Zombie Killers: HEAT

by John F. Holmes

  And the last one. Elimination of the infected. Last I knew there were hundreds of compartments on a supercarrier, and the crew was roughly six thousand. The Lincoln had been operating right up until the second plague, but had been a target for the dictator’s weapons. That had been almost two years ago, and although we had recovered the Washington, Reagan, Stennis and Roosevelt, each one had had been a bloodbath that decimated the Navy SEALS sent in to clean them out. The effort was given up when it was realized there was only enough trained personnel left to man two carriers, and the rest of our fleet floated around the world, home to thousands of undead.

  I took out my little green notebook and started to plan. The first priority would be the Mountain Republic guys. Quickly, what came to mind were three things:

  First, it would have to be an ambush. We were never going to stand up to these guys in open combat. I made a note that Ziv would start training the team on concealment and ambush procedures. If we could catch them in the open, then shock and firepower would do.

  Second, how the hell were we going to get there? I need to know exactly WHEN the MR guys were supposed to show up. “Proceed at best speed” was often code word for “go get yourself killed”. If they got there first, then we would figure out how to take them on from there.

  Matter of fact, maybe AFTER they secured the weapons might be the time to hit them. Kill a couple birds with one stone. Let them take on the undead in the carrier, take casualties, and hopefully fail. We could hit them on the way out.

  I got back to the how we could get there, and started thinking of the assets we had. Brit always knew everything that was going on in the military, don’t ask me how, so I would task her with figuring that out. Best speed implied aviation, but there was a Surface to Air threat all the way up and down the East Coast. I made a little star next to it and wrote “Brit”.

  Last, I ran down the team in my mind, thinking of who could do what. An ambush meant some heavy weapons, but fighting undead meant lots and lots of ammo. Rather than compromise between the two, I decided that a cache for ship clearing could be buried until after the ambush phase of things. Until then, 5.56 ammo instead of .22, a heavy machine gun, maybe a mortar or two.

  I called on the radio for everyone to meet me in the dining room, to discuss my plan, and looked at the slowly growing corn fields on my farm. It seemed like every single time things were going well here, something called me away. Were it not for the fact that a nuke being set off, or even a dirty bomb, would directly affect us here, I’d say screw it.

  “OK, listen up,” I said when everyone had taken a seat. “Some of you already know, but I’ll recap the mission we were given.” Then I told them all what we were being asked to do, and watched for the reaction on each person’s face.

  Brit remained impassive. I knew that later she would talk things over with me, but one thing I loved about her was that she didn’t go against me in public, unless it was a no shit you’re going to get us killed moment. My worry about her was that she was going to make things personal with Strasser and his goon.

  Ziv also said nothing, merely took out his knife and began scratching his initials into the rough wooden table. I had put it there because he ALWAYS did that when he was bored, and I didn’t want Brit to kill him. We had a nice table once, and she flipped her shit when she saw him gouging it.

  Scott Orr merely took notes, probably thinking of what he was going to need in his aide bag. He was an old hand at mission planning, but I could see some relief in his eyes that he wasn’t in charge of this one. Ryan Szimanski, however, almost wet his pants with glee at the thought of doing any maritime stuff. My concern was most with the three newest members of the team.

  Shona Lowenstein was a soldier through and through, and I could see that she was running the tactical problems through her head like it was a field exercise at OCS, making notes and jotting down ideas. Not worried about her, though there would be some transition from armor to being light.

  Elam Yasir said nothing, merely drummed his fingers on the table. If he was anything like his father, he would be a quiet man, and one didn’t get to be a sergeant in the US Infantry nowadays without skill and intelligence. He had said little since he had shown up, being sparse with words, but had also thrown himself into training, and run hundreds of rounds through every long rifle we owned. If anything, he was BETTER than his father. He and Ziv had disappeared for a week, heading across the mountains to hunt undead over in Vermont.

  Obi … well, the kid almost jumped out of his seat. “Hot frigging damn! We get to kick some ass!”

