The Apocalypse Crusade Day 4: War of the Undead

by Peter Meredith

  With all his quaking heart Jason wanted to run, but he held his ground, perhaps because everyone else held theirs, but it was a close thing. His feet were so light that he had to concentrate on keeping them planted, because if he wasn’t careful, he thought that they would, all on their own, do what came naturally and propel him as fast as they could out of there, just another squirrel or sparrow.

  No one else ran, so he stayed, hunkered down next to a tree, pointing his gun out at other trees, listening to that monster come closer and closer, thinking that when it was finally his turn to fight, he wouldn’t be fighting other men, he’d be fighting this beast that had been unleashed on them.

  But by a miracle, the fight shifted far to the right. Relieved, Jason lifted himself up from the tree, and peered along a firebreak and saw that there were guys strung out for as far as he could see. Some were shooting and some were just squatted down as if bushes were bulletproof or that their flannel shirts weren’t as obvious as they were. But no one was running. Perhaps we’re even winning, he thought.

  He was still standing there a perfect target, thinking that by some miracle he had escaped the horrible fire and thunder beast when something smacked into the tree next to his head, sending bark flying into his face.

  Had he been at home, he would have thought that someone had thrown a rock at him. Only he wasn’t at home. His body reacted faster than his torpid mind—his knees buckled and he dropped even before he realized that someone was shooting at him.

  And it wasn’t just some one. Guns were going off by the hundreds, enveloping his little acre of the forest in such a deafening fury of sound that the air pulsed with each gunshot. His heart seized in his chest, however the rest of him reacted, once again without much work on the part of his brain. He popped up almost as fast as he went down, and like magic, his daddy’s spare rifle was on his shoulder and the scope was at his eye.

  What he saw down that scope was a blur of green and brown that refused to come into focus. Only when he pulled his head back did he see that he’d been aiming at a bush fourteen feet away. The bush seemed to be coming apart under a withering fire and beyond it, maybe fifty yards or so, was a man in camouflage, an M4 in his hands. Jason fired without aiming and the shot went high. With fumbling hands, he jacked back on the bolt, but he was unpracticed and fear had made his fingers numb. What should have been a fluid motion was herky-jerky and instead of flying out, the spent cartridge “stove-piped,” meaning it got hung up in the chamber and just sat, half in and half out of the gun, gumming up the works.

  “Oh, God!” he cried, uselessly pushing and pulling on the bolt, certain that at any second a bullet would hit him square in the face or tear out his throat or puncture his heart or rip into his soft belly. His skin tingled with the horrible anticipation of it as he struggled the cartridge out. When it finally dropped into the leaves at his feet, he quickly pushed the bolt forward again, sending a new round into the chamber.

  Now, he could fight again, however by then, his mind was no longer processing fear rationally. Pure panic had its talons in his heart, and when he looked up again it seemed to the frightened boy as though the entire 101st Airborne Division was practically in his lap.

  Unlike him, these were real men, real soldiers, wearing real uniforms and firing real guns. Their guns weren’t anything like the crappy deer rifle he was clutching, either. They were a sinister black in color and when they fired, they shot not just bullets, but flame as well. And they never missed. There were screams erupting in the forest. The screams cut through the tremendous din of battle and burrowed their way right into Jason’s soul.

  No part of him wanted to stay and fight, but even if he wanted to, his feet were already moving without his permission. He was running before he knew it, sprinting blindly through the forest, leaping over bodies and dodging trees, plowing through the underbrush and the hanging vines. Seconds into his mad flight, the strap of his rifle got hung up on a twig and, quite unexpectedly, there was what seemed to be an explosion in his right hand.

  His finger had been curled around the trigger of his rifle and at that first jolt, he had squeezed his hand, sending a bullet blazing out. By purest luck, he didn’t shoot himself. The bullet, a wild card in the middle of a wild battle, passed under the nose of a pompous, self-appointed captain who had been cowering behind a tree and zipped unseen and unheard through the melee, hitting a tree half a football field away.

