Closer in, I noted the pile was growing to the front of the stack and this was more worrisome than any other development. Emptying my fourth magazine into an area about one hundred yards out, I pushed myself up off the hard, uneven deck and went to find Sergeant Herndon.
Given the gravity of the situation, he’d taken up a rifle and was working over the approaching horde with calm, measured shots. That was one of the things I liked about Herndon; the man kept his cool. From the way some of the other soldiers were acting, jerking the triggers and crying out for more ammo, I could tell some of these men were quickly reaching their breaking point. This was an unprecedented horde, and more kept coming.
“Herndon,” I shouted, trying to raise my voice over the tumult of the crashing weapons. “Your men need to stop shooting the ones right under the wall.”
“What? McCoy, are you nuts?” Herndon roared, and I thought that his loud voice and otherwise calm demeanor under pressure might be why he had those stripes on his sleeve. He never stopped shooting.
“Ya’ll are just building a ramp,” I yelled back. I forced myself not to curse under my breath. What the heck were they teaching our soldiers these days?
“Focus on shooting them further back and leave that pile alone for the moment,” I continued. “If you can cut them down away from that pile, then you might have a chance of holding this wall.”
Herndon, to his credit, stopped firing, looked down into the growing mosh pit, and I could see the wheels turning.
“This is what you do, ain’t it, McCoy?”
“More or less,” I replied, nodding so he got the point. “This is a big fucking horde, but you are working against yourselves here.”
“Well, get with the boys over there on the left and see if you can get them to raise their fire up. Them’s the ones I’m most worried about getting overrun. Or having their part of the wall collapse first.”
I agreed and nodded again before turning back and gathering up my second rifle and the bandolier of magazines. I still had thirty reloaded in there and I figured I would be needing all of them. In fact, I would probably need every reloaded magazine in the truck. And that might still be short. Only time would tell, I decided, as I carefully picked a cleared path across the uneven metal surface and made my way to the left flank.
The world ended as we knew it nearly five months ago. The architect of our destruction was still unknown, but everyone knew when it happened. That was when the First Wave fell. Roughly one quarter of the human population simply dropped where they stood, convulsed and died. Only, then they got up and started trying to eat the unaffected.
As things went, the United States didn’t suffer as much initially, as say, China, where the First Wave struck in the middle of the night. That one quarter quickly became much, much more. Millions of sleepers never had a chance. Husbands, wives, and partners passed in their sleep then roused and began consuming the fresh meat lying right there, conveniently placed next to them. And the poor bastards not completely consumed went on to join the growing legions of the hungry dead.
I was at work when it happened. I saw things and things happened that I still could not think about. Especially when I made my way home. At some point, a neighbor I barely knew got me moving again and gave me something to focus my energy on. Six of us made it out of the subdivision, and Roxy was the reason. Driving a salvaged school bus packed with orphaned children and desperate adults, we made a road trip that ended just outside Livingston. We were flagged down by Texas Army National Guard troops before entering the small town.
But, before we could get out of Houston, I remember seeing one the early hordes forming up. Just outside the Galleria, I witnessed thousands, tens of thousands, of the zeds swell into the streets. The vision of those monsters storming out of the ground-floor shops and onto Westheimer still haunted me.
When I looked back over my shoulder at the untold thousands of hungry, relentless predators streaming our way, I remembered how I felt that day and shivered. Despite our small victories since then, I secretly feared they would eventually eat the world in their terrible hunger.
CHAPTER THREE
Of course, at first nobody wanted to listen to me. These men were involved in a life-or-death struggle against actual Death itself, with the capital D and everything, and not prone to paying much attention to anyone without stripes on their sleeves. So at first I just pitched in, copying what I had done earlier and cutting down firebreaks in the mass of stumblers. By picking my shots, I managed to slow up their advance and take some pressure off these metal walls.
This was literally pressure, because the zombies caught closest to the wall were being ground up and flattened by the thousands of dead bodies pressed up behind them. I couldn’t calculate how many pounds per square inch of force that took, but I worried the tipping point might come soon. If I stopped long enough, I could feel the short section of wall flex under the weight pressing in on the metal walls.
After emptying another four magazines, I could tell the men were finally starting to get what I was doing. The group with me on the left wall was what the National Guard called a fire team, or a group of four soldiers.
I was never a soldier and these terms were sometimes confusing, but I made myself learn the basic rank insignias and unit sizes to better work with the soldiers in a support role. Nothing will piss off a sergeant more than being referred to as corporal, for instance. Except maybe calling him sir. That varied though.
As I stood taking shot after shot, I felt my trigger finger start to go numb from all the recent abuse and took the opportunity to switch hands the next time I changed magazines. I’m not as good left-handed, but I’d trained myself to be an ambidextrous shooter. At these ranges, I was good enough left-handed to get the job done and my left trigger finger still had some miles remaining on the tread. I’d also taught myself to use my middle finger to pull the trigger, but that was my last option.
Eventually, the corporal who seemed in charge stepped over close enough to be heard and asked, “Sir, what are you doing here?”
