“Th-they’re c-coming!” the first one panted. “About a quarter m-mile up the road!”
“Good,” I said. “Did they see you?”
“Yeah, they did. Started right for us,” the other one said in between large gulps of air.
“Better,” I replied. “Let’s spread out. Ten feet between each of us. Same drill. Shoot the ones only in front of you. Don’t waste any shots. Make them come to you. Let’s go, and let’s survive this.”
We’d done this sort of thing for a few weeks now, especially when we were out in the open. Between the twenty of us, we had about six hundred rounds of ammunition. That should see us through this one. I hoped.
The hard part with the zombies was the waiting. They were coming. You knew that. There was no getting around it. They weren’t going to stop until they were dead or you were. They would wait you out or wear you down. Eventually they would get you unless you got them first. This was what we were doing out here. We weren’t just going to find a hole to hide in hope so we could live out our lives behind walls and safe zones. We wanted to live without fear, without wondering if that thing that bumped in the night was our imagination or a very real monster.
The first sign was the sound. Or lack of it. When a large horde of Z’s moved through an area, it always went dead silent. No bugs or birds made any noise. Then you felt a change in the air. It was like a high-pressure system moving through. The noise came next. Usually it was the rhythmic march of hundreds of dead feet plodding along. Mixed in were some scrapes and drags, and you had a symphony of walking dead. They usually wouldn’t groan unless they saw you, and then they set up a sound which was pitiful and terrifying; it was the sound of a being without a soul, something that existed only to cause pain and suffering.
Finally, it was the sight of them. Hundreds of corpses marching in your direction, staring at you with eyes that were devoid of anything but hunger. They bore wounds of encounters with others like themselves, and the successful ones were covered in blood, especially around their mouths. Some were so successful that they had torn their lips off, leaving their teeth fully exposed. Some had limbs missing, but that didn’t stop them. They just kept coming.
We saw them coming over the rise about two hundred feet away. I called out the first order.
“Sharpshooters! Pick your targets! Fire at will!” I yelled, taking aim at a man whose face was half torn off. Sharpshooters were required to be able to hit an eight-inch target at three hundred yards. They were the first to start thinning the herds. The thought was to start creating barricades so the zombies would start tripping over each other. Anything to slow them down.
Rifles cracked, and zombies began to drop. At this range and with that many zombies, if you missed the one you were aiming at, you likely hit another you weren’t. If you were watching front the side, you’d see zombies in the middle dropping from shots.
We taught our marksmen to aim for the eyes. One of our survivors was a former Marine sniper, and he tutored us on the finer points of long-range killing. Even so, we were in less than ideal conditions to make every shot.
Two hundred feet became one hundred fifty, then one hundred. The zombies kept coming, and we kept killing them. At one hundred yards I gave the second order.
“Marksmen! Pick your targets! Fire at will!” I put the sights on an older zombie, a man who must have been over seventy when he crossed over. I waited a second to see if anyone else was going to fire, and then I pulled the trigger. The old man’s head exploded in a dark mist, and he crumpled from view. Down the line I could hear staccato firing as more and more people in our group started firing. Zombies were falling at a more rapid rate, and the ones that tripped over the fallen ones were killed either on the ground, or when they were rising again to their feet.
At fifty feet the number of zombies was significantly smaller. I gave the next order to conserve ammo.
“Sharpshooters, cease fire! Cease fire! Marksmen, finish them off!” I yelled, pulling the trigger on a man about my age. His grey face was slashed and torn, with one eye gone and half his nose bitten off. His shirt was black with dried blood, and his left hand was missing three fingers. His torn pants showed me bone where his kneecap used to be, and his left foot was missing a shoe. I put the shot in his forehead, and the man took a step before pitching forward on his face.
At twenty-five feet, the last two zombies walked around their dead comrades and lurched towards us. I actually thought we were going to take them out by hand, when there was two short booms. The heads of each Z racked back from the impact of several balls of double ought buckshot, dropping them on their backs. Our resident shotgunner had gotten into the action after all.
