Crucifixion - 02

by Dirk Patton

  Before the dust cleared I started hearing the screams of the wounded. I’ve known guys that couldn’t handle hearing those screams, finally opting out of the military to get away from them, but they were music to my ears. Hearing the screams of your enemy means you’re still alive and have inflicted more damage than you’ve taken. Hopefully. Unless you’re hurt too bad to scream. I kept watching through the scope but there was no breeze in the valley and it was taking a long time for the dust to settle. Movement at the back of the dust cloud drew my attention as two men supporting each other made a break back down the path. I shot both of them before they made it ten yards.

  Finally the dust started to thin and I was able to make out the carnage I had wrought. Bodies and parts of bodies were scattered along the path. In one of those scenes from battle that will always stick with you as clear as the moment you saw it I spotted a human arm dangling from a shattered tree branch, swinging slightly like it was waving at me. Not letting myself get distracted I kept scanning and started counting bodies, running out of corpses when I reached 17. Three unaccounted for. I took a moment to scan and count a second time, but the number didn’t change. Leaving the pack where it was I first moved laterally then descended towards the path, keeping to the heaviest brush. I heard number 18 before I saw him. He was sobbing and moaning and when I angled around a large tree that had blocked my view of him I could see him sitting on the ground with his back against the trunk. His hands were clasped across his belly in a futile attempt to hold in the intestines that had spilled out when the blast had ripped him open. I showed him the only mercy I was in the mood for by shooting him in the head.

  Moving closer to the trail I kept a constant scan going for 19 and 20, finally spotting movement back down the path as a figure broke from the trees and started running. I was a blink away from pulling the trigger on him when a body crashed into my left side, knocking the rifle off aim and me to the ground. Grunting with the impact of the body and the ground I rolled to get my hands up and between us but this guy had been in a few tussles and knew what I was trying to do. When we had landed he came down on top of me and was using his not inconsiderable body weight to pin my legs as he controlled my upper body with a hand locked into my vest while he pounded my head with his fist. Feeling his weight shift I knew what was coming and got my hips turned just in time to take the knee that was intended for my balls on the side of my thigh. It still hurt like hell, but at least wasn’t incapacitating like a shot to the boys would have been.

  I stopped trying to fight against his pressure and instead rolled on the ground in the direction he was pushing. This caught him by surprise and with his arm pinned against my chest he had to roll with me and we wound up on our backs with me on top. He tried to wrap me in a bear hug but I broke the embrace and started rocketing elbows behind me into his ribs. The second elbow I threw hit perfectly and I felt at least two of his ribs snap. One more elbow in the same spot brought a grunt of pain from him then I raised my head and smashed it back into his face as hard as I could. For a moment his grip on me went slack and I rolled off and leapt to my feet five feet away, drawing the Kukri as I rose into a crouch. He started to fumble for a holstered pistol and I lunged in and buried all 12 inches of the blade in his guts and cut upwards until the blade stopped against his breastbone.

  Chapter 18

  Yanking the blade free of the corpse I looked in the direction the last pursuer had run, but couldn’t see him in the dark. Moving on auto pilot I started running after him, Kukri held in my right hand, blood spattering off it onto the ground as I ran. I covered ground quickly, keeping my steps light and as quiet as possible. There was a little moonlight and I was able to see and avoid sticks on the ground and branches in my path. After five minutes of running I made it to the larger valley where Betty and the kids had been camped and paused to check the ground to make sure I was still following the man. Before I could spot anything in the jumble of footprints from the passage of two large groups I heard him crashing through the bush to my right, back towards the site of the ambush on the road.

  Turning I broke into a fast lope, now tracking him by sound as he continued to step on a stick or run into a bush every few seconds. Several minutes later I crested a small rise and saw him a hundred yards in front of me. The man was struggling through the dark forest. He was overweight and out of shape and even from this distance I could hear his ragged breathing. His run wasn’t much faster than a very slow jog and I came to a stop when I heard voices ahead in the forest. Did I let him escape and tell a terrifying story to his friends? The idea had merit. A frightened enemy is a significantly lesser threat than a mad enemy, and finding all their friends dead would frighten them, but would also make them mad. However, a lone survivor running out of the woods and telling a frightening story of how his entire group was wiped out in the blink of an eye could better serve my purpose. Decision made I turned and started running back down the valley.

  Approaching my ambush site I slowed when I heard what sounded like wild animals fighting. Raising the rifle and looking through the night vision scope I was momentarily disgusted by the site of a small pack of infected feasting on the bodies. There were four males and two females and the females would feed on a corpse for a few minutes then move to another. If another infected happened to also be feeding on the new corpse the female would attack it and force it to back off. This was another new behavior I hadn’t seen before, and didn’t quite know what to make of. Shooting the first female as she thrust her hands into the body cavity of one of the corpses I quickly acquired and fired at the second female, but missed. As soon as my suppressed shot had sounded she had moved, dashing into the surrounding trees. What the hell was that?

