by Spriggs, Kal
"We go on," he said after a moment. If St Louis had died quickly, then the hospitals and clinics might have supplies. Since he hadn't yet seen signs of large numbers of undead, bringing the train through the town might be the best option.
They continued on, and the sun continued to burn down on them. The air was like soup, every breath felt like it was half water. The Mississippi, brown and sluggish, was the only thing moving as far as Jack could see. The run of tracks met up with the main section and Jack moved over to the switch. It was one of the electric remote ones, but it still had a mechanical override and he waved at Sean to give him a hand. They'd already switched over all the junctions on the way down. Jack hoped it would save time when and if the train came this way. Not that they really had much of a choice about the matter, not short of giving up or trying to go north through Chicago.
As they came to the first set of trusses, Jack signaled to Warrant Officer Knighton and Lieutenant Baxter, and both of them climbed down onto the service walkways that ran on either side of the bridge. He nodded at Sean, "Looks good so far?"
The salvager scowled, "Yeah. Steel structure has held up pretty well..." He spat over the side of the bridge. "No damage to the tracks, no sign of people, though either."
"Yeah, I noticed that," Jack replied. Many survivors would leave messages, either written in chalk or taped in place, on bridges. Such messages ranged from warnings to offers, but most often they were simpler than that. He'd seen a lot of them that were simply: "Five survivors, headed west" or "Fifteen souls, headed towards Chattanooga."
The absence of such signs, especially when this was one of the few remaining bridges over the Mississippi, told Jack that either no one had made it this far... or someone had removed those signs.
They walked along the bridge. Here the Mississippi was almost a third of a mile across and Jack paused here and there to look down at the water, a hundred feet or more below them. He saw a lot of debris and flotsam in the river. Overturned boats, adrift barges, as well as trees, cars, and even parts of houses. The Ohio had been just as bad. The spring rains hadn't been terrible, but with no one to operate the locks and dams or to repair levies, there'd been plenty of flooding.
"Sir," Lieutenant Baxter spoke in a low voice, "I've got movement in the city. Eleven o'clock at eight hundred meters."
They kept moving. If this was some kind of ambush, then they needed to know what they were going into and if they stopped, they might trigger it before they could take precautions. Jack caught sight of a figure in the tall building just south of the far end of the bridge. The man stood in the shadows of a window, but at their angle he was silhouetted against an empty window behind him. Easy mistake, especially if you aren't used to working against military. Most people didn't look up: they looked at ground level. The observer had to be human, he shifted a bit and Jack thought he caught the glint of binoculars.
"Raider?" Warrant Officer Knighton asked.
"Maybe," Jack said as he darted looks around at the other buildings. The one the observer was in was the only one that rose over the tracks. It also afforded a good view of the interstate bridge just to the north of them.
It wasn't a good place to set an ambush, but it was a good place to observe. "Probably a scout," Jack said after a moment. "Lieutenant, check with Brian, see if he's got anything on the truck CB." Most of the survivors used either walkie-talkies or CB's for communication. If it was either of those, they might find the channel and listen in.
They continued to walk down the bridge. Jack felt the spot between his shoulder blades begin to itch. He didn't like this. There should have been zombies roaming the streets. There should have been outward signs of survivors. Instead, they had one observer, set in position to watch the only decent route in and out of the city.
That bespoke organization and planning as well as numbers. Jack didn't know how many people it would have taken to clear the city of zombies. He didn't know if it was possible. The combined might of the US Army, Marines, Navy, and Air Force had fought for three months just to contain zombie outbreaks. They'd had far better logistics and far more coordination than any group of survivors could manage. They'd used artillery, aircraft, and armored vehicles, they had destroyed tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of undead.
But when every victim that died rose as a zombie, even that hadn't been enough. Fifteen million zombies had spread out from New York City. Another twelve million had come out of Los Angeles... and another ten million from Chicago. Every man, woman, and child, every dog, cat, and bird that they killed rose as a zombie.
