“Alright you apes, back outside!” Sergeant Simpson ordered. “We need to support Third Platoon in clearing their building.”
“Fucking Third Platoon pussies!” Someone behind Xander said.
The platoon marched down the stairs and out into the parking lot, formed up into an infantry square, and advanced across the parking lot. Over his shoulder, Xander could see First Platoon lounging almost lackadaisically near the laagered vehicles.
Suddenly two soldiers burst out of the other building and one of them shouted, “We found survivors! They need medical help!”
A quartet of medics ran over and followed them into the building, lugging bags of gear and a collapsible stretcher.
Warrant Officer Beauregard came over to the platoon, “Stay in formation and keep an eye out, but it looks like Third Platoon doesn’t need our help.”
“Yes Warrant Officer,” Dan replied, then turned to the platoon, “We’re not going in there, but be ready for anything.”
Xander and the rest of the platoon braced and began scanning the area for trouble.
Fifteen tense minutes later, soldiers came out bearing a stretcher with two young children huddled on it, while two adults were helped by several other soldiers. All of them looked gaunt and malnourished, while the children had looks of terror on their faces. They were hustled into the lone ambulance that had joined the company and it sped off a few minutes later, escorted by a G-Wagen. Third Platoon followed and soon the entire company was assembled in the parking lot in an infantry square, while Captain MacDonald and the other officers discussed something, then they motioned for Warrant Officer Beauregard to come over. They spoke a few words Xander couldn’t hear and nodded.
The Warrant Officer marched smartly to the middle of the parking lot and shouted, “Alright, Second and Third Platoons board the trucks, we’re finished here.”
Once both platoons were aboard, he ordered First Platoon to board their trucks and the driver’s started the trucks and the convoy moved out.
As the troops chatted, Xander leaned over and shouted to Dan, “Now THAT was an easy mission Sarge!”
“Fucking Barnes, always the smartass!” Dan replied, cracking a grin.
--------
The troops were bullshitting about the usual things, booze, babes and cars on the way to the next apartment complex when Frank said, “Man, I could fucking destroy a Big Mac right about now.”
Mackenzie nodded in agreement and Jack visibly drooled, “Or a huge plate of poutine.”
Frank nodded.
“A Big Mac? Gross, I want a platter of sushi. I’d devour one of those faster than those dead motherfuckers tear someone apart,” Thomas replied.
“Typical fucking elite with his high-brow tastes,” Xander said sarcastically. “The thing I miss is fresh fruit.”
“Fresh fruit? You’re so fucking weird…why would anyone miss fresh fruit?” Jack muttered.
“Think about it. With a little effort, you could have any of those items you’re all drooling over. Ground beef, a slice of cheese, a fresh baked bun and some Thousand Island dressing and there’s Frank’s Big Mac. Some potatoes, powdered gravy mix and cheese from Costco and voila, poutine. Even sushi could be had if you had time to go ice fishing and catch a lake trout. But do you really think any of us is ever going to have a banana again? Or watermelon? Or grapes? All of those are grown in places that are overrun with these dead fucks. And I don’t see fresh fruit being a priority anytime in the future. No, we’re going to eat crab apples and canned berries for the rest of our lives.”
“Fuck that, I still want a Big Mac,” Frank said laughing. The rest of the section joined him in chuckling over the silly conversation.
A few minutes later, the brakes on the trucks whined and it rolled to a halt.
“You know the drill guys,” Sergeant Simpson shouted. “Make sure your gear is in order and then get moving like you got a pair!”
Thomas and Xander popped the latches and dropped the gate, then jumped out, taking up a position on either side of the truck. Xander scanned right while Thomas scanned left.
“Clear right!”
“Clear left!”
Then the rest of the section jumped down and moved to the centre of the laager where the rest of the platoon was forming up in an infantry square.
“All right men, you know the drill, let’s clear this place out!” Warrant Officer Beauregard ordered. Sergeant Simpson and the other NCOs began shouting instructions as the platoon moved forward into apartment complex.
Chapter 31
December 4h
Lather. Rinse. Repeat. That was the monotony that had become a fact of life in Xander’s life. Initially, life in the Loyal Eddies had started off slow and become a mix of insanity and hell as the intensity and frequency of the missions into the city increased. After a while, as the troops got used to the schedule, the troops had become hardened and found it incredibly dull and repetitive. Each morning, the unit drove to some random part of the city – random to Xander anyways, he couldn’t seem to figure a pattern in the locations they were sent to – and then they proceeded to bash heads for most of the day, with occasional breaks when the troops were moved to a new site to clear of the infected. Then they did again the next day. And the next…and so on, and so on, and so on.
It seemed as if Xander had been trapped in his own Groundhog Day movie like Bill Murray.
But finally, today the plan was different. The company was being sent to babysit a bunch of engineers while they fortified a nearby residential area.
After a short drive from the base to the northwestern section of Edmonton just off the ring road, the unit dismounted and formed an infantry square near the engineers, while Lieutenant Carpenter went over to converse with them while the troops stood at attention in the frigid December air. Eventually, he came back and talked to the non-coms. Shortly thereafter, the shouting started.
