Zombie Crusade II: David's Journey

by J. W. Vohs

  Luke looked shocked as David continued, “All you have to do is tell her what you told me, and then kiss her and hold her when she steps close, because she will step close after you tell her that. She might even shed a tear or two. We’re all family out here, and I’m sure we will be till the day we die, but you two have lost everyone. And you love each other. Nothing will change till we get to Jack’s place; we’re still gonna be fighting for our lives out here every hour of every day. But at least you two won’t have to be worried about your future together, and in stressful situations it’s good to have someone’s arms around you once in a while.”

  Luke smiled broadly as he looked at the ground, his cheeks flushed red again before he offered, “All right, let’s get back to camp. I’m gonna do it!”

  They walked back to the others silently, but both found themselves smiling from time to time. When they returned to the camp Luke walked right up to Gracie, who was playing with Chewy and the kids, and asked her to take a walk with him. They returned nearly an hour later, smiling and holding hands, and apparently having eyes only for one another. David mentally slapped himself for not keeping an eye on them while they took their walk, and realized he needed to have another talk with Luke. He’d ask Christy to have a talk with Gracie too, tonight, before bed. In fact, he was putting them on opposite guard shifts till the journey was over. They were both great kids, with strong faith and morals, but like Shakespeare once said, “The strongest oaths are but straw to the fire in the blood.”

  Everyone was on high alert as they readied themselves for the day’s travel; they knew they would see infected today. They checked and rechecked weapons, then did the same with all of their armor. Then, just as they were ready to board the canoes Jenny let out a quiet yelp and pointed to a corpse floating face up in the slow current ebbing around the tip of the island. Luke immediately waded out to the body and used his short sword to turn it to where he could see the face. He called back, “Dead hunter. Probably drowned.”

  “You sure it’s dead?” David hissed.

  “It is now,” Luke mumbled as he pulled his blade from an eye socket.

  As if they weren’t already nervous enough, seeing the dead hunter floating eerily in the water set the group on edge as they silently climbed into the boats and headed upstream. Ten minutes later David motioned for Trudy, who was piloting his craft, to drift over to the brush at the river’s edge. This time the corpse, or what was left of it, was human. After examining the remains for a few moments he surmised that whoever this was had been bitten deeply in the neck and jumped into the water to try to escape. The wounded person bled to death and floated away, at which point the critters went to work on the body, including the brain. Finally he looked back at Trudy and nodded toward the open water, and they resumed their journey.

  They saw two more corpses as they neared the island they were aiming for, and David figured that they were going to see plenty more in Fort Wayne. He wondered why they hadn’t seen them in Toledo, but the Maumee was ten times bigger there than here. Now they were navigating a small river at summer pool, and they were going to see some bodies in a city of this size.

  When they reached the island everyone got their feet wet and muddy as they all moved as quickly as possible to pull the canoes into the brush and keep themselves and their boats out of sight. As carefully as possible they cleared the island and then endured the heat and insects until nightfall. Lori and David were going to scout the dam with night vision. They hoped that hunter eyesight was still on par with that of a normal human. Before they left, David quietly reminded everyone that at least five thousand people had lived within a mile of where they now camped, and three times that near the dam he was heading off to inspect. He needn’t have worried though, as Christy had everyone in check.

  He’d chosen Lori to be the pilot on this mission for several reasons. First of all, either he or Christy needed to be with the group in such a dangerous location, and his wife had never been to the dam before. Second, Lori had used night vision in combat situations, so she knew how to function at a high level with the devices. Finally, she was one of their best fighters, but she’d also spent plenty of time piloting the canoes on the trip from Toledo. David, Luke, Jerry, and Christy had usually been in the front fighting position with full armor and weapons, but Blake, Gracie, Sal, and Lori had spent much of their time on the motors. Christy and Luke hadn’t been thrilled with being left behind on this mission, but once he’d explained his reasoning they agreed that Lori was the best choice.

  As they motored upstream, the water was a swirling greenish foam through the NVGs. A half-moon provided excellent ambient lighting for them, but not all that much for someone with ordinary vision. Several times they had to wade and tow, but with an empty canoe and hours of practice they managed the maneuvers quietly and efficiently. Just before they rounded the last bend blocking their view of the dam, the front of the boat bumped gently into a corpse. As it slid along the side of the craft, David got a decent look at it and thought it was a drowned hunter.

  When they entered the pool directly below the dam they could see that water was only flowing over the large structure in one spot, leaving open the possibility that they could try to climb up on top of the wall and lift their canoes and gear over to the calm water on the other side. But the dam was about ten feet high, and there was no way they’d be able to accomplish something like that quietly or quickly. That would only be an option of last resort.

  They docked at both edges of the dam, with David climbing out and doing a quick inspection of each potential portage. A brick building that presumably housed the dam’s operating equipment was on the east side, separated by a high chain-link fence from Anthony Boulevard. The other side just had a dirt path around it, and that was surrounded by brush. This was the portage David wanted to use as it looked to be much easier to cross than the steep bank where the building sat. Finally he motioned for Lori to start back to camp, and when they turned to head downstream he looked up on the bridge and saw a pack of six or seven hunters looking down at them as they floated along. Lori saw them too, and they both froze in place as the canoe floated with the current. They heard a couple of snarls and growls as they passed under the bridge, but the howls they normally gave when they spotted prey didn’t split the night air as the two humans gradually moved downstream.