Fighting them on the eastern seaboard had left vast swaths of destruction. Jack had employed explosives. He'd seen artillery barrages level cities, seen missile strikes obliterate zombie hordes... but this wasn't a human foe. The zombies kept coming. The military had leveled entire cities just in the effort to stop the undead advance.
He'd seen some of the fighting lines near Cleveland, where tanks and armored vehicles had been left out of fuel and ammunition, their crews abandoning them or dragged out when they were overrun. The fighting lines had been blasted clean of vegetation, even months later, pockmarked with craters. Those had been desolate war zones where humanity had poured on artillery and heavy weapons in an effort to stop the undead hordes.
St Louis didn't look like a war zone. It looked abandoned.
"Brian says he's got nothing," Lieutenant Baxter reported. "He went through some of the military net, too. Got a bit of static but that's it."
Static could mean nothing. The military radios tended to be more sensitive to atmospheric conditions than civilian gear. It could be some kind of storm in the ionosphere... or it could be someone using encrypted signals or even frequency hopping military comms.
Jack didn't know if it was one or the other, but if it was the latter, then whoever these people were, they had at least some military survivors who knew how to use military comms.
"Right," Jack said, "keep moving and keep your eyes open."
They continued onward and Jack's unease only grew as they crossed into the city. The railroad tracks were still on a raised section, almost a hundred feet in the air. Jack looked over the side as they walked over the freeway. He saw a few abandoned cars below them, but still no signs of zombies or the living.
Ahead of them, about a mile out, Jack could see the train station and a cluster of other buildings. The rail yard there would have the switches that would let them roll through. Jack didn't see any blockages, though he saw some clusters of passenger cars and one freight train parked in the area. He looked over at Sean, "I think we need to get down from here."
Sean nodded, "Best place for an ambush would be down there, no cover, we'd be sitting ducks as we follow the tracks down."
"Right," Jack nodded at Knighton. "That looks like an access ladder up ahead. Check it out. We drop down to street level and go evasive from here on out."
"Roger, Captain," Warrant Officer Knighton said.
They moved ahead and Jack paused at the top of the ladder. "I'll keep watch, go," he said. They took the ladder one at a time. When Knighton got to the bottom, he moved into cover with his shotgun. When Baxter got down, she took up position watching the opposite direction. Sean hit the bottom and then Jack started down. There was no talk, no discussion. At this point, survivors knew how to move together quickly and quietly. Noise would only draw zombies.
Jack reached the ground and they moved out. He signaled Knighton forward down the street, which led parallel to the tracks. Past the first intersection there were broad parking lots. There wasn't a lot of cover, mostly overgrown trees and abandoned vehicles. Jack started to wonder if they should have stayed on the railroad tracks, but ahead of them he saw a cluster of office buildings, which hopefully overlooked the railroad station.
He gestured that direction and the group broke into a jog.
As they came to the first intersection, though, he heard a rattle of noise coming from the south. Jack looked th
at way and bit back a curse. Not a hundred meters away, standing in a cluster hidden between two buildings was a large mob of zombies. The undead saw their group and began their advance. "Move!" Jack grunted as Lieutenant Baxter froze in front of him. He shoved her along and they all broke into a sprint.
Normally outrunning the undead was problematic. If you could break line of sight, that was good, but in the city there was far too much risk of stumbling on a group like this one. Jack looked over his shoulder as he ran and he saw at least a hundred of the zombies stumbling in pursuit. With how they clustered together, he wished he had some explosives or something, he could have taken them all out with just a couple of blocks of C4. Used the last of it months ago... I really should start making some pipe bombs or something. But the problem with explosives like black powder or ammonium nitrate was that they could be just as dangerous to their users as any enemy and the last thing they could afford was to blow up part of of the train.
"Doorway," Sean gasped out and pointed. Jack spotted the open doorway at the base of the nearby office building, a hundred feet off the main street. The building also looked to have some kind of covered pedestrian bridge that connected it to others, which might provide a means to escape. He hated to go into an unexplored building, but if they kept running, they might just run into another mob of zombies anyway.
