Zombie Killers (Book 8): Bad Company

by John F. Holmes

  We moved from block to block, stopping carefully to cross the intersections in bounds. We passed three undead, which were taken out by pistol shot. Elam watched from each building corner, scanning windows with a thermal scope. “Seeing anything?” I asked at one point.

  “I have seen several hot spots that showed human beings, and many, many undead trapped in apartments. Nothing that seemed a threat, though. I doubt any of the survivors can see us in this darkness.” So far so good, then.

  The first sign of trouble was the smell of burnt human flesh and diesel trucks. We approached the ambush site extremely cautiously, waiting half an hour, scanning for movement, but saw nothing. The trucks didn’t smoke anymore, but the stink hung over everything.

  “Colonel, I have some body heat on one of the corpses. One survivor,” said Elam.

  Shit, it had been three days. Whoever was out there would be in a bad way, and we would have to get to them quick. “Brit, cover my back. Ziv, with me. Rest of you, stay tight, set up a perimeter in that building over there,” I pointed. There was a storefront on the corner closest to the ambush site. “Elam, which one?”

  He was using an IR scope on his rifle, but I couldn’t see with my AN/PVS-14, for some reason. Brit had a pair of PVS-7’s on, and she said “I got it. Left of the closest truck, under the bed.”

  “You lead then. Doc, you stick right on my ass, got it?” She whispered an acknowledgement, and unstrapped her aide bag from her pack, handing the ruck to Boz. I could hear the nervousness in her voice. Ziv picked up the folding stretcher, and stepped in behind Brit.

  She moved out, and we followed, going smoothly around the dead bodies and wreckage. Brass tinkled under our feet, and I was careful where I stepped to keep from rolling my ankle again. As it was, I was still limping.

  Brit stopped at the survivor, then stepped over him, moving forward to cover our twelve. Ziv came up next to her and stepped to one side, moving left to cover the other sector. Nothing moved in front of us. Red light flared as Doc Swan turned on her light and started to examine the soldier, cutting through the straps in his plate carrier, then gently feeling for wounds.

  “Water,” gasped the man in a dry rattling whisper.

  “Colonel, just a bit on his lips,” said Doc, completely in charge of the situation.

  I took the bandana from around my neck and squeezed some water from my camelback onto it, and moistened the man’s mouth. He sucked at it greedily, weakly grabbing at my arm. I held him off as Doc whistled through her teeth.

  “Gut shot,” she muttered. She put her hand on my shoulder to get my attention, and shook her head from side to side. The man made a choking sound, and gasped as pain wracked his body, He pulled at my shirt, and I leaned forward to hear him.

  “Mercs, hit us hard, heavy weapons. Rockets. Mark, mark nineteen. Truck moun, mount.” He groaned again, clutching at his abdomen. “God this effing hurts!” he blurted out.

  “We can’t take you back. We’re just scouts.”

  I could see his face in the green light, the anguish, the realization that he was going to die. “I need, I need a priest. Confession.”

  “I’ll listen to your confession,” said Doc. “I’m a Baptist minister, is that OK?”

  The man nodded slightly, and she leaned down to listen. His voice slowly died out as he spoke, till I couldn’t hear anything. She held his hand while he slowly lost consciousness, and I moved her away. Then I placed my pistol up under his chin and fired three times. His body jumped in convulsions, then lay still, and Doc let out a gasp.

  “It’s a hard world we’re living in, Doc. Get used to it.”

  I started to move, stepping over the body, and then stopped dead. Something had caught on my plate carrier as I stood up, and I held very still. Taking off my glove, I reached slowly down and felt with my hand to see what it was snagged on. I touched a thin wire, probably fishing line, pulled tight and caught fast.

  “Doc, turn slowly around, very carefully, get on the ground, and crawl ten feet. If you feel the slightest resistance, stop where you are. BRIT!” I called, as loud as I could.

  “Yo.”

  “I’m caught on a tripwire,” I said, looking to see what it was attached to. Strapped to the bed of the truck that had been sheltering the dying man were three claymore mines. The trip wire ran from them and down to a peg hammered into the street, directly under the guy’s body. If we had tried to move him, the fishing line would have set them off.

