Catharsis

by Adrienne Lecter

  I half expected the asshole not to respond to me, but his answer came almost immediately, a little winded from running through the snow. “We’re maybe half a click west of you. Already seeing the undead fuckers crowding the valley. You got an idea?”

  I waited for Bucky to start cursing me out at the top of his lungs, but when still nothing came, I decided to go ahead. “We try to buy them some time to escape by picking out some of the more enterprising shamblers from here. We can still fall back if the tide turns on us. If the shamblers can even make it up the slope to reach us, it will take them several minutes to get here. We have time, and shouldn’t let this opportunity slip.”

  Nate gave a dismal grunt. “Just one problem. I think the group has some injured people down there. They’re settling in to make a stand rather than abandoning those that can’t climb to safety.”

  Russell, who was on Cole’s team, had his own interjection. “Not sure you see it from your vantage point, but half the cliff’s frozen solid, likely from melted snow or a waterfall. Even if they could climb, they won’t get out that way. Something must have gone wrong that they got surrounded.”

  A few seconds later, Bucky’s reply finally came. “Everyone, stand down. Do you hear me? Stand down, and do not engage—“

  With amusement, I watched as Nate pointedly switched his com off before he got his own sniper rifle out. At a glance from him, I cut the connection as well. Bad for coordinating, but I had a feeling Bucky would soon become a distraction. Burns snickered, readying his assault rifle that he aimed at the shamblers on our side of the ravine. “You try widening that gap over there, I’ll give them something to do right here. Any objections?”

  Rather than reply verbally, Nate pulled the trigger. A shambler right in front of the cornered group sank to the ground, a substantial part of its head missing. Several of the people shied back, but a rather stocky fellow who was trying to act as a human shield between the undead masses and the others did a great job pinpointing from where the shot had come, raising one hand in a brief wave. That was all the encouragement I needed, although I made sure to choose targets where, should I miss, I wouldn’t accidentally kill one of the humans.

  It had been a while since I’d been out and about with the sniper rifle, but my aim wasn’t bad. With several hundred targets competing for my rounds, it was almost harder to miss than hit, although the first few shots weren’t instant kills. Nate didn’t pay me any attention, instead doing his very best to build a wall of corpses between the humans and the remaining shamblers. Burns was laughing like a maniac as he picked off zombie after zombie at the bottom of the slope, his job getting easier when they started trying to come for us as well. In short, we made quite the racket, putting the shots we’d heard before to shame.

  I was just done reloading for the third time when Cole broke out of the cover of the trees, Russell and Parker in his wake. All three men were panting from running nonstop, and as a single glance revealed, none too happy with us. That was all the attention I was willing to pay them before I picked out my next shambling target.

  “Why the fuck are you maniacs shooting?” Cole huffed and puffed beside me. “You had the clear order to stand down!”

  “Didn’t hear that,” I lied as I lined up the next target.

  I more felt than heard Cole step up to me, presumably to check the light on my radio unit. “That’s not even on!”

  “Oops,” I deadpanned. “Well, that explains why we didn’t hear anything back from you.”

  Cole wasn’t done yet, reaching for the unit to switch it on. “You did that deliberately!”

  I didn’t respond right away, taking the time to finish off two more shamblers, using up the last of the ammo in the weapon. Only then did I look up, meeting Cole’s annoyed look with one of my own. “We can’t just let them die.”

  “Yes, we can. And we will,” the asshole insisted—but sounded surprisingly dejected. “Boss’s orders.”

  “It’s a total waste of ammo,” Russell interjected. “If we shoot them all, we’ll easily use up half of our ammo.”

  I shrugged, nonplussed. “That’s why doing it the blunt force trauma way is a lot more effective. We just need to wait for a few more to show up so we don’t get eaten the moment we make it down there. The rest should be easy.”

  Parker gave me a look as if I’d said something crazy, but considering that was the usual way he looked at me, maybe he was just having a bad day.

