The Zombie Wars: Call To Arms (White Flag Of The Dead Book 7)

by Joseph Talluto

  The Zombie Wars

  Call To Arms

  White Flag of the Dead Book 7

  Joseph Talluto

  Wilmington, IL

  “What do you think?”

  “Off-hand? Probably a thousand, maybe more.”

  “Christ.”

  “How do you want to do this one?”

  “We have to draw them out, no question about it. We go in there, we’ll get slaughtered.”

  “Right. Whose turn is it to act as rabbit?”

  “Umm…Duncan.”

  Inwardly I groaned. Not that I thought Duncan couldn’t’ do it, but he just couldn’t bring himself to take it seriously. He had a habit of making a game out of the whole situation, and if he wasn’t such a damn good fighter I’d have left him home a long time ago. As it was, he did provide some points of amusement.

  “All right. Send him in,” I said. I checked the load on my rifle for what had to be the millionth time, and it was becoming such a habit that Charlie was starting to make fun of me for it. He swore he was going to unload my rifle behind my back one of these days just to mess with my head. That would be grounds for some serious ass-kicking.

  We had just started the war on the zombies, having spent the last few weeks chasing a lunatic across the country. We lost a good man along the way, but we gained something as a country trying to pick up the pieces after the zombies tore us to shreds. We did a decent job of it, establishing a new capital and safe place for us to live, but our little trip made me realize there was a lot of country to take back and a lot of people out there that needed our help. Besides, Charlie and I just got elected Chief Executive and Deputy Chief of the New United States, and we had to do something with ourselves.

  Right now we were outside the town of Wilmington. After a lot of discussion, Charlie and I decided it would be a good thing to head south and clear the lands as best we could from the capital to the bottom of the state. After that we were going to head east as far as we could and then spread out and head south again. The idea was to move through the lands, pick up who we could to fight, clear out the zombies, and make the world a better place. That was the lofty goal. The reality was likely to be someplace between glory and disaster.

  Speaking of disasters, I watched Duncan make his way towards the town of Wilmington. It was a river town near the interstate, and by all accounts it was pretty dead. But we needed the highway, and it wouldn’t do to have zombies wandering all the way north where we didn’t’ want them. Plus, they made a mess of your car when you plowed into them.

  Duncan walked down the street and immediately he was chased by a pair of Z’s. They were an older couple, coincidentally dressed alike in matching colors with matching neck wounds that had changed the purple suits to black. The man was a gentleman of about fifty years old, and the woman was around the same age. They walked with purpose, but Duncan knew what he was about. He skipped away, staying out of reach yet keeping himself the center of their attention. As they walked they moaned in unison and reached futilely at the food just beyond their grasp.

  The noise attracted a couple other zombies, and Duncan had to move a little quicker to keep himself ahead of the game. He passed a small eatery that had a huge spaceman standing in front of it—a relic from a time when such things were commonplace. A small zombie came running out of the restaurant, and Duncan had to stop and deal with the threat. He swung his melee weapon, a four-foot pole that had three metal collars on the end. Each collar had four steel spikes on them shaped like little pyramids. Duncan had arranged them so they alternated around the end of the pole in a spiral pattern. The effect was anywhere he hit a Z on the head with that thing was taking it down.

  Just like now. The spikes connected in three places, crushing the little boy’s head and dropping him to the ground. Duncan paused a moment and then kept moving.

  Down the street, Duncan acquired five more zombies, and he moved ahead of them swatting away their grasping hands like they were trying to pinch him.

  “He’s really a nut,” Charlie said, looking through the scope of his rifle.

  “Whatever gets the job done,” I said. We started out by going house to house, but then we realized it was easier on us to just open the doors, back away, and let the zombies come out to us. If we suspected a town was dead, we usually had someone walk down the center to draw out the zombies and then we set up to kill them. Afterwards we went through the homes looking for any strays and supplies. It wasn’t the greatest solution, but it seemed to do the trick.

  After he reached the center of town, Duncan turned north to where we were waiting with our zombie trap. I had to give Tommy credit with this one. We had to find a way to kill a lot of zombies quickly and efficiently with little risk to ourselves. Having a bunch of guys just shoot all over the place was putting a lot of faith in excellent marksmanship. That was a religion I really didn’t believe in. While most of the survivors we had encountered were skilled to some degree with guns, not all of them were all that good out past fifty yards.

  Tommy thought it would be a good idea to bring a mobile version of what we did way back when the zombies first rose, and we had to kill a bunch of them at that school we holed up in. We would funnel the zombies into a narrow area, kill them, drag them out of the way, and let the next group in. Towards this end we used six semitrucks with modified trailers. The trucks would park end to end in a kind of funnel pattern, and the last two trucks would park about two and a half feet apart. When a line of zombies walked towards the bait, we would drop a gate behind and in front of them, trapping about twenty of them in between the trailers. We had welded panels of sheet steel to the bottom of the trailers, blocking the zombies from escaping that way. Once they were trapped, six men on top of the trailers dropped a large wooden plank filled with spikes onto the zombies, killing them immediately. The short ones got killed when the taller ones fell and let the spikes down.