"Go!" Jack snapped. They sprinted the last bit of distance and Knighton kicked open the glass doors and led the way in. It looked to be an office lobby and in the dim light it was hard to see anything. "There!" Sean pointed.
Jack saw the sign for stairs and he pushed the others forward. The zombies were still some distance behind, but they'd be following.
The door to the stairwell had been knocked down and Jack saw darkened and old bloodstains across the concrete floor. He tried not to think about that as he followed the others up the stairs. Knighton led the way up, panting and wheezing under his heavy load, even as Jack paused and looked down the stairwell for a moment. Three floors up, things looked good so far with no signs of other zombies.
"Top floor, Captain!" Knighton shouted.
"How's the door look?" Jack asked as he ran up the stairs.
"It's down," Knighton said.
Jack bit back a curse. He could see where someone had piled up a makeshift barricade at one time, but from the bloodstains and the way the door had been knocked down, that hadn't lasted. Then again, without weapons, most holdouts in the first few weeks hadn't lasted. Even with a pistol or knife, a survivor generally couldn't disable or destroy a zombie.
"Give me a hand," Jack growled and he, Sean, and Knighton shoved a desk back to block the opening somewhat. "That won't hold them, but it might slow them down. We need to find the route to the walkway," Jack said. Even as he spoke, he heard the shuffle and stomp of zombies in the stairwell. They were running out of time.
"This way," Sean said, pointing down the dark hallway towards a set of windows. Jack and the others jogged that direction.
Yet something seemed off and Jack gave out a shout of warning just in time. Sean bit back a curse as he skidded to a halt and then teetered on the edge of the gaping hole. Lieutenant Baxter reached out and caught him by the belt and hauled him back.
"What the hell?" Sean ground out, staring at the section of demolished floor. A ten or twelve foot gap dropped four floors down, the tiles smashed and only a few steel supports remaining.
"I've seen this kind of thing before," Jack said softly. "Survivors sometimes did it as a kind of moat in cities. They can fend off any zombies that try to cross the support beams."
Sean spat in the hole, "Okay, then where are the survivors?"
"Most of the time, they starved to death waiting for rescue," Jack replied. "Or died of dehydration. Or else they just gave up and killed themselves."
"Not going to happen to me," Sean snapped.
"We'll have to walk across..." Lieutenant Baxter started to say.
There was a loud crash behind them and Jack brought his shotgun around and turned on the flashlight. He could see cold, dead limbs pawing at the desk in front of the stairwell door. A moment later there was another loud crash and the desk toppled over. Two of the zombies pushing at it fell and their fellows trampled them. The mob of zombies poured into the hallway only fifty feet away and Jack realized that they were out of time.
***
Chapter Eight
Jack looked back at the others, "Cross it now!"
"This sucks!" Sean shouted. Even so, he started across the narrow support beam, his hands spread wide as he walked across.
"Lieutenant!" Jack shouted, "Ladies first!"
"My balance sucks," Lieutenant Baxter snapped back, but she started wobbling her way across. Jack brought up his shotgun as the zombies approached. He fired the first round from his twelve gauge and the deer slug blasted a hole the size of a softball through the zombie's chest and the next two behind it. All three stumbled and two of them lost their balance and the mob trampled them as they came forward. Jack worked the slide and blasted the next one. Next to him Knighton fired his shotgun and another zombie fell. But destroying individual zombies in that mass was like melting individual snowflakes with a lighter in a blizzard.
"Captain..." Knighton nodded at the beam
Jack just shook his head, "Go, you've got the long gun, I trust you to cover me when I cross."
Knighton worked his shotgun in a rapid fire pace and then, as it clicked empty, turned and jogged across the narrow beam.
"Go!" Knighton shouted.