“Sergeant Herndon asked me to come over and help. He said we need to be dropping these pus bags further back. Otherwise they’re going to push these walls out of the way, or all the way over. Neither would be good, Corporal.”
The young man nodded. These days, everybody seemed to be a kid to me. Once you hit forty, the world seemed to be filled with young punks that used to be you. Of course, maybe it was because most of the old people in the world ended up being zombie bait. Old and cunning was fine, but if your legs couldn’t carry you fast enough from the horde, then you got to run with them as a newly chewed member.
“I see your point. I’ll get with the guys and we’ll form a firing line, sir. You shoot and we’ll follow your lead.”
Darn, that was refreshing. I’d seen the corporal around, but I didn’t know his name. If we survived, I might ask.
True to his word, the men fell in quickly and I began directing the fire. They were good, getting head shots about half the time, and I noticed that their nerves seemed to settle as well. Shooting with any accuracy while your heart was thumping and your chest was heaving was just about impossible. Steady and calm, or at least not freaking out, was the order of the day.
By the time I’d gotten more than halfway through my ready magazines, I saw the wall we’d built up about a hundred yards out was beginning to slow the advance. Not stop it, not at all, but zombies climbed for shit, so giving them an obstacle caused the others to pile up behind. That was fine. Better there than pressing against our battlements.
Asking the corporal to personally clean up the mess between my new wall of flesh and the old wall of steel, I led the other three men through the tedious process of catching each new zombie as its head cleared the growing pile. Bang. Down. Bang. Down.
With the effort of climbing, the newly deader zombies did tend to fall back when we popped their melons, so the fence didn’t grow much more in our direction. Really, it was all
about physics and studying the effects of bullets on bodies. I felt like I’d been teaching at least a Master’s level class on the subject. I hoped these kids were taking notes, because there would be a quiz later.
For how long we held there, poised on the knife edge of disaster, I couldn’t say. I’d entered the shooting zone, and nothing else mattered but making my next shot. Not the pain, not the cries of the frightened soldiers, and certainly not the sound of the metal containers flexing yet again as the mass continued to maintain pressure. I just killed dead things.
I had become aware of other soldiers rushing up the ladders behind us, but the fight was out front and I didn’t spare a glance over my shoulder. If the zombies were learning to climb ladders, we were fucked anyway. This was the rest of Captain Shurman’s company, I guessed correctly—or at least all he could spare from the other barricades.
When another fire team made up of the new troops crossed over to our little slice of paradise, I gratefully stepped over and allowed them to slide into place, effectively doubling our firepower. These newbies didn’t get it at first, of course, but the corporal quickly outlined what needed to be done. We piled up the corpses and I tried not to look in their eyes. Of course, we were so close to being overrun that I didn’t think any of these boys would go all “zombie brain freeze” on me.
Then, finally, even more troops rushed up to the line, and I found myself being led back from off the edge of the container. Realizing the immediate threat was over for the moment, I began to gather my dropped magazines. Most made it back into the bag, but not all, and these large-capacity Ruger magazines were the tools of my trade and irreplaceable.
“You busy, McCoy?”
The familiar voice cut through the sounds of battle, and I looked up to see Sergeant Lawrence standing nearby, his mild expression and thin-lipped smile present as usual. Sergeant Lawrence was Regular Army, a communications specialist sent by the powers that be to assist the colonel and this region with recovery efforts. Something about the man made me think he was more than just a radio specialist, but I lacked the background to figure it out.
“No, Sergeant. Just cleaning up a little. You know me, always have to keep my toys neat.”
That was actually true. I was just a tiny bit OCD, and disorder in my gear made me cranky. Okay, crankier than usual, some might say.
“Just got a call from Colonel Northcutt. He wants to see you ASAP. Assuming this matter is settled, that is.”
I looked back. The soldiers were now doing a decent job of holding off the approaching dead. Especially now that the medium machine guns were set up on their bipods and contributing to the mayhem. The 7.62x51 round, or 308 Winchester for the roughly civilian equivalent, was great for chewing up the dead. Even without scoring a headshot, the bigger rounds would tear up limbs and slow the wretched advance. Hard to crawl effectively with a leg blown off, after all.
“Captain Shurman has this. I think that is the back of the horde, anyway.” I pointed, gesturing at the slow advance of the most feeble members of the horde. “I couldn’t really see it when this all started. They can stand if the ammo holds out.”
Lawrence nodded. “I would say in the neighborhood of forty thousand, Mr. McCoy. Maybe a bit more. The colonel also wanted to know what you were going to charge for this little bit of work.”
I shook my head. “It’s on the house. Or, tell him I need some replacement ammo and this should count against my militia time next month.”
Lawrence managed a polite chuckle, and I was headed out and down the ladder. Of course, as soon as I stepped off the last rung, I nearly bumped into Captain Shurman standing around with his company sergeant. The sergeant was apparently working to get more loaded magazines up to the men on the line, but I could not figure out what the captain was doing. Probably some officer thing.
“Ah, McCoy, I saw your truck. What are you doing here? I thought I ordered you out of my town.”
