War (The Zombie Extinction Event Novels Book 3)

by c. s anderson

  Every one chambers a round and then there really isn’t much more to say after that.

  “Try not to get killed.” Katrin tells me blandly as she walks by me on her way up to her sniper perch.

  “Will do my best.” I call back to her, but she has already cut through the crowd gathered to watch us leave and is stalking her way up the stairs.

  I nod at the door guards and they all snap to and go about the task of opening up the fortified doors and letting our teams out onto the street. We move out briskly and they close the doors as quickly as they can.

  “Ok Jake, you take the high road and I’ll take the low road and all that crap. Meet back here in ninety minutes.” Russ tells me in his deep growl of a voice.

  We shake hands.

  Then we part ways, he moves off north, my team goes south.

  We move away kicking rubble into the gutter, pounding on street signs, anything to make enough noise to bring some hungry Feeders our way. A few stragglers come at us and we take them out, but the rest don’t seem to be taking the bait.

  Maybe they aren’t hungry.

  Or maybe they have learned what happens when they rush us, the speakers go on, they all fall down and then we kill them.

  Hate to think that they can learn from their mistakes like that, I like my zombies stupid, thank you very much. Stupid things are always easier to kill.

  We have six of our squad assigned to scan roof tops and keep an eye out for Jumpers as we go. I will kill as many Feeders as I can get in my sights, but it is a better use of ammo to take out the more dangerous mutations. We need to thin the numbers of the Screamers, Singers, Jumpers and Burners to really hit them where it hurts and tone down the threat to us.

  “Incoming!” One of them shouts and we all do just what we planned. As the six assigned to protect us open up with rifles, the rest of us move to the nearest building to hug the walls. Our speaker team opens up and the few that land alive are quickly stunned by the wall of sound that hits them. The rest of us play clean up and kill them quickly.

  I signal to the speaker to cut the sound and count the shattered bodies lying on the street, eight Jumpers taken out with no losses on our side. Not a bad beginning to this little outing of ours. I can hear sporadic gun fire from the direction that the other team went, so it sounds like they found some playmates as well.

  Just when I congratulate myself on how well the plan is working, all fucking hell breaks loose.

  Dozens of Feeders come pouring out of three different alleys, coming at us from three different directions. The speaker team just barely has time to hit play before they are on us. They are close enough for me to smell them when they fall to the ground writhing as the din overloads their rotting brains. We start killing them before I realize something.

  They are a fucking diversion.

  No warning screams this time, the roof top team just opens fire on a group of Jumpers so big, that when I look up, they basically are blocking out the sun. Only a few of us have the time and reflexes to back pedal out of the way, before the damn things are landing amongst us.

  They land on some of my team, crushing them to the ground before they have a chance to fire a shot. Even stunned by the speakers, they are dangerous as they writhe around flailing razor sharp claws. The only thing I can hear, as I stay busy trying not to get killed, are screams and gunfire.

  I fire until my first gun goes dry and then I draw another one and do the same. No time to reload, so I reholster the guns and pull out the baseball bat I keep slung over my left shoulder and go the fuck to town with it.

  In the heat of battle, time has no damn meaning.

  I swing the bat until my arms ache and then I swing it some more. When the speaker team goes quiet, I lean against a brick wall and try to catch my breath.

  Dead zombies litter the ground, Jumpers and Feeders. Dozens of them. Mixed in are more than a few of our people.

  “Reload people! Right now!” Matt barks as he takes his own advice and starts feeding shells into his shotgun.

  I reload both pistols and replace the gore soaked bat back into its shoulder sheath. The world goes a little gray as another dizzy spell hits, but I have no time for that bullshit right now. I take a few deep breathes and push myself off of the wall.

  “Heads up people!” Matt calls out, pointing off to our left and a couple blocks up the street.

  Burners.

  Six of them, marching towards us in a loose formation.

  I shake my head at the speaker team, no sense wasting battery power, because the damn things are deaf.

  They are dead silent as they come, I can feel the heat from them from where I am standing.

  I take out a whistle that I have on a leather thong around my neck and blow it shrilly, three times.

  Shannon Krecklau, a pretty strawberry blonde nods at me and pulls out the LAWS rocket launcher from the backpack she is carrying. I showed her how to load and fire it before we left and I really hope that she was paying attention.

  She gives me a wink and then shoulders the thing like she has done it dozens of times and fires a rocket at the smouldering freaks coming at us.

  The results are fucking spectacular.

  Who doesn’t love a good explosion, right?

  The rocket hits them center mass and starts a chain reaction of explosions that sends a massive fire ball up into the sky and shatters any intact glass windows in the area.

  A few random Feeders come staggering out of the blast zone, fully engulfed in flames. They take a few steps and collapse to burn completely into ash. When the smoke clears enough to see shit, there is no damn sign of the Burners or any other zombies for that matter. Everything in the blast zone is on fire.

  “Holy shit.” Matt says quietly as he smacks me lightly on the shoulder with a small grin on his face.

