Zombie Killers: HEAT

by John F. Holmes

  I knew without looking what shape the rest of the team was in. It had shown this morning when we had assembled at the PZ for our ride. Ryan and Scott were fine; Brit and I were a little tired. Elam seemed ready to go, but he was a very calm and inscrutable guy, like his father had been.

  Ziv sat across from me, looking like someone had woken him up from the grave. His eyes were bloodshot and he had a rough stubble on his face. I was surprised to see that it was shot through with streaks of grey. I had no idea how old Ziv was, but he had fought in Bosnia as a young man, so he had to be well into middle age. He kept this head shaved, though, so I never thought about him having grey hair. Other than guzzling about a gallon of water, and his bloodshot eyes, he showed little effect from what must have been a pretty epic night of drinking.

  I had my suspicions about the other two members of the team. Obi had a huge black eye, and looked like he was sitting a bit uncomfortably on the canvas seat. He didn’t move very fast, and I had to yell at him to hurry the hell up as we boarded. Next to him, ignoring him completely, Shona stared out the open doorway. I had caught a glimpse of her right hand, the knuckles were split and covered in band aides. She also had a split and puffy lip. There was a story there, and I was dying to know, but neither said anything. Oh, to be young again! Brit made a point of staring at both of them in turn, and looking at their injuries, and then laughing, hard. Neither could look her in the eye. Elam spent his time taking shots at roaming undead, practicing.

  Beneath me passed the endless ruins of Western Massachusetts and Connecticut. A few towns had survived in the hills, but most had been overrun by the hordes of people coming from the Boston to NYC corridor. It had been, not so much the undead, though that helped, but rather the breakdown of the supply chain that fed our fragile economy. No more pre-cut chicken wrapped in plastic. No more cold milk. No more gasoline. After a while, no more ammunition; it had been mostly used up on each other, fighting to survive. The Navy Base in Portland, Maine, had seen F-18 fighter bombers dropping cluster bombs and napalm on the hordes of civilians pushing northward, chased by, and turning into, the undead. They had blown the bridges at the Merrimack and Piscataqua Rivers, and though that stopped the undead, the starving hordes had swum the rivers, seeking any safety they could. It had been a slaughter.

  Now, as we approached the reclaimed base at Providence, the lawns of the deserted suburbs were turning into scrubby fields, and swimming pools had become breeding grounds for untold numbers of mosquitoes. Built up commercial centers of towns had often burned, with nothing to stop the fires from shorting out electrical systems, looters, or lighting strikes. Those looked like skeletons, and as we passed over, undead ran after the helo, howling at a high pitch that set my teeth on edge, even over the rotor wash. We passed over Providence harbor, and landed with a thump on the dock where the U.S.S. Georgia was tied off.

  Waiting until the rotors spun down, we disembarked, dragging duffle bags of equipment and weapons after us, and were greeted by the Chief of the Boat, Command Master Chief Gilbert. He was a grizzly old NCO, and ran the Georgia like his own personal fiefdom, officers be damned. He and I went way back, to an epic brawl in a bar in Bermuda, right after I had formed the Team.

  “Hey Nick,” he said, grasping my hand in a grip of steel, “how’s it going, brother?” He stopped and looked the team over. “Where’s Doc? And Jonesy? And I’d swear that was Ahmed, but he’s way too young.”

  “Valhalla, Chief. Valhalla. This is the new guys, or new to you,” and I introduced them around.

  “Sergeant Yasir, I knew your father. He was a good man, and saved my life once. I’ll tell you the story someday. Miss O’Neil, well, I’ve heard about you. You can have my quarters.”

  “Are you going to move out of them, Chief?” she said, with the sweetest smile.

  “Hadn’t planned on it,” he laughed, then detailed a couple of squids to give us a hand stowing our gear. Ryan stood there on the deck, actually drooling on the deck plates.

  “Hey, Ski, are you OK?” I waved my hand in front of my face.

  “Ohio class ballistic submarine, converted over to carry cruise missiles and Special Operations troops! Damn, Nick, I never thought I’d get to see one, much less ride in one.”