  “Sit down, child,” said Ziv in his flat, dead calm voice, not even looking at him. Obi was still covered in bruises from their ‘training’ session, and resented the Serb.

  “Who the fuck are you calling a child, old man?” said Obi, turning to face Ziv.

  Eyebrows went up around the table, and I honestly wanted to see what would happen if the two of them went at it, so I let them glare at each other for a bit. Well, Obi glared at Ziv, and Ziv continued to scratch at the table.

  Brit broke the tension, like she often did, by making a joke. “Aww, he’s so CUTE when he gets all flustered!” she muttered, looking at Obi. “Like a big teletubby!” Everyone laughed, and he sat down, embarrassed, muttering “What the F is a teletubby?”

  “Listen, everyone,” I said, after the laughter stopped. “All of us bring something to this table, and we either work as a team, or we die. Does everyone get that?”

  There were grumbling assents from around the room, and even a sulky, mumbled “yeah” from Obi. I knew he was going to be a pain in the ass until we actually got into the shit, and then he would be humbled, or not. Nothing like an undead howl or shrapnel from a frag wizzing past your head to turn you into a smooth functioning team.

  Chapter 251

  What most people don’t realize about upstate New York in the summer time, is that it can get incredibly hot. Sweat rolled down my face from under my Kevlar, streaking the camo paint. Even more annoying, a mosquito was buzzing around my ear, with that annoying whine. It settled on the slight gap between my uniform sleeve and my glove, and I watched it extend its probe and probably inject me with yellow fever or West Nile virus or some other shit. I didn’t move, though. I held absolutely still, trying desperately to not move a muscle.

  Beneath me on the street, walking slowly through the ruins of Mechanicville, a pair of scouts from the 2-108 Infantry BN moved cautiously. They advanced slowly, in bounding overwatch, one man moving while the other looked cautiously around for threats.

  Around me, invisible from the road, were the rest of the team, shaped into a crooked L. At the base of the L, off to one side of the road but still with good line of site, Obi lay behind a rubble pile, underneath a piece of torn canvas. Beside him was Ziv, both to give him an experienced older hand, and to feed him ammo for the 240B machine gun. I had stuck them together because the kid needed someone to smack him down a bit.

  Further behind them, high up in a ruined third floor office, Elam peered through a hole punched in the cinder block, while Brit operated as his spotter. She had a tablet with a fiber optic webcam watching over the entire scene. Normally she wouldn’t depend on a battery operated device, but the ambush was going to be a one-time thing. Hopefully.

  The infantry had been given the mission of moving a heavy box, simulating a nuclear warhead, twenty kilometers from Albany to Stillwater, through the mostly cleared, but heavily damaged, urban strip that lined Rt. 32 for most of the way. They had been told to be on the lookout for undead and that our team was going to simulate an ambush somewhere along the route. I was a bit nervous about that; we only wanted them to get past us without them discovering the ambush. For that I had established with them that we would fire a red flare in recognition of being discovered.

  It was a dangerous game, because both they and we had live ammunition. A single twitch on the wrong finger could be the start of a bad day, and the infantry had to be on the look
out for a real ambush from reavers or an actual undead attack. I wanted to know, though, that the team could set up and operate on the fly.

  We had already done so, once. The first ambush set up had been just north of Albany, and they had walked right through without noticing anything. If we had wanted to, we could have done enough damage to make them non-mission capable. Once their rear guard had passed, I put the team to the real test. We fell back to our assembly sight, and RAN. Full out, battle gear, packs and weapons, sweating in the July heat, parallel to where we knew the infantry were advancing cautiously up the road. Down side streets, through abandoned houses with weapons drawn. Twice we silently dispatched undead that had attacked us as we went into buildings, and once Elam had twisted his ankle going over a fence, but he went gamely on, supported by Ziv until he could put weight on it again. We moved with little noise, though I noted that Obi was having a hard time keeping up. The kid was learning a lesson about being a scout. It wasn’t all about shooting well. More often, it was about being able to move quietly and unseen. Better a fight avoided than a fight lost.

