Zombie Killers: Ice & Fire

by John Holmes

  “OK, lets’ go in, look for survivors.” We snaked our ways through the debris, weapons at the ready, moving up a stairwell. The first few floors were empty, the damage getting worse as we moved upwards. The stairwell stopped abruptly just below the last floor, the steps hammered away. A bloody aluminum ladder, the one Guido had used, lay toppled over. We set it upright and climbed.

  I was first up the ladder, and I stopped the others. The whole place stank of blood and cordite, a smell I knew all too well. Scattered around the floor were more than two dozen bodies, some still clad in the remains of uniforms. Others were in civilian clothes. Many of the bodies we far too small.

  “Doc, Ahmed, come up. Brit, stay down there with J.”

  “Hell no, I’m coming up” she said, and started climbing the ladder.

  “Suit yourself.”

  She climbed up the ladder, looked around, and threw up. I walked over to the closest small body, but the kid, a young boy, showed no signs of life. I turned to Doc, after he had finished checking the other bodies.

  “Any?”

  “No. Those BB rounds, well, they work. All too well.” The corpses all had dozens of small holes in them, and the floors were slick with blood.

  “OK then. Pile them in the center, and find something flammable. There has to be some gas around here. Pop a Willie Pete on them and let’s go. I’m not leaving them to be eaten by crows.”

  Brit stood over one small body, a baby. Tears were streaming down her face. “How could they do this, Nick? You told them. YOU TOLD THEM! We’re supposed to be the good guys, Nick! ”

  “It’s war, Brit. We are the good guys. Just, some of us aren’t as good others.” I thought back to the kid I had executed a few days before. Yeah, some of aren’t that good. We just do what has to be done.

  Three hours later, we headed west towards Fire Base Tillery. Behind us the funeral pyre of Brits’ innocence burned brightly.

  Chapter 19

  Fire Base Tillery sat high on a bluff overlooking a narrow spot in the Mohawk Valley. Below stood the ruins of Little Falls. The cliffs on either side formed a natural choke point, blocking off easy access to the flatlands to the west.

  In the few days that they had been there, bulldozers had thrown up a high dirt berm, and soldiers had been even busier setting up and filling HESCO barriers, steel and canvas frames that were filled with dirt to form an unscallable wall. Machine guns and sniper positions sat every twenty feet or so, and brown and green camouflage netting hung over the sides, blocking anyone from getting a clear shot at the soldiers manning the guard posts. Covering each quarter of the compass, the muzzles of 155mm cannon poked out over the dirt berm, ready to fire quick fused or even canister rounds if a horde came too close. Fat chance of that here, out in the middle of nowhere.

  We straggled wearily along the cracked asphalt of a country road that the base had squatted on. It had warmed considerably in the two days we had taken to march here, and we were covered in mud from the melting snow. Brit limped along, blood coming from where her new boots had worn through a blister. Doc had put duct tape on it, but she still left a red foot print in the snow with each step. I had given her a tough lecture after she had walked on it for three days without letting Doc take a look at her blisters. She hadn’t wanted to slow anyone down, but now her feet were trashed and she would be out of action for at least a couple of days. It didn’t matter; maybe she would learn a lesson about teamwork and stubbornness.

  Jonesy was on point, but we didn’t expect much this close to the base. Patrols went out regularly to clear the area around the base, and the TOC had been informed that we were coming in. Apparently, though, the guys at the front gate hadn’t gotten the word.

  A short burst of machine gun fire chewed the ground in front of Jonesy, and a ricochet plowed off the frozen dirt and grooved his leg. He fell to the ground, howling in pain, holding on to his leg. We all hit the snow in less than a second flat.

  “HEY! YOU STUPID FUCKERS! SCOUT TEAM COMING IN!”

  Doc crawled forward to Jonesy, who had immediately shut up after his first surprised yell. Looking at it closely, he gave me a thumbs up and proceeded to apply a field compress. I stood up, and another burst drove me back down into the snow, rounds whipping through the air to my right.