  Cole’s snort was shy of derisive. “Oh, and I presume you’ll volunteer us for that task?”

  I wondered if I should have been talking more slowly. “Anyone who’s willing and able to, like a bunch of super strong, super resilient soldiers. But yeah, I’m going, too. Wouldn’t want to miss that for the world.”

  “Status!” came Bucky’s bark over the line, cutting our little to-and-fro short.

  Cole gave me another hostile stare, but sounded pleasant enough when he responded. “We caught up to the other fire team. They’re about two miles from the mouth of the valley, up on the slope.” He paused, assessing the view below us. “I think we stand a good chance to bring the assault to a halt with brute force.”

  “Gee, you’re welcome,” I muttered, for a moment forgetting that my com was still on—before I realized everyone had already heard my suggestions. “It only makes sense to try to help the people down there. And before any of you great warriors even thinks of calling me a bleeding heart, consider that this might be our best way in. We save them, they’re bound to put in a good word with whoever’s sitting in Ajou. Considering that they are the first people we’ve met, and we’re only a few miles away from Ajou, they likely belong to that group, anyway. This horde of shamblers must have been plaguing them for weeks, if not months. We clean that up for them, and they might even meet us with favorable feelings rather than suspicion.” Nobody had interrupted me yet, so I might as well go for the kill. “Getting that address from the bank and whatever was on that computer in that conservatory only got us so far. If that was enough, Hamilton wouldn’t have led us all here. So presumably, we need all the help we can get. That down there is our golden ticket for said help. Think about it. You’ll see that I’m right.”

  I’d expected some serious opposition—and scorn. Bucky delivered on the latter with a derisive grunt, but surprisingly agreed with me. “You really want to do this, Stumpy? Be my guest.”

  It took me a few moments of gnashing my teeth to realize that he’d just told me to offer up a plan. I hadn’t expected that, and I wasn’t the only one. Nate beside me paused as he reloaded, if with a hint of a smile on his face. So he hadn’t turned off his radio completely.

  “Well, not much to plan about this,” I said after trying to get a better idea of what was going on down there. No real changes—the humans were still holding out, and more and more shamblers were turning their attention toward our side of the ravine, Nate’s sniper rifle causing too much noise for them not to get interested. Burns had mowed down a good hundred by now, creating even more distraction.

  “I say, we enter the valley at three points—right here, and about half a click southeast and northwest from here, to pull their attention from a single focus point. Teams of twos and threes, covering each other’s backs. Everyone who doesn’t go down either gets to lay down cover fire, or works as a lookout to tell those below what parts to avoid or where to head next. Our priority is to break through to that group over there and see if we can extract them. If not, we have a lot of heads to bash in.”

  Someone grumbled something very far from enthusiastic over the line, but Hamilton’s retort cut him off. “We’ve reached the point Cole marked for us. Sending the others on with Richards except those that will head down with me here. Lewis, you are aware—your plan, your fault if anyone bites it?”

  “Well, then you all better not get killed, because I couldn’t care less.” A lie—and likely one they could all have called me out on, but luckily, nobody did. Oh, indeed, Bucky’s speech from y
esterday had served more than one purpose, it seemed—or maybe it was just my imagination that now they took me more seriously. Indoctrinated, my ass. I didn’t miss the hint of a smirk crossing Cole’s face, but when he noticed me glaring at him, he let it slip off his features. He raised his brows at me.

  “You coming with us, or what?”

  “I already said I would, didn’t I?” I pointed out.

  “To the third starting point,” Cole said. “Makes the most sense that as we’re already here and would have to wait another five to ten minutes for Richards, we head over there so that they don’t have to go for another half a mile. Or don’t you trust us not to smash your head in first?”

  I was tempted to hesitate, but got up without any words of protest, quickly brushing snow off my front and legs. I thought about picking up the M16, but I couldn’t carry a lot of additional ammunition without a pack; that was staying here. I was doing okay, but not fully-loaded-pack-animal-in-combat good. If we kept making that much of a racket, we’d eventually drown in shamblers. Carrying the assault rifle on the sling across my back would also make for a great way to invite a semi smart zombie to make a grab for it, and I could do without that. My Beretta and Glock would have to do—and my axes, of course.

