by J. W. Vohs
Carter watched a handful of the creatures somehow elude the snipers and attempt the jump toward Chien’s boat, but the only one that made it was shot between the eyes by the wary colonel before it could scramble to its feet. By then, a stream of fire was spraying back and forth across the deck of the Saltie near the cabin, and Bobby was pounding Carter out of his daze with punches to the shoulder as he shouted through his facemask. “Go, go, go, get the hell up there!”
Carter’s Marines had gone old-school against the huge transport, sending grappling hooks over the railings in what was an ancient, but effective tactic for boarding an enemy ship. As soon as one of the devices caught fast, the plan was for the powerful, yet wiry Carter to climb an attached, knotted rope while his men used their rifles to keep the hunters away from the area above him. Less than a minute after following Bobby’s command, Carter was on the deck and had secured a rope-ladder to the side of the vessel. As the Marines hurried to join him, Carter emptied the magazines of his two pistols into the faces of the monsters now rushing his precarious position.
Carter only needed to hold the hunters off for a few seconds as his squad frantically climbed aboard, and he killed a dozen of the creatures before one of the beasts hit him with a flying tackle. Feeling the flesh-eater gnawing the top of his helmet while simultaneously trying to rip his right arm from its socket, Carter struggled to reach the long-knife in his weapons belt while he could still move. He knew, from terrifying experience, that he would soon be covered by powerful creatures trying to eat him. Suddenly, mercifully, the weight was gone as the hunter was tossed howling over the railing. Even through the facemask, Bobby’s face was recognizable as the man who’d come to his aid.
“ ’Bout time y’all showed up,” Carter shouted.
Bobby grinned before lifting his pistol and firing into a group of flaming infected coming up behind Carter. “Better go see the captain before we’re all dead.”
A series of ladders and catwalks led up to the bridge of the huge ship. Carter had never been on any boat larger than the yachts plying Lake Erie, so this situation was completely foreign to him. Bobby and Marcus were on Carter’s tail, while the rest of the Marines were keeping the hunters occupied. A few minutes of climbing led the three men to a door near the top of the structure, and when they entered they found a crew of four civilians operating the vessel. The sailors immediately put their hands in the air at the sight of heavily armed, gore-encrusted fighters bursting into the operations center.
Carter pushed his visor up. “Y’all move to the center of this room and keep yer hands up.”
Once the men had complied with their captor’s directions, they were quickly zip-tied. “All right, which one of ya’s the captain of this thing?”
Three of the prisoners turned to look at a portly, bald, middle-aged man who shrugged. “I guess that’d be me, sir.”
Carter stepped over and grabbed the man by his shirt, shoving him toward the control panel. “Shut off the engine and turn this thing sideways.”
“What are talking about? Do you know who’s in charge of this fleet?”
Bobby pulled his long knife and stepped up to the captain. He spoke softly but his eyes were hard. “I’m gonna shove this blade through the top of your foot in three seconds if you don’t do what you’re told.”
The man frantically protested. “President Barnes will have our families killed!”
Bobby shrugged. “One.”
“Please,” the prisoner begged. “Don’t make me do this!”
“Two.”
The captain turned his gaze toward Carter. “All right, all right, I’ll do what you say, just don’t let this guy stab me.”
Carter nodded once. “Git on it then.”
The man moved to the controls and shut off the power, then he put the ship into a sharp turn.
“Now, drop the anchors,” Carter ordered.
The defeated captain shook his head but complied with the command. The massive transport began to vibrate and shudder as the anchors caught on the rocky bottom, and finally the ship came to a complete halt several hundred meters from shore. The Saltie wasn’t lying perfectly parallel to the coast, but at nearly seven hundred feet-long, the hull covered the deepest part of the bay in front of the runway. Carter and his Marines then had a front row seat to one of the best things to happen to their cause since the Battle of Vicksburg: the following transports tried to maneuver around their leader and grounded themselves in shallow water. The invasion fleet had been stopped.