  “Jesus Christ! Ahmed, pop smoke!” He threw an orange smoke grenade in front of us, and a cloud started to spew out in between us and the front gate. The machine gun started hammering, sending a stream of lead in a wide sweep, way over our heads. I ran over to Jonesy and grabbed the radio, quickly raising the Operations RTO. I nearly broke the handmike screaming into it, and the firing stopped.

  “SORRY ABOUT THAT!” was yelled from the front gate, fifty meters away. Ahmed silently buried a round in the sandbag next to the machine gunners’ head, sending a shower of dirt into his face.

  “SORRY ABOUT THAT!” Brit yelled back.

  As Doc helped Jonesy limp in through the front gate, we shot murderous glares at the stupid teenager behind the machine gun.

  “What the hell were you thinking? Don’t you identify targets before shooting?” The kid looked all of fifteen years old, and he looked like he was about to cry as he saw the blood running down Jonesy’s leg. At that point, a Staff Sergeant came running up, with a look of murder on his face. I assumed he was the Sergeant of the guard, and I knew that the kid was going to be in for a hard time.

  “Doc, turn him over to the medics and come with me to the TOC, Brit, you get that foot checked out. Ahmed, start getting supplies together. I don’t think we’re going to be staying here too long.”

  Doc pulled me aside. As my second in command, he would be in on the Battle Update Briefing, and I knew what he was going to say, but I let him say it.

  “Nick, keep your temper in check. We both know that Colonel MacDonald is an ass, but he could screw us, you know that.”

  “I know, I’m not going to put the team at risk.” He could see that I was fuming.

  “The hell you aren’t. Someday your temper is going to get a hold of you, and I have a feeling today will be the day” he said.

  “Maybe. Let’s go find out.”

  Chapter 20

  The Task Force forward staff was gathered in the Operations Center, in the middle of the afternoon briefing. A projector had been set up, and they were flipping through Power Point Slides. Heads turned as we made our way in through the tent flaps.

  “Ah, Sergeant Agostine, Sergeant Hamilton. I can’t wait to hear your report. I hope you have that Battle Damage Assessment I asked for. Took your goddamned time getting here.” Colonel Jackass sat there, chewing on an unlit cigar, the bare light bulbs shining off his bald head. Doc put his hand on my shoulder, and I took a deep breath.

  “Sir, I have your report. Give me just a second to load them up on the computer.” I pulled a data stick off the dog tags I wore around my neck and plugged it into the laptop showing the slides.

  “Two days ago, IST-1 entered the town of St. Johnsville, as ordered, to assess the effects of artillery fire on Undead.” A picture popped up on the screen, taken as we moved into the town. The Stewarts shop was still smoldering, putting a cloud of smoke over the whole area.

  “As you can see,” and the pictured changed to corpses laying scattered around on the street “the new BB rounds were effective in causing significant effects. Proceeding through town, we were only engaged by less than a half dozen undead.”

  “OUTSTANDING!” said Jackass, and he clapped his hands together. “Outfriggingstanding!”

  “May I continue, Sir?” He was in a great mood now.

  “Carry on, Sergeant.”

  “We proceeded on to a four story brick structure which had given indication that it might contain survivors.” The next picture was of a little girl, her face shattered by shrapnel. I clicked on to the next one, a shot of Staff Sergeant Guido, his leg tied off, face pale, blood spilled from his mouth.

  A mummer went around the tent. “That was unconfirmed�
�� said Jackass. “We had no way of knowing.”

  I clicked on more pictures, providing a voice overlay to the carnage.

  “We estimated that there were approximately two dozen men, women and children survivors. Before he died from wounds received in the artillery barrage, a survivor told us that they were National Guardsmen who had managed to survive, but that our helicopter patrols had drawn the zombies to this end of the valley, trapping them.”

  “Now hold on a minute, Sergeant. What are you insinuating?” The Colonel’s face had grown livid.

  “What I’m saying is that if you had sent a Chinook in, we could have evacuated them, instead of you being so damn eager to use your new toys.” I was getting hot, and I almost yelled at him.

  He got up and got in my face. “I don’t like your tone, Sergeant!”

  I turned away to calm down, and Doc went to put his hand on me to steady me. Behind me on the screen the picture had returned to the little girl with the bloody tear in her face. I looked it at for a second, and the face on the screen changed into my dead daughters’ face, blood leaking from it.

