River of Night

by John Ringo

  On the far right, the muzzle blast of a rifle fired right next to the shield wall caused the man anchoring the flank to flinch. His stance only faltered for a moment. It was enough for his shield to dip and an infected grabbed the upper edge, yanking it down and out of line. That pikeman instinctively drove his weapon into the target, but managed to get the broad leaf blade hung up on rib cage of the violently jerking infected. The matted, filthy beard parted in an unheard scream of pain. Spittle flew from the reeking maw and the faltering shield man bashed the zombie’s face again. The shield boss splintered yellowed teeth and the infected disappeared into the bloody tangle of offal that delimited the forward line of defense.

  “Shields up, close ranks!” Paul yelled. He knew that if they lost the wall it would come down to hand-to-hand and, despite the defenders’ protective clothing, the sheer mass of the infected would be deadly. “One step back, hut! And hut, and hut!”

  Still too many infected.

  Paul knew that he had to drop the pressure right away. The shield bearers simply weren’t in the physical condition to melee for so long.

  “Pistols!” Paul yelled hoarsely.

  It was a desperation move. The pikemen maintained their shield wall, dropped their polearms and drew their sidearms. Paul needed to reestablish enough space to allow his fumbling right side to reset. However, they only had as long as their ammunition lasted. Pistol fire from the shield line lashed out, dropping many infected, but the rate of fire was very rapid.

  Too rapid to be efficient.

  The spearman who’d almost lost his shield tried to do too many things at once. He fumbled his mag change, began to reach for his dropped magazine, then changed his mind and holstered. As he braced to raise his shield again, an injured infected tripped him up and he went down in a clump.

  Immediately three infected piled on, tearing at his equipment and heavy clothing. Paul watched helplessly as even more infected joined, drawn by the man’s frantic struggles to escape.

  Given the level of team’s training, there was no way to reverse the direction of the shield line. Recovering him was out of the question, but perhaps they could shoot the zombies off him. Paul drew his own pistol. In concert with others in the second line, he tried to carefully shoot the infected mobbing his downed man. The stricken shieldman fought, his knife flashing over and over but suddenly the plastic bicycle helmet that he wore flew off as a “friendly” pistol round cratered the plastic.

  “Withdraw!” Paul didn’t waste time mourning. There would be time later.

  As they backed through the doorway at the end of the hall, men peeled off and reformed. Unfortunately, this meant that fewer were holding back the same number of infected. The pressure was enormous and the team was being forced through the door like toothpaste from a tube.

  “Still too many!” his assistant yelled. “We have to pull out!”

  “We’ll retreat back to the front entrance!” Paul yelled back. “We’ve got to delay the mob long enough to break contact and get on the trucks.” Hundreds of infected were hammering at the remaining handful of men holding the shieldwall. The white-faced men had reholstered their clocked out pistols and now grunted with effort as they pushed back against a wall of screaming, growling predators.

  Paul and the squad leader stepped forward to begin a rapid series of single shots. As he did so, Paul activated his weapon light and was able to steady it long enough to really scan the corridor. For a moment, his heart seized. The number of infected had grown beyond his worst nightmare. Behind the depleted group of infected blocked by Paul’s shieldwall, a fresh mob numbering more than a thousand surged forward, filling the length and breadth of the long corridor. Holding back those kinds of numbers with gun fire would be like trying to restrain the incoming tide by throwing rocks at the surf.

  The men already through the chokepoint, like Paul, could probably make it to safety. The men in the shieldwall would be doomed if he waited any longer.

  “Everyone back! NOW!”

  The remaining shield wall disintegrated as the new wave of infected struck and Paul screamed his last command.

  “RUN!”

  * * *

  Tom had watched as the adversary’s foot patrol approached the bridge on foot. Cautiously, they probed forward.

  “Well, that tears it,” Tom said conversationally. “Wasted our best demo and we’re not even going to get a single vehicle. Let’s mount back up and use some of the ANFO from the ranch to collapse that cut.”

