Zombie Killers: Ice & Fire

by John Holmes

  He balanced his double edged, foot long knife low, point down, but held rock still, sizing up his opponent, who has just stepped into the ring. I had been expecting a giant, some muscle bound redneck, but this guy was medium height, whipcord thin, and all hard wire and bone. He had almost as many scars as Ziv did.

  “Shit” said Doc, and I echoed him. Ziv was a hard man to like, and I didn’t ask him too much about what he did when he was in the Serbian Special Forces, because, honestly, I didn’t want to know. However, we had been through some tough times together in the last year, and I respected him. We each owed the other our lives, many times over. I was wondering if he had met his match. This guy wasn’t some brawler, he was a knife fighter, and a killer.

  The crowd broke into cheers as the other guy held up his knife, a long stiletto of cold steel, and did a slow strut around the ring. He grinned, showing a mouthful of broken teeth. Dried blood from his last fight still coated his arms and the ragged jeans he wore, and matted his dirty blonde hair, which hung down his back in a ponytail. Prison tattoos were inked up and down his torso, mingling with the scars. As he strutted, the crowd started chanting “SWEDE! SWEDE!”

  Doc leaned over to Ziv and started talking. “He’s going to be fast, real fast, Ziv, and he’s going to try and get inside your guard, going for a low stab in your gut, or maybe cut your Femoral artery inside your leg. He’ll take a cut across the back to give you a fatal cut on the inside. Don’t let him get inside you.”

  In answer, Ziv spit on the ground. A girl stepped into the ring, dressed in Daisy Dukes and a bikini top, carrying a sign with a big “1” on it, meaning, I guess, round one. She followed “Swede” around the ring as he pranced. The first time around, Swede gave Ziv the finger. He just stared back, impassive and immobile. The second time around, as the crowds’ roar was getting even louder, he reached out to give Ziv the finger again, and Flagg stepped into the ring, holding a megaphone.

  Ziv grabbed the other fighters’ outstretched arm and pulled towards him. The man stumbled, off balance, and Ziv drove the top of his knife down through the point where his neck met his shoulder. Once, twice, faster than I could see it, then he spun the man single handedly across the ring to land at the feet of the girl carrying the sign. A jet of blood spurted from the wounds, spraying across the girl and her sign. She dropped it, put her hands to her mouth and screamed. The crowd fell silent, cutoff in mid chant. The Swede, grabbing at his neck, choked once and spat up a gob of blood, then collapsed into the sand.

  The only sound was of Flagg laughing.

  Chapter 7

  I jumped into the ring, pistol out, hammer cocked back, and stood next to Ziv. Doc did the same, facing the opposite direction. We stared down a half dozen guns on either side. I figured in the next ten seconds, we were probably dead. My heart was racing, and my hand shook slightly as I sighted down on Flagg.

  He stepped out and started clapping his hands. “Bravo, bravo, bravo! Now THAT is what I call entertainment! Something unexpected! Put your guns, down, and we will talk business.” He waved at the crowd, motioning for them to put their weapons away. He casually stepped over the body of Swede, and ran his hand across the face of the girl holding the sign, smearing the blood that had splattered her. Then he licked the blood off his fingers.

  “One hundred percent, grade A wacko” I muttered, and holstered my gun. We followed him through the crowd and out of the tent, crossing the open ground to a smaller tent and heading inside.

  Flagg’s personal bodyguard stood just inside the tent flap, a huge guy leaning on an actual frigging sword. He had his head shaved and beard twisted into a braid, and black steel and kevlar body armor covered him from his neck to his feet. This guy would be hell to fight in the confined spaces of the camp. As we came in, the guy stepped in front of us, and put the point of the sword to my neck, making me stop short.

  “Taylor, let them in. We have a business deal to discuss.” The giant grunted and lowered the sword, stepping aside. We walked past, and Ziv patted his cheek. “I will see you later” he growled. The two of them stared each other down for what seemed like an eternity, until Ziv barked a short, harsh laugh and turned away.

  Flagg sat down on the edge of a cot, and I sat across from him. “So what’s this business?”