  “I’ll keep an eye on you from up here,” Nate promised, barely looking up to catch my gaze before he focused on his scope again.

  I was taken aback that he wouldn’t join us, but quickly shook off my misgivings. He was certainly the best sniper we had along. He was the best man for this job. So he was going to trust Bucky’s men to keep me alive. I waited for my usual misgivings to raise their ugly heads, but besides the general unease my idiotic plan conjured inside of me, there was nothing else lurking in the recesses of my mind. Did I personally like Cole, Russell, and Parker? Hell, no. But if I died, they lost a third of the potential shield keeping shamblers off their backs. That wasn’t smart. Burns only gave me a wave before he continued shooting—another silent vote of confidence. So this was it—my chance to either prove myself, or remain the incompetent dead weight everyone seemed to see me as.

  Really not a hard choice.

  “Let’s go,” I told the other three, hoping that I wasn’t making a huge mistake—but I had a certain feeling that I wouldn’t get much of a chance to regret it. Parker certainly looked a little green in the face while Cole and Russell seemed mostly giddy. They were probably waiting for me to end up on my ass and in need of rescue so they could spend the next few days making me miserable. Just like Bates would have, I reminded myself. Not for the first time I realized that I’d lucked out with the people with whom I’d run away from that first wave of zombies—but I hadn’t yet had the reputation of being an obnoxious bitch then. Or had been gifted potentially near-super strength. I kept reminding myself of the latter as I tried to ignore the former. They wouldn’t just let me die, I was sure—no way for anyone to keep gloating at me that way.

  As we headed farther along the ravine, the others checked in one team after the other, getting ready. Cole hadn’t protested me taking point, so that’s what I did. There were no shamblers up here in the trees, but a few tracks showed that they must have joined the large group down the slope not too long ago, the snow, leaves, and earth still freshly churned. The trees started to thin and the ground evened out, and in the distance I saw a road winding toward this end of the ravine—likely the same road we’d crossed before we’d heard the gunshots. It was as good a point to stop as any. When Red reported in ten seconds later that he and the alternate fire team he had in tow had arrived at Nate’s position, I knew that the time for hesitating was over.

  Looking down into the ravine, I tried to better gauge the situation. The group had hunkered down behind their wall of corpses, doing a good job keeping the odd shambler trying to climb it at bay with long sticks and two hay forks. The only reason they hadn’t been overrun yet was that the ravine wasn’t that broad, even at the widest part where they had gotten surrounded. Unhindered, I could likely have crossed it within a matter of minutes. The zombies still had the advantage of numbers, but they were a disorganized lot, getting in the way of each other, torn between what target they should go after—including their own dead. Like the four I’d decimated on my unlucky watch shift, they were barely more than skin bags filled with bones. Still a menace, but no match for a healthy, well-nourished human who couldn’t get infected. Thinking of that female shambler and the conclusions my mind had jumped to didn’t make me feel very comfortable in my own skin, but there was a sure way to make myself stop caring—and that lay maybe fifty feet away from me.

  “We’re in position,” I reported in. “Everyone know what they got to do?”

  Bucky’s chuff made me wish I hadn’t asked. “My, your style of leadership is inspiring.”

  I looked at Parker rather than deign to answer that. “You can stay up here. Be another spotter,” I suggested, trying to keep any disdain out of my voice. Hell, I’d never held back just because of the infection risk. Why did I even think about coddling him now? I was certain that everyone else who could would be heading down there, and Nate would rope Gita into taking my sniper rifle not because she wouldn’t be any use otherwise, but because she was the one who would be missing the least as far as brutal strength was concerned. And they sure as hell hadn’t hesitated when they’d unleashed all those zombies on us at that factory.

