by J. W. Vohs
Jack knew that there was no way he could guarantee such a request, but realized that what David really wanted to believe was that Jack and the rest of his family would never stop fighting to make his request a reality. “I promise you that we’ll win, David, and our family will go on.”
David sniffed back tears. “Jack, kill ‘em all. Then kill the people responsible for the virus. Do that for me.”
“I will, David, I will. But I plan on being with you in a few months, so you prepare like I told you to do.”
“I will. I better let you go now. Keep fighting, Jack, don’t stop till we win.”
“All right, David, see you when you get here.”
Jack hung up without another word, then held his face in his hands and let the tears flow for at least five minutes. His conversation with David had been the most gut-wrenching emotional event he’d experienced since his parents had died. The worst of it was knowing that there was absolutely nothing he could do to help his little brother now; he was on his own in this terrifying new world. Finally Jack was able to take some deep, calming breaths, realizing as he did that he was desperately tired. He wanted to lie down right there on the floor and sleep for twelve hours, but there was work yet to be done tonight.
It was close to 2 a.m. when Jack hit the road again, and he was thankful for the bright, full moon that illuminated the night. When he delivered the radios to the safe-houses at the fire stations he found the places quiet, his officers reporting that there had been no zombie presence at all since people began arriving that morning. His deputies appreciated the radios and promised to stay in regular contact. He informed them of the night’s events at the office and the housing addition, then headed down to the courthouse with the final radio and a strong desire to clean up and find a place to crash for a few hours. As he pulled into town he decided to park the Jeep at the sheriff’s department and walk over to the safe-house, not wanting to risk leading any zombies to the fortress through the sounds of his engine.
It proved to be both a wise and dangerous decision, since as soon as he pulled his pack out of the vehicle and locked up he turned around to find several zombies moaning and crossing the street in his direction. His first thought was to leave the creatures alone and take a round-a-bout path to the courthouse, but then he realized that he would be responsible for whatever havoc these two wreaked if he didn’t take them out. He had replaced the .22 he’d lost at Hunter’s Ridge and still had his mace and dagger hanging from his belt, but Jack decided to use his halberd instead. He quickly unlocked the hatch of the Jeep and pulled the long weapon free, being careful not to damage the interior of the vehicle with the razor-sharp axe blade and side spear-point.
After quietly closing the hatch, Jack turned back to the zombies who had approached to within twenty feet. They seemed to be moving faster now that their prey was so close. Remembering the nearly deadly lessons learned with other edged-weapons becoming stuck in the creatures, this time Jack swung the blade of the halberd into the knee of the first zombie and brought the monster to the ground. As the second continued its approach, Jack took careful aim at the zombie’s face and rammed the spear tip at the end of the halberd through the monster’s forehead. He easily pierced the brain and dropped the creature in its tracks. Then he stepped over to the crippled zombie still trying to crawl toward him and brought the steel-tipped butt-end of the halberd swiftly down into the top of the flesh-eater’s skull. He smiled grimly as he realized that he had just emerged victorious in his first real combat with what had been his favorite weapon in medieval reenactments. As he had long suspected, the halberd was a fearsome weapon.
As he picked up his pack, Jack could hear a few moans wafting about the buildings of Main Street, but he didn’t actually see any zombies as he began his three-block trek to the courthouse. The adrenaline rush from his run-in with the zombies temporarily replaced his exhaustion with a burst of alertness and energy. As the guards passed him through the gate of the barbed wire perimeter, he told them about what had just happened in front of the sheriff’s office. They explained that numerous sightings had been reported throughout the night without any of the creatures actually attacking the safe-house. Jack reminded them that their noise-discipline was probably the main factor behind the lack of attacks, and encouraged them to stay quiet as they went about their business of guarding the perimeter.
CHAPTER 15
An hour before sunrise John had three RRTs and two snipers ready to move on the Hunter’s Ridge addition. They had decided to slightly modify Jack’s plan by attacking with three teams led by Tina, Carey, and Tom Smith. Bobby and Todd were still going to provide sniper cover, but John was going to remain with the vehicles and coordinate all actions over the radios. If necessary, he and the two snipers could reinforce any problem areas the RRTs might encounter. After equipment checks and a final briefing on the plan of attack, the teams headed out into a pre-dawn mist in two Hummers, a Jeep, and Carter’s old pickup. The transport was much more than they required, but they also hoped that they would find survivors who needed a lift out of the area.
A brief search of Google Earth had revealed 150 homes in Hunter’s Ridge, so John believed they could be facing four or five hundred zombies if the outbreak was as bad as Jack thought it might be. When that number sank in, Tina had asked him to bring along an M-60 with a thousand rounds, and John had considered her request a wise one. The machine gun sat in the back of the pickup, and if they needed the extra firepower all of the former Rangers were experts with the weapon.
As they pulled up to the addition, John ordered the drivers to back into the grass bordering the entry sign, just in case they needed to get out of there in a hurry and one direction was somehow cut off. The first rays of sunlight were peeking through the trees as the team members exited the vehicles and found themselves looking over the carnage that Jack had inflicted on the zombies just hours earlier. Twenty-two corpses lay strewn near the roadway, and more than half had obviously been killed with something other than .22 rounds. The leather-clad, helmeted fighters shook their heads in disbelief as they thought about the vicious fight Jack had somehow won against such staggering odds. John finally broke the reverie by hissing, “Let’s do it!”
