulled Maddy up and sent her on her way, in spite of the fact that she was demanding to stay and help Zach.
Luke could already see him running across the space between the walls as he literally pushed Maddy from the platform before turning to help Zach make the climb up the barricade. Jack was one of the last to break free of the score of hunters now atop the second wall, his halberd gone and armor streaked with gore. Even as he slid down the pole, flesh-eaters were dropping all around him, the pressure from the rest of the horde forcing them from their hard-gained perch. Zach and Luke pulled Jack up from the surface just as half a dozen hunters were reaching for his boots. As soon as he reached the top, a quick look showed that they were the last three soldiers on the wall, and as he grabbed another escape-pole his young protégés did the same.
As soon as they reached the bridge, they heard the second propane-bombs roar, sending pieces of seared hunters hurtling above their heads as they waited for all of the detritus from the explosion to settle to the surface. They all realized that a fifty-pound piece of flesh falling from a hundred feet could easily break their necks, so they huddled against the back of the wall until they felt safe to make a run for it.
Chad had organized the survivors into three lines of spear-wielding infantry a hundred meters from the last of the explosives rigged to the bridge. As Jack and the teens reached their friends, they were unceremoniously pulled through the ranks and dumped in the rear to catch their breaths. They were on their knees when they heard the first of the pursuing hunters crash into the formation, almost immediately followed by what felt like a powerful earthquake pass underfoot just before the blast wave knocked everyone to the surface. Once again the air was filled with debris, but this time most of it was steel and concrete, and nearly all of it tumbled harmlessly into the Ohio. Hundreds of hunters fell into the river along with sixty meters of bridge, and the handful of monsters that had survived the blast by being engaged with the humans were summarily dispatched by the first fighters to regain their footing.
A few moments later, the exhausted, blood-covered soldiers all stood watching as wave after wave of hunters on the other side of the chasm continued to push over the corpses of their pack-mates only to fall into the rushing waters below. Luke could actually notice a slight change in the howls of the beasts as they fell toward the river, taking grim satisfaction in what he was certain were notes of dread as the creatures realized that they were about to enter the substance they feared the most. Of all the scenes of armies, battle, and destruction the soldiers on the bridge had witnessed since the outbreak, what they now watched was the most astounding of all. For at least five minutes the hunters continued to stumble over the walls and into the hole left by the explosion. Jack would later come up with a rudimentary formula that yielded a death toll of roughly a thousand flesh-eaters every minute before the first Blackhawk appeared to try to stop the unfolding disaster.
Now Jack unleashed another nasty surprise upon the enemy. When he and Carter had stockpiled food, weapons, and other supplies in The Castle during the years leading up to the outbreak, they hadn’t neglected the need for firearms capable of inflicting great harm on humans who might threaten their future security. Arms and armor for dealing with the infected had been the most important part of their planning after food storage and water, but they both suspected that, at least early on, they would face hostile people armed with guns. With that knowledge in mind, they had purchased hundreds of firearms and over a million rounds of ammunition for them. Carter, being a bit of a gun-lover, had convinced Jack to buy two, very expensive, Barrett fifty-caliber sniper rifles after filling their armory with scores of AKs and AR-15s. They had then used their military connections to quietly amass over a hundred armor-piercing bullets for the deadly weapons. Now that foresight paid off.
Jack had told Chad about the Barretts and their special ammo before he led his force to the Ohio, and the veteran Ranger-sergeant had gleefully included the rifles in the gear his troops packed for the trip. After years of war in the Middle East, the two old soldiers knew full well the awesome advantage of helicopters and armored vehicles when fighting insurgents whose main weapons were AK-47s. Some choppers had been brought down by lucky hits from RPGs and other crudely guided rockets during the years of combat they endured, but usually the war-birds rained down spectacular firepower on an enemy with no means of fighting back. With those experiences in mind, since first hearing about the connection between Blackhawks and armies of hunters, Jack had been waiting for the right moment to use the fifties to try to bring one of the choppers down.
Once Barnes realized that his precious helicopters and pilots were vulnerable to Jack’s forces he would be much more careful with them, so the decision had been made to hold off using the Barretts until they were absolutely needed. Jack’s troops were safe from Barnes’ army for the moment, but he doubted that he’d ever again have the opportunity to kill a thousand hunters a minute in any future battle. Chad had placed his two best snipers under cover on the Indiana bank, and Jack told him to order the men to fire into the cockpit of the Blackhawk as it approached the gap in the bridge.
