by John Holmes
He leaned over his laptop. “Well, the runway is in good enough shape for C-130 or C-17 operations. They have rough field capability, but I wouldn’t land a 757 or C-141 on here. Too many cracks in the pavement. The electronics are good to go. We can set up a data link to a mobile radar unit and run flight ops from here. I already sent the report up to the Air Liaison at Corps.”
“OK, great. At least something went right this time. Going to be a long night, People. Get some chow, start the watch rotation.”
Brit leaned over and swiped the candy out of my MRE. She turned to Ziv, who was staring stonily at Doc as he bandaged his leg. She ripped open the packet of candy and poured it out onto Ziv’s lap.
“Here, you grumpy old man. Skittles make everything better!”
Chapter 67
The sun rose over a horde that had grown to several thousand, and they packed the stairwell and the bottom floor of the building. We didn’t shoot them in the stairwell because we didn’t want a pile to start that the Zs could climb and reach us. The smell, however, was bad enough to make us want to vomit, and we were caught between the smell coming up from the stairs and the smell wafting in through the window.
At first light I got on the radio to update the TOC on our situation:
“GRIFFIN MAIN, THIS IS LOST BOYS, AND WE ARE STILL SURROUNDED, OVER.”
“ROGER, LOST BOYS. IS YOUR POSITION STILL SECURE, OVER?”
“ROGER THAT, UNTIL WE RUN OUT OF FOOD AND WATER. ESTIMATE THREE THOUSAND PLUS IN HORDE. AIRFIELD STATUS REPORT BEING SENT NOW, OVER.”
“UNDERSTOOD, LOST BOYS. STAND BY FOR THE CAVALRY, OVER.”
“GARRY OWEN, LOST BOYS, OUT.”
The Iraqis, when we fought them in the Gulf, called the Abrams tank “Whispering Death” on account of how quiet the turbine engines were. In any case, we would never have heard them over the sound of the zombies moaning below us.
What we did hear was the sound of the case shot being fired by the tank cannons, a rolling boom that echoed across the airfield first thing the next morning. We had waited, dozing on and off, and trying to ignore the sounds from below. When the first volley of tungsten pellets cut through the horde like the proverbial hot knife through butter, we jumped up and crowded around the window to watch. Hundreds of bodies fell, in four huge swaths. The next volley came twenty seconds later, aimed along a different axis, cutting apart more zombies. Then the Abrams charged across the field. They hit almost forty mph in the short stretch, and plowed into the milling crowd of bodies, firing as they went. The drivers started spinning their tracks, knocking down Zs and grinding them into the airport tarmac. When they had gone completely through the horde, they spun on their treads and charged back in, the tank commanders firing their own MK-19a3s into individual clumps. I don’t think anyone who has ever seen an Abrams tank charging full on into a crowd will ever forget the sight.
We had been watching the fight and cheering the tanks on, but we all ducked down beneath the sill of the window when a stray pellet came ricocheting into the tower, sixty feet above the ground, and pinged off Redshirt’s kevlar helmet, knocking him down. He gave a weak thumbs-up and an “I almost peed myself” look, and we all laughed. When we looked back, after the cannon fire had stopped, a dozen armored personnel carriers had joined the fight, forming a circle with the tanks. Soldiers on top of the APCs fired individual shots as the Zs rushed at them. When the pile threatened to get high enough where the zombies might come over the top, the tracks peeled out and pulled backward fifty meters, and the slaughter resumed. They had done this countless times in the battle for the northern plains and operated like a well-oiled machine. We would win this war.
I let the team join in, shooting from behind the horde. Wasting ammo, but it had been a long day and they needed to blow off steam. Sometimes shooting things was the best way.
Half an hour later, a platoon of infantry was clearing the building below us. The rest of the dismounts in Mechanized Infantry Company were walking slowly through the pile of zombie bodies, firing individual head shots into any that showed movement. The guys downstairs advanced into each room behind plastic riot shields, forcing the zombies back, and the line behind them fired with pistols at the zombies’ heads.
“SERGEANT AGOSTINE, ALL CLEAR!!!” yelled the lead trooper as they reached the bottom of the stairs.