  He referred to a narrow cut in a rocky hillside that they had passed even earlier. Junior’s dad had pre-prepared modestly sized ammonium nitrate charges, packaged in the bright orange plastic buckets from the local hardware superstore. One or two of these, fused with an old-fashioned slow match, would suffice for what Tom had in mind. Covering the road with rocky debris would compel the Gleaners to backtrack and allow his party to keep their distance. They would continue to draw the Gleaners away from the families’ camp.

  “Junior, Dave, get back to the truck,” Tom said without taking eyes off the developing scene. “I’ll initiate electrically from here. They’ll have to ford downstream or go all the way to the next bridge. Either way, plenty of time to rig the pass.”

  Despite the beginnings of a protest, Pascoe towed the younger, if bigger, young man downslope towards their truck.

  A few hundred meters in the other direction, well below Tom, a small party stumbled across the stream and started pointing at the underside of the bridge.

  Well, shit.

  He hated to use one of their few remotely ignited charges for nothing more than a delaying tactic, but he had committed to the bridge. The remotes had the advantage of omitting wires, making them easier to conceal. Additionally, timing was simpler since he could wait for the proper moment to explode the charge.

  But, Murphy always takes a cut. Tom’s gamble hadn’t paid off, so he was only going to get a few individuals, not a truck.

  Lesson learned there. Or relearned, as it were.

  Chagrined, he dug the firing remote out of his pocket and lifted the safe and arming switch cover. With a second glance to check that their adversaries were within the blast radius, he pressed the button, sending a radio frequency signal to the waiting charge. The signal was designed to close a small circuit, allowing a battery to very rapidly heat the bridge wires in the detonator. Acting just like the element of an old-fashioned incandescent light bulb, the wires would ignite a chemical explosive that was very sensitive to heat. In turn, that very small explosion would ignite the secondary, or booster charge. The booster created a much larger, sharper explosion which would detonate the main charge.

  Of course, all of this happened much faster than a human could blink.

  Except that it didn’t.

  Nothing. Could be a slow detonator. Tom waited.

  And waited.

  Misfire. Damn it.

  He stowed the remote and positioned his carbine. The range was a bit long, but all he expected to do now was to make them deploy, slowing their advance and buying some time.

  Through his optic he selected one figure who was staring curiously at the underside of the bridge. Four hundred meters. The bullet would drop more than a foot over that distance. He repeated the familiar shooter’s mantra as adjusted his point of aim in order to compensate.

  “Front sight focus, breathe in, slowly exhale and squeeze…”

  * * *

  Paul squeezed the door knob in his right hand as he paused in front of Kohn’s door. The growth in camp population meant that nearly all the CHUs were shared, so having a private office with a door had become a pearl of great price. The acting administrator had made a show of accepting the office from her fawning staff. Paul knew that it was a symbol of her power. He released the doorknob, swallowed and knocked.

  The medical center salvage mission had been a barely mitigated disaster. The most recent losses on the clearance mission had further reduced the original security staff to less than
a handful. In contrast, Kohn’s coterie had grown. The original city staff, new refugees, commodity analysts from the bank and now, even Kendra were firmly embracing her leadership and a promise of collaborative safety.

  He had already compiled the after action report. Three missing, presumed dead. Two more dead of their wounds. More seriously injured, including a few gunshot wounds. The Executive Committee would meet tonight to receive his verbal digest, but he wanted to pre-brief Kohn.

  He recognized that he was delaying. Like it or not, Kohn was in charge. He knocked a second time with two firm raps to the door.

  “Please come in,” answered a familiar contralto.

  Joanna was seated, but stood to reveal that instead of the usual dove gray trousers that matched her uniform tunic, she wore a knee-length pleated A-line skirt in the same color. She came forward across the reclaimed carpet, circling the desk, and took Paul’s hands in her own.