Apparently, the engineer company was expected to seal off the entire neighbourhood in one day. Xander had no idea how they were going to do it, but it seemed pretty ambitious to him. The engineers had used their E-LAVs to plow the ankle deep snow off the southern lanes of the avenue and then set them up twenty metres away to watch for large groups of infected coming out of the subdivision to their south. The infantry company was expected to deal with any stragglers of infected they might encounter.
This is a waste of our fucking time, Xander thought. It had been too goddamned cold for too long for the infected to wander around, or so the intel said over and over the past couple weeks.
First Platoon was ordered to mount overwatch on the southeastern corner of the neighbourhood, Second took the southern front and Third Platoon headed to the southwestern corner.
I thought they told us in training that splitting your forces in the face of the enemy was a bad idea, Xander thought. Of course, as a lowly private, all he could was mumble to himself and think thoughts like this, because questioning the NCOs or officers would just cause trouble.
It took a few minutes, but each platoon took up its assigned spot and formed a shield wall four soldiers deep and eight wide and stood there.
And stood there. The engineers sat huddled in the warmth of their E-LAVs while Xander and the infantry proceeded to freeze their asses off for the next half hour.
Xander was shivering almost uncontrollable when a column of twenty or thirty semi-trucks finally came into view. The convoy had a G-Wagen with a machinegun sandwiched in between every three or four semi-trucks, while somewhere in the middle was a massive forklift the likes of which Xander had never seen before. It was at least as large as a front end loader and each of its wheels were taller than Xander, and its pair of huge forklift blades jutted out ten feet forward.
All of the trucks were hauling a massive shipping crate on their trailers. A bunch of tow trucks brought up the rear. The trucks pulled into a rough line and stopped, while the tow trucks and a few G-Wagens disappeared into the subdivision.
Tro
ops scrambled out of the semi-trucks and began loosening their loads. Once that task was completed, the huge forklift moved forward and lifted the shipping crate off the truck and dropped it on the ground. The tow trucks returned hauling wrecked cars from inside the subdivision, and dropped them into front of the shipping crates, then turned around and scuttled back into the subdivision. Once all the shipping crates were offloaded, the troops hopped back in the semi-trucks, and turned around and headed back the way they had come.
The engineers ran around measuring the crates and then began some calculations. After talking to Lieutenant Carpenter and his command team briefly, the engineers ordered the forklift to move some of the shipping crates around on the far side of the avenue.
“Fourth Section, on the double,” Warrant Officer Beauregard ordered.
The eight troops from Fourth Section peeled out rear rank of the shield wall and raced forward.
Sergeant Washington said, “Fourth Section reporting Warrant Officer!”
“Sergeant, when that forklift stops moving, take three men and push that car wreck into the crate at the end of the row, and get the other four to move that other wreck to the front of the crate at the other end, then stand back,” Warrant Officer Beauregard said.
“Yes Warrant Officer!”
“Fireteam 1 on me, Fireteam 2, go to that wreck, then push them into those crates!”
The troops struggled to comply, pushing the cars across the snow covered frozen ground. With a mighty heave, they each loaded the car into a shipping crate and then stepped back a few paces.
The engineers hustled over to each shipping crate and closed it, then welded the doors shut. Next, a tank with a huge bulldozer blade on it pushed a second empty crate until it crashed into the first crate. The engineers hurriedly welded those two crates together, welding the front, back and top together, as well as welding the doors shut. A third empty crate was dropped by the forklift behind the two that had been welded together, and it was welded to the other two. Finally, the bulldozer tank pushed the other full crate into the three that were already welded together, and it too was welded onto the row. The forklift dropped a fifth crate behind the four in the middle, and the engineers welded that too the entire row.
There were now four crates welded together in a row, with a fifth behind it, the doors on which had not been welded shut.
Warrant Officer Beauregard shouted, “Fourth Section back in formation, Third Section on me!”
Ok, this makes sense. They’re building a huge wall of these crates, and putting a car inside some of them so the whole wall is too heavy to be pushed from the other side. This is actually pretty smart, at least as long as there are enough of these containers to make this huge wall, Xander thought. And by putting the wall on the south side of the road, we can still use the north side of the road to move around. Maybe the guys in charge actually know what they’re doing.
All morning long, the platoon helped push wrecked cars into the shipping crates, and in less than three hours, the wall was starting to take shape. The wall was one container deep and every four containers, an additional crate was welded to the wall, but without a wrecked vehicle inside it. The work went quickly and the only real hold-up was the trucks bringing in the containers – it took them about an hour to make a round trip. The engineers and troops could generally fit the crates into place on the wall in about forty minutes. During that time, the platoon helped the engineers manhandle ladders and other bits and bobs into place on the wall.
Xander and the rest of his section were huddled over a small fire in a barrel near the wall. To avoid exhaustion, every section was given a quick break every hour or so if possible.
“I get the wall, but what is the point of the empty containers,” Xander asked Thomas.
“My guess is that is where poor saps like us will get stuck when we are asked to defend this place,” he replied.
