White Flag Of The Dead (Book 8): The Zombie Wars (The Enemy Within)

by Joseph Talluto

  “Daddy! Daddy!”

  I sighed. Jake could be a big pain in the ass when it came to going to sleep. Sometimes he played these games. I was tempted to ignore him and let him figure it out when he did it again.

  “Daddy!” It was a little louder, and he squeaked a little. That was different. I was fully awake now, and I could sense Sarah was as well.

  “What’s wrong?” Sarah could likely feel the tension in me as I listened to the darkness.

  “I don’t know. Watch Aaron.” I slipped out of bed and quickly put my jeans on. I had no trouble facing danger without a shirt, but it was weird without pants of some sort. I tucked my Glock into the back pocket, grip inward for a quicker draw. Some people liked reverse appendix carry, but I never was comfortable sweeping myself with my own gun.

  I moved quietly down the trailer and into Jake’s room. Jake was huddled into a ball under his covers, and I could tell he was nervous because he jumped when I touched him.

  “Daddy?” the little mound whispered again.

  “I’m here, Jake. Daddy’s here. Daddy’s got you. What’s wrong?” I looked around and didn’t see anything that could have spooked him.

  “I saw a man outside,” Jake said, pointing a little hand towards the windows at the rear of the trailer. From Jake’s vantage point, he could see out the windows that he normally couldn’t when he was on the floor.

  “Probably just a guard, Jake; they’re supposed to be there. They keep us safe.”

  “No! I seen his eyes!”

  “His eyes, Jake? How could you see his eyes in the dark?” I asked.

  “Shining eyes!” Jake said.

  Aw, hell. We had a zombie in the perimeter. I scooped up Jake and brought him to the front of the trailer.

  Sarah was waiting for us, and Jake slipped into her arms. I answered the question in her eyes.

  “Outside. I’ll be a minute. May have an unwanted guest,” I said.

  “Please be careful,” Sarah said. She ran a hand over Jake’s hair while her other hand checked the proximity of her gun. She liked the Glock 19 for fieldwork since we could swap mags and ammo, but for home defense she had her baby which was a stainless SIG X-5. The gun fit her hand like a glove and had a sweet trigger. Sarah could hit a two-inch target all day long at forty yards with that gun.

  I put my coat back on and put my Glock in the cabinet. I couldn’t risk firing a gun with all the trailers that were around me, so I’d have to do this the old-fashioned way. I took out my pick and my bowie, hoping I’d not need either, but I had a feeling it was going to come to that. I put on a long sleeve shirt and my vest, giving myself some protection against the cold. Boots and gloves came next, and then I was out the door.

  I stepped away from the vehicle and circled wide to the rear, trying to figure out which way the zombie might have gone that Jake saw. I didn’t doubt he saw something, and he had seen enough of the real thing to know it when he saw it. I was grateful he had enough sense not to start screaming and draw the thing right to us. As much as I hated hunting Z’s in the dark, this was preferable to having one of the stupid things bang on your trailer trying to get in.

  The sky was overcast, and it was dark as hell. Out in the wild, without any ground lights, it got very black. Things were quiet in the camp which explained why the zombie was just wandering through. As far as he was concerned, I was sure, this was just a weird forest of metal that happened to be in his way.

  I moved quietly around the trailer and looked at the area where Jake had seen his monster. I didn’t bother checking for any tracks since hundreds of feet had passed this way. I thought about making some kind of noise, but I figured that would make me the subject of the hunt, not the zombie. I thought about where it might have gone when I heard someone laughing about a hundred feet from where I was. Bingo. If I heard it, the ghoul heard it, and he would go in that direction. I moved quietly, keeping away from the trucks, trailers, and campers that covered the landscape. I didn’t want to be surprised by a ghoul that suddenly came out from underneath a trailer or something.

