Zombies! (Book 6): Hold The Line

by Merritt, R. S.

  Chapter 30: Field Commander Krantz

  Krantz had the Iron Turtle facility on lock down. He made the hospital converted into an outpost into a target just by his being there. If the enemy found out that the newly promoted commander of all of the New American forces had made this location the new command hub then the hospital would be converted into a smoking crater in no time flat. It was a weird war of harpoon missiles and machetes. A war where all the traditional rules were being thrown out the window. It was the civil war all over again except this time the south wanted to expand and absorb the north instead of just seceding. It was insanity before you even threw in the massive herds of infected cannibals.

  The north had an aircraft carrier while the south had drones. The north had fighter jets and bombers. Instead of focusing on what they didn’t have Krantz focused on what they did have. They did have a ton of manpower. Georgia had come through the virus with a much higher percentage of its population uninfected than any of the other states. They had plenty of ground warfare type machines. The problem with those was if you tried driving a tank down the road it’d attract every Zombie in a hundred-mile radius. The damned things were loud. He was thinking of ways around that though.

  He was curious about the death squad Sam had mentioned. He was hoping to learn more about that soon. They had network engineers and electricians tromping around in the woods rigging up the equipment needed to establish better communications between the Senators bunker and Iron Turtle. The connectivity was being slowed down by the need to keep it secretive. To make sure no one figured out the locations of the important posts they were having the crews setup multiple locations. It wouldn’t surprise Krantz if the crew that setup the Senator’s bunker disappeared once it was done.

  Communications were vital to winning. They’d learned through their spy network that the settlements to the north all had communications links between them. It’s how they called for help when they needed it and coordinated other more mundane logistical needs. It was just a matter of splicing into existing telephone cabling for the most part. As long as you had people who understood how all of that technology worked and were good with their hands you could setup a pretty solid network. The limiting factor being providing power to needed relays along the path. That was being slowly solved by utilizing solar for the places that power was needed but that required yet another skill set. Luckily a lot of the relay stations were already equipped with some sort of solar backup so there were ways to make it work.

  Krantz lost himself in the details like providing protection for the crews running the cable and setting up the network. He busied himself figuring out the best ways to get tanks to where they could have the most impact. He was good at solving these types of logistical problems. He loved the intellectual challenge of it. He loved the feeling he got when the ideas he put down on paper and the orders he gave resulted in tangible victories. By focusing on the logistics piece, he didn’t have to think too hard on the fact that his side kept people working by holding their families hostage. His side enforced their dogma with an iron fist. The New America they were marketing looked a lot more like a dictatorship than a democracy. Even the old-world dictatorships couldn’t have gotten away with the political prisons the south was running on such a large scale.

  Regardless of all that Krantz was ready to set things in motion. Timing was going to be everything. If they blew up an airstrip in one part of the state but not in another then the rest of the airstrips would be guarded more thoroughly moving forward. The trick was going to be taking out as many of the most important facilities at the same time as possible. That’s where the drones were going to come in handy. Krantz was working to align the drone strike times with the more manual assaults they’d have their strike teams carry out.

  He’d passed along his information requests to Sam hoping to get most of the data he needed back from her quickly. The faster they were able to put a plan together and strike back the more likely it’d work. They needed to report some success shortly or the Senator was going to start to get antsy. When the Senator started to get antsy the important people didn’t like it. Having now spent some time with the Senator Krantz could appreciate their position as well as his own.

  Rather than sit around waiting for the intel to trickle back to him Krantz ordered reconnaissance flights. Pilots were a precious commodity and the aircraft they flew had a limited lifespan, but he needed intel. If he didn’t put the helicopters and planes up in the sky to gather it for him now, he might not get another chance. The Senator wanted someone who took action. It wasn’t like he was going to be allowed to peacefully retire if he didn’t seem to be fulfilling his commitments. Hoping the pilots all made it back safely and wishing Sam would hurry up with the info on how he could launch the drone force into action he rolled the dice.

  The results were mixed as to the intel they got back from the planes he sent out on reconnaissance missions. On the plus side only one of the planes didn’t make it back. They’d sent one along the coast to try and spot the carrier or the subs the north supposedly had in place. That one’s last transmission had stated it’d located the carrier. That was the last they’d heard from that plane. It was assumed the carrier had activated its anti-air warfare measures and blown the jet out of the sky. The rest of the planes reported back on everything they’d seen as they flew over the dystopian countryside.

  Vast fields of crops growing wildly. Herds of the infected roaming randomly through the land. It was pretty amazing to Krantz that even the planes were reporting the herds. The planes were up high and moving fast. For them to spot a herd it had to be large and in motion. Multiple herds that were that large were going to be something they had to take into account in any type of invasion plan. There seemed to be a large quantity of vehicles on the road as well. Considering the planes had been sent during the day this was especially useful information. Krantz and Forrest had talked about that and both agreed it could mean nothing or it could mean the settlers were really getting ready to board the carrier and go on a cruise.

