He and Scratch continued just looking at their food, trying to eat, but it was no good. Hours of running over bodies and gore and splatter couldn’t be brushed out of their heads so easily. Kim-Li came over and started rubbing Scratch’s shoulders as they sat on the camp chairs, balancing the plates on their laps. Gunny was lost in thought, considering everything the General had said at their nightly radio conversation yesterday. It seemed their initial assessment of Israel being nuked had been correct, but the missile had missed its target and hit somewhere west of Tel Aviv. Another had blown up before it even hit the ground, near Jerusalem. That was probably why they couldn’t raise anyone on the radios. The resulting EMP blast had doubtless knocked out all the electronics, and according to the satellite images, the military communications hubs had been shelled relentlessly with conventional weapons. The Muslims had blown holes in the walls protecting Israel and had started wanton murder and beheadings, but within a day the Israelis had regrouped and pushed back. Without any zombies to contend with, they were quickly gaining the upper hand in the areas they defended. As much as the Muslims prided themselves on being fierce warriors for Allah, most of them were cowards. They happily blew up women, children and unarmed men, but turned and ran when they met real resistance. They could shoot up a night club, butcher everyone in a theater, or blow up kids at a concert, but would commit suicide when men with guns came after them.
The Russians and the Chinese had adopted a wait and see attitude before they unleashed nukes. Wait until the Muslims had decommissioned all of the nuclear power plants, and see if the Israelis could hold their own until that job was finished. Once the power plants were safe, the coalition would send in whatever conventional missiles they had to assist them. There were no more petty differences between the surviving nations anymore. Just the world against the zombies, and the people that unleashed them. Any survivors needed to band together or there was a very real chance they would all be killed. If not by the undead, then by the victors of the Jihad in a few years when a billion of them started spreading out of the Middle East and taking over the rest of the world for their Caliphate. All he could do was hope Israel could hold back the masses for another week or so until all of the radioactive rods were out of the power plants. They didn’t want to tip their hand, didn’t want them to know the world wasn’t helpless to retaliate, until all the uranium rods had been disposed of. If whoever was running the Caliphate knew that there was a possible danger to them, they may just let the rods melt down for spite. You couldn’t predict what a mad dog would do, so it was best to not let it know you even existed until you were fully prepared to strike. Gunny didn’t really like the idea of nuking them to oblivion, he’d rather blow up the walls they built and let them have a taste of their own medicine. Cooler heads were starting to prevail, now that it had been nearly two weeks. More intel was being gleaned and the enemies seemed to be more than just a bunch of radicals. Carson was holding out. Gunny was pretty sure of it, but he supposed he had his reasons. Probably radio security.
His family was safe at home. The stairs to the back deck were down, and the windows were boarded up. They had enough food in the house to last a month or more and he was sure they were collecting plenty of water on the back deck. They had more firepower than they could ever use, once Lacy opened the safe. There was no immediate rush to get there, but he still wanted to take off as soon as they had this town secure.
Gunny looked up from his plate when he heard Deputy Collins clear her throat. There was a group of men, and a few women, standing there, most with bandannas around their necks and gloves on their hands. The cleanup crew. And Bastille, with his ever-present video camera.
He stood, tossing the uneaten burger into the trash and looked over the gathered crowd. A lot of new faces, a few from the Three Flags. Bridget was there, looking determined. She looked nothing like the helpless beauty queen she’d been on that first day. Her painted nails were gone, now trimmed close. Her hair was cut short and no makeup or jewelry adorned her. People had heard the broadcast and had been steadily arriving all morning, and he had a few dozen volunteers standing before him. All of them survivors of the first days and looking determined. All of them had their own horror stories to tell. All of them wanted a safe place to live and were willing to do the work necessary to make it happen. These were the people who hadn’t been chosen, or hadn’t volunteered for house clearing duties. This was the street cleanup crew. The people that couldn’t bring themselves to fight zombies anymore, but wanted to do their part.
None of the vets from the Three Flags were there. They’d picked the most capable of all the newcomers, ones that were former military or had plenty of shooting experience, and were working with them on room to room clearing techniques over in the grain elevator. Most of the survivors were hard men and their families. Gun enthusiasts, veterans, or avid hunters. Some looking like their gun knowledge came from various criminal enterprises, but all were tough and smart. They had to be to have lived this long on their own or in small groups. They had outlived the rest of the population. Their job started tomorrow, going house to house and making sure they were safe to occupy.
As he was trying to think of the right words to tell this cleanup crew, maybe give them an idea of what they would be facing in a few minutes, Cobb came clomping up.
“Everybody get on the lowboy,” he yelled in his rusty voice and Gunny noticed a handful of them were carrying pistols.
“Stick to the plan, don’t do anything stupid and you’ll be coming back here for dinner tonight. If not, you’ll be buried with the rest of the town.”
“Very motivational, Top,” Gunny grinned at his blunt orders.
“You want daisies and unicorns, you shoulda joined the Air Force,” he said.