  Chapter 289

  “Can you move?” asked Brit, after they had carefully made their way back to me. Along the way, they had found three more booby traps, two grenades and another massive claymore set up, using silly string to find the trip wires and stepping gently over them.

  “I don’t think so. It’s snagged pretty good and I’m afraid whatever way I move it, it will go off.”

  “What if,” said Brit, “One of us grabs you and pulls as hard as we can away from the blast? We might get sheltered under the truck.”

  Ziv snorted and said, “There will not BE any more truck once those go off.”

  “Can you disarm them?” she asked.

  “Maybe, but I think Boz will be better at this. I will go get him.” He vanished into the darkness, stopping to pick Doc up from the ground. I reached up and flipped my NVGs out of the way.

  “Come here and give me a kiss.” Brit did, a deep passionate one. “Now get the hell away from here.”

  “No.”

  I sighed, exasperated. “Brit, one of us goes home. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Jerk.”

  “Obnoxious ginger.” She squeezed my hand and jogged back towards the store, and I waited. Boz showed up a minute later, just as I started to get really nervous. My leg was shaking from holding it in one place, slightly raised. He whistled when he saw the explosives.

  “No problem. It’s actually pretty simple to disarm a claymore, unless of course …” He started mumbling to himself.

  “Of course what?” I almost shouted.

  “Oh, nothing. Counter traps, kill you if you disturb it. Be quiet, will you? Man’s gotta think.”

  He snapped on a red lens covered light, and followed the fishing line back up to the mines. “Yep, thought so. Amateurs.” I saw him reach over and start unscrewing the cover of the blasting cap. My leg was really twitching now.

  “There you go,” he muttered, pulling the detonator out slowly. Even a blasting cap can take off your hand.

  “Simple fuse, not to worry… ahh shit. That’s not good.”

  “AHH SHIT WHAT!”

  “I just remembered that I forgot to turn the stove off back at my apartment.”

  “Were you always this much of a dick?” I asked, letting my leg back down.

  “Only under press…” His comment was cut short by the BANG of a heavy bullet round striking the truck half a foot above his head. We both ran as fast as we could, and dove behind the burnt out wreck of a Humvee, just as another shot detonated the claymores. You can light C-4 on fire, but hit it with a bullet and you’re done. The other side of the wreck was shredded by thousands of steel balls, and Boz grunted as one ricocheted off the pavement and scored his leg.

  My ears were ringing from the multiple blasts, but I could faintly hear gunfire popping around us, and sparks from steel jacketed bullets lit up the wreckage. I raised my knife hand and gestured to Boz, then pointed back towards the storefront, from which I could see, but not hear, bursts of gunfire. He nodded, and without waiting, pushed himself up and ran. I popped up and emptied a full magazine at where I thought some of the shooting was coming from, shattering even more glass that rained down like tiny stars in my NVGs. Then I took off myself, running as fast as I could towards the shelter of the store. Feeling like I had a target painted on my back, I dove through the shattered plate glass, tripped and landed on my face inside the store. I pushed myself back up and crawled forward until arms grabbed me and lifted me into the darkness. As soon as I disappeared from view, th
e shots stopped outside.

  “Anyone hurt?” I asked, as soon as my hearing started to clear. Brit was putting a bandage on Boz’s leg as he thumbed rounds from his rucksack back into an empty magazine.

  “No, we’re good,” answered Shona.

  “Holy shit!” said Cabrejo his eyes wide in the darkness. “There must have been like a hundred mofo’s shootin at us! Man that was some brave shit you and old Boz just did!”

  “Who you calling old, punk?” growled Boz, rolling his pants leg down.

  Elam spoke up, from where he just peeked around the edge of the storefront, from behind a barricade of shelving. “There were three, a four, spotter, and a light machine gun team, probably an M-249 SAW. I got two, the sniper and his spotter, and I think our return fire killed or seriously wounded both from the machine gun team.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Yes. Why would I say something I was not sure of?”