  Before Doc could stop me, I turned around and threw a right cross that caught Colonel Jackass right in the jaw. He went down, crashing over the folding chair behind him. I jumped on him, but before I could land another punch, I felt Doc’s weightlifter arms wrap around me and drag me off of him. He lifted me up bodily and carried me out of the tent, and dumped me in the snow.

  The Operations Officer, Major Flynn, came out of the tent. “Hamilton, get his ass out of here! NOW! In fact, I want your entire team off the base in the next half hour. I don’t care where you go, just get out of here before I have you all arrested.” Behind him stood two Privates with MP armbands, pistols drawn.

  I stood up and brushed some the snow off me. I had split my knuckles on his teeth, and drops of blood stained the snow.

  “Oh boy, you screwed the pooch now, Nick” said Doc.

  I looked at my hand as we hustled over to the medic tent to gather up the rest of the team. “They won’t arrest us, they need us too badly. He deserved it, murdering prick.”

  Chapter 21

  We headed toward the East Gate into a raging snowstorm that had blown up. Out into the Wild, Wild East. Doc walked next to me, and the rest of the team came along, both Brit and Jonesy limping, Ahmed looking to the rear every few seconds to see if we were being followed. I motioned for them to follow me, and we ducked between two tents.

  “OK, here’s the plan” I said. “We obviously can’t walk out of here with you two in the shape you’re in, and if we stay here, I’m going to get arrested.”

  Jonesy let out a laugh. “Way to go, Mike Tyson! Felt good, didn’t it?”

  I grinned. ”Yeah, it did. But here’s the deal. I think Major Flynn will be able to buy us a little time, but we gotta go” and I explained my plan to them.

  In the end, it was easy. Doc and Ahmed walked over to the motor pool, pulled out a set of bolt cutters, and cut the lock on a HUMVEE. They jumped in and brought it around to where we were waiting, and we piled in.

  At the gate, the sentry tried to stop us. It was the same kid who had been manning the machine gun before. He started challenge us, but Jonesy leaned out the window and said “Let us out or I will personally get out of this truck and pay you back for putting a bullet through my leg.” The kid went white, and waved us out.

  We headed down the road, going slowly, the snow crunching under the tires. In the turret, Ahmed rested his rifle on the roof. After a two miles, we pulled over into the parking lot of a ruined convenience store.

  “So, what’s the plan, boss?” asked Brit.

  “Well, about a hundred miles east of here, north of Albany, I have a house that I forted up, survived the apocalypse. It’s on an island in the middle of the Hudson River. I was there until I got picked up by a scout helo, after rescuing an F-16 pilot that had gone down.”

  Doc said “So, like a base of operations? You know that you are going to have to call in some serious favors with Joint Special Operations Command to get MacDonald off your ass.”

  “Yeah, I know. Thing is, though, they DO need us. Give it some time, especially before they move on Albany, and they will call us. Trained teams are in short supply.”

  Brit spoke up. “If you think any of you penis wearers are going to tap this ass, you can suck it.”

  “The proceeding was a paid commercial for the committee of the preservation of Ms. O’Neil’s virginity.”

  She stuck here tongue out at me. “That bus left long ago, mister smart ass team leader. I’m just saying.”

  “Moving right along … what do you all say? It isn’t going to be easy. We’re going to have to loot our supplies, pull watch every night, and be ready to move out when they call us back.”

  “I’m in” said Jonesy. “We’ve been together too long.”

  Doc spoke next. “Chain of Command, you’re the team commander, and we’re still on active duty.”

  Ahmed leaned down in from the turret “I will follow you, Nick.”

  “That leaves you, Brit. You’re a civilian, I can’t order you to go. We can drop you off back at the Firebase, and you can catch a ride back to civilization from there.”

  “You mean, like, clean clothes? Hot showers? Television?” Her eyes lit up, and she licked her lips. “Isn’t there a great sushi place in Seattle?”

  “I’m sure there is” said Doc.

