Surviving the Dead 03: Warrior Within

by James N. Cook

  “Never thought I’d be happy to hear that sound again,” he said.

  “Makes you want to reenlist, doesn’t it?”

  He glanced at me and snorted. “Yeah, it’s on my to-do list. Right under gouging my own eyes out and cutting my balls off with a rusty nail.”

  The helicopter became larger as it grew closer, a bulging cargo net swaying slowly beneath it.

  “Come on man, it wasn’t that bad, was it?”

  “You remember that fight with the Legion a couple of months back, right?”

  I grimaced, absently touching the scars on my side. “How could I forget?”

  “Imagine doing shit like that day in, and day out, for fifteen months at a time, with only seven months of downtime between deployments. Then repeat it five times. Do that, and you’ll have the beginning of an idea of what it was like over there.”

  I turned to look at him. “Jesus, five deployments?”

  He nodded, his mouth set in a firm line.

  “No wonder you’re such a grumpy bastard. If I had to go that long without getting laid, that many times, I’d probably be an asshole, too.”

  He didn’t quite manage to keep the grin off his face when he punched me in the arm. Hard.

  “Hey, not in front of the kids,” I said, pointing a thumb at the recruits behind us. “Nobody wants to see mom and dad fighting.”

  Gabe was still grinning when he opened his mouth to say something, but a low chattering sound in the distance brought him up short.

  “The hell was that?” I asked.

  Gabe had gone still, staring toward the chopper. “That’s a fucking fifty-cal.”

  Just as he said it, the Chinook began to lose altitude and for a brief, heart-pounding moment, I thought it was going to crash into the forest and I would have to stand there watching, helpless to do anything about it. At the last second, the cargo net detached and dropped down into the trees, freeing up engine power for the massive helicopter to gain altitude and take evasive action.

  “Grabovsky!” Gabe turned and yelled. “The chopper’s under attack!”

  The other soldier was already moving and barking out orders. “Squad leaders, round up your squads. Do it now! Sanchez, Flannigan, Vincenzo, get to the armory and start issuing weapons. Marone, Helms, Jeffreys, we need trauma kits and stretchers. Robinson, you’re my runner. Get your skinny ass into town, find Doc Laroux, and tell her to get ready for wounded. MOVE IT!”

  I yelled out that Allison was at home. Robinson took off as fast as his long legs could carry him. The other recruits erupted into a flurry of action. I slipped my rifle around to the front and gripped it, watching the Chinook climb higher and turn back in our direction.

  “What now?” I asked, looking to Gabe.

  He was still watching the chopper, fists clenched at his sides. “We need to secure that cargo before the Legion gets it. Tell Grabovsky to get these recruits ready to move out platoon strength, then grab two people and meet me at the west trail.”

  With that, he turned on his heel and sprinted for the instructor’s barracks. I assumed he was going for his weapons, pried my hands loose from my rifle, slid it around to my back, and ran toward the armory.

  “Grabovsky,” I called out on the way. “We’re gonna go find those supplies. Gabe wants you to get the recruits ready to move out and meet us out there.”

  He gave me a thumbs-up. “Will do. Watch your ass out there, Riordan, the place is probably crawling with Legion. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He turned and began shouting orders at the recruits with renewed vigor, speeding them along with his cane.

  When I reached the armory, I grabbed the two closest recruits and shoved them at the door. “You two hand out rifles. Sanchez, Flannigan, you’re with me, let’s go.”

  They both grabbed a carbine, a bandolier of ammo, and followed me as I ran toward the western edge of the field. Gabe caught up with us on the way. He had two long, green cylinders slung over his back, and he was carrying his big SCAR 17 battle rifle.

  “Are those rockets?” I asked, pointing over his shoulder.

  “Yep. I don’t know where they got that fifty, but I want to make sure we have the firepower to take it out. Grabovsky can fucking bill me.”

  Flannigan spoke up from behind me, “Hey, you wanna tell us where we’re going?”

  “Hold up, Eric,” Gabe said, slowing to a halt. I stopped.