“Cease fire! Reload!” Charlie yelled out the command, but it was pretty much unnecessary. The first thing any veteran of the Upheaval did was reload all his weapons with as much ammo as it would take or he had on him.
We looked at our lane of destruction. For a hundred yards, zombies lay in a near full blanket covering the ground. It was a grim carpet no one was going to order up any time soon as a home decoration. There were a few stragglers off in the distance, and I could already hear the Sharpshooters making bets with each other and smack talking.
Suddenly there were two shots fired so close together as to sound as one. The bullets ripped through the air above us, and in the distance at what had to be over six hundred yards, the two zombies fell dead.
Charlie and I looked back at our RV, which was another hundred yards back, and waved cheerfully at our wives who waved to us from the top of the vehicle.
I don’t know who said it, but it made both Charlie and me very proud.
“Damn!”
We started to turn back when a cry went up. “Left flank! Left flank!”
We turned and ran back a bit to clear the others who were doing the same. The fighters who were on the far left were fighting for their lives, for zombies had come out of the woods and were literally on top of us. Charlie and I couldn’t use our rifles because the Z’s were too close, so we were going to have to do this the hard way. Charlie had already dropped his rifle, and his tomahawks were in his hands. I dropped mine and flipped my pick off my shoulder, racing towards the zombies that had managed to sneak up on us. Two of our men were about to be surrounded, and although they fought ferociously, the numbers were going to get them.
At least that’s how it would have gone. Charlie slammed a tomahawk into the head of the nearest zombie, killing it. He used his momentum to swing the corpse off the ground and laid out half the zombies that were trying to get at our men. In the struggle to get up, Charlie and I killed the ones that were on the ground.
Another zombie stumbled out of the bushes, covered in brambles and leaves. It had a twig sticking out of its mouth like a cigarette, which would have been funny except it was sticking out of its cheek. I used the extra reach my pick provided me and buried the tip of the point in the zombie’s head. It fell over and I wrenched the point out with a jerk. Another zombie reached for me and I cracked its skull with an overhand swing that knocked it to the ground. Sweeping the legs out from under a third, I smashed that one’s face in with a snarl. A fourth tried to grab me around my waist, and I brought my pick’s handle in to keep its face away from my gut. I pushed back, and the zombie’s skeletal hands barely caressed my vest. I pulled my Glock and shot it once in the head, killing it for good. A fifth was on the ground and grabbed my ankle, but I spun and stepped down on the back of its neck with my other foot. I fired again, leaving it on the ground. Wrenching my foot away from the dead one, another zombie came out of the woods and promptly tripped on a Z that was already dead. Not one to waste opportunity, I backhanded the pick into the top of its head, slowly sending it over the Great Divide.
Looking at the woods, I didn’t see any more, so I turned my attention back to the fight. I was somewhat surprised when I saw the other zombies were dead, and all of the other members of the group were staring at me.
Not knowi
ng what to say, I just shrugged and walked away, being careful to not to trip on any zombie or zombie parts.
“Carry on.” I said, beckoning to Charlie. “Check the right side to make sure we don’t get surprised again.”
Charlie fell into step with me as we walked back to the RV. I could hear a few whispers behind me, but I couldn’t make anything out. I really didn’t want to know what they were saying about their crazy chief executive who didn’t have enough sense to get out of a fight.
“Nice work,” Charlie said.”
“How do you figure?” I asked. “I just did what anyone would do.”
“Oh, really?” Charlie asked, eyeballing me with one eye. “Anyone would just up and take on six zombies in less than two minutes. You’re kidding right?”
“Obviously I wasn’t if I just did it,” I said.
“You really don’t get what you just did, do you?” Charlie asked.
“What did I just do?” I asked, waving to our wives who were still on the roof of the RV. Sarah and Rebecca gave us both a once over before climbing back down the hatch.