CHAPTER 25
Roberto cocked his head, “What’s that sound?” It was basically a rhetorical question. Everybody on the coast guard cutter knew the sound of a helicopter. A lone chopper appeared out of the smoke and began to slowly circle the scene, illuminated by the flames below.
Barnes looked disgusted as he surveyed the bottleneck that had thwarted the invasion of Middle Bass Island. “I am surrounded by incompetence,” he growled. “But not even my own idiots can ruin this day for me.” He turned to one of the pilots. “Have we made contact?”
“Several points of contact, sir. We should have Mr. Smith on the line any minute now.”
“Jack!” Brittany shouted as she rushed across the deck with a sat- phone in her outstretched hand. “Jack, there’s some guy that claims the president wants to talk to you.”
Jack watched as the chopper made a slight turn and then hovered over one of the stalled invasion ships with a crowd of hunters moaning on its deck.
Brittany handed him the phone. “The jerk on the other end of this thing told me to make it snappy because the president doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
“Jack Smith here.” He casually added, “How can I help you?”
“Ah, Jack, so good to hear your voice.” Barnes sounded very pleased with himself. “While I’m not happy to see that I have another mess to clean up here, I’m not going to let that spoil my generosity. You see, I am being very generous this evening—I’ve brought Andi along so you two can have a little chat about your betrothal.” He motioned for one of his men to bring Andi, and when she put up a fight the soldier put her in a choke hold.
Jack was too numb to react with any emotion. He wasn’t sure he could believe Barnes, so he decided to address Andi directly. “Andi, if you are with General Barnes, you should speak up.”
Andi’s mind was racing. She didn’t want to cooperate with Barnes, but she also wanted to reach out to Jack. After a few seconds, she replied, “Yes, I’m here, Jack, but don’t—”
Barnes interrupted, “I think Jack would like to see you.” He addressed his nemesis. “Jack, you’d like to see Andi, wouldn’t you?” Someone dropped a lasso around Andi’s midsection, wrenching her arms to her sides. Then in an instant, the door flew open and she was shoved halfway out of the hovering craft. A spotlight mounted on the outside of the helicopter snapped on to illuminate her. People watching from the island gasped in unison.
Barnes reached out and stuck the satphone in Andi’s face. “Bid farewell to your friends—say whatever you need to, then say goodbye.
“Tell my girls I love them . . .” Andi sobbed before she was jerked back into the helicopter.
Barnes got back on the phone. “Aren’t you going to thank me for sparing your fiancé’s life?”
Jack noticed the emphasis Barnes put on the word ‘fiancé’ and instantly understood why Barnes had targeted Andi. He chose his words carefully, “Thank you for not murdering Andi, and let her know that I’m sorry for how we ended things.”
Barnes frowned. “You’ve ended things? Well, then, if she’s not important to you, she’s not important to me.”
A few seconds later, Jack watched helplessly as a terrified scream pierced the air. His heart stopped in his chest when he saw the woman he loved plummet from the chopper. “Andi!” he shouted spontaneously as a flash of red hair disappeared into a mass of hungry flesh-eaters.
“See you soon, Jack,” Barnes clucked before his helicopter turned and fle
w away into the smoky night.
The butcher’s bill for the Battle of Middle Bass, as it would come to be called, was lower than it could have been; in addition to the incident with Andi, four soldiers and five sailors died in the fighting. None of the combat casualties were Hoosiers, but, for Jack and his followers, the overall success of the battle was overshadowed by Andi’s gruesome death, and the fact that Barnes was even more fanatically evil than they could have imagined.
The Neah was mangled beyond any possible post-apocalypse repair. The Coast Guard vessel had been designed to break ice, not the hulls of tough, Great Lakes container ships. The ram at the bow was bent and the engine had essentially blown up. Jack tried not to think about any could-have-beens, including a healthy Neah keeping the waters surrounding Middle Bass open to present an unpassable barrier to the inevitable ice-borne invasion by an army of infected.