  Yeah, that pretty much sums it up I suppose.

  “Anybody remember to bring the marshmallows and hot dogs?” I call out loudly.

  This earns me a chuckle or two that dies out pretty fast as we do a quick count of our losses.

  Total buzz kill that.

  We just lost five people, two more have injuries, but when I try to send them back to base with an escort, they tell me to shove it. They reload and limp back into formation.

  I am proud to lead such people.

  So we move out again, the mission still the same.

  Kill them, kill them some fucking more and then keep on killing them.

  It isn’t a complicated plan.

  Like my own father used to tell me, follow the KISS program.

  Keep It Simple Stupid.

  Chapter Ten

  We continue our sweep and we kill a shit load of zombies, but they are adapting to our tactics. They stay, for the most part, just on the edge of the stun zone our wall of sound buys us. We are still picking off the ones that get too close and we are racking up good numbers just doing that. Most of what we are killing are common Feeders with a handful of Singers and Screamers tossed in.

  No more Burners.

  When we reach the come back point on our estimated battery life, we start the swing back homeward. I find myself wondering about how the other team is doing, if they can match our numbers, well then, we have done a good days work.

  A young black kid Matt has been training, named Maceo Freeman, leads the team keeping their eyes upward to warn us of and hopefully counter act any Jumpers coming our way.

  Except that they aren’t.

  Which makes me really fucking nervous.

  Because, if the Jumpers aren’t going to be the main threat, then sure as shit something nastier is going to be.

  “If they aren’t here brother, I am starting to have a nasty feeling of where they might be.” Matt tells me as he slowly scans the perimeter. He is white knuckling his shotgun.

  That had occurred to me as well, maybe this divide and conquer shit wasn’t such a great idea. Good idea or not, it is what we are doing, so no time to second guess the plan now
.

  “Team Red is on their own, just like we are. Let’s pick up the pace and get all these brave fucks home in one piece, shall we?” I tell him with a small attempt at a grin.

  “Roger that.” He tells me.

  And then he dies.

  A Jumper bursts through the plate glass window next to us and tears into Matt, dragging him down to the street and ripping into him with claws and teeth.

  “No!” I scream, as I bring my gun up.

  Three other guys beat me to the punch, blasting the damn freak into a bloody smear on the pavement.

  I stand over what is left of my friend, swallowing the feelings down that I don’t have time for right now. Somebody picks up his shotgun and steps slowly away, it is far to valuable to leave in a puddle of blood on the street, but the look on my face must be scary enough to make reaching for it a caution inducing decision.

  Matt is dead and we can’t even spare him the decency of a funeral, none of us would make it back alive, these days, if we tried to bring the dead back with us on runs. We honor them in spirit as best we can, but their flesh stays on the streets.

  Clock is ticking, we have to keep moving.

  “Heads up people! Kick it in the ass and triple time it, kill everything that gets in our damn way.” I shout while I am hand signaling people into their positons.

  No time to stun and gun our way home. We will fight to gain enough ground to be most of the way home and then blast the speakers to get us the rest of the way in. I don’t trust the batteries enough for me to plan on more than that.

  The first few blocks we move through quietly and quickly, I use the few minutes peace to start making a short list of people to replace my slaughtered best friend.

  Welcome to the apocalypse.

  Shit is like that now.

  Closer in, a few stray Jumpers come at us from various angles, like they are testing our defenses. We kill them and keep up the pace through the urban wasteland we are skulking through. A half dozen random Feeders lurch towards us and get blown away.

  One of the people on the short list for new head of security, is a guy named Greg Bennet. Muscular guy in his fifties, used to be a damn engineer or something, back before the zombies, kind of a Mr. Fixit type around our building. Favors a shotgun, because he says his eyes ain’t what they used to be. Pretty damn effective with a machete too, during close up fighting, from what I have seen.

  He signals for a full stop and waves me over.

  “We should blast the speakers I think, got a feeling they are herding us into an ambush.” He whispers to me tersely, when I get close enough to hear him.

  I would feel better if we waited a couple more blocks, but I have learned to listen to my people’s gut feelings out on run likes this. Most people who have survived this long, have developed pretty good radar for trouble. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t still be around.

  He spits out a wad of chewing tobacco that got scrounged from somewhere and looks at me waiting for an order.

  Shannon still has rockets, so if something big tries to block our way, we can just blow it to hell, whether it be Burners or a big wave of Feeders. We have lost more people than I had expected, but we are still a big heavily armed force. No time for debating the issue, we need to keep moving.

  Decision made.

  “Light up the noise, one big push all the way home boys and girls. Kill everything that isn’t us.” I shout the order out and instantly the speakers belch out whatever terrible shit is in the tape deck.

  Since we started doing this, I have stopped paying attention to whatever crappy music we are blaring out, it has all become just shrill noise. We use what we have, be it Icelandic death metal or shitty techno or hip hop.

  We are less than two blocks from home when a group of three Jumpers manage a surgical strike from a roof top five stories above us and take out the speaker cart and the people pushing it.