  “First, tell me about yourself and your crew. Why are only three of you here, and not all seven?”

  He was telling me that he had good info on us already. Time to play our hand, and see if he would bite.

  “Guarding our stuff. We’ve lived rough for years, and we don’t trust anyone.”

  He sat and pondered for a minute, making a great show of thinking. Then it looked as if a light bulb went off in his head.

  “YES! I know you! I know you all. You were in the newspaper last year. That scout team in New York, up at West Point!”

  Busted. Things were going to get ugly real quick, and we balanced on the knife edge of violence.

  “That was some pretty awesome stuff! I followed you in the paper. How many zombies did you snuff? Where is the big black guy? Is the redhead in the tent the same woman you had with you? She is frigging HOT!”

  I let out my breath slowly. Great, a frigging fanboy. Doctor Evil had a crush on Brit.

  “He’s dead. Died right after that, on the exfill. One of the reasons we don’t work for the Army anymore. Gave it up to freelance.”

  “One of the reasons? You have more?” Great, this guy was buying the whole thing. I rolled up my pants leg to show the crappy wooden leg I had strapped on.

  “This is the other one. I lost my leg, and all I got was this.”

  “Screwed by the government. Happens every time.” He leaned back on the cot. “What would you say if I told you that I’ve got a plan to bring the whole thing crashing down?”

  Jackpot! “I’d like to hear that very much.”

  Chapter 8

  Flagg leaned forward again. “I assume you know your way around Zombies?”

  “A bit.”

  “Do you think you could handle one? Move it from place to place?”

  Where was he going with this? “Probably. Fighting zombies isn’t hard if you’re smart about it.”

  “So I understand. You wouldn’t think so, with the number of people who died in the recent collapse.” He had a huge grin on his face. This guy actually seemed to be getting off on thinking about all the death.

  “Well, we didn’t go all the way under.”

  “More’s the pity. But back to business. Handling zombies.”

  “Sure, we could handle a Z. But there isn’t one within five hundred miles of here. The quarantine is pretty damn solid.”

  He waved his hand in the air. “Never mind that. I have some friends who are infuriated that the Great Satan is still standing, even as their own country is a radioactive dust bowl. Jihad, they call it. They have managed to acquire some undead for me.”

  Great. The Middle East had been hammered in a short, sharp exchange of nuclear weapons between Iran and Israel. After the plague broke out, and things broke down, terrorists had detonated a bomb in Tel Aviv, and then a couple of missiles had hit Israel’s other cities, fired from Iran. The Israeli military had hammered Tehran and the other Arab capitals flat, and then the Chinese had launched their disabling cyberattack against our nuclear forces. They had nuked Mecca, Jerusalem, Riyadh, Baghdad, Cairo, just to get them out of the way.

  “So, where do we fit into this plan?” I could kill him right here and now, in fact, I wanted to, but then we would lose the lead to his contacts. “What, exactly, IS your plan?”

  “How many people in this camp?”

  I thought quickly. “Maybe five thousand.”

  “And what do you think would happen if five thousand undead suddenly scattered across the inside of the quarantine zone?”

  My blood went cold, and I heard a sharp intake of breath from behind me where Doc stood.

  “Well, at a minimum, the Federal Government would fall. All their for
ces are oriented outwards.”

  A look of glee came across his face. “EXACTLY! Riot and mayhem, death and destruction, and the cycle turns again!”

  This guy was absolutely crazy. Completely over the line. I also knew something that he didn’t. Orbiting in a racetrack pattern, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, a B-52 from Fairchild Air Force Base circled the sky over the Federal Zone, armed with nuclear weapons. At the first hint of an outbreak, they would drop one, or two, or three, or however many the authorities thought they would need to contain an outbreak. Regardless of who was in them at the time. Nuke it from orbit, it was the only way to be sure.

  “So what do you need us to do, and what’s in it for us?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Gold. As much as we can carry.”

  He reached under the cot and dragged a heavy chest out, then flipped the lid open. In the light of the Coleman gas lantern, a pile of gold jewelry gleamed, looking like Smaug’s horde in The Hobbit.