  “Yes, why would you?” I muttered. Just like his father.

  “Prisoners?” asked Ziv.

  “Two more for rear security, with two wounded, that’s a light squad. Let’s go get ‘em! Doc, you stay here with Cabrejo Staff Sergeant Yasser, and Colonel McHale. Ziv, me, you and Brit are going after them.”

  “I’m about useless as tits on a bull here,” said McHale.

  “Don’t worry, Alex, I’ll find you a helicopter, gold plated, and you can fly us out of here!” said Brit.

  “Fat chance.”

  We dashed out into the night, Ziv in the lead. I was hoping that we could catch them on their way out of the building, and they would go out the back where they probably had a vehicle stashed. They had been up around the fourth or fifth floor, and carrying wounded, we might get the jump on them.

  We ran past the face of the building, turned the corner, and ran for another half a block, until we came to an alley opening up onto the sidewalk. As we did, a diesel pickup truck came roaring out of it, almost knocking Ziv down. All three of us opened up on it point blank, Brit hosing it with the SAW she had swapped out with Boz, firing quick five round bursts into the cab and then the bed of the truck. All the glass shattered and the ripping of the unsuppressed automatic weapon echoed around the concrete and steel canyons.

  It careened out of control across the street, hit a wrecked bus, and then smashed into the front of another building, where it stopped. We split and walked slowly down the sides of the truck, waiting for a door to open, and Ziv jumped onto the bed, keeping his weapon trained on the shattered rear window of the king cab.

  I had hoped to surprise them before they got into the truck, figuring they might be carrying wounded, but they had beaten us there, and probably figured we had taken off after the ambush. Instead, well, it was slaughter. That’s all you can call killing like this.

  One door opened as I approached the passenger side, and a man fell out, landing with a crunch on the pavement. He moved spasmodically for a few seconds, then lay still. There were two more in the truck, or what was left of them. In the green of my NVGs. I could see splattered chunks of meat scattered around the inside of the truck.

  Killing is pretty gross, and although some became used to it, I never did. Brit’s SAW, with its light 5.56 rounds, had punched through the sheet metal and then gone tumbling in a wild dance that ripped jagged holes in bodies, smashed bone, and tore chunks of bloody flesh. Ziv’s heavier AK bullets had blown huge holes on their exit that leaked massive amounts of blood, which was already pooling on the floor of the cab.

  “Six, this is Five, SITREP, over” came over the team radio, and I answered Shona while Brit and Ziv went through the dead men’s effects.

  “We’re good, no prisoners, coming back to your position, over.”

  “Roger, out.”

  We hustled back along the opposite side of the street from the way we came, at the same time looking out for trip wires. The original claymore and grenades had seemed to be the only ones present, though, and I did some figuring.

  There was no way that guy had been able to survive being gut shot that bad, lying out there for three days. Therefore, he had been a prisoner, and they had shot him and left him for bait, figuring the crashed helo was part of a rescue operation for the convoy. The ambush team had been left there to trigger it and give warning to the rest of their company. I explained my theory to the rest of the team when we got back.

  “That means they know we’re out here, though probably not in how much force. So they’ll do one of two things. Withdraw with whatever loot they’ve got, or set up for another ambush, knowing our forces are thin around the city.”

  “If I were in charge, I would pull my men out,” said Ziv. “I did same thing when pillaging Saint Louis. Gangs were too well armed, so we set fire to city and slaughtered them as they tried to escape flames.” He laughed uproariously at the memory, and said “Napalm, it sticks to kids, as you Americans say.” Boz joined in his laughter.

  “Crazy white dudes, you are scaring the shit out of me more than the undead,” said Cabrejo l.

  “Point is,” I said when they stopped, “we have to find out which one, tonight. That means we have to run through the park, up to the museum, assuming that was their target, and get eyes on as soon as possible. Might be that Ski and his guys are still being held prisoner. We call in the heavies and try to get them out from under their noses.”

  There was no more talking as we took off in a steady jog, shifting two blocks over from Fifth, racing against dawn to be in position before light found us.