  Walked quietly, checking behind me, and searching for glowing eyes. That was the only thing that made hunting zombies at night palatable. Fun part was, not all of their eyes glowed. Most of them, but not all. Truth was, it was creepy as hell.

  I listened carefully and thought I heard a sound further down the lane. It sounded like a soft scrape on asphalt, and it was not repeated, like someone was trying to be quiet. I hoped to God they weren’t evolving enough to try sneaking up on people. That would be just plain unfair.

  I moved quietly, and ducking around a trailer, I got a glimpse of a dark shape moving silently through the encampment. It moved slowly, glancing from side to side. I heard the laughter again, but this time it was behind me. The zombie in front of me should have turned around, but he didn’t.

  That wasn’t normal. As I watched, the shape moved quietly towards a trailer and looked inside a window before moving on. That wasn’t right either. All evidence I was seeing was telling me this wasn’t a zombie, but a live person.

  I was about to challenge whoever they were when they suddenly turned around to check their back. I was between two trailers, so I just stepped back out of sight. But I managed to see the man’s eyes, and that explained what Jake had seen. The man was wearing some sort of goggles, and they glowed pale green in the night.

  Not something any of our men used. We’d tried night vision goggles before, but they were limited in what they could be used for, and the men preferred flashlights, anyway.

  I moved around the other side of the trailer and up front as quickly as I could, trying to get in front of the man. I wanted to stop him without killing him, since he was clearly not from our camp. When I reached the point I wanted, I turned into the lane, and looked for the man to approach. A quick glance, showed me…nothing.

  Shit, he moved. He didn’t come out my side, so he had to have gone out the other side. I moved across the lane and through the line of RV’s on the other side. As I crossed to the other side, I ducked suddenly and rolled forward as a stabbing blade skimmed over my back. I jumped forward and spun around, facing the man with the glowing green eyes. He was holding a long bladed knife and held it like he knew what to do with it.

  I shifted my bowie to my left hand while I lengthened the hold on my pick. That gave me another ten inches of reach, and the move wasn’t lost on the intruder. He stepped back and then jumped forward, his left hand reaching for my pick while his knife stabbed towards my throat.

  I wasn’t going to give up that easily. I flipped my pick under his grasping hand and held it straight out, holding tight as he ran into the metal end with his mouth. His knife never got closer than eight inches as he fell back holding his teeth. I swung low for his knee, and as he stepped back out of the way, I stopped the pick and jabbed it upwards again, connecting with the goggles on his face. His head jerked back, and he ripped the eyepieces off, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  “Who are you?” I asked, waving my bowie back and forth. My pick I kept between us, using it as a barrier against his attacks.

  “We’re not here to hurt you; we’re here to clear the zombies away. Who are you?” I repeated. The man stepped back and bumped against a trailer.

  Suddenly, the man cut down viciously, and I easily blocked the attack with my handle. The sharp blade cut deep, and stuck in the wood. I twisted the handle away, taking his weapon with it, and brought my knife to bear, but the man had already let go and was running away into the night.

  “What the hell?” I asked out loud to nobody. I gave chase, but the man zigzagged through the encampment and out to the prairie. I let him go since I had no idea if he was alone, and I was loathe to raise a general alarm. I started the long walk back to my trailer, and back by the first encounter, I knocked something with my feet. Reaching down, I found it was the goggles the man had worn. Apparently he had dropped them in his hurry to get away.

  I went back to my
trailer and stashed the items safely, figuring out what I wanted to do with them in the morning. I took Jake back to his bed, telling him he was a good boy for getting me, and yes, I did get the monster-guy. Sort of.

  Sarah was relieved I was back safe and sound, and I told her I would talk to her about it in the morning. I tried to get some sleep, but it was a long time coming.

  The next day, I took my pick with the knife still stuck on it and went over to Charlie’s trailer. After the usual morning greetings, I showed Charlie my items and told him what had happened last night. He was mad for a few reasons, not the least of which at me for not coming to see him last night. The other thing he was mad about was the fact that our security was bad enough that a man had gotten through without so much as a challenge from anyone before he was wandering around the camp. I didn’t bother to add that had it been a zombie we’d be in a world of crap right now with newly infected people to put down.