The chopper was moving fast, but moving north on a route that seemed to be headed directly toward the line of troops still watching the hunters pour into the river. The angle was basically the best the snipers could hope for, and they began shooting when the Blackhawk was still several hundred meters from the Ohio. Jack couldn’t hear the rounds over the noise of hundreds of thousands of infected howling and moaning, but he saw sparks fly from the base of the rotor and knew that the sharpshooters had the range on the bird. A few more seconds passed before the pilots apparently realized they were under fire that could damage them, at which point they went into a sharp turn and headed back to the south as fast as they had approached just minutes earlier.
The torrent of hunters tumbling into the gaping chasm seemed to have slowed a bit, but they were still dying by the thousands with no chance of harming the humans watching them fall. Another Blackhawk appeared from the southeast, this time taking a hovering position well over the Kentucky bank where Jack assumed they were transmitting signals to the horde. A few more minutes went by with no change in the hunters’ forward momentum, but one of the snipers radioed in from his elevated position and said that Barnes’ creatures were finally moving west again. Sure enough, the flow of flesh-eaters coming over the walls almost immediately slowed to a trickle, stopping altogether when the beasts actually turned around and retreated back over the bridge.
With the spell woven by the spectacle of an army of hunters being pushed to their deaths finally broken, squad leaders began to inspect their units and determine who was dead and injured. A quick tally of casualties revealed five dead and four wounded seriously enough that they would need to be evacuated back to Fort Wayne. All of the injured had broken ankles sustained during the harried descent from the fighting pla
tforms atop the walls. Chad was grieving the loss of eight veterans over the past twelve hours, but Jack knew that the toll could have been much, much worse. As he rehashed the battle in his mind, he had a hard time figuring out how any of the defenders had survived the attack. The coordinated hunter assault had been unprecedented in both numbers and determination. Seeing perhaps ten thousand of the monsters plunge to their deaths was gratifying, but even Jack had a hard time convincing himself that the loss of so many experienced fighters was worth the thousands of casualties suffered by the enemy. Watching the horde move westward along the Kentucky side of the river, it seemed as if their numbers were undiminished.
Chad appeared at Jack’s side, a look in his eyes not seen since his people suffered the defeat in Buffalo.
“Well,” the gruff, former platoon sergeant sadly declared, “my boys got chopped to pieces in this one.”
Jack couldn’t meet his old comrade’s eyes as he muttered, “I’m sorry I put them in such an untenable position, Sarge.”
“Don’t let me hear that bullshit again, Jack. And for damn sure don’t let anyone else hear you saying things like that. You’re a commanding officer now, not just one of the guys. Officers lose soldiers in combat—you know that as well as I do. You had a good plan, and we all believed those walls would hold for a while. The enemy surprised us with a tactic we’d never seen before; now we’ll have to adjust. That’s the way war’s gone since the first caveman cracked another’s skull with a rock.”
“Every time somebody dies under my command, I just want to lay down and give up,” Jack confessed. “I just can’t figure out how the great generals from history ordered so many soldiers to their deaths.”
“First of all, if you didn’t feel this way after losing people you wouldn’t be a good officer. And secondly, the great generals all realized that the sooner they confronted the enemy and destroyed them, the quicker the war would end and the suffering would stop. Nothing’s changed in that regard.”
Jack let out a long, mournful sigh, “At least all the people back in Fort Wayne who can’t fight are safe.”
“Damn right, and every one of the guys we lost today fought for that goal.”
He peered at Jack from the corner of his eye before continuing, “Now square those shoulders and harden your heart. These people need to see us in charge and confident. We can cry when we get home.”
“That’s what I said in Afghanistan, Sarge, but somehow I never made it all the way back.”
CHAPTER 13
Carter and David’s crew had travelled over three hundred miles since leaving the Brandenburg encampment, and they continued to push themselves at a punishing pace down the Ohio toward the confluence with the Mississippi. They had found a number of groups of survivors along the river, normally holed up on islands or peninsulas where they were doing their best to keep a low profile and somehow stock enough food for the coming winter. Most of the time Carter stopped and quickly told the people an extremely condensed version of who he was and what he’d been through since the outbreak. Every group they talked with had heard about Barnes’ rampage across Tennessee and Kentucky, usually from small bands of refugees floating downstream.
Some of the set-ups seemed safe for the time being, even from Barnes, and Carter told them as much. A community of three hundred survivors on Diamond Island had managed to harvest more acres of grain than they knew what to do with, and unless the hunters could be forced onto landing craft, the people there would survive the winter and the hunter-army prowling through Kentucky. Another settlement had been cobbled together on a long peninsula across the river from Evansville, protected at its base by a series of streams and swampy ground that would probably protect them as long as they blew the necessary bridges if a horde passed nearby.