To all appearances, Jack remained a pillar of strength, focused on protecting his people and defeating the enemy. No one publically spoke of what happened with Andi—there was no point. Carter told Deb that it seemed like everyone instinctively knew that just talking about the evil deed increased Barnes’ power and influence. He didn’t have to tell Deb that people were also silent out of respect for Jack.
Four squads were kept ready at the airport in case any of the infected trapped on the grounded ships figured out a way to reach shore. The troops had front row seats for the display of fire and explosives Chien’s cruisers unleashed on the Salties. The operators of the flamethrowers had figured out how to use the wind picking up from the northwest, finding that their napalm could reach the transports from a safe distance with a little help from Mother Nature. Jack stopped by to watch as the boats began spraying the decks with fire, but found no joy in witnessing the incineration of thousands of trapped hunters. He could kill the beasts in battle all day long, but to hear them howling in fear, and seeing them jump into the water after being set ablaze, was something he didn’t care to witness. It had to be done, nobody on Middle Bass could relax with so many flesh eaters just a few hundred meters offshore, but the mass extermination just underscored the starring role of death in a world directed by Matthew Barnes.
So Jack wasn’t present when one of the hunters figured out how to swim. The creature was summarily shot upon reaching the slushy shallows, but a few minutes later two more flesh-eaters discovered that they could stay afloat and move toward the island. All told, more than two dozen hunters displayed a rudimentary ability to swim in the frigid waters as the Salties were destroyed, though none of the creatures reached the shore before being killed. What had generated a feeling of wonder at first, gradually turned to fear and worry as the soldiers realized that the hunters were developing new skills. By the end of the day, it was clear that islands weren’t as safe now as they had been just a few months earlier.
Swimming hunters didn’t really concern Jack yet; Luke had once told him that it was just a matter of time before the creatures figured it out. The teen had explained that all mammals could swim, and the only thing stopping the hunters was some sort of vestigial, mental fear of water. The infected learned through experience, that fact had been demonstrated repeatedly since the outbreak began. From the beginning of their post-infection existence, the flesh-eaters had seen their pack-mates sink and die in deep water, so the survivors learned to avoid it. As the hunters evolved, they gradually added new skills, so Jack wasn’t surprised that one or two percent of the hunters had jumped into Lake Erie and figured out how to swim. He didn’t have the time or energy to worry about this new development; all of the swimmers had been killed, so swimming hunters posed no immediate threat. Eventually, every hunter on earth would become a swimmer, but probably not soon enough to effect this war. Jack had bigger worries than the latest evolution in hunter behavior; he had a mole who needed to be unearthed and punished.
Carter, Marcus, and Bobby had been monitoring Lieutenant Heder’s movements ever since they’d arrived on the island, and although they had yet to discover anything incriminating, Carter was more convinced than ever that Heder was the traitor. With Marcus and Bobby in charge of interrogating the four prisoners captured in the Battle of Middle Bass, Carter met with Jack and David to discuss the ongoing surveillance of Brittany’s boyfriend.
Jack was as cold and emotionless as anyone had ever seen. “Someone leaked our defensive plans to Barnes.”
“Barnes didn’t need no contact here fer sendin’ a fake invasion fleet ahead of the real deal,” Carter reasoned. “Just ‘cause we ain’t caught Heder communicatin’ with the bastard don’t mean he ain’t Barnes’ lackey.”
David shrugged. “Christy is convinced he’s our man, but we only have circumstantial evidence. We need to be careful making assumptions—by focusing on the wrong person we could let the real spy get away.”
“So you don’t think it’s Heder?” Jack asked his brother.
“I think it’s a good possibility, but I’m open to other options.”
“I trust Deb an’ Christy’s woman’s intuition, but my soldier’s instincts back ‘em up. Plus, mister lawyer, that circumstantial evidence ya mention is purty convincin’. We should get ourselves an outside opinion—I say we git Colonel Chien and see what he says,” Carter suggested.
