by Nathan Brown
Those caught in the blasts stayed down. Some of those close to the blasts also stopped moving. The rest stood up and began dragging themselves forward.
“Fire at will,” the lieutenant ordered.
Erik, Bookie, JJ and the rest of the Marines on the line started firing one shot at a time. An experienced ear could pick out the individual shots, as quick as they were. To anyone else, the forty-eight rifles on the line and the two sniper rifles would have sounded as if they were on full automatic.
The wave of zombies had been cut down. Erik realized that it had been more of a massacre than a fight. It remained quiet for nearly two more hours.
“Sniper one to defense team; another wave inbound.”
“Roger that,” the Lieutenant said. “You heard him fellas. Get ready for another wave.”
“Sniper one. Gunny, there’s a woman and a kid running just ahead of the targets. What do you want us to do?”
“Is there any chance they’ll out run them?”
“None, Gunny.”
… … “Shoot them.”
“Sir?”
“Shoot them. Save them being eaten alive.”
… “Aye, Sir.”
Eric cringed at each rifle report. He never expected to hear that kind of an order from the Gunny. Not that it wasn’t the right thing—the humane thing—to do, but he knew what the sniper round would do to the poor people. He couldn’t imagine using that kind of force on innocent people.
“Sniper one to defense, I can’t give you an estimated target count.”
“WAG it.”
“Battalion strength, probably more.”
“Line to rear. Have ammo runners set additional mags at the second chain.”
“Roger that.”
A Marine, likely a truck driver, ran up behind Erik and Bookie. He had three ammo cans with him.
“I’ll take your empties,” the Marine said, handing each of them four fresh mags.
Erik pulled the two empties out of his right cargo pocket. He dropped one of the full magazines into the pocket. He pulled the empty clip out of his left cargo pocket and dropped two full ones in. The last one he set at his feet as he turned to face the approaching horde of zombies.
“Sniper one to Gunny Thorn. Uh, Gunny, the woman I just shot is standing up.”
“Say again?”
“The woman I just shot is on her feet and moving towards the line.”
“If this is your idea of a joke son…”
“No, Gunny. I shot her. The round tore off most of her left side, but she is up and moving. The kid stayed down, but I don’t think there was enough of him left to get up.”
“Sniper two. I can confirm; the woman is up. Just not for long.”
Erik heard the report of the sniper shot. Everyone on the line looked at one another. Everyone seemed to make the same mental note.
If you have to shoot someone that isn’t bitten, you still have to shoot them in the head.
“Sniper two to mortar team, prepare to fire on my mark. Four … Three … Two … Mark.”
The Marines watched the mortars blast away chunks of the oncoming ranks. By the time the easterly breeze blew the smoke clear, the gaps were already full again.
“Repeat fire,” the Lieutenant ordered.
Erik and the others started firing at the zombies that had passed the blast radius. He almost didn’t notice the second set of blasts. He kept firing.
“Fuck man! Every one of these bastards we kill, three fuckin’ more step up,” Bookie yelled over the gunfire.
Erik pulled the empty clip out of his rifle and loaded the one from between his feet. He slapped the butt of the rifle with his right palm and started firing again. He covered for Bookie as he reloaded.
Erik had no idea how long they held the first line. But it was long enough for forty-eight men to fire five more full magazines of ammo, one-shot at a time.
“Fall back to the second chain!”
The command to fall back was echoed all the way down the line. Each bunker shifted its aim forty-five degrees west to cover the retreat.
The first bunker was setting back up when the second group left. Once that group made it safely to the second line, the third bunker pulled back. When Erik saw JJ round the edge of the bunker, he tapped Bookie on the shoulder and they ran. They ran as if the gates of hell had opened behind them, threatening to swallow them whole. Bookie ran around the barricade. Erik cleared it like a hurdle, planted his feet and turned to fire. The entire platoon reached the second line and started to fire again.
“Sniper one to mortars. Repeat. Then splash fire at thirty second intervals; that is three-zero second intervals.”