All of the survivors had lived through nearly five months of a monstrous Darwinian struggle in which only the brave and audacious had made it to safety, and they didn’t like the idea of leaving the settlements they’d worked so hard to create for themselves. Nevertheless, Carter and David tried to explain Barnes’ plans for America and convince the hardy settlers that even communities that seemed safe for now would eventually be marginalized and starved out, even if the hunters couldn’t reach them over the water. The bottom line, they explained, was that all North American survivors would ultimately have to join together to stop Barnes, or they would eventually be subject to death or slavery.
The people in the most secure of the communities they encountered wouldn’t leave their safe-havens, but as David led their motorized raft toward Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio joined the Mississippi, scores of all types of watercraft filled with refugees were following him.
“Jack didn’t tell us to organize some sorta exodus,” Carter quipped as he looked back at the motley flotilla travelling in their wake.
David was firm in his decision to lead survivors away from Barnes. “He didn’t tell us not to, either. There’s fighters in those boats, and eventually we’re gonna need every one of them.”
Carter didn’t look convinced, but he just shrugged. “How far ya think we are from Cairo?”
“About eighty miles, we’ll be there this afternoon if all goes well.”
“Think we’ll find survivors there?”
“Probably,” David speculated, “the map shows a lot of water in the area . . . plenty of places for people to hide from the hunters.”
“Hope so,” Carter murmured, “and maybe they got news of what’s goin’ on down south.”
“I hope they have a radio powerful enough to reach Jack; but yeah, information about the lower Mississippi would be great.”
Carter leaned back and tried to make himself comfortable as he pulled a tarp-covered sleeping bag up to his chin and made a show of closing his eyes for a nap. “Wake me up when we get there.”
David and Carter had switched positions several times before reaching the Cairo area around three in the afternoon. The closer they got to the confluence of the two mighty rivers, the more people they saw. Most of the groups were small, even family-sized. Many were living on barges anchored in the middle of the Ohio, with small boats of all types tied to ladders leading onto the huge vessels. Some folks called down to the raft as it passed, but the soldiers just waved as they continued downstream. After a half-hour of this, Carter cocked his head and listened carefully to his surroundings before asking David if he could hear gunshots to the north. It took a few minutes, but David finally answered in the affirmative.
Soon they could hear the din of a big fight taking place somewhere close to the river, and even though the barges and buildings along the bank blocked their view, they knew the enemy by sound alone. Finally they came to a place where they could see people travelling along a road that ran just a few hundred meters from the shoreline. Trucks and other large vehicles were loaded down with men and women carrying firearms and pikes, and moments later what could only be described as a company of infantry marched by on their way to the sound of the guns.
“Whatcha think, Davy?” Carter drawled.
“I think nobody’s called me Davy since grade school. I also think there are a lot of people around here, and it looks like they’re fighting a battle somewhere nearby.”
“Prolly no better way to make a good first impression than pitchin’ in when a buncha infected are tryin’ to kill the people ya wanna talk to.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” David agreed just before shouting to Gabe and Bobby, “Gear up! We’re heading into a fight.”
Before leaving their raft, several of the boats following them had pulled up, the occupants asking what they could do to help. Carter was screwing the two pieces of his halberd together after attaching the rest of his weapons to his belt. “Y’all stay right here, on the damn water! Keep everyone else in their boats too. We’re gonna see if we can help these folks out with whatever’s got ‘em all riled up.”
“I thought we were comin’ to Cairo just to talk to anyone we found here?” An ol
d man in a crowded fishing boat wondered aloud.
Carter impatiently explained, “Nobody’s gonna be willin’ to talk if they’re under attack. My men’ll find out what’s goin’ on and do what we can to help. I ‘spect they’ll be a lot more friendly if we help ‘em out before askin’ a buncha questions.”
He turned to the three soldiers to find that they were geared up and ready to rumble. “Keep yer helmets off ‘til we meet these folks—don’t want ‘em shootin’ first and askin’ questions later when four funny-lookin’ strangers show up in the middle of a fight.”
With that warning they took off for the road at a fast walk, thankful for their leather armor in the freezing temperatures. Carter flagged down the first vehicle to pass, an SUV with a City of Cairo logo on the door. An older man, with saggy jowls that indicated a good deal of recent weight loss, rolled down the passenger window and demanded, “Who’re you folks, and what do you want?”
David stepped forward to handle this, recognizing a self-important bureaucrat when he saw one. “We’re former U.S. soldiers, sir. We’ve been leading a fleet full of refugees down the Ohio, trying to find a safe place to set them up for the winter somewhere along the Lower Mississippi.”