  Feeling less confident about being able to easily clear them out I quickly sighted in on and shot all the males, but the female I had missed hadn’t reappeared and wasn’t making any noise. Not good. Carefully scanning the dark woods I couldn’t spot her, but I was almost certain she was still in the area and was stalking me. Lowering the rifle I drew the Kukri and stepped off the path into thicker brush and started silently circling around the carnage. I took my time, lowering the toe of each boot gently onto the ground and testing the spot before I transferred my weight. This is a slow way to move, but when stealth is more important than speed it’s the only way to move. Eventually I had circled the area and was slightly upslope, only a few yards from where I had left my pack.

  I started to move towards the pack, then stopped and froze in place. If I was lying in wait for someone and there was something I knew they’d come back for, like my pack, I’d set up on it and wait for them to come to me and attack when they were vulnerable. For five minutes I stood perfectly still, controlling my breathing, the only movement my head turning slowly as I scanned the area repeatedly. Even though I wasn’t detecting a threat didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Was I giving too much credit to the female? Up until now I hadn’t seen any indication that the infected were able to reason or problem solve, rather had watched them repeatedly behave in only a mindless pursuit of any prey that was in front of them. Was that changing? Were they learning? Was this a product of the viral component that the scientists hadn’t been able to identify, or had I just happened to encounter a gifted one?

  Never one to believe in coincidence I filed away this one’s behavior and refocused on the task at hand. My pack lay on the ground five yards ahead of me on a clear patch of ground that was only a couple of yards across. Heavy brush surrounded the clearing except at the rocky edge where it looked down on my ambush site. If she was waiting for me it would be in the brush at the back or on the far side of the clearing. Moving a millimeter at a time I sheathed the Kukri and raised the rifle. Placing my eye up to the scope it only took me seconds to find the female hiding in the brush on the far side of the clearing. She was squatted a couple of feet from the edge of the clearing and was sitting perfectly still, her head turned to watch the path below where the corpses lay. She hadn’t seen or sm
elled me.

  The forest was very quiet, as if even the trees and rocks were holding their breath, and my current problem was that the rifle was on safe and it would make a small degree of noise when I moved the lever to fire. Whether or not she would hear it was the question, but I had already seen that these things seemed to have enhanced senses and I prepared myself to enable the rifle and get a shot off as quickly as possible. Target sighted I exhaled silently, clicked the safety lever with my thumb and fired. Miss again. She had moved the instant the rifle had clicked off safe. Damn that was some reaction time. There was no way any normal human could have avoided my shot. She had dropped lower to the ground and moved to the side and now burst into the clearing, charging directly at me on all fours at a surprising speed. I snapped off another shot that missed her head but impacted at the base of her neck, most likely shattering her collar bone as she lost control of one of her arms and crashed to the ground.

  Faster than should have been possible she rolled and leapt to her feet and launched herself into the brush to the side. She was breaking off the attack? That was definitely new. Up to now an infected that spotted prey maintained pursuit of that prey until it either escaped or the infected was killed. Self-preservation had not been a part of the equation. Still tracking the female with the night scope I saw her running down the slope towards the path and I stepped forward into the clearing, waited a moment then snapped off another shot that blew out a chunk of her skull and dropped the body into the dust. I didn’t have time to celebrate my small victory as I was tackled from behind and slammed to the ground on my face.

  Another female that I hadn’t seen or heard was on my back and ripping at me with her hands as she leaned in and tried to bite me. All that saved me was the high collar of the tactical vest and the shemagh I had wrapped around my neck. I could feel the pressure from her bites but her teeth weren’t able to get through the layers of tough fabric. More than a little freaked out I got my hands under me and shoved, pushing both of us off the ground where I was able to twist my body to come back down on top of the infected. But she wasn’t there when I landed on the ground, hard, flat on my back. Almost before I realized she had leapt off me when I had pushed off the ground, the bitch straddled me like a lover and lunged her head forward with teeth bared in an attempt at my throat. Her hands were on my upper arms, trying to control them, and while she was much stronger than a normal woman her size she was still no match for a man more than 100 pounds heavier that could bench press more than his own body weight.

  Forcing my arms up and together in front of my chest I was able to get my right hand wrapped around her throat. Pushing harder I levered her up until my arms was almost fully extended and hit her hard in the face with my left. No effect. Damn these things were tough. Holding her by the throat at arm’s length she couldn’t reach my face, throat or chest, but she started trying to rip open my arms with her ragged nails. Again, the heavy military issue fabric did its job and protected me. Still struggling with her I rolled and got her on her back on the ground. Pinning her lower body with my weight I leaned into the grip on her throat and squeezed for all I was worth. She thrashed and struggled, a couple of times nearly bucking me off but I held on and almost two full minutes later she lay still.