  “Looks good. So what do you need us to do?”

  “We need security, and help moving the undead from the drop off point into the camp.”

  I thought about it for a minute. “How many, and where?”

  “Three, and you don’t know need to know where. Just be at the south east corner of the camp tomorrow at breakfast.”

  “Early morning? That takes some balls, in broad daylight.”

  He nodded to the Viking. “Taylor, do you have that diversion planned?”

  “All set, boss” he said, never stopping his staring game with Ziv.

  I probed him for more information. “Are you just going to let them into the camp? Let them run loose?”

  “That is the general idea. In the confusion, I’m sure you and your people will be able to get out, easy enough. We just need you to keep any military patrols away from the transfer point, if they come around, and then get the Z’s into the most crowded area.”

  I pretended to think about it, then leaned forward and offered my hand. “Tomorrow at noon, then.” He took my hand in his, and his grip felt like ice in my hand. I let go as quick as I could and stood.

  We filed out of the tent, Ziv backing out with his eye on Taylor. As he left, he drew his finger across his throat. Taylor raised his sword to his face, then lowered it.

  “Ziv, do you have to piss off the big guy in the armor?”

  I could almost see his grin in the darkness. “Because some people are just asking to die. You can see it in their eyes.”

  “You, or him?” asked Doc.

  “That remains to be seen.”

  Chapter 9

  We made our way back to our tent, avoiding the open area. As we passed the remains of the burnt out tent I saw a half dozen figures coming up the street in the opposite direction. They stopped in front of our tent.

  “Heads up, company.”

  I pulled the Motorola radio out keyed it. “Brit, company outside. You tracking?”

  “Roger. Ahmed and Espo are out and about. We’re going outside to meet”

  She was cut off in midsentence. Simultaneously, in front of us, bright flashes shattered the night, and the flat CRACK CRACK of pistols firing. We all hit the dirt, right where we stood and drew our guns, but held fire. The attackers were in between us and our tent, and in the dark we couldn’t be sure of our targets.

  Beside us, in the ruined tent, a stab of flame ruined my night vision, and a loud BANG ruined my hearing. One of the attackers dropped, and I heard over the ringing in my ear the sound of Ahmed racking the bolt of the Mosin rifle he had hidden just outside the fence the night before. He fired again, dropping another one. At the same time, off to one side of our tent, from under the wooden floor boards, a low ripping sound and more muzzle flashes. Red emptied a full thirty round magazine from a MAC-10 machine pistol into them. From the other side, Brit fired the sawed off shotgun we had taken earlier in the day. The last of the attackers fell to the ground.

  “CEASE FIRE!” I yelled and stood up. Beside me, so did Doc and Ziv; Espo and Ahmed crawled out from the ruined tent. We advanced cautiously, and Brit and Red came out of the tent, shining flashlights on the bodies. They were more of the crew that we had taken this tent from earlier in the day. One was crawling away, and Brit shot him in the back of the head. Doc checked the pulses of each of the others, and when he found one still breathing, he quickly cut his throat.

  I sat down on a crate, after holstering my pistol. My hands started to shake, and I jammed them hard into my pockets. It took a minute for them to stop, and for my heart to stop pounding. When they stopped shaking, I stood back up. There was the smell of cordite and dead meat in the air.

  “OK, let’s get out of here. We don’t want to be anywhere near this in the morning when the patrols come by. Grab your stuff, time to roll.”

  We were ready to move in a few minutes; the radio was the only thing that needed to be broken down. Red stowed it in his pack, and Ahmed hid the rifle under the burned out tent, pulling the bolt and putting it in his pocket. We moved out through the night, hunting a new place to grab a few hours of sleep before tomorrow.

  The further we got from the shootout, the more faces we saw peeking out from tent flaps. As we passed, they slid back inside. No one wanted to get involved when the wolves were chewing on each other.

