Zombie Crusade: Evolution

by J. W. Vohs

  The prisoner noticeably jumped when the man with the knife barked at him, immediately explaining, “It’s like I said, none of us really know! We just fly over areas with high numbers of infected and turn on the transmitter. All we have to do is round up the creatures and then lead them to the coordinates we’re given. Then we switch the signal to another that sends the beasts into a frenzy. Then we leave. People say the infected we lead won’t break off their attack until they’re all dead or they’ve taken the objective.”

  Luke looked disgusted as he muttered, “Perfect soldiers, huh?”

  “Hey, look, we don’t like it any better than you do. The guys calling the shots took our commanding officer and fed him to a group of infected right before our eyes—said that anyone who didn’t follow orders would get the same treatment.”

  “Why are you here in Fort Wayne?”

  “When we got here we were ordered to gather a horde and send it toward a settlement near Albion; we used eastern Dekalb County to round up the infected for the attack.”

  Luke fought to keep from smashing the man’s face as he continued, “Why? Why was that settlement targeted?”

  “I swear that I have no idea . . . I’ve learned not to ask too many questions about my orders.”

  “Yeah,” Luke smirked, “perfect little Nazi. Where else have you been, how did you describe it—rounding up—the infected?”

  “Uh, up around Kendallville and Ligonier. We were told that another attack on the Albion settlement would be scheduled.”

  “Another attack? Why?” Luke snarled.

  “I don’t know for sure. Rumors are that the first horde was lured into a nearby state park and apparently destroyed. We never did see it again."

  Luke worked to hide his relief before demanding, “Any other round-ups in this area?”

  The pilot looked stricken, “Downtown Fort Wayne for some reason. Maybe twenty thousand of them. We had trucks bringing in cattle and other livestock from the south for about a week before we landed here, so luring the infected back into the city was easy once the food was in place. Like I said, I have no idea why we were ordered to gather them there.”

  Luke rubbed his forehead as he took a moment to compose himself, fighting the urge to run for the river and furiously paddle his way to Gracie’s side.

  Marcus took the opportunity to jump in, “How many settlements have been destroyed by your people?”

  The pilot shook his head, “Only a few that I know of. Most of them surrender and the general lets the survivors live once they agree to start working the fields and give up military-aged males for training.”

  Marcus moved with lightning speed, pulling the man’s head back by the hair and sticking the tip of his blade a quarter-inch inside the flesh stretched over the neck. The prisoner bleated with terror as he felt the trickle of blood leak out of the wound, and Marcus screamed in his face, “What’s this general’s name?”

  A look of resignation came over the pilot’s face as if he knew he was doomed, but after only a brief hesitation he peered intently into Marcus’ eyes and whispered, “Barnes. His name is General Barnes.”

  Chapter 19

  After talking over the options with The Castle’s team leaders and several representatives from the Utah expedition, Jack decided to send his assault force into Fort Wayne by rail. Ted Simmons had led a small scouting party along the CSX line that ran from Albion into the center of Fort Wayne, the same line the old engineer had used to get to Chicago, and reported that the tracks were clear all the way through the downtown area. The rails ran just to the north of the heart of the city, at one point passing within a few dozen yards of a major bridge leading across the river to the Headwaters area.

  Reports continued to come in from the northern half of Noble County detailing the activities of the helicopters flying in from the south, and Todd Evans was high in a silo calling in updates on the growing horde of hunters responding to whatever the call was emanating from the choppers. The eagle-eyed sniper’s latest information put the number of infected currently roaming the outskirts of Kendallville at five thousand and growing.

  Blake and Lori had fully recovered, and Jack was beginning to understand David’s good fortune in finding them back in Cleveland. Thanks to his SCA experience, Blake was an expert in the use of most medieval weaponry. He’d even purchased a Jack-crafted halberd well before the outbreak, and it had become his weapon of choice when facing the infected. In a very short time, he had become one of the best combat trainers at The Castle.

  Lori was a veteran combat medic; she’d spent two tours in Iraq, and she was an excellent marksmen with just about any weapon. She’d been working as an EMT before the outbreak, but she clearly had the heart of a soldier. Jack knew that David had come to rely on Lori for tactical and psychological advice, and Jack had made a point of including Lori in The Castle’s leadership meetings since before David left for Middle Bass. Since Andi’s girls had quickly befriended Jenny and Addison, Jack and Andi were seeing a lot of Blake and Lori. Jack was especially grateful for the slumber parties Lori chaperoned that gave him some much appreciated private time with the woman he loved.

  Lori was with Jack when the latest report from Todd estimated the hunter population in northern Noble County at five thousand and growing. She looked at Jack, her jaw set, and matter-of-factly stated, “You know we can’t stay here any longer.”

  Shaking his head, Jack replied, “I know.”

  Jack announced that they were completely evacuating The Castle and the surrounding houses under his small army’s control. Twenty-five soldiers were going to stay behind, locked down tightly in the house and barns, in case the people flying the helicopters decided to come down and take a look around the property. Jack figured that probably wasn’t something that would happen, but most of the group’s supplies, not to mention the horses, were going to have to stay behind until the Headwaters were secured.

