Irregular Scout Team One: The Complete Zombie Killer series

by John Holmes

  “Sergeant, I, um …”

  I stood there with my arms folded. He started to turn red.

  “Sergeant, uh, I’m sorry.” He sort of mumbled it under his breath.

  “What, Sir? I couldn’t hear you.” This was great.

  “Don’t be an asshole, Sergeant. I know I screwed up.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Lesson learned, then.”

  “I’m not the one you need to apologize to, Sir. You need to apologize to the team.”

  He stared at me for a minute, then looked at the ground.

  “Sir, you put their lives at risk and blew the mission because you wanted to make the front page of a paper. You’re lucky none of them pushed you off the boat last night on the way back. None of the boat crew would have cared. You put their lives at risk too, by forcing them to come back for us. You’re actually lucky that camera guy is alive, because Brit wasn’t shooting to disable him. We don’t do that; she was just off her game because she’s still recovering from a gunshot wound. By all rights, he should be dead.”

  “I know, I know. I just got my ass reamed by the CO.” He meant the Infantry Company Commanding Officer, who had overall command of the Firebase.

  “Really? What did he say?”

  “Uh, he said I should suck my thumb and let you change my diaper when I crapped myself, and that I wasn’t in charge of shit.”

  I laughed out loud, and he cringed. “Sir, this is real life now. Learn a few things and you can be in charge. I don’t know why you’re out here with us, instead of learning the ropes on a line platoon, but if you stay alive, you will learn a good bit and be better off for it.” In fact, I did know why he was with us; because Major Flynn was punishing me for what he suspected happened to LTC Jackass, but I wasn’t going to say that.

  “I guess so, Sergeant. Do I have to apologize to the whole team?”

  “If you want to live through our next encounter with Zs, it’s probably a good idea.”

  He did apologize. Everyone took it well, except for Brit, who called him a dumbass and some other pretty abusive things until I told her to lay off. Like I said, we worked for the Army, but we weren’t part of it.

  We set out again later that afternoon, but without all our gear. This time was killing time. The boats pulled up off the landing, about one hundred meters. A large crowd of Zs was milling around the parking lot, stepping on the remains of the ones the firecracker rounds had shredded last night. The guys started popping shots at them, but hitting a target the size of a head from a hundred meters away, on an anchored boat slowly rising and falling is almost impossible. Only Ahmed was scoring hits on a regular basis. I let Redshirt and Mya the LT continue to fire, though, because they needed to get accustomed to shooting at real dead targets instead of pop ups.

  Beside me, Jonesy lined up his 203 launcher.

  “Did you get any flashbangs?”

  “Nope, but I did manage to work a thumper into a shell. Only about one in three survive the shot, so I brought twelve.”

  “OK, I think we’ll only need two.”

  “On the way!” He set the timers and fired six quick rounds into the parking lot. We waited a few minutes and I listened for the music to start up.

  “Beastie Boys? REALLY?” The strains of “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” started filling the air. It sounded like three of them were working, each a second or two off the other.

  “Hey, them white boys are the shit, Nick.”

  We watched as more Zs started to shamble down the road to the parking lot. We waited half an hour, then an hour. It was a packed, milling mass, and we pulled back a few hundred meters and off the Gun – Target line, in case of a misfiring fuse. Nine hundred steel pellets would shred one of these boats, and us, in short order.

  “Cockers, this is Lost Boys, FIRE AA4037, over.”

  “Lost Boys, Fire, AA4037, out.”

  Two minutes later the rounds started detonating over the parking lot. Sharp cracks, blinding even in the sunlight, left small puffs of smoke. We could see where the water on the edge of the river got ripped up by the BBs and a few even skipped across the water towards us.

  “Lost Boys, this is Cocker, rounds complete, over.”

  “This is Lost Boys, Rounds Complete, estimate two hundred plus rendered ineffective. Thanks, Lost Boys out.”

