by J. W. Vohs
John’s first impulse was to rush headlong into the battle, especially since he couldn’t see Tina’s distinctive orange helmet among the standing fighters. But his training overcame his emotions, as it was designed to do, and he ordered the snipers to follow him into a two-story, brick home that had two large windows facing the battleground. As they reached the second floor, John told Todd to go into the bedroom on the right while he took Bobby into the one on the left. Todd’s orders were to thin the herd without endangering any of their people, but he had a different plan for Bobby. John stood for a moment at the window scanning the area for the bright orange helmet he had begged Tina to wear so he would be able to quickly find her in a fight.
Suddenly he caught a flash of orange through a mound of frenzied zombies grabbing and clawing at the person they had trapped on the ground about eight feet beyond what was obviously a shrinking defensive perimeter. His heart leapt into his throat at the site of his wife being mobbed by zombies, until he saw one of the monsters fall back clutching its face. Then another stumbled back and fell from a kick to the head. Tina was still alive!
John furiously kicked out the window glass as he yelled to Bobby, “Tina’s on the ground at ten-o-clock, eight feet from the circle; you can see her orange helmet.”
Bobby was already lying in a prone firing position, and at this range he was immediately ready to shoot. With a scope designed for eight hundred yard shots, the zombies’ heads were as big as beach balls, and the experienced sniper removed three of them in four seconds. The drop in pressure on Tina was obvious as she quickly gained her knees and once again punched one of her attackers in the face with her mace. Bobby had to be more careful now that Tina was moving, but he killed four zombies over the next ten seconds and Tina was now on her feet. Her feeble swings showed that she was exhausted, but after Bobby killed two zombies between her and the defensive circle she was able to stumble into the protective ring and fall to one knee as she caught her breath.
As soon as he saw that his wife was momentarily out of danger John yelled, “Keep thinning them out! I’m going to find a safe angle for the M60 because a lot of zombies are looking for us!”
Todd hadn’t had to focus on specific targets as he fired, and he had killed twenty-nine zombies with thirty shots. But the death-dealing was about to exact a price, as dozens of zombies were turning toward the sound of the gunfire and heading directly toward the house from which the loud explosions were emanating. John scrambled back downstairs where he closed and locked the door, immediately tipping over a large, heavy hutch into the foyer and wedging it into the space between the door and the stairs.
Then he ran into the dining room and pulled the massive table over to the window, doing his best to develop a firing trajectory that wouldn’t endanger the beleaguered RRTs. He hopped up onto the table and kicked out the window, then pulled down the front legs of the tripod on the M60 and prepared to fire. He knew that he had to be careful with only several hundred rounds, as the machine gun’s rate of fire could eat up all of his ammo in well under a minute if he didn’t use trigger discipline. John then worked to calm his breathing and set his sights on the area he thought would provide a kill zone safe for the RRTs. As several zombies crossed his sights he held his fire, waiting till at least ten of the creatures had moved into the safe zone. Finally, he aimed for the heads of the monsters and pulled the muzzle across the group with a three second squeeze of the trigger.
The burst from the machine gun killed perhaps half of the zombies John had targeted, while most of the others were now missing limbs or sporting large holes through their torsos. All but two of them were on the ground, so Jack took solace in the fact that he had at least slowed them down. The final two fell as their heads disappeared in a red mist when Todd took a moment to clean up John’s left overs as the gunner grimly waited for the next group to appear in his kill zone.
Tina had finally caught her breath enough to stand and check herself for injuries. She had no broken bones and could see no place where the zombies had penetrated her protective gear, but she hurt everywhere and knew that she would be covered with bruises for two weeks if she survived this mess. Looking around she could see that the twelve RRT members were now nine, then realized she made ten. Bill Haines was still wailing away with his mace, but she could see that all of the men were weakening fast. They had now been engaged in medieval combat for over half an hour with no breaks, and the weapons they were using were heavy. Still, she could hear the guns firing and knew that John had arrived. She’d known as soon as heads began vanishing in small red clouds among the group of zombies that had her down, but for some reason she hadn’t heard the shots until now.
The number of zombies on their right had been thinned to almost single digits, so she made the decision to retreat to one of the houses where fewer fighters could defend the entryways while the others could rest and rehydrate. She stepped up beside Bill, who had put down all immediate threats, and told him to spread the word along the line that they were retreating to the house with a stone façade on the other side of the street. The weary fighters didn’t argue, following Tina’s directions toward the house, moving back to back and covering the retreat away from the gore covered ground upon which they had just slaughtered several hundred zombies.
As they moved Tina could see that one of the snipers had killed all of the zombies that had downed Rick and the other fighter she had yet to identify, but neither of the men were moving and for the moment she made the practical decision to leave them under the cover of the guns. They moved into the house where Tina and Bill stood guard over the front door, ordering the rest of the RRT members to secure any other entrances and clear each room of the house. Now Tina hooked her mace onto her belt and pulled the .22 free again. She cast a questioning glance at Bill, but he just shook his head, indicating that he didn’t know where his pistol was. She told him, “Trade places with somebody who still has their gun and ammo, and send them up here to me. Then make sure the guys are guarding all the first floor windows and doors as they drink as much water as they can hold.”