  The objective of the force Jack would be leading into the city was called the Headwaters because the Saint Mary’s and Saint Joe Rivers met there to form the Maumee. Several neighborhoods were actually built upon peninsulas in the area, so one wall and good guards along the riverbanks would provide a nearly impregnable fortification from the infected if Jack’s people could create settlements there. Most of the ground near the waterline had experienced many floods since the founding of Fort Wayne, so, over the years, much of the land along the rivers had been cleared of all structures. On the west side of the first natural peninsula that Jack planned to take and defend sat an exception to the rule—a group of solid, windowless buildings known as The Old Fort, that was supposed to be a replica of the settlement established by General Anthony Wayne in 1794. Now, those buildings were going to become the new fort, and Jack expected to find them nearly as solidly built as The Castle. But in spite of its usefulness to the survivors seeking to repopulate the area, The Old Fort wasn’t the greatest prize to be found on the grounds near the Headwaters.

  The old water treatment building had been built to last as a massive, stone-based structure that could be easily defended against even a strong human attack. North of this impressive building were neighborhoods filled with houses over a hundred years old. Some of those residences would be utilized as homes by the people who’d been living in and around The Castle since the outbreak began, but a line of buildings that stretched from the Saint Joe to a point where Spy Run Creek poured into the Saint Mary’s would be used as the foundation of a wall that would eventually be able to withstand any imaginable assault by the infected. The old houses there had been framed with solid timber mounted on oak joists, and these materials would be scavenged and rebuilt into a palisade over twenty feet high.

  Once this fortress complex was complete, Jack’s people would control the primary access point to the Maumee River, and therefore a direct route to Lake Erie that could be used for everything from shipping agricultural products to providing an easy escape route in the event they ever were threatened by a f
orce they could not withstand. The other peninsulas in the city could be fortified in the same manner, including a neighborhood directly across the river from the water treatment facility that was linked by bridge and would require an even shorter wall than the one they would have to initially construct. The train tracks passed within a few yards of the water in several places, so the rail connection with Utah could be maintained even more easily than it currently was. The Castle had been built to survive the outbreak and immediate aftermath of the virus that Jack and Carter had feared for so long, and it had done its job well, but now the group of survivors gathered there had become far too populous to properly manage and aid from just one fortified house and barn. Jack accepted the fact that, at least for now, he had to leave his dream home.

  The Castle’s inhabitants had been preparing for the move since well before Jack had issued his orders to David and the rest of the troops who would be coming from Lake Erie. By the time Father O’Brien radioed the command center from Middle Bass to report that the Ohio contingent had been safely dropped off south of Toledo, residents of The Castle had already packed their essentials and were ready to evacuate. Jack divided his forces into two components: one that would establish and defend the beachhead, and another that would guide and protect the non-combatants who would follow the attack-group once they had possession of secure facilities for the refugees to occupy.

  The Castle’s people and soldiers were loaded onto the train by dusk, when a brief radio message from David’s Ohio expedition informed Jack that his brother’s force had made it to the Saint Mary’s. He was also told that a small mission had been sent to check out the airport, and that once David heard anything from that group he would forward the details immediately. The plan called for the train to roll slowly toward Fort Wayne, coordinating their approach with that of the small invasion fleet coming from the south, so Jack gave the order to prepare for imminent departure. Ten minutes later they were on their way to the city.

  David’s flotilla continued to drift northward with the current, discovering a few shoals that required wading but encountering no hunters since taking to the river. After a while the complete absence of infected began to bother David and Christy, who whispered their concerns to one another over the small space that separated them in the canoe they were paddling.

  “I wish Luke was with us,” Christy sighed.

  “He’ll be fine,” David confidently responded.

  “I’m not worried about his safety . . . well, not too much, anyway. I just wish he was here to tell me why I feel so nervous in this area.”

  “I know, I feel it too. I think it’s because there aren’t any hunters around,” David speculated. “I have this suspicion that we’re travelling through an area that’s been covered by those helicopters, and all of the infected have followed them somewhere.”

  “We haven’t had scouts in this area,” she added, “so we can’t know if the choppers have been through here or not. Either way, I hope we hear from Luke and the guys soon.”

  “Yeah, I never thought not seeing the damn hunters would worry me. Things just keep getting crazier and crazier. And in case I haven’t told you lately, I love you more than anything on this earth.”

  “Aw, I love you too, baby. And you’re right about how things just keep getting weirder. I think I liked it better when we were just facing some wild and random zombie infection—if people are somehow using it to their advantage, if people are actively directing it,” she shuddered, “I can’t imagine anything more depressing.”

  David was quiet for a moment. “Maybe our species doesn’t deserve to survive. If we brought this on ourselves, on purpose . . .”

  Christy instinctively rubbed her hand across her stomach, “No, honey, we deserve to survive. We deserve to stand up to the bad guys, to fight for justice, and to set the world right. A few evil people cannot define humanity.”

