The Hunt Chronicles (Volume 3): Crusade

by Demers, J. D.

  Tikel was unfazed by the attack, having already turned his attention back to DJ. He didn’t miss a beat as he rammed the steel shard through the skull of Goblin. Instantly, Goblin’s body wilted and he slipped off his blade and fell to the ground.

  My vision was still tunneled, but was slowly improving. I saw Pittman. He had grabbed a plank of wood and was staggering toward Tikel.

  Tikel, a mere five feet from DJ, flinched as Pittman swung the degraded wood planking at his head. The board snapped in two.

  Tikel spun, swinging his shard ferociously at Pittman.

  Pittman jumped back and used the broken plank to parry. It worked, but the board flew out of Pittman’s hands and bounced off the wall.

  Tikel dove in with his weapon again. Pittman darted back and, in a shocking move, swung on the Ogre. His fist connected with Tikel’s temple and the giant scab staggered back, disorientated. There is a difference between not feeling pain and having one’s head rattled.

  My hand brushed against something hard and cold as my senses came back. It was Enrique’s sword.

  “Pittman!” I cried, struggling to lift the blade.

  Pittman had taken advantage of the stumbling scab and pressed his attack, striking him in the face with two more powerful blows.

  He shot me a quick nod and I slid the lawnmower sword across the dirt toward him.

  Tikel had recovered and took an arcing swing at Pittman’s head. The burly man ducked and rolled right where I had tossed the sword.

  Finally, with some strength regained, I rolled Enrique over. Luckily, he hadn’t latched his M4 rifle to his vest and I quickly pulled it up just as Pittman deflected Tikel’s blade with the lawnmower sword. There was a loud, clanking sound that echoed like thunder.

  Pittman’s foot braced behind him, absorbing the impact, but he stood strong.

  Tikel, seemingly relishing in the fact that there was a capable human to fight, took a step back and examined Pittman. The two squared off like some honor bound knights of old.

  I was not a knight, however, nor did I care about honor.

  Before Tikel could lunge in, I raised Enrique’s rifle and began to unload the rest of his ammo. Without the weapon’s sights being adjusted to my aim, I didn’t bother trying for a head shot. I shot at his legs, riddling them with a dozen rounds.

  Tikel stumbled forward with a weakened knee. Pittman, taking full advantage, swung the lawnmower blade over the top. Tikel moved, but not completely out of the way. The lawnmower blade imbedded in Tikel’s shoulder.

  The scab cried out in frustration as Pittman withdrew the sword. Pittman swung again, but this time Tikel parried with the shard and swiped it at Pittman’s chest, missing him by a hair.

  I scrambled, tossing Enrique’s rifle to the side and searching him for back up magazines.

  Tikel and Pittman continued their melee, each deflecting and dodging blows. Pittman had been able to slash him again, but Tikel’s strength, endurance, and lack of pain receptors simply outmatched him. Pittman staggered backward as he parried blow after blow. He was growing tired and unable to keep up with the Ogre’s merciless assault.

  I found what I was looking for and reloaded my own rifle, happy that I didn’t discard it earlier.

  I raised my weapon as Pittman fell onto his back. Tikel lumbered over him like the shadow of death, preparing his final blow.

  Just before I fired, the side door burst open. Standing in the doorway was Fish and Sheriff Green. Nate was toting a SAW machinegun while Fish had his .308 rifle poised.

  Pittman scrambled backward as the three of us sent a torrent of lead toward Tikel.

  The SAW, loaded with a hundred-round belt, peppered Tikel with .556 rounds. The heavy caliber .308 was like an iron fist, knocking Tikel back with each blow. With my gun fire added, the beast fell to his knees, hunkering under his arm for protection.

  The acrid smell of gunfire and white smoke filled the barn. As it cleared, we saw Tikel hunched over, still on his knees. His body had been mutilated by the intense weapon’s fire. Dozens of holes dripped blood, while a few gushed profusely.

  I grabbed another magazine, reloading as I approached the center of the barn. Fish was reloading as well while Sheriff Green discarded the SAW and pulled out his pistol.