  “I am so glad that you have safely returned, Paul,” she said with a barely perceptible catch in her voice. “We have all been so very worried about the risks that you take.”

  “Um.” Paul searched for a response to this unexpected reception. “I’m very sorry, Ms. Kohn. You know by now that we lost two of the wounded. Septic shock. Four are badly wounded and may not recover to the point of returning to the team. We took on a target that was just too big. The risks of using only small teams and not investing in realistic training were eventually going to catch up with us.”

  “Of course, Paul.” She pulled him into one the chairs that faced the desk before taking the adjacent one. Her hold on his hand didn’t waver. “You must call me Joanna in a time like this. The loss of the team members is a terrible tragedy. You were right about the risks. You must forgive yourself!”

  “Ah, well, sure?” Paul said, feeling a little whiplashed by the way the conversation was developing. “Like I tried to explain, inevitable. I feel badly about it, but honestly, there wasn’t a lot that we could do. We had to enter the building to search for the centrifuge and filtration gel. Our numbers were limited. Sooner or later we were going to end up in a close-quarters fight without enough ammunition or shooters. That day arrived early, is all.”

  Joanna scooted her already close chair a fraction of an inch closer, and crossed her legs. The motion flashed a surprising amount of thigh in Paul’s peripheral vision.

  “I, I would like to propose the formation of a larger, dedicated security group which I can train up,” Paul said, startled by the unexpected display. He attempted to rally and continue with his brief. “The current policy enforcing the rotation of personnel prevents anyone from establishing the base of experience which becomes critical during an in extremis event. This reduces the effectiveness of our salvage sweeps and if we ever have to truly defend this camp, it’ll reduce our combat power there, as well. We need a larger security group, trained to a higher standard.”

  “Well, Paul, I am certainly open to reopening that line of thought…” Kohn said as she moved one warm hand to lay manicured fingers on his forearm. “We were together at the start of New York’s response to this threat and we can understand each other like so few others can. Really, we should work more closely together, after all. We can lead this group to be the start of a new recovery for humanity.”

  “Well, that’s the idea, Ms. Kohn,” Paul tried to shield himself with the formalities that had become commonplace. Was it his imagination or could he actually feel her body heat across the narrowing gap that separated their chairs?

  “Joanna, Paul. And I need your support too,” Joanna said, not quite purring. “If we could amend the Operating Rules, several options become more accessible to the Council. It would be easier to expand your security team, selectively improve and increase rations and so on.”

  “You can’t change the Rules without a unanimous vote, Joanna,” replied Paul. He could see her game now. “The Council must sit a bank representative. As I’ve stated in my objections for the record—”

  “Now, Paul,” Joanna dropped her hand to Paul’s upper thigh, where it rested lightly. “I am aware that your relationship with Ms. Jones ended some time ago. I have been alone since the start. It is fitting that the two principal leaders who were together at the start continue to…support one another, do you not agree?”

  Her finger tips beat a brief tattoo. On the material of his trousers. On the worn, thin material of his trousers.

  Paul abruptly stood up, appalled by the implications of her offer and by the uncomfortable if involuntary response of his libido. He hadn’t had a woman in a long time—well, a long time for him. Way too long, his libido assured him. In fact, this new direction that Kohn was proposing seemed just dandy to his libido.

  Kohn wasn’t unattractive physically. In a flash, his libido helpfully noted that she was fit, smart and apparently kinda into him. She was just creepy as hell. And she was a murderer.

  “I think you misunderstand my position, Ms. Kohn,” Paul said as firmly as he could, even as he jammed his hands into his trouser pockets. “I’m not going to change my position on the Camp Rules. They’re there for a reason. And…I’m not interested in other than a professional relationship.”