  Chapter 290

  Brit measured my pace and jogged next to me, pausing when I did to check before we crossed an open area. It felt good to have her by my side again, after being separated for weeks in Florida.

  Around us the team moved steadily, the point man stopping on a corner, checking things out, then waved us forward. They became the rear guard, and we made our way steadily, block by block. We found no undead, but did hear once, echoing down the streets, a horde howling. Far away and upwind to the west, thankfully.

  The biggest danger area was crossing over into the park. It was surrounded by skyscrapers, and any commander with half a brain would have spotters watching obvious crossing zones. I crouched under the awning of the Waldorf, looking at that expanse and doing a risk assessment. We might lose one or two to a sniper, and give word that we were in town. To go all the way around, then up the west side of the park would take time, and there was no guarantee we wouldn’t be spotted. Same with going east, to Lexington and heading north. The closer we got, the easier it would be for an OP to get wind of us.

  The whole team had gathered around me in a perimeter, and I asked Ziv and Boz, who had the most combat experience, for advice.

  “Well,” said Boz, spitting out a big wad of tobacco and stuffing in another, “I don’t know about you all, but I’m getting tired. How about we take a break and wait till sundown, sneak in that way?”

  “Ne!” disagreed Ziv. “Those men we killed, they had night vision devices. So will spotters.”

  “I do want to take a break, we’ve been at this all night, but I want to have eyes on the target first,” I interjected as they started arguing.

  Cabrejo of all people, spoke up. “You gotta go under, use the subway. If we go over to the Lexington Avenue line, there’s a station at 59th street. We can use the tunnel to get up to 77th and come out behind their eyes.”

  “Are you out of your mind, kid?” said Shona. “Those tunnels will be crawling with undead.”

  “Some, yeah,” he said, “but not a lot. The city locked and chained the tunnels during the evacuation. I’ve been in them. The south ones, they’s flooded, but it ain’t bad here. Besides, ain’t you all the famous Zombie Killers? Ain’t you got a rep to uphold?” He motioned to the body cam Shona was wearing.

  Before we had set out, we had been issued body cams, to “improve tactics”. I suspected that whatever footage they got off it would be used for more publicity stuff. “Kid, I’ll trust you.
If things go to shit, though, guess who gets to play rear guard while we run away?”

  Lexington was a few blocks over, and we made it there easily. Like he had said, the gate was chained shut, but there were three undead, a fat woman in an expensive dress, some guy with his baggy gangster jeans STILL hanging off his ass, and an NYPD cop. For all we knew, the three of them had been pressed up against this gate for eight years, hissing and howling at anything that moved. They had rotted, though, to the point where their vocal chords or lungs couldn’t from that annoying wail.

  I waved Cabrejo over, and made a “be my guest” gesture. I’ll give him credit, he was calm and collected as he shot each one. Took him five bullets, one of which was a complete miss that went zinging off into the darkness down below. Not bad, though, and I told him so.

  “Better than Brit. That’s why she carries a shotgun.”

  “Really?” he asked, and I could see him swell up a bit with pride. What a crappy life he must have had in the FEMA camps.

  “Suck it, old man,” muttered Brit, and she jacked a breaching round into her gun, placed the suppressor right up against the lock, and shattered it.

  We entered the tunnel, descending into the darkness. Headlamps and tactical lights on our weapons were turned on; NVGs would be little use in the complete darkness. Everything was fine until Elam stopped. Brit noticed and tapped my shoulder, and I called a halt.

  “What’s up, Sergeant?” I asked, putting his rank in there as a reminder.

  “I… I cannot go in there.” He was pale and sweating, and I said, “Go on.”

  He swallowed and said, “When I was a boy, we, we had to go into the caves to avoid both the Americans and the Taliban. One time, a bomb strike sealed us in for two days. I … cannot.”

  “You didn’t say anything when the idea came up.”

  “I thought I could do this. I cannot.”

  I waved for everyone to maintain security, and put my arm around the younger man’s shoulders. He was shaking in his fear and breathing heavily. This was a man who was always calm and cool.