“COMING DOWN!”
Ziv refused a medical chopper, instead moving supported into the truck, where he climbed into the back seat. The rest of us loaded up and rolled out.
Red called down from the turret. “Sarge, this gun is screwed. The feed tray mechanism is jammed all to hell.”
“Don’t worry about it. Just cover things with your rifle, and keep your eyes open. There have got to be leakers from the infantry attack. We need a few minutes to change this tire anyway.”
“Roger, Chief.”
We rolled up the highway, back toward the forward line of TF Bronco. I was half dozing, listening to the road pass under the big treads of the truck tires and keeping my eyes open for any threat. I was tired and so was the rest of the crew, but sleep would have to wait.
“Oh shit!” yelled Brit, and I felt the truck start to tip off to one side. The road had crumbled underneath the weight of the truck, and we started to fall off the side down into a dry streambed. Flash floods over the past two years, without maintenance crews fixing the back fill, had undermined the blacktop.
I reached back and grabbed Red’s legs and pulled as hard as I could. We hadn’t had time to practice rollover drills, and I hoped Red remembered from Basic. He slid off the strap holding him up and fell inside just as we went completely over.
I don’t remember what happened next. I woke up to Red cutting my seatbelt. I fell out of the truck and onto him. The truck itself was lying on its roof, the wheels were still spinning, a cloud of dust settling around us.
Brit lay on the ground, unmoving. Red had pulled her out first. As he dragged me over next to her around the front of the truck, I screamed. My collar bone grated together and I felt like I was going to puke. The world swam in and out of my vision, going grey.
“Sarge, Brit seems OK, she’s just out cold, still breathing. There are bunch of Zs coming down the wash. I’m going to head them off. Doc is trying to rope down here, but the road edge is really crumbly.”
“O-OK. Something in my shoulder, it’s messed up. Give, give me my pistol.”
Red chambered a round and pressed my.22 into my left hand. Then he ran out of my field of vision. I heard him start to fire.
I think I passed out for a few seconds. When I woke up, three Zombies were coming around the back end of the truck. Damn, damn, damn. I raised the pistol and started snapping off shots. It was hard to aim, and my vision was blurry. I hit one in the head and it went down, but the other two came closer. One made it to Brit and I emptied the magazine into it. It fell backwards, away from her.
I felt an incredible pressure on my ankle, and then a hot, burning sensation. I looked down to see the last one, a little girl with her face rotted off, had bitten me just above the top of my boot. She kept biting, chewing her way into the muscle, her broken teeth sinking deeper. The pain was a red hot poker shooting up my leg.
Chapter 68
I screamed and reached down, swatting at the creature with the empty pistol. I could feel the infection burning into my leg. It was like a hot piece of steel, still glowing red, shoved into my leg.
The thing’s head exploded, and the round continued its flight to bury itself into the ground, carrying a trail of bloody red mist. I didn’t look to see where the shot had come from. I reached across my shoulder and tore the tourniquet off my body armor. Kicking the corpse of the zombie off me, I wrapped the tourniquet tightly around my leg, just below the knee and a few inches above the wound. I twisted it as hard as I could, feeling it cut into my leg. Then I ripped open the leg of my uniform.
A raw bite mark was in my calf, just above the top of my boot. Dammit all to Hell! It burned
like someone was pouring raw alcohol on it. I let go of my leg and crawled over to Brit, who was still unconscious, and lay down with my head on her chest. Waves of nausea came over me and actually felt my eyes roll back into my head.
I woke up to a slap across my face.
“Nick, wake up,” said Ahmed. He slapped me again and I threw a wild punch at him. He sat back, easily avoiding it. He still kept his pistol trained straight at my head.
“He is awake. Not a Z yet, either.”
Doc leaned over me, blocking out the sun. “Nick, you got the TQ on in time, but you know what we’ve gotta do. I’ll make it as painless as possible. Here, bite on this.”
Ahmed gently put a canvas strap into my mouth. “Go for it,” I mumbled. How bad could it be? My leg felt numb already.
“OK, I can’t give you anything for the pain.”