  I knew what he meant. Although Ryan held the rank of Master Chief in the Navy, he had actually been a civilian when the Apocalypse broke out, and had lead Team Five as a civilian right up until two years ago. Then when his brother and cousin were killed, he had accepted a direct appointment as a Senior Navy NCO. It was a favor I had twisted out of President Epson in return for saving his life, seeing how it was hard to give a civilian a Distinguished Service Cross. Now he was like a kid in a candy store.

  “Just don’t start trying to have sex with a torpedo tube, OK?” Brit laughed at the crestfallen look on his face and his muttered “damn”.

  We made good time down to Florida, cruising below the surface at around thirty knots. It was weird, because the crew of the Georgia had spent the apocalypse patrolling off the coast of America, and had actually launched a few tomahawks with nuclear warheads in a vain attempt to stop the undead hordes. So they hadn’t seen the devastation, though I knew it must have been hell for many of the crew, unable to communicate with their families. Some of the younger crewmen had joined the Navy after Z day, but they were small in number, and you could tell who they were by their pinched, lined faces.

  “Yeah,” said Chief Gilbert as we ate in the Chief’s Mess one day (night?). “That was pretty rough. My kids made it through, but both of them were grown. Never heard from my ex, but I like to think she’s out there, somewhere. With red blazing eyes, rotting away and eating brains. Couldn’t have happened to a meaner woman!”

  We laughed at that one, and he took a minute to light a pipe and continued. “Yeah, that was hard. We lost more than a dozen guys to suicide, and the Captain died from a heart attack. Thank God for the XO, he held the boat together. Then when we docked at Bremerton, almost half the crew deserted. Can’t say I blame them, though. Things were pretty crazy at the time. Most came back after the amnesty was declared. We’ve spent the last few years ferrying Special Ops guys and cleaner teams into and out of various derelict bases. Home ported in Providence right now.”

  “Must be nice,” I said, looking around. “You’re all fat as hell!”

  “That’s because we Navy guys know how to live life. Now pass me the butter.”

  The only excitement on the trip was when the XO put up a video feed of the periscope. We watched in the exercise room as a cruise ship swam into focus. It was listing to one side, but still looked enormous on the screen. Whoever was on the scope zoomed in, and we could see the Disney logo on the hull.

  “Oh boy, I went on a cruise on that ship when I was little!” exclaimed Shona Lowenstein. Her excitement turned sour as the view zoomed in further, to show hundreds of undead milling about on the deck. The view zoomed back out, and held steady on the ship for a minute. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a huge plume of water jumped up into the air, center of the hull, followed a split second later by another, closer to the stern. The ship started to settle, her keel broken, and soon slid beneath the waves.

  One of the crew exercising with us answered our unspoken question. “There’s still a few like that, drifting around the ocean. More so in the Pacific. We take them out when they’re not too far off our course.”

  “Yeah, but eight years later?” asked Shona.

  “Big sucker like that will keep drifting for twenty years, trust me. Especially out in the middle of the doldrums. That one must have run into a storm and gotten blown closer into the coast.” He looked at her scarred face and pointed to his own, which had a pretty big burn mark on the jaw, a pale spot on his dark skin.

  “Just be glad it’s not a tanker. We have to clear those of undead and then try to get them running; if we can’t, we burn them out with Willie Pete and then have to stand by to sink them. If you aren’t fast enough, something goes wrong with a ti
mer, you can catch it pretty good, and there ain’t any place to go except into the water.” He didn’t say anything else, just went back to riding his stationary bike.

  Yeah, it was a screwed up world we lived in.

  Chapter 254

  We were in the shit. Another round cracked over my head, the supersonic CRACK of a high velocity rifle making me eat the dirt.

  “OBI! GET THAT GODDAMNED GUN GOING NOW!” I yelled. He was lying ten feet to my right, cursing furiously while trying to clear a jammed cartridge. Beside him lay Ziv, his face a bloody mess. Brit pulled the pin out of a grenade, yelled “FRAG OUT!” and heaved it out of the ditch towards the other side of the road. I handed her another one, and she repeated the process, rewarded with a scream and cursing in Spanish. The volume of gunfire whipping over our heads increased, if that was possible. I could hear at least a half dozen M-4 rifles and a pretty big MG, either a 240 or an older M-60.