  “Listen, playtime is over.” He turned to face the two recruits. “This is the real deal. That cargo you saw drop? That’s shit we need, and we can’t let the Legion get their hands on it. We have no idea how many of them there are, and the fuckers have a fifty-caliber machine gun. We have to get there, take out that fifty, set up a perimeter, and hold out until backup arrives. You two come with us, you might not come home. If you want to back out of this fight, now would be a good time to do it.”

  “Fuck that,” Flannigan said. “This is what I joined up for.”

  Gabe’s mouth flattened into a tight smile. “What about you Sanchez. You ready for this?”

  The Mexican shrugged. “Probably not, but you gotta die of something, right?”

  “Great. Awesome,” I said. “Can we get a move on now?”

  “Quick check.” Gabe tapped his rifle. “Safeties off, round in the chamber. You two, secure those bandoliers around your waist, you want that ammo quick at hand.”

  We all checked out gear, and I was glad Gabe had said something. In all the excitement, I had forgotten to chamber a round.

  “Everybody good?”

  We were.

  “All right, I’ll take point. The rest of you fan out, five-yard intervals. You two watch our flanks. Eric, you keep an eye on our six. Stay low, stay quiet, keep your heads on a swivel, and when the shooting starts, stay in your lane. Let’s move.”

  Gabe turned and jogged down the trail. The rest of us followed.

  *****

  One of the many lessons Gabe taught me about warfare is that going after an enemy head on, when said enemy knows what direction you’re coming from, is never a good idea. Success in combat comes down to three things: sufficient firepower, knowledge of an enemy’s location, and most importantly, the element of surprise. Contrary to popular belief, modern warfare, rather than being an outrageously bloody slugfest, is more of a prolonged series of sneak attacks, traps, and ambushes. In this arena, if a man wants to live to a ripe old age, then he had better damned well make sure that when the shooting starts, he is the ambusher, and not the ambushee.

  It was with this lesson in mind that I found myself growing increasingly nervous as we drew closer to the area where the Chinook’s cargo had taken a swan dive. We had not encountered any opposition, and had seen no sign of the Legion having been there, despite the fact that we were about to cross into their territory. The forest was quiet.

  The ground under my feet had been sloping steadily upward for nearly half a mile, and I knew we had to be getting close to a ridgeline. Sure enough, up ahead Gabe held up a fist. He flattened his hand, lowered it slowly toward the ground, and then moved it forward. Turning around, he pointed two fingers at his eyes. In plain English, this meant stop, get down, belly crawl to my position, enemy sighted.

  I was the first to reach Gabe, crawling next to him to see what he was looking at. The hill beneath me sloped abruptly downward, sparsely dotted with trees, and terminated at a steep berm above a section of crumbling two-lane blacktop. Ahead of us, we saw six men milling about, and more than a dozen heavy-duty plastic crates scattered across the empty highway. On the side of the road, an old Browning heavy machine gun lay next to a wheelbarrow, along with a tripod and two boxes of ammunition. Gabe and I exchanged a glance, then backed off down the hill to wait for Sanchez and Flannigan.

  “Here’s the plan,” Gabe whispered when they arrived. “I’m going to stay here on the ridgeline. Flannigan, you go back down the hill about twenty yards and keep an eye on our flanks. Remember, check both sides, check our six, then do it again. Keep
at it until I call for you. Clear?”

  “Crystal.” She nodded.

  “Sanchez, you work your way nice and quiet about twenty-five paces that way from my position.” He pointed to a spot on the ridgeline. “Stay low, and for God’s sake, don’t skyline yourself. Eric, you take the other side. I’m going to count to sixty, and then I’m going to fire a rocket at that machine gun. When it hits, you two use the distraction to start taking out those six raiders. If you can, wound a couple so we can take them prisoner. Any more show up, give them the same treatment. We have to hold this ridge until Grabovsky gets here with reinforcements. And don’t forget, all this noise is going to draw the infected, so don’t waste ammo. Make ’em count; we might have to shoot our way out of here. Everybody clear?”