“Good idea,” Jack agreed. “Let’s also round up Deb, Christy, Lori and Blake.” There were many other people Jack trusted on Middle Bass, but he figured that when it came to secrecy, the fewer people involved, the better your chances of keeping the secret. “We need to come up with a plan to smoke out our traitor, whoever it is.”
Ten minutes later the group was assembled and Jack got right to the point, “We need to find out who the mole is, and either eliminate him or use him to our advantage if we can. You all know we’ve been keeping an eye on Lieutenant Heder, but we haven’t uncovered anything. We can’t just watch and wait and come up empty handed. I need to know who the traitor is now—suggestions?”
When nobody immediately responded, Chien offered his input. “Well, either the mole was with you from the beginning, or somebody was turned in the past few months. Anybody with you from the beginning has fought at your side in battles that easily could have killed them or their loved ones; why would they keep doing that if they were going to ultimately betray you? If one of your people turned, they had to be in contact with somebody in Barnes’ camp. Who would have that kind of access in Fort Wayne? Is there anyone in your group who you don’t completely trust?”
No one responded immediately; for a moment they all just looked at each other with searching stares. Finally, Jack cleared his throat. “Everyone in Fort Wayne the night it fell has fought at our side before. Nobody who’s been with us since the Battle of the Castle would have turned, nobody.”
David brought up the prime suspect. “Red Heder fought with us in Buffalo, to the point of death, but we have no idea where all he’s been since then.”
“What do you mean by that?” the colonel asked.
Christy answered for her husband, “The people here on Middle Bass have been scavenging all over the lake since early summer. Usually they go out in teams, but I’ve learned that Heder went out on his own all the time; he told people that he worked better alone. Then, he just happened to be visiting Fort Wayne the night our wall was blown. Not a lot of people would have known how to do that, or cut the wires to the explosives we had on the bridge. Plus, I don’t care what the odds are, who among us wouldn’t have fought to save Andi?”
At the mention of Andi’s name, the room grew totally still. Jack stared at the ground, avoiding all eye contact. Christy drew a quivering breath and looked over at Deb, who took the cue to continue the conversation. “Andi led the defense of the bridge that night; the Utah sergeant who survived said that she was amazing. She didn’t panic one time, and never seemed to be confused about anything. So why would she run in the opposite direction from the docks when she retreated from the wall? Heder was with Andi; why was he left behind when she was abdu
cted?” Deb was surprisingly calm under the circumstances, but the only emotion she was allowing herself to feel was anger. “I know Heder is the traitor, and he needs to be stopped by any means necessary.”
Carter blinked at his wife’s newfound ruthlessness. “This woman is the gentlest soul on the planet, so if she says Heder needs to be dealt with, than ya better be listenin’ up.”
Jack looked up with narrowed eyes. “How do we get him to tip his hand?”
“He has to have a radio,” Chien explained. “If he’s been careful about using it lately, he’s probably feeling the need to check in after what happened here. Where was he during the battle?”
“He was with me,” Deb answered. “I told him we needed him to help monitor communications and be ready to move out if we lost contact with any of our main defenses.”
“Where is he now?” Chien asked with concern.
“I left him with Brittany; she said they were going to her parents’ place.”
“He lives in a small house with Brittany, pretty close to where her parents live,” Christy added. “I know Marcus has searched both places thoroughly.”
Blake spoke up, “If Heder’s the mole, the people here on Middle Bass are going to be shocked and upset; he’s one of the leaders of their scavenging and defense operation. We’re going to need hard evidence that he can’t manipulate, or, better yet, he could just have an unfortunate accident.”
Chien grunted as he considered Blake’s suggestion. “What about his girlfriend?”
“I’ll be surprised if she knows,” Christy decided. “I just can’t believe that she’d betray us.”
“Me either,” Lori added. “Every instinct I have tells me that she doesn’t know what lover-boy’s been up to. We have a history, she’s risked her life with us, and Father O’Brien trusted her completely.”