  Ryan was lying next to Ziv, trying to see where he was hit, and the Serb pushed his hand away, jamming another magazine into his AK, and holding it over his head, emptying a full magazine. Obi sat with his back agisnt the ditch, cradling his machine gun, unmoving, looking scared shitless. Ziv had been on point, keeping an eye ahead, when something warned him, stopping us just as the command detonated mine erupted further down the road.

  “SHONA! SCOTT!” I yelled to the two figures behind us returning fire over the road top. and when I had their attention, waved them around in a wide sweeping arc to our left. They immediately started low crawling along the ditch, headed up the road to where a bridge carried it over a stream through a culvert.

  “Brit, go with them!” I told her.

  Her eye flashed angrily and she told me to fuck off. “I’m not leaving you!”

  “Goddamn it, that’s an order! MOVE YOUR ASS!”

  I was hit, pretty bad. Whatever type of explosive had triggered the ambush had sent a piece of hot shrapnel into my shoulder, and another into my face. I could see it sticking out of my cheek, out of the corner of my eye, and it burned like hell. The one on in my left shoulder had turned my arm numb and useless, sending blood dripping down my sleeve. I hoped like hell it hadn’t hit an artery.

  Brit stuffed a pressure bandage up under my sleeve and then tied it off. Then she reached over and yanked the shrapnel out of my face, making me screamed in pain. “If you fucking bleed to death I’m going to kill you!” she yelled over the gunfire, then spun and followed after the other two. I started crawling in the opposite direction, passing Obi, Ryan and Ziv. As I did, I grabbed Obi.

  “Come with me!” I yelled, and told Ryan and Ziv to hold there. “WATCH FOR A CHARGE!” We went another ten meters and I told Obi to stop and point the gun down the length of the ditch, parallel to the road. Even as I did, three figures jumped down from the road into the mud about fifty meters away, trying to do the same thing I had just sent my three guys to do, on the opposite end. Obi started firing, yelling at the top of his lungs, one long continuous stream of tracers that riddled them, knocking them down into the dirt. I smacked his helmet as hard as I could with my good hand to get him to take his finger off the trigger.

  “WHAT THE FUCK! STOP FIRING!” I yelled at him.

  “Sorry, Colonel, first time I ever killed a man!” he said, and then threw up on the gun. I stared at him in amazement. All that shit he talked.

  “WATCH!” I said, and pointed down the ditch. Then I turned and started to crawl back to Ryan and Ziv. Ziv had a bandage over his eyes, and kept holding his AK over his head and firing bursts at intervals, covering the road. Ryan was doing the same when his weapon flew backwards, and he brought his hand down to stare stupidly at his missing pinky finger.

  Yeah, we were in the shit indeed.

  It was hard to track what was going on, since the ambushers were using M-4’s like we were, except for Ziv’s AK. I took my cell phone out of my pocket and secured it to the end of my rifle with a piece of tape, then hit “record” on the video function, sticking it up in the air for three seconds and then pulling it back down.

  The video showed three attackers clustered around a machine gun that had been brought forward and set up at a turn of the road. It swept back and forth, covering the entire road top with sort, disciplined burst, about a hundred meters away. I could see muzzle flashes among the palm trees on the far side of the road. There was no sign of Elam, who had been forced off the road on the opposite side of us, far to the rear.

  Crawling back to Ryan, who had put some duct tape over the stump of his finger, I motioned for him to shoot in the direction of the machine gun. He ignored his severed finger and opened up with his pistol. It was a .22, but some lead is better than none.

  At that second, I heard a bust of fire, a roar of rifle fire punctuated by Brit’s shotgun sending out measured BOOMS! I also heard from behind me three flat CRACK CRACK CRACK sounds, an M-14 firing on single shot. The machine gun fell silent, but a blood curdling scream broke out from the other side of the road, accompanied by a whistle from the treeline ahead. The rifle fire stopped, and I peeked over the top of the road, to see several figures clad in ACU’s disappearing into the open fields to the east. Another CRACK and one fell down. The rest disappeared into a far tree line. The screaming continued, then died to a moaning sound. It was a woman. I hoped to God it wasn’t Brit.