I spit the canvas strap out and yelled “Just shut the hell up and do it!” I looked over at Brit, who was awake, sitting up against the side of the rolled over HUMVEE. She looked back at me, tears streaming down her face. I smiled.
“It’s just a flesh wound, Babe,” I said, and reached for her hand as Ahmed put the strap back into my mouth.
Good thing he did, too. Doc cut into the muscle of my calf with a razor blade, in a neat circle around the bone, slicing through ligaments and blood vessels. I bit down hard on the canvas strap, so hard I felt like my teeth would break. I screamed into it, a soul-wrenching scream I tried to keep inside of me, and squeezed Brit’s hand so hard I thought I would crush the bones.
“Almost there, Nick.” Doc reached a bloody hand out and Ahmed handed him a small, battery-powered Mikita grinding saw from his medkit. It whirred to life and I could feel the vibration as he cut into the bone. My leg was a dull throb that pounded up my body.
The last thing I saw was Doc lighting the torch he carried, bending over to cauterize the blood vessels. I felt the thud of the chopper blades as the MEDEVAC helo thundered down onto the road bed overhead, and smelled my burnt flesh. Before I passed out again, I heard Brit.
“Doc, tell me he’s going to make it.”
“He’ll live, if he doesn’t go into shock.”
She squeezed my hand and whispered in my ear, “Live, dammit.”
The world fell away from me, and I fell with it.
END OF Volume II “EVEN ZOMBIE KILLERS NEED A BREAK”
Chapter 69
My leg hurt. Well, not really, because my leg wasn’t there anymore. Instead, I was getting used the prosthetic attached to the stump, just below my knee. It still hurt though, like a bitch.
We were sitting in a briefing room at Joint Base Lewis-McCord, the massive combined Army – Air Force facility south of Seattle. Overhead, a C-17 thundered out towards Puget Sound. I watched it out the window as it turned and headed east, back towards the wilds.
“Sergeant Agostine.” The briefer had stopped has slideshow.
“Huh? Yeah, sorry. Leg was bothering me.” He looked at me and then turned back to his presentation.
Brit leaned over and whispered in my ear “You’re full of shit.”
“Shhhh!” I said, and tried to pay attention to what was going on.
“Intelligence assets have picked up rumors of a plot by unspecified groups which have plans to use a weapon of mass destruction in the Seattle area, directed against the United States.”
He paused for a minute to let us think about it, apparently, and then continued. “The rumors are originating in the Tacoma FEMA Displaced Persons Camp. Your mission is to go into the camp, determine the validity of these rumors, and take appropriate action as necessary.”
We waited for him to provide more details. The officer, a Major, stared back at us.
Ziv broke the silence. “In Serbia, we call this a clusterfuck.”
Specialist Redshirt chimed in. “Sir, with all due respect, but that’s it?”
“Right now, that’s all we have. I wish I could give you more, but that’s it.”
I sat and waited for the team to get it out, and Brit spoke up the loudest.
“So, let me get this straight. You want us to do your government dirty work, killing enemies of regime and all that? And you can’t tell us who, or what. What, exactly, does this have to do with killing zombies?”
“Nothing, Miss O’Neil, and I remind you, you’re a volunteer. You can walk away from this at any time.”
“No, sweet cheeks” she said, making me inwardly groan “I got this. Can’t let Doc here babysit old pegleg by himself.”
I looked around the room at the Team. We were a mix of soldiers and civilians, though we were a bit short on civilians right now. Brit O’Neil and Sasha Zivkovic, or Ziv for short. She was a former college student, and he used to be a Serbian Special Forces Soldier. Next to them sat Ahmed Yasser, our sniper. On the military side, there was myself, my second in command and team medic, Sergeant First Class “Doc” Hamilton, and our two junior enlisted guys, SPC Redshirt and SPC Esposito.
Well, time to go all in. “Are you asking us to do this mission, or telling us?”
“Telling.”
“Well that settles that, then. We’ll need access to your intelligence sources inside the camp, civilian clothes, etc.”
He seemed to have this already covered. “We pulled your records, all the appropriate clothing sizes will be available at the Central Issuing Facility. New ID cards, cover stories, pistols, communications equipment. We don’t think that you’ll need more than that, because the camps are weapons free zones.”