  After the zombies were dead, the men hauled the plank back up, the front gate was lifted, and the zombies pulled out by people acting as draggers with hooks on poles. Once cleared, the process started over again. We had been working this for a little while, and it was a really efficient way to kill a lot of zombies all at once without firing a shot. Every once in a while, a Z needed another whack to the head, but the guys with the hooks did that without trouble.

  “Coming in!” Duncan yelled, leading the zombies towards where we had parked the semis. He walked towards the trailers and ran ahead to the front gate, waiting to make sure the zombies saw him. They kept moving, and suddenly there was a clang.

  I looked for Duncan and didn’t see him. Charlie looked through his rifle and swore.

  “Dammit! They dropped the gate too early. He’s inside!” Charlie grabbed his rifle and ran towards the semis.

  I grabbed my rifle and followed, hoping we could get there before the zombies reached Duncan. He’d have a hell of a time with no real room to swing his weapon. I ran, and as I did I kept expecting to hear shots.

  When I was about ten yards away I heard the next order.

  “Drop the bar!”

  The heavy wood plank crashed down. If Duncan was under that he was dead or dying.

  I ran faster, swearing I was going to kill the man who screwed up, when I nearly ran into Charlie’s back. He was standing with his arms crossed, watching Duncan slap a teenager silly. The boy’s head was snapping back and forth, and Duncan was punctuating his speech with slaps.

  “Didn’t I tell you (slap) to never drop the bar (slap) until the runner (slap) has cleared (slap) the grills (slap, slap, slap)?” Duncan asked
through gritted teeth.

  The boy dropped to the ground, bleeding from the mouth, holding a very red face. Beside him, a teenage girl was wringing her hands, wanting to go help her boyfriend but kept back by Charlie’s glare.

  “S-sorry!” the boy spit out. “I thought you said clear.”

  “Did you see me?” Duncan asked.

  “N-no.”

  “Then why in the name of God would I say clear?” Duncan yelled. “You’re off gate duty until you can focus your mind on the task at hand.” Duncan turned his attention to the girl. “You’re to stay away from him when he’s on any duty, or I’m sending you both home. Got it?”

  The girl nodded and started to tear up, clearly she didn’t want to go home. Her eyes got huge when I nodded and looked grim, and then she picked up her boyfriend and pulled him away.

  Duncan, Charlie, and I watched them leave, and then we all chuckled together.

  “Boy might live if he gets his head out of her ass,” Charlie said.

  Duncan grinned. “Next time, I’ll make him the runner, and she can close the gate. Any bets on how well that will go?”

  I shook my head. “I’d say that run will go perfectly. How did you get out of there so fast?” I asked.

  Duncan pointed to the mirrors of the truck. “Z’s can’t reach those, but if you run and push off the side when you jump, you can grab it and swing yourself over.”

  I looked and saw that it was a good trick to remember. “Have you had to do that before?” I asked. “I don’t recall you ever getting caught in there.”

  “First time for everything,” Duncan said, heading back to the caravan.

  Charlie and I just looked at each other. What could we say? It was Duncan.

  The killing went on for a good hour, and we hauled out over eight hundred zombies. There were several that wandered away from the killing funnel, but other fighters were there to put them down. In a little while, we would start our walk through, making sure there weren’t any zombies left over to surprise anyone else coming through.

  Charlie and I walked back to the RV we were sharing with our wives and kids. Sarah and Rebecca had made it clear in no uncertain terms that they were not going to be left behind again to care for the kids, and I wasn’t going to argue the point. Besides, I figured if they were with me, I would not have to worry about what might be happening when I wasn’t there. The last time I wasn’t around a group of very nasty people tried to kill my family. If it wasn’t for Charlie and my brother, I might have lost everyone.

  Sarah greeted me at the door. “Hey, you!” she said, wrapping her arms around me. “How was your day?”

  I kissed her and grinned. “Just getting started. Charlie and I need to do our walk through. How’s the kids?”

  “Doing just fine, and driving Rebecca and me crazy. Your son snuck out three times to try and go see the zombies.” Sarah said.

  “My son?” I asked. “How come every time he’s bad he only belongs to me?”

  Charlie laughed. “Julia is just as bad, and she’s always mine when she’s naughty.”

  “I’m not naughty!” came a little voice from the back of the RV.

  We all laughed. Charlie shrugged his shoulders.

  “How come she can’t hear a thing when I call her, yet she chimes in on very conversation she’s not a part of?” He asked to no one in particular.

  “Come on, Dad. Let’s get something to eat, and then we’ll get moving,” I said.

  “Can we come with you?” Sarah asked, batting her eyelashes. Rebecca joined in the manipulation, and Charlie had no ability to say no.

  “Sure,” I said. “Get your stuff. I’ll go see if Janna wants to babysit.”

  Sarah bounced off to the back room, followed by Rebecca. Jake was busy at the kitchen table learning to draw his letters, and Julia was somewhere in the back arguing with Rebecca. I figured it was a good time to leave, so I kissed Jake on the top of his head and headed back out.

