Zombies! (Book 6): Hold The Line

by Merritt, R. S.

  The men on the north side of the roof were looking down over the edge as a fast-moving torrent of Zombies flooded the streets. They were so in awe of the flood of infected humanity below that they didn’t even notice their commander standing there until he cleared his throat loudly. When they turned to look at him, he asked them if all the weapons systems were good to go. Noticing him in their midst for the first time there was a ripple effect as the men came to attention and saluted. All of them trying to answer at once. He picked one out and asked him to answer.

  “Yes sir. The SAMs are loaded and ready to go. We have enough up here in the locker to take on a squadron of those helicopters if they want to send them. If they have anything faster than those helicopters we’re probably screwed though. As you can see looking over the edge there are more Zombies in town than we have bullets, but we have comms open with patrols one, two and four. They’re all outside the perimeter of the herd and ready to cause a distraction if we need the infected to go elsewhere. We’re good to go up here sir.” The man finished his report.

  Milton looked out over the stinking, screaming mob engulfing the parking lot surrounding the massive building they were in. They had the walls reinforced so he wasn’t too worried about the Zombies breaking in as long as everyone followed protocol. What did concern him was that they were basically sitting ducks here. His family was down in the factory with everyone else’s, so it wasn’t like he was able to go over the side and disappear if everything went to hell. Not that his honor and sense of duty would let him do that anyway. This was a new age with new rules though and he wasn’t sure he was playing this right.

  Fifty miles away under a large tarp in the middle of the woods Krantz worked with three leaders of two troops worth of men to come up with an assault plan. Roberts was beyond infuriated that the soldiers in Goose Creek had taken shots at them damaging three of his helicopters. He’d relayed the orders to Krantz to thoroughly crush the base as soon as possible. Krantz had immediately gotten in the air. From his helicopter he started sending out orders for the troops he needed to rendezvous with him and what weapons they needed to bring.

  “The enemy’s surrounded by a ton of Zombies. They have an unknown number of soldiers and civilians inside this large warehouse looking building. They have men on the roof with rocket launchers and automatic weapons. They probably have special operations soldiers patrolling the area around them as well. They’re obviously not planning on surrendering so command wants us to make an example out of them. I’m thinking mortars unless anyone has a better idea?” Krantz finished briefing the leaders of the troops who were gathered under the tarp with him.

  “We launch a few mortars they’re going to be able to figure out where we’re launching them from and return fire.” One of the troop leaders mentioned. He didn’t look like the idea bothered him. He seemed to bring it up more because it was expected than because he cared.

  “We’ll send out mortar teams to attack from four different locations. They’ll have shells raining down on them from every direction. We’ll fire six times each then change positions. If we need to fire again, we will but I’m thinking one round should do the trick. We’ll also make sure each team has a squad with them to protect their backs if these guys do have patrols out there. Do we have four teams who’ve done this with artillery before?” Krantz answered. It’d just occurred to him this was probably one of those things you wanted to use trained people for. None of the leaders were sure so they tabled that to find out when they got back to their men.

  Thirty minutes later they had three teams Krantz felt pretty confident about and another that was busy reading instructions while the men from the other teams talked them through the basics of launching the mortars. Krantz figured he didn’t need to bother learning the names of the men in the fourth mortar team. They probably weren’t going to be coming back. Unless of course they just couldn’t get the rockets to launch and came back still carrying them.

  As prepped as they were going to get the teams set off. Each of them navigating towards the quadrant they’d been assigned to setup their mortar equipment. The rockets could travel up to six kilometers to strike their targets, so the teams didn’t have to get danger close to be able to cause some serious havoc. They were double timing through the forest and avoiding the main roads. It took a solid day to get everyone in striking distance. Once in position they all setup and waited for the stroke of midnight to start launching. They’d gone radio silent since they were going up against special operations soldiers who’d already demonstrated knowledge of advanced weaponry. Krantz figured it was a good bet they were scanning the airwaves as well.

  Back inside the base they were attacking Captain Milton listened carefully to the men who’d captured one of the mortar patrols. They’d tortured the men left alive after their attack into revealing everything they knew about the plan. Unfortunately, what the men knew about the plan didn’t amount to a whole lot of actionable intelligence. They basically knew there were multiple teams and the order was to stat launching mortars at midnight. Milton thanked his men and told them to reach out if they got any more info off the prisoners.

  It’d been sheer luck his patrol had run into the enemy mortar team. Milton knew there was no way they’d be able to track down and capture the other teams before midnight. Not having any good options in front of him he went to go speak with the current mayor of their city. The mayor listened then agreed that if they could figure out how to surrender that was going to be their only option. Milton had their communications team open up their radios and start broadcasting on all channels that they were willing to surrender.

  They got nothing back after ten minutes of trying to surrender. Milton ordered them to continue trying then went up to the roof. He stood there staring at the stars and talking to the men for a few minutes. As a last desperate attempt, he ordered the patrols to set off the fireworks they were using as a distraction. The massive herd of Zombies surrounding the facility let out an ear shattering series of screeches as they slowly began to disperse and head in the direction of the fireworks. It was a race against the clock now. Except that it wasn’t.