  Assuming the virus eventually died out then sailing away for a bit may be the best way to save as many people as possible. If the virus didn’t die out, they were just postponing the inevitable. At some point they’d have to deal with all the infected roaming the countryside if they wanted to settle back into these lands. The ship could head out to sea but at some point, it was going to run out of food and have to land no matter how much uranium was sitting in the reactor. Unless of course they had a different destination in mind. That was an intriguing thought but one that Krantz had no intel on.

  The plan Krantz came up with was to take the land by just motivating the people living in the north to hurry up and board that ship. Once the people were on the ship the carrier could set sail and the New American forces could claim the land left behind for the Senator. He had the outline of a plan in his head. The main problem being executing on the plan without causing the north to hit back at them again. They were poking at a wasps nest hoping it’d hurry up and fall off the house. Unfortunately, wasps sometimes took objection to being poked and would fly out stingers first.

  From the notes he’d reviewed he knew Roberts and the Senator had already sent teams of men up north to snipe at the settlements. The men were paid with higher status which meant their families got better living quarters and the men got to spend more time with them when they were back from their assignments. They were given vague goals and a point system when they were sent out. Taking out a sentry guarding an outpost might be worth ten points while taking out a whole roving patrol might be worth a hundred points. Destroying an entire settlement was worth a thousand points. The required proof was video evidence which was typically taken on iPods or something similar.

  The people that were sent out who couldn’t bring themselves to kill for points were told not to come back. If they came back anyway, they were executed. If they didn’t return within a year then their families were moved to a reduced status l
ocation based on a complicated set of rules. The rules could all be overridden by the people who administered the home-grown vigilante system. There were currently multiple teams listed as missing in action presumed to be deserters or dead. There were also a handful who were up in the target areas and assumed to be actively hunting. In addition to bringing the pain they also were awarded points for things like picking up the information from dead drops. These guerilla forces formed the backbone of the intelligence network Roberts had deployed.

  Krantz considered all of this while pacing the top of the parking lot where their helicopter was parked. The Zombies screaming below were just background noise to him now. Like the crashing of the waves on the beach. He’d wanted to get out of the dank hospital and walk in the sunlight. He hoped it’d make him feel slightly more human. He’d been eating sporadically while maintaining a regular diet of alcohol. His daily regimen of working out had been completely thrown to the wayside. The stress of this impossible job he’d been given was tearing him apart. Buried under the huge strategic challenges lingered all of his doubts about if he was doing the right thing.

  He’d done things in his military career before the apocalypse he hadn’t been particularly proud of. None of those things had made him think that his country was inherently evil though. He’d known both elected officials and commissioned officers who were just straight up scum bags. He’d always considered them the exception rather than the rule though. Now he found himself becoming that commissioned officer in charge who was going to be ordering people to do the shady work for no real reason other than straight up imperialism. He might as well be that admiral Darth Vader chokes to death in the original Star Wars movie. He felt like that scene pretty much summed up where he stood in the grand scheme of things.

  Walking over to the edge of the parking garage he gazed down at the infected staring up at him and screeching. There were a lot less of them today than there’d been a few days ago when he arrived. The ebb and flow of the local Zombie population was dependent on how much activity had happened around the hospital recently. If no one came out where the Zombies could see them then the numbers of Zombies gradually dwindled. If a helicopter landed or someone like Krantz decided to make an appearance and run around where he could be seen, then the numbers increased exponentially within an hour or two.

  He looked carefully at the faces staring up at him. He was looking for any signs that some of the madness may be fading from them. He wanted to see a slack jawed one who was just looking at him instead of screaming. A face that didn’t have the lips pulled back from the teeth as the demon virus turned it’s host into a monster.

  He couldn’t find a single face out of the hundreds below that seemed to fall into the category of the virus tapering off. He didn’t doubt there were infected wandering around who were not as aggressive as the normal ones, but he didn’t see how a handful of outliers would make a difference. For every infected that stood around and stared at you without trying to eat you there was an adrenalized one who’d jump over a tall fence to land on your ass with its mouth open and ready.

  The Zombies were a serious force multiplier in the battles that were being fought. They’d seen it in South Carolina when the massive herds of Zombies had started slipping through the woods chasing the sounds of war. They’d seen it used against them by the north when a single bomb dropped on one of their camps caused enough noise to attract the Zombies from all around. Silence was a shield that could be easily knocked aside by the weapons of war. If you managed to survive the missile slamming into the middle of the base you still had to worry about the waves of Zombies that’d be crashing down on you soon afterwards.

  Frustrated with how slowly everything was moving he crossed over the bridge from the parking lot heading back into the main hospital. The guard at the door smartly saluted and opened the door for him. He was fixing to go in when he noted a surprised expression cross the guards face. Looking upwards in the same direction the guard was looking Krantz saw a small group of planes leaving smoke trails in the sky.