  Finally they saw the island in the distance and found Luke waiting to help them pull up the boat when they landed. As soon as the canoe was hidden, David called everyone except Blake and Gracie, who were on guard, into the biggest tent to describe what they’d learned and explain the plan for portaging the dam. The most important information concerned the timing of the next day’s activities. David wanted to be at the portage site before dawn, where they would anchor until they could begin the move at first light. Everyone agreed that they couldn’t risk having a pack of infected following along the bank as they approached the portage, but taking the loaded canoes through the shallows without making any noise was a daunting task. After considering their limited options, they decided that moving under the cover of darkness was their only viable choice.

  Nobody except the kids and the dog managed to get much sleep that night, and three hours before dawn they hauled their canoes down to the river and started their most perilous day of the journey up to this point. They had faced danger all along the river, and, of course, they had lost Jerry in the furious attack at Independence Dam. But most of the time since Toledo they had been slowly motoring up the broad and sluggish Maumee under sunny skies with an island waiting for them to camp on at the end of the day. Now that was all over. They were literally heading into the heart of darkness, the second most populous city in Indiana with nothing between them and thousands of infected except water and the weapons of seven fighters, a doctor, two aging boomers, four kids, and a brave little dog. Any one of a thousand possible mistakes could get them all eaten alive, but they had no choice other than to soldier on.

  David and Lo
ri each sat at the front of the lead canoes with their NVGs, and the other boats followed closely behind them in column. The small flotilla made it through the shallows with a minimum of splashing, though the trip to the dam did bring a dangerous few minutes when Chewy let out a few barks before the kids clamped his mouth shut and calmed him down. David immediately led the group out into a calm pool where they waited in place to see if the dog had attracted any attention. Finally, after five minutes of quiet, David decided that the hunters must not have been desperate enough to put dog on the menu this morning and led the canoes the rest of the way upstream.

  The early morning air was warm and still as they tied ten foot sections of rope to trees near the portage sight and allowed the canoes to float with the current parallel to the shore. If hunters found them they would crash through the brush and howl as they tried to reach the humans in the boats, and everyone was under orders to cut the ropes and head back downstream if that happened. But the minutes passed by without incident and slowly the darkness of the night began to lighten, imperceptibly at first, but finally becoming obvious as more objects became visible to the anxious travelers waiting to make their move.

  David and Lori removed their NVGs and waited fifteen minutes for their eyes to adjust. Everything was still quiet, so they decided to go for it. The plan was riskier this time, but they simply had no other choice. Jim, Christy, Lori, and Luke immediately positioned themselves at the edge of the brush-line above the portage, while David, Blake, and Sal stood below to carry the heavily laden canoes past the dam to the calm, deep water behind. Vicki, Trudy, and Gracie would be waiting to pilot the first three craft with the children and most of their supplies out to a safe distance from shore. Blake would take the fourth boat out, and everyone would rush to the river’s edge as soon as the fifth craft was safely above the dam. Sal would be on the motor, and Jim was to join him. David, Luke, and Christy would hold on to that canoe and hitch a ride out to the others, after which they would find a relatively safe shallow area to climb into their own boats.

  The plan was admittedly complicated and fraught with danger, but nobody had been able to offer any better suggestions when David had presented the idea following the previous evening’s scouting mission. Luke didn’t like the entire set-up, but he agreed that they had to try it. Several of the more insightful members of the group suspected that Luke had one of the “feelings” he sometimes got about situations before they occurred, but again, they believed that they had no choice but to attempt the portage and face the dangers as best they could.

  There was plenty of space available along the shore below the dam, so they all docked their canoes and moved to their assigned positions as quickly and quietly as possible. Several small rockslides resulted from the fighters climbing the rocky bank to reach their posts above the portage, but other than that the children and dog were herded above the dam by the pilots who waited for the canoes to be carried up to them. Each boat and the gear it carried weighed close to two hundred pounds, but Sal was strong enough to handle one end while Blake and David struggled with the other.

  The first two canoes were manhandled into place quietly enough, and David breathed a small sigh of relief when Trudy and Vicki had the children safely out into deeper water. Then, while carrying the third canoe over the rough trail, disaster struck in the form of a softball-sized rock they had somehow missed during their first two trips. Sal struck the obstacle with his left heel and his momentum moving backward. He didn’t even have time to yelp as he fell hard onto his back. The canoe glanced off of his leg and hit the rocky ground hard, sliding several feet before mercifully coming to a halt. Sal was on his feet and lifting the front of the boat before the last of the pebbles rolled to a stop below them, but the damage was apparent when they heard the first howl ring out from above as they placed the craft in the river and sent Gracie on her way.