  The mortar teams hiding in the woods around Goose Creek all saw the fireworks and knew exactly what that meant. Rather than let the enemy break out of the factory and make a run for it they started letting their own rockets fly. One of their teams had been captured. One of the teams completely missed the target and one didn’t launch as they still thought they should wait until midnight. The fourth team scored four direct hits though. They had no idea they’d just killed hundreds of women, children and soldiers. They weren’t close enough to hear the screams of the wounded or the sounds of the infected rushing into the burning warehouse to feast on the survivors.

  Inside the blaze Milton fought his way to the room where his wife and young son had been reading a book together the last time that he saw them. The screams of the dying and the damned surrounding him he beat his way into the room. The sight of his dead wife obscenely spread out on the bed with a Zombie feasting on her neck froze him in place. Both of his hands fell to his side and he made no move to resist when a large Zombie came up behind him and forced him to the ground. His young son watched from the closet while both of his parents were eaten alive. Eventually the smoke from the burning building got to the son.

  The mortar crews packed up their gear and headed for their secondary strike positions. They were all expecting to get the order to return to base. They could see the orange glow of the city burning in the night sky. The patrols from Goose Creek were made up of men who had family back in the burning warehouse. Every single one of those men died trying to fight their way back to their families.

  The next morning Krantz was able to issue a dispatch to Roberts that the strike had been completely successful and the militia from Goose Creek were no longer an obstacle.

  Chapter 10: Time for your Checkup

  Myriah and Caitlyn were paddling the boat as best as they could. Kelly s
at in the middle seat checking on her two patients. One missing a chunk out of his leg and the other ones shoulder looking like ground beef. Riding around in a tiny boat and sleeping in the dirt wasn’t going to be conducive to either one of them making a full recovery. She needed supplies to treat them. Her big Ziploc bag of drugs had seemed like overkill at one time but now she didn’t think it was going to last them long enough. They needed more of everything.

  The supplies Randy and Caitlyn had dragged back with them had been well received. How her slightly nerdy husband had managed to run with his shoulder full of bird shot carrying a backpack full of canned goods was beyond her. After paddling for another hour through the middle of nowhere Kelly spotted a small grass covered clearing beside the creek. It looked like a good place for them to take a break. She needed a stable place to poke around in Randy’s shoulder and try to pick out the bird shot before it got septic. She needed to get the kids fed while she was at it. Most importantly she wanted to slip into a fresh new pair of panties.

  On the little beach she spread out a nice sized picnic. Everyone paired up based on their preference of canned food. She picked a white label can of generic raviolis for her and Zoey to share. Kyler and Randy woke up long enough to eat a few bites of creamed corn and some beans. They were washing everything down with water from the creek. If microbes killed them after everything else that they’d been through, so be it. She wasn’t going to let them all die of dehydration with a river right beside them. A few new t-shirts and some dry underwear later everyone felt a lot more optimistic. Randy looked much better without a big bloody hole in his shirt.

  She’d used two of the new shirts as bandages. One for Kyler’s leg and the other for Randy’s shoulder. She’d sprayed the last of her iodine on their wounds before giving them each another round of pain killers and antibiotics. She’d gotten them to eat more than they probably would’ve otherwise by telling them no pain killers unless they ate a few more bites of beans. She joked and smiled with them but they both looked like hell. All she could think was she needed to get them somewhere they could lie in a bed and be tended to until they looked better.

  Once the impromptu picnic was over, they piled back in the boat and continued upstream. All the girls not busy rowing staring through the trees for a house that would be a good fit for them. They weren’t looking to loot it so much as to camp out for a few days. Even the little kids could tell that daddy and Kyler needed a place to rest up.

  The creek ended abruptly in a marsh that smelled like a fart joke. The big kids and Kelly held their noses as they pulled the boat through the knee-deep muck to get to the side of the marsh so Kyler and Randy could be unloaded. The little girls were all watching and whispering excitedly about how disgusting the mud smelled. Zoey kept teasing her mom about the fact that she was wearing her brand-new dry socks to drag the boat through the muck. The joking and teasing gradually stopping as they all got out of the boat onto the muddy ground with tiny clouds of bugs swarming around their heads.

  For an hour they pushed, carried, cajoled and threatened Kyler and Randy into walking through the thick weeds and briars. They stopped and ate more food. They weren’t necessarily hungry, but it was easier to carry the food in their bellies than on their backs. None of them were ready to just leave cans of food behind. They didn’t have any containers to put water in and none of them wanted to drink the fart smelling water, so they were all getting dehydrated again. Kelly had chosen the cans of food with water in them for their last break. She’d never have guessed that green bean flavored warm water could taste so wonderful. It was probably the flavor of botulism but at a certain point she was beyond caring.