  We all gave an affirmative and moved into position.

  I adjusted the magnification on my scope, attached a suppressor to the barrel, deployed the spring-loaded bipod from the foregrip, and settled down into a firing position. I was well hidden on a depression just beyond the edge of the ridgeline. From there, in just a few quick steps, I could move back down the embankment and out of sight in either direction. This would allow me to take cover and relocate if the raiders below tried to concentrate fire on me.

  A strong breeze picked up from the north and whipped over the hills, carrying stinging swarms of autumn leaves across the low valley. The trees around me made a good windbreak, but the raiders down the hill had nothing to shield them from the blinding debris. As the wind picked up, they had to shout to hear one another. From the snippets of conversation I could make out, it sounded like they were excited.

  “Fuck me, look at all this shit,” one of them yelled. “We’re gonna be drowning in pussy for a month.”

  I gritted my teeth at the implications of that, and took a deep breath to steady my aim.

  Seconds that felt like hours ticked by while the raiders worked on a few crates, trying to pry them open. I forced myself to stay calm, slowed my breathing, and sighted in on one of the men below. He was tall, with broad shoulders, a bushy beard, and long hair. Kind of like Gabe before he shaved and got a haircut. Gauging the distance at about a hundred yards, I made another sight adjustment and waited.

  Come on Gabe, any time now.

  Just as I was beginning to wonder if Gabe had lost count and started over, the concussive blast of the rocket launcher shattered the air. The warhead, powerful enough to destroy a fully armored tank, slammed into the road in the blink of an eye, swallowing the fifty-caliber and the wheelbarrow in a cloud of white smoke. The force of the explosion thumped upward through the ground and into my chest, leaving me with an odd, hollow feeling in my gut. Concussion and shrapnel ripped into the raiders nearby, shredding one of them like a side of beef and knocking two others to the ground. One writhed in agony, bloody and screaming, while the other laid still, white bone protruding from a jagged hole in his thigh. Rocks and metal rained down around where the rocket had hit, and only a crater remained where the machine gun had been just a few seconds ago.

  For a moment, all I could do was stare. I had seen rockets detonate before on television, but never like this—up close and personal. Looking down at that instant, rocket-propelled destruction, a fervent hope took root inside of me that I would never find myself on the receiving end of such a terrible thing.

  The raider farthest from the explosion recovered first, snatched up his rifle, and started spraying bullets at the leftover smoke cloud where Gabe had fired. Knowing my friend, he had probably already dropped the canister and was moving to another position, but I wasn’t about to gamble on that. I leaned down over my rifle, took aim, and triggered a three-round burst. All three bullets hit center of mass, dropping the raider to the ground. He let go of his rifle, clutching at his chest—wounded, but still alive. I hit him again, and finally, he went still.

  The last two, shellshocked and terrified, turned and bolted for the other side of the road. I tried to take aim at one of them but couldn’t get a good shot. A single muted crack, the familiar report of Gabriel’s SCAR, sounded from my left. The shot took one of the would-be escapees high on the back, punched a hole straight through him, and erupted from his chest in an arterial spray. He pitched forward, screaming and trying to crawl toward the trees. Another crack sounded, and the top half of his head disintegrated in a red mist.

  Powerful stuff, those .308 rounds.

  The other one had already made it to cover, running in a serpentine pattern through the foliage. Sanchez’s M-4 cracked a few times sending splinters flying around him, but nothing hit. The stands of trees were too thick, and soon, he disappeared over the edge of a hill, out of sight.

  I cursed, got up on one knee, and began sweeping the far embankment for movement. It didn’t look like we had any other company, so I fell back and made my way over to where I had last seen Gabriel. One of the rocket launchers lay on the ground among the leaves, smoke curling from the open ends, but no sign of him. I made a low whistle, hoping his ears weren’t ringing so badly that he couldn’t hear me. A few seconds went by. Nothing. I whistled again, louder. This time, I heard him whistle back, ahead of me and off to my left, closer to Sanchez’s position.