  “Let’s deal with a few things first. Get the burial crew going, and we’ll have our service this morning. After that, let’s get the people in charge of security here, and we’ll talk to them as well. We have a city to retake, and this can wait till later,” I said.

  Charlie didn’t like it, but he figured I was right. We needed to deal with internal issues first before we dealt with external.

  About an hour later, I was standing in front of a series of graves, all marked with the names of the fallen. Sarah was behind me, and Tommy and Duncan were there as well. About a thousand people showed up for this service, and all of them were sad by the loss of their friends.

  I started by reading the 23rd Psalm, then I spoke for a few more minutes. I didn’t bother with any clichés or talking about the greater good. I just spoke about how these were people who fought for a cause they believed in, and in this cause, sometimes we died. It was a damn shame, but it was the truth.

  After the burial, Charlie and I went back to the campaign office where we called in the security detail from the night before. There were questions we wanted answered.

  Four men and two women stood before us. I brought out my pick with the knife still in it and the night vision goggles. I got right to the point.

  “The pick is mine. The other two items came off a man who was in camp last night uninvited and obviously unchallenged by anyone on duty last night,” I said. “I’m not going to waste time with scary stories of what ifs. He got in, he got out. The only reason we knew he was there was because my son happened to see him outside our trailer.”

  Charlie chimed in. “And he tried to kill John. Anyone want to start off, or should we just chalk this one up to stupid, and let you guys deal with it?”

  One man stepped forward. “Our apologies, sir. Won’t happen again.”

  Charlie looked at him for a full minute before answering. “Apology accepted. You will deal with this lapse, and if anything like this happens again, you will all be sent back to the capital to spend the rest of the war trying to explain to your families and friends why you are there and we are here. Understood?”

  The threat of public shaming was very real to these people, and none of them wanted to face their peers for screwing up so badly.

  “Dismissed,” Charlie said. None of the six had the guts to look me in the eye. I was angry, but my anger was diminishing at the mystery we had in front of us.

  “Who do you think it was?” I asked.

  Charlie shrugged. “No idea. Could be a lone survivor who spent too much time alone or someone part of a larger group trying to figure out who the hell we are.”

  “Both viable options. Would that I could have secured him for questioning,” I said.

  “Wishful thinking,” Charlie responded. “You know as well as I do there isn’t anything worse than a man wanting very badly to leave someplace. Remember that guy in Oak Forest back home? He practically crawled up a vent shaft to get away. Nothing was going to stop him.”

  “No kidding. If he had to eat through a brick wall, that would not have stopped him. Changing the subject, are we ready for the assault on Cedar Rapids?” I asked.

  “Just about. We need to get the three groups in place, but that shouldn’t take more than an hour. Where do you want to be with this one?” Charlie asked.

  “I’ll take the group from the north. We’ll clear the suburbs out on that end while the earth-movers take care of boxing in the city,” I said.

  “Good enough. I’ll be on the East side, and Tommy will take the Southern end. Duncan will be working with the earth movers, and he wants you to know he has a few ideas he’d like to bounce off of you,” Charlie said.

  “Do you know what these ideas might be?” I asked with more than a little trepidation in my voice.

  “I do, but I’m going to keep still to see if you have the same reaction I did,” Charlie said.

  “I’m so lucky to have a friend like you,” I said.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Go kill something, will you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  An hour and a half later I was on the north side of Cedar Rapids fully geared up and looking for trouble. The homes looked like the same kind of homes you would find in any other city or suburb. It really struck me how much the country looked alike once you stopped for a minute and seriously took a good look at everything around you.