  We found an empty tent and instituted a sleep plan. It was past midnight, and I was exhausted. I tossed and turned, and tried closing my eyes, but every time I did, I saw the exchange of pistol shots like afterimages from camera flashes. I finally got up, unable to sleep and not wanting to take any of the drugs the VA had given me. Picking up my crutch, I hopped out and sat down on the wooden steps in the front. Espo was sitting there, smoking a cigarette. I knew Red was somewhere hidden in line of sight.

  “Put that out.” A cigarette was well and good, but it ruined your night vision and gave an aiming point for a sniper. Shouldn’t be a problem in the camp, but a bad habit to take back outside the wire.

  Esposito grounded it out on his boot, then put the stump back in his pocket. Tobacco was expensive, now that the fields in Virginia were just a mass of weeds and scrub brush.

  “Sorry, Chief. Having a hard time sleeping again?”

  “Yeah. Bad shit keeps coming back. Had the shakes again today.”

  “Maybe you need a vacation.” We both laughed. A vacation, ha, right. “No, seriously, Nick. Look at all the shit you’ve been through in the last year. Lost your leg, couple friends been killed, house blowed up.”

  “Blown up” I automatically corrected.

  “Whatever, point is, you have been through a lot of shite. You gotta de-stress. Why don’t you go try to take a poke at Brit? You know she’s crazy about you.”

  “Old man like me? That will be the day.”

  “Just go talk to her, you dumbass. With all due respect, Sarge.”

  I sat and thought for a minute, then put my hand on Espos’ shoulder and used him to lever myself up. I stumped back inside, sat on my cot, opened my team book, and started writing notes on today’s events. I heard a sigh and looked up. Brit sat up, and fixed her eye patch over her ruined right eye.

  “Can’t sleep either, huh?” She nodded and came over to sit next to me.

  “Whatcha doin?”

  “Putting down an account of todays’ action. For posterities’ sake. Who knows, maybe I’ll write a book someday about all this.”

  “Am I in there?” She moved closer to me, trying to get a look at my notebook.

  “Ever since we met, way back in Syracuse. Two years now.”

  “You remember pulling me out of the water in West Point?”

  I thought back to that. She had kissed me after saving her life, but we had put a stop to that real quickly. Teams don’t work well when there is that kind of dynamic going on.

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  She moved even closer, putting her arm around my shoulders. “Remember what we talked about?”

  “Yep, rememb
er that too. Still the same. Nothing between team members.”

  “I know that, but I want to ask you a favor.” She leaned her head on my shoulder.

  “Go ahead.” I had an idea of what was coming.

  “Promise me something.”

  “We owe each other our lives, couple times over. You can ask me anything.”

  “Promise me that when we head back east, we go back to Stillwater, farm some land. Quit all this crazy stuff.”

  I thought hard about it. I HAD been thinking hard about it, ever since I lost my leg. Even before that, when Brit lost her eye. Maybe even before that, the first time Brit got shot.

  “I’ll be honest” I said, “my patriotism meter is running pretty low. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. That shit with Doctor Morano.”

  Brit squeezed my shoulder. “Yeah, I’ll deal with her. Someday soon. But, Nick. Listen. I’m not your typical woman. I’m not going to beat around the bush. I love you, you’re my best friend and”

  She was interrupted by a loud, raucous snore from Ziv’s cot. She picked up my prosthetic from beside the cot. reached over, and wacked him in the chest. He woke up with a snort.

  “What the hell was that for, you devil woman?”

  “Stop fucking snoring. I’m trying to seduce Nick.”

  He rolled over and pulled the blanket up over his head. “About goddamned time. Stupid idiot Americans.”

  She turned back to me. “Like I was saying. Let’s quit. Start a farm. Make babies. Make a new world.” She leaned over, kissed me long and gently on the lips, then sat back.

  “OK. After this, we’re done. Just … can I keep my soul, Miss one eyed, crazy redhead?”

  Chapter 10

  The sun rose on, hopefully, our last day in the camp. For once, bright sunshine silhouetted Mount Rainier in the distance. At first light, we had called Special Operations Command and filled them in on what was going on. While Doc called it in, I sat on the steps and shaved with cold water. Brit sat next to me, picking through a Pasta MRE meal.