The teams moved out in a loose wedge formation, Carey’s team on point with the other two providing flank protection. As they quietly maneuvered down the main street of the addition, the effects of the infection were on morbid display on the lawns and porches once so proudly maintained by the upper middle-class residents of Hunter’s Ridge. Body parts and nearly consumed corpses lay in dark red patches of earth and asphalt; the non-veterans and veterans alike were deeply shaken by the sight of intestines lying dozens of feet from some of the dead. The gore was eventually too much for Carey and Tom; both ripped off their helmets and vomited as they had to move around a mangled child who looked like the remains of a lion attack on The Nature Channel.
The rest of the team members waited while the two civilians rid themselves of the contents of their stomachs, and Tina began wondering why no zombies were showing up to investigate the sounds of the retching coming from the two men. Finally, Carey and Tom wiped their mouths and pulled their helmets back on as the teams continued their march deeper into the housing addition. While the vomiting was going on Tina had moved her team to the point of the wedge, and as they neared the middle of Hunter’s Ridge she halted the advance by lifting a clenched fist above her head.
The men in back watched as her helmet moved slowly back and forth for the next ten seconds, then they all heard a low moan coming from the back of an open garage. Tina pulled the radio from her belt and whispered their location to John, telling him that the fight was about to begin and she would keep him posted. As she finished the message other moans could be heard rising up in answer to the first, seeming to creep out of the mist from all around them. Tina waved the teams closer together, forming the troops into a small circle that was now bristling with halberds, maces, and .22s extended to arm
’s length scanning for targets. They didn’t have long to wait.
The front door of a house on the opposite side of the street from which they’d heard the first moan slammed open and two zombies stumbled out toward the soldiers. A mother and daughter from the looks of them, both had lost large chunks of flesh from their arms and shoulders to whomever had infected them. Tom was closest to the zombies, flanked by Bill Haines. Their inexperience showed as they peppered the approaching monsters’ bodies with the small bullets that could only stop the zombies with head shots made at close range. Finally Tina barked, “Hold your fire!”
The two men looked briefly at their disgusted team leader, who angrily demanded, “Make your shots count. Wait till they’re close enough that you know you can hit them in the head.” Then she lifted her own weapon in a two-handed grip and put down each zombie with only one shot apiece.
“Shoot them again to be sure,” she ordered, “and everyone look to your own front because they’re here!”
This time Bill and Tom took careful aim with their pistols and put several rounds into each zombie’s head before turning their attention to the next wave that was rapidly approaching the RRT perimeter. Tina wasn’t excited about having Bill Haines on her right flank, even though the new man had shown great promise during training. But Bill wasn’t her biggest concern as she considered the guy on her left a true liability in the coming battle. His name was Rick Jenner, a large, rawboned farmer who was allowed to join an RRT because he and Bill Haines had been best friends since kindergarten, and Bill had lobbied for his buddy to be allowed into training.
Rick had no military, police, or even serious athletic experience. Even worse, during his early training he had proven to be the type of person who always believed he knew everything. Tina was upset with herself for not paying more attention to the fact that the team Rick was on had been assigned to this mission, but she had been busy organizing every other aspect of the operation and didn’t consider the various individuals involved until they were actually on the road to Hunter’s Ridge. At that point it was too late to change personnel, so she had pushed the worry from her mind. Now that Rick was on her left flank she was kicking herself as the zombies approached, realizing that she would probably have to worry about saving him as well as herself.
Now Tina could see that zombies were pouring out of homes, bushes, hedges, and the wood-line bordering the addition. She didn’t know how many they were facing, but there seemed to be several hundred of the monsters heading their way. Tina set her stance and began firing on the advancing mob. Head shots, or more specifically, brain shots, were difficult with stationary targets, let alone a shuffling mass of creatures trying to eat you. Tina kept up a steady rate of fire, figuring that she was managing to drop a zombie with about fifty percent of her shots. When she heard the clicking sound signaling an empty clip, at least two zombies were within ten feet and moving quickly. A number of others were right behind them, and Tina decided she couldn’t risk trying to reload. She holstered the pistol and lifted the halberd lying at her feet.
Rick Jenner had emptied his first magazine in about three seconds, with nothing hitting the ground in front of him but spent brass. He did manage to reload fairly quickly, but again emptied the clip in seconds. This time he actually dropped two zombies, mainly because they were only three feet away and reaching for him when he unloaded on them. Now was the time to switch to a halberd or mace, but Rick was panicked and thought of nothing but trying to reload the pistol. He pulled out a new magazine and fumbled around for a few seconds, unable to load the clip because he had forgotten to eject the empty one out of the weapon. Then it was too late; a group of three zombies stumbled into him and pulled him to the ground, their hands and teeth frenziedly trying to reach the flesh beneath his protective gear.
