by Alex McHale
Zombie Killers: Cadence For The Dead
C-130 rolling down the strip,
Zombie Killers on a one way trip.
Mission not secret, destination Dead Zone
We all know we ain’t never coming home.
Stand up, hook up, shuffle to the door,
Jump right out on the count of four.
If I get bitten on the old drop zone,
Put a bullet in my head and ship me home.
Chapter 1
Losing a friend is hard. When that friend was one I thought of as my brother, it was even harder. The helo thundered upriver, back to Firebase Castle. I kept seeing Jonesy in my mind, swinging away at the Zombies with that big piece of metal he always carried, leading them away from us so we could board the chopper and get to safety. Ahmed’s bullet ripping through his heart.
It seemed to happen in slow motion, in my mind anyway. In the movies, you get shot, you fall down. No blood, no gore. In real life, this sucky, post-apocalypse life anyway, you can see the blood splash out. It looked black in the light of the full moon. Again and again it replayed in my mind.
I sat leaning up against the wall of the CH-47. Brit was wrapped in a blanket and Doc was keeping an eye on her. Ahmed was up front with the pilot and SPC Mya was cleaning her weapon while she yelled nonstop in Redshirt’s ear, trying to be heard over the sound of the turbine engines. She was trying to keep him awake until we landed at the base and he was admitted to the hospital.
Below me the waters of the Hudson River reflected the silver moonlight. I started to shake, my hands clenched tightly together, and I threw up over the edge of the ramp. The vomit immediately blew back into the compartment from the powerful downdraft of the rotors, and the crew chief shot me a dirty look. Screw him.
We had been hurt, badly. Lt. Carter, attached to the mission, was dead, in a stupid, suicidal charge against a crowd of Zombies. My friend and teammate for the last two years, Jonesy, had saved my life again, and had paid the full price for it. I could never pay him back now.
I knew what we had to do. After we had dropped off Redshirt and Brit at the base, we needed to head back and recover Jonesy’s body. Zombies never eat corpses. They will only chew on you as long as you have a spark of life in you. Ahmed’s shot had punched out his heart, and I knew Jonesy would still be lying there.
Doc made his way over to me and handed me a helicopter crewman’s headset. I put it on and plugged into the intercom system so we could talk.
“Nick, we can’t bring Redshirt to the hospital. As soon as they realize that he’s immune to Zombie bites that kid is going to turn into the world’s biggest guinea pig. They will keep him just healthy enough to produce blood for lab tests for the rest of his life.”
In the fight yesterday at West Point, Private First Class Redshirt, a Navajo kid who had been attached to the Zombie Killers, had gone down swinging in pile of zombies, and we had though he was lost. He showed up later, all torn to hell and bitten in several places, but still alive and uninfected. Doc had told me that he was only the third person he had ever heard of who was immune to the zombie plague, and the other two had gone missing.
“Tough on him. Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”
“Bullshit. If you believed that, you would be back in the real Army instead of scouting around out here.”
I knew he had me. The kid had done good and become a member of the team, and I knew what would happen once the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) got their hands on him. They would sic their pet zombies on him and keep trying to figure out why he didn’t get infected, and he would die soon enough from whatever other diseases developed in their rotting mouths.
“OK. He stays, but Mya is going to have to look after him. You, me and Ahmed are going back for Jonesy’s body tomorrow, if we can get it.”
He nodded and unplugged from the intercom. We touched down on the island as the sun rose.
Chapter 2
Brit complained, but she had to stay. We needed her whole. And she needed serious antibiotics after her wound had opened up and she had fallen in the river. By the next night, she had a raging fever. It had finally broken, but she had been left exhausted and wrung out. Even her complaints had seemed like something she felt she had to do. She drifted off into a deep sleep and the PA at the medical tent had kicked us out. Redshirt was recuperating in another tent, away from the eyes of the medical personnel, guarded by Specialist Mya.