  We pulled back in towards the parking lot. Blood and ooze ran down into the river, and here and there individual Zs stumbled about. Jonesy shot another four thumpers with their timers set to half an hour, an hour and six hours. Hopefully they would draw any more Zs down to the river, and leave a clear path for us on the other side. The boats engines kicked out and we sped downriver, around to the south side of point, and tied off to the remains of the dock there.

  This wasn’t going to be a sneak and peak anymore. The Zs were too stirred up for that, and no way were we going to go blundering around at night. This was going to be a balls-to-the-wall, run across campus, killing everything in our path, plant the flag and GTFO. With pics to prove it happened.

  Chapter 61

  We ran. Fast. Run. Stop. Aim. Fire. Run. We ran uphill from the dock, shooting everything that moved. One team up one side of the street, another up the other side. There weren’t that many Zs but what there was made me sick. Many of them were in the tattered remnants of uniforms, both the cadets and regular soldiers, and it hurt to shoot at them. It was one thing to watch from five hundred meters away while the artillery pounded them, another to stop, aim, and place a .22 slug in the center of their faces from twenty feet.

  Halfway to our objective, Trophy Point, overlooking the Hudson Valley, and we were just coming out of the tunnel leading to the parade field when we ran smack into group of Zs. They were headed in the same direction as us, coming from around a corner, and in an instant, we became a maelstrom of yelling, cursing, clubbing and firing, trying to break through without getting bitten. I hit one as hard as I could with my reinforced rifle stock, straight across the face and hopefully smashing its nose into what was left of its brain. I fired into another on the downswing, a quick burst that caught it in the throat, shoulder and leg. Beside me Jonesy was using his rifle like a club, probably ruining it forever, smacking it down on the heads of any Z that came near him.

  We made it, almost. The Zs were slow to react, but by the time PFC Redshirt, bringing up the rear, tried to make it through, they were worked up to fury and he was buried under a pile of them, swinging his hammer as hard as he could. He went down with a fight and a yell. Mya started back, but Brit grabbed her and shoved her forward. She screamed at the crying medic, “He’s done! Let’s go!” and then took off running herself. The rest of us had turned and were laying down a suppressive fire so they could catch up. We smoked the few still standing Zs as they came at us, but couldn’t see where Redshirt had fallen through the tall weeds. A quiet fell over the grounds as we made our way over through the brush that grew up over the parade field.

  The LT and Mya looked visibly shaken, and Mya was crying steady tears. Brit stood next to me, and whispered in my ear.

  “You knew that was going to happen. The frigging kid’s name was Redshirt, for Pete’s sake. I’m surprised he lasted this long.”

  “Shut it Brit. I don’t care if he was predestined to get sacrificed to the great Zombie God. He was my troop.”

  “Whatever. Just trying to make you feel better.” She walked away to scan part of the perimeter. It made me feel like an ass that I understood what she meant. People die in our business.

  “OK, that sucked, and it’s going to suck worse trying to get back to the boat. Let’s get on with this mission, and stay on your toes. Jonesy, you had point, you SHOULD have seen them coming. Be more alert.”

  “Warn’t nothing I could do, Nick. They just popped outta the doorway next to me. But yeah, sorry about that Injun kid. Hope you’re at your happy hunting grounds now.”

  He led onward, across the field. Everyone’s eyes were peeled now and the LT hadn’t sai
d a word since leaving the boats.

  We got to Trophy Point without further incident. The cannons, captured from England in our 19th century wars, were still there, lined up facing north against enemies that didn’t exist anymore. Standing in a row, we unfurled a flag, and Specialist Mya took our picture. Propaganda for the civilians in the Secured Zones and the FEMA camps around the country. I hope it helped them get through the day.

  Down below, we could see the shattered mush that was the Zs we had hammered with artillery. As we watched, another two rounds burst over the parking lot. The Redlegs were pumping them in every half hour until we called stop. We watched until the smell was carried to us on a change of the wind, then set out, back across the field, but a different way than we had come.