Brit laughed. “Hey sucker, I got a bridge back in New York I want to sell you. Weapons free, my ass.”
“What’s our cover story?” said Doc.
“You’re a salvage group, bringing in surplus from the San Francisco ruins. Your truck got impounded for use by the Army, and you got put in the FEMA camp till something opens up. This way, you can stick together as a group, and maybe develop some contacts.”
I nodded. “We can use that.” In my head, though, I figured things would go a different way.
Chapter 70
The FEMA camp sat miles south of Tacoma, which was itself overflowing with refugees. There were still large burnt out areas of the city, but things had attained some sort of order over the last year. Now, unrest was rising again. People were getting tired of the permanent “state of emergency”, and there had been riots the last time we were here, a few months ago.
Now the Army patrolled the streets in force, and travel between the camps was severely limited. Every few days a new round of riots would break out, spread by some accident or by design. Rumors were flying about armed groups that were plotting against the government, and sniper fire occasionally hit Army convoys travelling on I-5. The day before, an Improvised Explosive Device had been detonated south of Olympia, and two trucks had been destroyed. The Predator drone on overwatch had left the attackers a smoking hole in the ground.
This was the situation that we were being dumped into, none of us trusted the Army, even JSOC, to have a good plan. We needed to come up with our own.
“Anyone got any ideas?”
Redshirt spoke up first. “How about, we, you know, contact the guys providing the intel, and see what they say?”
Doc answered “Yeah, well, kid, times like this you learn to trust your gut, and things are too unsettled for us to just go walking in there and associating with known rats. They’ll make us in a second.”
He was right along with my thinking. “Doc, I know you used to run with some of the Motorcycle Gangs.”
“Clubs” he corrected me.
“OK, Clubs. I know you were an East Coast guy, but you might know some of them in the camps. No bikes anymore, but I’m sure they stick together. I need you to get in touch with them, see what you can find out.”
“Not a problem. I know three guys who made it back alive from upstate, been in touch with them through e-mail before. They were thinking of going back east, now that we cleared out the Mohawk Valley. I’ll see w
hat info I can get from them in return for a way out of the camps.”
Brit chimed in. “Oh, wait, I know, you want me to be a stripper! See what info I can wheedle out of some Johns, maybe make some New Dollars!” Sarcasm dripped from every pore.
“Um, no. I know deep down in your heart you want to be taking your clothes off for fat sweaty men, but, too bad too sad. You’re going to stay wherever we set up our base of operations.”
She was pissed. “What the hell, Nick? Should I just sit back in the kitchen and make sandwiches? Maybe shine your frigging boots?”
Ziv laughed his low rumble. “Watch out, Nick, she is, how you say, catching fire? Don’t get burned.” He was right, her pale face was almost as red as her hair, and her eyes were blazing.
I sighed. “No, Brit, it’s not like that. Once we get settled, they are going to come to us. The good Major might think that we can go I all incognito, but I’m sure they’ll figure us out soon enough. These camps have been in existence for two years. It will be like walking into a small town, where everyone knows everyone else, and there are powers that be.”
I looked at the team. We were hard. Two years of living out in the wild, marching hundreds of miles, dozens of firefights and hundreds of encounters with the undead. Ziv with his cruel, scarred face. Doc with his bald head, huge arms covered with biker tattoos. Red with his thousand meter stare. Brit with her gunshot wounds. Esposito’s lean, lethal frame. Ahmed’s calm, neutral sniper eyes.
Yeah, we were going to fit in with these FEMA camp sheep like a bunch of wolves. I’m sure the other wolves would sniff us out pretty damn quickly.
“OK, then, let’s roll out.”
Chapter 71
I have served in some pretty nasty places, all over the world before the Zombie Apocalypse, but I never thought I would see things like this back home in America.
The camp was a disaster. A riot had gone through it the day before, and armed guards stood just outside the perimeter, but not inside the camp. As we stood at the in-processing center, an infantry squad climbed into two HUMVEES and started through the gate. There was a long queue waiting in the rain for food rations, and as we watched, a fight broke out down the line.