We set off downriver that afternoon, with the boat crew gunning the engine at full blast. I knew they felt bad for leaving us. If they hadn’t had to return to base for repairs, Jonesy and Lt. Carter would still be alive. I didn’t blame them, though; equipment broke down. It couldn’t be helped.
The military ran operations on a shoestring. When the Apocalypse happened, many of the bases and depots that held spare parts for the military had been overrun. In the few years since then, there wasn’t anyone making anything except the simple basics, like weapons and ammunition. Even our uniforms were patched and mended over and over. That and irregular maintenance (or, in most cases, no maintenance at all) had taken its toll on anything mechanical. The boats waiting for us at West Point had suffered an engine fire and an explosion, causing casualties. They had been forced to return to base, leaving us to duke it out with a horde of Zs.
The dock where we had fought as we waited for the helicopter pulled into view. Zombie bodies were scattered all over, from our rifles and the airstrikes. We pulled up to the dock and climbed out, weapons at the ready, but there was no movement in sight.
Ahmed kept watch with his sniper rifle as Doc and I searched for Jonesy’s body. He lay where he had fallen, sprawled flat on his back, iron bar still clasped in his hands. Doc unwrapped a body bag and we tipped him over into it.
“Damn, Jonesy, you stink.” My eyes were watering and I felt like throwing up. Two days in the sun and he was almost unrecognizable. At least his eyes were closed. The blood had dried black on his uniform around the hole in his heart made by Ahmed’s bullet. He had always been too big to wear body armor.
“I know, right?” said Doc. “Maybe you should take a bath every now and then, Brother.”
It was either that or bust out crying. It’s just how you deal with it sometimes. This man had been my friend, as close to me as my own brother, or closer. We shared untold danger and saved each other’s lives too many times to count, and here I was about to zip up the bag and close him off from the sunlight forever. Doc motioned me aside. “I’ll do it.”
I turned away, but I still heard the zipper as he closed it. Goodbye, Brother. We each grabbed a handle on the body bag and tried to lift. “Damn, he’s heavy” grunted Doc. Ahmed slung his rifle and came over to give us a hand, and we pulled him over to the boat. The boat crew helped us get him onboard and we headed back upriver. Not a soul or a Zombie in sight.
We buried him on the south side of Bannerman Island, just above the shoreline, so his grave got sunlight all year long. Brit stood with me and held my hand while one of the infantry sergeants, a lay preacher, spoke over the grave. He prayed for salvation of Jonesy’s soul, who apparently had died doing the Lord’s work. Brit squeezed my hand tight to keep me from interrupting him.
As far as I was concerned, God had turned his back on the world, and I can’t say I blamed Him.
Chapter 3
I sat in the tent, cleaning my rifle, feeling vaguely depressed and incredibly bored. Doc lay on the cot next to me, leafing through an old Maxim magazine he had found in the ruins. On the cover was some actress
who looked vaguely familiar. He reached the centerfold and flipped her open, then held her out for me to see.
“Does this look familiar?”
“Somewhat. One of those reality TV show or something.”
He laughed, pulled out a red marker and quickly scribbled on the picture, then held it back to me. He had reddened her eyes and put blood around her mouth.
“Holy crap!”
Doc burst out laughing. “Thought you might recognize her that way. Now if I could just find a yellow highlighter to draw in where you puked all over her. Ha ha ha!”
Redshirt sat up in his cot and Mya leaned forward.
“Come on, Doc, tell us the story.”
“Yeah, let’s hear it!”
I shot him a dirty look but he gave me the finger.
“So some bonehead gets the idea that we should scout out Malibu. Why, I don’t know. Reports of some civilian survivors holed up in one of those mansions or something. So we parachute on the grounds of this mansion, me, Nick, Brit, Simmons, and, um …” he trailed off.
“Rabinowitz.” I prompted him.
“Oh yesh, the Rabbi. I wonder how he’s doing?”
“I heard he’s getting around good on his new leg.”
“Cool.”
“Get back to the story, old timers!”