  Pittman slowly stood, breathing heavy with exhaustion.

  Tikel raised his head. He swiveled his neck, answering each of his killers with a disdainful growl.

  Tikel’s eyes rested on Pittman as he approached the dying scab. The ogre lifted his chin defiantly when Pittman drew the lawnmower blade back.

  With one, heavy swing, Pittman removed Tikel’s head at the shoulders.

  CHAPTER 23

  Against the Grain

  September 3rd

  The rest of the day was a systematic blur of events. There was no time to talk or discuss what had happened and why. That came later.

  Our first order of business was to secure the area. Fish, Sheriff Green and I quickly reloaded, stocked up on as many magazines as we could carry, and took to the top of the barn.

  Up on the barn roof, Fish told me that they had engaged at least twenty scabs when they drove up to the barn. Immediately, they fought to keep them from entering. According to him, they had killed almost all of them, save for two that they observed retreating. Fish would have given chase, except they had to make sure we were safe.

  After the battle, though, we had a different problem. Between the automatic weapons fire and half a dozen grenades going off, we were sure to attract every zombie within a mile radius, regardless of the rain.

  During the course of the next hour, we spent over four hundred rounds of ammunition, picking off no less than two hundred zombies. We scampered across the roof of the barn, each taking a zone and defending the area until everyone was loaded up and ready to go. Thankfully, it was a slow, trickling tide of the dead.

  The rest of the uninjured helped perform emergency first aid on the wounded and moved them into the CDC bus and Stryker. Meanwhile, we fended off the increasing zombie threat.

  When they finally loaded everyone and as many supplies as they could scavenge from the barn, the Stryker and CDC bus left. We kept the zombies engaged so they didn’t follow our friends. Fish had us remove our suppressors to keep the zombies attracted to us while the two vehicles fled. Due to Enrique’s injury, the bus couldn’t drive faster than ten miles an hour, and we didn’t want the zombies hot on their trail.

  When our companions were safely out of sight, Nate, Fish and I jumped onto Big Red and drove at top speed to our original camp site.

  Two hours after the battle, we pulled up to the two-story house we had chosen before. A few zombies had pursued our friends, but were sniped from the second floor of the building.

  That was when the true fighting began. Not with guns or bullets, but with the medical knowledge of Pittman and Doctor Tripp. The two worked fervently throughout the night, trying to save the critically wounded.

  Thankfully, by sun up, everyone was still breathing. We had exhausted half of our medical supplies, from pain medicines and IV bags, to antibiotics and stitching wire. Even though no one had died, we feared two of our own may pass if Preacher didn’t convince the Almighty to throw down a couple of miracles.

  Though Doctor Tripp played a major role in saving our people’s lives, Pittman was the true hero.

  Doctor Tripp was a virologist, biologist, and another couple dozen “gists”, but not a surgeon.

  Enter Pittman. PJ’s were trained in the art of keeping someone alive long enough to get to a better medical facility. They were more than mere combat medics. Sometimes their duties meant operating in rough and infectious environments.

  Pittman once told me of a time he rescued a downed helicopter pilot deep in the mountains of Afghanistan. He stitched a punctured artery in the man’s leg so that he could stabilize and move him. From there, he marched three miles to the LZ, or Landing Zone, with the pilot on his back. While they waited an hour for their eva
c helicopter to arrive, Pittman pulled three hunks of shrapnel from the pilot’s stomach.

  His schooling was extensive, but primarily designed to stabilize. PJ’s were two steps above paramedics, but were, at best, battlefield surgeons.

  Enrique was a close call. Tikel’s metal shard of steel had carved his back from the left shoulder to his right hip. It was deep and had nearly severed his spine.

  Every drop of plasma in our inventory had been used up to keep his heart rate relatively stable. Doctor Tripp tested everyone’s blood type and found that only Trinity and myself were compatible. That, unfortunately, would not do. There was still the chance our blood could be as infectious as a zombie bite.

  When Pittman began to work on Enrique, he found that the steel shard had taken a divot out of one of his vertebrae, but the nerve clusters inside appeared to be undamaged. Without the proper testing facilities, however, there was no way to tell until Enrique woke up.