“What’s the plan, anyway?” Gunny asked. “What am I doing?”
“It’s simple,” Cobb said. “Collins has the pistol crew and they shoot every one of them in the head with a .22. The loading crew comes in behind and tosses the bodies on the wagon. Griz drives his truck because ain’t nobody else knows how to shift gears in that cobbled up thing. You take your crew of misfits and keep overwatch with the big guns. Take out any fast movers if there are any left.”
“Easy enough,” he said as Collins, still in her uniform as always, handed him his M-4. Scratch grabbed his weapon and Kim slung the AR over her shoulder. Lars rounded out the crew as they headed to the truck.
“You can ride up front with me, if you want,” Griz told the deputy as she started to hop on the lowboy.
She looked at him, her eyes unreadable behind the mirrored shades. “I’d love to, but isn’t that Ms. Cruz’ seat?” she asked innocently and climbed onto the trailer.
Lars and Scratch couldn’t help but snicker while making sure they were well out of punching range, when Griz glared at them as he mumbled something and turned red.
“Come on, Gunny,” he said, and headed to the cab of his truck.
They took off, Griz easing through the gears, aggravated, but being careful not to fling anyone off the back. He had an auxiliary transmission, an old Brownie Box, mated to the back of his 18 speed so it gave him 40 or 50 forward gears to choose from. Gunny didn’t even know how it worked, just knew it was overly complicated and there were a lot of them for pulling heavy loads through the mountains. Or for running triple digits on the flats. He had three gear shifters sticking up out of the floorboard he had to maneuver. No wonder Cobb said nobody else could drive it. He tended to talk with his hands and between having to use both of them to shift the levers back and forth, and gesturing in annoyance about the ONE day he let Bunny ride in his truck, he did most of the steering with his knees.
“She said anything to you, bro?” Griz finally asked, sliding the levers into 15th gear. Or maybe it was 31st.
“Naw, man,” Gunny said. “But I’ve noticed her checking you out. Don’t give up. And definitely avoid Bunny. I don’t think those two like each other very much. Matter of fact, I’m pretty
sure she sent her back to your truck that first day to see if you’d let her ride with you. How come you didn’t ask Collins? She was riding on the bus.”
“I was going to, but I figured somebody already had. I mean, she’s kinda hot in that uniform, you know.”
They were coming up on the first of the crawlers that were trying to follow the path the trucks had taken an hour before and Griz slowed to a stop. Time to get to work.
19
The 1st Battle of Lakota
Day 13
There were nearly 150 people gathered around the central campfire that night. After the miasma of the grizzly task they had been doing all day had started to lift, the Cowboys broke out their instruments and started to entertainment them. Jimmy Winchell gave an impromptu concert and was occasionally joined by Stabby. The boys in the band knew more than just country songs and their version of Sweet Home Lakota had everyone tapping their toes and in good spirits.
Even old Cobb had a small grimace on his face, that might be considered a smile, as the song finally ended with the guitarist shouting out, “I can’t anymore, my fingers are bleeding!” and everyone applauded loudly. They had killed any of the zombies in the streets that were still able to roam around today, and had a dozen guards posted to keep an eye out for any strays. They weren’t worried about making a little noise. The end was in sight and they were rejoicing.
Cobb stood and raised his drill sergeant’s voice to be heard, and everyone settled down.
“We’ve got a big day tomorrow, people. Some of you just showed up recently, so I’m going to break this down. General Carson said about 1,900 people were living here at the last census and we buried 1,200 of them today. There are about 1,000 buildings in town, houses and businesses, not including sheds and small barns. There’s probably 500 or more of the undead trapped inside those buildings. That sounds like a lot, but the 15 teams going in have been training hard all day. It’s not like those things hide from us, they’ll come running once they know we’re there. They seem to have slowed down some since they first turned. I guess being dead for a few weeks has that effect.”
A quiet, somewhat uneasy laughter rippled through the crowd.
“If my math is right, if each team can clear a house every 10 minutes, we should have the town free of the zombies by tomorrow night. We’ll clean up the mess the next day and by Saturday, we should be able to start moving into our new homes.”
With that, a boisterous cheer went up.
“Get some rest,” he said. “We roll in at first light.”
The sun was just peeking over the horizon as Cobb gathered the teams after breakfast and his speechifying wasn’t quite so uplifting.
“Now the dangerous part starts,” he said. “We’re going to start clearing room by room. House to house. Block by block, we’re going to take this town back from the dead. Pay attention, follow orders, and you all might come back here alive. If you don’t, then you won’t.”
“Look around you,” he said, pointing at various people. “Which one of you are going to get careless? Which one of you will be in the burial pit tonight and not here at the fire? Remember that when you start to get tired and lazy after a few hours. Remember that when you start gabbing to each other about useless crap. Stay sharp, people. It only takes one bite and you’ll be six feet under.”
As they headed for the lowboy for the ride into town, Bastille tagging along to document it all, Griz smacked Deputy Collins on her backside as he started to tell her to be careful. The words choked in his throat when she spun, cat quick, and grabbed the offending hand by his index finger, curling it backward, nearly to the point of breaking.