  “Sound the alarm!” Krantz yelled at the sentry before turning and running into the hospital himself yelling for everyone to take cover.

  He’d only taken a couple of steps inside the building when the first bomb hit.

  Chapter 31: The Prodigal Son

  “Ready?” Bryan asked as Kyler walked up to the beach where Bryan and his men were waiting to paddle back across to where the vehicles were.

  “Yep. Let’s roll. I guess you expect me to paddle this time?” Kyler said with a smile. He wanted to be at least a little pissed at these guys, but he was still too elated by the kiss Caitlyn had given him.

  “Operational silence once we get in the canoes, but I just want to go ahead and state that what you did going down south was some bad ass warrior James Bond shit. We all appreciate the risks you took and what it took for you to pull it off.” Bryan stood tall and saluted Kyler. The rest of the men quickly followed their leaders example. The whole patrol came to attention and saluted an embarrassed looking Kyler. Bryan had them all hold the salutes for a second before dropping his hand back to his side. He headed over to the canoes leaving a red-faced Kyler standing open mouthed on the beach.

  Just like that it was back to business as usual for the rest of the world. Kyler was on cloud nine though. The men who’d been hassling him and treating him like a traitor because of the brand on his back had finally shown him some respect. He’d just been kissed by a pretty girl. He was finally back to the settlements where he belonged. He felt like he’d come home even though he hadn’t really been part of the settlements for all that long. He’d been a looter then a member of the roving patrol before being sent down south to be a spy. He’d come a long way.

  They paddled silently across the cold, dark water. There was a chill breeze fighting off the heat from the sun by cooling the sweat from the exertion of paddling. The canoes had been loaded up with ammunition, canned food and safe drinking water. In addition to its being a processing center for refugees the warehouse still also served as a warehouse. It supplied most of the roving patrols in the western part of North Carolina.

  Feeling a little out of place moving around in the daylight for once Kyler dug his paddle deep into the water and pulled it back smoothly. The sooner they hit the beach and got inside the vehicles the sooner he’d feel less exposed. Even driving out of here was going to be a gamble. Driving at night was risky as you couldn’t see well and if you ran up on a herd or woke up a ton of Zombies sleeping under an overpass you could end up getting swarmed. Driving during the day gave you much better visibility but the Zombies were actively up and seeking out prey during the day. He was hoping the roving patrol had setup a system similar to the one in Georgia with outposts who’d warn them if they were coming up on a dangerous situation.

  He was assuming they probably had by now. The vehicles all had radios mounted in them. They hadn’t used the radios around him because they didn’t want to broadcast the fact that they’d picked up a double agent if it turned out his story was true. Out in the western part of North Carolina there also may not be any outposts. He’d find out soon enough. The beach was getting closer with every stroke. Standing on the floating dock in front of the dilapidated bar and grill was a single Zombie with tangled blond hair. She was staring out at the canoes like she couldn’t understand how something could float and move on the water. She hadn’t started screaming yet so maybe she was one of the silent ones.

  Kyler quickly gave up on the idea of her being one of the silent ones when she started screaming her head off. Bryan had already pointed the bow of his canoe down the shoreline away from the dock. If they’d tried paddling up to the dock, then there wasn’t an easy way to quietly take out the Zombie without risking her jumping into the canoe and biting somebody. They were under strict orders to not shoot at anything around here unless absolutely necessary. They’d been able to keep using this warehouse as a depot for so long precisely because everyone followed
the rules around operational silence whenever they were close to it.

  A screeching Zombie was going to eventually have the same impact as a gunshot as far as attracting other infected to the area. They needed to hit the beach and take her out as quickly as they could. A loaded crossbow would’ve come in super handy for situations like this. Silencers were also prized possessions. They had neither of those contraptions available to them though.

  The banks were high and muddy with thick brush growing on the top. The only beach type of area had been down by the docks. Since the Zombie was already screeching away Bryan went ahead and gave his orders out loud. His voice pitched so all the men could hear him.

  “When we get close to the bank if it’s shallow enough team one jumps out, goes up the bank and takes out that banshee bitch. If it’s not shallow enough to do it then we keep going until we find a place you can get your footing. If she won’t shut up, we may just have to shoot her. Let’s move.” Bryan ordered loudly enough for everyone to hear.

  The men assigned to team one dipped their paddles in and went straight for the short clay cliff rising out of the water. The screeches from the Zombie became muted as she worked her way through the bushes to get closer to them. Kyler and Bryan both had their rifles up to cover team one as they went in. If it looked like they might get attacked by the wailing witch before they were in a good fighting position, then they’d just go ahead and shoot her in the head. Operational silence be damned. They could move a warehouse. They couldn’t bring one of their team mates back to life.