Bill turned to follow the order without a word till Tina reached out and grabbed his forearm to stop him for a moment. “And Bill, tell everyone we’ve won this thing. We’ll make it back to The Castle tonight.”
Bill nodded his understanding in a weary, subdued manner, perhaps thinking about his friend lying among the dead out in the street, but he moved off to inform the fighters of Tina’s orders.
After Bill left Tina smashed out a side window panel set into the luxurious doorframe, then leaned against the wall to steady herself as she began dropping zombies with each carefully placed shot. From her position she could see most of the zombies turning toward the sound of gunfire coming from the house where John and the snipers had set up, but so many of the monsters were falling so fast that she figured they wouldn’t be able to get through to the shooters. If they had been able to carry more ammo she would have been right, but John was down to fifty rounds on the M60 while Todd and Bobby had seated their last magazines.
As Tina finished off a huge swig from one of the water bottles she had brought with her the radio crackled to life. “Tina, this is John. Can you hear me?”
She keyed the mike, “Yeah, babe, this is me.”
“Are you ok?”
“Yeah, from what I can tell none of them managed to break skin. I’ll have to get a complete checkup when we get back to The Castle.”
John let out a long sigh of relief. “All right, listen, we’re almost out of ammo over here. As soon as I finish this transmission we’re going to fire off the rest of our rounds and go to halberds and maces. Your people got anything left in the tank?”
“We’ll be there, John.”
“Ok, as soon as you hear the next flurry of gunfire taper off bring your teams out here and hit them from behind. I really think there’s fewer than fifty of them left. One more hard push and we’ll finish them.”
“All right, but give me
one minute to get everyone ready to move out. We’ll be there as soon as the last round fires.”
“Ok, babe, be careful and I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Tina immediately began shouting for the other RRT members to join her, and they came running out of concern that she was being attacked by too many zombies for her to handle. As she waited for the guards upstairs to join them, she looked over the faces of the soldiers she had led out of The Castle that morning. Many of them were pale and dirty, with a few of the faces bearing the tracks of tears as they had just been informed of the deaths of two of their teammates. There was shock in their eyes, but also determination, and she knew they would finish the battle and make it home. When the men keeping watch upstairs arrived, she told all of the soldiers to pull on their helmets and load their .22s if they still had them. When informed of the plan she and John had just made there were grunts and nods of agreement as the men were obviously ready to end this thing. A couple of the soldiers looked hesitant, and Tina pulled them aside to tell them they could sit this one out if they weren’t up to another fight today. She was proud of them when they looked as if she was crazy and strenuously argued against missing the attack.
With everything settled and the fighters ready to go, Tina ordered the men to form a column behind her as she stood at the open door. Seconds later they all heard the M60 rip loose, and as it fell silent they listened to the final sniper rounds being fired before running out behind Tina, screaming at the top of their lungs. When they rounded the corner of the garage they could see that only about thirty zombies remained on their feet, all of them crowding toward the front door of the house where the shots had been coming from. Just as the monsters reached the front steps, John, Bobby, and Todd stepped into the doorway and stuck their halberds into the faces of the advancing mob.
Right at that moment the RRTs crashed into the rear of the crowd of zombies with pent up fury from the loss of their friends, as well as frustration over the siege they had just endured, fueling their advance. This time the zombies didn’t have a chance. The handful of fighters still holding the .22s stopped a few feet away and immediately began dropping the monsters with head shots while the rest of the RRT members plowed into the flanks of the mob with halberds and maces. In less than a minute all of the zombies that had been trying to reach John and the snipers were down, and the two groups from The Castle met each other with handshakes and hugs as they stood over corpses drenched with blood, brain, and bone.
Their reunion was brief however, as Bobby Crane brought everyone’s attention to the fact that dozens of the fallen zombies were still alive and capable of infecting someone because many of the M60 rounds had dropped the creatures with shots that had destroyed legs and hips without hitting the skull. So the teams spent twenty minutes inspecting all of the fallen zombies from the morning’s battle, counting corpses and dispatching all that were still moving. When they were finished they realized that they had fought and killed four hundred seventeen zombies in a two-hour battle at the cost of two men. They were amazed and deeply saddened at the same time, and then suddenly their sacrifices seemed justified when a window opened from an attic and a woman stuck her head out and called to them in a weary, frightened voice.
“Did you kill them all?”
Tina yelled up to the woman but she didn’t react to the call. Realizing that her helmet was muffling her voice, Tina took it off and shouted, “They’re all gone. But wait where you are and we’ll come up to get you; we haven’t had the chance to search these houses yet.”
As Tina was speaking the woman pulled two little girls around to where they could see out of the window and pointed to the woman-warrior and her helmeted friends. One of girls smiled shyly down at Tina, who gave a small wave and shouted, “You’re safe now, honey. I’ll be right up!”