  “Paul, you do not seem quite sure.” She stood up with him, noting the position of his hands. A smile crept across her face. “In fact, you seem of two minds…”

  “It’s. Not. Going to happen,” he said as his anger asserted itself. “I’ve known for a long time about your record as a juvenile. About murdering your friends with a crowbar. About your boyfriend who died in a freak fall down marble stairs, his head so damaged that he must’ve fallen two, maybe three times. Some other deaths around you that remain question marks. Tom Smith knew, and he convinced me that we needed someone like you, in fact, particularly like you, if we were going to save the city. And we saw how that worked.”

  “Paul, the partnership between the City and the bank worked quite…well.” Joanna didn’t bother to repress a smirk. If his revelations disturbed her, it wasn’t evident. “We survived. Civilization may yet survive. Expressly because Smith knew, like I know and in your heart, like you know—the end will justify any means needed to get there.”

  She inched a bit closer, her chest only a few inches from Paul’s. He noted the motion of her blouse. It strongly suggested that she hadn’t bothered with a, ah, foundation garment.

  Her voice lowered a bit.

  “And we all used the same vaccine,” she said huskily. “We all have the same guilty knowledge. Would you give up your protection from the virus just because of the source?”

  “Yeah, we all used the same vaccine, Joanna,” Paul said angrily as he stepped farther back. “The difference is that I saw Tom throw up almost every day, sick from running the whole bloody mess. It was required to survive. Meanwhile, you slept like a baby. And that’s the difference. So you and I…no. Never. Work with you to advance the Site? Yes. Get personal with you? I’d sooner fuck a bag of scorpions.”

  “Oh, I see,” Kohn said as her face slid into immobility, her eyes calculating. “And my offer?”

  “I’ll continue to support the refuge and your role as Acting Administrator,” Paul said, keeping his hands in his trouser pockets. “However, the Site Charter and the Rules are clear. At some point soon, we need to establish permanent governance and a permanent coordinator. Which may or may not be you.”

  Kohn regarded Paul at close range, looking first into one eye, then the other.

  “I do see.” She spun on her heels and stalked back to her desk, the gray skirt swishing pertly side to side.

  Paul noticed.

  God-damned libido.

  “That will be all, Mr. Rune,” Kohn said, her voice perfectly composed. “Please close the door behind you.”

  Paul stepped backwards, keeping his eyes on Kohn. In turn she ignored him, and sat, opening the same red folder that she had closed upon his entry.

  He felt for the doorknob behind him before turning and then retreated, swiftl
y closing the barrier that separated them.

  CHAPTER 12

  “I’m getting really tired of all the fucking zombies,” declared Rob Robbins, Sr.

  They had departed the ranch shortly after the two bank SUVs had moved out on their delaying mission. Despite difficult roads, Kaplan’s experience to date had improved their navigation and they’d made better time than the original group. One thing that both trips had in common, however, was the number of infected that stood in their way.

  “This ain’t shit,” Kaplan said. “You shoulda seen New York on the way out. Now that was a lot. This is just the most that we’ve seen so far today. Still not too bad, though.”

  The first candidate dam had been a bust. Every fence had been knocked flat, infected buildings with open doors and broken windows and what appeared to be fire damage to the critical forest of high tension wires in the switching yard.

  Now they’d pulled up well short of the second candidate. The group was able to surveil the Watts Bar installation while remaining hidden from direct view by an old multiple car crash cluttering the state highway on the opposite side of the river. Both men ignored the ever present corpses that were still in some of the vehicles. The light breeze was pleasant since the work of scavengers and months of weather had eliminated nearly all the odors of decomposition.

  The state road descended the wooded hill where they were paused, eventually crossing the dam itself. Spanning the blue-green lake visible upstream, the dam bisected the river. Infected were in full view everywhere. Dozens appeared to be combing the near and far banks of the Tennessee. More were in motion near an RV park on their side of the river. Even more were on the dam itself, including the nearside dock mechanism.

  “So, think that we could we crush through?” replied Robbins.

  “Well, the numbers are pretty dense,” Kaplan said, calculating. “For every infected that you can see, there might be four or five that you can’t. Once we start making noise, those pop up. But take a look at the far side.”