  The next ambush site was in Mechanicville, a few kilometers short of their actual objective. I figured that by now, the scouts would be getting a little bit numb to their search, and we could stand a better chance of them walking by again. The first site had been easy; they were just setting out and we had plenty of time to prepare. This one was much tougher, a hasty ambush in an unknown spot.

  I watched the scout as he peered down the street from a doorway, then motioned silently for his partner to advance. Both of them passed down the street, walking five feet from where Shona, Scott and Ryan crouched behind a fallen wall, just to my right. They were holding as absolutely still as I was.

  The two scouts passed by, then almost walked on top of Obi and Ziv’s position. In case of a real ambush, I was to open fire, and Ziv was tasked with taking out the scouts, then returning to feed the gun, which would be hammering the main body. We would engage for as long as I thought we were causing casualties, then break contact to hopefully hit them again. Of course, in Miami, there would be the undead to cause a problem, but I had thought about that too. I was pretty sure that Strasser was no dummy, and some kind of noise diversion would have been emplaced miles way to draw the undead away from the area. I was pretty sure their extraction from the carrier would be by truck or ship, but either way they had to get off the carrier somehow, and we could hit them then. If they went by boat, a friend was going to be nearby to shove an Mk – 48 torpedo up their asses. In fact, that was what I preferred.

  Just as the last scout passed the emplaced machine gun team, the rest of the platoon started to move into the open space I had selected for the engagement. The looked tired, and the guys humping the two hundred pound simulated warhead were dragging ass. I was holding my breath; another minute and the lead man would be in line with machine gun.

  Where upon, of course, the canvas hiding said machine gun erupted off the two figures, and Ziv and Obi rolled out onto the street, locked in hand to hand combat. “Oh for fucks sake,” I heard Shona call over the team net, and Brit’s laugh echoed across the road. The infantry stopped where they were, staring at the two figures, who were covered with street dust and rapidly exchanging blows and trying holds on each other.

  “STAND DOWN!” I called out over the net, and stood up, finally slapping at the mosquito, long after it had infected me with whatever. “Come on,” I said to the rest of the team, and I jogged over to where they were fighting. The infantry had gathered around in a circle, with some of them cheering them on. I noticed, though, that they had put out flank security.

  “Are you going to stop them?” asked Ryan, but before I could answer, Shona spoke.

  “Hell no, let them fight it out. We do this all the time in the infantry. It gets bad blood out.”

  “NO KNIVES!” I yelled as I saw Obi, reach for his K-bar. Despite having more than fifty pounds and almost thirty years on the Serbian, he was getting his ass handed to him. I needn’t have said anything. Ziv grabbed his wrist, twisted and did some kind of pinch, sending the knife flying, and then kicked Obi in the balls as hard as he could. The younger man fell to the ground doubled over, and Ziv spit on him. The surrounding soldiers burst into cheers and started chanting “ZIV! ZIV!” and then one idiot actually started with “TWO MEN ENTER, ONE MAN LEAVES!” Soon they were all shouting it, and Ziv walked around with his arms up in the air, a rare smile on his face.

  I sighed. “Scott, see what you can do for him. Brit, go get our hero calmed down and keep him away from Obi for the rest of the way back.”

  “Ha, do it yourself. I’m not going near him right now, the conquering hero will probably want me to suck his …”

  I interrupted her. “I get it. Ryan, take Ziv and …”

  Shona laughed and said “Ryan’s a squid, he’ll probably want to suck HIS dick!”

  The two women burst out laughing, as did Scott. Even Elam, normally very reserved, smiled. Ryan blushed and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like ‘nasty women’ under his breath.

  I love it when a team comes together.