  Our bubble of protection is gone just like that.

  Fuck me gently with a chainsaw.

  Feeders come pouring out of alleys all around us, coming from at least four different directions. My people open fire, meeting the threat with a blistering hail of well aimed hot lead. The volley rips through the mass of zombies lurching towards us like a damn buzz saw, but for every one that we put down, two seem to take its place. We are holding our own, doing a steady retreat back towards our building, shooting and reloading, as fast as we can as we go.

  The sniper teams open up above, giving us some much needed support and we somehow manage to make it to the door without losing any more people. We are still firing as we tumble through the doors and then the door guards slam it shut and lock it down.

  Home again home again.

  “What about Red Team?” Greg asks dropping his gear to the floor and leaning against a wall trying to catch his breath.

  “They aren’t back yet.” One of the guards tells him grimly waving us away from the doors and into the unloading zone, so he can secure the area.

  “Fuck.” Greg says wearily as he picks his gear up again and walks away with what is left of our squad.

  Yeah, that pretty much sums things up.

  Chapter Eleven

  What is left of the other team comes straggling in a full hour later.

  All six of them.

  Henry is helping a wounded Russ up to the door, with the other four forming a protective wall around them, with their guns blazing.

  They are all ushered quickly in and Viv comes by in a blur and is taking care of the wounded man before the door even closes.

  “Report.” I say quietly as I walk up to the shreds of Team Red. They all give me the classic thousand yard stare and no one says a word.

  “I said report.” I tell them again putting more of an edge into my voice and taking a couple more steps towards them.

  “They kept ambushing us, using tactics they should have been incapable of. They outflanked and herded us where they wanted us to be. Jumpers took out our sound cart and Burners came out of fucking nowhere. They put us through a damn meat grinder.” Russ said, his gravely voice torn up with raw emotion, his eyes on the floor.

  “Leave him alone.” Henry tells me flatly.

  “Shut up Henry, I need to know what happened.” I tell him calmly without taking my eyes off of the retired military officer lying on the floor.

  That is when Henry sucker punches me.

  Hard.

  Guards grab him and give him an ungentle introduction to the floor. They pin him down with their own body weight and look at me for instructions.

  “Let him up.” I order them as I spit a mouthful of blood and probably a broken piece of tooth onto the dirty floor.

  Viv gets in my face and gives me a push backwards. She glares at me and unless you have been glared at by a member of the fucking Marine Corps, spare me your judgement of me staying put and not kicking Henry’s narrow ass, then and there.

  “These men are in shock. You can get your answers later. Go be someplace else, right now!” She tells me firmly.

  The rage that has been churning in me since Joyce died, tries to rise up and gain control, but I slap it down yet one more time. There will probably come a day when I can’t do that anymore, but that day is not today.

  “I’ll be back.” I give her my best dead pan Arnold imitation and she has the nerve to look completely unimpressed by it.

  Tough room.

  Me and my sore jaw, find someplace else to be, as suggested.

  That somewhere else being my quarters.

  I swear my memory is doing tricks on me again.

  Two nights ago, I know that I finished a bottle of bad whiskey, scored on a run where, for a nice change of fucking pace, nobody died. I remember tossing the empty bottle in the trash, I swear I do.

  But that bottle is sitting on my desk and it is almost exactly one third full.

  The world goes gray again as another dizzy spell dances lightly across my exhausted brain. I sit down on the bed with my head betw
een my knees until it passes.

  I reach for the bottle and take a long pull off of it, it burns and stings on the way down, but I have come to enjoy that. It feels real in a world gone fucking crazy.

  Somebody knocks lightly at the door and from the rhythm of it, I know that it is a runner with a message.

  Our survival depends on everybody knowing and doing their job for the greater good.

  “Speak it.” I call out.

  “There is an emergency meeting of the council sir, you are called to attend it immediately.” A female voice I don’t recognize calls out.

  “Acknowledged, thank you messenger.”

  “You are welcome sir.”

  Emergency meeting of the council, yeah that sounds like kicks and giggles right about now.

  I take another swig from the bottle and regretfully put the cork back in it as I haul my tired ass back to my feet.

  What the hell, it seems like my anger management skills are due for a heavy duty test today. First a punch to the jaw and now the council wants to no doubt kick my ass about how the first attempt at taking the war to the zombies went, even though most of them haven’t been on a run before.

  My jaw aches, the cheap whiskey sits uneasily in my belly and as I walk down the long hallway to the meeting room, I notice everybody seems to decide to get the hell out of my way as I go.

  Yeah, this should be fun.

  Katrin passes me in the hallway and something goes click in my brain and suddenly the short list for the replacement for head of security gets a hell of a lot shorter.

  “Who is the best on the rooftops besides you?” I ask her stepping into her path.

  She isn’t used to people stepping into her path, hell, she probably isn’t used to people talking to her all that much, so I think that I caught her off guard, because she answers me more or less civilly.

  “Jon Almodova, hands down. He’s almost as good as me.”