  The buildings themselves were wrecked. It looked like some serious fighting had taken place, and many of them were burned out. I wondered how long they had held out, how long the ammo had lasted against the hordes from New York City. South of here was one of the most densely populated places in the country. Never mind the Zombies; the refugees would have stormed this place. It happened to every military installation near a major population center. The military represented hope, and places like Fort Bragg, close to major southern population centers, had been quickly overrun, their troops reluctant to fire on civilians until it was too late. West Point had been burned and picked clean. It didn’t leave me much hope for Camp Smith. It might have made great propaganda to have a picture of troops back at West Point, but from a military point of view, the place was useless.

  We moved slowly past the fire-scorched stones of the cadet barracks. Up ahead, echoing between the buildings, we heard footsteps running quickly in our direction. Doc, now on point since we had another medic, held up a hand signal for “halt” and we all quickly dropped behind cover.

  A blood-soaked figure came around a corner about a hundred meters away and continued down the road away from us in the direction of the boats. Ahmed raised his rifle to shoot. I put my hand on his arm, motioned for him to wait. Something didn’t look right. It moved wrong for a Z. Too fast. It was wearing the remnants of an army issue uniform. Could there be survivors here?

  I stood up and yelled, “HEY! HEY YOU!” I know, too much noise, but the figure stopped and turned at the sound of my voice, started stumbling towards us.

  He wore the remains of ACUs, ripped and shredded, and he was bleeding from a dozen wounds when he collapsed in the road in front of us. Doc walked forward, covering him with his rifle, then quickly slung it and reached for his aid bag, yelling for Mya to come forward. She came at a run, then stopped dead and vomited right there in the middle of the road. I had begun to think that maybe she was in the wrong profession if she vomited every time she saw blood. Brit said “Shit!” then jumped up and ran over herself. She too stopped dead and started drawing her pistol from her leg holster.

  Doc reached up and slapped it out of her hand. By then I had made it up there, and I looked down at a bloody, but alive, PFC Redshirt.

  He had a half a dozen bite marks on his hands and other exposed areas, but it looked as if his armor had saved him from having his neck torn out. Doc was already cutting away parts of his uniform to check his wounds, and he yelled at Mya to give him a hand. After a few minutes, seeing the kid was in no immediate danger of dying, I pulled Doc aside and asked him why we weren’t shooting him dead on the spot, or sticking him with the Gom Jabbar and icing him.

  “He’s immune. I’ve heard of it, but only two confirmed cases. Ever. One in England, and another in Southeast Asia before communications fell apart.”

  “Really? No shit.”

  “Really, yes shit. He’s still in a bad way, and those wounds can get infected. We have to get him back to the boats.”

  Jonesy reached down with a hand, and slung the unconscious figure over his shoulders. We started off in a trot down towards the pier.

  Before we got there, the radio Ahmed was carrying cackled into life.

  “Lost Boys, Lost Boys, this is Castle 3, over”

  The Firebase Ops officer was calling. I motioned for LT Carter to take the radio.

  “Castle 3, this is Lost Boys, um, Lost Boys 5, over.” I knew he’d been about to say “Lost Boys 6” which was the call sign of the commander of a unit. I laughed a bit.

  “Lost Boys, be advised, engine fire and explosion on number two boat, crew evacuated with injuries to boat one, boat damaged and rowing back to base, over.”

  “Uh, roger, over.” I grabbed the mike from the LT.

  “Castle, how the hell are we supposed to get out of here, break.” “Be advised we have one litter WIA, over”

  “Understand, one litter WIA. Trying to arrange air Evac from Albany now, over.”

  Great. You can’t make shit like this up. Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, especially since spare parts and new equipment were almost impossible to come by.

  “Lost Boys, be advised, Air Evac will be available in five hours. Find a good LZ and hunker down, over.”

  “Castle, if that bird doesn’t show up, I am going to come back as a Z and eat you, over.”

  “Understood, Nick. We will be there ASAP. Navy Close Air Support is on station.”

  Around me, night was falling. I gathered the team around. We were going to have to make a stand.

  I told them in one word. “Alamo.”

  Brit said it for all of us. “F my life.”

  Chapter 62

  As the darkness settled down on us, we made our way down to the dock. I wanted a long, open field of fire, a narrow approach, and, as a last chance, we could hit the water and swim for it. Not something I wanted to do, because the current here was swift and we would quickly get separated as we swept downstream.