Jack fired off a last shot, blasting the zombie of an old woman into ruin and then turning. He started running across the beam, but as he did, his shotgun swung to the side and tangled in his feet. Jack gave a shout as he lost his balance and teetered, arms swinging wildly. Knighton reached out a hand and caught his and pulled him to safety.
"Thanks," Jack gasped.
"No problem, Captain," Knighton grinned. They stepped back from the edge just as the zombie horde reached the hole. The vast majority simply went right over the edge, most of them not even slowing as they stepped out into open space. They fell the four floors an avalanche of dead bodies, striking support beams along the way and falling into a pile at the bottom. Yet the mob showed no sign of slowing and here and there one managed to get a few feet along the support beam before falling.
"We need to go!" Jack barked.
They ran along the corridor to the windows and as they got there, Jack heard a moan from a side room. He glanced in the open doorway, just as a dozen zombies shuffled into the light. "Contact Left!" Jack shouted.
Lieutenant Baxter paused in the doorway and fired, downing the lead zombie. They wore the remains of office clothing and as he reloaded his shotgun, shining his flashlight in at the group, he saw makeshift mattresses and living quarters. "Found the people who made that pit," Jack said. Or what's left of them, anyway.
He pumped a round into one of the zombies and as it stumbled back, he made a quick judgment call. "Conserve ammo, go to hand weapons."
Sean gave a whoop and charged past Lieutenant Baxter, his broadsword swinging. Jack stepped up next to him and shouted to the others, "Cover our backs!" If any zombies made it past the pit, they'd be stuck between the two groups. Jack didn't even want to fight this group of zombies, but until they had an escape route, they needed to plan to defend this area... and they couldn't afford to leave any of the undead inside and capable of fighting.
Jack brought his machete down on the shoulder of a zombie and the limb flew off. As the zombie swung with its other arm, Jack took it off at the elbow and then kicked the armless zombie back. It fell and thrashed, trying to lever itself to its feet.
Jack chopped down and severed the knee of an advancing zombie. As it toppled, Sean took the thing's head and stepped on its back while he hacked the zombies' arms off. Two more zombies advanced and Jack attacked them with quick, brutal strikes, designed to disable them so that they no longer posed a threat. As the last of the zombi
es in the room fell, he stepped back, watching twitching limbs and writhing undead torsos while he looked for any that posed a significant threat. The limbs went still after a few seconds, the torsos would continue to twitch until whatever force animated them finally wore out.
After a moment, he called out, "Status? One up!"
"Two up," Sean grunted as he wiped black blood off of his broadsword.
"Three up," Lieutenant Baxter replied.
"Four up, Captain," Warrant Officer Knighton said from the corridor. "Captain, you need to see this."
Jack stepped back out in the hallway and he walked over to where Knighton stood by the windows. Knighton pointed down at the street and Jack's eyes went wide.
Three armored trucks had rolled up in front of the building, where zombies were still struggling to get in through the front doors. Each of the trucks mounted fifty-cals, and they opened fire at the same time. Zombies tumbled to the ground, their bodies shattered by the heavy caliber bullets. The roar of those three guns assaulted Jack's ears, even five stories up and behind the glass windows. The sharp, motor-like rattle of the three guns made Jack's chest tense and he felt his skin flush.
"Hell, yeah!" Sean shouted and pounded on the glass, "Get some!"
Jack, though, felt his stomach sink as he stared at those three trucks. Two were military, the new Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, the next generation replacement for Humvees, the third was another Mine Resistant Ambush-protected Vehicle. Those vehicles were military, no doubt about it. The men on the turrets working those machine guns across the zombies wore uniforms, too.
But the last that Jack had heard, Third Corps, including Fourth Infantry Division, First Armored Division, and over thirty thousand soldiers, had been overrun only fifty miles south of Chicago. Most of the National Guard units had died before they had time to fully mobilize. The ammunition depots and fuel reserves had been emptied in the first weeks of fighting, anyway. There shouldn't be any military units left in the central United States... they'd all died doing their duty. Certainly there shouldn't be any left over with enough ammunition and supplies to do this.