“Fuck.”
“You said it.”
By lunch time, the southern wall was completed and they were working with First Platoon on completing the eastern side. They had pushed past the street and were moving north making great headway. The eastern wall took longer because there was less room for the semi-trucks to maneuver, but it too was done in a few hours. After that, Second Platoon stood guard at the edge of the wall, while First Platoon was shipped off to the western wall to assist Third Platoon.
This time however, Second Platoon got to rotate guard duty, with half the platoon waiting in the warmth of the E-LAVs while the other half stood watch, switching every half hour. By the time First and Third Platoons had finished the western wall, the sun was beginning to set.
“Okay Second Platoon, into the trucks, we’re calling it a day,” Lieutenant Carpenter told them.
Chapter 32
December 5h
The powers that be let Xander and the rest of the company sleep in that morning, waking them at a luxurious 8 a.m. and instead of PT, the company fell in for medical parade, and every soldier got checked out. Xander, like most everyone else, was handed a couple Advils and sent off for breakfast. A handful were given light duty and stayed behind when the company boarded the trucks in the morning.
By 9 a.m., the company was back outside freezing their asses off with the engineers trying to seal off the subdivision for good. The trucks had brought a load of shipping containers by the time the company got there, so they went straight to work on the wall. By about 11:30, the northern wall was complete, completing all four walls, but there were several huge gaps in the perimeter, at intersections and the major roads.
“Hey Sarge, why did they leave those huge gaps in the wall? Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of all our hard work?” Ashton asked in between bites of a sandwich.
“I have no idea Ashton, it doesn’t make sense to me either,” Simpson said.
After lunch, the company went back to work, this time moving additional shipping containers into perpendicular positions along the gaps, creating thirty metre long killing zones at each of the gaps in the wall. While Second Platoon was working on the northern entrance, a convoy of Edmonton Transit buses and a few G-Wagens pulled into the fort. The left side of each bus had been armoured with metal plates welded over the windows and tires, and the drivers slowly and carefully maneuvered them into position to close off the killing zones.
The area was now completely sealed off from the rest of the city.
“Now the hard work starts gentlemen,” Captain MacDonald said to the assembled company. “It’s time to clear each and every one of these homes and apartments of infected. While we haven’t seen much in the way of movement, you should expect that there will be some infected in some of these buildings. And we need to clear every single one of them out of here, because in three days, we’re going to begin moving the civilians on the base in here. Good luck and God speed!” Captain MacDonald walked back to the command APC and the NCOs started shouting.
“All right, 2nd Platoon, equipment checks! Check yours, then check your buddy’s, then check again. We move out in five minutes!”
First and Third Platoons hopped into the trucks and headed off for other parts of the subdivision, and the engineers launched a pair of drones to watch for trouble from above.
In short order, the platoon formed up and moved out to the east, trudging through the ankle deep snow. The platoon advanced down the street with First and Second Sections in single file on one side of the road, and Third and Fourth Sections in single file on the other. When they got to the first homes, one fire team from each section went into a house, while the other stood in reserve to back them up in case of trouble.
Sergeant Simpson had led Jack, Phillip and Andrew inside the first house, while Xander and the others waited on the street for a few tense minutes, until Andrew shouted a loud, “All clear!” from inside. They closed the front door and the section moved onto the next house, and this time Xander, Thomas, Frank and Mack went inside.
“Shields up,” Xander said, then
led the fireteam inside.
“Hello, is there anyone home?” Frank shouted.
Silence.
“We’ll take the upstairs, you take the main floor,” Frank said.
Xander and Thomas nodded and they split up. Xander and Thomas walked around the corner into the living room and kitchen. Everything looked brand new and there were no signs of a struggle. It looked like the homeowners had just left to go shopping or run errands. The shelves in the pantry still had some food on them, mostly dry goods like flour and rice.
“Stay away from the fridge,” Thomas said.
“Yeah, yeah, smartass,” Xander replied.
Xander walked into the mud room and opened the door to the garage. Flicking on his headlamp, he noticed immediately it was much messier than the rest of the house, with stacks of yard equipment, piles of sporting goods, and several boxes of Christmas decorations, including a box with an inflatable Santa on it, scattered haphazardly throughout the garage. Based on the disheveled appearance of the garage, it looked like the owners had left in a rush.
Thomas called, “Heading downstairs!”
Xander backed out of the garage and followed Thomas’ voice to the basement. He came down the steps to an dimly lit unfinished basement. Dozens of boxes were stacked in the corners and a carpet covered in children’s toys sat in the middle of the huge room.
“Whoever lived here must’ve just moved in,” Thomas said.
“Maybe, but based on the garage, I’m guessing they left in a bit of a hurry,” Xander replied.
They headed back to the living room and met Frank and Mack, “Anything upstairs?”
“Nope,” Frank said.
As the fireteam walked outside, Mack bellowed, “All clear!”
Across the street, Fourth Section had found a couple infected and dealt with them, then dragged their bodies outside for disposal.
Zombie Night In Canada (Book 2): 2nd Period Page 25