  “That’s the woman I love, Christy the Crusader. And I have to say, you’ve been downright kick-butt beasty lately. I mean, you’ve always been good, but now your sorta like my superhero.”

  Christy laughed, “Baby, you’re my superhero, too. But I’d still feel better if we heard from Luke.”

  The situation at the airport remained tense, but the interrogations were over for the time being and the team was preparing to leave the Guard Base. After pretty much sharing identical stories, the prisoners had been duct-taped and locked in an interior room—they would remain there until somebody could return from the Headwaters and take them into custody for further questioning. Bobby hadn’t killed the pilot whose pinky had been partially cut off. He’d actually cleaned and disinfected the wound, then bandaged it neatly and given the injured man a few pain-killers. Marcus had never seriously harmed a prisoner before, and he didn’t like the fact that he’d felt compelled to do it in this situation, but they didn’t have time to play around and he and Bobby had decided on the ploy before the interrogation had even begun. Luke’s anger at the pilots had mostly given way to a powerful emotional urge to reach Gracie, and he was relieved to learn that the two Rangers he respected and trusted weren’t cold-blooded killers or sadistic torturers.

  Bobby seemed to know a great deal about almost everything, including helicopters and radios, so he disabled the choppers and communications gear and hid the vital components in another building. Finally they were ready to leave, so they pulled out the small radio they had brought along in order to tell David and the others what they had learned, and that they were on their way back to the river. After what had been a flawless mission up to this point, they were disgusted to discover that the radio almost immediately lost all power when they turned it on. The batteries were dead, and they hadn’t brought any back-ups. Bobby was certain that they could locate replacements somewhere on the base, or eventually work out the power situation with some wire and the various large batteries available, but there was no way to know how long that would take. They decided that their priority was to catch up with the expedition and warn David and the others that they were heading into a city occupied by a massive army of hunters.

  Todd Evans had radioed Jack to report that the infected gathered in northern Noble County were still milling about in place, and he had seen no sign of helicopters in over four hours. Jack was glad to know The Castle was still safe from the horde to the north, but he wondered about the location of those choppers. David had said he had no reason to believe his force had been spotted from the air, and none of his observers had seen anything man-made in the skies as they had travelled south from Toledo. The river was mostly protected from direct observation by a canopy of trees, but nobody in the boats had heard any choppers either. Jack realized that a government force or a well-equipped rogue unit could have access to equipment that didn’t need helicopters with human eyes aboard to locate people on the ground. Infrared devices in the choppers and spy-satellites in space could tell sophisticated observers that large groups of humans were on the move toward Fort Wayne. Thankfully, the operational existence of that level of advanced technology couldn’t be taken for granted anymore.

  Jack hoped that the fact that the choppers hadn’t been seen in a while was due to the success of the mission David had sent to the airport, even though nobody could be certain the birds were even based there until they heard something from the soldiers conducting the raid. The military force that Jack had recruited and trained was designed for defense, and the last thing he wanted was for his soldiers to have to fight their way into the Headwaters against large numbers of infected. He was counting on the information he’d received from Utah and David’s group that the hunters had mostly abandoned the cities in search of food in the countryside. The troops were going into Fort Wayne prepared for battle, but the hope was that they would face little opposition and have the time needed to fortify their new home before the mysterious helicopters could gather a horde large enough to threaten them again.

  Luke and the Rangers maintained a steady jog back to the river despite t
he weight of their armor and weapons, quickly covering the distance to where they’d hidden the canoe before breathlessly flinging themselves into the vessel and taking up the paddles. The current was moving at somewhere around three miles-per-hour, and they estimated they were tripling that speed with their frantic paddling. David and the others had planned on mostly floating toward Fort Wayne until they knew that Jack was on the way and they needed to increase their speed in order to ensure a simultaneous arrival at the Headwaters. The three warriors with the information that over twenty-thousand infected lay in wait in downtown Fort Wayne didn’t know if they could catch up before their friends floated into a disaster. All they could do was work the paddles with every ounce of energy they had and pray that they would make it in time.

  The night and the miles of river steadily passed until David estimated that they were about an hour away from their intended landing site. Jack had actually needed to slow the train to a crawl before midnight and was now certain they would have no problem meeting the river-borne force at the Headwaters a little after five in the morning. The first light of dawn would be breaking over the horizon when both groups arrived, which couldn’t have been more perfect timing for the planners of the rendezvous. David’s force was to secure both ends of the bridge spanning the river from the tracks to the Old Fort and the water treatment building as he heard the train approaching, while Jack’s shock troops in the lead boxcars would cross the span and establish a defensive perimeter around the buildings before evacuating the rest of the train and occupying the tip of the peninsula. Once the entire group of soldiers and non-combatants were safely established in what were considered safe-houses, the troops would regroup before pushing north to the line where they intended to build the wall. As far as they knew, everything was unfolding as well as anyone could have hoped.