  They marched on through tears and blood. Kyler finally sliding down against a tree and declaring he couldn’t take another step. Kelly squatted down to check on his leg. The t-shirt she’d used as a bandage was soaked with blood. She removed it and tied another one over the ugly open wound. While she was thinking about it, she offered up another round of pain killers and antibiotics. She made Randy and Kyler split a can of kidney beans before she let them take the pills. What they couldn’t eat she let the kids split.

  “You could try making a stretcher. Then you lay me in it and drag me through the woods.” Kyler said.

  “That sounds fun. How do we do it?” Kelly asked.

  An hour later they were dragging Kyler through the woods in a stretcher that probably wouldn’t have gotten them the points needed to earn a merit badge. They’d chopped down two trees that looked thick enough to support Kyler then tied a poncho between the two trees. After figuring out the trees were too big and heavy for them to carry, they’d cut down two smaller ones and repeated the exercise. Eventually they’d gotten Kyler in the poncho and with Kelly and Caitlyn both pulling one of the poles they’d fashioned they were able to drag him along without too much difficulty. Luckily the pain pills kept him from complaining too much about the briars that kept hitting him in the face.

  Approximately a million years later they finally ran into a road. Not putting a lot of thought into whether they’d be seen or not Kelly dragged Kyler and his stretcher up onto the blacktop. Once on the much smoother surface of the debris covered blacktop it was much easier dragging him along. They hiked along the road taking periodic breaks to eat more of the canned goods and rest their arms and backs. Tempers were running high enough that the rule of no talking was in full effect. Not only did that keep the Zombies away it also kept the arguments between them down to a minimum.

  Trudging along the road looking for a driveway or any sign of a housing development Kelly realized she resented Randy and Kyler for getting themselves hurt. Because they were hurt, she was the one doing all the hard work now. She was literally carrying Kyler. Randy’s gear had been split between the kids to carry so he was gallivanting down the road with just the bare minimum number of weapons strapped to his body. Both the men were so whacked out on pain killers that all the tough decisions were falling to her. She tripled her efforts to find a house they could crash in. She needed to nurse them both back to health so they could get back to doing their jobs.

  A mere five more miles down the road she finally saw the entrance to a subdivision called ‘Happy Estates’. She hoped it wasn’t a trailer park. They turned and walked down the road by the sign featuring a giant smiling gopher. She was happy to see it wasn’t a trailer park. It looked like new construction for a senior living community. The kind of place you saw all over Florida. She thought it was a little odd that there was one here in nowhere South Carolina, but she supposed people in this part of the country also got old and needed cheap houses they could afford on social security.

  There were only four houses built. All the others were in the foundation or framing stage. Construction junk littered the streets and yards. Of the four houses that were built two of them were the model homes based on the way the parking lots were setup for people to park and check them out. Picking the larger of the two model homes Kelly trudged tiredly forwards.

  The home had a small fence around it that was supposed to force you to enter through the sales center. Kelly and Caitlyn gently lay the saplings on the fence leaving Kyler suspended in the air while they stepped over the fence to check out the first model home. Hoping that locking up model homes was a low priority for real estate agents when a Zombie apocalypse struck Kelly confidently tried opening the front door. When it didn’t open, they kept trying doors and windows until they’d confirmed there wasn’t going to be a quiet way to get in.

  “We should check the one that’s a real person’s house. Especially if you’re thinking about breaking a window. If we’re going to make noise, we should do it where there might be supplies.” Cailyn whispered to her mom. Kelly nodded and smiled at Caitlyn making a thumbs up gesture.

  They walked back over to the fence and hopped back over it. They grabbed Kyler and dragged him to the other house. They looked like a parade going down the street with all the kids following along behind the stretcher. T
he next house definitely looked lived in. The front door dead bolt wasn’t fastened but the door stuck on a chain lock when Kelly tried opening it. A hard kick took care of the chain lock issue. Weapons ready they entered the musty smelling home.

  Other than the five cat skeletons Kelly counted in the living room there was no one home other than the mummy wearing a bright yellow mumu lying on the couch. The mummy was missing most of the meat on its body. Kelly wondered how long the cats had managed to survive by snacking on their dead mistress. Judging from the pictures around the room the woman had been large enough to have kept a pack of cats well fed for a good while. Immune to the sight of death at this point no one in their party really spent a lot of time considering the desiccated corpse of the woman.

  The cat skeletons on the other hand were fascinating. Each shriveled up fur covered cadaver drawing more ‘oohs’, ‘ahhs’ and genuine sounds of sadness from the children than the shriveled-up lady wrapped for all of eternity in the mumu had warranted. Kelly was just glad the woman had the decency to die on the couch so that they could use the beds. One thing she’d learned during the apocalypse that she really wished she could unlearn was that dead bodies seep and purge all sorts of liquids. If the lady had died in a bed, then that bed would be deemed too gross for any of them to sleep in. She’d have probably just changed the sheets and plopped Kyler in that bed for now since he was too out of it to notice or care. Knowing Kyler, he might not care even if he was wide awake.