  Jason had no idea what had happened. He actually thought that his rifle had been hit by a bullet and had the insane idea that his rifle was somehow attracting gunfire. He let out a scream and flung it away from himself. Now, he could run even faster; and he did. With the mad eyes of an escapee from an insane asylum, he hauled ass south for a quarter of a mile to where the world was quieter, more rational. He slowed to a jog, his heart calming, his mind clearing, but then he heard shooting ahead of him and he realized that he hadn’t escaped danger completely. To the south was the border and beyond that were more soldiers, and beyond them were millions of zombies.

  “Son of a bitch,” he whispered, realizing he was caught between a rock and another, heavier and harder rock. He took a hard left, heading east, heading toward Boston and home. He ran for his Ma, and behind him the others wheeled east like a flight of swallows.

  Jason had been the first to run and that one weak link had caused the entire chain to snap. In seconds, he was joined by a dozen men, then a hundred, then a thousand others.

  Behind him, Sergeant Ross of the 101st, came huffing and puffing to a stop, leaning against a tree. The sweat dripping down into his eyes went ignored as he watched the Massachusetts boys running away. It was shocking how many of them there were. Somehow, his little company had managed to dislodge a battalion-sized element—a thousand men. A wave of goosebumps broke out across his flesh.

  Never all that articulate, Ross could only whisper, “Holy shit,” as he stared with a feeling of stunned amazement. How he had lived, he didn’t know. “Not even a scratch,” he said, out loud in amazement. Just to make sure, he ran a hand over his chest and arms.

  A soldier next to him was wide-eyed and looked as though he had been hit on the head with a rock. Ross was sure he looked the same way. The two simultaneously grinned at each other and, for that brief second, they were happy. They had lived! Impossibly, they had lived. But the smiles faded as they heard the moans and the cries of “medic” behind them. They had lived, but there was no saying they would live much longer.

  “Hold here,” Ross told the soldier and turned away to gather up what was left of his company.

  The line had been broken; the bubble holding in the air assault element had popped. That was the good news. The bad news was that the other part of General Platnik’s two-pronged attack had failed miserably. The drive north had sputtered right from the start and he hadn’t been able to budge the Massachusetts National Guard even a foot from their trenches. Even with air power on his side, the fight had eaten up precious supplies and most of his reserve forces so that now that he had a breakthrough he was limited in his ability to exploit it.

  Red in the face, Platnik cursed over his maps. Sergeant Ross and the others might have survived, but they were still trapped behind enemy lines, while the rest of the 101st was trapped between two armies; one living, one undead. General Platnik knew he could still win if he could just act quickly and decisively, and if he could get just one more miracle.

  “God, if you’re listening, I need fuel, please, please,” Platnik begged with a glance to the sky.

  He only had a trickle of fuel left for his Blackhawks, and if he didn’t get any more, the air assault force that had just won a great victory would be stranded and open to counterattack. “And if they fail, I will have used up the last of my reserves for nothing and we will all die,” Platnik whispered.

  For long seconds the command tent was silent except for Platnik’s mutterings. He was like a physicist at a poker table, systematically going over every known variable. Gen
eral Platnik knew precisely how much ammo his men had. He also knew that his counterpart in Massachusetts was throwing everything he had into the fight, and that with every passing minute, more national guardsmen and militiamen and even teenage boys were hurrying south to hem in his assault force. He also knew that a massacre was happening twenty miles away in Woonsocket where millions of zombies were feasting on the civilians trapped there. He had seen the satellite photos and they had been enough to turn even his stomach.

  Platnik knew what the situation was. He knew that everything was against him: he didn’t have enough soldiers, enough fuel, and enough ammo. It didn’t matter. He had to break the deadlock around Webster even if it cost him every troop under his command. “Send in the reserves, now!” was his order.