“You just added to your legend. You just took out six zombies in front of nineteen people who will tell anyone who will listen what a badass their leader actually is,” Charlie said. “Chances are you’ll inspire more than a few village idiots to try and up the score.”
“So much for your inspirational message of hope and understanding,” I said, spraying my weapons with kerosene and setting them on fire. The yellow flames flared red, a sign the virus was dead for good.
“Don’t take it the wrong way, I’m all for killing as many as we can. What I’m saying is you probably did more as far as recruitment goes than any speech could ever do,” Charlie said. “We need the manpower.”
Did we ever. When we first started this little venture we figured we would have at least a thousand men and women to back us up. Turns out we managed a little over nine hundred, with a few extra here and there. A lot of the people who had managed to survive the Upheaval and get their lives back on something that resembled a normal track, weren’t really interested in going back out and getting themselves killed. I couldn’t say as I blamed them, but as we moved further and further away from the capital, I heard rumors here and there about being glad they were in this war and not taking it easy at home. If I had the memory for it I might have quoted Shakespeare’s St. Crispin’s Day speech, but I couldn’t remember it.
“We only lost ten so far as I know unless you’re keeping things from me.” I said, handing the kerosene sprayer to Charlie.
“True, but if we run into a major city with big time populations of zombies, we’re going to need a few more shooters,” Charlie said as he sprayed and cleansed his ‘hawks.
“We’ll council up after Duncan and Tommy sweep Bourbonnais,” I said. “They’ve got the majority of the fighters anyway.”
Suddenly there was a blast of horns, and a semi truck came barreling through the woods. It was on the dirt track that bisected the road we had fought the zombies on. Charlie and I jumped at the sound, then looked around to see if anyone had seen us jump.
“This could be bad,” Charlie said. The truck plowed into the piles of zombies, and body parts flew everywhere. Arms and legs broke from torsos, and hands and fingers blasted apart. Black goo flew like a putrid spray, and at least three heads sailed far over the trees.
The truck slewed to the side, unable to stay on the ground, and the driver was hard put to get things under control. The trailer swung wide, then skidded as the tires reached firmer, less slick territory. The truck leaned precariously on the side, and then in slow motion, dropped back to the ground.
“You’re right, that could have been bad,” I said. “Oh, well. May as well replenish the ammo while it’s here.” I waved over the rest of the squad, and we made our way to the semi. As we passed the vehicles, I noticed that zombie bits and pieces were all over the cars. Whoever was driving that truck was going to have quite a few angry people to deal with.
As we approached, the cab door popped open, and Janna jumped out. She was grinning like a kid in a candy store and held out her arms. “Rescue!” she yelled.
Charlie was about to shout something when I held up a hand.
“Thank you! Appreciate it!” I called out. Under my breath I said to Charlie, “She just wants to help. Just let it be.”
Charlie took my advice and raised a hand. “Thank you! Good job!” Under his breath he asked me why Duncan was so protective. Janna was hands down one of the best women with a knife we had ever seen.
“Duncan lost his entire family, remember? Just like you. Wouldn’t you want to keep Rebecca and Julia as safe as you could?” I asked as we reached the back of the semi. Fortunately the rig had hit the zombie’s head on, so the muck was less back here. A dead Z that had gotten caught in the wheel well looked up at us reproachfully, as if to ask for a little help.
“True. Every time Rebecca comes with, I have an extra worry or two,” Charlie admitted.
“Same here,” I said. “If I had my way, Sarah would be back at Starved Rock, but there was no way she was sitting this one out again.”
We opened the back, and Charlie climbed inside. He started with the .308, tossing out boxes of ammo to the Sharpshooters. The rest got 5.56, or .223, whichever their rifle’s preference. I shot .308, but could get by with 5.56 since I had two rifles.