“Repeat fire, and splash fire at three-zero seconds, roger that.”
Erik covered Bookie while he took the emptied clips out of his cargo pockets and dropped them into a small laundry bag that had been left next to ten full clips. Bookie shoved two full mags into his left cargo pocket and one into his right cargo pocket.
Bookie stood up and started firing, giving Erik a chance to repeat the procedure. They started dropping the empty clips into the bag instead of their pockets.
The zombies made it to the first barricade. Some tried to climb over it. Most waited to shuffle through the gaps between bunkers or the large gap at the east end. The Marines used it to their advantage, shooting the leaders so bodies started clogging the gaps.
“Christ! Is half of fucking Miami comin’ at us?” the Lieutenant yelled.
“Shut up and keep shooting,” came JJ’s predictable answer.
The piles of sandbags and bodies slowed the zombies down. But they didn’t stop the onslaught. For an hour-and-a-half, the Marines of 2nd platoon, Golf Company, fired into the crowd of zombies. An entire squad of Marines was now running ammo to the men on the line. The mortar crews shifted their aim a few hundred feet closer, trying to further slow the onslaught.
Still the horde pushed forward. A few zombies closed half the distance between the first line and the barricade. The Marines still had a kill for virtually every shot, but there were just too many bodies.
A few more covered most of the killing field before being dropped.
“We need some more breathing room, Sir!” JJ yelled.
“Fall back to the third chain,” the Lieutenant ordered.
Everyone in the bunkers again shifted their fire forty-five degrees east to cover the retreat of the bunker on the far side. The procedure was the same. As soon as one group made it to the safety of the next line, the next group moved.
Erik and Bookie pulled back to the third line. Once again, the ammo runners had staged fresh clips in advance. Erik dropped the empty clip from his rifle and reloaded. He smacked the butt of his rifle, chambering a round and started firing again.
Within ten minutes, the bodies were piling up in the gaps of the second set of barricades.
It disturbed most of the marines that blood could spatter on the face of a zombie where the one next to it had been shot and the zombie would trudge forward without even blinking as the blood hit them. It was just unnatural, not to mention unnerving.
Three or four zombies charged the barricade at a sprint with their arms forward, ready to grab anyone they came close to.
Bookie noticed one almost too late. He finished reloading and fired three shots. The zombie’s legs ran out from under his chest and continued kicking for a few seconds after it landed on its back. Bookie calmly put a round through its right eye as it sat up.
Erik turned and fired a burst across Bookie’s line of fire to cover a Marine with a jammed rifle. Neither man said a word, but continued shooting.
To the adrenaline fueled senses of the Marines, time slowed down. Erik saw each casing fly up and out of the rifle. He saw each target as he dropped it, and he could smell everything—the coagulated blood, sweat, urine, gunpowder, and death.
It was easy to pick a target and pull the trigger. They had trained for it half the time they were awake, when they weren’t in combat.<
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Erik saw part of a skull land in front of him. He glanced left and noticed JJ had saved his ass, blasting a runner about three feet from him. Erik shook his head to clear it and started shooting again. At the moment, he didn’t have time to be scared; he could do that if he lived.
The Marines kept reloading with the mags dropped off by runners they now barely noticed. They held the horde back while the mortar crews brought the blasts right to the end of the bridge. The snipers reported too many zombies to count, even after all of them that had been killed. The lieutenant had been half-right about half of Miami coming at them. To Erik and the others it was starting to look like all of Miami and the surrounding areas. In reality, the Marines of Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines were still outnumbered well over 100 to one, and the enemy was pressing ever closer.
Erik nearly blasted a fellow Marine who tapped him unexpectedly on the shoulder. Two more marines stepped up to the barricade.
“Gunny Thorn said for you guys to pull back to the final chain, reload, and take a breather,” said the Marine who’d tapped Erik on the shoulder.
Erik and Bookie trotted to the final defensive line, gasping for breath. They took a second to see what the rest of the company was doing.