  She made a great show of pondering for a minute, then started tapping her finger back and forth.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Deciding. Ennie, meenie, miney, MOE! OK, I’m in.”

  “Just like that?” said Jonesy.

  “Just like that!” she said. “Listen, Big J, before the meltdown, I was way serious, and now, well, I’m going to live life to the fullest. Eat what I want, screw who I want, go where I want. I expect to be dead any day now, anyway. I figure you guys might be more fun than going back to that madhouse called civilization.”

  “OK, that’s it then. Doc, turn left at the next road, if you can find it under the snow. We’ll catch Route 29 east, then loop north around the hot area outside Saratoga where the power plant melted down.”

  Chapter 22

  “Who do you think could win in a fight? Batman or Hitgirl?”

  We were slowly driving up Route 29, across the hills west of Saratoga Springs, trying to keep from sliding off the ice covered roads. The drive was monotonous, and Brit was trying to keep d my mind going. The snow came swirling at me, looking like hyperspace.

  “Now THAT is a good question. But I have no opinion, since everyone knows Superman can kick the crap out of everyone.”

  “You are such a frigging old man. Superman. What a frigging old school twit you are. Answer the question.”

  I sighed. “OK, Batman, because of the experience.”

  “Screw that. Hitgirl knows how to use a gun, Batman never uses one. BAM! He’s down.”

  “You don’t get it. He’s BATMAN.”

  She shook her head. “Nobody can beat my girl.”

  Jonesy crouched forward. “Next time we get in the shit, I want to see YOU doin all that dancing around Karate shit on the zombies. Then we can call YOU Hitgirl.”

  “OK then. I’m pretty sure you just want to see me in tights and a miniskirt.”

  I laughed. “THAT I would pay to see.”

  She batted her eyes at me. “Play it right and you might, old man.”

  Doc laughed. “As your physician, Nick, I advise against it. Might give you a heart attack.”

  Chapter 23

  We stopped for the night when it got too dark to see without using the headlights. The engine noise was bad enough; the lights would be a dead giveaway. One man stayed up in the turret, and another stayed awake. I settled into the front seat, trying to get comfortable, wrapped in my woobie, and slowly drowsed off. Half my mind slept, the other half listened for unusual sounds, changes in the conversation, anyone saying my na
me. It was a skill combat soldiers had been learning since long before Alexander’s phalanxes had marched through Persia.

  It wasn’t an unusual noise that woke me; it was a kick to the head. J was up in the turret. “Nick” he whispered. “We got movement in the woods, undead, maybe a hundred.” I reached over slowly and shook Doc’s shoulder. His eyes opened, but he didn’t move. The turret ring ticked on its ball bearings as Jonesy traversed to cover the group. A hundred undead could swarm the truck, no problem.

  Ahmed was already awake, on watch. He slowly slid his window down and extended his rifle out, lining up on the closest zombie.

  From the other side of the truck came a THUD and then the zombie howl. Brit woke with a start and then caught sight of the rotted face smearing itself on her window, and she screamed. Her shotgun, cradled in her arms with the barrel pointed at the floor, went off with a BANG that deafened all of us. The stock jumped up and hit her in the jaw, and she collapsed, out cold. I felt, rather than heard, the truck start, and hot brass started showering down from above as Jonesy engaged.

  My ears still ringing, I yelled for Doc to get us the fuck out of there. He shifted into drive and floored it, but we didn’t move. Ahmed closed his window, reached over, and pulled Jonesy down from the turret. J fell in and closed the hatch behind him, locking it. The Z’s swarmed around the truck, rocking it as they pounded into it. We sat there, engine revving, going nowhere.

  “Doc, check out Brit, see if she’s OK. J, figure out what the hell is wrong with the truck.”

  “On it, Boss.” The two big guys squeezed past each other, trying to maneuver in the confines of the truck. Doc shone a flashlight in Brit’s eyes, then broke out some smelling salts. She woke up quickly, and then vomited all over herself.

  “She’ll be OK. Slight concussion, we’ll have to keep an eye on her, keep her awake.”

  Jonesy had been shining a light under the seat. “Wish I could say the same about the truck. Looks like she done shot the transmission shifter linkage away.”