  Four fighters were with me, and we were the point of our group, walking into infected territory and setting up the zombies for killing. Behind us was a battalion of fighters going into homes and killing zombies. Behind them was another battalion bringing in support for the first battalion. The third battalion was cleanup and catalog. Any usable supplies were taken by the third group, and anything we didn’t need we just left. Others in the area might need what we left behind.

  The drill was constant. Hit the door, open it, and back away. Usually we had the chance to put some distance between us and the infected coming out to say hi, but sometimes we didn’t.

  I was back with the other four while the door opener, a hulking brute of a lad, kicked the door in to a small ranch house on what would have been a very nice street. Even under the dead grass and the trees still holding on to their morning frost in their shaded areas, the suburb seemed like it would have been a good place in different times. Wide lanes for cars, and tree-lined easements with many wooded lots gave the impression this once was a well-to-do section of town.

  “Back up, Sam!” barked the squad’s leader. Steve Mendez was a tough man to please, but he kept his squad alive.

  Sam dodged back as three zombies worked their way to the front of the house. A man, a woman, and a teenage girl all came slowly out of the house. They moved stiffly, as if the act of walking hurt them, but they kept coming anyway. The man looked to be in the best shape, while the two women were ripped and torn. The mother’s gut was torn open, and I could see she was missing a few organs. It didn’t take too much imagination to figure out who had turned first and then turned on the others.

  Steve took out the man, cleaving his skull with an axe handle that had two spikes driven through it. Sam took the teenager down, just slamming a knife through the top of her skull. I killed the third, using a side swing and the pointed end of my pick to let her rejoin her family in the afterlife.

  “Keep moving, get to the next house!” Mendez said.

  We moved to the next house, and this time it went more smoothly. We came, we knocked, we got away. It was a pattern that worked for us most of the time, however, there were forty-three graves that proved it wasn’t foolproof. We just kept going, up one street, and then the next. Behind us came the sounds of combat and death. We used the zombie’s tactics against him. Where he once had the superior numbers, now we faced them two or three to one, and we avoided the major confrontations. We weren’t going to win those, anyway. The cities we left alone, hemming in the zombies and leaving them there. If anyone wanted something from the city after it was closed off, he was welcome to try it. But don’t expect any sympathy when the mission faile
d.

  Down the third street we found a house that was different. It was boarded up tight with just a little space on the top of each window. The doors were sealed shut, and I could see wedges had been pounded into place all around the door. Not even three Sam’s and a Charlie could kick that door open. It was a small, two-story house, the kind that a new family bought when they were just starting out. I walked around the house and saw the same situation in the rear. Locked up tighter than a drum, and zombies surely weren’t getting in.

  I looked up into the second story and saw that there were blinds drawn on all the upstairs windows. On the roof, a well-maintained windmill spun silently, its gear shaft disappearing into the roof below. If I had to bet, I’d say there was a small hand-cranked generator in there that was supplying a tiny bit of power to the house.

  “Moving on, sir?” Steve asked. He looked up at the windmill and scowled.

  “May as well,” I said. Whoever is in there isn’t going to open up for us, and if they’ve lived this long, they’ll figure out its safe sooner or later.”

  We kept moving throughout the day, stopping briefly to eat something before pressing on. I took my turn at the door kicking, and things went reasonably well. We advanced around the city and stopped when we reached the point where Charlie’s group started. That was it for the day.

  “Sir! It’s time we headed back to the camp, sir. Second battalion is cleaning up here.” Mendez was somewhat anxious, and I wasn’t sure why.

  “All right. You go on ahead, I’m going to see if I can’t find some high ground and have a look over the area,” I said.

  “Sir, do you want an escort?” Mendez took his duties seriously, and usually that meant keeping me out of harm’s way. I wasn’t having any of it today.

  “I think I might be able to handle myself; thanks anyway,” I said, probably a little more forceful than I should.

  “Sir. As you wish, sir. Do you wish for me to inform anyone, sir?”

  “Do that and I’ll be very disappointed in you, Mendez.”