  It was a gamble with millions of lives hanging on the outcome. If he lost, there would be nothing to stop a second massacre.

  As Sergeant Ross poked about through the dead, looking for spare ammo, Blackhawks by the dozens, each overflowing with men and boys, started to land along the highway. At first, he cheered along with the rest of the survivors of the fight, but after not quite a thousand soldiers and civilians had been hastily dropped in the middle of enemy territory, many of them with not much more than a handful of ammo, the flights ceased as did the cheering.

  The 101st was out of fuel.

  Sergeant Ross’s company of a hundred men was down to twenty-three rattled souls when the order came to move south where the battle had been raging for hours, they were very slow to get up. They were heading for the meat grinder. They all knew it. But they didn’t have a choice.

  2—Alford, Massachusetts

  Slumped over in the front seat of the vintage Corvette, Courtney Shaw had been making an intermittent noise, a sound that was a cross between a cat’s purr and a chainsaw being used to cut up a block of cement. It was a snore that would have shocked and appalled her.

  It had gone on and on for hours and probably would have gone on until evening had she not been awakened by something, but she didn’t know what. She sat up and gazed out the front window seeing trees and a black topped road that wasn’t at all familiar, while a quarter of a mile behind her a C-17 Globemaster transport plane burned.

  The C-17 was one of seven which had been shot down while attempting to resupply the soldiers who were fighting to preserve the border against the hordes of undead. It had gone up like a bomb when it hit the ground, but Courtney had been so thoroughly exhausted and deep in sleep that she had no idea what had woken her.

  Her first thought was to reach over for the police scanner. “Thuy, are you out there?” she asked. It was a terrible breach in protocol as well as in operational security, but she just wanted her part in all of this to be over. She wanted to find Thuy and Deckard, somehow talk them past the border and then get the hell out of there. Possibly to Canada, but more likely Alaska.

  Only Thuy didn’t answer. Courtney tried again, this time doing it correctly: “Deck 1, this is Dispatch 6, over.” Again, no answer. In vain she repeated the phrase three more times before giving up—temporarily.

  “Are they out of range, or am I?” It was a legitimate question. She was still waking up and really didn’t know where she was. Not only that, her brain felt slow and woolen, as if there was an old sock stuffed between her ears instead of good old grey matter. She gazed about until something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye.

  It was only then that she saw the burning wreckage of the C-17 stretched out over an area greater than a football field. “Holy cow,” she whispered, wondering what had happened that could have brought down one of those huge birds. The crash was captivating in a gruesome sort of way and she had to tear her eyes away.

  The keys to the Corvette were in the ignition and she was still so out of it that it was a surprise to her to find them there. She pulled the ‘vette around to see if anyone had lived through the crash. It didn’t seem possible, but as a state trooper dispatcher, she knew that stranger things had happened. In this case, there wasn’t any sign of people or people parts there was just a noxious, oily smoke that blanketed everything and seemed to cling to the inside of her nose.

  For a good minute she gazed dully at the flames before she thought to leave. “Gotta pull it together,” she whispered, and once more turned the Corvette around. She knew which way the border was by the sound of explosions and the distant rising smoke. As she drove, she started in again, broadcasting, “Deck 1, this is Dispatch 6, over.”

  There was no answer and she was beginning to think there wouldn’t be one, unless she could boost the signal, which she wouldn’t be able to do with the power out. “The military’s got power,” she said. “And they probably have radio relays, too.” An idea was beginning to blossom.

  “I’ll be the Governor’s scientific liaison and I need to inspect the thingy. I mean the…uh…crap! That’s not going to be believable at all.” She needed an excuse to get to the communications equipment that the communications people would believe. It had to be urgent but not verifiable.

  The miles zipped by under her tires, and before she could come close to any sort of plan, she was close enough to the border to smell the spent gunpowder and the rotting flesh of the zombies. These combined odors hung in the air like an invisible veil, making her want to gag. She slowed the Corvette, her gorge rising in the back of her throat.