  Chapter 252

  Downstairs, there was quite a party going on. When I left, Ziv and Odi had been halfway through a bottle of Vodka, with Shona going shot for shot with them. Each was trying to outdo the others in stories about combat, though I suspected that Ziv was holding back, and Odi was making half his shit up. Scotty Orr was playing his guitar, trying to teach Elam how to play. Both ignored the raucous drinking and shit talking. Ryan Szimanski was out on the river, cat fishing with Red and our kids. You couldn’t eat the fish from the Hudson, but it was still fun.

  We were leaving tomorrow, a UH-60 scheduled to take the team down to Providence Naval Base, where we would board the U.S.S Georgia for a fast sail down the East Coast to outside of Miami. The converted ballistic missile sub would stay hull down over the horizon and launch a UAV to recon the carrier, see if the MR people were there yet. Once we were within boat distance, we were going to go in under the cover of darkness and approach overland. Once there, it would be “make shit up on the fly”.

  I had a few concerns about what we were getting into, but they could wait. The team had been practicing non-stop for a week; intel had put the MR guys more than three weeks from starting their op, and we had used the time to drill constantly. All of our guys, except for maybe Obi, were professional soldiers, even if several were civilians in reality. In any case, they all had months and years of combat experience, and were good at it. The ones that sucked, well, they were dead by now.

  That left me some precious alone time with my wife. She lay on the bed, watching Game of Thrones for the umpteenth time on her laptop. I watched in the candle light and glow of the screen, thinking about when we first met. She still looked like the college girl who had saved my life, except now, at twenty seven, she was all woman. Soft curves and hard muscles, and steel right through her soul.

  Like almost everyone, the Apocalypse had thrown Brit for a loop. Often, in those first years, she had broken down into an elemental fury, angry at the way the world had passed, and more than a little unstable. Ever since we had confronted the woman who had set the undead plague onto the world, though, Brit had become more and more grounded. When I had almost lost it a few years ago, with too much death and dying piling up on me, she had been there to stop me from eating my pistol. Now, well, she still drove me crazy, and I had to watch out for her fiery red head temper when I actually did screw up, but she was my partner in all things. It’s funny how it had taken the end of the world to make us find each other. I sat down on the edge of the bed and unstrapped my leg, rubbing some lotion into the stump with one hand and gently twisting her red ponytail with my other.

  She shooed me away, annoyed that I was interrupting her show. ‘You know what pisses me off about the Zombie Apocalypse?” she muttered, not taking her eyes off the screen.

  “What pisses you off, oh Mother of Dragons?” I start
ed tracing my finger across the muscles of her back; she was wearing one of my old Army PT shirts and a pair of black panties, and nothing else. Her long pale legs stretched out on the bed, and I devoured the arch of her back.

  “The fact that I will never get to see how this ended,” she said, still ignoring me.

  I leaned over and started blowing in her ear. She ignored me for a full minute, engrossed in a scene where some shirtless guy with eye makeup was gutting another dude in armor, so I leaned over and stuck my tongue in her ear.

  “Stop, asshole!” she said, wiping at her ear. “I’m just getting to the good part!”

  I bit gently down on her earlobe, and reached over and pulled the power cord out of the back of the laptop. It shut down with a blink and a whirring sound, and she rolled over and pushed me off the bed. I fell onto the floor, and she stood over me, green eye flashing.

  “You done fucked up now, mister. That was my favorite scene!” She reached down and pulled her shirt up and over her head, standing over me looking like some angry Celtic goddess.

  “Oh no, this is MY favorite scene!” I hauled myself up by the bedpost, took her in my arms, and pushed her onto the bed. I caught a faint smile in the candlelight, just briefly, and then she put a stern look on her face again.

  The rest is none of your damned business.

  Chapter 253

  For some strange reason, I hated flying, but loved riding in Blackhawks. This one, though, was making me nervous, causing me to stare at the ground rushing past me, a hundred feet below and going past at a hundred and fifty miles per hour. It had been eight years of constant combat and little maintenance for most of the equipment the military used now days, and the one we rode in was streaked with grease and hydraulic fluid, soot from a fire, and something I suspected was dried blood stains.