Tina had immediately killed two zombies by thrusting the spike end of the halberd into their faces, but a third attempt succeeded only in ripping off a large chunk of scalp from the monster trying to scramble over the growing mound of corpses. She calmly lifted the weapon and brought the blade down on top of the zombie’s skull, easily cleaving the bone in half and slicing into the brain. But while she was pulling the halberd free from the creature she had just killed, another zombie took advantage of the fact that Rick was no longer covering her left flank and managed to grab her shoulder and spin her halfway around. Tina instantly realized that this zombie was inside the range of her halberd, so she dropped her right hand to her belt and grabbed her short sword. The zombie had opened its mouth wide as it prepared to move in for a bite so Tina simply slammed the tip of the blade into the gaping maw, pushing the sword through the soft tissue at the back of the throat until it severed the lower brain stem.
As the zombie fell it took the stuck sword to the ground with it, and Tina looked around to see that Rick was in serious trouble. One of the zombies had pulled Rick’s helmet halfway off his head, while two others were gnawing at his back and legs. With no time to do much else, she kicked the helmet–pulling zombie in the head hard enough to send it sprawling, but then had to immediately spin back to her right to confront the presence she sensed there. She picked up and swung the halberd as she turned, feeling the blade glance off a shoulder bone and slice into the jaw of a tall male reaching for her back. The zombie was knocked to the ground but far from dead, and Tina didn’t have time to worry about him as two others had scrambled over their fallen brethren and were advancing to the attack.
When Rick felt the pressure on his head disappear he tried to lift himself from the ground, but the two zombies still on his back and legs managed to hold him in place. One of his attackers suddenly chomped down on the spot where his jacket had pulled up from his pants, and even though he was wearing protective underarmor the pain from the bite caused him to scream and renew his efforts to escape. He actually got to his knees before the zombie Tina had kicked off of him threw him back down and attacked his helmet again. Another of the flesh-eaters arrived. This one had been a six year-old child, and her small face fit perfectly in the space between Rick’s halfway-removed helmet and protective neck-collar. She viciously bit down into his neck and ripped into his spinal column with her canine teeth. She shook her head back and forth like a dog in an attempt to pull a piece of flesh free, finally making contact with the nerves controlling Rick’s body between the neck and toes. Most of Rick’s pain ended at that moment, but the realization of what was happening sent his panicked mind over the edge of madness as he lay there howling and screaming like the dying animal he had become.
Tina had taken several steps back to gain room to use the halberd more effectively, and she quickly dispatched the two zombies closest to her. On her right she saw Bill Haines surrounded by the creatures, but he was swinging his mace with a two handed grip and smashing skulls with every blow. A pile of corpses lying around the big teacher-turned-soldier immediately told her that he was holding his own, but just then one of the zombies turned away from the group trying to reach Bill and stepped toward her. Having had a brief moment to catch her breath she swung the halberd around with a powerful stroke that hit the zombie in the neck, neatly decapitating the monster whose head fell upon a mound of corpses and rolled up against her feet.
Tina immediately looked back to her front, and the horror that met her eyes nearly sent her over the edge. A child that could only have been two or three was reaching toward her with the stubs of two arms chewed off at the elbows. Even worse, the bottom of the child’s jaw and all of his nose were missing from his young face. Her breath caught in her throat as she faced this living nightmare, and suddenly her mind separated in to independent spaces where she was thinking about several things at once while her body returned to the fight.
As she kicked the child-zombie in the face she wondered where John and the snipers were. When she used the steel toe in her boots to crush the little monster’s head, she remembered that Rick was in trouble to her left. As she thrust the halberd into the eye of a fat, female zombie fol
lowing the child, she turned and saw Rick screaming and thrashing his head about as a mob of zombies were ripping strips of flesh from his back after finally pulling up the Kevlar-laced shirt under the jacket. Feeling pressure on her ankle, she quickly looked down to see the head of the zombie she had decapitated latched onto her boot, black eyes staring up at her with hungry malevolence. Again she wondered where John was, as two huge zombies finally fell upon her and pulled her to the ground.
Following the final comprehensible radio message, John had listened carefully for fifteen minutes to a few garbled transmissions that he assumed were the results of the talk-button being accidentally pushed down as Tina led her RRTs into the fight. What he heard wasn’t encouraging, with the most recent transmission lasting two seconds and sounding for all the world like a man screaming in mindless fear. It was a scream he expected to hear in a mental institution rather than on a battlefield; a primordial wail of terror that resembled the cry of a sheep being devoured by wolves. That scream propelled him into action.
John told the snipers to sling their M1As and carry their halberds at port arms, explaining that they were going to double time toward the sound of the battle and reassess their options when they made contact with the enemy. The three Rangers carried nearly one hundred pounds of guns and ammo, with John toting the M60 and several hundred belt-fed rounds. Still, the trained warriors covered ground quickly, soon topping a slight rise on the main street through the addition where they could look down on a scene that could have come from a thousand years ago. The RRT members were fighting for their lives about a hundred yards away, those still on their feet drawn back into a tight circle, surrounded by a mound of corpses that at least a hundred zombies were frantically trying to climb over.