  The three men resisted the temptation to stop and look up toward the sounds of a scuffle where the guards were posted, using their fear-fueled adrenaline to help them carry the fourth canoe faster than any of the previous craft. Blake followed the plan and piloted the boat out to join the others, though he felt like a coward doing so. Sal and David rushed back for the final canoe, carrying it over the portage trail as the noise above indicated that a full-scale fight was in progress. Sal climbed into the boat and took it just a few feet away from the shore, then pulled the shotgun David had given him to cover the retreat if anything went wrong. When Christy came tumbling down the bank with a furious hunter hanging onto her leg, it was obvious that things were going terribly wrong up in the brush.

  CHAPTER 22

  David slammed the point of his halberd through the monster’s skull the instant he had an opening, and his wife immediately leapt to her feet shouting that she was okay. Seconds later Lori and Luke came sliding down, pulling Jim by one arm despite the fact that several hunters had death grips on the tough old guy and more creatures than they could count were pouring down the bank after their prey. Luke rolled to his feet and pulled his axe, killing the two monsters on Jim with a powerful swing and a backstroke that took all of two seconds to complete.

  Now everyone was fighting furiously against multiple hunters, with more rolling or leaping down from the top of the bank faster than they could kill them. Lori had joined Christy in pouring pistol rounds into the charging horde, but something was wrong with Jim because he was still on the ground. With the howls of dozens of frenzied hunters all around them they couldn’t hear Jim’s replies as they shouted questions about what was wrong. He had rolled onto his side into a fetal position, and in spite of everyone fighting harder than they ever had they simply couldn’t protect the injured man. In hindsight they figured that he must have suffered some broken bones during the tumble down the bank, including his ribs. They told themselves later that they might not have been able to heal his injuries even if they’d gotten him into the canoes, but they never had a chance to find out.

  As they were forced out into the water by the sheer weight of the attacking mob, the hunters fell on Jim like a school of piranha. David could hear Christy screaming through her helmet, and Luke had actually fought his way back onto the shore as he furiously struggled to reach Jim. Lori had fallen and was frantically trying to pull herself out into deeper water where she hoped to lose the hunters clawing at her feet. In spite of the fierce attack he was under, David grew suddenly calm and knew exactly what he had to do. He threw his halberd into the water behind him, grabbed Christy and Luke by one shoulder each and used his weight to pull them into the river as he allowed himself to fall backward. Both of the fighters tried to shrug away from his grasp and head back toward their fallen comrade, but David kicked along the bank and continued dragging them into deeper water.

  To David’s relief and Sal’s credit, the big man opened up with the shotgun as soon as all of the fighters were in the water. The experiences of the past few months had hardened them all, and Sal did what he would want done for him if he was in Jim’s situation. He fired all five rounds into the writhing mound on top of his fallen neighbor and friend, then quickly reloaded and did it again as the rest of the group reached the side of his canoe. A dozen hunters around Jim lay still on the ground, and more than that were rolling about in agony. Though Christy repeatedly screamed that they had to go back for her father, everyone could see that he was gone. His helmet was off, along with his gloves and boots, and his eyes stared unblinking into the lightening sky that he would never see again. Then the crowd of surviving hunters fell onto his corpse and began to tear him apart, and both David and Lori positioned themselves between Christy and the shore so she couldn’t see what was happening behind them as Sal slowly motored the vessel out to the middle of the river where the rest of the group waited.

  David kept one arm around Christy and the other on the canoe towing them away from the portage. He raised both their visors so he could make eye contact with her. She was crying softly, and in ragged breaths she stated what they al
ready knew, “We lost my dad. Oh God, we lost Daddy . . .”

  David felt as if his own heart would burst, “Christy, I . . . I’m so sorry.” Tears spilled from David’s eyes as he remembered Trudy in one of the boats ahead. “Hey, baby, your mom’s gonna need you. Jim is gone, but he’s in no pain. We need some of that faith you talked about because now we have to take care of your mom.”

  She wiped her eyes and scanned the area, “Is she okay? Where is she? Does she know?”

  “She’s safe, baby, she’s out there in her own canoe and we’re almost there.”

  Christy nodded and began wiping at her eyes through the visor.

  “All right, babe,” David whispered in soothing tones as they pulled up to the waiting group. “Okay, we’re here now. We’re going to swim over to your mom’s canoe. You with me?”

  She looked up, and though her voice was low and even, David could still hear the pain underneath, “I’ll keep it together. Just get me to her.”

  They swam the short distance over to Trudy where David learned something new about his mother-in-law; she was every bit as strong as Jim had been. Her face was dry and her expression grim as she reached for Christy. “We are going to make it through this, for your father. He sacrificed himself for us and we will not let him down.” She continued, “Hunters are all around us. We need to find a place to get all of you in the boats and then find a place to hide.”

  David finally took a moment to look toward the shore and saw that the banks were crowded with hundreds of animated hunters, all of them snarling, howling, and jumping in and out of the shallow water as they roared their frustration at not being able to reach the prey so tantalizingly close. He looked to the opposite shore and saw that it too was filling up with hunters. Trudy was right; they had to move.