  Charlie decided to come with me, and together we walked up the road towards the second RV that housed Duncan and Janna. Those two met on our trip to DC and haven’t been apart since. No one could figure out what brought those two together, but Janna saw in Duncan as a partner what we saw in him as a friend. He was loyal, protective, and perfectly willing to throw himself in front of a horde of zombies to save his friends. Add to the mix that he was a deadly fighter and skilled with just about anything, and he turned out as a pretty good match.

  I knocked on the door and a blonde tornado spilled out. Janna was pure energy wrapped in a centerfold body.

  “John! Charlie! Hi! What’s going on? Are we heading out, doing a sweep? What’s going on? Duncan said he almost died again, is that true? What happened? Did a kid almost kill him?” she said, not pausing for a breath.

  I held up hand. “Can you watch Jake and Julia for me? Sarah and Rebecca want to go out with us to sweep the town.”

  Janna switched gears. “Of course! Let me get my little girl gear, and I’ll be right over.” Janna swept back into the RV, and Charlie let out the breath he was unaware he was holding.

  “Wow. I forgot how she does that,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah. It’s fun on a limited basis, but she can fight pretty well,” I said.

  “I heard she taught Duncan how to work a knife better,” Charlie said.

  “That’s something,” I said.

  “What’s something?” Janna asked as she came back out. She had put on some jeans and longer t-shirt. She was holding a small bag and had pulled her hair back into a ponytail.

  “The number of zombies we killed today,” Charlie said, avoiding the subject.

  “Ah.”

  We walked back to the RV, and Sarah and Rebecca were waiting for us. Jake was playing with his toys now, building blocks up and knocking them down. Julia was in a pout, but when she saw Janna she jumped up.

  “Janna! Can we do hair?” She squeaked.

  “You know it, sweetheart. You want braids or something sexy?” Janna asked, winking at Rebecca.

  “What’s sessy?” Julia asked, looking at Charlie.

  Charlie looked uncomfortable. “Ask your mother,” he said.

  Sarah and I just smiled and faded away, happy Jake wasn’t asking the same question.

  We walked to the rally point, which was a spot about a half-mile from the outskirts of town. Several groups were waiting for us, all skilled zombie killers. The unskilled ones were dead, and that right quickly. The men and women were lounging about, sharing jokes and stories, sharpening knives, checking melee weapons.

  They all stood to attention when we approached, something I wished they would stop doing. But since they were technically the army and I was technically the commander in chief, I guess it was a tradition they wanted to keep up.

  “Hey all,” I said, raising a hand in greeting. “We’ve taken out the horde, now we have to sweep. Let’s get it done. Watch your back and that of your teammates. Let’s get this done before dark. Watch your shots if you have to take them.” The standing rule was not to use your guns if you didn’t have to. Since we started cleaning up the zombies, we’d had a couple of accidents where people got shot by mistake. Using the non-firing weapons got that under control. “Charlie?”

  “Teams one, three, and five. Take the north side of town. Teams two, four and six, I want a full sweep over the main road in and out. Teams eight and nine, the business district is yours. Walk it through. We need to be done and on the road before dark.”

  “What’s our assignment?” Sarah asked Charlie as we watched the teams split up and move towards their targets.

  “We get the forest preserve on the south end,” Charlie said, pointing to a large group of trees off in the distance.

  I imitated a zombie with my groan. “Man, you do like to punish us, don’t you?” I asked.

  Charlie smiled. “Gotta keep you sharp. Can’t have no slacker leading us in this war.”

  “Thanks. Remind me to properly thank you for your
diligence when we get back to the lodge,” I said, fingering my knife.

  “Move it, sweetness,” Sarah said, pushing me with her staff. I was glad she used the blunt end because the other had a two-foot, double-sided blade on it.

  We walked south along 216th street, passing what looked like a maintenance shed. There were several tractors and mowers in various states of rust and it looked like the building had been abandoned long ago. I doubted we would even find anything of use in there.

  Charlie checked his map at the next turning of the road and we walked towards the East. We passed two houses that looked pretty empty and the broken windows and open doors told us that they were. The next house was down a very long driveway and we figured it had to be all of a quarter mile. The house looked huge and Charlie said we should check it on the way back.

  After passing the big house, we found ourselves standing in front of the woods. The actual wooded area started a ways back and we were going to have to cross a field covered in long grass with a sprinkling of trees here and there.

  Perfect.

  I pulled my worn but trusted pickaxe out of its holder and gave it a little spin in my hand. I caught Sarah chuckling at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You spin that axe every time you pull it out. Do you even know you do it, or is it just reflex?” she asked.

  “I didn’t even know I did it,” I admitted. “Consider it a trademark.”

  We spread out and started a slow walk through the field. We weren’t kidding ourselves. We had lived through some really bad zombie problems and didn’t want to take any chances. Besides, when the ghoul goop started flying, I didn’t want to be too close to someone who threw zombie bits around like candy at a parade.

  We were ten feet into the field when I stepped on a twig that was hiding under the tall grass. The sound cracked loud in the still air and ahead of us we heard a loud rustling, like something large was moving through the trees. We didn’t hear any groans, so I hoped it was just something like a large dog. I didn’t really believe that, but it was fun to occupy the mind a little.