We resupplied all of our fighters and went back to the river to retrieve our boats. I was glad that didn’t have to become an option. But that was part of the overall plan. If we had to retreat, the goal was to always retreat over water. We finally did the experiment with a zombie and a tank of water. As it turned out, the virus didn’t need oxygen to survive. But the brain it occupied did. The virus fed the brain oxygen to keep it going, and when the water killed the oxygen, the brain and zombie died.
We thanked Janna again and watched as she muscled the truck back onto the road. She blasted the horn three times and roared away.
Sarah and Rebecca were waiting for us when we finally finished securing the boat. Sarah handed me a bottle of water, and I drank it completely, not realizing how thirsty I was. I complimented her and Rebecca on their shooting, and Charlie did the same.
“Twarn’t nuthin’,” Sarah drawled, sounding absolutely ridiculous.
We all laughed and then swept up our kids who were wandering too close the zombie parts still scattered about.
We secured our guns and ammo, getting back on the road with our little caravan. We carefully drove around the mass of zombies we had killed, heading back towards the left turn Charlie had avoided earlier. In this case it was a right turn, taking us into the heart of Bourbonnais. We passed several zombies lying dead on the side of the road and several more stacked into small piles. Some of the piles were smoldering and soon would burst into flame. We tried to burn our kills as much as we could, but sometimes it was too hard. Many times if there were locals they took care of the chore, just grateful they had the help in clearing out the mess.
At the south end of Bourbonnais, we reconnected with the rest of the group. Tommy and Duncan were in some kind of meeting with several other men, and I wondered what was up. Charlie drove us up close, and we parked.
As I got out, Duncan and Tommy came over. Several of the fighters we were with at the river got out and headed over to their companions, eager to share some stories. I saw several nodding in my directions, and a couple even mimicked a few of the moves I had used against the Z’s. I glanced over at Charlie, and I could have slapped the grin he gave me right off his face.
“Heard you got into it over on the other side of town. Everyone okay?” Tommy asked.
“We lost a car by the subdivision, couldn’t get them out in time,” I said.
“Two guys and a woman?” Duncan asked?”
Charlie shrugged. “Could be, why?”
“We picked up three of our own running like crazy down the road looking for backup and wanting to get back to their frie
nds,” Duncan said. “Looks like you didn’t lose anybody despite Charlie’s lousy sense of direction.”
Charlie said nothing, he just shot a hand out and smacked Duncan in the forehead with a heavy palm. Duncan nearly flipped over backwards as he swapped ends and landed on the ground.
We shared a laugh as Duncan shook off the hit and stood back up. He looked a little dazed but no less confused which meant he was all right. He’d get back at Charlie later. One time Charlie popped Duncan, and Charlie woke up the next morning tied to his bed, completely immobile.
Tommy took that moment to take me to the side. “Something we should probably talk about,” he said.
“After the general meeting, we can talk then,” I said.
At the end of the day, or the end of a serious day of zombie killing, I tried to connect with all my commanders and get the general feel of the army. Most of the time, things were pretty routine, and that was the way I liked it. Any day no one living died was a good one as far as I could tell.
Tommy shook his head. “I think we need to talk sooner than that.”
That was different. “Right now?” I asked, noticing that a lot of men were watching us, and they looked almost apprehensive. What the hell was going on?
“All right. Let’s get into the RV and talk,” I said. I waved to Charlie and Duncan. “We’ll all have a chat.”
We went back inside the RV and sat around the table. There wasn’t enough room for us all, so Sarah stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders. Rebecca stood at the end of the table.
Tommy wasted no time. “You know the men we had training the fighters? The ones that survived the army being overrun?” he asked.
I thought for a minute. “Sure. The men we put in charge of the three divisions. What were their names again?” I asked.
Charlie answered. “Baker, Haggerty, and Hanley. Did they approach you as a group or one by one?” Charlie’s voice was low, the way it got when he didn’t like what he as hearing.
The Zombie Wars: Call To Arms (White Flag Of The Dead Book 7) Page 4