  Night fell, the stars came out, and a full moon quickly rose over the east side of the valley. Brilliant silver light flooded the landscape and reflected off the river. I got on the radio with the firebase and asked for on-call illumination rounds. Since they dropped from a base-ejecting shell eight hundred meters up in the air, they were fine. Actual fire support, firecracker or white phosphorus rounds to burn the Zs out was out of the question. The ridge of West Point blocked any low angle fire, and high angle fire, in this wind, wouldn’t be accurate enough. We didn’t need a high angle round getting blown a hundred meters off course and showering us with pellets.

  The dock itself was made out aluminum, and the LT’s idea of ripping up the dock to make our own little island wouldn’t work. Even Jonesy, with his strength, couldn’t pry them apart. We discussed grenades, but I decided the risk of accidental injury at close range was too great and would call every remaining Z in ten miles. Besides, I hated grenades with a passion. Didn’t trust the damn things, never did.

  “How’s everyone doing on ammo?”

  “Down to about half,” said Brit.

  Jonesy counted his magazines. “Seventy-five percent, but my weapon is shot. The receiver is cracked, where I hit some hard-headed booger. And I ain’t got no thumpers left.”

  Doc was doing OK. “About half, also. Maybe two hundred rounds.”

  Ahmed: “Forty-two rounds for my rifle, a hundred percent for my pistol.”

  The LT and Mya were down to less than twenty-five percent each. I expected that, since this was their first op and they had been spraying rounds left and right with little fire discipline. I was tempted to cross-level ammo with them but they would waste it. We were out of thumpers altogether, too.

  “Mya, give Jonesy your weapon. Stay back with Redshirt, make sure he’s doing OK, and if it looks like we’re getting over run …”

  “… Jump into the water with him?”

  “No, put a round through his head and jump in the water yourself.”

  At that, Redshirt sat up, and demanded a weapon. Damn, this kid was tough! I gave him my pistol, and told him I’d save one for him if we got overrun. He laughed and said, “Bring it, Chief.” Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he passed out again.
I took my pistol back.

  We waited for four hours before the first Zs showed up. They came wandering down the hill, in ones and twos every few minutes. Ahmed quietly took them out from a long distance, setting his rifle on some debris and popping heads from five hundred meters out. The red eyes would flare briefly when the rounds hit them, then go out.

  “Hey Brit.”

  “Yeah, Jonesy?”

  “Ain’t it true that redheads started the damn zombie apocalypse, stealin’ too many souls, an’ it just kinda got outta hand?”

  “Kiss my ass, you big chocolate hunk of muscle.”

  “You should have seen mah muscles, honey, before you redheads done brought the world to ruination. I ain’t had watermelon an’ ribs in forever!”

  “You people.”

  “What do you mean, YOU PEOPLE?”

  “Zip it, both of you, and watch your lane.”

  More started showing up and they started to get closer. The guys joined in the firing, less accurately than Ahmed, when they reached two hundred meters. We had a lull for a few minutes, then a huge, long moan wailed from behind the hilltop, and a horde came charging over the hill, eyes blazing.

  “Uh, Nick, this kinda looks bad!”

  “CASTLE, CASTLE, WE ARE UP SHIT’S CREEK, OVER!”

  “Lost Boys, understand. Bird is on its way south, ETA thirty minutes, over.”

  “Roger. Well, maybe we’ll be here, and maybe we won’t. Switching over to CAS.”

  I switched freqs over to the Navy Close Air Support Channel.

  “Stinger 52, this is Lost Boys 6, over.”

  The answer came back choppy, thousands of pounds of thrust distorting the pilots’ voice.

  “Lost Boys, this is Stinger, on station with short load. Expended most ammo popping hordes down the City. Enough for two runs. Over.” She had a sweet voice, and I imagined Scarlett Johansson in a flight suit. Reality was, she probably had gotten beaten with the ugly stick when she was a kid and was overcompensating by being a fighter pilot, but I would kiss her if she got us out of this.