As they were being led out of their home, the woman explained that her husband had been killed by the zombies two nights before, and she and her daughters had been trapped in the attic with one bottle of water and no food. Todd had taken several men back to get the trucks, and they pulled up to the shaken family and immediately gave them water, granola bars, and trail mix that many of the veterans always stowed in their packs. Then the RRTs split up into pairs that walked through the streets calling for other survivors. One by one and in small groups the shell-shocked people still alive in Hunter’s Ridge came out of their homes and joined the fighters. Eventually the soldiers from The Castle realized that they had rescued nineteen people, including four men of fighting age who had already asked about the weapons the RRTs were carrying. Though none of them would say it aloud, most of the RRT members knew that in a Darwinian sense the numbers from the battle had come out very much in their favor in this new world where the uninfected were quickly being overwhelmed by the zombies.
The soldiers and survivors knew that they would have to leave the mess at Hunter’s Ridge as it was for the time being. All of the corpses needed to be dragged away and burned or buried, and the homes needed to be cleared and searched for supplies. But the soldiers were exhausted and the survivors needed food, water, and medical attention. Before they left however, they attended to their fallen comrades. Rick Jenner had died from the severe bites he’d received to the back of his neck, which had eventually found a vein that caused him to bleed out. Another converted civilian named Fred Lemme, who’d joined The Castle after the attack on the Haines’ residence, had been killed when a group of zombies pulled him down and discovered he wasn’t wearing his neck collar. Fred’s throat was literally gone all the way back to the spinal cord. Fred had a young wife who was pregnant with their first baby, and he had entered into RRT training because he had been a high school football player and always hoped to join the Marines. Now, he was gone after only his first battle.
John gently removed Fred’s helmet and sent two .22 rounds into his skull, while Bobby did the same for Rick. They then policed up missing weapons and other gear, wrapped and loaded the corpses of their team members, and boarded the vehicles for the ride back to The Castle. The people from Hunter’s Ridge were riding in the back of the pickup and wherever they could find space in the Hummers. Everyone rode in silence, each of the survivors and soldiers lost in their own private thoughts about what had happened that morning. Tina wondered if ever in the history of medieval warfare twelve warriors had ever killed four hundred after being surrounded and mobbed. Granted, John and his snipers had killed their fair share of zombies late in the battle, and she would probably have died if they hadn’t shown up when they did, but the twelve RRT members who’d stood in that circle and fought like the heroes of old had won an epic victory. While they would all grieve the loss of Rick and Fred, she knew that Jack would be proud of them.
CHAPTER 16
Jack opened his eyes and briefly wondered where he was, then remembered that he was on a cot set up in a clerk’s office in the courthouse. Light was streaming through the window so he must have managed to get several hours of sleep after handing out the radios and flopping down on the thin, lumpy mattress. For a moment he just lay there, trying to determine what had awakened him, then someone began to knock quietly on his door. He opened it to find a frightened teenager nearly shouting, “Sir, Mr. Stergen needs you outside immediately!”
Since he hadn’t bothered undressing beyond his outerwear Jack was ready to roll in less than two minutes, grabbing his helmet and halberd on the way out of the room. As soon as the teen opened the outside door he could hear a chorus of zombie moans, but what bothered him more was the sound of people shouting to one another. He quickly found Barry standing on a scaffold left over from a remodeling crew, using his left hand to shield his eyes from the sun as he talked into the radio in his right. When he saw Jack he quickly ended the transmission and climbed down the ladder.
“What’s going on?” Jack asked with a note of irritation in his voice.
“We’ve got zombies in the wire out there, and some of our guys just can’t make killing shots with th
eir .22s. The trapped zombies are attracting others with their moaning and thrashing around.”
Jack let out a long sigh of frustration, “And you have guys out here shouting and yelling to one another?”
Barry looked embarrassed so Jack let the grieving man off the hook. “Don’t worry about it. Go around and quiet the loud people and send me a couple of guards who are armored; tell them to bring spears.”
“Uh, Jack, there’s another problem out at Station 2.”
“What kind of problem are you talking about?”
Barry handed him the radio. “They’re on channel two. I’ll go get you a couple guards, and you talk to Deputy Little out there.”
Jack turned on the radio, made sure it was turned to channel two, then called, “Little, you out there?”
A voice broke through the static, “Hey, sheriff, this is Deputy Little. We have a big problem brewing out here.”
“Talk to me.”
“Well, somehow an infected boy got in here yesterday; his parents were hiding the wound from what I can tell. Anyway, he turned at dawn this morning and bit both of his parents and another lady that tried to help contain him. They were sleeping right in the middle of about fifty people, and every one of them were shouting and screaming at the top of their lungs. One of my guards went in there and bashed the zombie’s head in, and then the parents went crazy attacking the guard. While I was in there sorting everything out, one of the younger guards had a zombie approach his part of the perimeter. He couldn’t stop the thing with his .22, so he panicked and used a shotgun; he needed three shots to kill it even then.”
Deputy Little let out a long sigh, “So we’ve got zombies in the wire all around the perimeter. We’ve taken most of them out quietly enough, but all of the moaning and gunshots have attracted dozens more. My guys aren’t taking it too well.”