There was a nasty edge to the officer’s words, a reflection of the mean little bastard who liked to pull the wings off flies, or extort lunch money from his smaller classmates. Maybe I was projecting, but the man clearly liked being a bully.
I just smiled. “Sorry, Captain Shurman. I received the distress call and had to respond. It’s a militia thing, sir. When we hear a call for help, we try to show up.”
Shurman didn’t like my answer, which was fine, since I didn’t like him referring to Jasper as his town. He was ambitious and a brownnoser, but Northcutt seemed to have this joker’s number. Anyway, I figured my work here was done.
Back at my truck, I took a moment to check under for crawlers and then heaved my rifles and nearly empty bag into the passenger seat. Walking around back, I checked the truck bed to make sure my boxes were untouched. Everything looked ready to roll, so I climbed in and started the beast.
I sat there for a moment, thinking about my earlier bout of reflection. I tried to forget the past and live in the now. Usually when I suffered one of those little bouts of self-pity, that was my subconscious trying to tell me something. I didn’t need to do any painful delving to figure out what had triggered my memories this time.
The horde was unusual in both size and location. Zombies were not territorial, per se, but tended to have really short attention spans. You could draw them off from an area by car, for instance, if you drove fifteen miles per hour or slower. Slow enough so the vehicle sounds kept their attention, such as it was, focused on the noise. Like me, zombies existed in the now.
No horde would naturally be that close to Jasper. The population densities just didn’t fit. Either somebody led them here, or … the alternative wasn’t one I wanted to dwell on since if they migrated here on their own, then we had more problems than I could even contemplate. I was an exterminator, but two million zombies-plus moving out of Houston was too much for me to even think about.
Shifting the truck into gear, I wondered what the colonel wanted. If this was not his intended topic, then I planned to hijack the conversation. He needed to know somebody likely drew the horde in on us—most likely Sandoval in retaliation for killing his crew. I was going to hope that was the case, even if I had my doubts.
Because the other alternative was that these were zombies who somehow followed Dr. Kelly Gooden and those bikers out of Beaumont. Or the larger backup team that I also managed to kill. Didn’t matter, I tried to tell myself. Zombies’ short attention span was one of the edges we used routinely in this war on the dead. Five minutes. That was the rule. So how the hell could they suddenly manage to follow for miles and miles after the car sounds disappeared?
Turning the truck around, I drove away from the sounds of battle behind me and headed for the turnoff to Highway 190. Hell, that racket was sure to bring in any zed for miles around, so the shooting would likely go on all night. Not my job, I tried to tell myself. I was officially off the clock, and that little bit of action might just count toward my militia duty next month, so I had that luck going for me. I didn’t mind standing guard on the walls since it was easy duty, but still the obligation cut into my paying work.
My brain was abuzz with worrisome thoughts, but I made myself focus on the road ahead. Highway 190 was the linchpin of our recovery efforts here, linking Woodville to Livingston, and then to Onalaska like beads on a necklace. Jasper was the next one along this track.
I’d cleared Corrigan and Diboll, though the fire damage in Corrigan made the town center, such as it was, mostly uninhabitable. We still cleaned out the stores of everything useful and gathered up what few survivors the Guard managed to locate. The lack of surviving structures in Corrigan meant the colonel was unlikely to ever plant a Safe Zone there. And Diboll was too close to Lufkin at the moment to consider doing more than setting up a guard station.
Don’t get the wrong idea, now. Zombies could and would follow you cross country if they kept you in “sight.” Really, more by scent, but you get the picture. But we still had enough fuel to get around for the moment, and the colon
el was already working on getting petroleum refining restarted at some point. I knew it would not be any time soon, but at least he was looking forward instead of staring at our back trail.
First, though, the colonel was determined to achieve reliable electricity. Regaining Jasper was part of that plan, and the engineers were already out at the lake. Hydroelectric power is a beautiful thing and didn’t require carloads of coal or scary nuclear reactors to turn on your lights. And with that power, he could resurrect one of the smaller refineries.
I couldn’t think of any local refinery—at least, not this side of Tyler—so I didn’t know how the colonel was going to pull that off, but Northcutt would have a plan. He had teams of men and women doing research and collating scouting reports into a useful matrix. Personally, I was wondering how we could restart our ammunition factories. Yes, I have a one-track mind about certain things.
As I drove toward Woodville and on to my eventual destination, I allowed my brain to wander a bit. We were still clinging to the ragged edge of survival, but here was the colonel, already trying to find a way back home. Not the same home or the old way, maybe, but a livable new normal.
He made mistakes and was as human as the rest of us, but I realized Northcutt was the best chance we had for building a sustainable community here in the lakes area. I really didn’t care, not for myself, but I thought about those scared young ladies and Dr. Gooden and hoped for their sake. I knew the horrors I’d been forced to endure paled in comparison to whatever hell they had already seen.
I drove on into the growing dark and wondered what the colonel wanted. I was hoping it would be something easy. I could use a little downtime. I was worn out. Not from killing the zombies, I admitted, but from having to interact with the living.
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