Gunny Thorn had half the company loaded onto five-tons. Two of the five-tons sat perpendicular to the traffic lanes, giving the Marines on one side the opportunity to cover the rest of them if and when they were overrun. Two hummers sat lined up with mounted .50-cals to supply even more cover fire for the retreating Marines.
Erik thought he might have been disheartened by the Gunny preparing for defeat, but he was more encouraged by it. It meant Gunny Thorn didn’t intend to let them die. The gunny was still doing his best to get them out of this mess alive.
Marines piled into the back of the two five-tons. They didn’t start shooting, but waited.
“Platoon, get ready to resume firing,” the Lieutenant ordered.
Erik, Bookie, and the others assumed standing firing positions. The Marines in front of them stood up and back-peddled, some even continued firing until they reached the last barricade. The wave of walking corpses wasn’t far behind them.
The retreating Marines stopped firing, turned, and sprinted for the five-tons.
“OPEN FIRE!”
Eric started shooting. So did everyone else. The shots weren’t clean and single anymore. Marines were shooting as fast as they could, some had even switched their weapons to tri-burst. A majority of the shots still dropped a zombie each, but there were now far too many for it to make a difference.
Had the things been breathing, Erik would have been able to smell the blood on their breath, they were getting that close. Bookie backed away from the sand bags to give himself more room to aim his rifle.
“Retreat by fire and maneuver!”
Everyone back-peddled towards the trucks. Zombies grabbed at a few of the Marines. The Marines butt-stroked the zombies off of them. Two Marines nearly panicked. Their buddies jerked the zombies off of them, shot the things at pointblank range, and pushed their buddies towards the trucks.
The retreating Marines welcomed the sound of the 50-cal machinegun rounds cutting the air just above their helmets. As soon as the Marines heard the sound of the 50-cals opening up, they turned and ran. The machine gunners swept the entire line, giving the defenders a chance to concentrate on retreating. The front line of zombies fell to the ground in pieces as the bullets tore through both them and the rows behind them.
The Lieutenant stopped to prime and trip the charges that would blow the bridge. Before he could start running again, four zombies grabbed him. He couldn’t even scream before they started to eat him, ripping out his throat and tearing away chunks of his wrists and shoulders with camouflaged fabric.
The five-tons were already rolling away from the rigged section of the bridge. The hummers were in reverse so the gunners could continue to spray fire on the area. The marines of 2nd platoon ran to jump aboard the moving trucks.
One of the 50-cals raked rounds over the Lieutenant and his attackers.
Erik felt the bridge quiver under his running feet before he jumped onto the railing of the truck and was hit by the deafening boom of the explosion. He didn’t look back. He didn’t have to. He already knew that a whole section of the bridge was dropping into the ocean below. The 50-cals quit firing and waited to see if any of the bodies that lay on their side of the bridge started to move. A few more rounds stuttered from the big guns before Gunny Thorn gave the order to hold.
The Marines turned and looked to the other side of the gap. Hundreds of zombies stood on the shore, moaning impotently.
“Save your bullets. We’re gonna need ‘em,” Gunny Thorn ordered. “Mortar crew, light ‘em up with what you got left.”
The mortar crews adjusted their range. They fired round after round into the horde.
Erik couldn’t decide if he wanted to cheer as the zombies were blasted into fragments, or sulk as the company of Marines and the small band of refugees marched forward into a bloody future.
NATHAN ROBERT BROWN (LEFT)
Nathan Robert Brown is currently a doctoral student of Mythological Studies at University of Texas at Arlington. His academic and professional works have led him to do extensive research in the areas of world mythology, folklore, urban legends, ancient civilizations, and world religions. Nathan has been the author of such books as The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World Mythology,
Fallen Angels of Vengeance, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Werewolves, The Complete idiot’s Guide to the Paranormal, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Zombies, and World Religions at Your
Fingertips.
ROBERT FOX (RIGHT)
Robert Fox is a journalist covering county government, health and fitness, and religion for The Lawton Constitution. Covering health and fitness led him to become a certified first responder and take interest in a career as a nurse.
Table of Contents
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