“Ow, ow, ow!” Griz yelled and went to his knees, bending his arm at an awkward angle so she wouldn’t snap his finger.
Scratch walked by and patted him on the head. “Now be a good boy and tell the nice lady you’re sorry,” he said, laughing, and quickly jumped out of range as Griz swung his free fist at him.
“Don’t break him, Collins,” Gunny said, trying to hide his own grin as he slung his rifle. “I need him to drive the truck.”
She relented, a little, then leaned close so only he could hear.
“That is not the proper way to romance a lady,” she said, giving his finger just a little more pressure before releasing it and hopping on the trailer.
Despite what just happened, Griz had a big smile on his face as he fired up the truck and started running through the gears.
“Guess that didn’t go as planned,” Gunny commented.
“You know what she said?” he asked with boyish enthusiasm, then going on without giving him time to hazard a guess.
“She told me, ‘That wasn’t the proper way to romance a lady’.”
His smile faded. “What do you think that means, exactly?”
“It means she’s got class,” Gunny said. “Haven’t you ever had a girlfriend?”
“No, not really,” he replied. “I joined the Corps right out of high school, then straight into being a contractor. You know the kinds of girls that hang out around the base. A date meant buying her a few drinks at the bar then taking her home. Trucking wasn’t any different, a little commercial company sometimes.”
“I don’t think Collins is like that,” Gunny said. “You’re going to have to put some effort into it. Get her little presents or something.”
“You mean like a new gun?”
“Well, maybe start out with flowers,” Gunny laughed. “Chicks like flowers and stuff.”
Griz shut down the big Cat in the middle of downtown Lakota, right in front of the courthouse. The men and women hopped off the lowboy and gathered into their assigned teams. They’d spent hours practicing yesterday at the grain elevator with empty weapons and volunteers jumping out at them, trying to tag them before they were “shot.” By the end of the day, if the people pretending to be the zombies played by the rules and attacked when they first heard sounds, none of them were getting anywhere near the shooters. The tactics were simple. Knock on the door, shoot through the wood at head level when you heard them on the other side. It was going to do a lot of damage to the structures but holes in the wood could be fixed. Being bitten couldn’t. The men and women were capable, but opening doors and then dealing with the undead as they stormed out was a lot more dangerous. One person in each team had a .22 rifle or pistol and it was the primary weapon. The shotguns and rifles were for when the little guns couldn’t get the job done. Doing it this way, they hoped to minimize damage, maximize kills, and reduce the chance of stray bullets going through walls and into another building, possibly hitting a friendly.
The teams spread out and Gunny could hear the quiet pops of .22 rounds going off around them in the houses after a few minutes. His team was going to take the downtown area. Two square blocks of formidable stone and brick buildings. The courthouse, the police station, the stores and restaurants on Main Street. Multi-story, vaguely Victorian style structures built near the turn of the century with plenty of nooks and crannies and thick, heavy doors.
He and Griz checked over the boys. Lars, Stabby and Scratch were ready. They were armored in leather, bristling with weapons, and anxious to get started. They headed up the stairs to the courthouse. Might as well do the hardest one first. There might actually be survivors hiding in the basement, the doors were formidable enough to hold the raging masses back. The oversized front entrance was unlocked and Griz banged on the thick wood with the butt of his rifle while Scratch called out, “Here zombie, zombie, zombie.”
They stepped back, fanning out in a semi-circle and shouldering their rifles, ready if more than one or two came running out. A .22 round wouldn’t penetrate these solid oak doors, and if there were small handfuls of them, they thought this is where they’d be. In the public buildings. They wanted something with a little more knockdown power if a few of them came running out at once, so the team had M-4s or full-size ARs. They heard a scream and the doors sprang open almost immediately, slamming against the
stops and bouncing back. Two were leaping in the air and roaring, pouncing at the fresh flesh. Everyone opened up, double tapping them and both crumpled to the steps. They heard more of them coming from the depths of the courthouse, heard their unearthly screams, and quickly glanced at each other. This was more than a handful. This was a LOT more than a handful.
“Last chance to break for the truck!” Gunny said, looking quickly at each of them. “Lars? You good?”
“I’m feeling tippy tappy, got a song in my heart and the strength of 10,000 men., he replied, tucking his AR in a little tighter and peering through the sights at the slowly closing doors.
“Stabby, Scratch?” Gunny asked, knowing what was coming, wanting to make sure they did, too, and were fully committed. If one man turned and ran, broke the wall of lead they were going to be laying down, it would leave the rest of them wide open.
“Not as good as him,” Stabby said, “but I’m just tickety-boo.”
He aimed down the iron sights, quickly going over everything he’d learned about shooting these past days. He was as ready as he’d ever be, the small sniff of powder leaving him tingly and itching to go.
“Once more into the breach, dear friends,” he said under his breath, moving his finger from the guard to the trigger.
The Zombie Road Omnibus Page 48