  Now that I knew where he was, I worked my way back down the hill toward Flannigan, approaching slowly and with caution, not wanting to spook her into doing something I would regret. As I got closer, I heard her voice hiss out through the trees.

  “Bluebird.”

  It was one of the standard challenges that Grabovsky had drilled into them, a way to identify friend from foe.

  “Actual.” I hissed back, surprised at how quickly I remembered it. I suppose the G-man had done a good job teaching me as well.

  Flannigan stood up from behind a thick maple trunk and came over to kneel beside me. “What happened back there?”

  “Gabe took out the fifty, and five guys down the hill are having a very bad day.”

  “I thought there were six.”

  “There were. One got away.”

  She nodded, turning her head to scan the forest, pale blue eyes flitting back and forth.

  “I’m gonna head back up the hill,” I said. “Stay hidden, and if you see anything, give a holler. I’ll come running.”

  “Won’t I give away my position if I do that?”

  “Yes, but we don’t have radios, so it’s the best we can do. Don’t be a hero. If trouble shows up, call for help. Understood?”

  She nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  I gave her a pat on the shoulder and made my way back up to my firing position. The wind had died down, and the road had gone still and quiet, save for the weakening cries of the lone surviving raider. He lay in a widening pool of blood, and even from this far away, I could see that his skin was ghostly pale. So much for taking a prisoner.

  After what felt like half an hour had gone by, I looked at my watch and saw that it had only been five minutes. The raider down the hill had gone still, and when I looked at him through my scope, it didn’t look like his chest was moving. Too bad for him. He should have thought twice before trying to steal from the United States Army.

  Looking at the crater left behind by the LAW rocket, my brain finally revved into gear, and I started puzzling out the pieces of the morning’s events. The presence of a heavy machine gun, combined with the fact that the Legion had known where to set it up, all begged some very pressing and disturbing questions.

  Where they had gotten the hardware from wasn’t all that difficult to guess. During the Outbreak, when it had become clear that there was no saving the Eastern Seaboard, the president had ordered a massive evacuation across the Mississippi River. The Army had hung back, trying to hold off the undead long enough for millions of refugees to escape to what they thought was safety. It was a valiant effort, but ultimately, it had proven futile. The dead found their way across the Mississippi, and the apocalypse had continued unabated.

  During the fighting, countless military units were overrun, and their comrad
es, helpless to do anything about it, had been forced to leave them behind. As a result, there was an untold wealth of military hardware out in the wastelands just waiting from someone to come along and pick it up.

  Hollow Rock wasn’t far from the Mississippi River.

  The Legion could move freely for nearly a hundred square miles.

  It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots.

  As for how they had known where to set up their ambush, there were a couple of different ways that could have played out. The most frightening possibility was that someone from Hollow Rock had known what direction the Chinook would be coming from and had somehow fed that information back to the Legion. If Hollow Rock had a spy in its midst, then our problems had just gotten a hell of a lot more complicated. Which was ironic, considering that we were preparing to do the exact same thing to them.

  Another possibility was that the Legion had found more than one machine gun, and had set up several firing positions around town on likely paths of approach for the helicopter. It would not have been difficult to do, considering how many abandoned buildings there were scattered throughout this portion of Carroll County. If that was the case, then the Legion’s threat level had just jumped up the scale from annoying to fucking terrifying.

  As if that weren’t bad enough, the fact that the Legion had actually managed score a few hits on the Chinook meant that they had at least one person with military experience in their ranks who could not only operate a heavy weapon, but do so skillfully. Unlike what was once portrayed in the movies, hitting an aircraft on the wing with a ground-based weapon, even one as powerful as the ma deuce, is extremely difficult to pull off. It would have taken an experienced, well-trained gunner to do it. That did not bode well.

  My thoughts were interrupted when I heard faint footsteps crunching through leaves on their way to my position. Through the trees, I saw Gabe approaching, moving slowly and scanning the woods behind us for threats. He must have wanted me to notice him coming. Otherwise, I never would have heard a thing until he was right next to me.