  Parker grunted with annoyance, but the tension in his shoulders didn’t lessen. “They have wounded people; I’m a medic. I wouldn’t be if I always stayed behind.”

  Cole and Russell grinned at each other, making me guess that I wasn’t the first to try to coddle Parker. Like me before, they now shirked their packs and only took their melee weapons of choice with them, plus the odd grenade and handgun.

  “Then let’s do this,” I said with more conviction than I felt—but also gleeful anticipation rising inside of me.

  “Ladies first,” Cole offered, pointing down the slope with one of his reinforced baseball bats. Over the com, Bucky and Red gave the orders for the teams they were leading. Ah well. Only way was forward.

  Chapter 21

  We more slid than walked down the steep slope into the ravine, the few trees working perfectly as safety nets so nobody tumbled into the undead horde below. Most of them didn’t pay us any mind at first, either standing around, staring at nothing—which now gave me the creeps, considering how much of that I’d done myself of late—or trying to push toward the thickest parts of the horde, around the cornered group and where Burns was still shooting into the thick of the mass.

  I was debating with myself how to best start this when I reached the bottom of the slope, only one hop from the thick roots of a tree separating me from the valley floor and its occupants—but Cole letting out an ear-piercing whistle that made heads all around whip toward him took that decision from me. Just as well. Taking a last, deep breath—that stank enough of death and feces to make my eyes water—I did my best to fight down the panic that wanted to claw its way to the forefront of my brain, and launched myself over the roots at the nearest shambler, Cole doing the same to my left.

  The first two shamblers were permanently dead within seconds, barely quick enough to turn to face me, too slow to react. From up close, the bad state they were in was even more apparent, some of them barely able to keep upright, let alone defend themselves. There were, of course, the odd stronger ones hiding between the weak, but the first twenty minutes were almost like a walk in the park. A deeply exhausting, strenuous walk that required lots of quick movements that the freshly healed wound in my side wasn’t fond of, not at all, but I spent more time trying not to get fountains of congealed blood and gore all over myself than actively having to defend myself. It was a little like chopping wood, although of the truly nightmarish kind. The very small part of my mind that wasn’t occupied with hacking at the next limb or skull noted that it only made sense. The shamblers this far back were the runts of the litter, the stragglers who bare
ly ever managed to get more than scraps of what the others left behind. They’d likely spent months subsisting on the remains of their even weaker fellows, who couldn’t have been very nutritious. If not for the cornered people clearly being on a very final deadline, it would have been smart to keep decimating the very edges of the undead horde to do away with the easy targets first—but we didn’t have that luxury.

  “You all need to pick up the pace,” Nate’s voice alerted us over the com. “The smart ones have figured out that what I’m trying to do is ring the dinner bell for them. The really smart ones are about to ignore all that dead meat in favor of the hot, wriggling snack that’s hiding behind it. I don’t think they’ll have another hour before they get overwhelmed.”

  Staggering back a few steps to gain some room to breathe, I waited to see if Cole could pick up the slack for me. He gave me a quick signal to go ahead. “How far until we get to the smart ones?” I asked, panting heavily. “We’re probably not exactly the closest, but I think we could carve a way through the mass here to meet up with some backup at the wall of bodies.”

  It took Nate a few seconds to assess, the afternoon eerily quiet as the rapport of his sniper rifle was suddenly missing. Quiet except for the groaning and moaning, interspersed with thuds and other fleshy sounds, of course.

  “Depending on how quick you can be, you might just make it. The opposition is heavier in the very middle,” Nate offered.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” came Bucky’s grunted response, making me guess he was talking from experience.

  “Looks pretty much the same on our side,” Hill reported in. “We could try to meet you at the wall. If we miss, what’s the worst that could happen?” His laugh was a little winded.

  Cole’s snort was loud enough that I heard it over his effort to keep the undead at bay. “My thoughts exactly,” I agreed on our likely demise. “Can one of you up there tell us if one or the other group is starting to lag?”