  He and Doctor Tripp were able to stitch up his torn muscles and skin, and were thankful to see no organs had been damaged. An hour after surgery, we found out he still had motion in his legs. He faded in and out, sometimes waking up in terror. Doctor Tripp decided to keep him sedated for at least a day.

  The next on the list was Trinity. She had regained consciousness before we left the barn and Pittman was sure that Tikel had cracked a couple ribs. His main concern, however, was the swelling purple and black stains on her stomach, chest and back. They were clear signs not only of bruising, but serious internal bleeding.

  Pittman was hesitant to open her up to repair any possible perforated organs. As skillful as we all thought he was, Pittman did not have the same confidence. He said that if she was bleeding internally, it may be minor and that the body should heal itself. If he were to slice her open and perform exploratory surgery, he could create more harm than good, especially considering infection in our current environment.

  Undoubtedly, some of her organs were bruised. It became a wait and see game with her, though the signs of her being alert and awake were positive. The pain Trinity was in, however, was extreme. She did her best to mask it, but she could only do so much and received quite a few milligrams of morphine.

  The one who grumbled the most was DJ. He wasn’t complaining much about the pain, or getting stitches in his shoulder, but rather that Tikel had struck him in the same exact spot that a scab had drilled a pickaxe into months before. The thrown blade had almost hit the scarred over area dead center. He began to refer to his left shoulder as a scab magnet.

  DJ had lost a lot of blood as well, but we found out Coleman and the Captain were matches, and they each gave up a pint.

  Boomer, thankfully, had only been knocked out. It was hard to see the swelling, but Doctor Tripp assured me that if dogs could have headaches, Boomer’s head was pounding like a heart on norepinephrine…whatever that meant.

  The canine awoke shortly after we killed Tikel. He could barely stand at first and had to be guided into the Stryker. Leia joined him after Trinity was placed into the vehicle.

  Jenna’s elbow had been raked by one of the scab’s machetes. It was a superficial wound, though, requiring a dozen stitches.

  I said my first order was to defend the barn, but that was a lie. When I ran out to Big Red to grab more ammo, my initial thought was to find her and make sure she was okay. She had done what I thought, and leapt out of the hay door and on top of the Stryker to safety. Campbell had to physically separate our embrace.

  The last that had been injured was Pittman, though he said he was fine until after we had alleviated the wounded. He worked for hours, stemming off pain from a very awkward injury.

  He was, for the most part, fine except for a severely sprained tailbone. Pittman had landed on his rear when he fell from the second floor. No wonder he refused to sit and take a breather throughout that intense night.

  By sunrise and after hours of fatiguing work, Pittman and Doctor Tripp finally got some well-deserved rest.

  We appeared to be in a relatively safe location. Our hideout was further north than my parents’ house and Trinity’s barn. It was in an area where the density of the dead was thin. The refugee camp at the water tower had been much further south, and the zombies, with ample sustenance from the woods, found little need to travel far.

  That still left the question of scabs, however. We knew two had escaped the battle at the barn, but were unsure if there were more out there. That is what led to our discussion while we ate breakfast.

  Karina and Jenna were pulling guard on top of the roof. There was little fear of scabs throwing spears from the cover of the woods since the tree line was fifty meters at its closest point. Anything that approached the house was in a kill zone.

  DJ, Fish, Campbell, and Sheriff Green were eating on the ground floor when I descended the stairs, interrupting their conversation.

  “How in the hell did that big bastard track us all the way here?” Nate was asking.

  Fish swallowed a mouthful of rehydrated eggs before he answered.

  “It’s not like we covered our tracks. Big Red carved a path a blind person could follow.”

  “Yeah,” DJ conceded, “but Dixie County is eighty miles away, and that’s not including the detours.”

  “Maybe we have underestimated their drive for vengeance,” I pointed out as I filled a plate of eggs and oatmeal from the skillet.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Campbell grimaced and then turned to Fish. “Why did you leave the barn?”

  Fish’s shoulders slumped as he laid down his empty plate.

  “Well, sir, when the kid and I went out to investigate the woods, I got a bad feeling.”