  Chapter 255

  She was young, and pretty, in a thin, post war starved way. Hispanic, maybe eighteen years old. Blood poured out of her nose and mouth, thin streams that stained her ACU uniform and body armor. Just under the edge of her armor was a great big bloody hole, with some loops of intestine hanging out. It looked like she had taken a full load of buckshot from Brit’s twelve gauge.

  The girl was gasping, crying and cursing in Spanish, trying to push her bowels back into the hole. We all stood around her, except for Ryan, who was busy trying to treat Scott. I let him keep going, though it was obvious from the hole just above his eyebrow, and the fact that half his head was missing, that my old friend was a gonner. His body still shook in reflexive spasms, but a wound like that to the head, without a dust off, was going to be fatal, every time. He made some inarticulate moans, but there was no life in them. The body just refused to accept what had happened to the brain. Thankfully he stopped twitching after a minute and lay still. Ryan cursed and threw the bandage down on the ground, even though he knew as well as I did from the start that it was hopeless.

  Ten feet away Obi yelled, “Fuck, we gotta do something for her!” kneeling down on the bloody ground and pulling at his aide pouch. I shoved him aside, raised my rifle, and shot the girl in the head, just under the rim of her Kevlar. It was hard to keep steady aim because of my arm, and the round glanced off the rim, tumbling and shattering her face.

  “What the FUCK!” yelled Obi; the backsplash sending a few drops of blood to splatter across his face. He stood up and came at me, only to stop with Shona’s rifle pointed two inches from his nose.

  “Stand down!” she said. “There was nothing anyone could have done for her. It was a mercy.” Obi turned away and started cursing, and for a second I thought he was going to swing at me. Instead, he just cursed more and started kicking one of the other corpses.

  “Obi, go pull security with Elam. Shona, figure who these jokers were. Ryan, see to Ziv. Brit, help me with Scott.” I was shaken. We had broken the ambush, but Scotty Orr lay dead. His eyes were open in a surprised look, one that I had seen on the dead before. No one ever really expects it.

  “He hesitated when he saw it was a woman. I had gotten one, and Shona the other, and Scott stopped when he saw it was a girl. She fired once. I was too late.” There were tears rolling down Brit’s face, but her voice was a quiet monotone.

  I thought back to the nights we had sat around on the porch, Scott playing his guitar, singing simple Spanish love songs or fast past Mexican dances. He was a good man, and had saved more than one of our lives with his medical skills. Reaching down, I closed his eyes for the last time,
then stood up. As I did, the world started to turn gray from the edges of my vision on inwards. “Brit …” I managed to say, then fell forward on my face.

  I woke up when Brit probed the shrapnel wound on my shoulder. “You are one lucky shit, husband. I managed to get it out. It would have been better if it was a bullet, the shrapnel tore its way through. You’re going to have a hell of a bruise.” She handed me a jagged, quarter inch piece of steel. “If it had hit an artery, you’d be dead as shit.”

  “Is he going to make it?” asked Shona Lowenstein. In my hazy, weakened state, I struggled with thinking who was going to be in charge now.

  “Yeah. Ryan is the same blood type, and Scott had two bottles of plasma in his pack. I’ve got an IV going, if we have to, I’ll take some of Ryan’s’. Don’t want to, the conditions here are pretty frigging dirty.”

  I used my free hand to pull Brit close and croaked, “We gotta move. They might come back.”

  “Five more minutes. I have to sew up Ziv’s face and Elam and Obi are stripping the dead of ammo.”

  I let her go, satisfied. My shoulder was starting to burn like fire, but I waved Brit’s hand away when she started to break out a morphine injector. I had lost some blood, but Brit told me that it was more shock than anything that had made me faint. I think her exact words were, “You’re such a frigging crybaby.”

  Ahead, in the distance, the great grey bulk of the carrier was turning blood red in the setting sun. It sat there, miles away, teasing me.

  Chapter 256

  It was three days later. Three agonizing days of waiting in the remains of a house just off the side of the highway. Three days waiting to see if my shoulder would heal, or develop one of those nasty tropical infections. It was covered in deep purple bruises, and stiff as hell, but I could move it. Both Ziv and I had deep cuts on our faces, mine on my cheek and his across his forehead, both sew shut and healing decently.