  Not a trusting soul I maintained the pressure for another thirty seconds, staring down at the woman and blinking sweat out of my eyes. She had been young and pretty, once. She was slender with long, red hair and had the kind of features that would have made men remember her. Now she was filthy and bloody with matted hair, and she was dead. Releasing my grip I flexed my hand a couple of times, drew the Kukri and rammed the blade into her brain. No reason to take any chances. Wiping the blade on her tattered shirt I sheathed it and stood up. A scan of the area with the scope didn’t reveal any more threats so I grabbed my pack off the ground, shouldered it and set off down the slope to catch up with Rachel, Dog and our new friends.

  Chapter 19

  As I ran to catch up with my group I had to force myself to not think about what had just happened. Dwelling on it would be a distraction that I couldn’t afford as I moved through the dark woods. It didn’t take long for me to pick up their trail and I stopped for a moment with the intent to disguise it to throw off any more trackers, but there was just too much disturbance to hide. The kids, like so many teenagers seemed to do, drug their heels on the ground every step forward they took and this was leaving a trail that Helen Keller could have followed. Making a mental note to spend a little time instructing them how to walk in the forest I set back off at a fast jog, heavy pack bouncing on my back.

  A few minutes later I rounded a curve in the valley which opened up in front of me. What had been a fairly narrow valley now widened dramatically, the floor of the valley spreading out to be almost a quarter of a mile wide. The small creek, Wallace Creek I believe Betty had called it, joined with a much larger creek and formed a small river. The sides of the valley were still manageable if we had to climb, but they were much steeper than they had been and more heavily forested. I could hear a low roar from ahead that I couldn’t identify, but as I moved further into this new valley I recognized the sound as a waterfall. Pausing where I was I brought the rifle up, scanned ahead and cursed. Five infected were moving down the valley ahead of me, apparently tracking the group. Turning I checked my rear and was relieved to not see any threats. Back to the front I sighted in on each of the infected and identified all of them as females. Oh shit!

  Were they going to be the more dangerous variety I had just encountered? Obviously I’d just fought two females that were able to think well enough to set up and execute an ambush. I had gotten used to the predictability of the infected. If they saw you, they were attacking and were coming straight at you. They didn’t try to hide and surprise you and they didn’t work together. If this was happening with all of the females the level of danger they presented had just increased exponentially. Putting my musing aside I stepped off and started stalking the hunters.

  Dropping the pack again I quickly exchanged the empty magazines in my vest for loaded ones then left the pack in the brush near the river. Moving deeper into the valley I started following two of the females who appeared to be moving together. They were walking quietly through the forest, only the occasional tick to their movements giving away the fact they were infected. If I hadn’t seen a few thousand of them before I probably wouldn’t have realized they were infected until I was right in front of them. Males are easy to spot as they move like someone who’s just left the bar after about ten too many drinks, but the females were even more agile once infected than they had been before.

  Ten yards behind the two females, I stopped and checked on the other three through the scope. One was thirty yards farther down the valley and 100 yards to my right. The remaining two were on the other side of the river, several hundred yards away. Back to the two I was stalking I moved closer, careful to keep my steps either on soft dirt or rocky outcroppings so I wouldn’t make any noise and alert them to my presence. They were close together as they moved, close enough to touch each other if they wanted, and I decided to take them out as quietly as possible. Lowering the rifle I drew the blade, gripped it tightly and leaned forward as I burst into a sprint.

  I was a yard behind them when they heard me. Both spun at the same time, the one on the right opening her mouth to scream but the scream never left her throat because I covered that yard in one fast step and sliced through her neck, nearly cutting her head off her body. The Kukri lodged in her vertebrae and I didn’t waste time trying to pull it free, releasing it to remain stuck in the female’s neck as she crumpled dead to the ground. I was in a full sprint and used my momentum to my advantage, lowering my shoulder and ramming into the chest of the female on my left. I heard the breath whoosh out of her lungs from the impact and she flew backwards, landing on her back in the dirt. Following through I fell on top of her, bringing my knee down with all my weight into her stomach and locking my left hand on he
r throat.

  Even with the wind knocked out of her and a 230 pound pile driver to the stomach she was still able to fight and started twisting her body and slashing with her hands to try and throw me off. I kept the pressure on and leaned my weight into her throat with my right hand on the ground for balance. When I touched the ground my hand was on top of a softball sized stone, nicely rounded by eons of river water flooding through the valley. Grasping the stone I raised it in the air and brought it down on the infected’s forehead, both hearing and feeling her skull crack and cave in. She instantly went still and the animal light in her eyes blinked out.

  Standing up I slipped the stone into my pocket before bending and retrieving the Kukri where it had lodged in the other female’s neck. Blade sheathed I brought the rifle around and checked the other three. The one closest had stopped and was looking around like she may have heard something, but the two on the far side of the river were still moving forward and were now angling slightly toward the water. Trusting there was enough distance to safely use the suppressed rifle I sighted in on the closest female and dropped her with a shot to the head, then quickly looked for the two across the river. Both were still moving at the same pace and hadn’t heard anything. Taking a moment to check my rear again, which was still clear, I ran forward and angled towards the river.