“Shut it, Kids. So anyway, we are scouting this mansion, everything is cool, no signs of life til we get into the kitchen. There, sitting at a table, is a woman with her back to us. Nick puts his hand on her shoulder, and says, “US Army, we’re here to help!”And this zombie jumps up, turns around and launches herself at him! I haven’t ever seen Nick move backward so fast. Just before she gets to him, he pops off a shot that catches her through the jaw and blows off the back of her head. She falls on him, spraying him with her blood and brains, and he throws up all down her back.”
“Screw you, Doc!”
Red and Mya were laughing. “Wait, it gets better. Every time, for quite a long while, whenever we shot a Z, someone on the team would yell, US ARMY, WE’RE HERE TO HELP!”
I was laughing too. It’s funny how things that were so terrifying at the time turn into funny stories down the road.
The tent flap was drawn aside and a sergeant from Operations came in.
“Nick, the Battalion S-3 is on the horn. They’ve got a new mission for your team.”
“OK, be there in a few minutes. Doc, start doing Pre-Combat Checks and Inspections. Red, you up for this?”
“I’m OK, Chief.”
“Alright. I’ll see if Brit can get away from the medics yet on my way back.”
I headed out into the bright June sunlight, feeling a little better.
Chapter 4
Inside the Ops tent, the computers were driving the temperature higher. Blue Force Tracker, Intel source trackers, artillery, plasma screen for briefings and more than a dozen radios to stay in touch with the various patrols on the shore and boats transiting the river. They all combined to generate a heat that the floor fan did little to dissipate.
I walked past a table where the liaisons from the other services had set up shop. We had one each from the Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard, and I made a note to get with each of them after I found out what this mission was.
At the Current Ops section, I took the microphone from the Ops Sergeant and called Task Force Liberty Ops.
“Liberty Main, this is Lost Boys, over.”
“Lost Boys, this is Liberty Main, wait one, over.”
After a minute, Major Flynn came on the line. After asking me how the team was doing, and getting my assurances that we were OK, he expressed condolences over us losing Jonesy. Then we got down to business.
“Nick, how do you guys feel about an airborne insertion? Over.”
“Friggin hate the idea, over”
I could almost hear him laughing.
“Well, tough crap. We need you to drop on a target, over.”
“I could say no, over.”
“You could, and I could draft you back into the Army again, over.”
He had me by the balls. I knew that Doc and I could disappear back into the woods, and Brit would go with us, but dammit, I liked what we were doing. We were, in our small way, making a difference.
“OK, send me a target with an OPORDER, over.”
“It will be in your inbox. The Navy wants back into New York, and we are going to do a hold and clear as soon as they identify a target facility. You guys will be jumping in first, giving a report, then waiting for the Airborne to drop. You will get relieved by the Navy. Over.”
“Understood. I’m going to need ammo and other refit, over.”
“Draw what you can from the Infantry. We’re tight up here. Liberty Main, out.”
I let out a deep breath. We were going to need a palette of ammunition, water and construction materials. Replacements for some of the weapons we had lost. Maybe another trooper, perhaps that big redneck sniper from the Infantry company. I headed over to the liaison table to talk to the other branches and see what support we could get from them.
Chapter 5
It’s funny how you can hate a job and love it at the same time. Part of me wished we were back in Stillwater, rebuilding the house and growing some food. Another part wouldn’t have missed this for anything in the world.
I had just stepped outside the Ops tent, back into the bright sunlight, when an old-school air raid siren started to wind up. Soldiers started scrambling for their fighting positions, manning machine guns and other heavy weapons set up around the island. As I passed the howitzers, I saw their crews franticly spinning the elevation wheel, lowering the barrel so it pointed out over the river. Three of them were levering the hand spike at the rear up in the air, getting ready to spin the cannon left or right. One had been set up on each side of the island, dragged there by the lone Humvee that had been brought down on the barge. Barricades made of empty ammunition boxes filled with dirt had been piled high in a circle around them, leaving just enough clearance for the barrel to direct fire on targets in the river.