  “Bad feeling?” DJ mocked. “What are you, psychic?”

  “Maybe,” Fish smirked.

  “You knew it was Tikel,” I accused.

  Fish raised an eyebrow and smiled.

  “I suspected.”

  “How?” Nate asked.

  “Well, the first indication was the number of tracks I found. The kid’s sister,” he motioned toward me, “and her friends told us there weren’t any scabs in the area. My gut told me they weren’t lying. That meant that if there was a large group of scabs, they either followed us or had migrated recently.”

  “But how did you know it was Tikel?” Campbell eyed Fish with suspicion.

  “I found a head. It had been torn from its body and had a very large gash in its face. The wound was reminiscent of Tikel’s chain weapon. The damage it caused when it got yanked out reminded me of the wounds I had seen Tikel inflict on the Major and that girl back at the storage center.”

  Fish let out a customary burp, neglecting to excuse himself afterward.

  “But, I still wasn’t sure and didn’t want to cause an alarm. You guys would think I was crazy,” he said with a slight chuckle. “I figured, if the scabs followed us into this area, be it Tikel or some other group, they would head here first,” he said, glancing around the inside of the house. “After all, we did stop here first. We already know they have some sort of super tracking ability.”

  Fish reached into one of his cargo pockets and pulled out a black, twelve-inch knife. After rolling it around in his hand for a moment, he drove it into the center of the kitchenette table.

  “Anyhow, when I got here, I ran across two scabs. I got the jump on them and took them out easily enough. I pulled that off one of bastards,” he motioned to the erected knife.

  “I don’t understand,” DJ winced from his shoulder injury as he pulled the knife free of the table.

  “Check out the inscription,” Fish said solemnly.

  “USAF Pararescue. So that others may live,” DJ quoted as he read the engraving on the blade.

  “It’s a Custom Tactical Pararescue CSAR knife,” Fish told us. “There are a few different versions. I can almost bet Pittman has one somewhere, or used to. That all but confirmed it was Tikel and his group. The scab probably pulled it from Major Dobson’s body back in Dixie County. Before I ha
d a chance to say anything, I got the call that there were scabs around the barn.”

  “That’s how you knew what they threw under the bus,” I said, finally understanding.

  Fish nodded. “Yeah, I figured they would try to immobilize our vehicles first.”

  “Well, shit,” DJ cursed. “That explains why they completely avoided getting in the crosshairs of the Stryker. They knew that turret would eat them alive.”

  Campbell’s face was washed with concern.

  “That is just insane. Why travel all that way, fight through who knows how many Zulus, just for revenge?”

  “Don’t try to figure it out, sir,” Fish grunted. “You’ll have an aneurysm. My best guess would be that we helped General Bolduc and his people escape, and that was their future food source. Not to mention that we killed a hundred or so of his hive. Maybe he thought we posed a possible future threat? Maybe it was just revenge. Who can tell, but it’s over now. God knows we gave him and his buddies enough time to lick their wounds before they set out after us.”

  “There are still a few scabs out there,” Nate pointed out. The former Sheriff of Dixie County squirmed uncomfortably.

  Fish shrugged.

  “Yeah, but Tikel’s not there to bash them into submission. I think those bastards went home or sought out safer hunting grounds.”

  “Remember what assuming has done for us,” Campbell said unpleasantly.

  “True,” Fish agreed. “We just need to stay on our toes.”

  Campbell nodded as he stood. “We also need to figure out how long until we can move out again and if we want to head south and survey Eglin Air Force Base.”

  That was not a question that could be immediately answered. Moving Enrique could mean his death. As it was, he was lying face down on a makeshift bed. It wasn’t the ideal position, but we had to ensure his stitching didn’t break and check regularly for infection. Even worse, he was restrained, both to keep from moving and just in case he passed into death.

  And the idea of trying to find a plane at the Air Force Base was not something any of us felt like discussing at that moment. The fight against Tikel had taken a lot out o us. We knew the number of zombies would drastically increase the further south we went. Eglin housed a large refugee camp and the coastal cities like Fort Walton Beach and Destin had giant populations.