  On her right, next to a pasture of clover, was a burned-out tank. It was black, scorched right down to its treads. The turret was popped off and was sitting more than thirty feet away, turned upside down. A helmet sat in the middle of the road and as Courtney went around it, she saw that there was a head still in it which had only the stump of a neck left. The stump itself had a shaft of vertebrae that was black with dried blood and swarming flies.

  It looked like the sort of potted plant one would find in hell, and Courtney stared at it for so long that she almost drove off the road and into an elm that had sprung up decades before and had sat, unmolested, on the edge of the road for all that time.

  “This can’t be happening!” she cried, hauling the wheel around, her breath coming fast and high up in her throat. She missed the tree by inches.

  The image of the helmet and the stump was horrible, but there were more of these types of scenes to come as she got closer to the fighting. A Stryker sat on its side with two corpses pinned partially beneath, the faces of the people, both women, were twisted forever in agony. Further on there was a charred pile of what looked like just arms and legs. Courtney had to stare hard to see a few torsos and another bodiless head in among everything else.

  Then she came to a number of strange, green-painted, metal-beaked multi-axil vehicles, and of course these were burnt and twisted as well, but what really caught her eye were the destroyed radar dishes and the radio uplinks and the boosting equipment. “What the hell?” she exclaimed in a haunted whisper as she realized what had done all this damage.

  “They’re fighting each other. Shit.” It made her sick to think that brother was fighting brother when there were enemies at the gates.

  She moved closer to the burned-out equipment and didn’t need to see the sign that read, “Comm Unit, 345th” to know that the US military was targeting the Massachusetts command and control apparatus with a heavy emphasis on communications.

  Even though the machinery was destroyed, she felt suddenly vulnerable and glanced up at the skyline above the trees, thinking that the jets could be coming back to make sure the job of blowing everything up was completed. Perhaps, she thought, flying by at Mach-2, these vehicles didn’t look this bad. Maybe they even looked serviceable.

  Her only consolation was that the idling ‘vette, with it shiny red paint, didn’t look like anything but a fancy sports car. She was all set to relax, as far as being bombed was concerned, when she realized that, although a person would recognize the car, a computer chip in the brain of a Tomahawk missile wouldn’t know or care that the Corvette was a classic.

  For
all she knew, a submarine eight hundred miles away could have launched an entire salvo of missiles at her already, and at any second they would come zooming in out of the clear blue. In a flash, it would be her head lying in the middle of the road, and it would be her stump of a neck and her jutting, glistening red run of vertebrae poking up.

  “Oh, shit,” she whispered. Clearly, she needed a new plan, but just at that moment, what she needed more was to get the hell away from those vehicles. Cortney tore her eyes from the skyline and started to turn the Corvette around yet again. She was in the middle of a frantic K-turn when she saw a Humvee far down at the end of the road.

  To her frightened mind, it had an air of menace to it and she quickly completed her turn, all the while watching the Humvee come closer and closer, not knowing which side it belonged to. She got the ‘vette pointed back the way she had come and when she stomped the gas, the Corvette accelerated as only Corvettes could. In five seconds, she was doing eighty with both hands gripping the steering wheel. The forest road hadn’t been designed with that sort of speed in mind and she took hair-raising turns with screeching tires and hit little hills where it felt that she was airborne for a second or two.

  By the time she looked into the rearview mirror, the Humvee was nowhere in sight and she realized it hadn’t been following her at all and nor was she being tracked by cruise missiles or Harrier jump jets, if those were really a thing. She was alone, which, when she thought about it, wasn’t all that comforting, either.

  “Deck 1, this is Dispatch 6, over,” she said, for the fortieth time since waking up, and then held her breath, hoping that Deckard or Thuy would reply. When they didn’t, she sighed, on the verge of giving up. So far, she had survived mainly by being lucky. She had managed to find the right people in the right set of circumstances to get her to this point: some what safe within the Massachusetts border.