I jumped down into the firing position next to our tent, joining Ahmed and Doc in the trench. We had an MK-19 40mm automatic grenade launcher. Normally useless against zombies, it would be great against anything coming across the river at us.
“What’s up?” I yelled over the sound of the siren, which was winding down.
“No idea!” answered Doc. We sat patiently, doing the old soldier thing of hurry up and wait. Not for too long, though. From around the back of the island came one of our assault boats. At the same time, I caught glimpse of a long, low shape cruising up the river, a couple of hundred meters away, about halfway between us and the far shore.
“ATTENTION, UNIDENTIFIED CRAFT. THIS IS THE UNITED STATES ARMY. STOP AND PREPARE TO BE BOARDED.” The words boomed out of a loudspeaker mounted on one of the turrets of the old castle and echoed across the water.
The boat, or ship, or whatever you want to call it, didn’t stop but turned toward us. It was about forty feet long and looked like someone had taken an old fishing boat and welded steel across the deck to make a primitive armored ship. On the front, a slit had been cut to make room for the barrel of some kind of automatic weapon. Probably a light machine gun looted from some National Guard armory. Through my binoculars, I could see a line of skulls strung across the bow.
I handed the binoculars to Doc. After a few seconds of looking, he handed them back to me and spit on the ground in front of us. “Ugh. Fucking Reaver jerkoffs.” I couldn’t stand them either. Zombies I killed without passion. They were what they were. People trying to survive I left alone if they let me alone, and helped them out when I could. Cannibals we shot on the spot, if there was evidence of it. Mad Maxes though, were scumbags who preyed on other survivors. Looting and stealing, killing just for the sheer fun of it. Many of them were criminals who hadn’t really been able to function in the real world anyway. They loved the mayhem the Zombie Apocalypse created. Some people called
them “Mad Maxes”. Others called them “Reavers”. Didn’t matter what you called them, they had no place in society if we were going to claw our way out of this mess.
“Look at that shit, they even have a frigging pirate flag hanging off the ass end.”
Apparently someone in command at the base had noticed it too, because I heard a cheer go up around me and turned to look. A makeshift flag pole had been set up on the highest point of the island, and up it ran the stars and stripes. At that, the ship started to turn away and the guys in the assault boat put it into high gear.
The guy in the next hole yelled, “Hell yes, there’s a new sheriff in town, Scumbags!” just as the ship started firing at the assault boat with rifle and a smattering of machine gun fire. Ahmed leaned forward, put his eye to his rifle scope and shot the man who was working the heavy gun on the back of the craft. The assault boat swerved away under full power.
Doc racked a round into the 19 and started walking grenades toward the ship but they were just out of range. Tracers were already reaching out to it from the .50 caliber set next to us when an enormous CRACK came from the western howitzer position, and the ship exploded in a muffled BOOM that echoed across the water. A high explosive round with a point-detonating fuse, fired over an open site from the 105 mm howitzer, had impacted on the steel plate welded to the back deck and blown the ship in half. The front half started to burn, while the rear sank quickly into the water. As we watched, burning figures jumped from the wheelhouse into the water. Ahmed shot them as they fell, muttering a prayer for mercy as he fired.
The assault boat moved in after the front half had slipped beneath the water, leaving a patch of burning oil on the surface. I watched them through my binos as they went from body to body, pulling each one up to check for signs of life, to see if we could get a prisoner. They turned back empty.
Chapter 6
Someone, I don’t remember who, once said that all warfare is logistics. That never held more truth than when fighting Zombies. One on one, maybe, you can beat a zombie, though they are strong, and once they start attacking, they never, ever stop. More than one, unarmed, you’re dead, or even worse, joining their ranks, if your heart doesn’t give out fast enough. A baseball bat or some other kind of knocker, you can hold out for a while, but having more than a few around you, you’re going to get swamped, like Jonesy when he went down fighting at West Point.
